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Looks like I found the physical limit on the size of journal entries. Read the previous entry first, it ends where this one starts up.
2002-10-07 00:01:34
I was very VERY wrong.
The competitors this year managed to make a better video in under two hours than I could’ve made in a month. I say “under” two hours because both Joe and Hsien managed to COMPLETE their videos and had extra time left over at the end to tweak them. Joe managed an elaborate transition-filled lip-synch parody film to an old audio track “Ubernostrum.” The audio was basically parodying advertising trends by repeating the brand name over and over and filling the space between with really random endorsements “It takes the pain away” “It makes me feel more like a woman” without ever actually saying what “Ubernostrum” WAS. I’d heard it somewhere before, but I couldn’t tell you where. Joe brought in clips from every piece of footage supplied and lip-synched nearly every line of the audio to humorous effect in the video. There were only two points of weakness I observed in the video. (My opinion mattered not one jot since I wasn’t actually involved with the judging. Hell, Brad was even MCing the effort instead of me as he has more than enough personality to carry the event and keep the audience interested.) The video lacked a strong beginning to set the sequence of jokes up. (One clip from Panda Family covered the first six seconds or so, and without a real strong connection established until that clip ended.) The second weakness (not a crippling one, just a spot of less strength than the rest) was inherent in the audio itself. The jokes kept coming rapid-fire and overlapping one into another. Joe matched it perfectly step-for-step, but the audience kept having to hold it’s breath, waiting for a spot where they could laugh without missing the next joke. Very good video, and quite funny, but not really for a large audience.
Hsien, however, won the competition, being the first Iron Chef to successfully defend his position against a challenger. When the secret ingredient was revealed, it played completely into his hands. He used video from Spirited Away, Panda Family, Five Star Stories, Metropolis, and (secret ingredient) “The Secret of NIMH” to……a faster, upbeat version of the the theme from “The Neverending Story.” Hsien just rolled a bunch of heartstrings of the audience together and gave a mighty heave on them. Secret of NIMH alone with that theme earned entirely too many points in my book for me to be impartial. Every element of his video just played to those heartstrings of folks in the audience around my age. He just happened to be handed the appropriate tools to aid in his tugging. Perusing his journal after the fact, he commented on the “gift” he got when quick-scanning “Spirited Away.” Seeing the dragon, he went “Holy shit! It’s Falcor!” Ah, yess. The fates did love him this time around. He didn’t even have to employ his secret drunken technique. But will he fare so well next year when the British invade? Hmmm…….
Anyway, other than Patrick taking a nasty fall over the cable bundle and pulling a muscle in his leg, everything ran smooth through the Iron Chef competition, although we did run over about 12 minutes and Nic Neidenbach’s panel got started a little late. Originally it was supposed to be his and Alvin T. Chang’s panel (winner of Dance last year) but Alvin had to cancel at the last min. I am sorry to Nic about the delay and the general lateness of the panel. It’ll be remedied by next year at the least.
I, on the other hand, snuck out as soon as everything was going well. See a friend of mine said she’d get me and Casey ( staffer, of Colliding Symphonies) into Dessloctoberfest as she had a pass and permission to bring one or two friends along. I shoulda’ known better, as she’s tried to haul me into other parties with usually bad (and somewhat embarrassing results), but I desperately needed to get at least a little soused at the con, especially after the fustercluck that had been Friday night. So anyway, we three go up to the party, take two steps in the door and she cuts through the crowd like a shot from a gun, disappearing in less than two seconds. And we two run into the host in that same two seconds. Dammit. Even as I say it, I realize that “my friend with the badge just….” is the single most stereotypical lameass “get into the party” excuse ever invented. The sad thing is that I’d been to D’fest several times in the past, but had apparently not made enough of an impression to get remembered this time. Previous years I’d been charging around to find guests who were missing their panels while accompanying Lloyd or Dave. They’d apparently just figgered I was “good” by association. This time around, though, I was officially a gatecrasher and so Casey and I paid the fee. ($5 and a salute to help out with the booze cost.) Two minutes after everything was sorted out, our friend with the badge showed up with two glasses of blue liquor for us. *Sigh*
It was pretty good once we got in, though. I had about four full glasses of the blue stuff in about half an hour. Seeing as I’d had about half a meal in three days at this point, the alcohol hit fast and hard, but I have a metabolism that kicks the asses of lesser metabolisms. Contributions to my state of inebriation from Ken Nabbe (Snackpants) in the form of a glass or three of sake helped me along the path, but I actually got fairly unstable for half an hour while at D’fest. Also had a major surprise in that I spotted Parker and MM at the party. Every year I think he’s given up on AWA for good, and then he turns up at late-night events like this. Stashed my WWMMD button in a hurry (he hates the things) and struck up a brief conversation with him on his way out. Need to remember to get a blank tape to him for a copy of his vids.
Had an extremely AWA moment at D’fest on top of that. Got deep into conversation with someone at the party and ended on the topic of how ridiculous it was for there to be a line waiting to get into the dealer’s room at AWA. (Hate to be elitist, but you either get that or you don’t. Can’t really explain it.) My friends with the badge abandoned me to my conversation after about a half an hour, and I hung out for another forty minutes or so, just talking and drinking. A nice ego boost when one of the newer guests was introduced to the crowd with the statement that “everyone worth knowing at this con is in this room.” Yeah, I know, private party, old school gathering, elitist bastard invite-only, but it was still a nice boost to the old ego since I’d missed LC and most of the rest of the con at that point. Ran into EK, Dave, and Ed on my way out, but by the time I left I knew I would have been risking it to attend Joe’s party. Whatever was in the blue stuff wasn’t as strong as Joe’s fabled punch, but it was plenty strong enough that I was too near my limit already to risk another incursion.
Made my way unsteadily back to the VAT for the setup of the dance. We spotted ANOTHER few problems with the speakers (I’ve lost track of what the problem was this time) got them fixed up and set the place to jumpin’ under TJ’s expert guidance.
Round about midnight at this time and I set to wandering the con, leaving the dance in TJ and Jingoro’s capable hands. I run into the crew on the patio and hang out for a bit. At this point I first hear about “Titty bitch.”
OK, I’m of two minds on this. Half of me, the half responsible for the VAT and general con-mind, is exasperated. We are trying to run a family-friendly con here, and now we all know that AWA’s reputation is going to be based on the one conger who decided the best way to liven things up was to flash complete strangers and pose for provocative half-clothed photos in the con area. Great, now we’re the “animal house” of anime cons. Despite all the work LC and the formal wear of our con directors have put towards avoiding that moniker before it even came up, we’re now “the party con.” (Helloooo Akon crowds.) Now AWA is gonna be known for nudity and alcohol before being known as the last con actually concerning itself with the showing of and celebration of Japanese cartoons above all the complaining of genere fiends. Further, how the hell can we catch these unless it happens right in front of us? We actually had a badge pulled for this last year (around opening on SAT last year……don’t ask… I know the girl) because someone complained, but it’s not like we’re gonna get applauded for pulling the badges of scantily-clad girls late at night. Hell, we’re more likely to get strung up for that. (That being said, had she hung around any more than she did, we woulda carted her off to sober up.) Really, people, between this and the multiple vomit stories, I expect I’m gonna get called on the carpet by the other directors about the behavior of my guests. I’m hoping no direct connections were made so it’ll bypass me completely, but I don’t think the con heads are that dumb.
The other half of my mind would like to say “GOD DAMNIT! WHY DOES THIS STUFF NEVER HAPPEN WHEN I’M AROUND?” Hey, red blood runs through my veins too….
We hung out until around 3:30 when the neighboring Video room 1 (the one that had hosted FF8) was showing hentai and the security staffers came by to tell me that they’d be turning in shortly. The dance was winding down, so, entirely impromptu, we set up the running of “The hour that does not exist” (which came closer to an actual hour than had ever been reached before). We cleared out the dance, closed up the room, and funneled the interested AMVers in through the Hentai room. Went off like a charm, although I got a few disappointed shouts at the first couple.
“How come there isn’t plastic on the floor in here?”
“’Cause these videos are really SHORT!”
“That’s not a problem for him….”
I’d originally intended a final sendout with the sole yaoi entry we’d gotten this year (“What’s this?” from the Nightmare before Christmas) but the video went strangely missing in the end. On the other hand, I’d never really appreciated how long that Celiene Dion song was before…
Shut down “The hour” around 4:15 and commenced to walking off the rest of my buzz (kept running by the repeated offering of libations). Ended up wandering in to ops and crashing there for half an hour. There, of course, I ran into Danny Wilson.
Dude, seriously, never drink that much again. I’ve never seen someone that totally wasted and still standing up. I’ve had friends less drunk than that wake up in their own vomit. (Hey, if it can do in Jimmy Hendrix, what chance do the rest of us have?) From my understanding, you were dragged unconscious to ops because you were found passed out in the elevator after everyone had graffiited the hell out of you. By our estimates, you were about six shots from the point where we call the medical staff in to find out if you were actually going to wake up at all. As funny as it may have been to see you pull a camera out of your pocket and go “Where the hell did I get a camera?” it wasn’t worth the chance that AWA gets its first case of alcohol poisoning.
And yeah, we were watching porn. We were bored as hell and it was really bad hentai so we were MSTing it off a laptop. Apparently it’d been left there by one of Danny’s friends who’d dragged ‘em to us.
By now it was around 5:30, and, considering that (although I was fully sobered up) the commute would have taken longer than any sleep I might have gotten, I just snuck into the VAT through the staffer’s entrance, pulled on my leather jacket (I’d brought it expecting to be wearing it all weekend, but the A/C was much more reasonable this time…lost out on the cool factor, though) and crawled onto the chairs behind the panel table to catch an hour or so of sleep.
Much to my surprise, the staffers (who had been told, once again, to show up at 7:00) actually showed up at 7:20, or one of them did. Same girl who’d earned points by coming by first the last time. (Turns out she’s from Michigan and there were some communication problems concerning her staffing forms…so she was practically in the same boat over-working-wise as Thad.) Somehow (heh) she culled about a dozen people into the VAT on about five minutes notice and we got all the chairs and equipment set up from the dance in no time flat.
Much to my greater surprise, Sunday was the day that a few staffers I hadn’t seen THE ENTIRE FRICKIN’ CON turn up to do their hours. Hooo….they’re not gonna be on my staff next year. I honestly though they’d decided to attend the con instead of work it. No more of these stunts next year. I’ve got enough trustworthy individuals who at least checked in all three days that I don’t have to tolerate this.
Just about everything was slower paced on Sunday. Some of it may have been my perspective from being rampantly overtired, but it seemed like everyone had burned out the night before. At the final closing ceremonies Dave asked who in the audience was actually sick (as about half the directors were absent due to sickness) and nearly a quarter of the people raised their hands. Patrick’s panel, followed by Jason Salce and Joe’s panel pretty much ran themselves (like the candle-light idea, Jason) so I took the time to go and actually peruse the dealer’s room with Robin. Could only afford to pick up the yearly T-shirt, although all the videos this year made me pine after the Now & Then, Here and There box set. (Really need to get those expenses reimbursed)
“The Splice is Right” was dropped that morning with little notice, mostly due to Greg working overtime to get the other gameshows up to speed. It’s too bad he chose to drop the AMV game, but he came by an apologized profusely in person (as did Lee twenty minutes later) so all is forgiven. We’ll try again next year. We filled the slot with a request block.
The Tech Issues panel was something of a fumble on my part, not handled properly since I was badly overtired. I knew 5 was about the limit on effective panelists, but even at that point I had two “yeses” and about four “maybes.” ALL five maybes showed up and wanted to participate. I really should have drawn the line earlier, as the net effect was a few participants and a bunch of bored panelists. Sorry guys, won’t happen again. Actually, considering the chat on the subject now, the panel itself will probably be dropped entirely as most tech questions are answered by amv.org already.
Final panel was Nathan Bezner and KZ (Mike Barranti) running vids. They’re listed as “surprise guests” mostly because we weren’t certain there’d be room for another block there when all was said and done. Sorry about the lack of a listing guys (although the bunny ears did work their mystical ways into getting you the slot in the first place…and foiling all of my dastardly plans.
VAT closing ceremonies. Damn I was tired. I was about six hours from the point where you start hallucinating from sleep dep. (I know, ‘cause I’ve hit it a few times in the past.) I hadn’t been this exhausted since the first year I got a room at D*C. I do apologize for my lackluster performance at the closing ceremonies. Specifically:
I regret that Brad and EK and Lee and Dave and…uh…Ardyn? (guy I didn’t know) ‘s “AMV ad” didn’t get a larger audience. Had I though about it a bit more I would have asked to show it at the main closing ceremonies….although I think they were already disassembling the equipment at that point. Really, considering how utterly exhausted the entirety of the con was on Sunday, I’m glad it got an audience at all….stuff like that should really show up on Saturday to get a nice, big audience. Too bad, ‘cause it was funny as frickin’ hell. Hope it shows up on AMV.org for everyone soon.
I regret that “VAT talent awards” was not better organized. In previous years we’ve had a printer on site to produce and present these things during Iron Chef. This year, no such luck. Thus, in the end, we had to do without the actual certificates and just get the presenters to announce which video they wanted to give an award to. Sorta clumsy, but as soon as I can get at A-ko, I’ll have them posted. (Along with all the Master’s entries.) This above all other things WILL be fixed next year. (Live and learn.)
I regret I was so utterly out of it at this point that I couldn’t summon up enough stage presence to get a nice sendoff of this year’s VAT. Unfortunately, that’s been par for the course for me, as last year’s appointment ceremony was mostly notable for my lack of anything clever to say.
I don’t regret being up on the stage behind the panel table when Ian came up to announce that he had extra free cds of his vids for whoever wanted them. Probably the funniest thing all con was seeing him get the words “free” and “video” out of his mouth before he was literally swarmed by everyone in the room. Just seeing the expression of “oh Hell” on his face as they came at him from every direction made my Sunday. He dropped the stuff and had to crawl out from the massing crowd.
I don’t regret the second time I blew up during the con. At the very end, after everyone was clearing the room, we had scary, enormous, creepy, fanboy stalker (who somehow conned himself onto staff) he comes idling up to me and says:
“Who do I have to kill to get on this staff?”
Without hesitation, I reply “Everyone here” and then turn and walk off.
I hate to bias against anyone, but frankly that guy is never going to be on my staff. He came by and volunteered to do something at the start of the con, so I sent him on one errand. “Get sandbags for the screen.” He returns an hour and a half later empty handed. I fix things in five minutes. That level of incompetence combined with his complete representation of the ur-creepy fanboy stalker means he will never join my staff. Hopefully, this two-word rejection will give him the clue he so desperately needs.
After that, I got to abandon the room to attend the main closing ceremonies. I got an ovation from the exhausted crowd and did my little prepared thank-yous to the staff, sub-directors and sponsors. No one had anything bad to say about the VAT, except for the people who wanted the VAT dance to run later. (Which is sorta a good thing, not really a criticism…) Returning from main, I found the room almost entirely broken down, and pizza awaiting at the dead dog. I also ran into Hil Hughes, which surprised the hell out of me, as I had no idea he was working the con. (D&D friend and the other half of Artificial Suns.) EK passed me a sketch she did of the VAT heads (me, Jingoro, Patrick, and TJ) on the way out the door. Apparently they were far too tempted by the “enormous cakes” at the local diner to make the dead dog party.
As has been the case for the last four dead dogs, it was pretty much a bust. Everyone too tired to really party, just sitting around eating the free pizza. Fun, though, as I got to hang out with the AMVer guests one last time. One by one we peeled off and left. I got outta there around 6:30 after a final libation from Ken Nabbe’s sake jug o’ goodness. (Yeah, yeah, I waited an hour after the drink before I even thought about driving.)
THE END. Man, longest journal entry ever. I was gonna add on a movie review, but I figure 30 pages is way too much already.
And why did I do all this? Because I believe in transparency in governance. I’m going to bed.
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"You were merely waiting for this moment to arrive..."
2002-10-06 23:57:46
(Those disinterested in me personally should move down until they encounter the "AWA insider" report a few screens down.)
Well, got back from a “Save Farscape” signing earlier tonight that was, I’m afraid, something of an eye-opener for me.
For those of you who don’t follow the top-rated show on the Sci-Fi channel, Farscape is a kind of self-aware version of “Voyager” except a lot more fun. John Crighton, an astronaut, is sucked through a wormhole while performing some experimental maneuvers in low earth orbit. He gets spat out somewhere else, and is put into a situation where he has to throw his lot in with a group of escaped convicts. They spend a great deal of time wandering about space, making friends and dangerous enemies. The story arcs are usually cleverer than typical Star Trek fare, although they do have their fair share of lame plot twists. No, the thing that sets it apart is it’s sense of self-awareness. Crighton is constantly deflating the situations they find themselves in with witty remarks that you’d never expect to see in a sci-fi show. At one point, while attempting to baffle his way out of a hostage situation, John makes a gun with his hand, points it at his own head and shouts “Nobody move or the white boy gets it!” Seriously, the show is just downright funny in its writing.
Anyway, Sci-Fi, in a leap of logic most people would call “phenomenally stupid” decided to discontinue their option to purchase more new episodes. The studio, with no buyers available, canceled the show’s promised 5th season with next to no notice. Word came down to the writers literally during the taping of the final episode of season 4. Worse still, it’s traditional for Farscape seasons to end on a cliffhanger. This is all made even more phenomenally stupid by the fact that (IIRC) Farscape was only supposed to run a total of 5 seasons, and it’s currently the second highest rated show ON the Sci-Fi channel.
In the end it comes down to costs and ratings. I wasn’t pissed off until I got the full details, and now it’s just reminding me all over again about the end of MST3K. Hell, Comedy Central couldn’t kill MST3K and Sci-Fi managed it.
So there’s a fan-base effort to drum up enough of a rally world-wide to get Sci-Fi to buy the fifth season of the show. All well and good. The Atlanta branch of this effort contacted the show’s stars, and, much to my surprise, three of them agreed to fly in from Australia for signings and a rally in the Atlanta area. The three stars are Paul Goddard (Stark from seasons 2-3), Lani Tupv (Bylar Crayse and the voice of Pilot…he was at D*C and, at the time, knew absolutely nothing about the cancellation), and Gigi Edgely (Chiana…my favorite character from the show). There was a signing at a Tower Records tonight in support of the rally. All well and good. As per usual, having not been there before, I got myself really fricking lost, (It was down a damn alley! I swear!) got a dinner, and accidentally stumbled on the place ten minutes before it was supposed to be over.
*Sigh*
OK, I’ll admit to having high expectations. I mean, this is my favorite currently running TV show (especially now that I’ve discovered that being zonked from AWA means I missed the season start of Buffy) but the generally high intellect of the show led me to make assumptions about the audience. I really should have known better. I got in there after slipping past the fairly annoying leaflet-ers at the front entrance to find a wonderfully spacious store, with about thirty-five (max) people in the back corner clustered around the signing table. Man. Such a collection of vaguely pear-shaped man-childs I haven’t seen in a long time. At least at D*C they’re thinned out by the “I diet and work out and I’ll be damned it I’m not gonna SHOW this” exhibitionist fetish women crowd. I got a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I really hate to say it, but the look of the crowd made me feel like I was peering into Eltingville. Loud-talking, “sci-fi is gonna save us all,” parents-basement-living fanboys. The whole endeavor started to take on the hopeless fan-wanking atmosphere of Star Trek petitions. If this is what the standard crowd looks like, I can see this whole idea circling the drain. For a popularity rally like this to be successful, they’d have had to mobilize a wide range of people to convince the networks that there was an audience for the show. Just pulling out the far-gone fans reinforces the impression that it’s a cult hit incapable of pulling in new people. Hell, they’d have scared ME off if I hadn’t known better. People like this wouldn’t be reasonable about letting a show die when it had become truly hopeless. They’ll latch on and worry the topic until long after the bitter end. They’ve got the complete toy line set up on their shelves at home. There was even a guy directly behind me who looked like he’d actually remember the Star Trek petitions.
Yeah, I’m a fanboy. I’d probably clam up like an imbecile if I ran into any of these actors socially. I love their work. I’ve got the first (and part of the second) season on DVD. But these fans looked like the type who’d have shrines made up of signed photos and action figures in the corner of their rooms.
Wanna know the weirdest thing? There’s another event tomorrow. A party. It’s taking place at “The Chamber.” That’s one of the more famous fetish dance clubs in Atlanta. (This year for Halloween they’re having a Hellraiser-themed night, complete with hook suspensions. If you don’t know what that is, don’t ask.) Now try with me to imagine this crowd of asocial man-childs at The Chamber. Yeah. Ow. And the organizer got the press to show up. Owwwwwww. ( I take it all back….after driving past I can attest that the place was PACKED.)
In the end, when I found out that the actors were charging $30 a signature I discreetly snuck out of line, payed for a couple of CDs and hightailed it out of there. The expenses from AWA haven’t been reimbursed yet, and I really don’t want to take another blow to the wallet (to the tune of $90) until that’s been sorted out. In the end, maybe I’m not that much better than these people I’m “sneering” at. Mostly I left because I didn’t want to be associated with the rest of the crowd when I met the actors. Horribly elitist of me, I know, but I have enough problems with my life currently that my self-esteem didn’t need to take another blow in the form of shaking the hand of a strained, humoringly-smiling actress after “Zelddar! He of great girth” just spent fifteen minutes talking her ear off. It wasn’t a complete waste of time, though. I got to see each of the actors at least.
Lani Tupv, of course, I’d seen previously at his panel at D*C. He looks only a little different from his character on the show, with the exception that his long, curly hair bursts out like a poodle’s tail from where he had it tied back. Paul Goddard had hair. See, his character wears a mask over half of his face, and he has a shaved head. He’s been out of the show for a good half-season at this point, and has grown all of his hair back. For all the world he looked like a slightly elongated Beck. Same facial features, same hair color, everything.
Gigi Edgley….damn she’s small. She doesn’t look ANYTHING like her character. It took me a good six or seven minutes to even figure out that it was her and not some administrator checking receipts at the end of the line. She’s about 5’3” and looks like she weighs under 110 lbs. Blond hair, small glasses, fairly forward-drawn face. Admittedly, she would be the least recognizable of the characters, as her outfit involves restrictive clothing, white and black-streaked wig, and full-skin grey makeup. STILL. I could only barely make out some of the contours of her face as looking a bit like her character’s. In the end, I think it’s a credit to her acting ability, because the most distinct thing about her character is the alien mannerisms she’s worked in. Take that away and suddenly she’s completely unrecognizable. Add it in and even without the makeup and outfit, I’d instantly know who she was. (Oh, and those of you who’ve seen her interview…she’s right about the construction of her costume altering her…ahem…physique.)
Anyway, despite this little eye-opening activity I still intend to support the effort. I’d encourage all the rest of you out there to do the same. Send physical letters, those are always more impressive, to Sci-Fi network asking them to fund another season or release the rights to show previous seasons to another network so they could consider new material. Be reasonable, not insulting, yadda yadda yadda. Come on, lets not let the world count on good, intelligent, fun sci-fi being a genre followed only by overweight fanboys and children. We’ve at least come this far in getting the US to consider animation as a viable medium for adults (well…..at least a little of the way), lets try to edge away from the stupefyingly dumb action flicks (MI 2 has been on the lunchroom monitor all week) calling themselves “sci-fi” to pull in the nerd clique dollars.
Oh! Acting upon EK’s vehenement recommendation, one of the CDs I got was The Avalanche’s “Since I left you.” The other was an album of Moxy Fruvous, since I was actually able to get “King of Spain” out of my head for a day or two this last year. (Infectious, infectious song.)
Now, what you’ve all been waiting for:
AWA 8 the insider report! Yes! Come and hear of the seamy underbelly of this popular con! Recoil in horror at the decadence and sin! Wonder where the hell I was during all this decadence and sin!
Heh. Seriously. I’ll tell y’all everything that happened from my perspective, excepting some of the stuff with my staff, whom I’ll just refer to as “staff” as any disputes along those lines really shouldn’t be aired much outside the track. I’ll try to keep everything anonymous.
So, first off, what the hell am I doing as head of this track anyway? Have I the qualifications? Have I the name recognition or the personality on the mic to pull ‘em in? Can I follow in the footsteps of the guy who went before, who fought tooth and nail, long and hard, for every minute of track space and time?
Well. No.
Qualifications? I haven’t won anything at AWA aside from VAT talent awards (thanks Aluminum and BBT) in two years. I don’t enter other contests since I can’t attend any other conventions. (My job keeps me nailed down in GA.) My editing system is significantly behind the curve, far surpassed by even some of the newbies (Had I the money I would have bid on Joe’s system.) What I do have is Quu and TJ, my sub-directors and tech experts on the converting of video files and the adjustment and alignment of sound systems for the VAT room. But personally, no I don’t have any special qualifications in the realm of video editing that make me indispensable.
Name recognition? For maybe a dozen people, yeah. Everyone else? Nah. It’s curious, though. That appears to be the least important aspect of the job. Daric Jackson (Jingoro, formerly Daric Koslowski) ran this con’s AMV contest for seven straight years, built it into the consistently largest and most attentively watched AMV contest in the US (despite the con’s relatively small stature) and yet a mention of his name on the boards would draw nothing but blank stares 99% of the time. AMV hosts just don’t seem to draw much attention at AWA. Techs, yes. Contestants, yes. Director, though, is fairly thankless, and lets the position sink into obscurity. Personally, I think this is a great injustice, but it just happens to work in my favor. Since few people remember Daric, few are going to compare me to him, a situation I could only loose out on. Frankly, from the response of the crowd this year, I get the impression that most of them hadn’t even noticed the change.
Presence on the microphone? I actually thought I had something there. That was to be my saving grace from obscurity, as I tend to be fairly funny in person. Turns out I freeze up a bit in front of a crowd, but I’ll come to that later.
Fighting tooth and nail? No. See, that’s the trick. I don’t have to. Jingoro fought the VAT into the position it’s in now, the largest self-contained programming track in the convention, with one of the best viewing rooms. To do so he had to strain a few old friendships, call in favors, and generally get a handful of directors pissed off at him. Now that everything’s set up, he steps down (or that’s what we told the cops anyway…..two years with no nomination could make a person….homicidal….;) ) and I just have to not screw things up. Everyone likes me ‘cause I’ve been around since AWA III in events staffing (which means you help EVERYONE), and nobody wants to kick the new puppy, so I’ve got pretty clear sailing for a few years before anyone might contemplate cutting into the VAT track. Further, the con heads rarely even stick their heads into our room ‘cause Dave burnt out on AMVs half a decade ago, Stan’s too busy with those parts of the con that are breaking down, and Lloyd is far too busy keeping things from imploding to check in on us. (Nothing’s gonna go down while Lloyd’s around…the man’s a miracle worker in these areas.) Therefore, we can do pretty much whatever we want so long as it doesn’t show porn to the kiddies (HEY….y’all took an oath, you know…) or set anything on fire. (AD…I appreciate the sip, but next time no open flames? Please?)
So we’ve enumerated all the reasons I shouldn’t be the director. Why should I? ‘Cause I can fix things. Not tech things, but situation-type things. Finding people, getting people to work around things, dealing with irate/drunk/high people, finding motivational buttons for the more procrastinatorial. Back in my events staffing days I used to go on “disaster patrol” because I could usually get things sorted out faster than anyone else in the area. (On the other hand, at AWA IV this meant I got stuck in the hallway for 40 minutes picking foil tape out of the carpet.) Further, I’ve kept up with a lot of AMVs out there and have a fairly good mental index of those I’ve seen. I claim no especial skill at mixing, but I can fill three hours with good videos at the drop of a hat. Finally, and most importantly, Jingoro knows that I like the track enough the way he ran it that I wouldn’t be tearing it apart to remake it in my own image as soon as he closes the door. Also (I believe) Jingoro trusts my taste in videos. (Any commentary on that subject would be entirely self serving…)
So where does that leave us? That leaves us on the weekend before the con begins. Otherwise known as “Expo judging.” Many thanks to all of the foolhardy individuals who actually agreed to sit through two solid days of video watching. Honestly, we had a rotating audience with a full crowd on Saturday and a handful of new people on Sunday. Final decisions were reserved for Monday instead of the weekly anime showing. An ordeal it was on many levels. At this point I was more than a little surprised to find out that many of the analog entries hadn’t been captured to tape, but I was assured that this would be remedied within a day or so.
Wednesday before the con. I went in to start assembling the awards tape only to discover that most of the analog entries had yet to be captured. Patrick and crew were “entertaining” the DDR assemblers as they started their final assembly, under much repeated shouting about how much “Priemier Sucks” from Brad. Hours were spent attempting to impose different transition effects into Priemier from expectations garnered in other systems. I, Nigel, and TJ were there until 4:00 AM renaming files to match our system, and we still only managed to get all of the pro entries finished. Expo we started on, but were so thoroughly daunted by the task that we gave up after an hour and a half. In theory, this renaming and the analog capture should have been finished on Tuesday, but the staff member responsible for that never showed up the previous day. This particular trend was something that became a theme for the rest of the con. If any of y’all came up and asked for a particular video to be shown from the Expo contest and it took us a while to find it, this is the reason why. When the videos were being captured, transferred or converted, they got named pretty much at random or just used the original file name from the submission. This made locating some of the files by computer search nearly impossible. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Also, and more importantly, times were taken down for all the winners to see whether or not I’d actually be able to fit them all into a single 3-hour block for the formal “Awards” ceremony.
Oh, I suppose that I should mention that at this point I discover I’m sick. This panics me. I always get sick at conventions, and in fact came back from D*C with a particularly nasty version of “Con Plauge” which I had just gotten over. To START a convention, especially one that I’m helping run, with a cold is just unacceptable, especially because the colds I always get are along the lines of CRIPPLING sore throats and exhaustion. The exhaustion I could deal with, the sore throat I can’t. (Con plague is what lead me to the discovery that it is physically impossible to go through more than four rolls of Halls in a day, unless you chew them.) So I go around asking everyone what the best way to stomp a cold out of existence in its early stages. The universal reply I get is “good luck, boyo.” Not accepting this, I drink three quarts of OJ and blast the hell out of the cold with Theraflu and Tylenol cold. Apparently, in retrospect, either it worked and I stomped it enough that it never reached its full potential, or a slight cough and little bit of an itchy throat is simply as bad as this cold gets, ‘cause I remained at exactly that level of sick for the entire con.
Thursday before the con. Showed up at the convention center at noon to help out with other departments. The VAT track was unavailable to us until about 6:00 as it was the last room being used by the previous convention. Specifically it was being used as a buffet “Dinner to fight Obesity.”
I’ll just let that irony sit there for a moment.
….
OK, that’s long enough.
Since my department was effectively put on hold until we could start setup, I ordered all the staff members present (all three of them) to go work for events until our stuff arrived. I, meanwhile, drove off to the storage facility to help out with loading. The rain slowed us down a touch, as did the most IDIOTIC arrangement for entry into the storage area (The keypad was so close to the gate you had to get out of the car to reach it.) but we actually got the thing loaded in record time. Back to the convention center and a bunch of toting and carrying. I helped out a bit with taping down wiring and the like, but once our room finally opened up we had more than enough to do. Chairs and the like were handled by the center staff, but we got the joy of fighting with the screen to get it set up, dictating where the stages and tables go, and the most preliminary of sound system setups. At this point Patrick and crew show up (around 7:00 IIRC) with loads of computer material and drop them off for us. I miss the AMV dinner due to having to set up the room and wanting to get the place in condition to actually show videos to keep the REALLY early congers busy and give them a place to cool their heels. Also, the absurd number of Expo videos means that I have to start showing some now to make sure that they all get shown at some point during the con. Unfortunatley, due to some key absences from our staffing (the people who know how these computers have to be wired in order to be prepared for Iron Chef and the sponsor blocks later on….as well as the simple accessing of the most up-to-date servers, as not all of the servers got fully updated before the con. (We had three backups of the servers, but only one of them had all of everything we needed.) So we were delayed from assembling the video output for three and a half hours. What did we do in the meantime? Tuned the audio system to within an inch of its life. I, TJ, and the rest of my staff who had shown up at that point (mostly TJ, as he’s our local audio technician) worked over the speaker and SEELE systems until they’d all been stretched to within an inch of their lives. Some a little further, actually, as we discovered that both tweeters had gone in the front speakers. Actually the whole system sounded fucked for the three hours we were working on them until those key members of the staff came back and fixed it in about three minutes. (Was a computer interface problem that set the default volumes through the roof on the computer…audio settings external to the system couldn’t compensate and every note of base made the SEELEs crackle and buzz. We even had Gordon (con tech guy) come in and take a look, but it didn’t help. He did replace the tweeters with a couple of external units, though. The first of many repairs to the VAT system during the con. (Gordon was nothing but an enormous help to us throughout the whole convention. He spent more than half his on-the-clock time in our suite trying to keep ahead of the curve as everything started breaking down. Our track, due to the constant demand for loud, heavy base music, put the biggest strain on all the equipment, despite the fact we got an extra SEELE this year for the center of the room just to make sure everyone could feel the base. Major props to the man…another con chair position that rarely gets recognized by the average conger.) We finally got the key staffers with their wiring diagrams back and, after perhaps a bit too much of a chewing-out on my part, everything was up and running. This constituted one of the two times I blew up during the convention. The second time was less justified but far more necessary.
Somewhere in there I managed to corner EK and got her to run the commissions I’d requested for the panels. They were great, but the “getting started” pic was almost ruined by the first signs of a fresh disaster. (Paragraph after next.)
So now we’re at…what…11:00? 11:30? My memory of exact times is a bit fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure it was a lot closer to midnight than I’d’ve liked by the time we were up and running. I sat behind the console for a few hours taking requests and interspersing Expo entries, and eventually traded out. We shut down the track around 2:30-3:00 IIRC, but not until after the fresh disaster struck.
The ceiling was leaking.
At least, we though that’s what it was.
A couple of attendees came back to the wall o’ VAT to tell us that they were getting dripped on pretty heavily. Running around in the dark and craning my head upward showed a remarkable amount of water collecting on the wood molding in the celing. Not on the chandeliers, not on the plaster or the tiling (although a few tiles showed water damage) but just on the big wooden molding. There was enough of it that I thought at first the sprinklers had sprung a leak, and I informed the hotel as such. In retrospect, I suppose it must have just been exceedingly heavy condensation from the constant dripping outside and the A/C ducts just on the other side of the paneling. At any rate, this was the only time during the convention that it was especially noted. (And believe me….I was watching.)
As I was commuting to and from the con (my funds wouldn’t let me consider any other option, even with half the amount being reimbursed by the convention pot) I rattled out and headed home after shutdown. Startup time was scheduled for 7:30 the next morning for requests and Expo overflow, staffers were to be there at 7:00 for the final adjustments and tweakings. I pull in a security staffer I knew and told him to get someone to come up and lock up the room, while I wander out towards home. Theraflu, Tylenol Cold, four hours sleep.
I wake up later than I’d like and get to the con by about 8:00. Hmmm. Track isn’t up and running yet. Funny. Door’s unlocked. None of my staffers are around. Even funnier. There’s no one inside keeping an eye on the thousands of dollars of computer equipment stored in the room. Asking around for a few minutes to the staffers who are there tells me that the convention center, despite specific instructions to the contrary, came by and unlocked every room at 7:30 that morning. AWA was damn lucky that no one came by and lifted one of MMI’s video projectors. You can be certain that we’re not going to let that slip by next year.
So, a couple of quick guesses, a brief powerup, and a roundup of a few staffers (some of the VAT’s did show up, but, no one being around, they were helping out in other departments.) and the track was up and running! The earliest of the early attendees and the staffers waiting for their departments to open came in and made requests interspersed with Expo entries. Things ran fairly smoothly until the rest of my staff showed up around 11:00. Got everything running properly for Aluminum and Dokidoki’s panel, which I hear was absolutely hilarious, but which I missed entirely due to something I can’t quite remember right now…fetching badges from registration (as Brad gave me a hard time about it the night before), tracking down Carol Ann to get a few last-minute additions to the VAT crew approved, checking in on Darius in the video tracks to see if they needed any help, redistributing the wiring we had left over in VAT, getting the tables set up for the sponsors and getting all their equipment into place, and doing a quick run-through of the convention before I got trapped in VAT for the rest of the weekend. There was something else….but it’s just not coming to me.
There was a schedule screw-up originally since the printed schedule only started at noon. William and Tim’s panel was supposed to start at noon and go till 1:30, but the printed schedule only says 1:00. We ended up compromising (hell of a way to start out the schedule, huh?) by starting them early and letting them run over 15 min into the Expo block (according to the Expo schedule. I get back and start running the first Expo screening block. Cleverest thing I’ll take credit for this year was asking the crowd if any of the Expo contestants were present they could come up and request that their video be shown then, so they could be sure to catch the crowd response. Everyone seemed to like it and we kept track of the shown videos on a checklist. (Actually two checklists…which caused a bit of a problem later….but we’ll come to that.) It was actually pretty fun, ‘cause I can see how every other con runs their screening blocks through the reactions I got from the editors there.
“Hey”
“Yeah?”
“Do you have a schedule of which videos are gonna be shown when? I don’t want to miss mine.”
“Which one’s yours?”
“blah blah blah to yackey yackety yackety”
*Typing*
“There it is. I’ll cue it up next.”
“OH! Oh wow. OK, thanks.”
Only problem was springing one of the awards early, as one of the winners came up and requested his vid when it was slated for showing during the awards ceremony. Eh, no biggie. We actually managed to get through all of the videos by all the artists present (who made themselves known anyway) with just a few minutes to spare, and got EK and Hsien’s panel up and running roughly on time.
My apologies to Issac Frank Fischer (Rei & Duo Productions), as I think you misinterpreted after-the-fact that, since I played one of your vids during the Expo block it meant that none of your others won anything. To be honest, I’d do it all over again, just to preserve the surprise you got during the awards ceremony.
For EK and Hsien’s panel we brought in the new and spiffy setup (delivered by a tardy staffer) consisting of a wireless laptop taking command of the VAT server. Ideally, this meant anyone sitting at the panel table could control and run video selection of the server, with occasional assistance from the VAT staffers as needed. What it actually meant was a lot of fighting over the mouse. The wireless control had some sort of lag time associated with moving the mouse and seeing the mouse move. When two people used the mouse from two different locations (laptop and terminal) the mouse tried to compromise by following both sets of instructions…which looks exactly like the mouse fucking up to long-time users. Further, EK had brought along a bunch of files that had been formatted just slightly off-kilter enough to fuck over our player. The tech details are boring enough that I won’t go into them, but the upshot is that any of the clips would play through properly all the way to the last frame, and then crash the playlist. Much frustration was encountered due to both these problems, and now EK apparently thinks she ruined the panel. Frankly, I blame the laptop. It’s not like you didn’t fill the room anyway…
The “Getting Started” panel came next, and pretty much ran itself. The panels this year were my innovation, based on my witness of the previous year’s panel (singular). I’d wanted to have more panels this year for longer periods of time simply because the previous year’s panel generated about three times more interest than there was time for. This time around, however, the panels were a success, but not a nearly well-attended enough success (especially since the dealer’s room was opened). Next year we’ll be cutting back on them one way or another. This first panel resorted pretty heavily to showing examples when questions ran out. Missed almost the entirety of it as well, due to the fact that I had to run out to the dealer’s room to secure LC passes for a couple of people on the panel. The spot I needed to pick them up at proved to be almost impossible to locate, and I had to ask the security staffers three times before I spotted them. Took me nearly 40 min to pick them up and get back. (You can thank my near ubiquitiousness at this con for the fact they handed me a pass with no questions whatsoever.) Got back in time to run the Pro screening. Daric (Jingoro) showed up and helped me out with the constant stream of questions directed at us by the AMVers. (We decided eventually that “the winners will be shown tomorrow” was the proper way to phrase it…straightforward, but nebulous enough to not drive out the non-AMVers who were only interested in seeing winning videos.) Somehow Daric slipped into MY chair for about half the screening, but I don’t begrudge him the luxury of running things for a bit. He’s done it for 7 years….must be hard to watch someone else do it. By starting just a bare few minutes early (relieving the panelists, I’m certain) we managed to show everything in the Pro contest that could be shown. (Pro block: 3 hours. Awards Pro block: 1 hour. Total tape time: 4.5 hours. Minus the one video we WEREN’T going to show during daylight hours (you know which one) 4hrs 20 min.) At some point in here, Patrick does a BKing run and picks me up a whopper combo.
I hate whoppers. (Overdosed in undergrad.) Should have said something before he left. I finish half of it and toss the rest.
Now the real fun.
*Sigh*
I’m sure DDR 2 was a great project this year. Everyone put their backs into it and I’m certain it far surpasses my efforts on the previous year’s project. (Especially considering the weird format error that makes mine look like shit.) However, I still haven’t SEEN the damn thing.
Why?
Well, at exactly 13 minutes in, during Nathan Bezner’s track, Paul Royal, head of Operations comes up to me. This is trouble. Paul wouldn’t be in here if it wasn’t trouble. He prefaces his commentary by saying “I know how this is going to sound, but I’ve asked four directors, and they all agree with me.”
Uh Oh.
He beats around the bush for a few minutes but eventually comes to the point.
The Final Fantasy 8 Ball has over a thousand people lined up to get into a room whose max occupancy (according to the fire marshal) is 200. If you weren’t at AWA 8, then it helps to realize that the VAT track occupies 2/3rds of a larger room. Subdividing partitions are taken out to form walls between the sections when smaller rooms are needed. The remaining 1/3 on the end of us was Video 1, the room designated for the FF ball. What was being proposed was that the dividing wall be taken down and FF flood the VAT. The room would have been cleared, the wall opened up, and FF would have taken over the entire space.
FF8B was an entrance-fee event (5$ at the door.)
They wanted to do it immediately.
Needless to say, I wasn’t happy. The only other viable option for running the ball would have been to move it into main A, where Dave Merrill (Con Director) was running Anime Hell. Paul and I stormed out of VAT and down to Anime Hell.
Hell was also packed. All the seats were filled. If anything, they might have had slightly more attendees there than the VAT. (Dammit, I haven’t been to see a Hell in three years now….and it’s my favorite part of the con!) Dave was also in rare form. Paul and I just stood there for two minutes trying to figure out how to approach Dave with this. Eventually, we decided that we just couldn’t. There was no way he was going to give up the room, and it would only piss everyone involved off more.
We storm BACK to the Vat. Run into Stan (Events Director) there. I argue. With 40 minutes left on the DDR tape, I get them to agree to let us finish out the event before they flood us. I’m so happy I got that much that we start planning along those lines. Ten minutes later, I get another idea. I hunt down those involved and argue for another five minutes. We all agree that after DDR, the remaining wall partition goes up, and the other one comes down. Effectively, FF8 doubles in size, we loose half our space, and the VAT dance takes place in a foreshortened room. Everyone’s happy (er). I spend the rest of DDR making sure everyone knows the plan and coordinating what happens when the music stops. Missed the whole damn event. (Made all the more embarrassing when I had to comment on an event I hadn’t seen for Vlad’s video documentary, but oh well.
At this point I have to give a few shout-outs.
First to AD (Ian). Thanks for the absinthe. I only wanted a sip of it (although I think I got the sip before you diluted it with water, cause it warmed me up ALL the way down.) which you generously provided (hmm…tastes like ouzou) made all the more generous by the fact you hadn’t won anything yet . And thanks for being understanding about the open-container laws when I mentioned them. Seriously, though…no open flames next year…OK? What’d you need the flame for anyway? Melting the sugar cube?
Next to Ken Nabbe (Joey Snackpants), this is primarily for the next day, when you kept me well supplied with sake, but most of the other libations granted me during this particular hellacious sequence of events were actually the dregs of your supplied CH3CH2OH passed on to my by others.
And finally, to Dave Peterson, for supplying the first libation of the night. (Of the afore-mentioned sake.)
“Man, you look like you need this.”
“How much do you want back?”
(unsteadily) “Take it man.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
*Gluk*
“Dude…..”
“You said you didn’t want any back…”
So DDR shuts down, we clear the room in record time, and everyone starts collecting chairs and stereo equipment. It turns out that during an update of the servers the entire playlist for the dance went down the crapper, so TJ shows up and actually couldn’t run the dance yet anyway (we were all worried how TJ would take the news, as he’d been out of contact (girlfriend) since before DDR started). He spends the time reassembling the playlist as we move the room around. We’re ready for the hotel people nearly half an hour before they show. The wall cutting us off goes up, and we no longer concern ourselves. (FF8 did actually still need the room, but not as desperately by this point) Turns out the hotel people actually break one of the partitions as they put the other wall away. Sure hope AWA doesn’t get billed for that. Wasn’t our fault, and I just know there’s an enormous fee going to be tacked on for the unscheduled room move anyway.
Do I need to mention here that I missed LC entirely? No? OK, moving on.
The weirdest thing about all of this was the number of people coming up to me after the bomb was dropped and asking me “are you gonna be OK?” This just weirded me out. They were acting like my cat had died or something. Like I was supposed to burst into petulant tears the moment I got off stage. Or maybe take a swing at someone. (Believe it or not, that’s actually pretty close to some of the advice I got from staffers during the whole debacle.) At least six different people asked me that, and I was starting to wonder if my mascara was running or something. (j/k for those who don’t know me…)
So we set up for the dance, realign the speakers, and discover that the front right sounds tinny, and the back two speakers sound like absolute crap. It’s too late to find Gordon, so we try to struggle on despite. TJ eventually just turns the damn things off, leaving us with one speaker and two SEELES, which is just barely enough to fill the room we’ve got now. Dance runs fine from about 12:00 on, cuts out around 3:30 or so, and we shut down the room. At midnight, the hotel staff was supposed to show up and put the rooms back in place. They never show. We’re not allowed to touch the walls.
Round about 1:30 I wander in a partially-drunken, mostly sleep-dep daze through the wall and find Darius Washington (Video rooms Director) packing up stuff in the back of Video 1. He and I sit around and talk for a good bit. Eventually my eyes wander over to the screen.
“What are we watching? Some sort of ….tennis anime?”
“Matt, you’re sitting in the yaoi room.”
“…….HOLY SHIT! I’M MORE DRUNK THAN I THOUGHT!”
Like I said, I can fix things.
That entire night I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn’t Saturday.
Meeting time tomorrow morning was set at 7:00.
I did get to hang out briefly with the AMVers gathered at that impromptu table just outside the dance before it got started. My “RENDER!” pic is in there somewhere if anyone wants to dig it up. Wandered the halls for a few hours, livened up Ops for a few minutes, talked to people, the like.
Home. Theraflu. Tylenol cold. Three hours sleep.
Saturday morning: Get in at 7:15. No staffers. Room is locked up, though, so I do have to get in the back through Video 1’s staff access. Oh look, the walls still haven’t been moved. Down to the front desk. Back to the room. Talk with the nice convention center staff. Lots of pointing at the contract is done. They reassemble the rooms. Gordon shows up and fixes all the speakers with a new amp. A staffer who’s been checking in constantly but is also helping run the art show earns major kudos points by showing up at 7:25. Room gets reassembled and running by 8:30. Taking requests and playing Expo overflow. Lotsa requests this morning.
Patrick shows up. I plunk him down in front of the editing computer on the far end of the VAT and I say “ASSEMBLE AWARDS’ TAPE” in an authoritative voice. He starts working. Dave and Daric show up for their panel. It starts off running smoothly.
I leave.
Why? Because the closest laser printer anyone can think of is at my work and the award certificates for Expo have yet to be printed. Commute. Print. Call Deborah for details on some awards. Print. Feed cells (don’t ask). Charge out the door. Drive to Patrick’s. Pick up Master’s jacket. Drive back. It is now 12:45 (Patrick lives WAY out in the north 40.) Patrick has run off to tend to other stuff, the tape is being watched over by Thad Ward (there is some sort of con staffer’s rule that says “the hardest working con staffer is the first-timer who paid for admission and then volunteered to help out”…Thad more than lived up to this this year.) and watched by Robin. All is well. I drive Brad DeMoss out to a local BKing to pick up a lunch. Brad is under strict orders to get me back in time for the awards ceremony or Deborah will skin him alive, so we get it to go. I get back at the end of Expo II. Slight problem here that I should cover. Intitally, the checklist we were following for the Expo videos was my hand-written one I assembled from the immense database list. (The thing is just too big to work with easily.) No one can read my handwriting, so when someone else had to take over the expo running, they kept track by writing the details into a notepad file. The notepad file started after my checklist and didn’t include some of those on the list.
That’s why we had a few repeat showings. Sorry to anyone disillusioned by our lack of perfection.
At the end of Expo we show the four videos we didn’t have room for in the contest. I’d hoped that I’d picked ones by non-attendees, but I only hit 3 for 4 on that one (sorry to Tim Stair, had I known (a day in advance) that you were coming, we’d have swapped out yours for one of the no-shows in Expo). (Wait….went for the lunch after Expo…that’s why I missed MTT. Getting this stuff mixed up…. I, myself, had a chicken whopper combo…of which I could only finish half. Hmm.)
Came down to the wire on the awards ceremony. I spent the sponsor’s block making sure I knew how to run everything in Main C, and drafting Nigel and Scott to run the tech in the booth. Everything’s on tape since that’s less likely to screw up (as has been shown in previous years). I start talking about 12 minutes into the block as it takes that long for everyone to get seated (especially AMVers who kept getting stuck to the masking tape marking their area :P). I say my little bit, display the trophies, tell my two jokes, explain the format, and get the hell off the stage. It was becoming fairly evident at this point that I simply don’t have the personality to pull this off to any great degree, so I’ll just go for the simple stuff. That and we’re pressed for time.
I had no idea how great it would feel to have my decisions on the winning videos in Expo and Masters affirmed by the crowd. This was somewhat mediated by the fact that about ― of the winners weren’t at the convention to accept their award….INCLUDING THE MASTERS WINNER!!! (I have a list of twelve names here. Eleven of these people are at the convention. One is not. Who do you choose? “Uh…number three?” Congratulations! You pegged the only missing guy! “DAMMIT!”) Daric Jackson greeted me after the awards ceremony was over with a hearty “You poor bastard.”
For those who care what I think….
The official list (with commentary)
EXPO:
Best Parody * #
“Trouser Snake”
By Chris Frampton
To audio from: “Trouser Snake: the trailer”
By the artists: The Frantics
To footage from: Blood: the Last Vampire and Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
This was gonna win something. We’re lucky the straight “parody” category was a bit lean this year, as, until we discovered that, it was slated to win “Best Parody Parody Trailer” which would have taken longer to explain than the award joke would have been funny. Nice compositing, and I swear the voice sounds exactly like Mark Hammel would after the third take on this promo. (A little high-pitched from all the “whang” ing.)
Best Introspective * #
“Everyone is Free (to Watch Anime)”
By Richard Cole
To the song: Everyone is Free (to Wear Sunscreen)
By the artist: Baz Lurman
To various footage.
This is why we keep Expo free-form. Plainly deserves an award, but doesn’t fall into ANY category. “Floss” was by far the best joke. I just wish it could’ve kept that caliber humor throughout.
Best Sentimental * #
“Learning to Fly”
By Teri Archibald
To the song: Gunning Down Romance
By the artists: Savage Garden
To footage from: Please Save My Earth
We had three videos competing in this category, all of which were greatly simplified once we realize they were all by the same person. Then we just picked our favorite to give the award to.
Underground Award for “Keepin’ it Real” *
“Boys in the Hood”
By Tim Stair
To the song by: Dynamite Hack
To footage from: The Big O
Damn, Tim. Sorry It wasn’t shown on the big screen for ya’. It being fairly lengthy meant it was one of the first considered for moving it to Expo block II. We’re gonna check next year. Hilarious in a sort of subdued manner
Best Upbeat #
“Scatman: The Definitive Biography”
By Rachel Hessner, Hayley Gordon, and Barry Hessner (Newlight Productions)
To the Song: Scatman
By the Artist: Scatman Jones
To the Anime: Dragonball Z
We agonized over this one for what to give it. Best Fight already had “Smash Bitches,”
Best timing had P&W. Didn’t want to displace any of them, and we don’t give “Honorable Mentions.” Glad I realized we didn’t have an Expo “Upbeat” category yet.
Best Trailer #
“Eva Man”
By David Chan (You Choose Sam, The Rest)
To the audio from: Spiderman Trailer
By: Universal Studios
To the Anime: Love Hina, Neon Genesis Evangelion
Had someone told me about this beforehand, I would have said it wouldn’t work. Damn this was pulled off well. We got a lot of trailers this year, making it an honest to God “filled” category, but this one stood way out from the rest.
Best Drama #
“Give in to Me”
By Erwan Queffelec (N7 Japanim)
To the song by: Michael Jackson
To footage from: Jin Roh
Wow. Just wow. Strong argument for not listing song artist at the start. Way too many people wouldn’t have given it a chance. Far and away the best straight drama vid.
Best Romance
“Gravity of Utena”
By Isaac Frank Fischer (Duo Maxwell, Rei Ayanami Productions)
To the song: The Gravity of Love
By the Artist: Enigma
To footage from: Utena the Movie & Various
Hee. No one ever said the romance category had to be straight… I believe this is the first time a yuri couple has won best Romance at AWA.
Best Character Profile
“Blackbird”
By Elizabeth Palacios (More Than toast)
To the song by: The Beatles
To Footage from: Now and Then, Here and There
Simple, straightforward, very few clips involved, and by far the most powerful character profile vid I’ve ever seen. Not exaggerating. This one was a work of pure genius. On my best days I wish I could get halfway to a video this effective.
Best Artistic Endeavor #
“Pater Noster”
By: Marko Elezovic (Anime 42)
To the song: Vater Unser
By the Artist: E. Nomine
To Footage from: Hellsing anime and manga
You know, there’s a guy on the AWA mailing list who absolutely refused to be impressed by this. “Carmin Burana? Feh. Overused. Words to the Lord’s Prayer? Feh. How original.” People like that I wonder why they bother watching these at all. I’m guessing it was a bit of green-eyed motivation. This one was one of Debora’s favorites. Gonna give me hell with the postal service, though, I just know it. (Going out to Croatia.)
Best Comedy
“Happiness Dojo”
By Brad Ayres
To the song: Happiness Hotel
By the Artists: The Muppets
To footage from: Ranma ― OAVs
This one was slated for the grand prize until we got to “Shameless Rock Video.” See, there’s a tradition at AWA going all the way back to the first contests that the grand prize is given out to the wackiest, most fun, off the wall video we receive. This means that the category of grand prize is always something of a crapshoot and no one can specifically aim to win it. The concept was that it would keep the competition from becoming bitter since the “highest award” was given to the most unanticipated video….and it’s hard to work towards something like “unanticipated.” It would also keep the grand prize from being elevated above the other videos, since they really weren’t competing in the same areas. When we eventually settled on “Shameless,” this vid got “Comedy” by default. KZ and Nathan Bezner mentioned during their panel that this is one of those videos that points out a parallel that seems so utterly natural you can’t understand how you missed it the first time around. Extra props for the inclusion of members from Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.
Best Technical #
“Perfect Drug”
By Jesse Glidewell (Flying Cracker)
To the song by: Nine Inch Nails
To footage from: FLCL
Genre-wise this one was so totally all over the place that it was a relief to be able to give it a technical award, as any other options would have been a hodge-podge. “Best Loud?” “Best Song that changes pace in the middle?” It wasn’t going to beat out Best Character Profile. The calming down in the end made it difficult to be an action video, not really a fight video, romance would have been closest, but not really the proper mood.
Best Timing
“The Princess and the Warrior”
By Milan Villarreal (Mindwarp Entertainment)
To the Song: Never Surrender
From the Film: First Knight
To the Anime: Princess Mononoke
Got called away during the screening of this one, but when I came back the Expo judging audience’s opinion was unanimous. Hard for me to comment further.
Best Action #
The Lady’s Got Potential
By: Fung Weng Cheong (Shonen Dizzy Cow of Dizzy Cow Productions)
To the Song by: Antonio Banderas
To the Anime: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Another hard to categorize one. I’m told that the editor thought it would have been more of a parody, but I’ve got to disagree. It’s a really LONG song, and there were only about four or five jokes throughout, so it was really more of an action-comedy what with all the military action and the like going on throughout. Sort of the Hong-Kong flick of AMVs. (Doh! That would have been a better award!) Second time this song has won an award at AWA in as many years.
Best Fight #
“Smash Bitches!”
By Matt Wiseman (MAS Productions)
To the Song: The Bitches Love Me
To Footage from: Smash Brothers Melee
What can be said? Easily the most original approach to the fight video I’d seen in a long time. Was entertaining to watch all the way through despite the use of an extended cut of the song and the fact that the entire video was video game footage. Honestly starts out kinda….off. The timing starts syncing up about 30 seconds in as the first few jokes start hitting us. Until then I was worried it would be just another tiring fight vid. WE KEPT GETTING REQUESTS FOR THIS ONE. I think it was the most showed video at the con this year.
Grand Prize:
“Shameless Rock Video”
By: Ian Roberts (Zettai Unmei Anime)
To the Song: Speed King
By the Artist: Deep Purple
To Footage from: FLCL
The EYEBROWS! The ACID FILTERS! Because FLCL JUST ISN’T TRIPPY ENOUGH! What else can be said? This one blew the judging crowd away and was voted for grand prize unanimously. The only other competitors were the duet video to Akira and the Muppets vid. Again, the policy with Expo has always been that the grand prize goes to the most left-field unexpected blindside video we get. Besides, I got to do my little “shameless” joke on stage, which made it worth MY while…..
Boy, this is taking longer than I thought.
PRO:
I apologize to everyone for fumbling at their names at this point, but I was as blind as everyone else to the creators of each of these videos. I don’t really feel like I should comment on these individually, as I had nothing to do with the judging in this case (as it was judged by other participants in the contest, and I never managed to finish my video for this year). Some of them I hadn’t seen for weeks before the awards ceremony. I’ll just stick in an idle comment or two.
Best Action #
“Secret Agent Man”
By Charles Bathel (Seven7th S7ep Productions)
To the Song: James Bond Theme (Moby Remix)
By the Artist: Moby
To the Anime: Spriggan
Actually made Spriggan exciting…an accomplishment in my book. (I’ve never understood why people like Spriggan. If nothing else, the entire film is just a long sequence of greys.)
Best Artistic Endeavor
Best Technical
“To Cut a Long Story Short”
By Ian Roberts (Zettai Unmei Anime)
To the Music From: Spandau Ballet
To the Anime: Evangelion and His and Her Circumstances
Best Character Profile
“Alone in the World”
By Meredith “Meri” Cantoni & Michael “VegettoEx” LaBrie”
To the Song: I’m Just a Kid
By the Artist: Simple Plan
To the Anime: Trigun
Nice.
Best Comedy
“Spectacular Anime”
By Jessica Brunelle
To the Song: The Pitch
From the Film: Moulin Rouge
To Various Anime
By a strange coincidence the day after the convention I was flipping channels and came across Moulin Rouge on HBO (the school pays for it) exactly as this segment was starting up.
I hated it.
That has to be the most disappointingly lame prancing about and film trickery mess I’ve ever seen. It was like watching six year olds try to recreate a scene from a Roadrunner cartoon. Dumb dumb dumb. Looking at this video, which, by contrast, I enjoyed immensely, I can conclusively say that the whole movie should have been animated. It would have been ten times better for it in sequences like this.
Best Drama
“Fathers and Sons”
By Brian Palacios (More Than Toast)
To the song: Still Fighting It
By the Artist: Ben Folds Five
To the Anime: Dragonball Z
A DBZ video has won “Best Drama” in a peer-reviewed contest. Must be getting a little chilly in the netherworld….
Best Instrumental
“Critical Instant”
By Dave Peterson, R-2 Dinnan, Michael Hahn, Cassy Strawn (Fourth Dimension Multimedia/Cracked Hoe Productions)
To the Song: Disco Science
By the Artist: Mirwais
To the Anime: Initial D
Dave, seriously, get help. You know all those tachometers twitching to the beat? He made those in photoshop. The man needs to be pried away from the computer for a while.
Best Parody
“Mystery Science Theater 3000 Theme”
By Brad DeMoss
To the Song by: Best Brains
To the Anime: Martian Successor Nadesico
MST3K SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN CANCELLED!
Best Romance
“A Thousand Miles”
By Brett Buchan
To the Song by: Vanessa Carlton
To the Anime: Whisper of the Heart
We had a hell of a time with an interlacing issue in this video. Thankfully, we were partially effective in our efforts, and the projector covered most of the rest. Nonetheless, major headaches all around to make sure this one played well.
Best Sentimental #
“Because She…”
By: Daniel Araujo (Studio Project: PANDA)
To the Song: Thief
By the Artist: Our Lady Peace
To the Anime: Cowboy Bebop
And we all get depressed as hell.
Best Suspense/Dark
“Bare Island”
By Maria Cristina Battaglia (Turboneko Studio)
To the Music by: Hans Zimmer
To the Anime: Berserk
*Cringe* Sorry I mispronounced your name. Knew I should’ve gone on a dry run…
Best Upbeat #
“Shining Collection”
By: Victor Boruta III (VicBond007 Productions)
To the Song by: Iceman
To the Anime: Ah! Megami-Sama
Man, I thought you were there!
Best Various
“Transcending Love”
By: Vlad G. Pohnert
To the Song: Only an Ocean Away
By the Artist: Sarah Brightman
To Various Anime
Best Video
“Triengel”
By: Nathan Bezner and Jeff Heller (Nightowl Pictures)
To the Song: Engel
By the Artist: Rammstein
To the Anime: Trigun
These last two pretty much speak for themselves.
MASTERS
Masters Winner #
“My Lover’s Gone”
By: Fred Graupp (TaranT)
To the Song by: Dido
To the Anime: Windaria
A lot of really good entries this year, and, as tempted as I was to give the award to some of the more experimental videos to encourage such adventurousness in future competitions, it ended up that I had to give the one and only award to perhaps the most “old school” of the videos. Technical and artistic proficiency is expressed just as much by knowing when NOT to mess with a video as when TO do so. The strength of concept and skill of execution really did deserve the recognition, although it was a very close race in the end.
Unfortunately, as Kusoyaro has pointed out elsewhere, this is the third year in a row that a slow, dramatic or emotional piece has won out over more fast-paced entries. I really wish people wouldn’t start associating this as a trend, because it really isn’t one. After all, this is my first year judging the contest, and you can’t really delineate a trend based on one data point. I have nothing against action or comedic videos. In fact, my choices for the previous two year’s winners (although my opinion counted for not a lot at the time) were quite different from those Jingoro ended up choosing. Please, everyone, we do want a variety of entries for Masters. We don’t want it to become a solidly dramatic block.
Finally:
CON FAN FAVORITE (Cross-Competition Category) #
“The Truth About Totoro”
By: Jared Silvia (SushiBoyJared)
To the Song: Come to Daddy
By the Artist: Aphex Twin
To the Anime: My Neighbor Totoro
What’s that? Don’t remember filling out a ballot? No sound level-checks? That’s ‘cause we didn’t use any. We just watch the crowd. It’s surprising how little debate there is that way, since there’s always been one video a year that just hits the audience just right. As the only video to get a standing ovation this year, I thought it was pretty obvious which video deserved it.
And that brought us to the end of the awards ceremony. Only ran five minutes over! At one point (when I’d forgotten how long some of the Masters’ vids were) I actually called down to the VAT for someone to prepare a tape of the four videos left out of the screening, but in the end we just hadn’t the time. Tim was pretty understanding about the delay as well. Next year we’ll just have to pack everyone in faster…
My thanks to everyone involved. I’m glad the format worked out, although I sense a little bit of an murmuring from the AMVers that they didn’t get much stage time. Hmm. Not really sure what to do about that…
Kinda sorry that I missed the DDR tournament, though. It sounded like it was a lot of fun.
So all the stressful bits were over, right? Wrong. See, we had two auctions to run during Iron Chef this year, and while Patrick was sweating it out in the VAT getting the machines up and running, I was sweating about the auctions. See, auctions are my idea of Hell. I’d already proven to myself that day that I hadn’t the stage presence to really pull off a proper awards ceremony (despite what Nigel said to bolster my confidence), and personality is the operative aspect necessary in an auction. I’d always consider it my fault if the items didn’t fetch a high enough price. Fortunately for me, Daric (Jingoro) volunteered to run the auction for me, and did a crack-up job on it, pulling in $700 for the VAT in the process (half the price of EK’s sketches, plus Joe’s donated computer). Especially amusing was the bidding war between Vlad and Nathan over the sketches. Halfway in, Nigel shouts from the Iron Chef judging podium “We’re finally getting Canada back for the war of 1812!” (In case you didn’t know, during the war of 1812, the US decided that Canada was just a little too friendly with England to be trusted, and invaded our neighbor to the north….for about a week and a half, just long enough to distribute the most ludicrous propaganda leaflets you’ve ever seen, at which point the US got it’s ass handed to it by the Canadian troops and we were shoved back to the border. The US doesn’t like to talk about that particular incident.)
So where was I for the rest of Iron Chef? I was in the lobby talking with Robin. Why? ‘Cause I was waiting for a solid hour for $70 worth of delivery pizza ordered for the competitors, sponsors, judges, and VAT staff. Ran into EK for a minute or two as she was on her way to the bar. Uncertain if I could afford to desert my post at the front lobby, I asked EK to check the line at the bar. I’m guessing that it must’ve been a pretty long line, as I NEVER HEARD BACK FROM HER. (Jeez EK…) ‘Course that’s not really true, as I ran into her later that night, but I’ll come to that.
Iron Chef? You know, Three years ago at the first Iron Chef I’d sworn silently to myself that the concept would never have worked. I couldn’t imagine anyone completing a halfway decent AMV in under two hours, and I couldn’t comprehend anyone wanting to sit around and watch them do it for the full two hours.
I was very VERY wrong.
The competitors this year managed to make a better video in under two hours than I could’ve made in a month. I say “under” two hours because both Joe and Hsien managed to COMPLETE their videos and had extra time left over at the end to tweak them. Joe managed an elaborate transition-filled lip-synch parody film to an old audio track “Ubernostrum.” The audio was basically parodying advertising trends by repeating the brand name over and over and filling the space between with really random endorsements “It takes the pain away” “It makes me feel more like a woman” without ever actually saying what “Ubernostrum” WAS. I’d heard it somewhere before, but I couldn’t tell you where. Joe brought in clips from every piece of footage supplied and lip-synched nearly every line of the audio to humoro -
Blackbird singing in the dead of night......
2002-10-02 22:59:24
Back by popular demand! (No, really. At least three people at the con told me I needed to start this up again…) Yes, there will be an “insider’s report on AWA” shortly. First off, however, I’m gonna wrap up this update that I had been working on about a week before the con. Current events, a few reviews, etc. So from two weeks ago:
__________________________________________________________
So , I’m back. This means that I’ve straightened out my life and gotten everything in order, right? Wrong. Truth of the matter is that it’s gotten a lot worse. So much is happening at work that I’ve had to drop out of my two weekly games and several of my friends haven’t seen me for over a month (well, sort of…I’ll come back to that). Dropped regular reading of message boards, including all of the journals here (sorry guys), and taken to reading online comics only sporadically on weekends. So obviously I’ve decided that I neglect enough of my friends already and I should at least pay some attention to you all, right?
Oh God no. That would be pretty pathetic, wouldn’t it? I mean, y’all give good conversation and discussion topics, but come on…if I have other real friends nearby that I haven’t seen in a long time, I’m gonna go visit them instead of spending a couple of hours to slap together a journal entry for y’all. Real-life getting together for a beer or gaming or what-have-you is always gonna win out in the “keeping up with friends” over e-mail, right?
So why am I back here? Because, I discovered, I need an outlet. The stress at work has been worrying away at me for over a month now, and the resultant buildup of pressure is turning me into an A-class asshole. The only weekly event I go to anymore is Quu’s weekly anime showing on Mondays, (which I can excuse to myself because it acts as an impromptu meeting for the VAT track) and I’ve started mouthing off to friends there for no good reason. This last week I had to leave work early to go pick up some parts with TJ for an upgrade on the VAT server, after which we were going to meet the others for dinner. TJ’s a half hour late getting to the store, the total’s about 10$ more than I got in cash, and I manage (due to my pristine sense for misdirection) to loose TJ on the way to dinner. This woulda been fine, but it turns out that I got a premature e-mail giving me directions to the wrong place for dinner. I spend another half hour waiting for anyone to show up, then give up and eat sushi ALONE at Ru San’s, which, let me tell you is just pathetic as hell. Considering this was the only interaction with humans of the similar-interest variety all week, I was more peeved that I missed out on the dinner conversation than the actual meal. (My labmates? No. Not similar interests. I once explained to Sandy what a “goth” was. She didn’t believe me.) So anyway, I turn up at anime night pissy and petulant about the whole thing and cheese off some of my only remaining friends. (Righfully so…I can be an officious little twit when I’m in one of these moods.)
The only benefit from the whole experience was that I got to see two men and a very drunk waiter whack wine corks against the front window of the resturaunt with a pair of golf clubs. Huh.
So, what has been going on to turn me into this particular breed of jerk? Work, work work. In short, all of my data are crap (as I discovered today) all my efforts have been wasted, I’m way behind in the appropriate advancement, my advisor now no longer likes me and apparently thinks I’ve been slacking off (which I had…) I’ve lost any impetus or feeling of importance in this work, my cell cultures won’t grow to confluence if I begged them, I’m behind in my article reading, I just finished spending two and a half solid weeks in front of the lab TV writing down long lists of numbers like this:
2:45 0
2:51 1
3:00 0
And I have two presentations about all of this on Monday, one of them to a possible committee member. I have no time, no data, no work ethic, and no life left.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincon, how did you like the play?
There actually has been a little else besides work. As the VAT director for AWA, I’ve been trying to get everything aligned with scheduling, different departments, awards, etc. That I’m apparently fairly competent at. We’re down to the final series of adjustments to the schedule (as we wait for the rest of the expo entries to come in). Master’s has indeed been judged, and the jacket ordered and picked up. Fair warning to everyone involved: After a near comprehensive search of men’s stores in Atlanta (Bacarac’s, Jos. Banks, Men’s Wearhouse, Macy’s, Riches, Sears, Land’s End, J.C.Penny…and that was just one of the malls I went to!), more than half of which looked at me like I was crazy, I have determined that NO ONE carries or can order the particular shade of Master’s green used in Augusta, all having discontinued the material nearly two years ago. (Jingoro had to drive to Florida to get one of the last remaining ones last year.) As such, I had to compromise and color-matched the material as closely as my poor color-blind self could. (Actually not color blind, just heavily lacking in color sense.) “Spruce” appears to be just a hair darker than the official jacket. Masters was hell to judge this year. I suppose it always is, but this year felt worse, not the least of which was that none of my judges agreed on ANYTHING. Of course, I’m actually the only judge in the contest, but their job is supposed to be to make mine easier, not harder.
What else? Welllll, there was Dragon Con.
Oh yes. Shock and horror. Everyone cringe in mock abhorrence.
To be honest, this has always been something of a sticking point between me and the various old-schoolers of Anime-X. I actually like D*C, whereas they regard it with the kind of revulsion I reserve for that most tired of fan tropes, the Trek convention. Yeah, a lot of it is crap, but there’s so damn MUCH of it, that you can still spend several days there and avoid the worst of the wandering, angsty undead. Just gotta know where to hide out. So anyway, I took two days and a weekend off from hell and went to the con. Had pre-regged anyway.
Besides, believe it or not, I actually wanted to see the guests this year. I didn’t know I did, but I did. See, I didn’t even look at the program before I arrived at the con, so each of these guests was a complete surprise. Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo) from MST3K were there as guests of honor. The prospect of seeing those two in action actually made me venture somewhere I daren’t set foot in for years.
I went to the costume contest. This time the cringes aren’t in MOCK abhorrence.
I hate the D*C costume contest. It’s usually hosted by Anthony Daniels (C-3P0) who is even more annoying after introducing cosplayers for three hours than he ever was on film. The D*C costume contest has epitomized the horror of cosplay for the entire southeast. Everything you’ve heard of has already wreaked its terrible vengeance upon the D*C masqurerade. Mike and Tom though? Well….OK.
Believe it or not, it was good. Mike and Kevin ad-libbed through the whole thing, and the 501st was on hand to enforce the stage time limits. (Atlanta apparently has an exceedingly large Star Wars fanbase, and they have an entire club devoted to making Stormtrooper armor….they were organized into a group of about thirty, plus a Darth Vader and a few other officials, and were officially empowered to march out on stage and escort the more hammy members off. Sounds nerdy as hell, but it actually worked…and Kevin got in a couple of “Fascist!” remarks as they passed.) There was even a funny intro film involving a pastiche of the Star Wars opening (the rebels, unable to find costume contest hosts on earth, decided to search the satellite of love…) Monty Python (those responsible have been sacked), and 2001 as the camera panned down a star field to the MST3K ball. Anyway Mike and Kevin had a great time with that and with D*C’s own Iron Chef Artist. Kevin composed a tune on the spot to the pensive “time is running out” music, and ended up interviewing a squeak-toy from the audience (because it spoke up…It was “Spooky, the horror what squeaks” for those of you who care).
Second surprise on the guest front was Lani Tupv (sp?) who played Commander Bylar Crayse and the voice of Pilot in “Farscape.” Virginia Hey (Zahn, from the same show) was there as well, but she was always my least favorite character…especially after her getting killed off at the request of the actress. (Also one of the bit actors who plays John’s father….whose name I’m blanking on.) I’m something of a Farscape junkie, so getting in to see Lani talk was a real treat. Would have gotten an autograph too, if I could have come up with something clever for him to sign. (I never get autographs unless they’re clever or interesting in some way. I have a Grendel comic signed “To Matt Wagner from Matt Wagner” and a Mononoke Hime poster signed by Niel Gamian.)
Finally, and most surprisingly, was the appearance of Johnen Vasquez. This guy is the off-center source of the “Johnny the Homicidal Maniac,” the even better “I Feel Sick” and the creative source behind the Nickelodeon cartoon “Invader Zim.” This man is a strange little variety of idol to me. I love his sense of humor, is off-kilter art style, and the subtile insights of his work into the stupid STUPID people who surround us. I mean him. Heh.
A couple of my friends were surprised at the variety of people who showed up to his panel. Ran the whole gamut from ultra-goth to nerd to kiddie with their parents. I was lucky and just got in the door, but I had to stand at the back. From this vantage I learned several very important things.
1) Invader Zim was doomed from the get-go. Nickelodeon apparently didn’t realize exactly what they were making until several episodes were already made, and then just continued to avoid paying penalties on pulling out of a contract. IT DID NOT DIE BECAUSE WE FANS DIDN’T WRITE IN ENOUGH. It’s not our fault. According to Johnen, it was canned pretty early on content alone.
2) “I feel sick” was apparently written about the frustration he had with the network execs dictating his content in “Zim.” He’s not bitter or anything, as he knew it was all coming, but the phenomenal stupidity of the people he was working for means he never ever wants to go through with that again. (Also, astoundingly enough, apparently Nick was first looking at “Squee” for a cartoon before JV suggested Zim.)
3) Johnen looks like a chess geek. Yeah, he’s dressed in black, but he’s just thin as a rail with short, somewhat spiky brown (on later inspection…very dark purple) hair, and these narrow little black-rim oval glasses. Got a better look at him after the costume contest when he and a friend of mine happened to retreat behind the same goth/industrial band’s table to avoid the fanboy crush. Didn’t bug him as, again, I couldn’t think of anything clever to say.
4) Johnen cannot speak into a microphone to save his fucking life. He kept pulling the mike towards him and slowly leaning away from it until we in the back were standing on tiptoe to try and catch an errant word or two. Strained the hell out of my ankles.
Other stuff? Well, ran into lots of friends from my gaming groups…all looking for explanations. Got a little soused after crowd-watching one night. Saw one of Dr. Sperry’s presentations in the “X”-Track. (Dr. Sperry is the Medical Examiner for the state of GA (all but metro Atl.) and he brings in themed sets of autopsy photos…along the “what looks real and what doesn’t”. Precepts.) This year it was suicides (which I missed, but I’d seen last year) and another panel on blunt trauma! Whoo hoo! Nobody passed out this year, though. Really livened up last year’s panel. Interesting, but the prevalence of child abuse evidence photos was depressing. “From the shape of the abrasion here and the shielded center, we can tell the child was beaten numerous times with something like a broom handle. Now this curious mark here, with the loop-around shape. Can anyone tell me what might have made this? Rope, no. Electrical cord, no. Very good, it was a wire coathanger.”
Didn’t spend much this year. There was the absolutely beautiful Klaive that beckoned to me all con but I resisted it and it’s $245 price tag. (Nerd prize to those of you who actually know what a Klaive is…other than that it’s a big knife. Knowing me is enough to figure that one out.)
(skipping a week between these sections)
Really have dropped my online presence a bit. The only place I visit anymore is somethingpositive.com and the board at Dooooo…aaaahhh……..nice weather we’re having here.
If any of you haven’t seen it yet, “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” paperback finally came out. READ THIS COMIC. This is a goldmine for anyone who knows anything about Victorian literature. Basically, the entire adventure takes place in the late 1890’s of fiction. Bits and pieces from the works of H.G.Wells, Edgar Allen Poe, Bram Stoker, even Arthur Conan Doyle all come together in the proceedings of the story. It even ends with a clash between two of the most famously evil masterminds in all of fiction.
What I really like about the story, though, is that they don’t talk down to you. Mentions and asides are given sans footnotes, and I’m certain that I must be missing half a dozen references every issue. Ones I know I’m missing is the major figure of Campion Bond. Him I just have no idea about. Oh, and that ridiculous school in the second chapter where they find Hawly Griffith. I recognize several of the the….uh…students, but the school itself I’ve never heard of….although I admit I could hazard a guess or two. (Hmm…Mrs. Flaybum…) I enjoy it, of course, for those references I do get. At one point during a walk through old London, the speakers pass by Bleak house. One of the adventurers runs afoul of a pickpocket trained by the Arful Dodger himself.
Also out this last week, another issue of Dork! Evan Dorkin’s vicious wit bites down once again on the neck of stupid fandom. (Oh, and it’s confirmed…that pilot of Eltingville failed. Everyone save your tapes, this one’s never coming back.)
As a special coming back treat I’ve got three movies sitting in front of me which is about the extent of my attack on mount DVD for the entire last month. Haven’t been out to the theaters either, so I’ve missed all the promising stuff that landed there. Didn’t see “One hour photo” with Robin Williams as another highly creepy obsessed killer/pervert (see my review of “Insomnia.”), probably going to miss Red Dragon (“Manhunter” remade to meet the “Silence of the Lambs” budget it’s a prequel for), and didn’t even see the “Eight Legged Freaks” …one I’m really sorry I missed as I would have paid a lot of money to see David Arquette eaten by spiders. Anyway, hope the reviews are worth the wait…don’t be surprised if they’re a little shorter than usual.
The first of the three films to be reviewed tonight is “Dagon” because I really need to return it to the guys I borrowed it from.
Dagon is the third film in a tradition stretching back over 15 years. Any schlock and gore aficionado remembers the true joys that were the original “Re-Animator” and “From Beyond.” These ridiculously fun films were very, very liberal adaptations of stories taken from the works of the grand old gentleman HPL. “Liberal” adaptations you ask? Why yes….for example the original story of “From Beyond” lasts about an hour or two worth of literary time and consists of two seated men having a rather heated discussion while a machine hums ominously in the background. There’s one gunshot and the story’s over. The movie worked in killer extra-dimensional bees, enormous purple worms, the stereotypically required black guy, an evil genius from another world, brain eating, third eyes that bust out of your forehead, and stupid kinky sex. (Oh, and one of the greatest lines of all time “It….BIT…his…head off ….like …a….GINGER….bread…man…”) Do I hate this film for “messing” with the original? Are you kidding? HPL was the last man to take the integrity of his own works seriously. He’d just have been pissed that people aren’t writing their own stories and leaning on his talentless offerings instead. Moreso, however, you could tell that the director really liked the material he worked with. Stewart Gordon obviously appreciates HPL’s works and isn’t afraid to have fun with them when he can. There’s an honest degree of appreciation in his work.
Which is why everyone’s so glad to see him back and doing HPL again. Back with Dennis Paoli as his writer and Brian Yuzna as the producer, the team that brought us those two greats are truly back again.
For those who have actually read the stories, “Dagon” is really more of a combination between that story and “The Shadow over Innsmouth” with more emphasis on the latter. For believability in an American audience, however, the story has been moved overseas. HPL was a great appreciator of the antique dilapidated (yet strangely sturdy) architecture of the old world that populated the more out-of-the way towns of New England. Many of his stories concerned such homes and the quaint, secretive people who lived in them, just as their families had for generations before them. Today, (as the story is set in modern times) any remaining spot of such architecture have pretty much disappeared, and the New England coastline is so well boated and developed that the concept of a costal community isolated for decades from the outside world would strike an American audience as ludicrous. Likely the same is true of Europe, where the story has been moved to, but we’re more likely to accept it out of ignorance. And besides, Imboca is a Lovecraftian town. From the first glance at the weather-beaten boathouses hanging out over the ocean and the grey stone-and-shingle homes piled up on one another up the rocky outcroppings that serve as a coast, to the way it appears set alone against the steep hillside, blocked from any way in or out, you can tell that this is exactly what HPL had in mind when he described the town of Innsmouth. In fact, supposedly the sight of this town from the ocean during a boat outing in Italy is what inspired the director to finally go through with the script.
On with the story. Paul (Ezra Godden…trying his damndest to be the next Bruce Campbell) is a young millionaire out yachting with his new beautiful young Spanish wife Barbara (Raquel Meroņo …who isn’t above doing nude scenes…and neither is the other female lead of this film Macarena Gomez) and two other millionaire friends of theirs. Paul’s been having some trouble sleeping recently, as he has vivid dreams of ancient cyclopean tombs and openings beneath the waves with a strange eye-like design worked into the stone. While diverting himself from such morbid thoughts with the attentions of his wife, their boat drifts onto a hidden reef a mile or two from shore, driven by the first few gusts of a storm that rages for the rest of the film. One of their friends is badly injured and pinned beneath decks as water begins seeping in, so Paul and Barbara begin paddling the lifeboat towards the strangely deserted island (or possibly peninsula) town (Imboca) on the shore. Once they get there, though, they can’t seem to find anyone to help them. Stumbling through the mysterious town they finally manage to raise someone at the church and, speaking through Barbara (only the priest speaks anything but Spanish…which is bad luck for Paul who doesn’t understand a word of it.) manage to convince a tugboat crew to take them out to the wreck against the steeply growing waves and wind. The crew are remarkably ugly creatures with waxy, pale skin and bulging fish-like eyes. In fact the whole town seems to be at the bottom of the genetic barrel, sporting limps, near universal baldness, imbecilic intelligence, or webbing between their fingers. They also seem rather unsurprised when Paul (who accompanied them out to the boat) is unable to find any sign of his injured friend, and even less concerned when Paul can’t find Barbara anywhere upon his return. Eventually being told that Barbara went to get a doctor from the next town, Paul holes up in the only hotel in town. Waiting out the storm in the dingiest, filthiest hotel room on earth, Paul is awakened by a gathering in the courtyard outside, which, upon spotting him at the window, promptly surges into the hotel, where a near step-by-step following of the text of a similar event in “Shadow over Innsmouth” occurs. (Frankly, this helped to clear up the scene in my mind, as I could never really make it work in my head before.)
Here the weirdness starts. Paul stumbles across some truly horrific things, including the flayed carcasses of his friends and pursuit through the streets of Imboca (Which translates roughly as “In-mouth”) by the staggering, limping horde. Eventually he manages to corner and threaten the town drunk, the only seemingly normal person in the town, into explaining things to him. Things get a bit more complicated then, and involve his encounter with the beautiful and sexy but bedridden “Uxia” (Macarena Gomez) who holds a strange appeal for him…until adventuring hands get a little below the waist. Let’s just say that something ain’t right down there. The film climaxes with a very Lovecraftian ritual and a CGI beastie, but unfortunately chickens out in the end and gives us a rather maudlin ending while still, technically, remaining somewhat true to the original text.
The real reason to watch this film is for the atmosphere. This film is directed by one of the few people who can actually capture the strange supernatural suspense that Lovecraft managed to instill into his best works. Several scenes are simply as close to HPL’s style as has ever been accomplished before. The opening dream sequence is an excellent example, although the fleeing through the streets of Imboca is perhaps the best. The addition of a city in which our hero can’t even communicate is perhaps even an improvement on the original text, as it serves to further isolate Paul from his strange surroundings, and further his confusion when everyone turns on him, partially excusing the strange behavior of the degenerate inhabitants, without really managing to dispel the uneasy feeling that everyone is keeping an eye on him. This is simply the most Lovecraftian movie I’ve ever seen.
Unfortunately, that’s not saying much, as most films that even try always fuck it up by the second reel. This one manages to keep it together till the third, but the sudden introduction of the Pocahontas theme with Uxia (But Father! I love him!) threw much of what went before out the window. Second, Ezra Godden gets a couple of lines that just don’t belong in this film. They really do sound like they were written for Bruce Campbell, and, let’s face it, only Bruce Cambell can pull those lines off in a horror film, and even then only in a specific kind of horror film. Namely, not this one. Drop Ash into Hellraiser. Funny? Yes. Horror? No. Third, there’s a really long, rather difficult to watch skinning scene that’s a really nasty, entirely unwarranted slip into gore away from the film’s atmosphere. It’s really rather odd, considering that the guy they’re skinning was one of the most famous actors in Spanish cinema. (Which I found out from the commentary. Hey, I don’t know EVERYTHING off the cuff…) Fourth, they managed to get the weird sex in here again. (Though a bit more relevant this time around.) Fifth, the CGI in latter portions looks really fake…although that’s mediated by the fact it’s only seen for about two seconds. Really wasn’t well modeled either. Then there’s the ending. Horribly, horribly cheesy in the “Pocahontas” fashion. “But Father, I love him!” Bleh. The problems really only scar the last ž of the film, though, so overall it gets a definite thumbs up. If you ever wondered if HPL could be translated to film properly, watch this movie and ignore the cheesy turn at the end. In the final analysis, the only thing this film was missing was Jeffery Coombs.
On to the second in our triple feature. In celebration of the Lord of the Rings the first time I saw it, I went out and rented another of Peter Jackson’s films “Dead Alive” (or Braindead as it was titled in Austrailia). Well, the phenomenal success that LotR has brought to Jackson means special DVD releases with “by the director of” labels on the cover.
Mweh heh heh.
I really never though this day would come. A constant favorite at Dealer’s room bootlegger tables, this particular treat falls into that same cult-ish category as Heavy Metal, but on a much more obscure level, and this time it very nearly deserves it’s reputation. See, Jackson really hasn’t done that many films, and his first few could be described as “experimental” only in the way that a bunch of eight year olds will “experiment” by poking at roadkill with a stick. Vile, disgusting, repulsive, and offensive.
Armageddon is nigh. “Meet the Feebles” is on DVD.with a cover label that says “by the director of “The Lord of the Rings.”
My God, this man has range. Did New Line know about these films before they gave Peter Jackson all that money?
“Meet the Feebles” does for offensive shock cinema what “Dead Alive” did for gore.
I shouldn’t need to say this, but our more sensitive readers may want to skip to the next review.
I actually think this film offended me. It’s a new sensation, so I can’t really be sure, but I can’t think of anything else it could be…other than nausea, and I’m pretty sure it isn’t that.
In case you can’t tell, I’m having a bit of trouble figuring out how to attack this film, so lets try this: Remember Jim Henson’s “the Muppet Show”? OK, imagine the muppet show with Kermit fucking Piggy onstage. That should at least prepare you. See, this show really is a massive, overblown sendup of The Muppet Show, except with enough independent concepts and offensive over-extrapolation to make it much more than a parody.
The cast, naturally, are all puppets. Animal puppets. In fact, they’re all quite good puppets. I was expecting something rather low-key, “done in my backyard” style, but I was blown away at the quality of the sets and puppets. There are dozens of characters all over the place, ranging from simple hand-up-the-ass (incidentally, the film never A) admits that they’re puppets for the sake of stupid jokes like this nor B) breaks the fourth wall) to full-scale partially articulated bodysuits for the larger cast members. Jackson must be an absolute wizard when on a budget because I can’t see how he could have talked much money out of anyone for this film and yet there’s even a puppet of “Mr. Big” at the end of the film that they literally drive a limo into. On a similar note, the puppets in this film must have been entirely unuseable after the gore, vomit, spooge, and associated other malodorous liquids they got soaked in. So yeah, the puppets are top notch. Their handling showed a bit of inexperience at times, though
So what’s the story? Who cares? Actually, you’d be surprised. The story revolves around a small theatrical troupe in a dismal old theater. Despite their dank surroundings, they’re actually rather famous for their “variety hour show”. (Sounding a bit like the Muppets?) Animal acts (?) contortionists, musical numbers, and rounded off by their female lead Hedi Hippo.
But. of course, they’ve got problems. A lot of problems. Sure, everyone is excited about the possibility of syndication they’re offered by the networks, but that really doesn’t help them, as discovered by the rookie hedgehog whose just joined up.
Let’s see. Much of the main action revolves around Hedi’s prima-donna manic depressive fits and food binges, exacerbated by the fact that her lover-boy, the producer “Blech” (Walrus) doesn’t want her anymore, and has trouble hiding his revulsion for her. See, he’s getting it from the pussy(cat) down the hall who spends a lot of time in the footwell of his desk. Of course, he’s got a lot on his mind, as he’s breaking into the local drug racket and has a big coke deal going down today. He anticipates trouble, which is why he and his enforcers have stashed a STUPID number of weapons in the guncases of his office. In it with him is a filthy stagehand rat who happens to sideline as an S&M bondage porn director (which Bletch produces) in the theater basement with his stars: a cow and an enormous cockroach. ((W)Robert, our lisping rookie, stumbles upon a scene by accident.) Unfortunately, the cockroach gets sat on and has to be replaced by the local laundry-sniffing voyeur-pervert Aardvark. Of course, one has to keep thinking up new ideas and looking for new star material to stay fresh in the porn biz, so the rat date-rape-drugs one of the younger poodle chorus girls and tries to forcibly introduce her to the business. ‘Wobert, who had been courting the poodle, happens on the scene and misunderstands terribly. Hilarity ensues! Of course, ‘Wobert has his own problems to worry about, as his constant directorial suggestions finally enrage the flamingly gay stage-manager, who reassigns ‘Wobert to be the new assistant for the knife-thrower. See, the knife thrower, who had been cheating fate for all these years, finally managed to put one right between the breasts of his pretty assistant because his heroine habit had spun out of control. Hard to blame the guy, though, since he’d gotten hooked after spending years as a POW of the Vietcong where he was finally forced to abandon his sergeant in a tiger-pit. Seems the flashbacks aren’t as bad when he’s stoked to the gills. The stage manager was a bit on the edgy side even before ‘Wobert’s suggestions, though, because their male lead, Harry the rabbit, has been keeping to his room for the past day or so. What no one knows is that Harry’s been feeling pretty bad for a while now, ever since a couple of his late-night threesomes with his adoring fans, and he’s just been diagnosed by the local Quack as suffering from “The BIG One.” Harry’s only got twelve hours to live, but he’s determined to go on with his last show for the sake of his public, no matter how bad it gets (and it gets REALLY bad). Sorry to say, but word gets out to the local press via a scum-sucking reporter who happened to be a “fly” on the wall, buzzing around backstage, and snacking on anything left behind in the toilets. This fly will make a story out of anything…probably even the paternity suit against the Elephant animal trainer with the weak bladder who lives in the back of the theater. Yeah, they’ve had a lot of trouble keeping acts on the stage lately, after the maggot stage director accidentally crushed their entire animal act with a barrel, and their contortionist got his head firmly wedged up his ass after a nasty fall. After all that trouble, you’d think Bletch would welcome new acts instead of swallowing them whole, but that’s upper management for you.
Nearly the entire film could be described as setting up all the various perversions, addictions, problems, and habits of the cast, but there are a few running plotlines in the background. As this solidly qualifies as one of those films that most of fandom has heard of, but isn’t nearly bored enough to actually hunt down and sit through, I’m gonna level the playing field by laying the whole plot out for you. If you actually intend to see this film, skip over this bit. It’s gonna be a bit random, since most of these plotlines run simultaneously.
‘Wobert arrives just as Trevor (the rat) mouths off at Hedi and sends her into another “I am an arteest!” rant and runs to interrupt Bletch from the middle of a “meeting.” Later, ‘Wobert meets Lucile, the poodle, and is instantly smitten. After much shyness, he manages to win her over with a little help from Arthur, the maggot stage manager. Their relationship blossoms until the incident with Trevor and the date-rape drug, where ‘Wobert is shocked at her “loose mowals” and swears he’ll have nothing to do with her. In the cataclysm of the end, he relents and saves her, at which point she explains the misunderstanding and they live happily ever after. They’re about the only ones.
The knife-thrower is absolutely broke and can’t beg a freebie out of Trevor, his supplier, to get rid of the shakes for his performance. After the subsequent knifing in rehearsal, he manages to con $50 out of ‘Wobert, his new assistant, gets the stuff, and shoots up in one of the filthy backstage stalls. When he’s drug out by his feet later, he’s taken too much and is just too damn loose to perform. They prop him up anyway and go live. He narrowly misses ‘Wobert the first few times…and then the flashbacks start. In the end, he manages to arc a blade right down through the top of his head on live TV.
Bletch meets up with his overseas coke contact on the golf course where he barfs up a job applicant from earlier. The stuff looks good, so a drop time is picked. Unfortunately, the contact double-crosses Bletch, which he discovers by giving some of the “coke” to the laundry-sniffing Aardvark…at which point the borax eats through the sides of his sinus and he keels over. The delivery-man meets a similar fate. Bletch and his enforcers arm themselves for bear and head out to the docks, where they run down several of the crustacean deckhands and shoot up the contact. On the way back they take out “Mr. Big” (a whale) by driving Bletch’s car straight in his mouth and out through the tail, eviscerating the drug lord an covering Bletch in ambergris. Bletch returns to the theater to witness the carnage that ensues, and dies in the midst of it all.
Harry the rabbit spends the entire film chasing off the reporter. After Bletch flushes the problem away his problems are reduced, but far from over. He makes it to the stage….and vomits like a fountain on his first line. Twenty minutes later he finds out thatt he’d been mis-diagnosed. He bursts out of his room to tell the crew…and is immediately mowed down in the carnage.
The Elephant looses his animal act to an accident early on and is constantly hassled by Sandy (paternity suit) following him around with the screaming kid. In the end Sandy gets shot up, her headless body runs around, and the Elephant manages to snatch the kid from the line of fire only to get shot in both knees. He lives and looks after the kid, but only after extensive reconstructive surgery.
The only other survivor of this mess is Arthur, the fairly nice stagemanager, and the director, who goes into hiding right after he resorts to reinstating his own routine…a one man musical ode to sodomy.
Oh, I’m sorry, did I not mention this was a musical?
Oh yes, of course Hedi survives. She’s the only real plotline left to explain. Mostly she meanders through the film on eating binges and manic depressive stints. Bletch manages to still his queasy stomach for long enough to pull her out of a prima donna “I won’t perform” protest with some pre-show sex, but when her big scene is a success he finally tells her off as she shows up in her negligee in his office. Heartbroken, she tries to commit suicide, but proves too heavy for the makeshift noose in her room and crashes through the floor into Bletch’s gun locker. Trying again with the more effective machine gun she found, she’s interrupted by Bletch’s current pussy(cat), at which point she changes her mind and goes on a murderous rampage instead. For a songbird, this hippo is damn efficient with a machine gun. She tears through nearly every member of the cast at random, wiping out even the chorus girls and innocent bystanders, scattering the audience as she proceeds towards the stage. Only Arthur, the Elephant, ‘Wodger, Lucille, the director, and herself survive.
I’ll say it again. Did New Line KNOW about this film when they gave Peter Jackson all that money?
In all honesty, this film is funny from the perspective of it’s outrageousness. It does it’s damnedest to offend the audience in every way it can. The fact that it’s puppets and not people makes the result somewhat bearable, but the viewing enjoyment comes from withstanding the film, not from it’s own technical and storytelling qualities. How exactly do you judge a film like this? It’s honestly gross enough to turn your stomach at times, but still you keep watching (or I did, anyway). On the technical end, it’s filled with remarkably good puppets, but on occasion the controllers screw up the mouth timing, and there’s an errant wire or two that shows up on film. Lighting has a few problems, and I had to listen to some of the stranger lines four or five times to figure out what was said. A few very rough cuts or possibly trimmed bits of footage made it into the final edit (non-smooth transitions, glips in the sound). All in all, it’s a consummate underground hit, tailor made to have been heard ABOUT, but rarely ever seen. It’s not the most offensive thing out there, but it’s possibly the most offensive thing ever made with puppets.
So what could I possibly follow those two reviews with? How about something classy?
Donnie Darko
Three words can summarize this film fairly succinctly.
CREEPY FUCKING RABBIT.
Whoa, this is a creepy film. In fact, it pretty solidly defines creepy. It’s not gory. It’s not really exactly scary. It’s got a few moments of suspense and occasional bouts of tension, but it’s not even really a horror film, as it’s not horrifying. It is, however, exceedingly creepy. Nothing ever really jumps out at you or goes after anyone with a knife…..hell, the source of the creepiness hardly moves at all….but if you watch this film in a darkened room late at night it will take a conscious effort to not check under the bed or behind the curtains before you go to sleep. And God help you if you own a rabbit.
Donnie Darko is a teenage kid with some problems. Not problems with kids at school, not problems talking to that cute girl in class or being tempted by booze from his reprobate friends. No, Donnie has the kind of problems that require heavy psychotropic medication. Donnie’s a schizophrenic with serious mood control problems. He visits a psychiatrist regularly, to seemingly little effect. He lives in an upper-class neighborhood that reminds me for all the world of the oversaturated color of “Blue Velvet”’s suburbia with his parents, one younger and one older sister. His wavering mental state is beginning to wear on the family’s nerves, due in no small part to the fact that Donnie hates taking his medication. (From family experience, I can tell you that many paranoid schizophrenics hate the medications because it always leaves them half-awake and listless, and the syndrome itself often works against taking any medication at all, as the paranoia sets in about the drugs.) One night, after downing a placebo, Donnie makes a friend. Rising from his bed in a sort of half-psychotic-sleepwalking state, he walks out the front door in answer to a strangely compelling voice he hears on the lawn. His friend is down there waiting for him. His “friend” is the creepy part. He spends most of the time just far enough away from the camera that you can’t really tell what he is. You can see a strange, uniform, loose body-suit entirely enclosing him, and the face is contorted in a grim rictus. Clumsy paws cover his hands, and two long, perversely twisted rabbit ears extend from what is later seen to be a mask. Much later, during another of his “friend’s” visits, we get a look at him in a well-lit room, and we can see that the entire thing is a hideous costume of a sort of Gieger-esque rabbit. Damn, that thing is creepy. The friend’s name, we later learn (although Donnie is never told directly), is “Frank,” and he tells Donnie that the world will end in exactly 28 days, six hours, forty-two minutes, and twelve seconds. Receiving this information, Donnie collapses and wakes up the next morning on the local golf course. As the rest of the story unfolds, the other days are all referred to in a countdown to this “end of the world.”
During the night, however, something else happened. Against all odds, an airplane engine, presumably having fallen off of a passing aircraft, crashes into the house, falling through the roof and landing almost precisely on Donnie’s bed. Donnie’s now convinced that Frank has saved his life, and, naturally, listens closely to anything that Frank wants to tell him. Surprisingly enough, Donnie actually starts developing a life of sorts after the destruction of his room. He gets a girlfriend, hangs out with his friends, even gets involved in his classes a bit.
Don’t let this fool you into thinking that we now regard Frank as a beneficial influence, though. First off, he’s still really damn creepy, especially when he finally takes the mask off. (No, it’s not Donnie under there, it’s someone we’ve never seen before and something…bad…has happened to him.) Second, he has things for Donnie to…do. I’m not gonna ruin any of it for you, as these are key moments in the film, but let’s just say that Frank’s requests are…strange. Involving vandalism, arson, and doing something…bad…with an axe. Frank never moves around, merely appears where he wasn’t before, standing or sitting to issue his instructions. He speaks in a strange pattern of riddle-like statements that seem to mirror Donnie’s own schizophrenic outbursts, and something prevents Donnie from actually, physically reaching him…something like an invisible barrier. At one point Donnie stabs at the barrier with a kitchen knife to ….interesting…results but no real effect.
Now, outside of this a lot of things are happening. Minorly odd, but in the “stupid people in large groups” level of occurrence. A new English teacher (Drew Barrymore in an actual good role) attempts to interest her class in reading through the introduction of the classic “The Destroyers” (a topic that gets Donnie’s interest back on school) but is halted by the school board and a particularly shriveled old busybody teacher who ranks everything in life on a scale from “fear” to “love.” (Gahhh….I had one of those…) So, instead, the class reads “Watership Down”…one expects that Frank approves. Also, a series of coincidences lead Donnie into the investigation of wormholes as personally manifesting objects. At one point, he discovers that he can actually see the lines of predestination emanating from his family members, dictating their actions a few seconds in the future, visible only to him as a sort of watery tendril extending from the abdomen.
This is a profoundly weird movie. More creepy than weird, but still pretty dang weird. If you crave complete, understandable resolution, this isn’t the film for you. When everything ends, you’re hardly even sure what anything meant at all….or even who the hell Frank had actually been. It also doesn’t end well, exactly….sort of…..so be warned! Drawbacks for the film are a habit of continually drifting afield. We spend a good bit of time just watching Donnie and his girlfriend try to deal with school in his own schizophrenic fashion, pissing off teachers, getting called to the office, tolerating the insipid guest lectures of the local simpering sycophant, etc., when we in the audience are all going “YEAH, BUT FRANK! What does this have to do with FRANK?” Well, the secret is that it all has to do with Frank, but I can’t tell you how, lest I ruin the movie for you. Let’s just say that the world does end 28 days from Frank’s first appearance….and on the same day as his appearance.
Donnie is played by Jake Gyllenhaal who you might recognize as the title character from “Bubble Boy” if you were one of the two people who saw that Pee-Wee ripoff in the theaters. He does a sort-of good job. There are times when it feels like he’s fumbled his portrayal, but that works equally well in character, as we get the feeling of someone who just isn’t quite equipped to deal with the world on its own level. He does the psychotic schizo look quite well though. Drew Barrymore really didn’t have to be in this film. She did an OK job, but her character was so thinly outlined initially that every time she was on scene, I had to force myself to not think of her as an actress, but as a teacher. An unknown would likely have worked better for the role.
The DVD extras are loaded. Most interesting are the 20 (20!) deleted scenes from the film included on the disc. Frankly, the missing scenes show that there was a much, much worse film lurking around until the editor got a hold of it. Excerpt scenes that give away the plot…segments of bad or directed totally-out-of-character acting…even a scene where we find that Donnie’s psychiatrist has been giving him sugar pills….a staggeringly irresponsible thing to do, since Donnie plainly needs to be medicated.
So anyway…that’s my contribution to make up for my absence.
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Hopefully an AWA report tomorrow night.
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...Lord knows when the cold wind blows it'll turn your head around.
2002-08-10 16:51:55
Just because I can't resist being an obnoxious know-it-all, I'm gonna answer Absolute Destiny's question. Yes Absinthe is illegal in the US...at least the real stuff is. I understant that there are a bunch of imitations missing the key active ingredient, but I've never encountered them.
For anyone who doesn't know, absinthe is an chloryphyllic iridescent green liquor made from fermented wormwood. It was really popular among the literary and artistic elite at the turn of the last century, especially in France, home of the Pernod distillery. Normally it's kept in a slightly-syrupy highly-alcoholic form. Pour a bit of this into a glass and set it aside. Then place an "absinthe spoon" over the mouth of the glass (normal looking spoon except with feet to hold it in place over the glass and the bowl-part of the spoon is slotted so it won't hold any liquid) and place a sugar cube or two on the spoon. Then pour water from a decanter over the sugar cubes. (Proper mix is about 5 parts water to 1 part absinthe.) The liquor appears to glow an iridescent green from diffraction at concentration gradients between the syrup, the sugar, and the water, and it has a anise-like flavor. (Ouzo or Black licorice to the rest of us.) For a demonstration, watch NIN's video "The Perfect Drug." I find it ironic to no end that, in order to come up with something really controversial and contraban, the group had to look that far backwards to find something original.
So what's the problem with it? The problem is that alcohol isn't the only active ingredient in absinthe. The other active ingredient is "thujone," derived from the wormwood, which is said to cause hallucinations and a high similar to marijuana. That wasn't enough to get it banned in the US at the time, though.
The real problem is that thujone is a neurotoxin.
There's some debate about how severe a neurotoxin it is, as it is present in a number of other foods and spices which are not banned in the US, but during the beginning of the last century a connection was drawn between habitual absinthe drinkers, insanity (they weren't really specific about what kind at the time), and suicides. Due to a vinyard blight in France at the time, absinthe became exceedingly popular in artistic circles and, as a result, wiped out nearly an entire generation of painters, writers, and philosophers. For the most part, the severe effects only seem to show up in long-time drinkers, so the occasional drink likely isn't any more of a problem than an occasional roach, but in the long run it is much worse. There are some imitations of absinthe that showed up after the ban which had no thujone in them, and for all I know the thujone has been entirely eliminated from all modern versions, but I've never seen any version at all available publicly in the US.
Clever note: "Absinthe" originally comes from the greek word meaning "undrinkable." On an even more negative note, you know what the Russian word for the drink is?
"Chernobyl."
If anyone ever wants to buy me something that I would think is cooler than the sun is bright (or more mixed than my metaphores), buy me an absinthe spoon. Really. It's not like I'm gonna find one here... -
2002-08-02 19:44:52
Life is hell. I'm pulling out of here for the immediate future for reasons having to do with work and working on the AWA contests, so y'all will have to do without hearing from me for a bit. Like a month or so.
*crickets*
I'll still be reading on occasion, but any responses will be really short.
Quick now, before I sign off:
iserlohn: Re: your mention of the changes to Disney comics, if you want a real laugh, hunt down some Smurfs. They hadn't entirely disappeared when I went over on the exchange program, so we happened to run into a poster of all the little plastic smurf figures (the 1 1/2 inch high soft non-action figure ones.), except they weren't called "Smurfs."
They were called "Schlumpfs." They had most of the standard array with one exception. "Bier Schlumpf"
Oh, and Papa Smurf? You'll love this....
"der Uberschlumpf."
treeprincess: I think you might be surprised how many people were glad to see a new entry from you. I for one was happy to see you still active...
JOURNAL: MCWagner (Matthew Wagner)
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