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AWA report part 2, read previous first.
2003-10-05 02:22:15
Stuck around until 6:50 in the morning before finally being convinced that VAT wasn’t gonna close on me when I wasn’t looking, and finally went up to bed. Crashed until 10:30. Patrick and Casey ran the first few tracks, which was appropriate enough since it was their individual blocks. (I’ve no qualms about giving out blocks to staffers when they’re ludicrously early in the morning. None of the guests would want to get up that early anyway. One of these days I might just give myself a block somewhere.
Anyway, as the pro showing and masters showings kinda run themselves, I pulled in a staffer or two to keep an eye on the VCRs, and finally got my chance to go through the dealer’s room in depth. Picked up the traditional AWA shirt (or the design they had left....never got a chance to see the one that sold out. Kinda curious what it looked like.) and went back to wander down the row of arcade games.
Hmm.... Shinobi, never could get past level three on that, Mr. Doob, Galactica.....
Holy Shit! FUTURE WARS! Quick! Where’s the change machine? There was one of those things in the Pizza Hut back in Indiana. That thing took three dollars from me when my allowance was a quarter! The showdown didn’t go much better for me, even though I’d finally moved beyond my original technique of “running at things while shooting and hoping they die before I get there.”
Came back to make sure that the AMV 101 was attended and attended to (again, an area more suitable to Quu’s domain, making sure that all of the cords and the like were properly sequenced to get the computer video out for Brad and Nic’s tutorial), and afterwards made sure to catch Dokonium 2.
Turned out that the pro block (excluding the winners shown during awards) was about four videos too long for the time space allotted (again, we’ve got to make the schedule long in advance of the deadline, so we go with best guess). Fortunately, the Master’s block was longer than necessary, so we just started that block with the remaining videos.
Everything wrapped up rather quickly, I shooed everyone else off the stage (sorry guys, but if there’s criticism, people want answers from one source, and want one figure upon which to vent their spleen. Helps focus things.) and we started closing ceremonies. Same as last year, I’d forgotten to spread the word about individual awards far and wide enough to have gotten a list from those who had to leave early, and a couple of guests gave “on the spot” awards. Still waiting for a few replies before that whole list goes public.
Criticisms were fairly on-target this year. No one seemed to try and be blaming us for stuff that wasn’t actually our fault. Several genuinely good suggestions for modifications and painless additions. Wound up the proceedings, the folks scattered, and we started takedown. I had to run off to closing ceremonies to do my little three-sentence-closure and thanks and re-pimp of the sponsors, and then I was in-and-out during the VAT takedown in an effort to catch the bitch session lest someone decided to go over my head with their VAT complaints. Somewhere in there TJ had to take off early ‘cause he was taking a bunch of folks to dinner (I was joining, but would have to catch up) at Umezono’s, but there were more than enough folks to tote and carry for our room. Bitch session was remarkably tame this year. Only repeat complaint was over the website, something not even exactly present at the convention, and the program book.
The program book. Whoooo.
I started hearing complaints about the program book almost the moment I ran into our first guests. At first I was worried that people were taking offense at the blurbs I was forced to write up for the tardy text writers. (Got individual descriptions from some of you, track descriptions from others, but not always both from everyone.) Then it became completely obvious that someone had been fucking around in the text itself. From the really basic stuff, like deciding that “Aluminum and doki doki” should be listed as “Aluminum heartbeat” or a spellcheck-inspired transliteration of “Fluxmeister” as “Fluxmister”, to the more heart-rending bits like finding out that a 2-3 sentence paragraph description of each guest had been cut down to three words, with enormous liberties assumed and taken (“member of” Aluminum Studios? Red Apple studios?) ......fucking hell. (IF I HAD BEEN TOLD WE’D HAVE THREE WORDS WORTH OF SPACE, I WOULDN’T HAVE SPENT A MONTH BUGGING PEOPLE FOR THE MATERIAL. Dammit.) The really weird crap, though, was reserved for the places where VAT actually did get some text. Here, stuff was just altered at frickin’ random. Let’s compare and contrast. This is what I sent in to be printed: “Nightowl Pictures’ Video Block: Nathan Bezner and Jeff Heller take you on a wild ride through the video libraries of Nightowl Pictures. Keep an eye out for additional guests to show up at the panel. They have a way of accumulating followers. (Oh, and be sure to ask Nathan where his bunny ears are…) Friday 2:00-3:00”
This was replaced with: “A wild ride through the video library of Nightowl Pictures, hosted by two video makers and assorted hangers-on. In-jokes about bunny ears sure to follow, allowing all to rapidly see who the outgroup is.”
‘the HELL? OK, a little snipping I can see. But what’s with the additional commentary tacked onto the end?
OK, try again. Before: VicBond007 & Red Apple Studios: AMVs! Parodies! EMAIL! It's all here! VicBond007 and Alan Chaess will be your guide to the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of an AMV creator's world, so keep your hands and arms inside the vehicle at all times, and please, no flash photography. Lens flares are VicBond's job, let's keep it that way. Come the panel, the panel.. what what, the panel! 9 out of 8 crazy bald guys recommend it!
After: Your guides to the good, bad, and ugly sides of the music video creator’s world ask that you please lend them some humorous phrases, as they are fresh out.
Now that’s just insulting.
Or how about fucking weird? Reinterpretation of inside jokes? Before: Fluxmeister and MexicanJunior’s Video Block: MexicanJunior of Random Variable Productions and Fluxmeister of NHMK invite you to watch an hour filled with the videos they love and maybe even some of their own. 2:00-3:00
After: The originator of the NES project and a man with connections to General Marquez and “El” will present their favorite anime music videos, and their own.
(I think I see the origin of this one.... MJ never sent me a personal description, so I made one up: Sotero “MexicanJunior” Lopez of Random Variable Productions: The nominated rep of the “La Familia” AMV mafia is making the long trek out of Texas to be with us here today. It is best that you show him all the respect deserved to a man who can arrange for you wake up next to the dismembered carcass of your editing computer.” That all got taken out, so I guess some inkling was included....wrongly....in the track text.)
Then, we glance at Lostboy and Hexgirl’s descriptive text, and discover it untouched.
Oh, and that’s not even touching the other events.
Disney Rave Project: Before: Think you’ve seen it all? Think you’ve followed all the DDR projects of the past? Think again! Unbeknownst to many, there’s a version of Dance Dance Revolution out there that draws entirely from the old Disney library of songs! Come see what happens when dozens of AMV editors get a hold of hyperkinetic versions of beloved songs from your childhood! Don’t be afraid to get up and dance, we know you all want to… Friday 8:00-9:30
After: It barely even makes sense, but there’s a version of Dance Dance Revolution using remixes of old songs from the Disney catalog. And now there’s a video to it. Western civilization, meet the final nail.
(Why is it that the three things I manage to fuck up through lack of constant presence all manage to accidentally and soundly stab Ken Nabbe in the back?)
This really is completely flabbergasting me. I know the guy who assembles this stuff pretty well, and regarded him as a good acquaintance, if not a good friend. I know for a fact that VAT was the only department to turn all of its text in on time. I knew that stuff was gonna get trimmed. I didn’t know that editorial comments were going to be inserted. It’s just totally unexplainable how randomly the editorial interference is spread. Some track descriptions only have a word or two (reasonably, for space) missing. Others have not a recognizable word remaining. (I never use the term “sublime” for one...) I won’t be having words with him. I’ll be having gape-mouthed stupefaction as I gesture widely at the program book. I’d be more pissed if I could comprehend what happened between my sending him text and him fucking with it to fit. It’s like he got really pissed when trying to get the last few entries to fit, or lost the file entirely half way through, and had to wing it from what he remembered. And this is literally on my first look through the book. I’m a little afraid of what I’ll find if I read it cover-to-cover.
So what can I say? I’m sorry, obviously, but not only was I unaware of this problem, I can’t even account for it. Words will be had, you can be assured.
Anyway, closing ceremonies shut down, and I went to help tote-and carry for about an hour. Got the terabyte server out into my car, got the last few pieces lined up to go into Patrick’s truck, picked up the raffle cards for AN, threw it all in the car, got intercepted by someone from Neko-con (who passed me a Guinness....sweet. People must be reading my lj more frequently than I thought) where we talked for a few minutes, then I drove out to Umezono’s for a dinner. (All I’d had for the previous day was a handful of Krispy Kreme donuts.)
The dinner was good, although my late arrival stuck me at a table of unknowns (old friends of Brett’s) leading to a bit of awkward silence. Especially when two of them had to leave suddenly. Something about luggage locked in a room, uncooperative security, and a flight leaving soon. The ice was broken when we discovered a common appreciation of failed comedy routines from back in the old days of Comedy Central and fandub humor.
Came back to the hotel to check on the dead dog....which was dead. Wandered a bit, stopped by the staff party, but suddenly realized that if I didn’t start back towards campus immediately, I was likely to have a narcoleptic fit while driving. Having a few drinks and then waiting the hours necessary for them to get all the way out of my system wouldn’t have helped the situation either. Said my goodbyes, and drove.......to work. (Crap) Cells to split before I slept.
And now.....a review? HELL NO. This is more than enough material to satiate y’all. Besides, I haven’t the energy right now.
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AWA took my baby away, took her away, away from me....
2003-10-05 02:21:15
Yeah, I know I stole the sig. But it’s good.
As per last year, I’m gonna try to do a full con review, keeping as many details in as possible, because I’m of the opinion that full disclosure and understanding is the fastest, surest route to people forgiving you your foibles and downfalls.
You’ll notice that most people’s reviews begin on Thursday. Mine begins on Wednesday. That was the day I showed up on Patrick’s doorstep and said “Hi, I’m here to pick up the list of winners for Expo and the alphabetized grid of entries you were gonna print out for me.”
“Oh, I haven’t got that yet.”
“Yeah, that’s why I’m here.”
See, I anticipated this, because it’s the same thing that happened last year. Thus, while walking in the door and asking what the problem was, I didn’t even blink when I was told “DDR is fucked.”
DDR is ALWAYS fucked two days before the convention. For the last three years, the bare days and hours before the screening is officially scheduled consist of a great coming together of editors from across the world into Patrick’s living room where they gather around and curse loudly at Premiere’s inability to do this or that, or why the hell that track switches interlacing halfway through, or what’s happened to overdue tracks A, B, or C, or why the audio isn’t synching up. Solutions are tried, options considered, obsolete machinery kicked, and eventually I leave, since I can’t help, and am only getting in the way of everyone else’s frustration.
Not that I could tell at the time, but it turns out that DDR was very nearly “proper fucked” this time around. Massive, MASSIVE, truly weird-ass problems popped up in sequence, and every time a way was found to work around problem A, the new method would incur problem B. The thing must’ve been rendered and re-rendered eight times between Wed. night when I got there, and Saturday morning when the final work was brought by the track. Nathan Bezner in particular was staring glassy-eyed for much of the start of the con as a result of the all-nighters pulled to get the project together. I don’t ever interfere with DDR for a couple of reasons. Primarily because any meddling on my part would be massively unhelpful. One of my few virtues is that I generally know when I’m out of my depth. Secondarily, because DDR has no technical connection with AWA. Oh, we’re more than thrilled to have Brad premier it at AWA every year, but technically, we’re merely providing host space. There’s a clear wall of responsibility between AWA and DDR that I make sure not to cross. DDR is Brad and Patrick and all the contributing authors’ responsibility. I couldn’t step in and order people around concerning it if I wanted to. Their control, their work, their artistry, their machinery. I just sit with a schedule block dedicated for its showing and hope that they get it done on time. (More specifically, that they get it done on time without driving my tech sub-director insane first, as I really need him to be working on other stuff during the convention.)
So I come in and sit down in front of the video server and start copying out all of the information for the printed awards, as well as reorganizing the Expo video-list into an actual searchable format. (Initially it was organized by date when the studio first created an account on the Otakuvideo server for uploading to any contest. Helps us not-at-all when attempting to find the proper video you’re requesting.)
Enter first crisis of the con. The secret ingredient for Iron Chef has gone missing. Totally missing. Mint condition videocassette of an obscure 1986 Rankin and Bass film. By shear coincidence after running around hunting for three hours, we discover that Nigel O’ Rear has an old bootleg DVD. Turns out that the quality ain’t great, but it’s better than anything else. (Find out three days after the con that the video was “borrowed” by a good friend who just happened to be in France for the entire weekend. Gahhh.....)
Enter second crisis of the con. Get a shout out from the basement, where the DDR workers are holed up, contemplating seppuku. “Something just blew!” Patrick rushes down into a cloud of ozone. One of the Iron Chef computers just blew a power-supply in the middle of trying to upload all of the ingredients for the contest. NOT GOOD. They get hauled up into the open where there’s better circulation (hey, every little bit counts), and disassembled. Another power supply that was just lying around gets popped in and re-wired. We start loading up the material once again into the non-blown machine while lying on its side with the case panel off. All is well and good. Put the panel on.
The heat-controlled fan for the power supply starts revving up like there’s no tomorrow. Quick, the panel comes off. Everyone stands around and does varying degrees of “that was weird” and “that’s not good” looks. Deciding that maybe the panel can stay off for a bit, we let it continue to upload material for a bit.
I retreat back to the complexity of a word processor (where I’ve fobbed off the work onto Nigel) and eventually get my working file. It gets sent to my mailbox, and I drive off back to work.
I’m stuck there until about 4:00 AM printing out the myriad rewards we’ve got for Expo this year and getting a proper printout of the video grid, pack everything carefully into a sealed box, and head home. The alarm gets set for 11:00, and I konk out.
Of all the frickin’ days. We get two phone calls that morning. I have to answer both of them. Why? My lab-mate’s mom had just died early Wednesday morning, after a prolonged battle with terminal leukemia. I’d been told that they were planning the funeral within the next few days, but not exactly when. I thought they might’ve been calling to give me the details. (Turned out it was on Sunday, and I missed it entirely. Not sure I could’ve made it anyway, considering my required presence at the con for those hours... feel like a scuzzball putting it that way though.) It’s really rather sad. For the past six months or so Sandy’s mom has been living in Atlanta (moved here from Athens, Greece) for constant transfusions. She’d been stable, but with little hope of recovery for a long time now. About three times a day we’d get calls from her for Sandy (who was practically never around), and she’d ask in quavering, broken English “Sandy please.” She only understood about forty English words, so I was always stuck with the job of trying to explain to her where Sandy had run off to. We could NEVER tell the difference between a call begging to go to the hospital because she was in pain, and a call asking what Sandy wanted for dinner, so every time prompted a panicked hunt through the building.
Any rate, on top of all that, someone showed up at 9:30 to test all of our fire alarms, and my roommates stood outside my door and discussed the matter at great length with the guy.
Grahhhh. All told, I got about four hours. The day before the day before the convention. The only people who got less were my crew back at DDR central. Great.
Thursday. I get up at 11:00. Pile everything into the car that wasn’t already there (sans one monitor and my little TV which I’d forgotten I wanted to take......crap. Needed that all weekend and never had the time to run back and get them) and charge out to.....THE MALL. Gotta pick up the Master’s jacket.
After the mall, off to the hotel. In by noon or so, and promptly can’t find anyone. The place is fucking DESERTED of AWA staffers. All I can find are the department heads hunting around for their staffers and only coming up with one or two each. In my case, that’s OK, ‘cause Patrick’s got to be hauling all the equipment in his truck, and I’m here to prepare the way for him (good thing too...the hotel had the VAT set up completely wrong and I had to do a good deal of maneuvering and chair repositioning before anyone got there) but all the other departments are rather disappointed. I run a quick tour of the place, and realize that my shoes, which should have been broken in during D*C, are starting to pinch again. Dammit. Over the weekend one foot got rubbed raw, which explains the odd limp I had that got worse as the con progressed. Nothing too bad, but just annoying enough that I had to walk pigeon-toed. I take the chance to check into the hotel, but don’t have time to run up to the room.
Slowly stuff starts showing up. I run to help locate and unload the MMI truck (tech sound and lighting system we hire to help us with the big stuff) and in dashing back and forth through the labyrinthine passages of the hotel and galleria, I managed to ALWAYS be at the wrong end of the cargo elevator. Honestly, though, the rat-tunnels for the hotel staff are horribly laid out. There’s a tunnel through an “authorized personnel only” passageway from the front lobby that just winds back out of sight, through four right angle turns, before emptying out halfway between the empty carbonation cylinders and the staff cantina. No logic or reason to the place’s layout, as far as I can tell. Got lost back there three times during the convention. (Place also has two loading docks, and we spent half an hour waiting at the wrong one.) Haul lighting rigs for MMI for a while.
Then we get to panic for an hour ‘cause we hear from Gordon that the U-haul for the rest of AWA’s equipment has yet to turn up at the storage space. I didn’t panic....’cause what the hell could I do about it? Eventually it turns up there and we can breathe a sigh of relief.
Then Patrick’s truck pulls up. Gonna take two loads from his place, but I use the opportunity to talk with him for a moment or two and confirm that the sponsors did get dropped off at the hotel, and there were no problems with their room (my biggest fear) and check on the DDR folk (still at his house, doin’ their thing). I’m informed that Patrick will either return with a completed, glitch-free DDR, or all of their corpses. I carefully observe that wall of responsibility.
All the monitors and servers and keyboards get dropped off at the VAT for wiring. I grab all the non-wiring staffers that’ve shown up at this point, and haul them down to unload the U-haul that’s finally appeared. Everything gets taken out in record time. The U-haul was packed as tightly as I’ve ever seen it, but the stuff just flies out via a Chinese-fire-brigade fashion of passing speakers and boxes of wiring components from one pair of hands to the next. The whole thing is empty in less then ten minutes, and individual departments start claiming material. VAT makes off with our speakers and four enormous “Seele” units that’ve been around since....AWA 3? Massive mothers. Gordon went at them hammer and tongs last year after one acted funny and broke about halfway-down during the VAT session. Turns out a mouse got into one of them and ate part of a speaker. How do we know it was a mouse? Sucker died in the Seele, and his desiccated corpse was discovered when it was opened for repairs. They were all tuned up (and cleaned out) for us this year.
So everything was finding its way up to the VAT properly, and we started laying wire, taping things down, etc. I really wanted the VAT to be up and running ridiculously early this year, but it turned out not to be. Scott Richardson, our advertising director, had promised to bring us a real kickass projector for this year’s VAT. Unfortunately, he’d had to back out on his promise. The unit he’d been planning to bring was this phenomenal pro-grade 5,000 lumen projector that a friend of his had picked up on the cheap from an estate sale. (For us to borrow, now own, naturally.) With power like that we’d have never needed to turn down the lights. Unfortunately, a day beforehand, the bulb on the projector went out. Big deal? YES. Those bulbs are meant to run for several years worth of continuous time, but an individual replacement cost about $4,800 (no, that’s not a typo.) So that one was out of the question.
As compensation, Scott volunteered a similar, although significantly less impressive unit. Problem was, he was nowhere to be found. That was partly my fault. As part of the sponsorship deal with Anime Network for Iron Chef this year, we agreed to hang this truly enormous banner up (20x20), and AN shipped it to the advertising director, naturally. But they shipped it in a 20-foot long poster-tube-like thing. I’m still not entirely sure how he managed to get it here. Or back home, for that matter. Anyway, wrestling with that monster was one primary reason for the delay. And we sat there with a fully-assembled system that I wanted up and running already (the editors had found us and were beginning to gather in random squads), but we had no projector to tune and adjust and check things with. So I wandered over to main and snitched (grabbed a spare, with permission) another projector to set things up with, on the random chance that Scott was unable to bring the other one. As it turned out, Scott showed up several hours later after some emergency conferences with some of the advertisers, and upon delivery to the vat of what I can only describe as some sort of Transformer’s vital organ, we never had a long enough break in programming, enough staffers (bastard was HEAVY and expensive), or the right wiring (BNC connectors) to even give it a try. Hated pulling that stunt on Scott after he dragged the bastard all the way out here, but the stars were never in proper alignment for such a thing. I regret it all the more in light of a few comments we got about slight blurry-ness. I’ll have to rely on other’s assessment of the clear picture, as years of judging AMV contests has so immured me to bad footage that I can’t even tell any more. (Hence the experts for the Master’s contest.) If there’d been any no-shows for panels, a regular flood of tech staffers early in the morning or after the dances died down, or a respectable gap in scheduling that WASN’T filled with panicked re-wiring, we’d have given it a shot. As it was, it just became a large, immovable object back in the curtained-off area.
Grab one of my staffers, shove the alphabetized copy of the Expo videos in one hand, the original note-laden packet of Expo vids into the other, and tell him to transcribe. See, I made up a system this year. Special notation to make sure everyone got at least one video shown. “A” marked an award-winning video that would be shown at the awards ceremony, so would be excluded from the Expo showing unless requested by the maker (to preserve the surprise), “D” marked a video disqualified because of tech problems (two videos we received this year had no audio track at all), “E” was a hentai video (MARK THOSE CAREFULLY for late-night showing and pass along to Darius), multiple entries from a single author were numbered according to the judge’s preference for which be shown if there isn’t time for all, etc. However, such a clever system does us no good if it’s not in an index you can easily search. So I left poor staffer to do that job.
So, things were coming together, VAT guests and regular attendees were showing up, (Brad was asking for his badge....which hadn’t been printed yet.....should’a learned on that point from last year.), and at that point I get informed about crisis #3. The power supply in the _other_ Iron Chef machine blew up last night. Got fixed without me having to meddle, though. Didn’t bode well for the weekend, however. Further, DDR was still minorly fucked. After the DDR company staying up most of the night futzing around with it and trying to figure out why the timing got further and further off the further into the project it rendered (turned out one of the capture cards involved was designed to capture film, not TV signal, and so wasn’t designed to run much higher than 24fps. At 29.97 it was just slowly screwing itself....told you the problems were odd.), they’d managed to fix it, but were now rendering it on the standalone machine at the end of the VAT.
Meanwhile, editors were starting to gather in the back of the VAT. The test stuff we were running to check on the system, and the emergency re-wire that Gordon was assembling for the Seeles, wasn’t proving to be too interesting to them, so they eventually migrated down into the lobby area, gathering in prep for the AMV dinner. I’d kinda resigned myself to being unable to attend, as had been the case last year, since the setup is always more elaborate and filled with mini-problems requiring constant attention, but I went ahead and let most of my eligible crew attend. Why should they miss out? At this point I hang around to do the fetch-and-carry for the tech crew assembling things. Also, I check on the progress with the Expo list. Three pages done. The staffer was searching the system backwards and making more work for himself. Groan. I take it over, and spend an hour and a half transcribing up on the stage in the dark while the videos run. Meanwhile, we’ve installed a brand new device into the VAT! A video switcher! And no one can figure out how it works! A couple of hours of futzing around with it, and we get the basic principles down, but there’s this weird chroma-color cycling thing going on in one of the “input” channels that we can’t get rid of. Looks like a special effect that got stuck in the “on” position. This stymies us for literally HOURS (I left and came back during the puzzlement). Eventually, someone just cuts the device outta the loop, and we discover that the signal is coming outta the computer that way. Major crisis number....ah, I lost count. Turns out a $35 netstream card burnt itself out during the fiddling and moving around of the computers. That machine gets set aside for repairs. (Up and running the next morning.)
Meanwhile, I haul my stuff up to my room (nice beds) and on the way back to the VAT, run into Jingoro and company on their way back from the dinner. Apparently there were over 70 people at the restaurant, but he told me I should quick drive out and join in ‘cause most of them were still there.
In my own typical style, I arrive in the nick of too late, just as the teeming masses pour out. It seems they all walked over rather than arranged carpools, but I’ve shown up at just the right moment. Brad and Nathan Bezner really need a ride back, due, respectively, to an allergic reaction and complete exhaustion. (The two are the ones who spent all night assembling DDR.) Five minutes are spent redistributing the reams of scrap paper in my car. (I accumulate scrap paper like most people accumulate pennies in the cushions of the couch, mostly due to notes rapidly jotted down for entries like this or story ideas. Looks like a mobile recycling bin, though.) Unfortunately, the restaurant was closing as well, so I circle around the galleria, drop the pair off, and then head out in search of some form or manner of sustenance.
At this point I encounter the most pathetic figure of the weekend. Given the options, I drive down to the Waffle House on the other side of the highway. Meandering in at around midnight, I cast around and, finding no booths available, sit down at the counter. Two seats from my left is a guy in a mall security uniform. Wears those stereotypical cop-shades. Little black-and-white relief nametag on the lapel. Bristle-brush mustache. Buzz-cut to make the top of his head vaguely cylindrical. Sitting there drinking a cup of coffee. I think my radio going off once or twice attracts his attention. He starts striking up the most awkward conversation I’ve ever participated in. He’s just sort of talking at me sidelong, great long pauses in the conversation. Says he gets wired up in here on coffee every night before his shift. Night watchman at the mall. Asks if I’m down at the convention center. I tell him I am. “Conventions are fun, aren’t they? I spent the day down at the fair. Lot of free stuff there. A big gyro thing they put you in and spin you around. Artists that draw your pitcher’. Here...” Unrolls a caricaturist’s portrait of himself on a “wanted” poster. It says “wanted for having too much fun.” “I think it’s a pretty good job, what do you think?” I agree.
Then he starts trying to get the waitress’s attention. The waitress’s name is Raven, which, he confides in me, he thinks is American Indian. (She’s about 15 years my senior, scrawny, dark, hollowed eyes, bright red nose from sniffling....you know, standard WH waitress....has at least one kid, I overhear.) He lamely tries to compliment her on the coffee. Two or three times as she walks past, half ignoring him. Then he stacks up creamers about six high, like a three-year old trying to impress his mother. She manages a half-laugh, mostly at the pathetic nature of the attempt. “Yeah, but there’s less creamer in some of these. You ever notice that?” She ignores him. “Maybe I should tell Matt the sugar story” (DAMN....wearing my con badge on that arm.) Tosses a packet to me. Explains why the sugar substitute can only say “low sugar”. Sugar’s actually present to make up the bulk of the otherwise unbearably sweet sweetener. Eventually he gets up, announces to no one in particular that he’s gotta be going now, and wanders out the front. The first words out of Raven’s mouth when the door closes behind him are “Squirrelly little freak.....oh, sorry, did I say that out loud?” She apologizes that I had to sit next to him.
It’s one of the most pathetic exchanges I’ve ever seen. The guy has nothing. I can tell. There’s no one at home when he goes back to his sparse apartment. He has no hobbies. The people at his work only tolerate his presence. No friends. People with friends don’t scrabble so desperately for a sentence or two every night from a waitress that wants nothing to do with you. I’m willing to bet his trip to the faire was the highlight of the month, and he just wanted to tell someone about it. Naturally. Since he obviously didn’t go _with_ anyone. He’s pathetic enough to tolerate for a while. Passively humor on occasion. Never, EVER date. Over a month, any tolerance wears thin, and you just wish he’d stop coming to your fast food joint.
If ever anyone finds me in a state half as pathetic as that, shoot me in the head. Believe me, you’ll be doing me a favor. I finished up my waffle and poached eggs on toast, had a word or two with Raven, paid, and wandered out. (Man, plain grits are nasty.) Get back to the con and we’re running requests. All my staff that ran off to the dinner are long back, naturally, so the place is in good hands. I lever myself into the driver’s seat and we take requests for a good long while. (IIRC...this bit’s a little fuzzy.) A fairly rousing party starts up in the back of the room among all the AMVers wanting to wring a bit more fun out of the extended weekend before the con starts.
Don’t recall much more of the night, other than I was up rather late, and the trip out to WH made me miss EK’s arrival and subsequent disappearance. Stuff happens. I head up for sleep some time around 3 or 4. Stuff was still running after my exit, as I left instructions to show stuff until everyone present deserts, and the doors auto-lock so we don’t have to worry about getting the room secured by the hotel after hours. I think this was the high-point of my sleep schedule for the weekend, as I got a good five or six hours in. Damn those are comfy beds. I’m used to the POS mattresses standard-supplied in dorm rooms, and not quite ready for something that folds around you while you sleep.
Wake up, make my way down to the VAT by around 9:30 or so. Am instantly enraged when I discover the VAT doors standing wide open and no staffers around. Placated later when I find out that the room had, in fact, been locked down. Apparently the hotel, considerately enough, opened the room for us, leaving thousands of dollars of computer equipment unguarded for an hour or so. Great. Quick inventory is taken. Someone left the projector on all night too. Great.
Ah well, we start up by running a request block until 11:00. Got a bunch of obscure pieces shown, a few requests for the Expo vids (cross-off the list with the color-coded marker...) and wind up into opening ceremonies.
Lame.
Usually is, though. I’d planned to spend the night coming up with clever things to say for opening ceremonies, but the transcription messed up my timetables and left me with little but the bare-bones of the matter to talk about. Most of the guests weren’t up and walking around yet, but we pull a remarkably impressive crowd, considering the hour. (And the rapidly growing line at registration......major organizational screwup while implementing a “new and improved efficient system” this year....but it’s not my department, so I won’t gossip. Just you guests be thankful that I skipped the line for you and fished your badges outta the recesses of the registration room.) Bow out of the Opening Ceremonies, and play some old favorites before the Expo block begins.
Expo showing goes pretty well. A good number of the creators are in the audience, so we fill up with creator requests fairly quickly. Then, three videos in, two authors come up and request their grand-prize-winning video. Gahhhh. Ah well, the room’s underpopulated enough that it should still be a good surprise for the audience on Saturday.
The first block of Expo rounds out quite nicely. A good mix of quality throughout, and actually got through a lot more videos than I anticipated. Next up was Nightowl’s panel. Up on the stage clambered a regular bevy of characters. Nathan Bezner was the only one I’d been totally sure of. Jeff Heller, the other half of the studio, had actually told me he’d be unable to attend, but turned up at the last minute anyway. Mike Barranti (Studio KZ) fresh back from duty in Iraq (though not for the best of reasons....his story, I’ll let him tell it). Monica Rial (voice actress) joined them as a friend of the studio, Andy Jenner, J-bone, ditto. And joining them all was a great friend.....Bacardi.
Nnnngh. Oh I just know I’m gonna hear about this. They got up on stage with Bezner toting about a half-full bottle of Bacardi, and it held a place of honor at the head. By the end of the panel, they were down to about two fingers, which KZ unceremoniously chugged. A foreshadow of events to come?
Actually, no. Unlike previous years, to the best of my knowledge, there were no great Technicolor yawns anywhere within the convention area. I had other panelists confide in me that they weren’t entirely stable when they went up to run their blocks, but no one made a fool of themselves. Remarkable, really. On the other hand, I have to hand it to Bezner. I can hold my liquor fairly well, but that man is a drinker on a truly Olympian level. I have it on good authority that his group went through three of those Bacardi bottles before the night was over. DAMN. That, and the fact that his mere presence makes me feel old. *grumble* In contrast, though, he kept himself sober most of Saturday night. I think he spotted how long Hsien has been trying to shake his rep from previous years at AWA, and decided to head that particular rep off at the pass before it got out of control.
Having taken far too much time getting the bugs out of the system while running Nightowl’s panel (which worked out fairly well, since they didn’t have much idea what they wanted to play either), we moved on to the saner, calmer exploits of VicBond and Red Apple (Alan Chase). Guests showed up early to give us playlists and material to put on the server, which kept Deborah and Nigel rather busy back there. Everything started running a few minutes behind schedule at this point, but since we’re mostly self-contained, it made little difference. Between running in and out of the room to gather badges and the like from registration, I only saw about half of the first thirty minutes of this panel, after which I went on a search for food. Caught some truly crappy sesame chicken at the attached mall, where I was so out of it that I grabbed someone else’s utensils, and left my drink at the counter. Bleh. Not boding well on the sleep front.
Came back and did my first turn around the convention center. Said hi to EK, ran into Mike and Shelly who gave me their KOR party badges, and made it back to the room just as Lee and Hexgirl finished out their set.
Followed with another two hours of Expo showing, results much the same as the first, and got the list whittled way down, only a couple of dozen left for the overflow block the following morning. Got stuff settled for Jingoro and Ken Nabbe’s panel. Stopped by and spoke with Stan right before opening ceremonies.
“Hey Stan, you want I should come up on stage for a few minutes and pimp out the VAT? I could say our sponsor a few times, stuff like that.”
“Yeah, why don’t you bring some of the VAT guests as well.”
“Uh......’scuse me?”
Me waiting around for fifteen minutes to say a three sentence blurb on stage is no big deal. Tying up my guests for that long on a strictly voluntary basis: not good. I ran out to see if I could track any guests down, and plead with them to do so. Surprisingly, I got a response fairly quick. ErMaC, Vlad, and Ian were all up for it (although they might not have been, had they realized how long it was gonna take). We got in, and waited patiently for about twenty minutes. I ran into some friends in the audience and chatted for a bit, as each of AWA’s main guests was paraded across the stage for a platitude or three. (Haven’t found opening ceremonies entertaining for years. Apologies to Ken and Jingoro for scheduling them opposite it, but they didn’t loose much of an audience. OC was deserted.) Got impatient eventually and Stan slid us into the middle of things, so I could release my guests from servitude. Frankly, I think it was pretty impressive when the VAT guests announced how far they’d come from. California....Canada....England.
Checked in with Quu about the projects we had coming up, and gave him permission to go get a meal. Saw the middle 10-15 minutes of the panel, and took to wandering again.
Came back about 40 min later to discover the biggest fuck-up of the entire track.
OK, here we go.
The Disney Rave project is like the DDR projects we’ve hosted in the past, but instead the audio track is taken from a Disney dance game that uses nothing but sped-up techno-ized versions of classic Disney songs. Needless to say it’s a massive project, and one I actually found time to participate in (my fairly low tech contribution was “Vacation” to various footage). When I came back into the room, I look over to the tech area and find my staff just sort of standing around, 20-minutes into when the DRP is supposed to be playing. I charge over and am told that the DVD won’t play.
OK, what happened: It turns out that Patrick did, in fact, test the DVD in one of our operating machines (A-ko 2 if I recall), but strangely we couldn’t get it to repeat the feat. No audio or video came out. Much, much later, we find out that the problem is some odd proprietary fight that the DVD player and the program we were using to play the videos got into. As long as it was open, the video player wouldn’t let any other signal out through the video output channels. We, naturally, panic. Quu didn’t take his headset with him and the newly-fixed computer won’t play the disc either (not being wired for it). Our next step is the most obvious one, put the DVD into the DVD player in the electronics stack. Logical, right? What we don’t know is that the player was actually broken before it got to the con, and was stuck in the controller stack because there wasn’t any other convenient place for it, and its size assured adequate air circulation for the golden VCR. So now we have sound out, but, no matter how many wires we switch around, no video. Much frantic re-wiring takes place. Somewhere in there, one of the security staff steps up and makes a joke. He catches a face full of venom from me. Casting about for a local tech expert, I haul our friendly sponsors from Expert DV into the mix. He takes a couple of looks at it, and volunteers to bring in one of the Iron Chef machines to remedy the situation. We hook that in. The wiring gets muddled, and he has to restart a couple of times, as well as set the players properly to display on the big screen. (Some weird reason, we get only 1 / 4 screen a couple of times.) Finally, we have video and audio out, and we’re booting up to start playing. Patrick shows up. We explain, in rather loud terms, exactly what has been going on. Patrick angrily reaches over to set right what he thought was the problem, and steps on the Iron Chef power cord. We start the boot-up again. At this point, the panel is running 45 minutes late. It starts playing. Patrick and I step to one side and finish our rather loud discussion. He takes off his radio and leaves. I look up, and realize that the screen is stuttering. About every ten seconds or so, more in some places, less in others, the audio continues just fine, but the screen freezes in place for about 0.5 seconds. DAMMIT. Back into the hallway to check for tech help. Our sponsor comes back in and takes a look. We fiddle carefully for a second (there’s only one continuous track on the DVD, so we don’t want it to cut out now or we’d have to risk scrubbing on the machine that’s already freaking out) and can come up with no logical reason for the problem. They suggest that it might be a big freakin’ thumbprint on the disk, from the reading laser’s behavior, but that really didn’t make sense with the timing on the screen. Turns out much later that it’s an obscure reading format conflict between the system that burned the DVD and the one trying to read it. (People who wanted the DVDs for the pro judging contest? THIS is what I’m wary of. Once we can be assured that this won’t happen, we’ll consider it.) Patrick comes back, but can offer no immediate remedy to the problem. In the end, we have to play the entire disk with the skips. Despite that, we keep a remarkably large crowd in the room for the whole thing. Elicit some laughs, and plenty of applause. Ken is naturally, and quite reasonably, steaming mad at the fuck-up. I was a little surprised that he didn’t want the “Nabbester” badge back. At the end of it all, I issue a massive apology and announce that the full thing will be played, without skips, on Saturday night after DDR to make up for the mistake tonight.
Everyone cheers the fact that the NES project isn’t on a DVD. NES goes off without a hitch, albeit delayed about 30 minutes, to thunderous applause. Nervous as fuckin’ hell that the same thing will get sprung on me again, I stick around for the whole project, and get to see all the tracks and all the great commercials that break it up into sections. And the dancing megaman.
Afterwards, we shut down the room briefly so that TJ, who’s been spending the last two and a half hours on one of the free-standing systems assembling his playlist, can re-familiarize himself with the video switcher. All the available staffers shoo attendees outta the room, and then start building the impenetrable chair-walls everywhere they’re needed. I set up a tunnel behind the black curtains for the sponsors to stash their stuff safely and quickly (auto-locking door on one side, six-high stack of cable boxes on all other sides), and we construct rather pathetic-looking barricades around the wires on the floor, the projector, the carpeted area, and the lighting. The lighting rigs kinda stayed up for the rest of the weekend, which we all greatly appreciated for convenience, especially TJ who got cartoon-ishly cold-cocked (not knocked out, but knocked-down) when one of them collapsed suddenly, straight down on the very top of his head. The thing is solid steel and heavy as hell, so he didn’t find it quite as amusing as I initially did. (I swear I though he was faking at first.)
The dance started up and started running a bit late, but everything had been pushed back by the total fuck-up, so I’d expected it. On the other hand, the attendees apparently didn’t. Banging on the door is not a really good way to endear yourselves to us at 11:40, and is most definitely not a way to hurry along the setup. Lots of petulant complaints from the campers at the doors when I ran out to find a missing piece of lighting rig. You know, we’re really not just doing this to spite you. We really are trying to set up quickly in here. Why won’t you believe us?
Dance got set, TJ got spinning, I secured some help for him (two person operation, involving much “I need the next vid NOW” shouting) in the person of Casey, and made my exit. Strobe lights give me a splitting headache, so I can never stay around for the dances. (Also, I can’t dance.)
One point. I really think that the population at the con was down about 40% on the first day, but bloomed to expected levels by Sat. I was actually a little worried for the convention, but this being a new place, I had no real scale for judging the actual crowd numbers. I set out to wander for a bit and check out all the actual rooms (hadn’t even made it into the dealer’s room on Fri) and quickly started running into people. We joked during setup that I kept gathering an “entourage” of staffers ‘cause I was the only director they could find, and much the same happened here. Ran into Darius Washington (Video room director) in one of his typically depressed states, matching nicely with my attitude from the major fuck-up. We ran into a group heading toward the Hong-Kong room consisting of William Milberry, Alan Chase (I know that’s spelled wrong), and VicBond, and a couple of others (whose names I’ve forgotten, sorry), and we ended up hanging out and totally blocking the hallway for about fifteen minutes. Somewhere in there, one or two of them recognized Darius and went total fanboy on him over his old-school AMVs. This was extremely personally gratifying for me, as Darius will repeatedly tell me how no one likes his work and no body knows he’s an AMVer, etc. etc., and I finally point at something to prove him wrong. HA!
We all split up when their movie was starting, and I continued my circuit. Ran into Franklin in the board gaming room and was able, after checking with my roommate, to supply him with some crash space.
After that, I stuck my head in the Let’s Classy party. (May be getting things a bit out of order here.) Felt like a skuzzy gate-crasher since the problems with Disney Rave prevented me from running upstairs and getting into my suit. I know there were a few others there out of the standard-costume, but I felt like I was just contributing to the problem. Talked to a few people, got a drink. Moped a bit over the fuck-up, and then bolted.
Came back to main about 2:30 in the AM and found a couple of groups gathered round in the main carpeted area of the con. The near one consisted of Darius, one of the MMI tech guys, and an extremely attractive woman in a Chinese dress and cat ears. Down the length of the artist’s alley I spotted a dozen or so AMVers hanging out. I’d intended to make both groups, but somehow didn’t quite get up the energy to stand again once I sat down. The MMI guy passed around a flask with his own special concoction, a mix of apple cider, vodka, honey, cinnamon, and brown sugar. Damn good stuff, and he tells me that he mixes it up ages it for five months, and sells it for $25 a gallon. Gonna have to look into that....
Anyway, friends pass by and say hello, we sit around and talk about nothing in particular, and I keep trying to find the energy to stand up and join the other group. Eventually, Darius has to go crash in preparation for the next day. About ten minutes later, the woman in the Chinese dress gets up, and, without a word from me on the subject, sits down in my lap, and gives me a long, affectionate hug.
Now this brings me to a cautious subject. The kind of subject that you’re afraid to bring up, for fear that asking about it might make it go away. So I’m going to tread very lightly here.
I got a lot of hugs this convention. Now “a lot” for me at a convention would be somewhere on the order of three. But in this case, we’re talking on the order of eight to twelve. Admittedly, there were several from long-time friends, and from people either married or virtually so, but I also got a bunch of hugs from women I’d never met before. Frankly, it’s what kept me going for the whole weekend. I was more than a little distraught over the fuck up (and the others coming), and my lab-mate’s mom’s death, and the fact that most of my friends recently forgot my birthday (go back and read my previous post. I was born on the constitution day of the bicentennial. Does it make more sense now?), so it was really what I needed, when I needed it.
So, my only question is, did I really look that bad? Strung out? Depressed? Disheveled or tired? Sighing too much? Were my eyes bloodshot? I’ve gone over and over it in my head, and my only guess is that I must’ve looked really, really down for most of the convention. I mean, I was....somewhat, but I’m not used to people being able to tell. Most of the time my patented “neutral” looks the same as my regular attitude to just about everyone, even very close friends. But now, friends who saw me multiple times would come up and ask me if “I was doing better now” when I’d previously made no mention of being down or anything. It’s a little odd, because I really was in higher spirits than normal, since the con was a respite from the rest of my current problems, if only for a weekend. And the hugs certainly helped in that department.
Soon after, she exits and Ken Nabbe stops by. I’m more than a little relieved to see that he’s still speaking to me, and not plotting my bloody death behind a dumpster somewhere. We hang out for a bit, and then the dance shuts down. I step in to organize some request block, and the available staffers (as well as a few volunteers) get all the chairs set back up. (Damn but those chairs were crap. Almost as bad as the artist’s alley chairs that kept collapsing underneath people. Story is that we so overwhelmed the hotel’s expectations that they ran out of available chairs and we had to bring in a rental company to stock the additional rooms, like everything other than Main. Pissed me off, but what could I do? On the other hand, they made stacking and storing really easy and fast.) That gets left in the hands of TJ and a staffer that wants to sleep in in the morning, and I truck off to bed, konking out around 5:00 or so.
Saturday is the big day for VAT so I get up as early as I can manage; about 7:30. I truck downstairs, and find the VAT closed up and locked. A bit of clever finagling gets the place opened for me and the lone present staffer, and we start up the early-morning request block. I get a bit mixed up, as the schedule doesn’t list anything for 8-10, and start wondering whether Patrick or TJ and Casey were planning on showing up for their individual panels. (They weren’t until the following morning.) At a bit of a loss, we play some Utena videos until we start getting some traffic, and then intersperse requests from the crowd with what we figure would be shown at that time. Expo overflow follows, and I discover that most of the videos left that need to be shown are the really long ones. Don’t make nearly the progress I’d hoped for, and are left with about 8-10 still needing a slot to be played in. Patrick shows up and we root around for a long enough cable to run the AMV.org panel off of Phade’s laptop. Eventually a compromise is reached and all is well with the world. Phade gets a surprisingly large crowd for so early in the morning. I hang out, fearful of another disastrous tech fuck-up, but nothing manifests, and I make an excursion out to the dealer’s room to say hi to Mike and Shelly. The increase in traffic is abundantly obvious in comparison to the previous day. I guess a lot of the high-schoolers decided not to ditch school on Friday for the con. Quick circuit of the con, and I’m back about 10 minutes into Vlad and ErMaC’s panel. Problem: the general Q & A session for newbies or tech-heads was designated for next. This was the one scheduling point that had completely slipped my mind until a week before the con. (There’s a reason the panelists weren’t mentioned there.) The guest that saw the request in the initial and subsequent e-mails offering slots on the general panel, and were interested, were ErMaC, VicBond, and Lee. Lee, unfortunately, had managed to catch a particularly nasty strain of pre-con-plauge, and had to refuse. I only wanted 3 or 4 panelists in the interests of time, but 2 was plainly too few. Fortunately, I spotted William from Aluminum Studios in the audience, and Jingoro walked in shortly thereafter, and they were both kind enough to come to my rescue.
The general panel was rather sparsely attended. I’m REALLY glad I decided to shrink down and combine the panels from the previous year, because there was barely enough questions to keep the panelists occupied for the hour it was running. I’m guessing this is due to the widespread RTFonlineM at the .org, or uncertainty that the panel would cater to all levels. Much to my surprise, most of the panel was devoted to artistic and aesthetic questions instead of technical ones. NO ONE was forced to give out their machine specs, no requests for step-by-step removal of subtitles.....ah, the age of the DVD.
Following that was Fluxmeister and Mexican Junior’s panel. (Tim Stair and Sotero Lopez.) I was behind the machines, helping keep stuff cued up and running while keeping an eye on the free-standing machine where Patrick was assembling hentai vids for the hentai room. Videos show, time passes, we start coming up on the end of the block, and Tim Stair comes over and stands behind me. “He’s gonna do something else after this.” I’m told.
Now, initially, I worry. I’ve seen MJ’s _other_ videos. But I catch on after a second or two. Sure enough, he calls his girlfriend up on stage to show the video she made, and after the last vid plays, he proposes to her. She gets all choked up and accepts, naturally. (He gets so nervous, he actually leaves the other ring in the box when he steps down.) There’s a great clustering of people near the front of the room after the proposal, people gathering around to congratulate and look at the ring. Meanwhile Hsien and Ian clamber up on stage, wondering what the hell they’re gonna do to top that.
Things get pushed back ever so slightly in time. This is a major worry for me, because we’re running up into the time when the whole track takes over main. We fill three hours there, and, as far as I’m concerned, not a minute more. Gotta be in and out to cause minimum hassle for the rest of programming, so they never have a reason to cut us short or move us elsewhere. Most of Hsien and Ian’s panel I spend running back and forth between main and VAT trying to ensure smooth transition. Turns out that they’ll be running late anyway....though no one knows HOW late. ADV is giving out prizes for trivia, and they seem to have a bottomless box of items. Back and forth I go, catching about ten seconds of “Road to Iron Chef” in the process.
Meanwhile, further headache, I can’t find the people from Mission Improbable. They’re nowhere to be found, and we’ve no idea what format their material is in. They show up right at the end of the preceding panel, but the file transfer takes a while, and there’s a touch more delay. No worries, we’re still waiting on the ADV panel.
Missed the Mission Improbable stuff entirely, as my constant flight back and forth never left me in the room for longer than thirty seconds. I understand it was really impressive, though. Oh, and did I forget to mention that we were dubbing the awards tapes RIGHT THEN? Expo was done about ten minutes before the Awards block finally began. Pro and Masters were being dubbed DURING THE SHOW. So how do I like working without a net? Guess. Ain’t cutting it that close again.
AWARDS: What can I say? Everyone saw me there. It was out in the open. All the tapes got there in time. Did my standard little schpiel, but had to hang the Master’s jacket away from the audience when people in the front row started guessing who had won from the relative size. Remembered to do my “Who wants this one!” joke that I forgot last year. Everyone laughed at my jokes, but that was mostly due to the crowd effect. Lost a lot of respect for stand-up-comedians if even _I_ can get a good rolling cheer. Expo ran fine, but only about six of the 20 award winners were present. (While attendance will not be required, the form having a check-box for attending or not will be on next year’s form, so I have some idea what to expect.) Those lights in the mid-range were required by the fire marshal, or we would have turned them off. Only real surprise was when I heard someone drunkenly calling “play it again” from ON STAGE. I leaned back from my position, and caught dim sight of someone who had hauled a chair up on stage behind the secondary side curtains. He had what looked like one of those big plastic cheap-ass 1.5-ltr. vodka bottles with the molded grip sitting on the stage next to him. He caught sight of me, and by the time I circled the stage he was gone, as was the chair. Weird. Giving out the awards put me on the spot, since I gave out the “sick” “twisted” and “gratuitous violence” ones first, the three I couldn’t show in the main ceremony. I’m still half-expecting to hear something from the higher-ups about using the phrase “Cock Pushups” on stage. On the other hand, I’m glad to have heard my decision about “Grand Prize” justified by the great rolling cheer at the end. The comedy winner didn’t get quite the response I expected, because it was one of those deadpan rapid-fire-joke pieces, and no one wanted to laugh for fear that they’d miss the next joke. Also realized during the Expo showing how we’d managed to accidentally group all the really flashy videos one right after the other. We had a lot of flashy (by which I mean strobe or quick-cut) winners this year, a factor that didn’t really hit me until just then, as we’d never watched all the winners back to back before. Two weeks of deciding, and we though we knew them all inside out. Next year we’ll know better, and preview them at the least for sequence and spread-out of effects.
Pro ran fine until we smacked into the missing slot for that great cinematic video to Golumn’s song and Hols: Prince of the Sun. Expo tape got run back to the VAT, Quu, in the middle of the DDR tournament and setup for Iron Chef, tagged the missing video onto the end, cued it up, and sent it back just in time. Pro awards went a lot better in the attendance department, although I forgot to ask everyone to line up at the edge of the stage, thus denying a lot of opportunistic photographers a shot of the winners. Also, no one wanted to say anything, which was a big surprise for me. I thought there’d be at least a few people wanting to say something or other, but no one wanted to take the mic in either pro or expo. Nearly thought I’d have a clean sweep in pro, but then the grand prize winner didn’t show. Damn. More postage.
Master’s ran almost exactly as I wanted it to. Starting with Lee’s maximized its effect, and totally freaked out the audience before catching on. (I snuck a “gotcha” in at the end of the vid just for the hell of it.) Freaked the hell outta the MMI guy running things though. He couldn’t figure out why his VCR was giving him a blue screen of death. The remaining “Survivor’s Island” effect maximized the suspense as the remaining contestants (no one knowing how many) were picked off one at a time. Of course, there was that one thing. I got pulled into the hall in the middle of the show to discuss with Tim Eldred about when I expected our stuff to be over. Deals were made, adjustments to schedules implemented, and then I looked over and saw the lights coming up and the picture on the screen frozen. I fucking freak. Ran back into main to sort it out just before I hear the “lost child” announcement and notice the Cobb county police officer standing nearby. Whoa. Shit, doesn’t look like I’d have been able to stop the interruption if I’d tackled him en-route. Sorry Vlad, especially on a “timing” video, interruptions like that are fucking disastrous, but there are some things I can’t anticipate. On the other hand, it seems like the track has separation anxiety, since every time I leave, something big gets fucked. Later on, I find out that they’d found the teen just before they sent someone to halt the track. Probably rolled the teen of some underage thing in one of the hotel rooms. (Not really, but with parents that.....insistent....you have to wonder what kind of a track record he’d have.) Naturally, I had to prolong it a bit even after I got up there to make the announcement. “How many of you were here last year for Masters? Ah, same crowd. So you remember when I called out the name of the Master’s winner, and he wasn’t here? Well this year I checked. (We do eventually learn.) And this time I know for certain that the winner is, in fact, attending this convention. But I don’t know if he happens to be HERE. So once again, I’ll cross my fingers and hope that lightning doesn’t strike twice when I ask if Victor Bo...” ...and the right front quarter of the room exploded. I must say, it’s nice to give an award to someone who so plainly wanted it so badly. Then again, that’s why Quu blinds the entries for me before I judge them, so I won’t let things like that influence me. It really was a tough field this year, and we’d argued down to the last day before I was finally forced to make a decision. Victor tried the jacket on (it looked like it fit....any probs Vic?) and told a little schpiel about making the vid. Then we showed it, and the place broke up for the next panel.
That was the major release of tension for me. The awards is the one thing I really have to perform for, and the one around which all of our schedule swings. Iron Chef is next, but that’s Patrick’s baby. Much like the DDR, I do best in that bit when I stay outta the way. Besides, this one really is Quu’s. He makes all the decisions and plans on it, picks themes and secret ingredients, and basically runs the show from behind the scenes. He’s welcome to it. Considering the tech complications that must be integrated into every aspect, I’d probably only fuck it up. Pizza (8 pies, entirely too much, shoulda given it to the crowd) was ordered for the panelists, contestants, host, and sponsors as part of the incentive to do a good job. Altogether, though, this is the most multi-media prepped version of Iron Chef I’ve seen yet. When they introduced Ian, someone had assembled a big montage of monuments of Great Britan (Palace, Big Ben, etc.) playing on the big screen with “God save the Queen” playing in the background while Vlad and company unfurled a big British flag to cheer on Ian. Must’ve been terribly embarrassing for him. “The Road to Iron Chef” was really brilliant. Ian, it turns out, is actually a mastermind fraud who kidnapped Kevin Caldwell and keeps him chained up and drugged in his basement to make music videos for him. He’s been down there so long, he’s turned into.....STRONGBAD! (Between this and Lee, we had an unusually high Strongbad quotient this year.) Also featured was a flux-capacitor powered editing machine, MTT “Hulking out” and the packing of secret weapons. Catch this thing when it goes up on the web.
Anyway, after signing for a truly enormous amount of pizza, I took the opportunity to decompress a bit, and toured the premises again. Literally have no idea what I did at that point. Can’t remember a thing. Andy showed up and handed me a Guinness....I remember that....but no other alcohol passed my lips, yet. Came back in time to catch the verdict. They were both really good. Ian hit on all the sentimental notes a little better than Hsien, but Hsien veered suddenly into hard rock, adding points for the original take, and the strongly matched pace-change. I wasn’t privy to any of the judging, but it must’ve been damn hard. Hsien ended up winning, defending his title for yet another year. While all this was going on, I and two other staffers were clearing the back-right area of chairs for the upcoming DDR and Disney Rave showings. We were effectively just swooping down and snatching chairs from the designated areas whenever someone got up. This worked really dumb, and we shouldn’t do it next year. (Note to self). DDR got itself up and running, and I, fearful again, stuck around until it played all the way out. Got to see Bezner’s CG animated versions of Death and Dream from Gamian’s “Sandman” singing the song on the “Dream a little Dream” track. Freaky. Really, really freaky. Nailed Dream head-on, but I think Death was a little off.
Was certain to hang around long enough to see the Disney Rave project start running again. Watched to be sure there was no skipping, waited a track or two, and then considered it safe to leave. Turned my radio all the way up just in case, and beat feet to the 14th floor. See, Mike and Shelly’s KOR party was running up there, and I was a bit worried about how it was going. I knew for a fact that at least a third of the people they’d invited all happened to be on MY staff, so I was directly responsible for those guys not getting a chance to attend until after Iron Chef, and a couple more all the way through DDR3. At the very least, I should put in an appearance. Fortunately, it turned out that I needn’t have worried. On the way out, I ran into Darius again, and collared him into going up as well, since he always complains that he never makes it into the parties at AWA. Besides, he had a cell-phone to call up with. An elaborate method is contrived for getting past the “lockout” function of all the doors and elevators to the 14th floor, but eventually he and I just say “fuck it” and tunnel back to the staff elevators, secreted back in the bowels of the building. (Notice to attendees: Do NOT do this. The people back there were checking for our badges to make sure we were directors. They’ll skin you alive if they find regular attendees back among the kitchenware.) Took us straight up to the 14 th floor.
Now I’d intended to hit a couple of other parties as well over the next hour. Intercepted Paul on the way to the room, and he insisted I come over to his room party after checking in on the KOR group. However, I came into the KOR place and it was PACKED. Bunch o’ folks in there making one hell of a ruckus. Darius and I pulled our way in, I fought to the back of the room, sat down on a rollaway bed, and Shelly got me two POWERFUL screwdrivers (in sequence). Very, very suddenly it occurred to me that I hadn’t actually eaten for all of Saturday, and I was working on about 3.5 hours of sleep. Those screwdrivers hit me like a mac truck, and all of a sudden, party hopping wasn’t much of an option. I was totally blissed out, but also pretty dang immobile. I sat around and talked for a good while, decompressing a bit from the days events. Somehow Brad DeMoss showed up (welcome as always, but I expected he’d be in the AMVers’ room party that I always seem to miss...though I’m not sure I’m invited) and got in a bad-movie-fight with Marlin. DAMN that was outta my league. (Bad movie fight= injure your opponent by merely mentioning the names of really, really awful films. Winner is the one with the final trump. Often contested.) All the while I’ve got my radio turned all the way up, and there’s nothing but silence on the VAT channel, so I figure I’m good with relaxing a bit.
Not so.
Staggering down to the lobby and over to the VAT again, I collapse into a chair during the end of TJ’s second dance, and ask if I missed anything.
“Oh yeah, Disney Rave screwed up again.”
Ngh.
Turns out that someone was PLAYING SOLITAIRE on the machine running the file. (Who the FUCK thought it was OK to play a FUCKING GAME OF SOLITAIRE on the running computer?) Someone came up and asked how the program was running if he was playing games on it, and in response he clicked on the player.....and stopped the file.
FUCK
The file’s too big to do anything other than just play it....can’t scrub to the middle or anything like that.
Ken, I’m told, happened to be in the room, stormed behind the bay, popped in the DVD and advanced to the appropriate point.
NONE of this, naturally, went out over the radios in ANY form. Effectively rendering my radio useless.
I was more than a little pissed over this, but there was nothing I could do at the time. Instead I settled in and decided to make sure that, for once, the VAT track would actually run for 24 hours. Every time in the past that I’d left the track in someone else’s hands to run for the night I’d always come down in the morning to discover it mysteriously locked up. Besides, I still had those last few Expo entries to mop up. They all got shown pretty quickly after the dance shut down, and since it was late enough I figured there was no harm in running the hentai entries and other questionable material as well. Although I didn’t like the fact that they got shown so late, there really wasn’t any other option in the end. Simply too many people entered for all the videos to be shown in the allotted 6 hours. Spent the remainder of the night running requests and repeat entries from the Expo list. (As well as the unscreened winners two or three times, since they kept getting requested.)
Stuck around until 6:50 in the morning before finally being convinced that VAT wasn’t gonna close on me when I wasn’t looking, and finally went up to bed. Crashed until 10:30. Patrick and Casey ran the first few tracks, which was appropriate enough since it was their individual blocks. (I’ve no qualms about giving out blocks to staffers when they’re ludicrously early in the morning. None of -
“...’Cause your friends don’t dance, and if they don’t dance, then they’re no friends of mine.....”
2003-09-20 11:07:29
AWA approacheth and we stand ready to meet it.
I think.
Everything seems to be going along swimmingly, which makes me thing that I’ve forgotten something REALLY important. Had my first meeting with the hotel staff today, sitting alongside Lloyd, and the rest of the directors, when they deigned to show up. It was really kinda surreal. I thought we were over-managed when I noted that we’ve got something like 20 directors, but only six of ours showed up for the meeting (me, Lloyd, Dave, Stan, Patrick, and the sub-director of security, whose name I’ve forgotten) whereas, if the hotel was as fractionally represented, they must have fifty of the guys burrowing around in the woodwork. Went around the table introducing themselves, and EVERY SINGLE ONE of them started or ended with “thank you for your business.” Creepy, really. I mean, I know we’ve totally booked solid your hotel (double-checked both of my rooms), but I was expecting someone to ask to kiss Dave’s ring.
Most surreal moment? Got around to the in-house tech guy, and he admitted that he was one of the 300 people at AWA 1 out at the Castlegate.
Whoa. We’ve come full circle.
All in all, I just felt really, really underdressed for the moment. Thankfully in my new jeans and T-shirt which look all classy and everything (in as much as I ever look classy....note to self, parents no longer know what size jeans I wear.....ow......), but all the hotel staff are habitually in 3-piece suits, so I did my best impression of sinking into the wallpaper. Dave managed to break the mood a little with this summary of the con: “How many of you are familiar with Star Trek conventions? OK, this is going to be a lot like that only younger, and with more girls.” Leave it to Dave to know how to speak with these people. Hopefully they’ll never find out that he’s been banned from the premises for loitering like seven years ago.
(I work for the coolest con on earth.)
After the introductions, mosta the stiffs bolted for the door, convinced this is gonna be yet another dull-as-ditchwater home-show convention. This hotel has never actually seen a fandom convention before.
Y’all, be gentle. It’s their first time.
And they have a really cool atrium, so we’d like to be able to come back next year. I don’t think they actually believed us when we stated that we’re expecting a little over 5,000 this year.
Stood in the background as the tech people went at it hammer-and-tongs over the sound system and stage positioning. What the hell am I gonna add to this conversation? I’ve got blanket ability to overrule anything, but I’d be flying blind, so I just trust my directors and subdirectors. At least, if the sound sucks, it’ll be due to “too many cooks” instead of unknowledgeable manipulation.
Handed TJ a copy of the Master’s videos, since he’s the only one who can actually translate the Japanese on #14, and took off back to work.
Bleh.
Not like I was gonna get anything done. Yesterday was blood day, but half my plates were crappy, so I actually got to go home before it was technically today. Gotta have a half-dozen things written up for Dr. Wick when he comes back, though. Most surreal individual meeting with my advisor this week. The incidents that happened a week and a half ago are still in effect, but I think it actually drove home to everyone in the room at the time that I was, frankly, frustrated as hell, though I don’t think they understand why. “We started that discussion in general and didn’t really mean to focus on you.” Well I was fucking in the middle of it, though, wasn’t I? Maybe the reason I fucking went ahead and did the p-value for those data sets despite the fact that we haven’t reached the appropriate n-value yet was because you told me that I shouldn’t really bother doing any more of those experiments because you’ve suddenly decided that they raise too many questions after working at them for over six months? The n-value is NEVER going to get any higher if you don’t let me WORK on the fucking things, is it? NO CONCLUSION WITHOUT AN N-VALUE OF 8, DAMMIT. Oh yeah, and maybe the inclusion of a p-value might, possibly, have been motivated by the fact that you decided my work presentation on the monthly cycle didn’t measure up to the person who’s been here for all of three quarters of a year, but who has this great style with data plots. So I try to present all of my new data in light of past data and I get ripped a new one for fourty-five minutes in group meeting for including a pre-climactic p-value? Well, how the hell am I supposed to present groups of data without having to re-explain the chemical action in play every ten minutes for the rest of the audience that’s been falling asleep during the presentation? So my boss has apparently sensed, through his strange extra-terrene powers, that I might be a wee bit miffed about the whole incident, and decides it’s time for actual advisor-style advice, and starts offering me revision advice for the Educational Partners Symposium Abstract I literally just placed on his desk and he hasn’t even looked _towards_ yet. “You have to think what this symposium is to YOU, and write towards that. Is it a chance for networking, or just something that you have to do? I mean, I signed you up for it, and I didn’t hear any objections....” Oh, maybe that might have something to do with the fact that you didn’t even tell me you’d signed me up for it until THREE DAYS before abstracts were due? Naww.....really? As if getting my paper rejected from a publication easier than a 20-dollar whore in Tijuana wasn’t head-spinning enough, I have to sit here and listen to you attempt to spin me a new ego out of candy floss for an hour, while wandering off into your own personal Brigadoon. I mean, I can accept that my professional writing is crap and not getting better, stop coating it in cotton candy, dammit.
I’m on my third Guinness, can you tell?
I mean, I might have totally neglected my duties on “Talk like a pirate day,” but at least I can sway like Jack Sparrow every time I stand up.
In other obscure-holiday news, Wednesday was “Constitution Day,” the day the US Constitution was signed. (No, July 4th was the day the Declaration of Independence was signed. Everyone gets that one wrong.) Nearly all of my friends forgot, but I don’t blame them. (Tell you what, guys, come up with something appropriate to fill my hip flask with for AWA, and we’ll call it even. And no, I have no access to kittisol.) I make it a point never to make a fuss about it. All my lab-mates remembered, but probably only out of experience from previous years. They didn’t do anything, probably because they didn’t note it until they woke up that morning and looked at the calendar, with its specifically-marked entry. They swear we’ll go out next week, but most likely they’ll forget too. The usual occasion for my lab is to go out for lunch or dinner or something, but I’ve got too much on my plate as it is, and it’s really nothing special, since last time we went to a burrito joint and half of us got lost on the way there. (Woulda been better if I hadn’t had a burrito for dinner just a day before.) Ah well. (Didn’t think I was that much of a Patriot? You haven’t been paying attention. Think harder.) Got a couple of gifts from the parents, which, unfortunately A) forgot the one item I actually need, a new belt (getting tired of hiking my jeans up) and B) put me in an uncomfortable position with my friends, since they spotted me the Family Guy box set for season 1&2. (No, it’s not on top of mount DVD....mostly because I’m actually afraid of it at the moment) Shelly and Mike have been hunting for a set for me for....what.....three months? And they just now got it in....and now my parents get it for me.
Sorry guys, I can’t afford another copy. Especially with all the cash I’m gonna be swallowing for the VAT track.
Stopped by Titans anyway, ‘cause they’re holding a back comic I needed (“Runaways #5”, which is a series with possibly the most potential of anything I’ve seen come out of Marvel for a long time, including “Exiles”......although in the last issue they finally chose some of the DUMBEST code-names on earth. “Arsenic and Old Lace?” Hell, _I_ get that, and it’s laughable. Not exactly a super-hero name....) and had to tell them to put the first box set back on the shelves. On the other hand, I discovered that Shelly set aside the second box set for me..... With those, the store credit, and Gamian’s new Endless book, I ended up spending about $60 more than I intended too when I arrived. Dammit. Ah well, it’s a holiday.
Other news.....I owe a major “thank you” to studiogaijin. I pulled down spybot, and ran it on my computer, and found over EIGHT HUNDRED SPYWARE FILES on my computer. Apparently the bottleneck principle was in effect. At the loading of any individual internet page, half of the frickin’ spyware programs would go to work, doing whatever it is they do, and slow the system down to such a degree that even the cursor wouldn’t work. What’s even more distressing is that I’ve apparently got a spyware program on my computer that’s in charge of DOWNLOADING MORE SPYWARE, because every time since the first that I’ve booted up, I’ve found more spyware present, despite not installing new software, even from programs previously deleted. Today, for the first time, I’ve hit the system with the spybot killer, and it managed to eliminate everything it found. (Usually I get a “can we run at your next startup” mention because it can’t delete active programs....clever on the part of the spyware makers.....yeah you found us, but we’re constantly working so you aren’t allowed to move us....what you gonna do about it?) Anyway, the system suddenly found all its speed and runs close to normal now. The only problem is constant internet crashes. I’m afraid that the spybot killer may have deleted something required for running popup advertisements, and now it just crashes the browser instead of subjecting me to their horrid sales pitches. Six of one, half dozen of the other, really.
Of course, the trials and travails of AMV judging have been plaguing me recently. Pro, of course, is outta my hands, and a great relief at that. Master’s is my own personal torment, and we’re having trouble narrowing it down. The decision will be made within the next two days, or we’ll have no award to give out.
No, the real problem is Expo. I’m, frankly, astonished at the quality of the videos coming in. The problem is the shear volume of the incoming entries. 263 entries? DAMN......
Overall, I’m very impressed. I’m not just saying that either. I can be condescendingly complimentary, but not after three (whoop....four) pints of Guinness. The field is honestly getting much better every year. The number of truly inspired works of genius fluctuates wildly from year to year, but the average video has moved upwards from “fanboy with a computer and a favorite song randomly throwing stuff together” to “someone has put a reasonable amount of though into this selection, and even if their skill isn’t there, the composition is evident.” Out of over two hundred and fifty, there were only a couple that we felt we had to slog through in the first three days of work. Now we just have to decide which ones to acknowledge with awards. This is gonna be painful, since all of the nominees deserve recognition, but only a couple will receive awards. Even AWA’s system of inventing awards can’t cover the range we had submitted this year. Damn. If previous years saw a bell curve centered on the “C” range, the peak of the bell curve has moved up the scale to around a “B-“ to a “B+”.
Final decisions are tomorrow. Which is pretty much why I’m relaxing getting wasted tonight. Only night to work on stuff not related to AWA or my career.
Ahhhh.....enough of that. I’ve got a review for y’all, so I can delve into the depths of mount DVD once more with a clear conscience. (ie. I will have caught up.)
First up, Jeepers Creepers #1.
I watched this with the idea of hyping myself up for the upcoming sequel, but the actual result was that I convinced myself that I didn’t need to see it in the theaters. Hollywood has recently re-discovered horror as a lucrative business, and has been trying to milk the hell outta it with, admittedly, fan geek-out qualities like Freddy vs. Jason and Jason X (Jason in Space...). Apparently cheap, exploitive horror has reemerged as the box office ass-coverer for studios that would like to get an Oscar, but who can’t front the risk of being disappointed when their elaborate touchy-feely drama falls flat on its face. (Speaking of Hollywood-starry-eyed projects......saw “King Solomon’s Mines” in part yesterday......wow....like Indiana Jones collided with ‘The Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines” at high speed and crashed into a crappy sense of humor. (For those who don’t know “TMMITFM”, substitute “Casino Royal”) Can’t find fault with a hero who sneaks up and shoots a Nazi in the crotch with a shotgun....ow.)
Jeepers Creepers gets it’s name, naturally enough, from a novelty song by Harry Warren and Johnny Mercer way back in 1938, composed, ironically, for another film soundtrack. The chorus is “Jeepers Creepers, where’d you get those peepers. / Jeepers Creepers, where’d you get those eyes.” Immediately makes you think of a horror film, doesn’t it?
Nah, me neither.
Let’s just ignore the title, OK? It’s better if we stay away from it. They try to thread the theme throughout the plot concept, but, frankly, it just doesn’t work. It doesn’t work on a scale that would send the audience laughing out the door at the end. “The film title was all for THAT? You gotta be kidding me!”
Now here’s the real pity. This film has the start of a really phenomenal film. Could be a great of the genre. But they flub it at the end, when we get a good look at the villain. (Middle, really.) Damn. So much potential.
So we start off the film with a brother and sister duo car-tripping it across the US. The great flat skyline makes me think they’re traveling across the great middle-heartlands of the US, somewhere near Nebraska, but later text says they’re somewhere in Florida. The reason for this (the scenery almost certainly places them in the Midwest instead of Florida) probably has more to do with audience response than anything else. People will believe anything that happens in the “south” (ignoring the difficulty in maintaining a cave in the soft Georgia clay) but the Midwest is just plain boring.
Anyway, the brother and sister are driving back from college. The bro has picked up the sis (both legal horror-movie age, meaning developed enough to have had sex, but conceivably still be virgins if the plot calls for it) and they bicker during the travels believably as they travel. The bro even has a full backseat of laundry for when he gets home. Right here we encounter a problem. I like these two. They’re well developed. They’re both charming in an immature kind of way. They have distinct, multifaceted personalities. Dammit, I like these two, and at least one of them is going to die. Gimmie some extra stereotyped characters to whittle down. Them, I can laugh at their deaths, especially if ironic, but I honestly don’t want either of these two to end up decorating the walls with their personalities.
No luck for me. While playing a new license-plate game (necessitated by the constant preaching from the AM-only radio), where the person to first decipher the personalized license-plate gets a point, they’re suddenly menaced by an enormous, overbuilt truck. The truck looks like a rusted-out hulk of an armored car, and won’t pass them, but constantly speeds up, and stays on their bumper, blowing the horn. Eventually it passes the sister’s old tail-finned car, and the junker speeds on past. As it goes, they spot the license-plate, “BEATINGU”, a film in-joke that took me all of two seconds to interpret. “Beating you” is how our intrepid main characters interpret it.
After they’ve recovered from their shock, they speed along and eventually come to a small, falling-down church set back among the trees. A quick eye spots the truck parked next to the church, with a tall, mostly concealed man in a long duster and broad-rimmed had working next to it. He seems to be moving several awkward objects wrapped in large blood-stained sheets, pulling them out of the back of the truck and dropping them down a corrugated-steel drainage pipe near the back of the church.
This, let me say, is absolutely perfect. Nothing is known for certain. Who is the man? Why is he apparently dumping bodies down that hole? What the hell is going on? This is an absolutely perfect setup....which may be the greatest fault of the film. Anything they tell us now is going to be inferior to the great nebulous notions swirling around in our brains as the main characters accelerate away from the mystery. Unfortunately for them, the guy, whatever he is, isn’t too keen with their having seen him at work, and menaces them once again, bearing down on them in his truck until they’re forced off the road, and the truck speeds along to some unknown destination.
This is the point where the stupid decision is made.
They decide to go back. The brother is most insistent on the matter, almost as if he’s realized that he must be in a horror movie. Acknowledging what they both know, that it was bodies being dumped down that pipe, he insists that they go back to investigate. Maybe that really was a body, and they can help whoever it was. A good deal of yelling later, and the sister agrees, so long as she can stay in the car.
These really are good kids. Dammit.
The brother insists on calling down the pipe to try and get some response from below. Much to everyone’s surprise, they actually get a response. A murmered cry for help from some indeterminate distance below. Being the stupidly-over-investigative schmuck that he is (damn his morally spotless soul) he insists on climbing partway down with a flashlight to see what there is to see. His sister (having abandoned the car, naturally) holds onto his feet, but is startled by the sudden appearance of rats, and drops him.
In many films, this would spell the end of dear old sibling. Not here, though. Magically, light is able to bend through the previously pitch-black piping (necessary, or there would have been a full six minutes spent with a completely dark TV screen), illuminating our dear brother who has come to rest on a dirt floor about a story and a half beneath the ground. He comes around hearing the shouts of his justifiably worried sister. Next to him is a couple of the blood-stained sheets they saw being dumped down the tunnel.
One of them is moving.
Cautiously, he unwraps the sheet to discover a teenager, much like himself. The figure is nude, gasping and weakly flailing about. The reason why becomes evident when he is further unwrapped and the brother discovers the distinct marks of autopsy scars down his torso. The boy leans up and whispers something into the brother’s ear, and then dies.
Brother starts exploring, after shouting up to his sister that he’s looking for a way out. Further into the strangely-excavated mudwash cave (ain’t no limestone cave this...) he starts encountering things. Workshop material. Like great sewing machines and leatherworking presses. The audience, meanwhile, has become interested in the odd patterns in the walls and celing. Almost looks like......oh......well.
Brother aims his flashlight up a bit, and realizes that the walls and ceiling are covered with an elablorate quilt made out of human corpses. They’ve somehow been fixed and preserved in specific positions, and sewn back together to form a network, geodesic dome-like, self-supporting structure. Approaching the ones closest to the floor, the brother discovers the living representation of an urban legend. Previously, in the car with his sis, they talked briefly about an old urban legend of a car accident on prom night 23 years ago (1977, I believe). How the girl was decapitated by the crash, and the bodies went missing afterwards. Well, here were the bodies in question. ‘Cept Mr. Duster was kind enough to re-attach her head.
Whooo.....spooky.
All joking aside, this still maintains the creepiness previously established, though somewhat reduced by further exploration. Why next to a church? Why a quilt of bodies on the walls an ceiling? What’s with the obsession with sewing? Is this going to turn into some twisted version of the Cobbler’s Elves?
Bro actually manages to get out. Climbs up a staircase in the old church and gets out. They actually flee and reach populated areas, (Color me surprised.) where they call 911 (even moreso), and eventually the cops show up (DAMN! Buncha horror film tropes going right out the window here....) Before that, though, they receive a call. At the roadside café where they stop to call the police, the payphone next to Bro starts ringing. He picks up, and is treated to a remarkably odd conversation. There’s a woman on the other end who asks if he’s “seen the cats yet”. Nebulous warnings are given, and always playing in the background is the tune “Jeepers Creepers”...which makes a very weird counterpoint, since it’s actually a rather upbeat tune. The weird cave he’s been to is referred to, and called the “house of pain.” He’s told by the unseen woman on the other end that the creature is upset, mad that they’ve been in his “house of pain.”
At this point I figured out what was going on. The film was attempting to tap a mostly unexploited source for horror. The great vast, open spaces of middle America. This may sound a bit absurd, but believe me, it’s a ripe area for exploitation. What is happening here, is the screenwriters are attempting to make us frightened of the scenery, the place wherein the story has been placed. The fact that there’s a monster roaming around in it is merely incidental, this is a “Deliverance” or “Shadow over Innsmouth” concept, wherein the society, while being similar on the surface, actually turns out to be isolated, warped from the odd small-town life that centers one while being so utterly cut off from major population centers. Unlike the backwoods hicksters of “Deliverance” or the decrepit salt-stung and work-warped figures of Innsmouth, the figures of “social” terror in middle America are the utter generics of the genre. Flannel, plaid-checked shirts of moderately overweight men, faces driven and beaten down into the everyday acceptance of monotony and continuous boredom, driving trucks of uninteresting cargo across hundreds of miles of flat, featureless plain and wheat-fields. The kind of people who will, as one, turn and look at an absurdly hysterical pair of siblings as they burst through the door of a truck stop screaming for help, and then, as one, mechanically turn back to their food, shoveling the mediocre fare into placid, accepting faces out of mechanical acceptance that this too shall prove little more than a bump in the six hundred miles they must cover today. Add to this the tabloid-quality of our volunteer psychic, the freakish fundamentalist programming they heard on the AM radio, and you’ll begin to see the world they want to frighten us with. It’s the Kroger at three in the morning when there’s only three other life-beaten figures wandering the aisles in strange desperation. Whereas the “society” of Deliverance was totally corrupted and decrepit, and Innsmouth was actively hostile, rotting wetly away under the constant weathering of the sea, these people sit in bland acceptance of whatever might come, caring little for their own lives or deaths, just knowing that nothing has the power to break the tedium, so why bother? Somehow the prophetess on the phone fits perfectly into this design, but I haven’t the skill to articulate why.
Frankly, this is the high-point of the film. Still, next to nothing is known. The additional freakiness of this metaphorical insertion of middle America has added to the weirdness without detracting anything. The call of this mysterious psychic adds an almost surreal, dreamlike touch to the matter.
Then the cops show up. This is, frankly, stunning, since they almost never make it out in time for horror films. They’re more than skeptical about the story, and let the kids know that. Still, this is more of an advantage than most slasher teens get. Suddenly, we’re given the most disturbing moment of the entire film. During the interview, someone spotted a tall figure in a duster and broad hat digging through their car. Looking at bro’s laundry.
And smelling it.
Eeeeewwwwww......
Great handfuls of it, according to the head waitress. Burying his nose in it. And enjoying it. Double ewwwww... As a college student, I know the level of laundry disgust that must be reached by students before they’ll consider taking home a load. So, we’ve reached top level of weirdness, right? Not quite.
There’s still a middle-America trope yet to be explored through the warped glass of Todd McFarlain’s creep-o-magnifier. (Actually, that’s giving Todd too much credit. This is a good deal more subtile.)
The pair are going to be escorted to the state line by the two police officers that interviewed them. They’d go to investigate the old church, but turns out that the place is on fire, and burning to the ground, a motion on the part of Mr. Duster that can only be viewed as a delay tactic, since the fire would hardly destroy the quilt in his basement, but will prevent access for the next day or so.
Anyway, they’re driving along until the cops are ambushed by Mr. Duster. He somehow lands on the roof of the cop car, kills the shotgun-rider, and decapitates the driver. As the kids watch on in horror (the horror, more likely, derives from the terrible remake of the title song playing on their car radio in late-90’s noise pop metal) Mr. Duster, still shown mostly in shadow and profile, picks up the discarded head and pulls its tongue out with his teeth. The backdrop is against a random billboard advertising a local supermarket, declaring “It Tastes So Good!” It’s little things like that which tell us they kept at least one competent writer on board throughout.
The siblings peel out and reach the next house on the road, as well as the missing trope.
They encounter a crazy cat-lady’s house. Great rambling ranch-house, set back among a copse of trees. This pretty much confirmed my earlier supposition about the film trying very hard to use the setting as a source of horror, and actually taps a remarkably ignored reserve of “crazy backwoods personality” with her introduction. Unfortunately, it ends here as well. Eileen Brennan (Mrs. Peacock in “Clue”) is hesitant to even answer the door, afraid that the two strangers on her front porch have been sent by the police to take her “babies” away. In fact, she’s more than willing to back up her uncertainty with a double barreled shotgun. An appropriately abbreviated explanation later (“there’s been an accident, two police officers have been killed”) and she’s quite willing to help....until Mr. Duster lands on her roof.
Whoop.
How’d he get up there?
Short work is made of the ancient feline aficionado, and the critters show the proper amount of loyalty for their species. ie, when the door opens, bro is practically buried under the flow of cats. (Think of the psychic’s prediction.) It’s now that we get a good look at Mr. Duster. (The credits refer to him as “The Creeper,” but that was one of the most ludicrously outfitted DC heroes ever (green striped undies and a red cotton boa), so I’m gonna call him “Mr. Duster.”)
Mr. Duster is ugly. Frankenstein ugly. In fact, there seems to be some seams running up the middle of his face.
The reason that this isn’t the high point of the film is that revelation of Mr. Duster’s actual appearance is a remarkable letdown. Nobody knows exactly what they expected to see under that coat and hat, but they could’ve done much better than we see. The kids jump back in their car, and Mr. Duster stalks out into the road, pacing back and forth like a pro wrestler before the match starts. Long, stringy hair courses from the sides of his head, leaving a big bald patch on top. The night conceals most of his appearance, but you can plainly tell that he’s well muscled. The kids try repeatedly to run the figure down (he keeps half-stepping over the car upon its approach), and eventually trick him, catching him off guard, striking and rolling over the mysterious figure.
There’s a bit of self-conscious breaking of the fourth wall in this film, mostly for humorous effect. Earlier on, the sister told bro before his delving into the pipe that “You know that point in horror movies where someone does something really stupid, and the audience hates them for it? This is that point!” Here, after driving over the body three times, bro asks sis “You think it’s dead?”
She replies “It never is” and hits it twice more.
Oh yeah, I like these two.
The last couple runs, however, reveal something surprising.
A wing springs up. Great bat-like membranous wing. Flapping weakly in reflex before the car strikes the collapsed figure again.
So Mr. Duster is winged. Which means he’s not human. Or zombie. Hmmmm......
Most reviewers I’ve read jump to the conclusion that he’s a daemon of some sort. That strikes me as premature. He’s a monster. Where does it say he needs some greater affiliation than that? Besides, Mr. Duster is forever followed by a great flock of ravens or crows that infested the old church above his house of pain. What THAT means exactly is unknown.
The end is pretty quickly summarized. They didn’t manage to kill the critter, but they do manage to make it to civilization and a proper state police office with attached jail. (Go ahead....destroy ALL of the horror movie tropes....see if I care. *Snf*)
Two important things happen when they arrive at the jail. First, unless I’m absurdly mistaken, someone arrests David Arquette. Weird walk-on bit part. Plays no real role except he’s being booked when the pair walk in, and appears briefly in a cell afterwards.
Second of all, we meet the psychic (Patricia Belcher....poor girl). She’s tracked down where they’ll be at this particular point, and has come to try and warn them against the future she sees for them.
The psychic is actually done really well....considering. Instead of a practical prophet, or a crystal-gazing gypsy, or a fainting new-ager imparting wisdom upon the poor doomed characters (I foresee.....that you are in a horror film.....and thus totally fucked dearies.....sorry), the woman is a rather ordinary looking. Rather stout, black, and utterly tormented. She sees these events in dreams, and, like dreams, there’s portions that are lost upon awakening. Teary-eyed she beseeches them with the few details she has. Asks if they’ve seen the cats yet. Tells them that if they hear the song “Jeepers Creepers” playing on an old phonograph then they should just run, because the song means torment, pain, and death for one of them.
Further, she tells us what there is to know about Mr. Duster. “Every 23 years for 23 days, he eats.” The creature, whatever he is (despite the assertion of reviewers, there’s no reason beyond the wings to think that he’s a daemon of some kind.....I’d bet on something older, more primal, something left over from the times of myth and terror at the things which walk the woods at night and pull little children from their beds. A companion of raw-head and bloody-bones), eats to survive, taking into himself the pieces that work for him. He eats lungs to breath, ears to hear....and, of course, eyes to see. He’s also eaten too many hearts for his to ever stop. Apparently not anyone’s parts will do. He’s got to scent them first. And only when they’re frightened. Thus the creature storms along the roads, terrifying motorists in order to “scent” them, and find potential targets. Therefore, he scented something he liked between the two of them, and that’s why he’s been following them.
There’s a term for this. I just invented it. It’s called “conceptual overload.” It was in play for the Phantasm films as well, but it was OK there, mostly due to the campy, low budget 70’s aspect of the films. So we’ve got a piecemeal creature who only wakes up once every 23 years to go out and feed. At which point he piles into an old rusty truck that’s been kept.......somewhere......and tears out across the roads to terrify motorists in order to scout potentials. After which he plucks the appropriate pieces out of the victims, eats the organs, wraps the bodies up in sheets, piles them in the back of his truck, drives them out to the old church (how many increments of 23 years has it been standing there? Or the truck for that matter) dumps them down the corrugated steel pipe, sews them together, laminates (or otherwise preserves) them, and sticks them into the walls.
Uh....why?
SOME reason for all this absurd behavior needs to be presented, or we run the danger of regarding it as utterly random in conception as it is. And that’s not even considering the exceptions we know of. If he ripped the organs out of the kid in the sheet whose dying breath we saw, then why was the kid sewed up again? If he’s gotta stalk his victims first, why pull the tongue out of the decapitated cop? Why the later killings and feastings (upcoming) at the police station?
Anyway, Mr. Duster has followed them to the police station, and he restocks for the bones broken and organs ruptured in his repeated hit and run and hit and run and hit incident by wandering down to the holding cell smorgasbord, where he does NOT eat David Arquette, as far as we know.
Charging easily up to our fleeing “heroes,” slaughtering some cops and bypassing the psychic, we finally get a good look at our villain.
Lame. Lame lame lame.
Picture a middle-weight pro wrestler. Now give him rather leathery skin, a bunch of scars/seams and a big pair of wings. Then cross him with a Jesus lizard (the ones who have that neck frill). You get a sort of “Creature from the Black Lagoon” with a more human/Frankenstein face and wings. Awkward, dull, and a bit silly-looking. (‘Cept for the wings, which are honestly cool.) No decomposing exposed ribcage, no chitionous exterior, no extra limbs. Frankly, Mr. Duster was a much better villain when he was still wearing clothes. Much like Phantasm’s “Tall Man”, the clothes make the monster, and the figure in the long duster and wide-brim hat is much scarier and more interesting than the nude sorta-weirdly-demonic figure, if only for the mystery factor. On this point I agree with the critics, “when it was revealed as a daemon, It was really a letdown,” although I don’t think they really know exactly why they felt let down by the creature’s full aspect. Short version: lame lack of concept. Alien? Backstory. Undead? Backstory. Dimensional flux? Backstory. Human serial killer? Backstory. Daemon? He’s just evil for the hell of it. No backstory necessary, or requested. When we see the creature, our minds our supposed to go through all the convoluted measures that would explain what we’re seeing. Humans require motives, undead require revenge callings, aliens require some unearthly purpose. Things that are evil just ‘cause, or just flat exist for no known reason, are often boring.
Anyway, Mr. Duster snatches up the brother, and, after some pathetically labored “take me instead” talk from the sister, Mr. Duster takes off through the precinct window with brother in tow.
The end.
Oh! Wait! The stinger! Mr. Duster has moved into an abandoned factory since his last housefire. There’s screaming, and a phonograph is playing “Jeepers Creepers.” We move in on Mr. Duster at his workbench, and see the brother’s corpse propped up, sans eyes, all the way through the back of his head.
Yes. The title of the film was based entirely on the fact that one of the main characters would get his eyes eaten by Mr. Duster.
LAME stinger, BAD stinger, NO biscuit!
In summary, an ill-conceived horror film that nonetheless manages to introduce a thoroughly terrifying and mysterious villain, present a good, angsty take on your standard tabloid psychic, read off lotsa good lines, introduce two honest, non-jerk characters, properly display the boredom of driving across Nebraska with an AM radio (believe me, I know) even if it was supposed to be northern Florida, and a good touch on sectors of American society that are ripe for film treatment in a horror film. Essentially, this film is great setup, but payoff so absurd that you’ll always end up worse off than when you started. Stop the tape about 11 minutes from the end. Much better that way. I get the feeling the bad writer came up with the overall framing concept, and the good writers were only allowed to fill in the details.
-
Shame
2003-09-11 20:49:40
Well, I had an update. Fair to middling one. Stuff on Warren Zevon, the metatexuality of lj and a review of "the Ghost." But somehow its gotten corrupted and unreadable by the machines here at work.
So I'm going to post a brief word or two on something else.
9/11
It's the second anniversery. I hadn't planned on doing anything, since, as others have said, anything I could put would be trite and shallow. I live in Ga. and had no loved ones in the WTC, so my shock was no greater than any of the other distant observers. I was gonna let them speak and keep my fat mouth shut.
So I tenatively entered the online communities, the lj friends list, and looked around to see what those who would know better had to say.
Frankly, I'm appalled.
Apparently, two years is long enough to let these victims rest in peace before putting them all on pikes and marching them around the white house shouting slogans and accusations. Those 3,000 dead are just another political tool to be used, another thorn for goading political opponents, 9/11 just a useful date to haul the pundits out of their closets and razz the opposition. In the words of someone far more eloquent than I, "I am outraged at those who hold those views. Outraged. Outraged that they remain so detached. Also, that they are proud of their detachment. They are proud of their removal from passion, from emotion. They are more interested in their own clever-ness, in their own phrasology, than in allowing any impact of that day to hit."
You know what? 9/11 isn't about the current administration. I'm no great fan of Bush, but even I know that. Tomorrow and yesterday are the days for ridicule and question. Tomorrow and yesterday are the days for symbols and smarmy op-eds, political cartoons, and protests. I'll debate you then.
Today is for the dead. The three thousand who fell from the sky either aboard a doomed plane, within the burning pentagon, or within the confines of a collapsing skyscraper.
The dead don't make political statements. They don't cry out for vengance. They don't cry out for justice. They don't rally for this or that cause. The only party color they wear is the color of blood. They, themselves are silent.
So shut the fuck up.
Oh well, my friends list needed pruning anyway. -
Stupid Journal word limits...read previous first.
2003-09-05 01:18:36
*GASP*
Sunday! ........kachk......
*GASP*
gimmie a minute here....
*Pant*
*Pant*
Hokay, Sunday. Went into work long enough to coat some plates, then hotfooted it to the con. Charged, once again, into the dealers’ room and exhibition hall. Found more stuff to whittle away at my account with. Ran into more friends, then again. (Anthony, sorry if it felt like I wasn’t paying attention, but I was trying to shop at the same time as our conversation, and you keep wandering into realms of horror with which I am entirely unfamiliar.) From there, I hit the Forensic Pathology 201 for more lunchtime goodness, hit lunch again, THEN tried the RotK panel (whoop! Wrong day!), saw Voltaire’s performance in the open hallway (packed...uh.....cul-de-sac), and caught the Atlanta Radio Theater Company’s performance. They’ve been doing these for a long time now, but one of their head writers and performers died this last year, so they did a re-performance of their first play at the con, “The Island of Dr. Moreaux.” This is my all-time favorite performance from this troupe, and one of the best suited stories for the medium ever written. Think about what is heard and described, and you’ll see the superiority of the radio treatment over anything that could be visually created. It also happens to be my favorite H.G.Wells novel. I love it because of its terrible nebulous nature. As though it’s not trying to teach a lesson, but demonstrating the futility of ANY lessons. The troupe did not disappoint. Especially chilling was the Puma, and the woman managed to get down both the big cat screams and the low-throat growling perfectly. Went right out afterwards and bought a new copy of the play on CD.
From there, stuck our heads in the “Attack of the Radioactive Hamsters From a Planet Near Mars” panel, and wowed them with knowledge of horrible radioactive zombie films. Had to leave early, though, to nab James and co. for dinner again, again at Max Lager (having learned my lesson, I ordered a lot more beer). Went back and crowd watched.
Like I said before, the actual costumes seemed to be saved for Sunday night. This was because the event I was pointedly missing was the general costume contest, taking place at the civic center about a mile away. Bleh. No thanks.
Among the costumes I saw were a bunch of comic-book characters, a catholic school-girl climbing over a crusader, and an excellent “Delirium”, complete with a foil fish-balloon. (The previous day had seen an 8-foot "Gir" costume, executed PERFECTLY...even got the little bouncy walk down.) My friends and I contemplated the fun that could be had by buzzing the crowd with a webcam-equipped remote-controlled zeppelin (we saw one wandering around earlier downstairs).
Then it happened.
Something showed up at the front door of the hotel. Something big. So big it had trouble wedging its way in. It was about 8 feet tall, four feet wide, splayed hands and feet, and lots of fur. When it finally got in, I saw what it was.
It was a wild thing.
Remember Maurice Sendak’s “Where the Wild things are?” THEY WERE ALL HERE. All six. About ten seconds after the first wild thing wedged its way into the lobby, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, broke into spontaneous applause. I have never, EVER seen that happen before. They paused a moment or two for pictures, the little kid in the pajamas and crown showed up, and they led a brief parade down the center of the lobby. It was the best thing EVER. (http://www.dragoncon.net/dc/dailydragon/ someone please tell me that there was movie footage taken from the second floor during the little parade and posted online.) Turns out that they won best of show at the contest, and deservedly so.
Had to back out on the party upstairs for the sake of not bolting out on other friends who weren’t invited, but we hung out for a bit, played some more strange synergy, and eventually called it a night. I, again, gave someone (Nigel) a ride back to tech, and then went into work for another two hours. Got home at six, slept three hours, and back up and to the con!
Monday!
Went shopping AGAIN! Spent more money! Actually, this was the tradition of hitting all the places that you aren’t certain you’ll be able to afford and buying the stuff you want if you’ve still got money left over. Got two bags of coffee for work from the Coffee shop of horrors (everyone support this shop if you live near it!). Great coffee, but honestly all they had to sell were great thick hardback horror novels. No authors I was interested in, and prices a bit over my head. Turned up my nose definitively at “The triumph of the will,” consigning that morbid curiosity to some day when mount DVD has reduced in stature, picked up some penknives I promised to a friend, drooled over the beautiful leatherbound German edition of classic Call of Cthulhu. $60? No freakin’ way. Mmmmm.....I think.... Grabbed some last minute DVDs, shot through the art show, stood outside of the farscape panel, hearing very little (hmmm....attended one of these earlier in the con, but I don’t remember where. Short version is that Anthony Simcoe LOVES the spotlight, loud volume, and jumping around on stage, the guy who voices Rigel LOVES the sound of his own voice meandering randomly around the question asked (almost sounded demented) and Lani Tupuv, the honestly interesting and funny guy is too polite to butt in ahead of these two.)
Hit the general Buffy panel, consisting of Marster, and the guys who played Jonathan (the nerd who got knifed at the start of final season), Clem (random fleshy comedic-relief demon), and Lorne, the nightclub owner. Obscene jokes were FLYING across the room at every possible provocation. The audience would explode with laughter at even the unintentional snarks.
“When I first met David Boreanz he was doing “Buffy”...”
*explosion of laughter*
“Look, I can do double-entendres...you people don’t have to reach.”
Earlier in the con, apparently Lorne and one girl from the audience liked one another’s shirts so much that they actually traded later. This was another source of jokes.
Jonathan, however, was the absolute bomb. Hilarious throughout, and mostly self depreciating. Somehow the subject of their individual hotel rooms came up, and Marster mentioned that he had a baby grand piano in his room.
Clem: “You’ve got a Baby Grand?”
Marster: “Yeah”
Lorne: “I’ve got an UPright piano!”
*Laughter*
Clem: “I’ve got a whole orchestra!”
*Laughter*
Jonathan: “I’ve got a kazoo!”
*Riotous laughter*
Even better was when one random questioner came up to the mike and _he_ thanked everyone for coming to the con, although he had to admit it was creepy how Jonathan kept following him around for the whole weekend. (Joking, naturally.)
“That’s because I regard you as the most magnificent piece of ass I never HAD!”
*Riotous Laughter*
“I keep asking myself, why not me? I could be taller for you!”
*More Riotous Laughter*
He really was the funniest guy up there. Clem wasn’t too bad either. A lot less in the way of series information, though.
Left that panel, went to lunch, came back for a final go-through of dealers with Vicky, got to meet Stanley Tweedle (see above), hooked up with James for dinner, Max Laager again, then went home.....for a few hours and drove out to Patrick’s for anime night, which I blundered through blindly.
That’s it folks. Final analysis, more than worth the money spent, got to meet some really nice celebrities, run into old friends I never thought I’d see again, bought a lot of stuff, didn’t get nearly enough sleep, but the programming wasn’t quite as good as in years past.
Ow.
JOURNAL: MCWagner (Matthew Wagner)
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