Two years ago at a Volks
Dollfie event in Los Angeles, my strong resistance to
Ball-Jointed Dolls, AKA Village of the Damned Children,
melted somewhat when I ended up buying one of the damned
things. As a Yo-sized doll and my lack of creativity
to come up with a name outside of Joe, he was dubbed
"Yo-Joe."
Now here he is two years
later, still the same age and still possibly antisocial.
He ate my entire cake.
Ruby
Moon III created a comic on her site to celebrate
the occasion. Additionally, I have reposted the award-winning
GoGa Doll video he starred in. I will have to resume
the series.
I usually joke how you
could count the number of good Asian comedians with
one hand and have fingers to spare. Whether that is
true or not, tonight with Ten we saw the 18
Mighty Mountain Warriors performing at the Women's
Center in San Jose.
I first saw them many
years ago in SFSU as part of the ASU. Their "John
Woo Family Dinner" got me hooked since I like
guns. The Asian themed humor combined with occasional
randomness and potential offensive material makes me
describe them as an Asian Monty Python troupe. But that
tends to scare people who hate Monty Python so I simply
describe them as an excellent comedy troupe that you
should watch. Tonight's performance in San Jose has
passed, but they have two more shows at 7PM and 10PM
tomorrow night. So for a good time involving Chinese
restaurants and the beauty of the Asian male body, go
check them out.
Yaoi-Con
marks the end of the 2009 anime convention coverage
of Traveling Valentine. The slight gag order prevents
an actual first hand report from taking place, so I
decided to let my heterosexual thoughts about the convention
flow freely.
A few more events are
getting thrown in but will be purely social for me.
I will end the year working on a few independent productions.
I'll make a few retrospective reviews on a few anime
titles I actually liked such as Special
Duty Combat Unit Shinesman and Di
Gi Charat.
Eh, I hope to take it
easy for the rest of the year and patch up a few loose
holes.
As if work, constant
weekends of activity, and other frivolous junk were
not enough to keep me from updating, now Twitter
and its widget that allows me to conveniently post my
updates instantly allows me to let things slide here.
My job prevents me from
getting my work done. So a few hours before I hit Anime
Destiny, I proudly announce Ten's report of LoveEvolution
2009. She attended it and actually wrote it up, so it
was a hell of a lot easier than having my taxed schedule
make up stuff about what happened during an event I
did not attend. But if I were to write it up, I would
probably mention how the ravers there were too stoned
to fight back against the SWAT team and their tear gas
grenades.
So President
Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize for promising to do
a few things while not
actually doing them. If I promise to cure cancer,
do I get my Nobel Prize? Not that I actually WANT to
be associated with a guy who made a whole lot of blood
money and got a lot of people killed with his invention
of dynamite.
I wish I could say that
I was too lazy to update due to enjoying a pina colada
under a palm tree between surfing lessons. Sadly, lack
of updates have been due to a return to public relations,
classes, and work outs from classes.
That total body fitness
class I signed up for turned out to be a fancy name
for running. Given my bum leg, that is a bad thing.
Fortunately walking is an acceptable alternative as
long as I move from point A to point B.
SiliCon
was this past weekend. Photos and reports are coming
up as soon as I recover. Ten had an interesting time
at LovEvolution
in San Francisco at the same Saturday.
In the meantime, my
latest anime review on The Escapist involves
a rare feat: A sequel that actually does better than
the predecessor. The Slayers was great but
had a few bugs that prevented me from fully enjoying
it. Slayers Next squashes those bugs, creates
a new story off the old one, and can stand on its own
without The Slayers.
I was glad to suggest
this comic idea to RubyMoon III for her World's
Most Bizarre webcomic. While I enjoy watching
new anime to add to my library, the flip side of being
an anime critic is watching some painfully bad anime.
The mecha anime Jinki:
Extend pretty much inspired this comic idea.
I do not let my personal disinterest in mecha anime
cloud my opinion of this series. This series is plain
bad with confusing storytelling and uninteresting characters.
Its one original element is being set in Venezuela.
My main gripe with mecha
anime is how pretty much every mecha anime involves
giant robots either fighting aliens or other giant robots.
Out of the many mecha anime, Evangelion, Macross,
and Gundam are the benchmarks that most
of the other mecha anime shows attempt to be. Jinki:
Extend--which sounds like a porno involving Scooby
Doo's Velma--starts off as an Evangelion clone
fighting ancient machines. Then it chucks that idea
out and replaces it with a crap shoot of cliche and
shock value. Crap shoots are called such because they
usually result in crap. So now the best thing I can
do with this DVD set is use it for target practice.
Nevertheless, I give
thanks to RubyMoonIII for using my webcomic idea to
help illustrate one of the many anime-related work Traveling
Valentine does. Stay tuned for the webcomic where I
wander conventions waving a chainsaw at people who scream,
"I lost the game."
9/17/09: Free
pirate game for Talk Like a Pirate Day (9/19/09)
Telltale
Games, in conjunction with "Talk Like a Pirate
Day," is handing out Tales of Monkey Island
for free. The game entails the misadventures of
Guybrush Threepwood, the mighty pirate who can hold
his breath for ten minutes. So from September 18th at
4:01PM PST to September 19th at midnight PST, you can
download the first chapter for free at Play
Like a Pirate.com. Once you finish, feel free to
check out the additional chapters as Guybrush points
and clicks his way through the Caribbean seas and undead
pirates. The third chapter comes out September 29th.
I have been a big fan
of Monkey Island since I read the words, "I
am Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate." While suffering
from the moon logic featured in most point and click
adventure games, the humor and the character always
had this charming appeal.
It only took about four
years, but I finally got to see Monty
Python's Spamalotthanks to Broadway
San Jose last night. During those four years, I
got thesoundtrack,
program, a cute "I'm not dead" pin, and even
a tin of Spamalot Spam before I even thought
about watching the musical due to two possible reasons:
I can smell a wonderfully
entertaining Tony award winning musical that appeals
to Broadway snobs and the average person who loves
comedy and ladies prancing in their underwear live
on stage.
I am a Monty Python
fan.
I would like to think
it was #1 so I will stick with that. While based on
their first movie about searching for the Holy Grail,
the musical manages to go beyond copy and pasting jokes
from the movie. So those who hate Monty Python will
still get a musical full of mirth and touching romance.
Meanwhile, Monty Python fans will get to see
classic movie scenes performed live on the stage. It
is win-win for both sides of the coin.
As expected, the ability
to improv, ad-lib, and change the song order of the
original Broadway production made Spamalot
so great. Being able to throw in a Kanye jab and later
following with a Serena Williams jab were two priceless
moments. And seeing Merle
Dandridge--voice actress of Half-Life 2's
Alyx Vance--as The Lady of the Lake was a sight to see.
And unlike the original Broadway run and the San Francisco
run, the San Jose version does not rely on B-list celebrity
actors. The guys on stage are actually talented.
If you have not seen
Spamalot in San Jose yet, you have a few days
left. I wish I could say the same about the rest of
the scheduled musicals consisting of overdrawn and overblown
teenage angst in Germany featuring the worst German
accents I have heard, Riverdance that simply
does not need extra a description to convey insults,
puppets that would have had more shocking material if
South Park did not exist, and a campy lawyer
comedy based on a movie I never liked from the beginning
and like even less once it turned into a franchise.
But given the commercial appeal and the rabid devotion
of the fans, at least it will put bums on seats and
turn a huge profit for Broadway San Jose's renewed organization.
Hopefully they use the money to experiment with other
musicals later.
And happy birthday to
Kevin Roche. The costumed Knights of the Log Table were
the talk of the audience next to the actual performance.
I take a break for a
week and a whole lot of stuff happens.
First, Disney. It was
a surprising move acquiring Marvel and being able to
toss Spandex costumed heroes into the next Kingdom
Hearts game. Then they acquired Naruto Shippuden
and are now able to toss ninjas into Kingdom Hearts.
And now Johnny Depp is confirmed to doing a fourth Pirates
of the Caribbean movie. I know Disney wants to
appear to the teenage crowd but there is such a thing
as trying too hard. Didn't Nostradamus predict that
The Mouse, The Marvel, The Ninja, and The Pirate were
the Four Gunmen of the Apocalypse?
Second, the movie 9.
I never saw the first movies 1-8, but after
seeing Elijah Wood at WonderCon promoting the stitchpunk
animation. The fact the movie is not in 3D format gives
it an automatic two gold stars for not following this
ancillary trend. The movie was great in short scenes,
but was lacking as a whole film. Nevertheless, a great
visual treat.
Third, 9/11. Leave it
to the anniversary of the terrorist attack to bring
out the left wing and right wing political nuts to duke
it out with each other and look like total hypocritical
idiots in front of others.
Fifth, PEERS. I had a
wonderful time at the Space Cowboy themed PEERS
event in September with Ten. It is a pity that we endured
a couple of falls during the dance, but I got to rekindle
my Congress of Vienna. I still prefer watching the choreographed
dances since I enjoy being free to improvise during
the heat of the dance. See you at Les Bal de Vampires
in November.
Fourth, a couple of articles.
I finally got around to summarizing that JVTA
infomercial panel during Anime Expo for those interested
in working in the anime industry as a translator or
writer. Then for Halloween, I provide my secret to making
mess-free bloodied
clothing with a little fabric paint. I will be extending
my toy reviews and another anime review in the future,
so stay tuned.
Young blood Michael is
now 18 today and is officially legal. So it looks like
we have another future Yaoi-Con virgin. So if you are
a woman or at least look like one and is interested
in a barely legal poster child of emo subculture, here
is your chance.
I had a wonderful time
catching up to my youth reviewing The
Slayers on The Escapist. I then have
to review Slayers Next and Slayers Try
in the future. Though it seems I have to take some
bad with the good and my scouting intel tells me I am
in for a few doozies.
As for toys, I attempted
to review something that was not Transformers
related. The Lego
City Single-Drum Roller makes a nice piece for my
Lego city and a prop in an upcoming video.
Some attendees of Sac-Anime
describe the convention in a word that rhymes with "musterduck."
While Traveling Valentine could easily join the people
saying it, providing a report
of the why and how the convention could improve itself
is the difference between general pessimist and convention
coverage. And those seeking Zombie footage from August
are free to stroll here.
It looks like the convention
summer season is coming to a close, which gives me ample
time to get some writing and video production finished.
I am itching to get my Cosette and Yo-Joe voice work
on again. I also have a few more convention photos and
videos that need archiving. October looks to be a busy
coverage month with SiliCon,
Anime
Destiny, and Yaoi-Con
in addition to monthly PEERS
dance events. There never is any rest for the weary.
