davemerrill

A month ago I was doing my five day quarantine on account of the COVID, and cases here were 7-day averaging 13K. Today the 7-day average is 3K. Progress, definite progress. Restaurants opened back up on the 31st, things open up further Feb. 21 and by March 14 most restrictions are lifted.

If our next wave is like the last wave, we'll have another spike in May that should flatten by July? I just want to have an Anime North again.

I got my booster Saturday evening! Sunday I felt pretty lousy but it passed by Monday. Feeling back to normal, I guess. It snowed a bunch on Monday the 17th and everybody took a snow day. Snowed some again last night, enough to make things a little slippery here and there. I find the crucial element in snow driving is to keep that momentum going - you can make it up that hill *if* you are allowed to sail into it at a reasonable speed. If you have to stop because, say, some Uber driver has to stop dead in front of you to let somebody off, well, that makes things tougher. Almost happened to me.


Before my booster we went out into the hinterlands to some antique malls we hadn't visited in a while, out to Tillsonburg Antique Warehouse and Courtland Treasures. Found an inflatable Huckleberry Hound for a bargain price. The vinyl is back out at prices ranging from ridiculous to 3-for-$1 but I never have enough time to really dig through the records. These places all close at 5, so by the time we get out there our browsing time is limited. Spent the rest of the weekend watching cheesy old TV movies and staying out of the cold, and recovering from the booster.

Anime North has moved its date back to July and I'm all in favor of it - the COVID situation might have cooled down enough by then to allow us to do a 50% capacity show. I don't think the venues are going to let Anime North NOT hold a show this year - 2020 and 2021's shows were legally prohibited from happening, which gives everybody a force majure out, but unless things get awful again 2022 is a different story. I was expecting a lot of complaining on the various Facebook groups but people seem to be feeling positive about it. I like the July date anyway. Their previous May date was the US Memorial Day weekend which put AN up against four or five other good-sized anime conventions, which has cost AN guests, vendors, industry, and attendees in the past. Also, later in the year gives me more prep time.

So yeah, we went to Atlanta for Christmas. We'd planned the trip a few months out, figuring COVID would be a dull roar in the background, instead of the cranked up to 11 scream it's been for about a month now. A week before the trip Canada's health minister pretty much begged everybody to cancel their non-essential travel, and I waited for some sort of official border closure. That never came, so we went.

We left here Wednesday the 22nd and drove to Cincinnati. The border crossing was uneventful - the officer asked if we were vaxed, but didn't check the documents. We stayed with Greg and Melissa that night and the next day drove down I-75 Atlanta way, stopping off in Chattanooga to see Grant and Marie and Daniel.

In Atlanta we didn't do a whole lot other than seeing family, wrapping presents, having Xmas at Dad's with everybody over a brunch/lunch meal. Boxing Day Sunday we saw a bunch of friends at Matt Buffington's house with his family (two kids now!) - CB, Elizabeth, Parker, Matt, Melanie, Jessica, Mike and their two daughters.

Monday we went out to Athens to see Devlin T. at Bizarro Wuxtry and trade in a bunch of comics for store credit, and catch up on what's been going on in the Classic City. Also on Monday we got our pre-arrival PCR tests at Walgreens'. They'd been good at getting my results back during AWA so I figured a Monday noon test would be fine for a Wednesday border crossing.

Tuesday we got back on the road. We detoured to Dirty Jane's Antiques in Red Bank TN, where we saw a repurposed school bus that housed One Piece fans (what's the story with that?) and then we took 27 north to I-40, I-40 east to 75, and 75 north back to Cincinnati. Wednesday we got up and still no test results. We got lunch and still no test results. Andy knew of a lab near his job that guaranteed same-day PCR test results for $100 - but they closed at 3pm. At 2 we decided to bite the bullet and get those tests.

A couple of C-notes later we were swabbed. Rather than sit around Cincy waiting for emails we figured we could make some time on the road, so back north we went.

Shain's negative results from the second lab arrived at 7pm. We stopped at a Starbucks in Lincoln Park and I checked my email - I had both sets of (negative) test results waiting for me. With those in hand we crossed back into Canada about 9:30. This border crossing was much less trouble than the search we got back in August. We got home about 1:30am.

All in all a fine trip - we got to see a lot of people, exchange presents, and not get sick. We didn't get to do the kind of deep-dive antique mall digging that we enjoy, however. The sheer stress of worrying about getting those return PCR test results back in time, combined with the stress of worrying about getting COVID in the first place, well, that made this trip more anxious than usual - and I'm always anxious about long cross-border car trips anyway. So yeah, some stress.

Glad we saw family and friends, glad we stayed well, glad to be home. Here's to a better 2022!

So it's two weeks since I got back from AWA and I guess I didn't get the COVID. I got two separate PCR tests the Sunday of the con - just so I'd have results in time before my flight on Tuesday- and they were both negative, of course.

The con went OK! Thursday was super crowdy. Friday still kinda crowdy. Saturday and Sunday didn't feel as crowded as those days felt in 2019. My feeling is, my guess was right and the show lost about ten percent attendance. The people that did show up were masked, vaxed, tested, and ready to party. I mean Thursday night drunken Disney Atlantis Princess drunk.

A lot of my friends who usually come didn't make it this time. The Saturday night that we'd normally have some sort of room party in memory of the room party we used to have which was called Dessloktoberfest, well, it was me and Neil and Ryan and Lloyd and Matt Buffington sitting around Neil's room drinking the rest of the six-pack of Shiner I brought and just shooting the breeze; no big deal but after not seeing these guys for 2 years it felt great.

The congoers were great about masking up. The part about "you must show your vax card or your negative test results" didn't quite filter down to the walk-ins, however, so there were a lot of walk-ins getting annoyed that they had to fish out their vax cards. I mean, the Braves weren't asking for vax receipts. Seems like the States, or Georgia anyways, has basically decided to Stop Giving A Shit and let the virus roam free as the wind blows.

The World Series meant parking was absolutely not happening for under thirty dollars on Saturday. I saw "Parking $100" at the Steak & Shake on Sunday. Most of the Braves fans were bemused & amused by the anime cosplayers, if people were expecting trouble it didn't happen. Hard to be angry when the Braves are in the series, I guess.

Most of the nerd fan drama nonsense seemed to dial itself back. Disgraced former anime voice actor Vic Mignogna had a signing scheduled the Saturday of the show at a hotel across I-285 from the convention, and there was some talk about what if certain banned Vic-involved people show up at the con? I don't wanna say the head of public safety was looking forward to throwing certain people out on their ass, but when Lloyd and I did our "history of AWA" panel that certain people had shown up to in 2019, public safety was there with eyes on. But certain people didn't show up. Better for everybody involved, I think.

The con had crazy line problems on Thursday - more Thursday attendees than ever before. Two lines for the SHFS materialized out of nowhere and what can you do? They got merged into one line, and people who got the short end of the stick weren't happy. One woman told me AWA was the worst run convention she'd ever been to. That's a tall order for 5pm on a Thursday! Anyway, I saw her later, she got into the SHFS and walked out with armloads of stuff, so I guess things went OK for her at some point.

Anime Hell went without a hitch. Opening ceremonies were an hour late starting, so I figured by the time Neil's Totally Lame got going it would be at least 9 - but they scheduled an hour of slack time into the schedule and Neil started more or less on time, as did Hell, as did Midnight Madness. Didn't have a full room for the full two hours, but that's on par with attendance levels throughout the convention, I think.

Sunday I got a ride for myself and Neil over to Dad's house, and we carved a pumpkin and handed out candy to kids, the first pumpkin I've carved in a long time. Walked around the block and caught up with a neighbor girl who's now a neighbor lady living in her childhood home taking care of her elderly mom and her kids and her mom's business and her own job, and still had time to dress up Mrs. Voorhees (her son was Jason).

My convention panels were over by noon Saturday, I left the dealers' room for the last time with $40 still in my pocket, spent my downtime catching up with friends from 10, 20, 30 years back, hearing about kids, health issues, middle school drama, and how everybody's coping with the tidal wave of covid wrecking everything.

I got to hear from a LOT of fans happy to be back at the con, happy AWA was back. Got to hear from a few staffers who thanked me for helping the show through the rough patch it was going through when it changed hands a few years back. After the con I came home and there was an email from someone who had been attending my classic anime panels for years and how those panels had opened her eyes to a lot of great shows she might otherwise never have seen, and that was a nice email to get in the aftermath of a convention.

Flying seems to have added a few layers of passport-checking, boarding-pass checking, can I see that sticker on your passport, please? checkpoints. An hour before we needed to leave for the airport I decided my old luggage was trash, so I hustled over to the Canadian Tire and splurged on a new set of (cheapish) hard-shell luggage. Treat yourself, I guess. Glad I did.

Discotek WAS at AWA but they did not have Braiger. They had the Cleopatra with my pull quote on the back, though. I wound up paying shipping for Braiger along with Future Boy Conan. What a world we anime nerds live in now.

the latest Let's Anime is all about how yes, I was a teenage anime club president.

https://letsanime.blogspot.com/2021/06/i-was-teenage-anime-club-president.html

It's absolutely fascinating to look back on the weird assumptions and nerd culture traditions we just sort of automatically assumed we needed to do when we started getting together to watch cartoons - that we needed officers and elections and we needed to be an official part of some kind of official structure with a national home office somewhere. And to my teenage 80s mind the C/FO was a vast organization with libraries and archives and vaguely professional behaviours, when the truth was it was run by two or three overworked people trying to answer letters and put a magazine out. A local anime club really didn't need to be a part of any part of it that didn't deliver two things, (1) tapes of anime, and (2) information about the anime that was on those tapes.

Anyway, we learned. Enjoy!

We both got our second shots. Shain got two Pfizers and I got two Modernas, and I spent the night after the shot with chills & fever and the next day being generally wiped out. Shain didn't have side effects other than a sore arm.

The weather's nice, the antique malls are open, the snakes and turtles are out, it's finally summer here.

The lockdown that started April 3 should be ending in a week? Hopefully? We can sign up for early second doses today? Hopefully? Ontario's numbers have been trending downwards again. It would be nice to get through this. I can't say we'll get back to normal. I just want to go to a store and buy a pair of pants and a shower curtain.

Weather has warmed right up and it's very summerlike out there. If things aren't crazy maybe we can get to a beach or two soon.

Anime North's Stay At Home show went well, I think. My Anime Hell did about 500 viewers which is less than a live show, but my panels about 1981 and Gatekeeping In Fandom did about 180 viewers, which is more that I'd get in a panel at the actual Anime North. So it's a win.

I finished a new Let's Anime reviewing the new book LEIJI MATSUMOTO: ESSAYS ABOUT THE MANGA AND ANIME LEGEND, a collection of interviews and essays about the seminal manga artist. I learned a lot from the book, and I've been paying attention to Matsumoto for years, so there are some revelations in this thing, trust me. I'm not a big fan of the whole "all my works fit together into an extra-dimensional Eternal Hero cycle" thing he's been doing the last third of his career, but I know some people are. Have fun with that.

https://letsanime.blogspot.com/2021/06/across-leijiverse.html

I personally think "Maetel Legend" did its darndest to ruin "Galaxy Express 999" - the whole point of "Galaxy Express 999" is to make people think about what it means to live an eternal life in a machine body, and the whole point of "Maetel Legend" is that Maetel's mom Queen Promethium goes power-mad and decides to *force* everyone in the universe to have a machine body, throwing the whole moral of 999 out the window. Oh well. Gotta force everything into a "universe" I guess. I won't even get into the late 1990s nonsense of Matsumoto trying to drag Space Battleship Yamato into his own reservation. Let it be its own thing, man.

Fingers crossed we'll be able to take a vacation and cross the border this summer. Hopefully we'll see some friends down in the States!

Well, it's been a year since COVID hit us like a ton of bricks. Since then I have cut my own hair, ordered cat food online for curbside pickup, done four virtual Anime Hell screenings, watched a bunch of TV, and walked a lot of trails. I haven't seen a movie in a theater in more than a year. Haven't eaten in a restaurant since last summer. Haven't seen most of our Toronto pals in person in more than a year. Haven't seen my family or friends in Georgia or the rest of the United States since Dec. 2019.

Yesterday I was home from work getting a new battery put in the car. After that I had to pick up something I'd ordered for "curbside pickup" at a store I thought was freestanding but was inside the mall. Haven't been inside a mall since sometime last Fall, I think. Anyway there was a maskless guy in the hallway to the washrooms arguing with security staff. Forcing him to wear a mask was "discrimination," apparently. He wasn't there when I got out, so who knows if he wised up and left or if he took it to the next level and earned a criminal trespass.

I am sketching regularly again, I am working on a new comic story, it's supposed to warm up this weekend and I'm going to get back out on the bike if I can. By my calculation we won't be getting our vaccinations until sometime this summer. I'm hoping situations will stabilize enough for us to get across the border for a visit in July. Fingers crossed.

Been a long year.

So there was an anime con in Miami last weekend called "Otakufest" - not to be confused with any of the other Otakufests around the world, way to come up with an original name there. Yup, an anime con in the middle of a pandemic. Word got out that one of the artist alley vendors had tested positive for COVID-19. They had, but not during Otakufest.

https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sril05

I don't know if what they're saying is accurate or not. What I DO know is that NOBODY SHOULD BE HAVING ANIME CONVENTIONS DURING A PANDEMIC, PERIOD, END OF STORY. Nobody should be organizing them, nobody should be attending them, nobody should be presenting at them, nobody should be artist-alleying at them. Nobody.

I get that a lot of discourse around the anime conventions that continue to happen in spite of COVID-19 is driven by people for whom running fandom events is their business, or for whom tabling at conventions is their business. This was ALWAYS a bad idea. If COVID wasn't going to kick you to the curb, something else was. Conventions fail ALL THE TIME without the benefit of a worldwide pandemic.

Gang, this shit is a hobby. Find something else to do that will pay your bills. Nerd conventions aren't going to do it. Nerd conventions don't have a healthcare plan or retirement benefits or paid vacations or even a guarantee they're going to happen on time.

Obviously nobody's going to listen to me; I've been saying this for years, & for years people say they're gonna be the exception that proves the rule, they'll be superstar millionaires selling copyright-infringing prints in artist alleys across the nation, their X-DoofusWorld-Con will be the biggest pop culture event ever for ever and ever, they'll start a chain of comic-cons in third-tier markets across America where magical first-tier crowds will shell out $500 each for the VIP packages. Animation studios will fight each other for the rights to their wonderful original ideas for an animated series. Fans with plans, we call 'em.

None of this ever happens. This shit NEVER WORKS OUT. However? Bills still gotta get paid. Rent comes due every month. Your teeth don't care about your fan art, they need to see the dentist twice a year. Your car needs gas and tires and the mechanic won't take old anime DVDs. Maybe he will?

Learn a trade, kids. The nerd shit will still be there when you clock out on Fridays. The nerd shit will still be there when COVID-19 is over. That's the great part about volunteer run and volunteer staffed nerd events. WE can walk away from EVERYTHING because THIS AIN'T OUR CAREER, this is a hobby, we can pick it right back up where we left off. Corporate Expo Overhead Salaries To Pay cannot.

Finally got to sit down and watch that SubGenius documentary that came out in 2019. It can be summed up in as two "How It Started vs How Its Going" images, from a 1984 San Francisco dance party to mock executions in a field somewhere in rural America. Seems like the whole thing took a dark turn in the late 1990s, as angry and personality-disabled personalities took Stang's "open source" concept and ran with it (always a problem with "open source"). It's worth a watch if only to put faces to names like Puzzling Evidence, Palmer Vreedeez, Philo Drummond, and Dr. Howl, who comes off as calm, intelligent, and unwilling to wander around campgrounds naked, watching SubGenius turn into an even whiter, moister, low-rent Burning Man.

Low point comes when one enterprising Sub-G preacher ("Papa Joe Mama") uses the Columbine shooting as an excuse to drum up publicity for an upcoming Boston gig by calling radio stations to say the Columbine shooters were SubGeniuses, how dare the Subs hold a rally in Boston, etc. Sure, he got a lot of attention, but his gig got cancelled, and if that's "slack" then I'm a Yeti. Taking the "fun" out of "funny religion" was always Mama's schtick; he's seen in the movie patiently explaining his desire to kill all normals, kill, kill, kill. What he CAN'T do is kill on stage; he managed a Janor Hypercleats appearance in Savannah that we heckled, and at the last Phenomicon, he helped to make the SubGenius stage performance last so tediously long that the other act - Man Or Astroman? - set up in the hall, played their gig, and left.

The doc avoids some of the Church's more scandalous moments - there's no mention of how one of the designers of the book sent a mail bomb to somebody who was zine-feuding with Stang, for instance - but it's a good overview of what artsy weirdos were up to in the 1980s and why their greatest influence might be the grab-bag cut and paste pop culture junkyard aesthetic of acolytes like Gary Panter and Matt Groening. Minus the clip-art, it's naked hippies in the woods pretending to kill each other every July.

My decision to not waste any more time on "Bob" and concentrate on comics and dumb-ass Japanese cartoons has brought me more slack than the Church of the SubGenius ever did, and the documentary only reinforces that. Praise something, I guess.

Apparently there's an anime convention happening this weekend in Dallas.

Repeat, an anime con in the middle of a global pandemic's giant wave of infections, at a time when hospitals and health care workers are being overwhelmed. Not a great idea.

Their COVID-19 precautions are as follows:

"-Attendees of Anime Dallas 2020 please note several health and safety procedures are being implemented for 2020. This year will be smaller and more spread out than past years and an attendance cap will be in place.

-MASKS will be required of all attendees, staff, and even the guests. Nobody is an exception to the mask wearing rules, and we will be asking folks to wear masks properly covering their nose and mouth.
-There will be no at-con registration allowed on Friday or Saturday of the convention, the convention’s busiest days. Only pre-registered attendees will be able to attend.
-Hand sanitizing stations will be provided at every panel room, at vendor booths, and throughout all other event spaces of the hotel.
-Hotel spaces will be specially sanitized and cleaned between events and at night
-We will be asking people to respect 6 foot social distancing guidelines and putting markers in place wherever we expect to have lines.
-An attendance cap will be implemented – and this limit will be less than half of last year’s total attendance.
-MANY wonderful and fun events simply can NOT take place during this time. Close contact events such as our convention dances will not take place. Events like our rave dances, maid cafe, etc, won’t happen this year.
-Panel rooms and hotel space seating will be socially distanced and additionally rooms will be capped at less than half normal capacity."

These might be good guidelines for any event moving forward, say in 2022. But right now, without a vaccine, they aren't nearly enough. Apparently the convention is hosting a buffet? A terrible idea right now. Locals say that the DFW area has been having weddings and events and buffets for a while, so Texas simply doesn't care, I suppose.

I have a friend who's vending at the show; he's not happy about it but he's got to be there this year or he loses his spot next year, and last year's convention was lucrative enough that he can't afford to miss it. That's where they're at - either risk your life, or risk your livelihood. Ugh.

Stay home. Don't go to this or any other convention.