davemerrill

I found this poster for the 1966 release of "Hentai" at the "Temple Of Schlock" blog, which is this aptly named deep-dive into super obscure exploitation films that were released under two or three names in fourwalled theaters in small towns and regional cities across America.

http://templeofschlock.blogspot.ca/2017/02/the-endangered-list-case-file-158_20.html

I posted it on Twitter and it's gotten a lot of traction and some amusing @s from people who either want to argue with its translation of "hentai" or aren't sure why it's funny. If you don't think kitschy old movie posters that have to work hard to explain themselves are funny, then I don't know what to tell you.

The yard sale went well. We beat the rain, sold a bunch of stuff, I got a new bicycle seat and a plastic Doraemon bank and a new yoga mat. I don't think there was as much foot traffic as last year, but we seemed to make about as much money, so go fig. Sunday we went out to the woods and did some walking, some catching up with the new Twin Peaks, which I'm enjoying a lot.

The old anime hell domain name went bye bye, so I bought a new one that is a work in progress at the moment.

http://anime-hell.com/

It's 2017 and this is the first domain name I ever bought and the first website that I've built myself. (Shain does all the work on Mister Kitty). There's a learning curve, but that's what life's about, learning new skills.

This week it's hot and rainy and cool again and rainy and hot again. This weekend is the Anime North post-con banquet, which means free Chinese buffet, and maybe a comic book show. We kind of need to save money for next month's vacation, though, so we might not go to that. I'm working on a review of the "Osamu Tezuka Story" that Schodt translated for Let's Anime. Need to get back to drawing comics too. And I gotta put that new seat on my bike. Always something to do.

so last weekend was a yard sale - picked up some beach books and a milk crate. This weekend is a big Danforth yard sale. Next weekend is the Liberty Village yard sale where we'll have a table and we'll be selling some of our unwanted stuff and getting a sunburn.

The new Stupid Comics this week is an exciting tale of fun with firearms, looting Southeast Asia, and misidentified idol action!



it's all happening at Stupid Comics! http://misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics534.html

What are we doing this weekend? Maybe some bike riding, maybe some drive-in movies, maybe Donald & David are coming over Sunday so's we can watch some Yamato 2199 - sorry, Yamato 2202. We may not make that Danforth yard sale. I got enough junk already.

Well! That one's over with. Got an article in the NOW about Anime Hell, no technical hitches, panels went as planned, everybody seemed to have a good time. We ate lots of food at a Mongolian hot pot place on Sunday night and are still stuffed. Found some interesting and reasonably priced stuff in the dealers room. Got to spend quality time with Neil and Mike. We had the usual fumfoolery getting badged up but I think I know the problem and will put a solution into effect.

Thursday it rained like crazy and it was ugly out there. Friday wasn't as bad. Saturday was nicer, and Sunday was downright pleasant.

Anime North found itself in the center of some political adventures over the weekend. Allow me to explain.

Since Stephen Harper stepped down the Conservative Party has needed to elect a new leader, and to do this they have a conference, and they had their conference in the North building of the Toronto Conference Center. Which is where Anime Hell and Anime North's Costume Contest was last year - AN has always had the South building but had recently expanded into the North building. This year we had to contract back a little.

Anyway, the Conservatives failed to let the attending party voters know which building they'd be in. So lots of Conservative voters were showing up to a parking lot full of cosplayers, ravers, photographers, and anime nerds, confused about what was going on and where they needed to be.

The voting polls closed at 4, leaving a lot of frustrated Conservatives unable to cast their ballots, but they didn't take it out on the anime fans, who instead got a lot of confused looks and some honest questions. And yes, there were a few anime fans who were Party members and who cast their votes (some in cosplay) for the least objectionable Tory candidate.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/conservative-members-frustrated-by-voting-difficulties-1.3432284#_gus&_gucid=&_gup=Facebook&_gsc=Wh70HhN

I think my panels went OK; the Hot Tub panel went much better this time than it did at AWA, the Desert Island panel was interesting and fun, and the Chargeman Ken panel was a blast. Stupid Comics wasn't as well attended this year and I don't know if it was the time slot or if the crowd is getting tired of it. Maybe both. Incomplete Cartoon Education went well and I think we're going to bring that back next year and show more things these kids didn't grow up with. Anime Hell went great- the tech was flawless, the crowd was into it and stuck around until 12:45, and even though I spilled Diet Coke onto the laptop during the show, it didn't miss a beat. That's a win for the new age, I guess.

Now we're really tired. We actually left the con on Saturday to come home and feed the cat, and we wound up napping for an hour. We got home this afternoon and took another nap. The older I get, the more these things wipe me out. I don't know how people do convention after convention and keep their energy levels up. Red Bull and disco naps, I guess.

If you're keeping up with Steve Harrison, you might have seen his LJ post this morning.
Before you get all freaked out, I have been informed that he's OK and has been transported to care.

http://tochiro998.livejournal.com/37818.html

Now I feel lousy, because I was this close to making a 911 welfare check call on him last night, and I didn't do it, and I wish I had.

Repeat: in spite of what this LJ link says, he is still with us, thank goodness.

I was supposed to do Stupid Comics last night - I generally do the scanning on Wednesday night and the actual writing of the text pieces on Thursday morning - but I got distracted and didn't get started and that thing just isn't happening this week, sorry. Not happening next week either because of Anime North.

That's what I've been spending my free time on, the Anime North. I'm doing Anime Hell and Hot Tub Anime Club Time Machine and Desert Island Anime with Neil and Stupid Comics with Shain. Neil is doing Totally Lame Anime and Mike Toole is coming and doing Bootleg Korean Anime and Dubs Time Forgot. We'll probably meet Steph. L for dinner Sunday and maybe hit Tilt at some point during the weekend and play pinball.

Speaking of pinball I got interviewed on Tuesday for a potential Now or Vice piece about Anime Hell. Dunno if it'll come out or where it'll appear if it does. The author went to what I think is the first Anime Hell I did up here back in '05 and is working on a history of pinball that sounds like a good read when it comes out.

This weekend is the final staff meeting and hopefully we can get out of the city for five minutes and enjoy some nature. Right now it's really warm outside, finally. Gonna cool off for the weekend but it should be OK for Monday which is a holiday here.

I put in for our vacation, the last week of July which means we miss Con Bravo again, but that's how the family vacation thing happens, my family is more important than some convention. Let my 19 year old self hear that and watch his head explode. We're gonna drive South until we hit whatever beach has been decided upon; it might be south Georgia or it might be Myrtle Beach SC. Either way there's sunburn in our future.

Watched "Guardians Of The Galaxy" and was underwhelmed. Watched "Logan" which I enjoyed more, probably the most out of any of the X-men movies. They can put that whole thing to bed now, I think.

Looking forward to getting the anime con out of the way so I can get back to drawing comics.

can't decide if my ambivalence towards TCAF is due to the show not having anyone I'm particularly interested in seeing, the show being super crowdy, the show having some kind of Image Comics celebration (??), or the show being filled with great cartoonists who are producing great work and me being envious of having the time and the focus to produce great cartooning. Because I don't and I don't, and rather than me wander around and get grumpy about the whole thing, I will keep my dentist appointment on Saturday. Anyway, I still have Anime North stuff to do.

Yesterday: got a haircut. Went to the ophthalmologist. Last weekend it turned out it didn't rain as much as had been predicted, so Saturday we had lunch with Steph and saw her studio space, Sunday we went out and did some walking and got some nature.

In your stupid fandom news department... well, there's a concise explanation here: https://twitter.com/thedreamcreek/status/862492511205380097 but the gist is, AX artist-alley artist says dumb stuff on social media, AX volunteer says dumb stuff about artist that way oversteps volunteer's position at AX, artist is not coming to AX, volunteer is no longer volunteer.

And that's where it intersects with my experience, which is that when you have volunteer staff at fandom conventions you occasionally get volunteers who fail to grasp their position on the Table Of Organization and who fail to understand exactly how much power they have in the organization.

My experience is watching staffers unilaterally appoint themselves guest coordinators, staffers invite people as guests without checking with anyone else connected with the convention, staffers make policy decisions way above their pay grade. Staffers who composed, printed and distributed their own convention flyers and who gave us big, blank looks when we told them that they couldn't do that (actually that staffer now takes public-domain comics he downloads from the internet and sells them in compilations, so there may be an ongoing failure on his part to grasp the subtleties of where his grasping hands end and the rest of the world begins).

I don't know if I've mentioned this recently but I'm super glad I no longer am responsible for dealing with this level of convention staffer. My stress level is a lotttttttt lower.

Stupid Comics up soon today! Stay tuned! It's terrible!

This week's Stupid Comics takes a deep dive into vintage Ontario Hydro safety comics, and for those who don't live in Ontario, "hydro" means "electricity"! Because that's how Ontario rolls!




Stay away from power lines with Mister Kitty's Stupid Comics!

http://misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics531.html

Here's what's happening for the rest of the year for us, with a few updates.

April 29 - Anime North Staff Meeting

April 30 - Toronto Comic Book Show http://www.torontocomicbookshow.com/

May 7 - Ancaster Collectorfest http://www.collectorshows.ca/Shows/TOY_2017-05-07.php

May 13-14 - TCAF http://www.torontocomics.com/
This is downtown and free and we might just drop in!

May 22- Anime North Staff Meeting

May 26-28 - Anime North http://www.animenorth.com/live/
Going to be doing Anime Hell and some panels at this one!

June 4 - Ancaster Collectibles Extravanganza http://www.collectorshows.ca/Shows/TOY_2017-06-04.php

June 9-11 - Anime Next http://www.animenext.org/
There's been some talk about us attending this show... but that was last year, and I haven't heard anything subsequently, so I'm not gonna worry about this one.

June 25 - Toronto Comic Book Show http://www.torontocomicbookshow.com/

June 25 - Ancaster Nostalgia Show http://www.collectorshows.ca/Shows/NOS_2017-06-25.php

July ? - Liberty Village Yard Sale
No date announced yet, but this was a fun neighborhood thing we did last summer and hope to do it again this year.

July 4th? At some point around this time period we will be on vacation and it'll involve Atlanta and a beach, probably.

July 28-30 - Con Bravo http://2016.conbravo.com/
We missed this one last year but we might swing by this year. There's a guy doing a panel about making fun of stuff, and he emailed us about being on it with him, so we just might be on a panel!

August 6 - Toronto Comic Book Show http://www.torontocomicbookshow.com/

August ? - Zine Dream http://zinedream.com/
No date announced yet but our intention is to get a table & sell some zines!

Sept. 24 - Toronto Comic Book Show http://www.torontocomicbookshow.com/

Sept 28 - Oct 1 AWA http://awa-con.com/
Gonna be doing Anime Hell and panels at this one too, obvs

Nov. 26 - Toronto Comic Book Show http://www.torontocomicbookshow.com/

So a while back - like ten years ago - I wrote a Let's Anime blog post about Gatchaman. Yeah, I've been writing that blog for ten years. Whatever. Anyway, I wrote this really generic bare-bones broad-brush sort of piece about Gatchaman, and then I sort of forgot about it until a week ago.

A week ago I got another one of those emails from Google where they tell me that a blog post has been put into 'draft' because of reported DMCA copyright infringement. The Gatchaman post from '07 was that post. Just like I did with the Space Battleship Yamato post, I filed a counter-claim. Google responded by saying, in essence, "we dunno what you're talking about."

I'm fairly certain these DMCA reports are being generated by a 'bot that a service uses to search the internets for URLs that contain the names of properties, properties owned by the corporations that hired the service. You hire the service, tell it the names of the things you own, it activates its DMCA-bot 9000 and that bot scours the Web looking for illegal streaming sites, Megauploads, and other infringements thereof.

So my counter claim being fruitless, I bit the bullet and edited the post. I changed the title so that it no longer contained the words "science ninja team gatchaman" and I took the opportunity to go into the text and fix links, add some more information, throw in some more images, and generally do the kind of maintenance that most older posts tend to need. That's what I like about blogging as opposed to print; blog posts can be repaired, enhanced, and otherwise changed as necessary.

SO, if you want to read about Battle Of The Planets aka Gatchaman aka G-Force aka Eagle Riders, please enjoy!

http://letsanime.blogspot.com/2017/04/your-bird-ninja-update.html

http://atlanta.curbed.com/2017/4/20/15364780/west-end-atlanta-craftsman-bungalow-for-sale

Just a placeholder to remind myself to send the URL to family later. My grandparents had a Craftsman a few blocks from this place that was in the family until the '90s, at which point it was in terrible shape and was sold. We spent a weekend clearing the place out and it was hoarded up, holes in the floor and ceiling, cats coming in and out of the place, neighbors stealing electricity, drug deals happening on the corner, one house on the block getting gentrified and the rest waiting for their chance.

The house in the link, at least the upper floors, really resembles my family's place in layout. However, you can see that it's been remodeled and well kept up. And there's a basement to the linked listing, my family's place did not have a basement that I recall.

I can remember as a young adult thinking how cool it would be to move back into the city and be an urban pioneer. If I was living in Atlanta and was younger and had more handyman expertise, more resources, and more time, maybe I'd do that. But the reality of living in a marginal neighborhood is, well, it's a full time job, leaving no time for things like Japanese cartoon conventions.

Anyway, it's nice to see the neighborhood coming back in a big, nice home, real-estate investment sort of way. Only took, what, fifty years?