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(For those interested parties.)

Not concerned with losing any sort of strategy (as if there is much at this point) I may as well put up my English Track Fall 2006 VA Draft Cast...since I should use this LJ for something:

In the spirit of full disclosure (or just because other people are sort of doing it...) I guess I can give my status report on my current "fandom level".

I'm currently collecting three anime series: Hare+Guu, Ninja Nonsense and Fantastic Children. All about two to three volumes from being done. I'll of course grab the FLCL Ultimate Edition in November, but except for one thing, Ergo Proxy, I'll be taking a break from buying any other titles in the foreseeable future and focus a little on catching up on some titles I missed, like snatching that cheap L/R bundle Right Stuf has available.

Non-anime, too. The last Kids in the Hall season comes out next month as well as the fourth Loony Tunes set, and after that there's probably the newly announced Saturday Night Live first season, but movies are pretty much done after Disney's latest Robin Hood release and the Oldboy collector edition, also in November.

That's a big deal. I've never been anywhere near a prodigious buyer of anime and other DVDs, but I've been putting away $100 to $200 a month on it for probably five to six years straight. (Wow, that sounds...weird. Bad, too. But weird.) TV series I don't mind being on the lookout for; but like some others, most movies I'll pretty much be transitioning over to heavy NetFlix use and waiting to see how HD formats shake out. I'm happy about all that. Burn out is part of it, but when it comes down to it long term, as long term stands right now, I can't really afford to keep going as usual.

(And not that I've slackened too much on my first hobby: the graphic novels (manga, you name it) that I enjoy every week.)

One comment, on the subject of burn out. Ninja Nonsense helped. It was nice to find something so uninhibitedly crazy and funny to take my mind off of all the little annoying things in fandom. I remember The Daichis did the same thing for me last year. Fantastic Children, on the dramatic end, also helped to reintroduce some wonder and amazement that had been lacking. They also both have reminded me that I'm not simply becoming one of those dreaded older fans who makes the foolish assumption that nothing good is made anymore.

After all, it's not the art form that generally changes, it's us. If you can accept that, you have a better chance of finding something worthwhile in it again; or if it has to happen, finding a smoother and more forgiving transition out of the hobby. Denying it, however, makes for a very bitter divorce.

...or another good title for a blog.

No, I don't feel superior, not in this particular circumstance. I do however feel somewhat vindicated, but in an empty sort of way.

Lesson of the day: there is a difference, though slight, between voicing an opinion and engendering incitement.

(Yes, I no longer have any new Galaxy Angel to watch so things are back to their normal cynical state.)

Oh, dear.

Never much one for them before, I fear my fervent purchase for this little 4" Komaki Asagiri figurine from Kujibiki Unbalance (the original character design version from Genshiken, not the upcoming TV spin-off) at Anime Vegas has sparked a nascent desire for more little plastic and rubber approximations of two-dimensional fictional Japanese cartoon characters. Maybe it was because I happened to unexpectedly stumble upon the KujiUn figures amidst a sea of Naruto and Bleach merchandise; or maybe it's because, of three little individual figure packages left in the box, the very last one (of two I bought, with the third in-between being graciously purchased by geoduck) was the only one I really wanted, and it seemed, well, destined. (I could have simply bought the whole set of six figures as these !StoryImageFigure! toys are commonly sold. But hey. Oh, and the first figure I bought in Russian Roulette fashion was mushroom-fiend Tokino, by the way, which I certainly can't knock. Guess I should probably get Izumi now.)

I also procured a Takkun the Cat plushy from FLCL, but that one isn't threatening my sanity. Though I really should have tried to have Jennifer Sekiguchi pose with it for a photograph. Ah, well.

It was good to meet geoduck again, and arcitaka for the first time. Good conversation, and thanks again for the driving. The smaller from last year but no less varied array of voice actor and director guests were also very fun, and very funny. I did not this time have the opportunity to gamble with any of them (and in fact I didn't do too much gambling myself anyway--though I did come out ahead with the small funds I allocated for the purpose) but that was also because they seemed this year to disperse much more widely across the strip in an effort to disrupt the VA Scavenger Hunt.

Yes, the Wynn buffet is indeed par excellence.

Aaaaand...coming back from a four day break, online anime fandom continues to suck. But there are no shrieking teenage fangirls (at least not of the audible variety) so I can't complain too much.

So that Wes Montgomery album from last entry? I loaned it to my dad, as I usually do, with the Prine and Mclean as well, but he grabbed the Montgomery liner notes immediately. When he used to live in New York back in the mid-sixties, he used to frequent the Half Note. He couldn't be sure, of course, but he could very well have been at that recording. He'd certainly seen Wes there a time or two. Kind of cool. Some of the people he'd seen in New York at that time were the ones who I was first introduced to in jazz growing up: Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Cannonball Adderly, George Shearing, The Modern Jazz Quartet.

And something completely unrelated... I was looking around You Tube a few days ago, which I hadn't really done before, except for a link here and there that people would point me to. So I did what was natural. Tried to rediscover my childhood. I was an 80s child throughout, so I looked for 321 Contact first (though only the intro is up there). Of course I became sidetracked with cartoons. There had been a thread in the Anime on DVD Off-Topic forum about the Disney 80s cartoon Gummi Bears, the show that kicked off the studio's TV animation resurgence for the next two decades. I thought I must have missed it when I was a kid, but watching the opening I suddenly realized I had watched it, but I couldn't remember much about it. From that time (mid-late 80s) I was more fixated on Voltron, Thundercats, etc. At least until my holy grail of cartoons from my younger days: Tiny Toons.

Not having bought much music lately, I hit Second Spin again a couple times over the last week. One rock, two mid-60s post-Bop, one country, and one collection of art song. If you like any of the other selections you won't necessarily like the "art song" one--I like both artists but its challenging stuff and the jury's still out.


I have decided to collect every John Prine album, of course. Can't believe this is only my first one after hearing him off and on for years. This collection from 1999 with, as Prine says in the notes, his "favorite girl singers" is all classic and sometimes obscure "meetin', cheatin', & retreatin' songs". Good old country with the likes of Iris DeMent, Melba Montgomery and Connie Smith. His more folksy and rockin' music, full of wry humor, is what I'm more familiar with, but I can't help but love this, even though five years ago I probably would have not given it a second listen. (This entry's title comes from the album's title song, in classic Prine style, performed with DeMent.)

I did also pick up William Shatner's brilliant and excellent Has Been last month, by the way.

What else on the music front... I finally watched Princess Tutu Vol. 6 and I can now claim it a semi-success: it finally featured Romeo and Juliet from Serge Prokofiev, but unless I missed some earlier, no Stravinsky! (One might recall I wondered earlier how a show about ballet did not yet have any ballet music from one of its modern masters...) Oh, but the show and dub and whatever else was wonderful, of course.

So Japanese retro blues rock band Samurai Delicatessen will be playing Anime Vegas. (SD manager to band: "Your first gig in the States will be in VEGAS, baby! Oh, did I mention it's a mid-sized anime convention full of teenage otaku who may or may not appreciate your music, not the Bellagio?") Well, they will be in Vegas no matter what.

They sound pretty fun from what I've heard of them. Stripped down throwback blues rock, bit of pop styling, but not too much. I'll check em' out. Question is:

Do I cosplay as John Belushi or not?

The banality of the livejournal tempts me again. Inescapable, it seems.

A few things, as they come:

1.) Despite my gushing appraisal of the Tour de France a couple weeks ago, I'm not going to go into the whole Floyd Landis thing more than what I have in a thread about it on the AoD Off-Topic forum. I'll just wait. Football's started already and baseball's going strong so I'll probably forget about it after awhile anyway. Unfortunate situation all around, though.

2.) Since I finally have Princess Tutu volume 6 in my hands after its year and a half journey (even though I haven't watched it yet) I can drop the reference to its biggest "controversy" (the kind of controversy that deserves cynical quote punctuation) from my AoD signature. Of course, no one ever called me on its slight error all these months. "Duck, Duck, Kari", a reference to the child's game of "duck, duck, goose" with "goose" in Japanese, actually read more accurately as "duck, duck, wild goose". "Duck, Duck, Gachou" would have been more accurate. But after I realized my mistake it had been so long I didn't care much.

Maybe people just had no idea of what it meant in the first place, besides it being part of the Orange Duck Revolution.

3.) Hideyuki Kurata, creator of R.O.D and KamiChi and scribe for Battle Athletes, Now and Then, Here and There and a number of other recent popular shows will be one of two Japanese guests at the upcoming AnimeVegas. No, I will not bring up any of my criticism of KamiChu with him... Didn't know he did composition and screenplay on Akitaro Daichi's NTHT, though. Pretty cool, that might be worth inquiring about.

4.) Josei manga fans who are also dub fans might be few based on response to my Nodame Cantabile fantasy cast thread in AoD's English Track. Of course, the show not having been made yet might have something to do with that.

Speaking of, I think Haruhi is going to go to the one studio that has not been given a cast for the show: Blue Water. Yep. Some will cry, I'm sure, but I'll finally have an excuse to get a BW dub--something I've been eager to do.

5.) As usual, I am unhappy with the Dodgers, adversary of my Rockies all bitter season long. Though I expect LA to deservedly win the very hard-fought NL Western Division.

6.) Bang Zoom! producer Eric P. Sherman lurks in the English Track. Not a surprise, and he’s assuredly not the only so far invisible studio rep out there.

If it wasn't already apparent, there's a very good reason I use the ironic "unmitigated opinion time" title for these posts. I believe 30-40 percent of posts in a common on-line forum are wholly unqualified. Most are harmless, usually for fun or innocent ignorance or desire for inclusion, but more than a few are either sloppy, or worse, deliberate misinterpretations. The latter made according to unspoken, but painfully obvious and therefore pathetic agendas.

Though this is about three days late, I wrote most of it out last night and I may as well not waste it.

Walter Cronkite is still right, of course. The role of the press is not to protect the free speech of the public or even its own. Its role is to guarantee the public's right to know.

This is an annual or sometimes semi-annual ritual: leaving town for a few days without online access. Of course, for this life-long (for me) annual vacation time with my family for various stretches of time, that's the point. Into the mountains, no phone (no cell service without driving out of the valley) no TV. Those exist there of course, plus DSL, in the property owner's house, for instance, but there's no reason to seek the services out. The point being rest and relaxation and other attendant distractions from normal life.

Trips out we'll grab the newspaper every other day or so, or catch a brief recap in a sports bar out to lunch one day. This time that was important for two reasons, and the subject of a follow-up post later. Otherwise it's about not worrying, or, at least, not over-worrying about any of that. (I believe there was a small little border dispute somewhere in the Middle East as well, wasn't there?)

Back to that ritual, though: at least these days, it involves fretting over being disconnected from all this for more than simply a couple of days. But once I return and re-connect, I always wonder, deflated, why I would care so much. And for the first day back or so, even after "catching up" I don't like very much what I am seemingly an inescapable part of. Dependence is a funny condition, and not something inherent on things that make it easy, like certain narcotics or binge-drinking or simple addictive personality genetics; regular consumption of high-sugar or especially high-fat foods can trigger the condition ("cravings" are a big part of the fast food business, after all). Sometimes it ain't so bad: regular cardiovascular exercise for many people is a prime example. Or simply adrenaline--no matter the cause it's all "chemical" dependence, of course, as it hinges on the reactions and interactions of a multitude of chemicals in the brain. And so too is much of this virtual existence, teasing its users with fantastic approximations of otherwise mundane matters, or mundane adventures of fantastic abnormality.

On the other hand this is simply as much life as anything not connected to a fiber-optic backbone, as it weaves more and more into the logic and working of the world. But it's still damn annoying on occasion.

Larissa Wolcott is playing Eimi in ADV's Comic Party Revolution. Good job by director Campbell for using the "Excel Connection". Plus Luci Christian as Mizuki, to me the Texas equivalent of Rachael Lillis, does make this more of a viable purchase.

But now it depends on who Taishi is going to be.

Other news: small mix-up in the May ADR vote. A vote was changed--before the deadline--and we missed it, simple as that. Not a big problem in the least, really. Once we're back to blind voting for the July vote this rough patch of trying to cram three months of Awards into two months of space just to get back on schedule should be behind us.

I'm finally caught up on Oban Star Racers. Missed the first two episodes at first and went ahead and watched the third, but fortunately the first two were repeated a couple weeks ago, so I'm caught up through episode 6, awaiting 7. Have been watching them (rather, recording by DVR) on ToonDisney in their hyper annoying Jetix block. Maybe I'll try the premier slot on ABC Family on Sunday and see if at least the commercial breaks are less annoying.

Oban has cross-age appeal, of course, but it's being targeted to the younger crowd, teens and older children. But did the stuff I watched at that age have this much commercialization and flash and bang, each commercial yelling louder and pulsating brighter than the last in order to grab kids' wavering attentions? Before you answer--yes, actually, it did, I just never noticed it as much at the time. The three commercial breaks a half-hour, however, are annoying as hell, especially when it's during a show only designed for one or two. (Again, thank you, DVR...)

Oban is great, by the way. I love the English dub out of Vancouver by Airwaves. Chiara Zanni is now one of my favorites up there, and she's delightful to listen to. I only heard her previously as the excellent nut-ball Faina in Infinite Ryvius, but here I get to hear her more...positive side, or everything Faina was not, really. If TV premieres were eligible for the ADR Awards I'd vote for her. (Of course, if/when it comes out on DVD it will be eligible if I still have a say in it.) Ron Halder as Don Wei is great, as well. And I love the animation so far, spontaneous and vibrant, with original and oddly fluid design. Only drawback is that generic replaced OP song for the English version.

Can't remember the exchange exactly, but the quote above is Molly talking to Setis (Brian Drummond), the servant of the mysterious race organizer Avatar, when she was feeling dejected and unimportant. Setis says, "You're too young to think that way." And Molly responds accordingly. I love that she acts exactly as you'd expect a 15 year old to act, even down to her relationship with her father.

Even though, to me, I think, my last post has generated good conversation, a favored occupation of mine, the first line looks like I'm beating a quickly dying horse, doesn't it? My apologies. The reappearance for me of a certain poster on AoD resembling a dessert confection and a mythical creature sparked the already formulated responses that followed. I'm always pretty good at ignoring pesky people, but blogs are a dangerous outlet, I've found. Something I'll want to watch for from now on.

But speaking of AoD, the guessing game for ADV's Comic Party Revolution has started in the English Track. And it makes me sad at first. But then watching Slayers: The Motion Picture last night for, I don't know, the fifth or sixth time (this time with the Martinez/Manison/Greenfield commentary which I had wanted to finally get to) I was reminded that I do sometimes like to hear multiple takes on a single character, whether it's Ortiz/Martinez with Lina or Cesario/Marlowe/Stevens with Belldandy. It's sometimes a great and fun opportunity. So I might check the show out eventually, but it's not a priority.

I am however amused by all the choices of Larissa Wolcott for Eimi Ohba. Awesome.

Seriously, CMX haters, get over yourselves.

The word "boycott" should be boycotted when it applies to a luxury. It is soulless sloganeering and lacks any meaning of true sacrifice or an honest attempt to cooperate for a solution.

I also don't like how the word "censorship" is used in reference to what publishers have done or continue to do. Words that loaded and important, like "fascism", should only apply to their worst and most apt examples in today's overloaded information age, in this case: the removal or restriction of material by those in a position of lawful power, i.e., the government. Characterizing the former as being on the same level as the latter dangerously weakens the warning inscribed in its meaning, history and widespread execution throughout the world. But I'm sure I already lost this battle.

In other news, my baseball team limped into the All-Star break out of nowhere, and the AL won the All-Star game, continually proving that people who institute ill thought-out ideas in an effort to deflect criticism of their waning administration should be right out. (And I was referring to Bud Selig and the World Series home field advantage provision--jeez, who'd you think I was talking about?) Back to the game, I just hope Trevor Hoffman can keep collapsing like that when the Rockies play his team the rest of the season...

Random opinion of the day: I just don't like drum solos in jazz. In the thousands of pieces I've heard, barely a handful don't ruin the song almost entirely by wrenching me out of it with an almost egotistical display of random disconnected drumming prowess that often has no connection to even the general rhythm of the song, let alone the melody or anything else--which being drummers they can't do anyway. Want to be in the rhythm section and solo? Play bass. This is one of the points of my rocky relationship with listening to drum great, Art Blakey.

There are, of course, numerous 5-10 second breakdowns that work wonderfully. As for solos I like? One always comes readily to mind. Joe Morello on Take Five from The Dave Brubeck Quartet's famous Time Out album, and other Brubeck/Desmond tunes. But Morello in general with his trademark polyrhythmic style is one of the very, very few drummers who I think "gets it" with a rhythm solo in jazz.

(This also excludes drum solos in rock, which are awesome. See title and go watch Wayne's World.)

Anyway, I hit a local used CD store I often use yesterday, the Denver branch of Second Spin out of California...

I was in the middle of writing a post here late last night about something music related, partly inspired by martialstax's recent post about his jazz philosophy when I accidentally deleted the whole thing. But in the midst of it I realized how little I actually know about most of the music I've always listened to. It was going to talk about how I'm getting back into buying more music now (DVDs and graphic novels supplanted the musical passion for a number of years, but I'm trying to balance things out again), and how I'm in the habit of focusing on a couple artists at a time and collecting most of their catalogues with a half-crazed completionist bent.

Wow. I didn't expect that. Josh Fogg was incredible. 2 hit complete game shut-out. Faced the minimum. Did so in the shortest game in Rockies history. And Safeco history, I believe. I mean, the pitching's done well this year, but this was the best so far.

And with Moyer for the Mariners having a pretty good game himself. Great pitching duel for most of the game.

Ahem, anyway. So much for talking about only on line activities.

I really like CMX. Their sudden and continued appearance on the AoD Manga forums a couple months ago in an official capacity, along with the introduction of an appropriate rating system and other positive production changes show a company that has listened and is willing to adapt and move forward positively.

This, of course, will not do for some.

I have more written, but it was even more weasely than a journal titled "weasel" needed.

The image here is not Scott Pilgrim related, but it is otherwise self-explanatory for this subject. And Yotsuba cures all ills.