AWA 2015 Stupid Video Panel OF DOOM! Report

For most of the year I've been posting my DOOM! lists over at Anime World Order but I'm reminded my login still works here. A full con report will be posted there, but for now:

A record-setting 25,000 people showed up to Anime Weekend Atlanta, and roughly 10% of the convention--that's 2500 people!--went to Friday's Anime Hell in Main Events. Saturday though is "the busy day," with major concert performances, dance events, music video and costume contests, dub premieres, and adults-only programming are all going on concurrently. The con continues to grow, but the purpose of DOOM! remains the same: to offer up an alternative to all that.

DOOM!'s new location this year was in Williams Ballroom E, the perfect "it's one of the biggest rooms but not the biggest room in the place" sized venue for it. If I had any critique of the venue it's that the ballrooms that size really need two projector screens, one on each side. This just had one single screen in the corner, but I anticipated this possibility (it happens often) and kept the subtitled clips to a minimum. I didn't even know where the room was until about an hour beforehand, and while that's normally lighthearted con absentmindedness, this year all it reminded me of was the last correspondence I ever had with Dan Baker: saying I didn't know the time and venue but would let him know. Danno would always whip up a silly flyer image and post a blog update with the location and start time info on my behalf, and needed me to tell him that for him to start. By the time I'd gotten word, he'd passed away. I just couldn't get into the necessary mindset to put together a playlist, but the benefit of running everything off of a computer is that you can put stuff together moments before and/or on the fly. I did more of that than usual this year.

But it all worked out. Despite lots of evening competition vying for the attention of congoers, but 90%-95% of the room was full and stayed that way through to the end when we had to clear out to make room for the debuting 18+ cosplay event. The Surface Pro 2 tablet has officially replaced my bulky laptops of the past, and I had no errors with adapters, tech hookups, files not playing, clips bugging out, crashes, or any of the usual antics. Good thing too, since with everything going on if I had needed a tech guy there would've been very little chance of getting one. Afterwards, one person thanked me for "being the only panelist who didn't have any tech difficulties" (on cue, I then disconnected the audio from the tablet, causing a big ol' eardrum damaging feedback BZZZZZ) and another noted that he'd been attending AWA for 12 years, had never even heard of my panel until now, but would be sure to tell his friends for next year.

But will there BE a next year? It wasn't until Sunday morning that I finally went into the Kennesaw ballroom for the first time the entire convention, and it dawned on me how many people I'd sat and joked with in that very room were now dead or otherwise not present. Hopefully I'll still have people willing to make the trip with me come 2016...

Pre-DOOM!, I showed some short bits: about half of the animated music video "Transfer," the "Deprive" segment of Robot Carnival, and "Prosthetic Moses" (a ghost with tap dancing shoes set to "Moses Supposes" from Singing in the Rain).

As for What Got Shown (this list is not in sequential order):

The Top 5 Viral Pictures of 1911, the entire alley fight from They Live, Sonic the Hedgehog's inability to summarize Dragon Ball Z, praising Sonic the Hedgehog for being a deaf woman, the Nigerian special effects bonanza that is B14 ONE AND TWO, Bill Plympton cartoon on the dangers of setting domesticated pets free in the wild, Black Dynamite's manequin teaching hard lessons to pro wrestlers and MMA fighters in Japanese variety show fashion, the Eagle's Nest Ministries warning us of the dangers of Skeletor and Dungeons & Dragons, the live-action Assassination Classroom, Bounty Hunter Hard in a rather improbable car chase, Tyrone explaining dogecoin, the Sci-Fi Channel's early 1990s ads for adventures in Japanese animation, Baki the Grappler punching an ape in his brain after repeated groin strikes (first question after panel: "what was that one anime with the guy fighting the ape?"), multiple horndog Amuro Ray-centric episodes of Gundam-san, Lupin the Third escaping justice once again thanks to the power of police racism, Ronald McDonald the creepy stalker, Segata Sanshiro's repeated assaults on children who dared to not be playing Sega Saturn, Metal Gear Payback, that Kirstin Dunst "Turning Japanese" music video by McG that I wouldn't dare show at any other convention besides AWA because it has a few shots of cartoon boob I forgot were there, Cooking With Scorpion, the opening scene to "Stone Cold" starring Brian Bosworth, the best bodybuilder fight in Indian cinema, Danger 5 goes super sentai once again, the Buddha's Palm vs the acidic zit dwarf, Metal Gear Raiden: Snake Eraser, Vegeta fights Cup Noodle, Frozen meets The Thing, Inferno Cop versus the FBI, Air Man Will Not Die (by popular demand), Metal Gear Sunrising, using Kirin Litchi to get sempai to notice you, le film de Mutafukaz by Studio 4C, and of course GARBAGE DAY.

Stupid Video Panel OF DOOM! Report, AnimeNEXT 2014

2014 was my first AnimeNEXT, and though I'd been saying I was never too keen on "Panel OF DOOM!" as an adequate descriptor, for 10 years I couldn't think of a better name. Taking a cue from the subtitle I added onto AWA 2013's, I settled on adding "Stupid Video" to the front of it. That way everybody could tell at a glance from the name as printed in the schedule what the panel would be about.

For a first-year panel, I'd say turnout was relatively decent: maybe 60% capacity? Far be it for me to lay any culpability on myself, so I'll give two justifications for that. First, the room had only one projector screen situated in the corner, so seats on the opposite corner were likely to have a hard time seeing the screen. More importantly, it was brought up to me that the Bridgewater hotel in which the panel was taking place was a brand-new addition to the con's layout as of that year. The convention was split up across four buildings, only two of which had an interconnecting pathway. The remaining two hotels required you go outside and walk 5-10 minutes, crossing outdoor streets and bridges, and (on Friday) without any signs in place. Since the new hotel wasn't within line-of-sight to the other buildings, I never would've known that hotel was even part of the convention had I not been told.

I was also a bit concerned that they had panel programming split up across multiple buildings, such that there were three rooms called, for instance, "Panel 1" which was the designation for the room I was in. You just had to know "Bridgewater Panel 1" wasn't the same as "Doubletree Panel 1"...which wasn't easy because the Doubletree had panel rooms ALSO named "Bridgewater." The big sign in front of my panel room said "Panel 4," but it was actually "BW Panel 1." People eventually figured this all out, but my hope for next year is they just give everything a unique number designation, then state which building it's in afterwards.

Oh, but it wouldn't be Hell/DOOM! though without technical difficulties, now would it? In the leading moments to the panel start time, my laptop which has served me in my DOOM! endeavors ever since I stopped running off VHS cassettes decided to finally die for good. It just wouldn't post. I always make a backup of everything onto a flash memory stick for such eventualities...and then it turns out that I packed the WRONG stick in my bag. (Before anyone asks: as is standard for most conventions, panel rooms weren't equipped with DVD players.) Staff/Tech Ops really bailed me out here. Thanks to creative use of a multitool knife as a makeshift screwdriver, I was able to diagnose the problem and figure out "well, if I could just remove the hard drive and connect it to another computer, it'll work." As fate would have it, one of the staffers packed a USB SATA enclosure and my laptop hard drive wasn't THAT ancient (there was momentary concern when it wouldn't fit, but it turns out the drive had a F-to-M adapter on it), so DOOM! started a mere 5 minutes late or so! Well. I guess I'd better start shopping for either a new laptop or a tablet capable of outputting video and running Windows. Kind of a tough expense to justify when literally the only use I have for the things is to run panels at anime conventions, but so it goes. Here's the list of what got run, most all of it items taken from THIS VERY BLOG:

More...

Laundry Day (I'm always concerned to run things seen by millions of people; a few remembered seeing it but 2014 is the year to run Sailor Moon parodies)
Elvis Is Speed Racer (nobody seemed to know about Viva Las Vegas or pick up that the song was from Speed Racer)
Nuigulumar Z Trailer
Kanpai Senshi
Bowser Says the N-Word in Mario Kart 8
Saison Credit Card commercial
Katsuhiro Otomo commercial from 1984
Doraemon Akira style (nobody seemed to know who Doraemon was or what Akira was)
Pepe Deluxe - Salami Fever
Welcome to the NHK - Sato Discovers Internet Porn
Sailor Moon Stars eyedrops commercial
The Women of Robotech
Midori Anzen - Bunen commercial to encourage gaijin to come to Japan, where indoor smoking is permitted
Science Ninja Team Gatchaman - Murder Music (I experiemented with running all the clips in order rather than spacing it out...it didn't go over as well)
Turkey Shoot trailer
Turning Girls episode 2
Sesame Street - Cracks
Cock Puncher trailer
Bushido Man trailer
The Wizard of Speed and Time
My Friend God
Doozy Bots (didn't get too many laughs; I had to explain "those are SD versions of the robots from Mobile Suit Gundam")
Sivaji the Boss
Your Anime Superstore commercial
Superman Never Says Yes to a Cigarette
Yogi Bear Cigarette PSA
Game Launch Rock!
Chuck Norris Missing in Action
Sidekicks (despite not knowing some of those anime bits, lots of people seemed to immediately realize this clip was from Sidekicks)
Gdgd Fairies Season 2 - Pkpk Clones
The Cat - Cat vs Dog fight
20/20 - Nuts for Nintendo with John Stossel
Old Glory Insurance
Japanorama - Cosplay
Ninja III: The Domination - Ninja vs Golfers
The Ninja Squad - Ivan the Red's First Victim (after what happened with Gatchaman, I left it at just the first clip rather than show the rest)
Charge! Men's School episode 4: We Can't Lose to the Foreigners!
Be A Man Samurai School - Somersault Instructions
Look Around You - Slimby and the Special Picture
Domain of Murder - Finale
Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown
Pong?
Sukeban Deka - Breakdance Fight
Monkey vs Robot
Danger 5 Season 1 Trailer
Chargeman Ken - Dynamite in the Brain!

Panel OF DOOM! Report: Genericon 2011

Genericon is a anime/gaming/general geekery college convention in upstate NY that's been run by students/alumni for 24 years. This year, they flew me out as a guest, and DOOM came along for the ride...

(I tried to have the rest of this post be after a cut, but it didn't work because I suck)

Although I was born in Boston and grew up in upstate New York--Rochester, to be precise--I moved to Florida when I was 10 (man, twenty years ago?) and have stayed there ever since. In fact, the only times I've ever been back to my old stomping grounds have been for anime conventions. The East Coast was being assailed by a serious cold front for the entire week prior to the convention, with snowstorms and the like causing numerous flight delays. As such, while I can count the number of times I've seen fallen snow since coming to Florida on one hand, this actually marked the first time since I was a child that I saw actual snowfall. Gotta say: snow's pretty darn awesome...as long as you don't have to shovel it and can retreat into a heated car or building once you start losing feeling in your extremities.

This probably gets old really fast, but I went out of my way to make this happen.

I didn't exactly have any heavy-duty winter gear, but as I predicted it didn't much matter: much like living in Florida, the goal is to minimize your time outdoors such that you're only out there when going in between your car and a building. The college con experience is not one I've had in several years, as the once-deluge of Florida anime conventions have now mostly become "media" cons.

This is not something I'm accustomed to seeing.

One look around revealed a "college life" that I thought only existed in the realm of television and movies; this world of student dormitories with entire floors reserved for the anime enthusiasts [to isolate them...?] was a far cry from my commuter college experience. I felt slightly jealous of it all, doing my best to conceal the fact that I was about 1 to 1.5 decades older than the majority of the attendees. College anime cons have all but vanished from the once-crowded Florida anime landscape (reflecting geek trends, they're all "media" cons now with some anime on the side), and so I must confess: I was ill-prepared for the first Panel OF DOOM! for the year as far as on-site promotion was concerned. Hotel and convention center cons tend to strongly frown upon non-upper level staffers putting up flyers of any sort anywhere, but those rules don't fly in college land. Luckily, the con guide did feature the writeup I supplied them, though I overheard one attendee saying that there was no way they'd go to a "Panel OF DOOM" because "OF DOOM" was such an out-of-date phrase. Perhaps they're right. Over the last...er, eight years?...I've occasionally given consideration to changing the name--giving it a "something Hell" title to match up with the rest of us--but I'm not sure it's necessary. That said, having a panel with "Panel" in the name has always sort of bothered me.

Genericon is held at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the oldest technological university in the United States. The panel room in which I was situated was basically the PERFECT mood setter; a college auditorium-style lecture room outfitted with a thoroughly bizarre mish-mash of 1970s technology and modern day. Overhead transparency projectors, molded plastic chairs that only partially swiveled out, CRT monitors built into the lectern, and weird giant silver balls hanging from the ceiling that for all I knew would arc static electricity lightning at the push of a button sat right alongside a wall of fancy LCD HDTVs that were all disabled for the weekend. I never found that lightning bolt button, but I did find that the CRT monitors were wired up to a closed circuit surveillance system for the room, meant so professors could see when students were sneaking in late or trying to cheat!

The ideal HELL environment? That's the Reverse Thieves up front.

Prior to my requested start time of Saturday at 7 PM--opposite cosplay and the formal ball, which is exactly where I want to be--I did a tech dry run with some of the A/V guys to figure out the systems by which I would have control over lights, video and sound. Everything was all set to go...or so it seemed. Being a small college-run convention subject to high staff turnover each year, there was nothing stopping the various other people using the room between my technical check and panel start from disconnecting every single thing in the room for the sake of connecting their own video setup, speaker system, microphones, and what have you. Nor was there an easy way to track if someone took the room-designated audio equipment to another room and locked them away. So when I got to the room ready to instantly switch over to DOOM...everything was gone. The cables connecting and powering the projector, the microphones, somewhere for me to sit down, you name it.

To their great credit the Genericon staff were able to help me out as fast as anyone could've possibly managed in that scenario, but I still lost about 30 minutes out of my allotted 2 hour block to that. Still, once we got rolling, I found an opportunity to reuse some of the classic standbys that are at this point "played out" on the traditional Hell territories. So this year, I got to bring back some of my dear favorites from years long past such as The Special Picture, Christopher Walken the Prankster, and (who else) Ivan the Red. Although Genericon is more sci-fi/gaming than anime, I've been dead-set on making sure my shows have a substantial amount of anime to them. To this end I've found that Science Ninja Team Gatchaman is one of the best series there is when it comes to pulling wacky 2 minute clip after clip after clip. My recurring theme which began at AWA was "Professor Nambu is a DICK" and that's probably the easiest picture of all to paint. I can't directly gauge the effectiveness of Hell/DOOM at getting people to watch classic anime, but showing people the bit from season 2 of Star Blazers where the Comet Empire kills all the dinosaurs then blows up the planet before noting "and you can see this cartoon for yourself in the video rooms of THIS VERY CONVENTION!" is about as good a sell for Star Blazers as I can think of until the SyFy Channel broadcast kicks off. Experimental Osamu Tezuka shorts, anime beer commercials (Suntory and Murphy's Irish Stout are my go-tos), anime cell phone ads, Black Jack and Dr. House, and the like keep things mostly in the realm of Japanese pop culture.

The Godfrey Ho/Joseph Lai pool is a near limitless source of comedy, but lately I've started to dig deep into the fountain of plenty that is Action International Pictures. AIP is great because virtually none of their catalog of B-grade and below action and sci-fi pictures were ever released on DVD, and because they were an independent get little to no play time on cable. Their most well-known movie is probably Space Mutiny thanks to the MST3K episode, but outside of the Everything is Terrible set, NOBODY knows about these movies. The AIP film I've picked as my go-to for this year's DOOM run is Deadly Prey, another Most Dangerous Game-type tale featuring a lead actor who...well...here's a compilation video courtesy of EiT that actually doesn't scratch the surface. Some enterprising folks have taken it upon themselves to digitally archive all their stuff, but as a good starting point I recommend "That's Action," a feature-length "best-of" compilation they put out in the early 90s.

Between the technical difficulties and the fact that it was a first-time outing for such a panel at the convention, I didn't pack the place to capacity but I got a respectable turnout. They originally had me in the main events room which seats 1400, and as nice as it is to run in the big room, the content of Hell and Hell-type events just aren't an appropriate fit for the 10 AM Sunday timeslot. Fortunately, my change request was granted!

All in all, Genericon was a good way for me to start off 2011's Panels OF DOOM!. I'm not sure if I should look into getting some silly flyers made up for future events. As smartphones become more commonplace I might just be getting more mileage out of using Twitter and hashtags in 2011 when it comes to on-site publicity of panels. That'll be the experiment for this year, I think.

Right now it looks like my next showings will be at Anime Boston as I once again cohost Anime Hell with Mike and Mike! See you then!

I'LL FIND YOU AND I'LL KILL YOU! Panel OF DOOM! Report, AWA 2010

I was concerned I might be out of practice.

With the one-two punch of the shrinking number of anime-specific FL conventions and out-of-state cons either having their own personal HELLs or having no interest in such an event, the Panel OF DOOM!--my solo act take on the Anime HELL experience--hadn't seen the light of day for well over a year. Not since...AWA 2009. But old habits die hard, and so this year's DOOM was almost entirely new clips and held in an all-new venue: the Video Art Track (VAT)! From my vantage point, the place was filled beyond capacity to standing room only from beginning to end. CRITICAL RESULT: HAPPY. Full list of what was shown (sort of in order of appearance):

For the sake of expediency, I'll use one entry for things with multiple clips shown. That way I don't have to write "Gatchaman" quite so many times!

JOHN CENA'S "BAD BAD MAN" MUSIC VIDEO - in memory of Gary Coleman
EMPEROR PALPATINE TALKS GUNDAM AND DBZ WITH MR. PLINKETT
SOUL TRAIN LINE - "Mighty Mighty" by Earth Wind and Fire
PARTY 7 OPENING ANIMATION - from the creators of Redline
KSBY WARNS AMERICA ABOUT PEDOBEAR
ASTRO BOY 1980 - Uran accepts a ride from a old man who wants to put a special unit in her
GATCHAMAN - Galactor's plan to attract 16 year-old girls, sick old man in wheelchair makes friends with little girl, never trust the forest patrol
SUNTORY BEER ADS - featuring Mike the Penguin
CHEERS BEER - Every Good Thing in Life
RED BARON - Science Investigation Detective, the greatest piano ever, 60 second premise recap, crucifixion explosion
IRON KING - Nonstop Action Before Credits, Slapping a Girl, Blowing Up Schools, Fighting Handicapped Monsters
LEGEND OF THE SACRED STONE - puppet wuxia fighting at its best
THE TEN TIGERS OF KWANGTUNG - its exciting finale!
DR. NAMBU FROM SCIENCE NINJA TEAM GATCHAMAN IS A DICK - Whales, Centrifugal Brain Surgery, Lost Shoes, Magma Jesus
TEARS OF THE BLACK TIGER - "fabulous" Thai western
BLACK LAGOON OMAKE - Radical Revy-chan
THE AMAZING RACE - watermelon catapulting
COMBATTLER V - Supermagnetic Yo-Yos, From Conceptualization to Implementation
FIRED! - featuring Brandon Keener, voice of Garrus Vakarian in Mass Effect
BUD ICE PENGUIN - DOOBY DOOBY DOO
PENGUIN MEMORIES - Mike the Penguin...in Vietnam
WOLF'S RAIN - the best walrus fight anime has ever depicted
ALLUDA MAJAKA - Telugu Indian movie where our hero evades capture, rides horse
3DFX COMMERCIAL - canceling science and medical advancement
SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO SEASON 2 - the Comet Empire hates dinosaurs and dinosaur planets
JAPANESE SUSHI RESTAURANT AD
JOJO'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE - car paradox in memory of Satoshi Kon
KOREAN ROBOCOP SELLS FRIED CHICKEN
RAVEN TENGU KABUTO - Iron Horse, Iron Terror
CRAPSHOTS - Using Hokuto Shinken to heal...and failing
DROP BY OSAMU TEZUKA - the most nihilistic cartoon Hayao Miyazaki had ever seen
NIA: NINJA IN ACTION - ninja vs woman with large rock in purse
DORITOS NINJA FORCE
LAWS OF ETERNITY - Happy Science cult heroes engage in philosophical finger pointing duels with Hitler and Nietzsche
JAPANESE MARIO KART DS COMMERCIAL
CRIME PATROL 2: DRUG WARS intro
DOLPH LUNDGREN MAKES UNICORN ON THE COB
JAPANESE FANTA COMMERCIAL - Grape Fun Time
HARD TICKET TO HAWAII by Andy Sidaris - Skateboarder and blow up doll blown up...by rocket launcher
KELLOGG'S COCOA KRISPIES - Snaggletooth uses his chocolate touch and thinks his chocolate thoughts
CHAD VANGAALEN - MOLTEN LIGHT (I'LL FIND YOU AND I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL FIND YOU AND I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL FIND YOU AND I'LL KILL YOU!) - I've held onto this clip for 3 years, waiting for the time to strike
GARBAGE DAY - I tried not running this for a while, but I can't resist
SLIMBY AND THE SPECIAL PICTURE (repeat from DOOM of years ago)
SAM PECKINPAH'S SALAD DAYS

Phew! And to think I brought an entire extra 90 minutes of stuff just in case people were getting bored with what I was showing! Worry not; we'll rock out with Sivaji the Boss next year! Click here for the 2010 lineup of Anime's Craziest Deaths!

AWA 2009 - Anime's Craziest Deaths Title Listing

Crossposted from http://bit.ly/1lAq3l:

Here's a listing of the titles shown at the AWA 2009 edition of the Anime's Craziest Deaths panel. Actually, some of them might not have been shown due to time constraints, but I'll list them anyway. If you want to learn more about these titles, click the links where applicable and it'll take you to the Anime World Order podcast review of the show (where applicable), so please listen! If you liked the panel, be sure to post what you thought about it and request that it come back next year over at the AWA message board!

Akira
Angel Cop (shown last year)
Apocalypse Zero (shown last year)
Baccano! (shown last year)
Baoh
Battle Angel
Battle Royal High School
Black Lagoon
Blood: The Last Vampire
City Hunter
Crystal Triangle
Cyber City Oedo 808
Cybernetics Guardian
Dai Mahou Touge (this is the talking vegetables one)
Dirty Pair (Flight 005 Conspiracy)
Fairy Princess Minky Momo
Fist of the North Star
Genocyber
Getter Robo (original + Shin Getter Robo vs Neo Getter Robo, but oddly enough not the one I linked to, New Getter Robo, despite it being the most gory)
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
Golgo 13 (The Professional)
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
Lupin the Third (Dead or Alive)
Macross: Do You Remember Love?
Mad Bull 34
MD Geist
Mobile Suit Gundam
Riding Bean 
Science Ninja Team Gatchaman
Shigurui: Death Frenzy (from the creator of Apocalypse Zero)
Space Pirate Captain Harlock (SSX)
Space Runaway Ideon
Space Transformers
Sword of the Stranger (review coming soon!)
Vampire Hunter D
Violence Jack (review coming soon!)
Wicked City
X/1999
Zambot 3

If you have any suggestions for crazy deaths you'd like to see included, be sure to head over to www.animeworldorder.com and send them my way! (No hentai titles, please.)

Panel OF DOOM! Report - AWA 2009

The Panel OF DOOM! was reshuffled around a bit this year due to last-minute scheduling changes. Unfortunately, there wasn't much of a way for anyone to ever know this, as the changed time wasn't reflected on anyone's pocket guides and no errata sheets were ever printed (or if they were, they never reflected the change). Additionally, the online mobile guide--a first for this year--was never updated due to technical issues that will be resolved next time, and the schedule in front of the door wasn't initially changed either. I spent much of Friday putting up Danno's flyers (which themselves needed to be altered), and Dave announced the schedule change over the mic before HELL, but the room didn't really fill up until halfway through--7:30 PM--because that was the listed start time on all of the official schedules. At this point, the additional space granted by the use of the Williams Ballroom was greatly appreciated.

This year's panel consisted of one hundred percent new footage not previously shown at AWA. Here's the list, though not necessarily in the order played since everything is mixed on-the-fly:

Pre-DOOM show (clips I ran prior to scheduled start time):

Cosplay Diets: Thin and Happy from MightyNiche
Mom Puts Clothes in the Xbox 360 box
Idol Tenshi Youkoso Youko - with special guest Michael Jackson
Killer7 - Garcian Smith Plays Russian Roulette with Benjamin Keane
The Bartender 2 by Mitch Magee
Tiger on Beat - Chainsaw Fight Finale

Playlist OF DOOM:
East Meets West - obnoxiously edited US-made anime documentary from Appleseed: Ex Machina Special Edition (recurring)
Survive Style 5+ - Tadanobu Asano's Marital Problems (recurring)
Science Ninja Team Gatchaman - Murder Music (the key recurring segment along with EMW and SS5+)
GI JOE - Cold Slither (recurring)
GI JOE Extreme - Opening
Youtube Anime Fan Disgruntled Over Being Rickrolled
Transformers - Thief in the Night (aka "so racist that Casey Kasem quit"; recurring)
Shaun Williams Bail Bonding
Street Fighter Ryu Cosplayer vs Car
Street Fighter: The Movie 1994 (recurring)
Will You Be Here Tomorrow? - work safety video
A Person With Confused Priorities (Skydiving) - Bill Plympton
Baby Police - "Nollywood" Trailer
Redhouse Furniture for White People...and Black People
DDT - Pro Wrestling Cosplayers (Haruhi, Maid, Rei Ayanami, Hatsune Miku, etc)
Ninja in the Dragon's Den "Shaka Ninja" Opening Credits
KRON 1981 - News Report on Reading Newspapers via Computer
Baby Laugh a Lot toy commercial
Yogi Ogi Dogi - the creepy old man farmer / yoga instructor / child molester
Lois Walker's Take Part! - Imagination Market (would probably get a better reaction in Canada since it never aired in the US)
Murphy's Irish Stout - British anime ad from the late 1980s by Hiroyuki Kitakubo and Production IG
Ninja Silent Assassin (recurring)
Torque Pepsi vs Mountain Dew Motorcycle Fight
The Animal Lover - Bill Plympton
Andrew WK giving the weather report on Fox News
Alex Jones Screaming
Alex Jones Screaming and Turning Super Saiyan
Kenshiro's Cat
Kenshiro's Gourmet Race
Kenny vs Spenny Season 5 - Who Is the Better Pro Wrestler (with The Iron Shiek; deemed tremendously offensive by 3 people on the AWA message board)
The Heroic Trio trailer
Legend of the Liquid Sword - Kung Fu Jesus
Andy Richter - Hyundai vs Toyota
MTV Acid Rain PSA - Bill Plympton
Hardee's Hates A-Holes
The Lost Key - Bill Plympton
Speedfit Treadmobile
A Person With Confused Priorities (Train) - Bill Plympton
Chojin Sentai Jetman - Gai's Royal Straight Flush
Kamen Rider Amazon - Decapitation and Dismemberment for Kids (TOKUSATSU HELL HIJACK)
Kamen Rider Ryuuki - Soccer
Crossranger the Sentai Porno (fight footage only!)
Ultraman Go-Kart Racing
Sukeban Deka Breakdancing
Kaiketsu Zubat - "Dear Asuka"
Story From North America - Garrett Davis, Kirsten Lepore ("the spider cartoon")
Keyboard Cat - Child Hit In Face By Steel Folding Chair
Iron Shiek Emergency Hotline
25 Ways to Quit Smoking - Bill Plympton
Barry Manilow - Never Gonna Give You Up, 2008 cover

The panel concluded with Jason Statham giving everyone the finger while on fire. Pretty long playlist, but it's slightly deceptive since most of the non-anime clips were only about a minute long. During the first Kenny vs Spenny clip, the curtain in the back of the room suddenly keeled over entirely and fell down onto the crowd, causing a fairly large panic/disturbance that resulted in my stopping the show for about a minute. Whether this was due to Peelander Z rocking out, offended attendees knocking it over, or--as I like to believe--the power of The Iron Shiek's profanity-laced tirade is unknown to me. As far as I can tell nobody was hurt.

Oxygen Destroyer: The Magazine of Japanese Animation Hell

Long, long ago--why, it's been nearly two days!--Dave Merrill once pointed out "the great thing about Usenet is that every embarrassing, ranty message is preserved forever and ever for our continuing entertainment." Fanzines, APAs, and all that other pesky print stuff make it such that the follies of one's wasted youth may be forever forgotten once the issue vanishes. And that'd just be a shame, wouldn't it! With that in mind, my fellow AWO cohosts Gerald and Clarissa took it upon themselves to begin an Otaku Archive, a scanning project for the preservation of all those con program guides, fanzines, newsletters, posters, badges, and such from the infancy days of US anime fandom before the advent of the World Wide Web. You know, like what Dave's talking about in today's Let's Anime post.

After a year and change the website's still not live due to concerns about "content management systems," but after some prodding from "Battlehork" James by way of the establishment of this Flickr group, it was decided that in the meantime the fruits of their labors thus far could be viewed here. As you can see, each thing scanned is available in multiple sizes ranging from "I can't read this because it's too small" to "I can't read this because it's too big"! Don't worry, there's also "I can read this!" sizes available, which is why special thanks are due to the Archduke of [Anime] Hell Ryan Gavigan for contributing many things, including this beaut:

Yep, before the days of this blog that you're reading RIGHT NOW there was Oxygen Destroyer, so named after the big ol' dry ice bomb used against Godzilla. Put together by a host of luminaries such as Dave Merrill, Matt Murray, and CB Smith of Corn Pone Flicks infamy (say, 2009 is one of them big deal anniversary years!), these guys must have been like, twenty or so at the time. With headlines such as "FIRST NATIONAL ANIME CONVENTION A SMASH!" declaring Project A-Kon a riveting success due to the premiere of The Making of the Star Dipwads, there is no way this should be allowed to fall into the annals of history! Also included is a Star Blazers fanfic, reviews (which despite being written like 20 years ago strikes me as more rad than what I'm writing TODAY), THE TRUTH about conventions, and an ad for the Animeigo release of Riding Bean! Say, that's what the next AWO is about!

And on that note, perhaps nothing for me illustrates "history repeats itself [try and you'll succeed...]" more than Oxygen Destroyer's opening manifesto, which so closely echoes that of both the Anime World Order podcast and Otaku USA Magazine which came on the scene over a decade and change afterwards:

Anime fandom has come a long way from the early days - the modern availability of animation far surpasses the existing documentation. In other words, there's lots of anime but not much knowledge. We are going to try to be something more than just another anime fanzine, full of traced artwork and yet another Z GUNDAM episode guide. The object, very simply, is to publish a magazine that we would want to read.

Despite owning a scanner myself, I have not so much as lifted one finger to aid in this endeavor since I don't have anything anyway. In fact, neither do Gerald and Clarissa because we weren't in anime fandom at the time! So here's my contribution to the cause: much like all those conventions Rob Fenelon staffed back in the day as well as Oxygen Destroyer itself, the success of the Otaku Archive now hinges upon YOU, dear reader, so check out the initial batch of scans (currently unorganized, but once the site goes live there'll be tags and stuff!), get those forgotten relics from out of the attic / garage / closet where they've been buried, head on over to the Anime World Order homepage and send us an email! AND TELL 'EM DARYL SENT YA.

Feel free to direct folks here from message boards, mailing lists, or wherever you think people might be interested. Heck, you could post it on Usenet!

animehell