Good video: bad news

Welp, it looks like we won't be doing AnimeFest this year, and for that, you can blame my renter who very nearly set my house on fire. Keeping all my worldly possessions from going up in flames kinda occupied my time and I missed the panel submission deadline.

"But you're an AnimeFest  institution!" I hear you say. "Why do you still have to submit for a panel?" That's very sweet of you, kindest aural hallucination I've had this year, but rules are rules and even we have to follow them.

"Can't they make an exception, just for you?" Oh my god but do you know what kind of floodgate that would open? No, they can't. And I don't expect them to. There was a deadline and we missed it. Plain and simple. In happier news, I no longer have a guy in my house who doesn't know the difference between a stegosaurus and a triceratops, or the difference between an on oven and one that's off. These things balance out.

Think of it this way: just imagine all of the awesome stuff I'm going to find for you during this time. I mean, you are going to lose your flippin' minds when you see what I have in store for you. Why, there's so much amazing stuff out there, I haven't even found it yet.

But I will! Next year! Trust me. We'll be OK. I'll keep you posted.

Hell show at AnimeFest

This Saturday, folks! At 11 PM in our usual location (P5--2nd floor, around the corner). The surviving members of AnimeHell Texas will be there with a Hard Gay pose-off, a Camay walk, and lots of new stuff. We've got some timely sing-a-longs and a SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT that may affect YOUR LIFE. If you miss it, you'll just be left wondering....

Animefest, all grown up

You win some, you lose some.

I took a risk on this video and I should have either played it later in the night or not played it at all.

Too quiet,
too slow,
too hard to read
on the back row.

It had pretty much the same effect as the driving scene in Tarkovsky's Solaris. It's a learning experience for us all.

This was really the show I was the most worried about, as Anime Fest is the bigger show of the year, and the oldest audience. Luckily, I had Eileen from PONG along with me, and--like me--when you hit a certain age and weight as a woman, you're free to do pretty much whatever the hell you want.

Our technical issues were pretty much finding a cable long enough. The solution I bought shortly after A-Kon worked very well to join two cables and boost the signal, so we did fine there. It didn't dig much off the audio, so we had a slight hum during the show, but I think it all worked out OK. As per usual, the staff we had for the room were more than helpful and helped move tables around, re-positioned the screen for us, and were all around awesome.

Other from that? What an great show. Came out strong, got hot with some meteors, gamed out with some punks, and we even had some fun with some old ads, including a personal, local favorite. I had no idea electronics ads from the 70s would do so well. It's all stuff Danno and I had talked about, but it was interesting to see it in action.

Besides Eileen stepping up to the plate on this show, I think our real star was Katie. Y'all already know and love Katie, but I think this weekend she did something really special. We've done the Hard Gay pose-off before, but you have to remember that Hard Gay is always trying to make things better for people. It's a big part of why those videos are called "Social Improvement" videos. Katie had our contestants do the pose-off and then asked them, "If you were Hard Gay, how would you make your community better?"

This totally changed the contest.

One guy talked about how he would encourage others to find the Hard Gay inside themselves, one talked about encouraging children, one guy: "Five words: Hard Gay Soup Kitchen, FOOOOOO!" (He won, BTW, and for extra prizes, took two noodle packets.) We had one fellow who--yeah, his dance wasn't all that exciting--but his Hank Hill impersonation was dead on and that made all the difference.

And the audience loved every moment of it. Once I've got the video, I'll get that posted.

We tried similar with the Camay walk of "What soap would you recommend?" but that that didn't hit as well.

Nonetheless, this was the first year we've done this without Danno, and that we still had folk in the audience at 12:45 (show started at 10), I'm going to take as a positive. It was a good learning experience and I want to thank everyone who came to the show and stayed through our rough spots. We know a lot more about what to do and how to do it and I'm pretty confident we'll be giving you guys great shows for many years to come.



Oh yeah, I found my glasses. And the case. I need to let Lost and Found know everything is fine. Sorry I threatened an imaginary kid who had stolen them. I was probably just angry about having wet pants from the sudden thunderstorm. Every con should start with a shower.

Anime Hell at AnimeFEST this Saturday!

via GIPHY

This is it folks. The big one. This Saturday, September 5th, is the 15th year of Anime Hell at Texas. We're celebrating with a Quinceañera, except without the live band and you aren't required to bring a gift. No cake, either. I don't think cake ground in to the carpet would win us any friends with the convention center. So it'll be the usual candy and prizes, with pinatas and maybe a few tiaras.

You're all invited to the party. R.S.V.P. in the comments:

Hard Gay Pose Off at AnimeFEST 2014

Dr. Mila pelts the crowd with candy...and then...

More...

Views from AnimeFest 2014

Video shot by Avery Davies

More...

A strange aside

When we called up the kazoo orchestra last night, I was handing them out: green, yellow, orange (I kept the purple one for myself). One of our orchestra members was dressed as a member of the Green Lantern Cops.

ME: It would be wrong of me to give you a yellow kazoo, wouldn't it?

HER: Probably.

HER BUDDY, IN BATMAN GEAR: I'll take it.

So, one girl got a green kazoo and one got a yellow one. La-de-da.

Anime Fest!

Huzzah! A most excellent show this evening. Kris* played a little pre-show music (don't forget he does a show on Wednesday nights!) and everyone was orderly and well behaved.

First contest is always Hard Gay, usually at the 30-minute mark, but we had to get our kazoo orchestra together (all fifteen of ya) and god bless if they didn't start playing "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (you were paying attention to the pre-show music!). Our winner there was an anime virgin (and for a prize, he took the Barbie book for a friend of his).

Camay walk went well and there were no sprained ankles.

The third contest...well, we just had a lot of swag to get rid of and so we had a Hard Gay\Camay mash-up. Mad props to the kazoos for playing StarWars music during that. Thanks for not making me take all that stuff home.

Best part of the night? Dan's reindeer\Frozen (and all of you singing along). My face still hurts from laughing so hard.

Bonus plus of the night. You guys were AWESOME at picking up after yourselves. I think this was the quickest cleanup evah. I'm still not sure about the reverse chairs, however. Did anyone notice a pattern? It almost felt like crop-circles.

EDIT: I was wrong in a post earlier this year. Our Quinceañera with Anime Fest IS next year. We're planning on a pinata, amongst other things.











*BTW, Kris is where I got my "Hey, you kids, get off my con!" t-shirt. We actually came up with that one while waiting to get into the room at A-Kon a few years back.

AnimeFest 2014

That's right! Anime Hell will be preforming it's 14th year at AnimeFest. This coming Saturday night, August 16th at 11pm. Bring a kazoo (or your own favorite instrument) and join in on the fun.

Anime Fest 2013: We Show Our Panties

Anyway, so, uh...yeah.

We had another fantastic show, like we do every Anime Fest. It's because we have awesome volunteers like Elemkuro and SpamOwO and everyone else we had helping out. Our audio guy was fantastic and, even though we were next to the rave (it's a curse), he kept those levels where they needed to be without too much feedback.

Ah, now, the rave. That's a bit of a thing at the Sheraton. While A-Kon was there, Anime Hell was often put in the room next to it. It's part of why the A-Fest show had more dialog-based material. Luckily, most of our dialog stuff is subtitled, so we're not too put out.

I also want to thank our audience tonight who--even though we threw a couple pinatas' worth of candy at them--were very good about picking up after themselves and helping make sure the room was presentable afterwards. You are the reason we do the show and we can't do it without you.

You sang along with "Pink Elephants" and we're just going to have to do that more often.

Aw, and you chanted "SLIDE" during the Cautious Twins. That makes me so happy.

The kazoos were back! They're just so great. We had the Hard Gay pose-off and the Camay walk and this year, we had actual bars of Camay soap to chuck at people. We even had an audience member come up and bring us several bars so we could throw them.

Oh, and we've got some dedicated fans. One young lady caught a bar while holding a baby in the other arm. I'm sorry, but that deserves a prize.

I might be a little sore tomorrow (later today) from throwing all that gum and blow pops and soap and candy cigarettes, but I've got a tin of White Monkey Holding Peach to see me through it. You should get a tin of the stuff, just so you can dab a little under each nostril at a con.

That's a trick I learned from Silence of the Lambs.



EDIT: By request!

Vote for Anime Hell

We need your votes! Go to the AnimeFEST website and vote for Anime Hell!

Thanks for your support.

Hell Nurse Katie's Shipping Game

Camay Walk-Off at AnimeFEST 2012

Sometime before 11pm we had the first contest of the night...

Sorry about the unfocused shaky cam. It's a new video camera and I guess I need to invest in a tripod. Or home build a steady cam rig.

Anime Fest Twenty-Twelve

Because "two-thousand and twelve" sounds kind dumb to me. I mean, World War One didn't start in nineteen-hundred-fourteen. I mean, it did, but "nineteen-fourteen" is just easier to say and we need to get a naming convention down as soon as possible.

Also, five in the A.M. might not be the best time to post something, but I'm going to do it.

AnimeHELL at AnimeFEST 2012

This Labor Day Weekend!  It's AnimeHELL at AnimeFEST!  We'll be bring lots of candy, prizes and Hell Nurse Katie to Dallas on Sunday, September 2nd! Doors open at 10pm in Panel Room 6! So bring a friend and practice your Camay Walk!

Anime Fest 2011: The Curse Has Been Lifted

A lot of people asked about this piece after the show, so here it is, so you can share with your friends.

Plus, we totally suck for not putting up a post letting everyone know about ANIME HELL at Anime Fest tonight. We were in panel room 6 and you WILL NOT believe what went wrong at the show tonight.

More...

Nothing. Nothing went wrong. At all.

Well, there was one minor hiccup. Dan and Ed came by the house at around five, and we attempted to do sukiyaki. We had decided against the raw egg dip, so it was really pseudosukiyaki, but the entire thing was a disaster anyway, because a fondue pot will never produce the kind of heat you need for that. Keep that in mind if you ever decide to do pseudosukiyaki: no fondue pot. We moved the entire operation into the kitchen, which annoyed the cats, because ONLY CATS EAT IN THE KITCHEN.

Anyway, that pretty much sucked the bad luck out of the night. It's not that it was wrong per se, it just wasn't what I had hoped.

But as we were packing up and getting ready to head out the door, we got a call from the AV staff at A-Fest, letting us know that the room was empty and ready for us to come on down and make sure everything was going to work.

And everything did work. We had the most awesomest AV crew and staff was super-cool about everything, helping getting the stage turned so we could see what was going on, making sure there was a fifth mic for Katie, showing us the light pre-sets so we could get the house-lights up when we needed...

And thank-you, Spam, for getting us water. That really helped a lot. You have no idea. Sorry that kid shoved you during the Hard Gay pose-off and tried to make out with your buddy.

We opened with TV SHOW, which is kind of about what we do here.

Spike Spencer sat in with us for a while (on a dare, I heard) and I hope we did not hurt him too much. You were a good sport, Spike. Thanks for joining in on the madness.

We had a great audience, a great crew, and a great time. Your "Yatta" dance was one of the best I've seen in a long time and you, the audience, are why we do this show.

Dinner at Sushi World was, as always, wonderful.

We did not try to have sukiyaki, however.

Now, before I forget all over again, anyone who was asking about my shirt tonight. It's the Simplicity pattern 3852, and the fabric is similar to this, but on a black background. Someone had asked me before the show and I totally forgot to touch-base with you afterwards.

Also, sorry again to the kid I beaned with the candy cigarettes. Those things are dangerous!

OtakuHELL at AnimeFEST 2010

AnimeFEST post show wrap-up

Thanks to everybody who came to the show Sunday night, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. And Thanks to Bruce, Ed, Mila, Avery, Steven and Katie for the help. I hope we can do it all again at YuleCon.

OtakuHELL at AnimeFEST 2009

OtakuHELL at AnimeFEST 2009 from tohoscope on Vimeo.

animehell

AnimeFEST 2008

animehell