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.
Showing posts with label Panel OF DOOM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Panel OF DOOM. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Monday, June 09, 2014
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.
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:
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.
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!
Monday, August 19, 2013
Panel OF DOOM!, Anime Festival Orlando 2013
It's been entirely too long since I wrote a post here, hasn't it? But as I learned at Anime Festival Orlando 2013, these posts are the only record of the chaos that has ensued to date. It doesn't feel like I've been at this for over 10 years. In fact, it's been more than 10 years. I can't quite remember WHEN or where I started running DOOM!, but AFO would've been one of the earliest places. So, since DOOM! is largely following the lead of Dave's HELL and Dave did his retrospective edition a while back, I figured I'd do the same this time around: mixing up new clips with old "classics" of yesteryear to see how much still held up. Turns out pretty much everything old is new again. Few people continue to attend anime conventions over the course of a decade that AREN'T on staff. More after the cut, including the playlist (that will probably be the baseline for AWA's...)
Yep. Completely empty room, with nobody lined up outside waiting to get in when I arrived 30 minutes early to set up and start rolling. The previous room's occupants left a bunch of freebie American comics for the taking on the table, but a Jim Shooter-relaunched Valiant Comics in 2013 is something you'd be hard pressed to GIVE away. Most of those stayed right there.
"Will they know this room is here?" I thought. "Am I programmed against too many other strong things (Jennifer Hale Q&A, the "Manime" panel, the Angry Gamer, the Nicktoons nostalgia panel, the Toonami nostalgia panel, and the rave)?" I started running the 10-minute opening segment of "Vitamin C: The Motion Picture" amidst this solitude, figuring that at least I still thought this Florida-made spoof of a Hong Kong John Woo blood opera was hilarious. People started trickling in midway through the 15-minute barrage of Robert Tilton repeatedly ripping ones, which lined up with my 10:00 PM start time that Saturday night. They continued to come in over time, such that I think I filled up about 45-50% of the room by the end of it all. Anyway, THE LIST. This isn't quite in the exact order as shown, since some things were split up and others rearranged to ensure there weren't too long stretches without anime/Japan-related stuff in the mix. With any luck what Dave plans to run at Anime Weekend Atlanta is totally different, but I'll adjust to suit if not:
Prince of Tennis Fandub
Gdgd Fairies Season 2 episode 1
Game Launch Rock
Cool Nippon Dream Club
CM - Man moves to Glorious Japan so he can smoke indoors
Hellhound Liner [this wasn't as well received as I'd hoped; crowd accepted its absurd premise with full earnest]
Monkey vs Robot [virtually nobody present had seen this before]
CitiFly...with stretch goals [very well received, though unlike Otakon and soon AWA its creators weren't in the crowd]
Metal Gear Lupin the Third
The "Dark Kitchen" [split up and recurring throughout the night such that the panel ended with its finale; despite being "only" 6 or 7 years ago, nobody present seemed to have ever seen this before]
Why Isn't There More BLOOD In This Children's Pony Cartoon?!
Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown [few seemed to have seen it, but most didn't seem to have any real awareness of what Peanuts was]
I Am a Gamer
Corn Pone Flicks' - A Highly Moral Tale
Attack on Madoka Magica
Superman Never Says Yes to a Cigarette
The Women of Robotech, Doll Commercials
Chuck Norris is Missing In Action
Chuck Norris is Missing in Action - Joe Piscopo Edition
Doozybots [general apathy to Gundam suggested most wouldn't have recognized the designs had I not spoken up]
Sivaji the Boss starring Superstar Rajnikanth
The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins
Your Anime Superstore
Old Glory Insurance
Danger 5
Den Ace
Turning Girls episode 2
The Cat vs The Dog
D.O.G. O.B.G.Y.N.
Silent Night Deadly Night 2 - Gun Rampage [only one or two people remembered what day it was]
Charge! Men's School Episode 4
Slimby and THE SPECIAL PICTURE [either not seen or completely forgotten about by most everyone present]
My Friend God [most laughs were for the commercial and me stealing Mike Toole's joke that "this is a re-enactment of the last hour of Man of Steel"]
The Wizard of Speed and Time
Power Rangers - NO YOU SHUT UP DAD
Monster Camp - World of Warcraft
Future Force - Rocket Punch
Forklift Driver Klaus [nobody present knew about this]
More...
Anime Festival Orlando was held outside from the Wyndham Orlando Resort where it has resided since 2003 (and far, far outgrown since...2007). I feel like I was doing DOOM! there even before the Wyndham move, but life is such a blur at this point. This time around they were at the significantly larger Renaissance Seaworld, located across the street from the amusement park of the same name. It's comparable to the Renaissance...Waverly, actually, that Anime Weekend Atlanta is held in. The hotel was massive, and con signage was a bit limited such that I didn't even realize things were happening on the second floor!
The room they allotted for me was a ballroom that was otherwise dedicated to hosting various game shows throughout the weekend. Decked out with multiple wireless microphones, a mixer with independent controls, and that rare yet welcome luxury of a desktop monitor displaying the projector output on my table, setting everything up was a snap. There were no technical hurdles whatsoever...which is good because tech staff were no doubt busy setting up the rave on the other side of the con. The configuration of AFOs past was effectively a way-too-narrow straight hallway whose sides doubled as a literal Artist's Alley, with doors to the various programming rooms off on the sides. This AFO had the exact same configuration transplanted to a newer location (with thankfully much wider hallways), except for a few rooms that required you go to the courtyard-sized hotel lobby and cross over entirely to access. This ballroom was one such room. Had I not been hosting a panel there, I never would have known it was in use by the convention.
So I'm not going to lie when I say that I had some concerns when this was the picture I snapped with less than 10 minutes to the scheduled start time:
Anime Festival Orlando was held outside from the Wyndham Orlando Resort where it has resided since 2003 (and far, far outgrown since...2007). I feel like I was doing DOOM! there even before the Wyndham move, but life is such a blur at this point. This time around they were at the significantly larger Renaissance Seaworld, located across the street from the amusement park of the same name. It's comparable to the Renaissance...Waverly, actually, that Anime Weekend Atlanta is held in. The hotel was massive, and con signage was a bit limited such that I didn't even realize things were happening on the second floor!
The room they allotted for me was a ballroom that was otherwise dedicated to hosting various game shows throughout the weekend. Decked out with multiple wireless microphones, a mixer with independent controls, and that rare yet welcome luxury of a desktop monitor displaying the projector output on my table, setting everything up was a snap. There were no technical hurdles whatsoever...which is good because tech staff were no doubt busy setting up the rave on the other side of the con. The configuration of AFOs past was effectively a way-too-narrow straight hallway whose sides doubled as a literal Artist's Alley, with doors to the various programming rooms off on the sides. This AFO had the exact same configuration transplanted to a newer location (with thankfully much wider hallways), except for a few rooms that required you go to the courtyard-sized hotel lobby and cross over entirely to access. This ballroom was one such room. Had I not been hosting a panel there, I never would have known it was in use by the convention.
So I'm not going to lie when I say that I had some concerns when this was the picture I snapped with less than 10 minutes to the scheduled start time:
"Will they know this room is here?" I thought. "Am I programmed against too many other strong things (Jennifer Hale Q&A, the "Manime" panel, the Angry Gamer, the Nicktoons nostalgia panel, the Toonami nostalgia panel, and the rave)?" I started running the 10-minute opening segment of "Vitamin C: The Motion Picture" amidst this solitude, figuring that at least I still thought this Florida-made spoof of a Hong Kong John Woo blood opera was hilarious. People started trickling in midway through the 15-minute barrage of Robert Tilton repeatedly ripping ones, which lined up with my 10:00 PM start time that Saturday night. They continued to come in over time, such that I think I filled up about 45-50% of the room by the end of it all. Anyway, THE LIST. This isn't quite in the exact order as shown, since some things were split up and others rearranged to ensure there weren't too long stretches without anime/Japan-related stuff in the mix. With any luck what Dave plans to run at Anime Weekend Atlanta is totally different, but I'll adjust to suit if not:
Prince of Tennis Fandub
Gdgd Fairies Season 2 episode 1
Game Launch Rock
Cool Nippon Dream Club
CM - Man moves to Glorious Japan so he can smoke indoors
Hellhound Liner [this wasn't as well received as I'd hoped; crowd accepted its absurd premise with full earnest]
Monkey vs Robot [virtually nobody present had seen this before]
CitiFly...with stretch goals [very well received, though unlike Otakon and soon AWA its creators weren't in the crowd]
Metal Gear Lupin the Third
The "Dark Kitchen" [split up and recurring throughout the night such that the panel ended with its finale; despite being "only" 6 or 7 years ago, nobody present seemed to have ever seen this before]
Why Isn't There More BLOOD In This Children's Pony Cartoon?!
Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown [few seemed to have seen it, but most didn't seem to have any real awareness of what Peanuts was]
I Am a Gamer
Corn Pone Flicks' - A Highly Moral Tale
Attack on Madoka Magica
Superman Never Says Yes to a Cigarette
The Women of Robotech, Doll Commercials
Chuck Norris is Missing In Action
Chuck Norris is Missing in Action - Joe Piscopo Edition
Doozybots [general apathy to Gundam suggested most wouldn't have recognized the designs had I not spoken up]
Sivaji the Boss starring Superstar Rajnikanth
The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins
Your Anime Superstore
Old Glory Insurance
Danger 5
Den Ace
Turning Girls episode 2
The Cat vs The Dog
D.O.G. O.B.G.Y.N.
Silent Night Deadly Night 2 - Gun Rampage [only one or two people remembered what day it was]
Charge! Men's School Episode 4
Slimby and THE SPECIAL PICTURE [either not seen or completely forgotten about by most everyone present]
My Friend God [most laughs were for the commercial and me stealing Mike Toole's joke that "this is a re-enactment of the last hour of Man of Steel"]
The Wizard of Speed and Time
Power Rangers - NO YOU SHUT UP DAD
Monster Camp - World of Warcraft
Future Force - Rocket Punch
Forklift Driver Klaus [nobody present knew about this]
Friday, September 30, 2011
Anime Weekend Atlanta TONITE!
Start off your evening with Neil Nadelman's TOTALLY LAME ANIME! Starting at 8pm in the Grand Ballroom.
Followed immediately by Dave Merrill's Anime HELL at 10pm!
And if you're still in one piece by Saturday check out Daryl Surat's Panel of Doom! 9pm in the William's Ballroom. Followed by Anime's Craziest Deaths!
So, that's, what, 8 hours of video clip show fun? 8 freakin' hours! Somebody better get some photos of all this...
Followed immediately by Dave Merrill's Anime HELL at 10pm!
And if you're still in one piece by Saturday check out Daryl Surat's Panel of Doom! 9pm in the William's Ballroom. Followed by Anime's Craziest Deaths!
So, that's, what, 8 hours of video clip show fun? 8 freakin' hours! Somebody better get some photos of all this...
Saturday, March 05, 2011
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.
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.
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!
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 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!
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
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!
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!
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, September 14, 2009
DOOM and Death await you Sat. night at AWA!
Saturday night at Anime Weekend Atlanta sure is busy, but if disco or bebop isn't your thing and you've lived through Japanese Anime Hell on Friday then boogie on down till you're SIX FEET UNDERGROUND with me at the Panel OF DOOM! Now simply too large to be contained within the Kennesaw Ballroom, from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM we're taking over one half of the Galleria's Williams Ballroom for two more hours of bizarre clips, pop culture detritus, and NINJA attacks. Also: anime! Who'da guessed?! Featuring the hypnotic murder music of Cold Slither and the Demon 5, this year's Panel is GUARANTEED to offend and/or cause insanity to all who dare attend, much like all the others over the past...man, has it been six years now?!
But wait, there's more! From 10:00 PM to midnight in the same room is the return of Anime's Craziest Deaths, now at twice the length of AWA 2008's! What is this panel about? Read the panel title to find out! What sort of content will it contain? Read the panel title to find out! No ID check will be required, but two hours of graphic cartoon violence and mayhem is probably not suitable for the young'uns, who should be asleep at that hour anyway! The rumors are true; the death panels you've heard about so much on the news and read about on the Internet are REAL, and they'll be pulling the plug not just on Grandma, but EVERYONE! Hopefully this time someone won't pull the fire alarm.
But the far-reaching shadowy grasp of the Anime World Order cannot be contained to one room on one night! Set your sights on the panel rooms throughout the weekend and be on the lookout for Black Jack: Tezuka's Dark Doctor, 30 Years of AIC (roughly 30 years, anyway!), the 18+ History of Hentai on Friday night (right before Hell!), the 18+ Doujinshi 101, and whatever else we decide to jump onto at the last minute!
Oh yeah, we donated almost all the prizes for the Ouran High School Host Club Challenge, too! That was like $2500-$2800 worth of stuff, as in two thousand, five hundred dollars plus (which counts as "over $1000")! RECOGNIZE.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Panel OF DOOM! Report, AWA 2008
I've posted my writeup on the Anime Weekend Atlanta 2008 Panel OF DOOM! proceedings over at the HELLforum. If you want to find out what went right, what went wrong, or what was in the playlist for this year, head on over! If you refuse, you risk being blasted by MELTON RAYS:
animehell
animehell
Monday, May 19, 2008
Panel OF DOOM! Report, JACON 2008
This weekend was a double (possibly triple now that ACen has a Tokusatsu Hell) dose of Hell between JACON and Anime Central, so I figure I'll get mine out of the way first.
This was one of those times where you try and plan stuff in advance and it almost all goes out the window due to circumstances beyond your control. I guess this sort of thing is what con staffers go through on a regular occasion. As JACON was being held in a new location this year, the Ramada Orlando Celebration Hotel & Convention Center, I honestly had no idea what to expect, but an early warning sign was that the hotel would not let me post any of the flyers Danno designed anywhere.
The panel rooms and video rooms at JACON this year were TINY. I'd say there were about 50 seats. In previous years I estimate I'd fill about 30-40% of JACON's Main Events, which is a bit too large a room, so there definitely wasn't going to be enough room for everyone. The con staffers were very understanding of this, and the A/V accommodations were just what I needed so I had no need to go to the con gripe session.
But since the panel rooms were all in the same building and the panels opposite mine on the schedule was the hentai showing and Steve Bennett's party, my panel was now 18+ only. The downside to this was that my panel started about 45 minutes late since everybody had to be carded and there was one line regardless of which event you were attending. The upside was that I was able to run clips from UK Channel 4's Brass Eye by Christopher Morris, which with its copious amounts of nudity, profanity, and jokes about sex/drugs/religion/pedophilia is not something I generally show at AWA.
Other than that, the actual panel itself went off fine. I opened up with the Studio 4C animated music video for Koda Kumi's Twinkle (released a few years back as part of an anthology entitled Amazing Nuts!), before getting into the dark, dark, heart of matters. Lots of Speed Racer clips in wake of the live-action movie (which was awesome), though I spared the crowd from the currently-running Speed Racer: The Next Generation after subjecting them to The New Adventures of Speed Racer. Also present was a sizeable amount of kooky religious stuff, such as that Mormon animated propaganda video and Somebody Goofed. These clips are still funny ten years after I saw Dave use them. Between those, Brass Eye, Green Porno by Isabella Rosselini (Bee is my favorite), Silver Dragon Ninja (another Godfrey Ho NINJA epic), Golgo 13 selling Intel Core Duo laptops, and Jean-Claude Van Damme punching a snake in the face I'd say that those 50 or so people in attendance really wanted to be there. I chucked some DVDs and manga into the crowd since I had a huge box of stuff but quickly gave up once I realized that regular DVDs are just as aerodynamically likely to put someone's eye out as thinpacks. Wrapped everything up at 2 AM to make up for the lost time, and while I could have gone until 3 AM (the time everyone would get kicked out the building) if I started reusing old clips I decided I'd better try and get some sleep instead.
Big thanks to the JACON staff for doing what they could in a not quite optimal hotel room setup. All the technical stuff worked perfectly and without a hitch; I didn't even need to supply cables. If they don't switch hotels next year (and I'm kinda hoping they do), maybe the size of Main Events could be reduced to make room for one or two more larger event rooms.
animehell
This was one of those times where you try and plan stuff in advance and it almost all goes out the window due to circumstances beyond your control. I guess this sort of thing is what con staffers go through on a regular occasion. As JACON was being held in a new location this year, the Ramada Orlando Celebration Hotel & Convention Center, I honestly had no idea what to expect, but an early warning sign was that the hotel would not let me post any of the flyers Danno designed anywhere.
The panel rooms and video rooms at JACON this year were TINY. I'd say there were about 50 seats. In previous years I estimate I'd fill about 30-40% of JACON's Main Events, which is a bit too large a room, so there definitely wasn't going to be enough room for everyone. The con staffers were very understanding of this, and the A/V accommodations were just what I needed so I had no need to go to the con gripe session.
But since the panel rooms were all in the same building and the panels opposite mine on the schedule was the hentai showing and Steve Bennett's party, my panel was now 18+ only. The downside to this was that my panel started about 45 minutes late since everybody had to be carded and there was one line regardless of which event you were attending. The upside was that I was able to run clips from UK Channel 4's Brass Eye by Christopher Morris, which with its copious amounts of nudity, profanity, and jokes about sex/drugs/religion/pedophilia is not something I generally show at AWA.
Other than that, the actual panel itself went off fine. I opened up with the Studio 4C animated music video for Koda Kumi's Twinkle (released a few years back as part of an anthology entitled Amazing Nuts!), before getting into the dark, dark, heart of matters. Lots of Speed Racer clips in wake of the live-action movie (which was awesome), though I spared the crowd from the currently-running Speed Racer: The Next Generation after subjecting them to The New Adventures of Speed Racer. Also present was a sizeable amount of kooky religious stuff, such as that Mormon animated propaganda video and Somebody Goofed. These clips are still funny ten years after I saw Dave use them. Between those, Brass Eye, Green Porno by Isabella Rosselini (Bee is my favorite), Silver Dragon Ninja (another Godfrey Ho NINJA epic), Golgo 13 selling Intel Core Duo laptops, and Jean-Claude Van Damme punching a snake in the face I'd say that those 50 or so people in attendance really wanted to be there. I chucked some DVDs and manga into the crowd since I had a huge box of stuff but quickly gave up once I realized that regular DVDs are just as aerodynamically likely to put someone's eye out as thinpacks. Wrapped everything up at 2 AM to make up for the lost time, and while I could have gone until 3 AM (the time everyone would get kicked out the building) if I started reusing old clips I decided I'd better try and get some sleep instead.
Big thanks to the JACON staff for doing what they could in a not quite optimal hotel room setup. All the technical stuff worked perfectly and without a hitch; I didn't even need to supply cables. If they don't switch hotels next year (and I'm kinda hoping they do), maybe the size of Main Events could be reduced to make room for one or two more larger event rooms.
animehell
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Witness your DOOM at JACON 2008
Although my posts here seem to have dwindled to about two a year (that's two more than I've managed to put in at Psychommu Gaijin!), you can rest assured that I've been reading every post. This year, the Panel OF DOOM! is back at JACON, only this year I'm getting back to my counter-programming roots! This Saturday night in Pelican C, at the official "You Should Be Drinking" time of 11 PM, I'm going the distance (for two hours anyway) and going for SPEED...Racer, that is!
Having placed myself opposite the Hentai Hoedown, Steve Bennett's party, the Royal Flush Casino, the nerd prom/rave, and other exciting celestial phenomena, all pretense of crowd pleasing is going OUT THE DOOR! The pain mobile is shifting into overdrive as it's two hours of psycho Christian propaganda, Speed Racer parodies, helicopter explosions, ninjas, Charles Bronson, Isabella Rosselini getting it on with the insect kingdom, and more! If you're there, you're doomed! You hear me? DOOMED!
animehell
Monday, September 24, 2007
Panel OF DOOM Report: AWA 2007
This year's AWA was the first time I ever missed Totally Lame Anime and Anime Hell save for about 15 minutes from each of them. I'm kind of down on that, but it was nice to see that (from what I'd seen) the execution has become slightly closer to my approach. The laptop dualview setup works great as a modern-day replacement for the trusty multiple VCR setup since I can still add to, remove from, and rearrange things on the fly as clips are playing without anyone seeing what's going on, with the highly important benefit of not having to carry around a giant box of tapes. Plus, I don't have to navigate through menus or swap things out, so it makes everything more rapid-fire.
Last year, I didn't bring the proper cable so the entire panel was in black and white due to my stubborn insistence of not using the VGA computer cable on account of having had bad luck with it in the past. This year, I had the proper S-Video to composite adapter, but compared to VGA it looked a bit blurry. Maybe it was the projector itself, which seemed to be set up such that the color red would just bleed a whole lot. Provided that the laptop is the only input device in use and I'm not switching to another VCR or DVD player, perhaps I should consider giving the VGA cable another shot.
Not that any of that boring tech stuff mattered since this was the BEST PANEL OF DOOM! EVER. Following a well-known expose regarding the threat of the Internet terrorist group "Anonymous" blowing up school buses, the proceedings kicked off with a Japanese commercial for Mandom (cologne?) featuring Charles Bronson prancing around shirtless. And firing pistols. I know a thing or two about firing pistols, but this year marked the debut of the Clown Submachinegun:
A full playlist will be posted somewhere soon, but for now, the part that everyone is waiting for:
GARBAGE DAY!
animehell
Last year, I didn't bring the proper cable so the entire panel was in black and white due to my stubborn insistence of not using the VGA computer cable on account of having had bad luck with it in the past. This year, I had the proper S-Video to composite adapter, but compared to VGA it looked a bit blurry. Maybe it was the projector itself, which seemed to be set up such that the color red would just bleed a whole lot. Provided that the laptop is the only input device in use and I'm not switching to another VCR or DVD player, perhaps I should consider giving the VGA cable another shot.
Not that any of that boring tech stuff mattered since this was the BEST PANEL OF DOOM! EVER. Following a well-known expose regarding the threat of the Internet terrorist group "Anonymous" blowing up school buses, the proceedings kicked off with a Japanese commercial for Mandom (cologne?) featuring Charles Bronson prancing around shirtless. And firing pistols. I know a thing or two about firing pistols, but this year marked the debut of the Clown Submachinegun:
A full playlist will be posted somewhere soon, but for now, the part that everyone is waiting for:
GARBAGE DAY!
animehell
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Panel OF DOOM Report: JACON 2007
I've procrastinated on this for long enough. The JACON Panel OF DOOM kicked off at 10:30 PM in the Main Events room on Friday. It's actually the exact same place as the Sheraton, only they got bought out and the name changed. As I mentioned in the original announcement, the new hotel staff wasn't too keen on this whole "anime con" thing, and so doing things like taping up flyers was out of the question. On top of that, I was scheduled opposite the Yaoi PJ Party and right after the flagship event of Friday night, the Wasabi Animusical. A big event like that expends a lot of energy from the crowd, and so I was kind of hesitant about how my turnout would be, especially considering the popularity of the yaoi stuff at JACON (and every other con). On top of all that, it was opening night for Spider-Man 3. So how'd things go?
To my surprise, it was better than last year! I'm not going to say that I filled up the room or anything, but there were more people than last time:
While it's true that I asked for the smaller room, having the extra space came in handy. I ran the panel off of a HP Pavilion 2210, which I purchased specifically for use at anime con panels. As lame as that may sound, without it I'd have no Internet connection to be writing this report up! Equipped with a DVD drive and support for DualView video output, I could output the videos to the projector screen while keeping the playlist, controls, and such visible only to me on my monitor. This allowed me to move things around, cue things up, and switch over to other clips as needed.
Once I started, I pretty much just kept going without much regard for the time. The tech staff--who gave me setup time to prepare in advance and ensured everything was running according to plan, so kudos to them--came in and asked me to wrap things up at 1:00 AM, which is when I realized it was 1:00 AM and I had officially missed out on going to all the important afterparties, thus missing out the best time to secure silly podcast promos from the guests and such. D'oh! Still, this was the highlight of the night:
To see a full listing of what got shown, as well as an explanation regarding WTF is going on in that video, click here. I recorded the audio for most of the entire show, but it started a few minutes late and then the battery on my recorder died with about 15 minutes to spare. Did anyone other than Danno care enough to listen to the one I did for last year's panel? If not, I'll probably just send the file to him directly. Next Panel OF DOOM probably won't be until Anime Weekend Atlanta in four months. That time I won't have the benefit of having a full week where I don't have to go to work, so I'd better work that one further in advance.
animehell
To my surprise, it was better than last year! I'm not going to say that I filled up the room or anything, but there were more people than last time:
While it's true that I asked for the smaller room, having the extra space came in handy. I ran the panel off of a HP Pavilion 2210, which I purchased specifically for use at anime con panels. As lame as that may sound, without it I'd have no Internet connection to be writing this report up! Equipped with a DVD drive and support for DualView video output, I could output the videos to the projector screen while keeping the playlist, controls, and such visible only to me on my monitor. This allowed me to move things around, cue things up, and switch over to other clips as needed.Once I started, I pretty much just kept going without much regard for the time. The tech staff--who gave me setup time to prepare in advance and ensured everything was running according to plan, so kudos to them--came in and asked me to wrap things up at 1:00 AM, which is when I realized it was 1:00 AM and I had officially missed out on going to all the important afterparties, thus missing out the best time to secure silly podcast promos from the guests and such. D'oh! Still, this was the highlight of the night:
To see a full listing of what got shown, as well as an explanation regarding WTF is going on in that video, click here. I recorded the audio for most of the entire show, but it started a few minutes late and then the battery on my recorder died with about 15 minutes to spare. Did anyone other than Danno care enough to listen to the one I did for last year's panel? If not, I'll probably just send the file to him directly. Next Panel OF DOOM probably won't be until Anime Weekend Atlanta in four months. That time I won't have the benefit of having a full week where I don't have to go to work, so I'd better work that one further in advance.
animehell
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Panel OF DOOM: JACON 2007
It was true the last time I posted here, and it's more true now: I haven't really been posting much, have I? Between AWO, Otaku USA, and the fact that I've got to see about purchasing a home and moving within the next week, the fact that JACON is this weekend sort of crept up on me. Actually, I had been telling myself "I'd better put that panel together soon" for the past month, but kept being set back by things such as laziness and getting awful food poisoning. Mostly laziness, though.
In any case, I'm set to go in Main Events on Friday night at 10:30 PM until whenever I feel like shutting the party down, same as last year. I actually requested the smaller panel room on Saturday night opposite cosplay since the whole reason for my doing the panels was to have SOMETHING to do instead of going to cosplay events, but I am now officially the alternative to the Yaoi PJ Party. Which, if you ask me, is what oughta be in Main Events room with the amount of people that are going to turn up for that, but apparently that requires hours of setup time.
As I perform a mad juggling act of writing articles, working out real estate offers, and assembling panel footage, I find myself experience a mild crisis of faith. Certainly, the last thing I want my little corner of Hell to become is an exhibition of Youtube clips and nothing but, but at the same time, there's not a whole lot that ISN'T on Youtube these days. But even if my panel were just say, clips of The Colors of Pomegranates by Sergei Parajanov, that still wouldn't matter. Nowadays, if you want to see some goofy clips, well then by golly you can see yourself some goofy clips RIGHT THIS INSTANT. And with the spirit of Hell being "see goofy clips with a big group of folks!" and all, it's becoming tougher to get that group of folks together.
I think it's just that Florida anime fandom is crazy. The Hell-style clip show events have been a Friday night main events staple at JACON since nearly its inception, but it's never packed the place even when it's been the only event on the schedule at the time. And now that it's up against the most cartoon mansexingest cartoon mansexathon in the state? Why, it's almost enough to make a guy want to call it quits...
ALMOST. No way did I buy a laptop for the sake of having one to use at anime cons just so I could NOT use it at anime cons! In lieu of flyers, I was going to place a large rasterization of the following image up on the walls for a few hours prior, but apparently the hotel staff won't allow anything to be posted anywhere this year, so this is it as far as spreading the word goes:
animehell
In any case, I'm set to go in Main Events on Friday night at 10:30 PM until whenever I feel like shutting the party down, same as last year. I actually requested the smaller panel room on Saturday night opposite cosplay since the whole reason for my doing the panels was to have SOMETHING to do instead of going to cosplay events, but I am now officially the alternative to the Yaoi PJ Party. Which, if you ask me, is what oughta be in Main Events room with the amount of people that are going to turn up for that, but apparently that requires hours of setup time.
As I perform a mad juggling act of writing articles, working out real estate offers, and assembling panel footage, I find myself experience a mild crisis of faith. Certainly, the last thing I want my little corner of Hell to become is an exhibition of Youtube clips and nothing but, but at the same time, there's not a whole lot that ISN'T on Youtube these days. But even if my panel were just say, clips of The Colors of Pomegranates by Sergei Parajanov, that still wouldn't matter. Nowadays, if you want to see some goofy clips, well then by golly you can see yourself some goofy clips RIGHT THIS INSTANT. And with the spirit of Hell being "see goofy clips with a big group of folks!" and all, it's becoming tougher to get that group of folks together.
I think it's just that Florida anime fandom is crazy. The Hell-style clip show events have been a Friday night main events staple at JACON since nearly its inception, but it's never packed the place even when it's been the only event on the schedule at the time. And now that it's up against the most cartoon mansexingest cartoon mansexathon in the state? Why, it's almost enough to make a guy want to call it quits...
ALMOST. No way did I buy a laptop for the sake of having one to use at anime cons just so I could NOT use it at anime cons! In lieu of flyers, I was going to place a large rasterization of the following image up on the walls for a few hours prior, but apparently the hotel staff won't allow anything to be posted anywhere this year, so this is it as far as spreading the word goes:
animehell
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Panel OF DOOM report at AWA 2006
I'll admit it: I've become rather negligent when it comes to making posts on the Hell blog since the podcast eats up my free time. Anyway, the short version: despite some technical problems, one of which couldn't be fixed and would have been a dealbreaker had it happened in front of another crowd, the Panel OF DOOM at Anime Weekend Atlanta went quite well indeed. The long version follows.
Due to time constraints brought on by excessive procrastination, the original plan was to run something nearly identical to the JACON panel with only minor alterations, so I didn't record the proceedings and opted to give the recorder to my AWO cohost Gerald so that he could do an interview. Then I decided to make sure that the panel was at least 25% actual ANIME for once, so I loaded it up with Ippatsu Kikimusume (aka Miss Critical Moment), some of Osamu Tezuka's short animated works such as Memory, Ziv International's Captain Future, Voltes V dubbed in English by Filipinos, Superbook, and Saban's masterpiece, Macron 1. After adding in that and some other things, the panel ended up being about 50% different from the last one after all, which is the mix I generally try to go for.
After filling up the A/V panels room well past capacity last year, AWA went ahead and put me in the much larger Kennesaw ballroom, which was where Totally Lame Anime was the year before. One post on another message board describes Kennesaw as "the redheaded stepchild of panel rooms," but I wasn't seeing that at all. On top of the size and location of the room, it already had speakers, a projector, a microphone, a DVD player, a VCR (!), remotes for all that stuff, a mixer board with everything labeled with tape (Mic Volume, Computer Volume, etc), plus all the necessary cables and connections for me to just connect my computer up and be ready to go. Short of having little security monitors for previewing footage (which I've never had except for when I bring my own TV), that is absolutely as good as it gets. On top of that, I was scheduled from 7 PM - 9 PM instead of 9 PM - whenever, which meant that I'd be able to actually put in more than just a brief cameo at the after hours parties. No complaints here.
Of course, the panel still started about 10 minutes late even though I arrived 15 minutes early to set up. Prior to my panel, the room was being occupied by the Risembool Rangers, which is Vic Mignogna's fan club. If you haven't been to a con in a while, there are LOTS AND LOTS of people who come to cons to see Vic, and once his panel was over, a huge mob of people stormed the front of the room to get autographs, which incidentally is also what happened right before Totally Lame Anime (because the FMA Movie was shown in there). During the chaos, the speaker cables became disconnected, meaning I had no sound at all and couldn't tell where the disconnect occurred. After everyone who wanted autographs made their way out of the room and the sound was fixed, I was ready to go.
There was however, a problem. Most anime conventions do not have S-Video inputs for things like DVD players, VCRs, computers, and such. Composite video equipment is much cheaper and easier to come by. Laptop TV outputs are all S-Video, so to output composite you need an adapter.
I lost mine.
So I borrowed Gerald's laptop. He's got a Dell laptop, I got a Dell laptop, it should work fine, right? Bzzzt. The pin layouts must have been different, because everything coming out of the laptop was in black and white. I switched over to the backup DVD and tape footage I had brought with me while trying to see if I could fix things, but eventually I just gave up and thanked my lucky stars that everyone didn't just leave because of the lack of color. In fact, at least one person thought the black and white made things sillier. Looking back, perhaps I could have circumvented this by just using the VGA output from the laptop into the projector, but it would have required an extremely long VGA cable that I certainly didn't have and didn't expect AWA to have. Even if they DID have one, I wouldn't have been able to instantly switch back and forth between the computer, DVD player, and VCR using a setup like that. I'd be stuck with the laptop playlist, and what kind of panel would it be if I was only running things off the playlist and nothing else?
Overall, things went well. The "Dark Kitchen" segments of Kamen Rider Kabuto, which was added in at the last minute since the clips were taken from very recent episodes, was probably the best received of the recurring bits along with Miss Critical Moment. I did have to cut down on the amount of Ninja Squad since without color, you can't really tell just how menacing Ivan the Red and Master Gordon are in their NINJA outfits, though. No idea what the motif of next year's panels are going to be, but I guess I've got until May to figure that one out since that's when JACON 2007 is. I think the panel right now is much too big to fit into an ordinary panel room, but not quite big enough to completely fill up a Main Events room. I'm not sure whether I should stick with the late Friday night in the Main Events room timeslot at JACON like I did this year or whether I should request the VAT (their AMV room) on Saturday night opposite the cosplay/dance, as is my traditional timeslot. After all, I started doing these deals so I would have something to do on Saturday evening!
I'll try and post a playlist over in the HELLforum, but I wasn't keeping track of everything this time and there's no recording for me to listen to this time. I might forget some things.
animehell
Due to time constraints brought on by excessive procrastination, the original plan was to run something nearly identical to the JACON panel with only minor alterations, so I didn't record the proceedings and opted to give the recorder to my AWO cohost Gerald so that he could do an interview. Then I decided to make sure that the panel was at least 25% actual ANIME for once, so I loaded it up with Ippatsu Kikimusume (aka Miss Critical Moment), some of Osamu Tezuka's short animated works such as Memory, Ziv International's Captain Future, Voltes V dubbed in English by Filipinos, Superbook, and Saban's masterpiece, Macron 1. After adding in that and some other things, the panel ended up being about 50% different from the last one after all, which is the mix I generally try to go for.
After filling up the A/V panels room well past capacity last year, AWA went ahead and put me in the much larger Kennesaw ballroom, which was where Totally Lame Anime was the year before. One post on another message board describes Kennesaw as "the redheaded stepchild of panel rooms," but I wasn't seeing that at all. On top of the size and location of the room, it already had speakers, a projector, a microphone, a DVD player, a VCR (!), remotes for all that stuff, a mixer board with everything labeled with tape (Mic Volume, Computer Volume, etc), plus all the necessary cables and connections for me to just connect my computer up and be ready to go. Short of having little security monitors for previewing footage (which I've never had except for when I bring my own TV), that is absolutely as good as it gets. On top of that, I was scheduled from 7 PM - 9 PM instead of 9 PM - whenever, which meant that I'd be able to actually put in more than just a brief cameo at the after hours parties. No complaints here.
Of course, the panel still started about 10 minutes late even though I arrived 15 minutes early to set up. Prior to my panel, the room was being occupied by the Risembool Rangers, which is Vic Mignogna's fan club. If you haven't been to a con in a while, there are LOTS AND LOTS of people who come to cons to see Vic, and once his panel was over, a huge mob of people stormed the front of the room to get autographs, which incidentally is also what happened right before Totally Lame Anime (because the FMA Movie was shown in there). During the chaos, the speaker cables became disconnected, meaning I had no sound at all and couldn't tell where the disconnect occurred. After everyone who wanted autographs made their way out of the room and the sound was fixed, I was ready to go.
There was however, a problem. Most anime conventions do not have S-Video inputs for things like DVD players, VCRs, computers, and such. Composite video equipment is much cheaper and easier to come by. Laptop TV outputs are all S-Video, so to output composite you need an adapter.
I lost mine.
So I borrowed Gerald's laptop. He's got a Dell laptop, I got a Dell laptop, it should work fine, right? Bzzzt. The pin layouts must have been different, because everything coming out of the laptop was in black and white. I switched over to the backup DVD and tape footage I had brought with me while trying to see if I could fix things, but eventually I just gave up and thanked my lucky stars that everyone didn't just leave because of the lack of color. In fact, at least one person thought the black and white made things sillier. Looking back, perhaps I could have circumvented this by just using the VGA output from the laptop into the projector, but it would have required an extremely long VGA cable that I certainly didn't have and didn't expect AWA to have. Even if they DID have one, I wouldn't have been able to instantly switch back and forth between the computer, DVD player, and VCR using a setup like that. I'd be stuck with the laptop playlist, and what kind of panel would it be if I was only running things off the playlist and nothing else?
Overall, things went well. The "Dark Kitchen" segments of Kamen Rider Kabuto, which was added in at the last minute since the clips were taken from very recent episodes, was probably the best received of the recurring bits along with Miss Critical Moment. I did have to cut down on the amount of Ninja Squad since without color, you can't really tell just how menacing Ivan the Red and Master Gordon are in their NINJA outfits, though. No idea what the motif of next year's panels are going to be, but I guess I've got until May to figure that one out since that's when JACON 2007 is. I think the panel right now is much too big to fit into an ordinary panel room, but not quite big enough to completely fill up a Main Events room. I'm not sure whether I should stick with the late Friday night in the Main Events room timeslot at JACON like I did this year or whether I should request the VAT (their AMV room) on Saturday night opposite the cosplay/dance, as is my traditional timeslot. After all, I started doing these deals so I would have something to do on Saturday evening!
I'll try and post a playlist over in the HELLforum, but I wasn't keeping track of everything this time and there's no recording for me to listen to this time. I might forget some things.
animehell
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Panel OF DOOM Jacon 2006: The Audio!
Now, many may wonder "why post the audio to a panel that's so heavily dependent on what is being seen on the screen? The answer has something to do with the spirit of Hell residing not upon the projected images, but the crowd in attendance. It's always interesting to find out what gets laughs where, and since the audio on this one is (mostly) intelligible, I figured I'd toss this up. Why, if you play the audio, close your eyes, and think of ninjas, it's almost just like being there in person! Stare now, at the legions of DOOM (minus the face paint and spiked shoulder pads)!
Download Part One HERE
Download Part Two HERE
If you haven't already done so, go to Love This Empire and check out the live action shorts "Mancop," "Free Lunch" (aka "An Infinite Carnival"), and "The Last Denominator," all conceived, written, and performed by folks I know! Free Lunch is what's running at the very start of the panel (though I didn't start the recording until about 30 seconds in or so), and The Last Denominator is well...mostly silent, so it probably might come off weird on the audio. All the more reason to watch it yourselves!
animehell
Monday, May 01, 2006
Panel OF DOOM report, Jacon 2006
My first time doing a panel in the Main Events went over pretty well, and so I've written up a report in the forum. Read the report as well as the list of what I ran here.
In a little while, I'll be posting up a recording of the entire panel. From what I've listened to so far, it's not just be two hours of indistinct chatter followed up by the sound of laughter. You can actually hear things! Well, most of the time anyway. Once that's done, I can finally get to releasing the latest episode of Anime World Order!
animehell
In a little while, I'll be posting up a recording of the entire panel. From what I've listened to so far, it's not just be two hours of indistinct chatter followed up by the sound of laughter. You can actually hear things! Well, most of the time anyway. Once that's done, I can finally get to releasing the latest episode of Anime World Order!
animehell
Monday, February 27, 2006
Panel OF DOOM at Jacon 2006
The Panel OF DOOM makes its Jacon debut Friday night, April 28th at 11:00 PM in the Main Events room! Be prepared to move your dead bones and experience firsthand an infinite carnival of wizards, ninjas, Chuck Norris, Heino, and other exciting celestial phenomena!
Generally I do Anime That Sucks Saturday nights at Jacon and the Panel OF DOOM at Anime Festival Orlando in July, but I just had to jump at the offer to run something in Main Events, even if most people will be off raving or room partying by then. Given that I often whine on the Internet about how the Florida conventions need to be more unique, I'd be a hypocrite if I did the Panel OF DOOM at both Jacon and AFO. With that in mind, I'll run Anime That Sucks at AFO instead, thus swapping the two. That shouldn't really affect the schedulers either way since both require similar rooms and tech setups.
But wait, what would go on during the time I was originally slotted to do Anime That Sucks at Jacon? A special live edition of Anime World Order would be cool, but since I think there are other, better podcasts planning to do "live at the con" episodes maybe I could try and finally implement the "Your Favorite Anime Sucks" panel now that those guys at Ohayocon have proven that the idea is actually feasible (crowd tosses out the name of an anime, hosts--it couldn't just be me--tell you why that anime SUCKS)? Ideas, people!
animehell
Monday, October 03, 2005
Clip of the Month - THE SPECIAL PICTURE! And the AWA Panel OF DOOM report!
So just what is THE SPECIAL PICTURE? Well, I could just link to it (it's been hosted on the BBC website ever since it originally aired), but I think it's far better if you watch the entire segment in all its glory.
DOWNLOAD THE CLIP HERE
Hopefully the hosting won't take too much of a beating. This was but one clip I ran at the AWA Panel OF DOOM. Oh yeah, I wrote up the report for that! It's over here in the forum! I'll edit the post to include pictures in a bit.
Monday, September 26, 2005
AWA Photos/Report Forthcoming
The home of Anime Hell, Anime Weekend Atlanta, has come and gone, and it was a glorious succcess. Dave Merrill's Anime Hell and my Panel OF DOOM (aka the illegitimate son of Anime Hell) both packed in the crowds and destroyed the sanities of any who dared approach. THE SPECIAL PICTURE destroyed health as well as sanity in what will perhaps be its final appearance in my showings, since I plan to make it October's Clip of the Month.
For those waiting for a full Panel OF DOOM report, I ask that you be patient. I managed to get two hours of sleep following my drive back from the convention, and I'm in such a daze that I'm actually doing this update from work despite my better judgment. Once I've slept for oh, say, a day straight, I'll work on putting up pictures and writing up descriptions. Of course, I'm going to have to learn a bit about Photoshop before doing so, since I forgot to use the red eye reduction on all the pictures I've taken. Also, every picture I took was done at maximum resolution, and I'll need to resize them for downloadability.
Well, except for this one. Here's one of the pictures I took of the crowd during the Panel OF DOOM. The room the panel took place in was in the same ideal location as last year. It's right next to Registration, Main Events, Artist's Alley, and the Dealer's Room entrance. There's just one problem: it's too small now. Well, technically it was too small last year, but now it's REALLY too small:
Click on that for the HUGE full-sized version! Boy, that sure is a lot of people packed into a room without air conditioning! Lucky for me that the fire marshal didn't shut me down. Still, what other room at the Waverly could I have been put in that wasn't itself full? That giant theater video room?
Anyway, if you think that's a lot of people who were just RABID for Zardoz, wait until you see the pictures of how many people GLADLY sat through all those Prince of Space clips at Anime Hell! I'll get it done soon, really!
For those waiting for a full Panel OF DOOM report, I ask that you be patient. I managed to get two hours of sleep following my drive back from the convention, and I'm in such a daze that I'm actually doing this update from work despite my better judgment. Once I've slept for oh, say, a day straight, I'll work on putting up pictures and writing up descriptions. Of course, I'm going to have to learn a bit about Photoshop before doing so, since I forgot to use the red eye reduction on all the pictures I've taken. Also, every picture I took was done at maximum resolution, and I'll need to resize them for downloadability.
Well, except for this one. Here's one of the pictures I took of the crowd during the Panel OF DOOM. The room the panel took place in was in the same ideal location as last year. It's right next to Registration, Main Events, Artist's Alley, and the Dealer's Room entrance. There's just one problem: it's too small now. Well, technically it was too small last year, but now it's REALLY too small:
Click on that for the HUGE full-sized version! Boy, that sure is a lot of people packed into a room without air conditioning! Lucky for me that the fire marshal didn't shut me down. Still, what other room at the Waverly could I have been put in that wasn't itself full? That giant theater video room?
Anyway, if you think that's a lot of people who were just RABID for Zardoz, wait until you see the pictures of how many people GLADLY sat through all those Prince of Space clips at Anime Hell! I'll get it done soon, really!
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