May 7 through May 9 I’m going to be at Costume-Con 28 in Milwaukee. If any of my readers should also attend, note that I probably won’t be in costume — although I have a closet full of medieval garb, most of it doesn’t fit anymore, and I have little time for sewing these days — but I will be armed with a camera, which I will not hesitate to use. You have been warned.

Should you be within reach of Milwaukee, the convention is worth catching if you have any interest in costuming at all. It’s cosplay-friendly — the top masquerade winners in the 2007 con were a Trinity Blood group.

With a little luck, I might be able to catch a showing of The Secret of Kells on the big screen on the way home.

I bought myself some belated Christmas presents. I’ll eventually get to the anime, but for now the item in the foreground takes priority. Incidentally, although I have a computer full of soft synths, this is the first hardware synthesizer I’ve ever owned.¹

Instead of following any current series, I have indeed been rewatching Shingu. I probably will check out a couple of upcoming shows, though. Yojo-han Shinwa Taikei is yet another blasted high school college story, but Masaaki Yuasa (Mind Game, Kaiba) is directing. Haiyoru! Nyaru-Ani features Nyarlathotep in the form of a cute little girl. It sounds like she might be a candidate to replace Pyun and Potaru if I redesign my site.

1. Unless you want to count my old, very plastic Yamaha keyboard, but that’s essentially a large toy, unsuitable for gigs. [↩]

I just got home a minute ago. As I carried my bike up the stairs, a couple of furries got into a car across the street and drove off. One just had a tail, but the other was in full fox regalia, plus a t-shirt. They were gone before I could fetch my camera, which is probably just as well.

I spent most of the weekend at the Walnut Valley Festival. It’s primarily devoted to acoustic string music, particularly bluegrass, but there were some items of interest to students of Japanese popular culture.

• The second-place winner in the fingerpicking championship was Akihiro Tanaka, from Kyoto, Japan. I wasn’t able to get down to Winfield on Thursday, when the contest was held, but the fingerpick winners made an appearance on the main stage Friday evening. Here’s what Tanaka played then:¹

• I spent several hours listening to the jam sessions at Carp Camp.² Here’s the tune that the campers call “Finish (sic) Polka.” It sounds strangely familiar.

(This is not my recording, but Carp Camp’s own from last year. The campers played the tune at least twice this weekend, but neither time did I have my recorder handy.)

• One of this year’s Carp Camp catchphrases (if you write it as a single word, you get six consecutive consonants. Can you think of any other English words like that?) was “Don’t hurt the old people.” The third Monday in September (usually the day after Winfield), is celebrated in the Japan as Respect for the Aged Day.

1. The sound is less than wonderful. Stage one is a noisy place. [↩]
2. I don’t bring my dulcimer to Winfield unless I’m camping. This year I day-tripped, so I just listened. [↩]

One can hope.

The Wichita anime festival moved to a venue within easy bicycle distance this year. I’ll probably spend most of the weekend there with my camera.

Here’s the first batch of snapshots.

(more…)

Richard the bodhran player and his '67 Camaro convertible

Note the license plate. It was Richard who loaned me his copy of Princess Mononoke several years ago and thus made The Kawaii Menace inevitable. (Richard’s brother has an astonishingly huge old Cadillac. There’s room for a children’s wading pool between the front and back seats.)

… I launched The Kawaii Menace. It’s my second anime weblog, succeeding Beware the Kawaii, which I abandoned when bots found ways of circumventing the anti-spam mechanisms. I’ve been writing about anime to some extent now for about five years, ever since I discovered Serial Experiments Lain.

Today is also the sixth anniversary¹ of my first weblog, Mixolydian Mode, also defunct for the same reason.². Its successor, Scuffulans hirsutus, devoted largely to photography, music and nonsense, is a good place to escape the virtual crowds; daily traffic there is usually in the single digits.

This is probably as good a time as any to acknowledge the obvious: The Kawaii Menace is essentially retired. I’m not shutting it down. I do have a series of summing-up posts in mind — though I’m in no hurry to write them — and I am as curious as anyone to see who the top ten anime babes are. There likely will be occasional observations, trivia and links about animation, Japan and women with blue hair. But my interest in anime has run its course. Little I’ve seen in the past year has sustained my interest past the second episode. I still enjoy watching old favorites, but I don’t have the patience anymore to plow through all the unremarkable new releases hoping to find another Denno Coil.

1. Six years, while not negligible, isn’t all that long in the blogosphere. Charles G. Hill has been around for over thirteen years now and still posts more in a week than most bloggers do in a month. [↩]
2. Coincidentally, Pixy Misa began blogging at almost the same instant I did six years ago. Congratulations, Pixy [↩]

(This has nothing to do with anime, but it might be of interest to those who are into ambient sound.) Here is last month at work, condensed to two minutes:

I can’t help comparing [Whisper of the Heart] to Revolutionary Road … not because they are similar but because they are opposites. Revolutionary Road explores the dangers of not having a dream (while thinking that you do.) Whisper of the Heart is about what it really means to have a dream.

*****

I haven’t spent much time on anime recently, and I don’t know when I will. My current obsession is a collection of fiddle tunes.¹ It should keep me busy for quite a while. I’ll be back eventually — maybe — but don’t hold your breath.

1. [Link deleted because of reported virus.] If you’re in the Kansas/Oklahoma area in September, go to the Walnut Valley Festival and drop by Carp Camp. And if you are building a website, don’t use frames. [↩]

I’m going to be away from the computer for a few days. Like Pete, I’m taking Moribito with me, though in my case it’s the book.

My picks for the top five anime endings should appear one a day. As you will discover, my taste is very different from Astro’s, but there is one we both chose. I don’t have time to write commentary on my picks tonight; perhaps when I get back.