2001-12-03 - 12:02 a.m.
#99: No Need for a Cosplay Party, FINALLY!
Note to self: Oh dear. It seems that my financial situation is knee deep in the critical zone now. Not the red/negative zone, fortunately: I haven't applied for the banks tertiary account overdraft which allows one to spend upwards to negative 500 dollars. But still, the situation is extremely bad. Like.... "27 dollars in my chequeing account and 5 dollars in my wallet with no help from my parents until the end of December"-bad. I remember a time (in Australia) where that kind of money could last for WEEKS on end (in Australia) but apparently my spending habits have become a bit more.... loose and expensive (not in Australia). I'm not as thrifty as I used to be. Not that I was thrifty BEFORE; it's just that I actually THOUGHT about purchases before stuffing myself into the "sweaty palms and nausea" territory. At this rate, I'm going to have to get that job at the supermarket just out of plain necessity.... Which is the reason why people get jobs in the first place. Duh. Or I could just wait for an entire month and a half and see what happens with the prospect I have at Chris workplace; as well as getting a "resupply" from red packets filled with dosh given out for my birthday and for Christmas. It's rather pathetic that I have to rely upon the ritualistic Chinese customs to reward the young and punish the elderly; on the otherhand, I'm going to have to do this (give out red packets) when I'm older and all the relatives of my generation have kids themselves, so there's a kind of retribution later on.... Which is why I have to get married first and beat the rush for the first baby to be showered with expensive gifts by asian family members. So anyone out there, if you're female, of legitimate age and elligible, how about bearing a child for me? *gets whocked by Miroku for stealing his routine* or maybe not. ow.
Woohoo! After a month of waiting, yesterday evening's (Saturday, 1st December) cosplay event was indeed a rousing success! Plenty of great costumes (well, by those who did wear a costume anyway) that kinda made me realise that I should have probably gotten my act together and put more effort into my own, instead of wimping out and going as Seishirou Sakurazuka from X and Tokyo Babylon (one of the cheapest ensembles I could pull off.... Well, cheap if you consider that they're all just plain "normal" clothes that I easily pulled from my existing wardrobe, anyway). Kudos to Gemma (for winning overall best costume as Mei Lin from Card Captor Sakura and walking away with a huge Lain wallscroll.... As well as daring to wear an outfit that had an even higher hemline than Claras Mononoke Hime costume. Hmmmm. I wonder if we'll have the same problems with "groping" in next years Armageddon Comic festival as we did in this years if she decides to cosplay for the event. That joke probably won't make sense to most people who aren't part of the AAC), James (for tying in second place in best costume as Allen Schezar from Escaflowne and getting one of those "How to Draw...." anime books for his trouble, as well as making one of the most dramatic "Entrance From A Darkened Girl's Bedroom" I've ever seen.... and walking around in blue tights all evening as well. That must have been MIGHTY unconfortable), new girl Sasha (for tying with Jamie in second place as Puchiko from DigiCharat and looking almost EXACTLY like the genuine article.... if only she were about 2 feet smaller and had eyes the size of goldfish bowls, it'd be perfect. O.o) and Anne-lise (who didn't win, but who had obviously put quite a bit of effort into her costume as Ruri from Nadesico, including the pilot tattoos on the back of each hand, the hair buns on top of the head, and of course: the logo arm patches. Very nicely done!).
Non-kudos for the rest of us, who either didn't appear in costume (I give a hearty glare of evil at those who didn't!) or cheaped out much like I did. Special non-kudos to Amy, one of whose immediate acts of greeting upon seeing me was to handcuff my hands together (REAL handcuffs) and then hiding the key so I'd be stuck with my hands together, trying not to swear wildly and with great fervor! XD Also to EB for being dead most of the time (read his journal entry to understand that one); Fergus, for not being in costume most of the time (you silly, silly man! And you should have had your hair straightened and come as Iori anyway, fixing that evil stare at the ladies and making them swoon!); and Josh for not being in costume at ALL (argh! You spent 200 dollars on that Orphen jacket and did not show it! I shall steal it from you and set it free for all to see! FREEDOM FOR THE JACKET! FREEDOM!). Tsk on ye all. TSK! But enough of those accusations. To see some of the piccies taken on the night, simply direct yon browser to this link over here and be amazed at the fact that, yes, there ARE anime fans in New Zealand crazy enough to do this sort of costume party thing. Yes, down here on this tiny rock (or hole. or small incontinent bear. one of the three) there are those with enough time and enthusiasm on our hands, to take our eyes off the sheep occasionally and get down to some serious anime business. But then we go back to looking at sheep. New Zealanders have their priorities, afterall.
Being the attention whore that I am, Michael and I worked on the past month (well.... the bulk of it was done only last week to be completely honest) on an anime trivia quiz entitled: "Who Wants to Win Stuffs?: New Zealand Style". It was originally based upon another anime quiz show event at an American convention (wish I still had a link to it), but it's final permutation was vastly different, requiring teams of anime otaku to go against one another in a battle of exclusive anime knowledge. We kept the multiple choice aspect of it, though. It was fun being the quizmaster for three whole rounds, but actually getting the required number of questions to GET to being quizmaster was a rather difficult task.... Especially if you consider that Michael and I had to come up with all the questions ourselves. 90 friggin anime questions between two people who had to spread out their knowledge of anime and Japanese culture as far as possible to get the required amount. Luckily, the internet was a (sometimes) useful resource and managed to get me out of writing for more than a few of those questions. The rules are available in *.doc format here. Feel free to accuse us of deliberately plagiarising other peoples ideas. We'll probably ignore you unless you SERIOUSLY mean it.... In which case the best we can do is apologise and offer our hand in peace: We're all anime fans here afterall: Let's not make war upon one another (although now that I think about it, I probably should have gotten the permission of the guy who originally created the concept of this quiz before using it.... hindsight is always 20/20).
Anyway, while the quiz was fun, next time I think we'll buy one of those quiz books currently available on Amazon.com. Much easier than trying to make up our own. We'll also probably have to set up some kind of electric buzzer to keep track of who buzzed in next time too, cause choosing who would answer first was my decision (as the quiz guy) and I was subconsciously biased to one team or several individuals. I was a bad host that way. Good thing my wonderfully developed speaking voice distracted them (mostly) from my random and spur of the moment decision making.... But then again that could be blamed upon my hobby, which I shall be describe in the next entry. The final overall winner was James, who rose from the ashes of his downed opponents with The Anime Encyclopedia in hand; and the amount of fun had by all in this endeavour (and I mean ALL.... The perfect number of people there and the exact fit into the teams was astounding to say the least. O.o) has made me seriously consider a single player version (ie the original version) to be unleashed at random otaku attending Armaggedon next year. Complete with electronic gameboard display using a form of Powerpoint and a projector, even MORE questions, and me as the host! My eyes sparkle at thought of more attention whoring on my part. I am such a sad, sad little man. ^^;;;
I also made an Anime Music Video VCD, filled to the brim with random AMV goodness. I'd originally intended it to be just something played in the background while people got on with their.... cosplay-y duties (or something) but it turned out to be a mini-watching event after a brief stint of fansubbed Inu Yasha (a most excellent and fun series to watch). 74 minutes of continuous AMV watching was probably just a BIT too much for most people, but the videos that got the most response were: "Right Now" (a parody of an existing music video for the original song.... with anime in-jokes!), "Cucumber" (A humorous Dragonball Z video that has to be seen to be fully appreciated. I'm a cucumber!), "Lord's Prayer" (visuals of the X OAV + a techno version of gregorian chant music = ecstasy. So ecstatic am I, that I've uploaded a lower quality version of the music used for that video here or just click on the kitty on the left over there. Download that if you're not sure you want to spend time downloading the video.... Then download the video after hearing the mp3. Go on. You know you want to. @_@) and finally THAT Card Captor Sakura Live Action Parody Opening (if you haven't seen it yet.... luckily for you I haven't got a link anymore) which has probably scarred a whole new generation of AACers. We should probably make that video a kind of rite of passage of some kind. Or better yet, we should make a live action video of an opening JUST like that! Only for a different anime series. That would be a peachy keen project for AAC to do, yes.
But I'm going backwards here.... We had the AMV showing first, then the anime quiz THEN the best costume prize vote.... But I had to turn up first, otherwise this entry wouldn't have happened in the first pla-- Let's just skip that, shall we? Move on to the final (more or less) event of the evening which was.... Anime Pictionary! Exceptional easy Anime Pictionary, but Anime Pictionary nonetheless. Drawing stick figures and broadly identifiable pieces of art and then jabbing repeatedly at it with the drawing pen to show that "we should KNOW this!" was quite a lot of fun; even of there were no prizes for it. ;-) heheheheh. Oh the mutilations that we created in the name of "fun" would have brought the average art critic to his knees. After that, we kinda drifted apart, the main events being over and the majority of the food and drink consumed.... Several more piccies were taken, and then we all unanimously deicded to go home: at only 10:30PM. O.o I guess we were all a little more tired than we had thought, considering the party only started at 3PM. Many thanks to Nadea for letting us completely decimate her house for this event.... See you next year! heeheeheehee....
Whew. And that was my 99th entry! I've been meaning to write this for the longest time,. but I couldn't think of anything that would provide the best build up for the 100th entry. This one will do just nicely, I think. All right, unto my planned BIG SURPRISE for the next entry (well.... Surprise for SOME people, anyway).
