newest entry
contact
quien es nico?
a links page
Antes:
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
I also do stuff over at livejournal:
the insufficient blog
otro lugares:
absorbacon
abstractnixon
aiyah
amateur gourmet
amazing adventures of bill
appetites
archerr
bill and kent
blockade boy
center of gravitas
cheap blue guitar
chocolate and zucchini
comics 212
designer blog
dogpoet
edwin
how to learn swedish
hungry tiger
i make things
i was just really very hungry
insequence
island of misfit toys
lady, that's my skull
mysterysteps
news from me
old grey poet
once upon a tart
postmodernbarney
precocious curmudgeon
pretty, fizzy, paradise
roar of comics
something old, nothing new
stop touching my food
strange maps
super underwear perverts
there are some who call me tim
tinman
tmb
ultrasparky
diaryland
diaryland profile
ringsurf gay diary
previous next random list join
Stories from a man who fails to meet media expectations of what it means to be gay:
white, frivolous, over sexed yet sexless, shrill, single, stylish, a clown, unimportant, et al.
Tue 07/09/2002
I was promised men in Sailor Moon drag, dang it!
Insomnia has once again reared its ugly head and I am tired. Very tired. Very sleepy. Sadly, without the ability to actually fall asleep bit. If this entry is odder than normal, or has more than its fair share of typos' & errors, lets just blame it on my state of sleep deprived, slap happy, goofiness. As usual, there's no reason for latest problems with sleep. Heck, I spent the holiday weekend being a lazy bum watching lazy TV while reading mindless fluffy fiction. Nothing too stressful. Certainly nothing to loose sleep over.
Unfortunately, the entire weekend wasn't spent spread out on the couch with the cats collapsed on top of me. John did manage to drag me outside to help him cut down some reed fencing to fit over the top of the covered patio. Well, more accurately, he cut. I was the one who ended up on the ladder with a staple gun trying to secure the stuff so that it doesn't all blow away. Why am I always the one on the ladder?
I guess I should explain that the covered patio is not exactly covered and hasn't been for years. The patio is sheltered by a structure that's sort of an oversized pergola which had big ugly sheets of big ugly corrugated plastic nailed to the top when John and I first bought the house. Unfortunately it hadn't been installed correctly. The first time it rained, the plastic channeled water into the patio.
We decided that despite this problem and despite it being butt ugly (no really, it was big, fricking, hairy, pimpled assed ugly), we should just keep the plastic cover. Lack of money to replace it also had something to do with the decision.
A decision that no longer made sense after a certain wind storm that just happened to hit the night before we had our housewarming party. Almost a third of the plastic sheets were torn off and escaped to the neighbors yards and our ugly patio was even uglier just in time for all our guests to see.
We eventually took the rest of the plastic off and except for a feeble attempt at covering it with fabric for our tenth anniversary party, we've ignored the need for shade until now.
Since John dragged me outside to work, I in turn dragged him out of the house for a movie. Nothing too big, just My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding. A big ol' girlie girl, chick flick and very funny. Didn't hurt that the male lead was a certain actor I've had a bit of a thing for ever since his Northern Exposure days.
The only other thing of note from the weekend was the Anime Expo in Long Beach. Kristen was going and I was mildly curious, so I tagged along last Saturday (07/06/02) to see what the fuss was about. So that day was sun, a very good lunch at a near by seafood restaurant, mild sea breezes, lots and lots of teens and early twenty somethings, and lots and lots of standing around in lines. I think we spent more time standing in line to get into the expo/con than we actually spent inside of it. The long lines did give me an opportunity to people watch, so it wasn't too bad.
There was a costume contest thing that night, which probably explained all the folks dressed up that day. I had been told that there had been guys in "pretty sailor soldier" drag last year. Didn't see any this year. In fact, I only saw one man in female drag the entire day.
Other costumed folks included warrior monks, warrior women, female sailor soldiers, a whole heck of Utenas, assorted super Mario brothers characters, and loads of guys carrying around huge prop swords which were larger than they were. No Freudian over compensating going on there I'm sure.
However, some of the costumed people seemed to be having problems. There was a young woman dressed as some sort of warrior lady, who looked none too comfortable in her �so very tall she could barely walk, let alone fight the forces of evil� high heels. Another woman had a couple of very large bells attached to the ends of long strips of fabric hanging from her sides. She sounded like a cat someone had tied a bell to to scare away birds.
Which serves to point out that something which looks cool in ink and paper will probably look funky, impractical and bothersome in real life.
Some other folks were having a slightly different problem. There was a small herd of fans dressed in Final Fantasy gear. From what I've seen of the game, these characters are muscular and buff. The guys in these costumes were not so much buff and muscular as they were skinny and thin. A shirtless costume designed to show off your pecs and abs isn't overly effective if you don't really have much by way of pecs and abs.
Among the better costumes that day were some Star Wars storm troopers with a princess Leila (there is a star wars manga, so they weren't too out of place I guess), a fairly professional costume looking Sailor Neptune and Uranus (Kristen mentioned something about Sailor Moon stage shows), a monster thing from Spirited Away (I kept hearing girls screaming whenever it walked by), and a young woman dressed as the main protagonist from something called Read or Die. Other than the title, I don't really know much about the show, although that is quite an interesting title. Sounds like a literary campaign gone over the edge.
It wasn't the only oddly named show being pushed at the expo. At one point, I took a break from all the standing and walking around and plopped my self down to watch the second half of an episode of I My ME!Strawberry Eggs. A totally nonsensical name which doesn't give any indication of it's guy dressed as a woman so he can teach at a middle School story line.
I don't what the deal was with that title. Is it supposed to be nonsensical, or does it just translate badly from Japanese? I have the same question for other programs. Why would female mercenaries fighting crazed robots be a bubble gum crisis? What exactly is an all purpose cultural catgirl? and what the heck is going on with DevilMan Lady?
That last example may not be fair, since at the expo it was announced that the company which licenses it is going to repackage it as the more English friendly Devil Lady. Whatever it's called, from what I saw of the packaging it looks gory, violent, and not my taste at all.
Admittedly, my tastes in Anime have a tenancy to run a bit girlie. But then again I was hardly the only nancy boy there that day. At one booth, I stood behind two fairly butch looking, hunky guys who got quite excited when they found out there was a newly released Japanese import Power Puff Girls dvd collection. I'm pretty sure I heard a squeal of delight from the taller guy when he saw that it was packaged in a bright pink PPG lunch box. Then again, who can blame him? If I were a Power Puff fan (and owned a regionless dvd player), I'd have been squealing away like a proverbial school girl as well.
Mmmm, those guys were very good looking. Even better, they were my age. The majority of the attendees were young. Realizing that I was roughly the same age as most of the parents who had been dragged to it by their tween-aged kids was making me feel elderly, decrepit, and withered.
In one instance, it also led me to feeling like a dirty old man. I had been checking out a guy from behind, thinking "nice butt," when he turned around and I realized he was only about 17, maybe 18 at most. My first reaction was Ick. My second was Eww Ick. My third was to stifle a laugh, since I caught "nice butt" boy looking wistfully at another teen boy who was wearing a black leather jacket. Give them both ten years or so and they'll be drool worthy, but for now, neh.
All in all, it was an interesting day. Although I think it says something that I went to an anime con/expo and left with Nightmare before Christmas figures.
more later,
nico
Music:
sweet silence
Want:
watermelon flavored shaved ice
Elsewhere:
adv films
<<the entry were i don't...::::numbers and stories>>