Supposedly Ms. Tequila appeared at the Gathering to rock the crowd with her singing ‘talents’ and was greeted with thrown rocks and bottles. At one point Tequila tried to assuage the crowd by taking off her top, but that only enraged them further.

Tequila Twittered her plans to file a lawsuit against concert organizers, telling fans “Pretty soon the owners who run the Juggalos will be bankrupt. My attorney Alan is already on it. This is disgusting behavior from men.”

Well that’s her first mistake right there – Juggalos aren’t actually men, they’re some wierd evolutionary offshoot somewhere below neanderthals…Homo Juggalosis, if you will. Boobies make the ape-men mad, Tila – remember that.

Update: Video!

Robert Bohl is an independent game designer and creator of Misspent Youth, an indie RPG he describes as ‘Teenage rebellion in a fucked up future.’ Recorded 8/7/10 at Gen Con Indy 2010.

Show Notes:

• Misspent Youth Official Site
• Robert’s podcast The Independent Insurgency
  

I attended two other panels chaired by the above gentlemen this weekend and they are a hoot to watch (and to listen to, frankly…). If you get a chance to listen to them talk, don’t pass it up.

• Freemarket – The new sci-fi RPG from indie game stars Jaren Sorensen (octaNe, Action Castle) and Luke Crane (Burning Wheel, Mouse Guard), Freemarket is a bizarroid mix of  transhumanist tropes – reputation economies, matter printers, virtual immortality – set aboard a torus-shaped space colony in orbit around Jupiter. Instead of focusing on ‘action mission’ scenarios, Freemarket’s gameplay focuses on a powerful central theme – how do 80,000 misfits, living on a space station designed to support half that poplulation, maintain a workable society? It’s a big game about big ideas. In addition to picking up the game, we attended a Freemarket panel chaired by the aforementioned designers. Of all the games I’ve seen at the con so far, this is the one I can’t wait to dive into.
• Kagematsu – Danielle Lewon’s indie game has an interesting central concept: several male players and one female player are required – the female player takes the role of Kagematsu, a wandering ronin who has the skill to defeat a demonic force ravaging a small village or town. The male players all play the female villagers – their task is to elicit a promise of protection from Kagematsu using everything from innocence to sexual wiles to get their way. It’s a game about inverting gender roles and class structure. It may have people squirming – I tried to gain Kagematsu’s trust by confessing that my uncle was actually my father. Try roleplaying that sometime – it’s every bit as uncomfortable as it sounds. But it works, it really does. I have it on good authority that Kagematsu won the Indie RPG Award for Best Indie RPG of the Year last night. If so, it’s well-deserved. This game is the best thing I’ve played at the convention.
• The Eye of Argon – If you don’t know what The Eye of Argon is, you’re probably lucky. Click here if you want to despoil your blissful ignorance. Okay – you’re back? Yeah, sorry about that – but I did warn you. At any rate, I attended a really entertaining group reading of The Eye of Argon and the winner (if you can call him that) read the book using a pitch-perfect Christopher Walken impression. It was the Eye of Argon audiobook, read by Mr. Walken. Good god.

Well – that’s the top three things I’ve done so far. We’ve still got two days to go, so there will be plenty of audio and blog posts from here on out. Again, if you’re heading to Gen Con Indy this weekend, look me up – I’m the guy with the ‘Yellow Menace’ backpack – you can’t miss me!

As usual myself and co-editor Gregory ‘Mazinga’ Harris will be attending, and podcast regular Ed may be there as well. With the new podcast in regular rotation, we’re hoping to gather a lot of interviews and other material which will make its way to the podcast shortly after the convention.

Anime

The Indiana Anime Club will once again curate this year’s anime offerings which include a mix of classic and new: Soul Eater, Baccano!, Eden of the East, Slayers Revolution, Maria+Holic, Darker than Black, Dragonball Z Kai, and Fullmetal Alchemist are just a handful of the shows you can check out throughout the various anime screening rooms that will be operating all weekend.

Asian Film

In addition to anime, there will also be screening rooms full of awesome live-action entertainment. This year’s roster includes: Alien vs. Ninja, Devilman, Ghost Train, Ichi, The Kid With the Golden Arm, Tokyo Gore Police 1.5, Zoo, and Robogeisha. Frankly – the chance to see Robogeisha on a large screen is worth the price of admission alone, in my opinion.

Panels

Like any good convention, Gen Con has panel discussions out the wazoo – and there are plenty of Asian-themed panels to go around this year. Big Effin’ Robots is an ode to all things mecha in anime while the Transformers receive their due with Dare! The Transformers Panel Ultimate hosted by Tom Croom and Joey Snackpants. And speaking of Mr. Snackpants, he’ll also be hosting Anime That Doesn’t Suck With Joey Snackpants. Fans of fan vids will dig Jingoro’s World of Anime Music Videos, while Wasabi Anime! will be butchering your favorite anime at Mystery Anime Theater 3000.

Other Stuff

The ever-popular Dub That Hentai event returns, with members of the audience lending their pipes to a slew of perverted anime clips (use your imagination). In fact, this year Dub That Hentai will be folded into an Adults Only event called Hentai Cafe, which also offers rounds of Strip Poker with members of Cosplay Deviants. For those not old enough to vote, there are Anime Name That Tune, Clockwork Photo (professional studio photos of your hard-earned cosplay cred!), as well as Grand Theft Anime, an anime-themed trivia game for fun and prizes.

Games

Well – it is Gen Con, so that means there are a metric ton of games to be played, many of which are Asian-themed. All the big CCG’s (Pokemon, Yu Gi Oh, L5R, etc.) will be represented as well as the more popular RPGs. There are a lot of indie RPG’s to be had, as well. I’ll be attending one such session for the indie game Kagematsu, and there are many, many more.

Greg and I will be on-hand all weekend, checking out the above listed events and recording interviews and other audio for the Yellow Menace Podcast. So let us know if you plan on attending – we’d love to meet the readers and perhaps play a game of Zombies or two!

You can see the ensuing events below…

We had a great time, but it might have been better if it wasn’t, you know, hotter than Hell (side note: in my hometown there used to be this KISS cover band called Hotter Than Hell, and sometimes at bars you’d see a sign outside that read, “TONITE: HOTTER THAN HELL THE OFFICIAL KISS TRIBUTE BAND). Of course the Conservatory isn’t air-conditioned, since tropical plants and butterflies need heat to live. So if you decide to go, take the weather into consideration.

This year’s Butterfly Show theme is “Butterflies of Japan”, which is why I’m posting about it here. Outside of the entrance is this stylish shrine gate.

When you get inside, you find yourself in the cactus room. Take my advice: keep your arms and legs inside the car (or at least by your sides) at all time. Those suckers have enormous spines and they are just waiting for some succulent human flesh to pierce (side note: once I got a cactus spine fragment stuck in my finger. It was seriously about two millimeters long, but the pain was out of all proportion to the size of the spine piece. It took me an hour and a needle and liberal amounts of rubbing alcohol to get it out. I actually left it in there for a couple days, figuring it would work itself out, until my co-worker told me lots of cowboys died of blood poisoning after getting stuck by cactus needles. I don’t know if that is true but it scared me). In the cactus room are cages with all kinds of sweet insects that Japanese people keep as pets, like huge-ass stag beetles. Here you also have your first encounter with the Butterfly Show’s adorably creepy mascots, who appear to be children dressed as huge-ass insects.

Next room is empty of cacti but full of bonsai. The local bonsai club has a nice display, with a dozen or so cool tiny trees and plants. There are cards saying how long each has been in training (one has been in training for forty-five years) and what species of plant it is. There was a nice man who clipped a tree while we watched. This room also has displays of Japanese ceramics, art, and textiles, including a whole case of maneki-nekos (those little cats you see in Asian restaurants, beckoning you in with one paw). There is a sculpture of a tanuki as well; you might want to cover the kids’ eyes on that one because he has some traditionally giant testicles. There is also a side room where kids can do crafts, but Gohan is too small for that and for some reason people think it’s creepy when grown-ups want to color.

Then you get to the butterfly room.  There are baskets of fake flowers you can pick up and wave around in an attempt to attract a butterfly (which probably land on the flower and think, “Wait…there’s no nectar in this. YOU BASTARD!”).  There are about a million butterflies; there were cards saying what kinds but all I remember are blue ones, orange ones, red-black-yellow ones, and monarchs.  There are nice Japanese touches like a stone Buddha and a pavilion where a lady was demonstrating ikebana. There were also about a hundred people, and we got there only a few minutes after they opened, so expect crowds no matter when you go.

When you exit the room a volunteer checks you over to make sure there are no stowaways. Then you’re in the gift shop area. There was a local club selling Japanese-style ceramics, and a girl doing manga-style portraits (side note: she had to be sweating her ass off in her little Gothic Lolita getup. I hope she made a lot of money). From here you can see the rest of the conservatory, two rooms with giant prehistoric ferns and a waterfall (we liked to peek around the trees and hiss, “Clever girl!” because we are dorks).

And that’s it. The conservatory isn’t very big. Usually it’s free but the Butterfly Show is $6 for an adult (though you can get a coupon for $1 off here: www.butterflyshow.com). $10 well spent, I think. It took us about 90 minutes from start to finish. We might have spent more time in the butterfly room but Gohan was really sweating. The conservatory opens at 10 am. Get there early (parking sucks and you will probably have to park on the street because the lot holds about 7 cars) and bring a bottle of water. The show ends June 20th. If you go, take pictures and send them to us! We’ll post them here.

Scheduled activities include Flying Pig Yoga (you’d have to be from Cincy to get that one, I suspect), Sumi-e artwork classes, the ‘Origami Game Show’, Taekwondo and Aikido demonstrations (I predict boards and complex joints will be broken), a Taiwanese Lion Dance and puppet show, Taiko drumming, and lots more.

Details here.

This past Saturday, Shapiro Keats and I ditched the kid with Grandma and attended Anime Punch 2010 in Columbus. We hadn’t been to an anime con in years, so it was quite a re-education.

The reason we’d abandoned anime cons for so long was the demographic’s increasing youth; either we’re getting older or they’re getting younger. At any rate, squealing teenage fangirls carrying signs like “Will Yuri For Yaoi” were seriously getting on my nerves. Anime Punch bills itself as a con for the older crowd- college kids are its target demographic. So we decided to get out of the house (also, we needed a break from Gohan).

We arrived about 11 a.m. There were really no panels before then; in fact, the entire con was pretty light on panels. According to the schedule there were some panels very late, like midnight-late, so I guess with college kids you have to go with their usual schedules. But there were large blocks of time when panel rooms were unused. Good thing me and Shapiro Keats were running a Ghost in the Shell panel at 5 p.m.

Like all anime cons of the last 10 years, everyone had to make jokes about the energy drink Bawls.

We went first to a Matsumoto panel, since I am kind of in love with Captain Harlock since he’s a bitch-slapping badass. It wasn’t much, honestly. It was run by a guy who was obviously in love with Matsumoto and knew everything about him and probably dreams about him at night and cries because Matsumoto will never love him the way he loves Matsumoto. But it was just this one guy, and he wasn’t really all that interesting. Sorry, dude. You know your shit but you’re not very engaging.

After that we had lunch in the convention center’s food court (Subway, mmm). Nothing much was happening until 2 so we wandered the artist’s alley (I bought a lovely print by Wil Woods- he has a Deviantart page but I am too lazy to go find it). There was one artist who obviously had a ton of talent- I can’t remember her name, sorry- but I just couldn’t get into her art because, well, it was all guro. Whatever makes you happy, lady, but it’s not my thing. Y0u’ve got a gift, though.

We tried to attend a panel in the video room called Anime Death Scenes, but it wasn’t on. In fact, none of the video rooms appeared to be showing what was scheduled, and when we sat down in one for a moment a staffer came in and asked us what we wanted to watch next (alas, they didn’t have Super Milk-chan on the computer).

So instead we went to a panel called Lightning Talks where staffers and audience members got up to talk about whatever the hell they wanted for five minutes. Only two staffers actually took part, but the audience was willing to chat (we abstained, we were saving up for our panel). One staffer talked about how he could leave a copy the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue lying around his living room and no one said anything about it, but if he left an anime figurine of a girl in a bikini on the coffee table, people were horrified, and anime is also art etc etc. I agree with his point but I think he was missing the fact that people were not horrified by the anime so much as that the girl in the bikini looked about 10. Sure, we know all anime characters are 18 even if they look 9, but outsiders don’t know that. Other people talked about their favorite anime and manga and how much the Angel Sanctuary anime sucks (yeah, that’s recent news). It was pretty entertaining in the end.

After Lightning Talks, we hit Metropolis to Metropolis, a panel about the evolution of robots in anime and manga as evidenced by the old German film Metropolis and the Rin Taro anime movie Metropolis, which are separated by 70 years and two continents.  It was given by an academic-type graybeard who studies Eastern culture. It was pretty damn fascinating, even if I did have to admit my terror of the coming Machine Wars before a crowd.

Then we hit the Superheroes panel, which was sort of set up as a debate about the superhero in manga and in American comics. We missed part of it but the three people up on stage knew their comics, hardcore. Shapiro Keats had to explain a lot of the more obscure characters they referenced to me. In this picture, these guys are on stage with the Perfect Woman. Not only is she gorgeous, she knew a shitload about comics and manga. Her name is Catherine Ho and if I was a dude I would want to marry her. I might still want to marry her but we can only do that in select states and where I live is not one of them.

After that we wandered about a little and checked out the (small) dealers’ room. Then we looked for cosplayers but here’s the thing about that: I didn’t know who any of the characters people were cosplaying were! I don’t know what the kids are watching these days. The only ones I recognized were video game characters (despite Anime Punch’s claim to discourage non-anime cosplay, there were a ton of Final Fantasy-types running around). There were some crappy cosplays, and some good ones even if I didn’t know who they were. But Anime Punch seemed kind of light on costumes compared to other cons I have attended. I did get a shot of Char’s Zaku, though.

After that…was our panel! Me and Shapiro Keats set up and were surprised to see quite a few people there for our Ghost in the Shell panel. I was terrified. I have no idea why I volunteered to do such a thing, since I hate talking in front of crowds. But I bit the bullet and dived in, untangling all the threads of Masamune Shirow’s tentacle beast that has invaded almost every artistic medium known to man…and hey, I think I did OK. Only a couple people actually asked questions or made comments, despite numerous invitations, but no one got up and left either. And a staffer had to come in and tell me time was up. I didn’t get to talk about every single thing I wanted to, but I covered most of it. So to anyone who has run a panel before, how do you get the audience to participate? Oh, and to the mom in the third row back…sorry, I didn’t realize you were a mom until Shapiro Keats mentioned you afterward. I can’t swear at home anymore because of Gohan so I tend to go overboard when the Cursing Ban is temporarily lifted. Calling Mamoru Oshii ‘a motherfucking genius’ might have been a little uncalled-for.

By then it was dinnertime so we went back to the food court. There was this one store that advertised PEANUT BUTTER ICE CREAM in their window, but they were closed the whole day so I never got any. What a tease. We had Noble Roman’s pizza. Man, that stuff is crap.

Before we left we slipped into the Game Room, where I saw some people playing Soul Caliber 2, which made me want to dig out the GameCube when we got home (Mitsurugi FTW!). Anime Punch’s Game Room may actually be the best I have ever seen; check this shit out:

People were playing all kinds of games, from ancient stuff to brand-new stuff to this one giant robot game that Shapiro Keats says costs a ton of money because you need a specialized control board that looks like an airplane’s instrument panel. I can’t remember the name of it, sorry.

And then we went home.

So that was Anime Punch. We’d like to go back next year and run another panel (they need it) but we can’t if the con is held on Easter weekend again. That may be why the con seemed rather depopulated to us; many people are going to have family obligations and such on that weekend. Or maybe anime is just losing its hold on America. It’s a 50/50 chance, I think.

Thanks for the day out, Anime Punch, and thanks to everyone who attended our panel. We might see you next year!

Butterfly Show!

It runs from April through most of June, so you have plenty of time to get your ass down there and look at some Japanese butterflies. I’ll be making Shapiro Keats take me sometime in May.

The exhibit will include selections from Joe Peacock’s personal collection of Akira production art and cels, which he claims is the larges private collection in the world, and is planned to include a traveling show.

(via MeFi)

Gen Con 2009 interview with Cryptic Studios Bill Roper – Champions Online from Alex Mayo on Vimeo.