I don’t really watch Iron Chef, or its’ American spin-off Iron Chef America, anymore. Really, once you’ve seen a good dozen or so episodes, there’s just not much more to see - although the end products are uniformly fascinating, if frequently unappetizing (stay away from the ice-cream machine!)

That said, I was happy to see that Iron Chef stalwart Masaharu Morimoto has been pegged as a Guest of Honor at this year’s New York Anime Festival, joining such illustrious figures as Yoshitaka Amano, Rie Tanaka, and fellow culinary enthusiasts Notorious MSG.

Fun will be had by all, I’m sure. I am prompted to ponder, however - what are Morimoto-san’s favorite anime series?

The NYAF takes place Sept 26 - 28 in New Yawk City. Be there - or dont….

It’s hard to believe it’s been a week already, but I’ve finally caught up on the sleep I missed from the awesome time Musashi and I had at GenCon 2008. As our esteemed editor in chief mentioned, we were joined by occasional contributor Centurion and his charming significant other Lindsey for a weekend of gaming, carousing and scoping out the newest developments in all kinds of games. We were joined by a record 28,600 unique and over 95,800 turnstile attendees.

This year, your humble staff indulged in gaming to an unprecedented degree. We started Thursday night with a modern-world-setting round of Call of Cthulhu. CoC is one of my all-time favorite RPGs, and it was a pleasure once again to experience the atmosphere of dread the game creates, especially since Musashi and I were denied in our attempts to join a session last year.

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Okay - normally I leave all the yaoi-related stuff to AnaKhouri, but I figured I’d put my toes in the water a little and talk a bit ‘o man-to-man love.

About.com’s Deb Aoki notes that yaoi artist Youka Nitta has pulled out of Yaoi-Con, possibly due to claims that she traced a number of fashion photographs for use in her work. (I’m reminded of the line from Chasing Amy, with regards to inking comics: “You’re a tracer!”)

To be honest, I’m not chuffed one way or the other - I’m just using this story as a test-case for writing more yaoi-themed posts in the future.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled post.

While I’m on the subject of GenCon, I should mention that Mazinga and I will once again be covering GenCon, which takes place August 14-17th in Indianapolis, Indiana. Although GenCon is ostensibly a gaming convention, the last three years have been decidedly Anime-riffic, with Funimation and the folk behind Robotech making big appearances. I expect this year to be much the same. Let us know if you’re attending and perhaps we’ll see you there.

AnaKhouri is likewise hitting DragonCon, in Atlanta, Georgia later that month, which I’m sure will be every bit as fun (and the genre-celeb attendee tally seems a lot higher, too…).

Hope to see you this Summer!

I did get a chance to check out BotCon 2008 today…unfortunately I didn’t learn about the con in time to get press credentials, but I did take the kids along and had a fun time wandering around the dealer room. Here’s a Flickr set to prove I was there…

So much to do, so little time…

If you happen to be in the Cincinnati area this weekend (which if you don’t live here is pretty unlikely), you might want to swing by two hoopy happenings going on downtown over the next couple of days.

First up is the annual Asian Culture Festival, being held in the rotunda of the Cincinnati Museum Center. Lots of food and cultural exhibits, including the ‘Origami Game Show’, dance exhibits from Taiwan, China, and India, music by Japanese trio Nakama - and lots of other stuff. Did I mention the food? Oh, and everything’s free, to boot…not counting gas and parking, of course. Oh, and there are also lots of dead Chinese people on display at the Museum Center, as well.

Even better, the annual Transformers convention, BotCon, is being held in Cincy this year…a number of voice-actors from the new Transformers cartoon will be in attendance, including Tara Strong, ‘Bumper’ Robinson, and David Kaye. Of course, there will be the requisite panels and seminars, as well as numerous fan events. And if you’re looking for a Transformer to fill a gap in your collection, odds are you’ll be able to pick it up at the show.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll be able to take the kids to one or both of these events (preferably on Sunday, since downtown Cincinnati is supposed to be mobbed tomorrow because of the Matt Maupin funeral).