Rocket Bomber - commentary

re: the title – Alas, a joke only those familiar with Punch Cards will get — though, did you know that even up until the early 90’s, long after optical scan [e.g. the ubiquitous bubble test/voting forms] had replaced the stiff, holey cardstock that had run the computations of what was then two computing generations past, the stern warning “Do Not Fold, Bend, Spindle, or Mutilate” still appeared in print?

I remember seeing it on class registration forms [GA Tech] from 1992.

The verb, to spindle is an anachronism from the 18th century industrial ‘computers’ (looms, jacquard and otherwise) of the day, dutifully transferred as a warning on cards—and bubble forms—presumably to this day. I’m not sure how many modern #2-pencil-test-takers are also bringing in a tapered rod, weighted on one end (the non-tapered end) (and historically used for spooling thread & yard) But let me assure you that the use of said rod to adulterate the form or card in question is still prohibited.

A spindle can also refer to the spike on an editor’s desk where potential Pulitzer Prize winning stories meet an untimely end (“Not enough sex or violence, son; where’s the corpse, where’s the hooker? Even better, Where’s. The. Hooker’s. Corpse? Don’t they teach you kids anything in Journalism school these days?”) or the similar instrument found in so many period [c. 1910-1959] mystery novels, only occasionally holding processed documents but more often found lodged in the thoracic curve or kidneys of the dynamic-but-abrasive inventor-slash-entrepreneur, or perhaps in similar regions of the up-and-coming deputy assistant assistant prosecutor, whose zeal and morals were only matched by the swiftness of his demise.

“Spindle” is a term steeped in history and rife with potential. At this point (& with my multiple reinforcements) I doubt you’ll forget it.

Fold Bend Spindle Mutilate. I dearly love that concatenation of verbs, the proscription of same that merely invites (sweetly, beckoningly invites) the card-stock-slaughter it seeks to prevent.

…

enough explanation of the off-hand joke used in the title:

I’m shuffling my posted charts a bit and folding one set (new releases and pre-orders) into the other (the Manga 500 and associated summary report) because

1) it’s all pulling from the same damn spreadsheet anyway. also:

2) if I could manage posts on time, some separation might be merited, but
3) …as it is I can barely manage posting the main charts 4 days late
4) …so a separate post on Thursdays for the Manga New Releases would come out on the same day anyway…
5) …and it’s rare enough that I get a blurb and link from the comics-news-aggregators as it is, so I should
a) make it easier on them and
b) make the most of the one-link-a-week that I can bank on.

(yes, like every blogger, I’m a Technorati-rank and SEO whore — part of the job description, part of the job.)

You can consider any promises I make to be lies, damnable lies, but here’s the new schedule:

Sometime between Monday and Thursday of a given week, I’ll post these:

- the Manga 500 (top titles, top series, Publ. scorecard, and midlist) for the previous week &
- the New Release & Preorders (as ranked in the report above: this month’s titles, next month’s titles, and the future…) &
- The Trends Report (highlights from the NR&P post above)
&
– Your Executive Summary and Index: The Top 10s & a Top 25 (or two) and-just-give-me-the-rankings-Don’t-Bug-Me-With-the-Math from the three posts above.

[might even get around to giving each a unique tag/cat to facilitate category-level linking. —not that anyone but me does that, but still]

The shift (from today moving forward) is that I’ll post it all at once (…mostly — maybe over 36hrs. at most) whenever the data is ready to post. Instead of delaying the New Releases et al. until after a Wednesday, I can have that data good-to-go on Monday morning — on those rare Mondays when the charts are done. (Monday *is* still the goal; if the internet and my spreadsheet and my work schedule coooperate I’ll be hitting that target on a regular basis again)

Oh, and the Summary report may have one or two more top 10s/25s on it than you’ve been used to seeing to date. [new chart = new topper for the summary, natch] [starting with the top 25 new releases and preorders— basic, neh?]

##

The drawback is that now that I’ve determined to consolidate the Online Sales Estimates In All Their Varied Glories into a once-a-week event is that the once-a-week sales post might migrate even further into the week. (fri-sat? who knows?)

…and, you know, the numbers from, like, three weeks ago just now posted so talking about weekly posts even in this meta context may seem a bit presumptuous… but before you comment to give me any crap on this issue, I have to say:

Sit down, shut up, and enjoy the numbers. It’s not like anyone else is posting them.

##

This diversion was hopefully entertaining, and perhaps a tad informative, but The Primary Purpose of this post was to insert a buffer between charts dated week ending 2 November and the next set (the numbers that should have been posted this week, actually) in an attempt to get ahead and in front of the mess that is my current reporting on the topic; I’ve 21 hours and 14 beers (not counting what’s in my blood stream at the mo’) before I have to show up at work again; we’ll see if I can’t manage another charts-download and some some real commentary (w/ or w/o actual analysis) between now and then.

Update 20:11 3 October 08:

After posting the Manga 500 last night, and fiddling a bit with the quarterly chart, I figured I’d done as much damage as I could on 4 hours of sleep, 8 hours of work, and 6 beers — so I turned in early, with the thought that I’d wake a half hour early to post the new release charts before heading into work.

Well, last night the beer definitely got the better of me — not in a passing-out and nausea kind of way but in the I-can’t-believe-I-made-a-rookie-mistake way: I forgot to save my spreadsheet before closing it, so I lost about an hour’s worth of work. Not a big deal, except of course that the hour I lost was all the publishing info I’d typed in. You know, the brand new titles coming out in the next couple of months, not previously tracked? Yeah, that publishing info.

I managed to find 45 minutes before work to repeat that exercise (goes faster the second time around) and 30 minutes during lunch to twist the chart in the right ways to get the new releases, pre-orders, and the new stuff for the Emerging Trends Report — all of which are now on the blog, immediately following this post.

The moral of the story: Save early, save often, save before closing. And pay attention to those stupid dialog boxes, every now and then the option you passed over in the interest of speed (quicker to bed) may be quite important.

I’d better fiddle with the summer rankings some more and start posting those tonight; the data isn’t getting any fresher.

The only problem with massive computational clockworks (like those I employ on the manga) is that no matter how careful, you *are* going to get pinched in the gears eventually. If your engine is large enough, it just might kill you.

…

…not dead yet. But the sudden alignment of three different cycles (weekly, monthly, quarterly) did put me in a wicked pinch. [Shawn: I’d say the monthly chart was ‘in the mail’ except it isn’t yet — *insert that nipponemoticon for grovelling that I'm sure I've seen but can't be arsed to looked up at the mo*]

As alluded to in the bracketed parenthetical above, I am concentrating on my own blog for the nonce, and will make good on other commitments later [hopefully within the next 12 hours] and in between, well, there’s a lot of data here and forgive me for being a tad distracted; I just love wallowing in data.

As long as both the insomnia and my beer supply hold out, though, (diametrically opposed forces, yes, but I live my whole life in this gap) I plan to simultaneously floor the throttle and ride the brake on my spreadsheets, so hard that charts are thrown out like sparks on rails — in fact, I think I can front this stuff to the blog faster than you, dear reader, would care to process it.

Fortunately, Textpattern lets me schedule future articles, so I can parse the massive info dump into chunks and queue it up to post — I’m thinking a chart or two every eight hours. I’ve got your weekend reading covered. Weekly data first (the Manga 500 with its summary went up minutes ago; the new releases, preorders, and trends report will follow in 8 hours.) — big chunks of the ’08 Q3 data to follow.

_Un_fortunately, I’m going to be bollocks-deep in the data and might not manage a commentary until, um, Tuesday (or more realistically, the 11th). If you like it raw, however — or are into lovely ordered lists with the occasional pie chart — I may just be your preferred source for stat porn all weekend.

[title selected to incite the fan base and garner more links.]

I’m always running 6-8 weeks ahead. Part of that is my natural tendency to vacuum up all available data, part of it is that—at work—I’m sitting on the final, retail end of a truly frightening distribution chain — and when if I can find the time to slack off at work there is this really delicious database, search functionality, and user interface that honestly makes any internet sales site seem weak. I mean, you can’t even search by release date. (You can’t. I can. Love the in-house system.) (not surprisingly, most of the folks who work at the bookstore have no idea what kind of beast they have access to. I can train the minions at *my* big box outpost, but most of you are missing out just because the kids we have working at your local have no idea what the system is capable of)

(and you miss out twice because — blah blah blah proprietary information blah blah corporate blah I don’t want to be fired — even though I have access to data at work I’m forced to reconstruct it in toto from secondary sources because I don’t want to be fired and every now and then I just can’t find an independent source so I try to forget that I know something and it goes missing, never to be posted. — Sorry. Gotta eat.)

On top of what I know, and occasionally I even know that I know and can share what I know, there is my very odd hobby and my voracious reading habits (online and off) — and my spectacular brand of insanity. :) …there’s no way you can keep up with me and a six pack. Can’t imagine why you’d want to… but you can’t. neener neener.

I came up with the ‘Naruto Glacier’ metaphor around beer five and…

Heck, there’s our lead:

##

Right now, Naruto owns the sales charts. Imagine this as the Naruto Ice Age, when a vast Naruto glacier holds fast to the peaks and valleys of the greater Manga Land Mass.

We are approaching the end of this age, though, slowing entering a post-Toonami world where what seemed to be the basic tenets of fandom, our very foundation and history as it were, are shown to be as solid as ice — fine in the early January of my-extended-and-forced-metaphor — but a bit dicey as time goes on and things warm up.

The melt shows first along the border, with Borders, and in the southern latitudes of the Amazon (Yes! go, metaphor, go!) where Naruto long since gave (partial) ground to titles newer, flasher, weirder, and with more androgynous bishies. Naruto still holds solid to the kids too young to know the difference, out at the store next to the mall, and (in my charts) at places like BN.com and Books-a-Million. Slowly, though, the thaw continues. Change is coming.

Will Naruto continue to be a Top 10 title a year from now? Duh. Yes. Naruto isn’t going anywhere fast — much like the belaboured metaphorical glaciers. Will Naruto, even after retreating to the furthest reaches of the manga mountains, leave behind a residual landscape where other titles will follow like meltwater down U-shaped valleys and across the same well-scoured ground?

Again, duh. Naruto is indeed a big ol’ mass of something. Many will try to fill the hole it leaves, without recognizing that it was the product of some weird weather combined with the right climate: ultimately, a big fluke. Later titles can be just as impressive — the Great Lakes followed the Ice Age after all — but the conditions on the ground are different, the pathways are different (changed, in fact, by Naruto) and lighting never strikes twice in the same place unless you’re firing a laser beam into thunderheads to create an ionized pathway.

[Do you have 1.21 gigawatt laser, or its metaphorical equivalent? No? Then lightning doesn’t strike twice: despair of ever ever duplicating Naruto. Can’t be done.]

RocketBomber: “We Combine Publishing Trends and SCIENCE! Because We Can!“ [sm]

Anyway: The point of the long, metaphorical side-trip through galciology (with a smidge of laser-powered meteorological research) is that even though “the fundamentals of the Naruto Economy are strong” I’m noticing some weakness in the leading indicators of my sales charts. With 31 extant volumes, 4 more already showing up as pre-orders, a number of source books and novels and other extras, and continued releases keeping pace every other month

the series isn’t going away any time soon,

but I think a chunk (the female contingent? kids naturally aging-out of the franchise?) may have moved on to other pastures, and while strong sales will keep it on the charts out in the ‘suburbs’, the hip ‘intown’ kids are already buying other books. Also, the bump from the 2007 Fall Sales Putsch (more Naruto, honestly, than most of us could stomach) may finally have worked through the system, and we’re left with merely the demand of a popular series running in monthly installments in a widely available anthology magazine that also has an anime adaptation showing daily on cable. Oh the hardships this poor little title from Viz is suddenly confronted with!

But…

Naruto is over. You heard it here first. Believe It!

##

Update: Numbers. (lies, damn lies and statistics)

currently ranked Naruto Titles

1. ↔0 () : Naruto 31 – Viz Shonen Jump, Sep 2008 [792.9] ::
4. ↓-2 () : Naruto 30 – Viz Shonen Jump, Jul 2008 [698.8] ::
8. ↓-3 () : Naruto 28 – Viz Shonen Jump, Mar 2008 [589.7] ::
14. ↓-7 () : Naruto 29 – Viz Shonen Jump, May 2008 [567.8] ::
19. ↓-1 () : Naruto 2 – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2003 [551.3] ::
20. ↑3 () : Naruto 1 – Viz Shonen Jump, Jul 2003 [545] ::
23. ↓-7 () : Naruto 3 – Viz Shonen Jump, Apr 2004 [512.9] ::
26. ↑7 () : Naruto 7 – Viz Shonen Jump, Aug 2005 [497.4] ::
27. ↑1 () : Naruto 5 – Viz Shonen Jump, Oct 2004 [497.3] ::
28. ↓-2 () : Naruto 27 – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2007 [494] ::
30. ↔0 () : Naruto 4 – Viz Shonen Jump, Jul 2004 [471.5] ::
31. ↑17 () : Naruto 15 – Viz Shonen Jump, Jul 2007 [460.8] ::
34. ↑4 () : Naruto 6 – Viz Shonen Jump, Apr 2005 [454.9] ::
46. ↑5 () : Naruto 8 – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2005 [415.1] ::
50. ↑3 () : Naruto 18 – Viz Shonen Jump, Sep 2007 [388.8] ::
51. ↓-1 () : Naruto 20 – Viz Shonen Jump, Oct 2007 [383] ::
58. ↑3 () : Naruto 10 – Viz Shonen Jump, Jun 2006 [371.6] ::
59. ↑4 () : Naruto 17 – Viz Shonen Jump, Sep 2007 [365] ::
60. ↑8 () : Naruto 12 – Viz Shonen Jump, Dec 2006 [361.1] ::
64. ↑7 () : Naruto 24 – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2007 [354.4] ::
66. ↔0 () : Naruto 21 – Viz Shonen Jump, Oct 2007 [353.2] ::
69. ↓-2 () : Naruto 14 – Viz Shonen Jump, May 2007 [348.9] ::
76. ↑9 () : Naruto 13 – Viz Shonen Jump, Mar 2007 [328.9] ::
87. ↓-11 () : Naruto 26 – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2007 [313.9] ::
88. ↑3 () : Naruto 11 – Viz Shonen Jump, Sep 2006 [311.1] ::
98. ↓-11 () : Naruto 16 – Viz Shonen Jump, Sep 2007 [295.3] ::
106. ↓-17 () : Naruto 9 – Viz Shonen Jump, Mar 2006 [280.1] ::
119. ↓-20 () : Naruto 25 – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2007 [259.9] ::
139. ↓-37 () : Naruto 23 – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2007 [223.5] ::
159. ↓-8 () : Naruto 19 – Viz Shonen Jump, Oct 2007 [205.7] ::
178. ↓-54 () : Naruto 22 – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2007 [184.8] ::
192. ↓-66 () : Naruto The Official Fanbook – Viz Shonen Jump, Feb 2008 [170.5] ::
232. ↑34 () : Naruto Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow – Viz Shonen Jump, Oct 2007 [147.6] ::
235. ↓-23 () : Naruto 33 – Viz Shonen Jump, Dec 2008 [146] ::
244. ↓-27 () : Naruto 32 – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2008 [142.6] ::
253. ↓-18 () : Naruto vols 1-27 box set – Viz Shonen Jump, Aug 2008 [137.8] ::
277. ↑48 () : Naruto Anime Profiles 2 – Viz Shonen Jump, Sep 2007 [123.5] ::
373. ↑62 () : Naruto Anime Profiles 1 – Viz Shonen Jump, Jul 2006 [86.7] ::
439. ↑114 () : Naruto Forever: The Unofficial Guide – Cocoro Books, Feb 2008 [67.8] ::
616. ↓-148 () : Naruto The Art of Naruto: Uzumaki – Viz Shonen Jump, Oct 2007 [37.8] ::
683. ↑122 () : Naruto Anime Profiles 3 – Viz Shonen Jump, Sep 2008 [29.6] ::
996. ↓-31 () : Naruto Collector’s Edition Hardcover 1 – Viz Shonen Jump, Sep 2008 [7.8] ::
1469. ↓-66 () : Naruto 34 – Viz Shonen Jump, Mar 2009 [0.3] ::
1490. ↑95 () : Naruto Mission Protect the Waterfall Village (novel) – Viz Shonen Jump, Oct 2007 [0.3] ::
1502. ↑305 () : Naruto Innocent Heart Demonic Blood (novel) – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2006 [0.3] ::
1585. ↓-52 () : Naruto 35 – Viz Shonen Jump, May 2009 [0.2] ::
1774. ↑new () : Naruto Wall Calendar 2009 – , Dec 1899 [0.1] ::

Sure, vol 31 is the number one manga. whee.

Naruto vols 1-30 dropped a combined 175 places. (an average of 5 ranks each)
Naruto Preorders (vols 32-35) dropped a combined 168 places. (an average of 42 ranks each)

The minor gains are in the middle of the series — the collectors filling in volumes they can’t always find in bookstores — roughly speaking vols 5-15. Even using those gains to offset other losses, the Naruto manga volumes lost an average of 8 ranks apiece.

The anime guides are up, a bump from the release of brand-new volume 3, a gain of 232 places. But the art book is down, the official fan book is down — the box set is down 18 places. The glacier is melting.

##

And now, (oh, you only wish I’d forgotten about it)
The Usual Five Paragraphs on Methodology:

This morning (at the time of this writing, a point 18 hours ago) I was all set to post the lovely finished numbers when a minor point — something that doesn’t even affect the top 500 (or the midlist, which takes us down through the top 610 or so) or any of my other primary charts, started to annoy me just a little.

It’s this ‘last ranked’ business: historical information stored in the spreadsheet for a title previously ranked—sometimes a week ago, sometimes three months ago—that returns to the charts. Since returning titles (or at least, titles previously appearing as preorders that have in the interim become new releases, and again ranked) are now something I’m tracking on a weekly basis I thought I’d nail these down with a bit more rigor (to the limits of my method).

…Or at least, make the process a bit less half-assed. What I had done—months and months ago—was just type in e.g. “last ranked 19 Sep 1899” in place of a zero (new title) or some other ordinate (the actual ranking from the last week). This worked quite well, but when sorting data, the spreadsheet treated this as text (alphabetical) rather than a date. That is to say, August before January, that kind of thing.

Fixed it. Oh, it’s not a pretty fix. In fact, it looks like this:

=IF(D2="last ranked";(CONCATENATE("*";A2;".* ";B2;C2;" (";D2;" ";(TEXT(E2;"d mmm yy"));") : ";G2;" ";H2;" ";I2;" - ";K2;", ";(TEXT(L2;"mmm yyyy"));" [";M2/10;"] ::"));(CONCATENATE("*";A2;".* ";B2;C2;" (";E2;") : ";G2;" ";H2;" ";I2;" - ";K2;", ";(TEXT(L2;"mmm yyyy"));" [";M2/10;"] ::")))

IF functions are great. The Backbone of the spreadsheet, to an extent. Concatenate is also a powerful and oft-used function. Between the two of them, I can think in advance, plot, plan, and do the hard part *once* — and then I get an output to a single field that has digested a whole row of the spreadsheet into plain, preformatted (for textile) text that I can select copy and paste directly into the blog. Elegant in execution, though quite messy behind the scenes.

There was another fix this morning, differentiation between new titles and those historically ranked, so far removed from the ‘relevant’ rankings (only showing up past #745 this week, all titles above that point appearing and ranked on last week’s chart) and in execution so trivially different as to be invisible [the difference, in fact, between 1986. ↑new (last ranked 8 Jun 08) : One Thousand Years of Manga – Rizzoli, Feb 2008 [0.1] :: and 1986. ↑ (last ranked 8 Jun 08) : One Thousand Years of Manga – Rizzoli, Feb 2008 [0.1] ::] such that that if I’d never mentioned it, no one would have noticed. (yes, it involves another IF function, and is also in a field called by the big honking formula above) (and even having mentioned it I still suspect no one will notice)

Math doesn’t quite get me hard, but after solving these two minor, minor technical glitches in my steam-powered clockwork spreadsheet-giant-robot, I went into work with a big ol’ smile on my face. You’d think I’d gotten laid. Yes, I know I’m a bit… different. And yes, that was more than five paragraphs.

I don’t want to hear about it. Shut up and enjoy your rankings.

##

The Autumnal Equinox was the 22nd, this past Monday, and I haven’t been at this long enough for you to know, but that means that another quarterly post is coming with all the rankings for the past 3 months.

If you are a regular Comicsnob/RocketBomber reader, you might recognise it as the big honkin’ list.

Yes, I will be posting the whole damn spreadsheet again (OpenOffice and Excel formats). Yes, I’m going to break it down into digestible chunks and post those, too (in text, as posts to the blog.) Yes, I’m going to milk the data for a whole week’s worth of articles, with varying degrees of commentary and analysis.

Weekly Data posts First, however, including the usual weekly charts posted below — and the trends report, posting tomorrow.

I made it to the International Ballroom at the Hyatt downtown—a little late—but in time to catch at least two-thirds of Vic’s Q&A, where he answered the same 50 questions he has to answer at all the cons.

It was someone’s birthday (Amanda? I seem to remember Amanda) so the 200 or so people in attendance all got to sing Happy Birthday —led by Vic. I bet that is now a happy memory, hopefully preserved via i-phone or camcorder or the like. Vic also sang again at the very end of the session, rolling right into a karaoke version of his song “Nothing I Won’t Give” when the video and music played but for whatever reason the vocal dropped out.

Vic Mignogna is a composer and musician, if you didn’t know. If I might be permitted some fanboy gushing — he’s pretty damn good, too. At least, “Nothing I Won’t Give” has real emotional impact when paired with clips from FMA, the anime that inspired it.

##

I swapped hats following Vic’s session, switching over to my Serious Blogger persona and also changing venues, to attend a panel on Creative Commons and Legal Issues for Podcasters. (Please ignore for a moment that despite repeated promises, I’m not actually a podcaster yet.)

Among the five panelists there were two regularly-updating and (one assumes) moderately famous podcasters, two musicians, two lawyers, a law professor, and a radio executive — yeah, that’s more than 5 but some folks are just that multi-talented — and they managed to cover every question I had in the first 5 minutes, then went on to discuss pertinent issues for the next hour. I could post my notes, but this being a podcast panel, of course there’s a podcast — well, this year’s recordings likely won’t be up for a while but the same panel discussed the same topic last year.

If you wanted to see a list of everything folks were talking about (into microphones) then you might want to check out the 2007 index and bookmark the rss feed for 2008

Following Podcasting I stuck with the AV track — not that Dragon*Con has an AV track but they present such a big buffet that you can pretty much program your own con from the extended offerings —

…and let me riff on that thought for a bit before getting back to how much of a loser fanboy I am:

##

As I noted last year, one of the big, big draws of Dragon Con is that they do everything — if you’re a fan, they’ve got your fandom. It’s not just a matter of “Oh we have both Star Wars & Star Trek” either. I mean everything. If elves and space pirates just aren’t your thing, there are panels on robotics, astronomy, legal issues & the internet, art, literature, YA novels — heck, they run a four-day writer’s workshop that runs parallel to the con every year. (it costs extra, but it’s there.) The con schedule runs 40-some pages; there’s no way one person could do it all, let alone talk about it all: if you’re interested you should check out the pdf yourself: link

The telling thing is they’ve been doing this for 22 years, drawing tens of thousands of people each year, and they only recently got around to adding an Anime & Manga programming track. (Oh, sure, they’ve always had the viewing rooms — I remember anime at the 2nd Dragon*con — but this is the first year there is a full schedule and dedicated space given over to otaku panels)

For me, it’s a long slog. I can get downtown in about 40 minutes (incl. the time it takes to link up with the mass transit system to take the train in) but travel time is incidental. Navigating the crowds (esp. on Saturday), switching buildings five or six times a day because the con is spread over four downtown hotels (adjacent hotels, but still), finding time to eat, taking time to breathe…

Incidentally, I found that a pair sunglasses and an MP3 player turned up to a suitable volume help with my phobia of discomfort in crowds almost as well as the alcohol. Taken together it’s almost perfect — and my consumption of $7 pints of Guinness (but only $5.75 at Gibney’s) was considerably reduced yesterday compared to Friday (& last year). Perhaps it’s just a matter of psychological distance — a way to pull myself back and away from the mob & throng.

I’m sure if I were in costume (in a way, not there myself at all) there would be a similar effect, but I can count the number of awesome anime characters I’d be willing to dress up as who also share my stylish, handsome goatee on no hands. (I’m not shaving for cosplay. Without whiskers, I look like that blue muppet who was always stuck with Grover as his waiter.) (No, I’m not doing that either, even if if you can find someone willing to wear the Grover suit)

Anyway: it is possible to attend Dragon*Con, nominally a sci-fi and fantasy convention, without doing anything fantasy or fannish all weekend. Other than rubbing elbows with Oddly Dressed Folk in the lobby, you might as well be attending science or cultural seminars at a college campus all weekend.

Of course that’s no fun.

##

Following Vic & the podcast panel, I trucked it back to the basement of the Hyatt for the “Dub Your Own Anime” panel.

Before you discount this as just an amateur effort in the vein of fandubs, let me point you to Coastal Studios [flash site — as an alt here’s the wikipedia entry] and their founder, Scott Houle. Scott loaded up a spare Mac G4, a Pro Tools LE workstation, mics, script, stands, and all the assorted accoutrement and basically transported a sound booth to set up at a con panel. (He’s done this before, at Otakon and others)

There were so many attendees (starting at about 50 and growing to 75 or more as more folks kept filtering in) that Scott took a round-robin approach — having volunteers step up to the mic to record a line or two each. Besides being hilarious (both for the efforts of those brave enough to try it and for the source material — a scene in a bar that ends with a drinking contest, from the anime Miami Guns — complete with drunken characters & bad accents) it was also a very informative session. Instead of just talking about the process, folks got to see it in action, they could work (however briefly) with an actual ADR director, and the results were there for everyone to see (and hear) on the screen.

In fact, Scott promised to post the final ‘product’ when he gets back to Wilmington, after some editing and clean up (and getting the licensees permission): It’s not uploaded yet but the fan-dubbed scene should be found at http://coastal-studios.com/dragoncondub/ in about a week.

I took the opportunity after the panel (and after everyone left) to sit through an interview Scott did with DragonConTV and then to ask him some pretty hard-core tech questions, discuss the nuts and bolts of the industry, where the American Anime Industry is headed, and also to get his opinion on SCAD’s Sound Design Degree Programs (his take, mostly favourable: “They certainly invested in the right equipment”) and to ask his advice (three words: Final Cut Pro)

I’m not a journalist, so I won’t post the ‘interview’ because it wasn’t an interview. (Hopefully DragonConTV will end up uploading their interview to iTunes or it’ll make the D*C 2008 highlights DVD) Still, I really enjoyed the conversation and I’d Like To Take This Opportunity To Thank Scott. Again. Very Very Much.

I know I was acting like a otaku fanboy loser but I was really into it which isn’t a defense but there ya go.

Talking with Scott meant I completely missed the graphic novel panel over on the YA fiction track, which would have been informative and certainly on-topic and eminently more suitable for posting to this blog, but screw it. It’s my $90 and I’ll act like a fan when I feel like it.

Scott also hosted a panel early that evening on “the Anime Racket”, where he covered a lot of the same ground as the DCTV interview. (some of the points Scott Houle and various voice actors made in this panel and others I’m going to discuss in a follow-up post)

After that in the same room, there was a Toonami Panel with a lot, and I mean *a lot* of video clips and a lot of discussion (Nicolas Anderson of Tsubascon in WV was the sole panelist/moderator/emcee but he was doing a fine job getting the audience involved while simultaneously keeping everyone more-or-less in line and on topic).

(And after that I trundled home. Alas. One of these years I might muster enough scratch to get a hotel room and actually attend the con, rather than just faking it as a day-tripper.)

Who said this was a *holiday* weekend?

I feel like I’m working my ass off. This being Atlanta, and this being Labor Day (not to be confused with Labour Day, which is Canadian and actually came first) that can only mean

Dragon*Con.

Ah yes, a chance to be out and amongst the geeks of my nation, to let my Geek Flag fly, to mercilessly self medicate with alcohol in an attempt to overcome my nascent demophobia

Yesterday I listened to Jake Tarbox give a panel on “How to Read Manga” — which might be more accurately described as art appreciation and an introduction to Japanese visual language, analysis of panel layout and composition, cultural differences in the pictorial depiction of time, space, and sequence, and how the arbitrary separation of art into ‘high’ and ‘low’ forms has largely been discarded by the academic art community… but that’s kind of a hard title to fit into the Pocket Program listing.

Also yesterday:
— a voice actor panel where George Lowe (Space Ghost) completely stole the show: an impressive feat with Vic Mignogna and James Hong (and others) on the same stage
— a panel discussion and Q&A on the legalities of copyright, fair use, transformative works, and literature (um. well. that is to say: fan fiction)
— & a two hour stint @ Gibney’s (love that place) drinking Guinness self medicating and taking a break away from the crowds, while also trying to finish up the weekly (and monthly) manga charts.

speaking of: The manga charts should post on time, if I can find a freakin’ wifi connection at the con. Between four hotels and the Peachtree Center Mall you’d figure someone would be fronting some bandwidth, but no — “No internet for you, Fanboy!” (if only Gibney’s had free wifi…)

Back to it. Vic has an hour-long solo Q&A coming up if I can get to the hotel by 11:30. (Well, he’ll likely still hold the panel even if I can’t make it… but y’all know what I mean…)