Tekko 2015: Day 1, Friday

So our day started out around 11:30 a.m.  We got into the convention center and, since we had pre-registered, walked right up to the registration booth.  We had our badges and were inside the convention within 5 minutes.

I must say, Tekko has really impressed me with how organized they’ve gotten.  They seem to have improved every year since we started going again.  This year was no different, at least as far as getting inside.

The first thing we did was walk into Con Ops, because both of my panels this year were on Friday.  We checked in and had a little scare.  You see, I had been informed that two of my panels proposals were accepted and that one was on the maybe list.  But when the time came for the convention to start, I had not received anything saying that my maybe was accepted.

So lo and behold when the guy at Con Ops says, “Okay, so you’ve got…3 panels, right?”

“‘Scuse me, wha…?”

I searched the schedule, the Wife searched the schedule, he searched the schedule, he called another woman over to search the schedule, and none of us could find the third panel listed.  So we finally decided that their list must not differentiate between okayed panels and maybe list panels.

So, after a touch of a scare, we got everything checked in and wandered around for a bit until the panel before ours ended.  Then we headed to Panel Room #3 and set up for the How To Avoid Bad Writing Panel.

Now last year I ran two panels and they were fairly average as far as attendance went.  One panel had about fifteen people in it and the other had about twenty.  More than I had expected, certainly, but still nothing super great.

But this year?  There was probably around 40-50 people in each panel.  The only panel we went to that had more people in it than my panels was one of the celeb panels, Uncle Yo’s Magical Girl Bootcamp.  I’ll get to more about that panel in tomorrow’s post.

So, anyway, the panel went off without much of a hitch.  We had a great audience, a lot of great questions were asked in the Q&A section of the panel.  Ultimately I was very pleased with how things went.

Several people approached at the end of the panel and the next panel’s host actually wound up having to chase me out of the room because I was still answering fantastic questions and chatting with people.

As a matter of fact people came up to me all day long to talk about their own writing, ask me for advice on how to handle this event, that style, this character, or simply to ask what I thought about one of their works-in-progress.  It was great!

The next thing we did was a little more roaming to get the lay of the convention center better before going into Panel Room #1 to host the History of Sengoku Japan panel.  Now what we should have done was change out my camcorder’s battery, because I hadn’t realized it only had 30 minutes of recording time left on it.

So we set up for the second panel and once again…room was pretty full.  The writing panel definitely had more people in it, but the Sengoku panel was certainly not empty by any means, a little closer to 40 than 50 in this one.

Once again a few good questions, but for the most part they just let me tell interesting stories about samurai.  And once again a group of people came up to me and chatted about the topic.

I was re-introduced to the fellow who did the RTK panel I watched a few years back.  His panel style is actually what my own are based off of.  I watched what he did and copied it, then modified the system to suit my own presentation style.  And through the whole thing I forgot to ask his name.  Go me, for derping on that.

We hit the restroom and popped a squat in the panel room we had just presented in for the How to Hibachi panel.  The Hibachi chef that was running the panel, Josh I believe, worked for Shogun in Monroeville, PA if I remember correctly.

A regular trick, the Onion Volcano. Always cool to watch.

It was pretty nifty to watch him do some of the tricks and to give us the low-down on some of the tricks of the trade.  He explained what all the items on the cart were, how much butter and vodka they go through every night (the vodka is for cleaning and setting fires), and how they modified their tools to let them do their tricks.

He had some pretty good jokes and a decent presentation skill.  He ended on this one…

What sound does a White Chicken make? Bak, bak, bak!

What sound does a Chinese Chicken make?  Meow, meow…

Overall it was informative and entertaining, which is how panels should be.  And it made me hungry for a Hibachi dinner.  So, mission accomplished if the restaurant sent him there to represent them.

After that was dinner.  Can you guess where?

You’re goddamn right we ate there!

Of course it was.  During the weekend the wife’s younger cousin was staying with us and we treated her to some delicious Sharp Edge food.  Got her addicted to the delicious pudding.  Yumm…y’know I really should start charging them for the advertising at this stage.

Anyway, we went back to the convention and sat in on the “I Know Where to Put It” Complications of Rule 34 panel.  In case you aren’t aware the panel is referencing Internet Rule #34: If it exists…here is porn of it on the Internet.

They showed strange occurrences within the porno-sphere of the internet.  Things like Maleficent holding Tinkerbell by the wings, dangling the little faerie above her mouth while she ate Tinkerbell out.  Which was strangely arousing in a weird sort of way (it was very well drawn).

There was some weird shit in that panel.  But the wife and I discovered that we are apparently pretty freaky.  There were people who walked out of the panel in disgust.  The wife’s brother was one of them; he hit his limit when they showed the General Lee (the  car from Dukes of Hazard) ass-raping Boss Hogg.  Yeah, like I said…weird shit.

But it’s nothing as bad as we’ve seen on the internet.  These people have clearly never heard of Shadman, Spazkid, or eFukt.

If you’re at work…please do not do a Google Search with those terms.

All in all Friday was a fantastic day.  Tekko was definitely starting to show how much they had improved over the years.  Not without hiccups, but nothing major that went wrong.

So, come back tomorrow and see what we did and what we thought of Day 2.  Which started pretty early for us because our ward for the weekend wanted to see a panel at 9:30 in the morning.

~RCS

Tekko 2015 Wrap-Up

All right folks, unfortunately Tekkoshocon 2015 is over.  But fortunately it was pretty good this year.  We did two panels this year (How To Avoid Bad Writing and History of Sengoku Japan) and, to be honest, I was worried about the turnout since we were on Friday and the largest number of attendees comes in on Saturday.

But both rooms were super-packed!

 

Okay, so…maybe it wasn’t that packed.  But still, the rooms were way more full than I was expecting.  Thanks, again for showing up.  I should have my full review and my merchandise review (i.e. a list of the stuff we bought) in a few days.  I’ve got some time off this week, so I should be able to get them done in a timely fashion (for once).

As always, thanks for coming folks.  And not just to my panels, but thanks everyone for showing up to the con as a whole.  It was a fantastic year.  It seems like each year Tekko has fewer and fewer hiccups, this year was no exception.  Well, except for the surprise fire drill, but that’s another story.  I should also have some video up on the Youtube channel before too super long.

~RCS

Have I Beat This Horse Enough?

Hey!  Have I mentioned that I wrote a book, coming out in a few days?

Once or twice, yes…

 

Okay then, uhh, how about we talk about something else?  Something like…

 

That’s right folks!  I’ll be hosting panels again this year at Tekkoshocon.  Unless anything changes I will be in Panel Room #3 at 1:30pm on Friday April 17th for How To Avoid Bad Writing.  That’s right, I’ll be teaching you how to not write complete drivel!  Trust me, if anyone knows a bag of crap masquerading as writing, it’s me.

I will then be shifting gears over to History of Sengoku Japan in Panel Room #1 at 4:00pm that same day.  Come by if you have an interest in anything Samurai.

Both panels will have my charismatic Alto spewing forth all kinds of knowledge, not to mention my usual humor (I use the term loosely, in case you’re new to the site), and even some door prizes!

~RCS

Shall We Date?: Abridged

Tons of news for you folks lately!  First I discussed my book being released in a few months, then I told you all about the panels I’ll be hosting at Tekkoshocon again this year.  Oh wait, I haven’t told you that, have I?  Probably because it was only confirmed a day or two ago.  Well, I don’t have timelines, yet, but I am slated to host two panels as it stands right now, with the possibility of a third one.

Now what did I come here to tell you folks?  Oh, that’s right…I’ve also been hired on to a new project as an assisting writer.  It’s a comedic ‘abridged’ series parodying a Dating Sim called “Shall we Date?: Angel or Devil” by NTT Solmare Corp.  If you’re interested, head on over to the trailer (embedded below) and give it a like, the project head is a Ms. Jamy Catalyst.

I originally got interested in the project because it seemed like a good concept and from working on the script I have to say that it does look like it’ll turn out pretty well.  I hope you’ll give it a look when we start releasing the full episodes!

~RCS

Tekko 2014 Review: Day 1 (Part 1)

As you all know I was very critical of Tekkoshocon a few years back. I decided to give the convention another chance this year. And that was a good decision. A lot of the problems they had before, they had fixed. Not to say there weren’t a few hiccups, something that big always will have something go wrong, but it was much better organized this year.

So here’s my complete review of Tekkoshocon 2014, starting with Day 1. Well, actually Day 2…we didn’t go to the Thursday events, opting to utilize the day for a set up period. So we’ll call Friday Day 1, for all intents and purposes.

 

First off we hit registration somewhere after noon. We had gotten the Premium Badges again this year, but our friend who went with us just got the regular badge. This opened her to a slew of jokes about abandoning her and going to the special Premium Lounge without her all weekend.

The Registration was something I had talked about before as being pretty poor, and it usually was every year. Getting the chance to go through Otakon’s registration was a delight…

This is the Premium Line?

So the last time I talked about Tekko registration I had mentioned I didn’t have any idea how to improve registration. Well the good news is somebody else must have, because Registration was a breeze. We Preemies…err, that’s a poor choice of name for that. Uhh…we…Snobby Cocksuckers?

I almost like Preemie better.

Anyway, the Premium line was a simple process and we were done in about two minutes. Our friend didn’t even pre-register and she was still done with her regular badge in about fifteen minutes.

The last time we were at Tekko it took over half an hour for us to get through registration, and we pre-registered last time, too. So they’ve definitely hit a sweet spot with their registration set up this year. They need to keep doing whatever they did…it was over so quickly I couldn’t even be sure about what they were doing to make it go so smoothly. Ten points for Griff–Tekkoshocon 2014.

Anyway we had about an hour and a half to kill so we went to the Disney in Japan panel. The panel was basically an excuse to talk about the movie Frozen for half an hour. The first half was a lesson about Disneyland Japan from someone who had never been there; but she did have first-hand accounts from workers and visitors, so at least she knew something of what she was talking about. And she was very up front about her total lack of first-hand knowledge.

It was interesting and the last half of the panel was a comparison between American trailers and Japanese trailers for the movie Frozen, followed by a short discussion about the movie. Which I am plenty okay with; if you haven’t seen Frozen, yet, you really should. Children or not it’s a pretty awesome movie.

 

And that brings us to, what my wife calls, one of the best panels of the convention. The History Behind Sengoku Basara panel, hosted by yours truly and presented by Dickjutsu.com. Which I pointed out numerous times during the panel, because that was the whole point of the panel: To get paid to advertise this very site.

…okay, well actually that was only half of it. I really love talking about this stuff and it was a chance to get paid for talking about something that I care about deeply. Oh, and advertise the site, if I didn’t mention that already.

If I got a nickel for every time I used this picture…I’d use this picture a lot more.

For those of you who came out to see it, I thank you. I hope you enjoyed listening to me talk at you as much as I enjoyed talking about Sengoku Japan. And my wife enjoyed it because I wasn’t directing all of my nerd air at her, alone…trapped with no recourse but to listen to me nerd-out, like usual.

…and then, when Oda Nobunaga was fifteen he…

 

Intermission

Now this is the point where I’d like to talk about dinner. It was at the Sharp Edge on Penn Avenue. That means it was delicious. We brought our friend to it, and indoctrinated her. Now everyone should go eat at the Sharp Edge– Wait a minute, I should charge advertising for how much I shill for that restaurant.

Can I at least get a free pudding?

Anyway, after dinner we headed back to the convention. This is already a step up from the last time we were there when we had dinner and decided we’d rather walk around Pittsburgh, even though it smelled like hobo semen, than go back to the convention.

So Tekko’s definitely making progress.

 

Back to the Story at Hand!

When we returned to the convention we went straight on to our second panel, the History Behind Dynasty Warriors. Like I mentioned before it was getting paid to talk about something I’m very passionate about and get some free advertising for the site.

Once again…thanks to those who came and I hope you enjoyed the panel.

Immediately after my panel was the Attitudes Toward Plus Size Cosplay panel, which was actually one of the bigger issues with scheduling. Normally all the panels had a 30 minute set up/tear down period, but there was no such period between my panel and theirs. I tried to get out of their way as quickly as possible, but oh well, a minor hiccup compared to the kind of stuff that used to happen at Tekko.

We decided to stay for the next panel and that was probably a mistake. The ladies handling the panel had a good idea, their premise was to stir debate about the attitudes toward plus size cosplay; hence the title of their panel, I imagine. A good idea. But they handled it poorly, especially when the debate broke out.

A small-framed young man stood up and shattered their whole plan by actually coming up with a counter-point and calling up a moment of hypocrisy in their suggestions.

All in all I can see both sides of the coin. What they were saying was right, but what he said was also right. He lacked tact, as far as he just stood up and called hem on their bullshit instead of going at it from a more diplomatic avenue. But when they accused him of not having a viable opinion in the debate on cosplay attitudes because he wasn’t a fat woman, she showed that she had even less tact than him.

We’ll be going into more detail on this later, but we’ll leave it at that for now. This post is about Tekko as a whole, not a rant on a single panel. I will say, however, that we got disgusted by the ladies running the panel when they singled the poor guy out and made fun of him…right as they started discussion on engaging with detractors and to always ignore them and take the high road. By the way, though, ignoring those who speak out against you…not a good policy for ‘starting a debate.’

Moving on we went to the Anime Horrors panel. But I’m sure you have something productive to do right now. So we’ll take a little break here and pick this up tomorrow. Your homework for next class is to like, share, and comment on this post. Haha, and you thought I could only shill for Sharp Edge–goddamnit I do need to charge for ad time.

~RCS

Tekko Review Update!

Thanks to everyone who came out to see us Tekkoshocon this year!  I hope you enjoyed our panels and, if you were one of the lucky few, our door prizes!

As it stands right now we intend to have a few more panels next year, overall we enjoyed Tekko this time, a lot of stuff I was critical about the last time we were there were fixed.

I intend to have a full review up in the coming week or so.

In the meantime, I’m also catching up on DotMs, so expect the September Dick of the Month tomorrow morning!

~RCS

Tekkoshocon 2014 Begins!

Just as a reminder to everyone Tekkoshocon in Pittsburgh, if anyone plans to attend our panels, we’ll be at Panel Room 3 from 2pm to 3pm for The History Behind Sengoku Basara!  We will also be at Panel Room 2 from 6pm to 7pm for The History of Dynasty Warriors!

Come one down and listen to me blabber on about Warring States Japan and Han Dynasty China for a couple hours, and maybe even win some free prizes, too!

~RCS

Tekkoshocon 2014 News!

I’ve been rather critical of Tekkoshocon before, but this year we’ve decided to try it out again.  We’ve been told by folks that went last year that a lot of the things we complained about had been fixed; so we’ve decided to give it another shot after going to Baltimore’s Otakon last year.

But not only that, we’ve gone two steps further: I’m going to be hosting two panels at Tekko this year.  As it looks right now one panel, on Japanese History related to the anime/game series Sengoku Basara, will be Friday afternoon at 2pm in Panel Room 3.  The other panel on the History of the Three Kingdoms Era of China as related to the game series Dynasty Warriors will be held the same day (Friday) at 6pm in Panel Room 2.

I’ll let you all know as soon as I do if the times change.

We’ll be giving away door prizes at both panels as well, including books and computer games, and of course the chance to listen to me talk about two of my favorite subjects for an hour a piece.

So if you’re going to be at Tekkoshocon this year in early April, feel free to come on down and see either or both of my panels.

The door prizes alone are pretty nice, we’ve got some decent games to give away: Europa Universalis 3, Majesty 2, a few Uno games, a book on Ninjutsu in the Sengoku Basara panel, and who knows what else!

Oh I know what else; that’s right.  Anyway…

We’d love to see our adoring fans (maybe even both of you!) come on down to see us, especially if you’ll be there anyway.

~RCS

Otakon, 2013 Review: Full (And Finally)!

This is long overdue, but unfortunately I just don’t really have anything to tell you all.  Otakon 2013 was pleasant, if not overwhelming.  As you know my last convention review, Tekkoshocon Pittsburgh 2012, was relatively negative.  Otakon didn’t have any real serious issues to bring up.

Everything went fairly smoothly, the only real issues were a few line-building issues around the panels based in the attached Hotel; which the Otakon people really had no control over.  All of the line issues were architectural, too; the wall where the line had to be formed had a double door every ten feet so the line was broken up twelve times before it wrapped around the corner.

Other than that, though, the only real problem was that there were over 30,000 people traipsing about so it was crowded from time to time in the hallways.  And once again the biggest choke point was the corridor between the convention center and the hotel where a few panels were being held.

Highlights were the Voice Actors After Dark panel, of course, and the Cosplay Burlesque was actually pretty cool to watch, too.  The VA After Dark panel was comprised of Todd Haberkorn, Mike McFarland, Jad Saxton (pronounced like Jade, a recurring joke was calling her something akin to Chad), Cristina Vee, and Kyle Hebert.  This was the second time we’ve seen Todd Haberkorn and he was entertaining, and a little creepy, as usual.  Mike McFarland was very entertaining as Seth MacFarlane since he did several very good impressions of the man’s characters (Peter, Stewie, and Brian Griffin).  Cristina Vee and Jad Saxton were both a little too cutesy and seemed out of their element for much of the dirty humor contained within the panel, but they got a few good lines nonetheless.  Kyle Hebert walked in half way through the panel and jumped right into things as if he’d been there the whole time; definitely a natural to the dirty mind platform the panel required.

But the real star of the VA After Dark show was the Sign Language guy, Semaj, who just made the whole experience twice as fun as it already was.  He was a spectacular sport, especially considering the dirty things they made him sign.

Another highlight was Crispin Freeman’s Mythology in Anime panel.  On his website he lists a few similar types of panels he runs and I think, honestly, you could just have a Crispin Mythcon and enjoy it.  Just Crispin Freeman lecturing for two days straight; he’s entertaining, informative, and he puts complex philosophical points in a very simple context that even laymen can understand.  Trust me, I understood it all, so a regular person should be fine.

That hair is mythological enough.

We saw Vic Mignogna, pleasant as always although he can get a little preachy at times and some of the things he says makes it seem like he lives in a bubble, but he’s still a very nice man and is probably one of the most fan-dedicated Voice Actors I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to (I’m really not sure how he has time to record anything, he’s at just about every con I’ve ever been to).  His main drawback, more so than the preachiness, is that he refuses to share the location of his fountain of youth.

Seriously!  Look at him…he’s in his fifties!

I’m still not sure entirely how, but we managed to miss every one of Maile Flanagan’s panels, if you can believe it.  Just bad timing on our parts.

And what seems to be a regular motif with any of my convention reviews…

Our favorite place to eat while in Baltimore was Mount Vernon Pizza.  It was right down the street from our hotel, the staff was friendly, and the food was really good.  Some pretty good coupon deals, too.

~RCS

Sirence!

I remember seeing the show original Japanese version of Silent Library once or twice during a humorous panel at Tekkoshocon.  It was pretty good, but now apparently it’s on MTV.  I just caught an episode on YouTube and that’s what I’ve been doing.  If you enjoy watching big burly men get mistreated by their friends for small sums of cash (in the end each guy gets a little more $700 for all their troubles), especially if you enjoy watching shirtless muscle-bound men have clamps put on their nipples.

The episode happens to be about some WWE superstars, whom I’ve never heared of because I don’t watch wrestling, go through an ordeal.  The one really big guy getting smacked with a bat is great, as is his fatal Simpsons joke during the Twister Sister (a cute Twisted Sister pun) trial where says, “The goggles do nothing!”

So if you’ve got twenty minutes to spare, I’d suggest sparing it on this video…

~RCS