The Oni-Con Spook Show Report


Where to start?

First, let me say the Oni-Con AV crew was great. They had the cables wrangled and the set-up ready for me to plug and pray. And despite that we still had gremlins in the works. An over sensitive SVideo connector gave us the blue screen of no signal from the start. Between roving mic-monkey Bruce Lewis and Video Programming Director Mike Unfried we lost the video feed a few more times over the course of the night. So the AnimeHELL tradition of video snafu was upheld.

The night before the show I found out that HELL had only been scheduled for one hour. I didn't want to drive 4 plus hours to Houston just to put on a one hour show. Thankfully, the OtakuHELL color commentator Bruce Lewis intervened and was able to get the Oni-Con powers that be to expand the show to 3 hours. Unfortunately nobody told the Red Vs. Blue guys who were scheduled to be in Video Room 1 at 8pm, but were moved to Video Room 2. It could've turned into a french farce, but didn't. The Rooster Teeth folks showed up, found the HELL spook show and after hanging around for a while gave their Red Vs. Blue DVD to some fans and disappeared into the Houston night. We did direct the R vs. B entourage into Video Room 2 where the DVD was shown without a hitch, and I apologized to the Rooster Teeth guys Sunday morning and bought a couple of their DVDs to make up for it.

The show was great. With Bruce Lewis on the mic I started the show with some scary movie trailers and some intermission shorts. I'll have to check the tape to see what played next, but I remember showing the Gobelins short SUPER TIBETAN RACER followed by the transforming robot C-4 commercial and following it up with the SPEED RACER THEME. From there it's all a blur. There was a lot of new clips, ATTACK OF THE SUPER MONSTERS, TOMB OF DRACULA, IT ONLY TAKES A SECOND, LIFE IS FOR LIVING, CORY HAIM ME MYSELF AND I, and the horror kept coming. And of course there was the crowd pleasing FORKLIFT DRIVER KLAUS, and NINJA SQUAD for some retro 80s pain. The Betty Boop cartoon MINNIE THE MOOCHER wasn't as well recieved as I'd hoped, maybe I need to trim it down for the next show...

All in all I had a great time, and I hope everybody enjoyed the show. I hope we can come back and do it again at next year's Oni-Con.
-danno!

Oni-Con Spook Show



UPDATE: Discotek has updated their website. They've gotten a distro deal with Ryko and actually street dates for their upcoming DVDs. Lotsa good stuff on that list, too.

AWA anime hell report

Okay, three weeks later, the fog's lifted, here's what went down.

Peelander Z put on a great show, everybody loved it, the people who got on stage for the last number sort of stayed there and prevented the band from packing up, so we had to clear the stage. Then we had to keep the lights up so that Peelander could pack their instruments up backstage. So we finally got the lights down and ready for Hell about 25 minutes after the hour, which is typical, actually.

This year I used PRINCE OF SPACE heavily; clips of the film were interspersed with commercial bumpers from shows like ROBOTECH, RONIN WARRIORS, STAR BLAZERS, TRANZOR Z, SAILOR MOON, CAPTAIN HARLOCK & QUEEN OF 1000 YEARS, etc. PRINCE OF SPACE is a terrible movie and I think I had about two segments too much, but in the end it worked as a unifying theme and I might try it again with another film and shorter clips.

Other Hell clips included:
vintage 700 club ad
Motocross in the Omni ("We're gonna turn the floor of the Omni into a GIANT MUD PIT" -this ad came from a tape of Starblazers recorded off-air in 1984.)
70s ads for church, the Marines
Subgenius ad
GI Joe PSAs -the Nensler ones, always a hit
Negativland- Drop The Mermaid - good for a "WTF" moment, but not actually enjoyed. I blame Tim Maloney.
Soviet TV 1-800 number - from the Discovery Channel's marathon of Soviet TV in the 80s.
Uzbeks PSA from SCTV's "The Russian Show".
Mini-Wini ad
Harmonica Heino -Next year I might run the "Wig Wam" clip, and that might be it for the old Heino. I'm so sick of looking at that guy. I think we've wrung all the comedy we can out of that motherfucker.
Forklift Driver Klaus - a big hit. Apparently the subtitled version isn't as widespread.
70s Air Force ads
Marlboro car ad - "It's interesting and practical!"
Flinstones Winstons - always a hit. Might retire this one for a bit though.
Purina ad with fursuits, disturbing.
Zingers and Wonder bread ad with Peanuts characters
Bring Me The Head Of Charlie Brown - got a decent reaction, but might get retired for a bit next year.
Dancing in the future clip show - finally got to use the funniest bit from SPACE PATROL ORION. Also Buck Rogers. I had to bring the actual tape of the Buck Rogers episode because that tape is MACRO ENCODED!! Who would pirate Buck Rogers??
Star Trek ad from Nashville TV set to "The Heat Is On".
Geraldo Trek convention footage - the kid cosplaying Kirk is funny, but his diction is so terrible that nobody in the audience knows what's going on. This clip might work better with more setup.
Angry Japanese Toys - found in a thrift store. Might go back to the thrift store.
Japanese Yamato toy ads- Yamato bike always funny, IMHO.
Live VS Anime- Nadelman missing his cues nonwithstanding, the audience really enjoyed the 3D Gundam segment and the Cutey Honey film is a good clip. The Gravitation clip has terrible animation! Does it always look that shitty? Robbie Rist can actually play instruments, BTW.
Cartoon All Stars is always a hit, though I might retire it for a year or so, or at least make a new edit that's not so rough.

Around this time PRINCE OF SPACE clips ran out. I actually skipped an entire segment because I could feel the audience reaction. I interrupted one segment with REJECTED, which gets GREAT crowd reaction.

DOG RIDING BICYCLE was next, which is just what it says.
JUMP OVER CAR, he doesn't make it. Always funny.
NEW ZOO REVUE CHARACTERS give each other puppet sex. I didn't even know I had this clip until a week before the show.
Danno ran clips from the Tetsujin 28 movie and the Godzilla Final Wars segment where he kicks the CG Godzilla's ass.
LIVE STAGE ANIME SONGS - found in a video store on our last day in Vancouver, stuck on the end of a bootleg VCD of anime themes. I was curious as to how well this would go, and it went pretty well. The giant inflatable Astro Boy at the end is a show stopper.

All in all we had the room full of people, (roughly 1000 chairs) we kept it full throughout the Hell, and everybody stuck around for Midnight Madness which started right on time. I didn't have to do nearly as much commentary, which works fine for me. I think the clips work better with as little setup or commentary as possible. Ideally they should be self-explanatory. Maybe I'm not drinking as much as I used to, or I'm not as nervous as I used to be, but the appeal of making a obnoxious drunken microphone spectacle out of myself just isn't there any more.

A great hell, on time and under budget, with terrific assistance from Gavv and Danno and Surat and the wonderful folks at MMI. I think the technical side of things was the smoothest ever, sound was great and the video looked sharp even on the crappier copies of things.

From what I see on the message boards and at closing ceremonies people loved the Forklift Driver, hated Prince Of Space, and want more hollering.

Clip of the Month - THE SPECIAL PICTURE! And the AWA Panel OF DOOM report!



So just what is THE SPECIAL PICTURE? Well, I could just link to it (it's been hosted on the BBC website ever since it originally aired), but I think it's far better if you watch the entire segment in all its glory.

DOWNLOAD THE CLIP HERE

Hopefully the hosting won't take too much of a beating. This was but one clip I ran at the AWA Panel OF DOOM. Oh yeah, I wrote up the report for that! It's over here in the forum! I'll edit the post to include pictures in a bit.