Event Journal:

Adult Anime Day

Brief Pre-amble: It can be a challenge for sub snobs to get out there and support anime in theatres (can’t we have more sub options?!). Admittedly, I haven’t done it in a horrifically long time. Here was one of the grander attempts, way way back (at the time of this posting it was 10 years ago). Bruce and I had already taken the kids (who were cute little Pokémon viewers at the time... something we were terribly pleased about, because it was a great avenue for interesting them in numerous other aspects of Japanese culture) to see the first Pokémon movie, and decided it warranted a mentally prepared outing with friends. Plus, Perfect Blue was showing... and Satoshi Kon was to become my favourite anime film director.

Be forewarned that we get “a bit” (aka plenty) offensive here. It was an ADULT outing, and a wacko adult outing for that matter. It is most definitely not for kids, or for thin-skinned adults who can’t stomach lousy senses of black humour.

Again, THIS IS NOT FOR KIDS!!! Turn back if you are under the age of 18!!!

For the record, I prefer Pocket Monsters... but there were things they got away with in season 1 of Pokémon that made me feel like TV can be pretty amusing after all. Then I suppose they got yelled at and sued too much, so goes TV life.


Sun, 28 Nov 1999

Ok. I figured it's bad enough that we had Humunga Dunga, mother-in-laws, and fucked-up dinner after the Jellyfish Pokémonathon, but at least this should explain why I seem to be bickering with a big-mouthed LERer who has delusions of dictating my lifestyle to me.

We had our anime day yesterday, and now Gordon is having nightmares about jigglypuff and Mima... who really are one and the same anyway. Or at least jigglypuff is Mima's pudgier stalker form.

As everyone can tell, I'm being stalked by this little big mouth who won't stop saying LER, LER, LER (HIT, HIT) and SCREECHing at me.

So, what happened here?

Roacheoto first appeared when we (me, Bruce, Gordon, and Chris) did the Pokémon Jellyfish marathon last weekend, and somehow managed to watch all of season 2 that's aired so far plus a little of season 1 in one sitting. If that wasn't brain damaging enough... Poor Gordon, forever plagued by jigglypuff nightmares, fell asleep for a few moments and awoke to the singing of the massive tattooed Bigglypuff. We knew he was going to be wrecked for life.

Then came this weekend, with Cthulhachu and my dear little Ler...

I rounded up all of the necessary supplies and we cabbed to grab Gordon, then continued cabbing along to Chris' apartment where we all (barring that boring straight person named Bruce who seems to follow us around and won't give in to peer pressure. What a flippin' weirdo!) got ourselves mentally prepared for the evening.

We walked into downtown and freaked out over all of the Xmassy atmals and yuppies on the mall, but somehow survived. Bought our Pokémon tickets (though the "Are you sure it's just 2 adults?" question Gordon was inflicted with made us wonder briefly if we would be allowed in without kids. Figured they'd claim kid tickets only, anyone over the age of 12 needs to buy the right # of extra tickets. "You, sir, are almost old enough to be four 12 year olds!"), bought coffee at the Barnes & Noble café (the first and only day I've ever set foot in a B&N, actually). I zeroed in on a table that had all of the right books sitting there for me. One was called Random Acts of Kindness, I think, and I really really really wanted Bruce to buy it for me... but so goes life with boring straight people. ;) The other was How to Stop Smoking. Well, I sat around reading the Kindness book for a while. It was going to teach me how to join the "Kindness Revolution", and the first section was about becoming an angel. Wow. Can I review this for ABR? =) I should review it for CPAOD, but then I'd kinda need a copy. *Sigh*. I felt soooo enlightened by the little bit I did read. It was when I noticed that it included true accounts of people going out of their ways to perform random acts of kindness that I knew I wanted the book. Drool...

But, lo and behold, it was time to go be G-rated movie rebels (next rebel outing: the Disney Lynch film?) so I relinquished my treasure and we somehow miraculously managed to swim through all of the children on their way to see Toy Story 2. It was frightening though.

Fortunately, since the Pokémon movie made as much money last week as it did in its first day alone, our theatre wasn't cramped. We sat up front, Pikachu IN-YOUR-FACE, and prepared to giggle. A lot. Obviously the first part, Pikachu's Summer Vacation, was the most fun in our highly reverent state. Particularly with all of the odd little clips thrown in. They need to make a full-length Poke-speech movie -- I can only begin to imagine all of the mass brain damage it would cause. It'd be worse than releasing Cthulhachu! When the 20-odd jigglypuff rolled singingly across the screen I asked Gordon if he was going to have a new nightmare and he confirmed it. Is anything in the world more disturbing than a herd of jiggly (or perhaps that would be called a "megalomania of jiggly")? Well, barring waking up to a Biggly?

At many points, while we laughed hysterically, we could feel the other eyes in the theatre burning into the backs of our heads. WHAT?! It's funny, damn it. Sheesh. =) Star Wars isn't as amusing, but still has its moments. Well... Mewtwo Strikes Back, I mean. No jigglypuff. *sigh*

We somehow survived the bad music and the saccharine overdub toward the end, and despite being the last people who needed to hear it we were the only people left in the room when the grating music for the credits finished rolling. I cheerfully informed Chris "There's the hip-hop you wanted!" He was looking about as wrecked as Gordon by then. They really really really should've left the original background soundtrack, even if they needed to put a few dumb songs in over it. As you reach the touching ending the climactic music becomes more'n a bit harsh. There's a certain overwhelming lack of subtlety to 'Merkin soundtrack music...

I also realized I was full of it on some of the little few second bits I thought were cut. Must've been my overdub paranoia working over-time as usual. Either that or my mental enhancement re-added them. Hmmm....

Afterward we retreated to Barnes and Noble for more coffee, but the unkind bastards had taken my books away. What's with that?! I was only gone for the length of one short movie!!! Sheesh. Bruce had to go buy some more books for learning Japanese. My skirt got complimented by a café staffer and I said "Thanks, I've been snagging it for years". Perfectly unintentional look, this colourfully shredded skirt. All I remember is going to a show at the Gothic around the end of the 80s or the beginning of the 90s, and leaving the theatre with my skirt shredded. My belt, which constantly has a new line-up of crap dangling off of it (whereas we did make my James "Man of My Dreams" super-cleavage t-shirt and I wore that, my flipping lobster broke off of my belt before the movie and that kinda ticked me off), lost a lot of jewelry that night as well. Since that night the skirt continues to snag and tear at least a few times every single time I wear it. I constantly wonder how long it'll take for me to find myself bare-butted out there somewhere as a result. Then again, I typically wear underwear as a form of rebellion. Even if I'm not right now.

Chris was asking about Disney Lovecraft movies and one, or so I thought, was edging its way into my mind. Then I realized I was thinking of Evil Dead, which wasn't quite a Disney movie even though it'd be easy enough to see it that way. Whilst we yacked about Ash from Evil Dead, and various black holes, Gordon walked up and completed the scenario of Ash waking up in a Poké Ball. Though we told him we were talking about another Ash, it occurs to me that this should lead us to filming Evil Dead IV: Ash Becomes a Pokémon. Before long Cthulhachu was creeping out of its poké ball, and we were all doomed.

We were all flashing our Pokémon ticket stubs, as well, letting it be known quite proudly that we'd be sending them in for our free trading cards (damn it). Since there'd been a Schwarzenegger film-fest on before we left Chris' (leading to much discussion of how Arnie could hope to be a stud if only he could master the Toshiro Mifune head lice twitch, and of how he should learn to pull rocket launchers out of his ass or nose like Jessie, James, and the Post Brothers all do), and the final movie we exited during was Terminator II, I realized that when the trading cards cause the collapse of Western Civilization we'll all be standing there in the ruins holding our cards and saying "Nyah, nyah, it didn't strike us down!" Though I'm still not sure if it really was the Pokémon trading cards that destroyed the world, or if it was the computers taking over while everyone was too distracted by downloading porn off the net to notice.

After a lot of waffly indecisiveness we decided to walk back to Chris' apartment to further mentally enhance ourselves and wait around for the next anime (at midnight, 5 or so hours later).

It was while we were waiting that Gordon told us about a Taiwanese commercial causing a bit of a stir. It was for refrigerators or some such, and included a little animated Hitler saying we're gonna war against heat. Chris tried doing a web search for it, but we had no luck. If anyone can find this commercial, I need it as much as I need that Random Acts of Kindness book. It was around then when my little big-mouthed friend, our hitler pokémon, invaded. Just a little set of feet with a huge mustache on top. It uses the screech attack, which greatly reduces the defense of your opponent. I'm training mine with toxic, and with ice beam so it can wage its war against heat. Too bad it doesn't work against the hordes of roacheoto. ={ Naturally it took a while for our chants of "Ler, ler, ler, hit, hit!" to fade away.

{Old Editorial Note: someone was kind enough to point me toward the ad, actually a poster, and I realized it's a space heater “War on the Cold Front”. Obviously hitler's ice beam attack was hastily changed to fire blast, so let’s forget we made this mistake and move along. *whistling innocently*}

Actually Chris switched from lering to announcing that email from Mike had come in, so I screamed and ran for the computer while he read it aloud for everyone. The discussion then shifted to Mike's alien implant for a while, and after Gene found us on irc it grew to include the Weekly World News issues that'll be devoted to him. There were also the details of Mike's Videodrome existence, but we won't get into that. I also found out there's pictures from my latest torture reading (some of Chris') up on Gene's web site, but I can't seem to find it all on my lonesome.

Eventually Gordon, Chris, Bruce (who had finally given in to peer pressure), our hitler, and I all wandered over to the Mercury to call a cab. We made it to the Mayan with little trauma and purchased our tickets to Perfect Blue. This was to be the last of the midnight anime showings there, until sometime next year.

It was cold so we retreated to the crowded Hornet, figuring they'd let us sit there if we ate something while waiting. Sitting almost wouldn't have worked, but we noticed one guy getting ready to leave his table and figured we'd snag it. A couple began moving in on it. A wall of flames sprang up behind me as I edged toward them. Sparks of electricity shot from my eyes. As I grew 20 feet tall and fumed, they asked "Did you want this table?". I politely replied "Yes, we did". They retreated and we sat down. Since it was so busy we wound up being able to sit there without ordering anything. I cupped my hands angelically and prayed to the Jellyfish for a while, because it was really too loud to do anything but pray silently.

Then it was movie time. Gordon pulled out the wrong ticket stub so I told him he might want to avoid the embarrassment of trying to get into the anime flick by handing over his Pokémon stub. ;) He figured that'd be a good scene: "What, you mean this isn't the Pokémon thing?!" I figured it'd be better if we did have a troop of kids so we could complain about "Whaddaya mean all animation isn't for kids!?" But there wasn't even a mob of kids to plow through at this midnight hour.

Gordon was delayed in the lobby because they ran out of coffee, so the rest of us parked toward the front of the theatre and I asked how he was going to find us if the lights went out. Bruce said he'd listen for the people loudly talking about roacheoto. Chris began the "Ler, ler, ler, hit, hit" chorus. Gordon walked up and joined in. I wound up in hysterics for a long time.

The theatre manager had a massive case of the yacks before showing the movie and was trying to excite interest in the mailing list by offering possible Pokémon toy prizes. Either he was misled or fibbing because he was waving one toy around saying it was an import worth about $120. Well, quite frankly, we have that waddling koduc (psyduck) import from the same wind-up series and it cost us $5. Whatever ya wanna blow a wad on, I suppose. Some people asked if they could blow up the toy. Though blowing up, and axing, toys is fun... I just thought "Ah, you people don't like Pokémon because you haven't been watching the same one we are. Lamers probably haven't even seen any hitler, roacheoto, or Cthulhachu yet!" Sheesh. Adults sometimes try to be so annoyingly... adult! ;)

Of course he had to ask if anyone likes Pokémon (and received a solid round of boos). Yeah, sure, all of the LERing chemical-addled derelicts in the front do...

Perfect Blue was actually pretty fun. During the first part I thought we were watching Sailor Moon, and kept expecting Gordon and Chris to flee the theatre in a fit of screaming hysterics. But fortunately for them the tone changed quickly enough, so no one was lost. The movie does a few hundred or so reality flips (they must've been having a Cthulhachu problem), and they do a fine job of confusing you about who the stalker is. First they make it pretty obvious who it is. Then they make it equally obvious that it's a couple of other people, so it's no longer certain which is which. Ultimately it turns out to be the original obvious (well, not that obvious!) suspect after all. And, as I previously stated, the fat personification of Mima's (the main character's) past is indeed jigglypuff. Naturally they also do a fine job of turning cute into something wiggy.

Unfortunately I can't figure out what to say about this movie without blowing it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. Pop star becomes soap actress becomes soft porn starlet and is all the while stalked by something or other, and seemingly losing her own mind, and the people behind her corruption are dying all around her.

And then John Hinckley Jr. shoots President Reagan... Or maybe that was another film.

Later we poké-ed on out of the theatre and no doubt irritated the hell out of some serious anime fans by resuming our Poké-babble again. Had a long, frozen, wait for the cab -- during which a Cthulhachu was trying to escape its poké ball and the world began evaporating around it. It's sad that Cthulhachu is a lot like psyduck in that it tends to pop out of its ball no matter who you call, and takes a chunk of reality with it every damned time. ={

Editorial note: I censored (well, sure, I posted it in plenty of other places first) the remainder of this outing report. The cab ride discussions lapsed into Death Equinox and Cnidarian Sermons plans of such utter sadistic and corruptive diabolic profanity that we should probably keep them more confidential until we can carry them out. Sorry about that. Maybe the censored paragraphs will randomly appear in a Cnidarian booklet. Yeah, sure, they probably will. Look for entry “The Sermons That Forgot To Happen Because Cthulhachu Locked The Blasted One’s Brain Into Chaotic Limbo For 8 Years”.

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