Hidey-ho, Jtorinos! Even if most of the con dust has settled for most of us, vacuumed up and thrown out by the mundanity of real life, we'll still have the strength to corral another news roundup today. As usual, it's just a few morsels to tide you over till our weekend peanut-butter orgies have been cleaned up and packed away. We've got middle-aged boobs, GONZO goodness and an anime/manga museum exhibit to cover here, so let's hose down the walls and hit the jump, shall we?

This one's title was a bit too large a mouthful, I thought; the full name was actually "Inspirational Lecture for Aspiring Artists & Writers." It fit in its schedule slot box thingy, but they had to put the panelists' names on the next line: Chris Holm and Amelie Belcher. This was a very nice, low-key and interesting hour, largely because Chris is a webcomic artist and diedhard Postal fan who's new to the whole paneling thing (this was his first one ever ever!), and Amelie is a veteran artist and panelist who estimates having attended over 50 conventions in the past four years. O_O

The gist of this event was very, very simple, really: if you want to tell a story, written and/or drawn or wha'evers, just do it. Chris, for one, definitely wants you to succeed, because then he'll get to listen to you talk at cons and thus won't have to deal with stage fright anymore. :D He's a very nice guy whose love of the Postal games and willingness to not only take chances on getting people to look at his art, but accept rejection and criticism gracefully, have gotten him as far as his own comic and an invitation to resubmit some of his designs for the next Postal. That's not what got me a smackdown, though; you'll have to hit the jump for that.

San Japan left me full of warm and gushy impressions, up to and including the full-blown case of headache-y sniffles I came down with Sunday night, and the days of drugged sleep resulting therefrom; luckily, most of the con itself was chicken-fried-awesome, and the pleasantest surprise of the whole weekend was the first panel I attended midday Saturday.

Little was going on downstairs, save for one [guess which!] handcuffed cosplayer playing dead in the midst of a cooing teenage cluster, black feathery halo and all; I checked the schedule again, trailed into the Ani-Idol finals, listened a bit, and almost immediately wandered back out in search of a Hare Hare Yukai-less environment (congrats nonetheless to the Demyx who won with it!).

This con had an interesting panel layout: many of them were either half-hours or staggered one-hour panels overlapping each other. It wasn't always apparent which was which at a glance, but the difference did cut down on blatant schedule conflicts and those twenty-minute "Any more questions? ...Anybody?" panel tail-ends you sometimes get at smaller cons.

This time, though, it meant either walking into an ongoing music creation panel - more Dale's or Zac's bag - or "The Chibi Project," whatever the hell that was. A quick caricature demonstration, maybe? The panel was being run by "PatrickD"--didn't ring any bells. Hmmmm...After an intensive five-second struggle, I decided on the mystery panel and walked into the dimmed, half-empty room just as a short video was beginning. Several brief transformation clips of Sailor Moon and her pink-haired future-daughter ensued, then an apparently pointless pre-battle sequence in which Chibi Moon is nabbed, zapped and/or squeezed by some huge bad guy/lady.

As we pondered this, the DVD cut right to live action, and that which followed lay bare the nature--nay, the very heart of The Chibi Project. Those of you with tender feelings toward chibis and inanimate objects resembling them may not want to hit the jump, but the rest of you...ha ha ha AH HA HAAA this was so awesome.

Adjust the microscope of your Convention Senses, if you would, on a mental map of the U.S., and zoom in. Now do it further. No, more, past that huge Ota-smelling one, in Baltimore, the one I am not attending with my site brethren (not that I waited too long to get tickets and availability was shot to hell by the tropical storm or something, OH NOES). See that, down there in Texas? That's San Japan 1.5, right in my hometown, the very same weekend. The con gods took pity upon this procrastinating moron, along with Captain McVengeance - I'm charging all of you at Otakon to call him nothing else, the whole weekend! - and secured me entrance to this much more local con...along with John Martone. They remembered you, John! I got your badge along with mine. (Un)fortunately, my boyfriend had already bought his day pass, so ‘twas quite easy to stay honest with it. :P

Ye Olde Otakone is coming up fast, and as we scurry around on our hamster wheels, trying like hell to make sure we all end up in approximately the same place(s) and time(s) August 8-10, it occurs to me that I'm really, really looking forward to this huge-ass con. I've gone to several in my time, if not as many as some folks 'round these parts; Dale recently pointed out many a valid annoyance of convention-going, without losing that ol' loving spirit for the whole thing. I haven't been to one since June, so I can't wait to thrust myself into the sweaty, be-Narutarded masses again. :D

Come to think of it, we all complain about pretty much the same things that suck the same every time--but we still keep coming back. Let's face it: body odor, poor behavior on various persons' parts - no pun intended...yuck - and three days of weary feet can't put much of a ding in the collective awesomeness that is an anime convention. Hit the jump as we explore ten of the finer points of public fangasmation.

So, 'bout a month ago, we found out that the infamous "WaiWai" section of Mainichi was being shut down because it was full of salacious crap that made its country of origin look like a bunch of loli-loving unnatural-sex-crazed Loony McCrazypantses. (Okay, technically fish sex > bandage fetishimization, but they weird me out about equally.) Trashy? Sure. But it was a hell of a lot of fun to read, and provided some proof positive - as if we really needed it - that anime isn't the only evidence that Japanese people are certifiably nuts, and why we love it so. :D

Shocking new allegations have come to light, though, as Mainichi Shimbun, a respected fo'-reals national newspaper, admitted that the items printed in WaiWai might not have been fact-checked so much as, well, made up. That's right, folks: a smutty tabloid printed things that may not have been true. I'm not shocked and dismayed so much as curious re: the veracity of fish sex, etc., but the paper is taking this very seriously, recently issuing an apology:

"These articles... should not have been dispatched to Japan or the world. [...] We apologise deeply for making many people feel uncomfortable, damaging many people's reputations, causing great trouble and at the same time, betraying the public's trust in the Mainichi Shimbun. We are deeply sorry."

Let's have a wake: what were your favorite "AH HA HA WTF??" WaiWai moments?

Proponents of seeing women without adequate butt-clothing, rejoice, for another incarnation thereof is emergent in Japan. It's not new, per se, as Japan Probe points out: fundoshi are traditional men's loincloths, usually seen these days on gentlemen prancing about at traditional events, and as such are not the kind of thing you'd expect to see hawked to women. Back in February, though, actress Saya Takagi mentioned on a talk show that she habitually wore them, and the nationwide "Bwuh?" effect has translated to a lot of attention from both sexes.

In case you didn't think ladies were being targeted, the name kills all doubt: they're "pendre shorts," from a French verb meaning "to hang"; if there's a cheap 'n easy way to sexify your product in the Japanese mind, it's to put anything even vaguely French in its name. I'm not sure why, precisely, but the Japanese associate France with beauty and elegance the way Americans associate any product with the letter X on it with mysteriously awesome coolness of awesome mystery, and buy accordingly.

Cynicism and ass-floss jokes aside, though, this kind of underwear does seem like a good idea. Not only does the design restrict your Stuff considerably less than elastic-waisted store pantsu - did anyone else ever use that word in Japanese class thinking it meant "pants"? - but natural fabrics tend to breathe quite well in humid Japanese summers, plus some of the designs are downright cute. I'm not sure about company Love Supplements claiming that their special material emits far-infrared rays to improve the human body vibrations and relieve various of specifically womens’ health problems, but it can't hurt!

In the few consecutive times I've been online this past month, abortive attempts to write about Inuyasha aside - seriously, one got closed prematurely via roommate, one eaten, and one killed itself in Gmail by making me step on a piece of glass when I got up for cookies...you win, you doggy bastard - this was the one worth staying up as late as Len does for quality 'puter time! It's another entry from Hello Kitty Hell, a site after my own bitter black heart, who supplied us with a scary-ass tattoo back in January and have been bustling ever since, providing too many bits of weirdness to link. Seriously, I can't pick 'em.

...Except perhaps the boob-related entry. And the adorable Mexican wrestling. Or the good ol' therapeutic device. Warning: I've now wasted a solid hour on flipping through these entries, and I could go on, instead of going to bed and getting up at a sane part of the afternoon tomorrow.

Besides rerererecomposing mental Dear John letters to Inuyasha, I've been wondering many other things the past weeks, one of which happens to be why this vapid caricature of sapient life is so effing popular. Why? Why? Cuteness doesn't explain a multi-billion-dollar sociopolitical empire, people! I'm not leaving my house again till someone gives me a satisfactory reason: "Why Hello Kitty is So Inexplicably Popular," in 250 words or less. Due Monday. Open-book.

Japan Today had a really brief but weird tidbit for all you airless-void-lovin' people: On July 1, some guys yclept First Advantage will start letting Japanese couples line up to get hitched about 100 kilometers above the Earth. Starting in 2011, the American-designed and ingeniously named Rocket Plane XP will, for the rock-bottom price of 240 million yen, take a priest, the happy couple, and two guests in a privately piloted one-hour trip up and down through the atmosphere. Friends needn't feel left out, as the fee includes "original wedding dress" (I wanna see!), a wedding party stuck on the dumb ol' planet, and live broadcasting from space. Four days' training and a crapton of money are all it takes!

I crapped out on getting an interesting pic (my NSFW folder's power level has risen a bit, though!), but did run across some neato factoids re: marriage and badonkadonk in space. Technically, the first marriage in space was in August of 2003, when Ekaterina Dmitriev married a cardboard cutout representing her new husband, Russian astronaut Yuri Malenchenko, who was in space at the time--Texas law says only one party need actually be present for the marriage to be official. (I've been to the NASA Center in Houston. Cool place, but I wouldn't get hitched there.)

Virgin Galactic wants to cash in on this, too: they've lined up the first both-present wedding in space as well as the first honeymoon in space. Potential jokes abound, as they didn't specify how long the latter couple would be allowed to go at it, but the wedding flight will only be up there for "a few minutes." No one's ever boinked in space, as far as we know, so that'll be an interesting experience for scientists and "Guess where WE went for our honeymoon??"ers alike.

The Japanese have come up with some strange, high-tech and even violent means of saving money in nonsmashable personal containers; as the latter blog points out, men and kids are not the ones wielding the principal financial power in the average Japanese house--husbands get an allowance from their wives, whose job it's been to manage the family's money since, well, ever. That translates to lots of gentlemen who spend down to pockets o' change, perfect for piggy banks, which have evolved to meet the demand, beeps and booms and all.

But what about the ladies who might be less used to dumping hundred-yen coins into a little gadget on a regular basis? Toy maker and all-around pimp Bandai Corp. apparently asked itself that the other day, and because it's bigger than fifteen Gundams in a mud-wrestling pit, it could immediately answer, "A dating thingy!" And that's what they did, pink hearts and all: the Ikemen bank ("handsome men bank") has a little screen that displays one of five types of men, from the daddy figure to the shy jailbait schoolboy, selectable at the beginning of the "game." Hit the jump for why this device symbolizes the ultimate implosion of Japanese society.