Time Off to Count Cajuns!! Photo Fame Wears Lovely Shirts!!

This month is gonna be slow.  I'm driving all over southwest Louisiana taking head counts for Uncle Sam so the state can figure out how many Representatives it stands to lose because of all the hurricanes.  Assuming I don't fall into a swamp or get bitten by a rabid dog, everything should pick up come April.

The (badly reproduced) photo above is from Nasfic '85 in Austin Texas.  As explained in the recent post about Wicked City, a Nasfic is the consolation prize America gets when the World Science Fiction Convention is awarded to the furriners "somewheres else" in the world.  Suffice to say, it wasn't out of snobbery that I somehow managed to make both the Nasfics during the '80s while managing to miss every Worldcon, that's just the way it worked out.  Flanking yours truly are Karen Helmer and Tommie Dunnam from the late, lamented SDF-Fort Worth, although the SDF-Forth worth didn't actually exist when the photo was taken.  It was supposed to be an EDC (Earth Defense Command) panel on anime fandom, but none of the officers from Dallas could make it, so we pinch-hit for Derek, Meri and the rest.  We were all technically members at the time, so I guess that made it okay.

The SDF-1 Super Fortress toy on the table is the original Japanese release and not the Matchbox Robotech version that came out later in the decade. This one had the (gasp) dangerous missiles that could hunt down your young child and force themselves down his or her throat until the tyke choked to death so of course it became public enemy number one on the Japanese PTA hit list.  Or something. Anyway, there weren't a whole lot of them making the fan rounds on this side of the Pacific, so Tommy had to keep his eye on this puppy lest it find its way into some toy hoarder's collection and never be seen again. I don't think he ever let it out of arm's reach.  I dunno much about the Yamato toy, that's more Steve Harrison's department...

The picture itself was printed in an issue of the Japanese Animage monthy anime magazine sometime in either late '85 or early 1986 (actually March '87, per Jack Thielepape in the Comments below).  Fred Patten sent notes around to the various anime clubs letting us know that Animage was soliciting pictures for an article on American anime fandom and this was our contribution.  Well, my contribution.  The picture was taken by Jack Thielepape.  I don't even know if Karen or Tommie knew about it until the picture was printed in Japan.  Animage was hard to come by over here at the time, so I know I never got a copy myself, though I did see someone else's later, which is how I knew they actually used it. 

When looking at the picture, I couldn't help but notice I was wearing my Return of the Jedi tee.  Sigh.  What a way to be remembered, huh?  I had the chance to buy a Revenge of the Jedi tee at a convention in Houston in the early '80s but didn't want to spend the outrageous amount they were asking for a so-called "collector's item." For all of you young 'uns who weren't around back then, the scuttlebutt was that Lucas was really using the latter as a working title.  Well, you can see how creative George got, he just moved the "revenge" thing to the third film (which is actually the sixth) because "revenge" just isn't a jedi thing.  But before he changed the title, there were people out there who probably made a fortune on bootleg t-shirts with the red, Revenge of the Jedi logo on it.  Silly fanboys.

Anyway, I was still too young to care what the hell I looked like at comic book conventions back in the '80s, so I ran the gamut from geek to geekier to downright obnoxious.  Most of that shit is loooooong gone now, but I still have a few.

 

NERD CONVENTION FORMALWEAR, 1987


Now, normally, a sweatshirt is not something that immediately comes to mind when you think about stuff you wear at a convention.  Unless, of course, you ran all-night video rooms at cons back in the '80s. Let me tell you, it was really, REALLY difficult to track down hotel personnel capable of and willing to adjust a thermostat at 3am in the morning.  Luckily I had the Kasugi sisters to keep me warm.

Not to mention Kei and Yuri.

I remember when Mitsuyoshi sent me these.  The price wasn't bad and I'd worn sweatshirts like forever, but man, I really didn't want to get these puppies dirty, 'cause I knew the washing machine would cause havoc, especially on the small Catseye text synopsis on the back.  But there comes a time in every geek's life when you have to decide between the collector mentality and the sheer awesomeness that is walking into a room and having everyone try to read the microscopic crap on the back of your shirt without you catching them.

 

You think I'm kidding when I say it was hard to get info on anime back in the day?  That little bitty text was gold 'cause it was in English. Pretty good English too.  Damn sad when the best description of a television show you can find comes from the back of a freakin' sweatshirt. But, that's just the way it was.  BTW, I used that text in at least two zine articles.  Hey, you do what you have to do.

One of the great joys of making a regular convention circuit was seeing familar faces every four or five months.  In Texas, we had regular groups from all the larger cities show up at most of the major cons. The group from Texas A&M/College Station/Bryan in the '80s mainly orbited around Alex Botello, who sold models and such and thus bought at least one dealer's table at most of Larry Lankford's conventions.  Since just about everyone from that area knew Alex (he'd been setting up at cons for years), they'd use his tables as kind of a "home base" to store their stuff and take a seat when tired of wandering around.  Among them was an exceptionally lovely woman named Margaret, who was majoring in marine geology at A&M, but also did some absolutely amazing t-shirt artwork on the side.  From talking to her at length, I discovered she loved Hokuto no Ken (gorgeous, smart, talented, AND with exquisite taste in anime - yes, boys, they ARE out there), and one con she totally surprised me with a white shirt with Kenshiro on it.  I can't exactly remember what I did to deserve them - seriously, I can't recall doing anything more for the folks at A&M than I did for anyone else back then - but she'd show up at just about every convention with another shirt.  Kumo no Juuza, Ein, and Kenshiro, from Hokuto no Ken.  Ai-chan, from Catseye.  And this beauty:

Man, these bring back memories.  I don't know or remember what I did to get on your good side and probably didn't thank you nearly enough, Margaret, but if you're reading this, you totally rock.

Of course, when I got the Captain Harlock gig at Eternity, they tried to launch the title with a big push at San Diego one year and part of that was printing up a lot of Tees with Ben Dunn's version on the back. I remember one day at the con, the entire Malibu Graphics gang was wearing 'em, though I dunno if that's exactly a good thing.  But the shirts themselves were really nice and after almost ten years of use, mine never totally wore out, though I retired it a decade back.

Again, because you simply can not get too much Emeraldas

San Antonio Attacks Phoenix with OVA!! Beware the Animation Cel with Teeth!!

CactusCon '87 (or "That Wicked City Con")

By the winter of 1987, C/FO-San Antonio was smack dab in the middle of organized anime fandom and I was right in the middle of C/FO-San.  Basically, I was a really busy guy.  In addition to being the center of the tape-trading part of the operation, I was in charge of most of the correspondence that didn't have to do with higher muckity-muck political stuff.  Which is just how I liked it, thankyouverymuch.  By that time, I had somewhat of a reputation as someone who was willing to bring a large part of my vidtape collection with me when I travelled to club meetings and conventions, which made for some interesting hotel stays. Sometimes I'd handle all that taping myself, sometimes I'd just hand off the tapes to whoever wanted them and I wouldn't see them again for days.  But, for conventions, I usually kept them with me because I'd developed somewhat of a rep because of my all-night vidrooms. 

I was a night owl back then (still true) who thrived on lack of sleep (definitely still NOT true), so, combined with the fact that I had a relatively huge anime vidtape collection, it made me the natural person to handle the overnight portions of the convention video rooms.  During the '80s, most of the comic book conventions in Texas were run by Larry Lankford's Bulldog Productions and he let the Earth Defense Command run the video rooms. Usually during this time period, that still meant one room that showed general fantasy/sf films and one that showed nothing but anime.  Sometimes, if the con was small, it would only have one video room that ran a combination of the two.  Generally, one room would shut down about midnight or early in the morning and I'd haul my box of tapes into the anime room and basically show pretty much whatever the majority of people wanted to see.  That allowed us to show newer stuff that wasn't available when the schedule was made, plus things that the con staff might not have (ahem) approved of.  Now, hentai vids had just started coming out in Japan a few years earlier, but I made it a point never to actually show them in the vidrooms proper because that would've been stretching things a bit more than would've been prudent.  Plus, I didn't want some parent complaining to the con staff about something Little Timmy saw even though it was five fucking hours past Little Timmy's bedtime.  I think I may have broken that rule once for Pop Chaser, but  it was only 'cause she asked really, really nicely.

Normally, there were very few souls strong enough to stay awake all night, so most of the time my programming consisted of things that would help keep me awake.  Or things fellow members of the con staff or EDC wanted to see.  Generally, that meant several hours of newer Hokuto no Ken episodes Jeff Blend hadn't seen yet, or episodes of Dirty Pair or more obscure OVAs like Birth or Greed or Legend of Fabulous Battle Windaria - stuff that wasn't popular enough to make the regular video schedules.  Because I was basically the boss, I could choose to simply step in and change programs if no one was watching. 

Mitsuyoshi the cel salesman!

Also about this time, I was itching to finally get out of Texas and actually go about actually MEETING some of these people I wrote letters to and spent hour talking to on the phone.  Mitsuyoshi had decided that he'd like to maybe make money selling animation cels and was likewise itching to, as they say, come to America, it only for a visit. So we started looking at the upcoming convention schedule to see what might work best for both of us, since San Antonio would never be mistaken for a major sf/comic book convention kind of destination.  About this time, Randy Stukey was thinking along the same lines because he was also developing some long-distance friendships, and being an sf fan first and foremost, his first thought was a Worldcon.  I'd never attended a Worldcon per se, but Ray Elliot was nice enough to let me use his Nasfic '85 membership for the con in Austin when he couldn't make it, so I wasn't exactly unfamiliar with it either.  It just so happened that year's Worldcon was in England, so Phoenix, Arizona was awarded the Nasfic for '87. This seemed pretty doable for all of us, so I sat down and shot off a letter to the con staff and asked about the availability for volunteer positions on the videoroom staff, not realizing I was ALREADY in contact with the guy who was in charge of the videoroom via my tape trading networking.

Just the way things seem to work back then.  It was like a Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon thing, with letters and phone calls instead of movie credits.

A few months go by and we all make necessary arrangements to meet up in Phoenix in September for the con.  Mitsuyoshi sends me an absolutely gorgeous Misa Hayase cel from Macross: DYRL that I manage to auction off and it pays for my flight.  There and back.  God Bless Carl Macek.  Yeah, I'm easy.  Turns out I get put in charge of the overnight shift in the vidroom and they'll let me pretty much run it however I want to, except with equipment that I've never ever had access to before and probably never will again.  Life is sweet.

So the weekend of the con finally rolls around and Randy and I head for the airport.  We get on the plane and THEN he informs me he hates flying.  Is absolutely scared to death of airplanes. Great. I'm not so keen on flying myself, not having flown in about a decade, but I end up having to be the rational one, which (if you knew either of us) happened maybe once a year.  The armrest between us somehow manages to survive the flight to Dallas and then there's enough downtime in Dallas to recuperate before flying to Phoenix. I pass the time pointing out all of the landforms between Texas and Arizona 'cause I lived half my life in West Texas and New Mexico and it's a cheaper way of staying sane than drinking airplane booze.  White Sands looks absolutely fabulous from 20,000 feet, btw.

By the time we get to the hotel, it's almost time to go BACK to the airport to get Mitsuyoshi, who was flying America West.  Luckily for me, my con staff contact whom I'm staying with (and I'm really blanking on his name, here and it really bothers me) agrees to take me to go pick him up while Randy checks into his room.  We get back to the airport and I finally meet Mitsuyoshi face to face.  He's tall.  As in, really, really tall.  As in, over six foot tall. And distracted.  In general, it's true that the Japanese I've met have been reserved when compared to Americans, but you could tell immediately that something was bothering him.  Turns out, the airline had misplaces his luggage. Including the suitcase full of animation cels he was hoping to sell at the convention.  Now, I'd later have a career in the hospitality industry, so I would become accustomed to airlines and lost luggage, but it's still hard to imagine what goes through someone's head when they're in a foreign country and at the mercy of  baggage handlers.  Considering the flight had originated in Japan, even if he got it all back, he couldn't even be certain it would be in time (or condition) to do him much good. All in all, the airline was lucky he was so "reserved." I think I'd have been yelling and screaming. But that's just me.

Have absolutely no clue what show this is from.  I just needed a pic of one of his cels.

We convinced him that sticking around the airport wouldn't be productive, so he agreed to come back to the hotel with us and check in.  To make a long story short, the bags showed up later that night (they'd just missed the connecting flight in LA), and he was happily showing his wares to interested customers in his hotel room the next day.  Unfortunately for him, this WAS a Nasfic and not a comic book or anime convention, so there wasn't nearly the audience or money there could've been but word eventually got out and he managed to sell enough to pay for most of his trip.  Or that was the impression I got.  You know, that "reserved" thing again.

In any case, the con started that next day.  Randy and I split up - he went off with Pat Munson-Siter and his sf/anime friends and I palled around with Mitsuyoshi and a few guys I'd met through Phoenix anime fandom.  There was only one anime fandom panel scheduled during the entire con, but I finally met Fred Patten in person, among various other people I'd only read about through newsletters.  We went out for lunch and stopped by a Church's Fried Chicken and bought a box to go.  Mitsuyoshi's eyes went wide and he kept repeating something like "It's so cheap" over and over again, which reminded me to cut back on my meat consumption if I ever decided to visit Japan. 

Back at the con, I stopped by the video room to see what I'd be dealing with later that night.  I'd never seen anything like it.  One of the local Phoenix anime buffs had lent his equipment to the room for the con and it was an absolutely amazing experience for this low-budget anime bum.  A box of commercial vids and laser discs straight from Japan - full of really good stuff, mixed together with turkeys not worth it at a quarter of the price.  The place was set up like a home video theater, except with cheap hotel chairs.  Six speakers.  A projected screen television.  Someone certainly had a lot of money to spend on his hobby.  For 1987, it was quite a sight.

Mentally, I'm thinking all through the day about what I'm gonna show.  When I see the arrangements, half of the possibilities go straight out the window - hell, I'm not going to insult all this nice equipment by showing third generation, tracking-challenged TV episodes of anything, no matter how rare the material is.  Luckily, I'd brought a good number of the tapes Mitsuyoshi'd sent me that he'd copied right off his television set, so there wasn't any chance of running out of material, just that it was rather limited.  As fate would have it, he'd also brought a few more new ones with him to give me and some of them had OVAs he'd managed to record just recently. I dunno if they still have this service currently in Japan, but back in the day, there were apparently video stores that would copy videos for you and charge you a fee depending on the number of minutes in the productions.  I always assumed that they were set up this way legally, but never really asked.

In any case, among the videos that he'd copied for us was one labelled "Yoju Toshi" and all I knew about it was that Mitsuyoshi said it was just released and that it was good.  I'd neither heard nor read anything about it, which wasn't unusual in the least.  OVAs were coming out right and left during that time period and unless we got a certain recommendation from someone who knew what they were talking about or it got heavy play in the monthly anime mags, we were flying blind. Such it was with this one.  What the hell, I figured, it was new, so at least it wasn't gonna ruin the equipment.   If it turned out to be boring, I could always stop the sucker and pop in something else before too many people evacuated the room.

Not that clearing the room would've been difficult.  I took over about midnight and there were, by my count, a whole seven people in the room, five of whom seemed to be using it as a place to crash.  That probably wasn't all that unusual for the time period - it was a sf convention, after all.  So I turned the lights up a bit, introduced myself and spelled out the way I liked to do things, gave them the usual speech about if they wanted to see anything in particular to come up and talk to me, then mangled the name of the new video I was gonna pop in, turned down the lights and started the show.

Now, I'd looked over the schedule up to that point and they'd shown nothing more lethal than the Macross: Do You Remember Love up to that point in the day, so if you've seen Wicked City, you might guess what's coming next. I certainly couldn't, having absolutely no clue about what I was popping into the VCR.  I went about rummaging through the laser disks, marvelling at how much money these guys had to spend on cartoon stuff and when I finally looked up at the nice projection screen, the first thing I saw was the part where Taki's getting attacked by the spider demon and suddenly NO ONE in the room is sleeping anymore. The fanboys are too busy making sure their respective favorite organs are where they're supposed to be, if you know what I mean.  Me, I'm wondering what in the hell I've done and whether or not I'm gonna get in trouble for it. It's not exactly Cream Lemon Rall or Urotsukidoji material here, but about as close as these geeks have probably seen.  As soon as the scene is over, two of the seven guys get up and zip out of the room, so I figure, what the hell, there's only five left and they're probably too scared to complain anyway, 'cause they'd have to admit they were there to sleep - not that they're snoozing after THAT particular scene. And, besides, I'm actually kinda digging this thing.  And I'll NEVER get to see it on such a nice screen ever again.

This gal might just put you off puttin' it in...like forever.

Anyway, five to ten minutes go by and the two guys who high-tailed it out of the room come BACK - bringing five or six more guys with them.  They all gang up at the front of the room and start mumbling to each other. Finally, one of them comes up to me and asks me if I can start the movie over.  I tell 'em if it were just us, I'd have no problem with it, but there are the other five guys in the room who might have a problem with it.  So this guy goes to each and every one of 'em until they all say they'd LOVE to see some animated siren turn into a spider with teeth where her hoochie should be all over again.  Hey, who am I to argue?  So, while I'm rewinding the tape, two or three of the guys run straight out of the room and ask me if I can hold off for about five more minutes, so they can go wake up their buddies. 

By the time the film is through, there are no less than twenty people in this video room at 2am, watching this semi-porn animated horror film that no one can understand a word of.  I think there may have even been one gal there, though I doubt she'd ever admit it.  It's the damndest thing that's ever happened to me in 15 years of anime vidrooms. I like to think that I ruined the lives of at least five people that night. If nothing else, they didn't get a whole lot of sleep.

The rest of the con went by fairly uneventfully and if anyone else showed up overnight expecting an escallation of the experience from the night before, they were disappointed.  I just wasn't gonna take that chance.  I did give out my address to a few people who definitely wanted copies of "that video," and I made sure to let the Phoenix guys know it was something that they just HAD to get on laserdisk.  Heh.

So I still have a soft spot in my heart for Yoju Toshi, even after all these years.  I've just learned to never, NEVER stick anything in that I haven't screened first.  Uh, video and otherwise.

Texas Invades the Fifth Radish! Old Fans Find Funny Clothes!

"A scanner. A scanner.  My kingdom for a scanner."

Sometime in late 1984 or early '85, the Daicon III&IV anime shorts started making the American fannish rounds and the result was, in the words of a fellow C/FO-San Antonio member who will remain nameless, a "giant fanboy orgasm" that went up one side of the US and down the other. Seriously, there was so much sweaty goodness concentrated in that seven plus minutes of freeze-frame bait that I made a whole seperate tape (at two-hour speed no less!) of it in order to make copies from so I wouldn't screw up my own.  Yeah, I think I might have made 10 or so copies just for local SA types, some of whom were barely interested in anime.  That's just the kind of magic it held - something for just about everyone, provided they looked hard enough.

Better people than me have done articles on the anime itself, as well as the history both behind it and of the resulting formation of Studio Gainax, so I won't go into it here except to say that it just fucking rocked.

Cute girl with deadly backpack destroying every sf/fantasy vehicle ever put on film or video.  You'd think there'd be screenshots all over the net, eh?

Being the kind of curious critter I was back then, I started asking around about the origin of the thing (all we knew is that it was from some convention in Japan named after a radish) and was informed that the Japanese science fiction community had - and, actually, still has - a national sf convention that moves around the country each year. The con isn't actually called "Daicon" except in the years it's held in Osaka. Strangely enough, I also found that the 1986 version of the convention was also going to be held in Osaka. Which, coincidently, is where my new Japanese friend Mitsuyoshi lived...

Robotech hit the airwaves, the Shonen Jump manga spin-offs and Nippon Sunrise mecha shows were dominating the anime TV schedules in Japan, VCRs were getting cheaper, and new anime fan clubs were popping up all over the country.  Basically, it was a pretty good time to be getting into the fandom - something which was not lost on certain creative business types on this side of the pond hoping to take advantage of the expanding market.  One of these was a California-based travel agency called Ladera Travel.  They organized several fan tours of Japan, mostly using the C/FO and other networks to get the word out.  One of the events on the tour was the upcoming 1986 Daicon 5 in Osaka.

Now, word of the tour spread down to us in San Antonio, but there wasn't a whole lot of interest because, well, because even organized through a travel agency, a trip to Japan was pretty expensive.  Of our group of 20 or so regular attendees, only Ray Elliot and Jack Thielepape showed both the interest and had enough moola to make the trip. Ray was a friend of Randy Stukey and Shon Howell and one of the founding members of C/FO-San Antonio, a military type who joined a lot of his servicemen in deciding to retire in the great town of San Antone.  Jack actually lived in Austin, but made the trip down to SA just about every month for our meetings, a camera around his neck like it was part of his character design or somethin'.  He's since been a fixture at the convention scene in Texas and I think he's still the official photo go-to guy at Project A-Kon.

When I found they were planning to attend, I dropped Mitsuyoshi a letter explaining the tour and he ended up meeting them in Osaka in August of '86 - seems he'd really gotten into the whole fandom thing.  Luckily, he remembered to bring his camera...

An auditorium of Japanese fans all studiously studying...something.

I dunno exactly what's going on here, but I'm guessing a re-enactment of that classic Lost in Space episode?

Jack, on the other side of the camera for a change, showing off a poster to a movie no one saw.

Ray, checking out animation cels.

That's either supposed to be Black Jack in the back or Japanese conventions don't smell a whole lot better than ours.

Captain Aardvark Rocks the Convention! Drive, Magic T-Bird, Drive!

Dallas Fantasy Fair, 1984

Back in cave man days, before the dawn of civilized anime conventions, we had to pretty much make do with whatever was in the immediate area.  In the early '80s, in Texas, that meant comic book conventions or science fiction conventions. SF Cons were still fairly strong in Texas, with NASFIC (the American convention held in place of WorldCon when the latter is held somewhere, well, not in the US) held in Austin in 1985, and AggieCon at Texas A&M and a few others scattered here and there around the Lone Star State. At the SF cons I went to (admittedly, not all that many) during that period, they'd have video rooms and, every once in a while, even let us show this anime stuff in raw Japanese.  But, for the most part, the comic book conventions was where the real action was at.

And, in Texas, during the '80s, Larry Lankford's Bulldog Productions ruled the comic book convention  biz in the state.  For a number of years, they'd run two cons per year in Dallas and rotate conventions through Houston, San Antonio and Austin as, I suppose, the money became available.

As I've mentioned a few time in previous posts, I'd become addicted to conventions before I moved from Houston to San Antonio, in '80 and so long as I could managed to scrape up the cash (and a ride), I hit as many of them as humanly possible.  The first "LarryCon" - which is what almost everyone I know called 'em - I can remember attending was a Dallas Fantasy Fair in 1984, though I'd attended a few other comic cons in Houston and San Antonio before then. The San Antonio "cons" were especially weak, most of them being glorified excuses for the local comic shops to set up booths in the middle of malls with no other programming to speak of. 

My running buddy back then was Mike Cogliandro, a fellow comic book nut and aspiring artist.  We met at the only comic book shop in our area of town and after shooting the bull for a few weeks found out we lived - get this - five blocks from each other.  Talk about kismet, eh? Anyway, Mike had a car and a job, so I  mooched off hung around with him through most of the '80s and some of that time was spent driving to and from comic book conventions.  Mainly in Houston, 'cause I still had relatives there who would let us set up shop for a few nights,  but occassionally in Dallas because of Mike's association with local San Antonio comic book pro Sam De La Rosa.  Sam worked closely with Kerry Gammill (who lived in Dallas) and Mike helped Sam out by doing background work on some of his books. This meant carting Sam up to Dallas every once in a while (Sam didn't drive) and I usually hitched a ride because I was pretty much a bum. 

Kerry and Sam.  You really don't see this kind of detail in American comics much anymore.  Mainly  'cause it took FOREVER.

Anyway, Kerry was going to be a guest at one of Larry's cons in '84 and Mike, Sam and I piled into Mike's white T-Bird and headed for Big D.  I'd been over to Ben Dunn's house a few times and had been intrigued by some of the contemporary anime I'd seen, so when I came across the EDC's anime video room at the con, I picked up a copy of probably the same flyer that Dave Merrill did and flopped down at the back of the room to watch the stuff.  Manning the room was Jeff Blend, who may just be the hardest-working anime fan that no one outside of Dallas remembers.  Seriously, I've been in many a video room and run more than my share of them, but Jeff Blend just totally rocked. 

I don't recall a whole lot more about that particular con, but I joined the EDC and swapped information with Jeff and promised Derek and Meri that I'd make more trips up their way and try my best to drag Ben up for some tape-swapping sessions and maybe even a few EDC meetings.  My interest in American comics hadn't quite died yet, but it was definitely narrowing, and I found myself in an extremely rare position back then - I actually had money to spend and couldn't find a whole lot to spend it on.  I was a collector of original  art, but there weren't a whole lot of artists I particularly admired doing sketches.  Then I spotted Dave Sim sitting off by himself looking extremely bored and, for some reason thinking that he had a reputation as being a bit of a grouch back then, I got a particularly evil thought.  I headed to the dealer's room to track down some cheap reference material, 'cause I hadn't thought to bring mine...

Okay, every Harlock fan worth his salt had at LEAST one of these back in '84.

And, cackling like a maniac, I head back over to artist's alley to see if Sim's gotten any richer in the fifteen minutes since I'd left him...

Beware! The Bones of Pharaoh will Take Your Life! Embrace The Power of the Pasties!

T'was doing some surfing recently and came across the wiki entry for Project A-Kon in Dallas and I tried hard to remember if I was at the first or second one or both.  I know I was at least one of those first two, nominally as a guest (because of the Captain Harlock comic).  Of course, back in those days, most of us in San Antonio anime fandom were treated as guests by the good folk up there 'cause that's just the way they rolled back then.  We slept on couches, on the floor or wherever there was space, usually waking up a few times each night to change the videos that were being dubbed  for this or that fan.  Things probably haven't changed all that much since then, except for the dubbing thing, of course.  Now I imagine all that work (if you can call it "work") gets done over Al Gore's marvelous invention...

Anyway, that got me thinking about all the conventions I've been to.  They all tend to run together, but a few stand out.  If I can keep up my enthusiasm for this blogging thing, it'll certainly be a topic I'll come back to over and over again.

Cause I basically loved going to conventions.  Loved 'em.  Even the old Larry Lankford conventions were a high point of my existence back during that third life.  But the convention thing itself started during life number two and it had nothing to do with anime or manga.  That was all comics and RPGs. 

I lived in Houston back during the late '70s.  I want to say that, by population, Houston was either the fourth or fifth largest city in the US back then.  And it had a total of three, count 'em, three comic book shops.  And two of those were right across the street from one another on Bissonnet Road.  Which was actually fine by me because that way I only had to take one bus there and one bus back.  "Roy's Memory Shop" went out of buisiness a bit after, but "Third Planet" moved to a larger location and stayed open for quite a few years after I moved to San Antonio in '80.  The third, "Camelot Comics" was downtown and a bitch to get to for a penniless kid like me, though I did manage to score about ten issues of the New X-Men starting with #94 from them a year or two before the prices shot through the roof because of...well, if you've ever been a real X-Men fan, you know the story.  Never did manage to get the Giant-Sized origin issue, damn it.

If you figure a city the size of Houston had only three comic book shops, you don't have to be a genius to come to the conclusion that conventions were few and far between.  I can remember going to two while living there and the second of those wasn't even in a hotel.  But that first one...

...yeah, I can't even remember the name of the damned thing. But it was in an old hotel near the Medical Center, just south of downtown, near Rice University. The hotel had a lighting system that made the whole place look green after sundown, so I kinda want to say it was The Shamrock Hotel, but I dunno. Anyway, it was my first real comic book convention, a real two-day affair, and I was fucking stoked.  My plan (or at least the one I told my parents) was to hang out there Saturday, catch the last bus home, then get back there for Sunday.  Yeah, like that worked, right?

I get there early Saturday, stand in line with the rest of the sweaty people (this is, well, Houston), pay my money, get my badge and run quickly inside to scope out the best stuff my forty bucks would get me before all the other goofs got it all.  Only problem was that, as it turned out, dealers trade with other dealers before the doors even open and there were so few dealers from out of town there that after looking around for about an hour, there was really nothing there I wanted that I couldn't get from the three shops in town.  Man, talk about disappointing.

But, hey, it got better.  This was, as the kids now might say, a failsafe environment.  The film room was scheduled to show Barbarella and Flesh Gordon that night.  Big screen.  16mil.  Followed by 2001: A Space Odyssey.  The only drawback was all that teenaged fanboy bait was half a day away and, frankly, there wasn't a whole lot else going on.  They had a dealer's room (I think maybe there were a total of ten retailers there, if that many) a gaming room that doubled as a panel room, and the film room.  I don't even think they had any guests, or if they did, it wasn't anyone I was remotely interested in hearing or meeting.  I had pretty much nothing to look forward to over the next couple of hours, except running across the street to Burger King to eat.  Hey, I know what you're thinkin', but at my house back in the day, Whoppers were fine dining.

Teenaged Fanboy Heaven

So, I'm walking around what essentially is a three-room con and eventually I stumble into the gaming room, out of boredom more than anything else. Back then, they didn't sell tabletop gaming stuff in comic book shops. Hell, for the most part, they didn't sell gaming supplies anywhere but in gaming shops. In Houston, anyway. So I'd never seen a twenty-sided die, much less an eight-sided die or twelve-sided die, or the dreaded four-sided die. Do any of you actually remember ever trying to roll a four-sided die?  I don't blame you. I wouldn't want to admit it either. I don't think it's actually possible to "roll" a four-sided die.  It's basically a pyramid that you toss onto a table and, unlike the rest of the multi-faced dice some nerdboy invented to make money off suckers gamers, you read the number on the bottom.  I swear, I actually paid good money for those damned things at one time.  I can't believe I'm actually writing about this shit. I'd almost rather admit to all the times I paid money to get into Houston adult theaters, but that's just creepy, so I'll be pleased to be shutting up about it now.

You tell me. WTF?


Anyway, this gaming room has four or five tables, but only two are being used at the moment.  The loudest game in the room, AD&D, is being run by an extremely large, but exceedingly jovial man named Roger Lawter.  Being the curious sort and always drawn towards the sound of people having loads o' fun, I  hang around the table for a while.  More fun.  I look at my con schedule.  Nothing interesting in the film room. More fun. The table takes a break and Roger looks up at me, smiles, and hands me his hardback copy of the AD&D Player's Handbook. I grab a nearby chair, sit down and after about five minutes, I'm grabbing a character sheet and rolling those silly dice.  More fun.  My wood elf makes five straight "secret door" checks, something Roger tells me has never happened before in one of his games.  Now that  I look back, I'm pretty sure he was lying, but it worked.  The forty bucks I brought for comics ends up in the pocket of the only dealer selling gaming stuff and I end up sticking a Player's Handbook and a few other gaming essentials in my bag.  Not to mention wasting a good deal of the next decade of my life.  Thanks a fucking lot, Roger, wherever you are.

I kid. I didn't have any friends my age back then, so it became my social life such as it was; and I don't regret any of it.  Well, okay, maybe the four-sided die thing...

God, I think I still have this somewhere. And, given that gamers are gamers, I put my name in it.  Now, honestly, what's more embarrassing?  To have this thing stolen or have your girlfriend find you put your name in it?


In any case, Roger was one of those rare gamers who did have a social life, which included going home to the wife, so he packed up just in time for me to run over and grab my seat for the opening credits of Barbarella.  Now, for those of you who have seen it, the opening credits of the Roger Vadim camp classic are pretty much the main reason to see the film.  Well, okay, the orgasmitron, excuse me, the "Ex-sex-sive Machine" scene was pretty cool also, but that's more something that appeals to the mind.  Yeah.

"You know, you could get a vibrator for under ten bucks back in '68"

Unfortunately, everyone else in the room knew about the whole "credits" thing too and the front rows were overflowing with sweaty fanboys, so I was relegated to somewhere in the middle of the room.  Which wasn't actually all that bad because did I mention the film was an actual film?  As in big picture projected against a large white screen?  With pops and crackles and multiple reels so they had to actually stop the film in segments to reload the next reel? Yeah, I know, that sounds really primative, doesn't it?  But it's all well worth it when Jane Fonda's boobies float around in front of you at several times their normal size.

I haven't seen the film in three decades, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't hold up all that well.  Come to think of it, Jane's boobies probably haven't held up that well either. But man, they still do look smokin' hot when  I close my eyes...oh, to be nineteen again.

Flesh Gordon, on the other hand, that just rocks.  Still.  You have your porn, then you have your porn, if you know what I mean, but Flesh Gordon is just in a class by itself.  It just is. From the Sex Ray (now a staple among written porn fetishists) to the Penisaurus to the Great God Porno (whom the crew lovingly named "Nesuahyrrah" - Harryhausen spelled backwards), it's just great fun from beginning to end.  Is it gay to admit that you once thought that having a pair of power pasties of your very own would be cool? I'm not sure,  but I think that maybe my memory of this one is clouded by the fact that no one in the film room got carded.  And there were kids far younger than me in that audience.  Did I mention that I fucking love conventions?

"Stand back! I have the power pasties and I know how to use them!

I'd never seen 2001 before that con, but I was looking forward to it.  Or, so I kept telling myself.  Unfortunately, between the understandable excitement of a kid at his first con,  Jane Fonda's incredible boobies, the awesomeness of Flesh Gordon's influence on my tender adolescent libido and the fact that it was almost midnight, I fell asleep somewhere after the guy from The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin shows up and didn't wake back up until HAL had killed everyone off.  Needless to say, I didn't catch a bus home.  Lucky for me, the dudes who ran security were pretty cool.  Or maybe they were just used to it.  There were at least five other guys in the same predicament (except I have a feeling that at least two of them were stoned out of their minds).  Come to think of it, the security guys weren't all there either, if you know what I mean.  The smell was pretty strong.  Ah, yes, the seventies...

Maybe I got a bit of a contact high, because I don't remember much of what went on Sunday.  I know Roger showed back up and I cracked open my AD&D book and played some more.  Spent the last of my money on more gaming crap I probably never used after that - though the little miniature pewter elf was a better representation of my character than the grey-and-white speckled twelve-sided die I'd used the day before. Fuck, I still can't believe I'm writing this shit down.

Oh, well, I  guess your first convention is kind of like your first lay.  Well, okay, maybe not. If I had to write about my first lay, it'd take up half the space. 

And, to this day, I've still not seen 2001 all the way through.

This isn't from the con I attended, but you get the general idea.  For more pics and stuff from other Houston Cons, this is a great website.