Calamity Wayne: An Anime North Story

Well, for the forth year in a row I am posting on this blog* about Anime North. What can I say again but that I had an excellent time, spent a lot of money, saw a lot of neat cosplays.

Friday night mostly consisted of the beginning of the awesome. We left the hotel around 4:45 to get to the opening of the dealer room. Curtis, Chris and I went to get some grub before heading there, it was pretty good. All through the weekend there was not nearly as many people that were in the restaurants that I thought that would be. After flying around the dealer room for a while we met up with Steve and hung out with him for a bit. Christine and Sam popped in later while Curtis and I were sitting around playing the ol Fallout 3. Met a new friend at the Karaoke on Friday night, spent most of it listening to her comparative analysis of Pokemon, and since I like Pokemon, it was interesting to have such an informed perspective. Anyways, after that I pretty much hit the sack around three AM.

Saturday was pretty darn sweet. Anyway, I made a couple trips to the dealer room and prepped for the Soul Calibur IV Tournament** that Rob, Chris and I had signed up for. Suffice to say I got booted the first round by Chris, who just Cervante'd it up. He did a good job and got into fourth place. I wandered back to the hotel and got my DS to hang out at the Pokeparty. Booooring, but funny at the end a little, they showed some pokemon episodes with drug, booze and sex trade references that couldn't be beaten. Also I went to see the 404's an Anime Comedy Troupe that visits the conventions through the year spreading their amusing rhetoric around. I must admit that I enjoyed this very much as I was still very very intoxicated. However, by the end I was asleep on my friend Eva's shoulder, she was asleep on the person beside her. It was kind of like dominos. Hah. I went back to the hotel room after in a severe amount of pain, heat and headache. Sleep was welcome and it came quickly.

Sunday was just the end of the day. We were the first to get our stuff down to the storage room in the hotel. Got some Timmies, walked around the dealer room for a bit. Got lunch. Spoke to Geneve a couple more times and picked up some of the really good deals of the day. That was really about it for Sunday. Its pretty much a cool down period. I had a good time none the less.

Things I picked up:
-Bioshock (PS3)
-Swat 4 (PC)
-Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force (PS2)
-The Matrix: Path of Neo (PS2)
-11 Stargate Figurines
-10 Pins (Star Trek, Stargate, Random)
-2 Backings for my Wal-Mart badge that are hilarious
-3 Blu-Ray Movies (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, My Best Friend's Girl, Body of Lies)
and so forth

Anime North was amazing. Year Five... I'm cosplaying motherfucker.

* by this blog, I mean this URL, the older posts were lost in the great South Passage collapse
** I was drunk off my ass by this time. Chris said he needed to bring on the pain to beat me, which leads me to believe I might be better at video games while drunk

Spoiler Trek (Now With 100% More Lens Flare)

So two days ago I saw the new Star Trek film, see? I must admit I was shocked at how much I enjoyed the film. When I first saw the websites utter the word prequel I was scared. When I saw J.J. Abrahms (Creator of the massively shitty Lost and Cloverfield) was directing it I was petrified, but now I can't imagine the day where I sit this film on my DVD shelf (273 movies and counting!).

Here is what I liked:

This was a time travel paradox movie, which already gives me a big thumbs up. I love time travel and love alternate timelines. So this movie appealed to me already.
Secondly, I really enjoyed the acting. Chris Pine did a spectacular Kirk, and I have to cite the scene where he beats the Kobayashi Maru scenario, just non-chalantly sitting there eating an apple while the ship gets hit with torpedo after torpedo... 'Oh wait, enemy shields just disppeared? Oh well fire our torpedos. Good job everyone, pat on the back, lets eat cake.' I laughed hard. If anyone didn't know too, the part about him eating an apple while doing the scenario is a throwback to Star Trek II where in the Genesis Cave, Saavik is speaking to him about his solution to the scenario ,he's eating a apple. He doesn't like to lose... or go hungry. Also the acting of Karl Urban must be brought to the light as his performance as Leonard McCoy was really well done. The inflections did DeForrest Kelley proud. He wore the pants well.
Finally, I must admit the changes to the ship's interior were initially met with skepticism after 15 years of clean engine rooms, but they grew on me. I liked the grungy piping in main engineering, and I liked the darker corridors in the bowels of the ship's shuttlebay.
I also liked the redesign of all the ships and weapons, although the camera angles were so tight and shaky you couldn't tell if anything was effecting an enemie's ship. It was still awesome effects.

Here is what I disliked:

Holy shit. Could you put any more lens flares in each scene? I counted at least 40 or 50 in the first 15 minutes of the film alone. It was the most overuse of an effect I have ever seen.
The bad guy, Nero, was a tool. He seemed to stumble around and talk drunk for most of the film, stopping only to spew chunks of orders all over his followers unsuspecting faces. And his reasoning for his vengeance is pure bullshit. It wasn't Spock's fault the sun exploded and blew up Romulus. It was the fucking sun's fault. Why not, when thrown back in time, go to Romulus and say 'Hey guys. Sun's gonna explode in 2387. Just FYI.' Nah, its cool, I'll just put the parking break on, pop on some re-runs of I Love Lucy and wait 25 years for Spock to show up in his Toyota Jellyfish. Tool.

Well theres my two cents (not adjusted for inflation) on a ten dollar movie. Hope you enjoyed this South Passge post as much as I did writing it.