Anime

Mexico City, Day One

Posted by Merrow on Jan 26, 2008 in Anime, Blog, Travel | 0 comments

Today was nice and relaxed. Yesterday I felt the start of a cold coming on, which happens a lot when I travel and when I change temperatures rapidly. And since I went from snow on the ground to t-shirt weather I wasn’t surprised when I woke up with a sore throat and head cold. But a cough drop, a hot shower and a packet of kleenex later and all was well. Shelly made waffles for breakfast, and we went for a walk in her neighborhood. It’s very upscale, and her apartment complex has a little garden and a pool. The streets all have pretty trees and cars that zip along without looking where they’re going.

After our walk we came home and she and Alan (her husband) had “Christmas” via webcam with her family in NY. They’re a pretty far flung bunch and today was the first opportunity they had to get a group together. But it worked out perfect as I hadn’t given Shelly my Christmas gift either. I got her a box set of Miyazaki movies, an exclusive at Borders. It had Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Nausicca, Castle in the Sky, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle. She loved it. (Yay! and she didn’t have any of the movies before that.)

Then we went and walked to the huge supermarket, aptly named Gigante. We picked up food for the week while Shelly tried to orient me to her neighborhood. (It failed.) I did learn what to look for for the SITO taxis though. Those are the regulated “safe” taxis. Libre taxis, which are typically cute green and white vw bugs are apparently just an invitation to getting mugged, assaulted and/or kidnapped. Good to know.

We came home and I was starting to feel the high altitude. We lazed around and watched Lucha Libre or Mexican masked wrestling. First we watched Mini-Lucha Libre, which is “small person” wrestling. Alan explained to me that most of the small wrestlers are made up to look like popular wrestlers, We watched Little Son of Satan wrestle Metaliquina (little metal man). Then we watched the Pequina Ultimate Dragon (little ultimate dragon) wrestle Mini Mr. Halloween. It was more entertaining then I thought it would be. The large wrestlers were fun too, they’re really acrobatic and their costumes are quite extreme.

I played a bit of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney and then took a nap. Dinner is served late in Mexico City, and we’d decided to go out. Dinner hour doesn’t start until 8:30-9:00. We tried to go to a place Shelly had heard about that is kind of fancy, but it was closed. I wore “nice” shoes that ripped up the back of my foot so bad it bled. So we ended up going to a sports bar type place called “Papa Bill’s” I had a really good chicken fajitas. I ordered that because was the only thing I could read on the menu, LOL. But I was very happy with it. The waiters were good, and I was amused by the top hats they all wore. Alan was disappointed they didn’t have them for sale in their merchandise section. It was 11:00 by the time we were done, and to save my poor bloody foot we took a cab home. (a SITOS not a Libre) Now, even though I napped earlier I’m exhausted and am going to bed.

Tomorrow we’re going to go to a open air art market. I’m wearing my sneakers!

This doesn’t mean I can go shopping.

Posted by Merrow on Nov 14, 2007 in Anime, Blog, Manga | 0 comments

The manga storage situation had gotten pretty bad. Even with Shelly, Coworker1, Coworker2 & Spouse, and Dreaming0 borrowing large chunks of books (at one point I counted and had over a 100 books lent out) I still had piles of books on the floor because I had nowhere else to put them. I can’t tell you the number of time I tripped over a stack and sent them sprawling across the floor.

My small studio apartment was seriously starting to look like Yomiko Readman’s apartment in Read or Die. Not quite so bad as to have to worry about crushing death by manga, but getting closer. So I decided to take stock and figure out what else could I get rid of or move to get them homes.

I couldn’t give up my computer desk, or my workbench. I sleep on my couch (no room for a bed…). My kitchen is full of art supplies and fabric. I already rebuilt my coffee table to be a bookcase. Hmph. But! I do have three book cases full of vhs tapes.

I can’t even remember when I last watched a VHS, plus I have a lot of duplicates. There are series that I re-bought on DVD. It was definitely time for a purge. But before I can purge I need to see what I actually had. So I spent most of this past weekend putting one book case into Movie Collector (a database program) and packing them away in boxes.

I managed to fit 143 tapes in that bookcase. Now, Movie Collector searches IMDB, Amazon and their own user submitted database to pull info and covers based off title and barcode on movies. I’m sure this works pretty well with recent movies. But 10-15 year old anime VHS? Not so much, no. So it was mostly manual. If you’re curious as to what I was watching 10 years ago, feel free to take a look.

I always knew there were tapes on that shelf I’d never watched before too, because when I worked at Blockbuster whenever a used anime tape went on sale I bought it. (I got 40% of tapes marked $2. It was more of a “why not” situation.) But I was pleasantly surprised to find it was a pretty small list. I always thought I’d wasted a bunch on things I hadn’t watched, but half the stuff on that list I got free (Last Labrynth and MezzoForte for example) and the rest I didn’t pay more then a $1 for. So really only a “waste” of about $6 bucks.

All 143 tapes fit nicely in three Office Depot paper boxes too, which leaves me a nice empty bookcase! Well, not empty any more. I’ve already got it half full with just stuff that was laying around on the floor. The lent out books would fill up most of the rest of the first layer. And my “unread” shelf is packed flat with the bottoms facing out (so I can get 4 rows instead of three), so if they were properly placed that would probably fill up the rest of it.

So, even though I have a bookcase with gaping holes of space. I CANNOT GO SHOPPING FOR MORE MANGA. I have nearly a 100 books on my unread shelf. I can’t even fit anymore books on my unread shelf! It’s packed tight. I’ve got to institute a no more manga till that stuff gets read rule. (and stick to it.) So Borders, please stop sending me $5.00 rewards certificates and 30% coupons.