They Way Too Long Otakon Round Up
Featuring Jason David Frank and Peter S. Beagle
A couple of months ago, my sister posted that Jason David Frank was coming to Otakon in Baltimore. About seven seconds after that, I posted that gee wouldn't that be a great weekend for me to come visit her in Baltimore? Thus began a memorable if not entirely satisfactory weekend of my first con with my sister sib.
Now, ordinarily, I am a fairly OCD person when it comes to con organization, but due to time constraints and distance, I was forced to do a couple things I ordinarily don't handle. First, as I'm unemployed and sister sib is a struggling artist, we decided to stay in her apartment and take the light rail to the convention. This meant that we didn't go in the day before to get our badges, and instead waited to get them on Friday morning.
Count this mistake one. Maybe it would have been okay had we gotten there at 7:30 like my original plan, but sister sib and her bf have long working hours and weren't able to get much time off for this, so we ended up arriving closer to 9:30, an hour after the reg line opened. Note that JDF was signing autographs at eleven and we both really really really wanted to get our autograph. Arriving at the convention, the line wrapped around the convention center, crossed a street and left us baking in the sun for an hour and a half, feeling bad for cosplayers.
As a side note, I did wear my Jiro outfit for the con, which worked nicely as both a storage device (Nice backpack) and comfy con clothes. The jersey fabric, however, does not breathe and I was afraid to take it off for how sweaty the undershirt was getting.
Long as it was, the line did move at a decent pace. So it only took us about an hour to get inside and get our badges. We did have to combat the Reg line Nazi who enjoyed standing and shouting at people to: "WALK THE SERPENTINE!!! HEY! YOU! COME HERE! WALK THE SERPENTINE!!!" It became the phrase of the con.
Oh, I should mention that in true Bandit trip fashion, I was running hot off a crisis at this point. See the night before, sister sib and I had gone out for yogurt. This involved me putting my plane bag down on the floor of a frozen yogurt shop. This meant that the wallet, stuffed near the top, pushed open the zipper of the purse and fell out onto the floor of the yogurt shop where it remained. Yes, I had no wallet for the first day of con because the security shop that kindly saved it for me wouldn't have anyone available to open the safe until two. While most of Otakon's staffers pissed me off royally, they were very understanding about me not having any ID to pick up my badge and hassled me not at all. So ten points there.
Sister sib and I now have about 30 minutes till the autograph session starts, so we manage to wind through the confusing map to find the lines. We get there and are turned away immediately. Line is full. The queue for tomorrow's autographs at ten would open at nine. Sadness, but we figured we'd just get there super early tomorrow.
Instead, we were left with a clear morning, so I dragged sister sib to the Henshin Heroes panel. Now, I've always considered my tokusatsu hobbies to be kind of a niche market. I had no idea fifty other Americans enjoyed these shows like I do let alone as many people as lined up for JDF's panels. I certainly didn't expect to see any non-power ranger cosplayers. But at this panel, they had a Gokai Red and Silver, an Abarewhite, a TimeRed, and even a freaking Decade whom I had to struggle not to kick in the shins. The best cosplayer though whom I missed getting a photo of was an AkibaRed cardboard outfit cosplayer. He even had a Shachiiku with him. Totally missed the boat on that, but sister sib and I had to duck out early to make sure we hit JDF's real panel.
The Henshin Heroes panel wasn't really my thing because I am very specific about things I like about tokusatsu which put me in disagreement with a lot of what they had to say, but nice things were said about Double and Hibiki, and embarrassing out of context old school sentai footage was shone, so that was fun. Poor sister sib knows very little of this world and had to deal with me muttering my commentary the entire line about how Decade is the most awful show in the history of awfulness and obviously the best starter super sentai is Dekaranger. How could anyone think it was anything but Dekaranger? Seriously?! Gobusters? Ugh!
But we wanted food before JDF's panel so we dashed over and waited in the smashed in Subway line because my snack bag of almonds and fruit leather wasn't going to suffice to the end of the day. Then we took our sandwiches up the the queue for JDF's first panel and I taught sister sib how to play zombie dice while the queue filled up behind us.
When they finally let us in (late as everything always is at conventions), we were surprised to see JDF himself sitting at the panel desk with the line from outside filling up around edge of the stage. He was holding someone's iPhone and using it to pipe various Power Ranger themes into the microphone. Eventually, he found someone who had the Green Ranger theme and proceeded to jam out for a while. "The others were so pissed when I got my own theme song. Austin was like 'This is bullshit!'" It took a surprising amount of people before he found someone with the original Mighty Morphin' theme, but he found it eventually. Then he started just going through people phone books and dialing numbers.
"Call my brother!" Someone would say. "I'm not going to call your brother. Who's Richard? I'm calling Richard? Oh no, Gramma and Grampa. I'm calling them!" The first fifteen minutes of the pane was basically JDF failing at crank calling people because no one answers their phone these days. Eventually, he got hold of a cab company, informed them that he was the Green Ranger and that his Dragonzord had broken down so he needed a cab. The connection was bad though, so I don't think the poor taxi guy got the joke.
Eventually, the con drone came out and told JDF that the person they'd been waiting for to get the panel started had arrived, and he could begin. JDF used no MC, just had a nice Q&A format made more amusing by the fact that he has the attention span of a drunken monkey. If a fan was asking him a question, and it reminded him of anything, anything at all, he would immediately fasttrack the Q&A into Tangentland until said fan forgot their original question. He said the only rule about the session was to not ask him if anything ever happened between him and Amy Jo. It didn't. Never. Colleagues. Sick of hearing this question for the last 20 years (Oh god, I'm old...)
Now, while I'm a pretty active member of the Japanese Tokusatsu fandom, I stopped watching US power rangers somewhere around the start of Zeo and never picked it up again. I haven't kept up with what any of the actors are doing except when they guest star on another show and I get to go "Dude, that's the black ranger!" I was aware that JDF was an accomplished MMA fighter now and owned some dojos, but I'd not read any interviews or watched him speak at other cons. I was ... pretty alone in this. The people in that hall were die hard fans, and he was regularly apologizing for repeating himself. Who knew?
Mostly, he shared stories about how he came to have the nickname "Jason David Prank." I guess Johnny Young Bosch had done Otakon last year and spilled a ton of dirt on JDF who now got to confirm anything. His top three pranks are as follows:
1. Filming the Christmas episode where he and Kimberly have to stand under the misteltoe. Kimberly goes "Look, Tommy, mistletoe!" and there is supposed to be a Fox Kids romantic moment. Instead, JDF continued to deliver his line and dropped his pants until the director yelled at him.
2. Filming the movie in New Zealand, he squashed a giant bug inside a sandwich. He then carried it around (on my bare hand. No one should have taken it. It wasn't on a napkin or a plate or anything. Just my hand. Who accepts a sandwich like that?) and handed it to David Yost saying, "Here, David. I got you a sandwich. Now, instead of being suspicious or looking inside or anything like that, David just said "Thanks, man" and chomped down. JDF, not having actually intended to feed David Yost a bug but now not wanting to admit there totally was a bug in there, just said "You're welcome," and walked away.
3. Johnny Bosch is apparently an idiot because, again while filming in New Zealand, they were all riding to set in a van. JYB told everyone he could get out of the van through the window, get on the room, and then climb back in the van. JDF said, "Do it." So JYB did. And JDF shut the window on him.
Jason David Frank is probably a dangerous person to know very well.
I also learned that JDF is a genuine comic nerd and had to sell his comic collection to pay for his first dojo. He's a very proud dad who regularly watches old Power Rangers with his daughter, but does not allow her to watch the new stuff. "Daddy, daddy! Power Rangers is on!" "No, sweetie, that's not Power Rangers. Let me get the movie for you." He finds it very weird to hear his own voice coming from another room though, and does still look at his wrist if he unexpectedly hears the communicator sound effect.
Now, I was not impressed with the fan caliber of this event. A lot of people take this way more seriously than me, and that is saying something. One girl came up and announced that she'd had a crush on him since she was five. His response, "Oh thank you. That's... so weird." Similar responses were made to the frequent marriage proposals from both genders.
The best fan, though, was a guy who walked in dressed like a putty. A very well done putty cosplay, too. He got up to the mic, and started doing the "bululubbulbulbulu" putty speech, then apologized for clearing his throat. His question was something on the lines of, "Yeah, hi. So, you remember your first episode when Rita sent the five of us to attack you in the park?" JDF, nodded seriously. "So, I was the putty that you hit with a trash can lid, which I didn't think was very sporting of you because none of us were attacking with weapons, and that's just poor form. Do you have any comments on those events?" Jason apologized, saying he didn't think that would come back to bite him 20 years later, and then offered an apology in putty speech. So while to most of the fans, I boo hiss their lack of class, a big thumbs up to you, Putty guy, whoever you are.
Eventually, they forced JDF to stop the panel, although that didn't stop him from doing an impromptu spin kick demonstration and fist bumping people who rushed the stage. It's a shame sister sib and I try to be nice at conventions and don't rush the stage.
The rest of our day was pretty uneventful. We met up with sister's fiance and hit up Artist's Alley so she could geek out over her webcomic heroes. (Sister Sib is the author of "Jikoshia" which is entering its first printing after a successful Kickstarter campaign. Pretty long way to go for the girl who once painted a Sailor Moon mural on her bedroom wall). As previously mentioned, I had no money, so I mostly just supported and gawked at the Teahouse cosplay booth.
We hit up one more panel on "New Anime for Old Fans" and proceeded to "Back in my day!" the entire audience. Except for the 60 year old Goth-loli cosplayer. I couldn't "Back in my day" her. Like all the panels, this one was jammed pack, but since nobody likes the front row, that's where we ended up sitting. I'd heard of/seen most of the anime they talked about, but there were a couple new ones for me to look into. I haven't seen "The Daily Lives of High School Boys," but they clip they showed was high freakin' larious.
We were a bit conned out and the next thing anyone was interested wasn't till 11, so we decided to head back, eat Chinese food, and watch Akibaranger. Then we turned in early so we'd be in line for JDF autographs.
Cue day two. Sister sib and I grab the early light rail, make it to the convention center right at opening time, and head directly for the autograph line. It's a mad dash, but we make it, though pretty far back. Still, we are in the line. After waiting 30 minutes or so, they cut the line off... way ahead of us. We are so deeply enraged I almost throw my Starbucks at the "Walk the Serpentine" guy. This venue just did not have the space to deal with the amount of people. They only had the 1 hour sessions booked for autographs, they lined all the autographees up together regardless of who's signature they wanted, and apparently they allowed multiple signings so less people got through. Rumor has it people who were not cut off were still denied sigs because of this. We were pissed and once again left with nothing to do all morning.
Luckily, I had an alternative, and dragged sister sib to Peter S. Beagle's panel. For those of you with whom I don't share a childhood, Peter S. Beagle is the author of "The Last Unicorn" among many other novels. Thus he is responsible for about half of both my childhood dreams and nightmares. The other half goes to Jim Henson.
Mr. Beagle's panel on "The Visual Last Unicorn" was at once a promotion for the new shiny graphic novel edition and a retrospective of all the different ways his books have been brought to life. It featured amazing art and lots of stories from the editor about what a crochety old man Mr. Beagle is. Mr. Beagle denied none of these accusations, but was otherwise quite personable and complimented the Lady Amalthea cosplayer there. Poor girl. Everyone kept calling her Daenerys. I know that pain. There was also a nice Molly Grue, but as far as seats went it was sadly the only sparsely attended panel I saw the whole time.
The most interesting thing I learned at this panel was that the reason we've not seen a Last Unicorn reboot is that the rights are currently being held by a nutjob. The editor can prove he's a nutjob because he has read the script. In one seen, the nutjob's skill has Prince Lir slaying the ogre by swinging a sword. The ogre then says "Ha! You missed!" After which Lir says, "Wait for it." Then the ogre splits a part in two equal pieces. I... do not remember that from my childhood. So Mr. Beagle and his team are working very hard to prevent that movie from being made until 2015 at which point those rights expire. Everyone, pray for 2015.
I went up after the panel to say hi, but he was chatting with people nearer the front and invited everyone down to the dealer's room where he'd be signing things etc. Sister Sib and I pounced on this and then spent the next 30 minutes hunting for the dealer's room.
The Baltimore Convention center is incredibly poorly designed for this type of event. It's four stories, but you can't get directly between any of the floors. You can go one to three or one to two or two to three but none of those in the same place. Also despite the dealer's room and artist alley being located on the first floor next to each other, you have to enter on opposite sides of the convention center depending on the one you want. We actually never found the way to get into artist alley without cutting through the dealer's room. Oh, and about half the escalators are broken or reserved for staff. I kid you not, staff only escalators. Poor cosplayers. So there's sister sib and I hiking up to the third floor, crossing the convention center to the dealer's room queue which then leads down two stories to put us directly under where we'd started. You can't just walk across the first floor because the concert hall blocks the way. It's a stupid convention center.
We did though and waited in the dealer's room line which luckily by that time wasn't around the center like it was on Friday, and found Mr. Beagle's booth and brilliant shiny copies of the new Visual Last Unicorn. I bought one and a copy of some of his other novels that they'd discussed at the panel and I hadn't read. Mr. Beagle was super nice about signing and taking pictures with his fan. He also signed everyone up on his mailing list by carefully walking each fan individually though the process on his iPad. He had the iPad walkthrough down.
We did a bit of shopping (I'd gotten my wallet back), and I'll say the Dealer's Room was decently stocked, but being just a year away from Japan and knowing what the prices of various items are pre-importing, I had a hard time spending much money. They were charging 10 bucks for 7-11 Gokai minis. I can't do that sort of thing anymore. Also, they didn't have any booths dealing manga in Japanese or anything like that. Their Gunpla was reasonably price, so I picked up a chibi-Gouf. Otherwise, I spent all my money on Peter S. Beagle books, some webcomics Sister Sib recommended, and a shiny purple di made out of zinc with triangular pips. It's adorable.
Not wanting to be denied access to JDF's second panel, we decided to start queuing 2 hours ahead of time. So back to the serpentine we went and got in line with the folks waiting for Aya Hirano's panel. I like some of her music, but not enough to risk missing JDF to go. However, as it turns out, that wasn't a concern.
See, Otakon had a print schedule, but also a smartphone app using "Guidebook." Sister Sib has a smartphone, so we were able to get updates and were planned for JDF's panel at 2pm. What we didn't know, is that this had been reversed with Aya Hirano's panel and the print schedule listed it incorrectly. Thus, the staffers told us that anyone waiting for JDF was welcome to go in for Aya's panel. Score for us but shame for anyone who really wanted to see Aya's panel and didn't have a smartphone. Some of us don't have smartphones, dude.
I was really glad to attend her panel because A) It was the only time I got to hear someone speaking Japanese the whole convention (how sad is that?) and B) Aya Hirano is pretty adorable. You don't expect much else from a seiyuu/Jpop singer thrust in front of an American audience, but it's still cute. The only problem was that a lot of people were just waiting for the JDF panel. The guys behind us were so rude I about turned around and smacked them. They talked the whole way through, very crassly and not at anywhere near subtle volumes.
Aya's fans were mostly good except for the one idiot who got up and asked how she felt about fans smashing her CD's (I guess there was a scandal or somesuch... I only knew she sang the "Lucky Star" theme at the time). The translator refused to even translate it and the rest of the audience booed the guy down. The translator was pretty good, but had a lot of trouble understanding when the fans badly pronounced the names of anime or characters. Aya usually caught on before that. One fan asked her to say something in MisaMisa's voice and the translator just couldn't figure out what a MisaMisa was.
But yeah, mostly fun panel. I wished I could've hit up her concert, but the line for the Friday night concert started at 2pm. We knew we'd never get in if we weren't willing to wait all Sunday.
Anyway, JDF came out for his second panel which was supposed to be about his MMA career, but really was just more Power Rangers Q&A. I don't know why they label these things on the schedule. JDF returned in his green T-shirt glory, reset the "Do not ask about me and the Pink Ranger" rule which was violated almost immediately, and got back to being way too nice to people who didn't deserve it. One of the idiots behind us got up and challenged him to spar. JDF said he has an open sparring invitation for anyone who wants to come to his dojo in Houston and sign a waiver. No waiver, no sparring.
Multiple people thought it was okay to come up and ask him if he'd sign something. This is backwash from the autograph overflow, I know, but come on, people. If I didn't take my "Green With Evil" VHS up there to get it signed, you shouldn't either. I forgive the guy who had the mint-in-box Dragonzord because that's awesome. Nothing else was awesome enough. I also forgive the girl in Pink Ranger cosplay who asked him for a hug because she went that mile. We met her later and she was sad because her "friend" didn't even get a photo. Some friend.
I do not forgive the girl who got up and shouted into the mic that it was JDF's fault she was so competitive and it was her life dream to have a kick-off with him and see who could kick higher. JDF is really obliging. He was willing to sign things for people if the audience said it was okay, he was willing to answer "What's your favorite ranger?" question a thousand times in different voices so it was new each time. He was even willing to show this dumb person up by not only kicking higher than her, but doing spin and jump kicks because "It's like a rap battle! I go, you go! Jumping spin kick, go!"
What really stood out about him was how personable he was to his fans. He talked about how it had been a disappointment for him meeting Jeane Claude Van Damme, and he never wanted to be that guy. So we were welcome to ask him "What's his favorite color?" as often as we liked, and he would answer it every time, but in different voices. "I guess... green?" "No, definitely green." "Green, of course." etc.
One idiot got up and asked him questions about why such and such happened in episode such and such. His response, "It's in the script. We really just follow the script. Script says "Zordon dies," Zordon dies, that's the script. Script says "Peace conference," you go to a peace conference, that's the script.
He also obliged someone asking him to say "It's Morphin' Time!" and then just repeated "DRAGONZORD!" because we kept cheering. "If this is what you guys, want, I can do this for an hour. DRAGONZORD!" I would have kept cheering.
The rest of the pnel was mostly just Jason being nice to people, lamenting that he and Austin hadn't gotten to do a con together (there is still quite a bit of machismo rivalry there, if I'm any judge), and subtle promotion of his martial arts schools. He closed by apologizing for the autograph session, and saying he was doing another one after his VIP event at 4:30 in the Dealer's room, so come on down.
Sister Sib and I exchanged a glance, then bolted out the side door, crossed the convention, barreled down the stairs (the dealer's room queue was done with) and managed to be about the tenth person in line at 3pm. Did I mention I did all that in flip flops re-activating my foot injury from DCC? Fun!
We were so stupid happy though and perfectly content to wait right there for the hour and a half until said signing. After five minutes though, we were told to move the line, and some inefficient staff members shoved the line against the Dealer's Room wall. This was poorly done and ended up moving us to maybe 30th, but we weren't going to quibble. We hung out with pink ranger girl for another twenty minutes before overhearing another fan talking to a staff member. The staff member was saying that this was a ticketed event only, and all those without VIP tickets had to leave.
Green Ranger Mob: "No! He said he'd sign for us after his VIP thing."
Staffers: "This is the VIP thing and we can't guarantee anyone waiting an autograph."
GRM: "He said he'd sign for us after. We're just going to stick around."
Staffers: Fine
So we all continue to wait. Until
Staffers: All Non-ticketed people need to leave.
GRM: No, we know there's no guarantee.
Staffers: No one without a ticket is allowed to line up here. It's a fire hazard.
GRM: You made us stand here!
Staffers: You all have to go.
Now, they weren't physically able to make us move, but they sat and huddled and got loudspeakers, and eventually Sister sib and I gave up. A lot of people didn't and the line stretched all the way around the Dealer's Room when we left to go find her bf. Apparently, everyone was kicked out and JDF wasn't allowed to sign beyond his VIP event. He did an extra autograph session Sunday, but we didn't get the message till 11 o clock, and with the light rail commute, there's no way we'd have made it. According to Otakon's FB page, we were not alone in our disappointment.
We instead sulked over to the Hilton to wait for Sister Sib's bf. The lines for the evening events had already started (that includes events starting at 11pm) and the conference rooms were all packed. Nothing else seemed worth waiting in a queue that long, so we abandoned it in favor of Chipotle. We thought about going back on Sunday, but were so upset at their organization and so sure we'd never get into the concert hall, we opted for a day at the Aquarium and Inner Harbor. Also Cheesecake. Cheesecake solves many problems.
So Short List for those who don't want to read my rant.
Highlights: Peter S. Beagle and Jason David Frank both run a great panel and are personable, swell people.
Issues:
-Way too many people for the space they have
-No day passes so you end up paying 80 bucks to sit in line all day
-No ticketed events so all that waiting can prove for naught
-Staffers completely lack internal communication
-Convoluted center that's hard enough to travel without cosplay.
-Not marking the entrances or exits to areas on maps so you can walk to the complete wrong end of a building and be shooed away.
-Too many crappy Fluttershies. (Okay, that's a personal issue of mine. Anyone thinks they can put on a pink wig and a yellow sundress and be Fluttershy. psh.)
Is it a con I'd go to again? Probably not. If I was local and they had day passes maybe, but I wouldn't go again unless I was guaranteed a Red Ranger vs. Green Ranger face off or some such. It wasn't a total loss, but the whole event was tainted by too much disappointment to go down in my otherwise awesome convention history.
A couple of months ago, my sister posted that Jason David Frank was coming to Otakon in Baltimore. About seven seconds after that, I posted that gee wouldn't that be a great weekend for me to come visit her in Baltimore? Thus began a memorable if not entirely satisfactory weekend of my first con with my sister sib.
Now, ordinarily, I am a fairly OCD person when it comes to con organization, but due to time constraints and distance, I was forced to do a couple things I ordinarily don't handle. First, as I'm unemployed and sister sib is a struggling artist, we decided to stay in her apartment and take the light rail to the convention. This meant that we didn't go in the day before to get our badges, and instead waited to get them on Friday morning.
Count this mistake one. Maybe it would have been okay had we gotten there at 7:30 like my original plan, but sister sib and her bf have long working hours and weren't able to get much time off for this, so we ended up arriving closer to 9:30, an hour after the reg line opened. Note that JDF was signing autographs at eleven and we both really really really wanted to get our autograph. Arriving at the convention, the line wrapped around the convention center, crossed a street and left us baking in the sun for an hour and a half, feeling bad for cosplayers.
As a side note, I did wear my Jiro outfit for the con, which worked nicely as both a storage device (Nice backpack) and comfy con clothes. The jersey fabric, however, does not breathe and I was afraid to take it off for how sweaty the undershirt was getting.
Long as it was, the line did move at a decent pace. So it only took us about an hour to get inside and get our badges. We did have to combat the Reg line Nazi who enjoyed standing and shouting at people to: "WALK THE SERPENTINE!!! HEY! YOU! COME HERE! WALK THE SERPENTINE!!!" It became the phrase of the con.
Oh, I should mention that in true Bandit trip fashion, I was running hot off a crisis at this point. See the night before, sister sib and I had gone out for yogurt. This involved me putting my plane bag down on the floor of a frozen yogurt shop. This meant that the wallet, stuffed near the top, pushed open the zipper of the purse and fell out onto the floor of the yogurt shop where it remained. Yes, I had no wallet for the first day of con because the security shop that kindly saved it for me wouldn't have anyone available to open the safe until two. While most of Otakon's staffers pissed me off royally, they were very understanding about me not having any ID to pick up my badge and hassled me not at all. So ten points there.
Sister sib and I now have about 30 minutes till the autograph session starts, so we manage to wind through the confusing map to find the lines. We get there and are turned away immediately. Line is full. The queue for tomorrow's autographs at ten would open at nine. Sadness, but we figured we'd just get there super early tomorrow.
Instead, we were left with a clear morning, so I dragged sister sib to the Henshin Heroes panel. Now, I've always considered my tokusatsu hobbies to be kind of a niche market. I had no idea fifty other Americans enjoyed these shows like I do let alone as many people as lined up for JDF's panels. I certainly didn't expect to see any non-power ranger cosplayers. But at this panel, they had a Gokai Red and Silver, an Abarewhite, a TimeRed, and even a freaking Decade whom I had to struggle not to kick in the shins. The best cosplayer though whom I missed getting a photo of was an AkibaRed cardboard outfit cosplayer. He even had a Shachiiku with him. Totally missed the boat on that, but sister sib and I had to duck out early to make sure we hit JDF's real panel.
The Henshin Heroes panel wasn't really my thing because I am very specific about things I like about tokusatsu which put me in disagreement with a lot of what they had to say, but nice things were said about Double and Hibiki, and embarrassing out of context old school sentai footage was shone, so that was fun. Poor sister sib knows very little of this world and had to deal with me muttering my commentary the entire line about how Decade is the most awful show in the history of awfulness and obviously the best starter super sentai is Dekaranger. How could anyone think it was anything but Dekaranger? Seriously?! Gobusters? Ugh!
But we wanted food before JDF's panel so we dashed over and waited in the smashed in Subway line because my snack bag of almonds and fruit leather wasn't going to suffice to the end of the day. Then we took our sandwiches up the the queue for JDF's first panel and I taught sister sib how to play zombie dice while the queue filled up behind us.
When they finally let us in (late as everything always is at conventions), we were surprised to see JDF himself sitting at the panel desk with the line from outside filling up around edge of the stage. He was holding someone's iPhone and using it to pipe various Power Ranger themes into the microphone. Eventually, he found someone who had the Green Ranger theme and proceeded to jam out for a while. "The others were so pissed when I got my own theme song. Austin was like 'This is bullshit!'" It took a surprising amount of people before he found someone with the original Mighty Morphin' theme, but he found it eventually. Then he started just going through people phone books and dialing numbers.
"Call my brother!" Someone would say. "I'm not going to call your brother. Who's Richard? I'm calling Richard? Oh no, Gramma and Grampa. I'm calling them!" The first fifteen minutes of the pane was basically JDF failing at crank calling people because no one answers their phone these days. Eventually, he got hold of a cab company, informed them that he was the Green Ranger and that his Dragonzord had broken down so he needed a cab. The connection was bad though, so I don't think the poor taxi guy got the joke.
Eventually, the con drone came out and told JDF that the person they'd been waiting for to get the panel started had arrived, and he could begin. JDF used no MC, just had a nice Q&A format made more amusing by the fact that he has the attention span of a drunken monkey. If a fan was asking him a question, and it reminded him of anything, anything at all, he would immediately fasttrack the Q&A into Tangentland until said fan forgot their original question. He said the only rule about the session was to not ask him if anything ever happened between him and Amy Jo. It didn't. Never. Colleagues. Sick of hearing this question for the last 20 years (Oh god, I'm old...)
Now, while I'm a pretty active member of the Japanese Tokusatsu fandom, I stopped watching US power rangers somewhere around the start of Zeo and never picked it up again. I haven't kept up with what any of the actors are doing except when they guest star on another show and I get to go "Dude, that's the black ranger!" I was aware that JDF was an accomplished MMA fighter now and owned some dojos, but I'd not read any interviews or watched him speak at other cons. I was ... pretty alone in this. The people in that hall were die hard fans, and he was regularly apologizing for repeating himself. Who knew?
Mostly, he shared stories about how he came to have the nickname "Jason David Prank." I guess Johnny Young Bosch had done Otakon last year and spilled a ton of dirt on JDF who now got to confirm anything. His top three pranks are as follows:
1. Filming the Christmas episode where he and Kimberly have to stand under the misteltoe. Kimberly goes "Look, Tommy, mistletoe!" and there is supposed to be a Fox Kids romantic moment. Instead, JDF continued to deliver his line and dropped his pants until the director yelled at him.
2. Filming the movie in New Zealand, he squashed a giant bug inside a sandwich. He then carried it around (on my bare hand. No one should have taken it. It wasn't on a napkin or a plate or anything. Just my hand. Who accepts a sandwich like that?) and handed it to David Yost saying, "Here, David. I got you a sandwich. Now, instead of being suspicious or looking inside or anything like that, David just said "Thanks, man" and chomped down. JDF, not having actually intended to feed David Yost a bug but now not wanting to admit there totally was a bug in there, just said "You're welcome," and walked away.
3. Johnny Bosch is apparently an idiot because, again while filming in New Zealand, they were all riding to set in a van. JYB told everyone he could get out of the van through the window, get on the room, and then climb back in the van. JDF said, "Do it." So JYB did. And JDF shut the window on him.
Jason David Frank is probably a dangerous person to know very well.
I also learned that JDF is a genuine comic nerd and had to sell his comic collection to pay for his first dojo. He's a very proud dad who regularly watches old Power Rangers with his daughter, but does not allow her to watch the new stuff. "Daddy, daddy! Power Rangers is on!" "No, sweetie, that's not Power Rangers. Let me get the movie for you." He finds it very weird to hear his own voice coming from another room though, and does still look at his wrist if he unexpectedly hears the communicator sound effect.
Now, I was not impressed with the fan caliber of this event. A lot of people take this way more seriously than me, and that is saying something. One girl came up and announced that she'd had a crush on him since she was five. His response, "Oh thank you. That's... so weird." Similar responses were made to the frequent marriage proposals from both genders.
The best fan, though, was a guy who walked in dressed like a putty. A very well done putty cosplay, too. He got up to the mic, and started doing the "bululubbulbulbulu" putty speech, then apologized for clearing his throat. His question was something on the lines of, "Yeah, hi. So, you remember your first episode when Rita sent the five of us to attack you in the park?" JDF, nodded seriously. "So, I was the putty that you hit with a trash can lid, which I didn't think was very sporting of you because none of us were attacking with weapons, and that's just poor form. Do you have any comments on those events?" Jason apologized, saying he didn't think that would come back to bite him 20 years later, and then offered an apology in putty speech. So while to most of the fans, I boo hiss their lack of class, a big thumbs up to you, Putty guy, whoever you are.
Eventually, they forced JDF to stop the panel, although that didn't stop him from doing an impromptu spin kick demonstration and fist bumping people who rushed the stage. It's a shame sister sib and I try to be nice at conventions and don't rush the stage.
The rest of our day was pretty uneventful. We met up with sister's fiance and hit up Artist's Alley so she could geek out over her webcomic heroes. (Sister Sib is the author of "Jikoshia" which is entering its first printing after a successful Kickstarter campaign. Pretty long way to go for the girl who once painted a Sailor Moon mural on her bedroom wall). As previously mentioned, I had no money, so I mostly just supported and gawked at the Teahouse cosplay booth.
We hit up one more panel on "New Anime for Old Fans" and proceeded to "Back in my day!" the entire audience. Except for the 60 year old Goth-loli cosplayer. I couldn't "Back in my day" her. Like all the panels, this one was jammed pack, but since nobody likes the front row, that's where we ended up sitting. I'd heard of/seen most of the anime they talked about, but there were a couple new ones for me to look into. I haven't seen "The Daily Lives of High School Boys," but they clip they showed was high freakin' larious.
We were a bit conned out and the next thing anyone was interested wasn't till 11, so we decided to head back, eat Chinese food, and watch Akibaranger. Then we turned in early so we'd be in line for JDF autographs.
Cue day two. Sister sib and I grab the early light rail, make it to the convention center right at opening time, and head directly for the autograph line. It's a mad dash, but we make it, though pretty far back. Still, we are in the line. After waiting 30 minutes or so, they cut the line off... way ahead of us. We are so deeply enraged I almost throw my Starbucks at the "Walk the Serpentine" guy. This venue just did not have the space to deal with the amount of people. They only had the 1 hour sessions booked for autographs, they lined all the autographees up together regardless of who's signature they wanted, and apparently they allowed multiple signings so less people got through. Rumor has it people who were not cut off were still denied sigs because of this. We were pissed and once again left with nothing to do all morning.
Luckily, I had an alternative, and dragged sister sib to Peter S. Beagle's panel. For those of you with whom I don't share a childhood, Peter S. Beagle is the author of "The Last Unicorn" among many other novels. Thus he is responsible for about half of both my childhood dreams and nightmares. The other half goes to Jim Henson.
Mr. Beagle's panel on "The Visual Last Unicorn" was at once a promotion for the new shiny graphic novel edition and a retrospective of all the different ways his books have been brought to life. It featured amazing art and lots of stories from the editor about what a crochety old man Mr. Beagle is. Mr. Beagle denied none of these accusations, but was otherwise quite personable and complimented the Lady Amalthea cosplayer there. Poor girl. Everyone kept calling her Daenerys. I know that pain. There was also a nice Molly Grue, but as far as seats went it was sadly the only sparsely attended panel I saw the whole time.
The most interesting thing I learned at this panel was that the reason we've not seen a Last Unicorn reboot is that the rights are currently being held by a nutjob. The editor can prove he's a nutjob because he has read the script. In one seen, the nutjob's skill has Prince Lir slaying the ogre by swinging a sword. The ogre then says "Ha! You missed!" After which Lir says, "Wait for it." Then the ogre splits a part in two equal pieces. I... do not remember that from my childhood. So Mr. Beagle and his team are working very hard to prevent that movie from being made until 2015 at which point those rights expire. Everyone, pray for 2015.
I went up after the panel to say hi, but he was chatting with people nearer the front and invited everyone down to the dealer's room where he'd be signing things etc. Sister Sib and I pounced on this and then spent the next 30 minutes hunting for the dealer's room.
The Baltimore Convention center is incredibly poorly designed for this type of event. It's four stories, but you can't get directly between any of the floors. You can go one to three or one to two or two to three but none of those in the same place. Also despite the dealer's room and artist alley being located on the first floor next to each other, you have to enter on opposite sides of the convention center depending on the one you want. We actually never found the way to get into artist alley without cutting through the dealer's room. Oh, and about half the escalators are broken or reserved for staff. I kid you not, staff only escalators. Poor cosplayers. So there's sister sib and I hiking up to the third floor, crossing the convention center to the dealer's room queue which then leads down two stories to put us directly under where we'd started. You can't just walk across the first floor because the concert hall blocks the way. It's a stupid convention center.
We did though and waited in the dealer's room line which luckily by that time wasn't around the center like it was on Friday, and found Mr. Beagle's booth and brilliant shiny copies of the new Visual Last Unicorn. I bought one and a copy of some of his other novels that they'd discussed at the panel and I hadn't read. Mr. Beagle was super nice about signing and taking pictures with his fan. He also signed everyone up on his mailing list by carefully walking each fan individually though the process on his iPad. He had the iPad walkthrough down.
We did a bit of shopping (I'd gotten my wallet back), and I'll say the Dealer's Room was decently stocked, but being just a year away from Japan and knowing what the prices of various items are pre-importing, I had a hard time spending much money. They were charging 10 bucks for 7-11 Gokai minis. I can't do that sort of thing anymore. Also, they didn't have any booths dealing manga in Japanese or anything like that. Their Gunpla was reasonably price, so I picked up a chibi-Gouf. Otherwise, I spent all my money on Peter S. Beagle books, some webcomics Sister Sib recommended, and a shiny purple di made out of zinc with triangular pips. It's adorable.
Not wanting to be denied access to JDF's second panel, we decided to start queuing 2 hours ahead of time. So back to the serpentine we went and got in line with the folks waiting for Aya Hirano's panel. I like some of her music, but not enough to risk missing JDF to go. However, as it turns out, that wasn't a concern.
See, Otakon had a print schedule, but also a smartphone app using "Guidebook." Sister Sib has a smartphone, so we were able to get updates and were planned for JDF's panel at 2pm. What we didn't know, is that this had been reversed with Aya Hirano's panel and the print schedule listed it incorrectly. Thus, the staffers told us that anyone waiting for JDF was welcome to go in for Aya's panel. Score for us but shame for anyone who really wanted to see Aya's panel and didn't have a smartphone. Some of us don't have smartphones, dude.
I was really glad to attend her panel because A) It was the only time I got to hear someone speaking Japanese the whole convention (how sad is that?) and B) Aya Hirano is pretty adorable. You don't expect much else from a seiyuu/Jpop singer thrust in front of an American audience, but it's still cute. The only problem was that a lot of people were just waiting for the JDF panel. The guys behind us were so rude I about turned around and smacked them. They talked the whole way through, very crassly and not at anywhere near subtle volumes.
Aya's fans were mostly good except for the one idiot who got up and asked how she felt about fans smashing her CD's (I guess there was a scandal or somesuch... I only knew she sang the "Lucky Star" theme at the time). The translator refused to even translate it and the rest of the audience booed the guy down. The translator was pretty good, but had a lot of trouble understanding when the fans badly pronounced the names of anime or characters. Aya usually caught on before that. One fan asked her to say something in MisaMisa's voice and the translator just couldn't figure out what a MisaMisa was.
But yeah, mostly fun panel. I wished I could've hit up her concert, but the line for the Friday night concert started at 2pm. We knew we'd never get in if we weren't willing to wait all Sunday.
Anyway, JDF came out for his second panel which was supposed to be about his MMA career, but really was just more Power Rangers Q&A. I don't know why they label these things on the schedule. JDF returned in his green T-shirt glory, reset the "Do not ask about me and the Pink Ranger" rule which was violated almost immediately, and got back to being way too nice to people who didn't deserve it. One of the idiots behind us got up and challenged him to spar. JDF said he has an open sparring invitation for anyone who wants to come to his dojo in Houston and sign a waiver. No waiver, no sparring.
Multiple people thought it was okay to come up and ask him if he'd sign something. This is backwash from the autograph overflow, I know, but come on, people. If I didn't take my "Green With Evil" VHS up there to get it signed, you shouldn't either. I forgive the guy who had the mint-in-box Dragonzord because that's awesome. Nothing else was awesome enough. I also forgive the girl in Pink Ranger cosplay who asked him for a hug because she went that mile. We met her later and she was sad because her "friend" didn't even get a photo. Some friend.
I do not forgive the girl who got up and shouted into the mic that it was JDF's fault she was so competitive and it was her life dream to have a kick-off with him and see who could kick higher. JDF is really obliging. He was willing to sign things for people if the audience said it was okay, he was willing to answer "What's your favorite ranger?" question a thousand times in different voices so it was new each time. He was even willing to show this dumb person up by not only kicking higher than her, but doing spin and jump kicks because "It's like a rap battle! I go, you go! Jumping spin kick, go!"
What really stood out about him was how personable he was to his fans. He talked about how it had been a disappointment for him meeting Jeane Claude Van Damme, and he never wanted to be that guy. So we were welcome to ask him "What's his favorite color?" as often as we liked, and he would answer it every time, but in different voices. "I guess... green?" "No, definitely green." "Green, of course." etc.
One idiot got up and asked him questions about why such and such happened in episode such and such. His response, "It's in the script. We really just follow the script. Script says "Zordon dies," Zordon dies, that's the script. Script says "Peace conference," you go to a peace conference, that's the script.
He also obliged someone asking him to say "It's Morphin' Time!" and then just repeated "DRAGONZORD!" because we kept cheering. "If this is what you guys, want, I can do this for an hour. DRAGONZORD!" I would have kept cheering.
The rest of the pnel was mostly just Jason being nice to people, lamenting that he and Austin hadn't gotten to do a con together (there is still quite a bit of machismo rivalry there, if I'm any judge), and subtle promotion of his martial arts schools. He closed by apologizing for the autograph session, and saying he was doing another one after his VIP event at 4:30 in the Dealer's room, so come on down.
Sister Sib and I exchanged a glance, then bolted out the side door, crossed the convention, barreled down the stairs (the dealer's room queue was done with) and managed to be about the tenth person in line at 3pm. Did I mention I did all that in flip flops re-activating my foot injury from DCC? Fun!
We were so stupid happy though and perfectly content to wait right there for the hour and a half until said signing. After five minutes though, we were told to move the line, and some inefficient staff members shoved the line against the Dealer's Room wall. This was poorly done and ended up moving us to maybe 30th, but we weren't going to quibble. We hung out with pink ranger girl for another twenty minutes before overhearing another fan talking to a staff member. The staff member was saying that this was a ticketed event only, and all those without VIP tickets had to leave.
Green Ranger Mob: "No! He said he'd sign for us after his VIP thing."
Staffers: "This is the VIP thing and we can't guarantee anyone waiting an autograph."
GRM: "He said he'd sign for us after. We're just going to stick around."
Staffers: Fine
So we all continue to wait. Until
Staffers: All Non-ticketed people need to leave.
GRM: No, we know there's no guarantee.
Staffers: No one without a ticket is allowed to line up here. It's a fire hazard.
GRM: You made us stand here!
Staffers: You all have to go.
Now, they weren't physically able to make us move, but they sat and huddled and got loudspeakers, and eventually Sister sib and I gave up. A lot of people didn't and the line stretched all the way around the Dealer's Room when we left to go find her bf. Apparently, everyone was kicked out and JDF wasn't allowed to sign beyond his VIP event. He did an extra autograph session Sunday, but we didn't get the message till 11 o clock, and with the light rail commute, there's no way we'd have made it. According to Otakon's FB page, we were not alone in our disappointment.
We instead sulked over to the Hilton to wait for Sister Sib's bf. The lines for the evening events had already started (that includes events starting at 11pm) and the conference rooms were all packed. Nothing else seemed worth waiting in a queue that long, so we abandoned it in favor of Chipotle. We thought about going back on Sunday, but were so upset at their organization and so sure we'd never get into the concert hall, we opted for a day at the Aquarium and Inner Harbor. Also Cheesecake. Cheesecake solves many problems.
So Short List for those who don't want to read my rant.
Highlights: Peter S. Beagle and Jason David Frank both run a great panel and are personable, swell people.
Issues:
-Way too many people for the space they have
-No day passes so you end up paying 80 bucks to sit in line all day
-No ticketed events so all that waiting can prove for naught
-Staffers completely lack internal communication
-Convoluted center that's hard enough to travel without cosplay.
-Not marking the entrances or exits to areas on maps so you can walk to the complete wrong end of a building and be shooed away.
-Too many crappy Fluttershies. (Okay, that's a personal issue of mine. Anyone thinks they can put on a pink wig and a yellow sundress and be Fluttershy. psh.)
Is it a con I'd go to again? Probably not. If I was local and they had day passes maybe, but I wouldn't go again unless I was guaranteed a Red Ranger vs. Green Ranger face off or some such. It wasn't a total loss, but the whole event was tainted by too much disappointment to go down in my otherwise awesome convention history.