fanime in hell mode

or, a video staffer's view of the con.
or, i thought we had tech people.
or, dial 9 to get out.
or, there goes speed racer.

The short version is: it was a great con.

Dom was fun.

Being a dealer was fun.

Even the video shift from hell was fun. In a way. It was the most stressful 4 hours of staffing I've ever had, but I think I might have enjoyed it a little bit.

It started out innocently enough. I showed up at the room on time, with my little anime tenchou screener episode for filler and the next hour's worth of tapes on hand.

Unfortunately, the sound wasn't working. More precisely, the channels were cancelling each other out, so that we got almost no sound from the center channel. Neither I nor the tech I called ever managed to fix that. Eventually I just pulled the right channel and mixed the sound down to mono. Really annoying, but it worked. That was where it started. We watched some anime, rahxephon, which was okay.

Then someone had scheduled a documentary, tanpopo arcade 2, so we sat through about half an hour of setup while they hooked up a dv camcorder to play the film from. That was okay. Granted, it was boring and pointless, but I got to play with the projector for a bit. (And bash my head more against that sound problem.)

The documentary turned out to be utterly worthless. It may well have been the worst thing shown at the con, beating out even the Japanese pro wrestling and the most inexpert parody fandubs. It was basically just some guys having fun with a camcorder, which is fine--but I don't want to have to watch it. It was stupid, it was boring, and the language was so uncensored that we broke our record for attendee complaints. You can quote me on that. We had to close most of the doors and warn people as they tried to enter. 'This may be rather offensive.' The opening segment, played while they were testing video, consisted of some guy verbally abusing an answering machine. Fun to do, boring to watch.

I spent most of that time making 'it's not my fault' gestures at bemused con attendees. After that came two episodes of alien 9. Looks like a really great series, actually. It would have been nice, though, if they had actually thought to provide us with two episodes. Apparently someone had forgotten to copy episode 4 to tape, and we didn't have any emergency tapes to show. I rattled off some panicked messages into my radio, to the effect of 'I need episode 4 of alien 9.'

No one answered. This was to become something of a running gag.

Right after that, I discovered that the tape of 'full metal panic', scheduled next, had broken. I believe at that point i screamed. Quietly, of course.

I left the alien 9 tape running (apparently they'd taped alien 9 over some houshin engi episodes, so at least there was something on,) and spent most of the next half hour flattening out and splicing the full metal panic tape. It was not fun. I spoke hysterically into the radio periodically, degenerating to 'someone please answer me. I have no tapes and I must scream.'

Miraculously, full metal panic worked, and I started it on schedule. That gave me an hour to get tapes of speed racer, and (I thought,) get off shift.

No such luck. Full metal panic ended. I had been on-shift for 4 hours, alone, pleas for help over the radio going unanswered. I called a vol to watch the room and started looking for video staff.

I found Fearless Leader A pretty quickly. I explained that I needed speed racer tapes, that my shift had been hellish, that I was the only staffer in that room for four hours, that the sound still wasn't working right, etc. I was rather nearly hysterical.

Her response? 'Wait a minute, you don't have authority to requisition vols.' I wanted to throw something heavy. That was the most useless reply I could imagine. She said that she would try to get speed racer tapes. I had no confidence. I went back to the room, sent the vol back to the vol hole, and apologized profusely. I offered to do a live-action version if they wanted.

It was tremendously embarrassing, and no one seemed willing to bring tapes for me. Thankfully, though, one guy in the front row had just bought the dvd box set, and offered to let us borrow the first disc. I was profoundly grateful.

At the end, my relief arrived. It turned out that he was early, that I wasn't supposed to go off-shift until after speed racer. I had assumed that my shift was only 4 hours, that no one could possibly expect one staffer to maintain a room single-handed for more than 4 hours. This was a mistaken belief.) I left and enjoyed the con for a while, attempting to calm down.

Now, I want to emphasize that for the most part I think everyone did a great job at the con, even Fearless Leader A. I mean, in most situations, a dogmatic adherence to rules is a good thing. She's also very careful and attentive of the con attendees. These are important traits. On the other hand, leaving me alone with nonfunctional equipment for nearly 5 hours -- without even radio backup -- was stupid. At minimum, I needed to be able to requisition vols.

I apologized later for babbling over the radio so much. Dave said it was okay. Everyone was tired.

—chris