Once again, lots of things to see and do on the Yuricon website!

The Yuri Events Page has been updated. Join us for the Otakon Yuri panel on Friday, August 4 at 9PM in Panel Room 3! This is your big chance to meet most of the Yuricon organizing staff, to ask questions from some of the world’s leading experts on yuri – and don’t leave early. We have a big announcement at the end of the panel that you shouldn’t miss!

Three new chapters of “Saiyuu no Ryouko: The Continuing Adventures of Yuriko” are now online! Visit the SnB/SnR page for updates.

And for Yuriko fans everywhere – it’s time for the 2006 Yuricon Fanfic Contest! This year’s theme is an alternate-universe for Yuri and her friends. Yuriko the cowboy, the space alien, the fish, all’s fair in fanfic. Submissions will be accepted from August 15, so get writing *your* version of Yuriko’s hunky mascot! Check the contest rules.

Speaking of contests – the winners of the 2006 AMV contest – and all the rest of the wonderful contest submissions – are up on Yuri Studios! Check out bakablonde’s yurified version of Appleseed, and Kyanite’s powerful Silent Mobius video – don’t forget to congratulate our winners. Our thanks to everyone who entered – this was a good year for Yuri!

Don’t forget to drop by the Yuricon Shop, where we’ve added new anime, new manga in English and Japanese, new Drama CDs and even a new T-shirt design! Celebrate your love of yuri in style with the spiffy new black “I Love Yuri” tee.

Yuricon – “For real women who like their women….animated”

If you’re in the Hartford, CT area or you’re already planning on attending Connecticon this weekend, drop by “Con Row” to buy 100% yuri publications from ALC and great Yuricon items, like original Rica Takashima postcards and “I Love Yuri” pins and magnets on Saturday, July 8, 2006.

Sean Gaffney and I will be holding a Yuri Panel at (I think) 7:30 – check the program book for time and location.

We’ll only be there for Saturday, so don’t miss us! See you there!

Back from Anime Next and not too backlogged at work, so I thought I’d do a quick report.

First of all, yay ANext staff, you are da bomb. With the exception of a few complete blights on humanity, the entire staff of ANext is a great group of people.

And yay my wonderful Yuricon staff. I would absolutely NOT be able to do this without you all.

Thursday night all the Yuricon staffers arrived at my home. We all went out for some late-night Indian food. Friday I had to work a half-day, but I told everyone to be ready by noon to leave – and they were.

I am on the staff of Anime Next as a teeny-weeny little piece of the Publicity pie (thank you Shelly for letting me help out)…I was coordinating “Con Row”, which is a thing that has come about largely because of a mailing list where con chairs gather to talk, share ideas and advice, and vent. The ACML, as it’s called, has really helped with cons developing mutual rapport, and as a result, they often offer other cons free tables for promotion. Not all cons do, but it’s an easy way to fill a hole in a DR for smaller cons, or have a row of tables somewhere at larger ones. In this case, we had 5 cons who wanted tables. (7 really, but two never got back to me.) Because I was “in charge” I had arranged ahead of time where and when to get the badges – so the badges thing went easily, and we set up.

Let me digress here for a sec. People who have never done it, seem to think volunteering or staffing cons is simple – and that they’d do it better, but you know…it’s not. It’s hard. I’m a pretty experienced person with volunteering and I’ve helped out at cons doing a gazillion things – and I *still* managed to screw up. LOL When I left for the evening Friday, I took the unclaimed badges with me. Two of the cons showed after I’d left and there was no one to check them in. Obviously, the intelligent thing would have been to leave the badges at Con Ops…but it just slipped my mind. Now, okay, not a big screw-up, but I should have known better. Con Ops just issued badges and when I got in, seven people verbally slapped my wrist, and I took it with good grace, because it was my screw-up, totally. :-) Let this be a lesson to you – even the most experienced person can slip up. That’s why all cons need a little leeway from the attendees. It’ll never be perfect, not as long as humans run things. Next time you go to a con and you’re whining about why things aren’t smoother – now you know why. Because we humans are horribly, painfully fallible. :-)

In any case, in Con Row, Yuricon sat between Connecticon, who are a lovely bunch of people – I even shared my homemade, made with love by my wife, rice balls with them – and I-Con, who seem nice, but we didn’t talk much. Also taking part was Dexcon and Ubercon. Ubercon is a local gaming con which had three lovely young ladies to represent the con, so you know I approved. :-)

Because Con Row at ANext is not in the Dealer’s Room, but outside it, I had to pack and unpack every day, which was a drag, but I lived. :-)

Anime Next is a very general, very young crowd. We never do really well there, so this year we tried something new for ANext – yuri-themed grab bags. I had made a bunch at $1, $2, $5 and $10. By *Friday* at 8PM, they were all gone. Next year I’ll see if I can do more. Basically I was cleaning out my office, which had accumulated an inordinate amount of cool yuri-type stuff I had no use for. The $10 bags were especially good deals, as they had perhaps $30 worth of manga and comics, plus other random stuff. I don’t really get the appeal of grab bags – I want to know what I’m spending my money on, but everyone seemed really happy with what they got.

Because of a snafu, my panels were not listed in the program schedule (not a snafu on my side – I had applied for them months ago, was assured repeatedly that they were happening and sent in descriptions which *did* make it into the program book. I wasn’t the only person this happened to. That panels person will not be returning next year…). So we did tell folks where and when the panel was but not surprisingly, there was a small turnout. However, it was a fine and dandy crowd. Bruce and Serge assisted me with opinions and thoughts about current yuri series, and we morphed at the end of the discussion to talking about Takarazuka, which was fun. (Both Bruce and Serge were with me in Tokyo and both were there to see Elizabeth. So they know how cool it can be.) There’s going to be a TK panel at Otakon this year. I’m going to try and attend.

Before you ask – yes, there’s a Yuri Panel at Otakon. It’s been on the Yuricon Events Page for weeks. lol Friday, August, 4 at 9PM. But really, get in the habit of checking that Events page! I add stuff there *first*. Long before I think to mention it elsewhere.

Saturday went along as Saturdays do. It was alternately fun and annoying, part sales, part promotion and part anger therapy. I had an extremely large number of people ask me about Yaoi-con, or if we sold yaoi, which I found bizarre. The funniest thing to me was the girl dressed as Sailor Neptune who saw our sign, turned quickly and sharply away as if we might bite her and ignored us while I kept calling after her that Neptune was gay and she has a girlfriend. It’s *always* women cosplaying Neptune who react that way – never any of the other Senshi. Ever. Just Neptunes. Why is that, I wonder?

Saturday night I had a Fanfiction writing workshop to do. I told the staff to go, but they stayed anyway, so were forced to hear me wax opinionated and pompous on the fine (coughcough) art of writing Fanfic. Considering it hadn’t made it onto the schedule and wasn’t on the sign, we had a lovely crowd – about 10 people who got there early and stayed for every last second. Freaks. LOL

Sunday’s always a short day. Thank the gods. Because when you’re selling, the day goes like this:

“How much is this?”

“We’re doing a special sale today! It’s only x dollars.”

“Oh, I have no money.”

Repeat for 5 hours. And then have those same people have friends run up and say, “I found a xx character purse!” and they all run off to not buy that too and annoy the vendor. Many of the dealers in the DR are my friends at this point and I always make a point, if I can find anything to get, to buy *something* on Sunday, because that’s the day when I know I want to throttle the masses myself.

I spend a fairly significant amount of time at cons teaching people really basic social skills and telling people to stop blocking doors (I don’t know why people constantly need to stand in front of doors. I know I do it too, so it must be something really lizard brain.. LOL) Let me stress several things to you all:

1) When someone says “Hello”, you respond with “Hello.”

2) When someone says “How are you?” the ONLY proper response in a general social setting is “Fine, thank you. How are you?” Sighing, groaning, making faces or complaining about your ankle, knee, back, head, stomach, exhaustion, colostomy, whatever, is NOT appropriate. Ever.

And here is my bonus lesson taken from years and years of working freak-show retail at anime cons and RenFaires and the like:

1) The person behind the table is NOT your friend. They are only your friend when you give them money. They do not care why you don’t like Shiori. Really. They will listen with a smile because they hope you might buy something. If you have no intention of buying something, don’t require them to care about your theories, or your gender issues or your difficult upbringing. Most other vendors will keep smiling and nodding because they do this for a living and can’t afford to offend. I will tell you to shut up and go away because I have a day job and you are not paying me $250/hour to listen. (If you WANT to give me $250/hour to listen, I will. I still won’t care, but I can fake it beautifully.)

So take pity on the other vendors and just don’t. Ask the price, ask about other items, etc…don’t opine.

But for a Sunday the day went well, I think. We made a few sales, nothing world shaking (yes, yes, pun intended), but a few folks seemed very happy to buy what they got. My favorite sale of the day was one girl who wanted to get something so badly that she dug the change out of her purse to buy a postcard. That dollar in change was the best dollar I got all weekend. :-)

But the best part, not surprisingly, was my staff. Serge, Donna, Kelli and Bruce – with a surprise appearance by the First Lady – really helped out alot and improved both my mood and my snappy comebacks. :-) So many thanks to them. And special kudos to Donna for all the fun craptastic movies from the Donna collection.

Next up is Connecticon – Sean and I will be up there on Saturday July 8th – in Con Row! Yuri panel is slated for 7:30 PM Saturday. (It should be on the schedule this time. lol)

It’s once again time for Yuricon to play with our buddies at Anime Next!

We’ll be at the Meadowlands Exposition Center in Secaucus, NJ from Friday, June 16 – Sunday, June 18.

Yuricon and ALC Publishing will have a table just inside the MEC on the left of the main entrance in Con Row.

In honor of ANext, ALC Publishing is holding a $10/book sale on all 100% yuri publications, and we have a fun new special just for ANext – Yuri-themed grab bags! For $1, $2, $5 or $10 you can get at *least* that amount’s worth of yuri-related random fun things. Very limited quantities, so get ’em fast!

And don’t miss our panels for this con, either:

Yuri Panel: 6pm Friday

Fanfiction Writing Workshop: 8pm Saturday

I and a bunch of the Yuricon staff will be there, so be sure to stop by!

The picture to the left here, graced the badges and program book at Sakuracon. We all commented that they must be a yuri couple as they are next to each other and touching. LOL (Little inside joke there from the Yuricon Mailing List.)

I’m going to be blunt here – Seattle is an odd city. The people, especially the panhandlers, were very creepy and had no sense of a sufficient personal space so as not to arouse the wrath of east coast visitors. I figure that in New York the homeless and/or crazy are so busy trying to survive that they don’t really have time or energy to get into my face. In Seattle, clearly they have plenty of time and energy…and get into my face, they did.

The city itself is pleasant enough. Through no one’s fault, the museum I wanted most to visit was closed, so that was a bit of a bummer. But we did manage to do lots of touristy stuff, which is always goofy fun.

“We” in this case included an unusual appearance by my wife. She almost never does cons with me. She and I were joined by Donna, Serge and Bruce; Yuricon staffers/supporters/minions/etc and people I am pleased to count among my dear friends.

We arrived on Wednesday, and met up with Donna and Serge. After dinner, we went on an adventure to Archie McPhee’s, where, as I mentioned, I bought bandages that look like bacon strips, got a friend a hula girl duster, some other friends pirate and rubber ducky goods, and myself some Tiki packing tape. Also, I picked up some heinous things to put in the yuri grab bags we’re going to be making for Anime Next.

Thursday AM, the wife and I set out to see the Seattle Space Needle. I, used to massive tourist lines, was shocked to find that we were able to go right up. We could see our hotel, and took in some nice views of the surrounding mountains and water. It had started sunny; by the time we got to the Space Needle it was cloudy over the city, but the mountains were still sunny. It looked quite cool. We have nice hills around here, but no real mountains and I’m always happy to spend an longish while looking out at really huge hunks of earth that stand out so massively from the rest of the scenery.

Next up was the Science Fiction Museum. It looked really ugly from outside – sort of a conglomeration of blue and metallic lumps. Inside, it was so impossibly geeky that I absolutely loved it. It’s essentially a warehouse house for Paul Allen’s private collection of sci-fi crap. As he has more money than god, it means that it’s a really super-sophisticated, well put-together warehouse for his sci-fi crap.

Note the utterly, totally dork-a-riffic levels of membership:

And the signs on the bathroom doors. Could they be *any* more nerdish?

Needless to say, we had a great time there. :-)

We decided that as we were all togther by Thursday evening, we’d wander over to the conference center and get our badges. The first person we asked had the right answer, but for the wrong reasons. The second person we asked seemed to have the exclusive job of sending everyone over to the most overworked person in the room, which would have been fine, except the right person was in that room too. Once again – you get what you pay for with volunteers. :-) But, be that as it may, we did get in touch with our host, Sean Larson, Programming Director of Sakuracon, who had invited us out in the first place. He got us our badges and had to bail, which we totally understood. We headed over to the Marketplace, took a look at our table, introduced ourselves to our neighbors and left to do some dinner.

Let me digress here for a second. I want to mention that, at every con/event I have a table at, I do my best to befriend my immediate neighbors. I find that it makes the whole event a better thing when you and the businesses that surround you all get along. In this case, we had “Toys for Freaks and Geeks” on the right, CL Enterprises (I think that was their name) on the left and YesJapan.com in front of us. All were perfectly wonderful to be near. YesJapan is a “language” website, which sort of sells the idea that geeky guys can have cute Japanese girls as friends to practice language skills with. They played videos all weekend of basically, the guys who work there shooting the breeze with Japanese women, talking about useless and insanse things – interspersed with hard Japanese rock bands videos. They were hysterically funny, but somehow really awful too. :-)

Friday started with a nice, relaxed morning. Pattie and Donna headed out to Chinatown and Bruce, Serge and I went right to the Marketplace to set up. We were doing a rock-bottom sale on yuri manga from ALC, so sales were brisk and we had a fast day. The joke was that while all vendors are there to sell and are, therefore, only your friends as long as you give them money, we were the only ones who were open about it. When people bought a book, we’d say stuff like, “Buy a book and we’ll be your friend five dollars worth!” LOL Serge got caught in a prolonged conversation that was going nowhere with someone who had bought a book. When the guy went away, he turned to me and said, “That was ten dollars worth of friendship for five dollars.” It kept us laughing all weekend.

A few friends stopped by – Jen, and her friend Jahana and Devon and unexpectedly Derek and Diana – as well as a bunch of folks from the ML, which was a genuine pleasure. Especially Sara, who was very energetic and bouncy and made us laugh – and she brought lots of people by, which was great. So, thanks Sara! And the young lady who is cosplaying Chloe here, who was very cute. Thanks to her too. ;-)

Friday night we went out to Chinatown to Uwajimaya, a pan-asian market and mall, with a very large Kinokuniya bookstore. I wasn’t feeling great, so managed to not spend anything. The wife and I went back to our room to crash.

Saturday was, for me, more of the same – the con in a dealer’s room looks the same for most of the day. LOL The crowd changes as the new waves of people come in, that’s about it. There wasn’t any anime I needed/wanted to see, and games and the like aren’t my cup of tea. We did have a friend, Hillary, drop by and later went to dinner with her, in the teeny space we had between marketplace and Yuri Panel.

The Yuri Panel was quite nice – about 50-60 people showed. The questions were pretty decent and everyone was very earnest. Serge and Bruce were GREAT on the panel and had a lot of good things to say. Interestingly, Serge was more up on anime, and Bruce on manga, so that worked out really well. We went back to the hotel and watched a brilliantly bizarre live-action movie called Survival Style 5. It’s by the same director who did Kamikaze Girls and boy can you tell. It had alot of the same actors and tropes, but was really funny and weird in a whole new way. I think we all liked the storyline of the guy who kept killing this girl, but she kept coming back, and eventually they kind of fall in love, best. I recommend it for a healthy dose of surreal humor.

Sunday we made an appearance briefly at the table, then bailed to do some more sight-seeing. This time it was the Asian Art Museum, followed by a quick turn aroud Pike St. Market, so I could get my hairdresser the salmon I promised her. lol

The last night we were there was the wife’s birthday, so we went out to celebrate, following that up with a Korean kung-fu (no joke – it was really a kung-fu movie, just filmed in Korea. Trust me, I know the difference) comedy. It was pretty funny, so it was a good end to a good trip. :-)

I can’t thank Donna, Serge, Bruce and Pattie enough for coming out with me. It would not have been nearly as fun as it was without them. Thanks, guys. :-)

Our next event will be Anime Next, June 16-18, 2006 in Secaucus, NJ. I’ll be doing the yuri panel and a fanfic writer’s workshop. I’ll let you know when they are scheduled.

See you there!