Is nothing sacred to these people? Yes, what's important is

Saw this quote today in my Sojourners email:

"I was raised to believe that you could question the church and still be a Catholic. What is worthy of satire is the misuse of religion for destructive or political gains. That's totally different from the Word, the blood, the body, and the Christ."

- Stephen Colbert, of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report
(originally quoted in TimeOut New York).

He's put into words my opinion on religious satire--and criticism of misuse of any religion. This is why I think Dogma is one of the finest religious movies ever made. It doesn't satirize or criticize Christ, or God in any of Her manifestations, it criticizes (to quote one of the characters) "the shit that goes down in His name."

A lot of abuse and destruction has been going down in the name of the Divine all around our world. To quote one of my favorite Michael Card songs, "Will you not listen? God has spoken Love to us..."

Studio Ghibli and Ursula K. Le Guin: how can it be bad?

The first movie review of the animated version of Ursula K. Le Guin's stories The Farthest Shore and Tehanu (and, if I recall correctly, other of her later Earthsea stories) is out!

As a major fan of both Studio Ghibli (the Japanese movie studio headed by Hayao Miyazaki, my favorite animation director of all time) and Ursula K. Le Guin, I was eagerly awaiting some solid news.

The movie does not seem to be as properly done as I (and I'm sure Ms. Le Guin) would have wanted. For one, the characters are not represented properly as far as skin color. This was a big issue with the Wizard of Earthsea movie that came out a few years ago. Le Guin is very realistic about the range of ethnic appearances in her fantasy and science fiction and sensitive to implicit and explicit racism. Also, the storyline is pretty much devoid of humor. Even in her serious works, Le Guin usually has touches of humor, and as the reviewer points out, so is Hayao Miyazaki.

But it is Goro Miyazaki's first movie (his father Hayao didn't think he could make anything decent but has called it "an honest work"). Besides, it's a Studio Ghibli movie (which means "top-drawer animation") based on excellent fantasy, and the overall review is fairly good. This is at the least a "rent it when it's out on DVD" movie, from what I can tell.

Addendum: just found Ursula K. Le Guin's response to the movie.

In other book-related news, I just found a copy of Anne of Green Gables for an adult patron who had never read it and is going to visit the author's home. I love helping people get books I've loved myself!

Otakon!!

Well, I spent three days last week at one of the biggest anime and manga conventions in the US and had a completely awesome time!

Photo essay...

While waiting in line Friday to get in (yes, I preregistered, but so did about 22,000 other people!) I met a wonderful young woman from our area, Arras, in line next to me. I didn't mind waiting nearly 1 1/2 hours to get in because we had great conversations. She's a dancer as well as an anime and manga fan. I'm having problems posting her photo so I'll put up more Otakon pictures above this posting...


Anyway, Megan, the youngest person I supervise, is also an anime and manga fan. I encouraged her to dress in costume, and here she is, as Ichigo from Kamikaze Girls (a book turned into a movie that she loaned me and I read and watched while I had that awful flu).


Yes, yes, I dressed up too, as Shinonome-sensei, the middle-school teacher from Loveless. (There's a link about the anime and manga series 2 postings ago, or you can Google it, if you're curious about the plot. Or you can call or email me and hear me obsess over it for half an hour or so.) I'll identify Megan (not the one I work with), who arranged this silliness, in one of the later pictures.

Here I am with my students, in the centered photo. The dark-haired people are all Ritsuka (one of the main characters), the two girls with pink hair are Yuiko, the boy with the long hair is Yayoi. Actually, I think most of them are girls, this series has much more appeal to girls/women than boys/men.


And here I am (on the right) being menaced (not very intensely, we were all having too much fun) by Natsuo (3 of them, with red hair) and Youji (aqua hair), otherwise known as the Zero Boys. I'm not very convincing at being scared--can't act worth a darn! Megan's the way cute one in the front.


The photo shoot was at 6pm, after I'd watched a ton of anime and met Megan-our-page-from-work in the art area (amateur and professional artists of various kinds showing and selling their work, doing drawings and stuff on commission, and generally talking with attenders).

Then I met my friend John and we went out for sushi and maki rolls at Edo, an excellent Japanese restaurant by the harbor. I had the best salmon sushi I'd ever eaten! Then back for the art show in the art room, and a couple of panels about anime and manga.

Saturday morning I watched the Anime Music Videos contest and voted. One of the best, and funniest, was Lives of the Animated and Fabulous. Hysterical! In the afternoon I mostly shopped in the dealers' room. Bought two Loveless pencil boards--pencil boards are used to provide a solid surface to write well, so they're really sturdy. In other words, they won't tear the way posters or other delicate stuff would while you haul them around a convention (or move from home to home) and at $4 each, they provide more great art per dollar than anything I can think of! (I love my pencil boards, can you tell?)


Saturday night my colleage (from another library) Mathew, his friend Carolyn, and I had dinner at Edo, where John and I had dinner the night before.


Sunday I saw some of Rumiko Takahashi's short anime, and spent a ton of money in the dealers' room: four manga, a DVD, and a couple of other random items.


And took this really cool picture. I forgot what the character's from but this woman is a great costumer!

So that was Otakon for this year. Wanna come next year?

archivists hand out the coolest schwag

My husband came home from today's events at his professional convention with cooler stuff from the association than I've *ever* gotten from either ALA or MLA at their conferences. This year I got a pen (exciting!) Ken, however, got a mug (equally exciting actually, since we own about 15 already between us), a mini reading light that unfolds itself (oooh, was I jealous!) and a totally kick-butt bumper sticker: "Archivists make it last longer!" I begged and pleaded and insisted that he put it on his car but he stood firm. So I put it up by the computer in the living room, fridge-magneted to the side of our file cabinet just above the "Spay Your Catgirl" poster he gave me when I was doing the anime/manga mini-con at work.

Yes, we are both insane.

More insanity: last week he poured about half a shot of Glenlivet (yes, the $35-a-bottle single-malt Scotch) into a glass of pomegranate juice. Yeah, pomegranate juice isn't exactly cheap either, but Glenlivet as a mixer? In a plastic glass?

We won't talk about my costume for Otakon, or what it says about my obsession with a certain manga/anime series. Or about my conversations with the computer printers at work, though that's normal, isn't it?

For those of you who don't do the con thing and have forgotten my post about going to BookExpo, "schwag" or "swag" is free stuff you get from conventions. It usually refers to the fun type of conventions such as Origins, Comic-con, science fiction conventions, etc. but it can also apply to professional conventions, at least, that's how I apply it since my profession allows for some pretty cool schwag (books/manga being my favorite, no surprise there!)

My posts will continue to be bizarre as Otakon starts Friday and there will be pictures taken.

Also I'm trying to get you people to respond a bit! This is a blog, not a manifestation of my ego (well, not much, anyway).

you thought there was nothing worse than telemarketers...

This morning (I worked evening shift today) I received a call for "the lady of the house." The caller promised this was not a solicitation call and she would take no more than ninety seconds. She was calling from Dove Media or Dove Productions, some such organization. In a nutshell, she asked if I was concerned about the creeping edginess of movies and TV and Hollywood's refusal to produce "family-friendly" TV and movies.

I explained that I had nontraditional ideas of what was appropriate, and that I felt people should vote with their pocketbooks and fund producers of films and shows they wanted to see, and pay to see them. When she insisted that I say I was concerned and tried to pressure into accepting a call later from someone else I said I had other more serious concerns to which I gave my time and energies. When she started talking over me and got more coercive, I hung up.

Of course, after I hung up, I came up with about half a dozen things I wish I'd said:

There are plenty of family-friendly movies out there. I just saw Cars, which all of us at work agreed was a top-notch movie for everyone, and we agreed "So many of the great movies out there are G and PG." I would also have mentioned The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (that would smoke out whether she was a sensible Christian or a paranoid ultra-fundamentalist because of the magic issue). Then I would have recommended My Neighbor Totoro, of course.

After agreeing about the inappropriateness of so many movies and shows I would have gotten specific by decrying violence in film, glorification of war and the military, and how Hollywood and the entire country should return to the core Christian values of nonviolence, equal justice and distribution of material goods, and the equality of all people.

I would have stated that the best and most profound religious film I've seen in my life is Dogma and I'd much rather have my twelve-year-old watch that than an excessively bloody movie by a fringe-ultraconservative-Catholic anti-Semite irresponsible drinker.

I would have asked her to call back when my wife was home.

Speaking of which, I'm more than a bit offended that she asked for "the lady of the house" as if dads don't give a rat's behind about what their kids watch. When I said this to Ken he replied "oh, my kid's going to watch Terminator 2 at the age of three." "And Loveless." I added.

After saying I don't watch TV I should have told her I mostly watch shonen-ai anime and then explained what it was. She'd be convinced I should never have children.

I would really, really love it if one of these people called my friend Stasa. (Though I'd feel sorry for her...)

I should add that all of the above is absolutely true, except for Ken and I letting our (as-yet-theoretical) three-year-old watch either T2 or Loveless. I firmly believe in age- and personality-appropriateness. Lots of movies are too violent for me, let alone any kid, but I know twelve- and fourteen-year-olds whom I'd allow to watch Dogma or Loveless (we would, of course, watch them together and discuss the stories afterward) if they wanted to and if I were their parent or guardian.

More stuff...

First of all, I do have compassion for Mel Gibson if he is genuinely an alcoholic and not just irresponsible (and one can't tell that even from 'news' reports), in which case I hope he seeks and finds help.

Secondly, and back on a lighter note, some more suggestions for "what to say" from my evil-minded best friend...

* Call back when one of my husbands / spouses is home.
* Sorry, I can't talk now, I was right in the middle of
[insert something pagan-sounding here] ritual.
* Actually I would prefer more edginess, my master Chthulu
likes things that way.
* Can you visit my house to discuss this in greater detail?
I can show you my dungeon too...