Dearest Rachel -
For all that I've talked about the atmosphere surrounding the convention, I haven't told you anything about the actual scheduled events. Part of that is because, even when we were attending these things together, we were rarely all that concerned about the panels, the guests, the screenings and all the other scheduled activities of the con. It was a side benefit to the social aspect of attending these events; it wasn't the main reason we came to these things. Besides, it's hard to come up with a connecting theme I can latch onto.
But today, I think I could tell you about what specifically I went to, and who I saw, because it was fairly distinctive. Or more to the point, he is fairly distinctive.
I'm talking, of course about Samurai Dan (and Jillian).
Really, I hardly need to tell you about him; we've attended enough of his panels, ever since discovering him ad libbing about his own takes of convention life maybe about ten years into our Anime Central habit. But anyone else who might be reading this over your shoulder won't know who I'm talking about, so it's probably incumbent upon me to describe him, at least for their benefit.
So, how to describe him? The best I can do - and do feel free to correct me if you think I've got it wrong - is to cross the leader of the Cobra Kai (although Dan would never be considered the bad guy. Dumb, yes – indeed, that's part of his comic schtick – but never evil) with a blue collar comedian like Bill Engvall. In fact, if you closed your eyes and just listened to him, he might pass for Engvall, if you hadn't heard the real comedian in concert for a while. He certainly has that combination of put-upon husband and older guy confused by the younger generation vibe about him.
None of which is what brought him to the anime convention scene. He's not even an otaku; to this very day, he only admits to having seen Spirited Away, and that at the behest of some cute convention staffer: while he's happily(? I'm not sure if it's all part of the joke, but it certainly seems like it) married to Jillian for twenty-plus years, he knows beauty when he sees it, and as not afraid to say so (until Jillian appears, ninja-like, right behind him). At six-foot-seven, and bald as a nut, he's an imposing figure; he looks like he should be working security at an MMA event – or be in the octagon himself.
That last isn't all that far from the truth; he's a black-belted martial arts sensei, with a dojo in the Iowa City area. This is his connection to the anime community – his skills at various Asian martial arts, both with hand-to-hand and sword fighting. And while he got his start here at Anime Iowa, we didn't notice him (why would we? We weren't into fighting anime, or fighting in general) until he showed up at ACen, telling stories about his previous con experiences up until then. As a storyteller myself, I could appreciate what he had to relate – although his stories tended to be more colorful, and his delivery funnier than I'm able to do.
But we'll get to that later. After all, he still does fight demonstrations, and often with audience participation. In fact, later today he'll be leading a class specifically for those in need of a crash course in convention self-defense, entitled "No Means No" – just because one is dressed in a skimpy costume is not license for another to get handsy with one, and a little self-defense instruction assists the otherwise hapless female cosplayer when words aren't enough to fend off a guy who won't take a hint.
Yesterday afternoon, however, was a little more lighthearted, with a series of activities based around the K-drama Squid Games. Fortunately, none of us gets punished the way the losers in that show do – I did say it was 'lighthearted' – but most of us could only get so far. The initial "red light/green light" game was substituted with a lesson in the most common Ashi Sabaki techniques: he would call for us to use either a 'tsugi' (shuffling) or 'suri' (dragging) step to cross the room safely. Anyone who used the wrong step was bopped with a pool noodle by one of his students who had accompanied him to the con; honestly, I think I slipped under the radar, here, but I got across safely. Either that, or I have an innate talent for this, where I don't even have to think about what I'm doing – I'm pretty sure that's not the case.
This was confirmed with the next game, involving a shuriken throw. At three yards, I could get it to land in a box half the time, but at five, I couldn't do much but surround the box with shuriken. One slip of a girl in an Alice costume (but with dark hair and bloody stockings – I think her version is from a particularly grimdark video game) got all of her shuriken in the target at this range; I and a few others began to call her the 'Wonderland Ninja.' She and her partner also got through the third round (where one person holds a wooden sword, and the other throws rings at them for them to catch on said sword) with a perfect score, the only ones to do so.
She didn't win the game, however, as the final contest was a kung fu eye-hand coordination exercise. Basically, it was a matter of balancing a coin (and later, coins, plural) on one's elbow, twisting said arm to drop the coins, and catching them in midair. She could only manage with a single coin (and only with practice that she and her partner were allowed to do, thanks to having had a perfect score on the previous game. But as they say in investing, 'past performance is no guarantee of future performance'). Two guys duked it out, going up to three coins before switching to their non-dominant arm – at which point, one dropped their coins and the other won. Quite the competition, really.
***
There really wasn't anything else on the program for Friday afternoon that attracted my attention, so I wandered about, as we always used to do. I did find another artist to suggest a commission to; I've since basically sent the photos that went into your LoRA for him to use as a reference. I guess that, for now, even those of us like me who are well into artificial intelligence art still respect the work of actual artists.
Either that, or I sometimes just need to talk to someone about what I have in mind. I can't really do that with a computer.
Not yet, anyway.
I also did eventually give in to hunger, and stopped in at that pizzeria across the street that I showed you in an earlier letter.
I can't help but respect their attitude towards their supposed competition in the food service industry. They're actually quite right, if you think about it.
So much for my plans to engage in 'intermittent fasting.' On the other hand, at least I'm getting my recommended ten thousand steps in, so maybe I need the sustenance after all. I also got my vegetables in, consisting of broccolini roasted in a spicy olive oil, and served covered in slivered almonds and freshly grated Parmesan.
Hmm. That may not be as healthy as I'd like to believe. It was still tasty, though – kind of like asparagus, but spicier. Maybe I need to try something like this at home at some point in the future.
***
Now, I mentioned earlier this letter was going to be themed around Samurai Dan, despite the fact that we were never particularly interested in his subject of general expertise. That's because, by the time we were aware of him, he'd been to numerous anime conventions (even this year, the last eleven weeks has seen him and Jillian featured at ten different conventions!), and he had seen some stuff there. His late night show last night featured him in a t-shirt reading "Bad choices lead to good stories," and boy, does he have 'em!
Good stories, I mean. Well, actually, probably bad choices, too. While he clearly comes across as a gentle giant, he admits to having "a big mouth, with no filter," and this has gotten him into scrapes plenty of times – more than enough for his stories to fill a panel (and for the audience for those stories to fill the panel room). His lack of familiarity with anime and otaku culture doesn't help, either... but I should just go into the stories themselves, rather than trying to dissect his act, such as it is.
That's the real beauty of his performance; it's an apparently series of completely true stories, with his completely honest reactions to what's going on around him. For all his expertise in martial arts, there are things he confronts at these conventions where little of that training serves any purpose (although there was the time when he was greeted by a convention showrunner with a running glomp, to which his reflexes kicked in such that he managed to dodge the attempted assault at the last second; for all I know, that event may have inspired him to create the "No Means No" panel!). It's that flummoxed reaction to these situations that make them so funny in the re-telling.
Of course, some of them seem a little over-the-top to me, as I've never seen anything like them. I've never seen a pair (let alone a gaggle) of girls in skimpy costumes running through the hotel corridors, grabbing guys at random and demanding they "say 'I'm a lesbian'" before presumably dragging them off to their room for certain, ah, activities. But then, these are the "bad things [that] happen after dark at conventions," as he puts it, that he was not prepared to deal with properly (especially after the girls return to his floor, insisting that he put on a purple wig that one of them had just been wearing – the details that followed have left him dealing with PTSD regarding anyone with purple hair, even you. So naturally, many of his dojo students will dye their hair purple, just to mess with him). Not being a night owl myself, this was never something I would find myself confronted with; I don't know if you would have seen anything like this, on those evenings you would head out to find someone to play games with, but I do know that, despite what they wanted Dan to say, at least I know you wouldn't have been their 'type.'
His stories also involve interacting with staff and other guests, which we regular attendees would not be privy to otherwise. One late-night dinner had him at a table with the Japanese guests (which, as a martial artist, he considered a particular honor), and he spent the meal discussing combat strategy with them, using utensils, napkins and prawns (he insisted that the shrimp at this restaurant were too big even to be called the already oxymoronic phrase 'jumbo shrimp'). Only afterward, when the con staff thanked him profusely for being willing to spend time with them – when none of the other guests were willing to – did he realize that they didn't speak a lick of English.
Those same Japanese guests caused trouble for him later on, though, when they enthusiastically invited him to a late-night panel (which should have been a tip-off right there), which he was willing to follow them to, until Jillian pulled him aside to explain what the term 'yaoi' meant. If you know, you know – and he didn't.
And this was a running theme to many of his stories, and maybe why most of his best stories are the ones I'd already heard – or in any event, could see coming. Despite still not watching anime, Dan now knows his way around the culture enough to avoid certain pitfalls – but oh, the things that happened to him when he didn't know!
Granted, his final story – about being all but contractually obligated to participate in an "18+" panel involving all the guests at a certain convention – was something where he was aware of what he was getting into, but as it was beyond his control to get out of, he found himself looking for a means to escape the disaster even he could see coming. Fortunately, salvation arrived in the form of Jillian, who had picked up dinner from a local seafood place while Dan was too busy either hawking merch or running panels to do so. Too relieved by his impending liberation to concern himself with phrasing, he attempted to excuse himself from the proceedings by standing up and announcing to all and sundry that "I've got to go – my wife has crabs!"
As improbable as it may sound, I actually believe he did that – and that makes this story funny enough to never get old.
***
That was essentially the Friday portion of the convention, as far as I was concerned. I was torn for a considerable length of time as to whether to stay for one last panel, where the audience would fill in certain words in a half-translated doujinshi; the presumption was that hilarity would ensure, but could I stay awake until one to actually focus on and enjoy it? And what would I do in the meantime?
I tried to hang around the recharge room, but it closed with an hour to go until what I took to be 'showtime.' At that point, I wandered down to the main programming room, only to find out that 'con time' had come into play. The burlesque show that been scheduled for an hour was well into its second hour – and the panel between it and the one I was debating about was still waiting to go on, which meant that 'my' panel wouldn't likely start for another two hours. The hosts, who were already waiting their turn to go on, told me that "if we weren't running this panel, we'd probably be in bed at this point, too."
I've gotta say, I appreciate the honesty.
Thus given permission to call it a night, I headed back to the room. And while I jotted a few notes down when I got back to the room, I resolved to wait until this morning to finally assemble and send everything to you – which has now turned into mid-afternoon.
Hope you think it was worth the wait.
Anyway, I've more to tell; some of it even about today. So keep an eye on me honey, and wish me luck. I'm going to need it.
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