Fullmetal Alchemarried and Other Amusing Moments.
Posted on August 21st, 2006
Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 12:22 pm
Sorry girls, Ed’s taken. By rapper and good friend Nursehella.
For starters, I have to say that in no way did Nursehella nor myself prod Vic Mignogna, Edward Elric’s VA, into saying that message for Nursehella’s inbound voice mail message. In fact, Nurse was quite nervous about asking him for a message at all, but Vic is one of the nicest guys out there. Not nicest VA – nothing so specific – he’s just really authentic, cool and fun. Beyond all that that though, Anime Evolution, even though I wasn’t able to attend a lot of it, was a heck of a lot of fun. The VA panel with Vic, Brad Swaille and Michael Dobson was a blast, the guest reception was a ton of fun, the dance was better than most anime dances (thanks to great music and an outdoor setting which kept the horrible otaku body odor, or HOBO for short, to a minumum,) and it was all made way more awesome thanks to Nursehella and Jesse from Zannen/Toon Zone.
PS: Pictures and more video forthcoming.
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Northwest, but more so.
Posted on August 20th, 2006
Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 11:42 am
So, I am up in Canada, namely Vancouver, BC so I can check out Anime Evolution, hang out with Nursehella, get filmed while hanging out with Nursehella at Anime Evolution and visit an animation studio (details after the visit and any write up I’d do for Toon Zone.)
Outside of a some what annoying trip up to Canada (the traffic between Lynnwood and Everett was horrible, and the border crossing took forever,) it’s been pretty fun so far. Hanging out with Nursehella is cool, as she’s a very nice and enjoyable person to hang out with. She has tons of great stories about the indie rock scene, and she has in general lived a very colorful life, but she’s totally considerate and polite too (she lent me a comforter, some extra blankets and pillow so I had more than my 10 dollar sleeping bag to sleep in/on.)
Anyway, I’m looking forward to the rest of the trip, but even as a baseline, this might be one of the more fun experiences of the summer, and I have had a very interesting summer, atleast compared to my usual loitering around Seattle.
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Snakes, Planes and other non-such.
Posted on August 18th, 2006
Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 12:45 pm
So, I spent most of my week in a car driving back and forth to Spokane. Family stuff. Very worthwhile, but very exhausting in a way too – I have a new found respect for truckers, bus drivers and other people in motion all day everyday.
Once that was all wrapped up and I was home, I then saw Snakes on a Plane, as all net-denizens likely did, and it was a pretty good film for a popcorn flick. It definitely stands on it’s own from the internet hype, and though it’s not a classic film in terms of Spielburg or Fellini, it’s something that will still be a decent watch when it runs heavily edited on TNT a decade or so from now because it really does hit the right cues for action/horror movie.
I will, however, note that the internet hype did make it an even more interesting watch in the theater. I mean, there were people dressed up as a snake and another person dressed up as a plane, there were tons of people with rubber snakes, everyone knew the big lines and said them along with the film, and in general the audience energy was great – all though the trailers people were adding “with snakes” or “snake in/on/around a” to all the horror film trailers with dramatic narration. If you don’t atleast catch a matinee, make sure you rent it/buy it and watch it with a decent-sized group of friends – it’ll make a fun film awesome. Also, they ran a trailer for another Samuel L. Jackson movie with the word “Snake” in the name in front of main feature, and that had to be the most brilliant trailer placement ever. I have a feeling a lot more people will be turning out to Black Snake Moan now at the very least.
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Returning Music To Myspace…
Posted on August 9th, 2006
Filed under: Music News — Karl Olson @ 2:15 am
So, it looks like (much to my pleasant surprise) that myspace.com has backed off on it’s policy of completely claiming everything you post on myspace thanks to Billy Bragg, which means my music can live on myspace again (in addition to the recently updated Nekodashi.) I’m even uploading tracks while I’m writing this post.
Meanwhile, I think I’ll go buy Mermaid Avenue next I time order from Amazon to show some appreciation for the man who helped insure that thousands of amateur musicians don’t end up on some crappy compilation or Fox News expose against their will. Besides, from what I’ve heard off the disc (various tracks on the public radio stations here over the years,) it’s pretty great anyway.
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PS: playing on mc chris’ myspace…
Posted on August 4th, 2006
Filed under: Music News — Karl Olson @ 3:27 pm
Someone asked about my mix on mc chris’ forum because it’s on mc’s myspace, and the question is part of what spurred the nekodashi update. Took me a while to realize that maybe the fact that Chris picked my mix was maybe news worthy. Almost lame that I get more play on his myspace than I get off my own website though, though I suppose that’s to be expect. Ah well, exposure is exposure, right?
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Nekodashi update – 25 iterations of 8 songs.
Posted on August 3rd, 2006
Filed under: Music News — Karl Olson @ 12:34 pm
AKA, my mc chris remixes now up for download for this first time in a while, and with gratuitous flavor text on the side. (Flava text? Fava beans? Homestar Runner humor.)
Anyway, on a more serious note, I hung out yesterday with nerdcore artist MC Wreckshin and his friend whose name I forgot (I am still horrible with names. Shoot, I drew a blank on Misu’s last name yesterday even.) It was fun hanging at SushiLand with them, and making an oddly long drive from the Seattle Center to Archie McPhee’s (even if Archie had just closed for the day.) I wish those two the best of luck on their cross-country trip back to Florida, and hopefully they can meet up with a ton of other cool nerdcore mcs and producers along the way.
Now, to trek back to Seattle (my bro and I are going to hit Archie McPhee’s and the Army surplus store.)
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In liu of an actual update…
Posted on July 31st, 2006
Filed under: Music News — Karl Olson @ 7:32 pm
A Crunk Beat I made for a couple other nerdcore rappers who will rapping about Poke Balls IIRC. Should be amusing.
Oh yeah, if you didn’t know, I’m back in Seattle, atleast until Anime Evolution. However, that won’t really stop me from being busy, but atleast I don’t have to be on my feet to review the 4 DVDs (more like 5) in my backlog, the three advance screenings I caught and the interview I have to transcribe. Oh, at the dating sim and related TV series I need to review as well. At least all of my awesome reporting at Comic Con resulted in my reports getting linked by Anime News Network, Anime on DVD, ICv2, some Japanese site I’ve never even heard of and probably more. I’m pretty darn happy about all that, even if SDCC was a bit of fiasco otherwise (I won’t go into details here.)
Oh yeah, I’m also putting together a website with Misu for a friend of mine in LA that if it works will be awesome, and if it doesn’t will still have atleast shown me how to use cart software, so I can set up a more professional interface to the business side of this website. Speaking of which, I have a CD I should send out to tomarrow.
Anyway, if you want to hear more about my LA/San Diego adventures, you’ll probably just have to talk to me. Any writing I do in the next month is probably going to be about DVDs, shows and movies coming to DVD, games or manga related to shows on DVD, interviews in relations to movies coming to DVD and contact info that I need to transcribe so that in the long term I get more DVDs to review, so it’ll be similar to last month, but a different side of the press thing.
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“Probably the coolest guy we met through the whole Expo” – chibi-tokyo.net
Posted on July 14th, 2006
Filed under: Music News — Karl Olson @ 3:11 pm
So, Slashdot finally talked about the RhymeTorrents compilation. I guess that’s +1 to my nerd HP or something like that. Hopefully, I’m one of the few that ended up in CmdrTaco’s ultimate playlist. On the opposite end of the exposure scale, I was interviewed by these cool dudes from chibi-tokyo.net for their podcast. If you just want to hear me, check in around the hour and 47 minute mark of their AX podcast. I guess they saved me for last. They put together a very good show though, and you should check out their other podcasts – they’re great.
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Temporary Reprieve / Imminent Reprise
Posted on July 13th, 2006
Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 4:40 pm
So, I’m back from LA for a bit, and that time there was fun: I met a lot great people; I hung out with people who I’d previously only known via the internet; I made connections with some old friends who I hadn’t really seen in about a decade; I saw the inner workings of a real animation studio; I ate lunch at said studio; I came back the next day and interviewed two brilliant directors at said studio; I ended up with piles of free DVDs, manga, games and other stuff between touring a studio and the Anime Expo convention; I walked along the Walk of Fame; I watched a couple of great movies; I did some thrifty shopping for both clothes and music; I had breakfast with a legend in the animation industry and I ate a lot of excellent food at various restaurants. By the way, that list isn’t necessarily in order, but as you can see, I was happily busy.
However, I’m happy to be home in the clean, cool, moist air where I can wear jeans rather than shorts and long sleeve sweaters rather than short sleeve shirts. Further still, while being treated all the time to nice food is wonderful, and it was easy on the wallet, I can’t help but feel like a bit of a charity case in the same stroke. Sure, sometimes I was able to help in some capacity, be that via typical household chores or by completely rebuilding a computer. But to be frank, I guess I’ve always viewed myself as someone who helps, not someone who needs to be helped. Of course, without the charity of others, I’d either still be in LA, spending money on a hotel or putting more people out, or I’d be at home with no Comicon in my future. Instead, I’m at home at in Kirkland getting a chance to do a laundry and generally catch up before Comicon. I’ve ended up with what in my view is a near-perfect situation (though the absense of confirmation from Comicon about press stuff is worrisome.)
I guess all I can say at the end of the day to everyone in the LA area who has helped me over the past couple weeks and to everyone in general who has made this trip possible is “Thank You.” I might have been able to do make it work on my own, but not to the extent that I did in this case. So really, I thank you all.
I am lucky to be surrounded by so many wonderful people.
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An evening of pure rock.
Posted on June 25th, 2006
Filed under: General — Karl Olson @ 12:46 pm
So, I saw the Pillows at the Crocodile Cafe yesterday, and that was pretty cool by itself, but I definitely didn’t go alone either. See, I not only went with people from Anime Kingdom, I not only went with people from BCC, I had a number of people from both those groups plus a friend from the internet and a fan (of Rai and I) (though I knew her previously I didn’t realize that she’d become a nerdcore fan because, of well, me) both of whom I ran into after the show (well, I saw Ferquin earlier but we couldn’t hang out until later.) Thus, inspite of the fact that it was insanely miserably hot inside of the club (the words “finnish sauna” were spoken by the drummer about the situation,) it was just an outstanding experience. I mean, seeing a great rock concert is awesome – it can be a pretty amazing experience by itself, but to do that with tons of friends from pretty much everything I’m involved in, shoot – normally I don’t get that kind of awesome until PAX, if then.
Granted, I was kind hoping to get everyone together for bubble tea post-show, and though that didn’t quite pan out, I think on the whole it’s not too much of a thing – to everyone who I couldn’t hang out with last night, I’ll make it up to you within the summer. That’s a promise, because you’re all awesome, even if it means some forming an uberposse of people at PAX. I mean with Anime Kingdom friends, BCC friends, nerdcore friends/fans, fellow nerdcore artists, various people from various internet forums and maybe a couple camera crews too? Sounds like quite a party to me. Or full-out insanity. Either way, it’ll rock. Still, maybe hanging out in smaller groups would be more advisable. Oh well, whatever happens, happens. 😀