Spreading the Love

[Tradewynd]

I staffed an anime convention last weekend and thought I would share some notes of puroresu relevance.



A few of the import dealers actually brought puroresu stuff with them. A lot of Weekly Fight and Weekly Gong, but at 10-20 bucks each I wasn’t paying that. I am only willing to pay so much more than cover price for a used magazine. One guy had a box from volume 2 of the Jushin Lyger anime, but amazingly couldn’t find the tape, and refused to just sell me the box. Talk about a bunch of crap. I did buy a bunch of Newtype magazines from the 80s, so if there are any articles/posters/etc. about that or the Tiger Mask anime (probably won’t be anything on TM though unless it’s a short retro article) I’ll be sure to post them.



There were a lot of other small things here and there like stickers and packs of trading cards. The Tokyopop FMW DVDs and tapes were available from lots of vendors at $2-4 for tapes and $10-25 for DVDs. One loser actually claimed his grandfather went to the island Gladiator trained on for 300 years 75 years ago to get him to sign the DVD. That doesn’t make me question the authenticity of the signature. No, not at all.



Now, onto the good stuff. Three people actually came doing a cosplay of me! How awesome is that! Well, it wasn’t me exactly, they came as Dr. Cube, but I’ve been Dr. Cube on 3 shows(not on Kaiju though, since those guys can’t even bump properly), and I’m a billion times the worker the guy on the Kaiju DVD is, so there. I signed their costumes and once word got out I had a bunch of autographs to sign, as I am a quasi-celebrity at these kinds of things since my cosplay stage performances are legendary(basically, cutting a promo or performing a skit as the character you dress up as). If I can start a riot, sure I can please my peeps.



We brought in J-Rock band Camino and you guys will never believe what their favorite thing to do when kicking back is…eating potato chips and WATCHING HUSTLE! Things further broke down when one of the band members stood up for the honor of Chicken and the rest of the Hustle army. Oh no he didn’t. Enter Tradewynd-soto. We had a truly awesome Hustle style exchange in which I managed to not only punk them out, but successfully hit on their manager at the same time. I closed out by promising her that before the convention was through, she would feel the love of my monster, and wished Camino bad luck during their concert, which was really awesome. Huge pop from the crowd for the wackiness of the exchange, but it led to lots of questions at my MMA panel.



BTW, their agent is Kudo Megumi bleeding and wrapped in barbed wire hot, and exploding barb wire in bed.



The MMA panel was an hour after that, and thanks to my monster(heh heh, what an awful pun) plug at the Q&A it was standing room in the hall only. After what happened before no one was there for MMA, as everyone wanted to know just what in the hell was up with the confrontation. So instead of talking about MMA I gave a history of the major players in Hustle(i.e. their shoot/puro backgrounds), why Hustle is vastly different from puroresu and why people love/hate it. I also snuck in some other puroresu stuff which will probably sell a few tapes. All while wearing one of my fan’s Dr. Cube head thing. It seemed appropriate somehow, especially since my signature was right across the front of it.



The rave (“dance” as far as the hotel was concerned, I can’t imagine their reaction if we told them we were going to use one of their ballrooms to have a rave for 4 hours) was also nicely done. There is a long standing tradition at these kinds of events to play remixed Japanese music, usually from anime, although this clown was not adhering to the standard. So, breaking out my staff badge I enforced a music change as it went from crappy American electronic remixes to remixed Misawa’s music. And Tanaka Masa’s. And Takada’s. And the Hustle theme. And Hamasaki Ayumi and Hayashibara Megumi with a little bit of TWO-MIX thrown in, because I worship them. And so will all you reading this is you do not want to feel my monster wrath. I was so proud of myself, and it put me over the top with Camino’s agent as a bonus.



To cap off a perfect convention, on the last day one of the dealers found an extra box of stuff he had, and inside was a KUDO MEGUMI PLUSHIE!!!!!! It was 30 bucks, but SOOOOOOOOO worth it.

[Daishikaze]

Dang man, you are sooooooo lucky

[bannabop]

Sounds awesome!