The Duck's Nest: online home of mizducky

Monkey Majik Makes Music Video with Lupin III Anime - Anime News Network

Monkey Majik Makes Music Video with Lupin III Anime - Anime News Network.

And it's a really nicely done video, too, character designs look a little like a cross between Alcatraz Connection, Mamo, and Monkey Punch's manga art, and the general feel of the animation reminds me just a tad of Gorillaz' video for 19-2000. Check it out here.

New obsession: Gaia Online

I can't believe it -- I need yet another obsession in my life like I need yet another hole in my head. Yet here I've gone and fallen for a new--and especially silly--time-sink in my life: Gaia Online. Yeah, it's kind of weird being in an online system where the vast majority of members are young enough to be my children (if I had any), but I have tracked down a few other geezers on there, so I'm not unique in this weirdness. Plus the little customizeable avatars give me the ability to take my Lupin online roleplaying to a whole new level of obsessively geeky detail. God, I'm turning into such an otaku.

Anyway--if you happen to be a Gaian too, come look me up. My username over there is loopy-chan. Yeah, I know. Geeky, ain't it?

About this Lupin III thing (Green vs. Red spoiler alert)

(For those who have not yet watched Green vs. Red, there's an analysis of that OAV in here that contains spoilers. Just letting you know.)

Okay, so what the hell is it with me and this Lupin III stuff anyway? Why is a person well into their 50s so obsessed with a cartoon character? And such a blatantly silly one at that?

Well, the age thing IMO is a straw man, given that so many of the creative types and talent behind these anime are well into their 50s as well (hell, several of the remaining original Japanese voice acting cast are well into their 60s and 70s). Plus I remain unapologetically kid-like in many areas of my life--insert lyrics to "I Won't Grow Up" from Peter Pan here: "... if growing up means it would be / beneath my dignity to climb a tree / I'll never grow up ... not me."

But totally aside from that ... I'll admit that, at times, I wondered if I wasn't reading a hell of a lot more into this wacky anime character than perhaps its creators ever intended. But that was before I watched the recent OAV Green vs. Red, and discovered that other people besides me had been struck by the larger meanings of this crazy little monkey-man.

The setup to GvR (as fans are inevitably abbreviating the title): we are in a slightly different universe than the one in which the usual Lupin III adventures occur, one in which the master thief has become enough of a cultural pheonomenon to start spawning copycats. Amidst all the hijinks and intrigue of hundreds of Lupin wannabes running amok in Tokyo, plus a big scary caper pitting the current reigning Lupin against a green-jacketed upstart, a young TV reporter pays a visit to a mysterious old man, a bookstore owner who is rumored to be a major authority on Lupin, to try and get to the bottom of things.

This bookseller (who might or might not be the real Lupin in disguise) proceeds to give an extremely Zen explanation of just who and what this man Lupin is: "Nationality doesn't mean anything to him. He is freedom itself ... He's always smart and cool. Or at least he's been so since he became Lupin." When Yukiko, the reporter, asks what he means by that last statement, the bookseller responds with a question reminiscent of a classic Zen koan: "Since when are you Yukiko-san?" He follows this up with: "Someone once told me 'A man isn't born a man, but becomes a man.' The same goes for Lupin."

And as the rest of the film plays out, it's shown that a large part of becoming a Lupin involves simply daring to believe that one is Lupin. Even two of the most inept wannabes manage to bust a majorly Lupinesque move (an homage-to-Cagliostro physics-defying drive up a cliff), once one of them challenges the other with a cry of "Don't say you can't!" And even the current reigning Lupin (there's some question left as to whether even he is the original Lupin, or if there ever was one) has a moment of panic in a death-defying situation--but then he pulls himself together, goes "Yeah right," steps on the gas, and sends the ol' Fiat zooming back on track.

This concept of total faith in oneself being the key to this wild freedom--this is what has me hooked on the character of Lupin. It speaks to all those aspects of my life where I find myself defying convention--from my sexuality, to my beliefs about the world, to my attempts at theatre, even to my current devotion to writing serious fanfiction. Sometimes, carrying on against the cultural tide of convention feels overwhelming--especially when I'm tired or vulnerable or having a self-esteem attack. But when I can psyche myself into believing in myself, when I can connect with the passion, the energy, the rightness I feel when I live in the very things that defy convention, then I have all the strength I need to actualize those things in the world.

There's also, of course, the entertainment value of the kind of outrageous stunts the Lupin character perpetrates with his freedom, and the over-the-top style with which he does them. Lupin is the fictional embodiment of the dude who can get away with anything, the one who always defies the odds. Somebody has to exist on that far tail of the probability curve, and he just happens to be that guy. Yes, there's an obvious element of wish-fulfillment in identifying with this character. But even in something as seemingly trivial as writing a story or performing in a play, there's an element of risk-taking and getting away with wacky stuff that partakes of the same cartoon energy as Lupin's misadventures. Or at least it feels that way to me.

So there you have it, a piece of life philosophy built around an anime character. But for the time being it's working for me. And who knows? He's given me some ideas for whole original stories of my own. How's that for an unexpected--and very real--litle treasure?

Want list: great big box o' Lupin

LUPIN THE 3RD 29 DVD BOX SET ALL 3 TV SEASONS 2 MOVIE - eBay

That's one helluva lot o' Lupin. The prizes here are the complete first (green-jacket) series and the second (red jacket) series episodes past #79, neither of which have never been released in US (dubbed) editions. Nor, for that matter, has the third (pink jacket) series, though I confess I'm a little less interested in those because they aren't quite up to the others in quality. I already have the two included movies--they're not even my favorites. But to have the 1st series and 2nd half of the 2nd series, that would be so sweet. So if anyone's wondering what the hell to get me for my 52nd birthday/Christmas/Hanukkah/Winter Solstice, here's one big fat huge freakin' hint. :-D

New chapter of my Lupin fanfic now posted

Finally got the latest chatper of my Lupin fanfic done. It was a lot harder to write that I expected, because at first I had a much more angsty concept in my head, but that felt wrong somehow, but then unangsting my ideas and coming up with different ones was a challenge. But the result, I think, is just as intense without the waterworks. Plus I got some action into it. But it still remains what it is, an opportunity to drag Lupin into further supernatural weirdness, now with a distinct Hunter S. Thompson goes Carlos Castaneda feel.

Check it out here: clickie

New horizions in anime themed merchandizing: Lupin III novelty fishing lures?!?

Two Lupin the 3rd novelty lures new in boxes - eBay (item 380080922903 end time Nov-18-08 19:43:31 PST).

Yep, nothing says "Lupin" quite like a fishing lure. What it says about Lupin, though, I can't quite decypher.

Okay, the fangeek in me will admit that I've seen Lupin wielding a fishing rod at least twice in various TV episodes. In one, the item he was "fishing" for was the beach towel protecting the modesty of a buxom sunbather. So that's reassuringly typical Lupinesque behavior. But still. Fishing tackle. Really. And the company that markets these darn things also markets ones themed on The Simpsons, Popeye ... and Reservoir Dogs. Weird.

That voice acting workshop I attended this past Saturday

So this past Saturday, I arose at a ridiculously early hour of the morning, piled myself and a few cans of energy drink into my car, and vroomed off northward to, as Laugh-In used to call it, "Beautiful Downtown Burbank" to attend an all-day workshop on voice acting for anime, put on by Bang Zoom! Entertainment, a post-production studio that is a major player in anime dubbing.

I'd first heard about these "Adventures in Voice Acting" workshops at San Diego Comic-con this past July, where Bang Zoom! put on a heavily-attended panel-discussion/intro workshop. That earlier workshop impressed the hell out of me not only because the BZ folks hauled an entire Automated Dialog Replacement (ADR) system down to San Diego for the gig, but had the panel MC'ed by Tony Oliver--veteran voice actor/director/writer with a bazillion credits to his name, but best known to Lupin III fangeeks like yours truly for voicing Lupin in the US releases of the second series and Mystery of Mamo. (And he also happens to be my personal favorite of the English-language Lupins.)

So I saved up a little extra room on the ol' credit card, and when one of the all-day workshops in Burbank landed on a weekend I had free, I ponied up the dough.

The studio where we met for the workshop was in an unassuming little brick building tucked into a side-street full of warehouses. A half-dozen students gathered that morning--about half the normal enrollment, which turned into a real boon for those of us attending because we got twice as much studio on-mic time as we would have gotten otherwise. Tony turned out to be a great teacher--warm, encouraging, unassuming, entertaining, and extremely generous with his huge pile of knowledge and experience. His big emphasis was on voice acting being as much about the art of acting as the mastery of the technology involved, and he encouraged us to get as much experience in just straight acting as possible, in addition to whatever specifically voice-acting opportunities we could network and weasel our way into.

The technology, though, was hardly neglected. After a couple of hours going over some basics of classic acting technique (proper breathing and vocal technique, Method and other ways of getting into the character, cold-reading scripts to make the lines come alive), we all piled into the studio. The control room was totally on computer--the engineer worked everything from a ProTools setup. The sound booth was set up for ADR, with a big screen for displaying the anime clip to be worked on, with the timestamp numbers speeding by across the top, and in front of it the big super-expensive super-sensitive mic, a music stand for the script, and your headphones.

One after another, we all took turns dubbing lines into the ADR system. The routine: the engineer previews the scene you're about to dub your character's lines into, so you can see the characters' expressions and non-verbals and hear what the original Japanese voice actor did. Then he cues up the scene again, you hear three beeps over your headphones, and where the fourth beep should have gone, that's where you start talking. It is much more difficult than it looks--you're listening for those beeps, watching your character's mouth flaps and trying to match your words to them, and also trying to relax and be in character while you're doing all this. All I can say is, yeah, I'm glad the class was underenrolled even though that was definitely a financial hit for the studio, because it wasn't until my third time on mic that I felt like I was getting beyond all the pat your head/rub your tummy coordination issues and doing anything even vaguely resembling real acting.

But Tony was, as I said, very encouraging throughout. He definitely gave critique, but it was some of the most constructive encouraging critique I've ever gotten in a critique situation. For instance, it became obvious within a couple of character choices that I was running into a few of my long-standing issues with acting and vocalization--1) that I identify much more easily with rowdy, tomboyish, or even boyish characters than I do with traditional femmy female characters; 2) paradoxically, that I have to work to find a hard cutting edge to my voice as opposed to a rounded, soft, blending sound; and 3) that I could use a hell of a lot of work on breath regulation. Yup, he noticed all of them thar issues right off. I'se got some work to do!

But by the end of the day, I felt that I did have a few things going for me in this voice-acting thang, enough to think that I'm not 100% off my rocker in trying to pursue this dream. And between several of the suggestions Tony gave for pursuing the dream, and a couple other ideas I brainstormed on my own, I'm psyched to give it a go. There's an improv group, for instance, I could audition for (provided I get control of my Wednesday workload since the group meets Wednesday nights); there are also a couple of community radio stations I might be able to talk my way onto. Hell, I could look into being a volunteer reader for one of those books-on-tape organizations for the visiually impaired--they apparently have a screaming need for readers who can hack technical books, and hey, it's on-air time in a studio.

So ... I've got options, and I've got some homework to do, and because of this workshop I feel jazzed about keeping on with it. Sounds like a worthwhile experience to moi!

Election night; also just another work night; and another cosplay photo

Wow, the polls in California closed just a little over a half-hour ago and McCain's already conceded. Whew. Good luck, Barack--I hope I'm proven dead wrong, but I can't help having a funny feeling that things are going to get even more challenging for you and for the progressive movement now that you've got the office.

Meanwhile, still waiting to get real numbers on Prop 8. The initial numbers are disheartening, but it's so damn early, it's almost meaningless to conjecture yet.

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Meanwhile, I'm supposed to be getting work-work done, so that I can also get all this pre-dinner advance cooking done. So this will be a pretty short post ...

... except that I have to show off this other Halloween crossplay photo that my photographer-friend emailed to me, because it came out so damn good (if I do say so myself). The fangeek in me loves showing off my replica Airsoft Walther P-38. But even beyond that, I love how I managed to get a really Lupinesque expression on my face. All that's missing is the dangerously raised eyebrow--only, while I can and do raise an eyebrow, it's not enough under my conscious control to do it on demand. But still--this photo makes me so happeeeeee... :-D

First picture from my Halloween crossplay; action-packed week ahead; fear and loathing on Election Day

Okay, I have gotten my virtual hands on the first of a bunch of photos taken of me in my Lupin III rig on Halloween. Note the stylin' background--the Postal Annex branch where I keep my mailbox offered free photos to anyone who came in wearing a costume on Halloween, so I took them up on their offer. Also note the slight blurriness of the photo, even after I pounded on it a bit in Photoshop; ah well, as they say, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Or you get what you pay for. Or one of them thar sayings. Hopefully the photos taken by my camera-savvy friend will come out much better--he really went to town with taking multiple shots with multiple poses, which ups the odds of success considerably.

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Got a fistful of action happening to me this week, starting of course with voting tomorrow--I always get an absentee ballot, and I always wind up hand-delivering it to the nearest polling place. I originally started doing this because I'm a lazy-ass procrastinator, but it turned out to be the best of all possible approaches: I can peruse the ballot at my leisure, without feeling like I'm holding up a horde of people in line behind me; I can then walk in to the polling place and hand it in without having to stand in that infernal line; and best of all, it's on paper and cannot be screwed up by flaky electronic voting machines with no paper trail verification.

Then on Thursday I am serving a catered dinner for eight that I auctioned off during my hippy-dippy Unitarian church's annual services silent auction fundraiser. The menu is a mix of some of my favorite dishes from a variety of Asian cuisines:  Vietnamese salad rolls; Thai tom yum goong (spicy coconut-milk/shrimp soup); Thai som tam (shredded green papaya salad); Vietnamese steamed whole tilapia; Chinese red-cooked pork belly; Hong Kong style sesame noodles; a trio of Korean banchan (little side-dish salads); and Thai black sticky rice pudding for dessert. It sounds a lot more difficult than it is--a lot of the dishes are make-ahead and require very little fuss. But there's no denying that there's a lot of shopping and prep, so guess what I'll be doing on Tuesday and Wednesday in addition to my usual load of work?

Then on Friday I'm driving up to Los Angeles and spending the night, so I'll be right on time for an all-day workshop on beginning voice acting for anime, taught by prolific voice actor (and voice of Lupin III for the American dubs of the 2nd series and Mystery of Mamo) Tony Oliver. Yes, I'm going to be a total fangeek and bring along a DVD for Tony to autograph. And yes, this little trip implies some extra work during the week too, because I'm going to have to make sure there's enough food and supplies in the house to keep my little Tottsan out of trouble--including, I suspect, getting all his meds for the coming week all counted out in case I return from LA wiped out. Well, at least while I'm away in LA it'll feel like a vacation. Sort of. If I get up there early enough on Friday I'll see if I can hit some interesting places--at the very least Melrose, and maybe Japan-Town to hunt for anime swag and good cheap Japanese comfort food.

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 I've been some flavor of liberal-to-left political animal from way back when I was a little squirt watching my mom take care of duties as a county Democratic Party volunteer, and I gotta say it's been a pretty disillusioning experience. Every time I've seen a glimmer of hope on the horizon that the spirit of liberalism and altruism might finally be gaining a toehold somewhere, I've seen that hope collapse--either at the polls, or at the business end of a gun. Every time I've sworn that politics could not possibly get any weirder or nastier, I've been unpleasantly surprised. And there's been several elections--the first time Reagan got in, and the first time Papa Bush got in, and both times Baby Bush got in, that I've actually entertained 10-second fantasies of high-tailing it for the nearest international border for fear that Big Brother was about to descend.

Now we've got a guy speaking amazingly refreshing and thoughtful words about hope and change, and of course I'm voting for him, but I'm also holding my breath for fear of jinxing things. Just the mere fact that, even in this day and age, there are American citizens who are deciding to not vote for this guy solely because of his African ancestry makes my blood run cold. And don't even get me started about the homophobes who are attempting to ram an amendment into the California Constitution "defending" their narrow-ass view of marriage. Where the hell do these people come from? And how did they manage to sleep through all their civics, history, political science and philosophy classes so that they think these are legitimate and defensible political positions?

I know the higher road to take with these people is to say, yes, they're entitled to their opinion too, and that's what makes this a democracy. But the moody-ass curmudgeon in me, who has seen too many elections go by where the tyranny of the majority has voted in all kinds of idiotic demagogues and hateful legislation, has lost all patience with the higher road. Soooo: my inner curmudgeon says to all those idiots: hey! Have you noticed you're a bunch of bloody idiots? Maybe you should stay home and not bother voting. After all, according to that beloved Scripture you like to (mis)quote so much, the Rapture's supposed to come soon and take you all away, right? So what the hell do you care if those of us who get left behind decide to throw a big party and vote for some smart people and laws for a change? So there. Nyahhh.