Date: Tue, 04 Nov 1997 02:05:18 -0500 From: "Richard H. Kim" Reply-To: MA-MODS@montagar.com To: MA-MODS@montagar.com, MA-MODS@montagar.com Subject: Halloween Anime Party Report Okay, on the behest of people telling me to write an account because I skipped writing one the past few 'events', here's my "story." I personally think its gonna get pretty silly to write a report every time a few of us decide to get together but since this weekend was centered around an "official" function, here goes... Chapter I : The Trip There OR Rest Stop Hustling. I leave here around 2 PM or so on Thursday, intending to get to Jen's around five-ish or so, but of course, I get distracted by, you got it, Tekken 3! I plunked in my two quarters and instantly, I was beset upon by everybody else in the rest stop arcade. Pretty soon, I had a win streak of 20+ racked up because I kept letting these guys come really close to beating me but getting them at the last moment. Anyways, about thirty minutes of hustling the schmoes later, I realize I'm going to be late. I get a guy to buy my game for two quarters and walk out a happy lil camper for having played that many games of Tekken 3 for free. Okay, enough on that. Chapter II : Jen's Dojo OR My Foray Into Italian Jujutsu: I make the rest of the trip in record time and get to Jen's around six. We drop my car off at a garage and we take the subway to her dojo. We watch the kid's class finish off and we get around to working out. Anyways, I embarrass myself a couple of times because of the rustiness of my tehcniques as we do some sort of line drill for striking and breakfalls. We finally get around to partnering off and doing some basic throws. I partner up with a white belt and this is when the trouble begins. We're practicing o soto gari and I let him throw me around and then its my turn. I proceed to pull a Jen and slam him really hard and do it sambo/competition style and follow him down to the mat instinctively and somehow manage to headbutt him on his way down (hey, its been years since I've done static techniques with a white belt, okay? And my knee, yeah, that's it, it's my knee's fault). He's seeing stars so we have to sit out for a little bit. I'm starting to feel bad so I let him throw me around for a while (on the ONE bad spot on the mat, incidentally) and he says, okay, show me this other throw, o soto otoshi. I'm real careful now not to do it my sorta style so I make sure to do it upright and with good technique. Unfortunately, this guy's afraid of me headbtting him again so he forgets to tuck and I end up dropping him on his head. Whoops. I have visions of these guys asking me to leave right NOW. One sensei tells the kid to tuck his head and the other one is off in the corner snickering - I'm starting to like this place. In any case, we end up doing the standard sort of workout, I'm dieing to get on the mats while everybody else gets to do some kumite/randori but I have my knee to worry about so I sit out and I only come away with my "pulling a Jen" story. After class, Jen and I screw around a little bit with leg locks before we have to leave. The trip back is almost a whole hour and after we stop to get a bite to eat at a Ukrainian place its a little past midnight by the time we get in. We spend the next couple hours talking and watching anime music videos that I just got in that morning before I came. Its 3 AM before I end up crashing on Jen's really uncomfortable sofabed. Chapter III : The Hooker OR "You want me to watch your ass?" Friday morning, I'm woken up by the sounds of people calling Jen. I try to sleep for a little more unsuccessfully and I finally end up getting up. Its like I'm doomed to never get a good night's rest at someone else's place but hey, at least this time I wasn't woken up by the wet tongue of an Alaskan malamute. Soon thereafter, we're watching the martial arts tapes that I've brought over. We're somewhere along watching the Korean TKD national team drill and demo tape when Jen's friend Perry comes over with what is to be Jen's costume for the party. I almost die laughing when Jen puts on the wig. Anyways, Perry has to use Jen's computer for a while so we go back to watching people's arms getting broken or knocked out in the Lumax tournament. Perry's got to go so we all leave to get sme breakfast/late lunch. Jen has to finish some stuff off so while she's doing that, I end up watching he Black Adder tapes that she has. Cool. After she finishes up, we watch the K-1 tape that I brought over and by the time we're done watching people getting the crap knocked out of them its time for her to dress up for the party. It takes Jen an inordinate amount of time to put on makeup and I can't stop laughing at each step of the transformation process. By the time she's done, I realize I have to walk down the street with this woman, who, for all her intentions to look like an Austin Powers girl, ended up looking like a prostitute. I'm hoping I don't meet anyone I know when Jen asks me to tell her if the dress is riding up on her. She tells me the story of ... never mind. Anyways, I think "What does she want me to do? Watch her ass for the next five blocks so I can tell her if her Cry for Attention Pink dress is riding up?" I ask her this and she says, "Well, yeah." I proceed to have a couple impure thoughts as we walk down the street while NOT looking at Jen's posterior. We pick up the car and we're off to pick up Joao. Halfway there, I realize that we left the directions on her sofa. That's okay, says Jen because Erica's prepared for us dimwits and sent Joao a copy of them as well. It takes some time to get there but we manage to get to Joao's place where he gets in after laughing at Jen.... excuse me, laughing WITH Jen. We have yet another exercise in hilarity as she tries to squeeze herself into the back of my car without exposing herself to the world. Or at least the denizens of Joao's building. Chapter IV : Enough of These Titles OR I'm Not That Creative. The Halloween parade interupts our plans for a quick departure from Manhattan and we end up taking a roundabout way off. Anyways, we follow Erica's *incredible* directions through NJ and we end up at her doorstep - all the while I'm telling Jen to take notes on how to give directions. (Jen's method: "when you get out of Holland Tunnel go to Houston street. My apartment is right there.") We walk into Erica's kitchen where she too breaks out into laughter at Jen. Of course, I'm fashionably late as Don is quick to point out once we make it into the living room. Jen's distraught as she realizes that she's the *only* dressed up - "I can't *believe* that I'm the only one in costume!" I guess she expected more out of Don and Deana. Introductions are made and I quickly head off to the kitchen to grab some beer. I'm joined by Don and Joao as I try to convince them that I really, really wasn't dissin' the Guinness. I manage to have two whole pints of the stuff on top of the earlier black and tan. Erica hands out party favors and we find out that Joao was never a Boy Scout (cut AWAY from your body) with Don's Spyderco Endura that we're using as a kitchen knife. I make Don jealous with the story of how I lost my Benchmde Emerson CQC 6 that a friend of mine gave me as a gift and he busts out his sword. Somebody's brought Corona for Jen and soon, Deana migrates in and we're having a RMA powwow right there in the kitchen whilst Erica's friends are watching Ghost in the Shell. _I_ have an excuse as what they're watching is dubbed in English and that's a travesty but the rest of the white folk were being antisocial, yep. We take a bunch of amusing pictures involving the wig and SPAM and talk about wierd stuff. But I digress. Don's got his sword so I examine the thing with good ettiquette, examining the thing inch by inch and it gets passed to Joao. SCHWING! Its out and he's waving it around like a madman. Okay, maybe not, but all the while, I was thinking what a great combintion that alcohol and very sharp swords made. Erica trots out her tai chi sword which is pretty neat but way to subtle for the likes of me - its incredibly flexible and light. Don and Erica pose for picture with the swords in the kitchen and we finally make our way back to the living room. There really isn't enough time to watch all the anime that I brought so we start with the first few episodes of Ranma - it goes over well. I've brought the OAVs and feature length movies which are great if you know the characters but everybody's got to take off so we don't get to them. (Don, I left a lot of stuff at Jen's so you might want to get them from her or something. But I'd wait on watching them since you really do have to know the characters to understand the action.) Erica does Jen's tarot reading with her homemade cards and soon, its my turn. I pop in Ninja Scroll for everyone else to watch while Erica does my reading. By the time we're done, Jen's very invoved with the story and feeling sympathy for the characters and on the verge of tears while Erica's making wisecracks because she really doesn't CARE because she's been doing my readings. We finish that up and now its time for us to watch Ogenki Clinic. Well, there's not much to say about that that hasn't already been said. Its three AM now and its time for us to go home. Next time we decide to do this, we should do it during the day on a weekend or something. Erica, the party was great - I had enough to eat and had a good time. We drop off Joao and by the time we make it back, its almost five in the morning. We plan on sleeping in the next day. Chapter V: A Nonproductive Day OR That Can't Be Real! We get up around noon and clutter around checking email and doing stuff and soon after we get back in from breakfast/lunch, we're watching anime again. I have to head back but Jen says the magic words - "Its rainy and unpleasant - why don't you stay till it stops?" Me being a procrastinating college student who wants to avoid the toil of school, I need no further convincing. Later on, we decide to watch "Boogie Nights" and we make it to the theater only to find out that the next show is sold out. We buy tickets for the show two hours later so we have to whittle away the time somewhere. First item on the agenda is Tekken 3 since I saw a machine on the way there. I try to play when I realize that the buttons are switched! Agh! Travesty! I mean, nowhere else in the world are the buttons switched. I only manage to get to stage four or something and I have to stop because I can't play no more. We walk around for a while and go to a video store looking for anime and stuff. We spend a lot of time in a video/book store just looking because the prices for this stuff is inordinately high. We then go to a comic book store across the street where we look around and spend a lot of money on stuff. Jen manages to stumble onto an Ogenki clinic manga and you guys know the story about that. I find some stuff here and there and end up buying some Death/Sandman/Ghost stuff for Jen. We eventually leave the store and make our way to a cafe where we spend the next hour talking about the porn community among other things. The kicker was the one she told about one of her friends and a man with a very big unit. I'll leave it up to her discretion to tell that story. Anywhere we go, people give us strange looks because we're guffawing at something or another. Anyways, we finally get to the movie and watch it. Jen yet again proves that she's getting into the story because I can hear her gaspig every time something bad happens or is about to happen. Pretty funny movie overall, but Marky Mark's impressions of Bruce Lee were the best. And then there was the last scene of the movie. Well, the whole movie was based on the size of this g's unit and we finally get to see it. Its a fake of course, but we decide that we REALLY didn't need to see it. Its 13 inches (how do I know its 13? Because he said so.) of pale, sickly, pasty thingie. Unnecessary scene. Very. By the time the movie gets out around eleven, we're both hungry and the hunt for a restaurant that takes a credit card in Manhattan is on. Jen's been paying for a lot of the meals since I brought little cash with me and my ATM card is nto working so we gotta find a place that takes credit cards. We look forever but to no avail. We end up getting some pseudo Mexican food at a cash only place. Jen freaks out several times when the cockroach decides to run by my elbow and we decide to get out of there fast. Its a little past midnight when we get in and we end up talking (you know, girls stuff ;) for another few and its yet again threeish by the time I do some reading and go to sleep. Chapter VI : Marathons Suck OR Another Reason to Hate Clinton OR These Roads Suck. Jen doesn't wake me up so its around eleven when I come to. Oh well. My plans for getting home around noon and getting some work done are toast. Around noon, we head out for the Sunday workout at Jen's dojo. We get rerouted multiple times because of the NYC marathon and get to her dojo really late. Jen beats me up with some sticks and gets to throw me around with some new sweeps. Anyways, class gets over and we're about to leave when we start screwing around with leg locks. Jen's sensei/friends John and Jordan are cool and we're soon rolling around the floor doing some rolling kneebars and hinge seperators. We eventually get out of there as the dojo shuts down and get some breakfast/lunch/dinner at a restaurant that takes credit cards (!). Okay, time to drop off Jen at her place and head home, right? Nope. We get onto a ramp that is blocked off for some reason at the end where it merges into a highway. We sit ther efor ten or so minutes when I go up and find out that a police car is blocking it off for the Clinton motorcade. Doh. We're both thinking, "You morons, why didn't you block off the ENTRANCE to the ramp first instead of the EXIT so people don't get trapped in?" After a good half hour of this mess, they have us back out. We turn the car around and head back when the ramp splits and I go right. Boom. We run into yet another asshole cop blocking the ramp. At this point, I'm in the lead and have about sic other cars following me, all going the wrong way on this ramp. The cop stops us, hand on holster (yeah, really intimidating, ya fat donut eating pig) and asks us what we're doing. I tell him that we were sent back this way by the other cop at the end of the ramp and he says "Nobody sent you back this way." At this point, I'm about to tell him "Look, you pussnut, think I'm doing this just to fuck with your head?" but manage to sound out a semipolite reply to check withthe other guy ("You have a radio. Use it.") At any rate, we back out and go the other way and eventually get on the road to Jen's place. I drop her off, make a quick phone call and I'm finally on my way home. Ugh. Long, wasn't it? Well, it was a long weekend. Lots of fun, but long. Teamwork is essential for survival; it gives the enemy other people to shoot at. - Murphy's Laws of Combat #23