Category: travel

Happy New Ears!

We had a Snickers fun-sized party in San Francisco in our hotel for New Year’s and had a great time with friends old and new.

Questions:

1. Who got the broccoli into the overhead light fixture? Follow up question: How?

2. Why would you use vodka as a mixer for vodka? That’s trouble!

3. How did Tommy split his lip on Jenner’s boot?

4. Why would a grown man yell expletives out the window on a holiday?

5. Why were my husband’s New Year kisses lavished on a new friend named Tater Tot?

I was proud to throw up in the historic Fairmont hotel, where scenes in Vertigo were set, and across the street from the Top of the Mark, where my grandma Virginia went to celebrate her wedding some 62 years ago.

We also visited the Hyatt Regency, which was used in the filming of the Vertigo parody High Anxiety.  INSIDE BASEBALL MY FAVORITE SPORT!

The Year In Review

Last year, my New Year’s Resolution was to Kick More Ass, which I think I achieved. This year, my goal is not to concern myself with people who don’t think I’m awesome. Life’s too short, and frankly, I only have so much awesome to go around anyway.

What We Got Up To

All in all, San Francisco was two tons of fun. We enjoyed SFMoma, hanging out with new San Franciscans Pete and Alex, lost Portlanders John Graham and Kyle from Satyricon, walking uphill at 90 degree angles, overdosing on Goth Loli in Japantown, the fantastic company of the Chongs, a show by the world’s finest Smiths cover band, This Charming Band, and two of their fan clubs, the Choir Boys and The Moz Crew. They were supported by a Spellbound, a Siouxsie and the Banshees cover project ably fronted by a former member of Rasputina.

Still and all, I’m sorry that my first post of the year does not contain much for my mother to be proud of.

My Sisters on Good Morning, America

The camera loves my sisters, and they love to give me the business. I especially like how my mother gets cut off in the middle of her favorite phrase, “Listen to your mother!”

Party at Ground Zero!

I don’t know how many of my readers are from Medford, Oregon, but I’m headed out for what promises to be a stupendous road gig with headliner Keith Wallan tomorrow night, Friday, October 5th, at club Ground Zero!

Keith Wallan works in wordplay, observational humor and cussing. He’s the last bastion of sanity in a world gone insane.

Virginia Jones has never been to Medford. She’s funnier than Bill Hicks, John Belushi, and Gilda Radner put together. In fact, she’s funnier than all dead people./divdivThey are both left-handed Capricorns and they’re the same height. This is a love note to everyone in Jackson County- come out and see us tomorrow!/divdivGround Zero*123 S Front St* Medford, OR*(541) 779-4827

Postscript: I am distressed at Ground Zero’s lack of web presence, but I found a clipping from the MailTribune for this night, and it really says it all!

“Comedians Keith Wallen(sic) and Virginia Jones will perform at 9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 5, at Ground Zero, 123 S. Front St. Admission to the show costs $5 and includes a buffet-style dinner.”

This was my first road gig ever, and it went so badly that I opened on a story about it for approximately 9 years.

Sha-Zam!

I am proud to announce that my sister, a week after moving to Noo Yawk, has landed a gig as David Blaine’s P.A. She is on call 24 hours a day to pick up his magic pants and get his magic coffee. I was then in the position where I had to explain to my mother who David Blaine is. I went with: he’s a magician who doesn’t so much do tricks as he performs feats of putting up with extreme inconvenience, such as living in a fishbowl or starving above London in a glass box, or indeed living in New York City. And then she asked me a question that I can’t answer: “In what way does that make him a magician?”

Sakura-con 2007- A Spy in the House of Nerd

The author as sad dolly.

I am back from adventure at the 10th Sakura-Con in Seattle, where I witnessed glomping, filking, and cosplay.

Costume Overview:

I have mixed feelings about discussing an anime convention, because on the one hand, it’s just nerds trying to lose their virginity while dressed as Japanese manga characters. On the other, there are too many horrors to go undocumented. It is filled with teenagers dressed as their favorite anime and videogame characteres, and I don’t know any of them, but you see the same ones over and over and eventually develop opinions about whose are better. It’s like Halloween, if there were only ten options for things to be. The Sailor Moon population alone could fill a city bus. My favorites were an adorable Black Sailor Moon who knew Para Para Paradise dances, and a boy Sailor Moon, who left and came back at 1AM dressed as a rubber nurse.

 There were a lot of Marios, but I think this one was the best. There was a little-kid team Mario and Luigi, and their mother was dressed as the princess, which I found disturbing in an Oedipal manner. Or Jocastan, as the case may be.

I’m assuming that this is a cosplay of Mana of Malice Mizer, the “Queen” of Gothic Lolita. He was giant, and had large shoes, and liked having his picture taken.

This is what we call a high-commitment costume. I don’t know what it is, but she was not going to speak, eat, drink, or have feeling in her hands for the day, but she looked fantastic.

Awesome bloody nurses from Silent Hill. I don’t mean it in the English slang sense. I mean they’re covered in blood.

The most popular option appears to be making a costume at home of your favorite character, and if you have a ridiculously oversized weapon, so much the better. Duct-taped and foil covered blades abound. If you have nothing in particular in mind, you can dress as a little Gothic Lolita dolly, but if you can’t get that together, you can just throw on a kimono and cat ears and call it a day. If you are dressed as a gothic lolita, other Lolitas will recognize you as one of them, and they will give you candy and tell you where stuff is.
The adorable fourteen year old on the right told me she was in love with a guy dressed as Jack Sparrow, (left) and that she had been to a doll meetup, where you introduce your doll to other dolls.

Fun Facts:

There is roughly a 30% overlap between Anime watchers and Furries.


Attendees at the rave, Club Sakura, can’t dance to anything below 240 BPM, because they are limited to jumping up and down.

A casual attendee might think that they would enjoy singing karaoke, but it will all be in Japanese, so give up. I sort of know the Ranma 1/2 song, and that’s not gonna cut it.

Dance, Dance, Revolution goes 24 hours a day, which is the only way to be sure you’ll get a turn.

People will line up to play console games that they played at home yesterday, because they can do it with other people.

Otaku, or obsessive nerd, is not an insult- it’s a goal.

Any 24 hour nerd event will degenerate into games of Hearts eventually.

Kid Whatever rules Club Sakura.

50% of people attending Cosplay events in their teens will be going to S&M conventions in their forties.

Dancing doesn’t count if it doesn’t involve glowsticks.

Bye-Bye, Baiji.

One of my favorite weird animals appears to have checked out, after 30 million years of rocking freshwater rivers in China, which means they watched us stand up and walk 3 million years ago. There were 20 recorded in 1993, 7 spotted in 1998, but this year, the Yangtze river dolphin appears to be extinct.

I am sorry to see us lose our first whale species to human pollution, fishing, and sonic interference.

Douglas Adams, who unfortunately is also extinct, wrote extensively about about this dolphin in his book on endangered species,  talks about their intelligence in the Hitchhiker series.

“For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy


He’s called Baiji when he’s at home. The Chinese believe the Yangtze river dolphin to be an incarnation of a drowned princess. Although she did not drown, I think they look a lot like Princess Diana.

Sure, they’re frequently albino. Sure, they have small, strange-looking eyes, and are mostly blind from knocking around in the murky, polluted river for the last thousand years. Sure, they think that dead aliens are in our blood, screwing up our life and relationships. Are they really so different from Edgar Winter? And yet, he survives.

Fun In A Bottle: Capsule Toys

Modern postscript: Please thank my 2006 Sony Clie for these crappy photos!  I loved that thing.  Maybe as much as I love my iPhone.

Here is the bank of capsule toy machines in Singapore, with a child pretending to fight a cutout robot. They are the sophisticated, collectible cousins of the machines that sell useless crap in American supermarkets. The uselessness of the toys is not different, nor their inevitable fate as something unpleasant to step on in the dark. There are some “rare” toys that are more desirable, and entire sets can be bought at stores at huge markups, just to keep from having to pump dollar coins into the machines. There is a large box next to the arcade of toy machines to collect empty capsules for reuse. Here are some of the most special displays.

dig dug capsule toys singapore

Sure, every kid wants a trinket of Dig Dug, a game from when his parents were in elementary school.

how how dog capsule toys singapore

How can you think that the sound of a dog barking is How How?” This is one of the capsule toys that doubles as a cell-phone trinket, for the 8 year old that wants to distinguish himself apart from just having a Nelly ringtone.

frog mobile capsule toys singapore

Please note some of the things the frogs say as they are driving their vehicles: “I love surfing!” and “I am No. 1!” That’s what it is to be an American.

wooly mammoth capsule toys

Why would a child want an automatically sliced wooly Mammoth steak?

san-x capsule toys

A capsule machine from my favorite weird Sanrio imitator, San-X. That bunny is also a mummy, or possibly he’s just horribly injured.

ban-dai panda capsule toys singapore

This one is a panda machine operated by another, tiny panda, and it reads “Let’s try to find our future!” If my future involves evil dual Panda overlords, I don’t want to find it.

bandai hentai capsule toys singapore

Little boys still like sex, right?

lion dance capsule toys singapore

When lucky dragons attack! Holy Shit!

golden dinosaur capsule toy yujin singapore

Step right up and get your Golden Dinosaur!

yujin nightmare before christmas capsule toy

Jack Skellington’s career keeps on going in Asia, just like Roy Clark’s does in Branson, MO.

hackman capsule toy singapore

This one was so mysterious that I had to plunk three dollar coins in. What was it? Am I really gonna get a hunched-over, vomiting cellphone charm?

hackman guitar

And that’s exactly what I got. This one is vomiting up a tiny Flying V guitar, which makes him the “Rock” Hackman. If you are what you eat, surely you are what you later vomit up.

hackman toy designer

Bizarre small-world postscript: A friend was in Tokyo a week later, and met Hackman’s designer, who sent me another a Hackman capsule. She explained that Hackman comes in twos, because when you are sick, your friend will come to your aid.