Today, came up to me at the JTAF general staff meeting and said something to the effect of, “ is inviting you to become a member of the Husky Gentlemen.” Ah, my Husky Brothers, let me just begin by saying it’s nice to be in some sort of loose social afiliation with you all. Not that we weren’t friends to begin with or anything… I just feel like I joined some sort of husky mafia or something
Anyway, today was an interesting day: I had worked last night for a grand total of sixteen hours (1pm to 5am), and I knew I was going to be pretty tired coming off of that kind of a shift. The primary reason was the SFSU thing I had to go to. By the way, the next time I decide to do something stupid like work 16 hours, I’m bringing a change of clothes with me, because I met all kinds of people and I’ll bet I did not smell all that great. Luckily, I booked a day-use room over at the nearby Radisson (at SFO) and took a five and a half hour nap in a huge king-sized bed all to myself. I had forgotten how nice it was to not share a bed with anyone, and having a large space all to myself. Especially for a husky gentleman like myself, having room to spread out was awesome. The next bedroom I get will be large enough for a king-sized mattress, I don’t care how much it costs me.

Following my nap, shower, and air-drying my clothes, I picked up at the Balboa Park BART station, and we stopped over at the McD’s on Plymouth and Geneva for a quick lunch. The meeting went quickly, and we proceeded to Christal’s place for the CBF Appreciation Party. It’s a pity I couldn’t stay for the whole thing, but oh well. Maybe later we can all hook up and do a round of DDR somewhere (*cough**cough*) for a while, downing as much alcohol as possible. My birthday’s coming up in June, anyway

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Currently Reading:

Warrior Soul by Chuck Pfarrer.

To be read:

The Winds of War by Herman Wouk
War and Rememberance by Herman Wouk

Though my pile has war books on it, I don’t really only read about war. I just happen to be on a war kick right now

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Phase Two of the JTAF2 Marketing Campaign begins today. Phase One began two weeks ago and consisted of a moderate internet campaign to get the feet wet and start driving traffic to the web page. Phase Two is now going to include TV/Radio advertising, and locating target newspapers to start running advertisements in, as well as broadening the current internet campaign to include web sites that will generate clicks.

Clicks are more important than impressions. If I ever got a 100% CTR on 1,000 impressions, that would be better than running 100,000 impressions and only getting somewhere around 0.5% CTR. That’s roughly standard. Right now, I have ads running on Something Positive, Megatokyo, and Sexylosers. We’ll most likely be adding four more web sites to advertise on, plus we’re looking into some of the big ones like imDb, Yahoo, Google, anywhere that has heavy traffic and has audience targetting options. Run-of-site banners on Anipike are a good idea for one week out of the month, because that guarantees the banner will be seen by everyone who visits the site, similar to how something positive runs our banner. That’s the maximum exposure I want for JTAF2.

Phase Three… ah, that’s when the fun starts. I’ll write about that later.

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So yeah, I’ve decided to start a band. Not your average guitar and drum band, I’m talking about a 25-piece band, with all the instruments a band should have.. including guitar and drums. We will rule the world with professional quality and our ability to tackle anything from B’z to Kanno Yoko While I’m at it, I would also like five saxophones from soprano to contrabass.

I’m serious about the band. If you’re a Bay Area resident and have talent in either instrumental or vocal music, click comment and let me know. There are tons of anime rock bands out there, but I’ve never seen a full ensemble band play anime music without a big name doing a concert… I think it would rule to do a show like that.

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Brownie points if you know what movie or book the above line is from.

Last night, I dreamt I went back to the house I grew up in, and though we no longer own it, I dreamt the people living there were incredibly cordial and invited me in to see what they had done to the place. I remember feeling somewhere empty inside at all the changes, and remembering the parts of the house redecorated and reutilized. I distinctly recall telling the new owner that he was using my room as an office. Anyway…

Went to the Giants game with who loosened up quite a bit from last time. I think we had a heck of a lot more fun last night than we did the first game we went to. I can only imagine what the third game is going to be like. There was shouting, and I got my “C’mon Blue!” call somewhere in the middle of the sixth inning, which is like reason number five to go to a ballgame in the first place. I’ll have to compile a list of the other reasons to go to Pac Bell Park, even if it’s not for baseball.

One of the discussions we had was visiting all the major league parks in the US, and Tap said she would have to go when its not baseball season, because when she goes, she goes for the game. Now, I would hardly argue that, because I’d go for the game, too. But nothing says you can’t go an hour ahead of the game to walk around the park, right? I’ve been wanting to do that kind of a road trip for a really long time, since my friend Shelly in high school did it with her dad back in 1990. They had this huge display in their house, with all the tickets they collected from each game they did. It was really cool to hear all the stories, and I felt the need to do it myself, just so I could say I’ve visited all 50 states. That would be a lot of fun for a summer outing for like two months or so.

By the way, and this is going to earn me some pain, but Tap? I just woke up You may now hate me.

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Around 2am this morning, I heard the sound of a body thumping to the floor, followed shortly by the sound of a woman crying out for help. I picked up the phone and called my apartment manager downstairs, but there was no answer. Right as I was dialing for emergency assistance, the doorbell rang and I figured it was the aggressor. Imagine my surprise when I saw a teary-eyed woman asking to use the phone. The police arrived in under 4 minutes, and they took her statement and stuff. After some door pounding, we finally woke up the apartment manager and he opened up so she could get in, get her things, and then go stay with a friend. I have to say this about San Jose PD.. they’re awesome.

The funny part, if there was one, was that despite having met her once or twice in the course of her having lived here since February, I never caught her name nor did I introduce myself. So, while we woke the manager up, I turned to her and said, “By the way.. my name is…”

I’m just glad she made it out… uh oh… I hear the boyfriend upstairs rumbling around. Great…

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Yesterday was somewhat painful, but a majority of today was spent relaxing at the computer and watching television. I’d been pretty much working my ass off last week with my “long” week (48 hours of work instead of the normal 36). On top of which, trying to promote the crap out of JTAF2 really takes the wind out of me from time to time, but it’s going to be a great gig and a fun convention to work at. I’m looking forward to Anime Expo… which reminds me, I need to confirm my rooms…

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… or so the subject of this email says. Yeah, not really my thing. I don’t care for blondes all that much. Now, if you had redheads, maybe we can talk.

Anyway, today is Mother’s Day. Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms reading (one, I think), and Happy Freedom Day to all the non-mothers out there. I had to call my mother and grandmother and tell them Happy Mother’s Day over the phone, because my knee aches so bad that even going to the kitchen for something to drink is ultra painful. Last night, at work, I had to climb up and down stairs to use the bathroom because the one on my floor was… unacceptable. I hate it when work bathrooms are so utterly disgusting, you wouldn’t bare your ass to it for fear of catching something. Obviously someone had a major lunch fiasco and plugged up the toilet.. and this is a toilet I thought could never ever be plugged up due to the sheer amount of water suction this thing employed. But when I walked in, there it was… water all over the floor and other visuals I don’t wish to pass on. I turned around, painfully, and went up a flight to the exec level, where I know the bathrooms had to be clean.

This morning, when I woke up, my knee ached so bad that moving it felt like bone crushing bone in there. Oh yeah. Fun times for all.

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I’ve been working non-stop over the past week, trying to rewrite my old press kits and marketing tools that Iw rote when I was working for Fanime in 2001. Fanime 2001 was my first real exposure to marketing; operations was my forte. I’ve been getting paid to do operations for almost 5 years, now and I know it so well, I think I may actually be good at it. If JTAF1 was any indication of my ability to operate a convention with over a thousand attendees in it, I think I did pretty damn good considering. Anyway, so I spent a great deal of time rewriting some of my stuff, and in one particular area I had to write a marketing kit from scratch, because the information and the feel of JTAF precludes some of the craptacular Fanime BS I had to write. Before I launch into an anti-Fanime tirade, I will digress.

The marketing kit actually turned out a hell of a lot better than I thought it would. Now if only I could pour this kind of talent into my creative pursuits, I might actually finish a novel or two.

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I love this guy. I just got back from what has become an annual event; my friends and I go out to the Improv when he’s in town, and listen to this guy talk for an hour after a filling dinner. If you’ve never heard of this guy and you like raunchy humor (raunchier than Margaret Cho or even Howard Stern), look him up on his website, or hit the San Jose Improv this weekend and catch one of his shows… I promise you you won’t regret it.

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