blueZhift Blog

About 6 years ago, I posted here about a blue haired Asian woman I had the good fortune to see when I was out and about. Since that time a couple of very likely spam comments have appeared about the virtues of Asian women. I’m probably goig to delete those comments, since they are, of course, just spam.  But before I do that, I just wanted to note that a few days ago, here 6 years later, I had the pleasure of seeing a gorgeous black woman who had wonderful blue highlights in her bangs!

It’s not so unusual now to see interesting hair colors, though blue and pink are still a little rare. In any case ladies, keep up the good work! ~_^

Moving can be tough, but I wasn’t really expecting all of the emotions. Sometimes you just gotta let it all out. That’s where this video came from.

The last month’s been pretty crazy with moving and everything, so I’m finally going to finish this up now. As luck would have it, my family showed up on Saturday while I was trying to get into costume, LOL. I figured it would happen that way, I never get up early enough because I’m out all night at cons. Oh well, just a hazard of having fun! XD

No matter, I wanted to wear my Princess Sakura outfit on Saturday because I wanted to show it to a friend of mine who was coming to her first ACen and was in the fashion show no less. She’s a loli, and my Sakura is about as close to anything loli as my costumes get. So I wanted to see if she liked it. I really love this cosplay, but the boots for it are killers! They look great, but there’s a huge price to pay for it!

After getting the family settled into our room, we all headed out. I wanted to say hi to some friends working in the dealers room in the convention center which also offered a lot of photo ops. On the way I ran into another friend who at first either didn’t recognize me or was totally shocked, but in a good way. She really liked my  costume, not only did she say it looked good, she said I looked like a woman! That’s the highest compliment I can possibly get for this kind of cosplay. (^___^) She looked great too doing a gothic Chii cosplay which you can see in the pics I took.

I guess my cosplay skills are improving, after I left Chii, an older black man took a look at me and said I was “lookin good”. There were two things I wanted to work on for ACen, makeup, and truly owning my characters. Oddly enough, I had been inspired in both by the 2nd season of RuPaul’s Drag Race! I really wanted to totally own my cosplays, and totally enjoy them. Not that I hadn’t been before, but I tend to be a bit reserved. I think that this ACen I was able to really cut loose and enjoy myself.

Makeup-wise, I’d been holding back too much. After watching RuPaul’s queens doing makeup, I think I finally started to get it right. I’m not afraid of the makeup anymore. This time I got my foundation on the right way and added some blush to bring out my cheeks a bit. I think it worked very well, and I discovered that I actually have a pretty face. Maybe that’s a conceit, but it’s a good one to have! I also enhanced my wigs, adding wefts to puff out the bangs more.

Of course none of this changed the fact that those boots were killing my feet. By the time I reached the dealers room, I was sure the boots were filled with blood. So after visiting with a friend who was working there, I found a seat in an empty booth and took a rest. Then it was time to go line up for the fashion show. Standing in that line was pure hell on my feet! But I did learn a few tricks to take the pressure off and got a picture of an awesome femme Spock. <3

The fashion show was interesting, I just wish I could have taken better pictures. In the end, I wasn’t able to meet up with my friend Grace until later after I’d changed out of the torturous boots. But she liked my outfit anyway and was impressed that I had made it myself. She’s pretty cool, and wasn’t in the least bit fazed that I was crossplaying. Yay!

The masquerade filled up as usual, but just as I was about to give up hope, I stumbled upon live video being projected on the hotel lobby wall. So watched there and most of what I saw was pretty good. After that I eventually made it to the hotel where karaoke was going on. It was packed, but I got some more cosplay pics, visited some friends and eventually got to sing. Then to top the night off, I went to the Soap Bubble, still going strong sometime after 2am. I think I ended up out later than I had been the night before, YEAH! It’s nice to know that I can still do stuff like that, heh heh.

Sundays are usually pretty quite. We had breakfast, checked out. Family headed back home and I made my final picture taking rounds. It was a good ACen, more fun for me than last year. Can’t wait to do it again next year!

It’s been almost a week since Anime Central 2010 and I’m still riding a wave of enjoyment. So I guess that means I had a really good time! I did indeed have a lot of fun at the con. This year I skipped out on the Thursday meetup to see Pandora Boxx at the Berlin Club in Chicago. That was a lot of fun, but a little crazy staying up so late the night before the con, though I do that all the time!

This year I didn’t have the family come out until Saturday to avoid the trouble of school and other engagements. That left me free to cut loose on Friday. After opening ceremonies I got into my Tohru Goth-loli nurse cosplay now with a new bag and shoes and went out to take pictures of cosplayers. Later I went to the concert featuring the Spoony Bards and Aural Vampire. I’ve always loved the Spoony Bards since they started playing in the lobby at ACen years ago. And Aural Vampire was pretty good too.

Next it was time to change into my second and newest cosplay, Mahoro Andou. I hadn’t given this one nearly enough test fittings, so it took some time to get it all together. I was planning to go over to the AMV room in the Double Tree to see AMV Wars Hentai Edition. I had an entry in the contest and thought it would be sort of ironic to go as Mahoro who definitely doesn’t go for anything echi! LOL I also thought it would be pretty funny if I won because I probably couldn’t tell most of my friends about it, much less show them the video.

Well as it turned out, there were only two entries, mine and the defending champ from last year. I was sure I had no chance, but after I saw his video, I had a glimmer of hope because he didn’t really follow the Sexy Magical Girls theme. Then my video played and the crowd really got into it, clapping to the music! They liked it! They really liked it!

The defending champ had a lot of fans in the audience, so in the end I tied with his video. He won the thong, and I won the bra. People were a little shocked when Mahoro got up to accept her prize! But even better than that, prior to that a young woman had called me adorable! <3 After that I watched some more videos before heading back, bra in hand, for the dance where Mahoro danced into the early morning.

Well, I’ll pick this up a little later. In the meantime here are some awesome Sailor Senshi.

Ooooh, I’m so angry right now! I needed to buy moving boxes so I figured, okay, I’ll go to my neighborhood Ace Hardware store. Ya know, support community businesses and save some gasoline, so green, right? I get there, and 20 small boxes cost $75! I buy the boxes anyway because I’m there with kids and calling my wife on the phone to confirm the $0.67 per box she paid proved fruitless as she did not remember what she paid. She sent a text later about it, but by then it was too late.

I simply couldn’t believe that Ace in competition with Home Depot would be charging so much more for boxes. Just shows what I know. Being irritated and knowing I’d need more boxes, I bit the bullet and drove to Home Depot and confirmed that Ace Hardware was indeed charging astronomically high prices for moving boxes. Yes, I got totally raped by Ace Hardware on those boxes.

I don’t have time to go back to Ace and complain or try to get a refund, but they certainly won’t be getting any business from me again if I have a choice. Next time I hear a sob story about how Home Depot is driving small hardware stores out of business, you’ll only hear laughs from me. Raping your customers is generally a bad business strategy.

Update: Ok, so maybe Ace is not so bad after all. Over the course of the weekend, I discovered that pretty much everyone except Home Depot sells moving boxes for the same relatively high rate! The Home Depot boxes got the job done for me, but I did note that they were a little softer than the more costly ones, meaning that you’re only getting one move outta these guys. The Home Depot boxes were made of 100% recycled paper though, which might explain the softness. Still, I’d go with those cheaper ones every time. I don’t know how anyone plans to compete with Home Depot with such a wide price disparity.

Just two more days until Anime Central! I had hoped to avoid working on costumes at the last minute, but of course at the last minute I am! LOL I had to help my youngest daughter make an Athena costume for the Latin Olympics on Sunday. She’ll probably wear it to ACen too. I just made the skirt and camisole. She made the shield, spear, and is working on the helmet now.

As for my cosplays, I don’t know if I’ll finish Mahoro in time. No matter, I have a finely tuned Tohru, more like tricked out really, ready to go and some others. This year I’ve got more cosplays I’d like to wear than usual. So I may do some mid-day changes. This is going to be sooo much fun!!

Once again, my AMV did not make the cut for the finals. But that’s…okay…*sob* People will still get to see it! And I’ve got one AMV entered in an, *ahem*, adult category as well, a first for me. I hope the people who see them will like my work.

I usually go to the Thursday night meet and greet, but this year that coincides with Pandora Boxx at the Berlin Club, so sadly I’m skipping the meet and greet, probably. I could probably make the meet up, but skip the IHoP portion. It’ll depend on what mood I’m in I guess.

Oooh! Just two days to go!

As YouTube continues its march to legitimacy and perhaps profitability, it seems that my own little hobby of editing anime music videos (AMVs) is getting caught in the crossfire. Sadly Bandai has decided that it would rather attack the fans of its series rather than embrace them so one of my AMVs featuring clips from Gundam Seed was taken down. I argued that the video portion is clearly fair use, but to no avail. Someday, I’m going to put up a real fight, but now is not the time. Besides, all of my videos are still available at AnimeMusicVideos.org where I’ll continue to add new ones.

As a fan, my hope is that anime and manga will continue to exist and thrive, all of the banning and blocking of derivative, fan created, works smacks of desperation. It’s no secret that the Japanese anime model is a difficult one for content producers to profit in. The internet and advances in digital technology have only made it more difficult. I buy all of the DVDs I use for my videos from reputable sources, but I know that for most fans these discs are just too expensive. This is especially the case in Japan itself. Piracy is like a release valve on the market. If prices are too high, the valve is going to open up.

I think in the end, the market will sort itself out. A lot of companies are going to close, but will this mean the end of anime? Of course not! As long as someone wants to create it, someone will figure out a way to make a profit. A new model will rise from the ashes of the old and before you know it, we’ll have more magical girls than we know what to do with!

On Monday, RuPaul’s Drag Race crowned its best “woman” for season 2, Tyra Sanchez. I didn’t like Tyra that much at first, but over the course of the show, she really changed and grew up. So I’m totally okay with her winning. Honestly, I thought Raven had the inside track because she consistently raised her game every step of the way. But in the end, Tyra’s performance in the final Lip-sync for Your Life was just amazing and pushed her over the top. So Raven didn’t lose the crown, Tyra really earned it.

One thing I’ve liked from the very beginning is having the shows and extras available on the web. In particular I’m really enjoying the final version of the music video they were shooting as part of the final episode. Now I can’t get Jealous of My Boogie out of my head! Thanks RuPaul and all of the queens for such a fun show! (^_^)

I’d been waiting for this a long time, so I was quite happy to find Yubisaki Milk Tea Volume 8 on the shelf at Borders in the Loop on Tuesday, a week earlier than expected. So I bought a copy and quickly digested the double volume sized manga. It did not disappoint. It’s full of the same fan service, taboo busting, cross dressing goodness that anyone who’s followed the series has come to expect. This is not for kids, each copy is shrink wrapped for very good reasons!

This volume actually contains Japanese volumes 8 and 9. And the series has already reached its conclusion in Japan earlier this month. I wonder if that might have been the reason for moving up the release date here in the U.S.? Scanlations of the series up to chapter 69 have been around in the usual places for years now since the series went on hiatus. The new TokyoPop release covers chapters 57 through 74. With the series coming to an end in Japan, there may be new interest here, so moving quickly is probably a good idea before everyone reads it online. Even if you’ve read the scans, please show your support for Tomochika-san and the industry by buying a copy!

After two years waiting for volume 8 and now four years since I started reading the series (my 2006 post here), I’m happy to have this fat little volume in my hands! Thanks TokyoPop! ^__^  I hope I won’t have to wait as long to see the conclusion.

The last few weeks, I’ve become a regular viewer of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I learned of the show from an ad on a CTA bus stop in Chicago’s Loop. So I decided to give it a look and got hooked on it, because all of the episodes are on the web after broadcast on Logo, catching up on the show was pretty easy.

In short, I love this show! I’m not a big fan of so called reality shows in general, they mostly leave me flat. But this one hooked me on a couple of fronts, one, the cosplay element, and two, the crossplay/crossdressing elements and all of the creativity that goes into them. The closest show I’ve seen to this previously was Project Runway. Once I saw that the Queens had to create their own stuff with limited time, this cosplayer was totally onboard. It’s a bit of Project Runway and America’s Next Top Model mixed together with some RuPaul secret sauce thrown in!

Up until last week, I don’t think I had a favorite. I knew I didn’t really like Tyra very much, because, well…she’s a bitch! Sorry, that slipped out. Seriously though, if you close your eyes and just listen, you can’t tell the difference between the Queens and real genetic women! Open your eyes and a lot of times, you still can’t tell! They’re that good, really. And as a crossplayer myself, they’re a bit of an inspiration. My cosplays don’t require much flashy make up, but the attitude of the Queens is something I’ve been missing. You’ve got to really own your characters and show that you’re having a great time to make the best pictures. This is something I hope to take with me to ACen in a few weeks.

After last week’s Rocker Chicks performances, I’ve found my favorite, Pandora Boxx! She’s been sort of flying under the radar, but over the last few weeks just gets better and better. Funny, smart, and wow I loved this outfit! The singing wasn’t the greatest, but her presentation and attitude more than made up for it. She looks great and I really think she has a shot at winning it all!