For any Dragon*Con 2007 attendees

It looks like I’m going to be the main panelist/moderator on the Classic Cartoons panel on the Anime/Animation track, the same track I helped to moderate back in 2004. The person who’s stepped up as coordinator is someone I ran into a few times when we were both students at Georgia Tech, so that kind of helps! I’ll have returned to the US just 2 weeks prior, so please forgive me if I have a deer-in-headlights expression on my face, but if you’re planning on attending, please come out and say hi!

(For those unaware, Dragon*Con is the largest science fiction and fantasy convention in the US. It takes place in downtown Atlanta every Labor Day weekend. I’m currently only planning on attending for a day, and just dropping in and out of Midtown to hang out with my friends who’re coming in for the convention, but that may change. A lot of people adore this convention, and I did attend from 2001 to 2004, but it’s always been a bit stressful for me–too many people in too small a space, especially in the lobbies of the Hyatt Regency and the Marriott Marquis in the evenings. We’ll see how this year goes.)

Courtesy of several messageboard threads

I love my referral logs. SiteMeter has never let me down!

Found on the TelevisionWithoutPity forums (where there’s a lot of love for this show–gratifying, considering the title of the site):

“One of the big things I remember about the show was that the five-episode pilot drew a larger female audience than the producers had expected; The strong female lead probably helped there. When the producers found that out, they re-tooled the show to make Tula a “better role model for girls”, i.e. less physical, less agrressive, and given relative passive nature magic powers rather than fighting prowess. Cause we can’t have girls being too tough or anything….It was a published interview with the TV execs in question, when the show first aired.”

I would love to get my hands on a copy of this interview. Wow. I’d say more but I have a headache and am not up to thinking too much right now, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, either here or via e-mail.

Also found on the JournalFen.com Fandom Lounge community (I had a brief “holy crap” moment when I saw the domain and immediately thought of Fandom Wank, haha):

“I honestly forget where I got mine, but they appear to be here at myspleen.net. I used to go the Andorus’s Pirates of Dark Water site for the links (which is http://www.piratesofdarkwater.net) but the site was down the last few times I tried to get on it.”

Eep. I had no idea the site’s experienced any downtime. Then again, considering that my hours are almost the opposite of everyone in the western world, where the vast majority of my hits come from, I really have no idea how well the site’s performing during the day for you (which is the middle of the night for me). Have any of you experienced prolonged or repeated periods of downtime? Please let me know–if it’s a real issue, I’ll definitely bring it up with my host.

Action figure help, and some possible DVD info (or lack thereof)

Someone recently acquired the Wraith toy, but he can’t get the two base parts to snap together, and is looking for some advice from someone who also owns this (I don’t). If you do own this and are willing to offer up some advice, please send me an e-mail and I’ll put you in touch with him. Thank you!

Also from the same guy–someone on the CaptainN.net forums claims that the PoDW masters have become dirty and damaged by moisture (very strange, considering the show’s relatively young), and said that the show was apparently slated for a 2008 release but that it’s been pushed back due to the masters having to be restored. I have no idea how credible a source he or his own sources are. He cites Earl Kress’s blog as having written something about the Banana Splits Adventure Hour (though there’s no mention of PoDW)–but it turns out Kress (a writer, among many other things, for quite a few animated series over the years) had posted a list of 2007 Hanna-Barbera DVD releases last September, so I definitely will be watching his website to see what else he posts, since he has a lot of information on many classic Hanna-Barbera toons, and had ties to the studio itself.

(Thanks, Nathan!)

Oh, and on a more personal note…I’ve booked my one-way plane ticket back to Atlanta. I’ll be moving back to the US on August 16th. From June onwards, life will be pretty hectic for several months–from now onwards, even, since I’m starting to look for jobs for mid-September right now. I’m not looking forward to leaving all this, but I’m looking forward to getting back into my area. It’s been an incredible ride so far, though.

Website URL

I didn’t think to write this before. I haven’t heard of anyone having issues with it just yet, but this is just in case.

Now that I’ve implemented WordPress on the index page of the site, the URL is no longer http://piratesofdarkwater.net/index.html. That will take you to a broken URL. Please don’t link directly to that! The actual index page is at http://piratesofdarkwater.net/index.php.

If you link to this site, please just link to http://piratesofdarkwater.net, and leave off the index.* at the end. Thank you!

In other news…nothing PoDW-related to report, not really. Life’s been pretty busy here–lots of traveling over spring break (Okinawa, South Korea, Nagasaki) and this past week (the southeastern coast and point of Shikoku, Muroto-Misaki), and beginning the process of closure with Japan, since I leave in three months.

I rewatched Titan AE a couple of weeks ago and started writing a post about it, which I never finished and still have saved, waiting for me to continue it. I’d like to do some kind of commentary/analysis of the two, because Titan is a David Kirschner-produced film and has quite a bit in common with PoDW. Please let me know if you have anything to contribute!