www.James-Strocel.com

Entertainment Tonight is generally useful as passive noise to pass the time before Jeopardy. However last week I came across a story that kind of struck a chord. It turns out that the comedienne Mo’nique had been thrown off an airline flight, and quite rudely to boot. While they were pontificating on what happened to Mo’nique’s spirit during all this, I guessed that this was probably a United Airlines flight. I honestly should have put money on it.

Whether Mo’nique was really rude to them notwithstanding, I honestly hope United gets what is coming to them.Sara and I ran across their brand of human cattle drive on our way back from California. Since we were going to San Francisco, then getting an international connector back to Vancouver, I thought we would go to the domestic flight desk. When we got there, it was a series of automated terminals with about 1 agent to about 3 terminals. We were supposed to check in with these terminals and have an agent hand us our boarding pass. The first thing that went wrong there was that the terminals had no "back" button, so I accidently only checked my own luggage while Sara’s didn’t go through. Once we were finished checking through, an agent came by and asked us for our passports. All we had were the Birth Certificates that got us into the country in the first place, so the agent said we couldn’t leave the country without our imaginary passports. Hilarity ensued.

We were told to get in line for the special services desk. When we got to the special services desk, an agent yelled at us to get into the international line-up. After a few minutes in that line we were moved back to the domestic desk. All this time we were freaking out, for we not only had to explain our engagement to our parents, but also how we were now stranded in a foreign country. The atmosphere in the line-up was beginning to resemble to fall of Saigon. Passengers were getting on cell phones trying to reschedule flights, an old man jumped the line, demanding that he be let on his flight home. The agent on duty just said "Simmer down", as if he was addressing a colicky toddler. Finally, we got to the international desk, and the agent took one look at our certificates and waved us on our way. And yes, we retrieved Sara’s luggage at the other end.

It seems like the stories surrounding these incidents seem to fault the workers as the companies involved scramble to protect their good names. Having worked in customer service, I’m afraid I have to call shenanigans on that. In these entry-level customer service jobs, there isn’t much room for discretion on the front-line. Scripts are used whenever possible, and if the company messes up, you’re basically left on your own to pick up the slack. I spoke to three different people during my experience at United, and I got the same "Don’t start with me" attitude. It’s an equation of corporate cost-cutting measures coupled with the apathy brought on by the notion that these people are replacable at a moment’s notice.

Coincidentally, I also got a taste of the other end of the spectrum on our journey. Air Canada can get all the government bail-outs it needs if it get me from point A to point B like that. You may have already heard about the fortuitous customs agent. The staff at Disneyland, of course, pulled out all the stops, and I didn’t even tell them that Sara and I were just engaged. The common theme here? Every one of those positions were Union staffed. Unionization may not be the best way for great customer service, but you feel the difference when people are doing their jobs from a place of security instead of a place of competition. How can a person be expected to do their job properly when what they really are doing is trying to hit their service metrics in time for their next performance review?

The global consensus is in: It is hot. Whether you believe in global warming or not, the palpable weight of heat and light is upon us. Curiously though, I have never been around so much air conditioning. I’m a much bigger fan of freezing weather than sweltering weather, but there is a kind of truth in feeling so hot that you can’t even sleep. It causes you to wonder about where you are and how you got here.

Let’s start with the heat, shall we? The obvious culprit is the air conditioners, which caused the greenhouse gases that are keeping the globe so toasty right now. I’m trying to plan a wedding now, that would be due to the success of proposing to my sweetie earlier this month. I’m preparing to head off to school, so I can get a better job, so I can take said Sweetie out to sushi every now and then. And now I’m trying to be a writer, by maintaining this blog for the third time this month.

These days I find that I can’t have fun any more unless I plan it out. The California trip was a good example of that. The most fun I had on the trip was the stuff I had planned out, I couldn’t just place myself somewhere and wait for something to happen. I think it’s a function of my perception of time. As we get older, each day gets shorter as it begins to represent a smaller and smaller percentage of our total lifespan. Does this change at all when we get older?

I wonder if women are better at a expressing “slice of life” stories than men are. When men converse over the days events, there’s none of the emotion, inflection, or underlying drama with each and every inconvenience of the day. Would comics like Jennie Breeden’s The Devil’s Panties or Yazawa Ai’s Nana have the same manic energy if they were created by men?

Is it just me, or is science fiction fandom or any other hobby just feel better in smaller towns? Without the noise and bustle of the city around you, is it not easier to focus on the things you love? When you create, is there not less distraction from your art? Is it not easier to be different in a small town, whereas there is so much competition in the city?

It may be to hot to answer these questions right now. If there are those of you out there who feel you are up to the challenge, hold a frigid can of your favorite drink to your temple and give them a try at this space. I look forward to your discussion.

One of my favorite things to do with Youtube is to look up intro animations to old cartoon shows. I’ve been mesmerized by this opening of the 1960’s anime series Ribon No Kishi or “Princess Knight”. It was made by Tezuka Osamu as one of the first manga drawn exclusively for girls. The main character is Princess Sapphire, who must masquerade as a Prince in her own kingdom for political reasons. It combines elements of the Disney classic “Snow White” with elements from all-female musical revue from Tezuka’s hometown of Takarazuka.

Princess Knight exemplifies one of the reasons I got into anime in the first place. It’s taken a familiar style of story-telling and animation and instead of simply parodying or appropriating it, it takes an artistic “next step”. It’s got the elements of Snow White with the artistic style and cute animal sidekicks, but it also makes use of the story of a Princess raised as a boy to deal with themes of identity, gender, and justice. It’s like looking at a drop of water from a beautiful lake under a microscope and finding the whimsical zoo of tiny creatures inside.

As you look at Anime openings throughout the decades, you notice radical changes of style and technique. It begs the question as to where Western animation is going, if it’s going anywhere at all. At the center of this debate is Ren and Stimpy Creator John Kricfalusi, who carries a running commentary of the issues on his blog, Johnkstuff.blogspot.com.

According to Mr. Kricfalusi’s observations, with media production being centralized into a few key market share holders, there is a very fixed mindset about what makes a cartoon show sell. The business people want a consistent product that they can put into televison and feature-length movies, so they basically go with what sells.

This results in practices that force to artists to keep characters “on model”, limiting the ways that characters can be drawn, favoring a consistent look over an expressive character. Another trend is toward 3D Computer animation, in attempts to emulate the success of such films as “Toy Story” and “Shrek”. This seems to a very wrong-headed approach to creating saleable animation, because while it does try to repeat past successes, it removes the very process that created the success in the first place – Experimentation.

If there’s one thing that John K. demands from his animators, is that they take chances with the characters that they’re animating. This allows the characters to evolve, to take on a new look for every show they appear in. The Manga industry is the way it is because the artists worked very hard to define their industry outside of what is selling right now. In a constantly changing market like animation, you can’t be satisfied by set rules. The next big thing cannot be found if you don’t go out and look for it.

At the time, I knew some people would question what I was doing there. I was 1300 miles from home, in a restaurant with too much class for me, opposite a girl with too much class for me, and a small piece of jewelry burning a hole in my pocket. Regardless, there I was, and here I am engaged to the girl of my dreams.

For those of you out there keeping score, the exact date and time of was July 2nd, 2006 at 7:00pm. The trip was basically taken on a whim. My friends Theo and Tarra were going to Anime Expo this year, where the Manga artistic Superteam CLAMP would be making their first American appearance, the anime convention equivalent of Bigfoot doing the Tonight Show. I had a look at the airfares on Travelocity and decided, why the hell not? It was a trip I had been meaning to take for a while now, and I had always put it off due to instability in work, school, life, I figured it was either now or never. It also occured to me that I was taking my girlfriend on a trip to California. I got on the phone with my friends and I hatched a plan that would turn out to be the trip of a lifetime.

We were lucky to get the friendliest customs agent on the planet. He asked Sara and I how long we had been going out and scolded us when we said 3 years. He told me that the chapel in Disneyland might be able to help us out. I really wish I could’ve told him about the ring in my checked luggage.

We spent most of Saturday waiting in line for the CLAMP panel. It was amazing that a media empire was perpetrated by 4 women working away in a small office in Tokyo. We retired to the hotel room with our friends Theo, Tarra, Erin and Ben. It was the Sheraton Park hotel with good view of the fireworks over Disneyland. The next day, we headed out to the convention in costume, Sara was in her chii costume and almost got whisked away by a whole group of fellow chobits cosplayers. I was one of the few, proud, brave Firefly cosplayers to grace the concourse as Captain Mal Reynolds. I had slapped my costume together from stuff from my own wardrobe and value village, but it was enough for a few tourists to take some pictures with me and the rest of my “crew”.

That night we got back into plain clothes and the plan went into action. Sara knew that we would be meeting our friends for dinner at a fancy restaurant in town. Tarra phoned me to tell me that they would be “late” and to hold their reservation. When we arrived at the restaurant, Sara noticed that there was a table for two and asked me if the waiter knew that four more people would be showing up. I gave her a look and she suddenly knew what this was all about. I showed her the ring and asked her to marry me. Holding back the tears, she said yes.

We ordered some appetizers and they brought us some complimentary champagne, but we were too excited to eat. When we got back to the hotel, Sara was walking on air. We showed off the ring, and Tarra provided a band-aid so that it would stay on. We rushed down to the convention Masquerade ball and danced to “Eyes on me”. We wandered over to the Hilton Lobby, and Tarra started announcing our engagement to everyone in earshot. Eventually we ran across some buskers in the convention hall, and Theo had them playing “The Wedding March” for us. They thought they were embarassing us, but in truth, it couldn’t have been any sweeter. On Tuesday we went to Disneyland to celebrate.

We told everybody as soon as we got back to Canada, and so far the reaction’s been positive. We’re hoping to get married in March 2008 to give me time to get through my GIS diploma at BCIT and take advantage of Spring Break while Sara’s teaching. It’s been a turbulent year, and I’ve learned that you can either write your own story, or let others write it for you. I think I’ll be doing the former from now on.