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AnimeNEXT - Author's Notes - 2006 You know you're in an unique place when you can see the Empire State Building on one side and a Wal-Mart on the other side. Those are the sights from Secaucus, New Jersey, a place that has the look of a typical American suburb in the untypical location of three miles west of Manhattan. Secaucus stands closer to Manhattan than some of the boroughs of New York, and many people who work in the big city commute from Jersey through the Lincoln Tunnel. It's a great example of the sort of urban and suburban environment where anime fandom proliferates, and it's the home to AnimeNEXT. We got to see the world's greatest (not tallest) skyscraper and the world's largest retailer at once from the Wal-Mart parking lot where we had to rush on the convention's second day. The AnimeNEXT staff gave us a large location to set up the picture taking and sales location (sorry to the guy whose table we "borrowed"), and it worked so well that we had non-stop business for most of Saturday. We set up around 9 a.m. Saturday, and as if someone flipped a switch, business picked up around 10:30 a.m. and rarely eased off until Saturday evening, when we needed a break for selfish reasons. Call it a sign of our photo booth's success or a confirmation of the author's inability to plan, but we ran out of ink around 6 p.m. on Saturday and needed to head to the store to get more ink so we could stay in business. Thanks to Brian for watching the boot while we walked over to the Wal-Mart and cleared out their supply of the Canon color cartridges we needed. It turned out that one of the convention's shortcomings, the late start of the Saturday night costume contest, worked in our favor. The event schedule said the contest would begin at 7 p.m. Saturday, but the first entry didn't get on stage until more than an hour and a half late. That led to the bizarre observation where, at the contest's scheduled starting time, the largest crowd in the Meadowlands Exposition Center was a hall full of people wanting to get autographs from dub actors. Everyone else apparently was in line outside; good for them the weather was dry. By comparison, when this writer held a panel on Saturday morning, we started the event a few seconds early and ended it ten minutes before the hour, in order to give costume craftsmanship judges the room at the scheduled time - the costumers started rolling in a few minutes early. As always, when we play photo vendor, we missed some of the weekend's most interesting events. This site has gotten its reputation through costuming pictures, but its author remains fascinated by the people who create the art that inspires the costumers, so we always try to pay attention to those artists as much as possible. We're looking forward to the galaxy of talent we'll encounter at Anime Expo and hope to get to as many interview sessions as possible. We barely got to hear a portion of the Sunday panel that included famed director Rintaro, but the discussion we really wanted to hear was the one where Rintaro was the focus of the panel and was expected to talk about his long and successful career. That event was late Saturday afternoon, and we had the pleasant duty at that time of dealing with several costumers at ones who wanted to have their pictures taken, so we weren't able to sneak away from the booth. Our goal was to take care of everyone as quickly as possible, with the limits of the three-minute printout time, and everything went well...until we brought the new print cartridges back to the booth on Saturday, installed the new unit and found the colors weren't right. The yellow ink had ran out while we were away and wouldn't print. We had to disappoint a couple of costumers and give them a refund for the prints they had been promised. For a while it looked as if we were out of business for the weekend, but we decided to make one more attempt to fix the problem. Sometimes you can fix a clogged printhead in units like the Canon printer we use by removing the printhead and running it under hot water. The first rinsing attempt in the expo center's restroom didn't work, but we decided to try it again and the yellow nozzles came back to life, letting us get back to business on Saturday night and Sunday. We're still pleased and amazed by the number of well-wishers we encounter, people who are actually glad to see that this author is back on the convention circuit after our January health problems. We've given up hamburgers and french fries and lost weight, but we haven't stopped working. Our experience with our recovery has taught us that the more you work, the better you feel, and being lazy doesn't help, so we try to stay active with convention trips. There are too many good people to meet to stay away from conventions for long. Even though AnimeNEXT is in one of the world's largest metropolitan areas, it's not among the largest anime conventions. It's too large to fit in the expo center and has to use rooms in a neighboring hotel, but the event hasn't gotten uncomfortably large. There was nothing near the problems that the comic book convention at the Javits center had in February, when too many people showed up and many of them never got inside. This weekend's sports irony was displayed on a billboard along the New Jersey Turnpike, not far from the Anheuser-Busch brewery, the state prison and the container yard: a big ad for the National Hot Rod Association national championship drag races at Englishtown, New Jersey. On the flight home from Newark Liberty airport, we spotted a man in a Prestone racing crew shirt and asked him who won, and learned that Ron Capps won in funny car and Rod Fuller in top fuel. Later, we found out that Jason Line was the pro stock winner. The NASCAR Nextel Cup series was at one of our favorite tracks, the Michigan International Speedway, where one of our favorite drivers, Tony Stewart, was put into the wall and knocked out of the race early. Good thing we went to the anime convention instead, because there was so much rain that NASCAR gave up after 129 of 200 laps. Further irony: the author swears he was finishing these notes in a Starbucks when he looked up and saw the transporter hauling Tony Schumacher's top fuel car, being taken back to its garage after the New Jersey race. A few minutes later, there was the truck with Melanie Troxel's fuel car - rolling past as the sun came out after a rainstorm. We're about ready to decide how much equipment we'll haul out to Anime Expo for the Newtype USA panel and photo shoot we'll be handling. While we used green and salmon-colored backdrops in Secaucus, a couple of people said they liked gold, so we'll have to load up on the gold material for the California trip. That Newtype event is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, July 2 at 6:30 p.m. (not sure about the room yet), and everyone whose costuming pictures we get at the panel is going to appear in an extended Anime Expo report in Newtype. Yes, that last picture is of a marriage proposal during the costume contest, and the woman did say yes. 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