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Anime USA - Author's Notes - 2006 These notes are being wrtten, four days after Anime USA, on a shiny new Acer notebook PC. The "great quality" notebook from Fry's that had been this site's mobile computer sits in a filing cabinet drawer with two other notebooks broken by this writer, and the previous machine's hard drive sits attached to the new machine, after a pass through a data recovery program to see if there's any chance of saving old files. This site prides itself on getting material online as fast as possible, so it was frustrating to have to deal with a failing machine on the Anime USA weekend. We knew that the old (six months old) machine's flimsy USB ports were acting up, but we didn't expect the entire notebook to stop working. We got around the USB problem, which kept us from directly transferring picture files, by taking memory cards to an Office Depot, getting the files burned to CD, and then copying those files to the hard drive. That already had slowed us by 24 hours in posting pictures, but all of our plans fell apart along with the old Fry's machine. So we did our online research and headed to a Circuit City to get yet another notebook on Wednesday, an Acer that is the fifth portable we've used in nine years. Fortunately, we didn't need much time to reconfigure the Acer for our web site wrk and had just barely enough backup files to finish our work, a few days late. Several people asked us if we were in good health. We had to be in decent shape to be able to make the daily walk from the Embassy Suites, three blocks away, to the Sheraton where the convention was held. We ended up at the Embassy Suites because we waited too late to book a Sheraton room, but that was a blessing in disguise. The Embassy Suites had larger rooms, free LAN high-speed internet and a complimentary breakfast for the same price as a Sheraton room - plus, it was next door to the Office Depot we needed to use. The only problem with the Embassy Suites location was needing to walk past intersections on the odd frontage road that led to the Sheraton; those intersections were routinely used by impatient drivers in SUV's. The walk also led past luxury car dealers where "affordable" used cars cost $31,000. Feeding at the trough of the federal goverment, corporations and lobbyists, the Vienna, Virginia area hasto be the most affluent part of the country to hold an anime convention. The next Anime USA won't be in Vienna. We were told it'll move in 2007 to the Hyatt Regency Crystal City, the hotel used by Otakon in 1998 and then by several editions of Katsucon through 2004. That'll give Anime USA, expected to stay on the week before Thanksgiving, the space it badly needs. Through the years they've been at the Sheraton, the convention's attendance has grown beyond that facility's capacity - around 3,400 people in 2006. That lack of space is one of the reasons we chose not to try to play the photo sales booth card at Anime USA. That would require an area at least 10 feet by ten feet, and experience with the Sheraton's open areas told us that the space just wasn't avalable. Anime USA rightfully puts its space priority with artists and guests, and a photo booth would have taken the space that would have held two or three art tables. And the convention had to deal with a last-minute irritation when the hotel decided to close their main restaurant to the public so they could accomodate another group on the Anime USA weekend, which led the hotel to set up a food line in the lobby for anime fans. Posting these notes late meant we got a chance to see how people reacted to this site's story on the MAX apearance at the convention. Japanese Max fans didn't need much time to fnd our story and link to the page. The former Super Monkey's had another spirited performance of the kind they displayed two years earlier at AnimeFEST in Dallas. We were curious to learn if Max would try the same thing they did in Texas, where after the break in their concert, they returned to the stage in Dallas Maverick and Cowboy replica jerseys. In Virginia, they changed nto white and gold outfits that didn't resemble anything from the Redskins or Wizards, and sang an Okinawan-inspired song. Like many of Japan's top musical performers, Max comes from Okinawa, and they're clearly proud of that heritage. Anime USA Main Page