The Library Needs More Anime!!!

So, I was sitting at my workstation at home, just like I am doing right now, I had just uploaded some Otakon 2010 pictures to the Multiply version of this blog (http://bigstevegearhart.multiply.com/photos/album/4/Otakon_2010 ) and my hands started to shake, my arms were itchy, couldn’t concentrate and I found myself being whiny.

That’s right, I had the anime junkie shuffle going on.

So I did the only thing I could do; rented some anime. The nice thing is that I work for a library. So I can do a free, seven day rental of up to 6 DVD’s! Actually, most of the DVD’s and VHS movies and such are free to anyone with a library card! The advantage of having a free public is to not have to pay, or rather, pay that much for certain things. Oh, BTW, I rented Paprika by the same guy who did Tokyo Godfathers and Tokyo Blue, good stuff!

So, as I looked around the main branch’s Sights and Sounds ( I work in the main branch, it’s called Central, pretty cool if you’re a FMA fan). We’re still in the process of converting our VHS collection to DVD. Many of the DVD’s are two-day, $2 rentals…they are the most current (within the past five years or so) movies, documentaries and stuff. The free DVD section is quite small and so is, alas, the anime section. Not much of a selection.

However, we have a fairly decent sized free foreign movie section. It’s where I first discovered Wong Kar Wei (2046, Fallen Angels, Shanghai Express) and gained appreciation for Asian movies in general (my first Japanese subtitiled movie was A Taxing Lady, go see it!). And most of it is in VHS format and not DVD. It’s not that I don’t have a VHS machine, it’s just that…well VHS is a thing of the past. And we all know that I enjoy Asian music. I have almost nothing here. I tried to find the Yoshida brothers at Central to no avail. J-Pop? Forget it.

Central is the largest of the twenty or so branches in the Enoch Pratt Free Library System of Baltimore. So you can imagine how much less the smaller branches have of anime, manga (which Central is actually doing very well with), Asian films and music. And it isn’t as if there isn’t interest in this. We show free movies, allow anime clubs to meet (for free!) and have periodic workshops (a manga workshop held at the Southeast Branch has been used in several grant proposals).

So, why am I bringing all of this up? Well, I have to admit that for part of it is a selfish need to satisfy my junkie urges…but there are a couple of other real reasons. And it has to do with the fact that this entry is my annual bug you for money for the library.

The overall, never-ending goal for my department and I (our jobs are to raise money) is to raise money so that we can keep the library free for ALL people for the vast majority of services we provide to the public.

On a more detailed note, I would like to make my annoying and meddlesome appeal to you to accomplish two things: increase the amount of anime/manga/Asian movie and music in the overall Pratt Library system of Baltimore, and second, to improve the system’s overall Asian studies; more books, more mediums that are up to date and informative, language skills, more free programs, classes, etc.

And while I would LOVE it if you gave money to my library for these goals, Iwould think it more important to give to your local library system, especially if you live outside of the Baltimore area. And if you do that, I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT IT!!! Email me at stevegearhart70@hotmail.com.

But if you should live in the area, and/or want to help my library out, here’s a couple of ways you can help. You can send cash, money order or check to:

The Enoch Pratt Free Library
Dept. of Institutional Advancement
400 Cathedral Street
Baltimore, MD 21201

Please be sure to include a note that you want the money to be used Asian Culture Programing (includes Programs and books), to improve/buy new Asian medium for the Sights and Sounds Department, and if you want to increase the anime/manga selections.

If you have, perchance, a credit card, go online here:

http://www.prattlibrary.org/support/give.aspx .

It is a minimum donation of $25 to use the online donation service and again, please be sure to include a note that you want the money to be used Asian Culture Programing (includes Programs and books), to improve/buy new Asian medium for the Sights and Sounds Department, and if you want to increase the anime/manga selections in the field marked “Descriptions”.

Ok, there. I’ve done my annoying please-give-to-the-library-spiel. I promise not to ask again until next year! 

SIDE NOTES:

Please give my vlogs some love!!!

http://www.youtube.com/user/SixtySecondsSteve

SixtySecondsSteve is simply sixty seconds or so of my life filmed per day and then displayed for all to see! The project runs through the end of the year! It could be something, or it could be nothing!

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheUnagiObserver

The Unagi Observer is my weekly commentary on things related to food, music and pop culture. This week: The Gracious Few! Ot if the vid fails to upload,you can see last week’s little vid of the webcomic Shortpacked set to music until the vid uploads…I hope that it loads…


TONIGHT’S PLAY LIST:

Go here and then go to the music section to hear the music!

http://bigstevegearhart.multiply.com/

New stuff for you all!

“Love Will Tear Us Apart” – Joy Division
“Transmission” – Joy Division
“Garbage Truck” – Sex Bob-Omb
“I’m so sad, so very very sad” – Crash and the Boys
“Black Sheep” - Metric

Baccano!

For something a little bit different and fun…I had bought the Baccano! series at Otakon. I enjoy mecha, I still like FMA, even though I still feel the reboot is a tad weak, and nobody can ever wean me off of Patlabor. So, I hearkened back to a previous Otakon and remembered how much I liked Baccano!.

As I have said before,you can ID a pretty good anime when you are at a convention and once the 4 episodes are over, people are wanting more. Baccano! fits into this category. I caught it at Otakon 2009 and saw episodes that are, I believe on the second DVD of the collection.

Baccano! jumps back and forth through in time. It spends a little bit of time in 1711, to show how this small group of people became immortal. But it also bounces around a lot in the 1930’s…in Chicago and aboard a train. The premise (but not the actual beginning of the anime) is that there were a group of travelers aboard a ship, presumably going to the American colonies. These people were conjurers and “alchemists” who, I think were driven away. On the ship, people started dying in a rather horrible fashion, so they did what came naturally to them: conjure up a demon.

The demon gave them an elixir that bestowed immortality upon them. The trick was that they had to use their own names through time, could transfer knowledge by placing a hand on someone’s forehead or kill them by doing the same act and sucking them into themselves. The group decided that only one of them would retain knowledge on how to make the elixir and not to make anymore immortals. One evil gentleman disagreed and started to, of course, sucking people in. He would later be thrown off the ship.

Fast forward to the 1930’s Chicago. The group has gone through time relatively unscathed until the evil Szilard (just sounds evil, doesn’t it?) is finally able to make the elixir on his own…only to have it stolen by accident…setting off a chain of events that involve the Mafia, immortals, a vicious serial killer, a sociopath and his suicidal wife, the FBI and a clandestine intelligence agency (can’t say more on that, it would spoil things) over a number of years between Chicago, a train and New York.

I can’t say anymore than this is really pretty good, but very violent…and kind of twisted in some places. But I can tell you, that a subplot to the whole story revolves around a bumbling Bonnie and Clyde pair of thieves…who are just over the top and hilarious…and gives a new bent on cosplaying!

SIDE NOTES:

As always, please give my vlog some love by going here:



Also, I am doing a little short term project on YouTube called, SixtySecondsSteve. Very simple: I upload a video from the day before that lasts only 60 seconds, give or take a few. There will be one per day until 12/31/10. On New Year’s Day the final video will be uploaded. These vids could be entertaining, boring, informative, mind-numbing…and could be of anything! So click the link below every day to see a new video. I started on 9/10/10 so you need to catch up!

http://www.youtube.com/user/SixtySecondsSteve


TONIGHT’S PLAYLIST:

I actually had Sirius/XM on tonight. I need some new music anyway. Anyone have any suggestions?