See You at Dinner, Space Mobile Armored Riot Police

[dorchadas]

I keep joking with everyone that now, like Japan, Chicago has a rainy season, but it's increasingly clear to me that it's not a joke. We have rain on the forecast every day through Saturday, it's rained most of last week, it rained for most of June, it rained for most of June last year...maybe I should start slipping 梅雨 (tsuyu) into my daily speech just so we'll have it ready when we need it.

On Friday, I wore a three-piece suit to work (insta pic), since worldbshiny told me that she was going to wear a dress to her work party and I certainly didn't want to show up underdressed. My boss gave me the thumbs-up when I walked in and seemed pretty surprised, and I kept getting compliments from co-workers throughout the day, which is pretty good for literally the only suit I've ever owned that I bought to go to Homecoming my junior year of high school. It was a little warm, but not too bad other than the walk from work over to the Palm where the dinner was being held. When I got there, I waited at the front desk only to see worldbshiny waving down at me from the walkway, so I walked around up to her, complimented her on her look--she had a gold chain that was a bit like a minimalist version of those Pharaonic Egyptian collar necklaces--and then she got us drinks from the three-hour open bar and introduced me to her co-workers.

The dinner was great! I was a bit unsure what to expect after what I had heard about her work environment, but anyone can be presentable for a few hours. Other than a somewhat rambling speech/toast about the greatness of the Constitution and some ribbing directed toward two England-born (I assume) employees about the Magna Carta, everyone was lovely to talk to. And because this always happens to me, the couple across from worldbshiny and I had met while studying abroad in Japan, so we talked about all the places we had visited and how we missed Japan while worldbshiny listened politely.

I got the filet mignon, blue. worldbshiny got a giant lobster that came out laid open on her plate, but I still half-expected it to jump up and latch on to her face.

The whole evening was lovely. At one point, a Chicago storm swept in and rain pounded the windows for about fifteen minutes and left a lovely rainbow behind, and right after that was when the wife of one of the employees arrived, fresh with a manager's card after she almost slipped and fell in the lobby. worldbshiny's boss later took that card because there was some issue with people's steaks--though not mine, because I ordered it blue, so when it came out cool it was exactly the way I wanted it. That meant that when the night drew to a close and worldbshiny and I walked back to the trains, the weather was a lot better.

I suggested to worldbshiny that we go check out the art at Merchandise Mart, but realized partway through that it was probably too late and it would have ended, so we walked to the red line and went home.

I had a great time and I'm so glad that worldbshiny invited me.


On Saturday, I had a party at saiyukisiren's house scheduled, so I wasn't originally planning anything else, but at the last minute I decided to go to the lecture held by Anime Chicago on the works of Oshii Mamoru, most famous (in the West) for Ghost in the Shell. That's about all I knew about him before I went, so I was glad to hear neilworms, motoko9rn, and brianruh's presentation go into a lot more depth. They started with some comparisons of clips from Ghost in the Shell and The Matrix (similar comparison here, though drum and bass warning), went into the inspiration Oshii drew from Ingmar Bergman and his involvement in radical leftist student organizations in the 60s, talked about physicalism vs non-physicalism and how the existence of cyberbrains affects that, and a a lot of discussion about the background that led up to Oshii's works, like the anti-ANPO protests.

I had no idea that Oshii used to be Christian and even planned to go to seminary, and while I knew about the unrest in the 60s in Japan--anyone who talks about Japan's "harmonious culture" has no idea what they're talking about--I wasn't aware of the connections between 60s radicals and modern otaku. I just wish that brianruh had come to a bit more of a point, since we got a lot of information about the social environment that produced Oshii and not that much about what that meant or what kind of message Oshii was attempting to convey through his work. But it did make me want to read Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights, apparently one of the best Japanese sci fi novels ever.

I also kind of wish that the venue had been different. It was very kind of the Japanese Culture Center to host the talk, but true to form it was stuffy and uninsulated, and while the temperature outside was a bit warm but not too bad, the temperature indoors was almost stifling. And we were in there for three hours...

Afterwards, most people went out to Logan Theatre to watch Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, and while I went along for the happy hour featuring music from Van Paugam and, unbeknownst to me beforehand, drinks with green tea syrup, I left before the movie to head out to the suburbs and saiyukisiren's party. That was a low-key, nice evening, where I drank fig vodka and ate homemade baklava, burgers, and caprese skewers, talked with shane.suydam a bunch, and got to see Littlelady2511 and threeohj, who came up from their new home in southern Illinois to go to the party! I hung out inside when we retreated thanks to the bugs, and then once the party started breaking up I called another Lyft and went back into the city.

True to form, my Lyft driver had visited Japan, and as soon as he heard I had lived there we talked about that for the entire hour-long ride back to my apartment.


Sunday during the day I went to look at condos with my parents, but they were all places I had seen before. I don't really have much to say about it other than it was a good experience and we managed to get back home just before the storm rolled in.

That morning I had texted lisekatevans about watching Cowboy Bebop, something we'd been talking about for a while. She had part of Sunday free, so in the evening after she had gotten all her work done and gone for a run, she came over with some salmon and onions and I whipped up a dinner of salmon, leftover steak that I had taken from the work dinner when one of worldbshiny's coworkers left it behind, coconut curry rice, stir-fried snap peas and onions, and asparagus. Then we drank red wine and ate caramel choco and then settled down to watch Cowboy Bebop.

I haven't seen Cowboy Bebop in almost a decade and a half, since I first showed it to schoolpsychnerd when she was in undergrad, so while I remember how the story goes in broad strokes I don't remember a lot of the specifics. I forgot that Ein joined the crew before Faye did, and similar I didn't remember there were two Faye episodes in a row. We got through the first four episodes, and when I said that if lisekatevans wanted to stay for two more it would start to get into Spike's backstory, she immediately said "tomorrow." So that's what I'm doing tonight!

I often joke with people that if someone thinks anime is all just big-boobed schoolgirls or idiotic hijinks, show them Cowboy Bebop. And then when they say, "Wow, that was amazing! Is there anything else like this out there?" you tell them, "Absolutely not." But lisekatevans thought it was great--funny, with good storytelling and characterization, and with the anime bullshit (Faye's outfit, for example) at a low enough level that it didn't overshadow everything else.

So tonight, we're going out to dinner and then starting with "Ballad of Fallen Angels."


The subject is obviously a mashup of all the different events here. The only one that might not be obvious is Mobile Armored Riot Police, the Japanese name of Ghost in the Shell: 攻殻機動隊 kōkaku kidōtai. Well, sort of. 攻殻 is a neologism, made from the characters for "attack" and "shell, husk," and if you look it up online you find either 1) Ghost in the Shell stuff or 2) Japanese people wondering what the hell 攻殻 means.

So now you know that the nonsense anime titles exist in the native Japanese as well as in English!

Comments

[helvetica]

Hey! I followed you on instagram I hope that's ok! My username is jennitheghost!

Your suit looks great, and that party sounds like a lot of fun! I'm glad you had a good time =)

I have been meaning to re-watch Cowboy Bebop for quite some time, I should finally get on it!

[dorchadas]

Oh, that's you! I followed you back.

(Also, I wasn't on social media for a week due to being at CONVergence!)

I have been meaning to re-watch Cowboy Bebop for quite some time, I should finally get on it!

You should! It still really holds up.