S. Worthen | Weblog

Waiting in line for the Kotoko concert This is a reflection in the window of a closed shop of a tiny fragment of the long line I stood in to get into the Kotoko concert. The hotel swimming pool - with sunlight and umbrellas - is behind the window which is behind the line.

Between the Kotoko concert and the masquerade, I spent at least four hours standing in line on Saturday at Anime North. The Kotoko concert line was the duller of the two, as I was sandwiched between two self-contained groups. But at least I was in the air-conditioning. When the Kotoko concert ended, the masquerade line was already out of the door of the hotel and starting to snake around the parking lot in the afternoon sunshine. I ended up with an entertaining group of three other people, each of whom had been abandoned by the friends they'd come with. One was sunburnt already from having stood outside during the Kotoko line. One was con staff and a costumer. One was a first-time cosplayer, flabbergasted by passing requests for photos of her in her costume.

Trite pop music sounds better in foreign tongues. Even if when sung in a language I've studied, song lyrics require that much extra thinking. It's easier to pay less attention to the words, to permit the sound and tune to comprise the music's sum, without the distraction of lyric superficiality. This is why I've long been attracted to foreign pop music.

Most of the time, I could justify the purchase of an album - I was studying the language, it was a way to practice, to listen, to sing along to easy melodies, until turns of phrase became comfortable to me - not that they were usually phrases I needed to know. But still, it was language practice. I have pop albums in Italian, French, Japanese, Aboriginal Australian. No, I haven't studied all of those.

So when I first met Eurovision, I took to its multi-national language and culture fusion naturally. Sure, most of the songs are in English or French. But not all. Bosnia scored high marks with the lament Lejla this year in Bosnian. Alvedansen, by Norway in Norwegian, was an ethereal piece of elegance, but better suited to a movie soundtrack than the contest. Croatia had a fidgety Croatian entry. Bloody Mary was Spain's exceedingly bored entry by Las Ketchup. Romania's compelling dance beat Tornero (with an irritating video) has verses in English and an Italian refrain.

( Eurovision... )

You can still watch the videos for all of the entries here.

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The second Saturday in a row found me listening to songs sung in another language - only this time, it was live! For the first time, Anime North imported a j-rock band as one of its guests of honor. Kotoko, the name of the lead singer, recorded theme songs for series including Please, Teacher, the only one I'd heard of, Tweeny Witches, Kannazuki no Miko, and Starship Operators. Anime North was the first stop on her first "world tour", starting in Toronto, going to A-kon in Texas, and then back to Japan for a more extensive tour there.

( Kotoko... )

If standing in line for a long time can earn good karma, then my hour in line this afternoon was time well-spent. Anime North hadn't begun, although registration was well underway when I joined a nascent line in the hopes of getting tickets to some of the more hard-to-get-into events of the weekend. After all, why waste time in line during the con when I could do it before the con began? After an hour of chatting with Original Character cosplayers working from BLEACH, our whole enormous long line was dismissed. "Go away. Line up in another two hours, not now." Reluctantly, we abandoned our posts.

A few hours later, I wandered back, expecting to either be at the back of another long line, or else for the evening's ticket supply to be used up. But I was in luck! I snagged the second-to-last masquerade ticket/sticker of the evening, and had no line at all for tomorrow afternoon's j-rock concert. Whether or not standing in line was wasted effort on my part is debatable - but I got both tickets.

( Series sampling and the AMV contest... )