How I Met a Group of Crazy People Without Showing Up on the 11 o'clock News

[40cakes]

So after wander999 had a nice experience with wine-tasting on meetup.com, I figured, "Hey, why not? Might be fun!" Joined the site and browsed for interesting thingies.

New York City Anime Meetup. Next meeting: Thursday, March 10 @ Some Sushi Place.

It's like destiny was calling me. I signed up and said I'd be there. Thought of stringing along anyone in the area who might wanna come, but figured I'd go alone first and make sure it was safe before leading anyone else into a pit of despair or something.

Sushi place was great. I had an inexpensive bento box that was very good, and followed it up with a green tea ice cream that was delicious.

The company? ...meh. I couldn't quite gauge everyone's ages. The group organizer felt like he was in his 30's, and there was someone who showed up later who looked like Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. One girl who seemed otherwise very cool said that when she was 4, she would get up early to watch Sailor Moon. Either her math is bad, or she looks old for 14. I had hoped everyone was at least out of high school.

One guy was very attractive, and looking up his meetup.com profile shows he's in NYC trying to make it big as an actor. Good luck, dude. You weren't THAT good-looking. Another guy, Anthony, kept trying to hit on me. "You're Galaxia, huh? Just as beautiful as your anime counterpart!"* "Are you single? You look like a single person." (I only gave my name as "Galaxia" because dude, crazies. I decided beforehand that if they all seemed sane, I'd give my real first name at the next meetup.) He also reminded me of an anime guy I ran into in college, who seemed incapable of continuing a conversation. His only contributions would be to ask a question, wait for everyone's responses, then ask another question. Like it was a roundtable discussion and not milkshakes at the Rat. (robinterrae, you know who I'm talking about, right? I can't remember his name for the life of me.)

Conversation was pretty stale and made me miss my previously established non-crazy anime friends. Someone mentioned Narutocon, and I asked if it would be 3 days of Naruto fans wanking about the upcoming dub. Everyone at the table took on a horrified face, then waxed eloquent about "I can't BELIEVE Cartoon Network is going to show Naruto! They're gonna screw it up so much! They're gonna cut out so much! The dub is gonna be so bad! They'll change all the voices!** It's going to suck so much! I hate it when they take good anime and put it on Cartoon Network!"

The irony didn't hit me until the next morning that they hate Cartoon Network and CN screws up all anime and CN sucks, but everyone just wanted to talk about their favourite animes: Sailor Moon, InuYasha, Gundam Wing, and Rurouni Kenshin. I tried to bring up Trigun, and there was some recognition, and "Yeah, Trigun's neat," but then everyone wanted to talk about ninjas again. At some point, we discussed tentacle pron, and that was the highlight of the evening.

But I did find out that there is a DDR meetup in Port Authority, which I've signed up fer. I may or may not go back to a second meeting for anime. I think I'll try a second one (still using my psuedonym) and see if there's a different crowd and that makes it better.

>^..^<

*THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is a geeky pickup line if I ever heard one.
**Yes, that's how dubbing to English works.

Comments

Good story!

[wander999.livejournal.com]

Wow. Although you didn't meet any cool people, at least you got an interesting story out of it, and that's all that really matters, right?

I picked the wine group because I figured the alcohol would probably loosen everyone up; I really had no interest in talking about wine.

Actually, at the wine meetup, I only had a few short conversations about wine. Most people talked about their lives, where they've traveled, what they do for a living. Wine was just a reason to get together.

Re: Good story!

[fadingembers.livejournal.com]

That's awesome! See, that's sort of what I was hoping for: Yeah, we all like anime, but does anyone else visit Japan, go to conventions, like to knit, take pictures, go to college, have interesting stories, etc... All I got was some sorta boring dorky people. And good sushi.

>^..^

Re: Good story!

[arafel.livejournal.com]

I wonder whether the Comic Book Guy you met was the owner of Knight Dreams in Princeton. He's the "genius" behind "This is Otakudom" and he is a dead ringer for Comic Book Guy. I think his name is Scott.

Re: Good story!

[fadingembers.livejournal.com]

I remember you telling that story, and briefly wondered if it was him. Though I don't know if he'd haul it up to NYC for a meeting. He showed up late and we were done by 9 - the commute would've been 3 times as long.

>^..^