So, as I was saying last time, this past week I was teaching a how to draw anime class as part of a special summer camp program for a kids’ art studio in Toronto. It was a long trek back and forth every day, and a few of the students were most certainly not on their best behavior, so it was quite an exhausting experience. Plus, it wasn’t just limited to me going in there and teaching. I also had to set aside time for the kids to have a snack, which I expected, but at the very last moment I was told that I also had to supervise the student’s lunch and walk them to the park. That was something of a surprise. I didn’t have a problem doing that, but still, I’m just an art teacher. Anyway, despite the student’s ages being much younger than I’d have liked to teach this material to, most of them actually did some really good artwork all things considered. Well, the ones who were well behaved did a good job. The ones who didn’t behave… not so much. Funny how that works, huh?

There was this one kid who was just the biggest pain. His mom brought him in on the first day and said that he loved stuff like Pokemon and that she had actually taken him to see Ponyo. He was the oldest student there and with all this in mind I figured that he’d be a good one, exactly the kind I like to teach. Boy was I wrong. This kid was incredibly obnoxious and clearly had some kind of attention problem, as he was always twitching, looking away, and interrupting everything with his own conversations. As the week wore on, he kept on yelling “Picklejinx” for no reason. When he was told to stop, he tried to find other ways of saying “Picklejinx” without actually saying it, including saying “Pumpkinjinx” or writing “Picklejinx” on a piece of paper. Before he left on the last day, I guess he figured there were no more rules, so he just kept on yelling “Picklejinx” over and over again. Now, was his artwork any good? Of course not. There was a definite improvement over the week, but he still refused to take the time and make the effort to do a good job. If he used all the energy he wasted being a brat on drawing instead, he’d have been much better for the experience. But no matter how much time I took to speak with him and demonstrate the techniques, he always went back to his old disruptive tricks. It’s too bad, but really, he’s got no one to blame but himself. Kind of reminds me of somebody else I know. But more on that some other time.

Anyway, I didn’t go right home after the last lesson on Friday. I headed straight for the convention center and got in line for Fan Expo! I enjoyed it this year. The convention is really expanding with a lot more corporate sponsorship. Kind of like San Diego but with 90% less Twilight! Some of the highlights for me included:

– Seeing the English dub of the recent Neon Genesis Evangelion re-make movie on a big screen with a huge audience of fans. It was a gooooooooooooood movie! I thoroughly enjoyed watching it there.

– Linda Hamilton and Bruce Campbell each had panels that I went to. Linda’s was very cool, informative, and funny, and Bruce basically insulted the audience at every turn and we all ate it up.

– The masquerade on Saturday was a lot of fun, with a totally excellent 1800’s steampunk style X-Men group stealing the show. Also there was a very funny Watchmen group that was “interrupted” by a guy with a “The End is Nigh” sign, causing Nite Owl to go insane using the audio from the Family Guy parody of Christian Bale chewing out the lighting guy. I almost choked with laughter.

– The TMNT 25th anniversary panel. This was the part of the whole convention that I was most looking forward to, and it didn’t disappoint. There was a loosely edited preview of an upcoming documentary about the Ninja Turtles and their fans, and it looked like a really exciting project from what I saw. There was also about 20 minutes of the upcoming “Turtles Forever” animated movie, where the modern animated Turtles meet the 80’s animated Turtles! It was AWESOME. I can’t wait to see the whole thing!

– I bought 6 wristbands, a few artbooks, and a Transformers Universe Ironhide, which I had been trying to get for months.

All in all it was a good time.

So, now that I’ve written all of this, I can move on to talking about other things. You see, this is very exciting, because someone from the past has returned! An infamous figure that I know you all remember!

Don’t you fret now, Mr. “Stupid Samurai“. I’m sure you understand that I needed to take care of all of this stuff for my blog first. I will get to you in due time. Look forward to it.

Sayonara.