Sir Terry Pratchett Passes Away at 66.

Gods, do I not want to report this news.

First reported by his official fanpage, then confirmed by the BBC, Sir Terry Pratchett passed away this morning. The beloved author was the creative force behind the incredibly long running Discworld series, as well as the Long Earth series, and the fan favorite Good Omens, written with Neil Gaiman. He was 66.

We'll have a full tribute to Pratchett and what he meant to us and our lives later today.

An Anime Expo Retrospective: The Long Beach Years

Anime Expo, a Thirteen-Year Retrospective

Part One: the Long Beach Years

When I came back from Anime Expo 2014, I realized it was my 13^th consecutive Anime Expo. 

Sigh.

Yes, a sigh, which is not necessarily a bad thing.  It’s a sigh of exhaustion from all the different things I did.  It’s a sigh of both joy and sadness as I saw, but had to say goodbye to, some longtime friends.  It’s also partially a sigh of some deep thought, since Anime Expo used to be the most exciting thing of the summer, at some point even more than San Diego Comic Con.  Now, it’s not, and not simply because of SDCC. 

The Long Beach Years (2001 -2003)

I first went to Anime Expo in 2001, the summer after my junior year in high school.  These were the years (2001-2003) that it was at the Long Beach Convention Center, right after AX was asked to not come back to the Anaheim Convention Center, for one reason or another.  I think it involved cosplayers going to Disneyland and being mistaken for character workers, and this was the mid 1990s, where cosplay was anything but mainstream.