Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in tatsugawa's LiveJournal:

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Friday, October 23rd, 2009
9:27 pm	Kogi Truck @ PMX We've finalized negotiations with the Kogi Truck and the hotel.  Kogi Truck will be making a guest appearance at PMX! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, November 6th, 2008
12:07 am	Arcade Games at Pacific Media Expo Tentative List: Chocolate Factory (redemption) Marvel Vs Capcom 2 Neo Print (photo sticker) Para Para Paradise Pop N Music - Fever Puzzle Fighter Stacker (redemption) UFO Catcher (redemption) (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 12th, 2006
12:21 pm	Nana Costume Contest @ PMX Avex has confirmed that they want to do the Nana costume contest. They are trying to select items to give out as prizes. Is there anything that fans particularly want from Avex/Olivia? Autographed CD/DVD's? They are a music company, so there isn't a whole lot to choose from. Mike (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 9th, 2006
3:12 pm	Olivia Tickets Selling Out? Well, I didn't think it was possible, but quite possibly, the Olivia tickets might sell out. Because the footage of the concert will be recorded, it sounds like the room must be absolutely packed and noisy for the camera. We might have to limit the number of tickets to only 400 to insure that kind of turnout. However, we do have the option of expanding the concert to about 900 people if the ticket sales are really strong, but only if we can guarantee that 900 screaming fans will pack the house. The fear is that if 300 fans get in for free and don't care, they will walk out and leave a huge open section in the back. That's why we want to charge nominal amounts for the back seats, just to insure that people care about the concert and will show up and stay. Mike Current Mood: determined Current Music: Olivia (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 27th, 2006
11:17 pm	SOOO Sleepy OK, finished another batch of documents. I need to work on a letter for professors, a letter for sponsors and finalize the agreement with Avex. Tomorrow I have a Japanese film festival to attend. There is a documentary about geishas that I want to see. But more specifically, I want to talk to the director and distributor. I know they want to have the film shown in the US. I also know that they bring in a geiko from Kyoto for the film events. I think a lot of attendees would find a panel with a geiko to be quite interesting. We'll see what happens. Friday night is our big publicity session. Saturday morning is my first trip to the newly re-opened Getty Museum. Saturday afternoon is the Cal football game. I'll be amazingly dead by Sat night. Mike Current Mood: sleepy Current Music: Beatles, I'm So Tired (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 13th, 2006
1:07 am	Music Crunch Time It's coming down to the wire now. I want to try to have all the concerts settled by this weekend for the registration opening. I'm rushing to try to finalize our deal with Avex. The only minor point is the rider and I'm just trying to be safe. Once that goes, we can bring in our additional musician. We've been running through MySpace adding all of the Nana fans in preparation. If things go wrong, at least we have cool Nana friends who love anime AND music. Our other guest has been going back and forth. IF we land him, we'll probably need to add another concert on Friday night before the con. That concert would need to be open to the public since we would have no way of being able to get registration up, running and processed by Friday evening. Keep your fingers crossed! I need some booze and some sleep... Mike (Comment on this)
Thursday, August 31st, 2006
8:26 pm	Catching Up again Well, I guess the final solution was just to post to both blogs. It's been pretty busy for the past few weeks. I got back from the Bandwidth Music conference in San Francisco where I heard some awesome presentations on the future of music. It's given me a lot of ideas about where music could go in the near future and how we might fit into that picture. We've also been wrapping everything up with the guests and everything looks like it's quickly falling into place. Uchuu Sentai NOiZ is confirmed, as is Mechanical Panda. Everyone pitched in with the press release drafts and everything got finalized. Thanks to Jinnie we managed to get the press release out. Now I've got to catch up on the other guests and musicians. We'll probably need to do announcements every other day so they don't crowd each other. I also want to stay away from other cons doing announcements as well as the 9/11 anniversary. Mike (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 12th, 2006
12:25 am	MySpace vs. LiveJournal? OK, now that things are finally moving along again, I've updated the schedule, kicked the proposed staffing levels back to the managers and have pushed out the business card requests and the exhibitor tables to other staffers. My question is where should I maintain a blog? MySpace seems usefull since there are 82 million people there and the PMX account has almost 3,000 friends. At livejournal, it seems that only the people I know are actively looking at the blog. Any suggestions? Mike Current Mood: accomplished Current Music: James Blunt (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 13th, 2005
12:57 am	Coming Up for Air It's only a brief respite, but I wanted to come up for air for a few minutes. The GoH's were taken back to the airport on Thursday, so I caught up on sleep this weekend. I dove right into the books and balanced the books for 2004. I then switched over and started finishing up the 2004 taxes. I just finished the federal taxes and will wrap up the state taxes in the morning. Once that is done, I can wrap up the key PMX05 financials by this weekend. One thing I wanted to note before going off topic. I'm really proud of the staff. Despite all of the adversity of Katrina, $4 gas and mis-steps at the con, they really held together well and are just growing closer. I think we are rapidly becoming family. I don't think I see anywhere near this level of hugging at any other con. One of my friends is turning the big 5-0 this weekend (second friend this year!), so I might have a slight distraction. After that, I want to write my thank you's, wrap up the pmx06 bids, tidy up my personal finances and get my life back together. Mike Current Mood: calm Current Music: Evita Soundtrack (Madonna) - You Must Love Me (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 28th, 2005
10:43 pm	Rounding the bend Lots of quick little updates. Aniplex is sending us the FMA trailer so we can use it to help promote Mizushima-san. Adult Swim is sending over a film crew to interview FMA fans. We're talking to the American FMA voice actors about appearing at the convention. The music press release is out. This should be a good push since I think the music side has a LOT of potential. I hope to have a music event to showcase a lot of Asian and Asian-American artists within a few years. I think that we are under-represented in the music industry. OK, off to sleep. At least I have had enough lately... Mike Current Mood: busy Current Music: Night at the Roxbury (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005
12:17 am	Yay for bunnies! Things are falling into place. Tomorrow we take care of the last of the bills and contracts and we are good to go. Dreamworks wants to do a promotion for the new Wallace & Grommit movie at PMX. They will give us the making-of video and we will screen it at PMX. Nick Parks actually gets more more excited than most of the anime we will show! FUNimation wants two of their voice actors to appear at the convention, so I'm excited about that as well. It sounds like the Final Fantasy - Advent Children preview is a no-go. We worked hard with Square, but it sounds like things just didn't fall into place correctly. This year had a lot of almosts. We'll just have to work and plan harder next year. Mike Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Thursday, August 18th, 2005
11:42 pm	The Rollercoaster Begins Wow, we are finally through the worst of the second guessing and just focusing on the publicity. I'm still trying to get the word out on the con, but I need to focus on last minute promotions. I've been getting tidbits of good news though. Adult Swim wants to help promote PMX since we have the director of FMA. Some execs behind Pierrot are interested in coming to PMX to see if we would be a good fit to do something next year. Kadokawa is sending an editor out to cover the convention. Koichi Ohata, the director of Burst Angel confirmed today. Funny thing is that I think FUNimation is being pressured to give away free DVD's to fans at his panel. Our bid to get Final Fantasy at PMX is running into speedbumps. We won't be getting the premiere, but I hope to get something that we can promote. I need to wrap up insurance issues and also send out the GoH tickets tomorrow. We're rounding the bend and I can see a light at the end of the tunnel... Mike Current Mood: sleepy (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 17th, 2005
3:42 pm	Coming up for air The last couple of days have been rough. Con stress has lead to poor sleeping and diet, so I've been tired lately. We've plowed through most everything. The Asian Cinema schedule looks done. The final music postcard is out. It's just a matter of evangelizing from this point. All the hotels are full, so most of the liability is gone. It's just a matter of making sure the fans turn out in force. With the diversification of risk between music, anime and asian cinema, I think we'll do fine. There are still some question marks, but without the proms, graduations and Fanime conflicts from last year, I imagine things will definitely go well. I'm still trying to lock down one last GoH. Things have been taking a while with the producer of his anime, so it's been a slow process. I hope to get the OK tonight. Tonight I have to finish the last of the hotel credit issues, wrap up the event insurance, finalize ad deals, wrap up the last guest and work out the receptions. There are a few radical things I want to try this year. The first is that since we had a weird credit with the hotel that we can't apply towards rooms, I would like to give the masquerade people something for a change. They get a pretty raw deal even though they are a bid draw. Marisa explained to me last night how a lot of cons skimp and choose fan judges, but people like competing for her since she brings in top notch judges, but we have to also treat them as almost guests. In either case, I was thinking this year, we could throw an after-party, just like they do at the movie premieres. The CosFest is in the afternoon, so I assume a lot of these people wouldn't mind a free dinner. If we could get a recording done in time, they can watch the performance in this party. It's just a thought... Mike Current Mood: exhausted Current Music: Moulin Rouge (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 13th, 2005
11:45 pm	Cheerleading is hard work! We just finished our first day at the Nisei Week festival and it went well. We got a lot of word out on our convention, but I can tell that we still have an uphill battle. Everyone who finds out about us, our purpose and our line-up becomes really excited, but getting the word out is the big challenge. We need to get word out better. We have tons of banners, but I'm not sure how much they are getting picked up. We also have the new postcards and posters, but we have our work cut out for us in terms of getting them out. Mike Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Friday, August 12th, 2005
6:39 pm	A VERY brief respite Well, the program book had a slight problem, but everything is OK now. I fell asleep at 7PM last night and caught up on some much needed sleep. My mechanic is all the way across town, so I had to drive there this morning. However, the fix-a-flat was unbalanced, so it was like a washing machine with sneakers inside. At high speeds, the car shook violently. So I basically had to take side streets across the length of L.A. The car is happier not, but I have to go back tomorrow to pick up my tire after they patch it. It sounds like we got another musician today and all is going well with the GoH's. FUNimation has a lot planned for PMX and we're trying to finalize arrangements. I'm also trying to do a good City of Hope promotion. I also had a good conversation with the Avex people and they want to try to do an event around Kumiko and their announcements. I think it's doable and we can include it in the price of the convention. I want to bring back the Meet the Guests Reception to give fans a chance to eat with the guests. We'll see how it works out. Tonight I have to get some proposals to Japan and then pick up the postcards for this weekend. It's going to be insanely busy... Mike Current Mood: awake (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 7th, 2005
6:48 pm	It was a good meeting today, although I think I got a bit of sunburn on my knees. I think everything is going well. We'll have a little bit of a scramble tonight finishing up the program book and then tomorrow will be busy tying up loose end and adjusting to the last minute GoH's. From here we will just be focusing on publicity for the next few weeks. Current Mood: tired (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 6th, 2005
2:27 pm	Burn Baby Burn! The FMA art from FUNimation is in. I've got to burn copies for all the people working on publications projects. For Alice, I guess I'll have to pick and choose images and stick them on the net for her to grab. I'm behind schedule and Todd and Priscilla are coming down tonight. It'll be a mad rush to get things done by tomorrow... On the bright side, I got enough sleep last night to go full speed through the weekend! Mike Current Mood: anxious (Comment on this)
Friday, August 5th, 2005
7:01 pm	My Square Day Lots going on. Finished the hotel issues last night. Jerry pulled in some super hours and managed to get everything done. Gotta do a proposal for Square tonight. I want to see if we can do any promotions with them. I'm also going to a reception at Meltdown Comics for an artist that will be showing off her work there. I think she'd be great for the Artist Market and for the Independent Film Festival. It sounds like the director of Burst Angel wants to come too, but we'll have to see what we can do to accomodate him. Program Book is going to be all weekend. I still need to finalize the Welcome letter, but I'll switch off immediately afterwards and help with all of the content. The meeting is this Sunday, so anyone reading this is more than welcome to come. Still waiting for the confirmation on the FMA GoH's. The waiting is driving us crazy since we are holding back on the publicity. I hope to have an answer on Monday. The bios are written and FUNimation has sent us a CD of art. Mike (Comment on this)
Thursday, August 4th, 2005
1:51 am	Another day in a mad rush for the finish line... Tiring day. Meetings all day at work. Had to go to a coworker's farewell party that I was planning, then buried myself in con work. We're rushing to get the rooming list into the hotel before they release rooms to the public. I'm also trying to get the program book wrapped up by this weekend so Viz can go to press on Monday. It's a difficult balancing act since we're trying to finalize the FMA GoH's and get the book in early enough for Viz to print. Megazone also came in to help out with programming. That will be huge in helping to cover a potential fire. Jinnie is also stepping up, which will give us a lot of energy. I think things in this division will work out well. I'm trying to finish writing up the guidelines for the Twisted Tea Party. It fits my idea of creating scenerios for cosplayers to take advantage of. This is a great one because they build the sets and then benefit from the backdrop. We also picked up the Japanese band Yousei Teikoku. Hopefully their VK style might make some of the fans happy. But they definitely aren't a JRock band, so we'll see. Too tired. Gotta write a lot of program book content tomorrow... Mike Current Mood: tired Current Music: Just plain old silence (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 2nd, 2005
11:05 pm	The pieces are coming together! The VK band just confirmed last night, so we have a band from Japan that will hopefully make people interested in that aspect of music happy. Yesterday, we also got the fantastic news that we are getting people from Fullmetal Alchemist. I'm just waiting for confirmations so we can move forward. We're going to need to close off the GoH's since we will have more than I expected. On the bright side, several companies want to get involved if we pull in some FMA talent. The rate sheet from Viz is FINALLY approved after a month of going back and forth. It also sounds like we got the boba dealer for the exhibit hall. It took a lot of work, but I think everyone will be happy with what they get. I'm a tad bummed. We were negotiating for the US DVD premiere of the Advent Children movie, but it has to go to the Venice Film Festival and Square didn't want it going to two places at the same time. My other choice for a US premiere would be the FMA movie. We'll have to see if Otakon beats us to the punch. If they do, I'm sure West Coast fans will still be excited to see it. These 7AM workdays are killing me. I need to sleep in tomorrow. Mike Current Mood: tired Current Music: Zero 7 (Comment on this)