After two great weeks abroad, I'm back in The Netherlands. Everything seems narrow and weird here now but I'm sure I'll get used to it soon enough. Goes without saying that I loved America. Even big cities like NY and Washington never seem really crowded and people still manage to stay polite, even during rush hour. We were there when it was pretty damn hot but that didn't spoil the fun at all.

In New York, we had a hotel on Long Island, which was nothing special, so my sis and I mostly explored Manhattan. From Time Square, to downtown Manhattan and Wall street to Central Park North and Harlem, we saw it all. The great thing about the island is that it's actually quite small in real life. It seems huge when you see it in movies but you can traverse it quite fast and all of the nice spots are close to each other. We saw the statue of Liberty, fed squirrels in Central Park, had some junkfood at Grand Central Station and saw the Rockefeller buildings. We got some stuff at the Nintendo store, downtown in Toy Tokyo and found some shady comic book stores. On Sunday, we met up with an internet friend of my sister, who turned out to be the nicest person ever. We sat in the diner you see in Seinfeld (Tom's Restaurant). We went to the MoMa, which is pretty much an art lovers idea of heaven. The collection is so huge and awesome it makes your head explode and then you've only visited one of the 9 floors. You turn your head around and find yourself staring at another Van Gogh or Picasso or Holzer. We also went to the Central Park Zoo but that one was not as awesome as it is in Madagascar. The peguins were the only decent animals they had - no zebras, lions, giraffes, mind you! - and we sat with them for an hour, because they were in a cooled room with airco.

Washington, then, was very different than I had expected. The city was very clean and certainly not as impressive as New York. It is flat, new, and a bit European with a hint of suburbia.The best things to do in the town are tourist-oriented and specifically aimed at Americans themselves. Here they can reconcile with there cultural heritage and visit tons of museums and memorials. That was about all there was to do in Washington. We covered a few memorials of the presidents (the Lincoln one for instance) and of particular wars (Vietnam, Korea) and though they were pretty, it was a bit weird that there were that many. Even the boy scouts have their own memorial. Needless to say that we covered five museums (The three Smithsonian art museums, a museum for flight and the natural history museum), the zoo and an aquarium to pass the time decently. It's a pity though that many Smithsonian museums are very educational and clearly target family outings and schools. You have to push some kids aside to see a proper dinosaur there. We also found a nice mall near the Pentagon which was pretty awesome.

Since I hadn't won the Broadway lottery in NY, I took my time to see Wicked in Washington. The show was definitely amazing. The stage had been downsized a bit for the occassion, but to be honest, I didn't really miss those stairs on which the flying monkeys are sometimes dancing. We had Dee playing Elphaba and Amanda as Glinda (who played her with a touch of Lottie from The Princess and The Frog; wheezing excitingly and overly happy). I was amazed by Dee's performance but she played Elphie for many years on BW too, so it's no surprise she gave such a brilliant performance. Madam Morribelle was also fascinating; she played with a bit of a weird (French?) accent that worked out great. Even after having seen the show before and replaying the soundtrack endlessly, the musical stll means the world to me. I was very affected afterwards and happy that I had seen this performance. I don't expect much from the Dutch version of Wicked - Willemijn, who I saw in the German Wicked, gives a good performance but cannot ace the belting part of Defying Gravity while Chantal is definitely not the soprano you need for Glinda and on top of that, a prototypical Dutch musical star.

Otakon in Baltimore was really amazing as well. The convention was huge and included lots of nice panels. The downside was that sometimes you were not allowed in certain rooms because they were over their capacity but for the big events like the masquerade, they had even rented an arena to make sure everyone could attend. The most beautiful thing was meeting Peter S. Beagle who wrote The Last Unicorn, one of my favourite animations ever was based on his book, and seeing The Last Unicorn on a huge-ass screen afterwards. I had forgotten how much I loved Molly and Schmendrick and frankly, I don't think I ever loved them as much as when I watched the movie this time, years later, and realized what interesting, wonderful characters they were. As a child, I saw them as average, even stupid people, who maybe failed a bit at life and were very comical. Two stupid characters that weren't half as pretty or awesome as the unicorn. Now I noticed they were anything but that. Their sadness and their tragic flaws are all over the movie. When I was young, I watched for the unicorn and lóved her to bits. Now I just find her a tad boring and love what happens between the other characters and how they struggle in life and slowly come to terms with their capacities and each other.

Anyway, back to Otakon, which - I'll emphasize this again - was so dámn big that you never came across the same cospayer twice. They had a few buildings and even had a few buildings just for an evening or so. The visitor flow made it a bit difficult to take pictures of nice cosplayers but I got a few I'd love to share.

Bender
Supergirl
Old Spice Guy
Mummymon
Ico
Tingle

I saw Helga from Hey! Arnold walking by, Freakazoid and whatnot. Still, because there was so much to do at the con and because there were so many awesome cosplayers, it wasn't really like a European con were people stand still to pose for a very long time. In a way, that was good too. I like it that the con had good cosplays but wasn't at all about showing off.

During the trip, I dug up some nice graphic novels and books. I finished The Last Unicorn just now and let me tell you, if you never read the book and even remotely liked the movie, you will adore this. It gives the characters layers, you wouldn't believe it. As a sad note, I'd like to mention that the graphic novel of Darkwing Duck got cancelled because Boom Studios went broke. I was very upset by this and still am. Despite its flaws, I loved what it did with the series and dared to do. It advanced the characters and the story world immensely. I will miss it dearly when it's gone.

For a short entry, this became a bit long. XD Ah well!

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