Hot in the City
A quick self-congratulatory placeholder for today
Short post today, because I was travelling over the weekend.
The reason is the season, because when you live in the central Arizona desert, the summer is a good time to leave. This coming Wednesday looks like it will officially be King of the Hill Day in Phoenix:
We’ll be back to normal posting on Saturday with a discussion of the critical reception and impact of Nakajima Sadao’s 1964 Ninja Lady Magic. So in place of your usual dose of ninja-related sarcasm, let me share a couple of cool updates.
Last week, I joined a couple of colleagues from ASU in doing a panel at Phoenix Fan Fusion, pretty much the Southwestern US’s largest gaming/cosplay/anime/pop culture convention. Hayden Christensen was there, plus most of the cast of the Lord of the Rings movies, but the real draw - obviously - was our panel, “Ninjas, K-Pop, and Chinese Drama: How Modern Pop Culture Uses and Abuses East Asian History.” It was pretty well-attended, especially for a (relatively) early morning panel, so here’s me laying down some ninja truths to the people, plus obligatory ASU promotional material:
Second thing is that this morning Substack informed me (to my considerable surprise) that Critical Ninja Theory is currently #74 in its “Literature” category:
Frankly, I’m astonished it cracked the top 10,000 in any category. I’ll take it, though.
Normal service will be resumed this Saturday.