In search of Toon Makers ~ Release Sailor Saban Moon!

A year ago, I posted a blog about the infamous Toon Makers video. I re-rendered it in HD, posted it on one of my YouTube accounts, and just left it there.

For those of you who don't know, let me catch you up.

Sailormoon is my favorite anime and manga series.

I am also a purist when it comes to comics, meaning that I despise any production that tries to "re-in-vision" a comic's original story. (Let's make Spider-Man EMO! Let's not and say we did. >_O) The Sailormoon anime that ran from 1992-1997 in Japan, the first TMNT cartoon and a few of the Batman series' are the ONLY things I will actually give any leeway to when it comes to story.

With that said, you can imagine my utter shock and horror upon seeing that in 1994, a company called Toon Makers/Toonmakers tried to re-make Sailormoon for an American audience.

That looks NOTHING like Sailor Moon at all!!! It's freaking SHE-RA!!!

I don't know what offended me more. Seeing my beloved characters completely re-designed into sexualized stereotypes, (Mercury would no longer be the "smart one in this, as she was degraded into being into parties and boys in this version, also, Sailor Venus in the Toon Makers script threatens to kill a man over makeup) seeing the plot completely ripped to shreds, no wait. I have what offends me most right here:

Yeah, for trying to be racially sensitive, they managed to draw probably the most racially insensitive thing imaginable. >_O

Now I've been chronicling the whole mess on Moon Sisters, and I recently added a new sub-page, devoted to this ungodly mess: Toon Makers Sailor Moon ~ The Saban Moon Never Seen! Why is it called Saban Moon when Saban had nothing to do with it? Simple. It looks like they would have done it. Worse? Three of the companies that helped Saban birth Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (Renascence, BanDai and Toei)  would have been a part of it, had it not been for the people at Toei Animation throwing the world's biggest conniption fit. (And thank God for it.)

But just to show you my own, personal Hell, here it is:

Now when I wrote that first blog, I didn't think anything of it. I had the entire back story of how it was made posted on a revised blog, and that was it. I just wanted to keep the history alive, and then run as fast as I could from it. I wound up putting a Sailormoon DVD on loop on the DVD player, just to wash this memory away.

But then came the news I dreaded hearing. Two words that shook me to my core.

"There's more."

Somewhere on VHS exists a full, 17 minute pilot. It has yet to surface, but I fear that day is coming quite soon.

Worse?

Well if you took a gander at my website just now, you probably noticed an asinine number of Toon Makers Sailor Moon cels. GAH!?!?!

Now the cels are being sold by several, different eBay sellers. But almost all of them are coming from California.

The sellers all have armloads full of "NOT" Sailor Moon, as well as She-Ra, X-Men, Archie, BraveStarr  and a whole catalog of other 80's-90's animation cels. ALL of them are drawn exactly the SAME.

This made me curious. Did Toon Makers die? Are they folding?

A visit to the Toon Makers website: Toon Makers Inc. didn't turn up anything new. In fact, the last site update was in 2008, and that was just to add a copyright date.

Their last known project is probably from 2003, but I can't actually verify that.

What I can verify is that they've done a great job of patting themselves on the back. Mostly for things they either did NOT do or should not be posting.

They falsely claim to have been behind the production team of two, very funny anime titles: Flint: Time Detective and Mon Collie Knights.

For the record, Sanrio created Flint, Enoki Films animated Flint, and Saban distributed it in the US. Toon Makers had zilch to do with Flint.

Mon Colle Knights was brought to us by Studio DEEN and Saban. Again, Toon Makers had NOTHING to do with Mondo, Rockna or anybody else on the show.

(By the way, if you can find them, let me know! I want the DVDs. ^_^)

Toon Makers also takes credit for a Darth Vader knock-off, called "Darth Vapor". Not exactly what I'd be advertising if I was my own company. If you scroll left to right on their page, you'll notice a few other designs that look suspicious.

But outside of a few cartoon ads that I can verify existing, I can't find anything they've legit done or finished after 2003. You know something's wrong when Google turns up empty handed. The only thing I got was their current contact information:

Rocky Solotoff On LinkedIn and on Facebook

Raymond I.

17333 Ludlow St.

Granada Hills , CA 91344

Phone: (818) 832-8666

Web: www.toonmakers.com 

Email: info@toonmakers.com

Data.com entry

Their Toon Digital page has been shut down. The page would have been the hub for their CGI goods. The main "About" page has them touting work they claim to have done for FOX, including Fern Gully, the first Tom & Jerry movie, The Pagemaster and the top movies from Don Bluth. I've rented all of them and have read the credits. Toon Makers is 100% ABSENT from mention. Matter of fact, another film they take credit for (Fievel Goes West) is in my video cabinet. I've seen the film 22 times and still have the VHS box. Toon Makers is not mentioned.

This leads me to question if Toon Makers is a fraudulent company, save but for this one video. Outside of my other blog post, ALL mentions of them working on these films are solely on their About page. The credits they claim do not exist anywhere else but on their own website.

Founder Rocky Solotoff did work as one of the many "producers" for the FOX, Saban and Don Bluth projects, but not Toon Makers, as each of these films had their own stock of animators, editors and the like. There wouldn't have been a need for Toon Makers.

There is one Art and Design entry where they lifted a Power Ranger drawing, and then lied, claiming it to be their own "Gladiator" sketch, and then there's a blank Facebook page, and an article about home-made animation studios from Creative Planet with the date missing, but nothing more.

A post from Crunchyroll in 2009 proclaimed the company "defunct" which offers little in the ways of an explanation. There's no timetable for when this could have mercifully happened, and doesn't explain why the website is still up, there are LinkedIn accounts for the founder and one other person ~ both claiming that Toon Makers Inc. is still open for business ~ and it also does not explain why they are still listed by various art schools and business websites as viable, active portals for job-seekers.
(Though admittedly, most of these job listings are a farce, but that's another story.)
Most of the business sites just copy-paste from Toon Makers's page.

But in concurrence with Crunchyroll's story, Rocky Solotoff's Facebook states that we was there until 2010, though he pops up again in a 2011 article, linking to the Toon Makers page. Then recently in 2012, an article from Corporation Wiki proclaimed the company "active" in the state of California and Solotoff as it's owner.

But no sooner had the article been posted was the internet flooded with these lost cels.

So which is it? Is Toon Makers Inc. dead or alive?

Is this all just now coming out because a second anime is on the way?

I fear the answer to these and the location of that lost, 17 minute pilot are not that far behind...

A letter to the lost...

(NOTE: I'll post a more funny blog in a bit. This is just one last thing I want to get off my chest.)

I wanted to come home in time.

I never understood why my father dragged us all over the place. He said it was for his "career" but when you make a "career" out of getting fired from one retail job after another, it hardly seems worth six years of travel.

Oh sure, I learned alot, and the people I saw back then turned me into who I am right now, and I don't think I could be a better person without those experiences. In fact, I've made peace with it all. I have a reminder every day that it all worked out for the best.

But really, I miss you. I'll never forget that day in September of 1997 when Mama came downstairs with the news. I never understood the phrase "you can't go home again" until that moment.

Every December when we lived back home, Mama would bake a ton of sweet potato pies, and then we'd drive up to see you. Naomi would be in the kitchen, waiting with a kiss. And sometimes you'd call around, and Aunt Cleotha, Uncle Richard, everybody, everybody would come over. We'd all have pie, and there was talking and laughter. Always, it felt like a party. I still remember losing a few skin layers on the plastic covered sofa, when I tried to get up to greet someone and forgot the heat was on. The crinkling of the thick, heavy photo albums with all the glued in photos of Native American relatives I still haven't met yet. This visit was always the signal to me that Christmas really was coming soon.

But we don't have Decembers like that anymore.

All of you are gone now, except for Pam, she lives in the city. But I guess you knew that already.

And your son is doing alright with his girlfriend. You'd be proud of him. He's been clean for 16 years next month, and he's getting into motivational speaking. A few years back, he was part of a rally, to bring benefits and safer working conditions to a ton of people in California. He and Mama long ago reconciled their issues with all the times he was absent when she was growing up, so they're thick as thieves now. Best friends.

Your adopted daughter last I heard was up north, but I haven't seen her in ages.

Every December now, I look over to Mama, and I say "Hey! Let's hurry and bake those pies for..." and I remember you're gone. I shake my head, say "never mind" and then cheerfully request sweets anyways.... probably not a GOOD idea for my health, since everyone down here is afraid of diabetes and the obesity monster... but whatever, Mama's a good cook and I'll work it off.

I have blood, but we all live far away. The family I have up here, I adopted. And I want to talk to you about them, but I'll get to that in a bit.

 Anyway, I'm not typing this out to talk about Christmas. It's 7 weeks away after all. I'm just trying an experiment. They say that people can see from the other side, and that if there is a Heaven, it's likely past the Milky Way, and not in the clouds as we once thought. But we've chucked more than a few satellites up there, so if you can't see this now, hang tight. NASA will fix it shortly.

I'm typing to let you know... we did it.

We have a man in office, who is Black, White, and just became a two term president.

A two term, ethnic president.

Want to know the best part?

WHITE people voted him in!! :D

No really. They did!

... I know, RIGHT????

They voted not because he's Black, they voted because they liked his platform. He could have been blue, green, polka-dotted, and they would have voted for him anyways!

We finally live in that world Dr. King talked about in Alabama. That world where little Black kids and Little White kids could play together? Yeah, that's actually today. You've only been gone since 1997, so you already saw all the integration as it happened... but a TWO TERM BLACK PRESIDENT, OMG right???

I have White friends who are as good to me as family now. (My adopted kin.) They don't even notice I'm Mixed. They don't seem to care much at all about it, just as long as I'm still .. well I guess the word is.. me. Nobody seems to care if they catch me hanging out with them either. It's no longer a Life Magazine story, it's just called "Saturday" now. (Or Monday or Tuesday, ect.) So I'm ok.

There are still some places that hold racist riots, but those people are called "idiots" now. Nobody seems to pay heed to their words anymore.

...We even have Black Disney Princes and Princesses now.... no REALLY, we do! We had a Chinese Princess after you died, too. They're not novelties, and nobody was in Blackface, it's for real. Like a normal Disney movie, just with different paint!

All that marching you did, the rallies, it all paid off. We're all the same, and it seems like everyone is evolving.

We're all friends now, and we have that world that you wanted to see.

We're doing ok now.

Thanks, Great Grandpa.

Love,
Kori

There's no such thing as a woman who "just has" an abortion.

Let me preface this by saying that while I'm pro-choice, I do want to be a mom one day. I've never been pregnant, never, not once, didn't even try the video game demo at the store, but I have studied the phenomenon, and it doesn't seem like an entirely bad idea. 

I'm not going to raise a stink about it, chase a dude down in a parking lot for it, or randomly drop a few grand to some doctor in a strip mall with a turkey baster, but it just so happens that I like kids.

It's morons I have a problem with. Especially those who hide behind the Bible, but never read it.

First thing this morning, I got up to vote. My nearest voting poll is at a church, and is generally run by friendly faces. They don't mind people of other faiths, and in case you're curious, NO I did NOT catch fire upon entry.

Waiting outside, circling the masses like starving vultures getting off the Atkins' diet, were two fat women, handing out cards and demanding to see our voting cards.

You should know by now that I'm not stupid enough to fork over my voting card to any random stranger in a J.C. Penny coat.

"Hi thenk yew fer comin owt tuday" Screeches a woman in a wing bar waitress voice. "Meek shur yew heve yer voturs registreeshun cerd, okeee?" 

She hands my mom a card.

"Who is this?" Mama asks.

"It's fer a Republiceeen."

"No thank you. I'd rather you not cut down anymore trees for cards like these."

The woman glares at us (as Mama puts it) like we spat in her cookies.

So I vote, and upon exiting the church, I hear the two fat ladies making fun of someone they read about on Facebook. "What's wrong with morons todeey? I KNOW people who have abeertions left and right. I hope they die. hahahahahaha Leik WOW man, even a rape baby is a baby."

Now I am in a CHURCH parking lot. Granted, a church across the street from a tobacconist and a bar, and a church that shares a parking lot with the second largest fireworks store in the state, but it's a CHURCH anyway. And I haven't had my coffee yet. And I'm floating by on less than 4 hours of sleep and I already have a migraine starting. I'm not so devious as to curse out a pair of morons on sacred ground.... a fifth time. Generally, my discussions look like this:

And always, I hear the same, lame excuse from everybody who sears they're a Christian.

"Well ... I KNOW women who just HAVE abortions all the time."

REALLY?? You do? AWESOME! Why don't you send me a video, picture, her name and phone number, or better yet, have the bitch email me and then post a public comment, right under this blog, because...

I DON'T BELIEVE SHE FUCKING EXISTS!!

Wake up and smell the roses people, there is NO such thing as a woman who "just has" an abortion. They do not exist. 

You have a better chance of finding Bigfoot ~ swimming in my backyard ~ while wearing roller skates and YODELING in Swahili.

Every woman who has had one, whether it's because she's been raped, it's incest, she's broke and can't afford it, the child will be born dead/sick or it's egg-topic and it comes down to her OR the fetus, I promise you, she has had plenty of time to grieve, question herself, and ask if she's going to Hell because of it.

And I am sick to death of people who say "well just give it up for adoption then" REALLY?? Let me take you through pregnancy, and what FOR REAL happens to a woman:

1. Your organs are rearranged to house this thing. Why do I say thing? Because until birth ~ WAKE UP ~ it is NOT a born child yet. That's why they don't call fetuses "born". It is NOT capable of being a fully functional, living thing until BIRTH. Until then, it is (I hate saying this because I do actually like babies a whole lot) fully reliant upon the woman. These science experiments take up ALOT of space, so the organs MUST move. Life does NOT begin until birth. 

2. You gain weight, why? Because your uterus fills with amniotic fluid. Also you need to maintain a certain amount of weight in order for the fetus to draw nutrients from you. That's right, whatever YOU eat, the fetus gets a hefty chunk of it. I hope you appreciate your mom more now that you've read this, because until you were truthfully a BORN person, you were taking everything from her, like those creepy aliens in those horror movies from the 80's.

3. Your hormones go out of control.

4. You now have to purchase bigger clothes, clothes for the child, furniture, food, diapers, lotion, all sorts of things for what "may" be a born person. Do you think that comes free?? Don't be stupid! We have:

NO Government program that covers prenatal clothing.

NO Government program that covers prenatal care ~ without an assload of paperwork and DCFS trying to take the baby from you FOREVER.

And if you think for one minute that there are ANY jobs that want to hire pregnant women, you've lost your mind. Whatever didn't get outsourced to China still won't take her ~ because pregnancy is a RISK. Think hard, if ANYTHING happens to that fetus while she's on the job, the company is LIABLE.

5. Total strangers call you "pregnant welfare whore" until you pop. This even happens to monogamous, MARRIED women. 

6. Assuming the fetus makes it to "birth-day" the woman's body contracts, stretches, rips itself open or otherwise is CUT apart, just to get the kid out. And don't think for one minute those drugs they give you are safe. Plenty of women get sick or die on the table, trying to give birth.

7. The hospital will charge you upwards of $10-20,000 for giving birth. Do you think your precious little insurance companies will cover it? HA HA WRONG!! And that's not even counting the untold thousands that go into prenatal doctor visits or the child's first year of WEEKLY pediatrician visits ~ and that's if he/she's born healthy! Price skyrockets up if the poor thing has a medical condition.

So "just give it up for adoption" hardly seems like an affordable option. Do YOU have $20,000??

If it was YOUR body, how would you feel?

I used to live in a neighborhood full of parents who had been bullied out of abortion. Oh sure, they loved each other, but they openly hated their kids. And DCFS wouldn't let them put them up for adoption, without coming back to take ALL the other "wanted" children. Forever. Like you get NO go-backs here. You never see them again.

Do you have any idea what it does to a kid to know he only exists, because a church he NEVER goes to, bullied his parents into keeping him when "dear old Mom" was 13 and repeating the 7th grade? 

The kids I lived near got into gangs, sex and all kinds of trouble. Their parents didn't care and could not get rid of them, without Johnny Law kicking down the door. Oh yeah, they sure did feel "saved" didn't they?

And yet there are people, hiding behind the Bible, claiming that a woman's rights are a "sin". Funny, I don't remember any such passage in there. But here's what I do remember from the book:

Deuteronomy 20:17 has a bit in there where God allowed the mass killing of the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites ~ including pregnant women. That is the biggest, mass abortion I've ever heard of. Good grief! Now mind you, there was a plan for this in the long run, but you'd be ignorant to miss this passage.

Genesis: 34 has a segment where Dinah, daughter of Jacob ~ was raped. She was NOT told "just deal with it and have whatever happens" NOPE! There was justice for her ~ as GOD DOES NOT EVER CONDONE RAPE!!

And let's not forget three more passages, for those of you still calling abortion a sin:

(Acts 13:39 ) - "and through Him everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses."

(Titus 2:13-14 ) - "looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus; who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds."

(1 John 1:9 ) - "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

In case you can't read, let me spell it out. ALL SINS ARE ABSOLVED THROUGH JESUS if you really believe he exists. 

And if you really believe in a God, and you think he created everything, then you must know that science is high on the list of things he made. Evolution is not just something atheists talk about you know.

So let that be the end of that, Christians.

Don't be a ditz, VOTE!!

I'm often shocked when people say "Well I hate them ALL, Why bother voting? It doesn't matter."

I get it, the two party system is outdated. But what do you expect, when every Libertarian  Independent and Green Party candidate gives up on themselves, cries like a little girl on Twitter, and turns out to be a Tea Partier in disguise?

"I'm gonna beat the system and create change. Wait... I have to worry about Libya, Iran, Iraq and Terrorists?? All the US jobs are in China and there are old farts calling the unemployed losers because they can't get the job that's now in Beijing? There are Gays and Women being treated like animals and people are trying to revoke their rights because they believe in false profits who wear ugly robes instead of actually believing in science and the notion that God made us to evolve? The economy is in the toilet? Oh no. No I'm not ready for this. Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeve heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeve OOOOOOoooo *waives hands* OMG OMG OMG Um um... vote for the other guy!! *cries* Mommy??"

Give me a Ross Perot over any of those "kind-of-pendants" PLEASE.

I don't know. Maybe it's because I watched the dubbed version of the second Pokemon film, where they drive the point home that it really "only takes one person" but I feel that every voice matters, even in a cracked system where the electoral college (secluded from reality, living in a basement somewhere in Washington DC with the A/C turned off 100% of the time) decides most of the nation's future for us, one vote can still mean the difference between "eh, could be better" and "JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH they brought us back to 1865!!"

And I'm sick of the morons who pick candidates based on religion. Am I the only person left alive, who read the passage in the Bible, where Jesus turned over the change tables and protested against the church?? REALLY?? New Testament people, thumb through it once in a while. If you really believe there is a God somewhere, then don't you think he'd want us to EVOLVE??

Oh, and you want to cancel out my rights to my own body as a woman, because you think my having a choice is a "sin". So you DON'T believe that all sins are absolved through Jesus? Then you must not believe in Jesus at all if you're trying to kill my rights, and the rights of the Gay friends I have. Some Christian you turned out to be.

But enough about that, we have separation of church and state anyway. It's what stops us from being like the Taliban. Bunch of freaks, the lot of them.

But anyway, let's go back to the story of why not only am I voting, but I've encouraged other people to vote as well.

In my family, voting is considered a high priority. Reason being? We've only had it for a few generations.

On my mother's father's side, I can trace his roots to a plantation out in Alabama. While I can't go too far for his father's side (more on him in a bit) I can go back to my Great Grandmother's Great Grandma, Mandy.

Great-Gran-Mandy was what they called "High Yellow" or "High Yella". That means she was pale enough to pass for White, and pass she could. She had light hair, light eyes and freckles. If she walked, nobody would have known that she was part Black. She was either the daughter or granddaughter of the man who owned the plantation, a man named William Craig. When he died, he left her a trunk of dresses and pretty things. Things a slave would not ordinarily have, but a descendant would.

The next owner of the plantation mated her off to the darkest man he could find, so she's have a child (Johanna) and feel forced to stay on the plantation, rather than to pick up and leave. During the course of the next few years, she had to watch has family and friends were bought and sold off, like used sneakers on eBay.

Even after slavery ended in 1865, my family did not have the right to vote. Mandy and Johanna never had the freedoms we take for granted today.

The right for a man of color to vote, was not ratified as the 15th amendment until February 3, 1870. But even back then, if you went to a voting place that was largely segregated, you would have to endure taunts, teasing, and sadly, deadly lynchings, before you'd reach the poll. People would curse you, call you names, and plenty of places would turn away Colored voters.

As for women? HA! The right for a woman to vote wasn't ratified until August 18, 1920. That is 50 years, six months and 15 days after the right for Colored people to vote was made legal. 

It wasn't an easy fight either. Women before the right was ratified were often times jailed, beaten, sent to mental wards and even sterilized. Oh yeah. Our country 'tis of thee was into Eugenics long before Hitler. And that's a sick, disgusting and frightening concept. I'm actually more frightened by US History than I am the standard horror flick!

And you would think it ends there on that sunny day in 1920. NOPE!

My ancestors had to fight even after that, as voting polls were tight under the Jim Crow watch. If you were a Black woman trying to vote as recently as the 1950's, catcalls and slurs would be your BEST hope.

And I knew a man in my own family who was no stranger to catcalls:

This is my Great Grandpa. And I'm lucky to say I got to know him before it was too late.

When he was growing up, he didn't have the chance to go to an integrated school. He went to a school designated for Black kids. His books were hand-me-downs, often with pages missing or messed up with snack food grease. 

So what he would do, is he'd drag his little brother and little sister over to the White schools. They'd sit by the window and learn from there. And always, they'd have people ~ starting with adults ~ catcalling them, throwing rocks at them, all because they wanted an education.

When his parents died young, he left the 8th grade and went straight to work, to support his brother and sister. He was a smart man too, I'm sorry I didn't get all of my math genes from him. He saved his money and spent wisely. Despite the odds, he did live the American Dream for the most part. Bought his own land, built a house on it, put his siblings through school, his son, and plenty of other people. Even saved enough to fully pay off his own funeral and resting place a decade in advance, and go on one annual vacation and change out the car when he felt the need to.

But the struggle didn't cease. He knew that he still didn't have the freedom to walk down his own street if a White man did. He knew that he couldn't shop or eat at the same places as everyone else. 

And most of all, his son had just had a daughter with a White woman, but they weren't allowed to get married anyplace near the army base where they met, without his son going to prison.

Ah... something had to change.

He marched in Alabama with Dr. King. (Yes, THAT one.) He survived race riots, and just like any other red blooded American, he voted.

I said he voted.

He voted, and let his voice be heard.

He got his family and his friends to vote. It was like second nature to them.

He was told that it wouldn't matter. That everyone sucks so why bother? He was told that he was just playing into a "corporate fantasy" and that nobody could change the future. Voting doesn't matter. Nothing changes. Nobody cares if you vote. Don't vote, don't do it, voting means nothing. He was told all of this.

...He also sat front row, when his Black son married a White woman. 

HA HA.

We don't know what vote was the deciding factor in deciding who would take office in each of the states where officials signed off on the notion of it being legal to marry outside of your race. We don't know which civilian exactly, sent in the final card that broke down a Jim Crow rule here or there. But nobody in my family cared. They voted anyways.

Every vote, no matter how weak or feeble does count. It counts somewhere, and in the history books, it's always noted when someone has tampered with the machines to erase the American peoples' choice, to fatten the wallets of already rich morons. Even there, those votes count.

So tomorrow morning, I'm voting. I have alot on the line here.

I have not only my rights as a woman to vote for, but the rights of every woman. My cousins, my second cousins, any female prodigy I might have. That's alot of ovaries to think about!

I have to pick between a moron who used Bain Capital to send MY US jobs overseas, and a dude who's picked on because he's not God, and people think that "Hawaii born Christian" is spelled M-U-S-L-I-M.

I have to vote between someone trying to rebuild my economy, and a dog-hating fat cat who wants to kill the last of my generation in another fake war.

I have to vote between some guy trying to get congress to stop vetoing every job creating bill he signs off on, and someone who just sent my last job to China, in exchange for lead paint goods and combustible laptops filled with BPA's.

I have alot riding on this vote.

I can't chicken out now.

Home is where the Wal*Mart is

"This right here is where Mama and your uncle Shingo grew up! Now unbuckle the baby, Chibiusa. Candy-corn Oreo's are on sale and your daddy has a coupon!"

So on this, the eve of my 26th birthday, I got some unexpected news.

I'm sure you recall that in July of 2011, I posted this blog: http://codenamesailorearth.blogspot.com/2011/07/guess-whos-close-to-homeless-victim-of.html long story short, my parents got snookered into a predatory lending scheme and NationStar wants to foreclose on the house.

Now after I stopped crying, I got wise and shared the blog around. I found other people going through the exact same problem, and the blog went viral.

For the record, I've never believed in the adage of "We don't air our dirty laundry" because there are other people going through what I am ~ AND WORSE. Why keep the pain bottled up when I can share it, and let a few people know that they are totally NOT alone? If my pain can result in one less person feeling alone, one less person contemplating suicide, then it's worth whatever embarrassment or "shame" this causes me. If I can make one less person feel ashamed of their situation, so be it. I'm not scared.

But I did only tell a select few. I didn't want to worry anybody, unless I knew for sure how this story was going to end.

One month later, the threats came to a screeching halt. And I had a good nine months worth of quiet.

Of course, my mom isn't stupid, so during the lull, she got a lawyer to help sort this mess out. He's also a divorce lawyer, so for one reasonable fee, we can deal with the house, and my parents long overdue divorce is almost over. I can't tell you how big of a blessing that is. >< No more refereeing fights between those two, just because my "DAD" has an obsession with cutting into my wrestling feed so he can watch Project Runway or American Idol. THANK GOD. MY PARENTS ARE 99.99% DIVORCED!!

Well two months ago, we get a call from the lawyer. The house was set to go on auction TODAY. Nothing quite says "Happy Birthday Kori" like "Get the F out" does it?

Well the lawyer managed to halt the auction for a while. I don't know how long "a while" is, but it was long enough to run a Google search.

Turns out that my whole freaking block is up for grabs. Ah... WHAT??

Here's how it's going down.

The city I live in wants more commerce. The hundreds of businesses around here just aren't enough, so they want to take out my block, and it looks like the next few blocks over, since over 100 houses are up ~ starting with fully PAID OFF houses. Yeah, I said PAID OFF. As in "the debt has done ceased to be" and stuff.

But the city doesn't want to do imminent domain ~ because that would give everybody in my block a stipend for the houses. We'd each have a little less than what the house is for real worth, which would be enough to find a new place to live and move. Perish the thought! We don't want to pay people for their own houses!

So instead, they have the banks all playing screwy with my neighborhood. So now any house under the guidance of NationStar, Citibank, Bank of America, JP Morgan and the rest of 'em are up for grabs.

Same goes for the Sub-way, Tobacco shop, fireworks stores, car dealership and even the church I vote at, which are now up for sale. (The church might be saved, but I have no data on that.)

So this morning, while my house's sale was stopped, everybody else on the block had their houses group bid on by "an anonymous investor". No, that doesn't sound shady or anything.

So I decided to look around, see what exactly they intend to do with over 100 houses and a few strip-malls.

Ah.

They want to put up another Wal*Mart.

... About 2.7 miles away from the other Wal*Mart near the heart of the city.

... No really. I'm not joking. They want to build a Wal*Mart 2.7 miles away from an already established Wal*Mart.

Say, do you remember when "The American Dream" wasn't just Dusty Rhodes's nickname, but it also meant owning your own home & having a really good paying job, benefits and a vacation every year? My mom said it was a cool time to be alive in. Too bad I missed that.

This is the American NIGHTMARE, this is everything my grandparents constantly complain about, this is not the America they anticipated. What the hell happened??

So while sipping my coffee, taking this news in, I looked at my baby brother. (Okay, he's 20 and twice my size, but dammit I have five years over him.) And I placed my arm around his shoulder, and told him something quite sad.

When he was eight years old, my mom drove us to one of the places she grew up in. It's still standing and owned by a very sweet couple, who showed us around the property. She took us to her first apartment, which is now Rosa Parks Middle School. The building itself was torn down for the school, but it's one of the better schools in a very bad neighborhood, and they try to do right by the kids, so it all works out. The trailer she used to live in is also still standing, and the neighborhood hasn't changed.

I told my brother that we can never have a moment like this with our kids.

No.

Now the first place I lived in was an apartment in Lansing. It's still standing, but the exact floor I lived on was burnt to a crisp, overrun with vermin and had drug dealers squatting in it before the fire. So it's been totally rebuilt, but aesthetically, it looks the same as it did in 1990 when I moved.

The first house my brother lived in was a teeny-weeny, Snow White cottage. It was a Sears home, one of the first ever in the area, and although it had a massive problem with creepy crawlies and mold, and was too tiny to have a thought in, it was adorable. And my ancient aged neighbors were friendly. Everybody baked and shared stories, and it was the all American home.

When I was 12, it was gutted out and "updated". Didn't even look the same. When I was 14, it was boarded up and condemned. I have no idea what happened after that, but it broke my heart to see it in shambles.

The next house was a townhouse in Virginia Beach. We lived there for a year and then abruptly had to move to New Jersey. That whole weekend I protested. I wanted to go home to Chicago. New Jersey is NOT Chicago. Why was I even moving to begin with??

Have you ever heard "there's always a reason" or "God has a plan"? This was one of those moments.

I moved on a Friday, was on a plane to Jersey Friday night.

Saturday morning there was a flood that ran through the townhouse complex we lived in. The front of the house spilled out into the street.

Sunday the rest of the house caved in on itself, taking the whole strip of houses with it.

Monday the landlord was taken into custody for fraud.

Tuesday he was on Dateline.

O_O; Okay OKAY Things happen for a reason.

The hotel I lived in in Wayne is underwater. The apartment I lived in in Wharton is part of a store.

The room I had in Reading is now an office.

The last house I lived in I HOPE has caved in, because it's not up to code, was owned by a Derpasaurus Rex, and almost caved on me when I was moving the boxes out. It also flooded like crazy, had wires from the 1930's left over, an ancient furnace and the insulation ~ I kid you not ~ was literally newspaper. Yeah, nothing quite says "ready for winter" like brown, water damaged papers that say "I Like Ike".

My current home is falling apart (see other blog) and is now in danger of becoming a Wal*Mart.

That makes me a little sad.

Someday, the place that I lay my head down and call "home" will be the men's goods section of a retail giant.  My basement will be cemented over. My kitchen and bathroom will be the baby goods and buttwipes department.

And my bedroom, currently pink and cheerful with dozens of wrestling and Sailormoon memorabilia, will be just one section of an aisle, where an obese woman with pock marks and a "mo'billity skooter" will be putt-putt-putting her way to a display. Her glassy eyes all beady with cataracts, will dart over to a display. And with a gasp, she'll lean over, grasp hold of a tenderly wrapped, mas manufactured plastic case, and yell out into the wilderness:

"HONEY BOO BOO!! They got tha candy-corn Oreo's on SALE!! Get Momma the cart!!"

And an obese child, wearing clothes much too adult for her own good, will roll down the aisle where my mom had once set my coffee cup on a little table for me, and she'll say "HOO-WEE MOMMA! An' they got the Disney Princess Leia dollies too! Can I have this one? She's got a dress on that's as sweet as honey, chil'e!" And she'll roll and tumble right past the lane that once had my bookshelf, and adjust her shorts, with the phrase "juicy" bedazzled on the back, and the two will beep on past the men's jeans display, where my TV set is now.

...

♫ Happy Birthday tooo meeeeeeee ~ Happy Birthday toooo meeeeeeeee ~ Happy Birthday dear Korianderrrrrrrrr ~ ... *whimpers, bites lip, cries* ~ Happy birthday to meeeEEEEeeeeee.... ♫

Dear Bruce Tharpe

I would like to preface this by saying that I have been watching the NWA from afar since the week I was born. I've never known a day without the NWA, and I've defended the respect for it's history from many a naysayer.

Not anymore.

While I will always hold a fondness in my heart for what the NWA used to be, and I hold a larger spot for it's wrestlers and for the title (or what it once meant) recent events have caused me to turn my affections elsewhere.

For those of you out of the loop, the NWA was recently restructured, under the guidance of it's new owner, Mr. R. Bruce Tharpe. Much like Vince McMahon Jr. back in 1982, upon letting the ink dry on the spiritual deed to the company, Tharpe began severing ties to many of the promotions and wrestlers who kept this company alive.

Then just a mere two weeks before the last of the 7 Levels Of Hate matches was set to be booked, Tharpe pulled the NWA sanctioning of the cage match, meaning that if Colt Cabana were to win the match, his prize would be essentially a pat on the head. Why? Because the NWA title cannot change hands in an unsanctioned match. The belt had prior been on the line, Tharpe pulled it.

Now Colt did win, but again, his prize is a sense of accomplishment. Nothing more.

Adam Pearce, being a man of honor, said that he felt Colt deserved the belt, and offered it. But Colt declined, based on what the NWA has become. So both men walked out of the cage, leaving the belt behind.

And how does the NWA respond? Via a Facebook post, like a 15 year old girl, of course, complete with the misspelling of the word "endeavors"

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The NWA™ World Heavyweight Title has been vacated. The Board of Governors wish former champion Adam Pearce the best in his future endeavours. There will be a new NWA™ World Heavyweight Champion crowned on Friday, November 2nd in Clayton, New Jersey.

R. Bruce Tharpe, President
National Wrestling Alliance™

So this is my response:

Dear Mr. Tharpe,
       Colt and Adam were your two biggest and brightest stars. While I appreciate and understand why they both chose to walk away from the belt, I hope you understand that the changes you have made to the company Mr. Tharpe, are the reason why they walked.

Adam was your biggest supporter, and the one person who made the loudest noise defending your company. If not for guys like him, the NWA would not be at the level it is right now, and I am very sad to say it is downhill from here. This company has an illustrious past, built off of the blood, sweat and tears of wrestling's finest, and by ruling the final of the Best of 7 an unsanctioned match, your company not only screwed over Colt Cabana, costing him a title he deserves, you screwed the fans out of their money. And it's obvious that you do not care about it.

And in not caring about anything other than your outdated and selfish demands, you are costing the NWA it's very existence. The NWA itself was hanging on by the thread from the heart strings of your biggest supporter, Adam Pearce. And now that this last thread of destiny has been severed by your own greed, this company, the one I have loved since I was fresh from the womb, has no future to speak of.

Sincerest in disappointment,
Ms. Koriander Ake

UPDATE: This is Adam's well said response to the NWA:

How Colt Cabana inspired me to be brave

I hope this story will inspire you the way I was. We all need a reminder that not everything in life needs a limit, and if you really want to make a change, you have to take chances.

It was April, 2009. I was excited. It had been two years ~ almost to the day ~ since I had last seen Colt Cabana, and I had my Fuji Film disposables ready. He had just come back from a tour of WWE's Mental System, and he was about to face one of my childhood favorites, Jerry Lynn.

Now before I left the house, I read my horoscope from Yahoo!. It read something akin to this:

"Don't make waves today, Scorpio. Tow the line and keep your head low."

So off I went to ROH. I was determined to get more than a few good shots, so I pleased and thank you'd my way through the crowd.

Right near the ramp were four guys, three of them really tall. The whole show long, they had no problems with me getting my entrance shots. "Let the little lady through, she wants her pic of Kevin Steen." they didn't really care.

... Until Colt's music hit.

The crowd was deafening and there were streamers everywhere. I tried to make it through the crowd, but was being hurled back by the large men in front, who were now reduced to screaming girls. "COLT CABANAAAAAAAAA!!!!" "OMG OMG COLT!!" Picture a sea of Brodus Clay, suddenly screaming and jumping up and down like girls at a boy band concert.

It didn't look like I would get a good enough shot. And I remembered my horoscope.

"Don't make waves. Tow the line."

And that's when it hit me.

Colt Cabana is in the ring.

Colt.

Colt makes a statement. He does what he feels should be done. He's not ordinary. Colt never tows the line.

... So why should I?

With all the gusto of a Mentos chomper, I did something that I'm not 100% proud of. Something I never did before and have never done since, and I usually advice people against it.

I walked over to the two men that hurled me backwards, took a chair, popped it open, climbed up onto one guy's shoulders, climbed to a second guy's shoulder, and took out my camera.

Now guy number two is moving back and forth, trying to get me off of him. He's threatening to hurl me back a second time. The first guy is amazed at my balance, and the third guy is yelling that a wrestling arena is no place for a "Little Lady".

"HOLD STILL DAMMIT! I want to get a good shot of Colt!"

Colt spots me in the crowd and waves.

That's when the fourth man SLAPS the second. "You stop that this instant!! The Little Lady knows COLT!! You stop that right now and let her take her damn picture. You let her take the picture!! Colt is watching US!!"

I'll tell you what. If I had listened to that horoscope, I never would have gotten such a great photo.

Colt's always reminded me to do my best. And he's always been a great model too!