Dear Mr. Safety,
I am serving my guests some large Sloppy Joes with sides of cole slaw, steak-cut fries, and sliced tomatoes and I was wondering what wine would fit the meal best?
—Martha

It depends on what sort of image you're trying to portray. If you want to be seen as an idiot who serves wine with Sloppy Joes then anything with the name "Gallo" on it should suffice. Also look for wines in boxes.
If you're being avante garde however, then I would probably serve a White Zinfandel, probably Sutter Home from '97, as that is a good all around wine which almost anybody will take well.
Get rid of the cole slaw and go for a fresh green lettuce salad with thinly sliced radishes, cherry tomatoes, yellow peppers and cucumber. Use a light vinaigrette with maybe a touch of basil.

Dear Mr. Frazier,
With all the economic problems are anime and manga still selling well in Japan?
—Wendy

The majority of anime being produced today is for TV, so the industry wasn't hit so bad by this wave as it was by the last when everyone was relying on OVAs to survive. The video market has been shrinking pretty rapidly for a few years now. Merchandise is not selling as well but that hasn't translated directly into budget cuts yet. The industry is overloaded with doing 60 TV shows a week right now anyway. Cutting back to 40 a week would still allow everyone to keep their jobs and the shows would look a lot better because they could spend more time on them.
Popular manga is selling about half of what it did before. We've seen some interesting reversals—Shonen Magazine now outsells Shonen Jump. Some of the smaller companies have given up and others have merged with larger companies. I've heard some horror stories about page rate payments going down and demand for new work dropping radically, but a lot of that might just be typical doom & gloom talk.

Dear Scott,
I always see girls with cat ears and tails on web sites and in anime. Why do they draw them that way? Are they cats or what?
—Kitty

Catgirls are the highest form of anime/manga expression. Once you start drawing them, enlightenment is near and your heart becomes pure and light. Nekomimi (cat ears) are physical representations of the yin and yang and the mind's reaching for something beyond normal human comprehension, and the tail is representative of a lightning rod for spiritual energy and also of the number one which is a reference to the unity of all energy in the universe.

OK, so why are so many of the catgirl web sites pornographic?

The Republic of Indonesia is the world's most expansive archipelago, stretching almost 5000 kilometers from Sabang off the Northern tip of Sumatra, to a little beyond Merauke in south-eastern Irian Jaya. It stretches north and south of the equator total of 1770 km, from the border with Sabah to the small island of Roti off the southern tip of Timor.

Dear Guy Who Tears Fan Art Apart,
How do I submit art to be critiqued in EX? How often do you do those articles where you critique someone's art? What characters and shows will you accept?
—George T.

Ask the editor. I do them whenever I get time to work one up and a lot depends on my schedule. It takes quite a while to do all the graphics and nobody reads my text articles so I have to put lots of graphics in. I'll accept any character from any show or an original character in any medium. (Send your Lilith and non-pornographic catgirl pictures in any time.)

Happy Holidays!