Check out this awesome ad at a bus stop for Spike TV showing the Star Wars movies:
See it unlit here.
Also, speaking of Star Wars, watched Empire last night. Have you ever noticed Yoda's semi-psychotic behavior? Methinks he's been on Dagobah by himself a little too long...
Friend and mondo cool illustrator Ben Templesmith posted this up on his blog:
Made for the He-Man Animated DVD. I'd love to see a He-Man show in this type of style, would definitely be quite a different feel. Anyway, check out the rest of his blog and if you're not already, his very cool Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse series from IDW.
...we made out in the bathroom in LA and we never thought we'd see each other again? And then I saw you at the show the next day? And then it was awkward? And then you Facebooked me yesterday? And then it was awkward again?
Awesome.
(This one's for you Fil)
True story.
After what seems like forever, but has been in reality over a year, I have found and successfully purchased a house!
It's a 1500 sq. ft. 3-bedroom townhouse in Mountlake Terrace (for those of you non-Seattleites, that's about 13 miles north of Seattle) that was built in 2003. It's an end/corner unit, which means I share only one wall with neighbors.
Here's a shot of the outside (front door is on the right about half way back):
I'm quite happy with it, it's in a good location with easy highway access, nice neighborhood with a grocery store in walking distance, etc. No pictures of the interior yet, I'll try to snap a few next time I'm in.
I'm not in a huge rush to move in, which is good - between Emerald City and knowing I'll be gone for 1/3 of April between New York Comic Con & Calgary Expo, it's gonna be rough finding actual "official" moving time.
That's cool with me though, I want get some of the rooms painted before I furnish 'em, so having it empty will make that process much easier. I think overall it should work out pretty nicely. Yay house!
Seriously, I'm never saying I'm not posting again unless I'm on a trip. Sheesh. Anyway, just wanted to share everyone's favorite Easter candy in an ultimate Peep show:
Happy Easter!
I thought I was done posting for the week, but then I saw a news story that I had to share: Man Builds Robot to Kill Him. True story.
Worth1000 did a Photoshop contest featuring mash-ups of famous paintings and superheroes called Superhero ModRen. Some really great paintings, this one being my favorite:
Here is a pie chart of things Rick Astley Would Never Do:
Lastly, check out the cool knittings of Nicole Gastonguay. My favorite:
Have a great weekend, tune in Monday for something cool...
I'm very excited to read that Marvel is doing a collection of my buddy Chris Giarrusso's Mini Marvels strips. Check out the cover:
I moved to San Francisco in May of 2005. In June, I was heading out to visit a comic book store when I bumped in a girl I knew from high school, Meredith.
We caught up as much as we could in the brief time we had on the train, leaving with a promise to keep in touch. I sent her an e-mail, she wrote back, this went back and forth a couple times. It was cool.
She was getting ready to move back to Seattle, but we vowed to catch up in person before she left, to hit a Mariners game or take a bike ride over the bridge. Or both.
When it was time to pull the trigger and get together, the e-mails stopped. No peep. No word. No contact.
Should I have suggested one activity over another, instead of both? Or neither? Did she end up moving sooner, lose internet, lose interest? Was it even about me?
It makes me wonder. The first couple months living down in SF weren't the best for me. Away from friends and family, not liking my digs, in an unfamiliar city, it was great to find a familiar face.
Thanks to that, I think that's why this whole story, that whole experience, pops in to my head occasionally. I'm in a different place now, even just a few years removed, and I don't think the same situation would affect me as much.
But I wonder if, because of where I was at mentally, it felt completely different and personal? Could be, since apparently I've never let it go. One day, maybe I'll figure it out...
(received in my inbox today - seems like a reasonable plan)
If you had purchased $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be
worth $49.00.
With Enron, you would have had $16.50 left of the original $1000.00.
With WorldCom, you would have had less than $5.00 left.
If you had purchased $1000 of Delta Air Lines stock, you would have $49.00
left.
But, if you had purchased $1,000.00 worth of beer/wine one year ago, drank
all the beer/wine, then turned in the cans/bottles for the aluminum and
glass recycling REFUND, you would have had $214.00.
Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to Drink heavily
and recycle.
Let people you care about know... And tell them to Start Now!!!
There's a contest going on to promote Be Kind, Rewind where people are encouraged to swede (film a version of an established movie) and post it for viewing.
Lots of cool entries, this one particularly fun, I'm quite partial to the X-Wing/TIE Fighter fight... enjoy:
For some reason, it seems as though traveling on airplanes dries the hell out of my lips. Is that common or just me? I think the dryness there didn't help either...
Anyway, I'm back from my jaunt to LA. I feel as though the show itself wasn't very good, while I myself had a good time, so all in all, it was kind of a wash.
It's been a couple of years since I've been to Wizard World LA. It started off in Long Beach and I was there for the inaugural show. I liked it the first year, lots of attendees, cool exhibitors/guests, great location (right by a bunch of hotels and restaurants, also near the water) and just a really fun atmosphere.
I didn't go to the show in its second year, but I did go in year three when they moved it to downtown LA (nearby the Staples Center). That's when I feel the show started taking a downturn as there's not a lot to do in that area, not many eateries, only a couple hotels and you pretty much have to cab it to go anywhere cool.
This show was the first I'd been to in a couple years and as fas I can tell, they've reduced the show floor and the attendance was lower that it was that first "downtown" year. Friday & Sunday were quite slow, while Saturday was busy at least in terms of people through the door. The floor was still quiet since most people were there waiting in lines to see the hot celebrities (and I mean hot, Alyssa Milano and Summer Glau).
Like I said show-wise, not so great. I was there working for James Fletcher of Heroic Fine Art. He sells lots of awesome lithographs and canvas giclees. I had a good time working at the booth but sadly I felt that the crowd was mostly non-comics people, so their interest in this stuff was pretty low. While working the booth, lots of comics peeps rolled by, so even when I didn't get a chance to walk the floor, I still had a chance to chat with people.
Both evenings I was there (Thursday didn't count since I got in so late) were spent at the Figueroa Hotel, specifically at the bar (shocking, I know). Though the hotel is a little dumpy, the bar is nice and positioned around a large swimming pool with dim lights, heat lamps and mini tables.
Friday night I spent most of the evening catching up with Filip Sablik, who is on the West Coast now for his Top Cow gig instead of Baltimore, so hopefully that will lead to more chances to see him.
Saturday night was the Wizard party. Invite only, but obviously no real selection criteria was used considering I got an invite. Each invite came with a drink coupon, which was greatly appreciated, and there always seemed to be extra drink coupons to be had. It was fun, lots of pros and chatting, called it a night around 1am.
I left the show on Sunday about an hour before close to make my flight. Thanks to booking so last minute, I wasn't able to get a direct flight so both on the way down (Oakland) and on the way back (Las Vegas), I had a stop. No delay down, but delays both out of LAX and Vegas made me not even touch ground back in Seattle until 1am early Monday morning.
That's really about it, nothing too exciting. One quick note though - I forget that people all over the country don't automatically know that Seattle is called the Emerald City, so I found myself a couple times explaining why the show is called what it's called and how it has nothing to do with munchkins. THAT would be a much different show...
Okay, I'm off to LA for the weekend and I'll be back on Monday.
I leave you with a political message, nothing to do with the big presidential race but it's a guy from Oregon named Steve Novick who is running for the U.S. Senate. I don't want to spoil the surprise, just watch it, it's quite short:
If you've been thinking about becoming a competitive Tetris player, you might want to check this video out first. It's insanity. Wait until the 3:00 minute mark, then it gets crazier (even the end credits playing is nuts). Link stolen for JLa. Enjoy:
Indiana Jones Chibi's from Japan? Soon to be mine.
In other news, you know what movie rocks? Of course you do: Star Trek II.
KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!
'nuff said.
In other news, I'm off to LA this Thursday to help out my buddy James at his booth for Wizard World LA. Should be fun.
More before I go...
Starting to make the rounds, but check out the final Iron Man poster:
Is it just me, or does everything about this movie point to awesomeness?
Ever since I got back from San Francisco, I've been quite busy, but surprisingly not with work.
You have to understand, one of the reasons I haven't posted much over the last couple months is I've just been working. So posts of "I sent a lot of e-mail today" aren't really compelling reading. Though really, I'm not fooling myself in to thinking my blog is compelling reading even when I'm not busy, so whatever.
Anyway, so this week I only really spent Tuesday & Thursday working on Emerald City and Sofos, I've had a lot of out days this week - let me explain.
After San Francisco, a couple of the guys from DC (Bob Schreck and Fletcher Chu-Fong) made their way to Portland and on Wednesday came up to Seattle for the day. They were joined by a couple other friends and I spent the day doing the tour guide thing, taking 'em to the Space Needle, Pike Place, etc.
Friday morning I get a call from Anthony Scales. He's in Tacoma for a work thing and has to check out at noon, he asked if I could come grab him and then Kelly would pick him up later in the day. I took the opportunity to head down to the shops in Tacoma and drop off tickets, plus we had grub at Famous Dave's BBQ (that was some good chicken!) and then ended up coming back to watch Semi-Pro (Love Me Sexy!). After that, I dropped him off at the shop with George and headed over to a quick movie night thing where we watched Turok (bloody for an animation but not very good) and then I got sleepy and went home, was in bed by 11.
Which is good, because on Saturday I got up at 5:45 to head down and meet with the Jasons to get Mariners tickets. It was fun, we hung out at Safeco, ended up getting Krispy Kreme, free Auntie Anne's pretzels and ultimately Mariners tickets for opening day (and two other games). Plus, both 2.0 and I picked up jerseys at the team store which was having a great sale that weekend only. After I dropped them off, I went to a few of the Seattle-area stores and got tickets and such to them too.
Sunday I met with Tom in the morning and went to the Steve Miner show to drop off some fliers, talk with Brian & James, then head out to find Curt Kobain's bench (Tom has a recap / explanation) and that is that.
In other news, I found out yesterday that I'm going to Wizard LA, so I will now be gone the following weekend, plus today I have to take George to the airport for his flight to Greece. With him out, that means I'm taking over all his shifts at the shops, which I'm looking forward to on one hand since I always have fun whenever I work. On the other hand, I also know that this will just add to my already seemingly never-ending work load, but whatever, it's only three weeks and I hope he has a rockin' time.
So there you go, more news (and by news I mean some odd YouTube video) when I have it...
My trip to San Francisco was excellent. To start with, I did a lot of great business at GDC with the launch of my company, Sofos Media, so I'm pretty thrilled about that. That continued well in to the weekend with a lot of great stuff happening during WonderCon in regards to Sofos, so overall, I'm quite pleased.
We've completely sold out of booths at Emerald City, so I wasn't really able to do anything for the 2008 show, but I've gotta say that even though I can't announce it yet, I've already gotten over a dozen guests lined up for the 2009 show (dates: April 4th & 5th, mark your calendar!). Overall WonderCon was a lot fun, high energy and as usual I talked pretty non-stop and enjoyed myself immensely like I always do at shows.
It was cool to re-connect with a lot of the Image crew that I hadn't seen much of since I left the bay area. I went to dinner with the crew from Elephantmen on Friday with pals Moritat and Richard Starkings, plus I finally got to meet the JG Roshell and we all talked shop for a while, so good night on Friday. Plus, as I mentioned, I stayed at Joe's and we got to catch up on life, the universe and everything, so it was definitely all good.
Saturday night I grabbed dinner with Kandrix & Laurie, then went over to the CBLDF bash featuring tons of artists sketching for charity, drinks and (at a certain point) obnoxious 80's music, but overall quite fun. Here's a few shots of the evening:
Chris Giarrusso & Erik Larsen
Glen Brunswick & Gerry Duggan
Mark Brooks & JJ Kirby
Terry Moore
Sunday night Jann Jones invited me out to dinner with a small group to hit Marakesh downtown for Morroccan food. There was belly dancing, making a fool of ourselves, drinking and merriment, I couldn't ask for a better way to end the evening. Here's a group shot of us at Marakesh:
(from l to r): Dan DiDio, Ellaine, Hiroshi, Kang, Sarah(?), Bill Willingham, Jann and myself
That pretty much sums up my trip to SF, totally tiring but tons of fun. Sweet.
