| Brace yourself... for FUN. |
[Jul. 28th, 2004|05:28 am] |
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| | Holy Jeez do I need sleep. | ] |
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| | Self - Dog You Are | ] |
This past week has been essentially a hug from Jesus Christ. It's been about that good.
Why? Comic-Con, and all the people it brought.
Fortunately for me, my wonderful memories of this week will be supplemented by about 140 pictures I took, several of which I have organized into an OFFICIAL REPORT.
For my own convenience, I'm LJ-cutting it all into sections.
First off, however, a bigassed PHOTO DIRECTORY DUMP. If you just wanna look at the colors, check that out. I took sort of a "shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out" approach to my photography, only with me after the con acting as God.
Needless to say, not all photographs are quality, but hey, at least they're in chronological order. That's gotta count for something.
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My travel-pals (Brendan, Will, Maria and Monica) arrived at Erin's house after midnight, haulin' a load of smiles and a box of Honor.
("Honor" being the title of the indie-printed mini-comic that our li'l travellin' crew put together to give away at the con. I didn't have to do any work on the actual print process, mwa-ha-ha.)
Here's (left to right) Maria, Monica, Will and Brendan hangin' on the memorial statue of local giant Robert Wadlow-- BIGGEST MAN EVER.
The motto of Alton, Illinois: "There's lots of ghosts, and there was this one holy-shit big guy. Also, Stephen has access to a Segway."
Fun fact-- During our layover in L.A. we saw two cops glide by on Segways-- you can probably imagine how intimidating that was.
(Very.)
Well, after 2 some-odd days sleepin' on the sleeper-train, a stop in Albuquerque and a wholesome shitpile of bonding, we arrived in San Diego.
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So we're at the hotel, right? And we're admiring the gorgeous view from our balcony.
Out of nowhere, from the balcony below and to the right erupts Bill Mudron.
Shirtless.
Needless to say, it was pretty much the hottest thing ever.
Picture that, only brimming with man-sex.
Well, I galloped downstairs and made knocks on the door for hugs. I met the whole gosh-darn Pants Press crew and walked down to Preview Night. Holy jeez, these are some of the nicest people you'd ever care to meet.
Here's a picture of their asses.
Left to right-- Bill, Jen, Clio (mostly hidden by Jen's head), Erika, Dylan and Vera.
BILL - Bill is just friendly as hell.
JEN - Jen is completely adorable. Honestly. You can't debate me on this.
CLIO - Clio is a surly drunk, and gets mad when you call her surly. She is also way great.
ERIKA - Erika gave me shit for two solid days, and then stopped. You cannot dislike Erika, it's impossible.
DYLAN - Dylan is smarter than I will ever be and she doesn't even gloat about it. Or maybe she does, and uses words I am incapable of understanding.
VERA - Vera is a total sweetheart, and I have no idea why everyone is scared of her.
We split off once we got there-- the Pants Press folk got to go in special important lines, whereas I had to whine along for about 45 minutes in the common-man's line to get my badge.
There is no photographic way to capture the ridiculous length of this line. Pretend that you are counting the grains of sand on a beach, and that each grain of sand is a nerd. That'd be pretty accurate.
So, finally, badge lariatted around my humble neck, I entered Preview Night. It was pretty neat. I got to see all kindsa people!
Possibly the most horrifying picture ever taken of Anne Moloney: Texas President.
Yeah, she never really stopped making that face.
Steve! This is Steve. Steve is like this big ball of hilarious disgusting energy. He's got this ridge-thing on the top of his head, you should check it out. He is awesome enough that I would probably marry him if I wasn't horrified by how Canadian he is.
That's Drew, Anne's buddy there on the lef-- hey! She's still doing it! She's still doing the face! The tongue is always out! HOLY JEEZ!
Dinner, Dinner, Dinner. Food court for dinner.
After dinner, we all went shopping and bought fruit and water and other things I wouldn't regularly buy, but enjoy nevertheless. We sort of borrowed the shopping cart full of our food, which I pushed back to the hotel.
Ev'rbody kickin' it back at the hotel. All relaxed and such.
EXCEPT VERA WHO WAS NOT RELAXED AT ALL, SHE WAS HARDCORE INTENSE.
Here's a li'l video in which I am nailed with a grape off-camera, and Anne makes a face.
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Walked on over to the con with Vera and Dylan, stopping on the way to sate their overwhelming caffiene addictions.
Upon arrival, the Flight booth was promptly set up. That's Clio up there, looking very sad.
Hung around with Anne and Drew for a while, meandering around. Anne moved like a hummingbird, and Drew moved like a man that's sort of sad because he knows he'll be following a hummingbird around for a few days.
Finally, Flight came in! I had to borrow money from the way-awesome Jason to get it that day, and it was worth it. That there's a pretty comic.
Click here to download the movie of the opening of the first box. I hope this gets around to all the Flight people that want it.
Scott McCloud bought the first copy. With money.
A big ol' group of people wound up at the food court that evening for dinner. We made sort of a horseshoe-shape out of the tables to fit as many people as possible.
I'm pretty sure the group ended up consisting of Dumbrella, Pants Press, and Modern Tales.
Being the unimportant bitch that I am, I was sent upstairs to take the great big group-shot. If you really want to, you can imagine me in my seat, between Emotion Eric and Kazu Kibuishi. But only if you really want to.
(Clio is frightened by the light.)
Oh, and I took a little video, too. Mostly of Jen eating noodles.
I'm sorry the video is dark. I'm not perfect.
Spent a few hours eating and talking in the food court, before tagging along back to one of several Dumbrella hotel rooms. The Dumbrella gents are nice as hell, and they were very kind to let me kick it on their floor for a few hours.
The main event of the evening was Steve Wolfhard vs. RStevens in a "concept off." This pretty much entailed the two of them trying to one-up each other by drawing weird little ideas in a notebook. Things like "the cloud that worked at Starbucks."
There was no declared winner-- the real winners were the children.
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Rocked on over to the con with Brendan and crew using modern bus technology.
Went with a small group to see the preview for The Incredibles-- the new movie Pixar's a-workin' on. It was HI-LARIOUS. I was polite enough to not film the clip, although it was WAY TEMPTING.
Then, after that panel was done, Neil Gaiman came out and talked for a long time. He was undeniably charming, but I can only listen for so long about a project I'm not enthused about. I ditched early to return to the con floor.
Erika (dressed as Tank Girl) and I moseyed our way around the con. She'd been around a bit by this point, but I had still yet to do any hardcore explorin'. So, yeah, fun!
I sort of look like I'm straining to make a bowel movement there.
Walking around with Erika, there were loooots of leering, creepy nerds. Guys that did the whole "slow look up and down" thing with their mouths hanging open.
Dammit, I am not a piece of meat.
I just feel bad that Erika had to deal with all those people oogling me.
So, okay there was this lady in a bikini in a box that rubbed herself with a tentacle all day. That is so many shades of horrifying, it had to be countered by an image of RIGHTEOUS CIGAR-SMOKIN' FEMINAWESOME.
(This is the best picture in the world.)
I got scared.
So apparently I'm like a foot taller than Hawkman.
Clio is entranced by that nipple. She just loves it.
Later, Matt Groening (creator of everything good) popped by the Flight table. INITIATE PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE.
SEE?
Then, later:
Dinner.
And I ripped Anne's face off.
After ripping her face off, we all trekked back to her hotel, for massive and intense hangouts. We were later met by sweaty and exhausted versions of Erika and Steve.
Erika had armpit-stained her shirt so magnificently, I loaned her my button-up shirt.
Erika is a small lady.
Derek Kirk Kim won a much-deserved Eisner (like the Oscars of comics) that evening, and was enveloped in women's underwear after the ceremony.
Derek is an insanely nice fellow.
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Walked over to the con with Steve, Vera and Dylan stopping for a classy breakfast involving smoothies. Steve, Canadian as he is, put catsup on his damn eggs. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "that's ridiculous."
You are correct. It is.
Vera had to go back to the hotel and get more "Girly Books" to sell, so we rode the bus back, loaded up and returned. Good story, eh? One to tell the kids.
Finally back at the con, I gathered a group and viewed the hell out of the third installment of SockBaby. If you don't know what that is, go to the site and watch the movies. If you are a good person, you will enjoy 'em.
The third installment? HI-LARIOUS.
See, if you knew who those people were, you'd be terribly jealous of me.
Later, I was outside chatting with Erika and Jen when this huge, insane march of Storm Troopers came filing down the back stairs of the convention hall. And they just kept coming. Turns out it was some photo-event. So, naturally, I grabbed a photo or two.
I mean, it was a photo-event.
This picture is titled "What the hell is Darth Maul doing here?" Because it totally looks like he's in trouble.
See, this is why this place was so rad. Hitler getting his ass beat by a boomerang and some model airplanes.
And later, while hanging out with Dylan and Jen...
TOM FREAKING KENNEY. (THE VOICE OF SPONGEBOB. AND EVERYTHING ELSE.)
Dude was just walkin' along. I tried to vibrate as little as possible as I told him I really liked his work, shook his hand and--
GOT A PICTURE.
My heart raced for something like 15 minutes. I vibrated all over the place.
And I saw this guy, too! I forget his name, but he's hilarious.
That night, I managed to get into the bigass 80-90 person celebratory fancypants dinner. It was extremely nice!
Here's a little video of everybody bumming around outside, waiting to be seated.
And another little video taken once we were all seated. This, this is your opportunity to absorb some of the dining ambiance, right from your home or office!
I sat across from John Allison, who is a perfectly delightful fellow. I took a little video of him drawing The World's Best Monkey.
Later, Vera drew horrible things happening to the monkey, because she is a horrible lady.
I have another, huge video where my camera was passed around the restaurant for everyone to say "hello" into. It didn't work out so perfectly, and the camera spent about 2 minutes held upside-down. It's neat, but too big to post. If you want it, lemme know!
After we left the restaurant, a huge group of us hauled ass across San Diego, on the hunt for a "Furry Mixer" thing in a hotel.
Unfortunately (fortunately?) there was no ball to be found. Much walking around was done, and I ended up going to the Dumbrella prom, which was apparently a party populated by the Dumbrella forum members. I overheard some guy on the balcony explaining it--
"These people-- they are the internet. They... how do I describe this? They introduce themselves by their screen names."
"Oh my God."
"Yeah."
Many of them seemed like right jolly good awesome folk, but there were just a couple "holy shit creepy" people.
Note Erika's facial expression.
Yeah, this seating arrangement didn't last long before that guy tried to schwerve on them.
I only had enough battery for one more picture, so I said "Do something final-picture-worthy."
And... I guess that there'd be it.
The next morning I left early, and said a few sad, groggy g'byes to Jen, Vera and Dylan before hittin' my plane. I was sleepy and emo as hell all day.
An' that's it! If you actually read all that, I am very impressed with you. If you skipped something-- anything-- you hurt my feelings. |
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| Comments: |
The funny guy whose name you cannot remember is Brian Posehn.
Thanks! I love 'im on Mission Hill and Mr. Show, but damn if I can remember the man's name.
so sorry I didn't get to finish inking your sketch, man. maybe you could mail it to me or something so I can put the final couple strokes on it.
Anyway. Man. Convention. Awesomeness. Damn. Good. Times.
Hey, what I got was gorgeous, no need to be sorry!
Damn good times indeed.
Reality TV is right: Other people's lives are just better. Thanks for sharing, Steph, your still my hero. Huggles all round!
More please. Uber jealous Stephen. But it looks like the time was very well spent. Thanks for the update and the picturey goodness!
Wow. That is the mother of all Con reports.
Good show, old chap, good show.
looks like everyone had fun, maybe I'll have to leave the sunny state of washington for the overly hot state of california for a con sometime. Great report.
Wow. if only I had super cool comic friends! Awesome report.
linking in from Scott McCloud's blog... Excellent Con Report! (I read the whole thing...) :)
--sam | |
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