How I Spent My Summer Vacation: SDCC '08 Pt. 2

Check out my Flickr for photos from SDCC.

Attending San Diego Comic-Con requires an awful lot of energy, and especially more so if you go out after each day’s events inside the convention. By Friday morning of the con, my level of energy was pretty low. In fact, a little lower than I would have liked considering I had just come from spending a few days in New York. But, hey, it’s Comic-Con; you gotta suck it up for Comic-Con, right?

Although there wasn’t really any official Caballero meet-ups with the members of the former Brian K. Vaughan forum (now part of the current Tony Harris forum), I did get to hang out with a number of them here and there throughout the course of the weekend.

On preview night, I had dinner with Carrie and Stephanie and their friends, where Carrie her Ghost Whisperer-comic writing partner, Becky, and I geeked out on Indiana Jones and Star Wars.

Thursday night, I hung out with some friends from San Francisco that I hadn’t seen in quite a while, including my friend David Brothers, who was part of the comics-blogging panel at the end of the day, as well as the Japan-bound Mindy Owens. David may have complained about the lasagna having a little too much meat for him, but I think I was hungry enough, that there was probably too little for me. Anyway, twas a good meal.

Also got to hang out with Mike (Lagomorph), and Nick from the board on Friday night for dinner, before parting ways: they went to the Oni Press party, whereas I went back to the convention center for the tail end of the Eisners, before calling it quits for the night.

On Thursday I had a quick lunch with Capntightpants (David, I swear, I don’t know what it is, I just happened to know a swell of Davids) and his girlfriend. And then I also met up with them for the Joss Whedon panel on Friday. It was a packed panel, one in which I barely made it into, and right on time. Joss actually brought out his family that he worked with to create Dr. Horrible, as well as the cast of Dr. Horrible. The panel was awesome to say the least.

In fact, had I made it into the Watchmen panel, I definitely would not have made it into Whedon’s panel. To which, I was so fuckin close to getting into the Watchmen panel before being turned away because Hall H had reached capacity. And despite not making it into the panel, I had found a fellow complainer in Whitney Matheson when she told me that she didn’t get into the Watchmen panel either while we waited for the Entertainment Weekly: Filmmakers panel later in the day. Although we shared that in common, the fact that she still got to meet Zack Snyder, and I didn’t… well, one of the perks of being a member of the press.

To start things on Saturday morning, I went to the Black Panel, and there I found out about Method Man’s graphic novel, which I still gotta check out. Someone was dressed as Captain America at the panel, and I wish had gotten a photo of him, too. But I did take a picture of this person as bumblebee. Absolutely awesome! I missed out on getting into the writers of The Office panel, but I did make it into the Grant Morrison and Gerard Way panel, which was… well, do you need to know anything else other than Grant fuckin Morrison? And my favorite quote from the panel came from Gerard: "I don’t know what a Grammy means anymore, but I know what a Eisner means." Gerard and Gabriel Ba, of course having just won the Eisner for Best Limited Series the night before.

I ditched the last few hours of the con on Saturday to go to the Whitney Matheson / PopCandy meet-up at the Marriot’s roof-top Altitude bar, and for those PopCandy readers that rsvp’d for the meet-up were given Whitney’s Twitter-mini-comic. Online version found here!

I don’t leave any comments, and mostly ghost through the comments on Whitney’s blog, and didn’t rsvp for the meet-up, but being the kind and super-cool person she is, Whitney handed me the Twitter-mini-comic to me anyway.

After the meet-up, I grabbed a quick dinner by myself before crashing in my bed in my hotel. That is until I woke up around 11:30, and on the verge of stir crazy. Luckily, Lagomorph (who was still recovering from the previous night) was also getting a little stir crazy, and we met-up at Lime, and hung out for a few hours.

Sunday morning, I went to the Jack Kirby panel, and the last DC Comics panel of the weekend. It was actually the first DC panel I had gone to all weekend. It was a good one to go to since at the end of the panel, DC announced that Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert are gonna be doing a little Batman story early next year. After that panel, I spent the final day of the con roaming around the exhibit hall. Where I got a cute little sketch of Nightwing from Art Balthazar. I still have to scan it, though.


At the airport, a few San Francisco friends had their flight delayed, including my friend Aaron Farmer. I showed him my Noir Sketchbook, and since his flight delayed, he did me this sketch of a noir Starscream. Epic.

There’s a bunch of other things I did while in San Diego that I’m sure I didn’t even get to in these recaps that I’m just remembering now, like the Ed Brubaker panel, or Geoff Johns panel, the Boom Studios Drink Up / Gay Pride Party. Like that Starscream sketch, the whole con was just absolutely epic!

How I Spent My Summer Vacation: SDCC '08

Well, this month has been a blur. I went and visited New York for the first time a few weeks ago (which I’ll elaborate more on in a later post), and had just gotten back from San Diego for Comic-Con. In general, the San Diego convention really does seem to get bigger with each and every passing year. Says the guy who has now attended SDCC a grand total of two times.

Preview night seemed to have gotten bigger from what I remember. I wish I had gotten to swanky booth# 2207; otherwise known as Darwyn Cooke, Cameron Stewart, and David Bullock’s booth, as they had a few giveaways, including some postcards and such to promote Darwyn’s new work at IDW, and David was giving away limited prints of the first issue cover of the Sentry mini series that he’ll be doing covers for at Marvel. In fact, I didn’t even get a chance to say hey to David all weekend until the last hour or so of the convention on Sunday, the whole weekend was just that crazy. However, I was able to get to write in one of the three notebooks that were available to everyone to write their thoughts and feelings to and about Michael Turner. As most of you that are reading this may or may not already know, one of my best friends, Justin, had suffered from Osteosarcoma, and I actually shared this bit of information with someone from the Aspen booth when he approached me while me and some other folks were writing in the notebooks. It wasn’t til near the end of our little conversation that I realized that I was talking to Vince Hernandez, Aspen’s editor in chief. I thought putting those notebooks out for everyone to write in was a lovely idea, and as the rest of the con played out the rest of the weekend, I smiled each time I passed by the Aspen booth and saw more people writing in the notebooks.

Also, I got to bug and pester Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie for the better part of the weekend at their section of the Image booth. To which, I got Phonogram and Suburban Glamour t-shirts they had for sale, a postcard each promoting Kieron’s Busted Wonder web-comic, and the upcoming second series of Phonogram, as well as getting Jamie to add to the noir sketchbook on Saturday.

But before Jamie did his Astrid sketch, I got a noir sketch from Amanda Connor of The Pro. Although getting a sketch from her took a longer considering the amount of people she had to get through before even getting to mine. But it came out great. Then after Jamie’s sketch, I handed the sketchbook to fellow Caballero, Stephanie, also of Conjoined Comics. She sketched me Emogician, a creation of her and other Caballero, Carrie’s mini-comic creation.

Then on the con’s last day, I got a quick sketch of Ampersand by Pia Guerra while at the DC booth. Of course, I just had to congratulate her on the pair of Eisners she won two days earlier. One for winning Best Penciller/Inker or Penciller and Inker team with Jose Marzan Jr., as well as for Y: The Last Man winning Best Continuing Series. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it to the beginning of the Eisners, and didn’t see those two categories announced, but Pia did tell me she had a good time celebrating the win after the ceremony, and that although she and Brian (or BKV to some of you) hadn’t yet actually talked to each other about the win, they played phone tag with each other’s voicemail.

Well, I think that’s where I’ll leave things for now, because as I said earlier, this convention was just too big to try to worm my recap of it only into a single post. Come back tomorrow, and I’ll have more good times to share, which of course, will include photos, too.

Currently (w/May and June's Pictures of the Month)

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I don’t think I will ever be ceased to be amazed by is the concept of time, especially with how fast time passes once you’re an adult. However, there are instances when life slows down to a snail’s pace.

And if you follow me on twitter, then you’d probably know that for the last week or two, I have been a wreck. My maternal grandmother passed away on June 20th, and this has been really hard on my family and I. However, the cloak of auto pilot status is slowly but surely wearing off.

One of my aunts set up this online obituary and guest book at legacy dot com. I just wrote my guest book entry today, and posted it there. So please, give it a look–see. It usually takes a while for their moderators to, well, moderate the content. So if you go there now, and see that it's not quite posted there yet, give it an hour or so. In about a month or so, I'll probably archive it here on the 'ol blog.

The general rule for my pictures of the month thing is that the pictures chosen for each month’s distinction have to be taken within that given month. But since I’ve been horrible with keeping on schedule with this whole thing, I’ll bend the rules that much more for May and June’s pictures of the month.


May's picture. I forgot what age and what year. I'll look it up soon to see for sure, but I'm pretty sure this was during Christmas one year.

June's picture. February of last year. Nanai with my brother's (current) youngest, Ava. Pat and Bella are expecting another on August 13th. Which just happens to be my birthday, too.

Also, another thing I don’t think I’ll never be ceased to be amazed by are people themselves. To reiterate this post, people are the most fascinating creatures on the planet.

The love and support I’ve gotten from family and friends the last couple weeks have all been appreciated to no end. I’ve expressed that all before, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to do so again.

Today’s the first day of July, which means my trips to New York and San Diego are just around the corner, and I can’t wait.

Life is Crazy

Can’t believe how infrequently I’ve updated this thing this year. Well, actually that’s because I’m just not on the grid as much as I’d like to, but go figure.

The year is practically halfway done. It’s crazy how fast time moves when you’re an adult. Maybe it’s just something that I think about a little too much, but I just don’t think I’ll stop being surprised by the quickness of time. Oh well.

In another news, I just can’t wait for these New York and San Diego trips next month. I still gotta plan what exactly me, Joseph, and Alisha, and hopefully Dang (provided he’s able to make the trip) are gonna be doing during our trip to New York. I mean there are some people that I wanna meet-up with, but our days are yet to get actually detailed.

So far, Joe, Alisha, and I are going to see Ave. Q, on the 17th, and Joe and I are gonna meet up with Dave and head over to the Bronx to see the A’s and the Yankees play on the 18th. But that’s about it so far. Other than of course the fact that I’ve vowed to be inebriated for at least no less than 50% of our trip. And no, I’m not even sure if I’m joking whenever I've express that.

Then after New York, it’s a pit-stop back to San Jose before getting back on a plane to San Diego for Comic-Con. I’ve only gone to SDCC once back in ’05, and spread myself too thin during the day, that there was little to no energy for the evening. I had gone to conventions before then, but yet had no idea how much bigger a scale SDCC operates. The conventions that I’ve attended since (and by the by, the only other cons I’ve been to have been WonderCon and Super-Con), I’ve learned to pace myself better, and maximize the fun at the particular panel, presentation, or time on the exhibitor floor that I choose to spend my time at. At cons, there’s always one or two somethings that you’re gonna miss out on. It sucks, but we can’t all vibrate through walls and can’t get from Point A to Point B as quickly as The Flash.

Also, I just found out this afternoon that Tim Russert had passed away earlier today. Tim's passing reminds me of when Peter Jennings passed away three years ago, and like Peter, Tim was a great journalist. And it is indeed a sad day for journalism. Rest peacefully, Tim.

March and April Pictures of the Month

Yeah, I'm late with posting these two up. Really late.

I got the Hal Jordan mini action figure from the dvd package from Besy Buy and the flyer there is from the Justice League: New Frontier afterparty hosted by Isotope and iFanboy.

This is from an Oakland A's-Kansas City Royals game at McAfee Coliseum from April 18th. The team had a promo of half off the price for the Luxury Suites for the month of April. If you can't tell, my chucks are pretty wrecked by now, and I'm in need of a new pair.

This weekend I spent most of my time at Super-Con. I'll be sure to do a wrap-up in a day or two. It's just that right now, I'm pretty damn tired. But just know that I got two great sketches: one from Darrick Robertson of Spider Jerusalem and another from David Bullock of Raven. The Noir Sketchbook is a growin!

Barack Obama in 30 Seconds

In this world, any and everything is possible. So is it so wrong to hope? Is it so wrong to aspire, and want something more out of ourselves? There is always the possibility of failure, but without hope, how can anyone expect to succeed?

Change can only become a reality if one recognizes it as a necessity. To implement change, it requires support. The more support given, the better the chance for change.

There’re much more smarter people in this world than I to discuss to politics with. But be that as it may, I like to keep positive in all the things that I say, do, and all the things that I am as a person. Is it so wrong to believe in Barack Obama and how much good that his presidency could mean for America?

There are a number of reasons why I wanted to submit an entry into this Obama in 30 Seconds contest. I collaborated on this project with my friend Jason, and for me, some rewards have already born fruit.

Also, Jason and I will be the first to admit that the quality of the video is a little, um, not great. With so many problems we had with scheduling the shoot, editing, and so on, I’m grateful we actually finished. Hopefully, you guys like it.

Voting just started today, and when you go to watch the videos, you’re given random batches of videos, so no ballot stuffing through those means. Another way to get into the second round is have your video have one of the top five most “unique views” (the contest organizers’ words, not mine). So the more you spread the video around, the better the chance mine and Jason’s video can make it in the contest.

Until today, I’ve been off the grid for a couple days, and I’ve already seen a few videos, some of which pretty good.

Watch mine and Jason's video, here:


Vote for it here:
http://obamain30seconds.org/vote/?v=view-2124-YmBHsz

And take a look at the rest of the field here:
http://www.obamain30seconds.org/

Youth is 100% Baseball

Well, yesterday I went to an Oakland Athletics' home opener for the fifth straight year. The A's lost, but they've lost 4 of the 5 times I've gone to these five straight home openers. So no real biggie.

Although, I must admit the A's already had their home opener back in Japan last week. But I won't tell anyone if you won't. Going to opening day is a bit of a tradition for me. To make things short, I've gone to opening day to sort of honor a couple friends that passed away in 2004. Here's a little more background on that. They were friends that loved and enjoyed baseball so much.

I know that at best, the A's have an outside shot of winning the AL West, but I have a feeling they will have surprised people by the end of the season. I also realize the season just started, and everyone has a good feeling about the new season, but I -honest to goodness- really do have a good feeling about the A's 2008 campaign. Maybe not win the AL West, but I believe they can and will turn some heads. After all, this is the Green and Gold we're talking about.

This is what transpired right as the A's DH Jack Cust came up to the plate from the on-deck circle in the second inning:

My friend Mark jokingly shouts: "Cust, you're forgiven for takin roids." (referring to the Mitchell Report)

Me: "As long as you hit a home run."

Cust hit a home run on the first pitch. We laughed our asses off as soon as that happened. And then I noticed on the big screen along side the replay, that everyone in our section, #224, gets a free personal pan pizza because of the home run. But when the vouchers were handed to our rows a couple innings later, we only got two vouchers (there were four of us). But like I said earlier about the A's not winning the game, this was also a no biggie.