We wrapped up San Diego yesterday with a visit to the Wild Animal Park. The park was pretty cool, we went on a tour and fed giraffe’s, and they were incredible up close. Nothing like a twelve inch long tongue wrapping around your hand. I had a “run in” with some of the staff at the park which really soured my whole experience on the park. Amazing animals. Horrible front desk manager.
After the park we headed up the Pacific Coast Highway, for about 30 miles. We are staying in Laguna Beach for a couple of nights and it is amazing. Staying at the Inn at Laguna Beach and have an incredible ocean view. Vickie and I had breakfast and coffee on our balcony before the kids woke up.
Heading out to the beach now.
Suckers.
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It occurs to me that I used to think I was pretty nerdy being able to identify comic book writers and artists from sight walking the halls of comic cons. Now… Now I think I’m might be super nerdy because comic book writers and artists can spot me. Matt Fraction is one of my (and Carters) favorite writers; Invincible Iron Man, Casanova, The Immortal Iron Fist… Carter and I were walking the floor on Thursday and Matt spotted us, came over and chatted for a couple of minutes in the Marvel booth. Matt won an Eisner Award for best new series on Saturday night.
Thursday was our 15th Wedding anniversary, so I picked up a copy of Invincible Iron Man #15 at the Con and had Matt Fraction sign it, he drew a little EP + VP heart and wrote Happy Anniversary… What wife wouldn’t love a Signed comic book for her anniversary, right!?!
This year Carter wanted to spend some money on sketches that he could frame and hang in his room. So we walked through artist alley several times checking out the different styles. Carter picked out a couple of guys he like and plunked down some cash. Alex Ruiz was super cool. Carter got a sketch on Friday and he like it so much he went back today and got a second one. The second artist Carter got a sketch from was Neil Winn. Both Neil and Alex do fantastical type creatures and they both did some really cool work for Carter.
One of my big missions was to find Art Baltazar and get a sketch for Claire. Mission Accomplished. Again, Art and his partner Franco could not have been cooler. They do sketches for free, color them in with crayon, and smile and talk to everyone the whole time they are doing it. Oh, and Art and Franco won an Eisner as well for their super awesome book Tiny Titans! Aw Yeah, Titans!
Saturday was all about panels… Our buddy Troy also came down Comic Con this year, and he is a huge Lost fan. So like about 3000 other Lost fans he decided to camp out from midnight Friday in line for the Hall H panel Saturday morning. We got a text at 6:30 Saturday morning saying he held a spot… So Carter and I were able to get amazing seats in Hall H with out the 12 hour wait. Awesome! Thanks Troy.
I will probably do a seperate post about the panels we saw… Too tired now.
Thursday Panels:
Friday Panels:
- Robert Rodriquez: Shorts
- Image: Robert Kirkman
Saturday Panels:
- LOST
- Solomon Kane
- Extract
- 2012
- Zombieland
- Iron Man 2
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Just finished up 3 days in Disneyland. This was Carter’s 5th trip to Disneyland and he is 11. Claire has been 3 times now and she is 7. Crazy numbers. The last couple of times we have gone to Disneyland Vickie and I say we will probably take a break for a while. I’m sure we will say it again, but at the end of this 3 days we all agreed we would like to stay a little longer.
We arrived in Anaheim on Saturday, which is sort of nuts considering we left Seattle on Friday at 3PM. I just started driving, the family all fell asleep, at about 12:30 i decided to get a hotel, we stopped in Weed, Ca. There were no rooms at the inn in Weed, so I just kept driving. The next thing I knew it was 4AM. At that point I was pretty damn tired, so I pulled over at a rest stop. We drove Grandma Dot’s sweet Honda Minivan (thanks Dot) again this year, and before we left I pulled one of the middle row seats out. I grabbed a pillow, curled up on the floor and slept for 3 hours. Up at 7 and back to driving. Awesome.
Alright, its 2 am and I have to up at 7 for breakfast, then some shopping and heading off to San Diego for 5 days of comic con insanity.
Late.
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Carter did this whole video in After Effects by himself. It is his second video with Adobe’s video editing software… Pretty Awesome. Look out Michael Bay.
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Vickie and I got Carter tickets to see Greenday for his 5th grade graduation this year. This was our second rock show in ~2 weeks, the last being Shellac at the Vera Project – Review. This is the second time Carter and I have seen Greenday and they put on this huge arena show. Billy Joe really works the crowd; lots of sing alongs, “Come On Seattle!” and “Are You Ready?” type things… That said, the show was really cool. They played for just over 2hours straight… Billy Joe pulled several fans out of the crowd to sing along and dance, including a kid who was probably 8 years old (Akeva?)… He also pulled a kid up who said he knew how to play Jesus Of Suburbia… The guy put on a guitar and played a flawless 9 minute song… If I were a little more cynical I would suspect he was a plant, but it was cool.
The band played for 45 minutes before hitting anything older than America Idiot. The majority of the songs they played were from the last 2 albums and then picking from their sizeable back catalog of hits. Both Carter and I knew every song they played.
I hardly ever go to Arena type shows and am always amazed at them when I leave… You don’t see a whole lot of Pyrotechnics at the Vera Project or Chop Suey… The Crocodile doesn’t have a 50 foot tall LCD array to play amazing animations behind the bands. The video playing behind the band seemed to be really well thought out and matched each song they played seamlessly. They had a cityscape, video of Banksy style graffiti art, song lyrics, etc. The tickets were $50 each and the place was packed, but with that said you could really see that quite a bit of that money went into the production of the show.
So overall Carter really enjoyed the show, the sound was actually pretty good, and I enjoyed the whole spectacle of the thing.
Carter With Greenday.
Carter With Shellac
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