all packed for Comic-Con

So the plan is to get up at 5am tomorrow, take a shower and grab a quick breakfast, then head out for the airport at 6am. If all goes well, I’ll be in San Diego just past noon Pacific time.

I got my laundry all done, and I’m all packed and ready to go. I haven’t been on an airplane since 2008, so I’m a little anxious about things. I shouldn’t really have any trouble tomorrow, but I’m worried that something might go wrong or I might forget something.
I’m trying to relax now, and catch up on a bit of SDCC-related news. Unfortunately, the big news item right now is the death of a Twilight fan who was camped out waiting for Thursday’s Twilight panel. She tried crossing Harbor Drive (against the light apparently) and was hit by a car. As sad as that is, I’m still very excited about getting out of NJ and enjoying a few days in San Diego, surrounded by like-minded nerds. The local paper has a good landing page for con news up now.

And I actually managed to leave work today at 6pm, with a fairly clean plate. I cleaned up my email inbox, so I’m done to just 9 messages in there, none of which require any immediate action. Pretty much all my projects are in a “waiting on somebody else” state.  I’m almost afraid to say it, since I don’t want to jinx it, but I may not have to worry (much) about work while I’m away!

peak geek

I’m killing some time this morning reading con-related stuff on the internet. Just stumbled across an article in the local San Diego paper titled “Has Comic-Con reached ‘peak geek?’“. Interesting question. The article talks about how TV is taking a bigger role at the con, as opposed to movies. I’m not much concerned about that either way. I’m honestly not seeing too much this year on either side that I’m interested enough in to actually wait in line for Hall H or Ballroom 20 or wherever else they might be having the ginormous panels. I’d maybe go to the Fringe panel if I could get in without too much hassle. I’m mostly interested in stuff that’s a bit more fringe (with a lower-case f). Like maybe the Gilbert Shelton panel!

45th birthday

Yesterday was my 45th birthday. It was a pretty low-key birthday. I strayed from my diet and had a couple of slices of pizza for dinner, and I allowed myself a buttered roll in the morning, but I didn’t go overboard with anything. I had the idea today to look back on what I might have been doing on and around my birthday, since I started this blog. So here’s a pretty random list of stuff, assembled by looking back at my Blogger archives.

2003

  • I went to Comic-Con that year. (I was making reservations in March. I’m going again this year, after skipping it for a few years.)
  • I was reading Sinfest, which I haven’t been following lately, but is apparently still around (and still funny).

2004

  • I was reading “His Dark Materials“, and listening to Rum Diary.
  • I had just gotten the 90,000 mile service done on my 97 Civic. (I got my 2008 Accord inspected yesterday. It’s got about 45k miles on it.)

2005

  • Windows XP was giving me grief.
  • I was listening to Warren Ellis’ “Superburst Mixtape” podcast. (That’s long gone. He has a new one named SPEKTRMODULE now, which I’ve been listening to recently, and is quite good.)

2006

  • I was watching Samurai Champloo on Cartoon Network. (I have it on Blu-Ray now, but I haven’t gotten around to re-watching it.)

2007

2008

  • I got my first Kindle. I’ve since traded that in for a new one, but I still haven’t read some of the books I loaded onto that first one (and later transferred to the second).

And that’s about where I feel like I should end this. I’m feeling weirder than usual about my birthday this year, for various reasons. But I can’t complain. I’ve been able to spend time with several really good friends over the last couple of weeks, and I think I’ll likely enjoy this coming weekend too, so that’s all I can really ask for.

digital comics

I just spend $38 on $76 worth of digital comics from Dark Horse.  I had a 50% off coupon, good even on stuff that was already on sale. I now have nearly all the Hellboy and BPRD comics that came out since i stopped buying them regularly in 2009. Plus the first 16 issues of The Goon, which I’ve wanted to read, but never got around to buying. A little over 50 comics total.  Digital comics never seem worthwhile to me when they’re priced at close to the regular print cover price, but for less than $1 each, they’re not a bad deal.

Dark Horse

I’ve bought a few digital comics via the Comixology iPad app over the last year, but I hadn’t bought any through the Dark Horse app until today. I just bought the new Groo mini-series (which apparently came out in print in 2009), and a Classic Usagi Yojimbo mini-series, which may be a digital-only release. The bundle pricing on these books is pretty reasonable, but you can only buy the bundles through the web site, not the app.
I’ve found myself reading comics on the iPad a lot recently, mostly while I’m on the train. I should really be working my way through the Programming iOS 4 ebook that I started a while ago, but I’ve been finding that my brain isn’t really up for that sometimes.
One interesting comic I’ve been reading via Comixology recently is Vision Machine. The whole three-issue series is completely free. It originally came out just about one year ago, and there was a panel about it at last year’s NYCC, moderated by Andy Ihnatko.

off to NYCC 2011

I’m heading out to NYCC tomorrow. I’m pretty sure that the last con I went to was NYCC 2009, which was back in February 2009, before they moved the con to the fall. I had plans to go to NYAF in 2009 also, which would have been in September, but my Dad was in the hospital at that time, so I skipped it. So I haven’t been to a con in a while.

I was also thinking that I haven’t really taken a vacation (other than a long weekend) in a while either. I guess that NYCC in Feb 2009 was the last time, though I think I only took Friday off for that, so that would also have just been a long weekend. This time, I’m taking Thursday, Friday, and Monday off, but I’ve got class at NYU on Thursday night, and a doctor’s appointment back in NJ on Monday, so I don’t know if this really counts as more than a long weekend.

The last San Diego show I went to was 2008. For SDCC, I would have flown out on Wednesday, come back on Monday, and I probably took Tuesday off to do laundry and relax, so that’s a solid seven days away from work. So July 2008 was likely the last serious vacation I had, which involved leaving the NY/NJ area, and staying away for more than a few days. And I can’t remember the last time I took a whole work week, Monday to Friday, off and had a good full nine days away from work. Technically, I wasn’t working at all during April 2010, in between leaving NMS/Spar and starting at Electric Vine, but there was enough going on then that it sure didn’t feel like a vacation.

So this long blog post that was going to be about NYCC 2011 has turned into a rumination on my lack of time off over the last few years. I’m going to have to come up with a plan to remedy that, though I’m really not that enthusiastic about any particular vacation idea right now. I’d like to get back to SDCC and/or WonderCon next year, so maybe I should look at that as my goal.

Planetary

I finally read the last issue of Planetary today. It came out in 2009, and the previous issue came out in 2006, so it’s been about 5 years since I read an issue. I managed to find all the issues back to #16 in my mostly undifferentiated pile(s) of old comics, so I got a chance to re-read a bunch of issues leading up to it. Planetary had been one of my favorite series, despite the long gaps between issues. That last issue was a nice one, and a fitting end to the series. It does leave open some possibilities, and it would be nice to see Ellis and Cassaday come back to it, but I guess that’s unlikely. I found a couple of good online references to the series, here and here. It’s a very dense series, so it helps to read someone else’s perspective on it, just to see things you’ve missed, or that might have alternate interpretations.

SDCC 2011, day one

This is now the third year in a row that I’ve skipped Comic-Con. The last time I went was 2008. I’m hoping I can find some way to get a full four-day pass and hotel reservation for next year. It’s been too long since I’ve been out there.
Meanwhile, as usual, I’ve been poking around the web for interesting articles about the con. Here are a few from SignOnSanDiego.com:
Comic-Con makes itself at home
Comic-Con and Hollywood
Comic-Con 2011 Preview

Concrete

I just started reading Concrete: The Human Dilemma. I’ve had this mini-series sitting in my reading pile since it was published back in 2004/2005. I’m really enjoying it, and I wish I had more Concrete to read, but I just checked Wikipedia, and apparently there hasn’t been any Concrete published since then. Oh well.
Paul Chadwick does a great job of mixing large-scale social commentary with small-scale human moments. And his artwork is great too. He obviously puts a lot of thought into panel arrangement and “camera angle” within the panels, and sometimes uses little tricks (for lack of a better word) that could only work in comics. Bits that, in the wrong context, would be distracting, but work well for him.

Little Dog Lost

OK, I know it’s sappy, but I like it.

Also, in the “dubious achievements” department, I have finally caught up and read all of the comic strip e-mails that have been piling up in my GMail account. I subscribe to GoComics.com, and get a daily e-mail with about a dozen strips. I fell behind in reading them quite a while ago and never caught up. Until this weekend, when I inexplicably had an urge to read about six months worth of comic strips. (One of the things that helped me catch up is that the older e-mails largely consisted of broken image links, since they apparently don’t keep the image links functioning forever. Except for those on Garfield and Doonesbury, for some reason.)