SDCC Tango, part 2

[furtech]

(Jack & son: *kssht* The fries are strong in this one! )

Saturday
•Up-and-at'em: got to con and met up with Roz: she showed me stuff (giant, limited edition Warg&Rider w/giant pricetag) and as well as where Donna Barr and Roberta Gregory were. Bought Roberta's cat-medical-bill-fund-raiser and chatted about old and/or sick pets. Roberta gave me a copy of one of her Bitchy Bitch collections: I cannot recommend these highly enough: hurt-yourself-funny.

•Talked with Anthony Waters and Cara Mitten...ended up having lunch (excellent fish place across the street from the con). Long, engaging conversation about art directors/portfolio-checkers at the convention and how to get freelance work. Their friend (Anthony and Cara as well) looked pretty depressed by the end of lunch. Wiser, but not happier. Fascinating insight about both sides of the table (portfolio critique'ers and artists).

•Even as I hate the blockage hall costumes create, some are just so cool !

•Rest of afternoon: zooming through rest of dealer's room. My Gohd there were a lot of people. Martes sums up what SDCC has become better than I can. I had 300,000 square feet of dealer's room left to see: If it didn't have a werewolf in it, *zoompast*. With exceptions, of course: Sideshow's LotR figures, including the Warg Rider and a Mumakal.

•Finished room just with ten minutes to spare...pooped. Limped over to the Anthony Waters/Cara Mitten table to see about food.

•Trudging back to AW's hotel...found Italian on the way. Decent food, huge prices, small portions.
--Restaurant stupid: couldn't slap a half order of spaghetti w/meat sauce together without putting it at the end of the serving line...and this after forgetting one person's meal (after about forty minutes he mentions not having food yet...after we all nearly finished our dinners. Maitre d' goes into kitchen and comes out with it in two minutes: apparently it was just sitting there for over a half-hour. No apologies or comps. Stupid restaurantX2). Seated right away, but service was lousy...two+ hours to end of meal and no apologies or excuses.
--Apparently we irritated Vantid (teasing about Harry Potter)...but if you bring out the book and start reading during a dinner with a bunch of smart-aleck artistic-types, what do you expect? Still, we were sorry.

•Separated after dinner: AW&CM&friends to hotel, me to masquerade.

•Masquerade: unexpectedly fantastic! Terrific Orc, unbelievable Doc Oc, hilarious "Disney Princess" sketch, a number of *HUGE* creatures/robots and things. Watched it in the big open room with the sail-ceiling; free nachos and good chips and pretzels and popcorn. No problem with seating and a better view than inside! SDCC got the crowd problem licked in style! (Nachos!)

•Dashed out to shuttle after masquerade...read Roberta Gregory's "Bitchy Bitch" comic. New people think I'm some sort of lunatic: her strip is a peculiar mixture of extreme bitterness and ironic humor. Hurtyourselfhumor! Do -not- read this any place where you can't laugh out loud (or while drinking any beverage! Spewage!).

Monday
•Packing to leave...realizing I should have given loot to Roz to drive back up...anticipate piano-wire bags cutting through finger tendons.

•Make it to train station in plenty of time (thanks to Mighty Zor): good thing-- train's packed.
--Huge line...
--No purpose to line; even station master suggests waiting inside. When train opens, people inside just walk in along with people waiting in long, pointless line.
--Got sandwiches and snax at station.
--Snag good seat w/view out ocean side of train. Love train.

•Discover why L.A.-ers will never completely give up cars: train breaks down in middle of nowhere. Engine dead.
Comedy ensues:
--(conductor): "The engineer is going to look at the engine to see if he can fix it."
----(conductor again): "The engineer is speaking to techs at the company who made engine."
------So...the engineer is on the phone with tech support. I imagine the conversation: (tech support line): "If you have a 7-thousand horse power General Electric diesel engine, please press 2...if you have a 9.6-thousand horsepower GE turbo-diesel, please press 3..."

•Train engine dies.

•Train stranded a few miles outside Irvine. Delightful view of low-income housing and mosquito pool.

•Train towed by next train (how humiliating in a "Starligh Express" kind of way). Arrive at Union Station @ 5PM, only two hours late...

• ...unfortunately, I had tickets to a Taiko Drum concert at 3:30PM. I catch the last half hour, but have missed seeing pikacello and her Stanford Taiko group play! Very unhappy (but other people on train were worse off, with connections and such, and over the weekend there was an accident on the same route where an Amtrack employee was killed! So...I'm good.)

•Missed seeing pikacello in a fundoshi...later meet her backstage and discover they wore cute happi coats instead. Probably for the best.

•Apologize profusely for missing their act! In love with O-daiko)!

•Picked up pooped husky from the Dog Gulag and went over to Zor's place for walk.
--massive power outage closed Pollo Loco (and half of Valencia), so it was KFC for Frieda and I.

•Three exhausted creatures shamble along trail.

•Home. Bed.

Comments

[hoshikaji.livejournal.com]

::is so happy:: You got to see Mich! She thought you wouldn't be able to make it and was sad, she must have been delighted. I'm glad you're ok after the train fiasco. SDCC sounds like it rocked so much.

[furtech.livejournal.com]

Yeah! At least I got to see her on stage (even if it was just the final bows) and then say hello! If she'll let me, I'll post the pic of her in her fundoshi uniform!

SDCC is a lot of fun if you can actually hook up with people...the dealer's room alone is overwhelming! 400,000 square feet of stuff to buy/look at! The masquerade was beautiful as well: I did recognize a lot of AX entries and they held their own (and then some) against the high-level (many pros) talent in the show! I was agape at a number of creature-y things! One thing about SDCC's masquerade: you need to design BIG costumes-- in the sense that they can be impressive from miles away (Kon would be on the small side here!). Fortunately detail is rewarded (they have good craftsmanship judges), but to impress the audience, impressive-from-a-distance is a must!

[genjitsu.livejournal.com]

SDCC is the con to go to if you ever start feeling cocky from winning at anime cons ^_^

[furtech.livejournal.com]

You said it, brudda!

[iisaw.livejournal.com]

I once laughed so hard at a Bitchy Bitch comic that tears rolled down my cheeks. Gregory is a genius.

[furtech.livejournal.com]

Have you ever met her? Nicest person in the world. Extremely intelligent conversationalist (eclectic topics and well-read views).

[iisaw.livejournal.com]

No, I've never had the pleasure.

[furtech.livejournal.com]

I'll make it a point to introduce you next time we're all in the same place: like I said, she's very accessable.

[dustmeat.livejournal.com]

Bitchy Bitch is actually brilliant.

[furtech.livejournal.com]

Very underrated...she needs to be syndicated! BB would really liven up any paper's comic pages!

[waynekaa.livejournal.com]

YOU MISSED SEEING PIKACELLO!!!!
GAME OVER T_T
Hrm. I'll try to get her in a fundoshi for USA Musume then

[furtech.livejournal.com]

That would be a new look for USAM~! Possibly very popular! Potentially dangerous to your health, tho'.

[waynekaa.livejournal.com]

i live for danger

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

I kin hardly beeeeleeeeeve you're train bit the dust!! 8/
ah well.. thinking back one time when I was coming back from a date on Catalina Island, one of the ship engines also died... and it changed a 45 minute trip into 3 1/2 hours.... Thank goodness she was good company ^v^

and *LOL!*... that JITB pic (and your caption) was my laugh o' the day! *flaps*

[furtech.livejournal.com]

I'm beginning to think I'm a public-transportation jinx-- same thing happened when I took Metrolink for the first time: suspicious package...all service cancelled for rest of evening, stranding us in Hollywood.

And your trip could have been worse...

"...a three-hour tour!
The weather started getting rough..."

[fenris-lorsrai.livejournal.com]

2 hours late? Fah! You have not truly experienced the joy of train travel then! Try 14 hours late! Now admittedly, I was going from Ohio to CT during a blizzard. The train was plowing 2-3 foot drifts off the track as it went. For even more fun, everytime the train stopped, the doors popped open to let people on/off and snow would blow in. There were drifts IN the car I was in. I think I was wearing every article of clothing I had packed and was thanking my foresight for tieing a fleece blanket onto my backpack. Still bloody cold.

Had I been flying, the delay would have probably been even longer. The long haul train like that routinely end up around an hour or two late because they have to dodge the freights, which have right of way. So if they miss their gap by a minute or two, they end up stopped and waiting for the next gap.

[furtech.livejournal.com]

Still love train rides! Generally less hassle, can see stuff, dining cars, comfortable seats!

[fenris-lorsrai.livejournal.com]

When I was looking at colleges we took the train down through the mountains of West Virginia. We actually passed through a few towns that were only accessible by train. They only had a couple dozen people in them, but still kind of eerie that there's such remote places on the heavily populated Eastern states.

We also ran into a fellow who had a sleeping car on the train. As a graduation gift from high school he'd asked to spend two weeks just riding long haul trains around the US so he could see the whole country. Pretty cool.

That same train also had a private car attached to the end. Belonged to some industrialist or other. Paid to have it hitched up so he could have a a private office and living quarters while he was traveling.

I've always been surprised that more movie stars didn't take that route and but private rail cars, particularly ones that don't like to fly.