Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

Our lovely Thursday in Seattle was followed by an equally beautiful Friday in terms of weather, but more grumpiness on an emotional level. This likely had to do with the fact that we walked about 5 more miles than expected throughout the course of the day.

The plan was good; walk down Pike Street from the hotel to First Avenue, where we would catch a bus in the free ride zone to Jackson Street and walk two blocks to Safeco Field for a 12:30 game day tour of the ballpark. Except… for some reason, the only bus that passed us on First Avenue was not going that direction. This directly contradicted the hotel front desk ladies, who assured us that LOTS of buses go straight down First Avenue. So. We walked 2 miles (according to Google Maps) and arrived at Safeco Field a breezy 15 minutes before tour time. But I was damp with sweat and not nearly as caffeinated as I would have liked, and I was hungry and thirsty, so even the nice weather did not seem as nice as it could have if we’d been able to take a damn bus for a portion of our journey.

Still, the ballpark tour was cool. Even though Ken Griffey, Jr. did not lead it as I was expecting. (I thought he worked for the team now?) A shrewish woman in her 70s named Helen led the tour instead, and she was full of information and excitement as long as nobody asked any questions. Most of our fellow tour-takers were Japanese and abided by her unspoken rule—too busy affirming stereotypes by fawning over every mention and piece of memorabilia related to Ichiro. We got to sit in the press box for a few minutes, and I thought that was cool. Ben about wet his pants from the excitement of standing in the dugouts and then on the field behind home plate. On the dirt, mind you. DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT TOUCHING THE GRASS, Helen said, with the implied sentiment that she would put on her Gremlin face and bite off your Tender Parts with one snarl if you did.

After the tour, we browsed the team store and confirmed that we are well past the Obtain Chinsy Souvenir From Everywhere stage. Well, that was more my hurdle than Ben’s to begin with. We went across the street to Pyramid Brewery for lunch. I enjoyed water and some of Ben’s Audacious Apricot Ale. My burger was okay, but the sweet potato fries were Audaciously Awesome and satisfied both my carb and vegetable cravings.

We walked back up First Avenue afterward to Yesler Way and Pioneer Square, where a great miracle occurred and we caught a bus. Instead of taking it all the way back to Pike Street, we got off a little early and went down to the waterfront where we caught the last Argosy Harbor Cruise of the day. We wanted to take full advantage of the nice Seattle weather and got some great views of the skyline. There was also a sea lion hanging out on a buoy by the West Seattle peninsula who posed for photos as we cruised on by.

Still full from lunch, we finally made it back to the hotel in the early evening for a nap. Later on we relied on The Internet for our bus itinerary to the Space Needle. Guess what? The Internet (specifically King County’s Metro Trip Planner) provided much more accurate information than the front desk. There was no line at the Space Needle, and not many people hanging out at the top while we were there (about 10pm-11pm). We ended up back at Tap House Grill for a late-night snack and, of course, some beer. Well, Ben had a beer and I drank water and we complained to each other about our sore legs and feet.

Saturday we met up with our friends Liz and Josh (and their 3.5-year-old daughter, whom I haven’t seen since she was a month old) and ate good Chinese food at Pike Place Market. Except the diet Pepsi was nasty. We stopped by Golden Age Collectables to pick up our allotted one-per-person comic for Free Comic Book Day, and then headed back to Safeco Field (in their car, thankfully) for an actual baseball game. We sat in “Area 51,” which is in right field close to where Ichiro hangs out. He’s number 51.

The most exciting part of the game for me was batting practice, where Liz and I whimpered and cowered together as baseballs came screaming toward us multiple times. Ben and Josh were ready to knock us down “for safety” to catch any balls headed in our direction. A few came close, but attempts were foiled by people with bug mitts and long reaches who didn’t even end up having seats in our section.

Josh said that I HAD to try the stadium’s garlic fries, so I did. And I basically breathed garlic fire for three days. I officially recommend them, but with caution. And plan to share because you actually get a lot for the overpriced fee.

It was “Turn Back the Clock” night at Safeco Field, and the Mariners and the Oakland A’s were dressed in retro jerseys from 1939. So they were actually the Seattle Rainers and the Oakland Oaks. There was no modern music played, only Swing and traditional baseball tunes on the organ. It was pretty cool… the Jumbotron even displayed video with a sepia and crackle filter so it looked like film footage from 1939. I liked the gimmick. The game went pretty quickly, and though we thought it might go into extra innings, Oakland ended up winning it in the ninth. Josh was sad, but Ben was just happy to be able to watch a live pro baseball game again. Going to a minor league Salt Lake Bees game just isn’t the same.

Sunday we met up with Liz and Josh again to go to the zoo. Seattle has a nice zoo, and if you like birds, you NEED to visit the Willawong Station. It’s a “bird feeding experience” that brings out the best of bird ownership without the need for you to clean up any poop or change the cage. In a different exhibit, I was rushed by a kookaburra. Luckily there was a plate of glass or plexiglass between us, because that m’f'n beak would have hurt bigtime.

After the zoo, we went back to Liz and Josh’s sweet new digs for dinner (some of the best take-out Pad Thai I’ve ever had) and general hanging out. It’s hard to not live closer to them.

On Monday, there was some time to kill after we checked out of our hotel and before our flight, so we meandered down the street to the Seattle Aquarium. Ben enjoyed it more than expected, and revealed to me that he wasn’t sure he’d ever been in an aquarium. I couldn’t believe it, but then again I worked a summer at Sea World of Ohio (when it still existed) and can’t imagine life without occasional aquarium visits. In any case, it turns out that I really, really love puffins. Is it possible that I’ve never seen them before? Perhaps. I spent a proportionally large amount of time staring and smiling at them and taking a bajillion crappy photos that didn’t turn out. Well, a couple kind of did. I’ll get those up on Flickr in the next couple days.

And that was our Seattle trip. We won’t be moving there anytime soon, but I definitely want to go back to visit. Now that we’ve done our downtown tourist trip, we can try it from a different angle. If it’s baseball season, though, the angle will still have to include a game! No garlic fries next time, though.

I’m just doing a quick PSA here to remind you to visit your local comic book store this Saturday to pick up some free comics.

Free Comic Book Day is an annual nationwide event sponsored by  industry representatives in publishing and distributing comics. If you haven’t been in a comic book specialty shop in a while (or *gasp* NEVER!), this is the day to go.

If you’re thinking to yourself that comics are just for kids and for those socially inept guys who live in their moms’ basements, well, you’re partially right. Comics are for them. But there’s a good chance that you’ll like some of them, too. Aside from the forever-ongoing Marvel and DC comics like Spiderman, X-Men, Batman, and Superman, there are a lot of literary and entertaining gems in the comic world.

The FCBD site has some basic information for those new to comics, but if you’re a “mature reader,” i.e you don’t mind the F-bomb or mature themes like sex and violence, I would recommend that you start out with the following Vertigo-imprint series that are now available in (multi-volume) book form: Fables, The Sandman, and Y: The Last Man. Fables is the only one that still has new issues coming out.

Want to start with something a little more tame but still really good? Try the complete collection of Bone comics. I would personally steer you away from ye olde Archie comics, though new ones are still being released on a regular basis.

If you have the opportunity to start some kids out on comics, or even just reading in general, there are lots of kid-friendly options including Pixar movie spin-offs and The Simpsons. I recently nabbed the first issue of The Muppet Show at Dragon’s Keep in Provo. It’s nothing spectacularly literary, but it’s fun and I’m a sucker for anything Muppet-related (even if I end up panning it).

So get thee to a local (participating) comic book store on Saturday and get thine free comics!

I have been unable to finish a blog entry lately, which is horrible considering the amount of crap that I’ve wanted to share. So, in the meantime, I hope you enjoy today’s xkcd.com comic that made me swell with enjoyment. The last panel made my day. (Perfect weather this morning also helped, but my semi-worthless evening definitely got a boost from another viewing of this comic.)

Oh, and if you’re not already an fan of xkcd, a “webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language,” you should seriously consider it. It’s one of the only comics that makes me love it a little more when I don’t always get the joke—because I know that other people wouldn’t necessarily get the ones that I do.

If you are not already a fan of Neil Gaiman, here is another reason why you should be: his recent blog post Why defend freedom of icky speech?

He gives an intelligent, easy to read, and in-depth response to a reader’s very valid question about why he supports the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’s (CBLDF) fight for Iowan comic collector Christopher Handley’s right to collect (what I personally find creepy and icky) lolicon manga.

Gaiman unequivocally supports our first ammendment right to Freedom of Speech, even when the content in question would probably disgust and mortify a large majority of the world’s population.

I grew up with a cursory appreciation of freedom of speech — censorship was something already in the history books for me, with an occasional current news story about another attempt at censorship by the Ridiculous Conservatives. I mean, I remember the 1999 uproar over Chris Ofili’s artistic rendition of the Virgin Mary on a canvas embellished with elephant dung, but I wasn’t involved enough in politics of any sort to take sides when good ol’ Mayor Guiliani declared “There’s nothing in the First Amendment that supports horrible and disgusting projects!”

Nearly ten years later, after realizing that some of the graphic novels I actually own have been affected by that gray mess of censorship in the past, I am ready to take a stance. I may not personally approve of the very ideas of fetishizing children, oppressing women, abusing drugs, senseless murder, or conservative religion, but I’m not going to prevent someone else from writing or talking about them or creating comics and art and movies about them.

Ideas themselves don’t actively cause harm, and drawing a line or making exceptions to the concept of Freedom of Speech defies its very purpose.

Gaiman sums up this reasoning quite nicely:

Because if you don’t stand up for the stuff you don’t like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you’ve already lost.

Oh, Neil. Today I hate myself even more for not driving to Las Vegas to meet you.

I can’t believe that I JUST found this clip of Obama scoring some major on-camera geek cred. It’s from October 17.

While I’m busy catching up on things at home and furiously recalling in the written word every single little thing I did during my last two days at Comic Con, I thought I’d share a little video with you that I wish I’d seen before Comic Con. Because I would have visited Booth #1435 with a RedBull if I had.

What a gloriously clever and well-done promo! This past weekend, Liz told me that I needed to start reading the Looking for Group webcomic immediately. You should, too! (Their site is a little slow today, but I’m guessing that’s because of post-Comic Con traffic.)

More of my Comic Con adventures coming soon.

The thing I’m learning about attending Comic Con is that you need to keep a pretty strict schedule to do all the things you want to do. That contradicts my somewhat laid-back approach and has resulted in a few missed opportunities. The flip side is that I’ve stayed pretty relaxed and have avoided crankiness.

Ben and I got started earlier than yesterday, though we still didn’t make it in time to see the first panel that I was interested in (Powerpuff Girls and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends). We decided to go stand in line to see a panel with Shaun of the Dead stars Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes, but the line was very, very long and snaked in and out of the building onto the veranda and we decided to skip it. I did get a free Stan Lee adverfan in the hallway, though. I don’t know what it’s really called, but it’s a sturdy paper cut-out of Stan Lee’s cartoon face stuck to a piece of wood that’s pimping a documentary of his life, True Believer. Advertising fan. Adverfan.

Other freebies I picked up today: a lot of button pins from various booths, a Ghost Hunters 4-inch statuette of Jason Hawes, a bright orange Nickelodeon slap bracelet, issue #1 of a comic called Burn, a paperback copy of Kushiel’s Scion by Jacqueline Carey (who signed it for me at the publisher’s booth), a Land of the Lost movie promo lanyard, an Attack of the Killer Tomatoes bag, and tons of random postcards.

I made it to three panels today. “Looking at Our World: Eye on the Present” was supposed to be about how authors use the supernatural in stories of contemporary society, but covered stuff that was sort of hit-or-miss according to my interests. Authors were Kelley Armstrong, L.A. Banks, Kate Brallier, Marjorie M. Liu, C.E. Murphy, Justine Musk, LIlith Saintcrow and Samantha Sommersby. I mostly went to that panel (with Ben in tow) so that I could squat a seat for the next panel, “The World of Graphic Novels.” Turns out that neither filled up, but oh well.

I learned a few interesting things from the author-illustrators on the second panel, but was disappointed that none of them were just writers or just illustrators. As a potential graphic novel writer, I’m interested in learning how writers can best collaborate with artists when their art skills don’t exactly fall under the umbrella of the word “talent.” The panelists were Nick Abadzis, Eddie Campbell, Rutu Modan, Alex Robinson, Adrian Tomine and it was moderated by Tom Spurgeon. I’d heard of Rutu Modan’s graphic novel, Exit Wounds, and she had a lot of interesting things to say. She’s Israeli but her book has not yet been published in Israel… the comics/graphic novel scene is almost nonexistent there and so she turned to the U.S. I recorded all these panel sessions and hope to be able to post them in some format on my website after I return home.

After the first two panels, Ben and I headed down to the exhibit hall to visit totally famous artist Katie Cook, a geek girl who we first met at Wizard World in 2004 when she drew a fun monster couple for us on the spot. I love her style, but she’s much busier these days so we settled for a signed print of her cartoony Darth Vader holding two small kitties with the caption “The Dark Side… is full of cat people.”

Then Ben and I split off and I happened to walk by the G4 tv channel booth… where Attack of the Show’s Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn were interviewing Samuel L. Jackson! I got a few crappy photos of him and my hands may have been visible in the background. I wanted to yell “Tell me more about your role in S.H.I.E.L.D.” but would have been drowned out by the retards who were just randomly screaming “SNAKES ON A PLANE!” Seriously, WTF. There was a mega horde of bodyguards surrounding him at all times.

From there, I walked around the exhibit hall and took lots of photos of cosplayers… even Barf from Spaceballs!

To be continued…

We arrived at the convention center at the lazy noonish hour and hit the exhibit hall right away. It only took 5 minutes for Ben to tire of my distracted walking pattern and run off on his own. I enjoyed strolling around at my own pace, stopping to look at everything that interested me. Aside from the big booths (Marvel, DC, Hasbro, Lucasfilm, LEGO, Gentle Giant, etc.), here are a few that I liked and had snaggable websites (that are all safe for work):

gwinarmy.com Little vinyl Tux penguin shapes with fun paint jobs. Ben likes “Bunny” the best.

mistertoast.com I love the little original watercolor cards the creator and his wife (?) were selling. I’m going back to see if they found any with Inky the ink well that they could sell me tomorrow. Because, you know, I’m a writer and stuff. So it makes sense.

comicimages.com I snapped a great photo of employee Ken wearing his company’s Yoda backpack. It really felt like I was in Dagobah! (photo to follow)

mimobot.com Designer USB flash drives. Cool as shit and just as expensive. I want C3P0. It would also be cool if an audio clip of Threepio saying “Oh, hello” played upon the computer recognizing the drive.

chessex.com Dice, dice, dice! Lots of lovely dice! All shapes, sides, and sizes. Ben and I picked up a couple 30-sided dice (“Those will be great for playing Magic [the Gathering],” said my husband who didn’t think there’d be anything of much interest to him at Comic Con).

After walking around for a while and seeing some amazing costumes (I kept running into a very tall Ghost Rider (sans motorcycle) on the floor), I caught two interesting panels: “Science Fiction That Will Change Your Life,” sponsored by io9.com and “Spotlight on Bill Willingham” with Mark “Bucky” Buckingham.

The Sci-Fi panel was interesting and I hope that my new voice recorder caught all the titles that I’ve never heard of and need to read now. There were some interesting perspectives on the genre and people’s personal experiences with it. Also, I about died for Graeme McMillan’s Scottish accent. I mostly attended the panel so that I could squat a seat for the Willingham panel in the same room, but I’m very glad I went.

Fables was the first comic to really pull me into the genre of comics, and that’s because I have a thing for folklore and fairy tales. I love new takes on old tales, so Fables was thematically my cup of tea and I was pleasantly surprised to discover the wonderful writing and beautiful artwork in the comics. It turns out that one of my early loves, the Fractured Fairy Tales shorts from Rocky & Bullwinkle was also an inspiration to Bill Willingham and he’s a huge connoisseur of folklore and fairy tales, too. He talked about his start in comics writing/drawing and assured the crowd that Fables will not end at the conclusion of the big war story arc. I asked a question about in what format Bill provides his story to Mark, and Bill commented that it was a good question (squee!). Everyone in the audience received a one-page Fables comic on glossy cardstock with the tiny woodland creatures of Fabletown and it’s quite cute.

After the panel, I jetted to the DC/Vertigo booth to stand in line to have Bill and Mark sign my newly acquired one-page comic, as well as Bill’s old comic reprinted in graphic novel format, Pantheon. Haven’t checked it out yet. Special thanks to Catherine, a Batman-loving senior English major from SF State who was in line behind me and held my place while I ran to the hard-to-find booth that was selling those graphic novels. We had a very nice geek girl chat during our wait time, and she recommended the best Batman graphic novels that she’s read.  (I wonder if I choose the correct spelling of Catherine?)

Then I met up again with Ben and almost didn’t get into the “Comics Experience: How to Write a Pitch!” panel. Ben waited on the beautiful veranda while I got some good tips, and then we met up with Liz and Josh and had dinner at Karl Strauss Microbrewery. I’m not a huge beer drinker, but I highly recommend their signature Amber Ale. Liz and Josh do not recommend their Melon Martini.

That about sums up today. We came back to the hotel to relax and get to bed early… which turned into Ben zonking out quickly and me blogging into the almost-wee hours. Crap. I need to get some sleep because tomorrow will be a long day. Not sure if I’ll be able to blog about it but I’ll try.

We decided to take a slightly laid-back approach to Comic Con today in order to be better rested after a hellish travel day. On the trolley ride down to the convention center, we sat across from a nice (but a little odd) middle-aged man who was missing a front incisor (tooth #6; residual knowledge from working at a dental office).

His first question when we sat down was “What do you read?” though he wasn’t familiar with anything until I mentioned X-Men. He’s writing a screenplay with the title “Flapjacks: The Movie” about life in San Diego and when I told him I was a writer, he offered me a comic idea that had been floating around in his head and said that I should write it.

He pitched a story about a worm who wiggles around and recognizes places in the earth he’s been before, then discovers the surface of the ground where he is plucked up by a boy who puts him on a fishing hook and introduces him to the water.

“How does it end?” I asked. “Is he eaten by a fish?”

“I don’t know,” the man replied. “I leave that up to you, the writer. It’s your story now.”

Then conversation turned and he asked where we were from, and never just wanting to say “Utah” I responded “Originally from Ohio.”

“Not from Cleveland, I hope,” he said. Ben and I glanced at each other.

“Yeah, actually…”

He apparently knows a guy who is a security guard at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and opened up a binder filled with looseleaf notebook paper to write down his name for us.

“Next time you’re there, we’ll have to work out a practical joke for you to play on him, to really freak him out.” He had a huge grin on his face s he mulled it over. “Maybe you can pretend to have ESP. Yeah, that would be great.”

He handed me the paper with just the guy’s name on it and slowly shared more ideas and talked about his friend’s good sense of humor. We just sat there wide-eyed, listening and nodding our heads, alert to the bizarre nature of the moment.

I asked him to write “security guard at R&R Hall of Fame” on the paper, which he took back from me and happily did. He also wrote down his email address so that we could contact him to discuss the details of our plan.

Then the trolley stopped and he looked up and told us he had to get off – that his stop was a long time ago and he’d have to take the next train back to his destination.

We said goodbye and I folded up the paper and put it in my purse. I don’t think that I’ll contact him to plan a practical joke on his friend, but if I ever write his worm comic, I think I will drop him a line. He’ll want to know how it ended, I’m sure.

I made them myself, can I have a cookie now?

Creating those little cards was a lot more work than I expected. Seriously, I am a writer who sometimes designs on a computer but rarely draws anything worth showing to anyone with decent eyesight. But I finally got them close to what I was envisioning, and that made the effort worthwhile. I can’t wait to hand them to people at Comic Con next week!

Here’s how I made the design:

1. Thought about what kind of business card would work well, and came up with the idea for a comic-style card.
2. Started drawing caricatures of myself. Some were really, really, horrible. I had to look up how to draw a female body because I wasn’t getting it right.
3. Finally figured out that I should draw the caricature elements separately, scan them, and then piece them together in Adobe Illustrator (CS1 that I got in my last year of college but never really learned how to use).
4. Hit the jackpot with Blambot.com, where I found some awesome free comic fonts (for Mac and PC) and pre-made dialogue balloons in .eps format. Perfect!
5. Swore a lot as I learned how to alter the Illustrator files to get the dialogue balloons in the size and shape I wanted.
6. Added the text (Blambot’s Anime Ace 2.0) and obsessed a little over the exact wording.
7. Tweaked and tweaked until Illustrator and Photoshop both worked together with me enough to get the final result you see above.

It’s not perfect, but I won’t be embarrassed to hand out that design. And there is probably a better way to do something like that… so if you have any suggestions for next time, please leave a comment. I’m not under any delusions that I would be able to illustrate my own graphic novel, but it would be nice to learn a little more about art ‘n stuff. I would like to write one someday (soon, maybe, with all this Comic Con inspiration).

Next on the agenda before Comic Con: packing and maybe finally getting around to updating my website?