Pacificapocalypse

Shamelessly stolen from Boing Boing.

Carla and I had a nice time at the 2009 San Francisco Zine Fest on Sunday. This week and next, I’m sharing some of the photos I took of the zinesters who came to sell their comics and zines. I’ll post a new photo each day.

This is Doctor Popular, a professional yo-yoist and cartoonist. I bought a couple of “24-hour” comic books from him, which are 24-page comic books that were created in 24 consecutive hours. My favorite is Robots Don’t Know Anything about Twitter. Doc Pop made the comic by tweeting “Robots don’t know anything about…” and used the answers that his friends tweeted back as the panels for the comic. Fun!

I don’t know if he sold out of the print version of Robots Don’t Know Anything about Twitter, as it had a print run of 100 copies (each cover was hand colored!), but he is giving it away as a free PDF. What a swell guy that Doc is.

Handsome mother fucker.

Via Boing Boing

You know that thing where you technically have a weekend, but you pack so much into it, it flys by and you blink and it’s over?
Yeah me too.
Last Friday night was Spamalot at the Golden Gate Theater which was hilarious; I mean come on JOHN O’HURLEY! Dude’s funny and I forgive him for Seinfeld which I loathe. Not a exactly a straight stage production of ‘The Holy Grail‘ but a good mix of the more popular Python skits and I was grateful that they didn’t try to have actors try and portray any of the actual Python cast.  So yeah, if you’re a fan of MP, you should go. Oh and court got some really cool Killer Rabbit slippers.
Ok so that was Friday night, didn’t get back home until midnight, then have to be up at 0600 Saturday morning because….

River Arts Festival!

In Sacramento no less. We picked up Kelé and hustled up to Sac. Set up the table and then I got to play photographer amongst the various homemade… crap. Hey no offense but most of it was garage sale quality. Court hawked her custom hula-hoops and Kelé had a bunch of knit stuff that was pretty cool, and there were one or two other vendors with neat stuff (Roger the depressed carved wooden spoon man being one) but mostly it was just okay.

Court sold I think eight hoops, which is cool (I think her demoing one in the aisle every once in a while really helped sales; that’s called marketing children) and more than paid for the material to make them, so yeah, this whole custom hoop thing may be a viable money maker… especially when a vendor is charging $60.00 for the exact same thing at…

Makers Faire 2009

Which we got up, again, at 0 dark 30 for. Court and Kelé were volunteering at the Bizarre Bazaar so we got there way early, which turned out to be a very good thing ’cause the place filled up quicky and we were able to score a pretty close parking spot. Too many cool things going on to go into in detail; suffice to say that crew from The Crucible were wicked cool as was Cyclecide.
I have a full photoset that I’ll get up later today. The Crucible had their E.R.V (Educational Response Vehicle) on scene; a converted 1960’s firetruck… no seriously, a real firetruck. Like Bradbury’s Firemen from Fahrenheit 451; a truck that shoots fire. Loud as hell; it set off car alarms for Christ’s sakes. So cool.

These were the lazy salad days… warm gentle breezes, crickets chirping in the twilight as Mother and I sipped lemonade on the porch.

Bullshit.

It’s freaking cold out there!
So here we are with another Xmas about to blow it’s festive load all over us. Good times. Unfortunately, my employer has decided that they need to remain open for business (of which there will be none) the day after Xmas, which throws a monkey wrench into the whole visiting the various fams for the holidays road travel extravaganza. Meh, we’ll make it work somehow. So here’s my checklist so far:

• Gifts: all done
• Gifts to wrap: three left to go
• Current mood: suspicious with a hint of ennui
• Currently listening to: Joy Division unreleased Christmas Album bootleg. Ok I made up that last part.

Anyway it’s damn slow in the office and I can tell it’s going to be a very long day.

New Ink!

Finally! Two weekends ago I said screw it and Court and I went and got new ink. Jeff at Lyle Tuttle was able to get us in on a moments notice, so tip o’ the hat to him for that.
I decided to work the chem geek/foodie angle and came up with this -

Don’t waste too much skull sweat trying to figure it out; unless you’re a BioChem freak (or SuperFreak – I’m looking at you Atek) then you might not recognize the chemical diagram for 8-methyl-N-vanillyl-6-nonenamide, or more commonly known as capsaicin, the burny goodness in chili peppers.
I’m not going to say what Court got done until i can get a good picture of it, so guess away.

Oh yeah and I asked Court to marry me last Wednesday.
So yeah, it’s been an interesting two weeks.

Glad to see people find that cursed “Saved By Zero” commercial as freaking annoying as me.

Nice work.

Via The Consumerist

We Watch Movies: Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Amazing, Del Toro has created an astounding universe for Hellboy, which we sort of saw in the first film, but in The Golden Army you get thrown in the deep end like a medieval witch trial. A little back story, in a flashback to 1955, as told by Prof. Broom to an adolescent Hellboy (whom is convinced that Howdy Doody is a real boy)  and we’re set to go.
Favorite scene; the Troll Market. Damn, it’s like every extra creature from Labyrinth and Dark Crystal that didn’t make the final cut is in there.  We plan on seeing it again just to check out all the details and goings on in the background. Creature effects for days.
And Doug Jones is still the most amazing actor who’s face you’ve never seen.
Can you believe that Ron Perlman is 58? Selma Blair is a lot more fleshed out as a character this time around, not so much the shrinking violet from the first film; more confident. That’s hot. Go rent Feast of Love and Storytelling;  she’s *totally* naked in them.

The Wii Fit - I predict a headline from the future: Nintendo Saves an Obese America.
This thing is so cool that it sizzles. I was a little skeptical at first ( silly me, I should have know better – I’m a huge Wii fanboy and should keep the Mario Faith ) but we were able to score one at Game Crazy in San Bruno ( kudos to those guys, best customer service ever. Game Stop; you SUCK!) and Court set it up yesterday. If you have a pulse and/or an internet of your own, I’ll go ahead and skip the details. You know what it is and what it does. But I had no idea how well it does what it does.  Talk about unintended consequences; I broke a sweat with the original Wii Sports games, but the Fit just might make me even more sexy than I already am. Side note: the Fit may increase Court’s sex appeal but we have to be careful – she’s already hot – increasing her attractiveness factor could be dangerous – we don’t want the universe collapsing into a sexy singularity.
Wii Girl ain’t got nothing on my baby. But she’s indicated that if I post the video of her doing the hula hoop exercise that I took last night… I will regret it. We’ll see. I have powerful means of persuasion.
Oh and my Wii Fitness Age: 35! Suck it entropy!

Nerd girls are hot. They come in many flavors. Court is a comic nerd, science, art and lit geek.
And then there’s Becky.
Rebecca is a math and physics nerd of the first water. I’m pretty sure she’ll be famous someday for solving some unsolvable equation, discovering a new GUT or she’ll disappear in a lab experiment gone awry and then return with super powers. Something like that.
Anyway, she has a fascination with the number five and already has geek ink to prove it.
Her latest:

Dude, you had a Turing machine inked on you.
That’s so geek I can’t even begin to approach it.
Talk about MIT street cred.
You win one (1) internet.

MINOR SPOILERS

Saw the Hulk yesterday; pretty darn good indeed, my biggest concern was the CGI and they made it convincing; when Hulk was on-screen, it wasn’t jarring – it never took me out of the scene. AND! I really like how they’re tying the whole Marvel Universe together. Anyone else notice the Capt. America references? When Gen.Ross takes the Super Soldier Serum out of the freezer module, anyone catch the name of the original doctor on the container? And the ‘Vita Ray’ tag? AND! Did anyone else think that perhaps ‘Mr. Blue’ in New York might have been Reed Richards? If the address Banner sent the package to had been the Baxter Building I would have giggled like a little girl… yeah I’m a big comic nerd.

And yes, the last scene in the bar with Gen. Ross and Stark was a full on Geekgasm.

“Stark, you always wear such nice suits.”