Archive for the ‘Pleasures’ Category

San Diego Comic-Con 2009

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

I spent the last week in San Diego for Comic-Con.

It was a fantastic time. Here’s the full story.

Tuesday

I got in about noon Tuesday, and walked to our place. My friend Scott found an awesome place. It was a huge open loft, three beds, a pull out bed, and some couches. It was 2 blocks from the convention center, and just incredible. It had a full kitchen, and Ralph’s super market was two blocks away. I went for a jog to check out the convention center, and got to see the massive trucks unloading huge crates of stuff at the back of the convention center.

Scott showed up that afternoon, and was equally wowed by the place. We threw back a couple beers, then headed over to the Padres stadium, met up with Pants (Brian C from Comic Geek Speak), and headed in to the game. We had great seats on the field level back up above the home dugout.

That ballpark in San Diego is a great park. It feels new and a nice place to sit for an evening. One corner of the stadium at the left field is built into an old historic building of some sort, very cool. I think pretty much any stadium seems great when compared to Oakland coliseum though.

I didn’t watch that much of the game though, since I was talking with Scott and Pants most of the time about comics and whatnot. Ralph joined us after a few innings as well, which made a great group to hang out with.

After the game Scott and I headed back to our apartment, sat around a bit and threw back some beers. Drinking beer was a prominent activity throughout the entire weekend.

The weather in San Diego was fantastic. I realized this when I was sitting outside on our patio at night, wearing shorts and a t-shirt, and wasn’t cold at all. Some of the best times of the convention happened late at night, sitting around talking comics with my apartment mates.

Wednesday

Wednesday is Preview Night at SDCC, but it is really just another day of the convention. There is really nothing “preview” about it. I got to the convention center about half an hour after badge pickup started. The line was long, and it took a while to get through. The funny thing was that the line for pros and press was much longer than for attendees. They had hundreds of folks working the line for regular attendees, but only a dozen or so working the line for press and professionals. I was attending the show as press for my Only The Valiant Podcast.

Wednesday was all about convention exclusives for me. I went around to a few booths and bought exclusive toys and statues only available at SDCC. My plan was to work Wednesday night to get stuff I could sell on ebay, and help pay for my trip down. Mission accomplished. There was a fiasco getting the Green Lantern Blackest Night figure, but I eventually got the first of the five figures. I wouldn’t be so lucky with the rest, as I figured out Thursday.

The best part of Preview Night was meeting up with everyone afterwards. We had a nice meet up at the Tilted Kilt for food and beer. About 15 or so folks showed up, we got our drink on, talked about preview night, and what we were looking forward to. I recorded the first OTV Comic-Con Episode, which was great fun.

The meet up at the Tilted Kilt was a beginning of a theme throughout the convention, the best times are not the convention, not the panels, not the dealers, but spending time with people and friends. Conventions are a chance to get together with friends, meet new people, strengthen those ties, and hang out. The convention itself plays a small role in the overall experience, and is just the thing that brings us all to the same place at the same time.

Thursday

Thursday started out as a very frustrating day.

I woke up at 6am, and this was after staying at the Tilted Kilt till midnight the night before, and headed to the convention center to get in line. I wanted to get the exclusive Blackest Night Green Lantern figures, since I could make a few hundred dollars – at least – by buying them at the show and selling them on ebay. There were no more than 200 people in line in front of me, and I waited about three hours to get in. Went straight to the booth, and no luck.

The line was already wrapped around the booth twice, and was starting along a walkway. They gave out tickets to the first part of the line, and then announced that there would be a raffle for tickets later in the day in a large pavilion. After not getting a ticket that morning, I went back to the apartment, got cleaned up, had some breakfast, then headed to the pavilion to enter the drawing. No luck. I gave up. My capitalistic plan to rake in a considerable profit was shattered.

In a way this was nice, because I was able to just not worry about lines for the rest of the show. I wandered around the small press areas that afternoon, met Steve Bryant of Athena Voltaire fame, and checked stuff out. After the morning of ridiculous lines, I wasn’t up for much.

I did walk around a few dealer booths and browse, and got one pretty darn cool book. My buddy Dave got me a book, The Ten Cent Plague, for my birthday. It is about the comic book scare of the late 40s and 50s, which revolved around the fact that people, mostly people who didn’t read any comics, thought that comic books were contributing to juvenile delinquency, and were a stain on our society.

Crime SuspenStories #23

Crime SuspenStories #23

I brought that book with me to San Diego to be my reading material for the week, and it inspired me to look for some old crime and horror comics from that era. I found a copy of Crime SuspenStories #23 at one particular dealer booth, and had to get it.

This comic was one of the pieces of evidence in the Senate hearings on comics as a cause of juvenile delinquency in the 1950s. The cover of this is quite out there. Yes, he is choking her to death with a tire iron. I like this comic because it has historical importance.

The fallout from those senate hearings, and from the hysteria over comics in general caused the American comic book industry to make a drastic turn, and the result is that comic books are considered by most people to be silly stories about super heroes in spandex. Comics have only recently been viewed differently, not as a genre of entertainment, but as a medium of entertainment, which can contain many different genres, for people of all ages.

So anyhow, this comic is very cool. I’m glad I picked it up.

Thursday evening was the All-Stars of Comics Podcasting panel. There was a panelist each from iFanboy, Comic Geek Speak, Indie Spinner Rack, Comics News Insider, The Comic Book Page, and Comic Timing. The panel itself wasn’t too fantastic, there wasn’t too much information that came out, but it was a great chance for everybody in the podcasting arena to get together and congregate.

After the panel a group of us went to Rock Bottom Brewery, and took over a little area of the upstairs bar. Dinner was good, and I got a chance to meet Bob from the Comic Book Page, and Ian from Comic Timing. We got to discuss podcasting in general, and the specifics of comic book podcasting. Other podcasters had interesting points of view, and I got a few ideas about how to make my show better, just through the conversations I had.

When we got home from the brewery, I set up my recording equipment, and Jay and I recorded an episode with our apartment mate, Scott. We talked about the convention, and we then talked about Resolution Comics, which is a small comic publisher that Scott has started with his business partner, Brian (who couldn’t make it to San Diego). It was fun to talk about what it takes to start publishing books, and hear about the challenges and the rewards involved.

Friday

Friday was the day I set aside for going through dealer boxes and buying some back issues for my collection. I found some good Green Lantern books at a decent price, and picked them up.

I wasn’t planning on making any big purchases this year, but as I walked by the Metropolis Comics booth, I noticed a few copies of Showcase #22.

Showcase #22

Showcase #22

Showcase #22 is the first appearance of Green Lantern in the Silver Age. There was an earlier character named Green Lantern in the 40′s, but he was an entirely different character. The Green Lantern that most people know, and who will be the character in the upcoming Green Lantern movie, is the character that was first introduced in Showcase #22.

This book has been pretty hot, because Green Lantern has been gaining in popularity. The upcoming movie is also pushing the value of this book up as more and more people are looking for it, me included.

I started buying silver age Green Lantern books a couple years ago [The silver age refers to comics published in the very late 50s and throughout the 60s]. My goal is to get all of the Green Lantern books between his first appearance up through Green Lantern #75. Before this weekend, the earliest issue I had was Green Lantern #2. Issue #2 is his fifth appearance, since was in Showcase #22, 23, and 24 before he got his own title.

So I was walking along, and saw a couple copies of this book at the Metropolis booth. I hadn’t seen any other dealers with this book at the convention, and had heard that it was selling for dealers very quickly. I asked to see them, and centered in on one that looked nice, and was within my price range. It took some thought, because this would blow through my entire spending budget for this one book, but I finally decided to get it.

This book is what I have most wanted since I started buying Green Lantern books, and is the highlight of my collection.

Only Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and The Flash are more important DC characters, and I am very happy I finally got a copy of this book.

After the show, a bunch of folks I know from the Valiant Fans forum got together for a couple poker games. Money was made, money was lost, and a good time was had. After the games we recorded a podcast episode, but it came out not so great. It’s up, but I won’t link to it. It was late, we were tired, it happens.

Saturday

I slept in Saturday, and didn’t rush off to the show. After Wednesday night, Thursday and Friday, I had already had a very full convention. It didn’t feel like I had two more days of convention to go to.

Eventually I headed over, and decided to walk around the artists and illustrator’s tables. I found a sketchbook by Terry Dodson, who I saw earlier in the day signing at his booth. I bought the sketchbook, and decided to talk to Terry. I asked him to sign the sketch book, which was from his French book Songes. He signed the book, and as we were talking, drew a small sketch on the inside cover.

Songes Sketchbook

Songes Sketchbook

The artwork for this book is amazing. His illustrations look like modern art nouveau. He has drawn a lot of mainstream superhero comics, like Wonder Woman and X-Men, but the work he does for the less mainstream and foreign books blows his mainstream work away.

It was even more exciting to talk to him about his art career. He was in engineering school, and took art classes on the side. He was planning going into industrial design, but instead left school to work in comics full time during his senior year, and never finished his engineering degree.

His story was similar – but opposite – of my own. I was in art school, and eventually got into engineering. I let engineering kill my pursuit of art, and I have lately been working to course correct and find my artistic soul again. I was able to tell him that he made the right decision to pursue art instead of engineering.

Meeting and talking to Terry Dodson made me want to sit down with a sketch book and do nothing but draw and draw and draw until I am as good, or better, than him. I have been struggling to find the time to dedicate to art, because I am finding that I need to create art and illustrations, just to make the world make more sense (as strange as that sounds). Though I only had the time for a quick 10-minute conversation with him, it was very inspiring.

Later in the day I met up with a friend who had introduced me to a guy working in the comics industry earlier in the weekend. We had set up lunch for Saturday, and I met up with them. We had a great discussion about comics, and talked about what fan sites and podcasts (like my OTV site) can do for the industry.

It was motivational, and gave me a lot of ideas of what I would like to do with my Only The Valiant website. I have ideas of how I can make it more than just a website for the podcast, but more of a community hub for comic book fans.

I walked away from that meeting ready to go to work to make OTV bigger and better.

After lunch, I rushed to get my recording equipment from the apartment. I wasn’t expecting lunch to go so long. I’m not complaining, since the conversations I had were great, I feel fortunate that I got to talk and network with folks for as long as I did.

Back to recording though, we were scheduled to record our big “live from the show” episode Saturday afternoon. I got home, packed up the equipment, and headed to the convention. I got a great space to set everything up in one of the lounge areas, and got to work plugging everything in.

A good bunch of people came to record with us, with people from the valiantfans board, thecomicforums, and a fan who found us on iTunes and started listening from there. We talked about the convention, people watching, and argued about which Valiant books were the best to give a new reader to try out. It was a fun episode to record, and it is up on the site now.

A couple of us headed back to the Tilted Kilt for dinner, and later in the night Scott and I went over to the Hyatt.

The Hyatt is where the after-hours action takes place in San Diego, at least as far as the convention goes. The bar is huge, and spilled out onto the patio out front of the hotel. Myself, Trevor, and Scott found Steve, Chris, and Jim with some other folks at the bar. I met a lot of people, and got to hang out with a lot of folks.

I ran into James Sime, the owner of Isotope comics here in San Francisco, quite possibly the greatest comic shop in the country. We said a quick hello.

I ran into some of the Geek Savant/Super Real crew, and got to hang out with them for a bit. Dave Dwonch and I brainstormed an idea for a comic book: How To Pick Up Chicks At Comic Book Conventions. Dave was a wingman extraordinaire for me at Wondercon earlier this year. He pulled some epic wingman duty while I was meeting a lovely lady at Kate O’Briens until late into the evening. Like most ideas from 1am at the bar, I have no idea if it will materialize, but Dave is a very talented comic creator, check out Space Time Condominium.

As Dave and I were talking, some poor kid comes up to us and started a conversation with us. He walked up and asked us, “so what do you do?” Dave jumped right in with his pitch about Pickup comics, and asked if this guy would buy it. This poor kid said he didn’t really read comics, and that’s whent eh situation erupted. Dave railed on this kid about why he was even here, and we poked at him about his direction in life, and what he wanted to accomplish.

I really don’t think he knew what he was getting in to when he walked up to us.

The bar eventually closed, and Scott and I went home. We had just gotten home when we both had the same thought at the same time: “want to drink a beer?” We stayed up an extra half-hour or hour or so, chatting about comics, the convention, and whatever else.

Saturday was a great day. I accomplished an incredible amount, from networking, to meeting people, to getting inspired to pour my energy into different work and projects. I wish every day of my life were as rich and satisfying as Saturday was.

Sunday

By the time Sunday rolled around, I had accomplished everything I needed to at the convention. I slept in again, and headed over to the convention in the late morning. I went to a panel, only my second of the weekend. It was How to Draw Star Wars with Katie Cook. Katie draws the Clone Wars online comic for the Star Wars site, and I have been a fan of hers for a few years. The panel was geared towards kids, and pencil and paper was handed out to everyone.

Katie would demonstrate how to draw different Star Wars characters, and the drawings were projected on a big screen, so everyone could follow along. The standout: Boba Fett in the Sarlac’s stomach juices, with a cute pet kitty floating next to him in an intertube. Every character she drew got a cute pet, even Darth Vader.

I walked around the convention floor for a while after that, made some final purchases. I found my friend John from New York, and got to hang out with him for a bit. I then finally made it back home.

Scott and I had invited folks over to our place for a post-convention cool down party. As far as I can remember, Pants, Trevor, Dave, Grant, Steve, Jim, and Chris showed up, plus another one of Dave’s friends whose name escapes me. Scott, Steve, Chris, Jim and I were talking about renting both units in the apartment building we rented for next year, so we could have one apartment to rule them all.

Our location and set up was really fantastic this year, and having the same thing, but even more so next year would be great. It would be this incredible congregation of creativity, ahanging out, and partying.

The location was great, the people were great, and I had a blast.

Back Home

I spent Monday packing up, figuring out how to transport all the stuff I purchased, and cleaning up the apartment a little. I’m glad I gave myself that extra day after the convention to wrap everything up.

My experience of comic book conventions is changing the more I go to them. I used to go to comic book conventions to walk around the dealer booth, buy some comics, and maybe get a book or two signed by a writer or artist. Comic book conventions were a chance to buy a lot of stuff, and that was about it.

The actual convention is now such a small part of my overall experience. The best times at this show were when I got to see old friends, make new friends, make new contacts, network with folks, shake hands, play poker, and raise beer glasses with folks.

This show was inspiring. It renewed my excitement about existing projects like Only The Valiant and my 101 Artwork, and got my me thinking about new projects. I am left ready to plow into everything and start creating. I have a few things in mind that resonate with me.

To everyone I met this weekend, thanks for making this convention great.

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Truck vs. Car, Round 2 (or, “yes, my truck is invincible”)

Wednesday, June 24th, 2009

Last night was going moderately well. I got home to find out that my press pass for San Diego Comic-Con went through, and it was time to head over to another Super Tuesday Party at Janet’s place down in Redwood City.

I was driving through town, stopped at a red light. The light turned green, but a couple people in front of me had to make a left turn, and I was stuck stopped behind them.

It took me a second to figure out why my truck got shoved forward and what caused that big crunching sound.

“Oh, I got rear-ended”

I went for my glove box, got my insurance and registration info out. A couple guys who were walkign by at the time told the other driver to turn his car off, he was leaking radiator fluid.

I started to wonder just how bad it was gonna be.

When I got out of the cab, I couldn’t see the damage to the back of my truck, but as I walked back there, I saw the damage to the other driver’s car:

The other car had a bit of damage

Pretty mashed up.

I had resigned myself to having a jacked up rear end, and having to get some body work.

I got to the back of my truck, and saw…

Nothing. No damage. Hardly even a tiny scratch to the bumper.

Check it out:

My truck hardly had a scratch on the bumper

It was at this moment that I realised that my truck truly is invincible.

I also now see that there is another truck across the street in the photo, quietly watching, as if in solidarity with my truck. We salute you, brother.

This is the second accident this truck has been in where at first it appeared the damage was gonna be bad, and then… nothing. In both cases, the other cars couldn’t exactly say the same, and neither was my fault.

One occurrence is random chance. Two occurrences is a pattern, and my truck is showing a pattern of invincibility vs. cars.

[I may have to post up the story of the first time my truck encountered car and won, it was from before I started this blog]

Over all, I was surprised and relieved to see I didn’t have any damage.

Most of all, I am proud of my truck.

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How To Memorize Anything

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

How to Memorize Anything

I just spent a weekend memorizing a 400-page technical manual, then took a test on the material to get a professional certification for the material.

I aced it.

I get to put a bunch more letters after my name, Sean Neprud, P.E., LEED AP. The LEED AP is new. My list of letters is almost longer than my name now. It would be longer if I could put “kick ass” on there as well, but nobody will certify K-A. Yet.

The real lesson from this story, however, is how I learned all of this material in 2 days. I studied from 9am to 5pm Saturday, with a 2-hour break, and from 8am to 6pm Sunday, with a 3-hour break. 400 pages of facts and information that I had to apply and interpret, memorized in 13 hours.

I want to go on record saying that I am not gifted at memorization. I am downright bad at it, in fact. Memorizing all of the vocabulary for Spanish was always the hardest part of class for me, and as far as forgetfulness goes, I recently forgot where I parked my truck, and had to walk up and down streets in my neighborhood to find it.

Now I will say (not so humbly) that I am gifted with smarts. I can figure stuff out, and know how to use information pretty easily, once I know it.

Knowing the information, and knowing it quickly, was the problem I faced.

My plan was to study for a week or two. That got cut down to a week. The time I was allotting to study got smaller and smaller as the test got nearer and nearer.

By the Friday before the Monday-morning exam, I planned to study for the whole weekend, from Friday evening to Sunday night. I got distracted on Friday though, and didn’t start till Saturday morning.

Why is memorization important?

Sometimes life requires memorization. It helps socially, with remembering names of people you meet. It helps in business and at work, with too many things to list. It even helps pass tests to become an Accredited Professional.

One frustrating thing about this particular exam I took is that it is closed book. They even made me turn my pockets inside out before entering the test room and filmed everybody in the room to make sure we didn’t cheat.

Of course, life isn’t closed book, and when using this information to plan the design of a LEED accredited building, like, for real, I will have the book as a reference.

I guess the folks that give out the certification want to make sure that Accredited Professionals are well versed in the LEED material.

I do know the material far better than if I could have just looked it up in a book during the exam. Name a random LEED credit, and I can list the requirements for that credit without referencing the manual.

This is due to my use of the Super Amazing Memorization Method™

How the SAMM™ was born

I developed my Super Amazing Memorization Method™ back when I was teaching a lot of workshops, and I would be in a room with 15 to 20 guys I had never met before, who had spent thousands of dollars to attend.

A little thing I have figured out about people: When we spend $2,000 for a weekend workshop, we want the people teaching us to remember our name.

Memorization is mighty important in this situation.

I’ve also used this method at networking parties, when I meet a bunch of folks, or even at the bars, when I hit on a group of 3 or 4 women, to remember all of their names.

I don’t get any letters after my name for that though.

So what is the Super Amazing Memorization Method™?

The process is simple

It is a very easy process. I’ll explain it with an example of learning a group of people’s names.

Someone introduces them self. You repeat their name to yourself.

Another person introduces themself, and you repeat their name to yourself.

Now here is the key:

After repeating the second person’s name, repeat the first person’s name, and the second person’s name.

After the third person introduces themself, repeat their name, then the names of all three people that introduced themself.

This is how, weekend after weekend, I memorized the names of 15-20 people in a seminar as they introduced themselves over a few minutes. By the end of introductions, I remembered everybody’s name.

The problem with traditional memorization is that as soon as we learn something new, it can very easily displace the old information. I can’t tell you how many times I have been at parties where I meet somebody, remember their name, but as soon as I meet another person and learn their name, I have forgotten the first person.

This memorization method reinforces the previous information every time we learn something new, and further pushes it into the long-term information storage in our minds.

Each new addition to a body of information is followed by a review of the entire body of information.

It amazes me how effective this is.

Last weekend, I used this method to memorize the LEED manual. The manual describes roughly 50 different ways that building design and construction can earn credits towards getting a certification by the Green Building Council.

Each one of these credits has very specific requirements, for example one credit requires that 10% of architectural materials, by cost, be recycled, with recycled defined as percentage, by weight, of post-consumer recycled material plus one-half of pre-consumer recycled material. Other credits reference standards with big, impossible to remember names like ASHRAE 90.1, CIBSE 10, and IPMVP volume III.

In other words, it was not simple stuff to memorize.

I learned all of this material with the same process that I used to memorize names. I started by learning the requirements of the first credit, and wrote it out on paper. Then I learned the requirements of the second credit.

Then I re-wrote the requirements of the first credit and the second credit.

I moved on to the third, learned it, then re-wrote all three. I repeated this on and on, until I had learned the meaning and requirements for approximately 50 credits.

I have dozens of pages of handwritten notes as proof.

I also passed the test and got new letters after my name, so maybe there is something to this.

The downside

There is a downside to this process: it is boring. When writing out the meaning of something for the 20th time, you will start to hate and despise writing it out.

I experienced that last weekend. There were times that I didn’t want to write down the previous 15 things I had memorized after learning the 16th.

I forced myself to do it though, and even though I was annoyed to be writing out that 1st item for the 15th time, it was worth it, because it helped me to add the 15th and 16th item to my overall knowledge, and it ensured that the previous 14 things I had learned stuck in my mind.

If you use this method, skipping a round of review is NOT allowed. It is tempting, but this shortcut will only damage the overall effectiveness of the process.

I did use shorthand, writing just a few words down that summarized each credit during the review. For example:

Materials and Resources Credit 4.1: 10% recycled material, by cost, does not include MEP, pre-consumer + 1/2 of post-consumer, use weight to figure partially recycled materials

Would get shortened to:

MR C4.1-10% recycled (post + 1/2 pre)

When using shorthand or abbreviations, the purpose was to remind myself that I knew the details, I just used the method to save some writing time (and reduce hand cramping).

The boring repetition of this process is the reason that it works so well though.

Learning in list format

For those of you that learn best by seeing things in a list, here is the Super Amazing Memorization Method™ in step by step format

  1. Learn the first piece of information, write it down or repeat it to yourself
  2. Learn the second piece of information, write it down or repeat it to yourself
  3. Write down or repeat the first piece of information, then the second
  4. Learn the third piece of information, write it down or repeat it
  5. Write out or repeat all three pieces of information you have learned so far
  6. For each subsequent piece of information you learn, write it down or repeat it to yourself, then follow it by writing it down or repeating every piece of information you have learned so far, including the most recent piece
  7. reap your rewards and riches

I learned it all the first time

How many times do you think somebody refers back to a previous section when memorizing information like this? How many times did you have to review part of a textbook in college to remember the material?

I paid attention during my memorization process, and I only looked back at previous sections 3 or 4 times to refresh my memory and understanding of that section.

That means that for 90-95% of the material, I learned and retained it all, accurately, the first time. Not bad for 50 different nuggets of information.

When I finished studying the manual, I made a note that I have never memorized so much information so quickly. It is boring, it is tedious, and it is effective.

Posted in Pleasures, Self-Analysis, Wealth | 3 Comments »

Nice..

Friday, May 29th, 2009

My thirtieth birthday is coming up this weekend, and my crew at work decided to decorate my cube up a bit.

Lots of balloons..

More decoration. The Superman next to the disco ball is always there, but the disco ball is not.

More balloons..

Most of the balloons have something written on them, including some messages that I (so far) have no idea what they mean written in Arabic and Chinese.

This is kind of funny, because today the company is having a celebration in honor of people that have worked at K/J for at least 20 years. They walked around this morning and gave balloons to everyone with at least 20 years under their belt. Folks who have worked here over 40 years (and there are a few) got two balloons.

By this measure, it seems I have worked here for 260 years.

Keep on rockin’ in the (not so) free world!

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Meeting Jim Shooter

Monday, February 9th, 2009

I have been reading comic books since I was about 9 or 10 years old.  It started by buying GI Joe comics off the rack when my family would go to Thrifty Drug Store for ice cream every now and then in the evening.  Though my tastes have matured since then, I still have a lot of fondness for the comics from this era.

Eventually I found Ralph’s Comic Corner, the local comic shop in Ventura, and started buying my GI Joe comics from there.  I soon started buying Wolverine, X-Men, and a few other comics, branching out into super heroes.

When I was 12, going on 13, I heard about this big crossover story from a new comic book company called Valiant.  They had been putting out comics for just under a year and a half, and I didn’t really know much about them.  For two months though, all 8 of their titles would cross over with each other, telling one large story.

For some reason I thought this sounded pretty cool, and I bought them all.  I got hooked.

I wasn’t too aware of it at the time, but Valiant Comics was the brain child of Jim Shooter.  Jim started working in the comics business when he was 14, by writing a few issues of Legion of Super Heroes.  He submitted them to DC, and they hired him, without even knowing how old he was.  After working at DC comics, then Marvel comics, he became Editor In Chief at Marvel comics, the position he held through most of the 80s.  In the late 80s he formed Valiant Comics, and eventually, in 1991, started the Valiant Comics line.

Though Valiant was a collaboration by a lot of people, it was largely guided by Jim’s vision and ideas.  He was the captain of the ship.  Unfortunately, Jim Shooter was forced out of his own company by the other owners, in what comes down to a conflict between what was best creatively vs. what was best business-wise.  Valiant became a huge success, but wasn’t the same without Shooter at the helm.

With that background, I met Jim Shooter on Saturday at the New York Comic Con.

Awesome.

Jim showed up to the con around 3 or 4pm, and was set up next to JayJay Jackson’s table in artist alley.  I had him sign a copy of Harbinger #1 for me, and I asked if he had a few minutes to record a few questions.  He agreed, but then my friend Brian did one better, he asked Jim to come over to our table when we recorded our episode of Only The Valiant (my Valiant-related podcast)!

So me and co-host Average Joe sat down to start recording, and over walks Jim Shooter!  He sat down, we gave him a microphone, and he talked to us for a while about Valiant.  It was great stuff, and will be in the next episode.

Jim was putting on a panel that evening, “How to Create Comics”.  It was the information that he learned in his 40 years in the comics biz, working with the old greats like Kirby, Lee, and Ditko.  I was hanging around his and JayJay’s booth after we finished recording, and it came time for Jim to head down for his panel.  I got to walk over to the panel room with him.  It was fantastic to walk around and shoot the breeze with him.  I asked him about what he was currently working on, and talked to him a little about working on the Valiant characters again for the recent hardcover books.  He is working for a media company, creating comics to be used in advertising, and he spoke kindly about the Valiant Entertainment guys.

The seminar was completely full, they had to turn people away after the room filled.  Jim’s seminar was fantastic, I would summarize it as “back to basics, but on stereroids”.  It was all about how to tell a story with comics, and what was important about the visual and written parts of the book.  I think it could have gone on for hours, but he only had an hour to talk.

After the seminar I got a pic with Mr. Shooter himself:

Me and Jim Shooter

Me and Jim Shooter

Jim was very friendly, gracious, well-spoken, and very intelligent.  He is quite tall, as is commonly known, he makes me, at 6′-1″, feel short.  I barely got to scratch the surface of all the things we could have talked about, but it was fantastic.

He is responsible for creating the comics that I have loved since I first read them as a kid, so meeting the man who did so much to create these was a real treat.

The comics that he wrote inspired me to start the Tags: ,
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MAC 2: MAC goes DaDa

Monday, January 26th, 2009

As I was walking down Second Street this morning, I looked at it in a new way. I was thinking to myself, what would someone who had never seen this street think of it? I forced myself to look at the street with fresh eyes, and notice the things that get lost in my day to day walk due to familiarity.

Second street is peculiar. Along each side of the street are old storefronts, with a new sign every twenty feet at a different height, a different shape, and a different color. This street houses the reject stores and businesses from other, nicer streets. The sidewalk itself is old brick, which is quickly interrupted by newer concrete. The street seems to be an old, run down relic of what San Francisco was thirty years ago. The oldness and smallness of this street is out of place next to the newer, fancier, taller streets just a block in either direction.

Amongst what seems to be an old, worn down street are pockets of newness. A starbucks hides at the corner of an alley, the round green sign is almost lost amongst all of the visual clutter that lines this street. New restaurants and new bars line this street, but the newness is hidden by the old facades that front them.

MAC went to DaDa tonight, one of these new places hidden amongst the drab clutter of this street. MAC is the Monday Adventure Crew, a biweekly social outing to a new happy hour bar. It gives us a chance to try new places and find new deals, so that we can make a better, more informed decision about happy hour when it matters.

DaDa is a long, narrow room, soaked in red light and red paint. The bar extends down the length of the room on the left, while a long booth seat runs along the length of the right side. The wall behind the bar is painted red, and is accented with red lights that run along the back edge of the shelves that are staggered along the wall. These shelves are covered with bottles of whiskeys, vodkas, and pint glasses, all of which glow red from the light just beyond them.

The red lights color everything, from specks of red light on the wood of the bar, to the overly sized, novelty alcohol bottles that sit high up on the highest shelves. The red light also shines from above from old, worn out chandeliers with red light bulbs in the sockets, half of them burnt out.

The wall opposite the bar seems to be in an entirely different room. Bright white lights shine down on the white wall, highlighting the black and white paintings.  Below that is the polyester vinyl cushion of the raised bench seat that extends along the length of the wall. Small, raised circular tables are placed every few feet, making this side of the bar look like a cross between a retro-chic lounge, and a cafeteria.

Unmemorable, mellow music plays in the background, loud enough to be heard, but bland enough not to matter.

The crowd was thin, as is regular for a Monday, which allowed us to stand at the bar for a while before setting up shop along the opposite wall, at one of the tall tables set against the raised bench seating. The drink deals extend only to the wine and “specialty martini” menu, which I didn’t take the time to examine, even though it was propped up in a clear plastic stand in the center of the table.

As I announced this morning when I sent out the email soliciting this outing, it is good to go out on Monday, when the week has just begun.  It reminds me that I am not just a cog in the machine, and it reminds me that spending time with people is one of the better parts of having to go to work every day.

This MAC consisted of: Sean, Patrick, David, Julia, and Zac.

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Yo Soy El Mejor Cocinero!

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009

I’d like to think this isn’t my fault, but here I am in the midst of it.

It started innocently enough, when I went for a jog at lunch with my co-workers, Sam and Allison. Sam started talking about his chile verde recipe, how easy it was, and how delicious it was.

The real reason I haven’t been too productive the last couple days? I’ve been thinking about chile verde ever since. How am I supposed to focus on heat load calculations when all I can think of is tender cubes of pork, slowly simmered in a mouth watering sauce of tomatillos, jalapenos, and garlic? I knew that if I were not to make a batch of chile verde soon, these thoughts would consume me.

Today, I couldn’t take it any more, and I decided to give in to these culinary urges that have been building in me. I went to Whole Foods after work, bought a big chunk of pork shoulder, a couple pounds of tomatillos, some jalapenos, and a few other necessities. I got home and went to work!

Some of the raw ingredients. The Tecate is to maintain sanity during the process.

Some of the raw ingredients. The Tecate is to maintain sanity during the process.

I learned some things about food today.  Tomatillos have a strange paper coating that they grow in, and they are sticky on the inside (I don’t know why).  There are a couple different cuts of pork shoulder.  There is the picnic cut, which is a fatter cut, and tends to fall apart when you cook it.  This is good for shredded pork in stew, or pulled pork.  The cut I got, the butt, is leaner, and holds together better when you cut it.  Further, even though the butt is leaner, there is still a bit of fat in the sucker.  I feel like I threw away a good quarter of the pig that was just fat when I was cutting it up into cubes.

So here was my basic plan of attack: cut the tomatillos, jalapenos, and the lone pasilla in half, and roast them in the broiler.  The tomatillos roast about twice as fast as the peppers, so take them out early.  Throw a couple cloves of garlic in there to roast too.

While that is getting broiled, cut the pork shoulder into chunks about 1-inch square.  Throw these in a pan with some olive oil to brown off the meat.  Apply salt and pepper.

Oh, man, don’t forget about the peppers in the broiler!  Take them out, remove the skin, and put the tomatillos, peppers, and garlic in the food processor.  Mix until it looks like salsa, then dump it in a pot and heat it up.

Now the pork cubes are getting hot, and the pan of salsa is getting hot, this seems like a perfect time to put them together!  I added a cup of chicken broth to add some liquid to the mixture.  Since I am gonna cook the pork through by simmering it in this mixture, I want the liquid to fill up to the top of the pork cubes. Dice up some cilantro to throw in there, make sure you dump in a bunch of oregano, and mince up more garlic, and things are good.

El trabajo del mejor cocinero

El trabajo del mejor cocinero

Now it is time to kick back. Grab your tecate, listen to some Voodoo Glow Skulls, and maybe write a self-congratulatory blog post. It’s all good at this point, the coast is clear. After simmering for an hour or two, I added more chicken broth because the liquid had been boiling off. When that is boiled down a little bit, I am gonna eat.

Preliminary tastings prove the title of this post, this very well could be the best chile verde ever made. My apartment is filled with the sweet smell of roasted jalapenos, with the juicy smell of roasting meat. It is sweet, with some spice, with a little zing from the lime I put in there. The meat is soft and tender, and is starting to take on the full, sweet flavor from the tomatillos and peppers.

Oh man.  I just took a writing break to try it out, and every time I taste it, it is better than the previous taste.  It is about time to eat this.

I apologize if you have ruined your keyboard by drooling all over it while reading this post.

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MAC No. 1 – 83 Proof

Sunday, January 18th, 2009

There is a new Monday tradition, the Monday Adventure Crew!

Every other Monday, the idea is to go to a new happy hour place in downtown SF to grab a drink.  Just one drink.  This will expose us to new happy hour venues and happy hour deals, so that we can make a more informed decision regarding happy hour when it MATTERS.  In other words, no more loser bars for happy hour on Thursday and Friday.

There are a ton of places in SF that I haven’t been to, and we always end up going to the same old places that happen to be within a block or two of the office.  In other words, we commit social suicide on a regular basis.

For the first MAC, we went to 83 Proof.

It was a nice bar, $2 heinekens and $4 well drinks during happy hour.

Yelp reviews say the bar gets pretty busy later on in the week, but Monday was pretty low key. We were able to get seats at the bar.  I drank a Sam Adams.

I’d defintiely go back to this bar on a Friday to check it out.  I imagine it fills up with financial district types, but the bar doesn’t seem like it gets too pretentious, just a good place to grab a drink.

Attendies of this MAC were Sean, Jimmy, and Patrick.

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