Home Page Golbanamaniarta!

Monday, October 20, 2008


I don't think it would fit in my apartment 


But, boy, would I love to have it: a Solari train departure board from Boston is for sale on eBay.

Labels: , ,



Friday, September 12, 2008


Another proud accomplishment 


My team had an outing to the L.A. County Fair, where one of the attractions is thoroughbred racing. Some of us bet on one of the races -- first time I've ever bet on a race -- and I won. It was only a $10 bet at approximate 2-to-1 odds, so I only won $22, but still...

I picked the horse using the "which one do I think has the best name?" method. The name of the horse: Trainspotting.

Edited to add: Turns out the jockey is on a hot streak -- that race was the third of four in a row he won yesterday.

Labels: ,



Monday, July 28, 2008


You say you want more glimpses into my life? 


I went to Comic-Con in San Diego on Saturday. A now-former co-worker at Yahoo!, comic artist Tim Hensley, gave me a guest admission, and I cashed in 2,000 Amtrak Guest Rewards points for the round-trip train ride, so I was able to make the trip economically.

The morning started off auspiciously when I missed a subway train because I was simultaneously attempting to help a woman with the ticket machine and trying to get the ticket machine I was using to accept a Sacajawea dollar (I eventually had to switch to a dollar bill, which it took immediately -- that's not the way the world is supposed to work!). But I made it down to Union Station in time to catch the first southbound train.

The guy sitting next to me after the Santa Ana station was reading a film script titled "Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates," presumably an adaptation of a Tom Robbins novel of the same name, although you never know.

At one point, a short, dark-haired woman already wearing a Comic-Con badge came walking down the aisle. The couple sitting in front of me excitedly asked if they could take a picture with her; she agreed, and they used the camera-at-arm's-length method. She looked very familiar, but I didn't see the name on her badge, and all I knew from overhearing the couple's conversation was that she played Ted's mother on "How I Met Your Mother," a show I don't watch. I'm so horrible on recognizing people out of context that it wasn't until I got home late Saturday night and did a Yahoo! search for "how i met your mother ted's mother" that I figured out the woman was Cristine Rose, who plays Angela Petrelli on "Heroes," a show I do watch.

The train got into San Diego a few minutes early, and I followed the crowd down to the convention center. I went upstairs to get my badge (which turned out to have "Professional" emblazoned on it -- I hoped nobody would ask me to draw something) and headed for the first panel I wanted to attend, "Quick Draw!"

This wasn't so much a panel as it was a demonstration. Cartoonists Sergio Aragones, Scott Shaw, and Mike Peters -- the paper in front of them projected on screens at the front of the room -- attempted to quickly draw things suggested to them by Mark Evanier, occasionally using suggestions shouted out by the audience.

After that, I stayed put for a panel featuring six voiceover actors, hosted by Mark Evanier and animation writer Earl Kress. The star of this panel was Chuck McCann, the original Sonny the Cocoa Puffs Bird (among many, many other things); the two others present with whom I was familiar were Wally Wingert (who does most of the "additional voices" on "Family Guy") and Phil LaMarr (Hermes Conrad on "Futurama" and Ollie the weatherman on "Family Guy" -- he admitted that they sometimes bring him in for 30-second-long sessions for the latter). This panel culminated in the six actors having to demonstrate their craft by reading an old "Adventures of Superman" radio script.

Once those panels were over, I headed down to the exhibit hall and wandered around for a while, although it was so crowded around some booths that the wandering was a very slow process. I did find the "Peanuts" booth, where I bought an exclusive Charlie Brown bobblehead (modeled after a Charlie Brown figurine from 1958), which is now on my desk at work. The biggest obstacle to moving around was the Warner Bros. booth, where an autograph signing by the cast of the TV show "Chuck" was in progress. Yes, the name Comic-Con grows more and more inaccurate every year.

At one point, I walked by as a woman was looking desperately for a pen. I pulled one out of my backpack and handed it to her. It turned out she needed it to get an autograph from a large, bearded man whose badge read "Steve Agee," and whose voice sounded very familiar. Yes, this was another case of me being completely unable to recognize someone out of context -- he's an actor on another TV show I watch, "The Sarah Silverman Program." I got my pen back, but I should have told him (or even the woman involved) to keep it -- I got it from work anyway.

Speaking of which, I went back upstairs, thinking about attending a panel previewing Season 2 of "Pushing Daisies" (which I'm looking forward to being able to watch in HD). The line to get into that panel looked way too long, though, so instead I ducked into a room where Mark Evanier -- yes, him again -- was hosting a panel on MAD Magazine in the '60s, with Al Feldstein, Al Jaffee, Arnie Kogen, and, of course, Sergio Aragones. I never got into comic books when I was growing up, but I read MAD and the Archie digests. I'm always happy to hear MAD stories, especially the one about Bill Gaines and a couple dozen staffers and freelancers showing up at the door of the magazine's one subscriber in Haiti, who had just let his subscription lapse, to try to get him to renew.

After the MAD panel, I stayed put for a panel that was supposed to be Mark Evanier interviewing Mike Peters, but turned out to be Mike Peters telling hilarious stories, tangentially related to his cartooning career, pretty much nonstop.

By this time, it was 5:30. I hadn't managed to meet up with any of my friends who were also at Comic-Con, and they all had dinner plans already anyway, so I walked back to the train station to catch the 6:20 train back to L.A. (the next train wouldn't be until 8:20).

The train was filled with tired Comic-Con attendees until the Solana Beach stop, when the crowd that had been attending horse races at Del Mar got on and raised the noise level considerably -- especially since most of them didn't have seats, and therefore had nothing to do but purchase libations in the snack car.

And the answer to the vital question: yes, there was a fair amount of attractive women in costume. However, I didn't see anyone dressed in the two female costumes I really wanted to see: Liz from "Hellboy II" (I can't find a good photo, but it involves a leather jacket, a choker with a dangling cross pendant, and short dark hair) and Dr. Mrs. The Monarch from "The Venture Brothers" (which I also can't find a good photo of, but it involves lots and lots of cleavage). Actually, I'm told there were a few Dr. Mrs. The Monarchs hanging about on Friday, when there was a "Venture Brothers" panel, so I was off by one day.

Because I'm too shy to actually ask strangers if I can take their picture, I only took one photo on the trip, and this is it:



It's a barbecue restaurant that met the fate of all good barbecue restaurants: it burned down.

Labels: , , , , , ,



Friday, February 09, 2007


Yes, this is HO scale 




This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?