Happy Halloween!

Yes, I know Halloween’s still a few days away, but I still want to wish everybody a happy and safe Halloween, All Hallows Even, Samhain, or whatever other holiday you choose to celebrate this time of year.

So I successfully lasted through my first 90 days working in the office of a local plumbing and HVAC company. Hopefully my benefits will kick in soon. That’ll be a relief, and I’m able to pay my rent and still have a little fun. ComicCon 2 weeks ago was definitely fun, and now I’m looking forward to the weekend after this coming one. I finally get to explore Baltimore, and what’s even better is that I’ll get to do it with some good friends. Hopefully I’ll have some good stories to tell after.

What a week!

So yes, I went out and had glorious fun this past Saturday. I got up at 5AM so I could get into Manhattan for ComicCon, and I managed to snag a relatively decent spot somewhat close to the front of the packed mob they called a “line.” That meant I actually got into the convention shortly after their official opening time of 10AM. One of the things I found out that these big conventions do is hand out “swag bags.” This was my first really big convention in over fifteen years, and I don’t remember swag bags from that big Star Trek con I went to in Boston back when I was in middle school. Anyway, this year’s ComicCon swag bag is one of those nice re-useable shopping bags, and it contained an Official Con Freebie T-shirt, a pack of popular name-brand bubblegum that has interesting commercials on TV, a single-color starter deck of 30 Magic the Gathering cards, and various advertising pamphlets. I added some free books, some pins, and another good reusable bag to my personal swag, and I managed to pick up a couple extra bags for friends who weren’t able to make it in. I did finally get an official Chewbacca t-shirt! It’s very cool, but not as much as the photograph I got signed by Peter Mayhew. In case you didn’t know, that’s the name of the man in the Wookiee suit, and yes he is that tall. He was sitting down when I met him, but I got to shake his hand, and it’s HUGE! I haven’t noticed that much of a hand-size difference since I was a little kid. I also got to meet and pay my respects to Stephen Lang. Yes, yes, he was the bad guy in Avatar (and my favorite part of the movie, by the way) and the new Conan, and is currently starring in the TV series Terra Nova, but I’m a fan of his work in Gettysburg and Gods & Generals as George Pickett and Stonewall Jackson respectively. Now I just need good picture framed for my signed photos.

ComicCon, here I come!

The New York ComicCon and Anime Festivals are this weekend. Sadly, I have to work both Friday and Sunday, but I’ll be spending a good chunk of Saturday at the Javits Center socializing with my fellow geeks and nerds. I don’t plan on buying much if anything, though that’s subject to change if I find Something Special. My main goal is to try to get autographs from Peter Mayhew and Stephen Lang – Mr. Mayhew becuase I’m a big fan of Chewbacca, and Mr. Lang because he was excellent as General Pickett in Gettysburg. I’ll also be doing a bit of promoting for Lunacon 2012. The Con Chair sent me a good-sized box of bookmarks detailing when and where it’s going to be, and who’s set to be guesting. I’ll be trying to hand them around and leaving small stacks at strategic locations - it’s a good way to get the word out, especially at an even where there will probably be a large number of book nerds in attendance.

I’ve been hoping to re-make a music video I created eleven years ago, but I’ll admit to being temporarily foiled by the lack of certain software on my computer. I took a TV production class at my high school the summer between my junior and senior years. For one of the projects, I took clips from the movie Gettysburg and cut them together to “The Glory,” the big finale song from Frank Wildhorn’s musical The Civil War. It came out rather well, I thought, but the VHS I had it on disappeared years ago. If I do manage to obtain the capability I need, I’d like to remake the video, borrowing from Gettysburg and Gods & Generals. I learned about intellectual property and copyright laws in some of my grad school classes, so everything will get credited at the end of the video once I’m able to get it done.

RIP Steve Jobs

I heard last night that Steve Jobs died. He had one heck of a career, and I’ll freely admit to owning an iPod Video and occasionally shopping iTunes (which I’ve downloaded to successive PCs over the past 6 years). One of the things I always remember hearing about MACs is their legendary near-invulnerability to viruses. A few years back, I heard various stories from someone who used to work heavily with MACs, particularly about how she and co-workers were assigned to try and write viruses specifically for that platform so they could crack what OTHER people might manage to write. One virus I particularly remember her mentioning was one that caused units in the office to start cursing out loud through their speakers. That stuck in my mind because I remember working with MACs for a graphics/web design class I took my senior year of high school. One of the functions these ‘puters had was that they were programmed with a few phrases they could say – my favorite was “HEY YOU. YEAH YOU. WHO DO YOU THINK I’M TALKING TO – THE MOUSE.”

Anyway, just over a week to NY ComiCon, and I’m getting excited! I’m not planning to buy a whole lot (though one friend maintains that buying stuff is the whole reason for going in the first place), though I may need to pick up at least one Chewbacca-related item to ask Peter Mayhew to sign for me. It’ll all depend on whether anything strikes me as being super-special and if I can afford it. I also expect to get at least a couple interesting/odd looks or comments – I want Stephen Lang’s autograph for something completely un-related to his role in Avatar, and I can do a rough approximation of the spoon line from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in German.