Still Busy

You ever stared at a script so long that you start to wonder what led to the great schism between "Courier" and "Courier New"? Were the two fonts one and the same? Or were they practically inseparable until they had some of falling out? Does Courier resent being inferred as "Courier Old"?

And what would the babies would look like if Courier New and Times New Roman mated? And no, this is not permission for Palatino to think you can come back into my life. You're dead to me, Palatino.

Ah, nothing says "get back to work, Eugene" like trying to find humor by anthromorphizing my fonts.

Eugene vs the Deadline

Sorry for the lack of updates - got a deadline that's creeping up on me.

Well, not so much creeping as bearing down on me at full speed. Remember when the mutant guy got hit by the car in Robocop? Yeah, it's like that. Only more so.

So no foreseeable updates for the next few days.

K-Fed-oogle

This is too awesome not to share. From the L.A. Times-

K-Fed takes on Google with SearchWithKevin.com

Kevin Federline hasn't been grabbing as many headlines since Britney Spears dumped him via text message in November. Nonetheless, he seems to have stumbled upon a new way to squeeze every last bit of cash value out of his 15 minutes of fame: Federline has launched an eponymous search engine, SearchWithKevin.com.

In addition to providing an edgy alternative to Google — albeit not as well organized or easy to navigate — the site offers users age 13 and up the chance to win Federline-affiliated prizes with every search.

Words fail me. Maybe I should do a search for some words to describe how I feel about Kevin Federline endorsing a search engine. And it's not a hoax - I did a web search for myself and it came up, along with a big picture of Kevin's face.

SearchWithKevin - it's like Google, only worse.

March 2007 Music Diary

For those new to the blog, I stole the "music diary" from Cameron Crowe. He makes mix tapes of music he's listening to from each month of his life - then he can look back and remember what he did during that part of his life based on the music.

Another month - another listing of what iTunes tells me I'm listening to most this month.

Chelsea Dagger - The Fratellis
Intevention - Arcade Fire
Keep the Car Running - Arcade Fire
Read My Mind (Pet Shop Boys Stars Are Blazing Mix) - The Killers
101 - Albert Hammond Jr.
Freak On a Leash - Korn featuring Amy Lee
Make Me Bad / In Between Days - Korn
Is It Any Wonder (Tall Paul Remix) - Keane
Piece of the Sun - Test Your Reflex
Don't Let Go - Pacha Massive
Callin' Me - Consequence
The Story - Brandi Carlile
Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk - Rufus Wainwright
The Wreckoning - Boomkat

If you get one incredibly catchy song burned into your brain this year, make that song Chelsea Dagger. I dare you to listen to it and not bounce around to it. SO CATCHY.

Arcade Fire - weird band, good music. Keep the Car Running is my favorite.

What's better than the Killers' best song? How about their best song remixed by the Pet Shop Boys! What's better than that? NOTHING.

I like the Strokes - and Albert Hammond Jr.'s stuff has a somewhat-familiar-yet-different feel to it. 101 is my favorite track of his.

I've never been a big Korn fan - just not my type of music. That being said, these two new acoustic tracks are well-worth checking out. The guest vocals are top notch - especially the amazing Amy Lee on Freak On a Leash.

I love Keane - the Tall Paul Remix is kinda disappointing, though. But it's there.

Have I told you already how much I love the free tracks from iTunes? Every week they give you a free song - definitely sample them out. Piece of the Sun, Don't Let Go, Callin' Me, and The Story are getting lots of play... and they didn't cost me anything.

Rufus Wainwright and Boomkat are old tracks that found their way into regular rotation this month.

Had to share this

The classic dirty joke goes something like this-

A man walks into the confessional and says, "Bless me father for I have sinned. I just met this incredibly sinful woman who went back to my house with me." The man then goes on to describe in rich vivid detail all the filthy and sinful things he and the woman did in the house, around the house, on the house, etc.

This goes on like this for almost an hour, when the priest finally interrupts and asks, "Are you even Catholic?" The man says no. The priest asks, "Then why are you telling me this?"

The man says, "Oh, I'm telling EVERYONE."

On a semi-related note, I was at a store today and bought the new Grand Theft Auto video game for the PS2. I gave them my credit card and my driver's license, but they had me remove the driver's license from my wallet to check my birthdate. They carded me to make sure I was 18.

Like the man said, "Oh, I'm telling EVERYONE."

A nerd eat nerd world (Wizardworld LA recap)

I have to say that WizardWorld LA was a lot more fun this year than in previous years. A lot of people there that I knew from the world of comics and animation, along with a good sized crowd.

Still, I wish Wizard did a better job with registration for pros. Comic Con does a great job handling pro registration, making it easy to pre-register, they give you a badge with a big easy-to-read label, and, perhaps more importantly, it's FREE. WizardWorld makes it really difficult to pre-register and it costs $10 for pros.

But the show itself was fun. Had work on Saturday morning, so I didn't get to the L.A. Convention Center until the afternoon. Met up with my friends (NAME DROPPING AHOY!) Matt Wayne, Dwayne McDuffie, Charlotte Fullerton, and Amy Wolfram.

Hung out with the uber-talented Sean "Cheeks" Galloway. If you haven't heard of Cheeks, you will - he did designs on the Hellboy animated films and he's blowing up. Check out his work at his web site and definitely order his sketchbooks. For $25 each, they're a bargain.

Saw the great and talented Man of Action guys again. Chatted with the awesomely talented (and awesomely tall) Joe Kelly, interrupted Duncan Rouleau's lunch, and finally got to meet Steven Seagle. Seagle's girlfriend went to college with my friend Dani, and Seagle had actually heard of me because Dani had told him about me. What a small world. Man of Action has a new animated project they unveiled at WizardWorld LA called the 7Cs - cool stuff that you can see on their website.

Went to Marvel's X-Men panel - I was distracted by the sheer volume of laptop computers in the room. I counted at least seven guys with laptops transcribing every word spoken by the panelists. It's wild to imagine that comic book creators have to be careful about every word they say, because it could end up word-for-word on the internet. After the panel I met Christopher Yost, who I've talked with many times but had never actually met in person (which is a surprisingly common relationship in the world of animation writing). Chris introduced us to Craig Kyle, who is hysterical.

Got to meet Peter David, which was pretty cool. I wanted to gush to him about an essay he'd written about becoming a better writer by expanding your influences and reading more than just comic books. I was a teenager at the time I read it and it'd really inspired me. The problem is that there's no good way to pay a compliment like that without them feeling insulted and self-conscious about their age, so I kept my mouth shut.

Saw Len Wein and checked out his new Palm device. Len can't believe how many of us keep up on his life by reading his blog. He's also got some great projects for Bongo Comics coming out in the next few months.

Also ran into Marv Wolfman, got introduced to Todd Nauck, Chris Ryall, a few others whose names escape me. Oh, and I saw Veronica Mars herself, Kristen Bell signing autographs - she is so adorably plucky cute in real life. I wanted to just go up and pinch her cheek as proof of her adorableness-ness. Wonder how many times this weekend she got asked whether her show's been cancelled?

After the show, ten of us headed out to dinner. The group included Len Wein, Sam Stormcrow Hayes, Charlotte, Dwayne, and Amy. I'd read good things about the Liberty Grill next to Staples Center, which turned out to be great. Lots of great stories over dinner, especially about the worst convention panels we've ever seen. Good time had by all.

Oh yes - I almost forgot the story about where the title of this post comes from. Over dinner, Len Wein's son told a story about having something stolen from him at San Diego Comic Con one year. We couldn't believe that someone would jack something at Comic Con. I responded with my line about it being a nerd eat nerd world. A few moments later, someone suggested a line of t-shirts with the phrase - Eugene says, "It's a nerd eat nerd world". I wouldn't buy one, but then again, I have a negative reaction to anything with the word "Eugene" in it...

Back to work. In the meantime, no more conventions for me until San Diego.

Facial Hair

Sorry for the lack of updates this week. Suddenly got very busy. One minute I was blogging - the next thing I remember, I was lying face down in a pool of my own hack writing.

But while I was in the writer cave, I realized that I haven't shaved this week. One of the signs that a writer's been in the cave is that shaving becomes a really low priority.

The problem is that I don't grow facial hair very well. I never have. It's just not something I was gifted with - the ability to grow cool Asian Facial Hair. When I go a week without shaving, I end up looking like this-



See? Not a good look for me. The judge pulls it off and it goes well with the round head shape that he and I share - but it's not for me.

Which leaves us the Fu-Man-Chu - the famous Asian Facial Hair that you see in the movies. This is a shot of actor Chow Yun-Fat in the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean movie-



The Fu-Man-Chu is great - since it makes you look equal parts evil and cool. But I dunno. It'd take forever to grow something like that. I'm sure it'd get in the way, getting all tangled up in my laptop keyboard. Plus I think if I grow that, I'm going to get laughed at. More so than I already do now.

I'm going to skip the other obvious choices - the Rollie Fingers handlebar mustache, the angry Vanilla Ice soul patch, the ZZ-Top thing attached to my chin, and the Korean version of the ZZ-Top thing that I always see in those Korean historical soap operas.

Anyways, it looks like I'll be pretty busy the next few weeks, so maybe I'll let the hair grow out and experiment with different looks. If nothing else, I can sit here in my office with the door and blinds closed and pretend to be Judge Ito...

Time to get my Wizard on

Wow, that sounds nerdy.

This coming weekend is the WizardWorld Los Angeles. If you've never been, WizardWorld is strictly for the comic book crowd - not much in the way of other television writers there. It's just not the must-be-there event that San Diego is.

But some of my friends will be there, so I'm going to take the Metro downtown and swing by on Saturday afternoon. Anybody else going?

An Open Letter to MySpace Spammers

Dear MySpace Spammers,

Hi.

You don't know me. My name is Eugene. You don't know who I am, yet you keep sending me so-called Friend Requests from names like Savannah, Destiny, Cheyenne, and Misty. Your profile pics are all hoochie pics. Your hundreds of friends are all male. You clearly only want to be friends so you can send me spam messages to get me to give you my credit card information.

And know what? I'm not mad.

It makes me laugh to see that "Chastity, 20 years-old, likes to party" wants to be my friend. I smirk when I think of how cold Chastity must be not wearing any clothes in her profile pic. In a twisted way, I even like to imagine Chastity sitting by her PC, clicking refresh on her MySpace home page, lamenting aloud through her tears, "Why doesn't Eugene want to be my friend?!?!?"

I get it MySpace Spammers. You want to make money and you see me as a mark. Fine. As long as you're that transparent and easy to spot, and as long as MySpace does such a poor job of blocking spammers, I'll just learn to live with you.

But frankly, your attempts at spam have gotten worse. The last few weeks, I've gotten a ton of bland spammer Friend Requests. The profiles are set to Private so I can't see them, so I can't laugh at them.

And then you sent me one that was obviously targeted for gay males. Do I look like a gay male? Don't answer that. I don't want to know. But my profile is public and it clearly states that I'm straight. Unless you see some ambiguity in my orientation, in which case, again, I don't want to know.

The latest craze in spammer Friend Requests? The women who brag about having a little child, to make them look more hot-to-trot? C'mon! The women in those pictures clearly did not just have children. And most of them still have their page set to, "I don't want kids" - which is prominently displayed next to pics of their kid.

I even got sent one Friend Request where the woman holding the baby was clearly NOT the same woman in the hoochie pic.

Frankly, and I'm only saying this because I love you spammers so much, I'm shocked by the lowering standards of quality that you spammers are employing. What happened to your spammer pride? It's obvious that your heart isn't in it anymore.

If you want to quit sending out spam, then just do it and quit. But don't just go through the motions. It demeans both of us and I value our spammer/spammee relationship too much to watch it degenerate like this.

Write back soon.

love always,
Eugene

"But we're on the same team..."

I'm not a big hockey fight video guy, but this is the greatest hockey fight video ever.


The second time you watch it, imagine what those kids were saying to each other as it happened. Imagine what the one kid is saying as the kid who decked him is trying to get away, but has to crawl.

Now imagine the dad who was video taping that, deciding to keep the camera held steady and not go break up the fight. Props to that dad.

And props to Greg Brown for the link!

Everyone's a Critic

Went to pick-up dinner tonight from a restaurant on Sepulveda. In the parking lot, I walked past three Hispanic guys, mid 40s, screaming at each other in Spanish. They were speaking too quickly for me to follow what was going on, but they were arguing in loud, booming voices.

While I waited inside for my food, I thought that the situation in the parking lot seemed pretty tense. Maybe I should tell someone? With my luck, it'd escalate into a riot.

I got my food and headed back through the parking lot - and the three men were still at it. This time, with my two years of high school Spanish, I could understand some of what they were screaming-

"something something something Jesus Christ Superstar!"
"No no no! Something something Phantom!"

They were going to brawl over Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals.

After a good chuckle to myself, I peeled out of there as fast as I could - because we all know that most Andrew Lloyd Webber discussions end in bloodshed...

Black Snake Phone

There are few people on earth who are happy when're working on a Saturday night, but I'm one of the few. Got another deadline coming up, but I needed a break, so I thought I'd gab a bit about my new cell phone.

My old trusty Treo 600 was showing its age and my 2 year Verizon contract was up, so I started looking at the idea of upgrading. When I found a great rebate deal through Sprint on a Treo 700p, I jumped at it. I didn't like leaving Verizon, since their support and call quality is top notch, but Sprint's cost on the Treo was $200 cheaper than Verizon's.

Plus, I read a lot of people raving about Sprint's unlimited high-speed data add-on. And WOW - the data plan is fun. I was IMDB-ing names from my seat at dinner. And while in San Francisco last weekend, I used the Google Maps application constantly.

Ian asked why I didn't hold out for the awesomely cool-looking iPhone. Three reasons-

-Too expensive. My Treo cost me a ton, but it still cost $400 less than the iPhone.

-Cingular exclusive. Except for people who travel to Europe and like to swap SIM cards, I've yet to meet anyone who loves Cingular. Consumer Reports didn't exactly have a lot of glowing things to say about them, either.

-Rev A. I'm trying to avoid Rev A Mac products. My G4 iBook had one of the recalled asploding batteries. Nuff said.

I'm hoping in a couple years, the iPhone will be in the cards for me. In the meantime, I'm loving my Treo. Plus my Treo 700p runs the Palm OS, so syncing everything to my Macintosh is a snap.

The only downside is that it won't play files bought from the iTunes music store, but I have an iPod for a reason. And if I do need music on my phone, it only takes a few minutes to burn them to CD-RW, rip them to MP3, and then play them on my Treo.

Okay - back to work. I'm hoping to go to bed in the next six hours or so...

Odds & Ends

A few thoughts on this Monday-

-Steve Marmel has started a blog for animation writers at http://animationwriters.blogspot.com/. Definitely check it out.

-Wanted to plug the new "The Land Before Time" animated series on Cartoon Network mornings. Many talented writers on that show, including Ford Riley, Holly Huckins, Catherine Lieuwen, and Jack Monaco.

-I love my new cell phone. I upgraded from a Verizon Treo 600 to a Spring Treo 700p before the weekend. Love it love it love it.

-But my Plantronics bluetooth headset needs some fine tuning. People who're hearing me say I sound like I'm too far away - people who're watching me say that it looks like I have a toenail clipper in my ear.

Back to the writer's cave for me - I've got some looming deadlines. And there's nothing more scary than a deadline with a loom...

WonderCon wrap-up

Walking around San Francisco and checking out the architecture, I had this horrible thought... How many Chinese laborers died to build the Moscone Center? How many Asians got blown-up with dynamite so I could get graphic novels at 50% off? How many Asians lost their lives so I could gawk at former Battlestar Galactica actors? It bummed me out for the rest of the day.

So a few more bits from WonderCon-



This is from Saturday night's panel on Animation Production. From L to R, that's Adam Beechen, Stan Berkowitz, Dwayne McDuffie, and Greg Weisman.

Weirdest part of the panel was the audience. In the front row was a guy rocking back and forth talking to himself. In the middle of the audience was the scary-looking guy who interrupted the Mark Evanier-Gerard Jones panel - this time he was reading and loudly crumpling a newspaper. Security had to ask him to knock it off, so he left - much to everyone's relief. And then in the back was a deaf woman who would occasionally mutter things to herself.

Sigh. These are the people that watch the shows we write for.

Outside after the panel, got to meet writers Paul Giacoppo and Henry Gilroy. Then a bunch of us went to Isotope Comics's party for writer J.M DeMatteis.

Sunday, caught a bit of a great panel with Jane Espenson. Man, if you thought her writing was great, she's even better in person. Smart with terrific insight, plus she looks so much younger in person than in her pictures online - I gotta figure out how she does it. Then caught a bit of a panel with Steve Melching, but couldn't stay because we had to get out of town. Six hours later, we were back in Los Angeles.

It was a great weekend - met a ton of people and got to hang out with people with whom I never get a chance to hang out with.

Let's do it again next year.

Wondering about WonderCon?

Greetings from the Argent Hotel in beautiful San Francisco. Let me give you the Ebay feedback for WonderCon - great sized, great fun - highly recommended!

We drove up Thursday night with my buddies, Charlotte Fullerton, Dwayne McDuffie, and Matt Wayne. Yesterday morning, we headed over to the Moscone Center and had this fun conversation with a security guard:

EXT. MOSCONE CENTER - DAY

Eugene and Matt try to walk inside - the security guard stops
them.  

                    EUGENE
          Hi!  Where is pro registration?  

                    GUARD
          Outside.  You have to wait outside
          in line.  They'll let you in at
          noon. 

                    EUGENE
          Um, no.  Pro registration is
          supposed to start at 10am.  

                    GUARD
          Nope.  You have to wait outside.  

                    MATT
          Pro registration can't be outside
          with general admission.  

                    GUARD
          Nope.  You have to wait outside.  

                    EUGENE
          Professional registration needs to
          wait out-

                    GUARD
          Oh, you meant professional
          registration.  Inside, down the
          hall, on your left.

Does the word PROS mean something else up here? Sheesh.

At the convention and at the Argent, ran into a bunch of great people - including Sean "Cheeks" Galloway, Joe Pekar, Bruce Timm, Rich Fogel, Greg Weisman, Cary Bates, Mark Evanier, Sam Stormcrow Hayes. For dinner, we met up with Alan Burnett, Nick Burnett, Stan Berkowitz, and Linda Steiner, then headed over to Chinatown - had this amazing dinner at this little place called House of Nanking.

More blogging to come later.

On the road to WonderCon

Aloha from the beautiful scenic 5 freeway. Nothing like a drive through central California to make you appreciate Los Angeles. Testing the new cell phone by blogging. If you can read this, it worked.

More updates to come this weekend.