Swamp(ed) Thing

Sorry for no updates. Very swamped. When I have time, I'll have a Comic Con wrap-up post, a post about an animation legend, and my July 2008 Music Diary.

Talk amongst yourselves.

It's that time of year again

Can't believe it's already that time of year again.



Nerd Prom. The 96 hour job interview. Geek Mecca. Nerd Ground Zero.

So a few notes before I head down to San Diego for several days of pure geek madness-

-If you want to track where I'm at in San Diego, check out my Comic Con Twitter feed. I'll update it with all sorts of useless and unfunny observations.

-One bit of non-Comic Con news. I had a really great time on Sunday, getting to meet some very cool people and see some amazing animation history. I'll blog more about this in detail when I get back.

-Reminiscing ahoy!

I went to my first Comic Con in 1989 when I was just a pimply dorky Asian comic-collecting obsessive-compulsive nerd-boy with bad personal manners and the innate ability to repel women.

Come to think of it. I haven't changed much.

Anyways, I haven't gone to every Comic Con since 1989, but I'm guessing this must be my 15th or so convention. Back then I would spend my days buying comic books and watching movie trailers - now I go to catch up with old friends, make new friends, network and make connections, and maybe try and catch an hour or two of sleep a night.

I guess it still surprises me how life turns out in ways you'd never expect.

See you in San Diego.

Iron Man: Armored Adventures Trailer

So the new trailer for Iron Man : Armored Adventures got released yesterday. The show premieres on NickToons in 2009. Great writers involved in the series - including Chris Yost, Brandon Auman, Andrew Robinson, Alexx Van Dyne, Michael Ryan, Len Uhley, and more.

There's a panel about the new show next Saturday at Comic Con - I should be in the audience somewhere.

#458

The eugeneson.com website's been up since summer 2002. For the first few years, the domain was only for email, so I left the website blank. Then in 2005, somebody made fun of me for having a blank website.

Three years and 458 posts later, here we are.

The blog has been a more rewarding experience than I ever could have imagined. A huge part of the fun has been because I know my friends read it - love you guys. But I've also made new friends through the blog.

I think I've made some enemies, too - but mostly friends.

The weird thing is to think that someday I'm going to die, but my blog will still be here. So long after I'm gone, someone will find this and go, "WOW! This guy sucks!"

So thanks for reading the blog to this point so far. I can't promise it'll get better, but I can assure you it can't get any worse...

What I learned from Independence Day

So Fox Movie Channel is showing Independence Day over and over this weekend.

1997. I had to take an upper-division course to graduate. ANY upper-division course. So I found that during the summer session, the visual arts department had an upper division film course on fantasy and sci-fi. Bingo - I couldn't think of an easier class.

It ended up being a great course. The professor showed an odd assortment of films - from the Dead Zone, Hitchcock's Marnie, I Married a Monster, X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes, the Charles Laughton version of The Island of Dr. Moreau, even the musical, Pennies from Heaven.

At that first lecture, the professor told us that because it was the big sci-fi movie of the summer, the first movie assignment was to watch Independence Day. Then he asked, "Has anyone seen it already?"

I raised my hand weakly. I'd gone to the 10pm sneak preview screening the night before. But apparently I was the only one.

So the professor, very excited that someone had already seen it, asked me excitedly, "What did you think? Was it good?"

What was I supposed to say? This is an upper division film course! I couldn't tell him the truth - that the movie succeeds despite itself. That the film is awful and I was acutely aware that it was bad, but I couldn't help but have a good time. It was a turn your brain off and hope you don't choke on your popcorn as you enjoy the silly fun. That it's the Citizen Kane of movies with a dog leaping away from giant special-effects fireballs.

I could feel the professor looking at me. The entire class was looking at me. I had to give an answer. So I muttered, "Um... it was okay?"

The professor looked disappointed. That was the best I could do. In an upper division film course. I had my chance to expound on the theme, the film-making, the mise-en-scene - all the stuff that film professors love. It was my chance to make myself the class genius. The one in the class who knew more about film than all the others put together.

Instead, I looked like a complete idiot.

After that first class, some guy came over to me and said, "Could the thing that saved humanity from the aliens been any more phallic?" I laughed and responded, "Hey - maybe that shape was what allowed a Macintosh Powerbook to infect an advanced alien civilization with a virus?"

Then it hit me. There were PLENTY of other people who'd been to the sneak preview the night before. I was the only one STUPID enough to raise my hand. The next week, the professor had seen the movie and gave a half hour lecture about how terrible it was. I wanted to crawl under my desk and hide.

So what did I learn from Independence Day? Well, for a while I thought it was that the nail that stands up inevitably gets hammered down. But alas, that lesson didn't take.

What I really learned is that I have a soft spot for dogs leaping away from giant special-effects fireballs.

Good dog.

Tired

Sorry for the lack of updates. I'm basically waiting to hear about stuff, but I've somehow been insanely busy with-

-The backyard fence. Instead of hiring someone to fix it, the neighbor wanted to do the work ourselves. The good news? We saved a ton of money and the new fence is looking great.

The bad news? I am not cut out for manual labor. I don't know what's worse - the aching muscles, the sunburn, the splinters in all my typing fingers, or my allergies. And it's still not finished yet...

-The Ebay auctions went well, but now I'm up to my neck in packing peanuts and boxes - struggling with the stupid FedEx website and driving back and forth to the post office.

By selling off this stuff, I'm cleaning out the garage, and I'm funding my next insane vacation that I'm hoping to do in 2009. Who knew insanity could be so expensive?

-I got injured in hockey again. Not bad - but just a little muscle tweak, so I decided to miss a game and let it heal. I should be 100% for the next game.

-I'm going to head to Anime Expo at the L.A. Convention Center this weekend. I've never been before - should be interesting. I'll take pictures.

-It hurts to be an L.A. Kings fan. I'll rant more on this later.

-It hurts even more to try to log onto MySpace. Seriously, what is the deal with all the stupid changes they're making? It wasn't exactly heaven to begin with, but now they added more ugly eye-candy and even more "page not found" errors. I couldn't even update the blog on MySpace because it wouldn't let me log-in - it just kept replaying the Dark Knight trailer over and over.

Don't be surprised if I drop the MySpace blog. And if I find MySpace Tom, I'm going to knock his smiley face out...