Friday

I should have mentioned that Wednesday night the car parked behind us got broken into. Don heard the smash and tink of broken glass, loud enough to wake him up.

Friday morning revealed another car break-in. Another bullet dodged.

From my journal that day:
"San Diego feels like a city that's faking it, that's blatantly dishonest, like the facades might come down at any moment and it'll be standing there with its pants around its ankles."

Downtown SD is so polished, with skyscrapers and joggers and folks walking their dogs. It's the paradigm of wealth and health. But drive down the wrong street, and the image cracks, like bad reception on your TV. It's a pretty place, just don't go anywhere outside of downtown. More on this later.

Got to the Con Center.

Spent most of the morning on the exhibit floor. Met people, handed out ashcans. Bought some presents for the family.

Tried to get in line for the Spaced viewing around noon. Nothing doing. The line was interminable. I ended up outside, down the rear steps, behind a few thousand people. I relented and headed towards the hall holding the Dr. Horrible panel. Got in just fine, caught the tail end of the Stargate panel. I don't watch Stargate, so I read and wrote.

Dr. Horrible panel - Just absolutely hilarious. Those folks are just as funny unscripted as they are onscreen, if not more so. My fanboy geekout for the day. Or at least one of them. Joss is my master now. Just find the Youtube footage of the panel, I'm not going to waste time trying to do it justice.

The Webcomics Weekly guys and Phil Foglio - Just excellent brainfood. Kurtz and co. get schooled (in a good way) by Girl Genius creator Phil. I don't read PVP, but Scott is genuinely funny in person. At one point he was discussing the reaction he gets when telling syndicated cartoonists about giving his work away for free. He then pantomimed the front of his imaginary tuxedo rolling up like a windowshade, his monocle popping out of his eye, and his bowler flipping on his head. I broke up. In general, the entire panel was school. Phil pulled out sales numbers, his justifications for working with retailers and Amazon, and lots of wisdom. Dave Kellen provided historical perspective on one-on-one entertainment which was very insightful. Just a solid, entertaining, and educational panel. Great stuff.

The Image Panel - Fairly awful. The big announcement was a crossover book with all of the original Image heroes drawn by their creators. It looked jarring and uninteresting. I left after about 20 minutes.

Colleen Doran's Creator Resources panel - Sad anecdotes and irritated looks. Colleen did her homework. It was like watching a Jesuit trying to bring Christianity to a troop of apes. She did an excellent job, and I learned a lot. Sometimes she can seem a little too quick to anger, however. It's a convention, it'll all turn out okay.

Hit the floor some more.

Tried the line MST3k reunion. Impossible. I think at this point we ate at Dick's Last Resort. Headed for the Eisners.

The Eisners are painful to watch. Frank Miller seemed unprepared. Not a natural public speaker. That wouldn't be a problem, except he had the keynote. A disappointment.
The best moments were the Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba acceptance speeches for 5 and Umbrella Academy. Those guys have electricity coming from their fingertips. They are not tired of comics. They love comics, and you could feed on that enthusiasm. It takes some guys from Brazil to tell America what we're doing wrong with comics. There's your "future of comics" right there.

Left early to attend the Spaced screening. Participated in a 2000-strong imaginary gunfight. Watched some Spaced, and laughed.

After the Spaced viewing, Jeremy and I headed for the car. We passed a couple of drunk twenty-something party girls, feeling their way down the sidewalk like they were lost in a cave.

Drove Jeremy down south to his hotel in Chula Vista. The closer I got to Tijuana, the more uneasy I got. The last place I wanted to end up was Mexico at 1am. Found his hotel, dropped him off, managed to avoid a couple of wandering hookers. Couldn't reconcile the excess in SD and the rundown vibe of Chula Vista. Shrug. Relaxed a bit when I got back on I-5, heading away from Mexico as fast as I could.

Drove back to SD, but the GPS provided some inaccurate instructions which led me down to the harbor. Empty streets, traffic lights, and lots of water. It was a GTA3 moment, sitting in the car, staring out at the water, with no one else around. I could have found some crates to smash through, or a cool ramp to jump off of into the bay.

Or I could just get back to the hotel, which I eventually did.

Better day than Thursday, I think.