that ring of confidence

Heading to Seattle the Emerald City

I'm heading down this weekend to Seattle for the Emerald City Comic Convention [eccc].  I'm feeling broke, nay I am broke, so I looked at canceling the trip altogether but with the exception of gas there's not a lot I'd save since most of it I'd already paid for back when being broke was not a near perpetual state of being.

I've been the last two years, and mostly just bounced around the convention floor looking at the shops and what they had to display, but this year I'm going to make an effort to get to a lot more of the sessions hosted by various comic industry types.  Spending money is not really an option, so thankfully once I'm inside most everything is free.

Except for food, artist sketches, merchandise, parking and so forth.

Speaking of which I'd better get going, I don't want to be too late getting into Seattle, I want to be well rested for the start of the convention tomorrow.

And then I started a photo blog

If I take a photo and it's half decent it generally will end up on my Flickr page [fkr], which acts as a storehouse for all my images.  That way if I ever need a specific image for a blog post, I can find it quickly no matter where I am.  Still the sheer vastness of what I put up there, I have currently uploaded 3,961 photos, means that browsing them can be quite a challenge.  So to start highlighting some of my favorite photos I've started a photo blog [jks].

I mean isn't that how I solve all of my problems, by starting a blog?

I'm going to aim to post a new photo every day, and talk a bit about how I took it and maybe even show some of the shitty photos that went into getting that one image that worked.  So far I've got three days worth of material up, and a few days into the future so staying active on it shouldn't be a big issue.  At least I hope now.

So check it out.

Let's go to Fiamma Burger

It's late, I should be in bed since I work early tomorrow morning at a new job, but I'm blogging about food.  Not just any food, the greatest hamburger you'll find around these parts.  Okay, sure it's in Bellingham but that's pretty close isn't it?  Fiamma Burger is a Bellingham burger joint and probably my favorite around.

That's right, better than Vancouver favorites like Vera's.  Using mostly organic and locally grown produce the meat is great, the drinks are great and the fries aren't bad either.  It's a most stop at for me now anytime I go to Seattle or venture into Bellingham, unless Lydia wants us to go somewhere fancier.

I went down last week with Nathan, and it was great.  The fact that they have good beer, and good ice lemonade is a definite plus.

I feel like this is all really cheesy though right now, so I'd better get to bed before I end up as a parody.

Iron Man bleu my mind aweigh and now I can't spell

Since getting back into comics during university I've always been a fan of Iron Man.  Tony Stark on the face of it seems like a high tech imitation of Batman, a rich man with fancy gadgets fighting crime, but there was always elements that separated the two. 

Batman's a much darker character, and yet oddly far more perfect.  Stark's lighter, more fun loving and while Bruce Wayne's demon is the death of his parents, Tony's is with his own weapons manufacturing corporate empire and alcoholism.

Apart from the cool toys Stark's wounded heart was always something that interested me, having grown up with my own heart condition.  In the earlier Iron Man books it was somewhat ridiculous as a plot point, with Stark keeping his injury a secret he kept having to rush home to plug a large chest plate into a wall socket otherwise he'd have a heart attack.  Later on they streamlined this so it wasn't such a clunky piece of plot business, to the point now that it's not even something that's really mentioned.

Needless to say I was pretty excited for the Iron Man live action movie staring Robert Downey Jr.  Such excitement though can be a double-edged sword, because sometimes nothing can be as good as your expectations.  I think that the last three Star Wars movies suffered from that, though they had their own problems as well.  How could a movie ever match the one I'd already made in my mind?

It's hard to believe it, but they managed.  Robert Downey Jr is Iron Man, and I don't think I'll be able to look at the comic without imaging him in the role.  I wouldn't be surprised if in a few months the artists started drawing Tony Stark like Downey, the way they now seem to draw Charles Xavier as Patrick Stewart.  The movie mixed comedy with the serious adventure elements, and all in all it was probably my favorite comic book movie ever.  Certainly it was comparable in quality to the first Superman movie, though clearly the onscreen visual effects were better now than in the laste 70s. 

Even Lydia who I don't think has ever read an Iron Man comic liked it [iatl].  I'm already planning on going again, and again, and again.  Maybe even tonight, though I do have some Grand Theft Auto IV that needs playing.  It's a tough call.  If I know you, and you live within about 100 kilometres of me chances are I'm going to try to drag you to this movie at some point this summer.  It's your duty as my friends, my readers or random Google search arrivals to oblige me.

Oh and we're staying until the end of the credits.  Why?  Well it's a comic book movie, there's always something after the jump.

The one where the show introduces the new comic book guy

After work yesterday I went to Elfsar for Free Comic Book Day [fcbd], the international day (well US and Canada) where retailers give away free comic books to help build a new readership.  By the time I got there, about twenty minutes before closing, most of the comics were picked over so if there was anything particularly good I'd already missed it.  The ones that I did get were mostly the ones that were based off of kids' cartoon shows and aimed squarely at the early readers.  Also I got an Archie book.

I start work there on Wednesday, so that I suppose was my last trip to the comic book store without officially being the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons.  Though I'd generally like to think that I'm more the newer cooler comic book guy that they introduced last year named Milo [swp] (voiced by Jack Black). 

Back when I was still in contention for the job at the new Vancouver Apple Store as well as Elfsar, and debating a future where I had part-time jobs at both, Jeff Weston joked that between the two jobs I probably could not get more pretentious. 

It's been awhile since I've had a job that I'm actually looking forward to.  I'm sure after a few shifts it'll get just as boring as any other job that involves mostly filing things into alphabetical order (I assume) and manning a till but at least for now I'm optimistic about the new part-time job.  The bad news is that I've not really got a lot of free time this month to spend with Lydia or friends.  The good news is that hopefully I'll make some money to start saving for this wedding thing.

I'm nearly done these beer shots so it might be time to get back into school

Taking a look at any random month over the past year or so and you'll find entries like this one [jks] where I'm looking for work.  It has become the new looking for a girlfriend in the dramatic narrative that is my life, and like my pre-Lydia attempts at finding love my job hunt has resulted largely in disapointment and nights spent surfing the internet looking for porn... I mean jobs.

A bit over a month ago I felt like I'd finally gotten into a good position in the hunt.  I'd an interview with a local company looking for a technical writer, I had an interview lined up for a sales position with the new Apple Store and I had an interview lined up with the comic book store I shop at.  The Apple Store and the technical writing job were both oppertunities that I considered to be career stepping stones; positions that would lead to bigger and better things.  The comic book store seemed like it would be fun, and a way to help make some extra money to help pay for the wedding.

I got a part time job at the comic book store, which was not the full time position I'd hoped for but was a promising start.  The techincal writing job did not pan out, and the Apple Store turned me down after bringing me in for a group interview where they did not actually interview us but spent the entire time telling us why we should work for Apple.  By the end of the interview I'd gone from really wanting to work at the new store to really really wanting to work at the new store.  Sadly there was something in the way I watched the promotional video that informed them they did not want me.

Counting the hours until Iron Man

I'll admit that I'm a huge comic nerd, and so I tend to try to see all of the major comic book movies in the theatre as soon as possible.  I've even seen the terrible ones like Ghost Rider in the theatres, and apart from looking through my Uncle Greg's old comic books years ago, I've never read a Ghost Rider comic book.

So it's a no-brainer that with Iron Man opening today I'd be buzzing with excitment.  Along with the X-Men, Iron Man is one of my favorite characters and I think probably along with Spider-Man has one of the better origin stories of the Marvel characters.

I'm just counting down the hours, tickets in my pocket waiting for work to finish and the film to begin.  It'll be nerd-tacular.

The fact that it's happening the same week as Free Comic Book Day [mbv] is perfect.