san diego comic-con & los angeles.
okay — here’s my so-cal journal entry, finally.
friday, july 27th
get to so-cal after work. got two hours of sleep before due to magazine design. w00! go crazy!!! jeanette and lindsay pick me up from the airport. great fun, great fun. we head on over to the omni hotel in san diego… jeanette’s friend kayla works for warner brothers and as a result, had a space there and all that jazz. free housing?! how can we resist?! so we get ready to go out.
“300″ party. yeah yeah. by the time we got there it was kinda late and no one was really around anymore… there was some dope ass food, though. if you’re wondering what it was for, it was for the “300″ dvd release. evidently clive owen (the main dude in “sin city”, during the prositute town section) and jessica alba were there, and clive owen was in the elevator with kayla at some point, talking to her. nyes. anyway, did i mention the food was good? yeah, it was quite good. that’s all we did really, so let me mention it again. the food was good.
apparently, like, people in LA like to pose on red carpets after they’re used.
me trying to hide from a picture and failing. this was at some rooftop bar. uh yeah. i just have to say — so-cal people, at least in this area? not my style. prior to the bar, though, it was even worse. we met up with their very friendly, quite possibly gay friend who was really excited to talk to me about seattle because he had just come up for ultimate frisbee or something… i liked him, though. very friendly. but yeah, before the bar we went to a club — a hip-hop / top 40s type club, and i’m not very comfortable in clubs unless they’re playing electronic music, so needless to say, i was uncomfortable.
that night we went home, and kayla had drunk quite a bit, i guess, and she was yakmaster flex. there was a lot of being woken up via her yakking in the toilet.
saturday, july 28th
got up in the morning time and went to comic con! holla! jeanette borrowed kayla’s pass and came with me for like, two hours. and evidently that was about all she could handle. i got a press pass… or else i wouldn’t have been there.
ugly dolls!!!!! they were sooooo nice feeling. man, i want a costume like that. i kept trying to run after them to take a photo with them. FAILURE. they couldn’t see except out of the little hole in the front of their body, so they didn’t know if anyone was in front of them or behind them. they kept crushing me later on because they were walking sideways and didn’t know i was in front of them… haha. but anyway, i was chasing after them and hugging them from behind for a while. it was great. love me an uglydoll!!!
did you know grimace used to have 4 arms? i didn’t!
can’t have a nerd convention without jabba.
can’t have a nerd convention without batman in lego form.
can’t have a nerd convention without an ass shot of spidey.
played a bunch of puzzlefigther here, but unfortunately, only terrible people kept challenging me. like, they would play me 5x and lose every time. and you’re supposed to leave after losing one round, BUT THEY WOULDN’T. one guy had literally never played before and still made me play with him 5x. it was pain. i also missed mega man dressed up, which sucked, even though i was there the same time mega man was 
:( :( did get to talk to some artists, though, and i’ll need to email some of them to follow up!! hmm, also bought a bunch of shit… let’s see… what else, that’s about it, i guess. jennifer [yee] was working at the wizkids! booth and i hung out with her for a little bit but she seemed quite very busy.
lunch/dinner at fred’s mexican cafe. it was decently good, even though they put coleslaw in their tacos. i have to admit i kind of liked it, though.
so kayla got sunburned really bad, because they were at the pool while i was finishing up at comic con. anyway, pool… that’s what people do in so-cal too!
this guy draws these pimp ass chalk drawings that don’t look 3d unless you look at them from a certain angle. famous guy. if you don’t know him already, you kind of suck.
jeanette wanted to go to the mall to buy some present for her friend’s birthday. we didn’t find a present, but my shoes were killing me, so i bought a pair of flip-flops. ugh, waste of money. but necessary at the time. i was literally dying. anyway, we had this really funny transaction with the guy at the counter. i was getting flip-flops and he started talking to jeanette, asking if we’d gone to comic con. she said i did, ran a magazine. blahblah, so i handed him a business card as i was being rung out. and i gave him my credit card too, but it took him a while to ring it up because we were all distracted. and then i noticed this freaking belt buckle that looked like a wad of bills (see below).
blang blang belt buckle. anyway, we got sidetracked taking pics of that belt buckle, so like, i nearly forgot to get back my credit card from the dude at the register. lol, as i was outside, changing shoes to my new flip-flops, i noticed i never got a receipt. i went in to get it, and he gave it to me. luckily no one had gone after me!!! anyway, two seconds later, he came out and realized that i hadn’t even signed the merchant copy. oops! worst credit card transaction ever!!!
on the way back, i saw this homeless guy. his sign intruiged me, so i asked him about it. he rambled a bunch of shit i honestly did not understand. essentially it went something like, the government screwed him a bunch of times — he had three houses and liquidated them but the government never gave him the money for them… and that he had to go to china and then couldn’t come back so he had to apply for refugee status. and then he said he learned some shit about being a pilot and knew how to hack into government things and he tried to use that to blackmail the government but it didn’t work. i don’t understand. and did not wholly believe at first (even though he talked very coherently and seemed like he knew what he was talking about… that was the only reason i had doubts — he was very well-spoken), but then he pulled out this note from china, which was all wrinkled and inside his passport… which basically said, yeah, he really had applied for refugee status in china. everything else i’m honestly not sure about because he used massive tech talk mumbo jumbo, but yeah.
the scene outside of comic con.
gasLAMP district. i kept thinking it was gastown like vancouver or gasworks or something. whatever the hell. this is the area our hotel / comic con / the bars we went to were.
bondi bar. well, i’m not a fan of expensive shit ($10 for 4 fucking tempura shrimp. they were good, and all, but what the fuck man?) — but this place LOOKED cool, at the very least.
well, we were pretty freaking amazed by kayla’s ability to hold a camera and take a picture of her touching her sunburn immediately right after it. really, that’s some coordination!
oh yeah, so some guy came over and wanted to recruit us to join their table because his friend (but not really his friend, as he had known the guy for only three hours… not to mention he was talking a lot of shit about the dude) had just flown in from nyc, and was single, and didn’t think that southern california girls were good because they were all superficial and stuff etc. anyway, this guy was really funny. eventually he brought over his friend (and he left), who i thought was interesting in a completely platonic way… and yeah, but lindsay and kayla thought he was annoying and had attitude i guess. which is weird cause he seemed perfectly normal to me… ALTHOUGH HE WOULDN’T DRAW IN MY BOOK. so that was kind of lame.
princess leia drawing in my book.
sunday, july 29th
so, this is some fucked up mexican food if i’ve ever seen it. it’s french fries, avocado, salsa, chicken (really good chicken), and cheese. FRENCH FRIES? californians are so weird, man. a “california burrito” is a burrito with french fries in it. the heck? anyway, it was kinda good at first but then got to be too much. eh, and it’s not mexican enough for my tastes, homie. i’m hella mexican, check the spanish text in my blog, yo.
the restaurant. roberto’s!
entrance to wild animal park!
merekats. however you spell that…
cool looking roach. this is a little smaller than life-size. as long as it doesn’t touch me, it’s cool. rainforest animal.
gorilla catching food. man, gorillas and monkeys are so cool. i honestly feel quite bad watching them in captivity because they’re so much like people…
hair shot of jeanette, i don’t know, i like it.
for those of you unfamiliar with the san diego wild animal park (actually, it’s in escondido, california) — it has this pre-built habitat for animals and they don’t pay much attention to them and kind of let them roam around on their own. tickets were $30. which allows you to ride this tram thing around the perimeter of this “habitat” they’ve built. now, for another $30 you can ride these busses which get you right up next to the animals — practically touching them — but yeah, that was too much money. but cool idea.
jeanette and i?!
white rhinos — two of twelve (at most) left in the world. pretty crazy to know that there are only that few left in the world and you are looking at them… they are going extinct due to poaching.
the ultimate in meow mix.
i can’t resist taking picture of this kind of crap. it’s just so pretty.
the best trees ever, i think. i think it’s a painted eucalyptus. cause if it is… best tree ever.
i wanted to climb that tree but it was covered with spider webs :/
anyway, after going to the wild animal park, jeanette and i went to irvine (LAMENESS) and met up with claire, jeremy, and phil [wu] for dinner. we went to an izakaya restaurant. it was actually pretty good although the salmon onigiri i got had like, barely any salmon. that kind of sucked.
afterwards, jeanette went back to la and we went out to newport beach for some bar-time. it was a sunday night so lots of things were closed, unfortunately.
jeremy and fil bought me shots of grey goose and petron. grey goose was decent. this is what the petron tasted like. this was at… i forget the name of the bar and i’m too lazy to look it up right now.
this was at the “barn bar” — there was sawdust on the ground, so it smelled like a barn. vibe was cooler, though.
this guy kissed me like, five times that night. slightly disturbing, but mostly funny. i kept saying, “no, no me gusta!” and he would be like, “okay, okay, no me gusta,” and he’d leave for 2 seconds and then come back right away. -__-
here are some videos of me being harassed by old mexican dude! his name is ambrosio!!! he said his friend was a wrong “canciones de mexicano” — he literally spoke to me in all spanish, i’m kind of proud of myself that i understood… 90% of it. anyway, videos courtesy of jeremy’s AMAZING cellphone that freaking takes videos as well as my camera, wtf!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUAO_3MB7n8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T_24_ClViI
group pic. woo. at fil and jeremy’s.
passed out at claire’s place later that night… they had these two really fat ass cats.
monday, july 30th
the next morning, woke up and went to eat at some sushi restaurant with my cs clan!! actually, though, there was no sushi-eating for the sushi restaurant was packed. we went to some chain called bj’s instead, and split 3 pizzas. the artichoke and spinach pizza was the best, although kinda salty, but still… everyone was freaking out about it being gross (before we ordered), but i thought it was good! after we ordered they didn’t think it was AS gross. let’s see… who was there… it was me, claire, joe [tran], mike [tran], aaron, tim, eddie, jason, and yuki [sawa]. werd.
we split this giant cookie thing with ice cream on it. ugh, made me not feel so good. richest chocolate cookie i’ve ever had. and i like rich.
teh group.
afterwards claire and i went to the tar pits… they were lame, asides from this little patch in the ground that you could play with.
the actual tar pits. i wish they weren’t fenced off, but they needed to be. there was this one tiny section, the size of a well or so, that they didn’t fence off on purpose. people threw a ton of trash in there. lack of respect, i tell you.
so afterwards, we went to the lacma (los angeles museum of contemporary art). this was the shit that was the major feature. granted, half of the museum was closed due to renovation, but this was some weak shit. this is actually one of the cooler pieces. i didn’t get one of the better ones because my camera couldn’t take it for some reason. but yeah. i don’t get it…
this is like the freaking hugest elevator ever. the size of my living room, literally. i wish this pic did it justice but it doesn’t.
these are images from the japanese art wing. the art wasn’t great, but the building was.
so these little trinkets used to go on bags, kinda like a drawstring, for people when they were wearing kimonos, since kimonos don’t have pockets. there were a lot — i should have taken more photos — but there were ones of animals and stuff. the one i took are primarily of people… not sure why… the last one is one claire liked. it’s actually a frog with its tadpole, although they kind of look like people.
after that, claire drove me to the airport, and jeanette got mad at me because i was trying to follow mapquest directions and not her directions. she was quite offended. lol. claire’s driving was quite very terrifying. i feared for my life, i definitely did. but i got back safely. hoorah.
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at comic-con i decided to keep sketches. here is my sketchbook from comic con.
