Neko wants you to know that spending $3.99 for an IKEA laundry mesh is more than enough. He and Cali play raucously inside their meshes. Well—he does. She’s smitten with the $1 moving box we bought for […]
Category: Aspiration
Night at the Park
Sometimes San Diego delights most unexpectedly. Yesterday, I entered an alternate universe—a lovely neighborhood that could have been from a 1980s Steven Spielberg movie. Kids played everywhere. Freely. The clang of metal baseball bats rang out from the park, where parents cheered and encouraged their middle-school players. Pretty homes, none too different from another, lined clean streets, from which the sound of playing children created intoxicating atmosphere.
My journey started with a request: Provide transportation to the Rebelution and Sublime concert at the Sleep Train Amphitheater. My soon-to-be 21 year-old daughter asks for rides so infrequently now, I couldn’t refuse. But given heavy traffic around the venue, 27-km distance drive, and her plan to return in two hours or so, I figured to stay in Chula Vista rather than roundtrip. But where to hang out—from the commercial-property isolated locale?
Flickr a Day 198: ‘Folklore and Youth’
Nothing produces a portrait like a prime lens in competent hands. Marjan Lazarevski shot today’s selection on May 27, 2013, using Canon EOS 600D and EF 50mm f/1.8 II. Vitals: f/2, ISO 800, 1/500 sec. But self-titled “Folklore and Youth” takes the Day as much for the contextual storytelling around it.
Based in Skopje, Macedonia, Marjan often captures moments that illuminate local culture. “Macedonian national costumes are part of the material culture of the Macedonian people and they are important branch of the Macedonian folk art”, he says.
Comic-Con House of Worship
I lied, but didn’t mean to. Turns out that my “Final SDCC 2015 Reflection” isn’t. I have another. Whether or not you believe in the existence of God, or some kind of deliberate creator, ponder this observation: Comic-Con, more than any other gathering, reveals how much human beings need to worship. Some evolutionist might argue that such innate genetic trait leads us to manufacture deities and religion. God believers could point to the fallen human condition and idolatry replacing pure faith.
Whether you accept either, neither, or something else, nevertheless ponder what San Diego Comic-Con and events like it represents: People gather to worship what or whom they see as being greater than themselves—fictional superheroes, artists who create them, writers who tell their stories, actors who portray them, and directors, producers, showrunners and others who bring them to film and to video.
Final SDCC 2015 Reflection
I offer hanks to Comic-Con International and to everyone participating in and attending this year’s funfest. As a participant, I must say, and hope other attendees share similar experience: Something about the organization and flow of things during the Con felt different this year. I got into more panels than ever, and people in and around the Convention Center appeared more able to relax rather than be asked to move along. These little things shape the overall experience.
Unlike other years, I focused almost exclusively on shooting photos (when not attending panels). My initial Flickr set, which for now is organized by day, is live. I will add more captions over time and perhaps edit the flow. I posted more pics than the previous four years combined.
The Face of Hall H
During San Diego Comic-Con 2015’s last day, I spotted this young woman wearing a Game of Thrones pack and Mockingjay tee. She stood in one the merchandise lines nearby the Tokidoki booth. I stopped and […]
Attack of the Cosplayers
I spent most of Comic-Con Day 3 shooting photos with the Fuji X-T1. With the Masquerade Ball in the evening, cosplayers descended on San Diego Convention Center in large numbers. As expected, July 11th was by far the busiest—bustling crowds were everywhere, Even at my trolley stop, there were more Conners waiting than the two previous days.
Riding in, I chatted with a Twentysomething, wearing an Apple Watch. I commented how much nicer is his wristband than mine. He asked how I like the timepiece, as he only had his for four days. Turns out, the former Marine who served for 5 years after joining at seventeen works at one of the local Apple Stores. I love go-to people. He had submitted a résumé online, but didn’t get a fast-enough response. So he hauled down to the mall and waited a half-hour to see the manager. Now that is how you get hired.
Comic-Con Heroes Enters the Public Domain
Timing is deliberate. As the big pop-culture convention starts here in San Diego, I release my ebook Comic-Con Heroes: The Fans Who Make the Greatest Show on Earth into the public domain. You can grab the PDF here, or click on to Smashwords for more formats, including epub. I relinquish rights, believing the content remains evergreen valuable even if dated. The book published in September 2013.
During SDCC two years ago, I interviewed attendees, choosing one-dozen to profile. My contention about the convention: The fans are the stars, not hollywood, which gets the glory. The concept started from a recollection posted during Comic-Con 2010: “The Roles We Play“. Yesterday, I published a followup that I planned to title “The Roles They Play” but last-minute changed to “The Heroes Are Us“.
The Heroes Are Us
Tomorrow night begins my seventh sojourn to the greatest geekfest and pop-culture event on the planet. Imitator shows are everywhere this Century, but none commands character and class like the original. San Diego Comic-Con is an amazing amalgamation of hopes and aspirations—and the grandest storytelling—where, for four days and a Preview Night, tens of thousands of people can be themselves—fit in, rather than feel oddball—or be whom they would want to be by dressing up as beloved superheroes or villains and by adoring the storytellers and actors behind them.
The first, full three-day event took place from Aug. 1-3, 1970, at the U.S. Grand Hotel, with about 300 attendees and sci-fi luminaries, including Ray Bradbury and A.E. van Vogt. This week, 130,000 attendees will storm San Diego Convention Center to enter an alternate reality, where the social rules binding them everyday no longer apply.
My Summer Sojourn: OS X 10.11, OS 9
Due to a rather startling accident, my wife’s laptop is no longer among the electrically living. She will use my beloved Chromebook Pixel LS for a few months, while I step back into the Apple lifestyle to test El Capitan and iOS 9. Eight days after Apple released developer previews, I finally am getting around to installing them, on 13-inch MacBook Pro and iPad Air 2. Whoa, I dunno about the new font!
The Mac is a new purchase. Our cameras and computers are all insured, and late last week I filed the second claim in more than a dozen years (the first replaced a hard drive, for $250, after my daughter dropped her aluminum MacBook during finals week two years ago). I grudgingly picked the 2.7GHz Core i5 MacBook Pro with Retina Display, 8GB RAM, and 256GB SSD.
Flickr a Day 166: ‘Life Through the Eyes of the Orphan’
Photos of needy children in some developing countries are so often cliché. Sad face, wide eyes, and even emaciation. Self-titled “Life Through the Eyes of the Orphan” takes the Day for being something more. You […]
A Life Lesson
For three summers during high school, I participated in federal assistance program Upward Bound at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. My parents divorced when I was 13, and my then 31 year-old mother chose to raise four children alone. Jobs were scarce in Aroostook County during the early 1970s, and mom couldn’t earn enough. We were poor, by most American measures.
That circumstance and college plans qualified me to spend summers in Southern Maine and someday to attend a school like Bowdoin (I didn’t). The program has expanded such that if I were a high school student today, my UB participation would be at the University of Presque Isle branch rather than the one at Bowdoin. While closer to home (next town over), the benefits wouldn’t be as a great: Getting out of the County’s confines, experiencing life on such a prestigious college campus, watching Shakespeare at the Theater at Monmouth, or traveling—even for a day—to Boston.