Here's the only photo I took today, of my favourite con sketch from today.

I am pretty tired.

Hope and I hung out and had Indian with Jacob, Brandon G., Marion C. and Erik (Lars) Brown. One of those cartoonist evenings. Good times.

The Seattle Hyatt is nicer than the Century City (Los Angeles) Hyatt. There, I said it.

Hope and I will be in Seattle tomorrow.

We're coming up from Portland and we'll probably be a little late, in case you're planning to be first in line at the show. Wait patiently and we should be there around noon!

Hope has: Gray Horseses, Salamander Dream(s), t-shirts, and one beautiful preview copy of Chiggers for you to ogle

I have: books (at Oni), original art, posters, and new t-shirts! (first run, black only)

We're sharing a table, somewhere.

Just a brief note to say that I'm back home. We're going out to Portland in a few days, though, and Seattle on Saturday. See you there?

i am too tired to use the shift key for capitalization. also might skip some punctuation.

AM: slept in a little (up until almost 4 AM due to late-night Iron Man screening)

remembered about burgers - consulted Adam & Jared and decided to go to Apple Pan. bonus: it's right near the Hyatt.

Apple Pan hickory burger and fries for breakfast.

kept me full all day. no lie. 11 AM to 5 PM, i didn't even have a hunger pang. i usually need to have like 2 snacks in that period.

12-2 PM: went to Meltdown for comics. stuck in traffic for a while on the way. procured Dororo Vol 1, Ganges #2, and The Education of Hopey Glass

spotted a Dick Blick's (on Beverly) and stopped in for some art stuff. not a wide range of art supply shops in Asheville. got a new triangle, a circle template thingy, cute japanese watercolor sketchbook, some pens for Hope.

2-3:30 PM: secret

3:30-5 PM: mostly stuck in traffic. came back to room, checked email, no time to blog, ran back out, stuck in traffic...

5-7 PM: meeting at Universal (see pic). topic: secret. i think this was my first Meeting with a capital M. strangely, it involved eating cake, and was pretty laid back. I don't think it was a "typical" meeting.

8-11 PM: farewell dinner - I'm heading home first thing tomorrow, and the Big Talk folks are trickling back to London over the weekend. special guests: secret.

now: unable to support weight of giant head. flopping around like giant baby.

may blog a bit tomorrow on my layover if i see anything interesting.

photos here

Today I sat in a conference room on the Universal lot for six hours.

Edgar took me through every page of all four Scott Pilgrims and asked me if every visual thing was a reference or homage, or if I made it up myself. Basically, I had some 'splainin' to do.

See, in the movie business, they have to get clearance rights for all these little teeny things that nobody's too worried about me doing in the comic books.

I guess there's a difference between a crappy black and white drawing of a brand name and a giant cinema-screen-sized moving photograph of a brand name.

Afterwards, I cured my ills by lolling around my hotel bed for a while, then going to the mall and buying some manga and quasi-healthy fast food.

The mall didn't have Tezuka's DORORO (vol 1 of which was just released). So sad. They did have copies of all four Scott Pilgrims, though, which was unusual.

I wish I had stopped by Meltdown on my way back from Universal. Maybe tomorrow.

If I can survive until midnight, I am going to see IRON MAN with some of the fellows. If I can survive to the end of IRON MAN, I will come back to my hotel room and sleep. Beautiful sleep.

I am still flickring my trip. I got flickr uploadr on this laptop, finally, so at least my captions and tags will start going through at the same time as my photos. I haven't fallen off the wagon yet, although my life has become busier and less interesting and I don't want to post anyone's photograph without their permission (or at all, really).

Anyway, today I hung out with almost exclusively English people, which made L.A. feel different and new.

Q: Is it weird to have English people making your movie?
A: Kinda!
Q: Are the English people doing a lot of work sort of on your behalf?
A: Yes!

TOMORROW...
Edgar Wright II: The Wrightening

Heads up: I am in LA this week (suddenly) and, for posterity, am attempting to photoblog the trip. I have the laptop and the cable and the flickr account, but I forgot my camera charger, so we'll see how long it holds out. And we'll see how long my attention span holds out. And we'll see if I get too busy and forget to take pictures.

Note: i will not be taking pictures or blogging whilst asleep

We ended up having a good time (oops?).

Day 1: travel. When we got in (dinnertime), we found out that the casting of Michael Cera had been announced and people were abuzz. Pure coincidence. We had dinner with some of the boys from Oni, who were in town for other stuff, and also with some Hollywood Producer Guys and Mr Edgar Wright. It was loud, but fun, and the food and wine were excellent (Tasca, Eric Gitter's favourite place, I guess - he's our Oni Press Hollywood Producer Guy).

Day 2: we hung out with some friends (Nick and Emily, who are on livejournal but I don't know how to do the name-link thing), and ate at the 101 Coffee Shop. I had the thursday fried chicken special. Sorry, I forgot to take pictures of all my food the entire trip. We also visited Michael Bacall (screenwriter to watch) at his awesome house.

Day 3: went to Little Tokyo, ate some cheap/good sushi at Zencu, browsed Kinokuniya and bought a couple things, picked up some Japanese snacks at the market (pancake cookies, green tea meltyblends, mochi, american coffee), shopped at American Apparel, took a meeting, and then went out to a dinner that I can't even begin to explain, so I won't.

Day 4: exhausted already! Went for a swim in the morning. Dropped my phone in the pool (it showed signs of life for a while, but I don't think it's going to make it). Went to Meltdown, made a huge stack of books to buy after the signing. Ate sandwiches at Abbot's Habit (down the street from the comic store and very good). Signed nonstop from roughly 1:30 to 3:30. Sold some art. Bought the pile of books. Went out to dinner with Bacall at a cheapy Mexican place that I won't mention because we got made fun of for going there for the rest of the weekend. Almost went to a movie, then didn't.

Day 5: Had breakfast (poolside! at the Standard!) with Adam and his wife. I dunno about the rest of you, but our experiences with Hollywood Producer Guys have been strangely awesome. All our producers are awesome Ivy League geniuses, not the caricatured dum-dums you might expect. We really like them and would hang out with them any time, even if they weren't Hollywood Producer Guys.

We mostly took it easy the rest of the day - ended up going to the beach with Nick, toodling around the closed mall (easter sunday) and then we finally did go to a movie that night, Drillbit Taylor, which was awful (but we still love Owen Wilson).

Day 6: had lunch with Edgar (the Standard again, but inside this time), went to Universal (exciting! but didn't see any famous people), chatted about movie stuff. Jared (a Yale man, see?) took us around the studio on a golf cart. We got in trouble with security when we tried to drive by the Back to the Future clock tower. Then we dragged him out to dinner at Chosun Galbee, which I'd been waiting for all week, and we had a ridiculous quantity of bulgogi and stuff.

Then we came back!!! The trip back was horrible and Logan Int'l (Boston) is my new pick for "worst major airport ever".

I took down my last two posts - I don't want to sound like I'm being a negative creep about this movie thing. I get easily ticked-off by lazy, ill-informed Internet Opinions (tm), but I'll try to chill.

It's exciting, sometimes fun, generally weird, often confusing. We get to hang out with people like Edgar Wright, which is many a nerd's dream, I'm sure. And we got treated like Important People for a few days, about which I cannot complain.

wednesday 5 april: flew to london, landed at gatwick. had weird pressure brain bubble on landing and felt really bad for a while. recovered with tea on the gatwick express, goggled at the weird houses and stuff (on the return trip this morning they'd stopped seeming weird). struggled to stay awake all day. went on three walking trips from the hotel. ate unappetizing-yet-huge portions of pad thai. saw some of hyde park, the royal albert hall, the victoria & something museum of decorative art, more stuff, hard to remember, finally mercifully fell asleep.

( much, much more )

I am in Nottingham now, and the signing at Page 45 is tomorrow from 4 PM to 7 PM GMT. I think that's all!

I am at Gosh Comics in London, where I've just signed a whole whackload of Scott Pilgrims, so you Londoners can shut the hell up! Uh... unless you wanted me to sign YOUR copy, I guess.

I've been nominated for an Eisner - "Best Humour", up against the expected Kyle Baker, and Seth, among others.

I'm leaving comments off for now because I don't want to hear about it, and I'm only on the computer for five minutes a day whilst on vacation, so you guys keep it to yourselves, okay?

Hope and I are going to appear at Page 45 in Nottingham, UK, on Friday April 14th, from 4 PM to 7 PM. Scott Pilgrim #3 won't be out by then, but I'll be signing and sketching whatever, and we're going to do a fancy new poster to commemorate the event. So if you're in the region, please come by. It'll be our first time in the UK. More information and artwork for this event soon.

(edit to clarify: we are going on vacation, and we happen to be doing a signing at this store because they are friendly to us and have sold lots of our books. they aren't flying us out. we're just making a mutually beneficial arrangement. other signings, ie in London, are unlikely at this point, because there isn't a lot of time to plan.)