summertime and

Been really busy the past week or so. Actually the entire summer has been busy. Spent most of a month promoting the KS, and when that ended it was time to start thinking seriously about Con Bravo, and we did that, we did another Stupid Comics panel at Con Bravo. And I like Con Bravo, it's a fan convention that has fun and does a lot of fun stuff, but this is the second or third time we've done a Stupid Comics panel at CB and... it's a panel that the attendees of Con Bravo really have no interest in. It's just not a good fit. We get 50-75 people when we do it at Anime North, but CB winds up attracting... 4. 5 if you count the staffer who checked up on us every 20 minutes. I don't know if it's worth anybody's time, really. On the plus side the 4 people in the audience seemed to enjoy it.

We did see ANT-MAN which is funny and moves along at a good clip and is smartly written. I think the other summer movies we've seen have been INSIDE OUT and MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, both of which we enjoyed.

We haven't really gone anywhere this year. Saturday we went out to Grand Bend, which is a beach town on the shore of Lake Huron sort of north of London. It's a little summer resort town full of beachwear shops and bars, and the beach is sandy (that end of the lake has some big dunes) and the city built a good parking lot and a big concession/changing/pavilion kind of place, and there are benches and a boardwalk and it's very vacationy. We sat on the beach and got some sun and did a little swimming and got some more sun. Saturday was really the first day this summer the temp has been hot enough to think about swimming; Sunday was hotter and today's been even warmer. I feel like after last winter I need about two solid weeks of hot.

Anyway this coming Saturday we're driving down to Atlanta for my parents' 50th (!!) wedding anniversary, and we'll spend the week in town, and then Friday we're driving north to New York City, where we'll spend some of Saturday and all Sunday and a little of Monday, in honor of Shain's birthday. I haven't been to NYC since the 90s - Shain hasn't been there since the 80s - so we're looking forward to it. It's kinda nuts that since we moved to Toronto we've been to Tokyo twice but haven't been to NYC at all, considering it's a day's drive from here.

So this late August vacationing means that I'm working to get ahead of the game for AWA - which means editing video for Anime Hell, getting materials together for the Class Of '85 panel and the Bad American Dubbing retrospective panel, being in touch with various administrators and directors about the SHFS and the mixer and making sure people have what they need. I'm going to have about 3 weeks when I get back from the trip to get ready and everything I can do before our trip will help.

I'm also trying to get some zines together that we can sell at the SF/Anime Flea Market on Sept. 12 at the Main Branch of the Toronto Public Library. If you're in town you should come to that, we're going to have a bunch of comics and records and books and things for sale, it's a great sale full of interesting stuff.

So, that's been my free time, I haven't had time to draw or write Let's Anime columns or really do much of anything creative, other than what's already on my plate. We did attend a meeting of the group that puts together the Toronto Comics anthology, and if I can carve out 15 minutes I'm going to put in a pitch to be a part of their next edition. It was honestly very pleasant to meet up with other Toronto cartoonists - when we moved here I figured Toronto would be this seething hotbed of cartoonists all hanging out, but that really hasn't been the case. Mostly because we all have actual jobs.

And that's the summer, a busy one. I'm looking forward to the post-AWA relaxation time, when I can get some REAL work done.