Only one week until my voluntary indentured servitude at Connecticon. Come! Join us! It'll be fun watching me sprint hither and skelter!

And after that... Otakon! Yes, folks, it's an amazing run of con-going out here. This is crunch time, of a sort. A fun crunch time. One where I get myself coated in various rubberized chemicals trying to get props done for sundry personae. I'll emerge from my underground apartment, amorphous and dripping ooze like Swamp Thing, and hey! By that time I won't even need a costume! I love how these things work themselves out.

It would appear that my town has been cast back into 1957. The main street has anti-Communist propaganda lining the kiosks, there are some wicked fins sitting on the backs of the boats-turned-cars lining the streets, and there's this damn archeologist who keeps tearing up and down the street.

Of course, it's only like this from sunup to sundown; the film crews pack up when the light gets too sparse to get a good shot, and then the rest of the town who didn't get cast as extras can admire the work that's gone into renovating the entire place for the fourth of the Indiana Jones movies.

They've done a fantastic job, too--the cars are all from local collectors, of course, but the storefronts are all redone by Hollywood's best, props and signs included. Seeing what's happened to the sixth-square area is just amazing. I'll see if I can grab some pictures later on today. It'll be hard not to, actually--I had to pick my way through three blocks of film set just to get to work yesterday morning.

Normally I'm not one for Hollywood glitz, but the fun here is seeing what they've done to spruce up the downright normal--turning the Starbuck's into an Irish pub, for example, or the Urban Outfitter's into a pawn shop. I could almost get used to this....

Incidentally, Lea Hernandez has released her comic Texas Steampunk to the public after nearly nine years. Go take a look.

Con-versely (heh heh), I have very few conventions to attend. I'll even be missing GenCon this year since, one way or another, I won't be in Indianapolis anymore. Alas! Of course, what I'm really itching for is a screening of Dead Gentleman Society's Dorkness Rising. I missed it last year because I went to see a terrible, TERRIBLE Lord of the Rings parody instead. I want those hours of my life back. I wouldn't mind so much normally...they said the DVD release of DR would be a few weeks after the GenCon screening. Well, it's now 11 months later and no release. I HUNGER for it. Apparently they're still in the process of looking for a distributor after having revamped quite a few of the special effects. I can understand wanting to get everything right, I really can, but it doesn't make it any easier of a wait...T_T

At least we still have The Gamers.

Things are much more mundane on my end, aside from scrambling to find housing and a job. You know, tiny little details like that. I am, however, working on a few pages of a side comic called Apocalypse Meow. This will be a heartwarming tale of one mutant catgirl's struggle for survival in a post-apocalyptic world where the only shreds to remain of the great civilizations of old are manga books. Doggedly (or not so), or heroine must contend with crazed Sailor Moon cultists who seek, in the name of the Moon, to punish the wayward heretic.

If you think I'm kidding, just you wait. ;D