11/27/2011 04:03 PM
Meeting artists and buying cool stuff at Austin Comic Con
Had a good quick visit to Austin Comic Con earlier this month.
As soon as I walked in, I bumped into friend and great comics creator Yehudi Mercado and picked up the latest volume of Buffalo Speedway:
Over in Artists Alley, I met some great creators. Had fun talking to local artist Rob Osborne, who sold me some Zango comics and this Gonk poster I had been admiring at Austin Books:
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| From Austin Comic Con 2011 Loot |
Also finally picked up Morning Glories TPB 1 and had it signed by the artist:
This book is phenomenal. Can't believe I'm just getting into it now. It feels like Lost meets The Prisoner, set in a sinister version of the X-Mansion.
I was SOOOOO excited to finally meet Jo Chen, who signed this Buffy/Fray poster for me:
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| From Austin Comic Con 2011 Loot |
Ms. Chen was a real champ, signing away despite a pretty nasty cold. I think she's the best cover artist working in comics, so I was very excited to get her autograph.
More loot pictures here.
Posted by ljh at 4:03 PM | Comments (0)
09/18/2011 10:02 PM
Jack's 2011 ACL Fest Roundup
It was a great ACL Fest this year.
The weather was as good as we could have hoped, given the brutally hot Austin summer we've been living through. It was hot, yes, but it could have been so much hotter. Every day had at least some cloud cover, and every day had some cooling rain. Saturday the drizzle settled in all afternoon -- enough to cool things down, but not enough to turn the park into a mudpit. It was actually 79 degrees at 10pm Saturday, and that is amazing given the last two months of 100+ days.
We enjoyed the yummy food this year, as usual, courtesy of the Austin Eats collective of restaurants. 6 meals over 3 days and all were good: Bess Bistro, Tim Love Burger, Aquarelle (twice), Olivia (Lucy's Fried Chicken), Torchy's, and Stubb's.
But to the most important topic, the music:
Friday highlights
- Reptar: an Athens, Georgia based band with a fun mix of styles and creative instrumentation.
- Smith Westerns: from Chicago, an indie rock band with style and substance
- Bright Eyes: Conor Oberst's band continues to take folky indie rock in new directions. Really good stuff.
- Santigold: fun show -- great singing, great presence, fantastic dancers
Saturday highlights
- The Antlers: Brooklyn-based indie rock and dream pop purveyors. A good way to start the day.
- Phosphorescent: experimental, atmospheric, and just morose enough to make me smile
- Iron & Wine: Austin-based Sam Bean and his band sounded amazing -- what a great songwriter he is.
- My Morning Jacket: they rocked. Hard. It was great. Loved that they brought Preservation Hall Jazz Band on for the last couple of songs.
Sunday highlights
- Mariachi El Bronx: a punk band playing heart-felt mariachi music, they blew me away, especially Ray Suen's violin virtuosity.
- Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.: uplifting, fun, original, and incredibly talented, this Detroit trio had me smiling and dancing
- Elbow: a really tight rock band from Manchester; front-man Guy Garvey knows how to work a festival crowd
- Fleet Foxes: this Seattle-based indie folk band makes wonderful music -- intricate songs with amazing instrumentation and vocal harmony. Loved it.
- Randy Newman: The man is a genius, a national treasure, and a songwriting god. He was fantastic, despite the sound overlap challenges of performing on the Vista Equity stage.
- Arcade Fire: second time seeing them this year, they were maybe even better on the second go-round. Rockin way to end the fest!
Posted by ljh at 10:02 PM | Comments (0)
10/14/2010 08:36 PM
humorous apology from Mint
Last night I got a flood of blank emails from the mint.com domain. I was a little puzzled and concerned, but decided not to worry about it. Tonight, I got this email from Mint and it made me laugh out loud. A sense of humor is always a nice touch in a "mea culpa"...
Posted by ljh at 8:36 PM | Comments (0)
09/ 8/2010 08:35 AM
time traveler's wife timeline links
I updated my popular Time Traveler's Wife: Timelines post from 2006 to have links to view the PDFs online in Google Docs. Thanks, Google!
Posted by ljh at 8:35 AM | Comments (0)
06/20/2010 08:31 AM
names in my family
I geek out over genealogy research from time to time, and have built up a pretty big family tree on ancestry.com. Today for fun I figured out how to download the tree in GEDCOM format, which is text-based and allowed me to export a list of unique family names from the tree. I have no idea why any of you would be interested, but here it is:- Angel
- Arthur
- Atkinson
- Banie
- Bayley
- Berry
- Bockman
- Boyle
- Braden
- Brown
- Browning
- Carson
- Chamberlain
- Champney
- Cochran
- Coleman
- Connell
- Cook
- Coppley
- Courtney
- Dabney
- Davis
- Dewberry
- Duncan
- Evans
- Feuge
- Floyd
- Gadberry
- Gregory
- HUMPHREY
- Hampton
- Hatchett
- Hooper
- Hopson
- Horseman
- Horsman
- Huggard
- Hughart
- Hughes
- Hughhart
- Humphrey
- Hutcheson
- Hutt
- Indian
- Jackson
- Johnson
- Jones
- Keyes
- Kirk
- Lackey
- Lawson
- Lay
- Lee
- Leythall
- Lide
- Lloyd
- Loyd
- Lynch
- Margaret
- Mary
- Mc Phail
- McBee
- McClanahan
- McIlvain
- McMillan
- McMurde
- McPhail
- Mitchell
- Mooney
- Nall
- Norman
- Norton
- Nosley
- POTEET
- Pape
- Powell
- Price
- Rawley
- Rusche
- Sagebiel
- Savage
- Scissen
- Scott
- Shepard
- Shepherd
- Sherrill
- Smith
- Stricklin
- Strother
- Sullivan
- Thompson
- Tillett
- Trammell
- Trout
- Turley
- Wade
- Whaley
- Williams
- Wilson
- Wood
:)
Posted by ljh at 8:31 AM | Comments (0)