This weekend:  FPAC vs. Pinoyfest

This is just really dumb.  Honestly, why on earth would you put together a ripoff version of FPAC and put it on the same weekend unless you wanted to be a total jerk?

I got all of my Nisei Week stuff up a few minutes ago.
http://www.super-no1.com/niseiweek2008/index.html

I tried a new photo editing program for a lot of these.  I don't know it I like it or not.  It does some things well.  It does some things poorly.  I guess I'm going to be using 3 programs for awhile.  I'd still like to play with the new program a bit more to see what it could do.  Maybe I'll get buy a copy of the new PhotoImpact 13 soon.  I seem to prefer that program, but my current version can't handle RAW files from the D300.  With this new software, some photos came out too "blue".  Some were too "red".  I got lazy and figured it's close enough.  If Nisei Week were a more critical series of photos, I would have worked on them more.

It's been a very productive 3-day weekend.  My goal was to at least finish editing my Nisei Week photos and I was able to do that.  They're resized and marked and now I just have to build the Nisei Week 2008 section to my website.  It shouldn't be too difficult and I should have that done in a few days.  I felt like I was back in school and working on a big project.  I spent most of the weekend locked up in my apartment and getting photos done.  I can be very disciplined if I want to be.  I spent very little time outside.  I ran a few errands on Saturday morning.  I went to the gym twice.  I took an ice cream break after watching USC beat the bejeezus out of UVA in football.  I went to church on Sunday.  But now I'm fully rested after a busy August and I'm ready to take on September's events.  I've got four weekends of craziness ahead and lots of photos to be taken.  I hope I can keep up and keep the backlog to a minimum.

I haven't done any work on the photos for Cosplay Underground v. 002 because I won't have all the material for that issue until after Mikomicon.  At least I hope I'll have enough photos.  There's no need to rush on those yet.  October is not going to be as busy and that going to be a good time to catch up on those photos and get that issue out.  I don't like to put up previews of photos, but since Cosplay Underground is on J!-ENT, I will put a few samples there on my staff blog.  Right now, I've actually done that.  It's good to let the readers know what I'm up to and to show that I'm working on another edition.

I also played a lot of Rock Band during my breaks from photo editing.  I played a lot of vocals on expert level on quickplay and just doing the songs that I liked.  I never got around to doing the tour.  So, I decided to try the tour on expert level and see how I could do on the songs that I don't like.  Honestly, I wasn't too bad.  There were about 4 or 5 songs that I failed and had to do over.  I had the most trouble on "Detroit Rock City".  I had to do that several times.  Surprisingly, I only had to do "Foreplay/Long Time" a second time in order to pass it.  What does this prove?  Almost nothing.  I can get the tones right.  When it got tough, I didn't even try to sing the lyrics.  It was okay.  I just did it to get the Xbox Live gamerpoints.  It's not a very fun way to play because you have to sing like a robot.  You can't do any crazy things if you want to pass and that's not really very fun.

It looks like 2 conventions got their registration pages up over the weekend--PMX and Fanime.  It's amazing that PMX has it up.  PMX usually does a lot of things at the last minute.  Usually cons announce a lot of stuff when it gets to under 100 days before the convention.  PMX usually doesn't operate that way.  Maybe they're going to be serious this year and recognize the importance of getting information out early, when people can still make plans to go their convention.  Fanime has registration up 9 months before their convention.  They're on the ball with that.  Yeah, I'm not ashamed to bash a convention even if it's a convention that I like.  If it's a con that I hate, well, yeah, you know how it is.

It's been a fun weekend so far.  I had great fun at the bonfire last night.  There's nothing like spending some quality time with the family.  Nothing to cover.  No photoshoots to do.  No convention.  No worries.  No stress.  It's just everybody having a little shindig on the beach at night and it was a blast.  I'm glad that I was able to go.  All of my sandwiches went very quickly.  I thought I bought too much.   It was nice to meet new people and see some familiar faces as well.  I'm sure some of you are tired of seeing me by now.  Even though I live in LA, I rarely go to the beach.  It's been a long time since I've been in the ocean.  I gave it a try and it was alright, but the sand was very sharp and abrasive.  It felt like it was cutting my feet and legs.  I'm sure that I'll be seeing a lot of you some time soon.

Today I saw Death Race.  I enjoyed it because I like senseless mayhem as long as it's not too gory.  I watched Death Race 2000 many years ago and it was really silly.  Death Race actually makes sense.  It's not going to win any Oscars, but I enjoyed it.  Before the movie, they showed trailers for Transporter 3 and Fast & Furious.  Those look like they have potential, but second movie in both those series weren't very good.

I had to do laundry today.  Because of last night, I had a lot of large towels to wash, including a large beach blanket so I had to go to the laundrymat.  The machines at my apartment can't handle that stuff.  I don't like going to the laundrymat.

Tomorrow, closing day of Nisei Week.  More fun and excitement.  After that, I'm almost halfway done with all of these late summer events.  However, August is the easy half.

Young Olympics singing star didn't really sing

Beijing enhanced Olympics show with faked 'fireworks'

I am officially bored out of my mind, but for all of you hardcore people who are heading off to Otakon, have a safe trip and have fun. Take lots of photos. I'm ready to start the weekend now. I just want to do something. I'm ready to get back into action. That last weekend of loafing around really did wonders for me. I'm refreshed and full of energy and ready to start the long string of events. I'm excited about it. This weekend is going to be super busy. The RSVP list for the ALA picnic gets longer every day and that's good. It will be nice to still have one big summer picnic. Of course this means I really have to hustle with all of my errands on Saturday.

My eye is doing better. It's actually been bothering me since Comic-Con. My left eye gets very irritated and vibrates and has been doing strange things, but for the past 2 days, it seems to have returned to normal. I think it's all better now and it was just something temporary. I have to take my exam soon anyways and I'll get it checked then.

Anyways, this gives me some ideas:

Today I went to see The Dark Knight at the IMAX at Howard Hughes Center. I caught a 9 AM show. I had never been to this movie theater before, but I wanted to give the IMAX a try. I don't know about other IMAX theaters in the area, but at this one, there wasn't a lot of leg room, so it was rough when somebody wanted to leave/enter the seating area. All seats are assigned, so have to sit where your ticket says your seat is. The person behind me kicked the back of my seat a lot. It was very annoying. It was the same with the girl sitting next to me, but she had a really bad time and I could tell she was getting very angry.

The movie was pretty good, although it's fairly long--2 1/2 hours. The entire movie wasn't shot in IMAX, but some parts were and those parts were really impressive. The majority was shot in regular widescreen, so you're just watching the normal aspect ratio on a really, really big screen. Yeah, I agree with everybody that the voice of Batman is kinda goofy and silly. I think I'm gonna try and talk like that from now on. It's very manly. Maybe next time, I'll try a different IMAX theater. I think the next closest ones are Anaheim and Universal City. I hope they have more leg room. I really enjoyed the movie, but I don't know if it's worthy of all of the money that it's making. I give it a B or B+.

I didn't do too much else today. I ran some errands and had some ice cream and went on some other wild goose chases. After I got home, I decided to walk out to the Gateway Fountain. It's a new fountain that the built at the Harbor Blvd. exit of the freeway, which is usually where I have to get off when I come home. It was built by the same people who built the fountain in front of the Ballagio hotel in Las Vegas. Every hour it does a choreographed water show to "O Sole Mio." It's not a good idea to drive in that area when the show starts because cars just stop in the middle of the street. I try to avoid driving through there at those time. Also, the area by the harbor isn't exactly a wealthy neighborhood, so the fountain seems to have become a free public wading pool for poor kids. Security is always busy kicking kids out of the water. Sometimes, the adults are pretty bad, especially if they're really ghetto. Anyways, I'd like to see that show at night to see if it's any good. During the daytime, it was just okay.

In other news, PMX finally revealed their first band on their website and it's a band called Suicide Ali.  It's about time since I recieved a flyer from the record label at a concert 2 months ago about this band and the PMX show.

It's the last day of July already??  Time flies.  August and September are my busiest months because there are just so many events to cover during this stretch.  Physically, it's very tough because a lot of it is outdoors and I'm carrying around a lot of stuff.  It's fun, but it's brutal.  I guess this annual late summer slog started a few weeks early with Cospix and SDCC.  This weekend, I need to be somewhat of a hermit.  I really need time to myself to just relax.  I definitely want to see The Dark Knight this weekend.  I'm going to try and catch an IMAX show at Howard Hughes Center on Saturday.  I'd like to get to the first show of the day so I can have the rest of the day to do whatever.  I know Ani-Jam is this weekend up in Fresno.  I've always wanted to try that convention, but maybe next year.  I might go there instead of Comic-Con.  I love all of my SD folks dearly, but Comic-Con was rough.  I don't know if I want to put myself through that again.  Ani-Jam seems like something that I would enjoy more.

After this weekend, the slog begins.  This is what the next two months look like:

August 10:  Anime LA picnic in Irvine.  It's in the same park as the SoCal spring picnic.  I'm looking for Cosplay Underground material.  I do read the RSVP list and there are a few people that I have my eye on.  We'll see how it goes.

August 15:  Glay concert.  Woohoo!!!

August 16-24:  Nisei Week.  I've got the Anime Festival on 16 and 17 and I'd like to go to closing day on the 24th because it's fun.  I help out a lot at the Anime Festival.  The guy who runs it is a friend of mine and he really could use the help.  Every year it always seems that we're the last two people there cleaning up after it's all over.  Once again, I want to get some Cosplay Underground material, but I don't know how Little Tokyo during the first weekend of Nisei Week is going to work.  It sounds tough, but hopefully the ALA picnic will provide me with the bulk of the material I need.  It's nice to not really have a quota since I make a lot of the decisions as to what goes into an issue of Cosplay Underground.  It can be as big or as small as I want.  The 24th is the taiko festival and ondo, which is crazy fun.

August 30-September 1:  free weekend, Labor Day

September 6-7:  FPAC.  I've been going to this for a long time and since it's in San Pedro, I really don't have an excuse to miss it.  It's practically right down the street.  Even though I've gone for many years and I rarely see anything there that I haven't seen before, I still enjoy it and want to give my support to it.  My FPAC photos are actually very popular.

Sept. 14:  Harvest Moon Festival in Arcadia.  I'm going to treat this as an expendable event this year.  I've looked at the list of performers and there's nothing that I haven't seen already.  It depends on how I feel physically at this point.  If I'm too tired, I'll skip it.

Sept. 19-21:  Mikomicon.  I missed it last year because it conflicted with FPAC, but no conflicts this year so it's a go.  It's the prettiest location for an official anime convention on my schedule for this year, so I don't want to miss it.  I had fun when I went last time.  It's a slow, relaxing convention and that's the kind of convention that I like.  There's not a whole lot to do except shoot.  There are a few bands.  The masquerade should be short and sweet.  Good stuff.

Sept. 25-28:  LA Korean Festival.  If I go, I'll go on the 26th.  Again, this event is expendable and depends on if I'm too tired or not.  It's and okay festival.  It's really crowded and parking is tough.  If I miss it, it's no big deal.

That's the slog and it's going to be tough.  Eight weeks, two free weekends.  A ton of events.  A ton of photos to be taken.  Is it fun??  Sometimes.