Hello World

So, to cut to the chase, Dragon*Con has come and passed, and it’s back to whatever we consider “normal life.”  Either it’s me beginning to show my age, or the fact that the temperatures within the proximities of Dragon*Con fluctuated from sauna to meat locker, but I have unfortunately come down with something pretty brutal and I’ve actually been home sick for the last two days.  Like real, debilitating sicknesses don’t occur to me very often, so this is somewhat notable for me.

But anyway, since I’m trying to keep it somewhat chill and just trying to cope through with rest and nothing strenuous, it’s afforded me a lot of time to catch up on the most arduous of tasks following any sort of event – processing of pictures.  Over the span of the last two weekends, I went to four new baseball parks, and then there was Dragon*Con itself, so in all that’s almost 600 photographs for me to sort through and try to make somewhat presentable.

Going outside of my normal OCD protocol, I’m actually going to be releasing Dragon*Con photographs and posts before I get to the baseball ones.  Considering that pretty much nobody other than me cares about my baseball ramblings, and the unwritten notion that there’s a general limited window of time following a Dragon*Con in which attention spans are at their most piqued, it’s a decision made for optimum social reasons over chronological order.

That being said, I welcome myself back to my beloved brog, and I look forward to sharing my picture takin’ with the rest of the internets.  Hopefully everything is received with fond reminiscing and plenty of laughter.

SDCC: Preview Night and Thursday

Since I have over 250 pictures that I have to go through, sort, process, edit and upload, I figured it might not be a bad idea to break them up. In a perfect world, I just split the RAW files down the middle, and call it two even batches, but that wouldn’t be very cohesive and I’m anal retentive like that. So the first 80 or so images contain pictures from Wednesday the preview night, and Thursday of Comic-Con, which means the next batch is going to be massive, and will likely take an extra day or two, as I try to settle back into a daily routine again.

If you’re looking for pictures a lot of costumers, I’m afraid I have to say that there really aren’t that many in this post. Contrary to my expectations, and/or maybe I just wasn’t ever in the right places at the right time, but costuming in general doesn’t seem to be as prevalent at SDCC as I suppose I’m used to with like Dragon*Con, so by virtue of there not being as much on top of my fairly picky choices of what to photograph, there aren’t a lot of costumer photos, although there are a few here and there. There will definitely be more in the next batch.

These pictures mainly focus on beautiful San Diego itself, examples of some of the horrendous lines and crowds that I quickly learned despite expecting them, were the most absurd things on the planet, my obsession with Richard Walker’s Pancake House, and a few pictures from the Facebook party and other night gatherings.

The highlight of these two days, and possibly the entire convention for me, was getting to meet Chuck Palahniuk, my favorite author (Fight Club, Choke, Haunted), and not only getting to simply meet the man again, but to also be one of a hundred people to actually receive an advance copy of his next book, Doomed.

Photos after the jump!

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Photos: A day in Jacksonville, Florida

The pursuit of bobbleheads took me down to Jacksonville, Florida for the first time in my life.  This was kind of a shoddily put together trip, as the only thing I had genuinely planned for was to go to the ballpark in the evening, so that I could get this rare oddity of a bobblehead of Chipper Jones in his high school uniform, since it was a prep school in Jacksonville.

That being said, I literally had nothing to do all day prior to going to the ballpark mega early to ensure that I would get my bobblehead(s).  After I found a place to eat breakfast, I walked around a tiny park, because Google maps showed that it housed a creek known as “Hogan Creek,” and as anyone should know about me now, I’m fascinated with anything with the name “Hogan” in it for my Hulkamaniac roots.

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Photos: Ten outs in Hickory, North Carolina

What I mean by “Ten outs in Hickory,” means that I literally only stayed at the game for ten outs being recorded.  In other words, my brother and I stuck around the game for just a little bit over one inning of a nine inning game, before leaving.  This was also after driving 2.5 hours from Raleigh to get to Hickory.

This is the kind of shit why I always “joke” about being the worst baseball fan in the world.  I drove 2.5 hours to Hickory, because they were giving out a Chipper Jones bobblehead, that I really wanted.  As for the game itself, I honestly didn’t really care about it, and after walking around the small minor league park, I felt that I had gotten enough feel for the place.

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Photos: Clearwater, Hogan Beach and baseball

I made a spontaneous trip down to Tampa, Florida, because my boy James said he was going to make the trip up to Clearwater to visit the Hulk Hogan Beach Store.  Frankly, I couldn’t see myself visiting on my own and I’m not sure to who I would be able to force come along, so this was an opportunity that I was not willing to pass up.

As for the store itself, it was pretty much the Hulk Hogan Nostalgia Center located on the Beach for all intents and purposes, filled to the brim with Hogan-related memorabilia, souvenirs, crap on the wall, as well as a huge variety of t-shirts and other chintzy things that all have Hogan’s likeness all over it.  And tons of yellow, it was like Asian camouflage in there.

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Photos: A day in Detroit

One of the best things about my baseball travels is that it gives me a legitimate excuse to visit places that I never really thought I’d ever visit.  I mean seriously, I don’t know anyone in Detroit, there’s not really any particular motivation for me to go to Detroit, but because there’s a Major League Baseball park in Detroit, it gives me a reason.  And that’s really all the little push I need, because sure I’m going to go see the ballpark, but obviously, I’m going to take in as much as I can otherwise, while I’m there.

As far as day trips go, this was the smoothest one I’ve had in ages, possibly ever, as I’ve already mentioned previously.  Detroit itself is indeed the gritty, blue-collar, kind of rough-around-the-edges kind of city that people often use to describe it, usually in exaggerated jest though.  It helped that it was a picture perfect day when I went, because seriously, I’d have second thoughts about wandering around the place at night.  But for what it was worth, I had an enjoyable time wandering around the urban sprawl that was Detroit’s general Downtown and eventual Greektown areas.  There really is that gritty blue-collar feel about the city, but as cliched as it sounds, in spite of how run down certain blocks looked, it legitimately feels like there’s still some fight left in the place.

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Photos: Colorado Springs and more Denver

The following camera dump is the remainder of the photographs I took whilst out in Colorado.  The second day of my trip, I ventured out to Colorado Springs with the main objective being the minor league park located there.  But at the same time, it was a good excuse to see the world a little bit, and I wandered about Colorado Springs to see what this city had to offer.

Beautiful nature, that was for sure; I found a place called “The Garden of Gods,” and there was no way I couldn’t check it out.  Although I probably only saw about a thirtieth of the place, I still spent some time walking and hiking some of their trails, and took in some of the mountainous sights.  And before I headed back into suburbia to see the ballpark, I passed through Old Colorado City, an old town that I honestly do not know the historical significance of.

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