Tag: palahniuk

SDCC: Preview Night and Thursday

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

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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High-er Expeck-taaay-tions

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The other day, I was at Borders purchasing a book about economics in baseball.  I happened to be wearing a shirt that said “i would rather be reading palahniuk” (thanks Katie), completely coincidental, and not because I was going to be going into a book store, and I wanted to assert my literary prowess to any other book nerds who may be glancing in my direction.

After an inconvenient delay, thanks to some black guy trying to swindle Borders with the “this book i recently purchased and have subsequently finished right away, i would like a full refund on it because i ripped out a bunch of pages to make it look like it was purchased damaged when it was really me all along” trick, but thankfully failing, I finally was able to check out.  The cashier, older, corporations would classify as “mature,” took amusement in my shirt, and stated her approval for my choice in literature.  The rotund younger cashier immediately took notice, and came to state her opinions as well, and before I knew it, I was engaged in a chance discussion about Chuck Palahniuk with the older cashier, with the younger one not wanting to feel left out, interjecting her remarks, inquiries about my choice of authors, and comments sporadically.

Now although I didn’t believe her when she said the only Palahniuk novel she’s read was Fight Club (because anyone can watch the movie and say they’ve read the book), the impression I got was that she was attracted to me.  If I’m correct in this assumption, I can easily say that it was most certainly not mutual, but it simply makes me wonder, that I think I have a tendency to attract women that I wouldn’t be close to being capable of returning attraction, because I give off this air of attainability?

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Thoughts on Portland, Oregon

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

On Monday last week, I hopped on a plane, and flew across the country to Portland, Oregon.  The reasoning was pretty simple – I wanted to see a baseball game.  The team was The Portland Beavers, which are a minor league affiliate of the San Diego Padres, and their home park, PGE Park is regarded as one of the nicest parks in the minor league ball circuit.

There isn’t a whole lot of explanation necessary to why I would exert so much effort in flying across the country in order to see a minor league team called “the Beavers.”  I am, admittedly, a big kid at heart, and I snicker every time I say, or someone else says “the Portland Beavers.”  The 14-year old in me demanded that this trip come to pass, and pass it did.  But most importantly was the fact that the 2010 season is the last year for the Beavers, and after it’s over, their park is being converted into a full-time soccer stadium for a fucking Major League Soccer team (The Portland Timbers . . . lame), and the Beavers are more or less being kicked out of town, and leaving the name behind in the process.  So it boiled down to a now-or-never scenario, to where if I didn’t make the trip on Monday, there would be no seeing any (baseball) Beavers, ever in my life.

The Beavers more or less gave me a convenient excuse to ever want to go to the state of Oregon, a state that I had never been to, in my entire life, and never really had any reason to until recently.  I had a fairly eventful time out in Portland aside from just the baseball game itself, and I’m glad that I made the trip, even if I did get stranded at the airport, and have to shell out the money that I don’t necessarily have to pay for a motel for four hours.  I look back at the experience fondly, and feel little regret that a trip with immature motivations, and for a minor league ballpark wound up being the furthest traveled, most expensive, and (planned) shortest baseball road trip I made this season.

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I have too many t-shirts

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Seriously, I just did my laundry, and when I merged the pile of clean shirts on top of the existing pile of t-shirts, they simply collapsed like a tower of Jenga.  Admittedly, I’m sitting down and forcing myself to write some stuff, but I do have a lot on my mind these days that I don’t think it’s purely for naught.

So there’s a situation that involves some nighttime vandals, and I have to wonder if there is anything that can be done about it?  It’s not my property per-se, but it’s still annoying to think of some idiots smashing mailboxes, and getting away with it, simply because it’s done likely in the nighttime hours that nobody notices.  Calling the cops can only accomplish very little, other than meek promises to patrol more often, and the postal service has zero sympathy for the situation at hand, and completely disallows movement of any mailbox regardless of the circumstances.  Other than radical vigilantism, or expensive surveillance equipment, there’s nothing saying it won’t happen again when the mailbox is predictably replaced.  This kind of helplessness and inability to solve in a conventional manner is distressing.

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