http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/bit-sad-but-it-ends-with-toast.html

I went to Boston and spent Thanksgiving with Amanda and her family. It was wonderful. I spent any spare moments reading comics for a book I am guest editing next year. (This is a photo of us on the pavement outside her house.)

http://feeds.reference.com/click.phdo?i=3bd845ea4e7ce4c3a74c8451c824207c

http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/archive/2009/11/30.html

couture: the high-fashion clothing created by designers.

Another highlight of my time in Morocco was the wrap party.

For those not familiar with the term, it's a Hollywood tradition to throw a big party when you finish shooting -- or "wrap" -- on a movie or television project. I attended quite a few great wrap parties during my ten years in LA, but the GAME OF THRONES wrap party blew them all away. We held it in the Ouarzazate Museum of Cinema, a pretty amazing place itself, complete with local musicians, belly dancers, acres of Moroccan delicicacies, and lots of spirits to lubricate the exhausted cast and crew. And when the museum threw us out, we just adjourned back to the Berbere Palace, where the party continued.

These few poor snapsnots don't capture a tenth of what went on. But hey, what happens in Morocco stays in Morocco, right?












A great time was had by all... except, of course, for the cast members who shot their scenes in Ireland and Scotland, and the Irish and UK crew who did not get to make the trip to Morocco. The drawback of shooting in so many different places... everyone couldn't be there together to celebrate the end of the shoot.

Work was really short and not super productive, as I discovered my deadlines I thought were at the end of the month (but going to be extended) are actually in mid-February (and going to be extended). I didn't think about work at all over the long weekend, which was pretty nice. We'll see what I have to do when I get in tomorrow. Failed to do as many sheets as I should have, too, which is more unfortunate.

Also:
Tuesday: Board Games! algorithmancy, fredrickegerman, and harrock for most of it, with special guest skuffle at the end. Germany was supposed to show up, but failed. Mostly Dominion, with a round of algorithmancy's new prototype in the middle.
Wednesday: Nothing much. Work ended early, then puttering about on the way home, then being at home.
Thursday: Turkey Day! Lots of people came over. twe had a nice summary.
Friday: Board Games again! History of the World, then more Dominion. I gave up before the party as a whole did. History of the World was fun, and I was mostly in the running, until I got Incas and Aztecs and then the U.S. in the last two turns, darn it.
Saturday: Dragon Run! Turned off one of the dooms that's been hanging over our head for most of the Scroll. Spent a bunch of loot doing so. Then went and tried to write character sheets, and got one started, but nothing impressive.
Sunday: GM Meeting for a while, which was actually pretty productive, then failed to write sheets, then dinner with ironrat and Germany, then hanging out at hariyos' place for a while with those two and haryios and a couple other people. Came home to write a sheet, but played Starcraft instead. And now, too bed.

With the holiday season happening and all, why not consider gift shopping at the Couscous Collective Store? Not only can you purchase Narbonic and Skin Horse collections (and if you order all six volumes of Narbonic together, I'll sign and sketch in each one), but the store includes a wide selection of comics and minicomics by the other members in good standing of the Couscous Collective. Some of my personal recommendations:

( Read more... )

Whoo! It's been a while since I logged in as myself. (I've been logged in as girlgeniuscomic for the sake of convenience, but I finally fixed the network so that my work machine can talk to the internet again. Whew.)

My beloved TypeStyler is back! Aaaahhh! I am so very happy. Typestyler choked and died when the Mac went to OSX, so yes, it's been a while. Obviously, I've been doing all right without it, and I also like Art Text, but Typestyler was once one of my favorite tools, and I'm glad to have it back.
The only problem is that it isn't recognizing my old serial number as a TS serial number. Weird. And here I kept it all that time...

So, I am very much behind in posts. Let's start with Steamcon. Amazing! Many of my friends who are less...shall we say... into the things I like (cough, cough, manga and video games, cough) wandered through, and were later wondering out loud why they enjoyed Steamcon more than they usually enjoy conventions. That one was easy. They stripped away all the extras, and cut straight to the tasty Victorian-flavored costumes and "historically-influenced" gadgetry. And Tea. Always tea. Of course my friends who are mostly into historical costuming and vintage everything loved it. Of course they did. I loved it, too.

Next. Windycon. This will probably need its own post. Or series of posts. And I don't have much time tonight. But if I wait until I have time to write about EVERYTHING, well, that's why I haven't been writing a lot. I sort of get bogged down in the sheer volume of things I want to say. Blah.
Oh, peachy. And, in fact, now I must go deal with the real world. Back later...

"The name Vanilla Ice evokes the sweet charm, the unknowing innocence of another time. In a world of school shootings, mass murders, endless wars, and economic despair, we miss that time."

Word up.

http://www.fireflyfans.net/news.asp?newsid=1637

eliza dushku, summer glau, alan tudyk! http://c4.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/8/l_def4641f70294cc582f980434f73250f.jpg Nathan Fillion's Castle ABC Mon 10/9c http://hulu.com Castle book "Hea...

http://www.fireflyfans.net/news.asp?newsid=1636

From http://www.fireflyshipworks.com/2009/11/what-serenity-means-to-you-%e2%80%93-fanmade/ http://www.fireflyshipworks.com/wp-content/uploads/serenity_render_background.jpg Nathan Fillion's Cast...

Have you heard of the Boston Comics Roundtable? Their website is http://www.bostoncomicsroundtable.com/ and they've been publishing a regular anthology called INBOUND. Well, INBOUND volume 4 is in and it's GORGEOUS! Perfect bound and chock full of nifty stories about Boston and the surrounding area, we highly recommend it. (And that's not just because they dedicated this issue to our fearless leader, Tony Davis.)

Due to the holiday last week, shipping is DELAYED and new comic book day will be on THURSDAY this week. This also means we'll be opening at 10am on Wednesday but not opening until 11am on Thursday.

Weekly Shiplist for THURSDAY, 3 December 2009 ( here )

Thank you!
The Million Year Picnic
99 MT Auburn ST
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-492-6763

or more specifically the Grigori?
and what song or effect is holy weapon anyway?

Our house has a Christmas tree this year! I haven't had one since I moved to Boston 15 years ago. This is my first faux tree (because otherwise we'd be vacuuming up needles until June). It's not really listing to the side -- that's just my impossibly awful photography "skills." It looks lovely and though you can't really see them, there are 200 tiny white lights on it. I feel Christmas-y!

Ornaments of note are a lobster trap, an antique globe, The Mad Hatter, a pickle, two moons, a Chianti bottle, two elephants, a Chinese lantern, and a Mexican hand-crafted star on top.

It's been a great holiday long weekend. I'm ready for the season! I also love Hanukkah and Solstice. I hope there's lots of festivity for all of the December holidays!

So, I've had the galleys for about two weeks now. I've distributed most of them, and feedback is starting to come in.

And.... oy.

Of course, you always expect there to be more things to fix than you expected, even when you take into account that there will be more things to fix than you expected. But then there are more things to fix than even that. I had been hoping to publish in late January; now I'm hoping by Purim.

Looking on the positive side, I have been getting lots of wonderful and useful feedback -- corrections of my errors (both embarrassingly egregious and subtle) and suggestions for improvements that I didn't see. I have been getting encouragement from people I respect to press forward, that I really have created something useful and new and worth the extra effort to make it ready to share more widely.

"With high hopes, the Globe endorses Alan Khazei, the prime mover behind national-service policies, as Massachusetts’ best chance to produce another great senator.

The 48-year-old Khazei offers a strong vision for success in the Senate, channeling the energy of activist groups and private-sector policy incubators while dedicating himself to the laborious task of building legislative coalitions.

He offers a time-tested and relevant example of this approach: his two decades of work bringing together politicians of both parties and citizen-activists to develop a national service plan. The recent service bill named for Kennedy and providing for 250,000 volunteers in a domestic Peace Corps is largely the fruit of his labors."

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2009/11/29/for_democrats___alan_khazei_for_senate/

I know that you all want to see pictures from the pilot shoot for A GAME OF THRONES, but alas, I can't show you the sets, the actors in costume, or any of that good stuff.

Which is not to say that I can't show you a few other things from my recent trip.

Jerusalem in Morocco, f'rinstance.

Here are some shots of the huge city walls and siege machinery that Ridley Scott built for KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, outside the city of Ouarzazate in Morocco. We did shoot some scenes here... but inside, in a court redressed for our purposes.





That's my assistant Ty perched on the battering ram, which was full sized, made of real wood, and appeared to be fully functional. Ditto the siege towers and trebuchets Ridley left.

The interior courtyards were equally impressive (alas, I can't show you the one we redressed and actually used).





I worked in Hollywood for a decade back in my checkered past, and these are the most impressive sets I've ever seen. Hell, Scott's fake castle beats about eighty per cent of the real castles I've seen, and I've visited a LOT of castles.

I'm obviously going to have to put a city under siege sometime soon, so we can go back to Morocco and play with all these cool toys one of these days.