California trip

Apparently, this has become more a travelogue-blog and less of a blog about Captain Capitalism or any other projects. I have put Captain Capitalism on the shelf for a little while. Not permanently, but I am taking a bit of a break. I got frustrated with certain things, mainly trying to find some sort of revenue stream to make working on the cartoons worthwhile. I took some time to just write some new scripts. I got some interest, but nothing really panned out the way I wanted it to. I realized I was spending more time fooling with that stuff than actually making the cartoons, which was the fun part. Since, Captain Capitalism was something I was for fun, I decided it was time to take a rest before all of the fun was sucked out of it.

Web cartoons never really took off. At least not like I thought they would. Very few have found the key to doing ongoing series that are produced regularly, with good quality that generate enough revenue to not work yourself to death.

I am also still taking going to kung-fu 3-4 times per week, and started a boxing class about 12 weeks ago. I go to the classes with Jason Williams, a fellow animator at Powerhouse. I am getting older, and these classes wipe me out most nights.

I did start another project though recently. As I develop it more, I will post about it. But until then…

The wife and I just took a week-long vacation to California. It was a blast, though I am very glad to be back home in Austin.

SAN FRANCISCO
Our first stop was San Francisco. We stayed with former Vizlab classmate, fellow Zippity employee, and former-fellow Powerhouser, Stephen Parker and his girlfriend Carrie. Stephen lived with Mandy and I for a while in Austin. He is one of my favorite people on the planet. That being said, I have not seen the bastard in about 3 years.

Our first morning in town, Mandy and I went and explored Chinatown.



After that we crossed the Golden Gate to meet Steve.

Steve works for this guy named George Lucas who must be the biggest dork ever. He named his place Skywalker Ranch and has things like Yoda statues everywhere.

Skywalker Ranch was pretty amazing. We couldn't actually go up to Steve’s office, because they are all secret squirrel about the project he is working on, but it was a pretty breath taking place to work.

There was a Klimt in a break room, just like the two we have in the Powerhouse breakroom. Great minds, y'know.

And other things I could not take pictures of…

The next day we walked through Golden Gate park and the Haight-Ashbury area. There was a carnivorous plant exhibit at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park.
We took a quick tour of the DeYoung art museum.We also got to see Mandy’s brother, Sean, who lives in San Francisco while he attends graduate school at Berkeley. That night Sean and his girlfriend Seemay met us all for Tapas at Picaro.

We had a lot of fun in San Francisco, it was great seeing Steve, Carrie, Sean and Seemay. On Sunday morning we all went to go have Dim Sum around the corner from Steve’s and then Mandy and I left to go spend a couple nights in Carmel.

CARMEL
In Carmel, Mandy and I stayed at the Quail Lodge, which was quite nice. Mandy found an amazing deal on the Internet that made it affordable.

While in Carmel we went to beach. Mandy attempted to put her feet in the water, but rushed out because the water was ice cold.
The animals at the beach put on a show for us one night, Dolphins were jumping in the ocean doing flips while some sea otters banged open clams on their chest.

There are some neat shops in Carmel, including a shop that had original Gil Elvgren paintings and both of Clint Eastwood’s restaurants.


Probably the most interesting establishment we went into was Sade’s, a small bar in Carmel. We stopped by to get a quick drink but ended up staying to hear the proprietor, an 84 year old gentleman named Frank, hold court. Frank told stories and picked on the patrons, including Mandy and I, all while drinking water and smoking. Frank thought I was in the service, because of the amount of times I say, sir. When I told him I made cartoons he told a story about how he used to draw cartoons of his superiors while he was in the service, nicely tying everything together. He kept telling Mandy how pretty she was, until he found out she was an attorney, then he told everyone in the bar to stop talking or she would sue everybody. I mentioned that he was smoking because seeing someone smoke in a bar in California is very rare these days. When he left we asked the night bar maid why he was allowed to smoke and she said that he had a special deal with the local police, and that they actually had a last call for cigarettes one hour after Frank leaves the bar every night.

It is possible that Mandy and I were the youngest couple to visit Carmel over the labor day weekend. It is a pretty cool place though, it is neat to be able to take a hike and see a deer and seals within 3 mins of each other.

After a couple relaxing days we had seen about all that I needed and we headed down the PCH to Santa Barbara.

SANTA BARBARA
The drive from Carmel from Santa Barbara was beautiful, but also a bit scary. There are many hair-pin turns and thousand foot drop offs into the ocean with no guard rails. I don’t think Mandy would willingly do it again.

Along the way we stopped in Big Sur and took a hike at the Julia Pfieffer Burns State park. We also stopped at Nepenthe, which had an amazing view, and is on the sight of a cabin that Orson Welles bought for Rita Hayworth.
We also took a driving break at a Seal Elephant preserve.
We also stopped in Solvang, a cute little Dutch town, and bought some trinkets for our parents. It was a pretty busy day.
Santa Barbara was nice. There was a giant farmer’s market taking place when we arrived. We walked around the area and ended up eating at a Seafood restaurant at the end of a pier. Mandy and I wrote a song to our dinner.
(to the tune of Elton John’s "Yellow Brick Road")
So Goodbye Barnacle Joe,
My friend that’s a rough way to go
You sure tasted great
Sitting there on my plate
Boiled alive in a pot,
I really liked you a lot
But we finally found a good restaurant
So goodbye to barnacle Joe- oe oe oe
Boo hoo hoo hoo hoo
Boo hoo hooooo Joe!
(interpretive dance must be included, with raising arms, into weeping, ending in clenched fist with dying flower move)

LOS ANGELES
We drove straight from our hotel in Santa Barbara to the Secret Stash in Westwood. The Stash is one of Kevin Smith’s comic book stores, it houses one of the Arcade machines that we built back in 2001. The unimpressed clerk pointed me to the machine, which is apparently not functioning right now.

I bought some souvenirs for friends, then we drove around a bit more, trying to kill time before our check-in time at the hotel.

We hit another comic book store, while out and about, Golden Apple. Mos Def was in the store buying his kid some comics and action figures.

We walked from Golden Apple to Pink’s Hotdogs. Mandy asked if I thought a certain hotdog would be too big, I told her it would not be. I was wrong.

After eating and doing a little more shopping, we checked into Maison 140 in Beverly Hills. I was disappointed that Brenda, Brandon and Dylan were not around but I guess they were hanging at the Peach Pit.

After Mandy and I relaxed for a bit, we headed to Hollywood Blvd. to eat at Geisha House. Despite having stayed across the street at the Roosevelt a few times, we had never taken cheesy photos of our hands in the imprints at Graumman’s before, so we went and did that. I apparently do not have large enough hands to ever attain any form of celebrity…oh well.

The next morning I went and had breakfast with Chris Bailey. Chris is currently animation director on Alvin & The Chipmunks, but has directed the animation on many great projects; like the Clerks Animated Series, Runaway Brain, and Kim Possible. Chris is a really nice guy and it was a blast to listen to him tell stories and talk about some of his projects. We are doing Chris’s new website at Powerhouse so we discussed that as well.

After breakfast I made my way to the Endeavour offices in Beverly Hills. After a brief meeting there, I met up with Mandy and we walked around the Beverly Hills shops. The security guards must not have thought we fit in, and followed us around a couple of the shops, so much so that we got uncomfortable and left the area and headed to Santa Monica.

I spent most of my time there at another comic shop, Heigh-di-ho comics. They had a great selection of books and sketchbooks and I picked up a Shane Glines book and Kelsey Mann’s Noir sketchbook. I also spent some time trying to find some comics for my buddy Brandon, and found a couple that he was missing in his close to complete later X-men run.

That night we went out to eat another couple great friends from my days back at the Vizlab Jeremy Sternberg and his wife Cindy. I had forgotten how much I missed these guys.

Jeremy is another one of my favorite people in the world. I had not seen them since they got married, and they make a great couple. We had a good time hanging out with them, and after walking around the area they took us to dinner, they dropped us back off in Beverly Hills.
The next morning Mandy and I spent most of the day relaxing before packing it up for the long trip back to Austin.

So that is it, probably not terribly interesting to the greater Internet populace, but it gave me a chance to do something with all the faboo pictures Mandy took.

I spent the rest of the weekend backing up my old computer, to move everything to a new machine. While doing so I watched "Dragon Tiger Gate," which was awesome.

My old machine is about 7 years old, and on it last leg. Maybe the new, improved and organized machine will inspire me to produce some drawings for the blog here. Until then...