Scribblescrawl » vacation

168/365: 06-16-10 Guess whose shirt is the lead image for this website’s Top 20 Worst Souvenir T Shirts list

Scribblescrawl — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 05:23:58 +0000

If you guessed “YOURS?!?!?,” you are correct.

Our custom-made airbrush shirts from the 2005 Destin trip are finally getting the attention they deserve.

List here.

Screencap here:

My Spring Wish List

Scribblescrawl — Tue, 19 May 2009 02:43:51 +0000

Chillaxin' at the lake

A hammock.
A maid.
Magically appearing mojitos, mimosas and margaritas.
A lawnmower.
40 more days of weather like today’s.

Oh, and another thing…

Scribblescrawl — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 01:33:36 +0000

I posted over 100 photos to Flickr of my 2001 cross-country drive and my 2001 summer working at Yellowstone National Park. These are some of the prettiest and most interesting nature photos I’ve ever taken (no credit to me, it’s just that Yellowstone is INCREDIBLE, y’all) and well worth a look if you’re into browsing people’s photos.

Crosscountry Drive

Yellowstone National Park

Day 58: Old becomes new.

Scribblescrawl — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 04:16:47 +0000

I’m currently on a mission to scan/upload my photos back to birth. I drug out a box of duplicates from 1997-present, thinking that the hundreds of photos would be an unorganized pile. But surprise!!! at some forgotten time, I’d organized them! I had genuinely forgotten this, so fuck it, new to me, right?

Day 51: Very literal photo description on Flickr…

Scribblescrawl — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 02:38:12 +0000

…that is making me laugh. The photo is of me being a ham on the top of Sugarloaf Mountain in Heber Springs back in 2007. Tonight, while individually adding tags to each of my 1,056 photos, I finally wrote a description that articulates what was going through my head when I picked up that enormous branch.

Sadly, a screenshot ain’t gonna cut it. You’ll have to click the link to see it.

http://flickr.com/photos/kerryvaughan/2772784124/in/photostream/

Maybe a photo later tonight if I get real squirrely. Love to you all, and I promise I didn’t picture any of your faces when I wrote about the fan who tries to pluck my eagle’s feather.

The Long San Diego Story, Day Six. The Last Day.

Scribblescrawl — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:38:07 +0000

Sorry, I got distracted for a while. I’m a bad finisher. Good thing I’m not a man or I would really suck in the sack. I’ve been busy uploading a ton of old photos on Flickr, watching The Wire and Dexter, playing Super Mario Galaxy and spending long stretches of time in either my computer chair, my TV room or my bed. Also I’ve been going to work, but who cares about that.

But, finally, here’s the entry for my last day in San Diego. It’s a win-win: people who enjoyed the story can read one more entry, and people who got bored don’t have to deal with it anymore.

Included: Sea World. A broken camera.

Steven works at a non-profit group home for developmentally disabled adults. He wanted me to meet his ‘clients,’ plus he had to work on Sunday, so in a stroke of genius, he planned a trip for us and two clients to go to Sea World together. Free admission for us, a hopefully fun time for them. We got to the home around 8. Steven was on the clock, so he did some work duties while I helped set up for breakfast and met his co-workers and clients. I don’t really feel comfortable sharing many details of the home and its residents, simply because I only met them once and don’t feel like I’ve earned the right to write about them. But, I will say that they are six fascinating people. I probably could have spent a whole day there just hanging out, listening and watching them do their thing. But, we had some sightseeing to do.

Gina and Bradley were our Sea World companions. Gina’s schizophrenic, Bradley has severe autism. They are also both severely mentally disabled. Gina talks nonstop, Bradley never says a word. The conversation was lopsided, to be sure, but we did communicate. At least as much as we needed to. We got to Sea World early, right when the gates opened. The upside was there were very few people. The downside was, nothing was open. So we shuffled from closed exhibit to closed exhibit, trying to see what we could. Gina got a huge bag of popcorn early on, which she ate entirely (it took her like an hour). We saw dolphins, a tiny aquarium, and seals. Annnnnd, a loose flock of flamingos walked all around us, squawking and flapping their wings and making a whole hell of a lot of racket. Understandably, all the noise scared Gina. And it might have freaked Bradley out too, but he made no sign of discomfort. Right after being caught in the flamingo stampede, we went to the shark exhibit looking for a calm place. Now, we had already been warned that Gina was scared of hills and of going up or down stairs. But how we were supposed to know that the shark exhibit included a dark, hairpin tunnel sloping sharply downward. Even I had a hard time negotiating it. It took us a while, and we knew Gina was getting agitated, but we made it to the bottom. Sweet relief….nope! The bottom was a moving sidewalk inside a glass tunnel, surrounded by water and sharks, and bright and full of people and commotion. Gina, poor thing, yelled “NO!” when she saw it, and shoomp, we slid out an emergency exit right then and there. Steven knew she wouldn’t recover from the scare, so we skedaddled back to the home (but first stopping at McDonalds, which he’d promised them for lunch).

Steven and I had re-entry stamps though. So after making sure they were settled back in at the house, we went for Sea World Round 2. By the time we got back, the place was crowded and hopping. Long lines everywhere. We figured we’d see the biggest attraction first — Shamu. We sat in the splash zone, right up front. Oh won’t it be cute if we get a little wet, we thought. I took a photo of the tank and stage. It was the last picture my camera would ever take. For those of you who don’t know, sitting in the splash zone at the Shamu show is like jumping into a pool with your clothes on. And with your wallet, cellphone, camera and iPod in your pockets. I was laughing so hard, and I didn’t have time to wipe off my sunglasses or even catch a breath before I got pounded again by a massive wave of water splashed over the tank’s edge by an orca’s tail. So, the first thing I do when the show’s over is open my messenger bag to see if everything survived. Yep, looks OK. I take my camera out to get a picture of our sopping wet dumb selves, and pposgjkggghh, fizz. Barrrroooo. Camera’s dead. I got the dreaded “lens error” so infamous with Canon’s cameras. It’s kaput. But hey, now I’m in the market for a new one… a digital SLR? A newer Canon Powershot? The mind boggles with possibilities!

We walked away from the Shamu show so wet that people asked us where we’d been. Haha. From there we wandered, visiting the sharks (and seeing the whole exhibit this time), the seals, the beluga whales, polar bears and penguins. We drank a beer (sheerly for the novelty) while we fed the flamingos. And we saw the Sea Lions & Otter show. I was totally not prepared for how cute and awesome that show was. Trained animals doing impossibly cute things that you have no idea how they learned! A sea lion loading a cannon! An otter carrying a can of Pepsi! A surprise appearance by a trained manatee! OK so maybe it doesn’t sound awesome, but take my word for it. It was.

Sea World took up most of the day. And frankly, all I remember about the rest of the last day was eating nachos at a cool Mexican place and being really exhausted. And I got a sunburn. And I was trying to make every minute last an hour because I didn’t want the day to end, for so many reasons.

Like I said, I’m a bad finisher. So, instead of awkwardly trying to close this up in some witty fashion, I will just stop.

And that, my friends and loyal readers, is The End.

The Long San Diego Story, Day Five

Scribblescrawl — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 07:25:29 +0000

Includes: Heroes panel, LOST panel, American Gladiators, Lloyd Kaufman and more strange costumes.

Before you click on the ‘more’ link, I’ll warn ya…. this entry got long. I did a lot at Comic-Con. There was a lot to say! Plus I am long-winded and boring.

Onward, soldiers…

Saturday was my big Comic-Con day. The Heroes, LOST, and Battlestar Galactica panels were all scheduled. Steven had to work at 7 a.m., so he dropped me off at the convention center at 6:30. I figured I’d just wait in line for the Heroes panel. Since we’d learned how abysmally long the waiting lines could get, I figured that getting to the Heroes panel four hours early would guarantee me a spot close to the front. Right? Oh how horribly wrong.

THIS was the line at 6:30 A.M.! If you’re looking at the photo, that little white canopy was about 100 people from the front. The line then snaked back and forth about six times, to where I was. By the time the doors opened at 9, it had snaked back another six or seven rows. So if I was roughly at the halfway point of the line, that meant that about 3,000(!!) people had gotten there before me, over four hours early! A girl was shown on the big screens holding a poster that read “Milo We Camped Overnight For YOU!!” Milo plays Peter Petrelli. Now, I’m a fan, and I could look at Peter Petrelli’s shirtless wet and smooth chest all day. Hell, I could even post a link to a pervy montage I found online of Peter Petrelli’s shirtless wet and smooth chest. But I camp overnight for no one.

I assume the line was so crazy-long because the Heroes panel was one of the most celebrity-packed. Comic-Con had already announced the entire cast (!!) would be there. The event was supposed to start at 10:30. Minutes ticked by, no one. Then, a snazzy, hipster-looking aide scooted to the podium and said the cast was “stuck in the elevators.” After awkward stalling and a few DVD set giveaways (“Who’s getting this one? You, with the actually-lighting-up light sabre! Yeah, you, you get one.” And damn if TWO people with light-up light sabres didn’t run down to the stage…), the cast finally walked out. And it really was everyone. Angela Petrelli, Peter Petrelli, Nathan, Mya, Claire, Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg was just as excited as we were, it was really cute), Nikki, SYLAR, Ando, Mohinder, HRG and Hiro.

Tim Kring, the creator, then appeared with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. He said they asked fans last year not to reveal spoilers from Comic-Con, but that hey, Heroes would have been off the air for 9 months by the time Season 3 starts in September, so this time? This time, they wanted everyone to talk about it. To run out and tell the world about what they saw. To! Get! People! Excited! He said something like, “I guess you want to know what’s in this…briefcase???” The audience was all geared up, hooting and cheering. He opened it, and held up a single DVD. Everyone could see the handwritten title, “Season 3: Villains. Episode One.”

Holy shit did we lose it. Fists were pumping, people were screaming, I made eye contact with the guy two seats down and I swear he almost made out with me. After a few minutes of waiting for everyone to calm their asses down, they played the episode. OMG it is incredible. So many surprises. I’m sure anyone who wants to see it could find it online, but I will not post links to it. I won’t even spoil the slightest thing for you, because I want you to see it. Almost as much as I wanted you to see the Will Arnett Sex Tape.

Afterward, there was some fairly painful Q&A (“can I meet you?”, stuff like that). One cute story, though….Little kid, maybe 7, gets to ask question. His “question” is that he chirps “Silo is the best! villain! in the series!!!” Which, even for a little kid, is a rough mistake to make in front of 6,500 people and the very actor he’s trying to compliment. Next question-asker, an adult, gets up and says “Hi, this question is for Sylar.” And Zachary Quinto goes “Um, excuse me. I believe it’s Silo.” Way to protect a little kid’s honor, Mr. Villain.

Lucky for me (and probably on purpose), the LOST panel was scheduled directly after the Heroes panel in the same room. So I just glued my ass to that tiny chair. The LOST panel is hard to recount, much like the show usually is. It started with a montage video of cast and crew talking about the show. Like Rose and Bernard sitting off-set talking about Farraday: “I really don’t see why he wears a tie…on the beach.” And somewhere in there, the creators Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse in a ‘flash-forward’ video of themselves doing an interview in 2012. Damon: “It really sucked when that fan gouged my eye out after we killed off BEEEEEEP in Season Five. Now I have to cry myself to sleep at night. With my left eye.” (oh and check their t-shirts). I didn’t realize how funny those two dudes are.

But then it got complicated. If you are a hopeless LOST nerd like myself, you might be on an email mailing list for the Dharma Initiative’s ‘recruitment drive’ advertised in an Octagon Global Recruiting commercial during the Season Four finale. Those emails said the Dharma Initiative would have a recruitment booth at Comic-Con, and were coming from someone named Hans Van Eeghen, head of recruitment. I’d seen the booth the day before, but didn’t try to get on the overcrowded list to take the recruitment test inside. During the panel, Damon and Carlton drank out of comically enormous Dharma Initiative cups, and explained to the audience that their panel had been sponsored by the real-life Dharma Initiative. And here was Hans Van Eeghen to talk about the recruitment drive… an older man with an accent took the podium and berated the audience, claiming the test results were awful, and said only five people at Comic-Con had passed. Those five were brought on stage, all looking very much like the nervous Comic-Con attendees they were. Hans told us they were being taken back to the booth to see a “very special video.” And off they went. Damon and Carlton then held a lengthy, interesting Q&A. The LOST question screeners were WAY better than the Heroes ones, because these questions were smart, well thought out, and highly entertaining. A Ron Burgundy knock-off got up, and on the screen in front of all 6,500 people, goes, deadpan, “So. Just between you and me. How does this show end?” Link to video here, no spoilers whatsoever, as well as the same guy at the Pineapple Express panel, where he actually upstages Seth Rogen. Haaa…a Hurley look-alike (!!) (link to photo) asked a question. (Video here. It’s cute and funny, but does include spoilers for anyone who isn’t caught up with the show). Matthew Fox was a surprise guest! The Q&A was rudely interrupted, though, by one of the new recruits running on stage with a camcorder, screaming “You’ve done these panels for four years and you’ve never shown us shit! Well, I’m gonna show everyone now!!!” And here, no big surprise, was the hoped-for new Dharma video. I won’t link to it, but you can easily find it on YouTube. It was awesome, and that kid was surprisingly funny. Not sure if he was an actor or just someone up for the game. After they showed it, Hans Van Eeghen stormed back onstage, yelling that the sponsorship was finished, snatching the cups out of Damon and Carlton’s hands, blah blah. Pretty cool stuff. If you want to take the recruitment test, you can at www.dharmawantsyou.com.

All that excitement and it was only 1:30 p.m. I couldn’t get into the Battlestar Galactica panel because the LOST panel ran too late. My ass hurt (like it does now, I’ve been sitting here typing forever), I was thirsty. I walked into the main part of the convention center, got a Diet Coke, and promptly sat my sore ass back down on the floor. I had a good vantage point. Many costumed wonders walked past, and it was an easy place for Steven to find me. He hadn’t been there long when we watched a tall, muscular man with long hair walk past. Steven went, “OMG was that WOLF from American Gladiators?!” Now, little did Steven know how much I like that show. Richard Hatch behind an autograph table? Who cares! The entire cast of Heroes half a mile away? So what! Wolf, right here in front of us? Shooomp!, we were up in an instant, power-walking through the crowd trying to catch up with him and take secret photos. Maybe we thought we were being sly? But really we were way too obvious, because the woman with him finally looks at us and goes, kindly, “Do you guys want to take a picture WITH Wolf?” YES, we do! And we do. Sadly, he was not in spandex tights, but he was wearing a t-shirt with wolves on it.

Not long after that, we saw Gabriel Macht getting a drink at Starbucks, but who cares.

The rest of the afternoon was spent trying to shop on the exhibit floor. It wasn’t AS crowded as before, but it was still rough. I bought a sketchbook as a gift and a t-shirt for myself by Tara McPherson, whose work was new to me and is pretty f’ing cool. I wanted photos of costumed people doing normal stuff… Batman eating nachos, Darth Vader in line for the bathroom, Bildo Baggins signing a credit card receipt, and so on, but never got good shots.

Our final panel, and actually the last thing we did at Comic-Con, was a horror discussion led by Lloyd Kaufman of Troma fame. I’ve actually seen him speak before, at the U of M with Craig Brewer, when Levi Gay dressed up as the Toxic Avenger. But I digress. This panel was much smaller, only about 50 people. We didn’t have to wait in line. We could see without binoculars. We didn’t take any photos. I don’t even remember what the panel was supposed to be about, but I do remember clips from Troma’s newest movie, Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead, which I really want to see. Some of it was downright disgusting. Raw chicken + fake blood = grossssssss. The panel was disappointing; no one got their shit together. Equipment broke, mikes were too loud. But we did see the clips, and Tegan from Tegan and Sara was in the audience, as Lloyd so excitedly pointed out.

Afterward, home. All that sitting around on our asses made us tired. Plus we knew we had a big day ahead, taking developmentally disabled people to Sea World.

The Long San Diego Story, Day Four

Scribblescrawl — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 08:11:19 +0000

Sorry for the delay. I got sidetracked by an ambitious blog revamp, which is turning out to be way more trouble than I bargained for. So for now, I’m sticking with the tried & true. I did do some extensive back-end updating (like y’all care) and add a randomized photo viewer in the sidebar, right over there – - – ->

By the wayyyy, if anyone knows how to edit the PHP to refresh that viewer on each page load instead of once an hour, please hook a sista up. Also, if anyone knows anything about computers, typing, CSS, HTML, XHTML or how to keep your calm while seething and banging your mouse against the desk, let me know about that too.

But back to the important stuff. Day Four. COMIC-CON. Includes geeky costumes, scary crowds and Samuel L Jackson.

Hello students, today we’re going to learn Comic-Con: The Basics.

The lessons…

Comic-Con is crowded as fuck.
Do not expect to get into a panel without spending half the day waiting in line for it.
It is considered impolite to sneak photos of people in costumes. In retrospect, this idea is not only disrespectful but also leads to poorly framed, shitty, blurry pictures.
If you see something/someone you want to photograph, do it RIGHT THEN because you may never see it again. Like that guy in a dead-on-accurate costume of Terminator 2′s transformed T-1000, complete with bullet holes that I saw for about three seconds as he clawed his way through a crowd. (PS- that guy was headed toward the Terminator Salvation panel line, I shit you not)
These are lessons I learned the hard way.

Really, when looking back on my first day at Comic-Con, I am thinking mostly about the missed opportunities and all the things I wish I’d known on Day One. Like, no, you CAN’T just walk up to Tricia Helfer and get your picture taken with her while having a lengthy discussion about Battlestar Galactica spoilers. Or like, don’t worry about how nervous you are about asking someone dressed like Mario to stop for a photo. Or like, 127,000 attendees means 127,000 ATTENDEES. That’s more than my hometown.

So, yeah. Comic-Con was a Comic-Crowd. That doesn’t mean I didn’t have fun. I had a blast. I didn’t take many photos that first day because, well, see above, but also because there are so MANY folks in costumes or weird clothes that a person can become fairly immune to it fairly quickly. Oh, there’s another Storm Trooper. There’s another Asian kid with spiky hair carrying a gigantic cardboard sword. There’s another girl in skimpy anime clothes. And so on.

My first few minutes there are typical of the whole experience…Steven and I register & get our badges. We walk about 30 paces from the registration table, which plops us into the autograph area. It’s been less than five minutes, and we’re still getting our bearings, and who’s at the literal FIRST autograph table that comes into view? Richard Hatch, star of the original Battlestar Galactica and minor player in the new version. I’m stunned, yet…not. Before Comic-Con, I was thrilled at the possibility of seeing him. But now that I’m here, in the middle of all this excitement, he just seems like one more regular guy sitting behind a table signing a gratuitously large array of photos of himself. And in one instant, the thrill is gone. Not for the whole event, mind ye, but for standing in line to get an autograph with him. So, I marvel and freak for a second, then we wander off to other things.

BUT… we did get into three Hall H panels. I specify “Hall H” because that was where the big-dog, mega-special events were. Each panel lasts about an hour. Hall H is a huge, huge room tacked onto the edge of the San Diego Convention Center. It holds 6,500 folding chairs, each one touching its neighbor. Makes for some crowded seating for big asses such as my own. There are three huge HD movie screens set up down the length of the room, so even the people in the far back (like us) can see. And we were among these lucky, chosen few 6,500 people. Haha. We sat through the first two panels to make sure we had seats for the third…

Our first panel was about the new Frank Miller movie, The Spirit (sexy trailer! hot people!). I was interested in this because I am a big fan of Sin City and 300. I was slightly less interested in this because the trailers for The Spirit look exactly like Sin City, same animation style and everything. And while I totally dig it, that’s reserved for Sin City, ya know? Anyway, the panel featured Frank himself, the film’s producer, the star Gabriel Macht, Jamie King, and Samuel L Jackson, who made a point of showing off his t-shirt that read “Mofokos.” And I gotta say… I love Samuel L Jackson. One of the best things about panels, live interviews, etc., is that you can (theoretically) see how actors behave “in real life.” And he’s great. Just as childish and excited and non-jaded as any of us. He seems like a normal person who magically got into blockbuster movies and now loves talking about all his balls-out crazy experiences. Even though this was the Spirit panel, he talked at length about which action figure of him was his favorite (Mace Windu from Star Wars. And yes, that kind of question only gets asked at nerdfest), and how he’s set his different action figures up to fight each other in his office, and about all the huge fake guns he got to shoot in The Spirit. And he sounded just as excited as any geek would have.

The second panel was some animated Star Wars thing we didn’t care about. I did crosswords the whole time, Steven played his Nintendo DS.

The third panel was something Steven wanted to see. And I’m so glad we waited for it. It was hilarious. It was called something like “Entertainment Weekly: The Visionaries,” which translated to “A Panel Of Famous Directors Here to Promote Other Movies.” It featured Kevin Smith, Judd Apatow, Zach Snyder and Frank Miller. I didn’t know, but Zach Snyder directed 300, and was at Comic-Con because he is now directing a movie adaptation of The Watchmen, which Kevin Smith declared was so awesome that he could now stop coming to Comic-Con and die. It’d be hard to recount in writing how funny Kevin Smith and Judd Apatow are, but we laughed the whole time. Even the moderator (EW’s senior editor) was funny! At one point, either Zach Snyder or Frank Miller asked to have a question repeated, and the moderator replied, incredulously, “Uh…what? It’s ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER.” The tone for the whole panel got set at the very first question, which went like this…

Moderator: So, what made you guys get into directing? What made you want to make movies?

Kevin Smith, flatly: I just wanted to get my cock sucked.

And somewhere in there was something like “How does Seth Rogan taste?” “How does Judd Apatow taste?” “He tastes Semitic.”

As well as “Hey Judd, do you know anything about the Pineapple Express car getting towed from in front of the convention center today?”

Judd: “Like…right now?”

“No, earlier today. Uhhh… expired tags or something.”

Judd: “Um. NO. I don’t care about the promotional car. I’m at a point in my career where I don’t have to care about the promotional car………..I mean………I drove it here…..but after that, it’s not my responsibility.”

Tee hee.

And then, after all this Comic-Con excitement, we still managed to get our asses over to Old Town for dinner, where Steven had picked out a sushi place. It’s on Harney Street, and it’s called…Miso Harney. Hawhaw. Fresh sushi. Yum. It was very, very tasty. Too bad we didn’t have more time to shop around in Old Town.

And too bad I don’t have the energy to end this blog gracefully. It’s 2 AM, what can I say. I’m sleepy.

The Long San Diego Story, Day Three

Scribblescrawl — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 05:47:51 +0000

Includes: The Zoo, not getting into Comic-Con.

And Trapped in the Closet.

Truthfully, a bunch of us watched Trapped in the Closet on Day Two. But I forgot about that when I wrote yesterday, and I didn’t feel like editing the last entry AGAIN. So anyway… dicking around after bowling, we all watched the Will Arnett Sex Tape which led to R Kelly’s crazy-ass, ridiculous “rap opera” that everyone on Earth besides me watched about three years ago. I had never seen it, but of course Steven owns it (because really, who wouldn’t want to?). Hint: watch it with the English subtitles on, even if you’ve seen it already. I can’t describe how funny it is. Also, if you click on ANY link in all these entries, click on the Will Arnett Sex Tape. You will hurt yourself laughing. Or I will hurt you for not watching it. Your choice.

OK, Day Three. I was probably more excited about the San Diego Zoo than any other place on the itinerary. Being a member of our own, impressive Memphis Zoo, and making it a point to go to as many cities’ zoos as I can, I was positively giddy to be going to one of the world’s best. I woke up chanting “It’s Zooooo Dayyyy! It’s Zooooo Dayyyy!” and skipping around the apartment like a little kid. Lucky for me, no one drove my childish ass back to the airport right then and there.

We spent probably five, six hours at the zoo. And even though we saw most of it, we didn’t see it all. It’s HUGE. And it’s not just a sprawling concrete jungle of “habitats” and t-shirt booths. It is pretty. I mean, really pretty. The zoo’s plants are more expensive than its animals, and that is overwhelmingly obvious after you walk through your third or fourth rainforest recreation or see about forty shapes of cacti you’ve never dreamed could exist. And many of the habitats are open, so open and close that you can reach out and touch the animals if you are a dumbass. You can skip the description and click here for my photos. But, if you’re a reader, here are some highlights…

Lots of baby animals. Maybe it’s the water, maybe it’s the constantly gorgeous weather, but animals at the San Diego Zoo apparently love to do the nasty. Even the gorillas and pandas had multiple little ones! That’s right. Baby pandas.
Walking in the aviary, a funny-looking little bird with long skinny legs and a fat Big Bird body walks (yeah, walks) right up. We look down, coo “Oh, well HELLO, little guy! How ya doin??” and he cocks his head, bops his body down, and craps right there between his feet on the walkway. Later, Steven asks, “did we get shit-talked by that bird?”
A person in a bear costume pointed at me, then to himself, then did the “call me” hand-to-ear motion. I don’t know why, but it cracked me up.
I met Jane Goodall in the bathroom. She’d been lost in there for about six weeks.
Just kidding.
It was only two weeks.
Koalas! I had never seen live koalas before. They are much smaller than I’d expected, and they are lazy bastards. They sleep 18-20 hours a day. The San Diego Zoo has about 10 or 15, and literally only one was awake. Most of them looked like this one or this guy (and it’s definitely a guy, look close). You know, with pandas and koalas being so freaking lethargic, it’s no wonder they’re threatened species. Get a leg up, furry things. Geez.

But sigh, all good things come to an end. We had to leave the zoo. I coulda stayed forever, but we had other plans. Plans to attend the preview screening of Lost Boys 2 at Comic-Con, which had been going on all day without us. (Note: Watch the trailer I linked. It’s genuinely funny. “OK, no, seriously, we’re vampires.”)

But first, there’s no way to get around this without it sounding cheesy and romantic (which it was)… Steven took me to watch the sunset at the beach. It was beautiful, we saw a seagull steal a Jack-in-the-Box bag then get chased around with it in the sand Benny Hill style, and I dug up shells while wading in the ocean.

After a quick dinner at Roberto’s, a tasty local place where we heard a Jerry Springer Show-esque argument (Girl: Don’t ask me for nothin later. Guy: Don’t worry, I WON’T. Girl: I hope you don’t. Guy: DON’T WORRY, I WON’T. Girl: I HOPE YOU DON’T, and so on) we drove to the San Diego Convention Center. We’d heard parking would be a nightmare, but it was a breeze. Crowded? Nope, we encountered no lines. Sweet, right? Wrong. Turns out registration was over for the night, so we couldn’t get in. And we couldn’t see Lost Boys 2. In fact, we couldn’t do anything other than wipe the tears from our eyes. Booooooooo. Epic FAIL.

Dejected and somewhat lost (but not lost boys…too…), we head home. We buy California-made beers (bottlecap collection, whaaat?), and drink a few while Steven beats me at two games of Boggle. Steven claims he has *never* lost at Boggle. I told him to enjoy his record while he has it. Of course an experienced player will beat a novice on the first two games. But, trust me, it’s on.

The Long San Diego Story, Day Two

Scribblescrawl — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 02:31:41 +0000

The short version: relaxing, the beach, Dollar Dollar Bear Y’all, bowling.

July 23, Day Two

This was a low-key day. Hey, vacations are for relaxing, right? I slept all morning. Steven went to work at 1. I spent the afternoon hanging out at the apartment, reading The End of Mr. Y and marveling about the 70-degree weather. I watched them play Rock Band, which they are all Experts at. I watched them play Guitar Hero, which they are also all Experts at. And Metal Gear Solid 4, which they have already beaten. I drank a super tasty Jamba Juice mango smoothie. Of course we have smoothie places in Memphis too, but somehow it seemed like a special California thing to do. We were supposed to go to Comic-Con Preview Night, but Steven worked too late. No Fringe pre-screening for me.

But I didn’t want to spend the WHOLE day at the apartment. So we went to Mission Beach. As soon as I got there, my camera’s battery died. No photos tonight. I waded in the Pacific Ocean for only the 2nd time, and walked on the boardwalk (like here and here). The weather was amazing. It was so comfortable, it was like there was NO weather. We walked around the rollercoaster and thrill rides and carnival booths, I realized every single person in California looks like a model, and we passed a basketball toss booth where the prizes were bears wrapped in fake dollar bills. Steven went, “Hey, dollar dollar bear y’all” and I cracked up. A few booths later, I pulled a girl move and declared, “OK, I want that bear.” And damn if he didn’t walk back and win it in only four tries. After that, we spent a bit more time at the boardwalk in the arcade, introducing Dollar Dollar Bear Y’all to the world and telling him how truly hard it was out here for a pimp.

Back to the apartment. Midnight bowling with the roommates and friends. The bowling alley guy was one of the angriest men I had ever seen in all of the service industry. “Whatever you people are gonna do, you better hurry up and do it”…”give me one of your shoes. NOW.” Dang. OK, dude. So anyway, I had all kinds of excuses for why my game sucked (the ball didn’t fit my fingers, it was hot in the alley so my hands were sweaty, my shoes didn’t fit right, blah blah blah). I only got one strike all night! My bowling name was, I bet you can guess, Dollar Bear Y’all. Steven’s was Raptor Jesus, and Josh’s was Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. (btw, they say “tiiiiight” as often they breathe. It’s their Hello, their Sweet, their Nice, their Thanks. Whole conversations can be had with just that word, it’s pretty hilarious.)

Um, I think that’s it for Wednesday? On to the zoo…