Rindis.com

Okay, okay, I’m wayyy late on this. Best I can say is that I’ve only seen one real con report on my friends list, so I’m ahead of the curve.

As traditional, me and drove down to San Diego for a weekend in a nice hotel with no spending money to speak of. However, since it was just the two of us and not a lot of luggage, we took my car to save on gas prices. This turned out to be a very good idea, as the heat wave that hit that weekend seems to have also spiked gas prices ($3.29/gallon was the best deal I saw the entire trip, I filled up last night at $3.05).

I’d like to get back to a smaller car again, but I was very happy to note that no matter what I threw at it (heat wave, AC, driving too fast up the Grapevine) the engine temperature stayed rock-steady at its normal spot. Nice.

Spent a bit more in the dealer’s room than I should have: Inverloch (my main goal: support a web comic that’s made it to print), PvP, Flight Volume 1 (yeah, I’m behind, what else is new?), Space Cadets 1.2, an art book from Diana, and… uh. I know there was more, though that’s the bulk of it.

And I barely saw a fraction of the floor this year.

Things not gotten: A Winry figure to go with the Al and Eric Elric figures Smudge got last year. Didn’t see any in small area I managed to search. Music: despite much-touted raids by the RIAA earlier this year, the major place I saw still had Taiwanese rip-offs. Frankly, this is something I support the RIAA on, and am disappointed that they skipped ComicCon.

Smudge and I relaxed, talked to friends, and ate well. Wednesday: Buster’s Beach House, a very nice ‘surfer’ restaurant that she introduced me and Baron to a couple years ago. Thursday: Panda Inn at Horton Plaza. Friday: Castle & Elephant a good English Pub-style restaurant across the street from Anthony’s (which had a 45 minute wait when we arrived). Saturday: Samba Grill, a Brazilian steakhouse in Horton Plaza. Very nice, you get some serve-yourself salad and the like, and then people wander by and offer fresh cuts (that is to say they cut it right there) of meat of different types and styles. Sunday: went to a nice Irish Pub with Diana, Michele Light and her husband.

This was Diana’s first time out for the con, and she was obviously very happy, which was great to see.

The con was big again. No, bigger than that. We attempted a few panels, but could only get seating room at one. The San Diego Union was advertising front-page coverage of the con. I also saw an article that mentioned that they don’t know how much money the con is putting into San Diego. It’s a large amount, but they can’t track it. The point is, they’re starting to think about tracking it. If a person we overheard is to be believed, it is known to be putting 5 million dollars directly into the pocket of San Diego City (and then there’s the businesses). We also heard that the city is buying land to expand the convention center – for the express purpose of hosting ComicCon (here’s hoping someone will notice they need more hotels too).

An interesting contrast to the ever-expanding size of ComicCon is that E3 announced that they are going to cut down to a much smaller size. Going from 60,000 to 5,000 while ComicCon is pushing towards 200,000…. The companies are complaining over the bill for floor space and building giant display booths. One potential problem I see, is that without a giant US expo to show off at, all the game companies may flock to ComicCon to show off to the fans (and end up spending just as much money).

Actually, finally, attended the Eisners this year. Very nicely done, I’m very happy we made it. Also, we went to the Friends of Lulu awards banquet Friday night, that was also nice, if tiny.