It's been quite a week. Extraordinarily busy, but in a good way. It's Saturday night as I'm typing this, wrapping up four full nights of awesome things, and I am just beaten, but it's a good feeling.

Wednesday night was the second meeting of the Secrets Society in Johnson City, a modern day Vaudeville show put together by my buddy Big Daddy Voodoo. I was the first act. A volunteer was picked from the audience and escorted onstage, and I drew his mutant portrait while rambling nonsense. I repurposed a couple jokes from my brief stint as a comedian and talked about how I acquired such a silly talent. This song was playing while I did it:
 
I was so freaking nervous about it, but people seemed to enjoy the act and I think I got a few good laughs out of folks. I also got to spend time with some good friends that I hardly ever get to see. So much fun. I don't think I'll perform again, but I'm definitely going to see about getting a table at the next meeting to sit and do sketches and sell books. It's a strange and wonderful show that BDV and the others are putting on and you definitely shouldn't miss it!

Thursday evening was the premiere of Guardians of the Galaxy, which is a blast. My only real complaint about it is that the villains aren't nearly as awesome as they could have been. Marvel's kind of lousy with how their villains are handled in films, yeah? It's a shame. Loki's pretty much the only one. Someone argued that the villains don't HAVE to be memorable in these movies, and that they can't spend much time on them since it's more about the heroes. Which, yeah, makes sense, but a character doesn't have to have a whole lot of screentime and/or dialogue in order to be memorable. The Assassin in the Raid 2 doesn't have a single line of dialogue and his screentime isn't much, but that dude has PRESENCE. Same goes for Baseball Bat Man and Hammer Girl. Ah well. Guardians is still a great film and that post-credits scene is just...well, whatever you're expecting it to be? That isn't it. At all.

Friday was our good friend, comedian, Pizza Flag founder, punk promoter, and Nerve Endings front man Sterlin's birthday bash at Machiavelli's. Misawa, Slow Animal, and Cousin Brian played. I admit to having left shortly after Misawa's set, so I missed the other band. I was pretty exhausted from working all week and staying out late the previous two nights, plus I had to get up early the next morning for Rob-Con!
This year's was the best, it just gets bigger and better every year. Once again, I got to see a bunch of friends, a few of whom I hadn't seen in forever. I tossed a stuffed puppy back and forth with a friend who had a table right across from me. Another friend I went to high school with had her own table set up where she was promoting her upcoming poetry book. Oh, the cover to that book? It's illustrated by David Mack. You know, the guy who created Kabuki? How cool is that? It was awesome to see her there. That's her in the picture up there at my table.

I got to do cute mutant portraits too! Look at this one!
And I drew one of my favorite people, Jessie AM, as the 13th Doctor:
Good times, good times.

Minor rant: Why are Godzilla and other kaiju toys so expensive at cons? This is the third or fourth one I've attended this year alone with things I wanted but were so expensive. The anime convention I went to last week in Asheville, which I didn't do well at, had a booth selling the MonsterArts figures of Destoroyah and Burning Godzilla. Prices were...$80 and $100 bucks, respectively. Ugh. One vendor today had a LOT of Japanese kaiju figures. Godzilla, Gamera, AND Ultraman stuff. But they were all so expensive. Other vendors had older Bandai Godzilla figures from a few years back, but at awful, jacked up prices. It just breaks my heart that I may never find a reasonably priced Heisei Gamera action figure when you can go just about anywhere and pick up the movie trilogy on Blu-Ray for under 10 bucks.

I did get a cool Rocket Raccoon sketch from a friend's 8 year-old son, though. That was awesome.

So what's next? Not much really. Just more Cannonball Fist work and a camping trip to the beach with the girlfriend, I guess. Oh, and the Asheville Comic Expo on September 20th, which is most likely my final con of the year. Then I'll have to start figuring out what I'm doing NEXT year, I suppose.

But for now? Sleep. Sleep is what I need.