Last 5 pages for issue 57 go out today. The new script for 58 just came in. Busy week ahead.

I received in the mail one of the new Doctor Who audio dramas produced by Big Finish, the same guys who put together the Luther Arkwright CD I was raving about a few weeks ago. This episode titled Human Resources stars Paul McGann (the eighth Doctor from the made-for-tv movie) and the best way to describe it is Doctor Who meets the Office. And I really liked it! The humour was well paced and dark with great twists. There was a subplot running through it that called back to previous audio episodes in the series and now I'm going to have to hunt them down. Any Doctor Who fan will probably get a kick out of these pre-Time War stories. Recommended.

Four pages in progress. I should have the last batch of five ready in a few days.

Found out that Mark Buckingham is going to be in Bristol with Irma! Oh this is going to be a fun trip!

I couldn't get the five pages out in time yesterday so I did up an extra page this morning and have 6 going out in today's pack.

I really have to kick this insomnia. I haven't slept more than 4 hours a night all week.

We ended up a Toys R Us today for a sugar raid. Nerds, Sweet Tarts, Gobstoppers, gumballs, all this weird and vile crap. Stuff you just have to have on occasion. On the way out I spotted a vending machine selling Hellokitty netsuke, those little dangly bobs for your cell phone, and I had to get one.

My old cell got wrecked, it was already becoming obsolete, I was gonna have to buy a new one anyway but the i-phone is still a year away so I've been using Ian's in the interim (the one he never uses because he doesn't answer phones, I have no idea why I set it up for him). Even more annoying, I can't get my old ringtone to set up properly so instead of a wicked Doctor Who theme I have to use the crappy defaults... and on top of that the pretty rose quartz dangly on my old phone was burned on by the seller so I can't move it to this one, and I need a dangly on my phone. That's just me.

So I plunked a toonie into the machine and out popped this teeny beauty:



Dudette is flipping the bird! I am in love!

5 pages almost done. They'll be out the door on Thursday.

Slow blogging day. I could write about my brain whizzing with plans for our trip but that's going to get really old by May.

Virginia Tech... dick with a gun. Do I need to contribute to the roiling blogosphere on that one?

Spider-Man 3 trailers... stop giving away the damn surprises! I actually want to be surprised!

Guess I'll just have to leave you with the Doctor and a kitten:

Tickets are bought. Hotel is booked. Wooo! We're going to England!

Watching Le Mans the other day made me want to post this short film, a cult favourite among racing enthusiasts called C'était un rendez-vous. Shot in 1976 by Claude Lelouch, the film shows an insane ride through Paris at 5:30 in the morning, 9 minutes straight, from a camera mounted on the bumper of the director's sports car.



I'm not totally sure if it's the same person but I've heard Lelouch now works in comics. Pretty neat.

4 pages out, working on more this weekend.

We've decided to get out to Bristol after all. Due to this week's all nighter I couldn't get out to the travel agent today but tomorrow, definitely. We're planning for a few days in London to catch a couple of shows, Othello is playing at the New Globe. Also Ian wants to see if he can perform at one of the gazillion comedy clubs there. I'll be happy to just wander around town and chow down on the scenery.

The added bonus, spending our first anniversary in England. Wooo!

Vic brought a copy of Steve McQueen's Le Mans over this evening. She's been reading his biography, telling us about his absolutely horrible childhood, and now we're in the let's-see-everything-he's-ever-done phase. Really interesting movie, maybe two pages of dialogue in the whole thing, with the first words uttered (by McQueen, he says "okay") not heard until about 36 minutes into it.

Beautiful cars, great shots... an amazing time capsule of the 24 hour event. And McQueen is of course, hot.

Paper came in! Woo hoo! 5 pages halfway done.

This evening our living room became tax prep central with piles of receipts tempting cats at every turn. This time of year is always stressful but made easier tonight with a nice discovery at Happy Bats DVD rental: Passport to Pimlico.

I first saw this film about 15 years ago at the urging of a very British roommate, actually her family was from England and though she did not sport the accent she would box your ears if you steeped the tea too long, that kind of British (okay, maybe heavily chide is more apt, she would never resort to violence, that wouldn't be very British). She also made a mean 3 minute egg and soldiers which was pretty cool.

This quirky slice of life piece is centered around a 1949 London neighbourhood in the throes of a record heat wave and heavy post war rationing. After an unexploded German bomb blows up in an empty lot the residents discover a centuries old cache of Burgundian treasure and documents that prove the land underneath them is actually foreign soil. When they learn they can sidestep rationing by claiming status as Burgundians a clash of governments paralleling the Berlin Blockade results.

It's a sweet movie and it was fun sharing it with Ian. Suddenly craving cucumber sandwiches.

Tomorrow it's back to the accountants to learn how much of my hard earned canuckbucks get sent to Ottawa for squandering on things like sponsorship scandals, fact-finding missions, Quebec...

*sigh*

Easter Monday. No deliveries.

I dug up some old Strathmore in storage and started tracing onto that, 3 pages in. I should have another batch ready in a couple of days.

Holidays can be so irritating.

In other news, found this super-hard-to-find Cyberman mask at the comic shop the other day. It has a cool voice changer!


We're amassing a scary amount of these toys.

2 pages ready to go out, 8 ready to be traced onto the good stock which will hopefully come in later today.

Spring rains are especially sweet here. The air smells fabulous and the warm air makes the wet all the more pleasant (unlike winter when it's better enjoyed indoors under a cozy quilt).

We had dinner near the beach yesterday, the rain was coming down pretty hard, there was a strong breeze, but it was warm and everything felt so hopeful for it. The real stunner was the view, one only a Vancouverite can love really: a host of luminous greys, the glowing grey sky, the almost metallic grey water, several gunmetal freighters anchored further out, and a single, lumbering, coal coloured cruise ship filmed over in fog, with vibrant vanilla lights happily outlining it's shape. Wow.

I love this town.

This evening Vicky did her first ever stand up at Zesty's and everyone agreed it was one of the best sets ever seen from a newbie. Her stuff was very dark but balanced with some great laughs, she totally nailed it. I'm so damn proud of her!

When we got home there was the new Doctor Who waiting, a classic history episode set in Shakespeare's London with some highly memorable nods to a certain present day writer of popular children's fiction, very sweet. Not to mention the dozens of in-jokes and cross-references to Willy's plays and sonnets. God, how much am I digging this show?

I have 8 pages nearly done. There was a mix up with the paper order so I've been working pages on some crap board (way too smooth for a strong line) that I can trace onto the good stuff when it comes in. As always with these situations, there's a big fat holiday slowing things down even further. Blech.

On the bright side, found a DVD of Casanova starring David Tennant and Peter O'Toole at HMV today. Perhaps a crazily revisionist version of a still remarkable life, this telling is both terrifically funny and quite moving. I knew very little of Casanova's history, just the obvious negatives concerning his many conquests, and I was surprised to see such a person made to be so damn likeable. I now want to read more of and by him.

Good on the BBC, they're just knocking 'em out of the park these days.

Tomorrow: The Shakespeare Code! The bard geek is excited! Oh yes!

The Varsity Theater. Seattle.

The double bill opened with a screening of Bullitt which ended up being more entertaining than we expected thanks to the packed house responding to he film's quirkier elements. The officers standing around an ancient telefax machine waiting for a mugshot to appear, Steve McQueen in all his brooding hotness casually getting out of his car, locking it with his keys, walking into a store, buying green onions and a huge stack of tv dinners...hilarious. So many quiet moments and asides, establishing a very real-time crawl of events, and when that car chase finally appears out of nowhere it's a hugely jarring experience. The driver's POV shots are dizzying and the growl and roar of the muscle cars' engines practically assault the senses. It was incredible to see on a big screen. And a good compliment to the headlining film...

Hot Fuzz.

Oh. My. God.

I can't remember the last time I laughed, cheered and applauded during a film as much as this one. It is head and shoulders above Shaun of the Dead and quite possibly the funniest movie I've ever seen. My face hurt from laughing so hard. This isn't an exaggeration: this movie is perfect.

Fast paced, brilliant, sharp, unforgivingly brutal, genuinely sweet and totally unpredictable. Damn it was good!

Ealier this morning I again had trouble sleeping so by the time we got to the end of both films my brain was fried. Nick Frost, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg were signing autographs after the Q and A and though I should have gone straigt to the car and passed out, I went up, got a sketchbook signed and blurted some incomprehensible crap in an attempt to introduce myself and establish geek cred. I'm sure I came across as a total dork.

They were very nice, Nick especially. His happy grin lit up the room like crazy.

We headed out and after a few pizza slices up the avenue we were back on the road. We made it home in record time, two hours, and there wasn't any speeding involved. Clear roads and no line ups at the border.

Now I'm barely able to keep my eyes open. Off to bed. Tomorrow, more work. I feel good about that.

Today was great! Super duper great!

The con was fun, chatted with Ken Steacy, Matt Haley, Taki and many others, I arm wrestled with Michael Avon Oeming for charity (pulled something in my back but it was totally worth it!), picked up an RC K-9 figure at one of the booths, bought more cool caligraphy pens at Daiso, finally figured out bit torrent and XVid on the laptop and then to cap off the night, we hung out at Mel and Ed Brubaker's to watch the new Doctor Who on their big screen. A mind blowing episode too!

Tomorrow: HOT FUZZ! Hopefully...

We're in Seattle after a rough day on the road. We left before noon in the hopes of getting to Emerald by mid-afternoon. when we got to the border the line was past 4th avenue. Two hours waiting to get across, inching at a crawl, too warm to leave the windows up, too brisk to leave them down. A few yards to the booth and I started feeling panicky and claustrophobic. It hadn't occured to me that missing breakfast to get out the door was making me all squirrely. Operating on only three hours sleep didn't help either.

It was probably a lot worse for Ian and Vic who went out at 4am to stand in line for a Wii at the Toys R Us, three hours in the cold only to find they missed it by three places in line. Behind them a clearly deranged woman was leaving permanent emotional scars on her kids by subtly implying it would be their fault if they didn't get one of the machines. Which of course they didn't. As much as I would have liked to have seen that for myself, bed was better.

Once we got through the border we headed for the nearest drive through for some grub and were treated to yet another wait after the intercom girl had to deal with something for about ten minutes. I was ready claw my way out of the car by then.

Back on the road, a little saner with food, it was smooth driving...until Everett. Lots of traffic.

We overshot the stadium exit and had to double back a bit. We got to the show an hour before closing, totally exhausted.

We checked in with friends, made plans for the evening which included getting out to Kinokuniya for much needed erasers and an assortment of pens and papers to play with.

We tried this sushi place next door, a pan-asian grill really, and found despite the Japanese and Chinese dishes on the menu it tasted thickly of Korean Kimchi. Better than a crappy Whopper Jr. but hours later my throat is still burning.

Ian, Vic and Roger went off to the improv show and I returned to the hotel to pass out.

I woke up when Ian got in and have been up for a couple of hours trying to turn off my brain.

Tomorrow we attack the con fresh and I'm excited about it.

Amelie just started on IFC. I'm staying up.