Brumbrumbrum Con 08

Even though I managed to catch the infamous Con plague this year (1 out of 4 cons aint bad) this Brum con was bloody brilliant :D :D


We met up with a load of our UK buddies from thecomicforums.com - a few of which we'd not seen in 'real-life' before - which was bloody awesome....It's always really really fun to hang out with these guys :)


We had a table as the UK Comics Podcast Group which was a giggle as we got to hang out in the main hall without actually blocking the aisles (something a lot of comic fans seemed blissfully unaware of - growl), and we got to have loads of good chats with our podcasting buddies in person for once - woot!!! I think i gave out one whole flyer the entire time I was there cuz i was way too scared to actually make contact with anyone looking at the table (although to be fair most people walking past found the floor way more interesting - standard con behaviour i think).


We all hung out in the evenings and im very proud that on the Friday night I only came second for drunkest person (Lenny came first in spectacular fashion), Saturday night I took the crown but that was mainly cuz I didn;t eat a thing all night - twat. Anyhoo we went to the Briar Rose first and hung out a bit with Tony Lee who is a thoroughly nice chap, and then went to Bennetts where I allegedly spoke to Paul Cornell for about 20 minutes (wish I remembered that - sigh) and apparently he introduced my podcasty partner to the SFX editor who is thinking of doing an article on podcasts (and Paul had said we'd done a cool interview with him) to which my partner said 'oo your forums are shit'. Nice one - guess we won't be in SFX anytime soon now *fume*.


So onto Sunday, a very nice chap walked up to me as I was (literally) running off for the Tank Girl panel and said 'are you Iz?'.........'uh...yeah?' says I..'oh i listen to your podcast - I've got a comic for you' says he and hands me a very glossy looking copy of High Pilot....now i'm so hungover and in a panic about missing TG I kinda stood there and said 'oh thank you' a lot like an idiot and then ran away. So I am very very sorry Dom Regan and next time I will be more polite :D


So on to the highlight of my Con - the Tank Girl panel.....Squuueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!
Bloody awesome stuff - I'd seen Rufus Dayglo around the day before and kept bottling going up to him to get a sketch and signature on my shiny Megazine I'd brought along. Seriously I am pathetic when it comes to meeting artists or writers (actually musicians too - there's a particularly cringe-worthy encounter with Clint Mansell from PWEI c.1995 I try to forget) which is why I've only ever approached Charlie Adlard for a sketch before (for the record: one of the nicest men in comics ever). ANYWAY, went to the panel, sadly Alan Martin couldn't be there, but Rufus did a bloody great solo job - loads of great anecdotes about the creation and continuation of Tank Girl....I think Damon Albarn will be forever known as Demon Arseburn to me now :D


After the panel Mr Dayglo did a signing session and I got in the queue after having a tantrum that I'd forgotten to buy the elusive KitKat for him - which I had been banging on about all weekend - so my lovely husband ran off to get me one while I queued :) I heart him.

When it was my turn I had planned to say (all suave-like) 'Hi, I read on your blog that you draw TG in a dark room with copious cups of tea and an endless supply of KitKats, so i thought you might be missing them, here you are' but what came out was 'I.read.on.your.blog.you.like KitKats.....so.here.is.a.KitKat'. twat. Luckily Mr Dayglo was extremely happy with the KitKat, did me a bloody awesome close-up of TG's face, and after I commented on how awesome it was to be able to look through his sketch books/portfolios in the panel, he dived into one of them, pulled out a sketch of what will be the cover of the next Megazine and signed it 'Thank you for the Kit Kat'. He is my new favourite person ever. (Not in a creepy wear-his-skin-for-a-hat way, just a he-is-brilliant way) :D :D :D

So after that we trundled back to the con floor, i was given two very lovely sketches I'd asked for earlier in the day - Tank Girl of course - one from Simon Wyatt (Orang Utan Comics), and one from Stu.Art (Monkeys with Machineguns)....I sat on the table for a bit until our lift got restless, we said our goodbyes and wandered off, all misty-eyed like until Bristol Con 09. *sob*

Now all I gots to do is win the Lottery so I can go to Leeds and Dublin next month :(

Brill comic news :)

The lovely Shawn Pryor of PKMedia has written me and Stace into Mercury in the Murd and we recently saw the pages for issue 4 drawn by Chad Cicconi (who also draws the excellent Baby Boomers - www.markosia.com webcomics section). Sooooooooooooooooooooooo exciting to be drawn into a comic book - woot!!!

There's something else on the horizon but i'm sworn to secrecy for now. Woot again!!

Uhhhhh stuff and Brum Con !!

Oops, haven't updated this for a while - um.....what's been happening....ok, I had a week off work (first one since Oct 07 and the awesome trip to NYC), and went to Spain to chill out with a mate who lives over there, leaving my poor ill husband to fend for himself (or rather fend off his mother trying to move in as soon as I was gone to look after him). So I get there and spend 4 hot, relaxed, in-the-sea days until the last night where I fall over like a twat and dislocate my little finger. Idiot.

I fly back the next morning as planned with my finger in a cup of ice and some well-meaning grannies pestering me all the way back with offers of Ibuprofen and hot chocolate. Bless em.

Anyhoo, lovely husband rushes me off to A&E where they aneasthatise (how the hell so you spell that?) my finger as I've opted to not go for gas and air. If anyone asks you which you'd prefer - do gas and air!! Anaesthetic hurt like a f**ker and I squealed like a small 5 year old child....the nice man pops my finger back (at this point I can feel nothing but still scream the place down) and sends me off to xray again - 'to check I haven't broken it by relocating it' - nice!

He hadn't, and i got bandaged up and sent home - unsurprisingly without my sticker or lollipop saying 'I was brave' :D

So now I have a bright blue bandage on 2 fingers of my left hand for 2 weeks - which I've adapted to rather well - after being a bit pathetic for a few days and refusing to do anything with my left hand - and it comes off in 4 days hoepfully - woot!! Just in time for Brum Con.

yeeaahhhhh - i've been looking forward to Brum Con since Bristol Con really (aint it always the way) ......Reasons to be cheerful:

Seeing a load of the comicforums.com people :)
Hopefully getting Alan Martin to sign my very old Tank Girl trade
Hopefully getting a TG sketch from Rufus Dayglo - his TG stuff is gorgeous
Trying for another sketch from Charlie Adlard
Keeping an eye on our mate Harv who tried to ask Bisley out for a fight at Bristol. (Biz thankfully refused otherwise our mate would be an ex-Harv i think)
Sitting on the UK Comics Podcast table and promoting everyone else except Comic Racks - cuz me and Stacey are allergic to self-promotion - huzzah.

Of course I'm getting all excited but we might not make it at all if my other half doesn't get better - killer chest infection and he can't see the doctor until Tuesday. sassannfrassen.

on the plus side

I've just discovered the iTunes Radio station and i'm listening to K-ROCK for the first time. At full volume. With my headphones on. In an empty office.

I'm beginning to see the bright side :)

growl

Yesterday I couldn't go to a funeral because of my stupid f***ing job and today I cancelled my leave to finish off what I was doing yesterday, and subsequently I'm missing a big family party in the South.

I f*cking hate my job so much and get f*ck all thanks for what I do.

the end

Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamie Smart

I've had a cruddy last few days in terms of bad news and shiz, so last night me and Stace (de la Racks) cheered ourselves right up with a bloody awesome interview with Jamie Smart. www.fumboo.com The actual recording is a bit rubbish and it sounds like Jamie is mumbling so we'll probably get some shit for it but we had such a fuckin laugh I don't care :D

Genuinely nice, humble bloke who put up with us for over 2 hours while we got way to familiar with him ('Jamie, do you need to tinkle?'), but that just goes to show what a regular sound bloke he is. We had tons of questions from people and asked most of them even though Jamie got way more excited about the question 'what are your top three favourite biscuits?' than any comic-related ones :)

Plus I got to tell him about Tank Girl being re-launched in the latest Judge Dredd Megazine (prompting the comment 'wow, you're better than my mum').........which he was proper excited about - i think - he might have just been being polite.

anyhoo, he is awesome and so are his creations Ubu Bubu, Angry Little Robot, Space Raoul, DFC Olympics, and his work on Desperate Dan is pretty damn peachy too.

Dark Knight tonight

Oooooooooooooooooooooo I am both excited and dreading tonight - I finish work early, grab some food and go straight out with the other half to see Batman :D

I am so excited about this film it is ridiculous..but I am dreading going cuz the cinema we go to is in the middle of nowhere (in Nantgarw), has a bowling alley next to it, and its Orange Wednesday - so all the snotty local kids get in their souped-up pimp-mobiles and make the place look and feel like kicking out time at the roller disco...only with Mad Dog 20/20 involved.

Hate Nantgarw with a passion..but it was the closest place to go on preview night. At least we've got our tickets already printed out.

Now...where's my tazar gun?.....

Ubu Bubu ROCKS

Yeah I should have done one of these sooner - maybe I'll do some in retrospect....since I fell and hit my head I've turned into a bit of a goldfish (more than normal, honest) so whenever I DO think 'oo I'll post that on my blog', i promptly forget 2 seconds later....

BUT this is so coooooooooool I had to post it up - Jamie Smart who wrote Ubu Bubu (which for the unitiated is a FUCKING AWESOME comic book about a demon living inside a cat - published by Slave Labor Graphics - and contains such FUCKING AWESOME gems as Ubu Bubu spelling out 'Suck My cat Nuts' in his puke) has asked if he can be on our podcast.

Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Yeah, he might be joking but I'm doing a happy dance anyway. He says:

"once again, missus and missuses, you have made my tiny little fluttering ego heart leap a little in needy joy at hearing your glowing review of my comic brain defunctions. it can be weird realising the idiocy one puts to paper can cause someone else to laugh, i still can’t get me head around it. at least i haven’t caused bum floods from anyone yet, thats a physical response i’m not after.i think i love your podcast. can i be on it? i don’t know anything about comics or anything, but i can do a dance. it’s obscene and people die though.
jx"

Wow, haven't done of these in a looooong time.

So I had my first saturday free from editing (which I love it just takes up the whole day cuz I'm a fiddler)..so I went into Cardiff, had Starbucks and Sushi (octopus and everything!) and then went to the 2 comic shops there (Planet and the independant Comic Guru) and managed to spend £20 in each of them :O

I picked up a real-life copy of Gnome by Dave Dwonch which is brilliant - I was jammy enough to be sent a pdf copy to read but having the real thing in my hands is brilliant. he's a top guy is dave and I'm really chuffed for him to have another comic out. Which reminds me I have to pick up Special Education #2 sometime.

I also got the 2 latest 2000AD's. I've really got back into this with a bit of a passion (i used to buy it years ago) - some of the artwork is phenomenal, and the writing is pretty brill too. I'm looking forward to seeing some of the creators at Bristol Con now, now that I actually know what they do.

Picked up loads of other stuff which I shall blah on about later, but now I have to go watch Pushing Daisies episode 3 - it's my brand new 'oh-my-god-this-programme-is-amazing' show and i already don;t want it to end :)

Happy Happy Joy Joy

Well I'm still editing my first episode of Comic Racks..and I now know what a 'Stacey pause', an an 'Iz sniff', and a *drinking* noise look like in Audacity..one thing I haven't worked out is how to turn my bellowing down when I get excited. Which is quite a lot. Hmm.

Today is pretty cool so far, I have a half day (which is always lush), and I'm sat in my house editing in my Yeti slippers, waiting for the carpet-measuring man to arrive. Rock n roll.

It's a pretty big achievement for me cuz it's taken me and Rich 2 years to get off our arses and buy real carpet for our house to replace the 'temporary' strips that we've had dotted about since we moved in.

Woot!!

Woot!!

I just started editing a Comic racks episode and I'm loving it :D I'm a bit of a control freak at the best of times so being able to cut all my Umms, Urrs, *sniffs* and general twatishness out is awesome. I'm making myself leave some stuff in tho if it's vaguely funny.

Stace (my co- Rack) is always funny and needs very little editing I think, but it'll be intriguing to see what she cuts out when she has a go...

So editing is my new obsession.....put that together with a box of hidden M&S chocolate twizzle sticks from Xmas that I found hidden at the back of the cupboard, and I'm quite a happy monkey this evening :D

Things I hate today

My husband having a day off and me being stuck in work

Feeling like a podgy f*cker

Being so addicted to the Wii I stayed up til 2am playing the damn thing - now I look and feel like a panda in a fist fight

No job vacancies

Toothache and dentists waiting lists


Wow...i'm in a BAD mood

Things I love today

Real Coffee (I had 2 huge mugs already)

Maltesers (I have half a box at home waiting for me)

The Adam and Joe radio show - BBC Radio 6 (it keeps me sane in work)

Sushi (mmmmm)

Sims Castaway - Wii (I played it 4 hours straught last night and had to be dragged off it)

Q!PAW podcast (hamsters in costume fighting to the death)

Co-codomol (mmmmmm no more tooth ache)

Godsmack

Funny name for a band - Godsmack..

I just saw them on Launch.co.uk and they are REALLYANGRYSHOUTYFURIOUS kinda music. With the name Godsmack I just imagine someone with a rolled up newspaper smacking God on the nose..."BAD God BAD". S'all.

Shallow - moi??

Crap. The bird just told me there is a film due out with both Hugh Jackman AND Ewan McGregor in.....which frankly made me squeek and run off to IMDB to look up the details...it turns out my other half was right..BUT then I scrolled down to see:
Plot Keywords:Nun / Nun's Habit / Mother Superior

wtf?? the film is about one guy who introduces another guy to a sex club and then murder and intrigue ensue (from what I can translate from IMDB) and the keywords involve nuns!!

My forum and work buddies already know that i have a HUGE irrational fear of nuns - so this *should* be a film I avoid like the plague...and frankly if the plot involves a sex club, I *really* hate to think how nuns are involved....but if Hugh Jackman is in it, I'm kinda obligated to go - yeah, I am that shallow :D But I may need therapy for a while afterwards :/

I'm an idiot :(

So I like half my job and hate the other half (and I have the complaint everyone else has that I have way too much to do and not enough time to do it in) - I'm trying really hard to find a new job, but jobs seem few and far between at the moment :(

I found a pretty cool job at Cardiff University and the deadline was 6th March - all cool, I filled in all the easy stuff and cut and pasted in my qualifications etc etc, I settled down to complete the person specification part that always takes me *hours* and I was half way through when I thought, oh I'll just look over the whole job description once more.....the deadline was 5pm, and I was reading this at 9pm.

B*llocks and a*se, I was assuming that Cardiff University would have the same cut-off points as Glamorgan University (which is 12 midnight).

Lesson learnt :(

Start as you mean to go on...

i'm guessing this blog will be my area for ranting about crappy stuff and raving about cool stuff in equal measure...but i'm going to start with a mini-rant.

I'm not fantastic at replying to emails, I'll hold my hands up to that one straight away. I'm also not the best at keeping in touch with people - Facebook (although it can be incredibly annoying at times with all its 'add 20 people' shenanigans) has been a bit of a life-saver for me cuz it makes me way better at keeping in touch with my friends.

After living away for years, the other half and I moved back to Wales several years ago and used to try and organise get togethers with our friends (with varying degrees of success). One guy in particular was like 'oh yeah i would but the wife wants me to do something', 'oh yeah I would, but i have to go do this thing' 'o yeah i would but i can't be bothered'..the guy didn;t even bother turning up for our wedding even when he'd accepted the invitation.

We do get contacted by him, but only once every 4 months or so - it's always the same thing: 'Hi guys, my band is doing this great thing / recording a video / up for an indie award / going to be on tv' all sent to about 150 of his closest friends. Which is fine. I don;t wish him bad luck with the band and i'm glad he's doing half-okay with it. But I used to send an email after each one from him 'hi good to hear from you, glad stuff is good, great news on the award / tv...i have voted for you...we should all meet up soon blah blah blah. Nothing.

can't be bothered. If you don't ever see me don't bother sending me updates about your ****ing band.