From the M.O.D.O.K. Holiday Special.

Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, turned out to be a great concert!

Not that I actually need a netbook. I’d only really end up using it for conventions that I’d want to post live (which would probably boil down to Comic-Con International), and I have the ability to do that using either my G1 or the laptop.

Long-time readers (all five of you ) may remember that last year I agonized over upgrading my phone to something with real web capability until they announced wifi, and I just lugged the laptop around. Which worked fine, but it was heavy, especially the day I was also carrying around Comic Book Tattoo.

Of course, now I can use the G1 to post to my blog, or Twitter, or Facebook, or (almost) anywhere else even without wifi.

Except…

• Typing on that tiny keyboard is slow. Not as slow as the onscreen keyboard, but still a lot slower than typing on a full-sized keyboard. Then again, netbook keyboards are also smaller than standard, so it might not be much of an improvement.
• There’s no easy way to transfer photos from another camera. I can only think of two ways other than using a computer as an intermediary: use a Micro-SD card with adapter in the camera, or get a card reader that will clone data from an SD to a Micro-SD.

The camera issue shouldn’t bother me. Chances are I’d just end up doing what I did for WonderCon this year: post the occasional phone pic to Twitter and then upload the good photos to Flickr each evening. Just like I’d mostly be writing brief posts from the convention and detailed posts at the hotel.

But then I remember the post I made on the Tori Amos signing last year. After the signing I was so hyped that I found a table, set up the laptop, banged out a blog post, hooked up the camera and added a couple of photos…and the post ended up getting linked on a major Tori fansite, producing a traffic spike so big that not only is the following day still this blog’s busiest day ever, but that post, even though traffic fell off over time, is the 8th most-viewed post on the site over the past year.

Still, the promise of another 15 minutes of blogfame isn’t enough to justify several hundred bucks. (Though the < $200 models that pop up on Woot from time to time have been tempting.) So I’m making an effort to practice typing with the G1, both the physical and on-screen keyboards. I’ve got Twidroid and I Tweet for posting to two Twitter accounts. I’ve got wpToGo to simplify blogging. I’ve got a plugin that will automatically liveblog using Twitter, which I still need to test.

It’s just a matter of making full use of the tools I have, rather than running after the latest cool toy.

Update: I posted this last night, but somehow it ended up backdated to the day I started it on May 20. I think wpToGo must have set a publishing date when I posted the draft. Yes, I started this post on my phone.

• DVDs: Angel Seasons 1-5 (individual season boxed sets)
• CDs: Tori Amos “A Piano” boxed set (massive 5-disc archive of hits, rarities, alternate mixes, etc.)
• T-Shirt: Star Trek (XL) from the new J.J. Abrams movie. Handed out at San Diego Comic-Con in 2007, still has the original 12-25-08 release date on the back. It’s never been worn.

Here’s the link to all the auctions. Most of them run through Sunday, May 24.

Movies: Coraline

YouTube also has the trailer in HD.

I discovered Sandman late, borrowing the trades from one of my (younger) brother’s friends around 1998 or so, then immediately tracking down my own copies. I lucked out and got a complete set on eBay for something like $70. Since then I’ve devoured most of Neil Gaiman’s work, be it in comics, prose, or movie form. The original novel of Coraline was very good, and it’s been adapted by the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas, which is among my favorite movies…and what I’ve seen of the film suggests that they get it. It’s hard to believe it’s only two weeks away!

Other movies: Oddly enough, I’m only mildly interested in Terminator: Salvation, Transformers 2: Can’t Remember the Subtitle, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (the films have been steadily deteriorating after peaking with #3, IMHO), Star Trek, and Watchmen. I’ll probably see all of them, but none of them have me nearly as excited.

Comics, books, music, etc. after the cut:

Comics: Scott Pilgrim, Ignition City, and Fallen Angel

First up is the fifth volume of the Scott Pilgrim series, Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe, coming in just a few weeks. This series is just plain fun: mindless action with a video-game sensibility, something of a coming-of-age story, and a huge dose of absurdism.

I’ve only read a fraction of Warren Ellis’ work, but I’ve subscribed to his “Bad Signal” email list for years, and he’s been talking about the ideas that became Ignition City for a long time. Basically, take all the old space hero archetypes (Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, etc.) and look at what happens when the future passes them by. I think someone described it as Flash Gordon meets Deadwood. I tend to like Ellis best when he’s doing science fiction, so this is a must read. Coming in April.

And finally: the relaunch of Peter David and J.K. Woodward’s Fallen Angel in July, with a crossover with Angel‘s Illyria.

There’s also Flash: Rebirth, which I’m looking forward to with a mix of excitement and dread. On one hand: Geoff Johns returns to the Flash and writes all of them, with Ethan Van Sciver on art. On the other: the more I learn about it, the more I get the feeling that the subtitle should be “Barry Allen is teh gratest Flash EVAR.” If that’s it, then no, thanks, I’m not interested. *sigh*

So, yeah, DC seems to be doing its best to push me away from anything they publish that doesn’t have “Vertigo” on the cover. I’m hearing rumors of a Welcome to Tranquility miniseries, but then that’s Wildstorm, so still not much DC-branded appeal. And the one Marvel series I read, The Twelve, is on hiatus (and it’s a mini anyway). Not going to be much coming out from the Big Two.

TV: Battlestar Galactica, Lost, Flash Forward

Of the TV shows returning for the spring season, I’d say Battlestar Galactica is the one that has me most intrigued. They’ve managed to throw new wrinkles into the Human/Cylon conflict and make viewers question basic assumptions about the show in the lead-up to the series conclusion. Next up is Lost, which has successfully moved past the Gilligan’s Island/Voyager problem of getting them off the island.

I’m also watching Heroes and Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles, though neither of them has me champing at the bit for new episodes just yet. (Actually, I’m more interested in SCC than the new Terminator movie, which is kind of odd to realize.) What I’d really like to see is the last few episodes of Pushing Daisies. I’m still torn between bitterness at the show’s cancellation and knowing that at least it got to go out while it was still good, rather than after deteriorating.

As for future shows, the one that I’m most interested in seeing is Flash Forward, based on the novel by Robert J. Sawyer, in development for next fall. I’m also curious about Dollhouse, which starts in February, mostly because of Joss Whedon’s involvement. And I’ll certainly check out the BSG spinoff, Caprica.

Books

Not a whole lot, actually. There’s Robert J. Sawyer’s new book, “Wake,” (part 1 of a trilogy) coming in April, but I haven’t decided whether to buy his stuff in hardcover or stick with paperback. And the final book of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time epic, A Memory of Light (being finished by Brandon Sanderson) may be coming out by the end of the year, or it may not.

Other than that…I haven’t heard anything about Greg Keyes’ plans now that Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone is done. I don’t think Neil Gaiman’s got any new novels planned for this year, though I’ve only caught about half of his blog posts over the past few months. Naomi Novik might have a new Temeraire book by the end of the year, maybe.

Music

Tori Amos, Vertical Horizon, and Butterfly Boucher all have albums coming out, though I haven’t heard anything beyond “spring/summer 2009″ on any of them. Tori Amos has basically never slowed down, except for a break between record companies, and it’s only been a year and a half since her last album, American Doll Posse (which was very good). Vertical Horizon has been out of the picture for a few years, though their stuff still gets played. (I heard “When You Cry” at the mall yesterday when I went to lunch.)

You’ve probably never heard of Butterfly Boucher, but Katie and I caught one of her songs on Indie 103.1 when it first launched. Then she opened for two different concert tours that we saw over the next year (IIRC, Barenaked Ladies and…Sarah McLachlan?), and we picked up her debut album, Flutterby. She’s been playing a lot of music, but this will be her second album. (A few weeks ago she posted a note about how she was finally free of her record contract, which meant she could finally release the album she finished two years ago.)

Cross-posted at Speed Force

One of the things that Tori emphasized was that she’d wanted the artists to have complete freedom, because she’d been on too many projects where someone stepped in and said something like, “Did you think about the demographic?” Rantz Hoseley expanded on that, pointing out that many of the artists kept asking him (or, more precisely, Tori, through him) whether they could do things like do a story without word balloons. They were accustomed to that kind of limitation working on other projects. Ted McKeever mentioned a Superman story he turned in that got rejected because he drew the wrong number of belt loops. And Rantz took great pleasure in telling them to go for it, whatever it was.

At one point, Tori mentioned that when she read the stories, she didn’t hear the songs they were based on in her head — she heard new music, which she’s now working on. She and several of the artists talked about the cyclical nature of inspiration, with different kinds of arts all inspiring each other.

I was in the 5th row, off to the side, which was great — but I also had managed to get a slot for the signing this afternoon. I had to skip a bunch of stuff I would have liked to attend — Pushing Daisies, “Quick Draw,” Battlestar Galactica — but you know, I’m going to see those shows when they come back from hiatus. Who knows when I’ll get another chance to meet Tori Amos?

Update: I’ve posted more photos from the panel.

Between the end of the panel and the start of the signing, I wandered a bit, grabbed lunch, went back to Todd Nauck’s table to pick up the Impulse sketch (he was doing a sketch of Secret, and mentioned that he’d started Young Justice as a huge Impulse fan, then started to really like the other characters, and ended up with Wonder Girl as his favorite because he got to show so much character growth over the course of his time on the book.) I caught up with Katie in the line for Pushing Daisies — she got into both the Heroes and Lost panels — and then headed over to the line for the Tori Amos signing around 1:30.

This was the first time I’d been to one of the big autograph signings in the Sails pavilion. They do everything in multistage lines. For about half the first stage I just pulled out the book and read the first few stories. (I must track down a copy of “Here in my Head.”) Then I got to talking with the woman behind me, who had somehow managed a last-minute trip and gotten into just about everything she wanted to do. (Though she disappeared between stages, so I suspect she didn’t know she needed to get her badge signed to get into the signing, and thought she just needed to buy a copy of the book.) During the second stage, I ended up mostly talking with a man in front of me who had been in the comics industry during the late 1990s and left. He said this con, and the book, had inspired him to try to get back into comics.

I got up to the front of the line around 4:10. I’d been trying to think of what to say during my 30 seconds, and promptly forgot all of it. I don’t think I’ve ever been quite reduced to the level of a babbling fanboy as I was when I got to shake Tori Amos’ hand — twice — and try to say something about how I’d loved her music since college, and got this T-shirt at the first concert of hers I went to, and so on, and she just kept looking at me like she was expecting me to continue, and ohmigodi’mtalkingtotoriamos. I remember she asked me if I was local, and I said something about the LA/OC area, and I wanted to mention catching her show at the Grove last December but said something incoherent instead, and that’s honestly the only thing I can remember that she said to me, even though I know there were several more sentences.

Not my book, but the same page that she signed in mine.

I walked away from the signing thinking, “I’m done. I could leave this convention right now and go home, and I’d be perfectly happy.”

Update: I’ve posted more photos from the signing.