Surreal. No, really.

Brian B. showed up at my door at 7:30AM yesterday, and we drove over half of West Seattle trying to find miniDV tapes for my camcorder. Finally found some at the Jefferson Square Safeway. Then we ducked into Easy Street Cafe (part of Easy Street Records) for some brekkies before shuttling off to the convention (aka "How you say, ah yes... THE SHOW!").

There was some kids race sponsored by Nike that was just wrapping up downtown, so the cops had a lot of the streets cordoned off, making the search for a viable parking garage problematic to say the least. We ended up 2 blocks away, not too bad.

It's a really cool feeling to be able to walk up to the VIP booth to pick up the badges. After locating JD's table inside, we began setting up. JD loved the RADZ books, and we sold a handful (signed, of course). Jason S., one of our co-authors was there, shmoozing and lining up work. So we got to have a mini-game developers party. At one point, Dennis Kleinsmith (aka Lucifer in Ordinary Angels) showed up, and helped make a DVD sale. JD began to take sketch orders. Dan & Trish showed up to check out the con and do some research for Duo. Introduced Dan, Trish and Dennis to Gigi Edgley, the heretofore unnamed actress with whom we are working on the top-secret film project, which I got permission to de-secretify. She's a big fan of OA, which is great, because I'm a big fan of hers. So, moving beyond the mutual geek-fest, Gi, Dan, Trish and I took a lunch meeting to chat about some film project particulars. I got back to the table to find JD with a sketch roster about 8 long. Dude was WORKING IT.

After lunch, I introduced Trish to Quentin Shaw, maverick comics publisher and writer (and all around icon), so that she could quiz him on some of the finer points of the biz for her character in Duo. Gavin had brought the kids to check out the convention, and they were already tired and bored, so after a short while they all went back to his house. Later, Marcio Catalano (aka Ornias in Ordinary Angels) stopped by our table. So we had JD, who played Afriel's galierii in OA, across the table from Lucifer and Ornias. JD actually made the reference that it was feeling a bit uncomfortable with two of the baddies so close at hand, to which Marcio replied, "yeah, but you've got the writer over there, and he always kills me." I thought that was funny.

So the convention formally ended at 6PM, and we ambled over to one of the panel rooms to watch the results of the costume contest, after which Gigi and local folk/rock singer-songwriter Kyle Stevens played a short acoustic set of the material on Gigi's new CD. I was introduced to a young videographer named Heather, who has a close cousin to my camera. She got the lockdown, and I went over to stage left and caught more of the closeups and stuff. Heather will edit the set. After all was said and done, Brian B. and I threw our gear back in my car and walked over to the Grand Hyatt, where the convention guests stay. While waiting for Gi to change clothes, I happened to notice Scott Kurtz (author of PVP) sitting with his homeys in the lobby. And just as I was turning around, I saw Kris Straub (author of the classic web strip Checkerboard Nightmare and Starslip Crisis) walking in, so I went and, after 8 years of email exchanges, collaborations and whatnot, finally met him face to face. We'd been talking about getting together at ECC for a couple years, and of course the way it happened was a random meeting in a hotel lobby.

After a brief conversation and plans to get together today, Kris went with his peeps and I went with mine, and we shuffled over to Pacific Place to Gordon Biersch. Brian B., Brian M., Brian M.'s wife and sister, Heather, Ian, Kyle, Kyle's wife and Gigi all unwound over beers and good food. It was a happy and somewhat surreal end to a surreal day.

And now comes day 2. I must be off.