Twas the night before Comic Con

And I am nervous as fuck.

You see, I read a few weeks ago on one of my favorite web sites that Marvel is going to be reviewing porfolios for possible work in their Creative Services Department, which is one of my dream jobs. So I've been working hard (or hardly working on it depending on who you talk to) for about a week now. Yeah I know, I should have spent more time working on the portfolio before a few days before the Comic Con, but I am a procastinator at times.

Anyway, I am really, really, really nervous, but I know this kinda of nervous because I experienced it during the summer when I went to the other convention Wizard World Philly for the Wildstorm Art Contest. So the same butterflies are in my stomach. They've subsided for now, since I have eaten and I am calmer now.

So now, on the eve of the Comic Con, actually, the Comic Con started tonight, but I am for the rest of the weekend - I am putting together what I think is the best of my work. Well some of it. I had to create most of it, because my portfolio wasn't versatile enough. I had nothing, but bank related stuff and I was stuck in a rut on what I should have in there. So I created a few Marvel oriented pieces and few generational ads as well as some of my best stuff from the bank (i.e. newsletters, postcards, brochures, statement inserts, etc.)

In a few mintues I am going to put my portfolio together and start reviewing talking points and getting my resume together and such. I am taking this a little bit easier now, since I am treating this like a job interview and not the unicorn job I've been searching a few years for. This is another huge moment for me. I need a job badly and I would really love this one. So please, wish me luck.

...And I Still Don't Like Seafood

It's a little known fact that I am not a lover or a fan of seafood. I can eat a few things, but not much and sadly enough I only eat shrimp, crab, and clam, but only if they're fried. (Told you - sad.) Which is always the oddest discussion in my family, because when you're family is from the south, you tend to eat fish. I don't. My mom stays thinking I'm adopted. The rest of my family thinks it's wierd. Even my little old, grandmom. I always tell myself that I would try it, but I can't bring myself to it. When I tell people I eat sushi, I mean I really only get California Rolls, which is not even close to what sushi is or could be. I don't like seafood, but I try to like it. So tonight I told myself that I would try some.

So as my VB trip rolls along, everyone decided to go to dinner at this place called Captain George's Seafood Buffet Palace. I've been to this place once and it was against my will. This time went pretty much the same way, given that everyone wants to eat there, but me. I get the usual reassurance that "they have meat there". I am sure I'd have a dollar right now everytime I heard that statement, but I digress.

We all pile up in the mini-van and my sister's car and head to Captain George's. Needless to say when we get there, the parking lot is full because clearly this is a hot spot in the VB. We get our table and head over to the buffet lines. I get my grandmother's stuff first, because you know me, I love her and since she is elderly and all. (yeah I know - I'm a sweetheart.) When she's done, I get my plate, which consisted of: fried shrimp, potatoe salad, rice, bread and that was about it. I didn't see anything else I really wanted. I wanted to try the salmon, which my doctor suggested that I start eating, but the smell got to me and I left it alone. There was just fishy food everywhere. Even a mess of crawdads. For you none hicks they're also known as cray fish. Those fuckin' hicks and their crawdads. I wouldn't even think of eating. I remember seeing them in the gutters when I lived in California all those years ago and yet these muthafuckas got them served with butter and lemon juice. The savages. So right then, I said fuck the seafood and headed back to my table. But never mind me though, it's really the ravenous people who wait on line for the crab sticks. It's hysterical to me to see grown folks and young ones shuck, pull and suck meat out of crab sticks. Basically they scale down to primal nature and grunt and pull at crab parts "just to get to the meaty parts". Yick! Needless to say, about my mom, aunt, michon, and aja came back to the table with a stacked plate. The savages. They're all cave hicks.

So after I ate my fill of nothing and found the prime rib and BBQ ribs, I got what I think is bread pudding, which sucked a big one, but I ate, because my mom payed for my meal and I wanted to be gracious and equally considerate being that she paid for it. After all of this, I still ended up not liking seafood. Oh well. I think I'll be okay.

The Dukes of Pocomoke City

I am on one of my road trips again. My family and I decided to head down to Virginia Beach this weekend to visit my grandparents, whom we didn't get to see on Christmas this year. So my aunt drives down to grab my cousin Michon and her kids, while my mom, my sister and I pack up the my sister's car and we all high tail it down to the VB.

Here's where it gets funny.

One the way, we are going through Delaware, where my aunt, who's driving ahead of us, runs over what looked to us as like a racoon, but upon further discussion and based on the blurry color we saw, it was a fox (possibly). It flew up in the air too fast for us to tell. Either way, it was hysterical, because we kept calling my aunt a "coon killer".

About an hour later, we are driving through Pocomoke City. For those of you who don't know what this is, it's an area in Maryland. I hate driving through Pocomoke City only because there's a stretch of road that goes on for miles that has no lights down the road. It's really just a strip of trees on either side of the road and the lights from whatever cars happen to be on the road with you, which if you're driving late - isn't many. However, since there aren't any cars on the road at this time, my aunt, who is still driving in front of us is doing at least 65-70 mph on the road. I am about 2 car lengths away from her, when suddenly from across the left of us, two state troopers flash their lights and wave us down. I knew why they did. We were doing at least 72 in a 55 mph lane. LOL. What I really wanted to do was fly down the road and start a big chase scene like one from the Dukes of Hazard. Just call me Dre Duke. Unfortuntately, I don't think I would get away to make Boss Hog look like a fool by the end of the episode. At this point, we're all pretty scared shitless, because we didn't want to get a ticket, but my aunt, who thought of this ingenious story to get us off the hook. It apparently worked and we got off with a warning and no ticket. After that we're taking it slower down the road, which take us longer to get there, but hey you gotta do what you gotta do right? I still wish I could have gotten all 2 Gay 2 Furious on those Pocomoke jokes, but I didn't. I didn't want to get my sister in trouble. But like I said, before I hate driving through Pocomoke City.

Needless to say, about 30 minutes after that, a racoon, shoots from the left side of the car, hurdles itself towards the driver's side tire and we bounce in the air due to the impact of the beast rolling under the car. My mother and I are screaming like little women, because we just became what we joked about - we became "coon killers". The beast clearly had a death wish, because most animals run straight across a road to get to the other side, this one ran straight for us. It was astonishing, somehow funny, but insane nonetheless.

We finally arrive to surprise my grandparents at about 2:30am. We set around for a few, discuss, laugh, play with the twins, make a WAWA run and finally we all settle down at about 5:00am. It just hit six and I am in the dinning room, typing this blog, because if I didn't, I don't think I would be able to in the morning. I should be bloody tired right now, but after 2 cups of coffee and a soda. I am pretty wired. I should go to sleep, because I know that when I am home, I can sleep for 7-8 hours. Here I wont be able to. I'll be lucky, if I can't 4 in.

Movie Review: Because I Said So

As it goes, there are good date movies and then there are bad ones. Most of the time, they're all just "okay and sincere". Some of them really don't resonate with any of us. Just a reason to go to the movies and feel good with our girlfriends/boyfriends, mothers, sisters or whoever goes with us. In the last decade or so, even romantic comedies have become horribly formulaic. You know what I mean, we clearly get a movie set-up and plot that can be seen from frames away, even before the first site gag is thrown. Then you have your few stand out entries, who do their best to stand out from the muck. Unfortunately, Because I Said So... didn't cut it.

I personally blame the commercials. They completely mislead you nowadays. When you watch Because I Said So, you soon began to realize that the commercial is not this movie. In fact, the commercials were better. Honestly, this movie was tacky and terminally bland.

Here's the rundown, longtime single mother Daphne (Diane Keaton) is determined to marry off her three daughters, hoping they will avoid her own loneliness. The opening scenes show her ostensible success with Maggie (Lauren Graham) and Mae (Piper Perabo), as they appear with cakes, white dresses, and grooms. But she’s not done yet. Her youngest girl, poor Milly (Mandy Moore), can’t find the right guy. So mom is fixated on making that happen.

Thus begins the set up of one basic joke - the interfering mother and then it runs right into the ground. There was so much wrong with this movie, I can't even begin to note them all. One thing I hated was the poor characterization. The whole movie is designed around Diane Keaton's character's meddling as excessive and of course is the set up for a big showdown towards the end. Blah! Most of the other characters are all pretty much cookie cut outs of souless supporting stars. I can't even go into the whole dynamically wrong attitude this movie took, but I do have to say - I love Diane Keaton. I loved The Family Stone, but she's beginning to play the same person in every movie. This is even going back to As Good As It Gets. We get the slightly naive, older woman, who's clumsy and full of life and vibrancy, who has this full rich life, but is dealing with an issue she hasn't had to in quite some time. That's really Diane Keaton, not the characters she's playing. It's heartbreaking to see her Ann Taylor Loft-like performances right down to the huge belts, horrendous pleated skirts and enormous accessories that only Keaton can pull off.

Because I Said So includes so many clichés that it’s hard to keep count. In lieu of plot, it’s cluttered with bad scenes after another. Some are funny, which would include a wacky driving scene, stupid dog reaction shots (which even at one point was too much) and falling-splat-with-cakes scenes. Frankly, this movie is so self-defeating, I can't even write anymore. It's trife people. Go rent Failure To Launch or my all time favorite The Sweetest Thing. Those would satisfy you more than this one.