my visit to comicon

Downtown San Diego is what happens when you leave the Crate& Barrel in charge of urban planning. It's filled with restaurants and nightclubs that are so tastefully decorated, you want to kill yourself out of the boredom. Two pretty good restaurants to check out: Ch1ve, a restaurant so pretentious it uses numbers as surrogates for vowels (I didn't just have fries, I had spicy feta cheese shoestring fries), and Rama, a Thai place with excellent decor and decent food.

I found San Diego's pedicab subculture fascinating. It's something I haven't noticed in any other American city: immigrants from some indeterminate Central/Eastern European nation (they always have thick accents) pedaling bicycle taxis through the streets of San Diego for exoribtant prices.
You even have female pedicab drives, which is pretty amazing and unexpected in and of itself.

The best days to go to Comic Con are Wednesday and Thursday. By the time the convention hits Friday, pedestrian traffic inside the convention center resembles a pedestrian version of the 405 freeway. It took me about ten minutes to walk from one end of the floor to the other on Friday, which was compounded by the definite, inescapable man-stench about the event.

The show floor is a melting pot of corporate commerce, indie artists, vintage pornography, and obsessive nerdery. It's a much more overwhelming experience to sensory faculties than even E3, which is simply a collection of large media conglomerates showing off their home stereo systems.

I attended a panel on Star Trek, in which an eleven-year-old boy asked the show's creators about slight differences in the visual effects of phasers in two different episodes of Star Trek: Voyager. Star Trek fans never disappoint.

It's definitely worth your time to walk through the rows of indie artists who have set up shop on the convention floor. You'll most likely discover something you like - I picked up quite a few indie comics at the show, and while they're not completely successful, they all contain at least a few interesting ideas.

Somehow, American culture has meandered from the Great American Novel to the Great American Screenplay, and now, to the Great American Comic Book. I spend plenty of time reading novels, watching movies, and I am impressed by the surplus of young comic book writers who have interesting ideas, and actual stories to include them in. It's a medium that isn't drowning in its own orthodoxy and pretentions, and allows young writers to grow and develop their talents. I don't think I've ever read anything by Brian K. Vaughn that actually works as a story, but I don't know if I'll be saying the same thing five years from now.

Surprisingly, the most popular cosplay character isn't any Marvel or DC superhero, but rather various characters from a certain hidden village in the country of fire. Naruto is such a juggernaut that he singlehandedly takes up an eighth of the convention center floor. Judging from the massive array of Naruto merchandise on offer in its booth, the Mattel corporation owes its current solvency to Mr. Uzumaki, it seems. Anime chicks love wearing the Konoha forehead protector in the style of Sakura. Surprisingly, nobody dresses up as Naruto himself, probably owing to the extremely loud orange jumpsuit that he is always attired in.

what i know about fashion.

Most men tend to underestimate exactly how tight their clothes need to be in order to get laid.

This is something I've learned as multiple individuals have asked over the past year or so that I go shopping for clothes with them. I don't know why people ask, as my personal fashion philosophy is to do and spend the absolute bare minimum to be stylish.

But for future reference, here is everything I've learned about men's fashion:

1) Don't depend on the opinion of a woman. The cliche is: shop with a woman. PLEASE. The opinion of a woman is valuable, but not THAT valuable. Remember, women are the dummies who are killing themselves trying to fit into skinny tapered jeans that don't flatter anybody, the ones wearing ugly leggings in the winter and hiding their stems from me (who thought this was a good idea?), the ones wearing baby doll dresses that make them look like dowdy infants. That being said, most women have more of a clue than you. Ultimately -- You have to do this by yourself.

2) Practice brand agnosticism. You may discover a particular brand that you love, and decide, in an effort to make shopping easier, to buy from that brand (or store) exclusively. This is a mistake because 1) every brand falls off eventually, and 2) diversity will always be more stylish than monotony. The only loyalty you want to practice is to your own body; things either look good on you or they don't.

3) Proper fit is more important than everything else. A retailer for frat boys and high schoolers makes dress shirts that are pretty cheap and not particularly remarkable. But they are the only dress shirts that are slim enough to fit snugly around my torso and shoulders - and because of this fact, end up looking much more stylish than shirts that cost three times as much. Of course, in a perfect world, I'd spend five times as much to get the cut, color, and pattern right, but the world is not quite that perfect yet. Fit is especially king when it comes to denim - more on this in a bit.

4) Never buy anything that is branded. Unless the logo is extremely small and inconspicuous. Not only because you don't want to be someone else's billboard, but because you want to keep people guessing where you shop. If they have to guess, congratulations: your taste is somewhat unique.

5) Be colorful. It works for peacocks, and I'm pretty sure we humans obey the same evolutionary biology. So many guys are afraid of wearing colors, and wearing them gives you such an edge. Every time I wear lavender or lime or pink, it's inevitable - a female will make a point of stepping forward to compliment me. I was talking about this with Ting, Stefanie's BFF, and she said, "But wait a minute - won't girls think you're gay?" And then she immediately followed up with, "Oh wait - if they stop to think about whether you're gay or not, they're in your back pocket." Smart girl.

6) No article of clothing should ever be pointedly uncomfortable to wear. There are too many clothes out there that look and feel good to waste your time with discomfort.

7) Do your homework. Make a regular habit of entering stores and trying on clothes, especially in expensive places. It's the fastest way to develop good taste - to know what is stylish and looks good on you. Then you can either buy things that aren't as expensive but look the same (girls do this all the time - it's called Forever 21 with their knockoff Diane Von Furstenberg dresses), or wait for things to go on sale (again, girls).

8) Corollary to the previous rule: try on clothes at places you would never normally shop at (because you don't think you're the target demographic). You'll be surprised, and it will inject new blood into your closet. I have things in my closet from all kinds of places, from thrift stores to Barney's Coop. Combine the two, and you'll get a pretty unique outfit.

videogames that i play.

Persona 3 is a game that attempts to model one academic year in the life of a typical Japanese high school student, albeit one who just happens to stumble across a hidden hour between midnight and 12:01 am, during which a hitherto unseen tower rises from his school campus, and disagreeable demons emerge. The game, like high school, is a challenge of time management. Do you study for mid-terms, go on a date with your sweetheart, or save the world from demonic evil?

This is a game which will require, at my current pace, about eighty hours to complete. I'm halfway done.

But ultimately, I admit that you cannot devote eighty hours of your life to something unless you really, really enjoy it. Here are just a few of the reasons why I enrolled at Gekkoukan High:

1) Getting lost on the first days of school because the campus is so big and unfamiliar.

2) Knocking out demons with a baseball bat, and ordering my classmates to go in for an all-out melee. Never gets old.

3) Everybody - the ditz, the jock - is hiding a secret. And they all have serious issues.

4) The hierarchy of demons is based on the tarot deck, with demons being grouped by allegiance to cards (Hermit, Magician, Death) from the Major Arcana. Being a huge fan of the Rider Waite tarot deck and a certain lady who uses it, I adore this detail.

5) Running into my acquaintances at random places (the subway station, the shrine) in town when school lets out.

6) Listening to the girls in my combat unit complain about the lack of fashion sense in the body armor I give to them.

7) Being given the option to fall asleep in class as a means of regaining stamina to fight demons later in the evening.

8) Pop quizzes on the difference between the Paleolithic and Neolithic ages. And actually having to pay attention during lectures when the teacher says, "This will be on the exam."

9) The simplicity and beauty of the allegory of kids with repressed (inner) demons that represent their traumas and their strengths. They have stuff inside, and they just have to get it out.

10) The charmingly Japanese notion that strong academic performance correlates strongly with one's desirability to high school girls, and in turn, one's ability to fight demons.

11) Going on spring break and attempting to mack on (only to get shot down by) college chicks.

12) Casual acquaintances (the neighborhood dog, the friendly grade school kid) reveal their greater significance in your life with time. Just like real life!

13) Going to see the school nurse when I'm not feeling well.

14) The oppressive structure and amount of ennui in my life - I had almost forgotten how simultaneously busy - and how boring - a high schooler's life is.