Here's the first batch of photos from our recent trip to Japan. Cheers to Facebook for changing their programming so that those of you who haven't joined the Facebook cult yet can still look at photos that are posted there.

Short explanation of our trip: In 2007, Shaenon and I curated an exhibition for the Cartoon Art Museum called The Art and Flair of Mary Blair. It was very well-received, prompting Studio Ghibli to plan their own much, much, much larger version.

Shaenon and I were hired on as consultants, assisting Mary's nieces with the process of gathering all of the art together and making arrangements for the art to travel to Tokyo back in April.

Earlier this month, we made a return trip to pack up the artwork and bring it back to the U.S. Fortunately for us, they held over the exhibition long enough for us to get a look at it. Even cooler, we got a private look at the exhibition on its final night with staff from Studio Ghibli, the Tokyo Contemporary Art Museum, Japanese broadcaster NHK, Disney, and the core crew behind Pixar's UP, which is already one of our all-time favorite movies. It was incredibly cool to be able to trade Mary Blair stories with Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, Jonas Rivera and Ronnie Del Carmen as we walked through the galleries.

Anyway, please check out the photos. More should be on the way soon.

Patti Martinson of Sequential Tart has been interviewing all of the Couscous Collective members (minus the elusive Konstantin Pogorelov, who lives in a small cabin in the woods with Bill Watterson, Steve Ditko and J.D. Salinger), and she's kicking off October with me and Shaenon.

Enjoy these, then meet us in person at the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco on October 17 & 18. Shaenon's moderating a panel, I'm moderating a panel, and I'm actually *on* two panels, which is a rarity. If all goes well, I'll have a new print-only William Bazillion mini-comic, entitled "Fatty Camp" on sale at the con.

We'll be loaded with stories from our (currently ongoing) trip to Japan (wrapping up a project for Studio Ghibli and Disney) and copious amounts of rum. Miss it at your peril!

That's it. I've officially given up on my life "settling down" anytime in the near future.

In addition to my trip to Japan last month (which I promise I'll sit down and write about someday, but you can follow Shaenon's detailed report in her current series of Comixology columns), here are some other recent doings:

In late March, I got to visit Skywalker Ranch to discuss some work-related business with LucasFilm's animation department. I didn't get to see Mr. Lucas himself, but we had a nice picture taken with a Yoda statue just before we left:



Then we went to Japan. Apparently someone at the SF Guardian reads my blog or my Facebook page, since the trip scored a mention in their write-up promoting the Cartoon Art Museum's Comics 4 Comix event:



The headliner for that event was Carlos Alazraqui, who's best known for his role as Garcia on Reno-911!, as well as his voice acting as the infamous Taco Bell Chihuahua and as Rocko in my first-or-second-favorite Nickelodeon cartoon series (along with the early seasons of Ren & Stimpy), Rocko's Modern Life. Carlos and I both got hats from SF-based designer Cassel Goorin, which we're sporting here:

In the midst of all that, we took a 12-hour drive up to Portland for the Stumptown Comics Fest, where we enjoyed the hospitality of Jesse Hamm and his wife Anna. I exhibited with my friends in the Couscous Collective, and I caught up/chatted/met/palled around with loads of comic folks including Derek Kirk Kim, Charles Brownstein, Steve Leiber, Jeff Smith, Graham Annable, Vera Brosgol, Chris Turnham, Diana Schutz, Jacq Cohen, Gail Simone, Jeff Parker, Kurt Busiek, Ivy McCloud, and other people that I'll probably offend by forgetting to mention here.

That photo of me and Miyazaki had really been making the rounds since I'd posted it online (whereas that photo of me and Paris Hilton, fortunately, has been largely unseen), and was a frequent topic of conversation. I felt *really* impressive when I asked Ivy if Scott McCloud had ever met Miyazaki, since I figured he was the most likely person in our circle of friends to have done so, and she revealed that no, Scott actually hasn't traveled to Japan yet. She followed up with, "I'm not sure if Neil's met him." It took me a few seconds to remember that she and Scott are on good terms with Neil Gaiman and get to casually refer to him by his first name, and I smiled as I realized I might actually be able to top some of Neil Gaiman's "I met so-and-so" stories if I ever run into him at a bar and feel like showing him up.

In the midst of all of this, though, and overshadowing everything else that's happened this spring, my mom came down with a terrible case of pneumonia and had to be hospitalized in the middle of April. It was really, really scary and was touch-and-go for a while, with ventilators and all sorts of machinery used to help her with her breathing. She's been getting better bit by bit, and moved from the ICU to the general population within a couple of weeks. I flew home last weekend as she moved from the county hospital to an assisted living center in my hometown, just a ten-minute walk from my parents' house. They've got her on oxygen and an IV drip, but she's slowly regaining her appetite. There's a lot of physical therapy to be done before she gets to go home, too, but she seems to be getting a little bit stronger every day.

And I'm 99% certain that the reason my mom kept the fact that she was feeling so sick a secret is that my dad, who had a heart attack in December, had a pacemaker installed in late March, and I'm sure that she felt she didn't have time to be sick while he was going through all of that.

It really drives home the fact that I still have no clue how to be a grown-up. I've paid off my student loans, I've been saving money, I haven't asked for money from my parents in several years...but seeing both of your parents go from your own personal indestructible protectors to suddenly having to help them cope with life-altering illnesses over the course of five months...man, I'm exhausted. On top of all that, one of my mom's best friends died from cancer just before I flew home, so I had a funeral added to what was already going to be a not-terribly-upbeat weekend of helping my dad clean the house and making sure that he was looking after himself during Mom's absence.

My birthday's coming up next week, and I'm hoping that my next year on this planet has a little less excitement in it. Healthy parents and some stability...I think that's all I really want this year.

Here's the first of many photos from Japan:



Taken at Hayao Miyazaki's private quarters at Studio Ghibli.

More details soon, of course...

First up, there's a new installment of William Bazillion this week. You don't want to be in the dark when everyone's talking about it at the water cooler tomorrow, so read up.

Secondly, Shaenon and I now have our tentative travel dates for our big trip to Japan next month. We've been helping Studio Ghibli and Tokyo's Modern Art Museum get a big Mary Blair exhibition (a HUGE exhibition, actually--I'd consider paying my own way to go there if they weren't taking care of it for us, since it's going to be something like 400 pieces of Mary's art and memorabilia).

Anyway, I've never been to Japan before, so if anyone has any suggestions--anything at all--that will help us to navigate the Tokyo area and get the most out of it in the three days (and seven or so nights) that we'll have available, please fire away.

And bonus points to whomever gets the reference to the subject line first. No Google-ing, please.

I got quoted again, this time in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Shaenon and I got to spend this past Saturday at Pixar for the Totoro Forest Project Art Auction, and we had a great time--even though we didn't manage to get the winning bid on our favorite piece. a non-profit museum curator earns slightly less annual income than the other folks who were attending the fundraiser, and I couldn't justify cutting lunch, the phone bill and running water from my budget for the next two months to justify dropping $700 on a single piece of art, much as I'd have liked to.

For those of you who missed the event, though, you can look at online versions of the Totoro artwork at the aforementioned Totoro Forest Project website, and if you want to see everything in person, you can visit the Cartoon Art Museum between September 20, 2008 and February 8, 2009 and see just about all of it.

If I've been slow getting back to anyone over the past couple of months, it's partly because of this.

And this.

And this.

And this.

More information on these as they develop--make sure to click on the first link, though. And join the official Totoro Forest Project Facebook Group while you're at it.

Me, I'm gonna take a nap.