Tues July 20 -- San Diegobound Yep, I'm off to San Diego Comic-Con (more on that in seconds), so this week's Tuesday update has the new strip, like so: San Diego! Woo-woo! Awright, I've been runnin' around this year like a Mexican ocelot, and I've gotta say I'm kinda relieved this is the last trip I've got scheduled. I'm pretty ready for Comic-Con this year though, I think. This'll be my first C-C with the UBOPE (what? that old thing?), and I finally got some nice fabric with which to cover the table, and I found some sweet little bookholders at Staples as well as a collapsible trolley that should make moving boxes of books a cool breeze on a sweltering summer afternoon. All is in readiness. This time I should even have a working cell phone! I've got a pretty good spot in  Small Press Area, table M16 on Ailse 1400, the westish side of the northish end of the ever-more-sprawling San Diego Convention Center. Comic-Con goers please feel free --nay, obligated-- to stop by and say howdy. Charleston Alert 2 Well, the Charleston City Paper looks like they've wrapped up the e-voting on their web page discussing the cartoon contest they were having. If any of you folks voted for me, thanks very much, and if you Charleston cats still have paper ballots to fill out, do it, man, DO IT! Movie reviews Nothing new since last update for movie reviews, but I gotta see Catwoman tonight so I'll try to throw that up here before I take off tomorrow morning. ** mini-update ** Here we go, Catwoman as promised. Leaden Angels I was a bit late getting the latest chapter of the Leaden Angels to Paul, so as of this mid-afternoon update I don't have it for y'all. I'll see if I can squeeze it in with the Catwoman review tonight. ** another mini-update ** And here's the new chapter, the very silly The Invasion of Medicine Hat, in which Constantine's sister Lucian berates the owner of a Christian bookstore and faces an invasion of... ah, but that would be telling. Fri July 16 -- Super Mega-Update Astute readers will have noticed there was no Tuesday update this week, a truth for which I have no explanation at this time. But! We here at angryflower.com have a pile o' stuff for you for being so patient. First, this week's strip: The horribleness, the horribleness... Charleston Alert! If any of you readers reside in Charleston, SC I urge you to vote in the big let's-pick-a-new-cartoon contest they got going on right now at the Charleston City Paper. I don't know if they've enabled e-voting or if they're only counting real paper ballots, but any help you Charlestonites could throw my way would be hugely appreciated! Yeah! Baby! Let me get into an AAN paper! So sweet! Movie action Gots something new for the movie review section, finally, Wil Smith and Alex Proyas's sleek and cool-looking desecration of Isaac Asimov, I, Robot. Paul Notley novel action My brother's book The Leaden Angels just keeps coming. This week's instalment is The Parliament of Gryphons, in which quasireal MP Ignatius Wilentz disapproves of Elizabeth's mother, Pr. Hermann gets hypnotized, and John Seinkewicz takes a trip and learns of the Casket of Dreams. Links dumping It's been a while since I did any links dumping and I've got an Inbox bulging with recommendations, so let's check 'em out --together! First up is a link to a story that describes how Kofi Annan loves cartoons. Weird. Then we've got a link to an old Chinese man robot much like the one from the old strip "Copy Wrong". And of the small but steady trickle of people with flower delivery web sites I figure, what the hell, why not include a link to maryjanesgarden.com, even though I think from now on my policy is gonna be that if flower web sites wanna get mentioned on angryflower.com they gotta buy an ad (Whoops! Just checked the site out now and I find it's a marijuana-selling outfit rather than a flower-buying site. Oh well, no harm done.) The people at Serebella.com wanted a link on my site in return for putting a link to angryflower.com on their crowded "B" page, so I guess I'll indulge them. And here's a link to a pretty good article that discusses some interesting modifications we should see in Real-Time Strategy games now that real life has pointed the way. Fish's Web Page My longtime colleague Fish Griwkowsky finally, finally, finally has a web site, Zardex.com, which is still young but already features some good photos and a startlingly complete archive of his Space Cat comic. Examine and evaluate. San Diego Comic-Con It's coming, coming like a freight-train, San Diego Comic-Con, the biggest comix event of the year and I, I say I will be there. I finally got my table placement, M16, right on the edge of the small press area like I wanted. Sweet. Click here for a floor map if such things excite you, and if you're gonna be at the show, please swing by and say Howdy. Fri July 9 -- Where's the Sunshine, dammit? Despite the general raininess around here, I'm in okay spirits. I wish I had something to rant about this week but I honestly can't think of anything; I'm just giddy at how the Bush machine seems to be crumbling on all fronts. Fahrenheit 9/11, Abu Ghraib, Kerry's pick of Edwards for his VP... the best the Bushes can do in response these days is pull out another phantom terror alert. They're stil holding out for their stage-managed Osama-catch, but let's face it, they're gasping. Best not to get too cocky, of course. The more desperate and doomed they get the more dangerous they'll become, and if it looks like they can't win in the political arena they'll just move the battle elsewhere. Still, I'm getting good feelings about this century... Anyway, a new cartoon, a LoveBot strip for y'all: And while we're at it, it couldn't hurt to remind y'all to BUY BOOKS! Also... I'll be heading off to the San Diego Comic-Con in short order, just under two weeks. I'm kinda excited about it, as I get about all of these trips, but I hope to sell plenty o' UBOPEs to hapless Comic-Conners despite that it's now over six months old. But so good! And hey, y'know, if you haven't read Lovebot Conquers All (only available in the UBOPE or at Graphicsmash.com) you haven't read Lovebot. Tues July 8 -- Mid-week Pseudo-action Well, now, let's see... Looks like John Kerry has picked John Edwards as his running mate in Somebody Grab The Wheel 2004. Seems like a good choice, better than wet noodle Dick Gephardt would've been, at any rate. I give it about an hour before the GOP spin machine starts denouncing Edwards as an evil "trial lawyer" forcing poor defenceless corporations to cough up millions of dollars just because of a little gross negligence. Texas pics Not a lot, since my photo-taking was more incompetent than usual, but for those interested the pictures are here. Leaden Angels 2.1 We surge forward into my brother Paul's novel The Leaden Angels. This week's chapter: The Drowned Librarian, in which Inspector Tyrone speaks in shorthand, prehensile ears are revealed, and Pr. Hermann has a chat with God. Movie reviews I fail you; I have no Spider-Man 2 review since I haven't seen it again. I do have a review of Will Farrell's latest Anchorman, though, so that's something. Fri July 2 -- Texas Unexpected Whew... this update's a little later and a little thinner than I'd normally like, but I'm still getting my poo together after a Juneful of travelling and partying. So, first, this week's strip: Texas? As I should have expected, Texas wasn't what I expected. For one thing, it rained every day, hard. For another thing, I kinda expected to hear some Texas twangs, some y'alls n' howdys, and I pretty much didn't. Admittedly, San Antonio was something of a bubble of Association of Alternative Newsweeklies people rather than Texans, but still. AAN was okay. I've got some photos but I haven't gotten them developed yet; if any turn out okay I'll put 'em up. As for getting into any papers, I got a couple of nibbles just like I do every year, so we'll see, though the Charleston City Paper is gonna do a "readers pick their favorite cartoon" thing in a bit so when they do I'll be urging all Charleston Bob readers to say they like Bob. Austin was... well, kinda wack. I stupidly thought there'd be some connection due to the Edmonton-Austin sister city thing, but of course Texans and Austinites don't really give a crap about Canada or whether some part of Canada is more like Texas than any other part. After all my culling of what-to-do-in-Austin advice I mostly just ended up crashing on the couch of a friend of mine, sweating, drinking a lot and watching the rain, so I only really got a blip of an impression of the town. Next time I'll have to go for longer. How was Spider-Man 2? I liked it, liked it a lot. I missed out on the chance to write a review and get paid for it but I will write something up once I get a chance to see it again and mull it a bit. It's more comic-booky than the first, more episodic in feel, with less of a dramatic throughline than I would have liked; you can really tell the action sequences were conceived and planned more than a year before the script was actually written. At the same time it's way more emotional and satisfying than the first film; Ock ruled and I was wiping away tears near the end so I'm pretty happy with it. It's weird to think that Spider-Man and Fahrenheit 9/11 are going toe-to-toe and even weirder to note that of the Americans I talked to in Texas, all were eager to see 9/11 and none so much as mentioned Spidey. Thurs Jun 24 -- Mini-update Nothing much extra here, I just wanted to throw a little bit of Austin info out there in the hopes of maybe running into someone who'd like to talk to me while I'm down there from Sunday Jun 27 to Wednesday Jun 30. I should be checking out the Alamo Drafthouse movie theatre Monday night, I'm thinking, there to see the classic gross Italian horror flick The Gates of Hell. I also wanna check out some Austin comic stores, so if any of you Austinite Bob readers have any suggestions, e-mail me. I'll be checking my e-mail while down there, so, yeah. E-mail me. Especially Rich Cornelisse if he reads this, the bastid. ** Mini-update *** Oh, wait, I got Rich's phone number... maybe he's not a bastid. Oh Yeah -- Spider-Man! I almost forgot! Spider-Man opens, I think, this Wednesday, at which time I wanna go see a noonish show at a good theatre somewhere in Austin. If any of you folks out there know a place or wanna go with me, e-mail-o-rama, baby. The Leaden Angels Didn't get a Leaden Angels update for you last week but I've got one this week, Chapter 5, otherwise known as Party Pepper Politics, in which two of the main characters meet and talk some serious books at a party and the Flannery O'Connor Brigade makes its first big move. Also has a blue talking bouncing ball. AND!! I haven't mentioned this before, but you should click on the text ads on the left side of the page, particularly the "Fun Free Games" one, that's Popcap, they rule. I'm sorry the ad text looks so crappy; I haven't found time to fix it and I'm taking off in 6 hours. But click the ads, why doncha? And buy books. Tues Jun 22 -- Off to San Antonio Well, not yet, but I leave on Thursday for the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies Convention, there to attempt for the fourth time to shmooze some editors into running my cartoon. Each time I go to this thing I try to excuse how brutally expensive it all is with the notion that if I get even one more paying gig out of it, it'd be worth it, and each time I fall short of that one new paper by one new paper. Ah, well, at least I'll get to hang out with Keith Knight and Ted Rall and Jen Sorensen and Andy Singer for a while. That should be fun, and there's always some free booze at these things, so.... PARTY!!!! And then Sunday, to Austin. Wacky! And if any of you Austinite Bob readers out there know Rich Cornelisse, tell him I'm looking for him. The new strip comes early this week on account of my trip: Reviews With all the runnin' around I haven't had the chance to do too many reviews, though I did see the incomprehensible Chronicles of Riddick. Oh, and I also saw Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, so there's that also. Oh yeah, you know what's coming... BUY MY BOOK! Seriously! Fri Jun 18 -- Home Again Whew! What a crazy week it's been! I've been off in Vancouver watching people get married while the whole country is getting all election-crazy! It's freaky! Okay, a cartoon, one that didn't run in Vue this week due to a tricky screw-up on my part involving my Bob file mailouts. Dammit! Kinda miffed at myself for botching that. On the other hand, I'm pretty happy with the two cover images I did for that same issue of Vue that *did* run; I'm throwing 'em up here cuz I like 'em. First the cover of the Hot Summer Guide issue... and the interior Hot Summer Guide... And yes, I know now that the surfboard is upside-down. Can you tell I'm from a landlocked town? Crazy Week -- AAN Yep, no sooner am I back than I have to do a pile of stuff and then head out again, next Thrusday, this time to swelteringly sunny San Antonio, home of the Alamo, for the swingin' Association of Alternative Newsweeklies convention, there to try to convince editors to run my stuff cuz it's so bitchin and cuz I need the money. It's kinda crazy that I'll be down there at this time; it means I won't even be in Canada the day of the election (Newsflash for American readers: we're having an election in Canada). Instead I'll be swanning around Austin, Texas finding out if it's really as cool as everybody says it is (of course if I find it not cool that will only be a measure of my own coolness failure more than any definitive comment on the city). A few weeks ago I asked Austinites to write in with suggestions of stuff to do or offers of crash space; I do so again, now, here. If you wrote me before, remind me again. Earlier updates retreat into the past here...