Dear visitor from Groves, Texas who reached my blog by searching Google for “aquabats how to make gloopy products,”
You’re awesome. If you decide to make some homemade Gloopy products, please let me know.
Sincerely,
Peter
Monthly Archives: July 2012
Christian Dasilva has a Posse Benefit Show
Last night was the “Christian Dasilva has a posse” benefit show. The Aquabats’ former tour manager, Christian Dasilva, passed away recently, and all proceeds from the show went to his family. While the Aquabats posted about it n the Super Show Facebook page, I probably wouldn’t have known about it if it wasn’t for a bit of a coincidence. On Friday, Toshiba had two food trucks at its Chili Cook-off. For the first time ever, I wore a t-shirt to work because I knew it was going to be hot and we were outside. It happened to be an Aquabats t-shirt, and the guy working the Longboard Ice Cream truck knew the Aquabats. Not only was he a friend of the band, he was a former roadie and has been in the Aquabats! Super Show! He told me about the show.
Shortly after we arrived at the Chain Reaction in Anaheim, we saw the Battle Tram pull into the parking lot! It’s a bit smaller than it is in the show…
That didn’t stop gem and me from posing with it though! How awesome is that?
First up was a grunge band from San Diego called The Makeup Sex. I hadn’t heard of them before, and they weren’t mentioned on any of the announcements about the show, so I didn’t know what to expect. Luckily they were pretty entertaining. Strangely, the OC Register’s slideshow featured a handful of photos of the singer and drummer, both, well, fat, sweaty guys (photo 18, for example), yet only included one picture of the attractive bass player (photo 19).
Scotty Professional took the stage while Starpool set up, performing an acoustic version of the Aquabat’s Martian Girl. I really enjoyed it. While I’m not familiar with him, nor had I been to the Chain Reaction before, I could tell that he really cared about Christian Dasilva. I’m glad I recorded his performance; I’ve already ripped the audio so I could listen to the song.
Next up was Starpool. I hadn’t heard of them before I looked them up in preparation of this show. As it turns out, Starpool consists of the former members of Save Ferris and one former member of No Doubt. They were incredibly awesome! Their music was sweet, wonderful ska, and their stage presence was superb. The singer definitely took control of the stage. I especially enjoyed their rendition of “Shout” with the singer jumping into the audience and leading us as we crouched low to the ground, a little bit softer now. More bands need sax, trumpet, and trombone!
I later sent Starpool a Facebook message, letting them know how much I enjoyed the show. I also had to let them know that I bought their album and EP after the show. Great stuff!
Then it was time for the Aquabats to take the stage! In this picture, you can see the M.C. Bat Commander on the left, Eagle “Bones” Falconhawk on guitar next to him further back, Crash McLarson next on bass, and, on the very edge, Ricky Fitness on drums. I don’t think I got any good pictures of Ricky Fitness or Bones really. Oh well.
Can you tell the Commander and Crash are good buddies? It sure looks like it to me! Of course, Crash is also gem’s big friend. He said yes at Comic-Con, you know.
Finally, here’s Jimmy the Robot, who plays the keyboard and sax, in front his keyboard. To his left is Crash. Jimmy grabbed by hand twice in the show! Swoon! The M.C. Bat Commander did once as well! Okay, I’ve seen them before and shaken all their hands, but it’s still fun!
When the show ended, the audience chanted “Where was the Captain,” and the Aquabats came back out to play Captain Hampton. Sadly, this took the place of Fashion Zombies and Burger Rain, which were written on the setlist. I really wanted to hear Burger Rain too!
When they played Pool Party, they threw pool toys in the audience like they’ve done previously. They also called all the young kids onto the stage. The Commander told them that the concession area in the back was the candy zone, and that they’d get free candy if they went over. He said that if the Chain Reaction didn’t want to pay for it, the Aquabats would. And how would the kids get there? Well, the Commander would throw them into the audience to crowd-surf to the back of course! They were all adorable. One very young boy, Jacob, even had a little mustache drawn on his lip like the M.C. Bat Commander!
It was a terrific show, and I had so much fun. I was pretty much soaking wet when I got home, and most of it was likely not my sweat. Those Aquabats fans with rashguards get pretty sweaty. I finally made it to sleep by 1:30, and I can definitely say I was sleepy today!
Christian Dasilva’s Benefit Show Featuring Starpool and The Aquabats! – Chain Reaction – 7/23/12, Priscella Vega, Heard Mentality, OC Weekly Blogs
The Aquabats perform at the Christian Dasilva Benefit Concert at Chain Reaction in Anaheim on Monday, OrangeCounty.com
Comics
How could I be done talking about Comic-Con when I hadn’t actually talked about comics yet? A friend of mine that I met working at Barnes & Noble, Kyle, introduced me to Daredevil, the man without fear! He let me borrow a few different trade paperback collections starting with the one pictured above.
I had to own these for myself, and I had to own more too! I ended up purchasing Daredevil Visionaries: Frank MIller volume 2 ($24.95 list), Daredevil Born Again hardcover ($24.99 list), Daredevil Legends volume 3 – Daredevil The Man Without Fear ($16.95 list), and Elektra hardcover omnibus ($74.99 list). I paid $100 for all of them, which I think is pretty good.
I don’t really need to say anything about this, do I?
What’s that, some sort of tank? No (well, yes), it’s the Batmobile! They had a few different ones outside of SDCC, which was neat.
There was also a really cool panel, Unlocking Arkham: The Forensic Psychiatry of Batman’s Rogues’ Gallery. Forensic psychiatrists H. Eric Bender, M.D., Praveen Kambam, M.D., and Vasilis K. Pozios, M.D. discussed Arkham Asylum, comparing it to real mental health facilities. They also considered Arkham Aylum’s patients and examined whether they would actually be found not guilty by reason of insanity or guilty. It was pretty interesting. As you might guess, Arkham Asylum is much more of a prison than a mental health facility, and many of their “patients” should have been found guilty anyways.
And I think that wraps up my summary of Comic-Con!
John Scalzi
The most exciting part of Comic-Con was getting to meet my favorite author, John Scalzi. He was nice enough to pose with me for the photo shown above!
There were two panels featuring John as well as autographing. There was some confusion about the line, but the folks at the Tor booth did a great job. In fact, after hearing about what Tor has allowed John to do and how they’re selling their e-books DRM free now, I’m very happy with Tor.
Before signing at the Tor booth, comedy and musical duo Paul and Storm played a little song about George R. R. Martin. It was a fun way to start an autograph session. After the song, we were given free copies of Old Man’s War and then got to meet John!
gem had John sign her vinyl, which I posted about earlier, but I’ll show here as well. He signed in red on the hand. It looks like bloody knuckles!
I asked him to sign Old Man’s War, the first book in his fantastic series (soon to be a movie), and told him it was an honor to meet him. He said, “no, it’s an honor to meet you! In fact, I’m going to write that!” That was pretty cool!
I also asked him to sign Zoe’s Tale, the fourth novel in the series. Afterwards, I asked his wife Kristine and daughter Athena to sign as well. I felt excited to meet them too; it feels like I know so much about them from John Scalzi’s blog, the Whatever. They said yes, so now I have a family-autographed novel! It was shortly after the signing that I saw him walking away from the booth and asked for the photograph shown at the top.
To get good seats for the Spotlight on John Scalzi panel, we caught the end of the previous panel and then moved to the front. While waiting for the panel to begin, the audience ended up singing together. John came into the room and decided to help. He led us in a rendition of Don’t Stop Believing before showing us that it’s possible to turn any song into a B-52’s song.
The panel itself was a lot of fun. I managed to record the whole thing. I don’t think John would ever read this, but let me just say sorry anyways for sitting in the front row with a camera aimed at you for an hour. Honestly though, I’m sure he’s used to this.
My final encounter with John was the panel he moderated on comedy in science-fiction and fantasy. It was a very entertaining panel, and I left with an interest in some new books and authors! Again, I was sitting in the very front with a camcorder. It was the last day of Comic-Con, but we woke up early and lined up early to ensure good seats. It paid off!
It was such a pleasure to meet him. I hope someday I can do something awesome enough to get on his radar. It’s a longshot, but you never know!
SDCC 2012 Vinyl Toy
Instead of having each artist in whom gem was interested autograph a piece of his or her work, she had them all autograph a single vinyl toy. I think it was a fantastic idea, and I hope she continues to do this in the future.
You can see it from the front in the picture above. First, it was turned into Jake of Adventure Time by an artist at the Adventure Time booth with drawings on the face, belly button, and fingers (and butt and tail, but that’s shown later). The ears and forehead were customized by Simone Legno of Tokidoki. The Aquabats symbol in the center was drawn by band member Crash McLarson. Amusingly, he had to look at the shirt of the member sitting next to him to remember what it looked like – an ‘A’ with a circle! He must have just wanted to ensure it was perfect. Author John Scalzi autographed the right hand. It looks like bloody knuckles!
This is the autograph of the person who turned it into Jake.
Here’s a close-up shot of Simone Legno’s drawings and autograph. He’s the creator and artist of Tokidoki.
On the side of the head are the autographs of Aquabats members Ricky Fitness and Eagle “Bones” Falconhawk. On the arm is a doodle and autograph by Behemoth’s Dan Paladin. On the back is Aquabats member Crash McLarson’s autograph.
Here’s the back. In the center is a picture of Domo-kun and autograph by Domo-kun’s creator, Tsuneo Gōda. You can also see the tail and butt of Jake.
The back of the ear features a great self-portrait by the M.C. Bat Commander, leader of the Aquabats!
Lastly, here’s a doodle and autograph by Tom Fulp of Behemoth.
The Aquabats!
Do you see that photo up there? That’s me with the Aquabats, the most fun and awesome band ever (obviously)! They were at Comic-Con, and gem snapped this photo of me with them while they were autographing.
This is the poster they signed for me. Sadly, it mentions a show that I didn’t attend; I was tempted, but it seemed better to spend my Comic-Con time actually at Comic-Con. I usually catch there Christmas show in LA anyways because they include past band members.
The MC Bat Commander, lead singer, asked if I wanted it addressed to me as he autographed it, and I told him I’d like it signed to “Peter and gem.” Not only did he do that, but he also started singing a little song. “Peter and gem, together again!”
gem got something signed as well, but I’ll talk about that in a later post.
Besides the poster, we also bought a pack that came with Aquabats boxer-briefs and a sweet, light-blue t-shirt featuring the Aquabats “A” symbol in the center. Later we were walking in downtown at night, and I saw some clothing on the ground. I wouldn’t normally pick up something like that, but something made me wonder if it was Aquabats merchandise. I kicked it with my t-shirt, and it was! We had found a t-shirt for The Aquabats! Super Show!
For those who don’t know, the Aquabats have a mythos that they’re superheroes from Aquabania. Over the course of their albums (and now TV show), they’ve accumulated enemies. One of them, from the album called The Aquabats vs. the Floating Eye of Death, is (as expected) the Floating Eye of Death! This was some pretty sweet cosplay.
I attended their panel on their TV show, The Aquabats! Super Show! Unfortunately, I wasn’t sitting near the front, so the video isn’t great. On top of that, they showed a lot of clips that I wasn’t allowed to record, so I had to edit them out. Even so, I’m glad I recorded it.
One of the things they showed was a Mega 64 video that was given to them to put in the show as a fake commercial. Unfortunately, the Hub, their TV channel, didn’t allow it. It was a commercial for a kit to turn a garage into an adventure play set for kids, built around the idea of a child pressing the garage door button and then rushing to get under it before it closed like Indiana Jones. It was pretty funny, but we couldn’t record it.
I think the most interesting part of the panel was finding out that one of the adults in attendance wrote a letter to the Aquabats years ago as a child suggesting a particular hand motion to do during one of the songs, Martian Girl. After reading the letter, the Aquabats have used that hand motion every time they played the song.
The Broken Yoke, a restaurant in downtown San Diego specializing in eggs, was redone to be a restaurant based on The Hub. Our table featured the Aquabats!
There was a section on the menu called “The MC Bat Commander Breakfast.” Of course, I had to order from it; I had Betty’s Southern Biscuits and Gravy.
As part of Mega 64’s collaboration with the Aquabats, they created commercials for fake “Gloopy” products. Here’s some ketchup rebranded to look like Gloopy Catsup.
Here’s one last thing to share – Gloopy Eyewash. “Pour directly into eyes.”
General Comic-Con
Last weekend was Comic-Con, and I went with gem and Antonio. I had a ton of fun, and I wanted to share a few things over a series of four posts. Above, you’ll see the chalkboard that was in our hotel room. I don’t know why they’d put one in a hotel room, but it was fun. gem customized it for us!
While waiting in line for an Archer panel that filled before we could enter, we saw these two Atlantians yelling at us land–dwellers. They were pretty entertaining; if it wasn’t for them, being in that line would have been wasted time.
I bought a tokidoki x Marvel hat from the tokidoki booth featuring Captain America, one of my favorite heroes. Simone Legno, tokidoki creator and artist, was there, and he autographed the hat. He also drew Adios and the tokidoki symbol of a heart and crossbones. Adios is my favorite tokidoki character. In fact, Simone has also drawn him on my 360.
I wasn’t expecting Little Shop of Horrors cosplay at Comic-Con, but it’s one of my favorites so I was happy! Here’s Seymoure and the Audrey II. It was a puppet, so he could control the plant.
Behemoth was there again with a great, arcade-like booth. Although they did have Castle Crashers, they were heavily featuring their new game, Battleblock Theater. It’s a very fun platformer to which I’m looking forward very much.
I’ll have posts about gem’s toy, the Aquabats, and John Scalzi soon!
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