Comic Nerd Party

On Saturday night, we went to celebrate our friends Mike & Luis who both had birthdays this week. The party was hosted by Josh Dysart (who is a pretty famous comic writer, working with Mike Mignola) and Ryan was excited to get to nerd out all over Josh, who was very accommodating (and if I do say myself, pretty enthusiastic about talking shop). Josh has this fantastic little house in Venice, one block from the beach that is super cool and people were shoe-horned into every nook and cranny. It was like something from a movie, where you have to crawl between people's legs to get from one room to the next. Very funny.

I spent most of the night out on his lovely front patio which looks into the giant picture window into the living room, where the band was playing and people were dancing. It was like watching this classic party on TV, only in surround sound. Someone brought their Boston Terrier, whose name was Jack Cheese (!) and he and I became fast friends and played ball a lot.

The group was such an interesting mixed bag. Lots of comic people, both industry types and also just huge fans (Mike co-owns the Comic Bug), lots of actors and artists and so many familiar faces. It was funny because there were people that I started chatting with because I knew them from somewhere, and I assumed it was from a convention or previous comic nerd party, but it turns out that oh, they're on TV. Like Bret McKenzie who we kept whispering ("Where do we know him from? Does he work for Marvel?") about... turns out he's from Flight of the Conchords. I also spent a lot of time chatting with a guy who works for Disney in the archiving department. He works in a top secret location, overseeing the team who is diligently scanning and saving all of the original artwork from the early Disney movies. In fact, he told me that the reason that there is a special edition of Sleeping Beauty coming out is because a bunch of the original artwork (hand-painted backgrounds, etc.) was recently discovered by accident in a back closet of a Japanese museum where it had been loaned decades ago and everyone had forgotten about it. I also met a girl whose father was an Imagineer at Disneyland and a few random drunk people from the street. GOOD TIMES!

We also walked down a couple of blocks to the "Gothic House" which is this hilariously over-done house nestled between all the other beach houses (you know, the kind with sand dollars on the porch). Mine are all night time shots, but some other Flickreenos have daytime pics. Ah, Venice Beach.