MoCCA Art Festival 2005
I ran up to NY to see the MoCCA Art Festival this past weekend. It was my first New York trip, actually, so I got to see a bit of New York for the first time too.
The Bus
I did take the bus this time; the bus trip up was uneventful, for the most part. I did try to take a few pictures on the bus but none of them really came out because of the motion. I have to say, though, that the warning stickers in the bathroom (reproduced crudely below) gave me pause:
These signs are often a little ambiguous, but here the message was clear:
- Don’t throw your empty booze bottles in the toilet.
- In fact, don’t drink booze in the bathroom!
- Rather, give your booze to the little man behind the door.
Fortunately, I determined that nothing bad happens if you fail to ply the dustbin midget with with alcohol.
The City
If you’re not used to big city life, you might not be used to the endless canyon-like streets surrounded by mighty skyscrapers, or the traffic or particularly the yellow cars that don’t stop. It’s a totally new experience, and pictures can’t do it justice at all.
In fact, one of the first things you notice upon arriving in the heart of Manhattan is the overpowering funk.
Well, you do. I’m just sayin’.
I had a great time though, and took way too many photographs of the place. It’s ridiculously photogenic. And it is a great city.
We ended up taking the subway part of the way and walking the rest, since they were apparently doing some sort of reshuffling with the subway routes at the time and none of us were quite familiar enough with the subway system to be confident we’d end up in the right place.
Unfortunately the walking in the heat and humidity left me very hungry, but also queasy. I had to split my lunch and dinner because I couldn’t finish either one, even though I was still hungry.
I splurged on a piece of cheesecake later, which was pretty dumb as that was probably the worst possible thing on a touchy stomach. But I was very hungry, and it was … well, cheesecake.
Fortunately nothing bad came of that, either.
The Art Festival
The festival was great. I got to see a number of artists in person.
Probably the most memorable thing was getting a quick sketch of a rat beast from Jeff Smith in my sketchbook.
I did feel a little bad about it actually. His drawing hand was in a hand brace from a hand injury last year (we had to shake hands left-handed), but I have to assume he knew his limits.
I got to meet a number of other folks and picked up several comics; I may review some of them here later.
Other
We also visited a few stores and restaurants. I picked up Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, which I’ve been dying to get for some time, at Kinokuniya, but avoided getting anything else. I’ve been on a book binge the past couple weeks; a bookstore chock full of imports could be a dangerous proposition. ^^;
Getting to see Rockefeller center was interesting. From seeing it in movies, I’d always thought the statue of Promethius was at ground level, but it’s not. It and the skating rink are sort of in a recessed area, about a storey down.
For some reason the sculpture reminds me of that God of War game lately. Kratos was in fact the Hellenic God of Strength (not War). Maybe that discrepancy is explained in the game, I dunno. Never played it. I suppose it’s not like ancient peoples never arbitrarily revised their own pantheons though.
But, anyhow, he was the dude that baby-sat Haephestus, the old softie, to make sure he’d really follow through with riveting Prometheus to the cliff face to have his entrails repeatedly devoured by vultures.
Eh, yeah. Anyway. I had a great time and got to see a lot of good comic stuff. And some not so good stuff. But mostly it was very inspirational.
One of the take-aways from the whole thing was that I really need to pursue something less ambitious than Lunar 8. Something that I can realistically do in ashcan format and run with the el cheapo physical indie comic thing.
I think what I’m going to do is unshelve one of my other projects, The Lost Bus, and run with it. It’s a lot more suited to that format, I think. I don’t think this means I’ll be abandoning Lunar 8 entirely, but we’ll see how things go…