When Mel Caylo of Archaia sent me an invite to his BBQ, I knew I wanted to make cupcakes of their popuar Mouse Guard comic book. I stayed up Saturday night baking vanilla cupcakes for the base, and mini Pop-Tarts on sticks. In the morning I ran to Michael’s and bought Wilton’s brown fondant mix, and sculpted tiny mice. I wrapped the fondant around chocolate chips, and used fruit roll ups for the capes. They turned out really awesome.

At the BBQ, we met lots of really fun people. Mel’s roomate Steve who makes wine. Mike Choi and Dennis Calero (left). Joshua Cozine. Emmett stopped by. Seth Green was there. And then Steve told us about his other roomate, Rafael. The guy who wrote Hackers.

I fantarded out. The thing is, I shoot comic book conventions all the time. Celebrities are pretty normal occurrences, especially people who are in things that I like quite a bit. But Hackers is different. Yes, it’s a cheesy movie and has technically inaccurate points. But it’s also one of my favorites. I ran a hacker zine back when it came out, and I dunno, parts of it resonate with me and my friends in a way that no other movie really can. I rollerbladed to payphones after that movie came out. Also the soundtrack is still one of my favorites. So I was rather excited to meet the guy who wrote it. Oddly, it just got posted to Netflix streaming, and Chris had been pimping it out. Me, Dave, and Jules had been watching it as I made the Mouse Guard cupcakes the night before. Super random.

We hung out with him for like an hour, talking about behind the scenes stuff mostly. Then Jim Mahfood showed up, which was also totally random, since I had no idea he was going to be there. He mentions that Jane Dope is in a play and that it was kinda like Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. Sold.

So we end up at the Strange theater on Melrose, watching Adam-O’s breakfast show. Jane Dope was a rollerskating cereal waitress. Everyone in the audience was eating bowls of cereal. I can’t even explain what it was like, except that it was surreal and awkward and terrible and awesome, all at the same time. I did get to throw a pie at a comedian, who it turns out was one of TommEE’s friends.

After that, Dave, Jules and I went barhopping with Jim Mahfood and his crew. Our first stop was The Drawing Room, a dive bar in Siverlake. One problem: it was karaoke night. But as we were leaving, we realized that Rod Stewart was doing karaoke to one of his own songs. wtf?!!

We escaped across the street to Ye Olde Rustic Inn to drink. Another problem! Trivia night! (Sorry Emmett, trivia sucks when you’re not playing). After almost getting kicked out, we escaped yet again.. this time to 4100, one of my favorite bars in LA. This one had redbull vodkas, and the inside always makes me feel like I’m in a genie bottle. We hung out for a while, then hit King Taco on the way home for California burritos, and watched a crazy lady with a doll yell at people. Best Labor Day weekend ever.

I’m playing a game on deviantART called deviantSURVIVOR. Works like the TV show but with art. This was my entry for this week, where you had to draw five things that start with a letter (I chose V cuz mostly everything else was taken).

Speaking of dA, check out MURO. It’s a html5 photoshop-ish drawing app with brushes and layers, and it’s really really awesome. They recently unveiled it at the big birthday celebration at House of Blues. It works on the iPad too, even though it crashes easily. Here’s something i drew on the iPad with it:

We have a couple spots open on our Antarctica trip if you know anyone who’d like to join us on our once-in-a-lifetime adventure. It’s mostly hackers going, and will be a great opportunity for photographers. They’re limiting tourism to the continent soon. The trip is November 19-30, 2010 and departs from the tip of South America. More info here.

Also, I’m trying to raise money for the trip. I’m making handmade postcards that will be sent from Antarctica. Want one? B/W cards for a $10 donation, and colored ones for $25. Paypal penguinpalace@gmail.com

If you prefer a premade postcard, adopt one our our penguins here.

ComiCon pics are all up on CBR! One of the things I do is run around pop culture events and take pics of comic creators, cosplayers, and celebrities for the biggest and best comic book website around, Comic Book Resources. These shots were done while I had a sprained ankle, a badass camera that I was unfamiliar with, and about 16 hours of sleep over the course of 4-5 days. If you ever have the chance to climb Mt Fuji, don’t do it right before ComiCon. Bad idea.

Thur: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=27666

Fri: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=27743

Sat: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=27804

Sun: http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=27831

Scott Pilgrim Shoot! http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=27432

I think this is the only shot of me at SDCC this year. It’s me and my friend Cesar, at the Hyatt bar. While SDCC was pretty rough, I still had fun cuz a ton of my friends are in that industry. I stayed at Belmont Park with  Dekker and Julia, and got to know their friends as well. We attempted to partyhop a lot, but my fondest memories are going to the Hyatt and running into about a zillion people that I knew. And I got to eat lots of Mexican food, which San Diego does an awesome job at. Shooting the Scott Pilgrim press line was really, really fun.

Saturday night I couldn’t really handle ComiCon anymore, and Junk had talked me into ditching industry events to come out to XBS and Methal’s wedding reception. Plus Dave was going to be there. So I went and it was fantastic.

Kyoto was the capital of Japan for a while, and is a fascinating city seeped in tradition. My favorite parts of the city are the red pagodas and temples. Our bus took us to Kiyomizu Temple first, which has a large Buddhist temple built into the side of a mountain. It also has the Otowa waterfall where you can drink from streams to increase your wisdom, health, and longevity. You can only choose two, because if you drink from all three, you’re greedy and will just have bad luck. There’s also the Jinsu shrine, where you walk with your eyes closed between two rocks. If you make it to the second rock, you’ll find true love.

For lunch we went to the Tofu Resteraunt, Okabeya, where we had hot tofu and a bunch of side dishes. It was nice trying new things, but a bunch of us dashed off to eat crepes right after. Me and Dave split one that had blueberry cheesecake in it. No ice cream in it though   On the way back to the bus, I found a Miyuzaki and Domokun store (seriously, that’s all it had), which made me super super giddy.

Walking around Kinkaku-ji to see the Golden Temple was pretty awesome. It’s a zen Buddhist temple built in 1397, whose top two stories are covered in gold leaf. There was a really nice garden walk on the temple grounds.

After that, we went to another Buddhist temple, Ryōan-ji, and checked out their rock garden.

Afterwards, me, Dave, Matt, and their parents went hunting for some curry. We eventually found a place that we thought had it, but it ended up being something else. It was tasty though. It was their first time ordering food from a vending machine, having the kitchen cook it, and bring it to them.

Then, Dave, Matthew and I went hunting for Cat’s Time, a famous cat cafe in Osaka. We walked and eventually found it, but it was 9:30p and they were closing soon. We got to pet a couple cats though, and the place was adorable. We stopped at a grocery store on the way back (no Tokyo-X, sorry Erin). By the time we got home, our feet were throbbing and exhausted.

Photos in this post by David Mertl and Pinguino.

At 9a we boarded a bus to Nara, which was the first capital of Japan. It later moved to Kyoto. Nara is known for having tons of tamed deer, because the deer there are thought to be the descendants of the Great White Deer spirit. For a while, it was illegal to kill a deer, and if you were found with a dead one, the authorities would have you executed. Eventually, someone left a deer on the doorstep of parliment, and that law was revoked.

The deer are SO absolutely adorable. They’re all over the place, and very friendly. There were tons of baby deer running around, though they were a bit more skittish. Some of the deer had huge sets of antlers, which were fuzzy when you touched them. For $1.50 they sell packs of deer biscuits that are made of rice. It’s like crack for deer. They’ll follow you and try to eat through your purse to get to the biscuits.

We walked through Nara Park, admiring the hundreds of stone lanterns that were shrines to shinto spirits. Our guide explained that Buddhism is so easily accepted in Japan because the first main religion, Shinto, has about 4 billion dieties, and adding one more to the list was no big deal.

The first shrine we came across was one dedicated to love and it’s where single people go for ceremonies, charms, and to pray. It looks very Valentine’s day.

We saw lots of great architecture. One interesting thing about Nara was that since it’s older than the other cities, it had chinese architecture, inspired by the Tang Dynasty. When the Buddhists gained power and moved the government to Kyoto, that’s where the Japanese style of architecture was developed.

We took a break and had a super traditional Japanese lunch. There was somen, miso soup, sekihan rice (rice with red beans), and an assortment of fairly intensely flavored dishes in a bento box. There was some tofu that was super inflated with some broth, tempura fishcakes, pickled stuff, a smoked scallop, and some other stuff. Most of the people in our group were not fans of the bento, but really enjoyed the somen and miso soup.

After lunch, Dave and I went into a gift shop cuz Dave wanted to show me a cute kitten he saw playing in the back. The shopkeeper talked to us a little, and he ended up giving us a giant bag of broken deer biscuits. I went out and soon had four deer surrounding me (three males, one female). The biggest one kept hogging all the food, and actually bodychecked another deer to push it away from my hand. This was the most fun thing I’ve done on the trip so far. Deer have velvety lips, and don’t seem to bite. I did end up with deer slobber all over my hand though (gross!)

We walked to another temple, and there was a loud thunderclap. Instantly, about fifty Japanese people ran towards an alcove. It was sunny. A minute later, the hardest rain I’ve ever been in happened. We all ran for cover, too. I wish I had video of that.

I forgot to pack for rain. Jack gave me his umbrella so I could protect my camera (and Matthew’s camera, and 4 iphones). By the time we all walked to Tōdai-ji to see the biggest bronze Buddha in the world, water was sloshing in my shoes, and I was drenched up to my knees. But it was all worth it, because the Daibutsu (Great Buddha) was mindblowingly gigantic. He is housed in the biggest wooden building in the world. It is 2/3 smaller than the one one it had, which had caught on fire and was rebuilt in 1709. The reason it was made smaller was because the samurai had chopped down too many trees for their forts and castles when they took over, so there wasn’t enough wood.

We got back to the hotel and immediately went out to a pharmacy that Matthew had seen. Jack had gotten attacked by some vampiric bloodsucking insect, which he pulled off his skin and splattered onto a wall. I got 6 mosquito bites yesterday at Osaka Castle, and had a severe allergic reaction. The same thing happened to me 6months ago in Hawaii, so I knew what it was, but it was still really really bad. The pharmacist didn’t speak english, but he handed me a box with a bunch of smiling insects on it.

When we got back, we went to one of the resteraunts in the hotel with Dave’s grandpa. Almost everyone got sushi, which was arranged beautifully. The fish was so fresh that the octopus wasn’t chewy and didn’t have that octopus taste I hate. And everyone (except Dave) was scared of their salmon roe sushi (big poofy orange fish eggs), and gave it all to me Win!

After a five hour nap, Dave, Matthew, and I went back out to Pop Masters to watch another World Cup match. This time, for the most part, we were the only customers there. They were prepared for us; they had the game on and had english menus for us. I got a really delicious lychee orange drink. Then, I drew some pictures and was able to order a couple redbull vodas off-menu. Yay! Spain won, and we came back. I’ve been awake since then, because this is the only time of day I have decently fast internet.

To see all of my Nara pictures, click here.

We’re staying at the City Plaza Osaka Hotel. That night, we ate at the fancy Japanese restaurant with sweeping views of the city. I had some soba egg soup. Today, we  had breakfast at the hotel buffet, which had some American food, but was largely Japanese. It was awesome.

Then we took a walk to the Osaka Castle, in the dripping humidity that none of us were used to.

We found a really interesting shrine there, and bought some fortunes.

Then, we got lost trying to find the giant crabs on Dotonbori, and couldn’t find the amazing ramen place I went to last time I was here. But we ended up at a place that had absolutely fantastic sushi.

For dessert, we had Beard Papa. We split a pie flavored cream puff, which is a zillion times better than any cream puff I’ve seen in LA.

After that, we walked back to the hotel. One of the weirdest things we saw was a 30min line for a newly opened Krispy Kreme.

We found a Kit Kat store, which had aloe yogurt kit-kats. Amazingly, it was really good.

We also saw a random shrine set between a few apartment buildings.

Dave’s dad got me a badge for the International Puzzle Party, and then we chilled in the room. A phone call scared us cuz Dave’s mom let us know the hotel had a 1a curfew. We sent Dave’s brother Matthew downstairs, and he found out that it just meant that the hotel closes, but you can get back in through a door that works with your key. We were worried, because we’re planning on going out at 3a to watch the World Cup.

Uploading this post on our super slow internets; hope it works! More to come.

We started with the pork feet gyoza, which was good, flakey, and didn’t taste like feet at all. Not that I know what feet taste like!

This is the oxtail and truffle oil ramen that Dave and Chris both got. They liked it, but I didn’t as much. It had an overpowering smokey taste that I wasn’t into. I stole an egg though. Yum!

Erin and I both ordered the Foie Gras Ramen and loved it. The broth was incredibly rich and exploding with smokey flavor. The noodles were slippery and crinkley. The foie gras simply dissolved in your mouth, and they gave you a giant chunk of it, too. It was an amazing experience, and if I had the chance to get it again, I would. It’s probably a good thing that this place is only around for a month.

I got interviewed by a new site- ani.me!

Check it out here:  http://www.ani.me/zine/anime/article/13/

The religion behind the Flying Spaghetti Monster was created in 2005 as an argument against the teaching of intelligent design in schools as an alternate to evolution. It was presented to the Kansas Board of Education. It became an internet meme.. and now appears in cupcake form (for Paul’s birthday). I made these last February and forgot to post about them.

Noodles = frosting
Meatballs =  hazelnut candies
Eyes = bits of Pocky mounted to chocolate chips
Marinara = strawberry jam mixed with thawed frozen strawberries
Stalks = Pocky (original flavor)
Cheese = shredded white chocolate chips
Cupcake base flavor = vanilla.

(Above: Rickmond and Paul enjoy FSM cupcakes at The Rustic Spoon)