Willo O'Brien

You know you’re about to have a great time when you get several warnings from people, i.e. stay out of trouble, be careful, etc. :) aww yaaa zazz girl! bring it ON!

anyone got an extra 15″ powerbook battery they could lend me? It’d be handy to have on my long string of flights I have coming up! SF peeps only need apply, as I’ve only got 24 hours to nab one. Worth a shot though as it’d be sweet! Thanks

Awww yaaaa, Darren! ;)

Lyne joined me for a night on the town Saturday night. Around 10pm I went & got her (she already had a few Zeitgeist beers in her which for Lightweight Lyne is hilarious) & we headed down to Swig for Kevin’s going away party. Swig (yelp review) is a bar we normally wouldn’t have gone to – who goes to bars downtown? :) But anything for Kev! (he actually got the hookup through a friend of a friend for a private party room upstairs – and for the record, I’m sure there’s probably some very nice bars downtown. I just mostly frequent bars that have live music and/or people dressed in nothing fancier than t-shirts & jeans. :)

Kevin has been my main contact at TicketWeb (TW is one of my main clients – but how would you all know since I haven’t updated my portfolio in 1.5 years!? *raises fist at self* :p), and he has been absolutely STELLAR to work with. So on top of it, and a super nice guy to boot. We’ve enjoyed a few years of TW Christmas parties together (such a great group there) and last December we even left the main holiday party & closed down the bars in the Mission (photo). Such good times… and, as I said but I cannot stress enough, he’s been totally awesome to work with. I am very sorry to see him go – but I’m stoked for him because he’s bought a round the world ticket & is traveling his pants off for the unforseeable future! Luuuuuuuuucky!

So, loverboy Darren up there (boykani) is actually how I got the TW gig. (Yes, I will now be your best friend forever and ever, D) Kevin, Frasier (another TW guy I’ve worked with cuz he engineers all the HTML and images I deliver them!) and him used to work together. So it was great that he was down at Swig to swig with us as well!

We took a ton of snaphappy photos that night – some of them absolutely hilarious (LOL!) – and had a grand time. :) Oh, and here’s Kevin’s photos from the night, too.

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I also posted photos from last week’s BAMboozled meeting (Jake, my Co-Facilitator/Editor’s last meeting with us who I will miss SO bad!!!) where we played a game & ate cake – and took a group photo! So you can see the teens I work with! They’re awesome. :)

I have this feeling like I’m right on the edge of the rest of my life.

My life is a blank canvas. Before me stretches: the Summer of 2005. Anything Can Happen.

I love my life, where I live, and the opportunities that lie in front of me: The Adventures.

mwah! I kiss you, LIFE. xoxoxoxoxoxo

You should most definitely try to get to a Comic store today for a free comic book, but if you’re trapped and glued to your computer like me, I *highly* recommend you discover the awesome genious of these online comics:

Questionable Content RULES! My favorite is his indie-cred battle comic, and this one cracks me up (awesoemPC1998!! hahaa) The guy’s a huge music fan, which makes these comics right up my alley! I highly recommend just going to the very first one & starting from the beginning. Then bookmark where you left off if you have to do something else… that’s what I’m doing. :)

He also recently started IndieTits – which is funny cuz it’s just birds talking, always the same template. This one cracks me up. And this one is for my sexy bass players, Hez & Misty. :)

I also just found this guy’s comics, The Perry Bible Fellowship (ha), most of which are hilarious and creative. Check out his movies, too.

And I absolutely love Matt Clark’s art, Robot the Robot. Wow, he is so talented!!

And last, but not least, aaawwww! bunny suicides!

Wow! An iPod vending machine! What will they think of next? – via boingboing

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Today is Free Comic Book Day!

Today the Shooting Gallery SF is having a Live Painting Day! My friend Eric Joyner is there, and I was really hoping to be able to break away from work here & go, but I don’t think I can. I love watching people do their art!

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No, I’m not going to Austin City Limits or Sasquatch. Believe me, I’d like nothing more than to travel around going to music festival after music festival!! I’d love to hit the CMJ Music Marathon in September (New York), and the Voodoo Music Experience in October (New Orleans), too… but with my Toronto/NYC trip next week (STOKED), and wanting to get overseas this fall (crossing my fingers)… I’ll just be saving my pennies up for SXSW06 in Austin next Spring!

I am getting *so* excited for my upcoming trip!! I’ll be in Toronto from May 12-17 (stayin with the crippler!), then in NYC from the 17-23rd, where I’ll be staying with Sarah and maybe even a little with Karrie and her beau, if Sarah gets sick of me :) Oh & Jem & Tania will be in NYC at the same time! woohoo!

Any of you live in Toronto or NYC?! Want to meet up for coffee or a beer? Illustrators, designers, bloggers, music lovers?

I’m bummed I’ll be just missing this Toronto Comic Art Festival! I also gotta start looking at the lineups in each city to plan some shows!!

Twice in the last 6 months I’ve had people ask me what ‘xo’ means. haha! What are you, an alien from another country!? (no offense, H) It just cracks me up.. who doesn’t know what xo means!? Well, apparently a couple people. Understandably the first person actually was, albeit not an alien, from another country… so OK… I’ll let that slide :) But someone who grew up in America asked me today and I just thought it was so cute.

So in case I have the opportunity to school more people on the glory that is the ‘x’ and ‘o’:
they’re kisses & hugs, sillies! x is a kiss, o is a hug… so when you reaaaaally love someone, it looks like this:
xoxoxooxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxo (and sometimes I throw in a ‘to infinity’ to really drive it home :p)

ok bye!
xoxo
w

p.s. Steve (of the famed Sneeze!) just relayed a hilarious bit the late, great Mitch Hedberg had done regarding the ‘x’…

“Xylophone is spelled with an X. It’s like X didn’t have enough to do sothey had to promise it more. “Okay, you won’t start alot of words, but you will have a co-staring role in Tic-Tac-Toe. And you will be aquainted with hugs and kisses. and you will make writing christmas easier. and you will mark the spot. and you will incedentaly start Xylophone. Are you happy now, you f*cking X?”

here’s some more great lines from that genius.

p.s.s. since we’re on the topic of people blowing me away with things I thought were common knowledge.. let me throw another one out that I was dumbfounded my friends didn’t know:

When you eat asparagus, your pee smells funny afterwards!

I mean, hello!? doesn’t everyone know that!? :)

Hey! For those of you living in San Francisco – you know that new “Java Detour” place on Van Ness & Division? Well I’ve passed by it a gazillion times (it’s unfortunately on the wrong side of the street for my normal route past there, so it makes it really inconvenient to get to most every time I really want to go), and finally went today! I really like the idea of drive up coffee places… and was hoping this new place was doing well and didn’t go out of business before I got to try it! (like kosmo.com & webvan.com)

So this afternoon I was finally going in the [more convenient] direction to pop in there, and thought I’d get myself a decaf soy latte & check it out. And great news!! They don’t have just coffee!! This place is cool! They’ve got smoothies, tea, chai, pastries and more! Check out their menu!

I’m totally more excited about it now that I know I can get a drive through SMOOTHIE! Which is exactly what I got today… and it was GOOD! And the dude at the window was super nice & he said they’re doing pretty well! And they’re even open late – which most coffee shops close early. Pretty Cool! Now if they’d just open one up across the street! hahaa

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Speaking of drive up things… I wish there were drive up drop mailboxes!

AWESOME! 5 is my favorite number! I’m going to have to see if Lyne wants to go for dinner – even though I’ll have to come back here & work afterwards, at least I can celebrate a little! And a girls gotta eat! :)

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I’m having a big dilemma over my illustration today… I have worked a lot in Flash, and then recently even used Fireworks (since I’m so familiar w/ it’s bezier and how it manages it’s vector shapes etc) & then importing that into Photoshop to convert it to 300DPI & CMYK for a print job…. and now I’m trying Expression, and I *really* like the lines that it creates – but when exported into Illustrator or Flash there’s a gazillion points. :/ It’s great to play and try different things, but I sure wish I could just feel good about sticking with one – that I feel like will be: 1.) able to maintain my style 2.) Be vector for ease of color changes and symbol usage for potential flash projects down the line, editing, etc & 3.) good for print projects. OY! Lots to think about. Illustrator is the obvious choice, in away – althought it doesn’t do some of the cool things Expression does. Anyway – that’s my world today. I posted about it in more detail on the illustration friday forum if any of you want to pick up the conversation with me there.

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Lastnight we had to say goodbye to Jake, our wonderful editor (and my co-facilitator) at Bamboozled. So we had a party, played Taboo & ate cake to ward off the tears. Jake is an incredible person that I feel so grateful to have known for the last couple years. He’s creative, funny, humble, kind, and an extremely talented writer & musician (also in BLAMMOS). I’m going to miss him so much… *sniff*

So now I have to find a new editor/co-facilitator… and I can only pray I find someone as awesome as him. He was so great with the youth and I feel like we were such a great team. Changes like this are so tough. Jake’s moving on to move back to Vermont with his fiance where they both have great jobs lined up and their family is there, etc. And yet it’s been hard for him (and us) to say goodbye. As Jake says… it’s times like make life beautiful and horrible all at the same time. I hear that!

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oh – eek! I have to run to a meeting – cya!