My mom called today to check up on me and make sure I’m still alive.

She does this after every Comicon.

“How was Comicon? How are you?  How’s Inaki?  How was Comicon?”

Normally, I get annoyed, cuz shit, Mom, Comicon isn’t going to kill me.  I don’t think I was that convincing this time around.  Cramming Comicon into two days is an ill-advised move.  I don’t think I’ll be doing that again.  At this point I’m running on residual buzz from those tiny energy shots I was downing as coffee chasers during the con.  Residual buzz and jetlag.

Of course, Comicon is worth it – it’s always worth it.  I got back last night around 1:31 am and stayed up until 4:21 this morning filing – that was worth it.  My flight to Berkeley was cancelled, forcing me to stay another night in San Diego and causing me some serious anxiety about flying out the next morning – and quite possibly missing Hayao Miyazaki in Berkeley.  To compensate, I stayed up almost the entire night and then took a cab to the airport at some ungodly hour, you know, since I have the nasty habit of missing my flight.  Totally worth it  – even though my flight was delayed.  And speaking of nasty habits, I’ve developed a new one of jolting myself awake during the night and shouting in Chinese “My cellphone!”  thanks to losing my phone for a a period of time during Comicon.  I’m convincing myself that it’s an endearing habit.

Now that the stories are all filed and the next issue of PWCW is on its way to bed; now that I’ve met Mr. Vengeance Park Chan Wook and Mr. Warm’n'Curmudgeonly Hayao Miyazaki; I just want to say thanks to Duncan and Sunyoung for putting me up in Berkeley and getting me into the Miyazaki events – and letting me break the news to begin with.  And Ed and Jason for putting up with the pre-dawn shouting in a foreign language during Comicon.  You guys are awesome.

Next year, same time same place?

I haven’t been blogging from San Diego.  In fact, I haven’t blogged much at all lately.  At this point, having jammed Comicon into two days so that I could come up to Berkeley for the Hayao Miyazaki event has left me exhausted.  Not to mention too much brilliance from Miyazaki-sensei himself – the fire still burns, my friends, the fire still burns.  In Miyazaki, that is.

Here is some of the coverage from Miyazaki’s visit to San Diego Comicon:

LA Times

Blogger Celestial Kitsune has the full text for the San Diego panel that Miyazaki was on.

I’m falling down tired at this point, so will post more tomorrow about Miyazaki’s actual talk.

Last night must have been the all-night birthday party because I swear, we were eatin Japanese fried-chicken with kare-raisu an’ playing Bakugan ’til the dawn of today.

My son is snoring like an old man now, so here’s a small update on Miyazaki and a few other notable tid-bits.

I bumped into a couple of my neighbors who had just caught the Miyazaki double-feature playing right around the corner from us at Symphony Space.  They screened Kiki’s Delivery Service and Castle in the Sky and showed a few clips from Miyazaki’s upcoming American release of Ponyo, Ponyo. They’re always screening something cartoony at Symphony Space so if you’re in the area, bring some popcorn and let’s go to the movies.

Miyazaki’s event at Berkeley’s Zellerbach hall is sold out.   Zellerbach Hall seats over 2,000 people so it will be an intimate talk with Miyazaki-sensei and his closest friends and fans.

If anime/cartoons aren’t your thing, the New York Asian Film Festival is kicking off next weekend.  Grady Hendricks and his band of 40 thieves have posted the schedule and a list of this year’s movies making it a few weekends of double-features for yours truly.

And if you’re the literate type, poet Sesshu Foster is coming to town to do a reading at the Bryant Park Reading Room (btw 5th/6th Ave.) on June 30th, 6:30-8pm.  This event is free and open to the public. I really, really love his poetry and in fact, wrote my senior thesis on L.A. and his book City Terrace Field Manual.

Cathy Park Hong is also reading with him.  I may have gone to Oberlin with her but we don’t talk about that.  Cathy won a Pushcart Prize for her first published book of poetry Translating Mo’um.  She’s a Fullbright Scholar, recipient of an National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and all sort of other awards for her genius.

I, on the other hand, received a beat-up laptop for my efforts in 2006, amassed a collection of comics that even I am impressed with, and am proud owner of a poorly maintained Facebook page.  We have all earned our victories.

And with that, here’s a little something I discovered online: an interview in Bomb Magazine with Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai from 1998.  This was back in the day when Lawrence Chua was managing editor of Bomb and I read it religiously.  This interview I kept a copy of with me on my person at all times – wandering from NYC to the BKK, to HK and my own stay in Chungking Mansions.

I still remember how that paper felt between my fingers, the way the creases frayed when I folded it, and how it went from being an article holding information and transmitting a voice, to an object that I simply carried around, sandwiched between the stamps on my passport.

10 years past and I’m still hanging on his every word.

A lot of hits and a lot of people linking to my post about Miyazaki-sensei’s visit. So, to clarify, Mr. Miyazaki is visiting in July and will be making a public appearance in Berkeley on July 25th. There are plenty more details to come and I will be updating this blog as the information becomes available.

One note I need to make: I jumped the gun in saying that scholar and author Roland Kelts would be in conversation with Mr. Miyazaki on the 25th. As it turns out, he is not yet a confirmed guest, but the organizers hope to have him. My mistake for the error which I do hope to clarify through this update.

Kelts interviewed Haruki Murakami during his public appearance after accepting the Berkeley Japan award. From what I hear, that talk was dreamy and Kelts did a fine job. Here’s to keeping fingers crossed that it will be him again.

When it comes to long essays, I normally do a lot of beating my head against the wall or my desk or any other hard surface that can withstand repeated impact from my thick, thick, fortified skull. But when the muse is a stylish 73 year-old Japanese man in a freshly pressed shirt and lightly distressed denim with thousands upon thousands of pages of work under his belt, and thousands more to come, I try to forgo the headbanging and just dig deep to make it happen.  At this point, given the type of attention he’s been getting for A Drifting Life, I hope that Yoshihiro Tatsumi is everybody’s muse – at least for a day.

Massive love to my saintly editor in Abu Dhabi who did a stellar job of guiding me and trimming down my 3500 word submission to a neat and tidy 2000 words. (*Note: he asked for the unabridged version.)  And to D&Q  for all their help.

My article, Gladly Drawn Boy, on Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s graphic memoir, A Drifting Life for the Review section of the Abu Dhabi National.

My interview with Tatsumi-sensei for Publishers Weekly.

And no, as long as sensei is crankin it out, I will never be done with gekiga.

I’ve been putting some long hours into a mammoth essay that I’m writing about Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s gekiga memoir, A Drifting Life.  One thing that helped, aside from John Dowers’ history of post-war Japan, Embracing Defeat, and the tomboy shojo manga series High School Debut, was bummin around the city with Mr. and Mrs. Tatsumi.

The most stylish couple in comics: James Dean and Yoko Ono.

The Tatsumi’s were visiting NYC from Japan for the PEN World Voices festival over the weekend – they’re now in Toronto for TCAF – and sharing a plate of nachos with them – and Peggy Burns, and Anne Ishii, and this other reporter, Casey from the New York Press who I wasn’t all that thrilled about having around – was really quite dreamy.  Peggy set up this interview for the two of us journos with Anne translating and between bites of vegetable fajita,  Mr. Tatsumi just answered our questions.

I’m going to quantify the next statement by first admitting to having only interviewed a handful of people, but outside of Mr. Tatsumi, I have never met anyone as prolific who is so gracious, so modest, so sincere, and so captivating. I was hanging on Tatsumi’s every word and I don’t speak or understand a lick of Japanese.

At the Austrian society where Tatsumi first spoke on Thursday, the man moderating had set up a slideshow of the short story, The Pushman.  As we all looked at it, Tatsumi offered commentary like “I don’t remember this story” and  “The artwork isn’t very good”  In the scene where the women are ripping off the pushman’s clothes, Tatsumi said “Hmm. I really don’t know how to explain this” then added “I guess I had some issues with women.”  At the last slide, Tatsumi commented “I’d really like to see what happens next.”

I can’t say much about the interview or the talks – you kinda just had to be there – since my story hasn’t run yet, but here are some photos of Mr. Tatsumi signing my copy of A Drifting Life:

The evening ended with a Szechuan dinner where the Tatsumi’s were telling stories about comics and life in Japan, and teasing Adrian about his facial hair.  My grandmother used to tease me the same way, and I hated it.  But watching Mr. Tatsumi do it to Adrian was mad funny.  I started laughing so hard I thought rice was gonna come out of my nose.

Big love to Peggy Burns of D&Q and Anne Ishii of herself for making this happen.  Check out the James Dean+Ono stylings of the Tatsumi’s in Toronto if you can.  This blog post is boring as hell given how good the weekend went – but it was so good that I don’t even want to share.