Day 1
Trying to remember the day in full order with ALL its happenings would be impossible, but I’ll mention that the first thing I did was go to see Louis Gossett Jr. and procure his memoir, An Actor and A Gentleman, and a photo.
I took a quick detour and decided I’d go and get a few things in between, so I got myself former Senator Gary Hart’s new book, The Thunder and the Sunshine and a few other items along the way like Debbie Macomber’s cook book, a BLAD for Matthew Reinhart’s DC Superheroes book, etc.
Next up was Rick Springfield. Rick has a book called LATE, LATE NIGHT coming out in October. They didn’t have Galleys, but they had a special CD with some of his biggest hits and I got a fab pic.
I followed that up with seeing my old college friend David Ezra Stein, meeting Charlie Higson, running around like mad, seeing Adri and the crew at Mark Batty, getting stuff, talking to Eric Shanower and then Ron Marz, running around more, saying hello to Martha Cooper, bumping into Bob Fingerman, seeing other friends and acquaintainces, through circumstance getting to meet Martin Kove after missing his performance, meeting L.A. Banks and then talking to Todd McFarlane and then a bunch of just walking the floor till closing to see what I could discover that would blow me away.
Day 2
First up was Larry Doyle, who let me know that the script for “Go, Mutants!” was now in draft 2. I’m looking forward to reading the book, but the premise alone really makes me hope the movie happens. I grabbed a couple of unplanned things, but then rushed across the hall to wait in line for Tony Hawk.
That line was really long and intense, but I had nice conversations while waiting and I got a free Tony Hawk lid out of it and this shot.
After Tony Hawk I actually ended up having a lot of time to kill till Mick Foley so I walked around a lot and got some really cool items actually (haul list coming soon). It was fun just walking around seeing and exploring. I didn’t take photos though… book expos are pretty boring.
Right before Mick Foley I saw a drawing of a kid cowboy on a dinosaur that really caught my eye. Turns of the drawing was by J. Calafiore, one of the comic artists I happen to like a lot. I ended up talking to him and the writer, J.P. Carlson of the book that the image was for a bunch. It’s called Rex Riders.
Then I was smart to run over at 2 PM for the 2:30 signing of Foley cause right after I got on line it got huge! It was good seeing Mick again for the 4th time. He’s as awesome as ever and I’m already on page 90 of the book.
I had more time to kill after Foley and getting my last main book of the day PARIAH by Bob Fingerman. So I went and grabbed myself a GLEE shirt, spoke to Keith R.A. DeCandido for a bit, got disappointed to find out Garth Ennis didn’t make it to the show, got more books and headed over.
Afterwards I had enough, it was time to reorganize and head downtown to Deitch for the Beyond The Street book signing. In my reorganizing I somehow left a bag at Jacob Javits, none of my books were in it, but my glasses were. Luckily Javits have the bag!
The signing was a spirited affair with many of the artists featured in the book there, so tons of signatures. The main surprises of the night were Mr. Brainwash AKA Thierry Guetta with an appearance despite not being in the book and Morgan Spurlock who happens to be a big streetart lover and a friend of Ron English’s.
Soon I was beat and could take no more and rain was coming. With 22 books including the 12 inch tall, 5 pound Beyond The Street I headed home.
