"My birthday present to everyone" Friday June 22nd, 2007

For those of you who don't know me it is true that today happens to be my birthday. I'm not really doing anything on my birthday, but that's okay since it gave me the time to finish the comic despite my travels into the city earlier into the week. Before I go into my trip into the city I'll talk about the comic so those of you only wanting to hear about the comic don't have to sit through a couple minutes of me rambling. It's okay if you don't want to sit through it, my rambling is nowhere as voluble as Tycho's.

Originally I had cut out the entire part with Dawson and Caine, and went more into Joe's escape plan. However the more I thought about it, the more it felt like I was pulling a Harry Osborne Miracle Regeneration move from Spiderman 3 since the next time you would see Dawson he would be fine and there would be no mention really of Kentan. So I went back to my original script and shortened the escape planning. The only part you miss out on the 'extended' escape plan scene is Joe explaining that they will use Kentan's second Ankoku Kyosei as interference as they ran, got some things, and then went into hiding. Julienne was going to say that they would eventually be found. Dave's intelligence figures out the real reason why Joe is stalling as he mentions to julienne that they aren't hiding because they are afraid, they are hiding in the hopes that someone would return. They all realize Joe's plan is thus to go into hiding to wait for Yuki. I figured the Dawson and Caine part added more to the coherence of the story so I used that. Why didn't I just do both and push the Dawson scene back one comic? There just isn't room in the next comic for a half scene. To do that would break up the flow of the upcoming comics. Anyway this was just an example of the on-the-fly changes I make to the comic script and story every once in a while.

Now for those of you interested in my travels into the city to meet with my cousin and her daughter I will now start on that portion of my rant. I went into the city with my dad to meet with my cousin Mayumi and her daughter Airi. I should mention that Airi is not a common Japanese name at all and most of the time her mom calls her Ai-chan as did my dad and myself. We did the whole southern Manhattan tour of Ground Zero, Statue of Liberty, Battery Park, Wall St, South Street Seaport, Chinatown, and Little Italy. From there we went to the Empire State Building and went to the observatory. After that was a short excursion into Times Square before they went back to their hotel room in the Hilton to rest before dinner. My dad and I ended up chilling out in Starbucks while we waited. Then all of us met up with my brother and we had dinner at a pretty cool Italian restaurant on 44th Street called Dopo Teatro. afterwards we went back up into the Broadway district to see Beauty and the Beast.

Despite living on LI for so long, I have never been to a Broadway play. I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I mean I knew what was going to happen and the songs that they were going to do since I like every other sane person has watched Disney's Beauty and the Beast. I happen to think that B& the B is the best Disney movie from the current Renaissance age of animation. Of course a case can be made successfully for Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Lion King. I would not argue you if you chose one of those to be the best as compared to say Pocahontas or Atlantis. However seeing as B & the B is my favorite it was very sweet to see it on Broadway before it leaves forever next month. I don't think I've been to a show that uses that many set changes or effects and I really was surprised by how awesome everything looked. They made the  final transformation of the Beast back into the Prince actually look like how it does in the movie... you know the whole body floating up into the air and then twisting around before transforming back. It was really cool. I will note that the whole spectacular ballroom dance to the Beauty and the Beast song that still gets me when I watch the movie was not nearly as good in the theater. I suppose I was expecting something a bit more huge for the set, but it just wasn't to be. I think that was my only sore point of the show. My favorite song from the movie, "Gaston" was perfect and the added lyric was a huge bonus for me.

Anyway my cousin her daughter loved the show as did my dad. We dropped them back off at the hotel and booked back to Penn station to make the next train back to LI. All told we left LI at 8 in the morning and didn't get back till 12:30.

Well like I said I should try and do something for my birthday so I suppose I will get going. I will hopefully see you on the Monday/Tuesday update and until then, have a great weekend!

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