{"id":127,"date":"2007-11-26T10:07:17","date_gmt":"2007-11-26T16:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/?p=127"},"modified":"2010-04-26T11:34:32","modified_gmt":"2010-04-26T17:34:32","slug":"117-a-fantastic-dinner-san-diego-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/archives\/127","title":{"rendered":"117. A FANTASTIC DINNER, San Diego 2006"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/o:p><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u00a0had been pretty regularly bugging Ryan Sook over the last few years to see when he would be going to San Diego, and year after year, he\u2019d say he just doesn\u2019t go to that con, because it\u2019s too expensive, and too far away.\u00a0 <\/span>He told me the only cons he goes to are Wondercon and the Supercon in Oakland.\u00a0 <\/span>Both of which are relatively \u201clocal\u201d for him, in the grander scheme of things.<\/p>\n

So imagine my surprise when I heard from a mutual friend that he was down this year!\u00a0 <\/span>On the first night, as so often happens at this immense convention, I was sitting at the booth, and I just happened to see him standing nearby.\u00a0 <\/span>I went running out to intercept him, and sure enough, it turns out that Adam Hughes, who he met at Supercon, was able to get him a booth in artist\u2019s alley, sitting between Adam and Bernie Wrightson, in the same row as Tim Bradstreet.\u00a0 <\/span>Talk about getting set up in the power aisle!<\/p>\n

I told him Elizabeth and I really wanted to spend some time with him, and he seemed up for it, and we decided to go get sushi one night.\u00a0 <\/span>He hadn\u2019t really had much experience with sushi, but we knew a place that was decent in quality, but amazingly cheap for sushi.<\/p>\n

At the end of the convention, he met me at my table, and we walked to the sushi restaurant together.\u00a0 <\/span>My wife was meeting us there with Matt Silady.\u00a0 <\/span>She told me the street cross-sections, and Ryan and I began heading the direction we thought it was.\u00a0 <\/span>Then Ryan figured out we were going the wrong way, and we headed back the four or five blocks we\u2019d gotten off track.\u00a0 <\/span>Then Elizabeth called us back, and said she\u2019d gotten the address wrong, and we headed back the four or five blocks we\u2019d just come from.<\/p>\n

We had plenty of opportunity to visit during all this walking.\u00a0 <\/span>He was talking about how he charges so little for his convention sketches, compared to what a lot of people were charging, but he just doesn\u2019t feel comfortable charging more.\u00a0 <\/span>He said that sometimes, you do a sketch, and it just doesn\u2019t turn out as good as you\u2019d like it to, and he feels that the inexpensive amount he\u2019s charging is fair, in case of eventualities such as this.\u00a0 <\/span>I asked him if he\u2019d ever looked on ebay the day after the cons, and he said he knew exactly how much his sketches were selling for.\u00a0 <\/span>Just a year before, he wasn\u2019t charging for them at all, so it was a big deal to him that he was charging the tiny amount he was charging, as it was.\u00a0 <\/span>We talked about how his name is worth a dollar amount now.\u00a0 <\/span>We talked about not underpaying himself for his talent.\u00a0 <\/span>Finally we discussed him maybe having a secret code-word for all his die-hard fans of many years bygone, and how if they use the code-word, he\u2019ll charge them less, but he\u2019ll have a regular charging amount that is more.\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t know what he\u2019s going to decide to do.<\/p>\n

I was telling him about my experiences with Steranko, and with Simon Bisley.\u00a0 <\/span>He said Mike Mignola had a fun Simon Bisley story, which I have to share.\u00a0 <\/span>Mike had never really talked to Simon much, but one night, got a call from him, at I think around eleven at night.\u00a0 <\/span>Mike has a kid, and is usually sound asleep by this time, but just happened to be up that particular night.\u00a0 <\/span>He said, Hello?\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

On the other line, with his British accent: Mike?\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Yeah.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is Simon Bisley.\u201d<\/p>\n

An uncomfortable pause, as Mike is wondering why Simon is calling.<\/p>\n

Simon: What time is it there?\u00a0 <\/span>(Mike lives in New York.\u00a0 <\/span>Simon lives in the UK.)<\/p>\n

Mike: It\u2019s 11 pm.<\/p>\n

Simon: Well, okay.\u00a0 <\/span>Thanks.<\/p>\n

And that was the phone call.<\/p>\n

Good \u2018ol Simon.<\/p>\n

Later, I saw Mike Mignola, and said we should swap Simon Bisley stories.\u00a0 <\/span>Mike said, he didn\u2019t have any, except that Simon called him in the middle of the night once, and asked what time it was.\u00a0 <\/span>I said to Mike, \u201cWell, all right then,\u201d because I was trying to mimic Simon\u2019s response, but then Mike and I had an uncomfortable silence, as I suspect Mike thought I was telling him that this was the end of our conversation.<\/p>\n

As we spent more time with Ryan that night for dinner, he kept slipping out interesting things that I never would have guessed about him.\u00a0 <\/span>We knew he was religious, but he said he was a pastor at his church.\u00a0 <\/span>He said he used to smoke when he was younger.\u00a0 <\/span>He used to work in construction, doing serious manual labor.\u00a0 <\/span>He used to be a drummer in a band, and opened up for Hole!\u00a0 <\/span>And he and his wife were high school sweethearts.\u00a0 <\/span>What an interesting guy.\u00a0 <\/span>We had a blast with him!\u00a0 <\/span>We told him we would love to come visit him at his home on the coast (he invited us way back at Supercon), and he again offered his warm invite.\u00a0 <\/span>If only we can find a way to make it the five hour drive, with a little one on the way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u00a0had been pretty regularly bugging Ryan Sook over the last few years to see when he would be going to San Diego, and year after year, he\u2019d say he just doesn\u2019t go to that con, because it\u2019s too expensive, and too far away.\u00a0 He told me the only cons he goes to are Wondercon and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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and year after year, he\u2019d say he just doesn\u2019t go to that con, because it\u2019s too expensive, and too far away.\u00a0 He told me the only cons he goes to are Wondercon and…","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}