Comic-con has come and gone

Life-size Iron Man (P1020556)
taken by me

Thoughts on my 4th Comic-Con...

Wednesday through Friday seemed busier on the dealer floor than did Saturday and Sunday was much slower than last year. It was absolutely crazy on Wednesday.

Last year, I sat in Hall H all day for two days. This year, I only sat through Kevin Smith on Friday night and Heroes and Lost on Saturday.

Kevin Smith's panel was OK, but not as funny as in past years. I love Seth Rogen, but I hope he has more than one note in him (stoner dude).

Seeing the first episode of Heroes for the new season two months early was pretty cool. I just with Kara had been there to see it with me. Now I have to keep all these secrets!

The Lost panel would have sucked, except for the funny gifts for the people that came up and asked questions. They didn't give anything away about the next season, so it seemed like a waste of time.

The line for the big rooms — except for Hall H — were just ridiculous. I lined up 90 minutes before Dexter and still missed the first 10 minutes. I'm also pissed that I lined up 90 minues before the Battlestar Galactica panel and still didn't get into the room, plus I was only 20 people from the front of the line when they announced that no one else was getting in to BSG. I should have stayed in Hall H to see Terminator Salvation.

Triumph insults Comic-Con (P1020586)
taken by me

The TV Funhouse panel was hilarious and it was great fun being insulted by Triumph (Robert Smigel). Last year, the funniest panel was the Sarah Silverman Show, but I skipped out on Sarah this year....

Instead, I got free passes (and a free set of anal beads, the coolest freebie ever!) to see Choke, the newest Chuck Palahniuk adaptation (by Clark Gregg) starring Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, Kelly Macdonald and Brad William Henke. I haven't read the novel (I seldom read fiction), but the movie was really good. Plus, there was a Q&A session after the screening with the director and writer (and supporting actor) Clark Gregg. I highly recommend the movie, but you should probably leave your anal beads at home and just enjoy the show.

Oh, and of course, I took pictures at Comic-Con and posted them here. I took a lot less photos this year and only a few with a scantily-clad female, but I hope you enjoy them nonetheless.

Our house "re-do" has started

The new cabinets have been installed in our kitchen/dining area (just this morning). There's still a lot more to come with new furniture in the bedroom, dining room and living room and new French Doors (the third set since we've moved in almost five years ago) in the bedroom.

It's Comic-Con time again!

Just a quick note that I'll be at Comic-Con again this year, starting this afternoon as soon as Jimmy G swings by to pick me up. Expect lots more pictures in my Flickr photostream soon!

Cult Night Flight movie finally comes to DVD

Being a teen in the early 80s, I enjoyed staying up late and watching the cult movies that were found on late night TV. One of my favorite shows (if you could call it a show) was Night Flight (on the USA Network), which always delivered bizarre and interesting stuff to my head. But of all the things that I remember watching those late nights, one movie stands out as something that I've always wanted to see again: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains.

It was a story of a female punk rock band that hit it big and I remember thinking that it was pretty good. I also remember falling asleep (or having to go to bed) before it ended, so it's something that I've always wanted to finish watching, but I never saw it aired on TV again. I later discovered that the movie was never released in theatres nor on video, which added to my curiousity. Over the last few years, I've been trying to find a copy and I finally bought a bootleg at Comic-Con a few years ago. Unfortunately, the quality of the video on that bootleg was not very good, I'm a bit of snob when it comes to what I'll bring myself to watch and I've never actually watched the thing. Instead, I've been waiting and hoping for a better copy to show up.

Well, it appears that my wait is almost over. According to a new item from USA Today, the Fabulous Stains are coming to DVD on September 16, courtesy Rhino. I, for one, am looking forward to finally seeing this movie again and I am thrilled that it will be an official release that has to look better than my bootleg.

Technorati Tags: movies, fabulous stains

Outlook 2007 - Still Craptastic after a year

You can read my original post on this subject here.

A year and a service pack later and I'm still having problems with Outlook. The latest bug is one that's plagued me since Outlook 2007 came out. I sort my Inbox by the Received date with the most recent emails at the top. When I have several unread emails in my Inbox, I like to open the oldest one first, read it in a separate window, act on it by deleting it or moving it to another folder (or ignoring it) and then automatically moving to the email directly above the email I just read. In previous versions of Outlook, this always worked flawlessly, even if the option for it is named based on the assumption that everyone sorts their Inbox in the exact opposite order that I do. In Outlook 2007, the option is found by going to Tools, Options, Preferences tab, E-mail Options button and it's the select box at the top of the dialog: "After moving or deleting an open item:"; I set the option to "open the previous item" (which should be worded as, "open the item above").

The bug is that if you receive a new email while you are reading an older email, Outlook 2007 forgets where you are in your Inbox and as soon as you delete or move the email you're reading, it jumps past the "previous" item (the one immediately above it) and instead opens up the email you just received. I don't want to read that email yet and, worse, this behavior sometimes tricks me into believing that I've gone through all the items in my Inbox after I've read the email that just came in and nothing else is opened automatically.

I did a Google search and could find no mention of this problem anywhere. So, I'm posting it here in the hope that someone at MS has a search alert setup for Outlook 2007, will see this post, acknowledge that it's a bug and fix it. Come on, MS, this worked for years and now it's broke.

Revisiting to my original list from last year:

• ICS problem that was affecting Google Calendar - Either MS fixed the problem or Google Calendar worked around it, but it's working OK now.
  
• If I shut it down and then hibernate my computer too soon after the shutdown, when I start it up again, it tells me that it "failed to shutdown correctly" and I have to wait several minutes for a fruitless and pointless error check to complete before I can use Outlook again. - This occurs much less in recent weeks. I think it was addressed by a patch that dealt with plugins or addins that didn't release all their threads (or something like that).
  
• It crashes randomly - for the last crash, all I did was close a Note window and boom. - I still get random crashes, but not as many as I used to.
  
• It's terribly slow - much slower to start up, much slower to deliver mail. - Still terribly slow.
  
• I can't delete bad nicknames because the MS article that explains how to do this is wrong and I can't figure out where the new nickname file is stored. - MS finally documented that the new nickname file name for Outlook 2007. I think it's outlook.nk2, but I'm too tired to search for this now, but I deleted the file and I no longer have this problem or the next one.
  
• Because I can't delete bad nicknames, it has this annoying habit of not sending some emails - they get stuck in the Outbox because the email address is invalid but there is no visible warning to me that they're there.

Crazed Pooch

When Kara adopted Gracie 9 years ago, the shelter said that she was part Dalmation and part Labrador Retriever. Her vet at the time, though, thought she was a mix of Lab and Weimaraner and we think that's far more likely to be the case.

Old Crazy Eyes

If you know anything about Weimaraners, you know that they have a tendency to be high-spirited and to suffer from separation anxiety and that surely matches our Gracie. Again, today, she showed just how crazed she can become when we came home to find her latest round of house destruction. This time, she destroyed several cans of diet soda that were still in a case by the back door, as well as some additional remodeling of the trim around the back door. We think this round was triggered by a visit from our gardener, but with Gracie, we can never be sure.

She destroyed (see picture to the right) the original French doors shortly after we moved into the new house and she's chewed the door knobs and locks off the new doors original hardware and has chewed up the new doors hardware. Hopefully, she won't completely destroy the new doors before she wears out all her teeth.

As Bluto Blutarski would say, Food Fight!

This clip is incredible.



How many conflicts did you recognize? You can find a cheatsheat on the creator, Stefan Nadelman's web site. Link

Help put Paul Broadway on the ballot

Paul Broadway needs signatures to get on the ballot for the upcoming San Diego City Council, District Three elections, so he's looking for volunteers to spend 2 hours this Saturday, March 1, to go knock on doors. I blogged very briefly about Paul before and I'm supporting his campaign, so I plan to help out. If you're interested in helping out, we're all going to meet on Saturday at noon at the entrance to Morley Field, located at the intersection of Texas and Upas Streets in San Diego (map). Paul will be there with handout materials and will give a briefing on his plan for the volunteers.

I attended the recent League of Conservation Voters forum on environmental issues in City Heights, where all but the self-hating gay candidate participated in the first District 3 debate. Based on what I saw at that debate, Paul is the only non-Republican candidate that is truly independent of the San Diego political machine and I think that having an independent voice in local politics is a very good thing.

If you want to find out more about Paul or if you don't have time to volunteer but still want to sign the petition, you can contact Paul through his website.

Lucky 13 and Old House Fair

For the two of you that read my blog on a regular basis, you probably already know this: I got 13 correct Oscar predictions (out of 24). Going by memory alone, I think that's the worst I've done in any Oscar pool over the last 10 years. (Not so) amazingly, Kara also got 13 predictions correct, even though some of the ones she got right, I got right, and vice-versa.

On a separate note, South Park is holding it's 10th annual Old House Fair on June 21 and I've agreed to be in charge of the docents for the old house tour this year. Kara and I have both been docents for several years now and I was a head docent for one of the houses last year, so it's exciting to get involved at such an early stage.

My Oscar Predictions

Here are my predictions for what will win the Oscars tonight:

Actor: Daniel Day Lewis
Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem
Actress: Marion Cotillard
Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett
Animated Feature: Ratatouille
Art Direction: There Will Be Blood
Cinematography: There Will Be Blood
Costume Design: Atonement
Directing: There Will Be Blood
Documentary Feature: War/Dance
Documentary Short: Freeheld
Film Editing: The Bourne Ultimatum
Foreign Language Film: Mongol
Makeup: La Vie En Rose
Original Score: Ratatouille
Original Song: "Falling Slowly" - Once
Picture: No Country for Old Men
Short Film - Animated: My Love (Moya Lyubov)
Short Film - Live Action: Tanghi Argentini
Sound Editing: There Will Be Blood
Sound Mixing: The Bourne Ultimatum
Visual Effects: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Screenplay - Adapted: No Country for Old Men
Screenplay - Original: Juno (*sadly)

Orayzio.com or www.orayzio.com

Since I seldom update my old web site, I changed the DNS entries so that orayzio.com points back to this blog. You should be able to use both www.orayzio.com and orayzio.com to get here, but I won't know for a couple of days whether or not this is all working. You should also still be able to get here using orayzio.blogspot.com.

What a hassle!

We can't get enough of Zia

Kara introduced me to Zia and Zia's Afghan Cafe when we first started going out and it was one of our favorite places to dine. And, for a little while, Zia had a booth at the Hillcrest farmer's market where he sold his delicious chicken in pita bread sandwiches that I could never pass up. So, it was very sad for both of us when Zia stopped showing up at the market and closed his restaurant. We later learned that Zia had gone back to his beloved Afghanistan after the Taliban government was overthrown. We were happy for Zia, but sad for our culinary loss.

We later discovered that his son, Khaled, had opened his own restaurant in the Rolando area (East of SDSU for the neighborhood-names challenged) after Zia's place closed. I think the name of the place is Café Zia, although the menu says simply, "Zia wraps". The food there is wonderful and we both highly recommend it, but Rolando is out of the way, so the only time we go there is when we see a play at Cygnet across the street.

This past September, we were at the Adams Avenue Street Fair when we noticed a new place named Zia Gourmet Pizza was opening soon. We checked it out and sure enough, Khaled was opening another "Zia", this time closer to home and this time, as a pizza place. We spoke to him briefly and he indicated that he would be keeping both his wraps restaurant and this new place open, not closing one in favor of the other. We were jazzed at the prospect of having two Zia's to eat at and looked forward to its opening.

We were on Adams Avenue about a month ago, thinking that we would check out the new pizza place, but while it had opened, it had odd hours (5PM to 10PM) and was not yet open for the day. We were too early, so we ate elsewhere that night.

Kara had been kind enough to cook dinners for us every night this past week, but she was tired of cooking and wanted to go out last night. The original plan was to go to our regular place, The Linkery, but I checked the menu for the night, wasn't that impressed with the current selections, and was itching for a change. I suggested Alexander's, where we had an incredibly delicious but very noisy meal a little while ago, but Kara wasn't ready to go back to such a busy place on a Friday night. I then remembered Zia's new place, suggested it and Kara was enthusiastic about the idea.

So it was that we tried the newest Zia incarnation last night. For a Friday night, the place was almost dead with only a party of three at one table. A quick glance at that table revealed the man, Zia, himself was back in the states and eating in his son's restaurant, which was very cool. Khaled was behind the counter and greeted us warmly (he remembered us from our visits to his wraps place). A very good start.

The place is pretty bare bones. There's no signage inside and no menu board. The entire right-side of the front of the restaurant is crammed with couches and furniture (we didn't know what to make of that) with customer booths and tables to the left. There is a counter that separates the diners and furniture pile from the kitchen in the back with no signage or menu board of any kind. I didn't count, but the counter had about eight different pizza pie plates each with three to five slices each of different flavors of pizza with a paper menu stuck under the front-edge of the plate with the name of the pizza circled. The hostess/waitress standing behind the counter stood ready to take our order and we quickly understood that you could pick slices from the counter or order a custom pie. I like variety, so we checked out our options, asked some questions and decided upon four slices total for the both of us.

All pizzas come on a crust described as "mouth-watering... prepared with healthy whole wheat and herbs and spices". Here are the slices we chose with the descriptions straight from their menu:

• French: "Our savory wild Atlantic salmon (marinated in a mouth watering combination of herbs and spices) combined with tomatoes, capers, lean cream cheese, fresh basil and topped with mozzarella." $3.45/slice
  
• The New Yorker: "Our tasty and lean turkey pastrami combined with green onions, pepperoncini, light cream cheese and fresh basil and topped with mozzarella." $2.95/slice
• Veggie: "A tasteful combination of artichoke hearts, goat feta, kalamata olives, light cream cheese and topped with mozzarella." $2.95/slice
• Roast Chicken: "Our succulent chicken (marinated in a savory lemon-garlic sauce) combined with fresh garlic, green onion, mushroom, capers, ricotta cheese and topped with mozzarella. $3.45/slice

Needless to say, these are not your traditional pizza toppings. As a matter of fact, none of the pizza choices on the menu could be considered traditional, unless you choose the "USA Pizza (U Suggest All)", where you select your own components from a list of "Protein", "Cheese", "Sauce" and "Veggie" options. Under "Protein", your choices are chicken, turkey pastrami, baked bean curd and wild salmon. There's no beef or pork options on the menu, so no pepperoni or sausage, but neither Kara nor I eat beef or pork, so this was perfect for us.

As a meal, the food was healthy, adventuresome and excellent, well within the tradition of "Zia's". As a pizza... well, I can't really compare these pizzas to any other pizzas because the taste is so different. If I'm in the mood for pizza by the slice, I'll probably still go with my favorite place, Pizzeria Luigi, where the slices are both delicious and cheap ($5.50 for 2 slices and drink), but Zia's pizzas I don't think are meant to compete with your local pizza joint or any other pizza place for that matter. I'll go to Zia Gourmet Cafe again when I'm in the mood for something different, local, tasty and quick — something Zia. As for recommending the place, absolutely we'd recommend it, not as a pizza place, but as a good place to eat and very vegetarian friendly.

My only complaint, if you can even call it a complaint, is that I like the wraps place better than the pizza place. But then again, I haven't tried all the different pizza options and I might find a slice of Zia Gourmet Pizza that is as good as any of the incredibly delicious wraps at Café Zia. The best possible thing that could happen would be for Khaled to open a third restaurant with both the wraps and the pizza and perhaps other options here in South Park; with The Linkery moving this spring and with the renovations of the warehouses on 3oth Street between Ivy and Juniper or the reconstruction of the buildings on the corner of 30th and Beech, there are plenty of places for new restaurants to try.

Oh, and one last thing, we didn't want to disturb Zia while he was eating, but we did stop and say hello when we were ready to leave. He was very happy to see both of us (especially Kara) and he told us how he owns some land in Afghanistan now and is looking forward to going back again in March to check on it. Zia is such a nice guy and although we miss his cooking, we're both very happy for him and he seems very happy as well.

Zia Gourmet Pizza is located at 3311 Adams Ave, Suite A, (next to the yoga place run by the same cult that runs Jyoti Bihanga, Kara's favorite restaurant) in Normal Heights. It is open 5PM to 10PM, Tuesday through Sunday, and closed on Monday.

Tucson, the desert of my dreams?

I use Yahoo! Travel to book most of my trips and I allow Travelocity to send me their marketing emails, even though I delete most of them without reading them. But today I received an email from them with the subject line, "Visit Tucson, the Real Desert of Your Dreams" and I couldn't resist posting about it.

Is the "desert of your dreams" supposed to be a good thing? I could understand "the oasis in the desert", but, seriously who dreams of deserts? And to me, it reads more like, "you know your dreams - well Tuscon is the desert portion of your dreams - the place where illegal immigrants die and only camels survive."

Just to clarify, I've never been to Tucson (at least, not that I remember) and I have nothing against it. I just think they need to rethink their marketing strategy.

Paul Broadway for San Diego City Council District 3

Due to term limits, the San Diego city council district three position is up for grabs in 2008. The first election won't be until June 3, but there are already seven "potential candidates" that have filed their intention to run form with the city clerk's office.

I've been leaning towards John Hartley because he seems honorable and because he's been pounding the pavement, knocking on doors and talking to constituents for years (he's been a repeat candidate for several elections now). He knocked on our door last year, we talked to him for a bit and we liked what we heard enough to say that we'd support his candidacy. I've not been happy with Toni Atkins lately, so I have no reason to support anyone that she endorses and I think John is an excellent representative for our community.

Having said that and taking nothing away from John Hartley, I'm throwing my support behind the newest candidate who just announced his intention to run: Paul Broadway. Paul was the owner of Sparky's (until it lost it's lease and was replaced by Hamilton's Tavern) and I've known Paul personally for several years through his participation on the Greater Golden Hill Planning Committee (and his postings to sdnet.eats). I like Paul and I think he deserves our support.

Swimming against the tide - Juno what I mean?

When Napoleon Dynamite came out, lots of people raved about it and said that it was the funniest movie they'd seen in years. I waited until it came out on DVD before trying to watch it and then I could only make it a few minutes before it became one of those very rare films that I could not bear to watch a moment longer. I watched it wanting to laugh, hoping to laugh, but mostly just wondering why anyone thought the movie was funny. It was just painful to watch.

Juno is no Napoleon Dynamite. But it's also one of those movies that's funny in parts, but overall it's just a bad film. I can't blame the actors for it being bad, they all did a great job with what they were given. I can point to two problems that made Juno a bad film and they are the screenplay by "Diablo Cody" and a soundtrack of quirky songs.

Kara and I saw the film at a sneak preview about two weeks ago, not knowing much about the film before we started watching it. Once I realized that it was the new film by Jason Reitman, director of Thank You for Smoking (which I consider one of the best films of the last several years), I had high hopes. Those hopes plummeted as soon as the songs started. Instead of enhancing the story or moving it forward, the songs served only as a distraction from what was happening on screen. I'm not against using pop songs in movies when they serve the movie, but here it seems they were just trying to fill in dead spots in the action with songs whose lyrics were supposed to be as witty as the dialog.

And, Ugh, the dialog! It's one thing to have a witty character or two where ever word that character speaks is sparkling, subversive, or charming, but it's another thing entirely when every single actor in the movie, even the clerk at the local convenience store (in a cameo by Rainn Wilson) sounds like a hipster or the wittiest person you'll ever hope to know. Plus, all of the characters in the movie are one-dimensional. The only exceptions are Michael Cera as the put-upon boyfriend/father-of-the-baby, who is still drawn in one dimension, but whose character is the opposite of witty, and Ellen Page as Juno, who gets to go from point A to point B (character-wise) in an utterly predictable fashion.

The thing that amazes me, though, is how practically every other critic in the world absolutely loves this movie. As I type this, Rotten Tomatoes lists Juno as 94% fresh with a simply unbelievable 100% for the "cream of the crop". Even Duncan Shepherd of the San Diego Reader liked Juno enough to give it 3 stars, one of only 10 films he gave 3 stars to this year (with only one other film this year, No Country For Old Men, granted more stars than 3). And actually, after reading through several of the "rotten" reviews, it seems that the people that didn't like the movie didn't like it for pretty much the same reason as I've given above - that the dialog is insufferable. Is this just another case of the inability of the masses to recognize bad choices in filmmaking? Will this be yet another movie that people will look back at many years from now and say, "What the hell was I thinking?"

I just don't get it. Of course, this isn't the first time I've been in the minority opinion on films. Here's a few others:

• Peggy Sue Got Married - Horrible film, nominated for several Academy Awards
• Forrest Gump - Terrible, also nominated and won six Oscars
  
• Chicago - Just didn't work for me.
• Independence Day - For this one, I go the other way - sure, the plot was ridiculous, but it was a good, thoroughly enjoyable spectacle.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention the unforgivable sin committed by the makers of Juno: they put father and son Bluth (Jason Bateman and Michael Cera) in the same film and don't give them any scenes together. Oh the humanity.

Best movies I've seen this year so far... The King of Kong and No Country For Old Men.

A good reason to turn back the clock

I was perusing a copy of the local daily rag at Rebecca's this morning when I came across an article that stated that Monday is the 50th anniversary of "In God We Trust" on U.S. currency. Then, just few minutes ago, I was skimming old unread emails and came across a forwarded spam email expressing outrage and demanding a boycott of the new dollar coins because "In God We Trust" is not printed on them.

Setting aside the fact that IGWT is, in fact, engraved on the new dollar coins (it's on the edge of the coins except for a few batches where it was accidentally left off), this just reminds me how much I wish our coins and currency were god-less, as they were before October 1, 1956. Of course, I wasn't born yet, but I still occasionally come across some of the older bills and they always make me smile.

Donkey Kong and Harmony

It's been miserably hot and humid the last few days, so much so that it's tough to do anything during the day. So, Kara and I snuck out this afternoon to catch the 5:05 showing of The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters at the Ken Cinema. I almost got to see this at a sneak preview during Comic-Con, but I passed because I was too tired at the time. Luckily for us, the producer of the film, Ed Cunningham, was there for our showing and he answered our questions after the showing.

We both really liked the film and I recommend it highly, especially if you spent far too many quarters back in the 80s on video games, as I did. (I played my share of Donkey Kong back in the day, but Tempest was my game.)

On a separate note, Jimmy G. showed me his Harmony 880 universal remote that he bought online a few weeks ago and, as soon as I saw it, I knew I needed one. So, I found a deal on Amazon and it arrived the other day. I think I've finished tweaking it and it replaced the 4 remotes that I had been using. I love the interface and the customizability and if you've got $120 or so to spare and too many remotes cluttering up your coffee table, I highly recommend it. I've got it set to control the following devices:

1. HDTV (Samsung HL-T5689S)
   
2. DirecTV HD-DVR (HR20-100)
   
3. DVD/CD player (no Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player yet)
4. A/V Receiver (Sony STR-DE995)
   
5. Cassette deck (which I rarely use anymore)
6. Air Conditioner (Haier ESA3105)
   

Google comes to my neighborhood

From Google's Earth and Maps blog comes this bit of news:

We're excited to announce that Street View is now available in San Diego.... Like the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego features high-resolution imagery.

I checked it out and, while they have coverage from downtown to the East Village all the way to I-5, they just barely skirt the Western and Northern edges of Golden Hill with a few views of B St. They also have some views of the Western-most streets in South Park with a little peek at Grape Street Dog Park.

The stop short of my house by four and a half blocks or, roughly, 0.2 miles.

Steve's Rant: The top 10 unintentionally worst company URLs

Pointed out by my friend Steve (different Steve): Steve's Rant: The top 10 unintentionally worst company URLs

I survived (yet) another Comic-Com

Carmen Mirandarth (P1000120)
Originally uploaded by orayzio

My Comic-Con 2007 photoset can be perused here or viewed as a slideshow.

For the first time in Comic-Con history, all tickets for all 4 days were completely sold-out... and you could tell this by trying to navigate the exhibit hall. Preview Night is supposed to be the slow night, but I swear it was at least as crowded as Saturday last year. And actually, Saturday this year seemed to be the least crowded day of all the days that I attended. I was there on Wednesday night through Saturday night, but I skipped out on Sunday.

The highlights for me were:

• 
  Kevin Smith in front of 6,000 fans in Hall H. This was the 2nd year that I've seen Kevin Smith in this hall and although he recycles a lot of his "stand-up" material, he was still a lot of fun to watch.
• 
  The Sarah Silverman Program panel. OMFG, these guys and gals were absolutely hilarious.
  
• 
  Watching Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. unveil the Iron Man suit at the Marvel booth on the exhibit floor, working my way through the huge crowd around them to get close for a picture and being rewarded for my efforts when, out of nowhere, Rosario Dawson pops in to say hello to Jon and Robert!
  
• Seeing early footage of Iron Man (you can probably find it on YouTube)

Oh, and all of the pictures were taken with my new camera. It took me awhile to figure out the best setting for pictures at the various sessions (I settled on the "High Sensitivity" scene mode with the higher level of jitter reduction) and when you add in the 10x optical zoom, I'm pretty happy with those photos. But, I didn't like the fuzziness and out-of-focus shots on some of the more up-close photos. But, I would recommend the camera as a very handy and capable, slip-it-in-your-pocket-and-go camera.