Comic Con

This past weekend was Comic Con in San Diego. We drove into town because Martin and Lucas had tickets to see Childish Gambino, which is the stage name of one of the actors on the television show, Community. Davis, Deneen, and I stumbled into the screening of an Australian independent film called Griff the Invisible, written and directed by Leon Ford, who was there and introduced the film.

The entire soundtrack was written and performed by an Aussie pop band called Kids at Risk. They just happened to be at ComicCon and before the movie they did a five song set. The music is a little light hearted, yet haunting, and intertwined with 1960s-esque spy movie riffs.

The cooler thing to me is the fact that the band was awarded an Arts Council grant of $20,000 to travel to America and perform in a bunch of bars in LA. It appears that ComicCon was their first stop. Here is a bit taken from the blog on their website which posted on the 26th.

"Wandered stunned through the convention until we had to dash over to an online interview blog style thing with YOWIE which was great fun then back over to the theatre to perform a few songs prior to the screening of Griff The Invisible. Great vibe and everyone so lovely, welcoming and supportive. San Diego is a very cool city."

We finished the evening off with onion rings and shakes at our new favorite hamburger stand, Hodad's, and a walk around the Gaslamp District.

The film was not what it appears to be. It is marketed as a Superhero genre film, and the publicity surrounding the screening had the feel of a comic book. The movie, if you ask me, is a character study of individuals living with mental disabilities who are unable to cope with the real world and so they live in a world of their own. It just so happens that in movies, two people with the same disability can find each other so that the character study can become a love story.

The line for the screening of the new movie "30 Minutes or Less" was right next to ours. That line had 200 people in it. Ours had maybe 30. Davis wanted to get into the line for the movie everyone else wanted to see.

Life lesson: Don't do the ordinary. Take the line that few people are in. It may be a bust, but chances are better that great stories are going to come out of that line.

I was right. The Imperial Valley will be a really cool place to live if we can get into San Diego once a month.