I find myself at the airport again - my second home. I'm actually beginning to recognize some of the people by the C concourse security gate. Crazy. I'm flying down to see my family in California for a week, mostly because now that I have the flexibility to... I should!

The holidays were pretty strenuous but very enjoyable. Forsaking both our families, Alice and I hunkered down here and just spent all the holidays together. Amongst other things she got me a Modo-Kun sweatshirt, yay! And, my parents sent me my dad's old rollerskates - I mean old-school, four wheel style. They are awesome. It will be my solution for short-distance commuting when I don't feel like manhandling my bike out of the laundry room. I haven't tried them outside yet, mostly due to the ridiculous and hellish snow-and-windstorms that have been plighting this unprepared metropolis.

Last week I went to the premiere of The Animation Show 3, with Don Hertzfeldt in attendance. It was great! His latest short was really fantastic, mixing his traditional stick-figure animation with real-world film elements... really cool. City Paradise was another short that was really great, it had a Joanna Newsom song in it at the end that really fit the piece perfectly... if you know who Joanna Newsom is you can already imagine what the film must've been like. I don't think anybody else noticed this, but I swear to God I saw Bill Plimpton lurking in the side of the theatre during the end of the show!

During the post-show interview he was answering lots of questions (I was going to ask if he's ever felt limited by the technological constraints of traditional photography, but thought that was kind of a boring question when it came down to it). He went on some tangent on one fellow's question, mentioning how he really enjoys, and thinks you get more out of, asking a little kid to draw something than a professional artist. He said kids don't have any training, and every drawing they put out (say, a bicycle) turns out as some crazy machine, but it really has a story to it that you can see just from looking at the drawing. "If you have a computer or a professional artist draw a bicycle, it just becomes a noun - there's no story to it." It's the style that tells the story of the picture. I really like the idea of differentiating between what's just a noun and what really has some life behind it.

Well, I have five minutes left until my flight leaves - gotta down this beer and go. I like to believe that while traveling you enter an alternate reality where there are no social qualms with drinking a tall boy immediately or during a flight in the early morning.