More videos, kids!

Sure, they're not exciting or anything. But this is what the market near my apartment looks like. This is about 100 meters from my place. Nice!

First video's a bit shaky as I'm walking. Second one's steadier as it's just a pan across the market.

In March of 2007, my girl Nara and I went to Berlin for a 6 day vacation. We loved it and had a fabulous time. Never got around to posting photos until now.

It's easier to post them on Facebook than here, so that's what I've done. Click the link below to view the photos.

Photos of our Berlin trip

I came upon some new music today. Great stuff too!

I found them by way of a band called Paris Combo, who I like very much. They were listed as a band that people who liked Paris Combo would like also. And it's true. If you like Paris Combo, you will like them.

The band is named after the singer-songwriter, Amelie-les-Crayons.

It's very light and airy feeling. I can't recommend it enough.


This is the album I was listening to earlier today.




And this is the band, pictured above, and a link to their site below.

Enjoy! Happy Sunday!

http://www.amelielescrayons.com/

Now it's time to finally post some of those pictures from the Makarska show, MaFest, from this year. There are a lot of pictures, of course. But I'll make my way through them here. MaFest is a comic show that we attend every May in Makarska.


The faces of Esad, Goran and Dejan are all deformed from violent shaking back and forth. See the video in an earlier post.


Talaja likes to get close when he's sketching.


Talaja, thinking about Israel.


Everybody did sketches except for Jamie Delano and me. We're not drawrers.


Jamie Delano gives good interview.


Talaja came out of the closet as a gay wrestler who plays basketball on this trip. Thinking about Israel too much finally made him snap.


I think he's ready for wrestling, basketball or maybe even tennis.


Esad, Tico, me and Talaja at lunch in Makarska.


Esad attacks his dessert.

Everybody loves Donkeys. So here you go, back to the Donkey race in Tribunj. The jockeys dress in traditional clothes and race them around the island three times if I remember correctly. Funny shit.

So yeah, it's a crazy blogging day today.

Nara and I went and bought her engagement ring earlier in the year. We took a day and walked around Zagreb a bit looking for a shop we'd like. And we happened upon this really small shop with this jeweler named Štef. We liked him immediately. We talked to him a bit and he was a very friendly guy who we got a warm feeling from. We still continued looking at other shops because we felt like we shouldn't just immediately settle with him. But we didn't like the other shops. So we returned to Štef and ordered a ring with him.

When we went to pick up the ring, he closed down his shop and took us to coffee. This struck me as amazingly "European". I really cannot imagine someone in the States doing this. He's had his same shop there on Ilica in Zagreb for something like 35 years. And it's just him and one guy that helps him with some things. He's a very nice guy with a great sense of humor. We'll return to him when the time comes to get the wedding bands sometime next year.

The ring is a classic Croatian style of ring. It's very different from what I'm used to in the States, but I like it.

Yes. Going through videos. So here are some more.

This first one is in Makarska in Croatia. There's a comic show there that we go to every May. Makarska is on the sea and is a nice place to visit that time of year, as the tourist season has not yet started but the sea is also warm enough for a swim.

This is Esad Ribić, Goran Sudžuka and Dejan Kraljačić making fools of themselves upon my request. Nice! Dejan was our host at the show in Belgrade.




Here is one still image from that same time, when they were doing the shaking head. Makes for nice still images.





And here's Esad's infamous snoring, also at the Makarska show.

And some more videos!

This first one is towards the end of the Donkey race in Tribunj. This is a big event there. There were seemingly thousands of people there. It was totally packed. They have some donkeys race around the island. At one point, one donkey didn't want to have anything to do with it and ran into an alleyway. Funny shit.

But here's some video of a few of the donkeys racing past.





And here's Krka National Park with it's waterfalls. This doesn't really capture the scope of how big the amount of water is or how large those falls are. There's a series of them and there really is a huge amount of water moving through that area.

This is during the summer, in very early August. And it was totally crowded with people, which was annoying. I've been there before, as pictured early on in this blog. When we went before, we went in very early June and it was pretty empty. Which is better for me. Viewing nature's beauty is something best done without the massive crowds, thank you very much.

Aha! Yes yes. I know. It's been awhile yet again. I suck. Yes I know this.

But things are still a bit busy. Things are starting to slow down just a touch, though. I finished up the Angel comic I was coloring for Marvel. I also just last weekend finished up the book that I was coloring for Vertigo, that Chas one from the Hellblazer universe. So instead of 5 books I now have three, which is much more tolerable. But those are sometimes running a touch late too. So I get into this cycle of late books throwing my schedule into disarray. And that's what's been up with me.

We went to Belgrade for the comics show there. And I will post a few pics of that later on.

Now we're back in Zagreb for a month or so and then we head to Dublin for a show there.

Went out drinking with a lot of the comics people here last night in the center, so today I am totally hung over and don't feel like working. Which means that I will post a few things on ye olde blog.

First up there are a few movies from our trip to Tribunj. We spent most of our summer there. And it was just fantastic. We rented a little one bedroom apartment with a kitchen and basically lived there for over 6 weeks. Much of that time was spent on the beach. We would often spend an entire day there from 11AM or so until sunset around 8:30 or something. Great! I spent a huge chunk of this time reading and read 8 books while we were there. 7 of them were great too! So that's a good ratio. I also spent a ton of time swimming, sleeping and relaxing. What a great way to spend the summer.

This first video is a basic pan across the water. This is where we spent almost every day while we were there. This is what the Croatian sea, the Adriatic, looks like when the water is calm. Even when it's not calm it doesn't have waves like in California. Ain't no surfers here!



And this second video is a pan across the area surrounding the apartment we stayed in. This is the view from the terrace. You can hear the Croatian crickets in the background, which reminded me of Southern California.