Tonight, we discovered the world’s worst beer.

(more…)

Mad props to my wife for going into work in her pajamas, armed with a Totoro, for her presentation at her company’s 2008 kick-off meeting!

This past Sunday, we celebrated grandson Riley’s first birthday! Here are photos of the event…

(more…)

(Amazing sculture by Didier Cottier)

I’ve finally gotten the Utopiales/Nantes photos up:

Slideshow

Individual

And what I call our “Ellen Datlow Special,” featuring the storefronts of Paris (couldn’t help but think of her since we know how much she likes to shop). We spent a day and a half just walking around, deliriously happy to be exploring…

Paris Slideshow

Paris Individual

I’ll have more to say on Utopiales soon. I will say that the art show was the best I’ve ever seen, with the best scheme for displaying the art, too. Some more teaser photos below…

Jeff

(more…)

Riley approximating the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel…

Why is Jackson still being so cute? Something is definitely up.

I thought it was just one book…

(more…)

(No, most of the stuff in this photo isn’t for sale–but doesn’t it look luscious?)

We will be running a massive, and I do mean massive, book sale next week. Everything from hardcover fiction and nonfiction to coffee table books, comics, graphic novels, and oddities. First editions. Rare editions. A few duplicates of stuff we wouldn’t otherwise part with. I’ll also be offering a lot of unique stuff of my own, like the Finnish King Squid. Hundreds if not thousands of items.

Why are we doing this? The house is too small, for one. We are also streamlining as part of the transition to my freelancing this year, and part of that is getting rid of unnecessary things and clutter.

Anyway, I mention it because we do have a list of people who have asked for first dibs on stuff, before we post it to the site. If you want to be added to that list and get a chance to pick out some stuff before the books post is public on this site and all heck breaks loose, let me know. vanderworld at hotmail.com

As a tantalizing glimpse of stuff we’ll be selling and, er, not selling…some photos after the cut…including a look at my complete collection of the Dedelus imprint of Decadent and Decadent-related books.

(more…)

I’ve been telling Riley about squid…

(more…)

Here’s a slideshow of our San Diego trip, with a few highlights below. (To access the captions, just click in the lower third of the screen.)

After hiking in the mountains, we looked like this:

(more…)

Ann and I spent my birthday at the Clarion Workshop in San Diego. It was the last day of the workshop and we were both exhausted and elated. The students had worked very hard and done some incredible things. And then when I got up I woke to this chalk drawing some of the students had done outside of our dorm. A really wonderful thing. Gifts of chocolate and beer were also very nice of them.

After doing some final work, we got down to business: a water gun fight. A truly epic battle that I enjoyed the hell out of. I’ve included some pictures below. (ALL photos by Keyan Bowes, one of the students, so thanks to her for that.)

Here student Andrew Emmott makes toast of my efforts to duck, roll, and come up firing by laying down a withering burst of water.

(more…)