Cool Meeting with "Wizards" Movie Poster Arist

So, my wife, continually tries to tell me that she is not a geek, but she fails miserably, as my friends can attest. 

As a case-in-point, last week I was watching "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" on a Netflix DVD I'd rented, and my wife walked into the room.  I said, "Hey, guess who this is!" and freeze-framed it on Nurse Ratched.  Now, my wife had never seen "Cuckoo" before, and keep in mind that it was made in 1975.  My wife walks into the room, glances at the screen for about three seconds, and says, "Yeah, sure.  She's from Star Trek, right?  DS9?  She was that Bajoran religious leader chick.  What's-her-name?  You know who I'm talking about."

I just looked at her with a mixture of disbelief, admiration, and silent sarcasm.  Also, to myself, I thought, "Kai Winn."

"That doesn't make me a geek, does it?" she asked, meekly.

Um, yeah.  Yeah, it does.  Firstly, the movie was filmed nearly 20 years before the TV show, and the actress, Louise Fletcher, has aged well, but still.  There's a 20 year difference!  Secondly, she was able to identify a non-main character from not the main Trek series, not the second most popular series (TNG), but from one of the "other" Trek series.  Further, she knew the name of the character's species (Bajoran, which is not a "main" Star Trek species like Vulcan or Klingon), and her specific role in the show. 

I'm gonna say that's worth some major geek cred.  I'll have to make her a t-shirt. 

Anyway, last week, my wife sent me an email while she was at work with the subject "Wizard World Comic Con in Anaheim."  The body of the email from her had just one line in all-caps: "I GOT US TICKETS!"

She was super excited to check it out, I think partly because her client, Acura, is an official sponsor of the new "Thor" movie coming out this Friday (Acura is the official car of S.H.I.E.L.D.), and she had a hand in writing some of the advertising creative briefs for Acura's tie-in advertising and promotions.  But, also, deep-down, she's a geek.  So, going to a comic book convention was exciting to her.  It was her first con. 

After the requisite 45 minute packing job to get our daughter and all of her toddler accoutrement into the car, along with our passports, change of currency, and Orange County-to-English phrasebooks, we crossed over the Orange Curtain and over to the Anaheim convention center. 

I won't get into a lot of specifics about the convention.  It was a comic book convention.  You know what it's about.  Lots of excited fans, homemade costumes, hipster poseurs, kids, old-timers, grown men dressed as Jedi Knights pretending to fence with each other using colored pieces of plastic tubing, and booth after booth of comics and comic paraphernalia.  As Stan would say... "'Nuff said."

But, one thing that caught me eye was an oil painting of Peace mounted on that weird lizard thing from the Ralph Bakshi "Wizards" movie.  Once again, I found it funny that this had come up again since I had just blogged about that movie a couple of months ago when I recently watched the it. 

As I approached the oil painting, I quickly discovered that it wasn't a collectibles store selling the piece.  It was the artist himself.  At first I thought it was just a fan who had done an oil painting, but then I found out, to my surprise, that it was done by the original artist himself, William Stout.  He was there selling his work, and I chatted with him for a few minutes about the movie and his particular piece, which was the first movie poster he'd ever done.  He also mentioned that he does a new, different version of that same piece about every ten years, and the oil painting was from 2003. 

Back before I lost my main client, I might have coughed up the $300 to have an original oil painting of this, since I really like that image a lot.  But, sadly, today was all about "looking but not buying."  I guess it's a good lesson for my daughter to learn. 

If you want to check out Mr. Stout's work, or purchase some of his pieces, you can visit his site here

The rest of the con was, as I said, just a typical comic book convention.  Not that there's anything wrong with that - I had a lot of fun checking out the booths and the 1,781 homemade Stormtrooper costumes and getting my official "AGENT OF S.H.I.E.L.D." badge (Jealous?).

Oh, yeah, and Colonel Wilma was there.  How cool is that?

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