THE BUSHMILLER MUSEUM AND RESEARCH LIBRARY!

YAY!

Mo Willems 

is here in LA!

Yesterday

he visited

Vroman's Bookstore

to read his latest

Elephant and Piggie 

book:

Which,

by the way,

just won a

Geisel Award Honor

this week!

And speaking of awards,

and

this

is

BIG

...

...

Sooper pal 

Dan Santat

won this year's

prestigious

Caldecott Medal

for 

THIS:

But wait...

another friend,

Jon Klassen,

won a 

Caldecott Honor 

for 

illustrating

THIS!

That's a lot to celebrate!

So

ANOTHER 

good friend

had a party for them at the

BUSHMILLER MUSEUM 

AND 

RESEARCH LIBRARY

Which is really just a fancy name

for the home of

Tom Gammill.

Mr. Gammill

rocks beyond words.

He's been a producer on 

The Simpsons 

since 1999.

He's written many an episode of

Seinfeld and written for Saturday Night Live,

David Letterman and Steve Martin.

He's also very involved in

The National Cartoonist Society 

and has a comic strip called 

The Doozies.

So yeah.

He funny.

And yeah.

He's probably the biggest

Ernie Bushmiller

fan in existence.

He has an entire room

dedicated to the man and his work,

primarily Nancy

He even has the guy's

driver's license:

Mr. Gammill also has a 

tongue-in-cheek

museum tucked away 

in a corner:

He even made this handy video about it:

Anyway,

it was a great party for

the medal winners:

Also in attendance were

Lisa Yee,

animator/author

Bob Boyle, 

with Adventure Time artist 

Teri Shikasho,

cartoonist Matthew Diffee and his wife

and 

Mr. Gammill's writing partner

Max Pross and his wife.

And of course,

the fabulous and stylish

Mrs. Warburton!

Tom's unbelievable wife Sandy

made an unbelievable dinner

and then we

TOTALLY

drew all over the tables.

But we'll tell you about that next time!

LUNCH WITH VINCENT X. KIRSCH

Last week I got to have lunch with

author/illustrator/craftsman

Vincent X. Kirsch!

I first met him in NYC

where he showed me one of his amazing 

papercraft toy theaters:

He's done lots of really fun books:

Vincent recently moved to LA 

so we got together so he could show me 

some of his latest characters:

He carries a big box

with lots of compartments

that house his little friends.

Here are a couple:

And I totally scored a bunch of signed books:

Thanks, Mr. Kirsch!

Head on over to his website

to see more of his work!

He makes wonderful stuff!

SCALZI AND ME

You know I love me some

John Scalzi.

And you know I love me some

Felicia Day.

So the other day whilst

Felicia was recording

Angela for 

Fish Hooks:

We somehow hit on the subject of 

Mr. Scalzi,

whom she is good friends with.

I let slip that I had never actually met him in person

but had indeed made his

List of Awesome People Who

Are Awesomely Awesome. 

Shocked that we hadn't met,

Felicia immediately texted John

to see if he wanted to swing by the recording studio

since he just so happened to be in town promoting

this:

(more on that later)

Mr. Scalzi couldn't make it

but asked if I wanted to drive down to 

Redondo Beach and hang out

before his

book signing.

Um...

...

...

YES!

And hang we did!

We chatted about all nature of things

for a sooper long time

(books, KND, movies, stoopid people, etc)

and as expected,

he's a really

sooper

nice,

smart

and

FUNNY

guy!

He even bought me

a bottle of water!

(he had a diet Mexican soda)

And eventually

 it was time for his reading.

Mr. Scalzi read a chapter from

The Human Division...

And a brilliant

must-read

post from his long-running

blog

WHATEVER

called

WHO GETS TO BE A GEEK?

ANYONE WHO WANTS TO BE

But what was the

bestest

best

part

of meeting

Mr. Scalzi?

When he wrote me

my very own

chapter of 

THE HUMAN DIVISION

in my 

sketchbook:

But ima 

save 

THAT

for 

my next post!

LIVE! AT THE SARAH BAIN GALLERY!

So last weekend

I went to see this guy:

Who was with this guy:

At this place:

Because they were doing this:

We brought some books for them to sign:

And hung out a while.

Both Kazu and James rock 

pretty hard so it was worth the drive to

see them!

As an added bonus,

the gallery had a sooper cool

Dr. Seuss exhibit: 

This piece spoke loudly to both authors

(see title card below)

If you happen to be anywhere near

Brea, California,

make sure to visit the

Sarah Bain Gallery!