Alex Heberling

Today on BoingBoing I found a wonderful blog: Free Range Kids.  This is the kind of parent I hope to be should I ever royally mess up and end up with a child on my hands…  I was absolutely a free-range kid growing up, which most certainly contributed to my independence and creativity.  Kids these days are entirely too sheltered and saran-wrapped, and while I know that all overprotective parents truly have their kids’ best interests at heart, or think they do, sometimes you just need to cut the umbilical cord and let your kid ride around the block on their bike a few times.

A huge thank-you goes out to my parents for raising me well.  They may not have let me watch The Simpsons or Ren & Stimpy growing up, but they let me stay outside until the streetlights came on without feeling the need to tag me with a homing chip lest I fall and stub my precious little toe.

Last weekend was the third AnimePunch here in Columbus.  I’ve been the department head of the Artist Alley for the past two years now, though most of the work involved with that is done in the three months before the con, and up to around 9 PM Friday night when all the artists check in for their tables.  My other duties consisted of being a deputy of sorts to the wonderful Susan, who ran ConOps, and essentially taking care of ConOps during the wee hours of the morning so she could get sleep and remain functional.

Once again, I got very little sleep, even less than last year.  A few hours Thursday night, a short nap Friday night, then 6 hours from 10 to 4 on Saturday after being up all night.  I checked out around 12:30 yesterday because I really needed to crash, and wasn’t at all functional for teardown.  I was in bad shape.

But I did get to hang out with my sister Kelly, and the rest of OLAC.  We had some drinks in the bar on Saturday, where Stephen Poon of the Spoony Bards accidentally spilled some of his drink on me, the rascal.  I also ran into Aaron and Diana of WARP a couple times.

My only event was the Evangelion Puppet Show, in which I played Katsuragi Misato, who I also played last year.  The puppet show actually had several weeks worth of planning this year, and to put it simply, it rocked rocked rocked.  Our director Zach took over as the Narrator when Patrick Seitz, the guest who was going to perform, didn’t show up, but Tristan MacAvery performed with us once again and the show was just great.  We actually separated puppeteers and actors this time, so the actors weren’t hunched down under the stage trying to work a puppet, hold a microphone, and turn script pages at the same time.

I ran into Patrick later in the Consuite, and it turned out he simply forgot about the puppet show and felt bad for not making it.  He’s such a cool guy, he’s forgiven.

I was initally going to help run the Fun & Games event as well, but not realizing it was at 1 AM Friday instead of Saturday, it happened to be during my nap on Friday night.  It’s kind of a shame, since I was looking forward to it, but the sleep I got was beneficial.

Overall, it was a good con.  The general consensus of the attendees is that it was the best Punch yet, and from the staff side of it, we were just about completely on top of things.  Our hotel was very nice, the hotel staff was very helpful and cooperative, and apart from some minor property damage, nothing was terribly messed up.

So that was AnimePunch!  I’m undecided on whether I’ll be staffing next year, since I’ll be long out of school by then.   We shall see.

Now for something I’ve been sitting on for a few days:  I’ve accepted a position at the Cartoon Research Library at Ohio State.  The Department of Art maintains several blogs, one of them being a job posting, and lots of queries for art-related jobs and gigs come through.  (Mostly weddings looking for student photographers, etc.)  I saw a posting one night about two weeks ago after getting home from Starbucks for a digital imaging assistant, and basically I will be scanning comics from the CRL’s library for use in the Treasure of Fine Art database.

I spent about two hours crafting my first real resume as soon as I saw the posting.  I wanted it, and I’m pretty thrilled to actually get the job.   The equipment is pretty amazing, and I’m excited to get started.

My latest project is for my Multimedia Authoring class at OSU, entitled BARI$TA.

BARI$TA is the name of my barista rapper/rockstar persona. This idea came about when, at my Starbucks, we had flyers promoting an open-mic poetry night at another nearby Starbucks, so I joked with my coworkers about going up and starting to slam about espresso and cappuccini, “and my stage name is Barista with a dollar sign instead of an S.” The prompt for this assignment was to remix my identity, so this BARI$TA character was just perfect for the project. I’m passionate about coffee and about my job, though I am aware of the social stigma that Starbucks has accumulated from the perspective of the small, independent coffee shops, so I made sure to poke fun at the Big Mermaid a little bit as well.

There is an easter egg link hidden within the layout of the website, so be sure to look for that, too!

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