Month: May 2008

Yikes! I almost forgot!

I’ll be at Book Expo America this Sunday afternoon at booth #4005 — signin’, sellin’, sayin’ hi, sendin’ high-fives your way, sketchin’. All the usual S’s.

BEA is a huge, expensive trade show for the book world, so if you’re not already going for bid’ness reasons, it may not be worth it for you to go. BUT! If you’re a Sheldonista who’s already going, please come by and say hi! I’ll be giving out free sketches in all the books, and we’ll have Original Art from the comic strips for $25 off the normal price! (If you have a specific one you want me to bring, e-mail me.)

Come on out! Booth #4005! Sunday afternoon!

have all the books, some shirts,

Apologies to all who have e-mailed after Wednesday, 8:30 AM PST — looks like my mail server took a well-earned vacation and brought the wife and kids down to Cancun.

The mail server left a very nice note before his r-and-r break, which is to say, technicians are apparently working diligently to fix it.

Sidenote: Man! Am I having technical difficulties lately, or what? Bets on how long it takes for my phone line to go dead.

I’ve loved all the e-mails I’ve gotten from Texans the last few days. They’ve been among some of the funniest I’ve ever received — Texans have a great sense of humor.

My favorite part of all these e-mails, though? Almost every e-mail has ended with a “P.S. Oh, and by the way, Texas DOES have the legal right to secede any time we want.”

They can’t let it be. 🙂

[Edited to note: Thursday’s toon was just one big setup for the tiny little Austin addendum. I got invited down to Austin a few years ago to speak at SxSW…and it ain’t nuthin’ like the rest of Texas. It’s more like Seattle: But instead of it raining, you just sweat a lot.]

So a bit about me.

My name is Stephanie and I am from southern California. I’m a junior at LMU and LOVING my major (…which is English. Read! Whether it’s Shakespeare or Sheldon.) This is my first internship, so in the beginning I was a bit apprehensive. But no, Dave is not making me bring him a double-shot latte with extra foam from Starbucks every morning, and I have never seen his dry cleaning bill. Instead I’m doing all this amazing stuff! Transcribing is fun, and after doing it for just an hour I already appreciate those of you who take it upon yourselves to contribute to transcribing all of the strips. Not only are you helping out the site and making it easy for other readers, but you get to re-read some of your favorite Sheldon strips. I’ve also done some light book packaging — so if you purchase the books you can enjoy my hard labor. Just kidding. And finally I’ve done my first business-type project that has taught me the process of publishing and distributing (and only on my second day!). Also, the place I work at is amazing. The studio is so well decorated, cozy, with music on and a constant supply of tasty beverages.

And Dave! You know those cool adults that are in movies like “Juno”, and you think “Wait — what? Those people don’t actually exist.” Well I was wrong; they do exist and Dave, my boss, is one of them. He’s funny, intelligent, and super nice. He continually asks me politely if I would like something to drink (manners are practically non-existent in my generation). And his wife and new baby are amazing, too (I know she’s only a couple weeks old – but the awesomeness from her parents are clearly present). If you worship Dave and his art, your praise isn’t crazy – but well directed.

Well I think that’s it! Again, thanks to all of you who have welcomed me.

— Steph ([email protected])

The next installment of the Sheldon Newsletter will be going out later this week, and will feature a super secret sneak-peak on the next book!

This next book will be very different than the first four Sheldon collections, and…um…well, you’ll see what I mean when you get the newsletter.

In case you’re not familiar wit the newsletter, I should explain: It’s an e-mail newsletter that goes out every few months to all of the “Daily Sheldon-by-Email” subscribers — so if you’re signed up for that already, you’re good. But, if you read the strip via the site or RSS, and would like to get the newsletter, feel free to sign up for it here.

This next newsletter will also have some tidbits about upcoming signings and appearances, aaaaand a newsletter-only sale on Sheldon Original Art.

I find Sunday’s strip to be a great encapsulation of Arthur’s personality.

I want to take a minute to welcome our summer intern to the Sheldon studios: Stephanie!

Steph’s on a university-administered internship from today until the end of August, when school kicks back in.

When I was in college, one of the best opportunities I was ever given was a summer internship with the “San Diego Union-Tribune,” the big metro paper in San Diego. Here I was, a college kid, and the Editorial Page editor, Bob Kittle, gave me prime newspaper real estate on Saturdays and Mondays to do my editorial cartoons. It was such an awesome opportunity… and even then I knew it was a huge kindness I wanted to pay forward when I got the chance.

So, in my Mattel years, I sponsored 3 or 4 summer interns through our “Design Center” to show them the world of toys… and so far with Sheldon I’ve been lucky enough to have one fantastic intern: Ignacio (…who, if I can take a minute to play the “proud poppa” role, is now working on CGI for James Cameron’s new flick “Avatar”. I’ll expect premiere tickets, Iggy!).

Anyway, over the last few months I’ve been doing a few talks ‘n lectures at local universities… and after one of them, a professor asked if I’d be willing to take on an intern for the summer. She forwarded on a glowing recommendation of Stephanie — and it just seemed like a great fit.

Stephanie started today, and over the summer will be helping out with as wide a variety of tasks as she’d like to take on: Like handling the strip transcriptions for the site, archiving some of the original art, helping to research some stuff for an NPR piece I’m working on, and if I can talk her into it…blogging here from time to time about how her internship is going. She’ll also be helping out with the next Sheldon book, and possibly coming down to San Diego Comic-Con to check out the spectacle for a day (I told her it was “125,000 super huge nerds in a super huge convention center,” and she still seemed enthusiastic. That earned her some points.)

You’ll be hearing more from Stephanie personally in the blog about how the internship is going… but for now, feel free to post below and make her feel welcome!

[EDITED: Steph now has an “@sheldoncomics.com” e-mail! Drop her a line here to say hi!]

Between now and Sunday night, U.S. shipping is free on any Sheldon shirt(s) you pick up in the store!

Live in Alaska? Free.

Live in Hawaii? Free.

Live in a tiny little town in Iowa with no local post office…where surely, SURELY we can’t ship it for free? Free.

So head on over and treat yourself! Treat a loved one! Treat the cat!* Free U.S. shipping on shirts between now and Sunday! Just make sure you click “Free 1st-Class Shipping” when you order — thanks!

*Note: No guarantee that your cat will like the shirt. Some cats are mean like that.

It looks like the Sheldon site was down for a bit on the morning of the 21st. Apparently, at the server farm where Sheldon resides, heat was building up on the Hadron Supercollider, and the whatchamajiggit was threatenin’ to ‘splode into heat because the Rebel Alliance had placed explosives nearby so that they could bring the shields down on the Death Star.

Or something to that effect.

Something to the effect that a server-farm fire was avoided by shuttin’ everything down for a bit.

Good times!

Sheldonista Jacky S. sent me a link to this amazing table.

I can already hear you saying “amazing table???” Yes, I say to you.

YES.