Update: San Diego's Measure C passed, with 100% of the vote in, 63.55% to 36.45% (127,431 to 73,082 votes), out of 1,671,555 registered voters, in a reported population of approx 3,340,000 residents. Sources: Ballotpedia, sdvote.com (County of San Diego) and U.S. Census Bureau, respectively. 

On February 20th, 2020, Comic-Con Interational endorsed Measure C. San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer also endorsed the tax measure. 

Original post -------

Round One of the San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) Early Bird hotel reservations is currently in motion. If you are fortunate enough to snag a room, at very attractive Con-rates for badge-holders, well done, you!! (Note: Round One hotels are generally Shelter Island, Mission Bay, airport-close and areas outlying the San Diego Convention Ctr. However, they're all lovely hotels at bargain rates and the SDCC-provided shuttles are free and run, mostly, around the clock. Early Bird Hotel Sale Round Two usually occurs in the spring, and offers the more coveted, downtown hotels, most within walking-distance to the Convention Ctr and the historic downtown Gaslamp District.

Yet, when summer arrives, if you weren't an Early Bird, a 5-day stretch will cost you monies more likely aligned with Spacex' new satellite-distribution budget. Mind you, those last-minute hotels won't be all fabulous 5-stars within walking distance of The Con and The Gaslamp, with soothing, harbour-views and top-notch room service; some will still be Spacex budget, but will be skanky 1- and 2-stars within walking distance of Dirty Dan's and with a dumpster-view. Well, depending on how San Diego's Measure C fares in March, you might be paying extra for that dumpster- or harbour-view, or not. Either way, you'll still pay a hefty hotel-tax ... or sunshine-tax, as the more obnoxious of us San Diegans call it.

Currently, San Diego's hotel room tax is 10.5%. On the ballot, March 3rd 2020, Measure C will ask voters to boost that 10.5%: ranging from 1.25% to 3.25%, depending on how close a hotel is to the San Diego Convention Center.

So, some quick, Muppet math: If your SDCC hotel room costs $300/night, your current tax is $31.50/night. If Measure C passes, it goes into immediate effectiveness and your room will now cost extra $3.75 - $9.75/night, added to that $31.50/night fee. Thus, a $300 room could jump to a $335.25 or $341.25 room, depending on how far you are from the Convention Ctr. Ta-dahhhhh!

Tourism wonks, local pols and union folk have trumpeted a potential goldmine of tourist coins that could translate into billions of dollars for the City of San Diego and its tourism and construction industries. All monies raised are slated for San Diego Convention Center expansion and operation, homelessness reduction and road repairs; the bulk of any monies raised as a result of this new tax, 59%, is slated specifically for Conv Ctr construction and facility operation.

“We’re telling voters upfront,” explained Carol Kim, a member of the Convention Center board and the Building and Construction Trades Council, "we’re not just going to raise this tax and let anybody do what they want with it. We’re going to raise this tax and spend it specifically on three things. Three specific buckets: The convention center expansion, homelessness, streets, and roads.”

It's not all flowers and sausages, though. Community advocate Donna Frye warns voters the extended hotel-tax is "a huge, ongoing tax subsidy": 42 years from date of passage, to be precise.

“What they’ve done is they’ve tried to combine it, the hotel guys have tried to combine it with homelessness and roads,” Frye said. “And make it sound like it’s really for homeless people when there is no guarantee, there is absolutely nothing in the measure that says any housing will be built for the homeless.”

In fact, whilst Convention Center specs are outlined, Measure C does not outline how homelessness monies will be spent. Spending relies on the San Diego City Council to make all decisions regarding homeless services, housing or a combo thereof.

“I’ve been involved in a lot of campaigns and ballot measures,” said San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer. “I have never seen a more diverse and stronger coalition that cuts across all portions of San Diego because we need this funding source. We need a permanent source of funding for homeless services. We need to expand our convention center and the dollars this will mean for road improvement. These are the issues San Diegans care about. It’s the first time it is actually going to be on the ballot. And I think that’s why you’re seeing so much enthusiasm.”

So, if you are indeed headed to SDCC 2020, like Yours Truly, you know to bring extra, Earth monies. You always need extra, because, well, action figures, cosplay wigs, vintage lunchboxes, geek tees, pewter dragons, Star Wars gear, Hello Kitty hoodies and cocktails at Lou & Mickey's. Just be aware, your hotel bill, Early Bird or not, is likely going to be out of this world.

Just the facts, ma'am: 

A "yes" vote supports authorizing the city to increase the tax levied on overnight lodging guests with a tiered range from 1.25% to 3.25%, with revenue dedicated to expanding the San Diego Convention Center, improving streets and related infrastructure, and funding programs to reduce homelessness.

A "no" vote opposes authorizing the city to increase the tax levied on overnight lodging guests, thereby leaving the city's hotel tax rate at 10.5%.

Because Measure C is a dedicated tax increase, the ballot measure needs a two-thirds majority vote to pass.

Good grief! I hate politics! Photo: JSDevore, SDCC 2015

@JennyPopCom

Gwen Stefani’s You Make It Feel Like Christmas is a modern take on the traditional Christmas specials that we all grew up with and love. Featuring musical performances and fun, holiday sketches, this one-hour primetime special captures Stefani’s infectious spirit and iconic style. It takes her accessible joie de vivre and the love in her heart and shares it with audiences around the country.  Stefani performs several songs from her holiday album, “You Make It Feel Like Christmas,” as well as several festive favorites, including “Jingle Bells” and “Santa Baby.” 

 
Special guest appearances include Blake Shelton, the six-time winning coach on NBC’s “The Voice” and a multi-award-winning country music superstar. Shelton and Stefani perform the title track from Stefani’s album, “You Make It Feel Like Christmas,” which the two co-wrote along with Justin Tranter and the late Busbee. Additional guest appearances include Chelsea Handler, Ken Jeong, Seth MacFarlane and NE-YO, who join Stefani for the holiday festivities. You Make It Feel Like Christmas is a journey through everything that makes the holiday season so special to Stefani and the rest of the world.  
 
“You Make It Feel Like Christmas” airs Thursday, December 19th, 2019 on NBC, 10-11 EST, and is a Done & Dusted Production in association with Interscope Records. Irving Azoff, Steve Berman, Eddie Delbridge, David Jammy, John Janick, Tina Kennedy and Katy Mullan serve as executive producers.
 
Merry Christmas, kittens! YOU make it fee like Christmas!

Can I offer you tickets to a live, Christmas special in the tradition of Andy Williams?

- Liz Lemon, 30Rock S3e6

Long before Instagram bred the invasive FOMO strain, many a home-bound, snowbound Victorian envisioned warmer, winter climes, mostly by way of personal memories (if they had been fortunate enough to travel), letters from friends on sunny holidays (those actually fortunate enough to travel), or by literature-fueled imagination, reading tomes like Treasure Island or Winged Life in the Tropics by the sooty fireside. The idea of bare legs and sandy toes was never further away than in Victorian Boston, Brooklyn or Bar Harbor. Enter ... Professor Charles Frederick Holder with a vicarious cure for the truest, icy-bluest, winter doldrums.

On a, presumably, clear and sunny, winter's day, far away from the sleet and soot of 1890 New England, the Valley Hunt Club of Pasadena, California had a brilliant, if not somewhat braggadocious, idea: to share their geographic good fortune with all those snowbound schlubs back East. "In New York," Prof. Holder, leader of Valley Hunt Club observed, people are buried in sonw ... Here our flowers are blooming and our oranges are about to bear. Let's hold a festival to tell the world about our paradise." It's a little like tagging a friend recovering from an appendectomy, with selfies of you in Paris. It might be meant to brighten someone's day; yet, it could be seen as insensitive. Either way, it was certainly meant as a generous gesture at the time and the Tournament of Roses parade was born.

Of course, from 1890 until the 1920s, the only way to truly experience the parade in all its floral and scent-laden goodness, was to travel to California. If that wasn't possible, one waited weeks for newspapers to print images taken by their reporters. Even by 1925, when wire photos were the next best thing to being there (similar to a fax, with light photons sent via telegraph or radio current), one still waited a week for transmission, and even then, the glorious, blue skies and vibrant flora of a SoCal winter were lost to the muddy graininess of black-and-white images. Horse-drawn carriages, motor cars and the earliest of floats were laden with local flowers, foliage, fruits and the bubbly festivity that can only be bred in California. Happy cows and people come from California. Witness.

Thank goodness for continued technology. On New Year’s Day, 1940, television first aired via an experimental television station based in Los Angeles: W6XAO. In 1947, another new station, licensed as W6XYZ/KTLA (local channel 5) covered the Rose Parade via television, for the first time ever. One year later, on January 1^st, 1948, the old, experimental station, W6XAO, returned and was eventually licensed as KNXT/KCBS. By 1948, two more Los Angeles stations alighted: KFI-TV, eventually licensed as KHJ-TV/KCAL-TV (local channel 9): and KLAC-TV, eventually licensed as KCOP (local channel 13). Both new stations joined parade coverage on New Year’s Day, 1949. Getting in just under the wire, a third station popped up on-air: KTTV (local channel 11 and home turf to TMZ). The 1949 Tournament of Roses Parade was KTTV's very first on-air program. In 1950, one more station-tent was added to the parade-coverage: KNBH, later licensed as KRCA/KNBC. In 1951, KECA-TV, later KABC-TV, added the Rose Parade to their New Year's line-up.

Also, sometime in the 1960s, football was added to the Rose Parade festivities, I guess. Whatever.

If you grew up watching the Rose Parade on KTLA, chances are good your childhood memories of any given January 1st include hosts Stephanie Edwards and Bob Eubanks. The Bob and Stephanie show was synonymous with New Year's Day, hosting from 1982-2016. Since their retirement, and for the noted future due to freshly inked deals this December 2019, Leeza Gibbons and Mark Steines have proved perky, affable replacements. If you're watching the 2020 coverage on NBC, your hosts will be the ever-ebullient and optimistic Hoda Kotb and Al Roker.

Accuweather predicts January 1, 2020 in Pasadena, California to be sunny, clear and sixty-two degrees. To that end, Prof. Charles F. Holder was correct. Our flowers are blooming and our oranges are about to bear, whilst a lot of the country can't get out of their driveways. Wherever you are, in the U.S., or around the world, whether you love a blue sky and turquoise sea, or prefer a rainy and grey, proper winter landscape, you can't mistake the televised views of Pasadena, Colorado Blvd. and The Norton Simon Museum sitting stately on the sidelines. The parade does shamelessly boast all our beauteous, blooming, Technicolor, SoCal flowers and fruits of winter, not to mention all the happy, peppy people of The Tournament of Roses. Even for those, for whom the Rose Parade is a bit old-hat, boring and played even, jaded or not, it makes a person happy. It warms your soul, wherever and however you watch it; it infuses your spirit with a brisk, bright start to an optimistic New Year, eEven if only by watching Tilman, the snowboarding/skateboarding bulldog.

Happy New Year's, kittens! May your 2020 be brilliant, lucrative and plentiful with love and light!

 Follow all year @JennyPopCom Twitter and Insta!

"Hey, whose leg do you gotta gagoosh to get an Amaretto Disaronno around here?"

                                                -Vinnie, Family Guy, "Christmas Guy"

Tradition wraps itself around The Holidays like a thick, Irish cable-knit sweater: shopping, socializing, gifting, baking, travelling and visiting with family - those fams carefully curated, as well as those into which we are born. Some fams are just wackadoo and amusing enough to engage you into horridly uncomfortable, severely awkward card games. (Note: Cards Against Humanity NOT rec for play with children, nieces, nephews, parents or grandarents. Equal opp embarrassment. Trust Moi.) Some fams are just conservative and deathly boring enough to engage catatonia. Either way, if you are a fellow Earthling, your Holiday traditions are, likely, equally eagerly and dreadfully anticipated. All are carefully navigated. We at JennyPop understand, and empathize with, both extremes of The Holidays pendulum. Ergo, similar to her Thanksgiving Episode Recs, JennyPop has curated a of fave holiday viewing, just for you: season and episodes numbers included (i.e. S1e1) for ease of searching.

Forget ye not FOX holiday animation! Even when some episodes aren't quite en point - debates run year-round throughout a community of online Comic Book Guys - Family Guy, Bob's Burgers and The Simpsons (Simpsons now only avail on Disney+ , Amazon or live network) holiday fare give some of us the warm fuzzies in an already cozy time of year. As I penned for my Thanksgiving TV list, holiday programming is a tasty, gluttonous treat for a viewership family comprised of non-adulting adult-toddlers - totally includes Moi - and ready to celebrate a year's end in the silly and simple joy of twisted family-humour.

All, new, FOX Animation Domination Christmas fare airs Sunday, December 13, 2020:

• The Simpsons:  "A Springfield Summer Christmas for Christmas" (S32e10) Springfield is mis-en-scène for a Hollywood production; and Principal Skinner finds love at the Holidays. 

• Family Guy: "The First No L" (S19e9) Lois has had enough making Christmas sans any help and takes a break this year, leaving the rest of the fam to save the season.

• Bob's Burgers: "Yachty or Nice" (S11e10) Bob is leery when his restaurant is hired to cater the Glencrest Yacht Club's annual, holiday boat parade; and, Louise sees herself as a boat owner.  

*Note: Because The Goldbergs serves up cheerful, Christmukkah joy each season: "Hanukkah on the Seas" (S8e7) airs Wednesday, December 2, 202020 at 8PST/EST.

Now, pour a glass of cab, pour out some spice tea, or craft a festive, adult libation and get to Holiday viewing! As with Thanksgiving TV and film recs,, JennyPop doesn't rank shows, just lists them; as not everyone might agree with a ranking. All are winners though, or they wouldn't be on the list. Season and episode designations (i.e., S1e1) are listed alongside, for easy-peasy searches. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Joyful Viewing to all!

Fave Christmas and Hanukkah TV Episodes!

Bob's Burgers

"God Rest Ye Merry Gentle-Mannequins" (3e9)

"Christmas in the Car" (S4e8)

"Nice-Capades" (S6e5)

"Last Gingerbread House on the Left" (S7e7)

"The Bleakening: Parts I and II" (S8e6/7)

Better Off Sled (S9e10)

"Have Yourself a Maily Linda Christmas" (S10e10)

"Yachty or Nice" (S11e10)

Family Guy

"A Very Special Family Guy Freakin' Christmas" (S3e16)

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph" (S11e8)

"Christmas Guy" (S12e8)

"How the Griffin Stole Christmas" (S15e9)

"Don't Be a Dickens at Christmas" (S16e9)

"The First No L" (S19e9)

The Goldbergs

"A Christmas Story" (aka Super Hanukkah) (S3e10)

"Han Ukkah Solo" (S4e10)

"Yippee Ki Yay Melon Farmer" (S6e10)

"It's a Wonderful Life" (S7e10)

"Hanukkah on the Seas" (S8e7)

At Home with Amy Sedaris

"Holidays" (S1e7)

Stranger Things

"Holly, Jolly" (S1e3)

"A Stranger Things Christmas" (a ST x Peanuts stand-alone, animation short)

Modern Family

"Undeck the Halls"(S1e10)

"Express Christmas" (S3e10)

"The Old Man and the Tree" (S5e10)

"White Christmas" (S7e9)

"The Last Christmas" (S11e8)

The Big Bang Theory

"The Bath Item Gift Hypothesis" (S2e11)

"The Maternal Congruence" (S3e11)

"The Santa Simulation" (S6e11)

"The Cooper Extraction" (S7e11)

"The Clean Room Infiltration" (S8e11)

The King of Queens

"Noel Cowards" (S1e11)

"Net Prophets" (S2e12)

"Better Camera" (S3e11)

"Mentalo Case" (S5e11)

"Santa Claustrophobia" (S6e11)

"Silent Mite" (S7e7)

"Baker's Doesn't" (S8e11)

30Rock

"Ludachristmas"(S2e9)

"Christmas Special"(S3e6)

"Secret Santa" (S4e8)

"Christmas Attack Zone"(S5e10)

Arrested Development

"Afternoon Delight" (S2e6)

The Simpsons  (a sampling, 18 eps avail) 

"Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" (S1e1)

"Mr. Plow" (S4e9)

"Miracle on Evergreen Terrace" (S9e10)

"Grift of the Magi" (S11e9)

"Simpsons Christmas Stories"(S17e9)

"Holidays of Future Passed" (S23e9)

"White Christmas Blues" (S25e8)

"'Tis the 30th Season" (S30e10)

"Bobby, It's Cold Outside" (S31e10)

Seinfeld

"The Red Dot" (S3e12)

"The Race" (S6e10)

"The Strike" (aka Festivus) (S9e10)

Decorating Disney

Holiday Magic 

Northern Exposure

"Seoul Mates" (S3e10)

The O.C.

"The Best Chrismukkah Ever"(S1e13)

Scrubs

"My Own Personal Jesus" (S1e11)

King of the Hill

"The Unbearable Blindness of Laying" (S2e11)

"Pretty, Pretty Dresses" (S3e9)

"'Twas the Nut Before Christmas" (S5e8)

"Livin' onn Reds, Vitamin C and Propane" (S8e7)

The Office (U.S.)

"Christmas Party" (S2e10)

"Benihana Christmas" (S3e10)

"Moroccan Christmas" (S5e11)

"Secret Santa" (S6e13)

"Classy Christmas" (S7e11/12)

"Dwight Christmas" (S9e9)

Rugrats

"The Santa Experience" (S2e14)

"Chanukah" (S4e1)

"Babes in Toyland" (S9e3/4)

Mr. Bean

"Merry Christmas, Mr. Bean (S1e7)

Stand-alone Holiday Specials

A Stranger Things Christmas (ST x Peanuts mashup, aka Merry Christmas, Will Byers)

Keeping up Appearances

"A Very Merry Hyacinth"

Little House on the Prairie

"The Christmas They Never Forgot"

The Office (U.K.)

"Christmas Specials"

Wonderpets

"Save the Reindeer!"

Mr. Bean

"Merry Christmas Mr. Bean"

Any Stella Artois commercials

Fave Christmas and Hanukkah Films!

A Charlie Brown Christmas (duh!)

A Christmas Story

Elf

Switchmas

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Winnie the Pooh: Christmas of Giving

A Madea Christmas

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

A Family Man

Love, Actually

The Bear Who Slept Through Christmas

Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas

Santa and the Three Bears

A Muppet Christmas Carol

Black Adder's A Christmas Carol

Mickey's Christmas Carol

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas

A Garfield Christmas

Lady Gaga and The Muppets' Holiday Spectacular

If I neglected anything, please let me know! I'm toujours happy to amend my lists!

Merry Christmas, Joyeux Noel, Happy Chanukah, Gledelig Jul, Froehliche Weihnachten, God Jul and Mele Kalikimaka to everyone!!

Just when you thought Orange County's windex waves were sketchy, The Darlings of Orange County are headed into the real, shark-infested waters: Hollywood. All The Darlings, and their cohorts, are headed to H-town: Veronica, Ryan, Chet, Tucker, Pardo and Astrid. If drugs, sex, veganism, duplicity and murder-by-fashion-doll don't belong in Hollywood, where do they belong?

Author and essayist Jennifer Susannah Devore Savannah of Williamsburg, San Diego Comic-Con Souvenir Book, is currently adapting her bikini-and-martini, summer beach-read novel to a screenplay. Hold on to your Uggs, kids. You're going to get sand everywhere!

Ideal production partners/storytelling stylists?

Cheers, kittens! As the SoCal comic convention season is in full-swing (You remember Wednesday's Bad Night at WonderCon, don't you?), my con cohort at Twisted Pair Photography and I are getting ready for San Diego Comic-Con 2015 (SDCC); in that process, we are partaking in a wee bit o' pre-con cavorting. Fortunately for us, Yours Truly has contacts; they might be in books, they might be in comics, they might be in beer. You don't know.

So, as it pertains to our most recent pre-conning, I have a query for you. What do the Library of Congress, IDW Publishing and San Diego Comic Art Gallery have in common? A vision of posterity, crackerjack curators, an historic backyard and a brewery within walking-distance. Two of these pip organizations have set up shop in a gloriously gorgeous San Diego community and, happily for all, they're both sitting pretty next to Stone Brewing beer garden.

Comics bulwark IDW, founded in 1999 by Ted Adams and Robbie Robbins, has grown so big in its britches, those britches have been let out to accommodate an 18K+ sq. ft. workspace in the posh yet chill, waterside neighbourhood of Point Loma. Think Range Rover-meets-Roxy, Brooks Bros-meets-Billabong, Nautica-meets-No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem. Situated serenely along the San Diego Bay and America's Cup Harbor, housed in one of the original barracks at the Naval Training Center (NTC) at Liberty Station, the cavernous, 1921 Spanish Colonial Revival edifice makes great digs for a Vans-and-RayBans kind of entity like IDW.

Ushered in by Prohibition, 1920s San Diego was two-parts business, one-part good times. In 1921, the NTC commenced construction and by 1923 began rustling to life as a hive of naval activity. Having just come out of WWI, protection along the Pacific, offensive and defensive, seemed a good idea. Initially a training base for one-sixth of the U.S. Naval fleet, the compound soon came to house military classrooms, residential quarters, tactical training fields and everything the Pacific fleet needed to prepare for come what may. Come it did. By WWII's peak years, the NTC was home to more than 33K sailors. (I can't say the wartime Betties of San Diego had a problem with that!)

Today, the NTC is a far cry from its initial intentions. By the 1990s, Liberty Station was maneuvering away from military endeavours and into real estate. Now, it functions as a center for the arts, entertainment and business: retail, churches, beauty and wellness, hotels (Marriott, Hilton), golf (Loma Golf Club), leased office space, banking (Navy Federal Credit Union, natch), fitness, dining, culture, museums and so much more. What your great-grandfather saw as a campus for national secrecy and necessary aggression, you may now see as a weekend destination for Starbucks and SDCAG, SoCal Fly Fishing Outfitters and Capoeira Brasil (Ponytail! Ponytail!) or California Ballet and Sushi Mura. Cap off your jaunty day with a pint at Stone Brewing and a run for Longboard Chips and New Zealand water at Trader Joe's, and you've got the new normal at Liberty Station. It's like Sarah Jessica Parker took great-grandfather's Naval-issue peacoat and stuck a giant, pink, silk rose on the lapel. The original bones are still there, but now it goes better with a Zara cocktail dress than a mop and bucket, you know, for dancing and swabbing decks whilst belting out Fred Astaire-style nautical chanties with your fellow sailors.

That's a nice story, but what about IDW, Hannah?, the fair reader gently prods. To continue ...

Installed on the bottom floor of IDW's digs, in Barracks 3, the SDCAG opened to the public June 5th, 2015: "designed to educate and engage the local San Diego community and the region of Southern California with the sequential comic book and graphic arts". Owned-and-operated by IDW, the gallery houses an analog, research library (appt. only), artist-in-residence program (coming soon) and, for you Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) aficionados, the Eastman Studio: a permanent installment of TMNT co-creator/artist Kevin Eastman's home studio and personal memorabilia collection. Throughout the year, SDCAG will install exhibits featuring a bevy of artists knee-deep in comic lore. The inaugural exhibit? Kevin Eastman and his TMNT.

With San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) just around the corner, geographically and temporally, (San Diego Convention Center, July 9-12, 2015) IDW/SDCAG have positioned themselves smartly for a pop-culture, coming-out carousal. As the cosplayed hordes descend upon America's Finest City, they shall find that besides The Old Globe, S.D. Air and Space Museum, S.D. Museum of Art, S.D. Natural History Museum and Hooters (For a lot of you mooks it's the closest you're going to get to San Diego boob.), the S.D. Comic Art Gallery will serve many of your artistic, and geeky, needs. To serve those more primal needs in Maslow's Hierarchy, SDCAG is fortuitously located right next door to Stone Brewing World Bistro and Gardens: an 11K+ sq. ft., glass-stone-and-wood re-purpose of what used to be the NTC mess hall. Hello, sailor! Buy a girl a stout and some crispy Brussels sprouts?

On June 4, 2015, the night before their grand opening, IDW/SDCAG held a VIP event, to present the art gallery on a more intimate level to those closest to the effort. That night, along with Ménage à Trois and J. Lohr wines, an oh-so-hoppy IPA flowed generously, provided by Stone. It's just good fence-building, proffering beer to the new guy on the block.

Whether it's an Arrogant Bastard, a Double Bastard, a Crazy Ivan or a Border Psycho, a quaff of Stone is always a great mingling lubricant. So, just in time for San Diego's greatest mingling event, IDW/SDCAG and Stone Brewing Liberty Station are celebrating con-season with Hop-Con, the w00tstout Festival: "Our annual celebration of nth-degree beer geekery".

Launching Wednesday, July 8, 2015 (same night as SDCC Preview Night), if you jelly beans can swing $40-$100/person, you can drink-and-geek with Aisha Tyler, Wil Wheaton, Kevin Eastman and the upper echelon of Stone brewerdom. To boot, you can be of the first to imbibe the "2015 Stone Farking Wheaton w00tstout". Want more special beer? According to an inside source, there might be a Kevin Eastman/Kris Ketcham collaboration beer which might be called "Twisted Turtle w00tstout". (Call 619-269-2100 for more info. on advance tix and event specifics.)

But, Hannah, what about the Library of Congress?, you ask wearily and patiently. Allow me to elucidate  ...

In 1800, amidst legislation which would move our new country's capital from the progressively sophisticated Philadelphia to the swampy backwoods of Washington, America's second president John Adams (1797-1801) understood the dire need for a local, congressional reading room, research facilities and library for this new nation. Moving merrily along its way, August 1814 saw Adams' library come to a fiery end as the British set our Capitol aflame. (Good thing we're all friends now.) Upon this news, then-retired, third president Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809), and Adams' BFF, proffered his precious, voluminous, private library at Monticello as a replacement. Jefferson's collection and all that would be added to it over the years would become America's library: the Library of Congress.

Visionary like Jefferson and Adams, IDW/SDCAG understand that, even though the comic arts seem all too present and contemporary, at times even fleeting, wondering when this wild, geek, pop-culture rocket will free-fall back to Earth, history always needs a paper trail, even digital history. When tomorrow arrives, mankind always thanks those whom were ambitious enough to preserve the past. (Plus, if you've been watching Wayward Pines, you'll know that even in the year 4065, First Generation will need something to read. Why not Jem and the Holograms or Mr. Peabody & Sherman? Although, I would suggest against 30 Days of Night and Rot & Ruin. Those might be too realistic in WP.)

Adams, Jefferson, IDW and SDCAG also know America needs just the right word-nerd to curate the past and present, for the future. John James Beckley served as the first Librarian of Congress (1802-1807) under the Jefferson administration. In keeping with a national level of know-how, Harry L. Katz, former Head Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Library of Congress, will serve as the first curator of SDCAG. He now calls San Diego home. (Psst, Harry. The Starbucks at Liberty Station is a beautiful and breezy switch from the one you're probably used to at Seward Square. Still, it's hard to beat the small, window-table facing the streetlight on Penn. Ave., on a snowy D.C. morning. Enjoy our palm trees and ocean air, good sir!) Oh, breweries within walking distance of the LOC? A couple of Gordon Biersch, Capital City Brewing Co. and District Chophouse and Brewery. Yeah, D.C. is a far better walking-town than San Diego.

Kids, here's an insider's tip: San Diego is one hell of a town and you'll never grasp it in one long weekend. You can try though! Start by getting up early; you can sleep when you get home. Then, grab a quad shot over ice at Starbucks or Peet's and hit the terra-cotta tiles heading in any direction! If you're in town for Comic-Con, out for a sunny getaway from Beantown or the Big Apple, or if you're just a local doof like Moi looking for more stimuli than Big Steve's Comic Kitchen can give you, drop by the SDCAG, year-round. When you're done, treat yourself to a tantalizing brew in Stone's sunny, stony, garden bistro. It's your summer, kittens; do something fun with it.

Abyssinia on the Con floor, kittens!

Aside: A v special Thank You! to Denton Tipton and Rosalind Morehead at IDW, and Gary Sassaman at CCI, for a wonderful SDCAG opening event! Cheers to all!

Visit JennyPop every Con season for all of her Official SDCC Souvenir Book articles and full, Con coverage. w her fave, Con-cohort: Twisted Pair Photography shutterbug, Eslilay Evoreday.

Follow @JennyPop: Insta and Twitter for year-round geeky goodness and visit her Amazon Author Page