Here’s a glimpse of what they’re working on:

Carlos, age 7

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Haley, age 7

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Jackson, age 8

“Thou shalt not bear false witness…” Sounds familiar. That would be one of the Ten Commandments liberal judges say cannot be posted in public schools, or on government monuments because that would be an establishment of religion by the US Government.

Here’s the President of this pluralist, secular, democracy paraphrasing Cain and Abel found in the book of Genesis: “…what I consider to be a core ethical and moral obligation that we look out for one another, that I am my brother’s keeper and I am my sister’s keeper.”

We have a moral obligation? So now we can legislate morality. Check.

I’m not even sure what Obama means by this, “We are God’s partners in matters of life and death,” I was kind of hoping he still thought it was above his pay grade.

“Should” is a moral word —a philosophical one. You can’t weigh it in a lab, it cannot be found in the materials. So to tell America’s (liberal) religious leaders to spread the word that we should pass the President’s health care plan, he’s pushing a value from his office as the president.

I love it.

He’s actually living out what the left has railed against when a Republican refuses to divorce their religion from their political decisions. I just wanted to mark this day that the POTUS used his state position to disperse a religious, philosophical point of view…and all I can hear from the ACLU are crickets chirping. NAMBLA-defending crickets.

I smell a rat. It’s implied that when Republicans call up religious support that we are just doing it to manipulate the Gods-n-guns folks. When Bush reaches out to faith leaders it’s duplicitous and inherently manipulative. But when the left does it, it’s genuine — they have somehow divined the true spirit of Christ in our political discourse. The right is pandering to faith communities while the left is reaching out to faith communities.

Obama even comports himself like a charismatic preacher. That’s his rhetorical style. Hillary channeled black preachers when speaking in the South. John Kerry took many a photo op in front of huge robed choirs when touting his own religion while running against Bush. Bill Clinton and the Baptist Al Gore did the same. So why is it that when Obama quotes the book of Matthew he’s not a threat but a journalist has a heart attack because he heard from a source who heard from a source who heard from a source that Bush had an active prayer life with Jesus?

The answer is simple, the true religion of the left is pragmatism, and even the Christianity they hate will be embraced so long as it gets them to their leftist, Utopian goals. That’s why a Republican can be gay, a woman, a black man, a poor fellow, and they are still demonized. The left doesn’t hate blacks. It’s that they love their own ends more than any standard, value or government. If turning a blind eye to the horrors of Islamists is useful, then so be it. But don’t think that they actually embrace Christianity. Because as soon as a Republican Christian is in office it will be back to “Jesusland” and “God-n-guns” rhetoric.

Cindy Sheehan told Byron York, “The ‘anti-war’ ‘left’ was used by the Democratic Party. I like to call it the “anti-Republican War’ movement.” But Cindy didn’t go far enough. Because they won’t just use the anti-war left, but the Democratic Party will use Christians, gays, Mormons, terrorists, body-counts, Republicans (Specter), southerners, high unemployment, low unemployment to achieve their means. And as soon as they’re done using any of these in the back seat of the Donkey Van the same groups are discarded. Cindy Sheehan who?

It’s not the practice of religion that the left hates about conservatives any more than it was the practice of war for why they hated Bush. It’s that they hate conservatives so much that their practice of religion, war or tiddlywinks will be cast in the darkest shade possible.

But as for me and my house, we welcome religion into our politics. I just want the left to remember this day where with this posting I supported the President’s reaching out to lefty religious people.

Religious politicians acting on their faith is not an establishment of a government church, nor was it when Bush did it.

The first thing that grabbed me was the character work. The hero, Julia Powell (her real life blog is here) is a foodie blogger played by Amy Adams. I’m used to watching Amy Adams over my kid’s shoulder in “Enchanted,” which plays in our house on continual loop. I didn’t know Amy knew how to turn down the volume and play a “plain-Jane, yet interesting”… but she’s awesome. This isn’t her usual glowing, perky role where she turns it on like a fire-hose. And she doesn’t turn invisible like when she played a piece of cardboard in “Doubt.”

Back to the characters because “J and J” is a feast of interesting, appealing people I haven’t seen chew up the screen like this in a long time. The real Julia Child is already a great character, but Streep not only personifies this larger than life personality, she pulls off hilarious physical acting. She’s a comedic presence that had our audience laughing with every scene. And she looks huge, just like the real Julia Child. As a 6′8″ fellow, I appreciated the height jokes like when Streep reclines in a bed only to have her feet extend well beyond the mattress.

But Streep shows us sides of Child we probably hadn’t seen before: her sexuality, her competitive spirit, and the mourning for children. How painfully ironic that her name was Child.

I don’t know how Streep does it, but she makes her jowls look bigger. Her hands look big and mannish. Her shoulders rounded so that she looks like she’s playing a man in drag, which is kind of how Child came off to me. A refrigerator in a dress.

Stanley Tucci was in another favorite food movie of mine, “Big Night.” My friends told me to see Big Night then go out for Italian food. My Beloved and I saw “J and J” on date night then went out for dinner. It was one of our better date nights… much better than the time I made her see “Mimic.” But guys, don’t be fooled into thinking this is a chick flick. It’s a people flick. I’d take anybody to see this and if they didn’t like it, they’d need therapy. Yeah, this is the first sure fire Oscar contender I saw this year. At least this is the one I’ll be rooting for when they award it to some movie about a transvestite who marries a 12-year-old boy then murders him because Republican Christians fired him from his job.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Stanley Tucci. He plays the nicest guy in the world. He’s a great, understated character to provide contrast to Streep’s living cartoon. Hats off to Chris Messina as Julie Powell’s long-suffering husband and Jane Lynch who plays Julia Child’s sister.

This is for Nora Ephron: stop wasting your time at Huffington Post and make more movies. As a married man, you’re one of the few who seem to get marriage… even men in marriage. You seem to like men, which is rare among women writers. As someone who writes graphic novels, you’re one of the few who gets what it’s like to long for a significant project to find its way to publisher. You get the narcissism of working on one’s craft while someone else is in the house being neglected for some great piece of art. As someone who knows his way around the kitchen, you get the love of cooking, experimenting with recipes, even shopping for ingredients. Finally, you get Julia Child… including details like her love of sending post cards.

My wife went through a phase when she became an airplane pilot in the ’90s where she studied great women of the last century. She stumbled on the biography of Child Appetite for Life by Noel Riley Fitch. So inspired was my Beloved that she mailed Julia a birthday greeting for her 88th birthday. A few weeks later, she received a hand written post card from Julia herself! We were both so excited and my Beloved went into a cooking phase where I was the benefactor.

Man, this makes me wanna cook something. Maybe I’ll try making beef bourguignon.

Many comic creators dreaded the move-in of the film and video-game industry. The center of the convention center is year-by-year sprouting more and more fancy studio spaces as evidenced by towering signs and a hogging of square footage. Meanwhile, fledgling artists with books under arm can barely afford their tables though there’s still a four-year waiting list to get booth space. With maximum occupancy filled by both exhibitors and attendees only one thing can happen…prices will go up. It’s the law of supply and demand.

As I stood within my booth today a huge swarm of convention attendees mobbed a booth. There was a sea of people trying to see someone inside doing a signing. The group was so big that even my six-foot-eightness couldn’t see who it was at the table. I pulled an Elvis-wearing-a-kilt aside to ask who was signing. “Jennifer Love Hewitt.”

In the afternoon I was joined by Electric Playground’s Victor Lucas for my yearly interview. Their show provides top commentary on video games and movies long before mainstream Hollywood media got either of these mediums. They don’t understand their broadest audiences and think people want to hear more about Perez or Paris Hilton than what’s going on with “Halo.” They’re wrong.

Mainstream entertainment news vomits, then trains and audience to consume it, then complain that the audience only wants more vomit. Entertainment news is lazy, they don’t want to dig up real events and only found the Comic-Con after five straight years of the sold-out event. They probably didn’t trust their audience’s interest in comics, and it’s probably unfathomable to them that the convention would be interesting even without Hollywood’s presence.

Comics have been around since the pyramids but video games and movies are relatively new to the scene. The medium of comics will outlive them and the Comic-Con will survive Hollywood’s flavor-of-the-decade interest just fine. In the meanwhile, it’s nice to sell books with Jennifer Love Hewitt signing right next door.

I got a boost when half way through the day Jon Heder and Dan Heder came by my booth. Jon was wearing a Dan costume and Dan came as Jon. I loaded them up with books and Jon told me about his new series he’ll be doing for Comedy Central and Dan is doing CG pre-viz work on a Gore Verbinsky project.

I keep bumping into one of my favorite artists, Eric Powell, who is a great artist and a good family man. He’s living the dream with his “Goon” comic book being developed into a CG animated feature by David Fincher.

The rest of the day is too similar to the previous days so I’ll shift to my dinner party I host each year for my forum buddies. We had a surprise guest, Gunnery Sgt. Nick “Pop” Popaditch! In case you haven’t seen his story on TV, he’s the Gunnery Sergeant that took a rocket in the face while battling in Fallujah. I met his family and gave him a copy of my graphic novel Monster Zoo, which was dedicated to our troops. He gave me a signed copy of his autobiography, Once a Marine. He has a bunch of different bitchin’ false eyes he swaps out. Tonight’s featured an image of a tank with cross-hairs.

I ended the night by having a cigar with my pals on the bay as a fireworks show launched from the Del Coronado Bridge. My voice is gone. I miss my kids since I leave for the convention before they wake and come home after they’re already asleep. One more day, one more post, then it’s a wrap.

In a convention first, I ended up in a meeting at the Warner Brothers booth where I pitched a prime time TV show. The best thing about the convention is that instead of me having to scatter fifty meetings across the year to catch up on the usual folks to whom I pitch, they’re all in one room. Okay, it’s a big room, but somehow we’re managing to find each other.

At the Gotham Group/Darkhorse lunch party I met pals from Sony animation, Disney, Tyler Perry’s company, Warner Brothers, Dreamworks and Universal. Now we’re talking convenient, we got em’ all in a 30′ x 30′ room. I made my way through the mosh pit in front of the bar and ended up having three beers. They were free, and I left pretty wobbly. A few hours later I met with some executives from an unnamed family entertainment company that also has a theme park and rhymes with Schmalt Schmisney where they bought me two more drinks. So now I’m returning to my booth hammered.

I had a backlog of people waiting for me to sign my posters and I was hoping they didn’t notice my obviously slurred speech. I was hoping they just thought I talked like a normal idiot. As I document my slow descent into alcoholism this just became my inadvertent attempt at gonzo journalism. Enough of that.

Getting back to the Boba Fetts… I remembered hanging around with Jon Heder at the con two years ago when he got mobbed by a bunch of girls and fanboys. I mean they were tearing his clothes off and suddenly he didn’t like going to the convention any more even though he’s probably the most comic-video-game-cartoon savvy kid in Hollywood. But I’ve got your solution, Jon. You need to dress up like Boba Fett and you could walk the floor with only Boba Fett fans tearing your clothes off. Hey, I’m a problem solver. It’s what I do. I didn’t ask for this gift.

I ended the night by attending the Eisner Awards where my pal Ethan “Eef” Nicolle got robbed of an award. Don’t worry, pal, these awards are all fake and meaningless and a complete shame until we win one. Then they’ll mean everything. Patten Oswalt did a set announcing a few categories and he got some decent laughs. “Reno 911’s” Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant did a set and picked up an otherwise academic night of comic history and tributes.

Many of my Big Hollywood readers came over to play and it was great to meet you all. It was great to see a certain editor named John Nolte hang out as we swapped convention stories. Good people. Good times. Goodnight!

Twenty years ago a retired lady bumped into me while I was in line to see “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” when she said, “Oh, you like to draw? You should come to the San Diego Comic Con. Here’s two free passes.” She came to my booth today and I gave her a big hug.

I had over ten young industry professionals who work in comics, animation and video games and tell me that they decided to learn to draw because they liked my work. An incredible 25-year-old Russian kid said that he was raised on a pirate version of my game, “The Neverhood,” I did with Dreamworks in the mid ’90s. I looked at his comic pages and he could draw better than I could. I drew a character for him and he gave up a tear.

I’ve been on the receiving end of so many people’s kindness on my way into this industry that it makes no sense to avoid helping other up-and-coming artists and writers. One thing is for sure; there will be no shortage of great ideas funneling through Hollywood for the next generation. But talent is secondary to what’s really important, that there are people of character and substance coming into this industry that make me feel like entertainment will be in good hands as time goes on.

But let’s get away from this raw sentiment before we might actually feel something and get down to the bottom line–today was my biggest day of book sales ever. I was limping around with a bigger wad of bills than Bill Maher in a strip club.

I loved seeing Lou Ferrigno signing headshots. He looks younger than I remember and his arms are still huge. Sure, Arnold won the title in “Pumping Iron” but he’s the hare to Lou’s turtle.

Patricia Heaton and David Hunt brought the family to my booth to get some books. She’s a true friend and we’ve been working on a few pitches. I loved introducing her to a few pals I’m in business with in Japan. Just to be ironic they started taking pictures of her.

There was a panel introducing Tim Burton’s “Alice In Wonderland” and the audience went nuts when Johnny Depp made a surprise appearance. Producer Sean Bailey talked about “TRON 2.0″ and the footage made the audience erupt with excitement.

My management (Gotham Group) in partnership with Darkhorse Comics has their big yearly drink-n-schmooze then I’m going out to drinks with some Disney executives. With all of this drinking I have a great excuse to be an even bigger jerk so I’m looking forward to that.

Friday brings the Oscars of the comic kingdom known as The Eisner Awards. My buddy Ethan “Eef” Nicolle is up for Best Humor Graphic Novel with his book “Chumble Spuzz”…I’d be nervous, but then again I have a lot of confidence in his work.

Tomorrow (Saturday, when I’m sober), I’ll be on a panel from 11:00am-12:01pm talking about Spirituality in Comics. It will be in room 3. Don’t be a stranger.

Doug TenNapel (L) and fan at Comic-Con 2009

I got to meet my pals who come back to my booth every year and it’s always a special time to go face to face with my graphic-novel audience. I also do portfolio reviews of folks who are just starting to break into the world of comics. I love seeing good art, clear lay out and epic story-telling from 24 year olds. 24 year olds who can draw circles around me. 24 years who aren’t half way to dead like me. 24 year olds who, ah, heck I hate 24 year olds.

While I got soaked on mall parking it was nothing like what I paid to take my family of six to Legoland. “Wow, 20,000 blocks to make THAT!” is about all one can say during a trip to Legoland.

I did a few on camera interviews for I-have-no-idea-what-outlet so if it shows up on the Penthouse Channel I’d like to apologize in advance to my church.

I’m also nursing a broken middle finger on my right hand from a quad accident I had in Colorado three weeks ago so my hand shake is extra-limp. I like giving a firm hand shake but now I’m reduced to a squishy wet fish of a grasp that would send a chill up most people’s spine.

Most fans I talked to were clamoring to buy BONE creator Jeff Smith’s new issue of RASL. I didn’t see any outrageous costuming since the Wednesday night show is just for professionals, the press and exhibitors. This is the lightest night of the convention.

I got to talk to a few fans who had lost their jobs and were barely able to make it to the Con. The recession is hitting everyone pretty deep and while most downturns in markets past didn’t effect floor sales by a lot this year is palpably different. Oddly, I think people are nicer, looking for more intimacy behind the purchase and are doing without big budget items to come to comics for some comfort food. Maybe I’m just reading into it all a little too much, but I don’t recall ever hearing my video game industry friends saying, “Hey, it’s great to just be working.”

It’s late. Tomorrow the San Diego Symphony is performing famous video game music behind the convention which was orchestrated by our musician on the original “Earthworm Jim” video game. I can’t keep track of the cultural 6 degrees of separation that’s happening at the convention. It’s like a great convergence of everything I’ve been stewing in for the last 20 years.

It was great to meet my Big Hollywood readers who swung by my booth. So come on by and I promise to provide the best hand shake I can manage.

The last ten or so years has seen a deliberate migration of Hollywood into what used to be a convention to celebrate just comics. A general sense of grumbling can be heard from the true comic fans who resent the beautiful rich crowd carpet-bagging onto Will Eisner’s turf. But what many don’t realize is that this has contributed to the mainstreaming of comics into the rest of culture. With entertainment’s money comes stability of the comics medium, a broadening of a market, more books sold, artists, writers, publishers and bookstores able to stay alive a little longer this is good for our tribe.

But getting back to Voltron and Gumby, why does a convention that celebrates comics also have hundreds of video game consoles, movie stars, even classic 70’s cereal boxes for sale? It’s the overlap. I don’t care who are, if you loved the limited run 1980’s anime television series “Voltron” you read comics. Period. If had to roll my 20 sided dice I’d also bet my last saving throw that you also played video games.

There’s probably a real good chance that you have a throw-back t-shirt of some ancient classic like “Star Wars” and you probably owned a “Planet of the Apes” lunch box. We were raised on the peak of cheap plastic manufacturing that figured out how to get a free toy in a box of cereal while we were figuring out how to put a man on the moon.

Let’s go back to Comic-con 2005 where Dreamworks executive and marketing genius Michael Vollman rolled out a giant diesel truck on the show floor. It was covered in a giant black tarp so that one could only see the wheels of the vehicle but the logo silkscreened on the side said it all…the “Transformers” logo. Ever hear of “Transformers?” Well, at least now you do. And the word of mouth started with a potent, core audience because some savvy marketing folks knew where to find the highest concentration of “Transformer” nuts in the world. Two years later the movie comes out, two years later the sequel.

No matter if you love anime, Dungeons and Dragons, Iron Man or just dress like a Klingon, this is orchestration of those forces converging on America’s Finest City. Oh, and if you don’t have tickets you can’t come because they sold out three months ago. Scalpers are getting 400 bucks and up for passes but you can come back here each day where I’ll bring you the sights (woman wearing that Princess Leia slave outfit who should not be wearing the Princess Leia slave outfit), sounds (of money dumping on my lap by the truck-loads) and smells (mostly pungent B.O.) of the convention floor for free.