Last night I went to the 5th Annual Johnny Ramone Tribute at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.  It was a fun night full of The Ramones, Night of the Living Dead, and Resident Evil.

NVIDIA was at the event showing off their impressive 3D Vision stereoscopic technology using Resident Evil 5.  RE5 looks absolutely stunning in 3D.  I kept hearing the word "awesome" said over and over by visiters trying it out. 

I was able to grab the very busy Linda Ramone (Johnny's wife) for a photo at the booth.  Linda and the Johnny Ramone Army are responsible for throwing the event every year to raise money for prostate cancer research.

Linda Ramone digging RE5 3D

Graveyard cat also digging RE5 3D

Once it got dark (and spooky), everyone gathered on the grass in front of the huge movie screen. We were treated to rare footage of a New Year's Eve 1977 Ramones concert.  After the short concert ended, actress Rose McGowan came out and introduced us all to the world premiere of Night of the Living Dead in 3D.  Right before the movie started, a 3D trailer for RE5 played.  It looked like there were a lot of RE fans in the audience, since there was a good amount of applause for the trailer.

Night of the Living Dead looked great in 3D. 

It was a cold, rockin', scary, and fun night!

Be sure to check out the blogs of WickedElement and TongariDan for their report of the event.  Click here to see more pictures in my gallery.

While in Vegas this year for Evo, my friends and I took a ten minute drive off the strip down to the wonderful Pinball Hall of Fame.  This place is a pinball fan's dream come true.  On the floor are hundreds of classic and modern pinball machines.  They have some incredibly rare machines that you've most likely never even heard of before.  The Pinball Hall of Fame collects pinball machines and restores them to 'like new' condition.  It's a not-for-profit corporation, where excess revenues go to charity.  Everything on the floor is playable.  I was told that they'll soon be moving to a bigger location right on the strip, where they'll have enough extra floor room for several hundred more machines!

Two Street Fighter II pinball machines were present on the floor, one in beautiful working condition and the other being repaired right in the front.

If you're ever in Vegas, I highly recommend spending a couple of hours and rolls of quarters here.  Check out my gallery for more photos.

My favorite pinball machine has always been The Addams Family.  What's yours?

Capcom’s Comic-Con booth was by far the most fun at the show.  I could see the smiles on people’s faces as they entered the area.  There seemed to always be a line to play the games or buy some goodies from the store.

This was my first trip to Comic-Con.  I couldn’t believe the enormity of the event.  It could take fifteen minutes or more just to walk from one end of the floor to the other.   All Capcom guests seemed to love playing Lost Planet 2 and Tatsunoko.  The graphics in LP2 always amaze me.  Everyone that I met was incredibly nice and friendly.  It’s always great being able to meet and put faces to Unity members.

I attended the convention on Sunday, so I unfortunately missed out on the wonderful panels that Capcom had to offer.  I did get to finally meet Random aka Mega Ran.  He asked people in the audience to hold up an item (anything they wanted).  Mega Ran then freestyled while incorporating the items flawlessly into his rap.  The crowd loved it and couldn’t believe how great he was.  If you haven't bought his albums yet, go do it now!

The Capcom store had some fantastic items, many even imported from Japan.  I bought myself two of the Rockman 20^th Anniversary mugs.  Here are some pictures of all the of all the lovely Capcom swag that I got.

To finish off my trip to San Diego, I stopped at Hash House A Go Go, about a mile away from the Convention Center.  It was there that I ate one of the best meals of my life. 

That’s an enormous honey-glazed biscuit to start, and then sage fried chicken with a hardwood smoked bacon waffle tower (bacon IN the waffles), hot maple caramel & fried leeks.  Yes, it’s even better than Roscoe’s.

After I ate a small fraction of my meal, my friend and I headed back to LA. 

If you couldn’t make it out this year, I highly recommend you try to go next year.  Buy your ticket early!  You can always get a refund if you can’t make it.

What a weekend.  EVO 2009 was an incredible experience.  Where else in America can thousands of Street Fighter fans gather to compete with and watch the best of the best?  I’ll let my photos do most of the talking for this blog post.  If you watched the stream or read about EVO2k9, you already know just how crazy it was.

(Daigo and Ono-san)

(Team East Coast)

That's EVO in a nutshell.  Be sure to check out my gallary for even more photos.

Many thanks to Seth for getting me this can of Pringles and having Yipes sign it.  A million more thanks for helping to make EVO so great.

Thanks to Kramer for the awesome TGS SFIV pins (which I promptly had Ono-san sign).

To finish off this post, I leave you with this photo:

I just had to snap it.  A Tekken stick on the floor of the Men's room... nasty.

Street Fighter + open bar = WIN.

To celebrate the release of Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li on DVD and Blu-Ray, 20th Centry Fox sponsored the ‘Shadaloo Lounge’ in LA’s Chinatown.  On hand were sixteen of the best Street Fighter IV players in SoCal, let alone the country.  They were competing for a $2,000 cash prize.  Unfortunately, Chris Klein was nowhere to be seen.

Ed Ma decides to pick random.  Guile it is...

In the end, the two best (most sober) players made it to the finals.  It was Ken I (Rufus) vs. Mike Ross (Honda).

It would have been wise to believe in Mike Ross, as he ultimately took home the cash.

Many thanks to 20th Centry Fox, i am 8-bit, and Capcom for the great event.

Check out my gallery for more photos.