Josh, Mark Taylor and Me

Okay, almost a month: from September the 20th to October, 15th, I've been travelling in US. Needless to say, about 95% of my time has been spent as a MOTU fan. Yeah, shocking news, I know.
Being out of He-Man.org didn't diminished my passion and my commitment to MOTU in the slightiest and I was lucky to do a lot of cool stuff and make a lot of great experience as a fan during the month in US. And even if I have tons of stuff to do, I'm gonna bore you with a small journal of what I did there!

First stop was Los Ageles, where with my pal Josh Van Pelt we immeditaly went to meet one of the most influencial artist in MOTU. Nope, not Rudy Obrero, and not Bill George (even if we had the pleasure to meet both of them later on during the trip) An artist which remained a mystery to many for 30 years, and still, all He-Man fans are familiar with his art. The amount of art he created for MOTU is probably 4-5 times what George and Obrero did together. Thanks to Mark Taylor, we got in touch, and we had a wonderful time at his home. We'll soon reveal more about him on The Power and The Honor Foundation website, for the moment, let's say he's an incredibly sweet, humble and nice person, who also let us borrow all his art and take it with us at the hotel in Torrance, where we spent most of the following 2 days scanning like crazy.
During Power-Con, many friends stopped by our room to take a look at the historical pieces laying on our beds during the scanning process. They all had the same shocked look I had when I first looked at that art, and they have been extremely lucky to share with us that incredible sight.
Don't worry, you know why we did all that. Years ago I promised I wanted to wait to present all those toy design pieces we had, to make it right. Rest assured we want to do make justice to this artitst and his work too, so just keep your finger crossed!

The PAH Foundation crew!

Oh, right, Power-Con.
Or the lack of it. I won't be hypocrital. That was a bittersweet experience. I was officially cut out of anything Power-Con related, barely allowed inside and with silly restrictions. My plan was not to go at all. Still, I went in a couple of times, mostly to say hi to friends there. And that was the best part. The words I heard most where "I'm glad you're here". I felt the trust people put in me and their love was still intact and that was really heartwarming and made me feel a lot more relaxed.
The sad part that being officially excluded, I was not allowed to share lot of things with my friends and hang out with them as much as I wanted. And I don't mind admitting I enjoyed the work I did last year at Power-Con, which I missed this year.
Sad part aside though, everybody has been wonderful and I so loved the time I had chance to spend with all my friends: Danielle & Magoo, Karla, Arnoud, James, Tom, Chuck, Josh B., Pete, Mike and Englebert, Nate, Dan, Leanne & Rod, Israel and last but not least Eric, Jim, Owen, Shane and Sherri from the Four Horsemen Studio, plus all the great fans I met or met again (too many to list!)
If I forgot someone, you can call public shame on me when I'll post this on FB (but a couple of German guys may want to wait for Part 2...)

Martin Arriola was a blast as usual, now joined by Ed Mosqueda, which showed us a few great pieces he worked on (including purple & black haired tytus and Eldor test shot!) Larry DiTillio was sweet as always and speaking of Filmation, this year I also got to met Rob Lamb! Rob was one of the higlights of the days in LA for both me and James, and thanks to him now the Foundation now has lot more very cool art!
I had also the pleasure and the honor to intruduce Rudy Obrero to William George. What a moment!
Oh, and I sold out of my prints in half an hour!!

On Saturday, we had to stop scanning earlier and set up the room for the Friends of  The Power and The Honor Foundation Foundation Reception.
Thanks to the art loaned from friends, we had some amazing stuff on display. Some never-seen before art (with very cool surprises) and a huge homage to (and thank to) Mark Taylor. For us, that was the best way to celebrate the 30th anniversary of He-Man.
We also had the He-Man Power Tester on display, but we coudn't manage to make it work properly. Oh well.
The reception was successful: a nice, relaxed, small thing, with a few friends and guests that chimed in all night to say hi and check out the art. I'm glad we did it, and I'm glad so many friends showed up and donated to be part of it :)

The Cake Ricky made for us!

Our pal Ricky also brought us a great and tasty cake skillfully made with the vintage MOTU cake pan!!

In the afternoon, while setting up, looking at all the cool stuff by Mark, I decided to give him a call at home to describe him the view of the room and say hi. Mark was very happy to hear it was looking good and asked me where we were. I told him the hotel's name and he said he would have joined us for the night.
My mood immediatly jumped and I told everybody we were going to have a very special surprise.

Everyone was captured by Mark's stories!

Mark and his wife Rebecca arrived later during the dinner and spent the rest of the night with us the fans at the reception. Everybody was listening to Mark's stories about He-Man and toy industry and I was just sitting back chatting with Rebecca and thinking there was nothing better for He-Man's birthday party to have his dad there. Fans loved Mark and Rebecca. Both me and Josh are extremely grateful they joined our little thing and I'm sure all the fans feels the same. It was a wonderful time and I'm so grateful also for Mark and Rebecca trust and friendship: another thing I will never forget.

And those were just the first 3 days!
But before we move to Palos Verdes, I gotta get back to Transformers, work is calling!
Stay tuned for Part 2, (hopefully) soon!