Keeping Score

Pit Crew

So I'm sure by now everyone's familiar with the woman who "gave birth" to six babies in under sixty seconds.

I'm not that impressed. At first I was floored that anyone could possibly push out that many kids in under a minute. I mean, I know they're small and all when it's sextuplets, but that still would have been impressive.

But it was a C-section, which means that the woman didn't give birth to six kids in sixty seconds, they were pulled from her abdomen in rapid succession by a team of experts. So the credit (and the headlines) should read "Medical Pit Crew removes six babies in under sixty seconds." I'm not saying the feat is unimpressive; I'm saying let's at least give credit where the credit was due. It's not like she became pregnant with this litter of children without medical science's intervention, and she certainly didn't deliver them.

And besides, this could set a dangerous precident. The Pit Crews at Indy can change four tires in under 15 seconds. I'm sure with a few clinics, and instructional seminars, they could get the doctors' time way down.

* And can I just pause for a second to say that "six babies in sixty seconds" sounds like some nightmarish sequel wherein Tom Selleck, Ted Dansen, and Steve Gutenberg all team up with Nicholas Cage, who has now given up on his life of crime and turned into an OB, and they're forced by the mob to steal six babies in under a minute. Hilarity ensues.

Ugh

I've been completely congested lately with the Great Sinus Infection of 2004. Add to this the incompetence of the girl washing my hair at the salon, and you'll find I just spent the past week in a state where I couldn't smell or hear anything due to complete and total cement compaction in my sinus and ears.

So at any rate, now that I'm feeling back to normal I may be posting more again.

But then again, I can finally smell things again, and since I'm now smelling only the strongest of odors (cigarette smoke, ass, garbage, etc.), maybe you don't want to hear any tales about that.

Although I have been wracking my brain trying to come up with the term for "not being able to smell." Sight has "blind," and hearing has "deaf," speaking has "mute," but what the hell about smell and taste? I know the medical industry calls it "scent blindness," but my nose couldn't see in the first place, so that's not entirely accurate.

Anyone want to take a stab at some terms?

And My Year Keeps Getting Better

I just got filmed for Mtv's Making the Game. It's a show ala Making the Video where they do a documentary style "behind the scenes" show based on different games, and Ballers is being shot today and tomorrow here at work.

While I'm not thrilled that I'm on camera (or especially thrilled that it's Mtv, since I don't watch it anymore), I hope that my interview segment went well, and I didn't come off looking like a complete chump.

What I'm most excited about is the line-up of games that Ballers is being compared with. Other Making the Game segments have been done on Madden, NFL Street, Enter the Matrix, etc. So basically, games that were so successful they practically printed their own money.

So I'm fairly stoked to be in league with those sorts of titles.

Medieval Times

Hey City of Aurora: while I'm normally thankful that you supply fairly clean water to our house on a regular basis, I'd like to politely ask that you maybe step up your efforts to clean our water supply all the fucking way up. It's one thing for us to joke that E. coli found its way into the water supply because of random bums taking a dip in it (as we joked about here amongst ourselves), and another thing to find out that you're theorizing that it's goose shit.

Look, here in America, we have these things called birds, and they often take flying craps. You're obviously new to this theory, because if you showed me some giant open resevoire of fresh drinking water, my very first question to you would have been "what are you planning to cover this with? Because I don't need ducks swimming in my tap water, thanks."

So now you're saying the E. coli is cleaned up (or really dissapated), but there's ammonia in the water now due to the high levels of ammonia in the Fox River. What next? Radioactive isotopes? We've been boiling our water for a week and a half. Some of us have just been buying large quantities of bottled water (larger than the supply we're already buying just to drink) so that we don't have to boil water every time we want to just do something as simple as brush our teeth, or fill the pet's drinking bowl with some water.

While I appreciate the effort to return us to a more medieval-like era your complete lack of planning has thrown us into, I don't appreciate panicking every time I habitually run my toothbrush under the faucet, or pull some tap water into my mouth in order to rinse or drink.

So do us all a favor, and clean up the damn water. We're tired of paying twenty dollars a month for the priveledge of experiencing third world living.

The Greatest Year of My Life

This year I've decided that I'm going to promote myself at work again. I'm tired of working on Ballers, not because it isn't a good game (au contrair! It's actually turning out to be an incredible title), but because I'm just not a fan of Basketball. I'm a fan of action movies. And fighting games.

So I started pushing my skills envelope a bit, into design, mentoring more animators, helping out other teams with animation related issues. It's evidently paying off.

Yesterday, on my way out of the building, I was tapped to be Lead Character Animator on the Mortal Kombat VI opening movie trailer (a temporary assignment on the FMV team). To say the least, I'm stoked.

So of course, my first choice for motion capture talent for this gig was Joe Eigo. I sent him a quick email, which immediately got forwarded on to the manager of one of the stunt teams he works for (yes, he works for two: Reel Stunts and Jackie Chan's. And yes, you read that last one right), and I was talking to Tommy Chang from Reel Stunts not ten minutes ago.

My fingers are so very very crossed for this to work out, because it's going to be either the greatest thing I've ever worked on, or I'm going to fall flat on my face. And I'm not real keen on the whole face-plant thing.

Oh, and my old boss from Startoons (who happens to be the greatest boss I've ever had) is coming to manage the FMV department (that I'll be working under temporarily).

Oh! And I'm going to be a Dad in about three months.

Fuck, screw the lottery. I'm on cloud nine.

This Man Is Serious About His Hobby

Today I saw a bumper sticker on the back of a car that read "I wish I was driving a Titleist."

He was driving a Volkswagen Golf.

Super Platinum Turbo Ultra Championship Hot Damn Special Edition

Evidently, Lucas is finally going to release the Star Wars original Trilogy on DVD this fall. About. Friggin'. Time.

I might at one point have been excited over this news, but for the fact that I already own it. In fact, I think I own about three copies of each movie. I've got the THX VHS remastered original box set. Then I've got the THX VHS remastered Special Edition (still in the shrink-wrap, fuck you very much, George). I also have a...uh...um..."DVD" box set someone made...uh...as a gift (Yeah! Gift! That's it!) of their Laser Disk editions.

So I doubt I'm going to be shelling out whatever the asking price is for these DVDs. What, maybe I need a fourth box set?

Besides, I hear they're going to remove the infamous "Greedo Shoots First" edit, and replace it with "Han begs for his life, then runs for it after shouting "Oh my god! Jabba, here?!?" while Greedo is temporarily confused and distracted while craning around for a look-see." Then, throughout the rest of the movie, ILM uses the magic of Computer Graphics to super-impose Han wearing a skirt for "disguise" purposes.*

*I figured if he was going to try and make Han any less of a man, he should just go full-bore and get it over with.

Reason #1 Why I Don't Get BBC America

Conceit:

And The Office has been acclaimed in the US, becoming more popular with the "chattering classes" than middle America, according to Hollywood Reporter magazine's UK bureau chief Stuart Kemp.

That is partly because adventurous viewers on the east and west coasts are more likely to subscribe to BBC America - and middle America "would not get" the humour, he said.

One of the reasons why we "would not get" the humor is because we don't buy subcriptions to networks who talk down to us as if we all grew up in some sort of backwater barnyard. Think about that, BBC "America," before you go clamoring to your precious "chattering classes." The rest of us get British humor just fine. What we don't get is the arrogance that comes free with every order.