Break a Leg

A couple weeks ago I got an IM from my friend Nate asking me if I wanted to go to a mutual friend's annual St. Patrick's Day blow-out in San Diego.  Now, I rarely go on weekend getaways.  My weekends are usually spent gaming, sleeping, drinking, rehearsing for shows, or -heaven forbid- shooting Break A Leg awesomeness.  Taking a trip somewhere requires time and money and more effort than it takes to, for example, walk the block to the liquor store for a 6-er and a bag of chips. But, I won't be taking one of my annual vacations this year because I will be in a show during the time that would usually happen.  And I had nothing to that weekend.  So, after a moment's reflection I figured: why the hell not?

Now, if you haven't flown on Virgin Air, I highly recommend it.  They have the tv's in the back of every seat from which you can watch shows, talk with other passengers, and order food and drink.  Their service is pretty good as well.  Additionally, if their are First Class seats available when you check in, you can upgrade your regular ticket for $50.  The day we were to leave, I got a text from Nate saying he had gone ahead and done this.  Happy Birthday to me.

Now, our buddy gives us a ride to the airport, which was cool, and since we had preboarded we got in line for security checks.  We go through all the stuff: take shoes off, take off anything with even trace amounts of metal in, put everything in those bins that are never big enough for all your stuff, go through the scanner thing, and then wait for your stuff to come out the other side.  The scanner things at the San Francisco Airport are neat: you stand in this plastic cylinder and the scanny bits revolve around you.  I wanted them to beam me somewhere, but apparently they haven't got that far with the technology yet.  Slackers.

Anyway, we go through the scanny thing and we're waiting there and there's a problem with some unidentified item in my bag.  So they call the security chief lady over and she starts prodding my bag and asking my if there's something with batteries in there.  Now, I always carry a flashlight in my bag, because, hey, they're useful.  So, she pulls out my flashlight...and keeps digging.  Eventually, she finds my drinking horn.  This is a long cow horn with a metal bell on the wide end and a drinking cap that unscrews on the tiny end.  She asked me what it was.  I said it was a drinking horn.  She asked me what it was for.  I said it was for drinking out of and then sounding.  "Sounding?" she asks.  "Yes, like a trumpet," I reply.  "I can demonstrate, if you like."  "By all means," says she.  So, in a crowded airport in front of the security chief, I sounded my horn like I was storming Isengard.  We wee quickly sent on our way.

FLY FIRST CLASS! Oh man, if you have never flown First Class, try it at least once.  As soon as you get on the plane they offer you drinks.  Any service that you would normally have to pay for - you don't.  That means free movies, free drinks...well, ok, not quite free because you did pay the extra cash, and on a 1 hour flight it is nearly impossible to go through their entire stock of whiskey (yes, I tried).  But the seats are all comfy and there's tons of leg room, which is important to a tall guy like me, and I was just nice.

We got picked up at the airport in San Diego by three of our So-Cal friends and immediately headed to a bar.  While we're sitting there at the booth we had confiscated, a somewhat cute girl sits down beside me and starts chatting me up.  Shortly thereafter her gigantic female friend joins her (and therefore us) and starts handing out business cards for hosting BDSM parties.  We left rather quickly.

The next day we spent helping clean up the house for the party that night, which were rumored to be legendary.  Eventually, people started showing up, many of whom had no idea that Nate and I were going to be there.  I always like surprising people like that.  Suprise!  I'm here!  Yeah, great, but do you mind if I finish my shower? Go ahead!  Ok, but can I do it without you watching me?

Just kidding!

Anyway, the party was pretty fun, but I didn't really consider it to be epic.  Dunno, maybe I missed something.  But I DID have the best corned beef I've ever had in my life.  My friend makes it with Guiness and Tapatio.  It was tender and juicy and ridiculous.  I still dream about it.  I don't think I went to bed before 4am for 3 days.  And on Sunday I spent 4 hours playing lazertag with a 9 year old and a 2 year old.  Our flight home was delayed an hour a half, which would put us in San Francisco at about 12:30am with a 1 hour ride home and I had to be up for work the next morning.  And on the ride back we DID drink all the whiskey.

I was a wreck for 3 days after we got back, but MAN, did I earn it.

Wish us luck at the Streamy Awards!

Happy Jenday!

Last Friday I turned 32 years old.  Which means I'm finally starting to feel like I'm in my late 20's.  27 possibly.  It was well celebrated - my crew and I went and saw Watchmen, then partied at my house.  I did not get the random birthday hook-up as has happened in years past, but neither did I spend all night praying to the porcelain god, so I consider the night a draw.  Then I had lunch with the family on Sunday.  My mom made me a ham.  I love ham.

People often say that birthdays are a time for reflection, summing up the past year, and seeing what you've learned and can carry over into the next year.  I say bugger that.  I try to learn from life as I go.  If I had to collect a year's worth of experience and then right down everything only at the end, I'd forget a crapload of stuff.  I mean, I have a hard enough time remembering a phone conversation I had yesterday.  Live in the now!  Woo!

*Cough* Ahem. 

 So, Watchmen was interesting.  I haven't read the graphic novel, so I had no expectations about it whatsoever.  I like not knowing anything about a movie before I go into see it.  That way I'm not distracted by the changes or what is missing, and I can just focus on the movie for what it is.  Overall I thought Watchmen was pretty neat.  I thought it was pretty cool visually and I didn't mind the acting.  I did think the guy that played Osmandius was a horrible casting choice.  From one scene to the next I couldn't tell if he was supposed to have some kind of accent or not.  I thought some of the violence was a bit gratuitous, as was the amount of blue penis.

But I tend not to be overcritical of movies.  During the course of watching a movie, if something happens that bothers me in some way, I tend to just ignore it and forget about it as soon as something else happens.  I tend to evaluate movies with the following criteria:

1.) Did stuff happen?

2.) Did I stay awake?

3.) Did I gnaw through anything that I shouldn't have gnawed through during the course fo the film?

If the answer to these questions is Yes, Yes, and No respectively, then the movie is ok by me.  People with opinions bother me.

But that's just my opinion.

Happy Jenday!

So, this last Saturday I went to my first comic convention: WonderCon.  It was held at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.  If you've never been to a comic convention, it's like this: they have comic books by the hundreds, toys based on comic books, shirts based on comic books, games based on comic books, guest stars, panels of discussion...all manner of geekdom and nerddom to sate all manner of geeks and nerds.  Now, I'm not really a comic book buyer, but I'll read one if somebody else owns it and they don't mind me getting my grubby hands on it.  I was going mostly for two reasons: 1) To see what these conventions were all about, and 2) to meet some online friends who I had never actually met in real life.

So the day started out like this:  I put on my kilt, got a breakfast burrito, and met up with several of the crew at my house and we caravanned into the city.  We drove around several blocks several times before we found a parking garage.  It sounds like it should be easier than that, but the driver is kinda stubborn about some things.

Finally we park, get into the convention center.  There are overweight and under-hygienic people everywhere!  We go down stairs and get into the registration line to get our badges.  This is when the nerd-herding began.  We got in one line where they packed us in, then once we acquired badges, we got in another line where they packed us in and waited for them to open the gates.  Finally the gates open and the herd shuffled en mass towards this basement city of capitalism.  We then spent the next 4 hours standing in lines, buying things, ogling the rare cute girl, and generally wallowing in our geekiness. 

There were many guess stars on hand that day.  Perhaps most notably were Mark Hamil and Carrie Fischer.  The line to get their autographs wrapped around the building and was guarded by storm troopers and jedis.  I skipped it.  My friend Nate got autographs from Bret The Hammer Heart and The Honky Tonk Man.  Nate also got his picture taken with Adam Baldwin (Jayne from Firefly).  Nate was wearing a shirt with one of my drawings on it.  Adam Baldwin complemented Nate on the shirt.  The drawing is of a cute little bunny holding a huge bloody butcher knife.  It was discovered that Adam Baldwin is in fact taller than Nate.  And Nate is a big guy.

I stopped to talk to one guest star because he was actually somebody I had worked with: Jeffrey Weissman.  He played Crispin Glover's part in Back to the Future III because Crispin Glover apparently was a tool and didn't want to wear old-man make-up and hang upside-down for all his scenes.  I acted with Jeffrey in 12th Night a few years ago.  Really nice guy. I think I offended him when he offered me an autograph and I declined on the basis that I was out of money.  When he said he didn't expect payment, I eagerly acquiesced in an attempt to rectify my ass-hattery.

But here's the thing: I've never gotten anybody's autograph.  I have never really cared that much.  And plus, to get the autograph with somebody I have worked with and have infrequent correspondence with just seemed..I dunno.  It's just not my thing.

There were many other stars there: Ray Park, the kid who played Bud on the Cosby show, Erin Grey from Buck Rogers (who went to highschool with my mom.  I didn't feel like going up to her and saying "Hey my mom said you were a bitch.")

And there were two other people who I really wished I would have gone up to and said something.  One was John Provost, of Lassy fame, and also a guest star on our beloved Break A Leg.  It was just that having never met the man and then walking up and saying "Hi, I'm Jennifer" seemed like a silly thing to do at the time.

The other was Felicia Day.  Remember that whole Yahoo Awards thing?  Where Break A Leg did absolutely phenominal, but lost out to a show called The Guild?  THAT Felicia Day.  She was actually walking around the con picking up some comics before she had to sit for hours and do her signing.  My friend Gail got her picture taken with Felicia.  Again, I felt hesitant about walking up to her while she was signing autographs and say "Yes, please make it out to 'Jennifer, I'm sorry for killing Break A Leg.  Best wishes, F."

But here's the stinger: I TOTALLY SHOULD HAVE!  Just so that this blog wouldn't end in such failure.

But like I said: I am not a fanboy.

Happy Jenday!

Last week I posted about one of my hobbies: Kingdom of Loathing, and the radio show associated with it.  On that radio show, one of the DJs mentioned repeatedly an amazing new product that they discovered: Bacon Salt.  At first I thought "You mean the salt they use to cure bacon?  What's so amazing about that?  I mean do they recycle it or something?  Cuz that'd be kinda grody."  But NO!  They were not talking about recycled pork seasonings.  This is what they were talking about:

A couple years ago, a couple guys got into a conversation about how much they loved bacon.  Then they started talking about how great it would be if everything tasted like bacon.  So they set out with that goal in mind.  The result: Bacon-Flavored salt.  You can read more about it here: http://www.baconsalt.com.

This sounded like a fantastic idea, because I Love Bacon.  But naturally I was skeptical.  I mean, have you tasted Baco's?  They...sorta taste like bacon might taste if bacon was in fact stale and slightly burnt tiny bread pieces.  But I was assured of that authentic baconosity of Bacon Salt.  Now, of course, I could have just ordered from some the site, but then I would have paid for shipping and then I would have waited for the shipment to come in.   And what if it wasn't all that good and I spent all that money just to get the stuff here and it was no good?

So I set out to find some.  And of course, I set out to do this when I got off work at 5:30pm.  During Rush Hour.  Now, if you look at the site, it shows a list of possible vendors, all of which are not local to my locale, or just don't exist anymore.  But some of my coworkers pointed out that some of those had been bought out by, or were associated with other major supermarket chains.  So, hopes up, I set off.

Long story short: it took an hour and a half and a handful of markets all over Marin, but I finally found my prize in Mollie Stones.  I raced home, overjoyed to make everything in my house taste like bacon: pizza, tater tots, ramen, chili, Funyuns, the cat...well ok, I don't have a cat, but if this stuff worked as advertised I would seriously consider getting one on a very temporary basis.  Anyway, I got home, fired up the oven, through the taters in there, grabbed a beer, and started writing this blog.  About halfway through writing this, my dinner was ready.  I sprinkled on an experimental dose of this potentially magical powder...and low and behold, my tots did, in fact, taste more bacony than before.  Though I will admit that there was not the complete Tater-To-Bacon conversion that I was hoping for.  I will have to experiment with the levels.  And there are several different types out there that I have yet to try.  Fortunately for science, I picked up a bottle of each, so I'll be able to explore the range of accuracy.

Anyway, if you have the means, I recommend picking some up.  And it's vegetarian, so if you love the taste of bacon but not the moral dilemma behind eating it, give Bacon Salt a shot.

Happy Jenday!

I play a game called Kingdom of Loathing.  Some of you may be familiar with it.  Some of you may not care.  A care.  And it's my blog.

KoL (as it is known amongst its constituents) is a free, online game, that is basic in every way, but it's design.  The art is stick figure drawings; the all the text is in Arial; basically all you have to do to play is choose an option, point and click.  The game itself is actually pretty complex, with lots of quests, items, areas, events, pop-culture references, etc.  If you haven't played it, it's worth checking out (www.kingdomoflothing.com). If you have played it and don't like it, hey, I don't like seafood or tomatoes, so no biggie.

I was introduced to the game a few years back by a previous girlfriend, but only recently have I started to explore other aspects of the game and the communities associated with them.  One of these aspects is a radio show that is run by people who play or have played KoL.  This radio program is freem and streaming on line 24/7/365.  You don't even have to play the game to listen to the radio.  But if you DO play the game, you can log into the radio chat channel and talk with the DJ's and whoever else might  happen to be logged in as well, which personalizes the experience a bit.  Eventually you get to know some of the DJs and some of the other people that hang out in chat.  Aw, faceless online friends that you interact with...kinda like Break a Leg!

The DJs are from just about anywhere in the English speaking world.  We have several Americans, but also Brits, Scots, Dutch, Welsh (Fun Fact: did you know people from Wales are not called "Walers"?), etc.  All these different people bring with them different tastes in music and different styles of DJ-ing.  For instance: some people will just talk and play music.  Nothing wrong with that.  Other people will play games during their shows: which gets me closer to my point.  

Some of the games are based on random elements: i.e., one DJ has a secret code that he will play at various times throughout his show.  Then the people that send him a message with the correct answer when they hear the code are in the running to win a prize.  Then he will randomly determine which of the people with the correct answer will get a prize.  Then that person has to pick from 1 of 3 "mystical prize doors": basically three prizes of the DJ's choosing - one crappy, one good, and one awesome.  Anyway, there's lots of different contests played at different times.

Here is where I've created a niche: some DJ's like to have contests that require some vocal skills and the ability to record them in a playable format. I figured these were more my style.  You may remember a while back where I pirated a copy of some audio software and put a couple songs together.  As usually happens, my patience for putting those songs together along with my already deficient attention span caused my production of those songs to fall off.  But since finding out about these contests, I've had a renewed interest in recording stuff.

The first contest was what a particular DJ called "Skaraoke".  She made a post on the KoL forums announcing the contest and that all you had to do to enter the contest was to post on that string in the forums.  Then on a predesigned date she took all the people on the list and randomly assigned them a song.  Each enteree then had to record themselves singing along to that song, karaoke style.  I got coupled with Every Breath You Take By the Police.  Now, my singing voice is ok if I can use all of it, i.e. belt it out there.  But having roommates, neighbors, and a crappy microphone means I have to tone it down a bit.  Plus, I couldn't hit the same octave as Sting with a Howitzer.  So I cheesed it up and threw in an impression of Gizmo, Kermit the Frog, and a Gregorian Choir.

I won the contest.

And that was just the beginning.

I have won every Radio KoL contest in the last 5 months that required some sort of vocal recording.  It's gotten to the point where people are A) asking me if I'm participating to gauge whether they should bother or not, and B) asking me for advice on their recordings. 

Now, you'd really think this would be some kind of sign that YES, I should be pursuing voice acting, and you'd think right.  And I say to that: I'm working on it.

Anyway, play games, listen to music, prizes: Kingdom of Loathing, people.

Oh, and just to show how close a group of friends we have become just from playing the game and listening to the radio: a bunch of people that are local to the SF Bay Area are meeting up at Wondercon in San Francisco this weekend.  What will happen once we get there, I have no idea.  Probably geek out about KoL.  That's what geeks don.  They geeks out.  That's why they call it geeking out.  It's done by geeks.  And damnit, I'm a geek.

Happy Jenday!