Little Witches with Beards

Adieu, mon ami rouge

Today I shed a little tear, as my very first car passed to its new owners. After the wife and I moved to Seattle we came to the conclusion that two cars was one more than we needed. And although my faithful and trouble-free little Red is both more gas efficient and fully paid for, it was saddled with a wife-unfriendly manual transmission. Believe me, I tried to teach the wife to drive a stick. She and it just didn't get along.

So au revior, my friend. You gave me many good miles, and you will be going to a good new home. You've already met your slightly older and slightly smaller new brother. He's just as red and shiny as you and even has dents and dings in the same place. Please don't hold the fact that he's a hatchback against him. And don't mind the crumbs from the babies that will inhabit your new home soon. I'm sure it can't be worse than the food I dropped in you during the late night drives back to Bremerton from a soccer game, or bits of snacks that fell during road trips around the Pacific Northwest. Keep your new owners safe (and let the husband rock out a little every now and then with your awesome stereo). I'll miss you.

</sentimentality over inanimate objects>

Burnt out and ready to go

Lately I've been obsessed with Burnout Paradise, and have been spending most of my free hours with controller in hand. On one hand I feel guilty for playing video games so much, on the other hand it feels good to enjoy something so much.

After playing the demo months ago, I was actually pretty indifferent to Paradise. What I enjoyed most out of the earlier games in the series was just smashing up cars for big points, and the open gameplay in Paradise appeared to have robbed the game of that joy. But after engaging in some online action and learning how the open city format bridges you between events, I began to get hooked. Now the pursuit of newer, better cars and a better record on my license has me enthralled.

Tonight I'm in forced retirement from the Xbox, though. I'm taking part in the 48 Hour Film Project, which makes its stop in Seattle this weekend.. One of my co-workers ponied up the cash for an entry and put together a crew. I volunteered to do the post (effects and titles) work. That's right, I'm a one-man ILM this weekend.

Since the game just started, we're hanging around in Tom's apartment, waiting for the writers to put the script in a decent enough state that we can start storyboarding and planning the next two days. What I hear from the writer's room is that we should be good to go soon. Even though I'm only the post guy, I want to be on set to prevent the crew from creating any problems, so it's gonna be a sleepless weekend.

But the wife made cupcakes, so I think everything will be OK.