On the big stage

Well, the band is doing some recording this weekend. I'm both pretty psyched and pretty nervous.

Pretty psyched because it'll be good to finally get these songs down, so that we can use them to get some gigs and set up a Myspace page, etc. Also, I'm psyched because we'll be recording on the stage at the Majestic Theater in Boston. Our bass player works there and, since there are no shows there this weekend, got us in for the recording. This should be pretty awesome, since we'll be recording on the main stage there. And although there will be no one there, this will be the biggest stage I've ever played on.

But I'm also pretty nervous for two reasons. 1) Recording is stressful. No matter how well you know the songs, there's that extra added pressure once you know the "tape" is rolling. Especially in this case, as 2) we will be recording the band mostly live. We'll be overdubbing vocals and probably solos, but everything else will have to all be done in one take between the rest of us. So not only will we all have to get our parts right, we have to all get them right together, at the same time.

At any rate, we're hoping to do four tunes. Right now, the plan is to go in Friday night and set up as much as we can. Saturday will be for recording the band. Sunday we'll possibly go back to record the vocals. We can record the vocals anywhere later, if we want, but we'd like to try and get as much of them as we can in the same acoustic space so that it'll be easier to match them up in the mix with the rest of the instruments.

So, that will be my weekend.

Baby we were born to run...

I'm not a proponent of the running zombie, in general. The nu-zombies of the Dawn of the Dead remake and 28 Days Later. I think what's so scary about zombies is that although they are slow, they are also inexorable. Unless you're really careful and a little bit lucky, they'll probably eventually get you, despite their lack of mobility.

That being said, I did like both 28 Days Later and (surprisingly) the DotD remake. I give 28 Days Later a pass because they're not "zombie" per se, in that the infected are not reanimated corspes; they're just that: infected.

All this leads up to the fact that I saw 28 Weeks Later last night. (For the purposes of this review, the infected will be referred to as zombies, although technically they are not.) Now I've seen my share of horror movies. And your share. And her share. And half of his share. I've seen a lot of horror movies. At the most, nowadays, I will usually get creeped out, maybe a little disturbed, by a horror movie. But not usually very scared (except for the transitory "BOO!" scare they use in the films.) The closest I've gotten to scared in recent memory has probably been Wolf Creek, but that's because of the fact that it is supposedly based on a few true stories.

Well, 28 Weeks Later is fucking scary! 20 minutes after the movie was over, I was at home and my heart was still somewhat beating like I had just finished up at the gym. If you ever want to feel like you're in the middle of what it's like to be caught in an outbreak of people with Olympic sprinter speed that want to either chew through your neck or make you like them, this is the movie to see. The reason for this is pretty much all about the cinematography. Think back to the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan, when they're landing at Normandy. The use of the handheld camera, and shooting style was almost documentary in style, making you feel like you were there, bullets whizzing around, people dying on every side of you, death only seconds from your door as well. (A more recent example, Children of Men, uses this style of shooting very well, too.) Now imagine that same style of sitatution but it's not bullets and Nazis, but zombies and you have 28 Weeks Later. This is what my nightmare of being surrounded and pursued by zombies would look like.

There are a few stretches of the story where you'll need to turn on your disbelief filter, but they are overruled by the general, all around awesomeness that is this film.

Sabbatical

I need a sabbatical.

I'm in the middle of one of those feelings where I'm just totally burnt out on work. When I pulled into the parking lot this morning, I just sat in my car for a minute with the engine running, thinking about how I should just drive away. You'd think after just getting back from a week in Vegas I'd be feeling much better, but not so. Probably because I was there on work-related business.

So I'm sitting here at my desk, not motivated to do anything. This is usually the time where I delve into my usual escapes of imagination: where to go on vacation next, perhaps time for a new job, perhaps time to move somewhere, a new direction in life. You've all heard me speak of them before, as well as my reasons for not doing them. But thing is, I've come to realize, is that really the answer? I just don't know.

That's why I need a sabbatical. Take time off from a current life to determine whether a change is needed, or just a reboot with a reinvestment (as it were). But the problem is who can afford a sabbatical? Rent's gotta be paid, bills, and I'm not growing my own food. Life goes on whether you want a time out or not. (As an example, I had to take a break from writing even just this to take a call at work.) It makes it hard to try and figure out what you want to be doing when any number of things you feel you need to be doing just keep coming at you.

Yep, I need a sabbatical.

Alive and unharmed...mostly

I've made it back from Vegas in one piece. I'd write all about it, but I already did on my Myspace blog. Feel free to check it all there.

The right mindset to go into any gambling session is that you're leaving without any money you've brought for that purpose. Not that you're going to win big. Now, for the days I was there I only lost $160 at the tables. Not bad all things considered, although $100 of that was in 15 mintues at the roulette table.

However, here's why I suck at gambling. It's not about what I lose, it's about what I don't win. At the conference, there was a vendor section. Lot's of vendors hawking their Help Desk related softwares, and giving away all sorts of free stuff. At one booth, I won a $25 chip for Mandalay Bay, the hotel where we were staying. They had a little faux-roulette game there, and I won on black 33. So, despite my assertation at this point (I had already dropped the $100) that roulette was evil, I figured it was only right that I use my chip at roulette table. Keep the karma going. So I put the chip in my back pocket with the plan of dropping it on a table at some point during the week. The last night I'm there, I finally get around to it. I stop at a table with some free spots, intending to drop the chip on black 33 (the number I won it on.) The odds are extremely long, but I figure why not, it's not my money. Now, once the dealer starts the ball rolling, you can still bet, until they lock the table. (By passing their hand over it.) This dealer had already started the ball, but the table was still open. Howevver, I decided to wait for the next spin anyway. What comes up? You guessed it: black 33. I believe the payout odds on a single number are 35 to 1. On my $25 chip, that's $875. Figuring that black 33 is not coming up twice in a row on the same table, I walk over to the next one, and immediately drop my chip. I got squat. Winning big is sometimes not about the hands you play, but the ones you don't.

Whoops.