Week of Doom

Then we had the Week of Doom at work. Meaning it was a whole bunch of big events happening all at once.

1) Thankfully no current faculty members won Nobel Prizes. Otherwise my week would have been even crazier than it already was.

2) I drove to work almost every day this week. The office rented me a car two days in case a faculty member did win and then I would have had to drive to their house at 6 AM to interview them. Driving frequently made me glad I don't own a car and drive on a regular basis. Parking is obnoxious.

3) I'm excited for Epic Mickey the concept art is really what does it for me.

4) One of the Nobel prizes made me rediscover this awesome protein synthesis video (you might want to skip the first three minutes - just boring ol' science)

5) I think I had dinner at Paul and Stephanies and it was broccoli chicken which I haven't had in ages and is delicious and we watched the Wire. But the week is mostly a blur.

6) Oh yeah, I guess we had the last wednesday night dinner with Tiffany, Seth and Krista at my place. We ate "Ithaca Artichoke Medley," sweet potato wedges and chicken piccata. Delicious.

7) This week's Dollhouse episode was great. Whoops! Accidental personality swap! I watched it while on vacation, but this week has so little going for it I will put it here.

8) I guess nothing went terribly wrong with the Week of Doom. So I guess it was the week of running around a lot, but not really Doom.

9) Sleeping Friday night after getting home from work. I was going to hang out with Robert, but then my 1 hour nap turned into a 5.5 hour slumber. I woke up confused in the middle of the night and began frantic packing.

10) Getting out of Chicago. Look for my recap of vacation coming soon.

Way Behind

This week (which happened almost a month ago) was crazy. I worked long hours at work, worked on my laptop on the train to and from work and worked sending e-mails when I got home.

1) Much of my week was spent conducting interviews for our potential new student employees. Those are fun, although I always have a hard time choosing because I feel bad about not being able to hire all the qualified people. Tiffany helped me whittle it down though.

2) We had some cool videos go up this week. South Campus Residence Hall Tour, Color Vision, Chicago in 60 Seconds Promo.

3) One night I managed to get away from work and went to a networking event called: Let's create New Media in Chicago. It's a cheesy title, but I handed out a bunch of NNN cards and heard about what other people are doing (though, there were less video producers than I expected) and collected a fist full of business cards.

4) Another night I had dinner with Max at Leona's. I was a little incoherent from the work week, but we had a good conversation. He had just started his job. We also talked about a time-weighted conception of self.

5) That Friday I wanted to reward myself for getting through the week, so I stopped at the Lego store on the way home and picked up Winter Toy Shop. It's totally awesome.

6) Watched the new episode of Dollhouse. That one was probably the weakest of the season, but it was still good. Unlike last season, there's no need to skip episodes in season 2.

7) Then I went shopping to three stores I've walked past many times in the last year and thought about going into but never have. Uncle Fun is a kitschy toy and novelty shop. Paper Boy has cards and notebooks and journals and wrapping paper and origami paper and all other paper things. Candyality has big bins of candy to buy by the pound. I bought presents for Jenny, Leo and Mom and then delights to share with all. I got a wind up walking brain for my desk at work.

8) Then I went and got a haircut & bought some stuff at Gap.

9) Robert and I had dinner at a so-so mexican place but then we went to Yogen Fruz, which is always awesome.

10) Then we went back to my place and watched the Rocky Horror Picture Show, which I had never seen before. Oh my, Tim Curry!

Bust the posts out my blog

1) Robert came over and we ordered Pockets and watched Bubba Ho-Tep & Howard the Duck. Bubba Ho-Tep was great. But what else would you expect from a movie with Bruce Campbell as an elderly Elvis teamed up with an old black man who thinks he's JFK fighting a mummy that is terrorizing their nursing home? Howard the Duck was awful. We were hoping it would be so terrible it was good (like Freejack) but it was just plain awful. The first five minutes were the best.

2) There's a new fad sweeping the lego fan community: Cube Dudes. I made a Sherry Tiles one and will eventually make a Phil (when I regain some free time)

3) I likes this brickfilm- "Alles ist dies noppe"

4) Best part of Episode 3 of Glee was "Bust your windows" (episode 4 of Glee was much better storywise, though no musical numbers of the same caliber)

5) Stephanie and I started playing Little King's Story. It's awesome, very much like pikmin.

6) Changes are finally starting to happen at work. Thought they aren't fun I'm still hoping they will be for the best.

7) Paul and Stephanie had an excellent Wine and Cheese party

8) I bought new shoes!

9) Went to a potluck with Robert. It started out on a roof top, but then migrated inside where there was warmth and cable and cheesecake.

10) I finally spent the money to register a domain name and started putting together a NNN website. It's still very unfinished, I've only begun to carve out the sections I want and listing some content I'd like to put there, but the overall design is more or less set. I'm very happy with the way the banner turned out. You can see what I've got so far here.

Huzzah!

1) The most important item from this week is the fact that Robert and I are now dating. We went on another non-date on Thursday to the Modern Wing at the Art Institute since neither of us had been and the museum is free on Thursday nights. We saw a bunch of art. I’m not going to try to describe it here. We did not get to get across the sky bridge, sadly. Then we went to Noodles and Company and it was delicious. Then as we were waiting on the train platform I asked Robert, “So what do you think about us dating?” And he said, “I think I’m ready to give it a try. (pause) Though, I’m not entirely sure what that entails.” Well, figuring that out is the fun part.

2) Robert and I went on our very first date the very next night. Guthrie's was super crowded, so we went to Trader Todd's for karaoke night and I sang "These Boots are made for Walking" as I am wont to do. Then we went to Berlin for a little while and then we got the awkward first kiss out of the way.

3) The new South Campus dorm is awesome. I spent some time this week helping make a video tour of it. I did not operate the camera or do most of the editing, but I was there to walk around and help the videographer figure out what to capture. The place is gorgeous. I am jealous of the students who get to live there.

4) I introduced Krista, Tiffany and Seth to the glory that is Freejack. It is one of the best worst movies ever. Emilio Estevez stars as a racecar driver who is kidnapped to the dystopian future (November 2009) where he is hunted by Mick Jagger so that Anthony Hopkins mind can be transplanted in his body. Check out this must-see chase scene & a short clip from the climax.

5) I had a dream that week that involved solving a mystery (in the Mystery Machine) with Jerry Seinfeld and some assorted teens. I was describing this dream to Tiffany and Seth and we started trying to imagine who would be on my Scooby Doo dream team. (By Scooby Doo Dream Team we mean if someone was making a movie about my life and there was a dream sequence where I had to solve a mystery, who would be on that team. The question of who would be on my ideal mystery solving team is another matter entirely.)

Obviously Jerry Seinfeld is going to be on it because he was in my actual dream. The next obvious addition is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which we later refined to Sarah Michelle Gellar so she could be both Buffy and Daphne. We were originally going to keep Scooby-Doo, but then decided to replace him with Brak. And I have to be on it since it’s my dream. We couldn’t agree on the 5^th team member. I was pushing for Carmen SanDiego, Lumiere from Beauty and the Beast also came up as an option, I would have put Jack Harkness on the team, but that would have quickly derailed the mystery solving. I welcome your suggestions.

6) I challenge you to watch this video of kids trying not to eat marshmallows and not smile.

7) We had our yearly Communications Retreat on Friday. This year it was at Navy Pier. While it was a nice way to remind us how we are all connected to a larger goal, I was disappointed that there wasn't more room for conversation about the strategy stuff. Still, the food was good and the boat cruise made for a nice afternoon.

8) "Guise will be Guise" was my favorite episode of Angel season 2 to date. Wesley pretends to be Angel, hilarity ensues.

9) On Saturday night I went with Tiffany, Seth and Stephanie to see Mike Birbiglia. He's hilarious. Here's one of the stories he told during the routine we saw.

10) Then we went to Yogen Fruz. So delicious.

Pro-Green Commercial

You've probably already seen this, but now it's officially released. :)

Hiking is awesome

1) The best part of putting up an animation is the ensuing wave of comments/e-mails/IMs/messages from people who’ve watched it telling me what they liked about it. I even got a phone call from one of my friends who had just watched it. The consensus seems to be that the music is the most note-worthy thing. Followed by the buildings as dominos and ROBOphelia’s energetic behavior. And of course the best part was watching it with Stephanie on Tuesday and hearing her laugh. <3

2) While we’re talking about lego stuff. I finally got around to tking pictures of all the microscale buildings I made for the animation.

Click on the picture to read my full write-up about them on MOCpages (w/ more pictures). Also I made the most elusive couple ever.

Man, Carmen Sandiego is so awesome, it’s hard to handle sometimes. I guess that’s the benefit of being fictional, you don’t have to get bogged down worrying about what ‘s possible. Here’s a great quote from the cartoon where she was voiced by Rita Moreno, “Think out your plan like a woman of action, then act out your plan like a woman of thought.”

3) One last lego thing. Since I’ve already finished the next NNN video I’ve got some time to relax before focusing on making the next one. So instead of building sets, recording voices, storyboarding, or animating this weekend I finally attacked one of the bins of unsorted lego where I throw the remnants of sets after I harvest the pieces I want from them. I put in some DVDs and spent a few good hours doing that Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. Also did 4 loads of laundry, now I’m ready to spend the next few weekends working on animation.

4) So what were the DVDs I watched you ask? Well I rewatched Spirited Away, the plot was much easier to follow the second time through, not as ridiculous as I first thought. I wonder what the process for making a Miyazaki movie is. Does Miyazaki just think of different scenes/characters that would look awesome and then slowly stitch a story around them? I mean this movie is beautiful, and it’s certainly not a poorly stitched amalgam of isolated scenes and plots or anything like that. I just wonder if he thought “Alright my next movie is going to have a train that seems to glide across the surface of an ocean, also a giant muddy monster that gets a bunch of pollution pulled out of it, a bunch of adorable soot monsters, some dragon (or sky snake as Stephanie and I have dubbed Eastern dragons) riding of course, and let’s not forget the giant baby.who lives in a pile of pillows and later gets turned into a hampster. Now how do I put those together?“

5) The other thing I watched was the first disc of Angel Season 2. It’s off to a good start. I haven’t cared much for the individual plots of any of the first few episodes, but the show just knows what it’s doing now. Lorne (that’s the lounge-singer demon/psychic who can tell you your future, but only if you sing karaoke first) is starting to pop up regularly. They’ve moved their office into an abandoned hotel, which is way more stylish than the last place. Gunn is actually being integrated with the rest of the cast. Darla is making me care about Angel’s existence, though right now it’s only to be annoyed with him. And Cordelia continues to be awesome and is certainly benefiting from not having to carry the entire show any more. And for this week’s clip of Angel doing something embarrassing – singing Mandy.
6) I’ve run out of segues so I’m going to revert to boring old chonology for the rest. On Thursday I hung out with Robert. We were going to try to go to Target free Thursdays at the art museum and see the Modern wing. But he ended up having to show his apartment to potential roommates. So instead I went over to his apartment and we had dinner sitting on the carpet and played a few games of Fluxx.

Fluxx is a card game where the rules and goals are constantly changing. About a fourth of the cards are cards you play to change the rules – how many cards you draw and play per turn, how many you can have in your hand or on the table etc. My favorite rule was “first play random”. There are also action cards that let you do things like steal cards, pull cards out of the discard pile, eliminate rules and generally cause mayhem. Then were the cards you played on the table, they were just nouns like cookies, dreams, the brain, etc. They did not do anything exciting. The goal cards usually involved collecting two specific nouns, although there were a couple more inspired ones as well. While the game is not as crazy as Mao, it is still pretty cool.

7) Then he showed me these two awesome hilarious faux-informational books – Science Made Stupid and Cvltvre Made Stupid. They are basically modeled on textbooks, but everything in them is utterly and hilariously false. Oh how I laughed and laughed. I still haven’t read through the culture book, but for the Science book at least I agree with Robert that the more you know, the funnier it is. Allow me to quote “OVERVIEW OF BOOK” “BAGELS” “etc.” And the thing I can’t to justice to are the hilarious illustrations of imaginary animals, ridiculous diagrams and fake advertisements. But don’t take my word for it, you can read them online here. (You could order them, but they are out of print and therefore very expensive).
8) Last Friday I went on an awesome recording for work. We were interviewing my color vision professor about his latest research into how colors are represented in the brain. It was awesome and made me remember what I loved about studying Neuroscience.

9) Crazy 3D-seeming murals (via Seth)

10) I rented a Zipcar from Friday night till Saturday night so Stephanie, Paul and I could go hiking on Saturday. On Friday night I used the car to go to Target and buy a new microwave (my old one became possessed), a lamp for my bedroom, and other such Target purchases. I also went to Trader Joe's. On Saturday morning we drove up to the North Branch trail system and then we hiked about 5.5 miles. Along the way we ventured through Bugopolis, pumped water by hand lost the yellow trail briefly, saw hoodlums on bicycles and debated about chipmunks (among other things). Then we had a lovely picnic of chips and pita and hummus and salsa and grapes and mini muffins and rice pudding. We saw a Bald Eagle! Then we drove back and took naps. I took the car to Jewel for more groceries before returning it. All in all it was an awesome day.

other things from the car - target and lots of groceries

Let's talk about the animation! Oh and some other things too

1) Making the animation. My mom was asking how I matched the movement/action to the sounds and I was telling her about the notebook where I write down how many frames are between each important word/emphasis point. Here's a page that corresponds to a 22 second long shot (starts 51 seconds in).

That was probably the most complicated shot in terms of matching actions to words in this episode, since there are two people on screen and for some parts they are both moving and also because ROBOphelia has so many little exclamations and such. I am really happy with the way it turned out, I like the way she extends off screen at "oh my!" and her nervous laugh /arm twitch immediately following. And her "hmf" coupled with a head turn and a little leg bounce at the end of the shot might be my favorite ROBOphelia movement in the entire episode. (Though extending her magnifying glass while saying IN-TRI-CATE-LY LAID PLANS? gives it a run for its money)
The scenes between ROBOphelia and Persephone had some complicated gesture animation, but they were pretty light on set-up since they all took place in one room. I reused as many set-ups as I could for Malifios's schemes (e.g. the Octopus machine wide shot and the scene where he rages at the plane) but the 7 second scen in which 12 buildings fall down (starts at 2:00), for instance, took over 2 hours to set-up (though less than 10 minutes to actually animate). Here is the base I built during that two hours.

I had all the building on cleverly concealed hinge bricks that made toppling them easy. The octopus machine stuff was pretty straightforward and the hay fire one was somewhere in between (Malifios's feet did not stick to the baseplate very well in that one, also if you watch the torch closely you can see it slowly drifting up in his hand, a consequence of me rotating it around every other shot so the flame would flicker.)

Small details you might not notice otherwise:
The movie theater at 1:55 is playing "The Franky Job" (refer to this old post for the why)
At 0:48 "woman" in Persephone's titlebar is scratched out and replaced with "brick"
After getting kicked by the cow at 4:14, Malifios lands in one of the hay piles in the background

It's been up for less than 12 hours and already has close to 200 views. That's pretty awesome.

2) On Wednesday Tiffany, Krista and Seth came over for dinner. We were later joined by Daniela. In honor of Krista's real birthday Tiffany brought cupcakes from Molly's cupcakes. The one I had was delicious though structurally unsound. I really ought to go to Molly's Cupcakes. I meant to go a long time ago, but still haven't made the trek.

3) I talked to Jenny (her birthday was the week before but we played phone tag for a bit). We talked about our jobs, Isaiah, legos, and ice cream pie among other things.

4) This weekend was the one year anniversary of moving into this apartment. To celebrate the fact that I wasn't moving I had my friends over and made potato flag and butter beer. We played Boom Blox.

5) On Sunday Night I went over to Paul and Stephanie's new place. It's really nice. We started the Wire season 5 and had cinnamon chick peas. Om Nom Nom.

6) Then Stephanie convinced me that rather than go grocery shopping or animating I should go to Yogen Fruz and watch The Dark Knight with her. I am glad I listened to reason instead of doing something foolish like going to Jewel.

7) On Monday Krista had a BBQ. I used it as an excuse to make ice cream pie (talking with Jenny abou it just make me want it). It was awesome. Chocolate and Cookies and Cream (Krista doesn't like mint things)


8) I finished Angel season 1. Here are the episodes I liked the best "Rm w/a Vu" " Bachelor Party" "I will Remember You" "The Prodigal" "Five by Five" & "Santuary" and "To Shansu in L.A." 7/22 isn't bad. Another third of the season was mediocre and the last third was terrible. If you are ever inclined to watch through Angel Season 1 don't feel obligated to watch "I Fall to Pieces" "Sense & Sensitivity" "Expecting" "She" "I've got you under my skin" or "The Ring" Just read summaries and move on with your life. There's probably a whole disk you can skip in there. Most of the time I just had Angel on in the background while I built lego stuff for the animation. It was perfect for that as very few episodes actually commanded my attention.

9)Now that the animation is done, I was able to clean up my apartment. It is neater than it has been in quite a long time. Yay!

10) Other things? I don't remember... let's check facebook. Oh! There we go! Look at all these links! (via @qikipedia, Robert and Stephanie respectively)

Oh hey I just remembered something cool I did at work last week. I went with Tiffany into the construction site for the Mansueto Library (a.k.a. giant glass bubble with robots) Here are some pics I took trying to show how deep it is. Of course, being two dimensional they don't really give a good sense of depth. If only I had a stereo camera!

Look! It's Tiffany's elbow!

SVELT Interview & Failed Plans of Malifios

Look! I finally finished the post below this one!

Again with the partial posting

1) I've built some cool lego stuff recently, but I haven't really taken pictures. I've been too busy taking sequential pictures of other legos. Rest assured, when there are pictures they will be posted. My creations don't really exist for me until I share them.

2) Angel is getting to the good parts. Doyle is dead (woohoo) and Wesley has joined the team, and actually seems to be doing more than bumble now. Faith just had a two episode stint that was quite good. I was even happy to see Angelus briefly. He's a lot more fun than regular Angel who tends to mope and brood. Although the best thing I've seen David Boreanaz (I can't beilieve I spelled that right on the first try) do in this show so far can be seen here. Oh how I laughed and laughed.

3) On Tuesday Stephanie came over and we ordered Pockets and played Super Mario Galaxy and watched Better Off Ted and Dollhouse (I'm glad both of these shows are getting second seasons). It was awesome. I take these weekly dinners for granted, but we were talking about how terrible it was when we lived in Hyde Park and Ukranian Village and couldn't hang out several nights a week.

4) I finially finish the mix CD/playlist I've been working on for hte past month: Trip Hop Exploration 2. Doesn't mean much to you, but playlists are very important to me. I don't like listening to music on shuffle, the randomness just takes me out of it. I can't constantly be shifting genres and styles with no transitions. This is why when I do use shuffle it is usually by CD, so I at least have periods of consistency. Anyway you can hear a poor approximation of this CD/playlist on youtube. Or if you want I will burn you a CD. Making this one reminded me just how much I love Poe. It's too bad she hasn't released more albums, though she is collecting dreams for something... Also, apparently Eagle-Eye Cherry is his legal name. I thought it was a band name. That is one crazy name.

5) The first week without Renee was not too crazy - we have been approved to move into the new space - Chicago in 60 Seconds is an awesome project.

6) Read The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman via Stephanie. It was awesome. No wonder it's winning so many awards. I just realized, I don't think I own anything written by Neil Gaiman, I think all my Neil Gaiman stuff has just been borrowed from Stephanie. I should really buy something, you know, put my money where my interests are. Allow me to go update my Amazon cart.

Anyway, I don't have a lot to say about the book in terms of review. Neil is very talented in creating rich worlds that take elements from mythology, legend and other forms of communal storytelling and make those elements new, wonderful and unique. The Graveyard book is no exception, there are ghouls, ghosts, and ghasts, a werewolf and mummy and other things that go bump in the night, and while they benefit from the folklore, each of the creatures in the book is completely a Neil creation. The story is about a human boy who grows up in the world of the graveyard and like every good coming of age story he makes mistakes and gets into tight spots and has help from friends at the right moments.

7) While we're talking about Neil and how awesome he is. I should mention I finally finished Sandman Vol. 3 - it was awesome. This volume focused on the Endless and their relationships more than the previous two volumes combined and it was awesome. I have a special place in my heart for Delirium, who is similar to ROBOphelia in several ways and will probably end up influencing how I write her in the future at least subconsciously. But all the Endless are interesting/cool in some way. Wonderful. There was also some rEdiculous nested storytelling in the Tavern at Worlds' End series that made me happy. (Guy 1 tells a story in which Guy 2 tells Guy 1 a story in which Woman tells Guy 2 tells a story) ROBOphelia would approve heartily. (Sorry, after animating her for a couple weeks, I've just got her on the brain)

8) Speaking of comics I also bought "We Can Fix It" which I heard about by way of Kate Beaton, (PONY!) whose History Comics book I got about a month ago. It was decent. I liked the premise (traveling through time to try and fix things in your past [and make-out with your past selves obviously]) and some of the art was good. The cover for instance is fantastic, but I agree with Krista's assessment that over-all it was sloppy, both in term of drawing and storytelling. Still I don't regret buying or reading it.

9) Speaking of buying things to support starving artists I bought this color strong t-shirt that I guy I know designed. Here I am wearing it!


10) I discovered Harvarti cheese. It has been added to the list of cheeses I love. In reverse chronological order they are: Harvarti, Morbier, Brie, Feta, Provolone, Mozzarella. There are some other cheeses I'm okay with, but these are the ones that made me understand why people get excited about cheese.

11 )3 day weekends are awesome.

Maybe I'll actaully get back to posting once a week... maybe...

1) Here's the set for that chase scene I posted last week. It took a good deal of my yellow bricks...

And from above you can see how I slanted the wall to force the perspective. Whee!


2) Saw District 9. It was good, a little more action-packed than I expected or desired, but the action was well done, (the mech was awesome) so I'm not really complaining. I recommend it, although not for my mother, as the protagonist drops the F-bomb like it's going out of style, and at one point bites his fingernails off. I agree with AV Club: B+

3) Got my passport in the mail this week. That was fast. I probably won't be using it until the spring. The end of the year is always a busy time and no one wants to go anywhere in the winter (except to shiny, sunny places).

4) Finished Avatar the Last Airbender. It was pretty good, especially considering it's target audience. There are things I would have liked them to explore/explain in more detail, but such is the way of things. I'm sure there's fanfic. The best thing about the show is the animation of the bending. None of the various bending compilations I could find on youTube (and believe me I jut dredged through a lot) show all the coolest bits I would have compiled, but this video does a good job of showcasing all four elements. Start at 40 secs and turn the sound off since it is irrelevant. This one seriously neglects Earth, but shows off the octopus form of waterbending, which I love. None of them show why waterbending is the best, but rest assured that it is. All this talk about bending makes me want to watch all the North Pole episodes again.

4) I took Friday day off. In the morning the Internet went out. This is a frequent occurrence, I probably go upstairs to reset the router once a week. However, when I went on Friday the door on the closet with the router was locked. It's never been locked before. I tried all my keys (because there is one key I have that I still haven't found the lock for) but alas it was not to be. Then I e-mailed (from my iphone) my landlady to see what was up. Then I went into the living room and played with legos for a while. She called me maybe half an hour later (because I hadn't responded to the e-mail she had sent in response to mine) and told me to try picking the lock. I was unsuccessful (but I had fun trying!) and e-mailed her back to tell her so. Then I started watchign a movie. maybe twenty minutes in to the movie she came to my front door to tell me that her father-in-law would be coming by soon to take the door off the hinges and fix the internet. After I finished the movie the internet was back and she had sent a follow-up e-mail to make sure everything was fixed. All of this is just to show how awesome my landlords are. When Paul and Stephanie's heat was out it took their landlord days to respond, let alone fix the problem.

5) The movie I was watching during the previous item? The Emperor's New Groove. I give it a B- Best part is with out a doubt "I'll turn him into a flea. A harmless little flea. And I'll put that flea in a box. And then I'll put that box in another box. Then I'll mail that box to myself, and when it arrives, [laughs maniacally] I'll smash it with a hammer! It's brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, I tell you! Genius, I say! [Knocks over the potion, which makes a plant explode] Or, to save on postage, I'll just poison him with this!"

6) That night I went with Robert and two of his friends to see the Improvised Shakespeare Company. I highly suggest watching this clip, which should give a small sense of the hilarity that we experienced. The play we saw was called "Hampsters," and while I won't waste time recounting the plot I will briefly mention some highlights. King Edward was my favorite character, he was hilariously viscous, the main plot conceit was that he kept his son locked up in his room to protect him, but also had told all his guards and citizens to kill the prince on sight if he ever left his room (when they open the windows to look out a volley or arrows flies in), he invariably killed every messenger and anyone else who irked him. Alright, I'm just going to list the other highlights without context: yearly three minutes of unchaining, triple sodomy, porpoise riding handmaiden, the kings players miming an owl, a rabbit and a branch and then animating the corpse of their slain leader, the mermaids' song of warning, "is he talking about the mermaids again?", incest + dramatic irony = hilarity , "it took two half-siblings to make my heart whole," the royal guards - each with a more outrageous accent than the last, "i'm gonna strangle wit' my dreds!", advice from the king's ghost, "we've got a horse!", the completely unnecessary death of the King of Corsica. I could go on - it was a riot. I think the most impressive thing was the rhyming couplets they would occasionally bust out.

7) Then we all went to Home Bistro. Robert and I had already eaten dinner, but we got appetizers (he got dates wrapped in bacon and cooked in brown sugar, I got fried balls of cheese and artichoke) and dessert (he got bread pudding covered in whipped cream and chocolate sauce, I got an espresso drenched coffee cake, also with whipped cream) and help the others with their meals (the trout was amazing). There was some wine from Kafka too. Delicious!

8) Finally got some animating done for the SVELT Interview. Here's a really choppy low-res clip of what I've got so far. Of course the actual animation on my hard drive is big and beautiful, so don't worry.

9) I finally broke down and started a MOCpages account (I have also put a link in the sidebar, since Dad gave me such a hard time about neglecting to put a link to the NNN Youtube page ::grins::). I had told myself I would be content with just posting pictures of my lego creations on flickr and posting about them on EuroBricks, but that approach just felt so scattered, even with sets and collection,. nothing every really feels organized on flickr. MOCpages gives you a lot more flexibility in how you present your creations. Plus, it's another part of the LEGO fan community to expose to my videos. I still have a lot of stuff to add, but I put a few simple ones on there to start off.

10) 8-bit Trip - This may be the most impressive lego animation I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot) The pong part is mind blowing.