Happy Halloween!

And now for something truly scary: a Bollywood version of Michael Jackson's Thriller.

Let me just say...

...that I will never again attend a brunch in San Francisco without bringing my camera.

Hopefully others will post pictures soon so that you will understand why.

Update: It was, of course, Crystal McNugget who made an appearance at the brunch.

I'm a Winner!

The two times before now that I've come to Nevada, I've always played the slots and I've always come out maybe $2-3 ahead in the end. Well, the slots at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino were not generous last night, and after sinking a $10, and then a wallet full of ones into a 25 cent slot machine (yeah, I'm a high-roller), I walked away empty handed.

I figured I had broken my streak.

But while walking through airport security just now, I looked down and spotted a crumpled $20 bill on the floor.

So, once again, I'm leaving Nevada $2-3 up.

P.S. McCarren International Airport has free wi-fi. Did you hear that, SFO? Free.

Vegas

Greetings from room 666 at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. I'm here for a three-day company offsite.

I just got back from breakfast. I need to pack up my stuff, check out, and then head downstairs for our final day of meetings. They go all day, and then I catch the 7:00 Ted flight back to SFO.

There are things I've enjoyed about this hotel, such as my view:


And other things:


Being a rock-and-roll themed hotel, there is rock music playing everywhere in the hotel lobby, casino and restaurants. I rather like it. However, a lot of my work colleagues find it annoying, but I think most of them are not in this hotel's target demographic.

However, there are things I haven't cared for. They are represented by this:

This is a diet Coke that I bought, chilling in the room's ice bucket. The reason it is in the ice bucket and not in the room's refrigerator is that the fridge holds the mini-bar. "Couldn't I just take stuff out and put the soda in the fridge for a couple of hours", I hear you say? Not unless I want to pay. You see, the mini-bar is automated. Merely taking something out will cause my room to be charged for the item in question. In fact (according to the four-screen electronic disclaimer I had to read and sign while checking in) merely opening the refrigerator door will result in a charge.

They will also charge me for using the gym ($20/day), bringing a guest into my room (ahem), or even bringing into my room food bought outside the hotel (I don't know how they'd find out, but I don't want to mess with Vegas security).

BTW, while the room rates are considerably cheaper during the week, starting Friday evening, because this is Halloween weekend, the hotel will be charging over $400/night per room

That's right. A hotel that charges $400/night will ding me for buying a bottled water outside the hotel.

How I wish for the days when the hotels were cheap because they would make their money from gambling.

My Life

If you had asked me when I was, say, 17, to describe what my life would be like at the age of 35, and then compared it to my actual life at 35, here's how it would differ:

1. I'm out.
   
2. I have an M.S. in computer science, rather than a Ph.D.
   

That's it. Literally.

I don't think that's a good thing.

Stress

My plan for what to do next with Swimming the River went as follows:

1. Take a few new pieces of it to playwriting class for a reading (which I did last Wednesday)
   
2. Do some revisions
   
3. Consult the latest Dramatists Sourcebook for a list of contests to send it to
   
4. Enter said contests
   

Well, the Sourcebook (a thick guide on places one can send new works) was supposed to come out on September 1. I pre-ordered it from Amazon last June.

It came out last Friday, seven weeks behind schedule, and arrived today.

So I sat down this evening looking through it for contests. I'd say I could enter maybe 5% of the contests (most are too specific about what they want: works from Latino writers, works from Southern writers, translations from the Scandinavian language of my choice, etc.). I found three contests that look quite promising.

They all have deadlines of Oct. 31 or Nov. 1.

So now I have a week to incorporate the comments I got in class last week, print out a number of copies of this (126 page) play and send them off.

There's also a 10-page play contest that I want to enter, again with a deadline of Nov. 1. I think I'll send my play about blogging, Apocalypse Habit to that one (I've got to do something with that play before blogging becomes passe).

Oh, and in the middle of all this, I'm flying off to Vegas for a few days this week for a company offsite. Yay, Vegas (I guess).

Pandas!

The Atlanta Zoo Panda Cam.

(Hat-tip to Dan Renzi).

"Hey, Mommy, Look at the Cute Squirrel!"

Mountain View has a squirrel problem.

Specifically, squirrels at Cuesta Park, Mountain View's largest park, have been attacking people. The city's plans to quietly deal with the situation fell apart after a recent incident where a squirrel bit a four year-old child (there's nothing that will get city staff swinging into action faster than a front-page picture of a sad-eyed four year-old showing where he got his rabies shot).

So here's the solution. From our local free weekly, the Mountain View Voice (emphasis mine):

As a result, plans to curb the rodents' population at Cuesta were put into action last week, as squirrel-crushing traps were placed in the trees around the children's play area.

Doesn't that just scream South Park?

I can imagine it now:

Little Kid: "Hey, Mommy, look at the cute squirrel!!!"
[Squirrel wanders into trap and is crushed into a bloody pulp]
Little Kid: "Nooooooo!!!!!!!!"
[Little kid is taken away, crying, and will later spend most of his 30s in therapy]

Predictably (this is Northern California, after all), this has caused outrage. Some want the squirrel captured and euthenized humanely. But PETA is also threatening lawsuits. The parent of the four year-old is also contemplating suing the city for neglegence. In the meantime, the city has dispatched a park ranger to patrol the children's play area, banging on his metal clipboard, so as to keep the squirrels at bay.

I will keep you updated at the situation develops.

Two Weekends. Two Bloggers.

I'm very happy tonight. Twice in two weekends I've gotten to hang out with guys whom I met only briefly last June at the blogger get-together. In June, I met so many people, so quickly, that I was able to talk in depth to only a few people.

It also doesn't help that the larger the gathering, the quieter I tend to be.

But the past couple of weekends I've been able to better get to know a couple of guys I barely got to talk to in June. Atari_Age was out in San Francisco celebrating his birthday last weekend, and we got to hang out at Dan's for a couple of hours on Saturday evening and chat.

This weekend, it was Jeff Skybar, visiting from Calgary. I met up with Jeff, Kel, Dan, Chad, etc. at the Mix. It's a nice, low-key bar, which gave Jeff and me a chance to talk for a while. We also got to hang out at (my first ever) Chad Fox brunch (where the only thing broken was a glass; whew!).

Thanks for the good times, guys. I'm already looking forward to next time.

Heath Ledger > Macaulay Culkin

A friend of mine recently told me that I look like Macaulay Culkin. I had never heard that before, probably because he's 3 5 7 9 years younger than I am.

That got me wondering who else I might look like, at which point I realized I hadn't done the celebrity look-alike thing that was all the rage three weeks ago. So I decided to give it a try:


Well, I'll say one thing: Heath Ledger beats out Macaulay Culkin any day.

Tonight I got to tie two people up

No, not like that (NSFW). Like this. I always enjoy being the villain. It helps take my mind off of work. Which is what I need right now.

I Give In

I've finally given up on my 4G iPod. After replacing it several times, the warranty ran out. The problem then cropped up again. I tried repairing it myself, and that bought me a few weeks, but I started seeing the same problem this morning. So I decided that that's it for that iPod.

So, what will I do for music? Get something from Creative Labs? Wait for the Microsoft Zune? Go back to CDs? I made my decision tonight:


Yeah, I'm a sucker for these things. What can I say. This time, however, I'm prepared:



(When I was paying for this, the clerk asked "do you want the extended warranty?" I hesitated for a moment, and then the clerk next to him said "you really should get it; an iPod has a lot of moving parts." Ain't that the truth)

Update: This my first iPod that can play videos. But apparently certain videos are not in an iPod-compatible format. But don't worry, I've figured out how to convert them.

Acting. Writing.

Okay, I haven't been blogging much. I've had a lot of stuff happen in the last couple of weeks that's left me feeling uncreative. Much of it has to do with work, and some with friend's personal crisis, neither of which I'm going to write about. But the result is that I go home at night and barely have the energy to do playwriting, never mind blogging.

Speaking of playwriting, the school year has started, which means playwriting class is back in session. I was happy to see it end last June, as I was very busy, but now I'm happy to see it start again. I don't think I've realized before now just how much of a creative kick I get just from being in that class. Seeing readings of other people's plays (member of class act them out) can be very inspiring. And acting in them, even more so.

Originally, I went to the class just to act (before I started taking it as a writer), and I still tend to do a lot of the acting. I did more acting last night than I have in a while, and it was a wonderful creative rush. The beginning students brought their first assignments (three page plays), and I read in a number of them (the very first was a wonderful, over-the-top Roman general).

But the best part was an improv exercise, designed to illustrate multiple plot lines. We had four people performing, each of whom had a goal/desire. Mine was that I was a Druid who has snuck into Stonehenge. I decided I needed to make a blood sacrifice to the raven goddess, so I ran around the front of the room, grabbing at imaginary birds and gophers, until I caught one, killed it, and smeared its "blood" on my face. I then turned to one of the other actors, took off my belt, and announced "for the next part of the ceremony, I need to be naked."

That's when the instructor stopped the exercise.