Bad Commercial

I happened to run across the Captain D's commercial on a Tivo'd show. They must not have been very happy with it because I haven't seen it anywhere else.  A coworker found a link to the full commercial HERE.

Tea And Murder

Speaking of guilty pleasures, Mari and I both enjoy British murder mystery series. Foyle's War is the best so far, but we've just started the Lynley series from the beginning and it's very good.

Guilty Gears

I'm a sucker for books based on games I've enjoyed, even though they're usually pretty bad. Call it a guilty pleasure.

The Scene

Remembering a Nashville hijacking.

Recovery

Today was spent recovering, trying to help people at work via e-mail (which didn't feel like very much in the end), and very rapidly getting tired of not being able to eat anything solid. My kingdom for a hunk of meat. Also, not above laughing at myself, I discovered this unsent text message addressed to "66" on my phone. "Ever8hing oj. When I swallx feejs jike some gaus is dowmm my throat." Later I learned from Mari this was supposed to be to her, to explain why I kept sticking a finger down my throat in the car on the way home from the oral surgeon.

Wisdom Lost

After about an hour all four teeth were gone. They trundled me out in a wheelchair and a nurse and Mari helped me into the car. I do not remember any of this. Nor do I remember taking a bunch of really gruesome pics of my mouth, crammed with bloody gauze with blood drooling down my chin. I am sparing you from these now deleted pictures, and cleansing your mind with one of a cute fuzzy bunny instead.

Loss Of Wisdom

And right in the middle of all this my wisdom teeth need to come out. Of course when I scheduled this I was blissfully unaware of what was going to happen last week. Here we have the chamber of wisdom extraction.

Recapping

Going from tired to exhausted, the second day of chaos. People moving in, people moving out. Constantly running into a system that needs to be fixed or rerouted because of the cut-off from VVM's network. My first meeting with the rest of my IT team over at the Grassmere office.

Retreading

I've been too busy, too tired, or too uncomfortable to blog all week so here's some back-posting. Monday was the first full day under SouthComm. So much to do to separate our systems from VVM's and on top of it moving people around. SouthComm is condensing from four offices to two, one of those being the Scene's.

Bleeding Gums Murphy

A plethora of soft foods in anticipation of the wisdom teeth extraction on Wednesday. Great timing too with the events of the previous week.

District 9

Hard to classify what this movie is. Documentary? Action flick? Social commentary on South Africa's apartheid using aliens? Surprisingly dark and sometimes sadistic.

Southern Hospitality

What a week. It all ends with a meet n' greet mixer at Bound'ry with our new SouthComm coworkers. You never know what life will throw at you. Monday morning everything was business as usual. By Friday we have new owners, new jobs, some people are gone...crazy. But I'm pretty excited about the changes now that the worst is over. Monday a new adventure begins.

Taste The Rainbow

The Nashville Sc3ne was purchased from Village Voice Media by SouthComm today. It was a brutal day I'm sure for all sides. It started by all of us being fired from VVM, the proper way to get us off their books. Then SouthComm had to offer us our jobs backs. If they wanted us back. So I was technically jobless for a few hours, while I waited with baited breath to know if the new company wanted to retain my services. It did, and I'm actually very happy to be working for the people I am now. Still the waiting and the nerves not just for me but for everyone in the office was tough. Pretty much a cornucopia of emotions today.

The Scene

Nashville's up and coming women musicians.

Is In The Air

As rumors swirl about a takeover, to be confirmed or denied officially on Thursday.

Monkeying Around

The Secret of Monkey Island is one of the all time classic games, followed up by two decent sequels. It's an adventure / comedy game following the misadventures of Guybrush Threepwood and was released back in 1990. Well LucasArts just lovingly recrafted the entire game, sc3ne for sc3ne. They updated the graphics, the controls, they added voice acting for all the characters (back in the day it was all text), and they redid the engine to run on a modern PC (also available on the XBOX 360 this time around.) One other cool feature is you can switch back to the old version of the game at any time to compare. The above picture an example of that. Very cool and nostalgic. Thanks LucasArts, I might almost be able to forgive you for the last three Star Wars movies. Almost.

Sauna

Yep hot and humid. Really hot and humid. One of those I miss Arizona's dry heat cliche' kind of days.

Unnatural Bounty

A Saturday article in the paper reminds one how good one has it.

Pin Drop

Today was eerily quiet at work. The cubes seemed empty, not much chatter. Was today a holiday and nobody told me?

The Scene

Late night noshing.

Tooth Delay

Waiting to see the oral surgeon for a consult, which will result in the scheduling of the wisdom teeth pulling.

Equidogbrium

Mystic. Because Maddie got a post on Saturday.

Comfortably Numb

A very early dentist appointment to get two fillings redone. So to work I go with a numb mouth. I can't stop poking myself in the lip, it's like a new toy. Probably not so fun when it wears off though.

Sunday Shearing

Getting your hair cut on the day before school starts again is not a good idea, as made clear by the six people in line before me and the ten or so who came in after me. I would also like to complain about the inordinate amount of gray hair noticed in the shavings. She was obviously planting it.

Sunday Saturday

With Mari having to work Saturday morning, we're putting off the traditional coffee, bagels, and a newspaper until tomorrow. On the plus side it meant I got to sleep in. And you know who also likes to sleep in...

Wrapping It Up

The morning was spent putting everyone back in the right cubes. Jonathan and I thought Kevin might like a nice cube warming gift, so we wrapped his entire cube in the giant "Like Me" banner. Judging by how quickly he took it down, he didn't fully appreciate the gesture.

Captain D's 18

There was more after the green screen, and more to come as I post this, but I got tired of taking pictures and they all started looking the same. After the green screen they shot more of the same scenes from the commercial as before, but this time more oriented on "heroic food images". Yes, it actually said that in the script Brent found. Next they did more "food oriented" shots where the actor in red would eat some of the fish with varying degrees of bliss. Then came sound recording, where the actors just sat and read the lines into a mic over and over. They were still doing that when I left.

Captain D's 17

This was followed by a long session of them putting up green screens at every possible angle around the cubicles and getting the seagulls to sit or fly in front of them.

Captain D's 16

Step 5. Stand around while they adjust something, suggest different ways to say the lines, places to stand, gestures. Then repeat from step 1. Over. And over. And over. And...

Captain D's 15

Step 4. Reset and shoot the second half of the scene where the first actor has a bird on his head while the other actor gets up and leaves. The head-perching bird's name is Wally, by the way.

Captain D's 14

Step 3. Shoot the first half of the scene where the actor approaches the one sitting in the cube.

Captain D's 13

Step 2. Snap the clapper marker.

Captain D's 12

The shoot. Step 1. Wrangle the seagulls into position.

Captain D's 11

Finally they are happy they understand how the birds will react, so they start prepping the "talent" as they are called, for the shoot.

Captain D's 10

Here they are seeing how the bird would react if they wanted one to land on someone's head.

Captain D's 9

More fun with seagulls.

Captain D's 8

They start by letting the seagulls out, just to get them comfortable and see how they'll react to the environment.

Captain D's 7

The making of the commercial finally begins.

Captain D's 6

The seagulls.

Captain D's 5

Our repurposed conference room.

Captain D's 4

Spots that weren't good for posters got random spreadsheets and "officy" pin ups. Yes, all this stuff is fake.

Captain D's 3

They redecorated the entire office, taking down our art and putting up those cheesy "motivational" posters everywhere.

Captain D's 2

Here are the two cubes that will be the center of the commercial, everything in them, including the computers, are from the crew.

Captain D's 1

The day begins as they set up, though they've been here since 6am. The seagull on the corner there is just a prop. There are those giant lights in just about every corner of the office. It's bright. And crowded. There must be 25-30 people on the crew, not counting all the people in production and craft services who are all stationed in our conference room. All of this is happening directly outside of my office so I get a first wing view.

The Scene

Nashville's king o' building stuff might be dethroned by two big projects dangerously close to failing.

In The Name Of Fish Peddling

Preparing for Thursday's commercial shoot, I had to temporarily relocate Stevan and Kevin whose cubes will be the setting for this artistic masterpiece.

Less Peachy

This years peach harvest from the back yard was much smaller, then again that's what you get when you don't use any organic pest control.

Dogo Foodo

Halo (Maddie) and Nutro (Mystic) coexist peacefully next to each other at the pet store.