Cool Refreshing Crack

There's a Futurama episode where there's a vending machine for "Cool Refreshing Crack". While it's neither cool nor refreshing... behold! Eugene is now addicted to the latest version of crack.

In this case, crack is Sid Meier's Civilization 4.

Crack 1 came out when I was in college. I played that game for hours/days/months on my roommate's Mac 2si. When Crack 2 came out, I played that game for hours/days/months on my PowerMac 8500. When Crack 3 came out, I played that game for hours/days/months on my PowerMac G4 and iBook.

Sid Meier's Crack is one of those games where I play for a few hours, tell myself that I should really go to bed, and then start to hallucinate by hearing bird chirping noises that turn out to be ACTUAL BIRDS CHIRPING because I've played all the way through til 5 in the morning. Then I go to bed and tell myself that I'll never do that again - then start up again the next night.

How bad is my addiction to crack? Despite being a diehard Mac user, I bought a Pentium 4 Windows PC. That's how bad my addiction to crack is. I've got a new Windows box just so I could play Crack 4. And I'm kicking myself that I didn't plunk down for a Windows laptop. Then I could have Crack 4 everywhere! In the bedroom, in the car, in the backyard, at Starbucks, in the waiting room at studios for meetings.

If my addiction to Sid Meier's Crack 4 leads me into a self-destructive path of late nights, skipped meals, missed deadlines, unreturned phone calls and emails, and cessation of bathing and showering.... just know that I'm one happy dork.

Now that the game has installed, I'm going to play now. See you again in... oh, six to eight months. I have a world to conquer.

Still no Abzo Dolba

My Duel Masters episode is apparently going to air NEXT week. I won't mention it anymore until after it finally airs.

Observations from the City by the Bay

Writing this from lovely Pleasant Hill, California. It's quite... pleasant. The reason for the trip was a funeral for a family friend. Wanted to do some stuff around town, but ended up sidelined by a sore throat. Two observations from inside the hotel room.

-For some reason, there's a big sticker on the toilet that says, "Please DO NOT FLUSH soap down the toilet. Thank you." Could this BE any more baffling? Why would someone flush soap down the toilet? What happens when someone DOES flush soap down the toilet? And why is it happening so many times that the management of the hotel feels the need to PRINT OUT STICKERS and affix them on all the toilets?

-I love my sports options tonight on the hotel television. I can watch the L.A. hockey team - because they're playing the San Jose team on Fox Sports Bay Area. Or I can watch the L.A. basketball team - because they're playing the Sacramento team on ESPN. Five hour drive into the heart of NoCal - and it's just like being at home.

We head back to So Cal tomorrow morning.

Return of the Blog

I finally had some time to blog last night. I came up with some thoughtful insightful essays (read: rambling raving rants) that I thought would make for interesting blogging. I fleshed a few of them out, but none of them are anything special and not worthy of immortalization here.

And now that I've wasted that time, I'm back to work. Another deadline - meaning less blogging. But I'll leave you with this question that popped up this evening while I was doing some work. Perhaps someone can give me a definitive answer.

Is the term, "Fo Shizzle Dizzle" broadcast acceptable for children's television? Meaning, would I get slammed by Standards & Practices if I wrote a character saying it? I mean - I'm pretty sure you won't see, I dunno, ELMO or BARNEY saying it anytime soon. But in an animated show - could a character say it? Is there some hidden dirty meaning to it that I'm not aware of?

I love that I have to worry about things like this - even if the question does keep me up at night...

Lies and more #@$% lies

Allow me to sum up my recent lies-

-I lied that I would not blog this week. I could try to deny that this is me writing this, but I have a feeling you'd see through this.

-I lied that you could come over to my house and kick my @$$. You are most certainly NOT welcome to come over to my house for the SOLE PURPOSE of applying bodily harm to my person. However, you are MOST welcome to come over to my house to hang out, eat a meal, talk, IN ADDITION to applying bodily harm to my person.

-I lied that my Duel Masters episode is airing this Saturday. Apparently, my episode of Duel Masters #218 has been pushed back a week. It will air next Saturday, October 29th at 7:00pm on Cartoon Network. So for those of you jonesing for a Super Necrodragon Abzo Dolba fix, you'll have to wait a week.

I think that's it in terms of lies.

If you still believe anything I say, I should mention that I wrote an episode of Battle B-Daman that will air this Saturday, October 22nd at 7:30am on ABC Family - and then repeat Sunday, October 23rd at 7:30am on ABC Family.

Battle B-Daman is a toyline with cool little robots that shoot marbles. The cartoon is another Japanese anime show, where an English language script is written from pre-existing animation. Now before you watch it, please keep in mind that it's episode #47 of a 52 episode story arc. So unless you've been watching the show regularly, when you watch my episode, you will have little to no idea what's going on. That feeling is normal.

Back to work. Hope to have more time to blog next week.

No Updates this Week

When I used to work at QUALCOMM, there were days when I would surreptitiously web surf and daydream until 5pm. I called those days "weekdays". And whenever those days happened, I would feel guilty that I wasn't giving my all to the company. Inevitably, those days would end and I would have three or four weeks of pure torturous non-stop work, stay late to get it all done. After I recovered, I would tell myself that I would never EVER feel guilty about those downtimes because they would soon be over and I would be crushed under work again soon.

Now I'm writing full time and it's kinda similar. Actually, no, they're not similar. They're very different. No wait. They're similar - BUT different. (Swish! Great writing!) As a computer guy, when I had downtime, I still got my paycheck. As a writer, when I have downtime, I have no money coming in. So those times when I should relax and recover before the next period of non-stop work? I don't get paid during those times, so they're much more stressful. Then again, the periods of non-stop work were stressful - while the periods of non-stop writing work are pure joy. A dream come true.

So why am I babbling like this? Because I'm procrastinating about that giant pile of work I have facing me this week. No updates this week because I'm going to be rolling around the ground in my underwear crying like Database, "This is the life we chose." (from the classic Simpsons episode, Little Girl in the Big Ten) (after Milhouse pulls Database and Martin off the wall after they've been wedgied) (it was the episode where Lisa Simpson goes to college because they think she's a collegiate gymnast) ("I am Lugash!") ("I had a dog." "Is CAT now!")

Ok. I have to stop. Seriously. If you catch me blogging this week, you have my permission to drive over to my house and kick my @$$. Thanks. I knew I could count on you.

Music Diary : October

I realized last month that posting "What I listened to last month" was a misleading title. I'm TECHNICALLY listening to that music at that very moment. So for now on, I'm listing them as "What I'm listening to now." So in no particular order, here's what iTunes tells me I've been listening to most-

Cool - Gwen Stefani
Begin - Ben Lee
Wake Up - Arcade Fire
Girl - Beck
Always Love - Nada Surf
Way Down - Elvis Presley
A Little Less Conversation - Elvis Presley with JXC
One Summer's Day (Spirited Away Theme) - Joe Hisaishi
Up All Night - Suburban Legends
Gold Digger - Kanye West & Jamie Fox

Quick observation about Gwen Stefani's song. I laugh everytime I hear the line "Remember Harbor Boulevard". I can say that spending my high school years in the same stomping grounds as Gwen & No Doubt, me and my friends were more of a Brookhurst and Euclid crowd. Harbor Blvd was just too touristy...

Super Necro Dragon Abzo Dolba!

Curious what a "Super Necro Dragon Abzo Dolba" is? So am I - and I wrote that @#$ line in an upcoming episode of Duel Masters.

According to the good folks at Toon Zone, my second episode of Duel Masters is going to premiere next Saturday, October 22nd at 7 pm PST/EST on Cartoon Network. Far be it for me to argue with Toon Zone, so I'll assume they're correct.

Please set your Tivo and watch it! Or don't watch it and I'll just assume you watched it. Or a third option (since we're all about options here at eugeneson.com), set your Tivo, plan to watch it at some point, let it sit there under the "I'm going to watch this as soon as I have time" folder, and then eventually delete the episode without ever watching it so you have time to record the entire Dr. Phil marathon.

That's probably what I'm going to end up doing...

Death and Destruction at Smurf Village

Normally, I don't like to just copy/paste stuff from other blogs, but this is a great story that just hasn't gotten its due yet.



From Mark Evanier's blog is this story about a public service commercial that will be running in Belgium. The campaign is to raise money for UNICEF's efforts to help children maimed in Burundi. The commercial's hook? An animated sequence of Smurf Village getting bombed.

I won't bother to comment or write something funny to go along with this. Besides, are jokes really even necessary with a story like this?

Okay. One comment. Don't you just LOVE that Smurfette is lying face down on the left? Of all the Smurfs to die, the only girl in the village has to buy it. I think the living Smurfs would envy the dead...

Hockey Night in L.A.

So this crazy week, I had two different writing assignments that ended up being due around the same time. I worked on both of them this week, switching back and forth between the two. I turned the first one of them in this morning - the other one is due Monday. So I get to look forward to a weekend of writing, hunched over my keyboard like a crazed hermit typing out his Unabomber-like manifesto.

Ah, good times.

Though, I did manage to sneak out and go to opening night of the L.A. Kings last night at Staples Center. I'm a huge hockey nut and I got to watch the Kings beat the Coyotes 3-2. I could tell you all about what happened on the ice, like the goals, Wayne Gretzky's coaching error, the fights - but you can get that from ESPN. Lemme tell you about the best part of the game.

The national anthem before the game was played by Zach Wylde, who used to be Ozzy Osbourne's guitarist. It was AWESOME. He started the national anthem with a ton of distortion and feedback, then blasted into some power-rock version of the national anthem. He was FEELING it. He'd play five or six notes, then he'd strike a pose, blast some more distortion, and point to the sky, like some William Shatner-like hitch-pause method of guitar. Then he'd play another two or three notes, crank up more distortion, then point to the sky. This continued for several hours. Remember that Simpsons bit where Bleeding Gums Murphy sings the National Anthem? This was similar. Only with loud guitar feedback and distortion and frequent points to the sky.

Some fans were getting upset. It's not the most stirring rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, that's for sure, when you have people shouting, "This is a Roseanne Barr-like disgrace!" But the people in our section? We're laughing our HEADS OFF. Guys are calling their friends on their cell phones, shouting, "You have to hear this! It's the worst national anthem ever!"

He finally finished - and there was this stunned, "What the heck was that?" silence before the crowd cheered. If you go online and do a search on the L.A.Kings message boards, you'll find a lot of people discussing the national anthem.

Thank goodness it was a game between American teams. I think the world is a better place without an Ozzy Osbourne-like rendition of "Oh Canada".

I'll Never Look at Bart Simpson the Same Way Again

Still crazy-busy this week, but I had to blog this.

Last Friday night, I was at a Writer's Guild event and got to meet voice actress Nancy Cartwright. She's most famous for her role as the voice of Bart Simpson, but she's done a ton of other great voices including Chuckie on the Rugrats, Rufus the Naked Mole Rat on Kim Possible, and Todd on The Replacements (coming to Disney Channel in 2006). The event was quite cool and she was everything you'd expect her to be - funny, charming, inspiring.

So beforehand, she comes and up and just introduces herself to us. I shake her hand and she asks if we've met before. She says I look familiar - I tell her that we've never met. Then she looks at me and says -

"Oooooo. You're cute."

Now normally I'd be giddy as all hell that an attractive woman thinks I'm cute.

But I'm worried.

I'm worried that I won't be able to watch the Simpsons anymore without lusting after Bart Simpson as an attractive woman. I'm worried that she was just being polite and humoring me. I'm worried that her vision is going bad and that's why she misinterpreted what she saw as cute.

Mostly, I'm worried that my wife is going to read this blog entry and make fun of me. Aye caramba.