Ramblings (Kids, Santa Might Not Be Coming This Year Edition)

First off it's really creepy outside today. There's a visible breeze but you can't feel it. The weather is not your normal California warm. Smoke from all the fires has cast a strange smoky haze over the coast. Oh and I had to worry that I should run home and close my windows because of the ash falling from the sky.

For those who live outside Los Angeles, or don't read Variety, or live in a world where reason and sanity exist, you might not know that there is a writer's strike just on the horizon and is approaching at speeds up to 90 mph. I'm not going go into detail of what the Writer's Guild wants and what the studios and networks are offering because that will exceed the boredom factor of even this blog. All I will say is that it sucks...big time. When this strike happens thousands of PA's, writer's assistants, and other help staff are going to either flood the employment market or take a few unemployment checks and hope the strike doesn't last long. For the record, the last strike happened in 1988 and lasted 5 months. Oh, and you dear viewers can expect a flood of reruns and reality programs sometime around early to mid January. Maybe even reruns of reality programs. In between work and late afternoon rounds of scrabulous, the strike has dominated office conversation. Heck, even the old guy writers that work on Boston Legal keep mentioning it to me during smoke breaks. What are you going to do? How far can you go on your saving? What about you no longer having health insurance? Wouldn't it be nice if there was an assistant union? What would all the producers and writers do if they had to get their own lunch and coffee, or work a photo copier, or learn how to send an email? What really sucks is that it's that Holiday season, and I love giving, and now perhaps I might not have as much to give. On to more enjoyable things...

Mandy, have you seen the geektastic chumby?

Somehow some eleven year old somewhere figured out how to get the Guitar Hero III demo online so you can simply download it, burn it onto a DVD, and play it on your 360. That means last night I got to rock out to some new tunes without having to buy another Tony Hawk game. One week from Sunday the full version will be released. My one hesitation is that the bonus tracks won't include some of my favorite bands from Guitar Hero 2. In Guitar Hero 2 you had lesser known bands like Valient Thorr and personal fav Bang Camaro. Come on they have 20 lead singers singing at the same time. Now that Harmonix is out and doing their thang with Rock Band, we aren't going to get these bands in Guitar Hero 3. Still, rocking my toy guitar to "Rock You Like a Hurricane" sure does bring a smile to my face.



Yes, I'm tempted to ask for Rock Band for Christmas or maybe a Chumby.

Speaking of nerd things I only care about, back in the early 80's my Mom signed me up for a computer class. In that class, I wrote a program that drew a picture of a bear. Later on I would try to write my own Zork computer games on my Mom's old IBM. First of all, big ups to Mom for seeing how important computers would be even at that time. Second, why didn't I keep up with this? It wasn't like music lessons or something. Also, where would I be if I did keep up with that? Would I be living in some retro cool town house in San Fransisco? Perhaps I'd just be living in someone's basement among Taco Bell wrappers, playing Warcraft, thinking I could've made this game.

Sunday, my brother Sam and I played Halo 3 co-op. Over twenty years ago we were taking turns playing King's Quest or Vanguard. Now, we are simultaneously playing the same game with one continent and the Atlantic Ocean separating us. Sweet technology, how I love you.

Went to my second Reading to Kids a couple Saturday's ago. It went even better than last time. I had a better partner, and the group was smaller. I'm hoping that in the upcoming months I can become a favorite. When the kids all get in line and wait for the readers to come out, I want the kids in my row to be thrilled. I want kids in the other rows to try to swindle their way into my row. At the very least, I'd be happy if they remembered me from the week before.

Ohio State's first real test of the season happens this weekend when the play Penn State at Happy Valley. Anne Marie, would you like to come over and watch the game in glorious HD?

The Tottenham Hotspurs this season are simply awful. The games have ranged from abysmal blowouts to dominating leads given up in the last minutes of injury time. Twice they had commanding leads over Fulham and Liverpool only to give up tying goals in the last minute. It's like watching the 2005 Cubs. It's just painful.