I smell like chlorine

[dr4b]

Hmmm. I overslept this morning. That sucked. I made up for it by actually sort of plowing ahead in the task I've been doing rather than debating whether my approach is good or not.

Carl and I went to Osakaya for dinner after work! That was cool, except THEY DIDN'T HAVE OKONOMIYAKI. They didn't have it last time we were there either. What's the point of going to an Osaka-style restaurant if they're not going to have freaking okonomiyaki?

On the other hand, I had miso katsu (which I was under the impression was a Gifu/Aichi regional thing, thanks to the2belo), and it was actually pretty good. So, eh.

Came home, hacked on things, decided I was mentally dead, went to the gym instead and went swimming for a half hour, which was fun I guess. The good thing about swimming is that it doesn't kill my knees, but the bad part is that it DOES hurt my ankles sometimes -- maybe my kicking is bad, I dunno.

Funny quote from Curt Schilling's blog -- more funny because I am working on a baseball-RPG crossover humor piece right now -- him talking about having R.A. Salvatore as a world creator for the MMORPG his company is working on:

Q-Fan of R.A.'s? Read his books?

A-Absolutely. I met R.A. this last year. Early on, years ago, when I knew 38 Studios would become a reality, I wrote up my 'dream team' lineup. In that lineup I had R.A. in control of creating the world and the story. When it became a reality, the company, I contacted the person that handles off the field PR for me and asked her to inquire about me talking with R.A. (he goes by Bob, which is why I call him R.A.). Katie called me ten minutes later with a number, and I called him. I had no idea he lived in Mass, which he does, and the he was a life long Sox fan, which he is. It was a conversation that basically went on for 30 minutes like this

"Dude, I can't believe I am talking to you, this is so cool, I'm a huge fan"
"Dude, I can't believe I am talking to you either, this is so cool, I am a huge fan"

We met soon after and I am incredibly grateful to call this man a friend. He's one of those people that just 'gets it', and gets life. He's incredibly passionate and excited about being involved so that only fans the creative flames. The things he's done to this point are pretty incredible and I can't wait until we get to the point of being able to start letting people peek into 'our world'.

And yes, I have read his books, and am reading them again.

Oh yeah, and I read this article forwarded on sinthrex's journal, about Avenue Q travelling tour tryouts: So Many Hopefuls, So Few Puppets

And totally randomly, if you want to get an idea what it was like being at Japan Nite last week, there are a few great short videos up on YouTube. I particularly love this one of HY, with the crowd chant/shamisen intro to Street Story, which is an awesome song to begin with. It really was pretty much like this where I was :) (And well, this is what Asakusa Jinta are like, it's a 10-min highlight video of them, of the awesome songs "Noru Soru", "Gamachi", the yakuza-shirt euphonium player leading his dance, and some other stuff. Fun fun.)

Comments

[nickjong.livejournal.com]

Wow, I had no idea Schilling was involved in such cool projects outside of baseball. Maybe I should get around to reading some of Salvatore's stuff someday.

[dr4b]

Yeah, there's a good reason Schill is my #1 player on the All-Nerd Team. He's also well-known as an Everquest player and he owns part of Multiman Publishing (the guys who put out Advance Squad Leader). 38 Studios is his personal game company that's developing a new MMORPG, probably to be released around when he retires from baseball.

I read a LOT of Salvatore's TSR stuff -- the Dark Elf seriesseseses, all the way from the original Icewind Dale stuff that came out when I was in middle school, to the later books. I gave up eventually when I just got sick of it seeming like he was just coming up with more excuses for sequels. I haven't read any of his non-TSR books though.

I was mostly amused by the idea of Curt Schilling and RA Salvatore being like "OMG DUDE I AM SUCH A BIG FAN". That's just funny.

[nickjong.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I figure I should at least read the original Drizzt stuff, to see what all the fuss was about.

And the story of Schilling and Salvatore meeting was definite very cute. :-)

[danno-san.livejournal.com]

R.A. fell victim to the Tolkein high-fantasy "My heroes can never be in any particular danger or be seen as having the chance to fail" syndrome, but didn't have the compelling massive-world style storyline to back it up. You just get novel after novel of the heroes wandering out unscathed with swaths of corpses littering the ground behind them.

If nothing else, the absurd over-popularity of Drizzt makes it really easy to weed out munchkins from a proposed gamer group. Just look for the person who -really- wants to doublewield scimitars, or play a good-aligned member of an otherwise evil race, and you spot the RA fan-person.

[theonlymegumegu.livejournal.com]

Carl and I went to Osakaya for dinner after work! That was cool, except THEY DIDN'T HAVE OKONOMIYAKI. They didn't have it last time we were there either. What's the point of going to an Osaka-style restaurant if they're not going to have freaking okonomiyaki?

That kinda stuff is what makes me so sad that most Japanese restaurants are heavily sushi based :/ there's too much other good Japanese cuisine to not include it :/ That's why I think Samurai Noodle is so damn cool; it's just a ramen shop ^_^

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Hehe. I go there for lunch a lot, since it's right across the street. Their tonkotsu is too thick for me, but the shouyu and tounyuu flavors are pretty good. :)
And, whee, Japanese noodle shop. Osakaya is actually a decent as a noodle/donburi shop too--I should figure out how to reasonably go there for lunch sometime.