Cinco de Mayo party, 01
Students
celebrated their first real opportunity to blow off steam after a year that
claimed more than its share of academic casualties.
Last
of the sleep-over stragglers have departed, and I just finished taking out the
last
bag of empty cerveza & tequila bottles. I'm pleased to report there were
no
casualties. No one puked. Nothing got broken, no fisticuffs, and only 1 lover's
quarrel.
I
feel surprisingly good .. considering. Learned long ago that only premium
tequilas
can be consumed without regret. No need for hair of the dog. Tho my
voice is a little
horse from yakking so much.
Became
a little concerned when one couple was MIA, but returned hours later with
unusually large smiles from a trip to beach. =)
Many students (who've been stuck in
the city all year) especially enjoyed
taking a
barefoot stroll down to the beach (a block away) under a full moon over Laguna.
Wendy
made a caldron full of her famous guacamole, containing chunks of avocado.
Also had chicken tacos, nachos with gobs of melted cheese .. everything you'd
expect
at a Cinco de Mayo party. No one went hungry.
Cops never came,
even tho music was kinda loud, and bass was PUMPing, thanks to
Keith,
who brought some great, trancey, rave music with him. Also, a bunch of
people
brought musical
instruments with them, and several impromptu, sit-down sessions
materialized
(guitars, bongos, etc.). Onlookers sang along with familiar songs.
When
musicians took breaks, the stereo was turned up, and dancing began. Dancers
loved the hardwood floors, slippery with sand tracked back from the beach.
Had
a couple of games going all night long. Some
guests had never played online before,
and seemed amazed after learning they were playing
against *real* people .. on the Net.
Unreal
Tournament
saw the most action (easiest game to stay alive in), with Quake
III
&
Counterstrike
coming in 2nd & 3rd.
All
newbies were thoroughly trounced & humiliated, tho some gaming veterans
managed
to hold their own .. despite the tequila.
The Matrix style of play in
CS
blew many minds. It allows you to jump high & hang in the
air for extended
periods, and move at hyper speeds while airborne (like in the movie).
Some
also wanted to play with Premiere
6
& the real-time editing effects (RT2000)
in Win2K.
They loved not having to render effects & transitions. Most Film school
students are editing
video on a Mac with Final
Cut Pro
(software rendering).
One
guest, Brian, is editing trailers for Lord
of the Rings
trilogy .. due out Christmas.
LOTRs was recently voted best book of the millennium
(doesn't have to compete with
the Bible) at Amazon.com. Everyone was saying what
an incredibly cool gig that was.
Brian said they're shooting all 3 films at the
same time .. to save money.
For
example, some scenes are used in the 1st & 3rd movies, but not the second.
So they
shoot everything - for all movies - at that particular scene, before
dismantling the scene.
They have also constructed over-sized scenes .. to make Mr.
Bilbo Bargins (the hobbit)
appear smaller than the actor really is.
Wendy
& I are reading the Hobbit
& LOTR
before the (first of the) movie(s) come(s) out
at Christmas .. easy to see why it's
the most beloved story of the last thousand years.
Lots
techie talk about video encoding last night. MPEG-1, MPEG-2, which encoder is
best,
how to make video look its best, for the Internet, for CDROMs .. DVDs,
burning DVDs ..
pig heaven for a geek.
One
guest, Brad, who has degree Computer Engr'ing, quit his lucrative job
as Director of
Software Dev to attend Film school in
LA. He says (graduate) Film school at USC is
"10 times harder" than
Computer Engr'ing (at Michigan).
Brad made a cool Vampire movie for last
project (16mm) and just finished editing a 546 ..
like Wendy & Lisa.
Of course, we watched some of Wendy's movies.
Brad's
546 editing partner is Eric,
a history major, who couldn't recall the historical
significance of Cinco de
Mayo. "Musta missed that class," he said. =)
Keith
just sent a note saying:
Thanks for an AWESOME party. You and your place rock!