Yesterday, I drove down to San Diego for the very first time - and managed to get lost in Newport Beach.
But thankfully found my way out after asking some 16 year old guys who let me follow them back to the freeway (guess who kinda felt like a moron) and with the help of K and S, I finally reached San Diego around 4pm, following a gamer session at SOE where I checked out some of their NDA titles. Some look pretty exciting, but no, I can't blog about them.
mmm...turkey bacon sandwich just arrived. yes it's 2:15 in the morning...and yes, I really only wanted some fries, but I had to work with what was on the menu. My room is pretty.
Anyway, my friend R from college met up with me after I got situated, and we shared a beer and a ridiculous number of fries at a local brewhouse. It was great catching up and there was a ton of stories to swap. It sounds like all is going pretty well with him, and I'm loving the west coast. In fact, later in the night at the Sony soiree, my friend L commented that she'd never seen me laugh or smile so much in the years she's known me.
The cocktail hour last night was fun. I met a bunch of new awesome aquaintences, and managed to deftly avoid belting out karaoke songs to singstar. It's not a bad game, but trust me, no one wants to hear me croon kelly clarkson. You want to go put on the Clash or the Misfits? That might be a different story. But we started getting shooed out of that around 11, and scooted over to a local pub, The Blarney Stone, until they closed at 2pm. Seriously, what is it with bars in California closing so darn early?!
After an hour of editing, I finally got to sleep a little after 3, and yes, I was still kinda tipsy when I woke up five hours later. groan. Despite the mild hangover, I made it onto the bus around on time (barely) after running down to the cafe and asking them if they had any pastries left.
Most of today was spent at Sony's studios as they showed us the wonders of motion capture, sound editing, and let us have a go at their upcoming titles. I'm under NDA until midday tomorrow, so I can't talk about any of them quite yet. But I will say, that I've got some amusing pics of Navy SEALs wearing mocap equipment and one of them wanted to tackle me later and erase the photos.
This was just after we were told we weren't allowed to eat or drink. J popped open a can of soda just after the guy finished talking.
Here are some photos of what they use for models in the studio.
After the event, and a brief shopping escapade, I met up with friends and we went over to "watch" the Padres play the Reds.
The Navy SEALs are on the left side of this pic.
Now, I went with S to the Dodgers/Reds game on Sunday, and that was awesome. This was too, but in a totally different way. Most of the game was spent joking with SJ, talking to RF about music, or shooting the shit with L. Oh, and I kinda managed to spill red wine all over some of the bleacher steps. Nice.
When it was clear that the game was definitely going into extra innings, we bounced and headed to a nearby bar, where we all continued to get our drink on and mix with other gamers. The SEALs showed up too, and I spent most of the time at the bar talking with a 6'6" tall, tattooed, formerly heavily pierced SEAL who was looking to open his own tattoo studio and professed not to be nearly as nice as he came off. Sound familiar? In case you're interested, I think he's this guy (it's hard to tell with the makeup): http://www.geocities.com/x_1337_n3m3s1s_x/socom3desktop10aq.jpg
When he and a friend headed off to the hotel bar, I stayed behind and ended up going to a different bar with friends. It was totally worth it though, because on the way, a new friend, A, slipped and fell on the grass, then got totally pissed off and laughingly tackled my friend J, pulling him to the ground in a parking lot. He then essentially announced to everyone when we ended up at the bar that she had pissed her pants. We stayed until the bar closed, which is when I ended up back up here. Things are good. San Diego is too laid back for me, but it's a beautiful city.
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