Another weekend slips away to the steely grip of time. I was pretty busy this weekend.
Friday night Emily and I ordered in pizza and watched Once Upon A Time In Mexico on video with our friends Lisa and Mark. It was fairly enjoyable, if a bit bloody, but not nearly as good as the first 2 films in the "El Mariachi" series. Not Robert Rodriguez's best film, but solid and entertaining nonetheless. I am very much looking forward to his next film, an adaptation of Frank Miller's classic noir graphic novels SIN CITY. Miller is supposedly very involved with the filming (Rodriguez was even trying to get him co-directing credit on the film until the Director's Guild struck that down as against the by-laws of their contracts.)

I spent the latter part of Saturday afternoon getting ready for our monthly "Game Night". This time I was treating everyone to another test play of my game ELECTION! I tweaked some of the rules a bit and printed the cards on a heavier paper stock and I have to say it went very well! Everyone involved actually played the game until completion, offering up some great suggestions to improve gameplay and speed up the play. All said the game took about 4 hours to finish, but we came up with an idea to speed it up to about 2 hours, which I think is a bit more manageable. So thanks to my play testers: Derek, Kate, Emily and Mary! I think with a few more adjustments I may be able to get this ready enough to submit to some game companies! More on that as time marches on.

I did get to put in about 20-25 minutes on my comic strip taking it that much closer to completion. I don't think I have much left to do on it, but I feel like it needs a little more zip and punch in the artwork. I'm not sure how I am going to achieve it yet but I'm sure I will think of something....

I also found the time to re-arrange my upstairs studio/computer room just a bit. Not a huge change, but an improvement nonetheless, I think. Emily hasn't seen it yet, so I may have to change it back! Biggest change is that I finally got my stereo hooked up to my huge Acoustic Research speaker cabinets. These suckers are a good 4 1/2" tall and sound great, but are a pain in the ass to move! I probably won't get an opportunity to blast them unless Emily and Alena are gone for the weekend as they were last week, but it is great to hear them popping again!

Movies that I still haven't seen yet this summer....

Shrek 2
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
Stepford Wives

Concerts I really want to go see, but in all probability won't:

Devo live in Central Park, NYC July 23rd

Duty now,

--Doug

Now playing on my iPod: Folsom Prison Blues, Johnny Cash