Month: October 2006

And I shake my little tush on the catwalk

Eight hundred twenty-two miles, three days. Last weekend was Costa Mesa, forty miles south of Los Angeles, toodling from open house to open house in the Prius. On the seventh stop, the wife quietly exclaimed that she had found the house. A blizzard of mortgage papers, lines of credit, points, GFEs, and linked Excel spreadsheets is happening now.

We expect offers on our current house today. The game must be played with a straight face.

My picture is in a pile of trendy magazines on newsstands this week. Newsweek, Oprah, Vogue, In Style, Food & Wine, Vanity Fair, Sunset, Self, Bon Appetit, The New York Times, and all the wine magazines. First thought: “Wow, I’m in magazines with a bunch of movie stars!” Second thought: “Oh, wait a minute… I am a movie star,” followed by self-loathing.

To celebrate our first offer on the current house, the wife bought the most expensive bottle of Freixenet at Safeway. It was seven ninety-nine, after the Safeway club card discount of three dollars. Truly a great champagne value!

Take your average karaoke band, kill them, resurrect them as ghosts, and give them guitars, and you will have only one-tenth of the rawk power of the Hungry Hungry Hippos. My immune-to-fire-and-lightning band, Hungry Hungry Hippos, is playing a private party on the evening of December 16 around San Francisco. Is there a song you’ve always wanted to sing in front of a huge screaming appreciative crowd? If you’ve ever dreamed of being a rock star, this is your chance to come on stage and LIVE THE DREAM! Contact me for location and password.

But then a tall man stepped in with a cynical grin and said

Today I completed an agreement with The Collective, Inc. and Warner Brothers to do audio programming for The Collective’s games. My first project is Dirty Harry, which is being co-produced by Clint Eastwood and his Malpaso Productions. My first job will be to accurately simulate the sounds of 1970s San Francisco in this game, as well as The Collective’s other unannounced games.

In order to do this work, I created a new company, and I’m its first employee. All the work I do on Dirty Harry will be owned by Gigantic Software, so later I’ll be able to license this work to other game companies that need great audio.

The wife has been incredibly supportive through all this. I couldn’t possibly consider this without her wonderful backing. We’ve done a couple house-hunting trips down to Orange County, and we’ll probably make the move in early November.

To those that are not there: you’ve got another friend in LA. To those that are there: see you soon.