What a weekend. It was kinda all over the place. Saturday I worked the 100th Aniversary party for American Nation Insurance or something like that. It was a crazy party with probably well over 1000 people. We were hired to photograph couples as they came in as a gift to them from the company. After that we were to photography the party, dinner and the presentation afterwards. The party was so big that we called in 2 extra photographers. I’m not sure how much they helped but it was nice to have someone to help carry stuff. Things went pretty well for the most part. My camera suffered a massive error and died about halfway through dinner, but hey, that’s what backup cameras are for, and we had 2 of’em. It was actually a pretty sweet rig, Canon 20D with booster pack, 17-35 L-Series (pro) lens, Quantum QFlash and Turbo battery kit all stuffed onto a custom bracket. I think it’ll be my main wedding rig once I figure out whats wrong with the camera. It might just need a firmware flash or maybe a good nights sleep.

Speaking of which, I didn’t get home until 2am from that shindig, which, with the time change became 3am. I slept in until about noon on Sunday. I haven’t been feeling well, I’ve got some sort of sinus/throat thing and it’s been real bugging me. I’ve been doing my usual Nyquil and OJ and it seems to be keeping the full-on cold at bay.

Sunday was pretty cool. While I was asleep, Lauren’s cell phone rang and it was Dan (from SCAD). He had a 4 hour layover in Houston before his fight back to San Diego. We figured since he was in the neighborhood we’d pay him a visit and grab some dinner with him and catch up. It was good to see Dan and he seemed to be doing well aside from stomach trouble from his excessive drinking the night before. He wanted to get something “Texas-ish” to eat so we took him for some mexican at Papasitos. After that we still had some time to kill so we stopped in at Frys before we brought him back.

Frys is quite possibly my favorite store on the planet now. It’s super Walmart sized and its full from floor to ceiling with everything electronic and computer related. It’s the only store I know of where you can go in and browse the “motherboard section” and physically handle the display board before you buy it. Not to mention the fact that isles to follow have every other component you can image. You can quite literaly walk into Frys and walk out with all the pieces to build a new computer at below retail, almost NewEgg prices. Add DVDs, CDs, Software and Home Electronics sections and you’ve got one sweet store.

And speaking of CDs, I went over to their techno section (yes, they actually have a techno/dance section) to look for the new Danny Howels Global Underground (after Chris reminded me which one it was) and ended up coming home with the greatest mix CD set ever made instead.

Renaissance: The Mix Collection by Sasha and John Digweed

3 CDs of pure genious. The quotes on the box sum it out pretty well…

“The re-release of this remastered 10th anniversay edition couldn’t have come at a better time” … “For many it was the first mix album they ever bought and for us it remains the best” … “Perhaps the greatest mix CD of all time”

Yeah. This is actually a re-release of the Uber rare original, which if I’m not mistaken, is going for hundreds on Ebay. It’s old school audio bliss. It makes me remember why I like techno in the first place.

Anyway, after we dropped Dan off we headed south back towards home when we decided to go see SinCity. A few phone calls later and Robin and Laurie are coming with us. We catch the 8pm at Cinemark.

SinCity is one of those movies I’ll have to sit and think about for a while. It wasn’t bad, it was ok, and there’s nothing that I can pick out instantly as something I didn’t like, I just can’t help feeling that it was only mediocre though. Not for any particular reason, it just didn’t thrill me as much as I thought it would. Like I said, it’s not “bad” so don’t think that I didn’t like it, it just needs some time to digest I think. The direction and cinematography were very well done. The visuals were perfect and consistant and the mood was as close to a Frank Miller comic book as you can possibly get. I think there was a thin layer of “cheese” on top of the whole thing and that most of the actors were dry and that every line felt like a one-liner instead of dialog. This could also be because 99% of the lines were taken directly from the books, not to mention about 90% of the shots through out the movie. They did a great job of trying to recreate EVERYTHING from the comics but in the end it just feels a little forced. There’s a quote from a reviewer that reads: “Accuracy isn’t the same thing as quality.” and I think I agree with that. Out of 10, from me it gets something like a 8.5. Apparently, the tomato agrees – RT 78%.

Today is my day off so I’m spending the whole of it enjoying my new CDs, trying to get rid of the spyware I just found (stupid f’ing ecards from my mom) and playing some more Brothers In Arms. I considered briefly getting a new Xbox game, but there’s nothing out right now that I feel like spending $50 on. DOA Ultimate is a thought, but I’d rather wait until it’s in the “Hits” package and $20 cheaper.

Lastly, my “Recent Links” plugin is completely borked. I’m trying to fix it but keep getting parse errors. I’ve sent an email off to the author, we’ll see what he says. That should be back up (or gone) in a day or two.

Matt out.