A day in the life of the Swoosh

So begins the recovery from Comic-Con.  I spent 6 days in San Diego helping Konami show our games at the largest comic-book convention in the world.  This was my first time and it was definitely an interesting experience.  Being a consumer event, it is very different from E3.  All kinds of freaks and geeks from all over the world gather and many are dressed up in costume, like Halloween in July.  I’ve never seen so many Jedi in one place.  And a lot of them bought replica lightsabers from MR replicas, which were $120 a piece.  I couldn’t believe how many little kids I saw walking around with those things.  Coolest costume I saw was a Transformer.  He was a blue Subaru WRX and the costume actually transformed into a car, unbelieveable. 

Some highlights:

Stood in line for one hour to get Stacy Kiebler’s autograph.  Sony digital cameras take crappy pictures, hence the blurriness of the main photo on my page. 

Went to Petco park for a San Diego Padres game on Thursday night.  Great park, love the Park in the Park area.  Grassy hill behind centerfield where you can watch the game on the giant television monitor or looking into the stadium.

Signed up for the Socom 3 beta test!  I carried the laptop I had all over the convention center looking for a decent wireless connection.  Can’t wait to start beta testing!

Lowlights:

Waiting in lines.  Stood in line for over an hour at Hertz to rent my car.

Vagabond Inn.  Mental note, book hotel room way in advance or be stuck in a crap ass hotel.

Man, NYC is one crazy town.  It’s been a long time since I’ve been back to NY and a lot has changed.  I remember going to the World Trade Center, shopping at the Century 21, eating at the Burger King with the free internet access.  Now there’s just a big hole in the ground and it really is a moving experience. 

Got to visit many of the cool places I’ve seen before, like Gray’s Papaya and Pommes Frites.  Now there is only one Pommes Frites and it was quite a trek to get there, near NYU.  Ate at White Castle for the first time and it was ok, not the best in the world, In N’ Out is so much better.

Cab drivers are scary.  The first one I took coming out of the airport was going nuts.  I knew something was wrong when he was driving on the shoulder on the freeway.  He was honking, cursing, going in and out of parking lots, anything he could do to go faster.  I honestly think if he just stayed on the freeway, it would have been the same amount of time.  Whatever, he was insane. 

The subway system is so convenient and easy to navigate once you get your bearings.  But when it gets hot, like it was the last three days, it gets nasty in the stations.  Thank goodness the cars have AC. 

Another MLB park crossed off the list, Shea Stadium.  It’s always interesting going to someone else’s home park and rooting for the opposite team.  Would have been more interesting if the Giants put up any kind of a fight.

Three hour delay at the airport.  There was bad weather on the east coast so flights were delayed and some even got cancelled.  Ran into Steve Wang at the airport and we were all in the same boat.  Finally got on the plane and surprise, no pilot!  Took him around 30 minutes to get on the plane and on our way.  Got home at 1am and it’s good to be back in California.

I don’t think I’ve travelled this much in such a short period of time. Two trips to LA in March, Hawaii in April, LA in May, and now New York in June. We’ll see if I get to go to Comic-con in San Diego in July. Then the biggest trip of all, Japan in August, really looking forward to this one. I hear it’s going to be hot and humid so I’m going to try to stock up on Dri-Fit shirts. Say no to armpit stains.

So glad that E3 is over and won’t have to deal with this for another year.  One whole week in LA and I’m glad to be home.  Overall it was a good E3, my first with Konami.  No booth for Eidos but it was funny how their meeting room looked over our booth.  From Sunday to Friday night, it was work all day, play all night.  The real parties didn’t really kick off until Wednesday night.  Got into the Ziff party for the first time and this year the GameSpot and IGN parties were the hard ones to get into.  Didn’t really matter because some of us were going to see a midnight showing of Star Wars Episode III on opening day.  It sounded like a great idea back in SF, but the reality settled in at around 11:30pm (WTF was I thinking?) Sitting in the second row wasn’t too fun either, have to see it again later.  Then, to top it off, we were in Monterey Park at 2:30am waiting for a cab which took forever.  Didn’t get back to hotel until 3:30am.  3 hours of sleep and it was back on the show floor.  Then do it all again the next day.  A lot of us were anticipating not going to the Sony party, the hottest ticket of the show, but at 5:45pm, Erica and Knoles came through with tickets for everyone.  It was the same venue as last year, parking lot of Dodger Stadium, but the acts were considerably worse.  First up was Jimmy Eat World, then a group called Camp Freddy.  Camp Freddy apparently is a mish-mash of different musicians, including Dave Navarro.  They bring out random musicians, this night was Tone Loc and Juliette Lewis.  We left early and the rumor was Weezer was the headliner.  But good thing we left because they weren’t there and it was a midget Kiss cover band.  Got back to the hotel at 2am and I was out of it on Friday.  To top it off, I had a floater shift on Friday morning so I was on my feet for 6+ hours.  My feet were killing me, next year I’m going to wear Nikes instead of dress shoes.  Friday night I just crashed.  Congrats to Tina for passing the bar, we’ll celebrate next time I’m in LA.  Now it’s time to catch on sleep, it’s probably going to take a whole week.

I did play Socom 3 and it rocks.   Also won a Socom 3 hat!

It’s off to my third E3.  It’s going to be a long week of hard work and hard partying.  Sprinkled in with the opening of Star Wars Episode III on Thursday at 12:01am, it’s going to interesting.  Bloodshot eyes and being half awake at the booth on Thursday.  The only consolation is a lot of other people will be in the same condition.  Looking forward to sleeping in my own bed next weekend and a chance to relax.

Lucky thing I was checking the online stores on Friday night.  When I saw that Finishline, Eastbay, Footlocker, etc were selling out of sizes, I decided to order mine from Nike.com just in case.  I heard the next day the line at Niketown SF went down the back alley.  Damn, didn’t know these would be that hot.  When I got there, they were out of 8.5-10.5.  Oh well, guess I’ll just have to wait for mine in the mail.

Also went hunting for Lebron IIs (white/blue) and couldn’t find my size in the Bay Area.  Crazy.  Guess I’ll order those online too.

The Jordan X retros are releasing tomorrow.  That makes it a full cycle of Jordans, at least since I’ve started collecting, started with the XIII’s in 1997.  The only one I’m missing are the VI’s, which were retroed in 2000.  The only OG color that came out was Black/Infrared and somehow I missed them.  I remember seeing the White/Blue/Red in stores but I passed because it was more of a Retro+, it had a Jumpman on the heel, rather than Nike Air on the original.  So now my collection is complete except for these Holy Grails (as sneakerheads call them).   Hopefully I can find a pair when I go to Japan.

Can’t believe that E3 is a week and a half away.  Three years ago, I was going to my first E3 and thought it was the coolest thing ever.  Now, it’s more of a chore and the only thing I’m looking forward to is seeing Socom 3 at SCEA’s booth (better be playable damn it!)  and the parties.  Actually, even the parties are becoming over-rated.  Almost everyone is having their parties at the same places, The Standard, Figueroa Hotel, Fox Sports Bar.  Gotta change it up people!

A bunch of us are going to see Star Wars Episode III on opening day, midnight showing.  The movie is 2.5 hours long so we most likely will not get back to our hotel until 3am.  We’ll be zombies on Thursday but it’ll be worth it!

Hawaii is an awesome place.  Nice place for a long vacation but if I had to live there, I would go crazy.  Just being stuck on an island and missing some of the stuff we have here on the mainland.  But chilling on the beach and working on my tan, I can’t really complain about that.  Plus eating at Gina’s BBQ once a week, mmmmmm.   It was tough coming home, going back to work and getting rained on.  Can’t wait for my next trip back.

And it’s off to Hawaii!  Stayed at work until 7:30pm finishing up everything before going on vacation.  Why is it so much work making sure everything is in order before you can leave?  Oh well, I’ll be drinking mai-tai’s on the beach.  Brad, this one’s for you!