When I worked at my last job, we had a number of people who had never seen Team America before. So, we got a small handful together, gathered at my place, snuggled up on the couch, and laughed ourselves silly. We had such a great time, I was asked when the next movie night would be. And, while not having a date in mind, I suggested we do Red vs Blue.
My co-workers hadn’t heard of it, so I explained it to them. Basically, these guys with an X-Box console recorded various scenes from Halo, and using a video editor, produced a short series of episodes. This became wildly popular, and the series has become harder and harder to find online, now that you can purchase DVDs of the episodes.
I’m a proud owner of the hi-res DVD set, but, believe it or not, don’t like them as much as I do the lo-res downloadable version. How come…? The reason is that the DVD strings all the content together sequentially as if it were one big movie. But the charm of the series is actually the fade-in song, the strange situations, followed by a fade out to credits while the audio continues the absurdity in some new direction. It is a better punchline and makes it seem like more time has passed. This is totally lost with the DVD sets, not to mention some really good jokes fall on the cutting room floor.
Well, I managed to scrape together the first season off the web, and since we didn’t want to crowd around the computer, burned a temporary copy to DVD, so we could watch on the big screen. Let’s just say that I learned more than I ever wanted to know about codecs and DVD production before I got it right. To set the pacing, I placed a number of AdultSwim-like fillers poking fun at direct individuals that would be sitting in my living room.
Anyhow, the number of people interested started to climb, and it hit that magic threshold where it was more appropriate to do a party. And, since we hadn’t done an Ashburn party of any massive scale, we thought we’d introduce this group to something big.
The house was decorated with red and blue streamers, red and blue balloons, red and blue banners, red and blue floor coverings, red and blue table settings, and so forth. My wife got a pile of snackage, while I made popcorn in different flavors and in mass quantity. Additionally, we had made a run to Toys’R’Us and the party store, and obtained everything from Pop Rocks, indoor fireworks, to tons of office toys that flew, drew, or shot things.
During our pause for food, we gave out door prizes, and instead of drawing a name, one of the slips said “there’s silly string hidden under the chairs, start the war!” And, within moments, my living room was trashed, my walls were covered, and we had piles (about 24 cans worth) of silly string all over the place. We were grinding it into the carpet, tracking it all over the house. Good stuff!!
Tonight I get an email from Ellen: “Where are the pictures?”
Well, if you recall, Ellen, you guys were shooting me in the face; I didn’t have time to get the camera, and the one guy who did have a camera, only managed to squeeze off four shots, mostly from across the room. He’s promised I can get the pictures, which I assume means sometime tomorrow — at which point I’ll post them.
In the meanwhile, since I now have a new graphics tablet the size of Wyoming, this will have to suffice for now:
UPDATE (12-Mar-2006): Danny apparently was holding a camera before he grabbed cans of silly string, and managed to capture these brief party photos before things really went down.