Hey, Look! There's an Elephant in the Room!

How majestic! A helium-filled cat!

Might as well address the elephant in the room from the outset here...

How did the BTI premiere go, you may wonder?

In the interest of maintaining a level of professionalism and "act like you've been there before"-ism, let me give you the EXTREMELY sanitized, succinct version of the answer, stripped of all emotion and potentially self-embarrassing repartee...

Due to technical reasons beyond our control, and an interminable delay, the movie files would not play on the theater equipment.

I cannot - will not - elaborate upon that at this time, and in this forum. Suffice it to say, the evening was rather less spectacular than I had hoped it would be.

Enough said.

HOWEVER, I have since seen the finished product, and I am overwhelmed by how awesome it is. Granted, that may be, in part, a byproduct of the fact that I've worked so closely on the project for 18+ months, and perhaps can overlook what other fresh eyes may perceive as possible shortcomings... but I LOVE what we've done. I had hoped to embed it here for you to watch in all of its glory, but it will have to wait another 1 to 3 days (according to Jeff's latest assessment), while he finishes tweaking (read: perfecting) the final product, and properly prepares the Vimeo page to handle traffic and process the stats, etc, that we will need for marketing strategies going forward.

Man, I am so proud of what we've accomplished -- and it's just the opening salvo. Ladies and gents, have we got plans!

There, elephant in the room has been identified and put in its place! The nerve of some elephants, man! Waltzing around a room like they own the place! They think they're so cool because they have four knees....

Whales aren't much better....



"it's mostly water weight... urrrrrr!"

Let's see, what else? What have I been reading?

I read The Bullet-Catcher's Daughter, by Rod Duncan. Just to show you how lazy I can be, I'm going to copy/paste my (admittedly-brief) review of the book from my Good Reads page!

A swift, rewarding read. Great steampunk alt-reality UK setting, with a cool main character. Detective work, disguises, circus performers, gypsies, fortune-tellers, conmen, amazing machines, thwarted cross-class love, all written with class, humor, pathos and action.

This may very well be good enough for me to grab the second volume (when it is soon-released) and continue the series! Trust me, that's a compliment. I can't tell you how many series' I have stalled out at Book 1... 

Recommended.

And to show that I'm perfectly fine with reusing jokes, here, let me copy/paste my review for the other book I recently read, called Bird Box, by Josh Malerman... a post-apoc thriller...

Crazy premise -- unique in that I've never even contemplated such a take on the post-apoc genre before. Wholly unique? Maybe... I'm not the most well-read person in the world, so I don't know. Maybe other authors/books have hit things from something similar, I don't know... 

But for me, this was a terrific, tense ride. A little contrived at the end, and the present-tense presentation was occasionally annoying/confusing. But overall, a terrific book, with solid characters, chew-worthy ideas and a great premise.

There! My work here is done! With little-to-no effort on my part! See? See how easy to please you are? A couple quick paragraphs for you to skim! Makes for a swift blog-reading experience! See how considerate I am of your time!? I mean, you have better things to do than read a fresh review of a book I enjoyed enough to mention! When I serve up rehashed opinions on books you'll never read anyway, it makes it all the more painless...

In fact, here, let me post another cat picture for you...

Dang! That cat could probably kick my butt! Looks like its been hitting the weights at Gold's Gym pretty hard.

Wait, I did want to mention one more book-reading-related item... I've finally done it! I've dived back into Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive! Any of you with long memories for Dave-related minutiae will remember that I bought The Way of Kings back in the day (August 2010) when it was released, and waited almost 2 years before finally reading the thing (1,000 pages! Yikes). It was a great book, and I reviewed it well.

The second volume (Words of Radiance) was released about a year ago, and I purchased it with a mix of dread and anticipation... enough time had passed since I read Volume 1 that I knew I'd have to re-read it before diving into Volume 2... a daunting task, since reading both volumes would represent a 2,000 page commitment....

So this week, after finishing Bird Box, I started my re-read of The Way of Kings.

And at this point in the conversation, I am forced to stop myself and ask, in a loud, annoyed voice, "Dave, why on EARTH would you think anyone would want to know any of that?" And the answer is... "Well... it seemed like a good idea when I started typing it... now? Not so much..."

So instead, I will stop the Sanderson-related nonsense, and dance for you...



OK, that's not me. I could never dance so amazingly....

The next time you hear from me in this forum, I will be posting the entire pilot episode of Beyond the Impact, for you to enjoy. That is, if Jeff sets it up to allow for embedding. If not, I shall post a link! It should be in the next few days.... then, we shall see what everyone thinks... hopefully people will enjoy it, and the memory of the premiere will fade into obscurity, over-shadowed by all the love!

If not, well, hey... there's always Minecraft....

Adios for now,

Dave the Tested and Found Wanting...