So with all the stuff going on in my life right now, it's kind of wacky that I'm leading this post with Monday Night Combat, but... I'm hopelessly addicted to it right now. I know that whole "Halo" thing is going on and I plan on jumping on that bandwagon soon, but for $10 MNC is just PEACHY.



There's enough depth there with the classes and the Blitz/Crossfire modes to keep meoccupied, despite the limited number of maps (Com'on DLC!). I'm just a sucker for shooters that have any ounce of strategy or team play involved. I now officially loathe CoD just because it's so much of a twitch shooter and there's little, if any, strategy there except for "use this gun and this gun with this perk" and "go this path and take out the guys running around that one corner."

MNC offers the whole money system element. Do I spend my Banana Bucks on upgrades for myself? Turrets for the base (oh how I love turrets)? Or maybe just spawn some bots to ravage the enemy base? If the other team is using a lot of one class, you can counter with another, attack their defenses with long shots or suicide juice runs... it's just a lot easier to adapt to the other team's play style and counter. I would kill for a full retail game with more maps, classes, customization.

ON TO OTHER NON-GAMING BUT KIND OF EXCITING NEWS...



My video/writing group and I are leaving for LA in 6 DAYS to meet with Jim Carrey/Will Ferrell's manager, talk to Paramount Pictures and tour G4TV's studios, the past 2 months waiting for this have been agonizing. I haven't taken up a new job since getting fired/quitting from Best Buy simply because in the off chance that they just hand us stacks of cash to make a movie/tv show/web show I won't have to abandon a new job. Been doing freelance work to pay the bills in the meantime.

We've come up with, what we think are, three good ideas to present to them. We'll see if anyone else finds us funny besides ourselves, soon.

We also have forged a deal with Ustream.tv to live-stream our 30 hour drivefrom Kansas City to LA as well as the rest of the week-long trip as a "featured broadcaster," which should make the drive more fun, we'll see how it goes. We did some testing and it actually works pretty good over 3G cards with a 2-3 camera setup, but this rental car is going to be WIRED to the brim, with 3 laptops, 3 cameras, lights (oh God) and of course, games/DVD's. I might want to live in this car after we get done with it.

Dtoid, if you're bored, feel free to follow along at ustream.tv/tinywatch. I would love you for at least, but not limited to, 8 years. If nothing else, you might see us get drunk and kicked out of the state for being too midwestern.

Also might be going to NYC randomly for a day, they're showing our video at a Comedy Film Fest and have offered to fly me there FO FREE. I can't turn down a free anything.

So, tonight I'm a guest on G4's Attack of the Show. It's kind of nerve racking. I'm trying not to think about. In reality more people probably watch the local news here and saw me on there than on G4, but it's still live and nationwide...

We also posted first sort of behind the scenes video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElM86AHIWf0 , As we travel to LA we plan to sort of film any shenanigans that happen along the way.

When this is all done tonight, I'm coming home, buying some MS moonbucks and playing some Monday Night Combat.

Blarg, all this crap is like a soap opera. Since our last blog post the following has happened:

-Paramount Pictures invites us to L.A.
-Will Ferrel/Jim Carrey's manager invites us to L.A.
-Independent Film Channel enjoys our work but has no room in the budget for us
-G4 (whom I worked for for a summer) asks me to be on Attack of the Show next week.

This is totally crazy bonanza time for me. I keep thinking I'll wake up and be blogging about Monday Night Combat or something instead of this today, but so far the totem always stops spinning. The G4 thing is especially weird since I used to "work" there for a bit as a consultant. I dunno that they even remember that.

So we've decided to start documenting everything on video, maybe it will be interesting to somebody someday. I don't like to hang out in the limelight, I'm a pretty quiet guy usually, so hopefully the other 4 guys on our team can get some face time as well.

We're heading to LA the last week of September to sell our souls, but it's just plain agonizing waiting. Hypersleep sounds pretty good right about now.

Shit, it's been a crazy month. Every week I think it will end but then something else happens. It's hard to believe all this is over a YouTube video I made in 30 minutes that was supposed to be an injoke at work, which then ballooned into a YouTube hit, my suspension from work, a media circus and now floods of freelance jobs and various studios knocking on the door.

It's slightly infuriating as well, as everyone is like "DO MORE CARTOON THINGS" and I understand those were funny, but they're so cheaply made. I hate to be a broken record and keep banging that drum. Plus, our comedy troupe has been working on (what we think is) really stellar live action stuff for awhile but no one seems quite as interested in that. Maybe it's because we haven't really edited together that stuff and showed it off (which takes a hell of a lot longer than the Xtranormal cartoons). Not to say I'm totally against animation, infact I love the stuff, but I don't want to keep relying on such cheap animation tools much longer. Maybe we can strike a balance between the two genres...

This week is the culmination of everything, said studios are talking to us in the next few days, we really have no idea if they even want anything, other than just to say hi, but we're hoping they are going to help us put some of our projects out at the level we want. We have a few comedic webseries we've scripted out and then a truckload of short sketches/skits as well. Problem is, our camera guy, musician & actor all have day jobs, so it's hard to get those things busted out. I hate to say money solves everything, but it would certainly help get things rolling faster.

And then today, I do an media interview and one of the producers is like "HEY WHY DON'T YOU HAVE AN AGENT, YOU NEED A PUBLICIST, GO TO L.A. AND SHOP YOUR IDEAS, YOU NEED TO HURRY!" which is all great except that requires money and let's not forget that I have no steady job right now. We're currently debating if we're worth doing something as crazy as driving to L.A. and knocking on doors. Part of me worries that it would be a huge waste of time and what little funds I have, but the other part is screaming " HURRY UP YOU NEED TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS SHIT," at the top of it's lungs, beating me over the head with a hammer.

Shit, I dunno, it's hard to plan anything when the picture changes everyday. Who knows WTF will happen tomorrow.

Somehow in the midst of all of this I have made a little progress on Mass Effect 2, which I bought just as this thing went down. I just love sci-fi RPG's, especially ones as story driven as this one. It's the first RPG where I actually want to do all the side quests and talk to everyone. At times it does seem more like an interactive movie, but that doesn't really bother me as much as I'd thought.

Anyway, that's enough paragraphs for now, if you read this far down, I owe you a Coke or Pepsi, your choice.

-KS

Well it's been an exciting & kind of nerve racking few days, but I for the first time since Thurs. morning I'm not being called by reporters & radio stations.

So now the task at hand is recovery & assessing what the eff just happened. Seems like Best Buy isn't going to sue my pants off or anything, I have no plans to sue theirs, so kind of relieved on that front.

I'm amazed at the outpouring of support from the interwebs, just emails, tweets & YouTube comments all flooding, I can't read them all but I plan to do so over the next week or so. It's kind of all ridiculous, seeing as I'm just a guy sells phones & made a really simple YouTube video. It's kind of frustrating as well, because other projects I lots of time on garnered hardly any views, but I guess that's how YouTube operates, you never know what's gonna catch on.

Have some big decisions to mull over the holiday weekend. BBY seems to be interested in letting me keep my job, but I've also gotten a few temp job offers here & there. Not sure whether to stay with the sure job or move on out to what I really want to do, which is digital media (games, videos, animation, anything like that) but have no guaranteed work.. What does Dtoid think?

(If you're totally lost, check my last blog post for the full story.)

http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/01/best-buy-iphone-4-evo-4g/

Yeah so I guess I created a thing and that thing made other things mad. I dunno what really to say, or if I can say much, other than this whole thing is silly.

Is Dtoid hiring janitors?