Return of the Awesome; 2004 Redesign
Everyone else in the world has already said it, but I'll say it anyway: Lord of the Rings: Return of the King was an incredible movie; the best I've seen all year. The large-scale war was beyond anything I've ever seen in a movie before. Having never read the books, I was surprised and entertained at every twist and turn. My only (minor) complaint was the overabundance of fade-outs during the last 45 minutes; I thought the movie was over about 6 different times. But I'll be very surprised if it doesn't win Best Picture on Oscar night. Expectations for these movies were at a fever-pitch, and somehow Peter Jackson exceeded them. I'm sold on traveling to New Zealand at some point in my life too. It was great seeing the movie with the Okay Samurai crowd (and honorary member Jinsoo) since we all went vocally nuts when cool things happened in the fight scenes. Check out Jeff's site; he should have a review up soon.
The visit to Baltimore was short but fun. Mike and Nick were sick, but that didn't stop us (Charlie and Tammer included) from playing marathon sessions of Mario Kart: Double Dash!!. Mike and I rocked out to the point of me breaking two strings. My visit to Vitamin was also cool - Alexey was extremely friendly and informative. Their calling card is ridiculously creative: a prescription bottle with their contact info on the label and breath mints inside. Cool company all-around.
I'm happy to say that our daily visitors for okaysamurai.com have almost tripled since I started attending PC; thanks for continuing to check in on us. I'll be updating the site in early 2004 to be more reader-friendly and professional looking - right now fun stuff like Shoot is buried in the navigation. I'm trying to emulate an online magazine instead of a typical blog, with a staff page, more in-depth writing and interviews, and even fake monthly magazine covers. This site continues to be my favorite way of keeping in touch with people, but it's also evolved into something else. The emails I get keep me motivated to continue. A few weeks ago, I got a letter from a teacher in Haywood County, Tennessee, who read the TFA Chronicles and asked me questions about her own discipline system. A lot of old friends have written short notes like "MORE SHOOT!" and the inevitable "Is Eugene single?". Tonight, I got an email from Owsley's record label about sending me a copy of his new album to review. So again, thanks for reading, and I hope you'll like the upcoming redesign.
Saturday, December 20 at 8:29 PM
Okay Samurai Multimedia is Dave Werner's personal site. I'm currently working at Minor Studios in San Francisco. Thanks for visiting! (more...)
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