No Time To Blog

Partly because of Tears of the Kingdom, yes, but also:

- Mixes of the remaining tracks for 4-D are back! So, as always, they need to be listened to over and over again several times in different conditions (open air, car, headphones) in order to make them the best they can possibly be.

- Cover art for Joel Suzuki, Volume Seven is done! So now, proofs and eBook conversions need to be ordered, final info forms need to be filled out, and preparations for a launch party need to begin.

- Preproduction for Hold My Beer continues, with grant applications, cast searches, and general film school-style-learning all going on simultaneously.

Busy, but exciting times! (And big thanks to my youngest who told me that walking on the pipe to reach one of the shrines in Great Sky Island is not the way to do it, saving me hours of stress and heartbreak.)

Tears Of The Kingdom Is Out Tomorrow!

And I have my copy on preorder! My copy of Tears of the Kingdom! Which is coming out tomorrow!

Did I mention that Tears of the Kingdom is coming out tomorrow? Because it is! Coming out! Tomorrow! In case you don't know, Tears of the Kingdom is the latest entry in the Legend of Zelda franchise, which is my and my youngest kid's all-time favorite video game franchise. We each have our own Switch now, but we'll be sharing the same copy of the game... not sure how long that arrangement will last. Anyway, from what I can tell by watching the game previews and trailers, any semblance of free time that I may have had will now be a thing of the past. Because Tears of the Kingdom is coming out tomorrow!

Album Four Status Update

Well, we have FINALLY finished all the tracking for every song on Second Player Score's fourth album, Four-D. As one would say in Japanese, yatta! ("Yay!") And also, yokatta ("Thank goodness").

Over the last couple of days, we recorded the four songs that make up the album's "Summer Suite," including "Dimension No. 4," "Challenge Accepted," "Daily Grind," and "This Won't Be So Easy After All" (the title of that last one could very well apply to the recording of this album, which turned out to be a FOUR-year process - there's that number again).

So hopefully we are still on track for a summer of 2023 release. The accompanying card game that I've mentioned in previous posts is probably back on the shelf for now as we have other big projects going on at the moment, but it will see the light of day eventually, I swear.

In the meantime, stay tuned for release date announcements, cover reveals, etc.!

A Mostly Underinformed Seattle Seahawks NFL Mock Draft

If you've been following this blog, then you may know (or not) that I'm a fan of spectator sports, especially baseball (see: all the April & Lydia interview posts) and football (the American kind). You may also know that I have a fair amount of knowledge about each sport, but not to the level of most sports-related bloggers out there (of which I am definitely not one. A sports-related blogger, that is). As a Seattle Seahawks fan, I rely on the expertise of sites like the wonderfully-named Field Gulls as well as those of Seattle-based and national sports media.

That said, tonight is the annual NFL draft, in which professional football teams select college players to become the newest members of their respective squads. Each year, I probably spend more time than is prudent thinking about the draft in the weeks leading up to it, so I figured I'd finally share my thoughts with all of you in this inaugural Mostly Underinformed Seahawk-Centric Mock Draft. Here we go!

Round 1 (5th pick): John Schneider, the Seahawks' general manager, has said that (I'm paraphrasing here) the team's approach will be to select the best player available and not draft for "need," meaning positions where they are currently lacking depth. This approach makes sense to me, because you'd be surprised how often positions you thought you were set at suddenly and unexpectedly become positions of need due to injuries, ineffectiveness, or contract expiration. So with that in mind, despite the fact that the team needs defensive (especially the front seven) and probably offensive line help (and assuming that Will Anderson Jr. is off the board by this time) I'm going to say... Bijan Robinson, RB, Texas. I mean, if both he and Kenneth Walker III are healthy, can you imagine? (One writer from the aforementioned Field Gulls hates this idea. But one of the Seahawks' own players apparently favors it. Who's right? Who knows! Either way, it'll probably be a moot point when the team ends up drafting Jalen Carter.)

Round 1 (20th pick): I'm going to guess that "best player available" and "need" meet up here, and that the Seahawks end up with Nolan Smith, Edge Rusher, Georgia.

Round 2 (37th pick): Eventually you do kind of have to draft for need, though, right? After all, who is playing nose tackle for the team right now? Well, I don't know if this guy is an actual nose tackle or not, but from what I've heard, he's good at stopping the run, so that works for me... Mazi Smith, DT, Michigan.

Round 2 (52nd pick): Back to best player available, which kind of fits a need as well, I'm going to say... Josh Downs, WR, North Carolina.

Round 3 (83rd pick): How about Ricky Stromberg, OL, Arkansas?

After that, I lack the knowledge about the remaining prospects to make even a wild guess, so I'm just going to stop here, except to say that I kinda hope the team will be able to grab Fresno State quarterback Jake Haener with one of their later picks. Apparently he's considered undersized, but he got a high score on a cognitive test that the 49ers' Brock Purdy also got a high score on last year, so...

A Glitch In The Matrix?

If you've been following this blog, then you may remember (or not) that I've written three previous posts titled "Evidence That We Are Living In A Simulation." In these posts, I detailed several examples of why, perhaps, we may all be characters - either player or nonplayer(!?) - in one big video game. Recently, I experienced another such example, but since there is only one of them to talk about, I changed the title of this post accordingly (I guess that doesn't really make any sense, but whatever).

Tonikaku ("anyway"), recently I finished watching a Japanese rom-com on Netflix called "The Full-Time Wife Escapist." It was a fun and charming show that I really enjoyed (the fact that the leads are actually married in real life made it even more adorable), but that's not the point here. What is the point is this: you know how when you finish an episode of a show on Netflix, it automatically starts playing the next one? Well, at the conclusion of the penultimate episode (I'm not counting the New Year's special, which, by the way, I loved for its pretty spot-on portrayal of life during Covid), I was exposed to the first few seconds of the season/series finale before I had a chance to hit the "back" button. During those few seconds, there was a shot of the female lead in her kitchen, and I distinctly heard her say (or, more accurately, read the subtitle of her saying) "I ruined the proposal." Which, you know, she kind of did. Then I backed out, planning on watching the finale the next day.

When I did, to my surprise, she did not say anything even remotely like "I ruined the proposal." I even rewatched it to make sure. That line was not uttered at the beginning of the episode, nor during the remainder of it. I am at a loss to explain how this happened. Could Netflix have changed the subtitle overnight? Or even the actual line of dialogue? Why would they do that? My best guess is that, like when my drummer and his wife heard a character on Fargo say "I'll text you later," or when they heard Reilly and Jonesy in Letterkenny saying "ferda," this is yet another example of a streaming-series-related glitch in the Matrix. If you have a better explanation, please let me know...

Yet Another Hold My Beer Status Update

Fair warning: you might be seeing a lot of these Hold My Beer status update posts (mixed in with, of course, Volume Seven and Album Four status updates) in the coming weeks and months. If you need to catch up, check out these previous posts from March 9 and March 16.

Tonikaku ("anyway"), it appears that the project is moving ahead full steam, at least for now. The application window for the grant from the Vancouver Culture, Arts & Heritage commission is open, and I and the guys from Second Player Score are hard at work trying to line up all our ducks - and boy, there are a lot of ducks to line up when you're putting together what is basically an independent film project! For the grant application, we have to come up with an itemized budget, which we kind of knew we would have to do anyway, but now we really actually have to do it, which is a good thing.

This being our first real film project, we're also working on figuring out exactly what we need in terms of cast, crew, locations, and so forth. Who knew that so much went into making a film, even a short one? Well, we did, sort of. I mean, for years I've always marveled at the closing credits of TV shows and movies, where it seems like gazillions of people are needed to produce even just a single two-hour film. And now we're experiencing it first hand!

So basically I've turned to doing what I did when I first wanted to write a novel or a screenplay, and that's to learn how to actually do the thing I want to do. To that end, I've picked up a couple of books on filmmaking and have been watching a lot of YouTube videos. Yes, I've sort of dabbled in it before, even at one point buying and watching the Robert Rodriguez film school series, but now things are getting serious.

That's it for now, but like I said, there will be many more updates to come (hopefully). And if you are in the Vancouver/Portland area and would like to be a part of the project, let me know!

Volume Seven Status Update

Good news! Much progress has been made since the last status update five weeks ago.

- The manuscript was sent in for a line edit by editor extraordinaire Kristen Hall-Geisler.

- The line edit was returned!

- The edits were incorporated.

- The back cover copy was written.

- The back cover copy was edited.

- An ISBN (International Standard Book Number, kind of like a Social Security number for books) was assigned.

- The manuscript was formatted so that it now looks like a Joel Suzuki book.

In other words, we are really close to being ready for launch! All that's left is the cover art, final proofing, some minor finishing details, and, of course, weeks of hype - including a title reveal, cover reveal, launch party announcement, and so on. So far, it's looking like a July launch date (to coincide with Joel and Felicity's birthdays and the 11th anniversary of Volume One) is in the cards. Stay tuned!