How Appropriate, You Fight Like A Cow

Well, I'm back from a long weekend visiting the wife's family in Houston. It was a pleasant enough trip, her family seems nice, but it was hot, muggy, and Texas so it wasn't the vacation of a lifetime or anything. The real highlight for me was driving the rental Prius. Melissa and I have been looking into buying a new car this year, and we'd love to get a hybrid, so this was like an extended test drive for us. In short, we absolutely loved it. The car drove wonderfully well, felt smaller and more responsive than our current 98 Altima, and had so much gadgetry it felt like I was driving a spaceship. Plus, we got 42 mpg without even trying (and probably would have been higher had we driven further) and the 100 or so miles we drove didn't knock a single bar from the car's 8-bar fuel gauge. Impressive.

We got home Sunday morning and slept most of the day away. And then I woke up to what turned out to be a pretty damn good Monday. First, it was Conan's first night on the Tonight Show. I've been a big Conan fan ever since I first heard Lyle Lanley singing about a monorail on The Simpsons, and seeing him really get recognized with this job is just fantastic. Last night's show wasn't spectacular, but it was the first show. Once the pomp and celebration dies down, he should be fine. More than anything, the show felt like Conan's Late Night, which isn't a bad thing. Looking forward to a bright future at the 11:3o hour.

Next up, the E3 gaming expo is going on, and there was some extremely cool stuff announced. First, they showed footage from the Beatles Rock Band that made me so excited I could hardly speak:

Now, that's just the intro video, not gameplay footage, but how cool is that? Up next, I knew that Lucasarts was releasing a "special edition" of Monkey Island this year, but I didn't realize how cool it looked. Great graphics update and voice acting (Dominic Armato back as Guybrush? Hell yes!) make this very intriguing. However, they pulled a huge surprise by announcing A WHOLE DAMN NEW MONKEY ISLAND GAME! I though I had seen the last of the adventure genre, let alone my favorite series of all time!
It's being done by TellTale games, who have already revitalized Sam and Max and put out great games in the worlds of Homestar Runner and Wallace and Grommit. One of the heads of the company worked on the original Monkey Island. The look of the new game is a little funny (wish they'd gone 2D instead of 3D) but I'm too excited to care. Monkey Island is a game that inspired my sense of humor in a way only The Simpsons and Monty Python can match. It also taught me how much better a good story could make anything, especially a video game. Which leads me to my final bit of good news...

My latest screenplay, co-written with Josh Cook, has managed to get us a meeting with an agent. I won't go into too many details for fear of building it up too much, but I'm very excited about the possibilities this meeting could provide. Just getting the meeting is a huge step (not to mention a substantial boost to my confidence). Hope your week started out as well as mine.

Cheers,
Eli