World Cup and Birthday Cook-Out.

This is mostly for the local folks —

My birthday this year is on a Sunday. The day before, however, is a big glorious Saturday — Saturday, June 12th, in fact. A date which hold special significance as the day that the United States will play our first World Cup match — versus England.

So, here’s the plan, for folks what are interested: A group of like-minded hooligans will be descending upon The Red Lyon pub here in Lawrence to watch the match, which starts at 1:00 p.m. local time. We’ll probably be heading over at noon-noonthirty in order to secure prime location.

We will watch Footy and drink many pints.

Then, after the game (roughly 4ish), we will return to Minas Skarka, where various meats will be charred over coals, more drinks shall be had, and celebrations of a vaguely birthdayish nature shall occur.

Drop me an email or comment below to let me know if you’re joining us for either leg of the day’s epic events.

(Non-locals: Can’t attend? Feeling left out? Feel free to get in on the birthday festivities! My Amazon wish-list is up to date. :) )

World Cup Predictions

Inspired by Theron’s Livejournal post, I figured that I’d venture forth to humiliate myself publicly by going on the record with my predictions:

Group Stage (Top Two Advance)
Group A: France, South Africa (home field excitement, plus Mexico’s inconsistency)
Group B: Argentina, Nigeria
Group C: England, United States
Group D: Germany, Serbia
Group E: Netherlands, Denmark
Group F: Italy, Slovakia
Group G: Brazil, Portugal
Group H: Spain, Chile

Round of 16
Nigeria over France (yes, I’m predicting an upset here)
England over Serbia
Netherlands over Slovakia
Brazil over Chile
Argentina over South Africa (although I’d love an upset here, I don’t see it).
United States over Germany
Italy over Denmark
Portugal over Spain

Quarter Finals
England over Nigeria
Netherlands over Brazil
United States over Argentina
Portugal over Italy

Semi Finals
England over Netherlands
Portugal over United States

Final
England — yes, I think it’s their year.

And I’m probably massively wrong. We’ll see.

Mercury Men

I’ve been keeping my on the forthcoming Mercury Men retro SF/pulp-serial web series for while now, and they’re getting close to launch.

They recently came up with a great immersive merchandising idea — they did the classic 70s-80s “collectors glasses” for the series. They also produced this great retro-styled TV ad for them:

Check out the website, and especially the blog, which features a ton of behind-the-scenes video, which might be of use to those of you out there considering launching your own transmedia properties.