Month: June 2010

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Work Load

So, yeah. 41.

My birthday was over the weekend, and now I’m back into the work, up to my eyeballs as usual.

Birthday swag included Red Dead Redemption, Tales of the Gold Monkey, and a 1-1 draw between the US and England in the World Cup, in a game that drew more viewers than any game of the 2010 Stanley Cup or any of the first 4 games of the NBA finals.

The World Cup continues, but I’m not getting to watch nearly as much as I’d like (beyond the evening’s highlight show on ESPN), as I’ve got a mountain of work piled up — and more being added to the To-Do list every day. The work load is preventing me from diving into RED DEAD REDEMPTION as well — which I’m chomping at the bit to explore.

Just the stuff that I can talk about: Final layout and release of the EPUB and MOBI versions of ICONS (for the Gulf charities– details here), release of the next installments of Thrilling Tales Theatre (fallen horribly behind on what was supposed to be weekly releases), finish layout and release “Warriors of MARS” and “Face of MARS”, layout and release the first ICONS PDF adventure (Steve Kenson’s “The Skeletron Key”), layout and release “The Valley of Mystery” (the next THRILLING TALES adventure), finish layout and release PDF and Print editions of Pathfinder version of CORSAIR….

…and that’s not even talking about various contracts, proposals and prospectus that I need to be working on, this week alone.

I seriously need to be hiring some production freelancers, but the problem is that by the time I assemble templates and artwork, I’ve already done most of the work and it just seems simpler to do the rest myself. But that way lies logjams (as is evidenced by the above list, which I remind you is partial).

Those of you with comparable work loads — how do you avoid drowning? I’d welcome suggestions at this point.

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World Cup

The 2010 World Cup starts this Friday, and lasts until July 11th.

Imagine if “Super Sunday” lasted for an entire month, and you’ve got an idea of what this means to fans of the world’s game. The last World Cup (2006) drew an average of 93 million viewers per match — every match, for a month — with an estimated 715 million watching the Final.

So, to say that I’m going to be a bit distracted in the coming month is a bit of an understatement.

This year, the World Cup will have far greater reach than ever before, even here in the United States. This blog post lists all of the sources for following matches: TV (ESPN, ESPN2, ABC, Univision), Online (free and legal streaming via ESPN3.com and Univision Online), Mobile devices, and more. This doesn’t even talk about the countless thousands of unofficial blogs, podcasts and streaming sites.

ESPN also has a great dedicated website, aggregating news, scores, video and more (including a bracket predictor that I just filled out for the fun of it).

(….and for another smile, Google “World Cup” and scroll down to the bottom of the page.)

One month, 64 games. Bring it on.

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Friday Music

Not a lot this week, due to the usual busybusy.

The World Cup starts next week, and I haven’t really heard any Cup anthems yet. I have, however, found a track that already has come to represent the cup in my head. I discovered this past week that one of my favorite artists, Johnny Clegg, released an album in 2007 that I had completely missed. So, I picked it up, and discovered this track — which he had written for the South African rugby team. It applies just as well to the Cup, and I’ve been playing it incessantly. “Jongosi” literally means “strong young ox”, and is an idiom for “young warriors” — and now most often applied to athletes. The refrain: Hayi Wemajongosi (Hey, young warriors) Azovimba phambili (They will overcome all challenges ahead). Johnny Clegg – “Jongosi.”

One of my favorite 80s tracks, reimagined by the songwriter. I actually like this acoustic version better than the original — this is taken from Men At Work frontman Colin Hay’s solo album, Man @ Work — Colin Hay – “Overkill (acoustic version).”

After being introduced to Kula Shaker, the English neo-psychedelia band by their single “Tattva”, I went out and grabbed their debut album, “K” in 1996. This track from the album quickly became one of my favorites: Kula Shaker- “Govinda.”

Lastly, a kick-ass mash-up, combining three seminal sounds — the drum loop from Run DMC’s “Walk This Way”, the guitar riff from Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love”, and vocals by James Brown: Fissunix – “Whole Sex Lotta Machine – The Drumloop, The Guitar Riff, The SuperBad.”

Sorry for the short one this week. More later.

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