The Cannonball's Sweet 16, Pt. I

Hey kids.

So the Houghs hit this particular milestone this weekend: we've somehow managed to keep one of our offspring alive to the point where they can finally, legally drive. 

. . . well, sort of. She still needs, like, five or so hours of drive time - and to pass a driver's test - before she can actually get her license.

The Cannonball celebrated her Sweet 16 this weekend, which we divided up into two, separate events - per her request. She'd been looking forward to this weekend for a long, long time, and - seeing how it's Alayna and everything - had huge, grandiose plans for the momentous occasion. Large pavilion tents set up in the backyard, catering, the works.

Because, you know, Kris and I are lawyers, and the Cannonball's apparently graduating high school. Frickin' teens.

Just so you're aware, I had a severed allergic reaction to blowing up this balloon arch. I've never had issues with balloons in the last forty-plus years - or latex of any kind - but for whatever reason, these particular balloons caused my eyes to turn red and itch uncontrollably (I couldn't even keep them open, they'd tear up too much), my nose to run, my breathing to become forced, etc. Had to take Allegra, Paladay, and other such allergy crap to beat it down - Goddamn ridiculous.

Our family Fondue set that we break out for parties, oh, once every few years. 

Once we ground reality in her and Alayna remembered that we had already, you know, bought her a f***ing car, she was willing to start compromising on some of her demands. 

She wanted a fancier vibe for her birthday, so Kris and I went out and bought some black and gold decor (at Alayna's request) and we put together a menu that fit her tastes. The compromise for the party here was that she would settle for a toned-down affair under the condition that we'd be able to take her and this assortment of friends up to the family lakehouse on Eight Point Lake the following day for a 'Sweet 16, Part 2' (we had her clear it first with her grandparents.)

Weren't about to let kids drink wine at this Parisian murder mystery. . .

This first part of her Sweet 16 was centered on this Murder Mystery Game that Kris and Alayna picked out online. Death By Chocolate, as it's called, involves eight characters and is set in Paris in the early 1900s. Set up was pretty straight-forward and involved some manual reading, character research, and the hooking up of a TV in the kitchen (along with setting up an appropriate 'vibe' for the evening, obviously.) The kids got into it and, once started, the game lasted about three hours - not bad for the price we paid.

So yeah, the next two installments of this blog of ours will chronicle the Cannonball's big weekend, and I'll let the following pics and videos illustrate how the weekend went down.

Enjoy. . .

The Cannonball's favorite food - by far - is sushi, so we couldn't really host a birthday party for her without buying a platter.

Aside from sushi and fake wine, she wanted lots of finger foods (instead of, say, pizza or shit on the grill.) These meatballs (or, 'Monster Balls') that Kris usually makes for our Halloween Parties are always a big hit with teenagers.

While looking absolutely f***ing disgusting, this chili cheese dip is another party staple around here that gets devoured at parties. If Kris made it more often I'd easily weigh 300 lbs.

Some of the rest of the spread (we rotated out crap as it was consumed - teens will tear through a spread like Sherman to the Sea.)

Kids began to show up around 5pm.

Abby and Ella were nice enough to step in and take the place of two of Alayna's friends - Cristina and Rita - who were invited couldn't attend because they were vacationing with Cristina's family in Madrid.

Kris and I take a break from serving kids pre-game food to have a drink and listen to records in the Study.

The evening's cast of characters for the murder mystery game. Left to Right: Maddie (an archaeologist), Abby (a ventriloquist), Kyle (a boxer), Lexi (a bohemian artist), Ella (a rival investor), Toby (a pyschiatrist), Amelia (a jaded lover), and the Cannonball (a CEO.)

Kris reads out the instructions for the game as the kids research their own characters.

The mystery begins. . .

Lexi takes down notes, and Abby reads from her script, as details of the victim - some chocolatier who was murdered by a bomb hidden away in a piece of chocolate - begin to emerge.

The game was played in a series of 'rounds,' wherein each character had to read from a provided script a small excerpt, and then, afterwards, exchange dialogue with other characters around the table. From these exchanges, clues and details were dropped that the guests had to keep track of in a notebook.

Each turn each character had to go, so each round ended up taking almost an hour.

At the beginning of each turn, we played a few minutes from this video - an interactive part of the game, uploaded to Youtube - that directed players, offered more information and detail, and kind of added to the overall aesthetic and experience of the game. It was corny as f***.

Probably don't need to caption all of these pics and video, you kinda get the gist of it by now. . .

Watching one of the pre-round video segments.

Grabbing a drink between rounds.

Samson didn't know what to do with himself throughout the evening - too many people about the house to just do what he usually does around here, lie on the couch like the lazy piece of shit that he is.

Closing arguments, about three hours into the game.

Things get heated - Lexi was cutthroat with this murder mystery thing (unsurprisingly.)

Revealing the killer at the end of the game (I guess he got away with it because no one accused him. . . ?)

After the game concluded, Alayna and the rest of the kids went downstairs into the basement to open up gifts.

Then, of course, it was time for cake and ice cream (as the law dictates.)

Alayna - like her mom - prefers cheesecake over standard cake, so that's what we do around these parts. . .

With cake and presents out of the way, Kris and I went upstairs and abandoned the basement to the teenagers. They hooked up a movie to the projector, played some games, and otherwise kept themselves occupied for the rest of the night.

Around 11pm, the girls kicked off the sleepover portion of the evening once Kyle went home (we're laid-back parents, but we're not that laid back) with a chaotic hours-long bout of karaoke.  You can imagine how much Kris and I appreciated this blasting throughout our house. . .

- Brian

The Great Christmas Record Odyssey, Ep. LIV

Thanksgiving is over.  All systems go for the official HOLIDAY SEASON. . .

Album Title:  A Very Cool Christmas

Album Artist:  Various Artists

It may be just a gimmick, but I do love myself some colored vinyl. . .

I pre-ordered this double-LP when I first came across it on Amazon about a month ago, and it came in the mail earlier this week.  This release includes two discs:  the first is presented on green, translucent vinyl, and is the 'Rockin'' disc (all the songs are rock and blues versions of Christmas standards and originals), while the second is on translucent, red vinyl, and is the 'Groovin'' disc (these are all soul, classic R & B, funk, etc.)

Most of the songs on this album are badass - it's a fun compilation of Holiday jams, and I like how it's divided up by genre in case you feel like one type of sound instead of the other.  The Darkness' opening track is probably my favorite on this release, but there are a lot of great offerings from The Kinks, Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, B.B. King, Booker T & the MGs, Otis Redding, Leon Russell, and more:

There are some weaker ones on here, though.  Tom Waits, who I'm usually a fan of, groans tiredly on "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet" with Gavin Bryars (whoever that hell that is.)  It sounds like a sound engineer pressed 'record' on the mixer, then got up and left the studio to go get some Thai take-out or whatever, leaving two old men napping behind in the mic-room.  Once and awhile these two old guys will talk or grumble in their sleep.  Feeling the yule yet?

Didn't think so.

I wanna punch these two in the f***ing face. . .

The third track on Side A of Disc 1, a song called 'Christmas Tree' by The Lovers, is probably the shittiest song on this entire album.  Unlike the rest of Disc 1, which is filled with rock and blues versions of Holiday favorites, this one sounds like some French cha-cha nonsense you'd hear in an art gallery or a really lame Euro-trash party where everyone's wearing black turtlenecks and drinking white wine.  I Wikipedia'd this band in order to uncover the origins of their shittiness, and discovered they're a premiere French band in the Neo-Burlesque music scene.  Yes, that's exactly what it sounds like.  And so it shouldn't be a surprise when the female singer whisper-coos the entire song, the chief lyric being the not-at-all-subtle "Can you show me your Christmas Tee?" It's beyond obvious by her highly suggestive, French voice that 'Christmas Tree' in this sense is a holly, jolly dick.

She wants to see your dick.  For Christmas.

The song is really jarring, both lyrically and musically (the style so out of place on a rock album), and consequently these Frogs torpedo this album by a solid two points all by themselves.  Goddamn it, France.  I'm highly considering taking a flathead screwdriver and just creating a giant scratch across this track of the record so no one has to ever hear it again.

"It's the biggest, most nicest Christmas Tree I've ever seen."  Shut up, you French whore.

VERDICT:  8/10 - Awesome (A bad-ass collection of rock, blues, soul, and classic R & B, presented on two, limited, colored LPs. . . and pulled down two points by some slutty, French cha-cha'er who wants to see your dick.)

- REMAINS IN CIRCULATION -

For Hyrule

Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria

Hi gang.

Some time ago I mentioned that I was taking another EF group to France, Germany and the Alps in March.

Remember that?  Well, I'd been thinking about it more and more, and honestly - I wasn't as excited about the trip as I probably should've been.  I mean, yes, I really wanted to see Neuschwanstein Castle (however the hell you spell that), but that was about it.  Half the tour was in Paris, and I really, really despise the French.

EF Tours

So, after talking it over with the Mrs., I decided to hand over my Group Leader duties to one of the teachers that was going to be chaperoning on the tour and bow out of the tour.  This freed up a chaperone spot for another teacher - the same one that had gotten sick a year earlier and had given me Group Leader duties for the Italy trip.  It was my way of paying her back, I guess.  Plus, this way, I can now start planning for next year's epic 2015 trip. . . which I'm really looking forward to (more to come on that later.)

. . .so long as it's not France.  F*** the French.

Anyway, since I was no long going to Europe in March, I decided to treat myself to an irresponsible purchase.  The timing was perfect, too.  Recently, our Nintendo Wii had stopped playing certain games.  At first, it was just dual-layered discs like Super Mario Smash Bros Brawl. and The Last Story. . . but then nearly every other disc wouldn't play on the system:

The Screen of Death.

As it turns out, the lasers in Wii consoles that read the game discs burn out after five or six years.  This makes total sense, as we were one of the early Wii users, buying our system back in November of 2007.  So now, as it were, it was time to replace the system.

But how?

I had two choices:  I could either a.) buy a refurbished Wii system, at a tune of about $100, or b.) spend $300 and upgrade to the dismal-selling Wii U.

These guys always make me cringe.

I put weeks and weeks of research into this decision.  I spoke with relatives, friends and coworkers, I sought counsel from nerds in video games stores, and I stared at websites for hours and hours.  In the end, I realized that the overall consensus made sense:  it would be better to upgrade to a better system, that was backwards compatible (it would play all of our old games), had better graphics and gameplay, would allow us to play our games much longer than buying another old Wii system, and give us a ton of new features and games to utilize.

The problem was, however, tracking down the one I wanted.

Nintendo dropped the ball releasing this system.  It had nearly a two-year drop on the PS4 and X-Box1, but the chimps in its marketing department barely sold the damn thing, and it remains one of Nintendo's worst console releases to date.  This fortunately forced the unit drop in price to $250 for the Basic 8gb console and $300 for the Deluxe 32gb console.

Legend of Zelda Deluxe 32gb Wii U Bundle

In addition, there were two 'bundle' options for the 32gb release - a Super Mario Bros. bundle (that came with included a Super Mario Bros. game and a limited edition GamePad controller) and a Legend of Zelda bundle (that came with an HD re-release of LOZ Windwaker and a limited edition GamePad controller.)  You could find the Mario one practically everywhere, but the damn Zelda one - the one I was after - was ridiculously overpriced on Amazon  (my go-to shopping site) and unavailable in major retailers.

So I decided to play the Waiting Game.

Showing how WindWaker looks on either gaming console. . .

After a few weeks of prowling around online and poking my head into stores, I was finally able to reserve a Zelda Bundle Wii U at a local GameStop.  Yesterday on my way home from work I swung in and, for $300, upgraded my nerd gear:

BAM

Last night I spent a couple hours hooking the damn thing up, installing all the software, registering a user account, and updating all the data that was needed in order to operate the system.

Wii U GamePad

This console is much more complicated than the original, but as long as you're not completely technologically retarded you can manage it.  The system basically uses a tablet (called a GamePad, mentioned earlier) as the main controller.

The tablet's screen serves as a secondary screen while playing a game on one's TV (most commonly employed as a map screen, item screen, etc.)  However - and this was a selling point for me - if you're in the middle of playing a game and someone (say, your wife or children) want to watch something on the TV, at the press of a button you can transfer your game onto the GamePad wirelessly and continue playing as if you were on a handheld device.

The GamePad itself - and this feature especially - is practically worth the $300 in my opinion.

This process was a pain in the ass. . .

Anyway, after work tonight I decided I'd undertake the long, pain-in-the-ass process of trans-ferring all my old virtual games (old school NES and SNES games you can download to play on the Wii), save data, Miis (the animated characters you design on the Wii in order to play certain games), and other data from my original Wii system to my new Wii U system.  This process took hours, and you can tell the geniuses at Nintendo hadn't thought this through initially - this was definitely an "oh shit" afterthought on their part.

Basically the process involved installing software from the Wii U on an SD card, installing software on the old Wii, reinserting the SD card into the Wii, transferring all the old data onto the SD card, removing the SD card and inserting it into the Wii U, and offloading all the data into the new system.  If it sounds easy enough, it's because I'm omitting, like, a billion little steps that were written by jargon-freaks.

Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD

Anyway, long story short, everything's up and running and the console was by far the best purchase I've made in a long, long time.  True, it doesn't have a lot of third party titles out yet, but, as an original Nintendo fan from way back, I'm not buying a Nintendo to play EA Sports games - I'm buying a Nintendo to play my favorite franchise, the Legend of Zelda, as well as other old favorites like Mario, Metroid, etc. etc. etc.

Alayna fell sick yesterday with whatever the hell Abby had last week (it was only a matter of time), so Kris took yesterday off and took her into the doctor, etc.  Today, I took the day off, and fortunately Alayna just wanted to sit around watching movies in our bedroom. . .

. . .which of course freed up Yours Truly to do the one thing he'd been looking forward to doing for a long, long time.

Saving Hyrule from the forces of evil.

- Brian