It seems to be a fan-run SF con end of May at UCLA, but they seem to have better commitment to sound than most cons bother with.

Sound Studio

Enigma is pleased to bring back representatives from Weddington Sound, an industry leader in sound effects and sound design for film and television. If you hear something strange at EnigmaCon, it's probably from Weddington!

Just wondered if you knew anything about it.

Now you're getting me hot.

Did you feel the earth move? Or just think you did?

I know Weddington Sound. Don't think I know anyone who works there any longer though.

Huh, maybe I'll have to try to check it out if I've got the time.

Okay, I'm off to the theatre, Everest is calling.

Oh, and we had to create an avalanche on stage using nothing but lighting and sound, along with a few other complex effects.

Oooh, cool. I'll have to check this out at some point.

Just got back from taking my mom on the Warner Brothers Tour. It's the "good" tour--the one where you tour in-use soundstges and get to visit the prop and costume collections and stuff. We saw Parminder Nagra and Shane West walking to lunch. She has shiny shiny hair.

Plus, they make an excellent snack, if you're doing Atkins.

No, Cindy, you're thinking of Catkins. Totally different diet.

Oh! That's right, Nicole. I had the Catnip saute for lunch. I'm a little out of it.

oooh, Parminder sighting!

Hey lori, did you see the Chron article today about the kickass engineers of the Mars Rovers?

To distract us from the potential for a cats v. baseball civil war, I'll ofer this up. My (ex) minion does a weekly question to her mailing list, and collects all the answers. This week's was fun.

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What games did you enjoy as a child?

with family and babysitters (that is, older people), board games and card games. beginning with candyland and war, graduating to scrabble and gin (both the game and the beverage). somewhere in between, my mom taught me to play solitaire. it was the closest thing to meditation she knew.

with my brother, outdoor boy stuff, handball, hot lava, frisbee.

with my childhood girl friends, imaginary and fantasy games, usually around being older ("let's play teenagers"). there were four of us and we would pretend to be unsupervised girls between 14 and 17, very cool, very sexy, very grown up. my best friend and i also had a pretty directly homoerotic variation for when we were alone in which i played a boy and we were neighbors.

halfway through my freshman year of college, i got kicked out of school for all kinds of out of control, self-destructive behavior. i went back home full of shame and scars while my family tried to decide whether or not to have me committed. my mother took a week off to stay home and be with me, but we couldn't bear to speak to each other. once i could drag myself out of bed, we spent several days sitting at the corner of our kitchen table playing solitaire. she would play a game, then collect the cards and hand them to me, i would shuffle and play my own game, then collect the cards and hnd them back to her. i think we did this for four days without exchanging four words. it was eerie, and a strange start to our healing. it did not feel like a game.

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I grew up in a world where kids could play outdoors more than in so our favorite games were in the yard. (Pong came along when I was nearly in high school.) Some games: Red Light / Green Light, Frozen Statue, Cup Ball, and a game we played called (for some strange reason) Godzilla in which we would play around the front yard just after dark and wait for a rare car to turn the corner. We would shout "Godzilla!" and try to hide before getting caught in the headlights. If the light hit you, you were history.

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candy land, stratego, life, monopoly, scrabble, casino(a card game) and my favorite that I still occasionally play: dress up

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We played a game called, "Jail break", with neighboring developments. Great fun!!

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my favorite game was the game of life, the actual board game. that shit made you think! hungry hungry hippos, though i never had one... id like to see how active the kids were in the commercial, bumping up and down and shit. snoopy snow cone machine - not a game but fun anyway. didnt have this either but looked cool. any outside game that i could play with others as long as possible as i am an only child...

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My mom was big on playing games with me so we played them all: Life, Sorry, Uno, Monopoly, Cards, Operation, Concentration, Whatever there was, we played it.

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Johnny Lightning. I'm a female, and this was a thrilling game for me to get at Christmas. All it was was a racetrack with two cars, and their speed was determined how fast you could push them through the starting gate. No electricity was involved at all. In hindsight, I can see how that this wasn't the typical toy you'd buy for a daughter (I was also an only child), so I think my dad bought it for himself. :) But I simply loved it. I always liked the boys toys more--the were interactive and simply more fun.

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chase, truth or dare, spin the bottle, tv tag, football (which ended promptly the moment the boys realized I was a GIRL).

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On the playground, boxball (aka, foursquare) was fiercely competitive and the scene of one of my great elementary school triumphs when I held serve through a line of twenty. In my neighborhood, all the houses had backyards that empted into a large common space with trees all around. Prime (continued...)