Washingcon: Thursday, July 19, 2007
Thursday, July 19
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Nintendo of America Trip
By using top secret insider-finding skills, we managed to get invited for an interview with our contact and several people from Nintendo Power at NoA's headquarters. Five people were allowed to come, so we sent Reid, Camille, Steve, Jon, and Brian.
Brian in the shirt he claimed he was "going to wear" to Nintendo. He changed before he left.
Reid commandeers Paul's laptop for a noble cause: its ability to burn DVDs for Nintendo at blazing 8X speed. Camille looks on.
The gang leaves to siege NoA, a Mr. Saturn plushie adorning the dashboard of the rental minivan.
At the House
Those of us not lucky enough to go to Nintendo hung around the house, looking for something else to do.
Pirate flag
The view behind the pirate flag
We couldn't get away with not playing EarthBound at the convention. Konan hadn't played before, so we started a new game for him. He started with the controller, but we eventually started trading off between many different convention attendees.
Onett at night
Attack slugs at Giant Step. Kevin spent most of the time being irritated that we didn't play the same way he did.
Lilliput Steps
Runaway Five show
We discovered that you can have pizza delivered while you're waiting for the waterfall. Apparently accepting the pizza doesn't even interrupt the three-minute timer!
EarthBound wasn't the only game we played.
Brice and Will playing Free Bird on Guitar Hero II
People playing multiplayer games on the DS
The Nintendo Siege Force eventually returned to the house, promising to tell us the story of their interview later.
The Jeff
After complaining to us about looking like a frat house a few days earlier, Jeff, the owner of the house, kept telling us he'd come by to check on things. He didn't come by every time he said he would, but at any given time he seemed to have us convinced that he'd be over sometime soon. In retrospect, it seemed more like he wanted us to think he'd be coming by at any moment so that we'd always keep the house clean. It worked, to some extent.
He seemed particularly anxious about the hot tub; apparently, a group of people in their late teens and twenties couldn't be trusted with it. Since it did look a little dirty, we took a chance to clean it out.
Reid holds down the hot tub to keep it from wandering off as the cleaning chemical he just put in begins its work.
Dinner
We made enormous quantities of spaghetti that night.
Jon has a little bit too much fun playing with meat
Casey and Jon share a tender moment
Joe fiercely guards the spaghetti
Spaghetti and meat
Spaghetti sauce
"Juice drink in a blend with another juice." They never did tell us what the other juice was. Apparently it didn't taste all that great.
A little bit of role-playing.
Lindsay as the "Angry" Cafeteria Lady
Steve as the Eager Student
Joe as an Onlooker
Meat Loaf
At one point, Paul put Meat Loaf's Bat out of Hell II: Back into Hell into the stereo.
Chaz begins to sing along to one of the songs
Chaz singing
And then, all hell broke loose, so to speak. Casey refused to be outdone, and he started I'd Do Anything for Love (but I Won't Do That).
Casey puts us all to shame with his dancing
Campfire, A.K.A. "That's What She Said" Marathon
We had another campfire, which quickly devolved into dirty jokes.
Campfire
Kevin's self-proclaimed best photograph of him
Roasting marshmallows
Chaz gives us the longest setup for a pun ever
Casey's "flipper baby" impression
Trip, master of the log
Partway through this campfire, Reid and his cohorts told us the TOP SECRET tale of their adventures at Nintendo. If you weren't there, you don't get to hear it. 
Trip, Jahnavi, and Reid run into the sound
Paul roasts a marshmallow on an empty can as Brian, Lindsay, Dan, and Ken watch
Camille and Reid watch Kevin eat a stack of marshmallows
Ken and Casey water the beach
Paul didn't burn any pants at this campfire, but he did burn many other things, including a branch covered in grass
The beach had some sort of sand grubs. They came out when we shone a light at the sand.
1000 Blank White Cards, Yet Again
Some of us came back from the campfire and started another game of 1000 Blank White Cards.
1000 Blank White Cards
One of the cards played in the center required us to all give a handful of cards to Reid, even though he wasn't playing the game at the time. He soon joined us.
Konan has to stand with his mouth open
One of the cards required us to all go out to cheer for Dan, who was in the hot tub.
Kevin has to do the Humpty Dance
We stayed up relatively late playing cards, so we went to bed once we were done.