NAB: The Rest Of It, and then skip to the present

Remember how I suck at blogging? (Hint: It involves finally posting a follow-up a month after the fact.)

Anyway. The good times continued throughout the rest of NAB. The show floor remained basically the same each day, but the afternoons and evenings were spent a little differently. Second evening was spent at the Final Cut Pro User Group gathering, which featured some interesting presentations, but was tainted by the fact that each time Mike and I got to the front of the food line, all the food was gone. On an interesting note, we had to walk through the lingerie sellers convention to get to the gathering, so we passed some banners that I’m sure our coworkers will be curious about.

The third afternoon was spent at the Red User Group Meeting, which was in the classiest and least tacky stretch of hotel I had seen all week. It was a pretty cool event, with the Epic being shown off by none other than Jim Jannard, the billionaire owner of the company. Just wandering around the floor, playing with his camera, mingling with his biggest fans/people most likely to include stalkers. That shows dedication. (The Red event also had the advantage of a constant stream of food AND a free open bar, so it was by far the better of the gatherings.)

The rest of the week was spent exploring both the convention floor and the Strip. Vegas is an interesting city in that it combines many of the things I love about a Disney theme park with many of the things I hated about the more creepy parts of Philadelphia. Many of the hotels put a lot of effort into creating these elegant themes, with beautiful ambiance…but step outside, and the streets are disgusting. Also, it’s hard to walk two feet, inside or out, without some easy way to lose money.

Still, it was fun to visit once, but I can’t imagine going back often.

In more recent (but less plausible) news, I went out with a few friends, a few casual acquaintances, and a handful of friends-of-friends-whom-I-had-never-met to that karaoke place at the Universal CityWalk that has the live band. I know what you’re thinking…”Dave was out past 9:30 PM? Preposterous, I say! This story must be a deception!”

I assure you, it not only happened, but I even did some karaoke myself. I performed “Sweet Caroline”, the first time I ever really sang in public (not counting the final for my college voice lessons, which was in front of people I didn’t know, but they were all fellow students in the same boat). And maybe it was the band behind me, maybe it was the alcohol in most of the audience’s system, maybe it was just that I picked a song that crowds of people are legally required to sing along to…but I may or may not have ROCKED THE FREAKING HOUSE. Seriously, there were people chanting my name after I was done. It was surreal and awesome, and I’ll torture you with video of the event as soon as my friends upload it.

I gotta say, though, it was hard to top the fat guy who went a little earlier and started stripping to “Like a Virgin”.

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