Wednesday was a tough one. After getting back to the room sometime around 5am, I could only muster a shade over three hours of sleep. I’m not good at going back to sleep once I’m awake. Sometime around noon I got in touch with Ken and KT and we made our plans for going to the Convention Center to explore the NAB show. First things first, I needed some caffeine. Luckily there’s a coffee counter right at the base of the elevator in this tower. They’re…they’re getting to know me pretty well at that little coffee counter.
Our day began with a short walk to MGM Grand, where we hopped the monorail northbound to the Las Vegas Convention Center. I think all three of us were still pretty hungover by the time we arrived, which was sometime between noon and one o’clock. The long walk from the monorail station to North Hall seemed to take ages. But once we were inside, and once I had that caffeine coursing through my system, I started to feel like myself again. Which is to say, I felt almost human.
My first order of business at NAB was to find my cousin, Dara. She works for Sony and I haven’t seen her in…I want to say…ten or fifteen years? After some location confusion I found the Sony exhibit (it’s one of the biggest in any of the three halls) and Dara. She showed me where she’s been working all week, what she’s been working on (producing videos of different product demos for an online audience), and I watched as she started to film an interview. In between scheduling and filming, we caught one another up on our those aforementioned ten or fifteen years. I’ll post some pictures I took around the Sony exhibit once I’m back in LA.
While I was hanging out in Central Hall, Ken and KT were over in South Hall taking in all the crazy motion graphics exhibits and demos. That must have been the “cool hall” because whenever we were able to finally get in touch with each other (after a couple hours of wandering separately) they were hanging out, drinking some complementary beers, talking shit about Drobo (to the people from Drobo), and flirting with the girls whose job it is to scan your badge so you can be added to countless e-mail lists. I learned this lesson the hard way last year thanks to VIZRT. They had free sandwiches, beer, chips and cookies at their booth last year. In order to take anything you wanted, you just had to let one of the servers scan your badge. Had I known then the amount of e-mails I’d receive from VIZRT, I would have happily ignored the free food and booze. So, yeah. This year I kept my badge close to my chest, and let nary an attractive young female get her hands on it. There’s nothing worse than SPAM from companies you’ve never heard of who make you jump through hoops to unsubscribe from their mailing lists.
Next I headed to my buddy Sebastian’s booth, which was also in Central Hall. His film equipment company always combines forces with other Bavarian businesses so that their combined clout will reward them with better location. Last year I think Tom directed a video for his exhibit, and Ken and KT might have provided some motion graphics for it, or a related video. This year I didn’t see any new videos, but Sebastian said the show was going really well for the company, which is always good to hear. We talked about our Vegas experiences to this point (he’d been in town since Sunday, and I for just one night) as well as tips and tricks for surviving extended stays in this dangerously hedonistic city.
I met up with Ken and KT in the outdoor mobile/media center, which is where all the crazy 3D broadcast trucks were last year. This time around it was a lot smaller, with less to explore. In fact, it felt like across the different halls, there wasn’t as much excitement this year as there was last year. I saw some 4K TVs and a lot of new professional camera technologies, but there didn’t seem to be the same barrage of wildly new, cool gadgetry as I remember from NAB 2012. That said, this isn’t a consumer show it’s a professional show, so both the exhibitors and the clientele are vastly different from a show like CES. That said…when I tried to describe NAB to someone last week I said, “It’s not like CES where you get to play around with new phones or tablets or televisions. NAB is for, like, if you run a tiny FOX affiliate in Bumblefuck, America and you want to spice up your local news broadcast with an Action News Van or something.” Of course, when I walked outside into the mobile/media center, what was the first thing I saw? A white van emblazoned with an “Action News 8” emblem on its side. That gave me a good chuckle.
We stumbled around for a bit, Ken and KT and I, before realizing it was getting close to the end of the day. So we hopped on a shuttle and headed back to our hotel. Once safely back in my room, I crashed for about 90 minutes, getting a much-needed nap. And I *never* nap, so you can imagine how exhausted I was just to be able to fall asleep with the sun still out. Upon waking up, I stumbled out to the food court for some chinese food. It was disgusting. By 10pm, I was feeling well enough to tell my friends I was ready to head out for the night.
We started off at MGM Grand, betting on the silly video greyhounds. I figured out a pretty successful system that enabled me to double my money in a somewhat short amount of time. I was hesitant to ever bet more than $3 on a race so I was never eligible for the big-payoff jackpots, but I was happy to just walk away from a table or a machine without feeling like I’d thrown any money away. The drinks weren’t coming in as rapid-fire succession as we’d hope, so we inevitably decided to move locations.
At Monte Carlo, we found a little corner with some progressive penny slots that also featured an incredibly cute (and attentive!) server from Brazil who was more than happy to put in more drink orders every time she dropped off a round at our little nook. She was tipped very graciously, and even provided a bit of luck as Ken asked her to hold his hand while he placed a bet, which wound up paying him something close to $100. She was a good luck charm, that little Brazilian girl…and now I know her work schedule for the rest of the week.
Of course, all those Jack and Cokes made me kind of drunk, which meant yet again I thought it would be wise to hit up a diner for some late night grub. I wound up making an even worse decision than the previous night (chili cheese omelet) when I ordered a GIGANTIC bowl of mac and cheese and another order of fries with gravy. I remember complaining about there being too much food in front of me, but of course that didn’t stop me from dousing my mac and cheese with tabasco and the entire bowl of brown gravy. In hindsight, that was ten times worse than the chili cheese omelet. Honestly, I think when I’m drunk I try to sabotage myself. Like, maybe drunk Evan thinks its funny that tomorrow’s sober Evan is going to rue eating such foul food, but he’s willing to endure it because it brings him some sick pleasure. Needless to say…Wednesday night turned into Thursday morning. It was another late night. I’ve still got Thursday and Friday nights to go.
In case you’re keeping track at home, I’m down about $100 total in gambling losses. That’s the equivalent of a
Sigh.
Sun Ra – Nebulae [MP3]
