the.[ED]ition

So Friday night, Stephen, Michael, John, Leo and I were invited to the Microsoft Zune launch party. We’ve been to plenty of these before and generally, we know what to expect. Of course, we’re there any time someone says “open bar”.

I’ve been to totally awesome swinging shindigs hosted by various industry giants and I’ve been to…um…less awesome nights such as, say, Leo Laporte’s party. Since this was hosted by Microsoft, I expected the nines. I’ve been to a couple MS hosted events before and they aren’t cheap when it comes to schmoozing the media.

The night didn’t begin well. We arrived on time to somewhere called the Sweatshop (which is apparently an indoor skateboard park or something) and had to wait outside about half an hour before we actually got it. Turns out, there were only about a dozen media folks invited including us and we were all waiting outside. When we did get in, the place was deserted. Of course, I didn’t really mind since that means more liquor for us. There wasn’t any food served…just bottles of Red Stripe. A good choice, by the way.

There actually wasn’t that much to do with the Zune at all. There were a few posters up and a total of two small displays. That didn’t stop John and Leo from messing around with them though…

By the way, in case you’re wondering, yes, that is an absolutely attrocious shirt John is wearing. There is absolutely no reason to EVER wear a Hawaiian shirt…even if you happen to be in Hawaii, let alone Vancouver.

Since there were so few people there, we decided to run across the street to grab a bite before coming back just after 11. When we got back, the place livened up a bit but not in the way we expected. We presumed that this was an industry party but instead, the place was filled with people who came to see the band. Well, by that, I mean about 10 people who were seriously into the band and about a hundred others who didn’t seem to care.

To be honest, I’ve never heard of the Tranzmitors. They had a lot of energy and stage-presence but their music wasn’t really my scene. Imagine The Hives dressed as Buddy Holly…except that The Hives are freakin’ awesome live and these guys were just decent. Loud is my favorite kind of music but it just didn’t seem like much fun.

It’s tough to rag on anything with an open bar but it became more and more evident that someone pocketed Microsoft’s money to fix their flooded skatepark. It would’ve been awesome if we were given some swag, y’know. If Microsoft paid more than $100 to sponsor this thing, then they got ripped off.

We seriously had more fun hanging out with the other dozen or so media folks, eating crappy Chinese food and telling idiotic stories.

Maybe we’ll see you folks at another party around here sometime.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, May 10th, 2008 at 11:09 pm and is filed under Entertainment, Photography, Random, Tech and the Net. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.