On Friday, a bunch of us celebrated Halloween in costume.  Can you identify who’s who?  Or who’s what?  Read on for the answers…
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In keeping with our “we love NYC and can’t stop talking about” theme, we purchased a permit to have a picnic in Central Park.  Food was ordered, travel arrangement arranged, significant others cajoled, etc.  Sadly, though, the forecast was for rain.  And, not maybe-drizzling-wear-a-hat rain, but don’t-stand-in-an-open-field-thunderstorm kinda rain.

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We signed up for Clean Air NY a little while ago.  How could we not?  Their inarguable pitch is “we promote clean air”.  (Plus, they sent us some helpful (and cool) pens, transit maps, and such.)

After meeting with the friendly folks at Clean Air NY, we quickly set up an employer-sponsored tax-free transit fare program.   Which is a good thing, as almost everyone here commutes by foot, bike, or train.  (We have to burn off all those calories consumed.)

Click on their logo above to check out their site and/or read about them below:

Clean Air NY. Breathe it in. Just like our name and slogan state, we are in the business of promoting clean air that fellow New Yorkers will “breathe in.” Created for New Yorkers by New Yorkers, Clean Air NY wants to help you live better and breathe easier by partnering with you to learn what we can all do to improve air quality.

Clean Air NY is a network of individuals, employers, employees and community organizations in the New York metro area committed to the idea that every person can help clean our air. Participating in Clean Air NY is free and easy—we provide you with everything you need. Getting involved takes just a few seconds and clicks of a mouse.

Last Friday was another fun Rock Band night. Thanks to Jon, Neil, Sean, and everyone else who helped get everything set up.  We spiced up this RB night with a few new ingredients. First off, of course, is Rock Band 2!  (We like!) We also picked up one of those Ion Drum Rocker kits.  All the righties were really impressed with this premium kit. But, I’m going to go off on a bit of semi-self-indulgent tangent here, so feel free to ignore the following rant about how the world continually conspires against lefty drummers…

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The US Open is in Full Swing!  (Sorry about that. Though, our extensive research shows only 300 people or so have made that same pun online, so it’s not that bad.)

While there are a couple of tennis fans among us, the real treat is what happens to our nearby park (previously mentioned, here and here) during US Open season:

Madison Square Park [is] transformed into the ultimate tennis experience, including giant viewing screens, stadium seating and concessions from NYC-area restaurants, Country, Hill Country Barbecue Market and Rickshaw Dumpling Bar.

An official link is here.

Sadly, convenient dumplings and pulled beef sandwiches are only around until Sunday.  So enjoy ‘em while you can.  (After Sunday, we’ll have to walk a couple of extra blocks for dumplings again!)

p.s. Yes, it’s another food post.  I promise we’ll put up the “results” of the last mix CD really soon.

p.p.s. Oh, and people are still wearing ties etc. on Fridays, if you were curious.

Forgive the late notice, but some friends of the family are coming to town, as per the message below!

The Guitar Zeros, the plastickiest band this side of the Mississippi, is crossing the Mississippi. in a small plastic paddle boat. not really. We’re playing 2 shows in NYC, and would love support from anyone who wants to help us…… please consider telling your friends in New York, if you’ve got some you think might be interested, about our shows and maybe we’ll be so lucky to have some people show up to witness the plastic shredding.

• July 17 @ Lit Lounge in Manhattan
• July 18 @ Union Hall in Brooklyn

The Guitar Zeros is a group featuring some Ubisoft employees that play original music using the plastic peripherals from the recent onslaught of music based games. You can read more about them here.

To get our games done for holiday 2008, our big deadlines happen in the spring and summer previous. So, as you might imagine, there’s a lot going on at Powerhead Games, what with the multiple awesome projects in the pipe, forthcoming client visits, and of course, all the Formal Friday-ing you could ever want.  Between hitting our deadlines, and the New York City heat, it can get pretty hectic at times.  Luckily there’s folks like David Gallaher, writer of the hit web comic High Moon and all around great guy, to remind of two very important things:

1.  Ice cream makes everything better.
2.  Dry ice is one of the neatest things ever.

A Fed Ex guy showed up to the office this morning with a box full of joy in the form of six pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream addressed to “Team Awesome c/o Powerhead Games”.  Flavors include Steven Colbert’s Americone Dream, Sweet Cream & Cookies,  Vermonty Python, Cake Batter, and perennial favorites Strawberry and Vanilla.  As great as the frozen treats are, though, half the fun was disposing of all the dry ice they came packed in.  As seen in the pictures below, my poor memory of sixth grade science class and what happens to a box of dry ice when exposed to a sink full of hot water resulted in turning our humble office bathrooms and hallway into a lost Flock of Sea Gulls video.  Or maybe a Rob Liefeld comic.  Behold the hilarity, and click to embigginate:

(Editor’s note: We probably should have saved some of the dry ice for the next Rock Band night!)

Thanks again for thinking of us, David.  A Powerhead T-shirt is on its way to you, and drinks are on me for the next several years at least.

Our office is located a couple of blocks from Madison Square Park — former home of Madison Square Garden, and current home to the Shake Shack. Once a year the park dons a big bib and gets its BBQ on. That is to say, this weekend is: the Big Apple BBQ Block Party!! Their website is down at the moment. Hopefully, it will be up by the time you’re reading this. In the meantime, here’s a quick summary:

“The Big Apple Barbecue Block Party, Danny Meyer’s annual, free mega-event in Madison Square Park, just announced the participants for June 7 and 8, and we are pleased to see familiar, delicious names. Ed Mitchell of North Carolina will do his legendary whole-hog BBQ, and Chris Lilly of Big Bob Gibson’s in Decatur, Alabama, will be on hand with his pulled pork. Jimmy Hagood of Black Jack BBQ in Charleston, South Carolina, is a notable newcomer, bringing his state’s distinctive mustard-based sauces to a city more familiar with the North Carolina tradition. The New York contingent consists of Blue Smoke, Hill Country, Dinosaur, and the rarely mentioned but worthwhile Rack and Soul.” (Quoted from NYMAG.)

A couple of us will be working this weekend. And more of us will be playing Fourth Edition. But, all of us will be enjoying BBQ.

(Apologies to our non-meat eating cohorts.)

Twice a year, the pedestrian commuters of NYC get a little treat: Manhattanhenge!

For Manhattan, a place where evening matters more than morning, that special day comes on Thursday, May 29h this year, one of only two occasions when the Sun sets in exact alignment with the Manhattan grid, fully illuminating every single cross-street for the last fifteen minutes of daylight.

Read the rest of the quoted article at Newyorkology. Also, there’s a neat Flickr pool with more Manhattanhenge images.

The middle of May was something of a berserk time for us here at Powerhead Games. In the space of one week, we had multiple milestones due for multiple different projects, a client visit, and the sort of computer issues that usually only come from having your offices built on an Indian burial ground. It was like the perfect storm, only without George Clooney dying at the end. We think.

So what better week, then, to have the first ever PHG Mixed CD Swap? Armed with a handful of rules to keep things interesting and the names of three other people to make physical copies of their mix with, a bunch of us set about the time-honored tradition of carefully arranging songs and assembling cover art. The results were far better than anybody could have expected, producing a surprisingly eclectic range of songs and styles while proving once and for all that, to truly know the people you work with, you must first walk a mile in their headphones. For some it was their first mix ever (and how any of them have significant others is a mystery for the ages), while for others it was a chance to dust off old skills while trolling through albums and hard drives long forgotten in search of the perfect obscure Beach Boys cover. While some people had themes for their mixes and others just went with a bunch of songs they liked, one thing is abundantly clear now that it’s all said and done: we’re all secretly in love with each other and can only express our feelings through the poetry of Journey and Avril Lavigne.

Everybody seems to have really enjoyed it, and we’re definitely doing it again next month. In the meantime, if you were to take the fruits of our labors and pile them up on the floor in Jason’s office, it might look remarkably like this:

UPDATE: For the curious, some of us have started putting up tracklists in the comments section. Check ‘em out, won’t you?