Last week at my first departmental meeting at the new job, I was exposed to my first round of "Question of the Day." Apparently the boss man likes to make up a random question and make everyone answer it, just to keep things interesting.

It was interesting. The question was the default "what is something about you that no would else would ever guess?" The best response goes to the intense little German flash developer, the organic vegan. His response was, "I like for people to get their asses kicked and I like to watch shit blow up. I'm going to a building implosion on Sunday."

Needless to say, I had to go. I furiously scribbled down the details rounded up a group of people retarded enough to get up before dawn on Sunday. Vicente and I got up at 5:20, bought some donuts and met Josh and Kaitlyn. First we tried to go to parking garage 1, and were denied because you had to have advanced tickets and parking passes. Parking garage 2 also denied us entry. The only parking lot that didn't have security manning the entrances was the parking lot of the building they were about to blow up!?!?!

We ended up parking by the Mexican Tacos and Seafood Cantina which was across the street. Randomly and luckily, there was a big school bus parked there. We weaseled around trying to decide if we should squat, asked around, and no one claimed ownership so we hauled all the snacks and video equipment up there. It was an awesome view. I set my camera to take super-fast successive still shots. Vicente set himself with the handheld video camera. Josh set up his big fancy camera on the tripod and:

• put on his heavy metal wig
• took off his sweatshirt, revealing a bleach-stained Danzig t-shirt
• put on his wraparound sunglasses and buck teeth
• popped open a can of Steven Seagal's new energy drink "Asian Experience"

...and we waited. Forever. We were told it would implode at 7AM, then the rumors in the crowd flew that it was really 8AM. At about 7:20, we were all at our stations, ready. How do they alert you that they're about to blow the dynamite? Sirens? Honking horns? Do they yell "FORE!!!"?

No. The answer is they do nothing. At 8AM on the dot, you could hear the explosions. My camera fell asleep so I almost completely fucked up, but I woke it up in time to get several shots of it falling. My camera probably takes 2 or 3 shots a second, and I seriously only got 8-10 shots of it falling. If you're good at math, you'll realize that that building fell in about 5 seconds. It was insane.

Josh had been standing in front of the camera in his costume, with the building over his right shoulder, ready to go. I've heard of the "One-Take Osmonds" who could always nail their performance the first time, but Josh HAD to nail his performance because they won't go back and re-blow up the building, obviously! Oh shit, he so nailed it, please check out the footage on Google video.

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