Eli Kirk

Slash Bash started with Jessica, a petite 17-year-old, who was, truth be told, a little ditzy. This fact made us a bit surprised when we found out that she owned a sword—and not just any sword, but a straight-blade, black ninja sword with a sheath that could be strapped to your back. In an office full of geeky guys, this was totally awesome.

And she kept this weapon in her car. Not knowing why anyone would keep a ninja sword in their car, but excited nonetheless, we asked her if we could see it. So, she brought it in and let us all heft it. After holding it and doing obligatory ninja poses, we thought to ourselves, "We should cut something with this!"

It was around Halloween time. So the next day our creative director, Seth, brought in a couple of pumpkins. Not wanting to damage our work environment, we took the pumpkins to the back parking lot. Now, Seth is a total camera geek. He does semi-professional work with cameras, but we think that's just an excuse to buy more cool camera gear. We watched as Seth used the slow-motion setting on his video camera to capture the moment when one of us would slice through the pumpkin.

We first tried supporting the pumpkins on a pole. But hitting a stationary target didn't satisfy our inner ninjas. We decided to gently toss the pumpkin at the sword wielder. Now Chris, one of our developers, had lived in Japan for a couple of years and knew a little bit about the Japanese sword-fighting sport of Kendo. He took the beginning stance, one foot slightly in front of the other, sword held in front of him, ready to attack. The pumpkin was tossed to come down directly where he could make a clean cut. We've all seen the Japanese cartoons where a chopped object cleanly clears the sword bearer. We discovered, however, that reality isn't that cinematic. The sharp blade simply cut clean through the pumpkin and rather than having one projectile coming straight at his head, Chris had two.

Of course, Seth caught all of this in glorious slow motion—Chris's perfect stance, his cut, and the cowardly cringe on his face as he tried to dodge the pumpkin with only moderate success.

We all had so much fun, we decided to make it into a client and community appreciation event, so others could have the same creative fun that we did. Our boss is a bit of a kid at heart. So every year Slash Bash gets a little bigger, a little crazier and a little better than the year before.