Enough with the weekend festivals, parades, marathons and such and such. Alright, I'm not against raising money for charity, but someone has to formulate a better game plan. Traffic this morning (6/29) was a complete cluster f*ck in the areas of Summer, Washington and God knows where else due to some kind of 10K or fun run or whatever. There were more cops and traffic cones downtown than Lindsey Lohan has Page Six mentions.
With our stagnant economy and outrageous gas prices, shouldn't we be making area restaurants and businesses readily available to the consumer? Or is the answer, 'block off every available road and create unnecessary traffic jams?' If you're going to have these events, there has to be a more logical way to accommodate traffic. You can't just block off streets North, South, East and West, forcing people to drive all over creation to get to a simple destination.
And BTW, who are these kooks that are running around in 90 degree weather? What are you, insane??? "Hello, I have dehydration on line one, shall I tell them you're in a meeting with heat stroke?"
Well, we all know the only reason I care about Stamford traffic on a Sunday morning is that I'm trying to make my way to Scalzi Park from Norwalk. So let's take a look at some pictures from this morning's session. Due to this whole traffic conundrum, I abandoned my car at the corner of Bridge and Summer and skated to the park. Which kind of sucked, but it's no big whoop. As you can see, the theme for today was "shirtless". It was REALLY hot out.
First up: Adam is really taking those frontside ollies out of the park.
Here I am having some fun in the shallow end of things.
Oh no he didn't! Ben "The French Assassin" Plomion, absolutely killing it with a clean kickflip over the barrel.
Skate photos by PDA.
On a different note, check out these Jeff Grosso Vans that are coming out real soon. (I'm told in a couple of weeks by Old School Skaters Online.) I'll believe it when I see it.
Time for another barbeque at Scalzi Skatepark, this one taking place on Saturday, June 21st, which is (believe it or not) National Go Skate Day. While I'm sure groms descended en masse on the streets of Manhattan, we kept it local.
I forgot my camera, so there's not a lot of documentation of the actual barbeque. But PDA got the shot below: Myself queued up in line for Billy Bonebrake's famous hamburgers hot off the grille.
I kept the local groms hopped up on sugar with a seemingly endless supply of Cherry Pepsi. Parents, you're welcome.
Shades of the great Chris Miller. Gene busting out a tuck-knee frontside in the deep end.
Billy Bonebrake, the man can carve it up and make a mean potato salad.
PDA, full coping contact in the deep end. By his account, he got pretty worked by the end of the day. Sometimes those knee & elbow pads slip off, rendering them 100% useless.
Jim Murphy stopped up from Queens. (Wounded Knee Skateboards) He pretty much killed it with Madonnas, big frontside airs and tweaked inverts. Did anybody get that guy a hot dog?
I think I was at the park from about 10:30 till 4. A full day of skating, and I even went back for some more the next morning.
Good barbeque. See you at the next one.
OK, back to business. No more posts about sub-par beer dispensing devices. In today's installment we will look at the hotness that is After Effect's Keylight 1.2.
Now of course, I don't want to give too much away of the new Boardlord's video, "Chinese Takeout", but here's a taste with a few production stills. Believe me, the best is under lock and key until the video is done.
Exhibit A kinda has a "Blade Runner" feel, doesn't it? But I assure you, it's the skyline of Shanghai, not Los Angeles circa 2019. Maybe I need to add more random explosions and spinner cars in the background.
Exhibit B shows you how nicely Keylight works.
Look how wrinkly my green screen was. (Not to mention the Pug) I gotta steam that thing or something. But with just a few tweaks in After Effects, I managed to produce a nice key. And I'm sure someone more competent could rock this way better.
Hi, I'm a Mac.
I'm a PC.
I'm a dog in a Chinese takeout container.
Yup, you gotta love the white infinity screen.
So the biggest stumbling block I've run into lately is the transition to High Def. (If you consider HDV High Def) I mean, it looks great, but it brings post production to a crashing halt. Trying to render sixty seconds worth of motion graphics on my old G5. (I've got one of the last PowerPCs before they made the Intel transition) Forget it, I had to tweak the settings big time, and even then, it takes a looongggg time. It's worth it though. I want to get as far away from SD as allowable. Well, like I said, thank God the song is only sixty seconds long. That's it: From here on out, no music videos longer than a minute.
Alright, break is over. Time to keep working on this project. When the video is done you'll hear about it (and see it!) here first.
I had an overwhelming feeling of nausea Saturday night. At first I attributed the urge to vomit to the Lindsey Lohan movie I had just watched. But sadly, it wasn't that simple. Yup, I had fallen victim to some kind of barf bug that's going around.
But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. Before any of this unpleasantness occurred, I bought the Beertender. And in the words of Jerry Seinfeld, "I think I made a big mistake." Not that there's anything terribly wrong with Heineken, but I realized after setting this mini bar up and having a few pints, I was locked into drinking Heineken for the unforeseeable future. And that scared the hell out of me!
Other problem areas:
1. The beer came out too foamy
2. It gave off an odor reminesent of the Nite Cap's floor
3. It's noisy (runs on a fan)
4. It takes up a lot of counter space
Fortunately, the place I bought it from was good enough to take it back, so I won't even bring them into this story. So thank you for the "no questions asked" return! BTW, when I "untapped" the keg, it shot beer all over our kitchen floor....so that was fun.
Two days later and I'm still not 100% up to par. The thought of drinking beer is making me want to puke right now. Moral of the story? Buyer's remorse. (Is that a moral? I don't know, I'm still sick, gimme a break)
Boy, is it hot out. Let's jump the gun and say that summer is officially here. And as noted by this bit of rebellious grafitti, the price of gas isn't coming down anytime soon. On that note, in the words of Boston greats Gang Green, "Let's Drink Some Beer!" But I'm all about keeping things as cheap as possible when imbibing. Or am I?
Last night I saw a commercial for the Heineken Beertender. (Manufactured by coffee giants Krups, who may or may not have had involvement in some WWII conspiranoia, according to some sources) Anyways as mentioned, I am one of the biggest cheapskates around. But when I saw the spot for the Beertender, I said to myself, "I gotta get this!" The long and short of the spot was "turn your house into a bar". I have seen the results firsthand, and I must say, it's a fantastic idea. Well, I couldn't find said commercial on YouTube, but this gives a pretty good visual of how the system works.
So, these bad boys go for about $300. Ten bucks cheaper if you get the version that doesn't let you adjust the temperature. But if I can't have my beer at a chilly 36 degrees, than the terrorists have won. You also have use a disposable line every time you tap one of those kegs. And what does a Heineken mini keg cost these days, 20 bucks? I'm hoping these things take off here in the U.S. and other companies like Amstel get on board. And could Guinness successfully manufacture a mini-keg? I mean, we did put a man on the moon, right?
So what do you think, is the Beertender worth it? Or a complete ripoff? I say to hell with the recession....it's Miller time! (Or as the case may be, Heineken time)
