The Cuab Side of the Moon

Here are the two supplement vids I made for that water bottle project in After Effects.

First project in After Effects…

Ray Allen, Tony Allen, Rajon Rondo, Jo Jo White, Lucky, a couple of Celtics Dancers, and the 2008 Larry O’Brien (NBA Championship) Trophy were at the Capitol today showing themselves off. Thanks to Luke, who was the ultimate hookup, I got to the front of the line, and got my picture taken with the whole lot of them. Davitt showed up later, and I waited in line with him, and got another picture taken, this time sans Rondo, Tony, and Jo Jo. Then as Ray Allen was leaving, the Chief of Police got me Ray’s autograph on my Champions T-shirt, again a Luke hook up. Here’s the story in pictures:

Ray Ray’s Car

I got two new babies up on the side of the highway. 

Thomaston Oil and Select Oil have become my babies at work, I even created the Select Oil logo. You can see these guys on 84 W (between exits 25 and 24) (Select Oil), and Thomaston on Rt 8 South, going towards Waterbury. Pretty cool seeing your work that big and that public.

I’m getting pretty geeked up for Halloween this year. I’m totally onboard with the group Dethklok idea. My Nathan Explosion costume is almost complete already. I bought some killer biker boots online from a biker boot wholesaler for over 50% off, I got my wig, and I even bought green contact lenses. I have yet to get the faded black shirt, the black nail polish (the one part of the costume I’m not too cool with, but whatevs), and the face makeup, if in fact we’re going as concert Dethklok, which I think only makes sense because it’s Halloween. I know Dan plans on being Toki, and Boivin wants in as Murderface, with Amy as costume designer. Amy is in the planning stages of her Dr. Rockso costume, which, if all goes according to plan, is going to be nutso good. We still need a Skwizgard and Pickles, I’m hoping Jeff wants to hop aboard, for either really, Skwizgard would be best for height reasons, but whatevs. Any takers on Pickles? Everybody knows the best costumes at any party are the group costumes. Is anyone even having a party this year? heh. The most exciting thing about doing this whole thing is the possibility of making a music video and sending it into Adult Swim. That’s what I’m most amped up about. Plus the photo opp possibilities. I gotta learn how to green screen, the video would be infinitely better if I could add any background I wanted. If I’m really ambitious I might even try to make the Dethklok cell phone, but thats a big might. Seriously if anyone wants to jump on board, do it! We need to be complete!

Brutal.

Three days removed now from what I consider the best vacation ever, it all just seems like a big tease. Imagine living in a mansion on the beach, where everyday the weather is 85° and sunny, 15 of your closest friends are your roommates, you have an in-ground pool, hot-tub, back(bocce)yard, observation deck, about a mile of wrap around deck, a pool table, and no need to work. Now imagine all of that being yanked away and getting thrown back into reality. I know that all vacations must come to an end, but this one was really hard to have to say goodbye to. Eight months of planning and anticipation gone in 6 super quick days. I miss it all so much. Saturday morning was pretty depressing, I didn’t want to leave. It was almost on the same par as a bad break up. No matter how bad I didn’t want it to be over, the truth was that it was. 

It was the perfect mix of company, barring a couple of M.I.A.’s. It awesome to see Vinnie and Jay back from the dead too. The whole week seems like a blur to me, I’m finding it hard to segment the week into days. It really turned out to be everything I hoped it would be. I mean how could it not, though? Other than a few unfortunate situations, the week was amazing. I really want this to become a new tradition, and I hope with the same group. Not even necessarily go to OBX every year (although I would have no issue with that what-so-ever), but a week long vacation somewhere with everybody in a big house during the summer. I think we’re all at the ages now where something like that is pretty feasible. I just keep replaying the week in my head, and I just want MORE! 

I think my favorite part of the vacation is the fact that I can’t name my one favorite part of the vacation. It was all so great. Jet skiing, getting the kite up to 2500 feet, the nightly observation deck sessions, the beach, mad seafood, dueling guitars, random girls roast, drinking till the wee hours, card games, bocce, the pool, the hot-tub, parts of us seeing horses and driving on the beach, driving slowly, basketball tournament, Vinnie falling the first day, Jeff screaming into the shrubs on the first day, ryan jumping into the pool on the first day, the 50 foot wizard staff, Jay Berk 16th Level Wizard, party pyramid, jet ski accidents, night swimming in the atlantic, pool volleyball, pool basketball, Davitt’s good morning to Ryan’s family, free* floats, sleeping a lot, roof sitting, a lot of grocery shopping, the Olympics, WHAT ELSE? 

Best vacation ever.

Was it just not meant to be? Does waiting in line for 14 hours outside not count for anything anymore? Today I saw “fandome” die in a catastrophic wreck. 

It’s the NBA Finals and MY team is in it. MY team has home court, and MY team happens to playing in the biggest Finals in 21 years. How could I not be there? After all I had season tickets during the worst of times, was given the opportunity of a lifetime to shoot a shot on the parquet, the ultimate cap would have been tickets to game one of the Finals. 

So I get up to Boston around 2am, and there are only (exactly) 25 people ahead of me. I thought I just struck gold, that the tickets were as good as mine. They officially went on sale at 2pm, and at maybe 2:15 AM we were notified of HOW this whole day was gonna transpire. Their plan was to hold a raffle, and the winning ticket would be the first person in line, no matter what time they got there. The god awful part of this whole thing was that the person in front of the winner was then the dead last person. For some innconceivable reason they handed out over 1400 raffle tickets when only 700 tickets total for both games were available. What did that mean? That meant that if the raffle number selected wasn’t 1-26, because I was the 26th person in a line of over 2000, or 1100-1400, that I wasn’t going to get a chance to purchase tickets, even though I got there first. The overwhelming odds were to fall right in the dead man zone, and it fell HARD. Number 250 about. They let in 350 people and told the rest of us to take a hike. This was around 4pm, some 14 hours since I made my spot at number twenty six. So disappointing, and wrong. Whatever happened to die hard fans getting rewarded for their devotion and support. Waiting all night for tickets is an homage to team allegiance, going through hours upon hours of uncomfortable boredom only to be rewarded with the toughest ticket in town. But apparently that’s an unfair advantage, and people showing up at the LAST MINUTE have the same chance to get a ticket as I do. Totally backwards, I’m really pissed. 

This probably would never have happened at the real Garden.

I have two theories. I hope both aren’t true, although one of the two has to be. 

Theory A: The NBA rig series for higher ratings. David Stern wants Lakers v. Celtics in the Finals. David Stern also wants LeBron James to play as long into May as possible. Prescription = go seven games! There’s a lot of story lines building up here. The Celtics are 6-0 at home and 0-5 on the road. Possibly the making of the first team ever to win a championship without winning a road game. That would mean four 7 game series for the Celtics. How sweet that taste’s in the commish’s mouth.

Theory B: Doc Rivers is a bad coach. At home coaching doesn’t matter. The team feeds off the fans, emotion takes over, they stop thinking, and they straight up ball. They play killer D. They have fire in their eyes. They win just being who they are, and they’re blowing teams out. When they’re on the road, they have no fire. Garnett turns into a little girl. He’s 7 feet tall. He should get the ball 80% of the time. 90% of his shots have been from 15 feet or beyond. He pusses out and runs away from the block. He never calls for he ball, so they end up shooting a wayward three at the buzzer. It’s a joke. Paul Pierce used to know how to score too. He used to know how to take over a game. Granted he’s playing his balls off guarding LeBron, and he’s doing a really good job, proving he can play some mean D. But he needs to stop deciding to turn on the jets with 3 minutes to go in the game, when they’re down by 7, when they could have been up by 5 if he had turned it on 9 minutes earlier. They have no sense of urgency on the road, and the ONE person that needs to take control of the situation, and inject intensity into the dying heart of KEVIN GARNETT is Doc Rivers. The Celtics were settling for awful, AWFUL shots very late in the clock, like 10 to 12 possessions in a row, and KG caught it zero times in the post, and shot twice from about 17 feet out. The last 6 to 7 minutes of EVERY close game should be played 5 feet from the basket. GET FOULED. It’s a sin for Doc not to call that option. Run the offense through KaGe down in the block when the game is in the balance. Let me coach this team. Christ.

The good news is, there is at least one more home game, and perhaps a second if it goes to seven. Nothing is over, I truly believe momentum stays at your home court. Sure the Cavs won two in a row, but they won in a friendly environment. If this years playoffs has proven anything it’s that home court means everything. So here we go again, best of three. 

So Amy and I were at Pet Smart for no good reason, and we decided it was time to cash the checks our mouths have been writing for years. We got a fish. A betta fish because they don’t need much care and maintenance and they’re really inexpensive, plus they only require about a 1/2 gallon of water to swim in. We picked out a blue and red male, and hooked him up with a sicky-sick aquarium. So without further ado, I present to you, Some-Buggy Franklin, better known as Buggy…