New Years Eve Special

For new years eve ('07-'08), my co-worker/buddy Katie Hawbaker (now ex-co-worker... *sniff*) and myself organized a little get-together at our office on 46th and 7th, overlooking Times Square and all the chaos of new years on the streets below. As I've been into taking advantage of the phenomenal view during workdays by shooting time-lapse footage from the windows above, I set up two cameras to time-lapse capture as much footage as I could of the scene below. It took me a little while to get around to editing it (as these things tend to do), but I've had a bit of my own personal chaos to sort through these last two months... www.us.vividas.com/NYE08/

You can also view this on youtube (below), but I definitely recommend using the Vividas version of the clip since a) it's full-screen and b) the quality is superior to that crappy flash player they use on youtube. The music is "Exactly Where I'm At" by Ween off their album White Pepper.



Also notable of this evening were the pictures taken by my friend Anthony "Zonalpony" Lopez with his Nikon D80 SLR. The resolution on his camera is so vastly superior to that of what our DV video cameras could capture, not to mention the color saturation and temperature. These shots are well worth a look.


Created with flickrSLiDR.

It's not every night that you have a VIP seat to watch performers Carrie Underwood, Kid Rock and Jordin Sparks do their thing while observing one of the largest organized cattle calls of humanity ever assembled (estimated over one million people freezing their asses off on the streets below). It was quite a party!

goodbye broken heart

As most of you probably are aware of by now, Jen Rock and I have separated. He was 75 years old.

It was a long and rewarding relationship in many ways, and so the decision to part was certainly one neither of us took lightly. Fortunately, our separation was very amicable; i think both of us wanted to keep things as peaceful as possible between us while we were still living together and I'm happy to say that went smoothly. Nevertheless, it is unlikely we will be able to resume a friendship for some time.

It's always disappointing or a bit of a letdown when you get to the place where you have to admit that the relationship was a failure and need move on for both parties' betterment, but i think we did so gracefully and as drama-free as possible. We've been down this road a few times before so we've had more than enough practice. Only this time feels a bit more final and definite. You can't push a relationship harder than sharing an apartment or home with them - there's nowhere to hide anymore so you either shit or get off the pot. For us, the pot needed to be replaced, and so here we are.



There's a lot of history between jen and myself. We've been involved, on and off, in and out of relationships with each other over the last 5 years. There have been great highs and lows, emotional desperation and assurance and plenty of great sex. And to the naysayers who were always skeptical, dubious or judgmental of our involvement with one another (and there were a few), fuck you. It was never any of your business to begin with and last i checked, we are all human.

I've been swimming in apartment make-over (more on that craziness a little later) and so I haven't had a chance to really let the loss completely sink in. Keeping busy is a good way to postpone it, but I dread the day when the pied piper of heartbreak comes along to collect his kids. Hopefully, i'll be out of town when that happens.

So long, Roy...

Roy Scheider was always an actor I admired and looked up to as a young cinephile. Yes, he's most well known for his role as "Chief Brody" in the two first two Jaws films, though, notice how the obits only talk about the original and never the sequel, which i thought was a pretty good ride in and of itself. There were times when I felt Roy Scheider might have been trying to overextend himself as an actor such as his roles in Naked Lunch (his first appearance as the seemingly benign Dr. Benway is priceless) and Romeo is Bleeding (the latter a shit film in spite of Scheider's efforts). But it was really the '70s where he had hit his stride with roles in French Connection, Klute (as a pimp!), the two Jaws films, The Seven-Ups and All That Jazz. Of course, who could forget his work with William Friedken in the ill-fated movie Sorcerer (of which I was always a fan). I was 10 years old when Blue Thunder (1984) came out, and I thought that was just about the coolest movie I'd ever seen (it actually does hold up pretty well, plus it's got a good villainous turn from Malcom McDowell). Roy Scheider's work in Blue Thunder, by all means a routine renegade-cop action film, showcased how he could really bring his trademarked intensity to an otherwise conventional role and elevate the project as a whole. He was awesome.

Roy Scheider always possessed a very unique and unmistakable quality that was both disarming and completely likable. Even when playing less than savory roles - his presence always made me fond for him as a person. I felt like he was, in many ways, my "cinematic dad." He was the father figure in the first two Jaws films and there was just something indelibly old-school in his charm that, I suppose, reminded me of my own father.

I harbored aspirations to meet Roy Scheider and tell him how much he meant to me as a performer, actor, and all around cool person. I wanted him to sign a copy of his headshot I had picked up a few years ago on ebay and flaunt my collection of Jaws 2 baseball cards (trust me, i have plenty to flaunt). I'd probably make him laugh, maybe even quote him from some of his films, and then tell him something he'd never see coming... "I'm going to write the new Jaws film and we want to bring Chief Brody back and pretend that Jaws 3 & 4 never happened. It'll be called Jaws 5000 and will feature gigantic flying sharks that attack people in water, air and land." My enthusiasm would win him over and I'd be on my way to a successful hackneyed career in B-movie Hollywood. That dream died last night.

Roy - i'm gonna miss you! Thanks for being.