Boston Teams

Boston teams are doing pretty well. The Sox are in second place and the much hated Yankees are in fourth, behind the Blue Jays. Although, why are the Orioles in First place?

The Celtics are one game away from being Atlantic Division Champions. They play the Pacers on Saturday. Go Celts!

I'm bummed that the Bruins didn't play at all, this winter.

No hockey season aside, finally, Boston teams are doing great. The Patriots won their third Superbowl in four years. The Red Sox finally win the World Series and are in second place, the Celtics are riding pretty high. My dream, dare I say it? Should I? All of the Boston teams win their respective championship games.

Soup Nazi on the move

So, Lovi, Moto and I checked out a couple of galleries on Thursday. We saw some early work and the famous Vietnam photos by Larry Burrows at Laurence Miller Gallery and a "family" group show that included some family photos shot by Diane Arbus, Robert Frank and Gary Winogrand at Greenberg Gallery.

While looking around and deciding where to go for lunch we were talking about the "Soup Nazi". Chris mentioned that he was going to open a chain. We didn't go there, we got Thai, but this article talks about his expansion to a nationwide chain. This could be some good New York brusque for wayward Americans. Alas, there will be no shouting, so there won't be any restau-rants.

Thanks Tricia

Thanks to Tricia for helping me get photos onto my blog and referring me to Photobucket. Thanks to Photobucket for free picture hosting.

Little puffball cloud

Shot this Tuesday, after spending the day assisting Mr. Lovi. We did a lot of walking around shooting a proposed building site. Even though we went from 11am to about 4:30pm, I was so happy to crawl into bed early.

View From atop Silvercup Studios 4/05

This is as close as I'm going to get to being on set at the Sopranos. Maybe later this year...

Union Square, Sunday afternoon

Chivonne Rocks

So, I finally meet up with Creighton to give him his sweater, which I have had since he left it on the set of Life Happens, back in December. More about that later.

We were at Madison Square Park but the hotdog place there was closed, missed it by about fifteen minutes. We were a little hungry, but mainly needed to use the restroom. Wouldn't you know it, there's a Wendy's across the street. A hot cuppa chili would be nice on this chilly spring afternoon.

So I use the facilities and get in line. I ask for a large chili, hold the fingers.

" 'scuse me? Oh"! and then she starts laughing. She got a good chuckle. I noticed her nametag, " Chivonne". I said: "Thank You, you made my day by laughing at my stupid joke". It was great. The chili was average, but mainly it was hot and the weather was cold.

Wendy's

So, last night I ate at Wendy's. The prospect of a decent sized meat patty and chili beckoned. I like their chili, it's nothing special, but in the bland realm of fast food, it's a nice change of pace. The Big Bacon Combo and a side of chili seemed to be the right thing to do. I like to dip my fries in the chili and spoon some beefy chili goodness onto a few fries, before shoving the whole mess into my mouth.

After the story about the woman finding a finger in her chili, Wendy's is synonamous in my mind with severed fingers and chili. This really is not a problem for me. Being contrary, I could think of nothing better than to satisfy my hunger for a burger and chili at the Wendy's on Northern Boulevard, near Douglaston. It's almost a challenge, a dare. The odds are in favor of a finger free meal. Plus, it's always so damn hot you end up stirring and blowing on the chili endlessly to cool it, how could you not find the finger in that six ounce cup?

While in line, I was sizing up the crowd behind the counter, contemplating whether or not to ask "and a side order of chili, hold the finger" (laughter). How should I put it, so that I can get the maximum comedic impact? What is the correct wording to get:: severed finger+chili=laugh, into a compact zinger of a sentence?

Once I got up on line, the woman who was to be my server was spacing out at the register. She was a Hispanic woman, speaking spanish to the mostly Hispanic food prep crew. I suddenly realized that my joke would issue forth and then promptly die, only to complicate matters and be completely lost on her. Severed finger+chili="?Que?".

If my Spanish were better, I might have carried it off, but it's not until now, over twenty four hours later, that “dedo” the Spanish word for finger creeps back into my mind. But I never knew the Spanish for "severed".

Finger Chili story

Drake

No, It's not Secret Agent Man, or The Prisoner, it's a German HD camera,
The Drake.
720progressive, 24/25 FPS, pretty cool. Scroll down their page and check out the avi's they look pretty good, though the contrast has the whites clipping, wondering if their processors can handle a longer dynamic range.

"A 10bit lookup table and a 8bit data stream are recorded in real time. An export program converts the RAW data to 8bit or 10bit single frame sequences or video files (uncompressed or packed with "lossless avi codec"). The typical data rate of the uncompressed export video streams with 8bit color depth and 24 frames: 66 megabyte/sec. and 528 megabit/sec. respectively."

Pretty exciting that these guys, who I think are a very small company, can offer an HD camera for 15,000 Euros"!

DVInfo link

While at DVInfo, do a search for "Drake" and check out more about it and the filmmakers who are building it.

Oops!

I'm listening to NPR and between stories, there is some dead air, then a half whispered "...the fuck!" a click and then the The newscaster's voice.

Oops! I guess they'll be hearing from the FCC real soon.

I find this to be hilarious. I recommned PTT- Push To Talk, guys.