philly

Wrong Time

Sooo, there were two times on the MoveOn page for the vigil tonight. I arrived at the time that was in bold. Lo and behold, the time in non-bold was the right time from what I could gather. There was nobody in sight at 6.30. Heh.

Osama Clock: 1500

Today is

Day 1500

Since W said he wanted Osama bin Laden "Dead or Alive"

Busy Week

This week has been and will continue to be a quite busy week for me. Sunday was pumpkin carving and catching the tail end of the Giants game. Monday was the Alan Lee talk at Friends Select. Tuesday was the 76ers game with Pat. Wednesday is the candlielight vigil at Dilworth Plaza at City Hall. Thursday night is the Project HOME event. Friday night we head up to CT for Lady's grandparents' 61st Anniversary party. And Saturday is the party itself with Lady's fam. Sunday will be the drive back and planning on how I'm gonna get my ass to work the next day if SEPTA's workers strike.

76ers v Knicks

Oh man was it ugly. But it's nice to get out of the house on such a dreary night and hang out with my season ticket holding buddy Pat! I did, however, miss Joe Trippi at DL last night as I've read on the blogs, ah well. I would've loved to thank him in person for the Live8 "press" pass.

We got there a little bit late after I had the bright idea of catching the northbound train from Lombard-South to Walnut-Locust to catch the express train down to Pattison. A) it's just a few stops, why did I think this was the better solution? B) we hopped on the wrong train directly across the tracks taking us to City Hall instead of going upstairs and back downstairs to the right southbound tracks. Ugh. I'm still not 100% comfortable with the trains here. If I'd have been taking them for a bit longer than I have, it would've been mere instinct to go up the stairs, but I saw the train across the tracks and we went for it. Damn me!

I got a few good shots of the action from our seats. It's a nice perch Pat and Jodi have. First row in the second tier, unobstructed view of just about everything. The seats are also well within the range of HipHop's air-powered t-shirt shooter [no, we didn't catch one]. Here's the flickr set of thirteen shots from the game.

Iverson was not in attendance, dunno where he was. Webber was so rusty it was disgusting. Igoudala is just a showstopper. I missed one of his dunks, the biggest one of the night. That guy is like a fucking pogo stick, just explodes to the rim. Korver was about 2 for 20. Didn't hit a shot until about six to go in the fourth quarter. I'm not even going to get started in trying to describe the gameplay of my woeful Bricks. I barely knew the names of any set of five on the floor at any given time. Besides Marbury, Hardaway and Crawford, I really didn't know anyone. Q wasn't there for the Knicks and Mo Taylor was ejected about six minutes into the game. The Bricks are just so woefully undersized. It's gonna be ugly. Somehow, they beat the Sixers by nine.

It's only pre-season, but good God was it ugly.

2000th Soldier Vigil

Tomorrow night MoveOn is helping to organize vigils across the US in honor of the announement of the 2000th armed forces serviceperson killed in Iraq since the start of this quagmire of a war. Find an event closest to you here. I'll be at the west side of City Hall at Dilworth Plaza at around 6.30p. There will be a candle light vigil, procession to Senators offices and reading of names of the fallen. I believe the Senate offices are on Broad St or Chestnut St somewhere.

It's gonna be chilly cold out there. But I know lots of people will be there standing with Celeste Zappala, the organizer of this event. Celeste's story in PW from September.

Also involved in organizing this particular event: Brandywine Peace Community, Gold Star Families for Peace, Veterans for Peace/Vietnam Vets Against War, Military Families Speak Out, Iraq Vets Against the War, House of Grace, Catholic Peace Fellowship, Shalom Center, American Friends Service Committee.

Fall in PA

Holy shit! Look at the size of that leaf! Oooor, is that a mini person? A micro person, perhaps. Smurf-sized if you will.

I got an email today about the tourism board's newest gimmick, Fall is Bigger Here. A funny way for PA residents to laud the changing of the colors to the Fall season. Send in your own gigantic leaf photos or send an e-card to somone telling them to come on by and take in the sights [and spend some dough!] of PA.

I've been here in PA for about seventeen months now and haven't seen all that much changing of the colors. I don't get out of the city much so that's to blame. I hear that the rest of PA has some wonderful colors this time of year. I guess I could head on up to Fairmount Park to take in some color if I so chose.

I haven't really been all that into the whole Fall Foliage thang. I'm from the burbs just north of New York City so the scenic Saw Mill Parkway was a short car ride away where you could take in the deciduous trees change color as you drove north through Connecticut. But not for me.

But taking a few photos of some non-green leaves and making a funny PS'd image out of them to in some way help out with PA tourism? I can get down with that. I'm gonna see what I can find in the next few days [when it's not so disgustingly dreary and rainy outside] to play with and submit. Maybe you could be sending an e-card with my mug and an absurdly large leaf to a friend. Now isn't that what everyone in the world wants?

There are currently three images up there of people and their GIANT leaves they've found around PA. Maybe I can do something with the holly tree in front of my apartment building - they're a sign of Fall to me. But I think they're looking more for brown leaves. With the Nor'easter and Wilma joining up around here now, there may not be many leaves left around soon. Maybe I'll have to cheat and use a leaf I find in CT this weekend as Lady and I head up for the weekend.

Photo illustration: Lifted from Fall is Bigger

Cold Rain

Not much I hate more than a nasty cold rain. Especially when it involves me using my feet to get to/fro the various train stations on my commute to/fro work.

Bricks v 76ers

I just got a call from Pat saying that there was another 76ers pre-season game tomorrow night against.... da bricks aka the Knicks. I'm bringing my new super zoom. Let's see how the post-Houston Knicks play.

Alan Lee at Friends Select

I was so excited to slosh out into the cold, dreary, wet, windy, disgusting night to go see Alan Lee speak at the Friends Select School tonight. I got there early in hopes that I could get him to sign my Fellowship of the Rings DVD set and I got there just as the crowd was gathering. He was out in front of the auditorium sitting by a stack of books and I walked up to him with the DVD set and asked if he'd sign it. He said of course and fumbled around looking for something to sign it with [he only had a pen]. I came prepared and whipped out a nice silver Sharpie [it's what I use when I sign prints of my photos] and he signed it "To Albert, Best wishes, Alan Lee" SWEET!

I settled into the front row with my new ginormous 80-200 f/2.8 zoom. One of the organizers told me that he likes to face a certain way while speaking and doing his slideshow presentation and ushered me to the center of the front row where I plopped myself and my bag o' goodies. I mounted my flash and waited for Alan to start. I took a few shots of him before he started to speak and more during the Q&A session, none during the presentation, that would've been mucho rude.

He said that he had never touched a computer until working on the Lord of the Rings films. And not until three years into the production of it at that. I believe it was seven years of work altogether [yes, I've watched all of the extended DVD sets and the extra footage DVDs]. But once he started with the computer, he worked solely in Photoshop and loved it. He was saying how hand made drawings were great when talking to other artists, but when it came to the computer animators and CGI designers, he felt that PS was a much better communicative tool.

He mentioned that he was here last December giving a similar talk and that the presentation this time would be of completely different images. I didn't go to, nor did I know about, him being here last year, but I was psyched as I knew this would all be new stuff to me. He's just as soft-spoken as he is on the DVD extra footage when he discusses the set design and concept to film segments. Quite peaceful. At one point during the presentation, he remarked that "It was just like being a kid again" in regards to working on the films. He made 2000+ drawings plus tons of digital work throughout the course of the filming and production of the films.

He cited artists like Da Vinci and Raphael among his influences and a slew of illustrators I've never heard of before, but some of the people in the audience were obviously illustrators as they were nodding in agreement and some even commenting on how they were familiar with the artists' work.

I had a blast looking at his images and listening to him narrate the processes that went into the making of the films. I'm no über dork about it, but I'm pretty into LOTR so it was quite a treat for me. And to get him to sign my DVD set was icing on the cake.

I have six photos up in a flickr set, four more in addition to these two. Just a few more shots of Alan.

Oooh, I forgot to add that Alan took a photo of the crowd at the end to post on his book tour blog. So not only did I get to hear Alan speak, see never before seen footage, meet, shake hands with and get him to autograph a copy of my DVD, but I'll be immortalized on his tour blog. There were, however, nobody dressed up in a Middle Earthean outfit.

The locations and dates of the rest of his two-week long tour.

The Cold Rain

It is cold. It is rainy. It is windy. It all makes me cold, wet and shivery when outside. Arg.