Author: UncleLar

The head orphan and eldest surviving member of the Fall Family Clan.
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New Year’s Eve 2009

If you checked out my previous post on New Year’s Eve, you’ll see that my attempt to do live video streaming didn’t work so well.

I was able to capture some halfway decent videos on my photo camera though. Here’s some of the videos I got at a couple of the bars I was in.

First some JR and Natalie videos from the Cafe 210. The videos are a little jumpy because I was zoomed in to try to prevent the lights from behind the band from overwhelming the camera sensors. For the most part I succeeded.

Van Morrison’s “Wild Nights”.

Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”

Tom Petty’s “Free Falling” — kind of funny because Natalie grabbed the camera out of my hands and briefly turned it around on me.

Roberta Flack (and the Fugees) “Killing Me Softly”

JR and Natalie ended their last set at 1:30 and Natalie (and I) rushed over to the Phyrst before they gave their 2:00 am last call. At the Phyrst, Natalie did a couple of songs with Maxwell Strait (she’s been filling in as the lead singer with them because their normal lead, Molly Countermine, has been out having her third child). Molly, Natalie, and the third woman on stage, Kate Twoey, also perform together as a trio called Pure Cane Sugar.

Aretha Franklin’s Chain of Fools

Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s “Four Dead in Ohio”

Needless to say – I’m having fun with my new camera.

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Another live stream

Thought I’d try this live stream thing again. This time I’ll capture some video from the First Night State College New Year’s Eve Celebration. I’ll wrestle with some of the dame dim lighting in the bar challenges that I had the last time but we’ll give it a whirl anyway.

Hopefully my videos will appear below (once I start recording that is – I see the old Santa Crawl ones are there now).

Streaming live video by Ustream

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102 and counting

The Penn State women’s volleyball team racked up their record setting 102nd straight win and third straight national championship with an absolutely thrilling 5 set win over Texas in the title game on Saturday night. I also heard a rumor that they gained a new young fan from Montclair NJ.

Their championship match was one of the most compelling sporting events that I have ever watched. The girls started slow and dropped the first two sets of the match, marking the first time in the 100+ win streak that they had ever fallen behind 0-2. But they fought they way back, eventually winning the fifth set 15-13 in a set that had both teams trading points back and forth. I’ve heard from a bunch of people who just turned the game on for the novelty of the championship but were overwhelmed with the athleticism of the participants. They’re real believers now.

The match has become an instant ESPN classic and was already rebroadcast three times yesterday. It will also be shown again on Saturday at 10 pm EST Saturday (9 pm CST). It’s worth a view even though you know who won.

It’s hard to appreciate how tall and good these athletes are. I shared this photo with Gary yesterday. It shows PSU coach (and Fremd High grad) Russ Rose with his four first team All-Americans, from left to right Ariel Wilson, Megan Hodge, Coach Rose, Blair Brown, and Alisha Glass, at their All American Awards banquet Friday night. Russ is my size but he looks like a shrimp in this photo. The girls heights in order are: 6’3″, 6’3″, 6’5″, 6’0″.

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State College Santa Crawl

Tonight marks our sixth annual State College Santa Crawl.

Our annual romp in Santa costumes started out as a little thing that I created (with encouragement from my buddy Brian Allen) back in 2004. Our original group consisted of five of us.

Santa Crawl Year One

This year we could have upwards of 75-100 people.

I’m also trying to ratchet up my coverage of the event by experimenting with live coverage of the goings on with my iPhone (I already know that lighting conditions are going to make it a challenge but I’m going to do the best that I can).

If things work out as I hope, the window just below will have a live feed of our activities (as much as I can without killing the battery in my phone) while the second window below will have a collection of the videos that I’ve made throughout the evening.

First – the live feed:

Live Video streaming by Ustream

There’s nothing there at the moment but the festivities will begin somewhere around 8-9 EST (I might put up one or two test videos earlier).

Come join us vicariously.

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The Chicago Fall Clan may well be aware of this

but I suspect that this just might be new news for those of us outside the Windy City.

Last week, the Black Eyed Peas pulled off an incredible stunt for Oprah Winfrey’s block party kicking the fall season for her show. Ostensibly, Oprah was unaware that will.i.am of the Peas solicited the services of a flash mob to help create this 21,000 strong dance scene. It’s pretty neat.

While watching the girl dancing solo at the beginning of the song, I couldn’t help but think of another front row dancer in a video, specifically Courtney Cox performing in Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark video twenty five years ago.


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I know this is a little gimmicky…

but I sometimes wonder if some of our Congressional Senators/Representatives can even ID all of our 50 states much less draw a map of them. Smart of him to start out with his home state too.

A little behind the scenes research indicates that Franken had been doing this for years. I’ve found photos and videos of him doing it on at least two other occasions. I’ve also seen a claim that he first did this for an SNL skit back in the nineties when he was “lamenting” the poor budget that he had been given to do his political commentary stating that he was forced to draw his own political maps.