We are the mundane
We had our annual Santa bar crawl last night. While I didn’t make an official tally, I’d say we probably topped 100 people on the tour. We had an absolute blast. This was our seventh one and it’s really taken off these last couple of years.
Here’s a bunch of photos from the evening.
The Wall St Journal digital edition did a story about the folks that go to see the Macy’s floats being inflated. Lisman has a couple soundbites, the only bites, and the kids are in the shot.
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.
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).
Actor Peter Facinelli’s daughter thought she’d set up her video cam to catch Santa on Christmas Eve. This is what she found on her camera the next morning.
Pretty slick of Peter.
from Natalie
and to all a digital version of our Xmas card. You’ll be getting a hard copy someday, but don’t hold your breath, it won’t be real soon.
The kids made the gingerbread houses.
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.
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.
Seems you can’t go anywhere without getting your picture taken these days. This just showed up on Facebook last night.
Over the fourth, I ran into Gary and Katie Gray downtown with a bunch of their family and friends celebrating the 21st birthday of one of their sons. I had just come from a Fourth of July party which had a hat theme (and yes I did win the prize for best hat).
I thought you should get to see, and this time, hear them. I stumbled across this YouTube video of JR and Natalie recorded at the Cafe 210 on New Year’s Eve.
I kind of hoped that I might be in the video somewhere because New Year’s Eve was actually my first real night back out in public. Shortly after I got out of the hospital, I made it my objective to make it to the band’s New Year’s Eve show and I did (even if I did run out of gas and leave shortly after midnight). Unfortunately, I didn’t make an appearance in the video (or at least a visible appearance). I was actually standing on the other side of the state almost directly opposite the person with the camera so I’m somewhere there hidden in the shadows.
Here’s another clip from a night that I wasn’t there.
Anyway, hope you enjoy the videos.