drewd The Adventures of Carlos d’Avis

Mesmerizing and Beautiful

I love love LOVE this Letter Flow animation.

Do you know what else are beautiful? Handmade bleach-stenciled The Hedge hoodies.

Dave Zucker and I have had our eye on this project for nearly half a year but never found the time or inspiration to complete it. Around two weeks ago, we realized that our dearest Claire Storck (see below) was leaving for New York City today. As in, she’s already left right now. To commemorate the fantastic, loving house we shared, Dave and I needed to produce before she departed.

Dave had the concept for each letter of ‘hedge’ based on congruent (is that the word I want?) circles at varying heights. I took this concept and added some thematic flair—the leaves and branches you see adorning the letters above. One late night with Illustrator and I had the design you see above, complete with a leafy heart for the left breast. Dave laser-cut the stencils into plastic sheets at work on Monday. We were ready last night, armed with bleach, a cosmetics spritzer, rags for blotting, and plastic bags for masking.

And we produced two perfect hoodies with nary a hitch. Success! I’ll have to take some better (non-iPhone) photographs because the one we have really doesn’t do the piece justice.

These final shots came from a fantastic evening over Memorial Day weekend, when Whit and Claire were visiting from San Francisco. We had purchased (nearly) matching shorts at REI then added to our outfits with 15 minute–$10 limit shirts from Buffalo Exchange, assigned to all participants randomly. What choice did we have but stage a photo shoot with these gorgeous ensembles?

Weezer Has Returned

In this month of May, which has been one of the most stressful, loneliest and generally worst months on record, the following made me smile and actually Laugh Out Loud:

Shadrach Rising

Tonight is the second Shadrach-only tryout practice. We shared scrimmage fields with Shazam for the month of April and had our first exclusive practice last Wednesday, which a bit over three dozen (36+) players attended. Wow. We have apparently arrived as a team. Slash Seattle Ultimate is insane.

Sadly, only eleven ladies were there, three of those returners. I hope that we have more ladies tonight—we will perhaps benefit from recent Riot and Viva cuts. And a few ladies from UW Element have been unavailable in preparation for the UPA College Championships this weekend.

Ignoring returners/core players with a guaranteed spot on Shadrach, twenty-one (21) men were trying out last week with an additional eight (8) returners, I think. And there are more men than that who have expressed interest in playing but have not attended. We shall see how many are there tonight.

Our target roster is 25 players. I see the optimal arrangement as an offensive line of eleven (11) with five women and six men. The defensive line would be fourteen (14) players with six women and eight men.

Regardless, I am way stoked for the season. After a week off following my neck and back injury, I returned to Air Alert yesterday afternoon. Let me tell you: it was death, but I feel great today. I think tonight I will force myself to play less and watch more. And I may “coach” a few players into showing off certain skills for which we’re looking.

Running for your huck and your dump and your slap mack
Is your name Carlos d’Avis?
No, mine’s Shadrach.

Payback for Nader

Former GOP congressman Bob Barr declares as Libertarian presidential candidate.

Brilliant. I honestly don’t see how we, the Democratic Party, can lose the presidency. Unless Hillary somehow holds on in the nomination battle until Halloween. Or, unless the article is correct regarding Barr’s possibility to steal young, anti-war voters from Obama. Seriously? Check out that photo—Barr looks like a crazy uncle! And he’s Libertarian.

Can’t we just give the presidency to Obama already?

Quick Brain Dump

Finding a new place to live is hard. Seriously.

This is why I love Web 2.0:

Hi, Carlos d’Avis.

Hammer (MCHammer) is now following your updates on Twitter.

Check out Hammer’s profile here:
http://twitter.com/MCHammer

Best,
Twitter

Sometimes, mostly while eating triple cream Brie, I have a difficult time with the dilemma presented at Paganello two years ago, “Would you rather spend the rest of your life without cheese or without oral sex?”

Devastating.

And now it’s time to mow the lawn. After that, Zucker and I are getting ice cream.

Heavens Descending

I think this photograph is by far the best I have taken so far this year. And I took it with my iPhone. Take that, Nikon D70! Photography is not about technology but rather inspiration and opportunity and timing and mostly life.

Wait, shit, the iPhone is technology. *runs away*

Hot Domain, Drew

Here is a list of the domain names that I own:

• bellalogica.com
• briancalle.com
• carlylestout.com
• claremontultimate.org
• decielo.com
• drewd.com
• esplainit.com
• frisbase.net
• frisbolero.com
• hotbombdotcom.com
• lei-out.com
• loveroni.com
• noodlepop.com
• trinastout.com
• whitscott.com
• zoomfocusclick.com

Some of these I obviously hold for other people (and some of those perhaps a bit awkwardly). A few of them represent personal projects or sites for friends that never came to fruition. I spend approximately $150 per year on these “properties,” plus another few hundred in site hosting costs. And I receive approximately zero (0) return on investment.

Regardless, I cannot stop myself from registering a new domain name when I have a new idea. I think a strong component of this compulsion is my perception of the scarcity of good domain names. I contributed a whiz-bang 2.0ish domain name to my work the other week, and was a bit miffed that I hadn’t conceived of it myself.

My newest acquisition is hotbombdotcom.com. See, some of the Claremont Ultimate kids took to congratulating successful hucks or exciting throws by saying, “Hot bomb dot com slash Gordy slash Jughead slash SWEET.” Or something like that, I don’t really remember. hotbomb.com has never been available but I think this domain is the next best option. .net is for suckers, and doesn’t work with the rhyme.

So, now, what I want to build is a little hotbomb application that automatically parses the URL to show photographs and text. Think hotbombdotcom.com/krump/lull/PFL: the script finds a photograph tagged with ‘krump’ and another with ‘lull’ and then displays crazy, colored text of any other URL component strings for which no photographs are tagged. Awesome.

Do you have thoughts on what I should do with any of my other domains? And when am I planning to change 2008 from the year of conception to the year of execution? We shall see.