Yes, it's official, I have too much time on my hands. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you, the 12 w00t!'s of Christmas! (abbreviated version. You know the song, fill in the rest.)

On the twelfth w00t! of Christmas, my true love gave to me, 12 bajillion radar detectors, 11 MP3 players, 10 digital cameras, 9 iPod accessories, 8 home projectors, 7 GPS systems, 60 different watches, 5 bags of crap! 4 cordless phones, 3 robot vacuums, a twofer Tuesday speaker, and a brand new Playstation 3.

That is all. Merry X-Mas, as in Malcolm X-Mas, you cracker fools!

"The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue happiness you'll never find it."

C. P. Snow (1905 - 1980)

Well... last night was Jimmy's birthday. I'm not quite sure who Jimmy is, other than that he's a large, balding, 60 year old man with enough money to have a party for himself and 100 of his closest friends at the Jersey City Hyatt (the height of class and elegance, in the nicest neighborhood you can think of. Just don't go around the corner) featuring Three Dog Night. Yes Jimmy, Jeremiah was a bullfrog, and we did have some very fine wine. A bit too much wine, apparently, because MAN were they bad. I mean, it sounded like a cover band. Oof. But the best part was the DJ. They hired this guy to play the entire record catalog of 101.1 CBS-FM. All that was missing was Cousin Brucie, and it would have been the perfect night with the oldies. They stayed and danced until 12. And by they, I mean your grandparents. Yeah, it was Granny Dance Party 2006 up in this hizzle.

Just about the only good thing about the whole day was the view from this ballroom. It was all windows, and sitting on the Hudson River, so you could see from the George Washington Bridge all the way down past Staten Island, including Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. The Twin Towers would have been directly across the river. It was pretty awesome.


So after all this party malarkey, we get told that our cases, which were stored on the 3rd floor, will not be brought up to the 9th floor so we can pack our stuff up. No. Instead, everything must ride on the few cases we have in the room, down to 3, get packed there, and then taken to the dock, on 1. Great. And, on top of that, we had the C-list crew, as well as whomever from the wait staff wanted to stick around to help. Real rocket surgeons, let me tell you. So we get the trucks on the loading dock, and find out that for 2 trucks, they've sent 6 straps. Plus, where we had 1 24' truck and 1 26' truck on the load in, and they were both packed full, we now have 2 24' trucks. And a whole bunch of video gear that isn't ours and didn't come on our truck, but we have to take back to our shop. Merry F'n Christmas! When I got home at 4 am, I took a shower and sat on the couch with a beer for a minute, just to let my brain decompile. I turn on the TV, and there, on PBS, is this documentary about the making of the Mars rover. And I thought to myself, "Oh, right, THAT's rocket science!" And proceeded to pass out.

And so, that was my day. Monday is Christmas, whoopie. That's, whoopie, not waHoopie. Never mind. Have a Merry, you faithful reader you.

"Only the mediocre are always at their best."
Jean Giraudoux (1882 - 1944)

December 16, 2006. C-1. That's right. It's time for Brancato Christmas. All the kids are excited, bouncing off of walls and cars and other objects. Look out! Here comes Insanity Claus, with all his lists and toys and joys and CRACK! YAAAAAAA!

Slow week this week, kinda nice, really. Worked at Hammerstein Ballroom Monday. It was a charity fundraiser for an organization called Witness. It's run by Peter Gabriel, you know, like Sledgehammer Peter Gabriel. It's a human rights organization. Paul Simon played 3 songs, then some weird African chick tried to bring the whole crowd on stage, and the B-52's topped off the night (well, Fred and Kate, anyway. Don't know where the rest of the band were.) It was a good day, pretty slow and not much to worry about, since we used the house rig.

Tuesday was way cool... got to go to Silvercup studios in Queens for an episode of 30 Rock. They were using moving lights to do a goof on Deal or No Deal. So they sent me in to make sure stuff worked. It was great. Got to hang out all day, watch people come and go... and they didn't shoot until Wednesday. Oh well, guess I'll just have to wait until January to see it. (Thursdays at 9:30 starting Jan 4!)

And there you have it. Well, I've got stuff to wrap and laundry to put away... will the excitement never end! OMFG!

Here's a little video I found. I'm not going to put it in here, but the link will take you to You Tube. It's a Charlie Brown Kwanzaa.... very very funny, but REALLY raunchy and foul. Make sure you have headphones and the kids aren't nearby, cuz WOW. Ta!

"Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment."

Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)

Well, sorry if I've been kinda quiet lately, gang, I just don't seem to have much to discuss. Work's been slowing down, though I did do Aerosmith at the Beacon theater last weekend. That was interesting. Stephen Tyler is a pretty cool guy, though I didn't actually meet him, or any of the other band members. But I did watch their sound check, and he was just as cracked out during that as he is during shows and other public performance type things, so it's probably safe to say that it's not a character but the way he really is. One of the weird things about the show is that it's one of the last before the Beacon closes for 2 years for reconstruction. They're apparently tearing the place apart and rebuilding it, which is definitely a good thing.

So what else? I dunno. Jingle Ball is coming up this week, as is Brancato Christmas. I'm looking forward to that last bit. For those of you out there not related or in the know (I don't think you really exist, but hey...) my Father's family gets together on the Saturday before Christmas to celebrate and do all that stuf that most people do on Dec. 25th. It just makes life a little easier and allows us to kinda remove an extra stress of travel on the 25th, as well as extending the holiday by a little bit. It's nice to be able to sit down and actually hang out with your family without having to worry about when do we have to be at the in-laws house and who's showing up for dessert and who's not. I know that this weekend's not technically the Saturday immediately before Christmas, but I think that having both halves of my family together at my parent's house in the space of 3 days is more Christmas than anyone can handle.

Something else I want to turn you guys on to: Woot.com. This site is AWESOME! Ok, well, it's great if you're a dork like me. They sell gadgets and random crap for really low prices. The catch is that they only do one item a day, and once it sells out, it's gone. They update at 11:59pm Central time (12:59 EST) every day. So don't be late! Or else you might miss it. Well, that's not entirely true. Most items are usually still available by 8 am, but occasionally there's something REALLY cool, and those go fast. There's also Wine.Woot.com which sells one type of wine each week... good stuff, usually. SO go check it out, and buy stuff in the next Woot-off! OK.

Last but not least, I've found a really fun and interesting diversion the last few days: typing random strings into Google Images. It's interesting to see what comes up: stuff like this, and this, and this. Oh yeah, and this. So go ahead, give it a try. Just be warned that there's some weird stuf out there on the 'net.

"Look at how those legs go all the way up and make an ass out of themselves."
Stephen Tyler (1948 - )

Sorry there hasn't been a post in a while. Technical difficulties abound: my computer died a slow painful death, and all efforts to revive it so far have been frustrating at least.

I just wanted to post this, tho, as proof that there is no such thing as a slow news day:

Clooney's pig dies

Oh yeah. That's right. The headlines never lie. That's 159 articles there as of 8:24 am. Wow.

And in case you missed this one, there's yet another reason not to eat at Taco Bell.


"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."

Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)