Flip You...Flip You For Real: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Ridiculous Purchases

My past impulse (read: drunk) purchases have been well documented. It was said that I would be unable to top the white linen suit that I purchased weeks ago. I think I may have proved the naysayers wrong.

The back story to this purchase is that I go through digital cameras like Bihler goes through bottles of Andre's. FAST! I'm now on my fourth digital camera since i moved out to LA. That's about one camera every six months. Not a favorable ratio for Deltron (yeah i spoke in the third person, deal with it!). Stuff breaks, I can live with that. The tragedy here is that I never really earned the camera destroyer reputation. Each Canon Elph was damaged by non Del actions.

1) Canon SD400 5.0 megapixels - After all my drunk adventures my camera was fine and in tip top shape till I went home for a visit and someone at a family BBQ dropped it. You could tell they were psyched to have me home. "He's home for a visit, let's smash his shit!". No one fessed up but my grandmother looked VERY suspicious. Before I could even ask her what happened she blurted out, in broken english, "Why you look at me? I do nothing!". Helluva poker face Grandma. Well played. I forgave her but I will not forgive her for the countless times she gave my twin bro a Tensky and gave me the shaft when we were kids. I guess $10 is the going rate for being named Eugene. Actually come to think of it she is forgiven for that too. Eugene3030 just sounds lame!

2) Canon SD500 7.1 megapixels - Bihler, Cinco De Mayo. Nuff said.

3) Canon SD1000 7.1. megapixel - Two weeks ago my camera was in great condition and on it's way to Lake Arrowhead. I had a Saturday full of beer and Led Zeppagain. Good times, all documented on the camera till the encore. Led Zeppagain must have rocked harder than I recalled because my camera stopped working and there was no droppage this time. Instead there was some mystery message of "Lens Error, please restart camera". I came to learn this was camera talk for "You somehow got some sand in your lens, even though you weren't near any sand today. You are fucked." There is no reset on the thing, so pretty much you have two options to try and fix the camera

• Taking the battery out for a couple of minutes and trying to retract the lens again, or
• Banging it on its side to try and dislodge what is is jamming the lens retracting mechanism

The third option is to drink while you let your friend, who thinks she is Schiender from One Day at a Time, try and take apart the camera. Point of advice: If, when asked for a progress report on the repair, the repairer says quite proudly "I am making the screws silver" stop them dead in their tracks. That is Schiender speak for "I am stripping the screws". The camera was a goner...and the shop wanted $150 to fix it. Time to move on to get to brand new camera #4

4 - Olympus Stylus 850 SW 8.0 mega pixel. The major selling point: Waterproof to 10 feet; shockproof to 5 feet. Smash city, population: This guy! I'm pretty brand loyal, but my poor track record with Canon, coupled with the fact that I'm headed to Arrowhead for the 4th of July, made this camera a smart drunk (jumbo shrimp anyone?) purchase.

I state that i was drunk because I left an Amazon window open with the camera, xd card, AND "for a goof" a Flip Mino, all night and then stumbled to my desktop the following morning and pulled the still drunk trigger. Sadly I didn't realize that I sent my purchases to NY. Not cool. Easily fixed*...except the memory card is still in NY somewhere. The funny thing is I could not give less of a shit All thanks to the awesomeness of the Flip Mino, or as I like to call it, "the best thing ever"!

I can't put into words how awesome it is so I will simply post some youtube clips that I made. Added bonus points for letting me make everything "old timey". You'll see in the old timey clip how awesome it is and how it is impossible for me to imagine the novelty of it wearing off. Ever. "Old timey" has already been officially added to the lexicon of anyone who has been around the Flip...and or me. The only other phrase I've heard more than "haha, make that old timey!" is "put that fucking thing away".

I'm talking about the Flip you sick bastards.

Video 1: The camera got delivered while I was on a conference call. Hello Old Timey, Goodbye attention span.


Video 1: Old Timey's glorious debut. This is Linda, the Interep receptionist. Badass woman.



Video 3: Past Meets Present.** Old timey with the Wii & Albert Hammond Jr



video 4: Last night's Edit one - Old Timey Drinks


video 5: Last night's edit two - As much as I love Old Timey, I have to say the heavily edited, all by the Flip and Muvee, version with the Hold Steady score is so well done.



* Amazon has the best customer support ever. You feed your cell number into a box on the site and they call you back. No sitting around on hold like a jackass. They called back in less than five minutes.

** past meets present. New blog perhaps?


----------------
Now playing: Stevie Wonder - Sir Duke

Beat It Him: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Listen More Closely

A friend and I have been battling on Muxtape this week. The challenge was to see who would pull the best 12 song (the mix tape limit) 80's CD. Mind you, the date range actually goes 1979-1990... Quite a challenge considering I'm "27"*. That being said, I think that I did fairly well. The only rule of engagement was that we could only use one song per year...and no repeat artists. (and no loophole tricks like having a Genesis song and then having a Phil Collins song.)

Here is mine
Here is hers
Vote at the bottom of the blog!

She went above and beyond the call of duty by relabeling each track to match a time and place or feeling that the song evoked. Great work, especially when you get to find out her favorite song of ALL TIME is by Starship. Correction, her favorite song is the THEME SONG to Mannequin by Starship! How awesome is that? Earning lots of points in my book.

Props having been given, I still think that I blew her out of the water.

I should mention that it was implied that you had to pick songs that you REALLY listened to around that time. God knows I'd like to say I was rockin' out to Echo and the Bunnymen's "The Killing Moon"...but that awesome song did not grace my ears till my first viewing of "Donnie Darko". "The Killing Moon" came out in 1984, when Michael Jackson ruled the charts. While I did not ultimately decide to include any Michael Jackson tracks on my playlist, MJ does bring back a rather fun traumatic childhood memory.

1984 - "White Lines" is the trigger of this memory. No, Young Del was not blowing lines. Break dancing was the drug of choice. I tried my hardest to perfect the art, but it never really took. A damn shame, as I would have owned my catholic school courtyard with my windmills and head spins. I was no Ozone...not even a poor man's Turbo. Damn their Electric Boogaloo. My only recourse was to fall back to what was easy, and nothing was easier than aping Michael Jackson. Anyone can pull off a moon walk while wearing one glove and white socks.

A sad, sad side note: I would wear a winter mitt (didn't have gloves) and try to moonwalk in the middle of a scorching, humid NY summer on my back deck. Luckily for me there are no pictures**.

Now to the music... Back then people would buy record singles, and I was a big enough sucker to have purchased the record singles for both MJ's "Beat It" and Weird Al Yankovic's HILARIOUS parody "Eat it". However even after a big purchase like that I stopped listening to "Beat it" pretty quickly. And for an extremely good reason! As youngster i guess my ear for music wasn't fully developed and because of this I would butcher the words to songs. This led me, in "Beat It" to hear and sing "Showin' How Fucky Strong Is Your Fight" when the actual words were clearly "Showin' How Funky Strong Is Your Fight". Repeated over and OVER again.

Now I'm friggin' YOUNG, so "fucky" had LIT-TRA-LEE the same exact meaning to me as "funky" (I didn't know how to get funky or fucky back then. Now...still a bit unclear.) Unfortunately my mom felt differently, took the title of the song quite literally, and out came the dreaded "wooden spoon".

...And that's when "Beat it" was retired from young Del's record rotation. That is your Del story of the day.

*That's right 27. Don't question it.

** Being the child of six the novelty of taking pictures and general parenting pretty much wears off after #3. A Blessing and a Curse.

Which mix kicks more ass?
	1980's Jerkface Sandwich
	A Dozen Years

Clowning: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love In Rainbows

Currently at the beer garden there is a clown...her name is Rainbow. Turns out She comes from a long line of clowns. She was born into the art of clowning ...and now she is trading balloons for beer. She is clearly out of her mind. Of all the days to forget my camera! God bless this place...AND GOD BLESS CAMERA PHONES.

I got her business card so if anyone is looking for an ecstasy cigarette smokin, beer swigging , fake picture taking* clown who may or may not be on Quaaludes let me know

S he somehow won 1st place in a clowning competition the night before. That seemed crazy to me because who the hell is throwing a clowning competition and secondly she was one step away from being as terrifying as Pennywise. Who the hell was voting on this?

*she took pictures of people with a really nice nikon slr...but the camera had no film in it. I couldn't make sense of this practice no matter how much i drank.

END NOTE: as amusing as she was, she's hardly a replacement for the one man band. I miss hearing "Like A Rolling Stone".

Jamba Chamberlain: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Unnecessary Yelling

Mondays are notoriously tough. Even when my Sunday funday only consists of three "dingers" and a netflix starring Diane Lane I still could feel like crap. (speaking of crap, will someone please call Diane Lane's agent. "Untraceable*" = unbearable.)

I'm not going to say "I just can't hang anymore" because that simply isn't the case. I'm strong like bull. Friday and Saturday were solid late night boozefests that resulted in me:

• Walking half drunk to the Promenade to get my car on Saturday morning...and stopping at Macy's to buy a ridiculous linen suit** for...

• a wedding on Main St near the beach that allowed me to walk from my apt to an open bar that was more than happy to serve me 15+ red bull vodkas...that in turn had me up at 5am thinking it would be a good idea to pop "Red Dawn" in the dvd player. Who doesn't like to hear the birds chirping to the sunrise as C Thomas Howell*** belts out one of his signature "Wolverines!" victory chants?

Oh my roommates that are trying to sleep, that's right.

The point of this recap isn't even to explain why I'm still feeling quite hungover today or why my liver and I are on a break. To tell you the truth there might not even be a point but let me go on. When I'm hungover I usually have no appetite and today was no exception. The trick is to not embrace this feeling as it is a mirage. Knowing this I went to Jamba Juice at 2pm and got myself a Citrus Squeeze w/ a protein boost and an extra immunity boost. (isn't it obvious I'm into healthy living? My body is a temple!) Like I said it's 2pm on a monday. I guess this is a dead time for the Jamba runs because I was the only person in the store. Even though I was the ONLY person in the store the Jamba Barista, if that what i should be calling her, still felt the need to yell out "DEL!......DEL!" as my order came up. Knowing there was NO ONE else in the store I looked to my left and then to my right while keeping my eyes trained on her. On her third "Del" I held up my receipt and said "That's me".

I had to respect her commitment to the Jamba workflow...but come on, I was LITERALLY**** the only person in the place.

That's it. End of story.

Notes:

*blu ray is doing Diane Lane no favors!

** No tucking in, no socks, and cargo pockets to hold the bb and the canon. A Del dream, if it didn't look so ridiculously awesome. The looks at the bars after the wedding: Less awesome. The drunk homeless man on the bench in front of a strip club asking me if I was a College Professor: awesome. Pictures***** to follow.

*** That's two blogs in the last ten days to reference C Thomas Howell. I need help. Seriously. Thank god the Manhattan Beach Six Man isn't till August. No Side Out references till then.

**** when reading this word in any of my blogs please make sure to read w/ a cockney accent.

***** Here it is, in all of its glory: