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?


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Now playing: Stevie Wonder - Sir Duke