Go Strong to the Blog

I’m a huge basketball fan as some of you may know. I just saw the list of NBA All-Star reserves that were just announced today… and once again, its a total joke. SHAQ is an All-Star??? Does that guy even play half the season anymore? Good God. There’s a pretty good chance I won’t watch any of the festivities this year… ever since JRich won back to back dunk contests the entire freaking weekend has been boring. So I’ve been thinking about some ways to spice it up. Here they are:

• Turn the lame dunk contest into a Posterization Dunk Contest. Four dunkers go head-to-head with four shot blockers tourney-style, winner gets $1 mil, or enough to actually entice good players to participate. Each dunker gets three tries to ram it on someone’s head, or 45 seconds. Think of the possibilities- you could have Lebron vs. Dwight Howard, Nate Robinson vs. Yao, Amare vs. his own teammate Shaq, Vince Carter vs. that French guy, etc. You could also throw in some cash for the guy who blocks every dunk attempt. This would be so awesome, just for the fact that you’d either see someone get teabagged or get taken off the court on a stetcher. It’s a win-win.

• 3 Point Shooting Contest for guys who only shoot 3’s. Notice how every year the NBA puts dudes like Gilbert Arenas, Dirk, Ray Allen, and Steve Nash in the 3 point contest, even though these guys almost never lead the league in 3 point percentage and look like they’re hung over during the contest? I’ve also wondered why no one has ever hit a perfect score. Granted its pretty damn tough, but why hasn’t anyone ever hit 28 or 29? From what I remember the best score was Jason Kapono with 25. You always hear about scrubs like Rashad McCants who once hit like 70 out of 75 in practice, or Wally Szerbiak hitting like 86 out of 100 as a shooting drill. So here’s what I would do: only put spot-up 3 point shooters in and give them like 2 minutes to finish 5 racks. Guys like Anthony Morrow, Jason Kapono, JJ Redick, Matt Bonner, etc. WInner gets $500k. Anyone who hits a perfect score of 30 gets an extra $500k. The only problem with this is no one would probably watch it, because no one knows who the guys I just mentioned are.

• Instead of the stupid NBA Skills Contest, change it to a Crossover Contest. Guys like AI, Baron, Derrick Rose, etc. could participate. Take a bunch of D-League point guards and put them in 1-on-1 against an NBA PG. Each NBA PG has 30 seconds to shake their defender and get to the rim. Quickest player to the rim wins, or first to make his defender fall on his ass. A prize goes to the D-leaguer who makes a steal or stops the NBA player from scoring.

• Change the ridiculous fan voting. One of these days someone like Rafer Alston or Shane Battier is going to make it into the All-Star game starting lineup, just because everyone in China votes for whoever Yao plays with. Did you know that Jamal Crawford got more votes than Brandon Roy this year? It’s such a joke. I would change it so that the fans only get to vote in 2 players or something, regardless of position. The rest of the teams get voted in by coaches and players, each player or coach can vote for one other player but no one on his own team. Then raise the stakes by making it so that the conference winner gets home court advantage in the Finals, sort of like what baseball does. This way everyone in the All-Star game would take it seriously and actually play for real.

There’s about a zero chance that any of this would happen, but it’s fun to dream, right?

To quickly recap 2008: I turned 30, survived and even thrived as a full-time freelancer, went on a cruise for the first time, bought my first laptop, watched my savings go down the drain along with everyone else, voted the first black President into office, and spent another wonderful year with my gf. All in all, not a bad year.

2009 is rife with excitement and uncertainty. My long term contract with TiVo ended this week, capping over eight months of solid work with them. Coincidentally, they just released a beta version of a portion of what I was working on, HD Search. If you have a TiVo HD, you can check it out under Showcases>Beta Search. It’s still very much beta and is slow and buggy as hell, but the general idea is there. Alot of the animation work that I did isn’t quite there, but alot of my 2D work is. As you can probably assume, this is the general direction that the new interface is going towards- more color, eye candy, and information. I’ll still be working with them on a per-project basis, so I’ll still have some input into the final product.

Freelancing went exceedingly well in ‘08, in fact I practically doubled my yearly salary from the year before. This year I’m not so sure I’ll be able to do that. We’ll see how the economy affects my industry; in some cases I’m sure there will be some creative budget-tightening, but in other cases I may have more work since no one wants to hire anyone full-time right now. If worst comes to worst I’ll think about going back into full-time, but only as a last resort.

It’s funny how freelancing affects your work mentality though- even if I have a few idle hours I feel like I’m slacking and I need to find the next gig. It’s almost like built-in motivation; if I’m not making my hourly rate then I’m essentially wasting time. Even if I’ve covered 2 months of living expenses in 1 week, I still feel like I need to work. Even the time it’s taking to write this post is time I could be working.

In terms of non-work related stuff, I’m pretty excited about what Obama’s going to bring to the table and how fast he can turn this economy around. I’m hoping he can stick to his promises of renewable energy and commitment to public transportation. Viv and I are making plans to move to the city and when we do, there’s a good chance I’m going to get rid of my car and totally rely on public transportation. I’ve never given a shit about what kind of car I drive and honestly I’d rather not have one. We’ll see how long that lasts though.

I want to make a trip to Hong Kong/Japan this year, depending on work and funds. My bro went out there in August and said I’d love Japan. I’m so ready to eat some good ramen.

If you’ve made it this far, congrats, this is turning out to be a pretty dry blog post. I haven’t been motivated to write anything here so this blog might be dead for awhile… but then again who knows. 2009!

The Black Kids - Partie Traumatic

During my short trip to NYC, I went and saw Slumdog Millionaire. I knew absolutely nothing about it but heard that it was good, and I’m glad I saw the movie that way. Totally traditional movie themes done in an entirely unconventional way. I definitely recommend checking it out, I’ve become pretty jaded about movies these days but this one reaffirmed my belief in filmmaking.

…we have a non-white President!

…we have a President with intellect, integrity, compassion, vision, and confidence.

…we don’t ever have to hear the word ‘maverick’ again, unless it’s coupled with ‘Iceman’.

…we don’t have to listen to Sarah Palin’s annoying voice anymore. At least for a few years. (on the flipside, no more genius Tina Fey impressions).

…I can stop being cynical about this country. At least for a few days.

On another note- it looks like Prop. 8 will pass. I still don’t understand people who front religion as a veil of bigotry, ignorance, and intolerance. Get over yourselves.

Finally got around to updating this thing: cliffordchan.com. Took down alot of old, crusty, work and put up some new, shiny stuff. Updated reel coming next.