Everyone remember the house across from Barnes & Noble on Broad Street? It was the last one on that stretch of road in Short Pump. Well, the owner, Raymond Haithcock, decided it was time to move on, and is leasing the land for a new development. I don’t know what it is, but I love seeing heavy machinery tear things down. I was able to capture the entire house demolition start to finish, on September 13. I just now figured out how to export the file to fit on YouTube. I had two cameras, one in hand used to walk around the perimeter of the house as it was being demolished and capture it from different angles, and one fixed in the median of Broad Street on a tripod to get a time-lapse shot of the entire thing (shown at the end). The video is set to Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer,” quite appropriately. I love this stuff. I hope you have as much fun watching it as I did making it!

I’m on a roll here with the movies this week. I saw another one last night: Juno. It was the best movie of any type I’ve seen since Superbad. Ellen Page stars as Juno, a sixteen-year-old girl who’s gotten pregnant by her friend Paulie, played by Michael Cera (from Superbad).

The story evolves around what she decides to do with the baby. She opts for adoption and forms a bond with the family that is to keep her child. I’ll stop there because I always spoil a lot of the movie for those of you who haven’t seen it yet, and I really think you should. There’s no deep, complex plot beyond that, though, but it’s the dry humor and sporadic hilarious lines in this dark comedy that make it so great. Michael Cera is brilliant in this film just as he was in Superbad, and his sarcastic, slightly awkward ways make for a very, very funny movie.

This was a Fox Searchlight picture (described by many as an “Indiewood” (Hollywood-style but still independent) studio), just as Napoleon Dynamite and Little Miss Sunshine were, and although these are all lower-budget films, they were all excellent. Juno was the best by far, though. I don’t usually do it, but I am planning on seeing this movie again. Definitely check this one out.

Overall rating:

I went to see Across The Universe with a big group of friends last night at the Byrd Theater. I can summarize it best simply in one word: trippy. Of course I don’t do drugs, but I think that watching that movie shows you what it’s like to be on an acid trip in the same way drunk goggles show you what it looks like to be completely wasted. The plot of the movie is built around the most popular songs of The Beetles. While the songs are great and the singers’ renditions were very good, I (along with most people in our group of about eight) had a hard time following the story. I got bored and a little restless about half way through, and when I was finally able to pick the plot up again (after an extremely odd scene of someone throwing strawberries all over the walls while the song “Strawberry Fields Forever” played), I found it dry and uninteresting for the most part. The best part about this movie? It was at the Byrd so it was only two dollars. Glad I didn’t waste ten bucks on it at Short Pump when it was playing there. Nice try, but you guys lost me.

Overall rating: No stars.

So I know birds flock together to go south and things like that, but this was just ridiculous. I heard this chirping sound and looked out the window to find thousands upon thousands of little black birds swarming through my backyard. I grabbed my camera and took some footage. At one point there were so many of them that they nearly blacked out the sky. Is this normal? I don’t know much about birds but you don’t see this too often. It looked like a scene out of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.” Here’s the video.

I love Christmas, and am let down every year after the holidays when the lights come down and things go back to normal. But it doesn’t have to be that way! Here’s an excellent article from one of my favorite websites, dumblittleman.com (It’s a great site, check it out sometime). These ten tips will leave you feeling like it’s Christmas year ’round.

Does Christmas Have to End Today?

Make celebrating all year long a priority and you’ll never have to feel the post-Christmas slump again!

I just wanted to take a moment to wish each and every one of you a very Merry Christmas! I hope you take the time to slow down and enjoy the company of all of your family and friends. I am definitely looking forward to tomorrow. Each year Christmastime gets crazier and busier for me, and this year that has proven to be true on an exponential level. But somehow on Christmas Eve everything is put back into prospective. Tonight and tomorrow are the only times the whole year that haven’t and probably won’t ever change for me. I have something come over me every year unlike anything else. It’s a sense of peace and happiness I can’t describe. I hope Christmas is the same for you. God bless each and every one of you, and thanks for your reading loyalty throughout the year!

With just a couple days left until Christmas, and the hecticness that brings, it’s important to remember the true meaning of Christmas: that God sent his one and only son to save us all from our sinful ways. In lieu of the Song Of The Week, watch this powerful video of a little boy named Logan calling into a Christian radio station who reminds us of the real reason for the season.

So my new room has been done for almost two weeks, but I just haven’t gotten around to taking pictures of it. Some of you might remember that it was dark navy blue before. I was going for the Starbucks look and feel with the way I painted it. Every single thing in the whole room is brand new, including every piece of furniture (purchased at IKEA) all the way down to the lamps and desk accessories. I put a lot of hard work into it and I’m really happy how it turned out. Leave a comment and let me know what you think! Here’s some pictures. Click each one for full resolution pictures.

So our family friend from Charlottesville, Sue, stayed with us last night and the night before after coming down for our Christmas party. As you could imagine, there’s not a whole lot of places to shop in Charlottesville. It’s not the boondocks, but there’s a lot more places in Short Pump. So naturally, Sue wanted to do some Christmas shopping while she was down here. Her and my mom were going to go, but I decided to go along too because I really hadn’t bought much of anything for the people I planned on buying for this year.

As a side note, it’s important to realize that guys don’t shop. We hunt, we gather, we buy. If we must enter the doors of a retail building, we are there on a mission and know exactly what we want. We’re not there to leisurely browse through aisle after aisle looking for “cute shoes” or a “trendy top.” Don’t get in our way because we’re making a beeline for the thing we want to purchase and then we’re getting out and going forth with our lives.

Anyway, I could almost feel my soul being sucked right out of my body after hours of this thing they call shopping. I think it’s some kind of natural reaction you hear about from caveman days where your body just shuts itself down as a preventative measure when you are exposed to such preposterous things as “buy one get one free” sales and “blue light specials.”

Where did we go? Well, here’s the complete rundown: Ben Franklin, Grapevine II for lunch, Men’s Wearhouse, CompUSA, Kohl’s, Dollar Tree, Barnes & Noble, Hallmark, H&M, American Eagle, New York & Company, Urban Outfitters, Firebird’s for dinner, Circuit City, and Starbucks.

Yes, I made the best of it and got a good amount of stuff for friends and family, and yes, it was good to see Sue and spend the day with her and my mom, but I was worn out by the end of the day. I do feel good that I actually put some time and thought into my gifts this year and didn’t opt for the typical present of gift cards that I often get.

My parents through their big annual Christmas party. We’ve had it for years, but skipped the past two. It went really well. Here’s a few pictures from it.