Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Sorry world, but pears have been spread thin lately. Soon, that will all change though, I swear. Look forward to some new posts this long weekend! Actually, this long weekend would be the reason for this post– it would make me very happy if every person took a minute out of their day and thought of all the things they have to be thankful for. And smile. Because life is full of things to be thankful for! Happy holidays all. Pricklepear looks forward to returning with a vengeance!

Today is Blog Action Day. Yes, yes it is. This is Yoda’s little drop in the bucket. Yes yes it is. I think I’m beginning to sound a bit like Matt Pond when I write– yes, yes I am.

My little attempt to help green our planet, I suggest that everybody try taking a little vacation from their cars, and put some public transportation or muscle mass (aka ride a bicycle!) to use. If you need help or information on how, or why, try visiting the Transportation Alternatives site. Not only will you feel better, but the world will feel better. Which, you know, means that in the long run, we’ll all feel better! And feeling better is good.

Fellow blogger Anja Merret has some interesting things to say. What strikes me in particular is her vow to attempt a more “paperless” office. As someone who spends a large amount of time in an office environment each week, it amazes me the amount of paper saved by this little thing called email. If we all made a concentrated effort to print only what we needed to, to recycle scratch paper, and to make use of digital recordings (ie using highrise to take messages, or using basecamp instead of interoffice memos) we could probably save millions of trees. That’s a lot of air– so we can continue to take deep breathes and calm ourselves down, from all the stresses of life.

So, as of Sunday, I have crossed over to the darkside. Sick of my non functioning freebie Samsung phone (it was dropping calls, got terrible reception, etc) I decided to light it on fire. And replace it with a shiny new Blackberry Curve.

As of today, the only problem I’ve had with it is its terrible battery life. I’m hoping that after a little use it will settle down and work properly, but if not, I guess I’ll be calling up Blackberry/T-Mobile and demanding a new battery. That aside, I love this phone.

A little background- for the last ten years, I have been complacent, if not satisfied with the cheap freebie phones that T-Mobile gives to it’s customers. I just honestly didn’t care what the phone looked like, how cheap it was, who made it - as long as it made and received calls and text messages, it was fine. The last time (two years ago) my family renewed it’s service, I told my Mom to get me the simplest one possible - I didn’t care that it didn’t have a camera, or bluetooth, or internet- as long as it made calls, I could live with it. Needless to say, two years of abuse later…said phone stopped measuring up to even my paltry demands. Sick of terrible reception, cutting out on calls causing people to think I was hanging up on them, and the general falling apart physically battered casing, I gave in and allowed myself to be talked into picking up one of the latest and greatest.

Now let’s be honest, very few people absolutely NEED to get their email on a handheld, let alone have internet access. But…I will admit it’s very very handy to have and I have grown to like it very much. Also, that camera I thought was silly to have as a feature on any of my previous phones? Well, the Curve takes nice photos for a phone, and the fact that I can now upload them straight from telephone to my flickr account has me using this feature far more than I had anticipated. As a relative stranger to this vast city (I have now been a resident for about three months and some change), the google maps app excites me. I haven’t actually used it yet, but I’ve seen it in action while on shoots with a crew member who owns a Blackberry Pearl. Ideally, I will never get lost again, knock on wood.

The phone has so many buttons and keys that at first it was a bit daunting. However, given a few hours to explore, I learned how the menu functions and had no problem navigating around to the different applications and changing settings and preferences. The trackball is makes scrolling and selecting a no brainer. Purchased from T-Mobile, my phone came with a leather smart slip case, which automatically puts the phone in standby phone when inserted. It’s pretty perfect for me, adding a nice little protective sleeve that’s not bulky or terribly unattractive that can easily be tossed into my backpack or messenger bag. Something I can’t decide whether I like or dislike is the volume on this phone. It is LOUD. Even set to low, I can hear the phone when it’s buried in my bag. That’s great for when it’s buried in my bag and I might otherwise have missed a call. However, same phone, on the same profile, sitting on my desk at work? Its so loud it’s scary. I can’t imagine how loud it is on LOUD. But you win some you lose some, and I guess I’d much rather have a phone with capable speakers as opposed to the iPhone with subpar speakers.

All in all, I’m super happy with my transition. It was a quick transition, and I feel that should I decide to, this phone will help me be more productive. I’d recommend the new Blackberry Curve to anyone.

So, I’ll admit it, the whole point of this post is to establish that not only do I LOVE the Gray Kid, but that I knew about him and loved him WAY before any of you did. That’s right. I’m in on it. And…now you can be too.

Gray Kid (aka Steve Cooper) used to sing in this band called The Spark from back home in good ol Washington DC. While he was in this band he also happened to be a substitute teacher in one of my classes. Instead of taking attendance in any classic way, he had everyone write down their email addresses so he could add it to his band’s mailing list. Classy. A year or two after that I bumped into him at the mall, where all the true suburban kids always end up. A year or two after that, I remembered my smokin’ hot substitute and wondered what he was up to.

Welcome Google. And personal websites.

The Gray Kid has come a long way. In the two years since I found his new musical incarnation, he has more or less exploded. His parody video of Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack”, remade as Gray Kid’s “PaxilBack” was on the front page of youtube for days, and garnered him a mention in Rolling Stone Magazine.

Gray Kid produces all his own beats, and collaborates a lot with Daniel Stessen. His myspace always includes key tracks as well as photos from his latest shows and promotional material. He makes me wanna dance. He makes me wanna swoon. He makes me think I’m cool because I like him.

He’s bringing sex— er, I mean PAXIL back…go listen to him. NOW.

Pricklepear apologizes for the lack of updates. We are currently in the process of relocating living situations of some of our pears, and don’t have internet. Hopefully this situation will be resolved this upcoming weekend. Until then, fear not, for it might be possible for some pears to sneak away from real life and make use of coffee house wi-fi…but if not, you have not been abandoned dear reader, stick around- loads of new posts will be up beginning next monday. Hu-RAH!

On a run to the post office last week, I happened across an old mail delivery bike in the lobby. It made me smile, because A) well, it’s a bicycle and if you’ve read any of the other posts on this blog, one thing we love is bicycles, and B) people probably used to get pretty excited waiting for mail to be brought on those two wheels. In an era pre cell phone pre email pre loss of actual life lived (replaced by digital friends, digital memories, digital life) handwritten letters were a way to reach out.

For our generation, a pile of mail is hardly anything to get excited about. If your piles look anything at all like mine, your mail consists of a bunch of bills (gross), some take out menus, the free neighborhood newspaper/newsletter you rarely read, junk mail, and sometimes wrongly addressed bits and pieces. This makes me frown. When I first realized this sometime last year, I decided to take it upon myself to begin a letter writing campaign, an effort to reach out to those whom I care and think about and felt deserved a little bit of my attention and time. Certainly more time than it takes to blast out a quick email. And then, maybe their little dismal piles of mail will begin to be not so dismal, when they see an envelope made out to them in my chicken scratch, and open it to find page upon page of barely legible (but loving!) handwriting.

I guess I got too caught up in the big idea of making other people smile to realize that nobody would take the time to write back, and that one sided letter conversations can only be so fun. So I slacked off. But seeing that bike made me want to bring smiles to faces and rays of light to mailboxes across the country again. So I have reinstated my letter writing campaign. Unfortunately my move to NYC has taken away about half the people I used to write to as I see them on a nearly daily basis now. So this is my announcement- if you’re sick of nothing but bills and junk, and would like a little handwritten sunshine straight from my little heart, leave a comment with your mailing address, and wait with baited breath.

I’m sick of emails and texts and instant gratification. I want old school courtship- long rambling letters you wait for days upon weeks to receive. And maybe if I write enough of them, someday someone will write back…

There’s nothing to make an otherwise boring situation interesting like a good heckler. Obviously, by the nature of that statement, a bad heckler can be close to the most painful thing ever, but: when it’s good, it’s good.

What’s even better about a heckler is that their material doesn’t have to be the best. It just has to illicit a response from the person being heckled. For instance, a comedian totally destroying someone in the crowd, or an athlete punching the fan in the face.

While cruising digg, I came across this video of a press conference going on with O.J. Simpson’s lawyer. Now, I could care less about Stabby McKill Kill and his latest legal trouble, but I have to say this guy made watching it totally awesome. He is almost so great that I wonder if he wasn’t a plant. He looks a bit like one of Val Kilmer’s characters in The Saint.

Other great hecklers in history include:

1. Joe Rogan in Vegas:
   
2. Jamie Foxx destroying a fellow comic:
   
3. And of course, the classic “Jackass” sequence from Happy Gilmore:
   

Do you have a great heckling moment caught on video that I forgot? Leave a link in the comments and I’ll add it to the post.

I suffer from a couple vices, the most prominent being shiny gadgets, bicycles, and caffeine. My favorite purveyor of the latter comes from a dark brown substance known as coffee. Sometimes it’s hard to justify getting out of bed without the oh-so-delicious promise of coffee-induced twitchiness to get me through the rough early hours.

Lately, I’ve been living with relatives of a friend while looking for an apartment to call home. The last coffee maker I had went out with the trash while we tried to cull the unneeded belongings, and because these relatives don’t drink a lot of coffee, I truly miss having the ability to brew up a hot cup of nervous energy instead of shelling out 3 bucks at the local shop.

Not having experimented with the fancier types of machines, I leaned towards the drip-percolate style machines that your mom had on the kitchen counter, which produce a reliable if not too reliable cup of coffee, especially when paired with a digital timer and automatic start feature. Throw in a filter, a couple scoops of grounds, 2 cups of water, then “set it and forget it.”

The problem with those machines is that it’s hard to just do a single cup. You inevitably end up wasting a perfectly good filter, too much coffee, or the end product just doesn’t taste right. Now, I know about the gold filters (which I’m tempted to try but don’t have the cash for), and I don’t even want to hear about those “single-use” rip-off pods.

The point is, my current locale has one of those old-fashioned “coffee press” gizmo’s. Don’t know what I’m talking about? It’s a glass or plastic cylinder with a plunger that separates the cylinder into two compartments when depressed. It took me a couple minutes of staring and mental juggling to figure out that all you have to do is throw in however much coffee you want, then add boiling water. With those two ingredients in place, you put the lid on, slowly push the plunger down, and VOILA: the perfect amount of coffee, in a container, ready to take to the desk with you. And even better, you don’t need a single volt of electricity or a filter to make this gizmo do its thing.

Sometimes, old school just works. And I’m just a twittery mess.

If anybody is interested in acquiring one of these, don’t google like I did for “coffee plunger gizmo.” It won’t yield very good results. The technical term for this product is a “coffee press” and can be found from various manufacturers at Amazon.com. Here are the search results all ready to go, or check out these super classic designs from Bodum available in 3-cup, 4-cup, and 8-cup sizes.

For a limited time, you may stream the entire new cover album “From the Screen to Your Stereo Part II” on New Found Glory’s myspace page. Set to drop on the 18th, I dare to say this album will do very very well. A follow up to the original “From the Screen to Your Stereo” the featured guest vocalist list on Part II reads like a whos who of the current mainstream radio scene. Singers include- Adam Lazarra of Taking Back Sunday, Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy, Chris Carraba of Dashboard Confessional, Sheri Gilbert and Sheree Dupree of Eisley, Will Pugh of Cartel, Max Bemis of Say Anything, and Lisa Loeb. This veritable all star cast combines vocal talents with NFG on a number of tracks including standouts King of Wishful Thinking from Pretty Woman, Love Fool from Romeo and Juliet, and Kiss Me from She’s All That.

There’s really not too much for me to say except that I’ve spent the last two days on myspace streaming this album again and again. There’s something so fun about cover songs. If you’re a fan of NFG, you’ll dig the cd. If you’re a fan of the original songs, you’ll probably dig the covers. If you don’t dig it, well. Then I guess you don’t. But at least give it a fair chance. Just a bunch of friends getting together to sing songs they like from movies. Man, sometimes I really wish I could sing well. Or at least not terribly. Until then, I’ll sing along (out of tune, out of key, and a beat behind) to these fantastic covers!