Me & Rollie

        My life has been pleasantly derailed since last Thursday, when I traveled to Boston to hook up with lots of old college friends and witness Villanova pummel Duke in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championships. Two nights later, we watched our alma mater defeat Pitt in one of the most exciting finishes in NCAA history.
         Tomorrow’s post will be built around this rather magical weekend. Until then, I present a picture of me at courtside with legendary Villanova basketball coach Rollie Massimino. For NCAA Men’s Basketball neophytes, Rollie took the Wildcats to their last Final Four in 1985, the year I graduated, and proceeded to defeat Georgetown in the greatest upset in the annals of championship college basketball.
         This past weekend was just as special.

Schoolboys in Disgrace

        My alma mater, Villanova, are in the sweet sixteen of the NCAA Basketball Championships this week. I’m happy about that, but I’m not a big basketball fan. So normally, this would only marginally excite me. My chances of even watching the game would be fifty-fifty. This year, however, they’re playing in my home town of Boston. And some very dear college buddies, who are big hoop fans, are coming in from way out of town to go to the game. So I’m meeting them in the city on Thursday. As if that’s not good enough, if Villanova wins, some of them will stay to go to the game on Saturday. So I could be with these wonderful knuckleheads all weekend. Now THAT excites me.
        So I pulled this picture of us, taken at Halloween twenty-five years ago. Looking at it, I realized that Halloween, like good friendships, can actually get better with age.

Bird's Eye View of Heaven

This is a perspective that most non-drummers rarely see; what a kit looks like when you're sitting behind it. I love this angle. It's the view I'm most familiar with, but that few others experience. I have a saying that no drum set, even the cheapest one on the planet, looks bad from this perspective. Because if this is how you're seeing it, it means you're about to make some noise. You're about to lay something down. You're about to groove. And that's always beautiful.

Spring Sunrise

Just another spectacular show put on my Ma Nature.

Mustang Clint

Death Valley, August of 2006. Temperature: 118 degrees Fahrenheit. A Mustang convertible is the appropriate touring vehicle if you want to fully experience what it's like to be in the hottest, driest place in the country during the heat of summer. A little later that day, when the temperature dropped to a chilly 115 degrees, I went for a run. As you can see, I'm low on Kleenex.