i'm calling in the thousands that are the dport7 army for this one!!! our friend and long time dport7 member brian lauvray needs your vote! he is a freelance writer for this online travel website called Trazzler. anyway they are holding a competition and one of brian's articals has made it to semi-fianls. What do we need from you? well we need you to do CLICK HERE and then click the green button that says WISHLIST. sadly you do have to sign in / create and account. although if your already on face book that's easy and it takes a second... if brian wins it's big money so rally people!!! see illustration below if confused!!

Labels: friends

Alright here's a quick post about a lot of stuff. First all points west..... we i wouldn't call it a disaster but it wasn't far off. don't get me wrong no one got hurt, but the rain and the lack of the beastie boys was oppressive. we ended up seeing a shit ton of hipsters, along with the bands The Fleet Foxes, he National, and Vampire Weekend... Let me say this the Fleet Foxes were far to hippy for me. Guys, get a shave and and some shoes. The National was amazing with rock and roll badassness that could be felt for miles.. Vampire Weekend played well but those guys are just too young and awkward to be on a stage.. As you heard MCA from the beastie boys has cancer and so they had to cancel their show... This was a heart breaker for me and many others, but going to an event like that is always fun....Check out the pictures below of the poncho madness big thanks to Megan for picking those up!.





















Second my good old friend Rusty from high school was in town. We joined him his lovely wife and brother at the Brooklyn brewery on Saturday for what i would call a less than satisfying tour of the place.. it's just a room off the main hall where they make there special brews... well ok...... Kate and i had a great time hanging out. So thanks Rusty and welcome to dport7!!








Lastly and this may be my favorite. Kate and I have this floor standing air conditioner in the bedroom. The LCD screen is such a bright blue that at night you think your sleeping next to one of the Tron motorcycles (see last post)..so one night in complete desperation and half sleepiness kate grabbed one of the lint rollers we have took a piece and found a heart sock. then used that as the classy way to fix the problem... and it works!!!! As a industrial and fashion designer you think we might be able to come up with something better.... sadly no... Although I am only here and awake for maybe 2 hours a day so I'll make that my excuse....

Labels: birthday, concerts, friends, shows

Blah blah blah I'm sorry.... but hey cut me some slack i've been busy. First the big parent meet up happened. yes thats right after 7 years of dating the Rybicki's and the Diehl's met here in brooklyn. Everything went great and lots of wedding stuff got figured out. One of those wedding things was the Save The Date cards. They went out about a week and a half ago and, well..... i hope you got yours and you like it. If you didn't get one..... well i can't believe there is anyone that reads this blog that didn't receive one. If by some chance you are that someone then email me your address and i'll get one out to you post heist.
last weekend kate and i were visited by my good old friend from high school brian louis lauvray from chicago Ill. It was a nice chill visit we hung out in the neighborhood all weekend going to local restaurants and bars. We even had a little cook out on the roof. Kate and i fired up this little grill she's had forever and made a few dogs. Speaking of bars in the neighborhood the place just down from my apt "Sharlene's" just opened last week. brian had a bit of an altercation with the bar tender but i liked it just fine. Well, also speaking of altercations check out the new episode of the Me and Paul show that Brian and i taped while he was here. notice there is no Jon on this episode mainly because he bailed...... nice.....
Lastly I don't care that Kirstie Allie is fat again.

Labels: friends, wedding

faithful believe it or not i went on a mini VACATION last weekend!!!!! kate and i joined our friends BVA, DVA, and our new friend Nicki at a beach house on TYBEE island for a fun filled weekend of old college friends, karaoke, beer, beef, pinkie masters, bingo and all other types on tomfoolery. I've posted a bunch of pictures in FRAMES that i hope you'll enjoy!! It was so great to get a chance to see my old college pals Joel and Jenn!! Being back in Savannah and seeing the students made me long for the "studio fridays" warm days and lost hours at pinkie masters. Well you can't go back as they say and i won't waste my time trying, although it does make me feel good/sad to remember how much fun i used to be. The pictures below are the entire team at different stages of the trip. enjoy.... love the kate dance pic. Oh the pic of DVA and nicki show their bingo winnings!!!! BVA also at bingo just hours before big 30. yeah that's me singing brandy. hooray!

Labels: friends, travel, vacation

hey everybody!!!! sorry for the absence for the last week. you know what happens things get busy, I get tired. Anyway the weekend before last i participated in the 2009 Idiotarod. If you didn't gather from the website the Idiotarod is a race consisting of teams dressed up as some sort of theme then run through NYC. The object is to win by any means possible. pushing cheating and throwing of eggs rotten food or hell anything you can find is encouraged. my team was founded by (friend of the site) virgina and special guest Martin shmidt. They each add a few friend and out team turned into a seriouse team of six. It was a solid 6 to 8 miles in total, and let me say it crushed me. I'm tryong to get in shape but this race only proved how far i am from that goal. Looking back on it it was a really great time. We came in 16th out of 100 teams, which as far as I'm concerned is winning. Thanks to Virgina for inviting me to be on the team!!! I've never been known for my team spirit but I try. Oh check out the map at the end of the post for the full route!!!

In other new is anyone else sick of Beyonce? Man! I am! Don't get me wrong she is a attractive young lady but all her videos are the same and it's starting to really ware on me. I see her videos at the gym and lets just say (Beyonce i'm talking just to you now) I GET IT!!!!! Dudes cheat on you and your friends! I can't do anything about that! I wish i could but I can't. It's your life deal with it. Make a cool video. Look at Kanye West I don't really like him but at least he puts out new and interesting videos.
Thanks everyone I just needed to say that.

Labels: famous people, friends, observations

did it feel like you lost a close friend? what did you miss the most, the misspellings and horrible grammar or the long explanations about my weekends that sounded strangely familiar as if you read them the week before. No matter, you missed dport7 and by god dport7 missed you right back.
Now let me explain the reason for the outage. There's been a lot of speculation that it was the economic collapse that took out the site. As most of you know dport7 is a publicly traded company invested in any number of financial ventures. others speculated that with the down turn in the economy that much of the staff was let go and the site was just under powered. This is partly true we finally fired the entire film making wing and that helped free up some much needed funds for the new podcast venture. others speculated i had been killed in a helicopter accident but that's untrue. (so what's the real reason paul i'm tired of reading this crap) Well fine!!!! It all started back a few weeks ago when I moved into a new apartment. As all of you know Kate and i moved in together in Park Slope Brooklyn. We found an amazing place and it's really working out well. I need to take some pictures to post but we are hoping to have you all over soon. Although i can blame a large portion of this on the move the other large portion is that i just don't have time. between work and getting sick ( just a bad cold no need for alarm), and other responsibilities i feel as if i just can't find a free moment when i have enough energy to sit down and make anything new for the site. I still have lots of ideas for things i would love to make for you but the energy to make it happen is harder and harder to find. Maybe i've just hit a slow patch and i hope so because over the years i've put a lot of time in to this site trying to make it not crap. That got a little heavier than usual. moving on..........
So, to come back on a high note last Saturday a bunch of us went up to bear mountain for the yearly octoberfest. You might remember last year we went up for this with Ian and Eban's parents and really liked it. This trip was a little different though. without any parental supervision to keep us all inline it kinda turned into (for lack of better words) a shit show. we went up with quite a large group of dedicated friends. The boat left the harbor at 9am. Unlike last year with it's pre WWII boat this years vessel was brand spanking new. Because of the newness the city had yet to grant the ship a liquor license. This upset a few people in the group because this was promised to be a day of debauchery. This stuck fear in to Kate and I hearts. Kate sent out the evite for the event promising a booze cruse and we were letting people down. Luckily though i think this turned out for the best. As a result on the way up to Bear Mountain we decided that with a dry boat we should forgo the ride back, thus spending more time at Octoberfest. We arrived at noon just as the gates opened, and Octoberfest didn't disappoint. Needless to say i think you can guess what happened next. All i know is we missed the boat back in favor of more german fun and got a ride to the LIRR with Sarah and Billy who get a great big dport7 thanks. I'd like to go into detail but most of it is stupid and embarrassing, although not to mean we didn't have a great time. I think this will go on to be a dport7 sponsored event every year. although i feel as if you may need to pass an endurance test before its safe to come along. It was truly a hard day of fun. Thanks to everyone who came we can't wait for next year!!!!!!!! If this picture doesn't say it all i don't know what does. Big thanks to kate for organizing!!!!!! you're a hero!
::::update:::: Check out frames for all the bear mountain photos!!!

Labels: friends, party

ever since people started to realize what podcasts were they've been asking "paul when for the love of god is dport7 going to have a podcast?" My answer has always been who's got the time and what on earth would I talk about. Well the answer is nothing and as i walk home from work to the subway late at night. The show is called me and paul after the Willie Nelson song. The idea is based around the phone conversations i have with Jon "jew" Schulman. Often when i get out of work i call on bother him on my 10 minute walk to the subway. Occasionally these conversations are amusing and we decided to turn it into the dport7 podcast. How it works is i call from my phone to Jon's Skype number (his computer) and he records it. he then sends the audio to me and i throw it into a podcast, into feeder, then up to the dport7 servers. that entire process is faster than typing out this post. Either way we have already done a few episodes while waiting for itunes to accept the show so please subscribe and enjoy. I'm planing to do a show a week mainly because they are short but who knows maybe more. Please tell your friends and let me know how you like the show. Oh and write some reviews on itunes.

Labels: friends

so let's talk about all points west. Friday night Kate and I met up with Tyson at port authority and made our way to jersey city NJ. Tyson and Josy were nice enough to have us over so it would be an easy start to the concert Saturday morning. So were the band s good? yes, yes the band were great. well except for radiohead. yeah i know radiohead is amazing but honestly people i just can't get into it. the lead singer just whines all over every song. anyway that's not what i really want to talk about. as we walked into the show area of the park first things first we headed for the beer tent to get our over 21 bracelets and the first beer of the day. On the bracelet were 5 small tear away tags. These tags were the amount of $7 beers you could buy over the course of the day. so lets be clear it's not so much that i could only have 5 beers that made me mad. it's the fact that i was told i could only have 5 beers that really set me off. by set off i mean a rage-less "that sucks" came flying out of my mouth. then we all kinda complained about it on and off for the rest off the day. talking about how this country has turned in to an over protective parent that doesn't really love you but hates when you have any fun. kinda like Communism but without all that marx crap. either way i thought we all still managed to have a pretty good time.
I've finally posted the SSP pictures I've promised so check them out. don't forget to check out the links to pictures that i posted a few weeks ago those were really pretty good to.

Labels: friends, shows

Oh faithful let me apologize i have been negligent to you who i love most. the thing is that life has exploded with busyness and responsibility. I still haven't had time to post pictures from SSP08 but with any luck I'll have a bit of time on sunday. at least thats the hope. In other news i wet to see The National on monday night. I don't know if your a fan but I have to admit they were really pretty good. the lead singer started out a bit rough but a few songs in he found his sound and really nailed the songs from then on out. What else you ask? well there was a lovely rabbit's foot in there some where. Kate's parents came for a visit, kate had a big birthday, that's 25 folks. (she got a new black iPhone). Ian went back to singapore. This weekend i head to All Point West. It's a big band fest in NJ. With me luck i don't think it's near camden so i should be ok.




thanks to laurea and david for the photo

Labels: friends, shows, SSP

so hope everyone had a great week. The SSP is around the corner and the city is a BUZZ with anticipation for this years party.
in other news (more nerdy news) the App store for the iphone launched last friday. For those of you that got hosed by the update stalling for hours i have something to make it all worth it. One of the free apps on the store is called LOOPT. Download the app here. What it does is allow you to see where your fiends are at when your out. so lets say i'm hanging out in union square and i check Loopt to see that rebecca is there to. I can send a message with loopt to see if she want to meet up. Either way it seems like fun especially here in the city where you can walk past a friend in a crowd and not even know it. I guess technically it's a social network of sorts. It integrates with facebook so that will make most of you kids happy. Before you get mad and say "well, Paul i don't have a iphone so i guess this is out of the question". Stop it right now! go to the Loopt website they support a bunch of phones. Please get on the stick and join this might be the only social network i join..........ever. I posted some screen shots so you could see how it works.
::::Update:::: posted some new pic in frames!!!!

Labels: friends, technology

Let's start with the important news! If you didn't get the email last weekend you have the wrong email on joinup or you have failed to become a member. Either way the SSP08 save the date went out last week and the streets of New York are already buzzing with anticipation. As New York's biggest Short Shorts Party it's a lot to live up to. This year promises to be the biggest ever with attendees from all around the world. July 19th mark it down with a bullet and we will see you there!
Next on the topic of Short Shorts Parties a great friend of the site known as Jew threw the first successful satellite short shorts party in Milwaukee last month. it was a fully sanctioned and sponsored dport7 SSP and it looks as if it went great. He sent some pictures please check it out. notice the dport7 stickers placed to represent dport7 in only the best of ways. THANKS JEW.

Before i forget I've posted pictures frames the last few weeks in frames. One set is from the Kentucky Derby parties Kate and I went to and the other set is from my brother's visit. some of them are kinda funny i guess.

Memorial day weekend is here. I don't think I've ever in my life enjoyed a three day weekend as much as i do now. It just feels so great to have an entire extra day of freedom. So far mine has been really fun. My old friend from my intern days back at TODA is in town so we've been hanging out a lot just goofing around. we went to that new art museum on the bowery called The New Museum of Contemporary Art. To be honest we were both a bit let down and uninspired by the art in the place but the building and the space was impressive. Sunday night was a BBQ with a bunch of the TODA people that was supper nice out in sunset park. Then made at stop at brian westerhoff's wedding reception to hand a congratulations. The were a couple apple people there and it was great to seem of course.

Lastly for you internet kids out there I saw this new Weezer video that plays off all the big internet video hits of the last year or so. they got a lot of the people that were in the original videos to participate so it's really pretty cool. i posted it for you so check it out!

long post over!!!

Labels: friends, party

so how was kickball? well pretty good. let me tell you how it works. if you don't know or didn't go to grade school kickball is played much like baseball. Just a big red rubber ball in place of all the baseball equitment. here in NYC the game is played in 5 innings. We have kinda a large time so i got up to kick just one time. oh don't worry faithful i made the best of it. grounded out in the most dignified of ways. i believe the kickball league was really formed to give 20 somethings yet another reasons to drink on the weekdays. Although it's on mondays and i'm afraid my drinking mondays are over. the best part of kick ball is hanging out with michele and erin, oh so funny!

Saturday night kate and i went to a dinner club type situation at BVA's house called the rabbit's foot. Brian and Megan and are hosting a supper club once a month on saturdays. I'm going to be honest, things like that usually scare me a bit. It forces me to act a bit more grown up then i usually care to. i had to take my hoodie off and leave the fart jokes at home. All my fears were for not i must say. The dinner was amazing and everyone was supper nice. Many of my G2 friends where there and things were relaxed.... Jihee took a bunch of great shots and posted them on her flicker. I took one picture my self. the one you see below is a bunny made of a black olive. nice right?

Lastly I stopped by target to pick up the long awaited MARIO CART. This is one of the main reasons I got the wii and I can't wait to really get into it. I was just to tired to really play tonight but soon my friends. If you like marioKart Please come on by and pick up a wiimote, by door is always open. well, when I'm home. don't break in.

Labels: friends, technology

well spring is finally really here. I've hung up my black winter coat and dawned my orange wind breaker. i'm feeling unusually exhausted lately, so I'm ganna keep this one short. Saturday was beautiful so Kate (she updated)and i went to the park along with the rest of manhattan. I posted a couple of pictures in fames. turns out the first chance people get, the shirts come off in public. girls running around in bathing suits and hair dudes trying to look cool laying in the park getting much needed sun on any part of their bodiers. Poor Kate got flashed by some guy trying to change his shorts while wearing a towel. it was fine though it made her laugh hysterically. I got a little color on my face and unfortunately kate caught a cold.
Anyway sunday went to work for awhile and then went to union square and took some pictures. I got to use this slr when ever possible. any way check out ian's flickr. watch suddenly struttin for updates during a road trip this week. Oh i joined a kickball team and the games start monday so wish me luck. I'm out of shape like jim belushi
I took the skateboard pick a union square....... sorry no tricks!

Labels: friends, general

So if you haven't heard dport7 has lost one of it's most prestigious staff members. Ian Swanson shipped off this morning for singapore. Where the hell is that? you ask. Well it's on the other side of the damn world pal. A 22 hour plane ride from JFK to Hong Kong then 4 short hours to everyones favorite spot on the Malay Peninsula. Ian pretty much sold, gave, and threw way everything he owned to move for a year to southeast asia. Why did he go? Well the Company we work for is opening an office there and ian was chosen to go over there and help build that arm of the business. i know what you asking. Paul what does this mean for my bottom line? Well, I'm losing my best friend here in NYC and with that goes my most reliable drinking buddy this means i'll be reaching out to more of you in dport7 land to fill the gap. Maybe instead kate and i will build that life size paper mashay dinosaur we've been talking about. maybe I'll start reading books, or finally finish my master degree, or re-stain the deck, or learn to sing dance and play a instrument all at the same time. no matter what i do kate and i are ganna miss that guy.
Anyway to send ian off right we had a going away party for him at Kettle of Fish down in the west village. I have been stricken with a cold so i couldn't go full out party (which was heart breaking). A lot of people showed up (some pictures in frames) so it was a nice send off. Prof and alison came in from NC which was lovely. I took the opportunity to bust out the camera to make a well wishes video. If you were there and I didn't get you on the video I'm really sorry. sometimes i get shy about putting people on the spot..... at least for the sake of video............. Oh speaking of video, with ian leaving the final nail in the coffin has been thrust into dport7 flicks. Unless anyone else want to sacrifice a Saturday to shoot, this is the official end. kinda sad really.

(double click to play)

Labels: friends, travel

Hey everybody happy daylight savings time. I know it's been happy for me so far. I got out of work yesterday and the sun was still up. It was beautiful. In fact I even got home before dark. A special treat. Anyway, on Friday Kate and I went to see be kind rewind. Its a Michel Gondry movie with jack black and mos def. mos def works at a VHS video rental store. His best friend Jack Black lives by the power plant and becomes magnetized. This causes him to erase all the tapes on his next visit to the store. To save the store they remake all the movies on their own. I was really excited to see this movie the director is probably the single most creative person on the face of the earth. He uses simple camera tricks for most of his special effects which always seems more impressive than the CG over done mess that most of current movies rely on for entertainment. So did I love the movie you ask? Well yeah......... I thought it was great, but it just seemed to be missing something. I can't put my finger on it, maybe it was the people sitting behind us that insisted on making comments through the entire show. Why in the name of everything holy would you sit in a theater and say out loud " oh look at that" when something cool happens. "oh, look at that" really? You really want to make that comment. We are all sitting in a crowded dark theater watching a movie we payed to see. What are the chances we aren't paying attention to what's going on in front of us. So please if you talk during movies, don't. Its making me mad. Not just me by the way, everyone around you wants to slap you, and some day someone might.

Good news everyone I bought guitar hero for the wii on saturday. Yes its really fun. What I thought was cool was that the wiimote nests right in the guitar so no extra batteries needed. Kate and ian came over and got sucked back into the guitar hero black hole. Later Saturday night we all went to see my friend jon hildenstein play a small show in park slope. I'll say right off that the guy can really play guitar. The show was great and it was really nice to hang out with jon. It's been at least a year I bet.
Other than that I've just been busy with work, and trying to build more organic models in my free time. I build a mummy last weekend and I'm working on a model of a reindeer right now. I'll post some renderings soon.

Labels: friends, movies

so as we all know i have a phobia about aging. so i thought it might be a good idea to start hanging out with a younger crowd? this is aviv he's kind of hard to keep up with but i'm trying. (see picture below) was that funny at all? i think the older i get the more consistently less funny i get. it could be every year i'm more tired and i have less time alone with my brain to think of funny things. any way the real explanation to why there's a picture of me and a little baby on the site. my friend, co-worker, and member 95 jonathan eshe, jonathan and his lovely wife invited us over for their son's aviv 1 birthday. kate ian and i made the trip to hoboken and enjoyed the afternoon although by the time we left felt totally exhausted. I'm not really sure why though. (side note) i made the bowie shirt the kid has on. now that's a happy birthday.

other than that is was a slow weekend with out much to report. hey did anyone see the halfass golden globes announcements last night? i saw the people on NBC (i think) they had some tool reading the winners and not only was it less than entertaining but they guy the had the dumbest stuff to say i think I've ever heard. i could only find one youtube clip of this tool (the guy on the left) although this clip doesn't show just how dim this dude is.

lastly mac world is tuesday so look for the super cool coming your way!!!

Labels: apple, friends, party

alright everybody, well happy new year!!!! so for new years eve kate ian and i met up with michele and erin to go to allie's place for a new years party. it's kinda a weird college flash back. although we all collectively had a great time. I'm ganna be honest with you kate and i and everyones else for that matter bought in the new year with a bit too much to drink. it was great to see everyone.
Anyway lets talk about 2008. first off uncle urb and urbn cowboy is back. for those of you that have been around the dport7 halls for the past few years will remember. also bellafrench got a face lift for her site so check it out.
new years resolutions:
well i don't really have one. i just want to do more dport7 stuff. for you the reader. so get excited.
check out the FRAMES for the last shotes of 07...... soon to be replaced with 08 (sorry for the quality most were taken with iphones)

Labels: friends, holidays, party

hey guys. had the office holiday party on friday. it was pretty fun. we take the holiday party pretty seriously so it was as cool as can be. hung out with rebecca and her gang last night. she gave me a robot that she bought me a year ago. stopped by luke and laure's house a holiday hello. I'm working on some worth while content for you but as of now thing have kinda cooled off here. here's the robot.

hey so I was checking the stat's for the site just now and it seems like there are some folks in germany that love to visit the site. I'm pretty sure it most be some internet bot but is we have some german fans let me know i'll send you a t-shirt. oh hey we also got a hit from macedonia, the former yugoslav wow. I don't know what started the international craze but lets keep it up.

Labels: friends, holidays, party, robots

ok no picture today. I'll fill you in anyway. Last night ian Joel and I hit the town just like the old days. After starting at Pinkie Masters (which has not changed in the least, even some of the old regulars are still there). Then moved on to Vinnies and on to the rail pub. This was kinda hard for me because when I was here at school the rail pub was kind of the place to go. Now its just full of a bunch of lame kids sings really lame 90's shit rock karaoke. I sang peaches by the presidents of the united states of america and no one cared. Then we closed the bars down at some Scottish place on congress. You know they say you can never go back, and for as lame as that saying is its sooo true. You had your time and weather it was cool or not it seemed cool, and its impossible to remember it as any less then the best.

today was golf. Yes that's right I went golfing. I'm really horrible, although I had two good shots to at least save face alittle. We were playing a scramble (look it up) and I was on a team with bill (the groom) and the bride's father and brother. For not getting to bed till 4 the night before and getting up a 7 for the tee time i handeled myself pretty well. Had a pretty good time and didnt really hit the wall so to speak untill lunch time. Bill really carried our team. Of course we did our best to destroy the golf carts. But they always cap the speed on those things so you can't get them airborne.

Right now I'm waiting for Jenn Norwood to come pick me up so we can go to the kings inn to do some real karaoke. Jenn is a pro and I have a few killer songs in mind. I'm doing a neil diamond song in honor of both kate and brian. Also I'm going to see if jen wants to do the clash's train in vein with me. (if you dont know this song, go buy it. One of the best)

Labels: friends, travel, vacation, wedding

it's hard to describe really. when two blogs of this stature collide it is earth shattering. From friday at 9am to Sunday at 10am myself and brian lauvery/tony ritz/may other aliases enjoyed the very best of what chicago had to off. tony wrote a supurbe account of the events on suddenly struttin(believe the good things, i would never start a burrito fight). One of the highlights of the trip was a stop at threadless. Check out there site if you haven't head of it. they recently opened their one and only store in chiacgo not too far from brian. From there it was off the the best hot dog place in the world hot doug's. i had a BLT dog..... trust me crazy good. The rest of the day was spent at BOBinn a locals bar great time. i lost my grasp of concionsness at 9pm sadly and passed out on brian's friend paul's house (thanks paul). the next was more of the same good lunch some pumpkin carving and a uber late night getting to know more of the locals. also as a special surprise number2 jay purugganancame out for a few drinks a tons of fun. the kid can dance for real. Overall great time..... can't wait till next year!!!!! lots of pictures in FRAMES!!!

P.S.
if you've been reading this blog for a few years, you know how i hate flying because of delays and the people i sit by, ect. this trip was with out a doubt the best experiance ever. i even missed my flight home and had no trouble getting on the next one just one hour later. along with that both flights landed early there and back. SO united good on ya!!!!!! dport7 giving credit where credit is DUE.

Labels: friends, travel, vacation