Originally uploaded by photomatt.

Matt and I literally crossed paths with Dave Chappelle tonight. The story of how we bumped into him is here, and the photo of the parking ticket that Chappelle handed back to me after I dropped it is here.

As I mentioned before, this year at South by Southwest, I was asked to do a presentation at 20×2, and my goal was to answer the question “What if?” in 2 minutes along with 19 other fellow speakers that had 2 minutes each of their own to take a swing at that same question.

I was on a panel at SXSWi this year (more on that later if you haven’t found it all over the internet by now), but nothing occupied my time more than prepping for 20×2. I must have reworked the concept of the presentation over and over in my head for days and weeks but couldn’t settle on anything. (The concept before this one for the record was: “What if Google wasn’t indexing everything I was writing?” Lame, I know, but a common problem for bloggers.)

Not having anything to work with, I proceeded to grossly take advantage of the torrential downpour the day before 20×2 to get to work on my presentation. After tinkering around with subject matter that I didn’t particularly feel very passionate about, I then scrapped everything I was working on and started fresh with 24 hours to go before showing my piece publicly.

For the record, the YouTube file above is not the original file that was shown at 20×2. In fact, I had to enlarge the fonts on several screens for that version to be readable. The actual presentation I showed is here, in its original form.

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My alma mater, Albany, is the No. 13 seed in the 2007 NCAA Division I Mens’ Basketball Tournament this year! This is the second year in a row they’ve made the tourney, and I’m absolutely thrilled to tell you the truth.

When I went to college, the UAlbany Great Danes were a Division III program and just about the only thing we were known for was the fact that the New York Giants used our fields for summer training. (Back then, I was a student athlete, but I did not go to college to participate in sports, though I could have and recieved scholarships for these things from other schools.) I thought as a student I’d never see the day that Albany would end up on ESPN as I sipped mojitos at a bar in Austin, Texas. That’s essentially how I found out this year. (more…)

Those who know me can pretty much tell you that a lot of my brain space is taken up memorizing a great deal of minutia. I am an elephant of elephants, able to memorize the most painstaking detail of things: birthdays that were mentioned once, phone numbers for friends in grammar school, when I’ve actually met someone in real life, and in some cases, I’m able to recount whole days to find your lost items if I was with you that day. It is both my blessing and my curse; I’m sure that more pertinent information has leaked from my head in life as a result.

One of these things taking up space is for me to memorize scenes from Star Wars — or Scarface, or the Breakfast Club, or a bunch of other movies… but mostly Star Wars. My penchant for reciting whole scenes for Star Wars is sometimes both terrifying and amusing to people close to me. That being said, in the vein of whipping off one-liners from Star Wars verbatim, no one should be surprised to know that I attended the “One-Man Star Wars Trilogy” the other night.

I was given a press pass, so there’s the disclaimer. However, I think I realize two particular things as a result of this event: 1) I didn’t know Return of the Jedi as well as I thought I did, and 2) think that my obvious bias for the awesome geekiness shows too much.

So, here are the facts: Charles Ross, the “one man” behind the “One-Man Star Wars Trilogy” has been doing exactly what the show promises in the title for the past 5 years — making him a professional geek for sure. Not only is he licensed by Lucasfilm, but now is currently in San Francisco Bay Area (the home of Lucasfilm and its’ associated properties) for a 14-day run. The last 7 days of Ross’ show are coming up at the Post Street Theatre from Tuesday, March 6th through Sunday, March 11th.

So without too much more editorial on my part, here’s the interview that I taped that Matt did with Charles Ross after his hour-long performance on opening night here in SF. (Sorry about the lighting; it wasn’t too good to tell you the truth.)