Outdoor loners and weekend warriors rejoice. The good folks over at solshot for no longer making you have to have another soul tape your crazy ideas and countless boring minutes/hours/days of unusable footage. For 500 bucks you can have a personal digital cameraman follow you while you get all extreme and shit. Starting today, sponser me tapes are at a whole new level.

Bad news for global soccer. Rueters has reported a huge soccer fixing operation based in Singapore. We are talking a HUUUUGE HUUUGEE ring that seems to cross all countries and continents. Match fixing is nothing new in soccer. Gambling is nothing new in Asia or the rest of the world for that matter. But the corruption uncovered is at a level never seen in my life and puts a black eye on all of sports. At least in the short term it gives a bit of substance to every kook at the end of bar that talks how the fix is in on the game, whether drunk or not. I never payed much attention to “that guy”. Now it seems like we all have to give the idea of a game being fixed by a dirty ref or dirty player a possibility.

These things seem to stick there head up once every decade. The last one that comes to mind was the Tim Donaghy scandal with the NBA. That left the league with a bad rep for a few years and made the basketball hating-old school game loving purists reason to hate even more. I still can’t help but wonder about a bad call in the final minutes of a close game…was the fix in? It’s a shame to even have to consider it and in the end the lesson learned is…don’t gamble on sports and don’t invest so much time in games that clearly are filled with corruption at every level.

The best thing about sports is getting out and playing them yourselves.

Here is the word from the AP:

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has agreed to expedite a proposed $30 million dredging project to protect sections of Ocean Parkway damaged during Superstorm Sandy.

More than 1 million cubic yards of sand would be deposited on the beaches at Gilgo and Robert Moses state parks. The funding is included in the Sandy Supplement Aid Package. It’s awaiting approval by the House of Representatives.

Sen. Charles Schumer announcement the agreement on Monday. The Corps will immediately allocate $350,000 for the project’s engineering and design.

Schumer told Newsday (http://bit.ly/VcTRhL0 ) the project will benefit commuters, tourism, fishermen and businesses that rely on a passable Fire Island Inlet.

The $33.2 million project also includes dredging sand from Fire Island Inlet to restore five miles of dunes at Gilgo and Tobay beaches.

Why the hell was my man Howard Stern recording Melo’s bench conversations for Jimmy Dolan? Or is that a possessed Weird Al Yankovic? Whoever it is, this NY Post pic makes the dude look really scary, and not to mention very thirsty. How much energy does it take to sit there with a plastic bowl on your lap? Apparently 2 bottles worth. And more to the point, why the hell did Melo get all bent out of shape because KG said his wifes nipples look like Honey Nut Cheerios . Next time relax a bit Melo, take it to him on the court and not at the bus stop.

Last night was my 5th game of the season. It’s been a great run so far and I was excited and worried to see the Rockets come into town. Last game they humbled us a bit by running the floor and making some easy baskets. Last night was no different. Without Melo we struggled to find a consistent scorer after the first quarter. Houston seemed to score with ease all night and we couldn’t keep pace.

In a game of few highlights, on notable was watching Jeremy Lin miss the front end of a horrible technical foul call on Tyson Chandler. Are we not allowed to foul hard in the NBA anymore? Weak call! But we got our temporary revenge on the subsequent when we chanted BALL DONT LIE. It’s quickly become the Garden chant of the month. Honorable mention to Crazy Legs Chris Copeland…the only player more out of control and still able to score buckets this side of Jeremy Lin.

Next up Gene will be in the house on Sunday the 23rd against the Twolves. We will be coming off a tough stretch of 4 games in 6 days, hopefully we can come out with a winning record. Lets go!

Will see you next week at Northport High School for the last fair of the winter. After that it’s a much needed vacation over the Holidays and then straight back to the studio for some new art.

- Gene and James

Happy to announce a contest for some free Trail of Dead tickets at Irving Plaza tomorrow night at 6pm. All you have to do is go over and like us (metalbox design group) on facebook and reply in this post.
4 winners will be chosen and you will each get a pair of tickets that you can pick up at the show.

Thanks to Trail of Dead and Live Nation for the support. Looking forward to the show.

Super cool little gadget on kickstarter for all the instagram addicts out there. Am going to buy a few as Christmas gifts. Can make for a fun night the next the power go’s out.

Funny Video put together by Kid Rock.

One sure way we felt we could help is to donate all of our profits from this month’s sales to a few families that got rocked by the storm. We are both born and raised in Lindenhurst so it feels right to help out a family from our area. We also have a lot of mutual love and respect for the people of Long Beach that have been such big supporters of us over the years. We will give back. Keep on checking back for some updates on where we stand and we appreciate you spreading the word. We hope to get a couple of thousand dollars up and spread that to 3-4 families around the holidays. At the very least they can get some needed clothes, food or maybe a nice meal and a glass of wine to forget there troubles for a while.

Here are a few images we made to remind us that we will rebuild and get things back to better than they were.