The Xtreme Video Fest
 
On Wednesday night I ended up attending the Xtreme Video Fest held at the Westin New York at Times Square.
 
This was actually an awards show acknowledging the chosen best in categories such as best xtreme cinematography and best xtreme editing. There were eight short films ranging from 2 minutes in length (Xtreme Sport: Kite Surfing)  to 70 minutes in length (High Life - a film on skiing and snowboarding which won the best overall xtreme video award).
 
My personal favorite was The Texas Paragliding Massacre which won the best xtreme story award.  The film by Darryl Czuchra was about Will Gladd's attempt (along with other fliers) to break the flat-land flying distance record (successful atempt BTW - oh sorry should I have said something about spoilers?) .
 
For those unfamilar with flat-land paragliding basically a flyer is towed from "flat land" up to about 1,000 feet above the ground behind a truck (think kid running with kite at the beach but instead of a kid you have a big pickup truck and instead  of a kite you have a crazy person with a parachute). Once in the air the flyers try to find thermals to take them even higher and then glide hoping to hit more thermals to allow them to get more distance.
 
There was supposed to be one guest speaker but there ended up being two. Thomas Lucas spoke about his experiences filming tornado chasers (from the University of Massachusetts - Go Minutemen!) for a Nova special. The guy from High Life was also there (sorry I forgot his name). I was going to challenge the guy from High Life to some xtreme thumb wrestling after the show but I couldn't stick around (you can see trailers from the movie on this page) .
 
My favorite part of the night was the fact that the event had door prizes. Every once and a while between films the lights would go up and the MC dude (that seems the most apt description) would pick a winner via raffle tickets we were given on our way in. He would pick a winner and then say something rad as the ticket winner recieved their prize.
 
One time this big black guy won and when the MC dude saw him he said "Right On!" and just started nodding his head Spiccoli like. I had to chuckle to myself because I found this so Starksy and Hutch. Of course the next number to be picked was my own. I forget what the MC dude said but it wasn't "Right On!" So shy guy that I am I ask, "What no Right On for me?" So the MC dude went back to the microphone and gave me my "Right On!" After the handshake and pictures I lifted my prize above my head and gave the room my best Howard Dean, "Yeahhhhhh!"
 
Fuck it - I only knew one person in the room and he thought it was funny.
 
My prize BTW - was a copy of Final Draft Version 7 (professional scriptwriting software - a $229 value) . And so a screenwriter was born, "Yeahhhhhh!" You can probably look for episodes of Days of our Red Sox on these pages to come.