Chris Raftis

Huh, this thing still exists?

Did you pick up your copy of The Daily Freeman today? If not, then you would have missed this.

So, in honor of MySpace wiping out everybody's Project Playlist player, this seems to be the most appropriate time to direct everybody to Blip.fm, a great way to share your own favorite tunes with everybody else.



Be sure to add Gargos and aksarah to your lists of DJ's and start posting.

Late to the party as usual. Gotta get better about updating these things more.

-- Last Friday's Dir en grey show was fucking incredible. Best of the 3 times I've seen them live. This is also now in my possession.

-- Got to referee for the Albany vs. Utica bout in the Washington Ave. Armory up in Albany. That was the largest crowd I've ever been in front of and it was a hell of a good time.

-- It's good to know that I'm not nearly the only one that thinks these could be the worst possible advertisements ever... and that they get played WAY too much.

-- And a big FUCK YOU goes out to ABC for essentially canning Pushing Daisies, the only thing worth watching on network television. Guess I'll have another free hour on Wednesday nights now.

In honor of this awesome past weekend, and the Hudson Valley Horrors improving to 4-1 for the season, here's a whole bunch of stuff that's out there for everybody to see:

Vs. Pocono HighRollers back on 8/24
Vs. Long Island Roller Rebels on 6/7
Vs. Morristown on 9/27

Only 2 matches remain for the season. The last home match in Hyde Park on October 26th (this is going to be one hell of a match), and then the final match just announced with Suburbia (Westchester) on 11/1 down in Yonkers.

Monday marks the first official day in my new position. It'll be nice getting out of the classroom I've failed to fall asleep in for the last 8 weeks. Bowling resumed about 5 weeks ago, and every time I think I have a free weekend, some new party or event comes up, so hooray for no free time! I literally started posting this blog on the 29th and only just now got around to finishing it.

Damn, well over a month since I've last updated. Need to get better at this (and have more free time) since I've had way too much happening lately to remember it all.

I've been keeping up with my referee duties. A match at the end of June with Maine Roller Girls that was incredibly intense, suspenseful, and close in score the entire match. Hudson Valley won by a mere 3 points at the end. Yay! I was also asked to referee a match between Utica and Syracuse. This was Utica's debut match and they needed some extra help and it turned out to be a great night. No pressure at all that night since neither of the teams really knew me personally, just a night to go out, have fun and enjoy the match. In about 2 weeks time, the 24th, is the next home match against Pocono. That'll be a hell of a lot of fun with a bunch of our newer skaters getting their first shots in this match.

The only other thing to really note as of late is the promotion I just got from work! They announced the position well over a month ago, but were unable to post it awaiting approval. The approval had finally gone through I suppose and they wasted no time in asking for resumes a week ago today. Got mine out that night and then suddenly there was a surprise interview on Monday in house. Out of the 3 positions available, 2 of them were pretty much decided before it started considering the experience level of the others I knew were applying. It's was pretty much a fight for position #3. I didn't know of any others who were applying, but I guess it turns out a bunch of people did. By Thursday afternoon, they offered me and the 2 others I thought would get it the positions. Today was my last day in my current position and I'll be starting training on Monday. It was pretty cool to know that a bunch of people had put some good words in for me too there which didn't hurt matters. It's pretty amazing the change that's happened in the last year and half since leaving that old, poor excuse of a job I had prior to this.

Life is good.

All you get is this link to the tickets:

Hudson Valley Horrors vs. Maine Roller Derby. June 28th @ 7PM

And if you haven't seen them yet, photos from May's bout are online

This (among many others) just hit my house (and hopefully not my car). Unfortunately, the storm is still too intense outside to check for sure. It sounded like people were hammering on the roof, then bits of whatever broke apart would fall down from there. Pretty sure this could have been part of something larger before it landed.

Better late than never. The first official bout I got to ref for was completely insane. The Horrors managed to take off to a 22 point lead going into halftime and kept most of it intact to finish ahead, 95 to 84, in their first win of the team's relatively short career so far. People in the crowd were going nuts, the team themselves were quite ecstatic rightfully so, and us refs had to be pleased that the game went without much incident, save for a few great spills by our outside pack refs!

Bout photos (will be updated as more people add their own photos to it)

Best thing about it all, we get to do it all again this weekend out in Bethpage when the Horrors take on the Long Island Roller Rebels. Sweet!

Thanks to everybody for all the birthday shouts, now get out there and watch some hot rollergirl action Saturday night