little lost robot

Tomorrow, I’ll be jumping a plane for the Northwest. Can’t wait. I’ve been busy trying to get a bunch of projects done before I leave (including this week’s “click”) that I almost forgot about the most awesome thing I got in my email yesterday.

I’ve been hanging onto it for the past 24 hours, wondering if I should post it. But since I already posted the “rough sketch” last week, I figured the cat’s already out of the bag (presuming that keeping cats hidden away in bags until they’re forcibly dumped out for enjoyment is still an acceptable practice).

This is what I look like in a post-apocalyptic comic book world!

Bax did an amazing job drawing my new site banner (and now it’s off to get colorized). I look kinda husky and rugged - which not only comes from carrying around a bunch of camera equipment, but also from running from homicidal robots and radioactive zombies. The detail on my XDCAM is amazing right down to the scratch marks from when I dropped it! Anyway, There’s a mini version of the whole drawing after the jump… Read more

Every now and again comes a moment where you have to just make a snap decision and live with it. Today I had to make such a decision when I learned that Michael York was waiting in our lobby (ee was here promoting his touring Camelot show). I was carrying a bunch of stuff and was about to rush out the door to lunch and run errands.

Snap decision: Do I “wander out into the lobby” and “just happen” to see Logan Michael York, strike up a “conversation” and then somehow work it into me pulling out my digital camera and awkwardly asking for a photo. — or — Do I go to lunch and not act like a jackass?

Lunch won. I snapped a pic of the interview off the monitor later. And I Must say: I made great strides today, when I decided for once to NOT go be a weirdo fanboy - rather than running out there and rocking his face with a bunch of stuff about how I love a movie he made in 1976.

Of course, now I wish I did it. I mean I’m the guy that knocked over the elderly man that played Luke Sywalker’s Uncle in Star Wars, it couldn’t have been worse than that, right?

Oh man. I can not wait for my mini-vacation coming up in two days. Ky and I will be hopping a plane for PDX, where we’ll be kicking it all over the 503. Plans include: eating Gorgonzola fries at Henry’s, drinking Northwest microbrews, and meeting-up with all the friends and fam. Heck, I might just walk around all day with my laptop open, getting free wi-fi - just because I can.

I’ve been to busy to send out emails to all my peeps, so hopefully one or two of my friends still check my blog. (insert sound of pin dropping). Luckily our trip will be short enough that I’ll be back here before my Publix diet sweet tea addiction kicks in.

I’ve been getting a bunch of emails from friends about the Daylight Saving glitch coming up in a few weeks. Basically it boils down to this: daylight savings is early by a month, some software isn’t ready, a half-dozen computers might be off by an hour when the day eventually arrives.

Such an intriguing concept made it a perfect subject for this week’s “Click on JL” videocast…

[If the YouTube video doesn’t work - here’s the video on my station’s video player]

I had a heck of a time not saying (or writing) Daylight Savings - with an “s” - which, to me, is the preferred nomenclature. But I figured I’d rather just write it the boring way and not have to deal with emails from librarians and AP style fascists.

Each year I kinda get all into American Idol, arbitrarily picking my favorite performer and then cheering them along until they’re voted off. This year’s decision has been a whole lot easier since one of the “final 24″, Chris Sligh, is from Greenville (and the PDX guy was booted off last week - which is fine because he seemed like a total jerk).

Adding to that, a dozen people (some as far away as New Zealand) have been saying to me, “That guy on American Idol last night reminded me of you.” My singing voice isn’t as good as Sligh’s, but we definitely both have an affinity for eyewear and sarcasm.

So this year, I’m now backing two people: Obama and Sligh (which is bound to be better than last year’s: Baltar and Daughtry).

In other music-related news:

After receiving an invite from Dinah, I signed up for iLike. I’m gonna deck out my profile, but I’m still on-the-fence about using the iTunes plugin sidebar thing (but I probably will).

I was gonna wait and unveil my new (and soon to be permanent) site banner when it’s all finished and ready to put up on the site, but instead I thought that it’d be cool show off a little preview sketch.

The layout sketch is rough, so in case you couldn’t tell: involves robots, aliens, zombies and my Sony XDCAM.

Quick recap of the past few days:
1. I shot a story entirely about light bulbs on Monday.
2. I had a devestating AVID editor meltdown Monday night (leading well into this morning). I got a bunch of horrble, scary pop-up alerts while trying to get the problem corrected [see image below].

That message was the ‘friendliest’ by far, and it’s basically saying that I’m in danger of losing all of my projects. [update: I got all of my projects back, but most of them have balck holes in them now, where random video clips used to be.]

3. Yesterday morning I found out that the drive-thru coffee shop ladies have nicknames for all of the regulars that pass through. Apparently name is, “Soy Almond Joy Boy”, which is basically my beverage of choice. While I was there they called another guy, “Lean Cuisine”. Who knows? I might’ve passed someone nicknamed “Chai Guy” on the street and didn’t even know it.

4. Speaking of coffee-related weirdness: Some paparazzi have been snapping shots of the actors in downtown Greenville. Kinda surreal seeing Renee Zellweger walking out of our one downtown Starbucks with that half-annoyed-half-suprised expression as she trogs along with two veniti drinks cradled in her arms. Wonder what her coffee nickname would be? Ideas anyone?

Here’s two things I’m thinking about on this mild Monday evening:

1. I’ve been putting random videos up on YouTube, and much to my surprise the one that’s been getting the most comments and mail is the Klingon guy who sings karaoke. Who knew? Well today, I got a video response [link] to my robot humps video. I would’ve embedded it but it’s kinda NSFW (as the word “humps” now becomes a verb rather than a noun).

2. My favorite mp3 right now is “Proper Education” by Eric Prydz, which was officially released just under 2 weeks ago. It’s an electro-dance remake of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brink in the Wall 2″. Sounds terrible, right? Well, once that synth line kicks in you’ll be won’t think so. [Here’s an mp3 link to the longer, club mix: “Proper Education (Club Mix)” - via Shot Callin’].

Today I had a pretty fun assignment: ride along with one of the Verizon Wireless base-line tech guys. Basically, that means he’s the real-life equivalent of the “can you hear me now?” guy. His name was Andre - and much to his credit - he let me shoot all kinds of weird angles, ask super-annoying questions, and drove me all around the area as he tried to do his job.

And here’s the video link to my “Click on JL: Can you Hear Me Now?” segment.

[video working again - I still blame Vista.]

In completely unrelated news: I’m obsessed with the astronaut-turned-crazy-ass story. I like how she wore adult diapers so that she could drive 1,000 miles without stopping to use the restroom, but then probably had to do all her knife weilding psycho stuff with poopy pants. I really wanted our producers to write in the lede, “she may be an astronaut, but she’s no rocket scientist”, but they wouldn’t go for it. All the networks have had funny things to say, like Fox News had a line like, “she traded in her flight suit for a jail uniform” and another branded the story “Lust in Space.” I know, I know…every place of work has some crazy behind-the-scenes stuff going on. I’m sure that NASA probably had to fire someone for surfing internet porn or misplacing space plans, but this story is just too weird to ignore, you know?