little lost robot

Here’s a quick shot from one of the “Geoff on the Road” live segments that I shot this evening. I spent the entire two hours at this Spartanburg athletic club defending my camera lens and crotch from getting nailed by rogue volleyballs (of death).

This previous post has another, similar crotch-defending photo - which I’m starting to see as a disturbing trend (especially if Geoff and I end up doing segment at a shooting range).

Today was a rather busy day at work, although I don’t recall if any of the stories I shot were even in the newscasts. My last story was a definite non-story. I was sent out to a possible drowning on a river. When I rolled up into the scene, I put on my game face and started getting shots of the area until a fireman came up to me and said, “This isn’t a news story” - which is exactly what people say when they don’t want it to be a news story…even though it clearly is, but in this case he was right, as the drowning was a false alarm (someone saw an abandoned boat on the lake and thought the worst). When I called back to the station to update them, my assignment editor called it a “chocolate sauce” story, which made me chuckle. That referred back to an infamous incident in which a local law enforcement department suspected that there had been a grisly murder at an area hotel, but were later corrected when the out-of-town forensic investigator showed up and informed them that the ‘blood’ smeared on the sheets and walls was just chocolate sauce.

That was the end of the day. In my first part of the day I was conversing with country western musician, Michael Peterson as he talked about an upcoming concert and his message urging young people to give back to the community. When the newsroom folks first said, “Do you know who Michael Peterson is?” my initial (incorrect) response was, “It’s that guy that killed his wife, right?” But, it turns out I was thinking of two other men in the news with a similar last name.

I really don’t know much about country artists, but I figured it’d be a good idea to get a photo with him. You know, in case it turned out to be a big deal to someone back at work. It’d be like another photog coming back into the newsroom and saying, “I just got back from interviewing some guy called Morrissey” right before I flipped out and accidentally punched him in excitement.

I spent a while this afternoon going through a batch of old photos, and scanning them onto the hard drive of my laptop. I’m doing a little photo project with them, but I guess it’s also cool to have digital backups of these decades old photos. Here’s one of my brother and I half-posing for an Olan Mills portrait:

I think this one was one of the outtake proofs that they give you to look through before placing your order. My mother used a similar tactic with my senior portraits, giving out some of the painfully bad proofs to random relatives instead of ordering extra wallet sized cards of the chosen ones. Anyway, I really like this photo and I’m thinking of giving the sideburns and moptop haircut a chance again (as you might remember: I still have the blue suit).

As much as everyone hates (or maybe secrely loves) all the Britney Spears media coverage these days, hearing about her every exploit can get rather taxing. However, the massive Rolling Stone cover story devoted to her (full version online now) is beyond fascinating. Here’s my absolute favorite passage:

If there is one thing that has become clear in the past year of Britney’s collapse — the most public downfall of any star in history — it’s that she doesn’t want anything to do with the person the world thought she was. She is not a good girl. She is not America’s sweetheart. She is an inbred swamp thing who chain-smokes, doesn’t do her nails, tells reporters to “eat it, snort it, lick it, fuck it” and screams at people who want pictures for their little sisters.

Zing!

My video assignment today wasn’t all that exciting, but I did find a silver lining in the way of freaky rubber masks.

I was at the local Red Cross office, shooting a news segment urging people to update their CPR skills. Like all CPR stories, at some point the mannequin victim comes out of the bag for a demonstration. Today none of them were outfitted with faces! I guess I didn’t realize that they had removable faces, but it makes sense now that I think about it.

I also didn’t realize they kept hundreds of rubber faces in large, plastic storage bins. At first glance it’s seemed quite freakish, causing me to feel like the guy who wandered into Leatherface’s house to ask for directions, glanced around at furniture made of animal parts, and then thought, “Something is not right here.”

Actually it way more like being at a thrift store in 2059, looking through bins for replacement parts for a crappy household robot. And while I was there…I found a robot baby!

Fact: Robot babies don’t cry, they emit ringtones - which is still rather annoying.

Today’s video assignment found me bouncing around in a fishing speedboat as female “Bassmaster” Janet Parker ripped across Lake Hartwell at the nautical equivalent of 120mph. Along the way, we hit some rough patches and got blasted with freezing water, but her makeup help-up remarkably well.

She’s in town as part of the media circus surrounding ESPN’s Bassmaster tournament thing [video]. I’ve been told repeatedly today that it’s the “Superbowl of the fishing world” - but without all the semi-entertaining television advertisements. I left work at the end of the day with two thoughts running through my mind: 1)”I find myself oddly interested in the world of professional sport fishing; 2) I’m so thankful that I didn’t drop my XDCam in the lake today. Read more

I’m at home this evening recovering from the station’s (unofficial) football tournament, in which I was an actual footballer this year. I’ve been lying about reading my old-timey horror novel, “The Terror” and realized that at the same moment I was reading about English sailors suffering terrible wounds and freezing in the Arctic, I was kinda freezing in our apartment and aching from this weekend’s activities, so I could relate in a way.

I never posted photos from our Valentines Day, as we have a “no laptops on Lost night” rule in effect. When I asked my wife if she wanted to go out for a romantic Valentines dinner, she replied, “I don’t know. I don’t really want us to miss Lost.” So I did some quick planning and threw together a Lost-themed Valentines Dinner, covering every exposed food/drink label with Dharma Initiative logos.

Shortly after greeting her at the door dressed like one of The Others, we had a fun Polynesian kabob dinner and watched two episodes of Lost. And now, a few days later the Dharma logo had disappeared from most of the apartment, although we still have a two liter bottle of Dharma Initiative Diet Sierra Mist lingering in the refrigerator.

In a galaxy not so far, far away (Hollywood) the popular trend right now seems to be the unnecessary remaking of classic films and television programs, recasting them with an energetic young ensemble cast. Although, I should point out they’re no longer called remakes - they have catchy buzzwords like “jumpstart” or “reboot” to describe them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m actually looking forward to seeing the JJ Abram’s Star Trek reinvigoration and the much-rumored John Singleton A-Team film. However, all the horror movie remakes, I can do without.

Here’s a look the cast of my imaginary Star Wars reboot that I’ve been invited to pretend-direct:

Han Solo (played by Josh Holloway).
Let’s just get it out of the way and say that he’s pretty much already playing Han Solo on Lost. Maybe I just want to see Sawyer in space. I have a feeling he’s going to be a mega-star and it’s only a matter of time until you see him in at least six movies a year. He’ll be the new Clive Owen.

Princess Leia (played by Anne Hathaway).
I really had to fight the studio execs on this one, as they wanted Jessica Alba for the part. Luckily she was busy shooting Fantastic Four: Another CGI Villain and wouldn’t be available for months. Also, I had went into the project looking at Mandy Moore for the role, but after taking a lunch with Anne (mineral water and vitamins) I knew she was who I wanted as my space diva.

Luke Skywalker (played by Shia LaBeouf)
This one I had nothing to do with, the studio execs forced my hand in casting Lebeouf. I think it’s a good casting choice though, Shia’s got the acting chops and he’ll make a believable farm boy turned intergalactic hero. We originally tested Michael Cera and Paul Walker for the role, but neither of them really worked out.

Obi Wan Kenobi (Played by Hugo Weaving)
When I think of weird mystical guys, Albus Dumbledore and Hugo Weaving come to mind. Only one of them is a real person, so Hugo landed the part. I think he’ll be a pretty kick-ass Obi Wan, and I’ve also secretly cast him as Emperor Palpatine in my imaginary sequel. You have to pretend-wait until 2013 to see how that pans out.

Lando Calrissian (played by Blair Underwood)
I know Lando isn’t even in the original Star Wars movie that I’m remaking, but since this is a “reboot” I’m gonna just add him to the trilogy early (Spoiler: He shoots Greedo). I chose Underwood because I’ve seen him in like ninety television shows this year, he’s a great actor, and his random search engine imagine actually looked sorta Lando-ish.

That’s as far as I got with the casting decisions before I daydreamed that Executive Producer, George Lucas stepped in and decided to make the rest of the cast entirely out of CGI - which is probably a good thing since I thought it’d be funny to have Rick Moranis show up as Shia LaBeouf’s Darth Father. Also, I’m close to inking an imaginary-deal with Ricky Gervais to voice C3PO for the trilogy. The weird thing about this completely pointless exercise is how I was able to cast a movie that looks borderline terrible, and yet somewhat entertaining at the same time.

build a ROBOT cupcakes!, originally uploaded by hello naomi.

Another awesome “robot-related photo find” while aimlessly surfing around on Flickr. I’ve never wanted to eat cupcakes more than I do right now. There’s a ton more awesome cupcake photos on naomi’s set. This makes me wonder (or perhaps hope) that someday a robot afficianado will stumble across one of my robot things on Flickr and freak out, as well.