little lost robot

I’ve been busy finding things to keep my mind distracted from waiting impatiently for Grand Theft Auto IV’s release on Tuesday. Like what? Well, I’ve been going onto Wikipedia to look-up which historical figures are going to be beheaded on upcoming episodes of The Tudors.

It seems that my pal Hasser has also been doing things to keep himself occupied. Things such as: sending me random packages from his home base in San Francisco. Upon opening the mysterious box, I discovered (and photographed) the following contents:

1. Pootie Tang DVD - which he borrowed from me in 2002 and apparently never returned.
2. A framed photograph of the two of us taken moments before our historic cross-county road trip in 2005.
3. DVD ROM entitled, “Awesome Shit 2008″

Naturally, I’m intrigued by what’s on this disc, and I plan on popping it into my laptop in just a few minutes. I thought it wise to do this blog post first, in case Hasser jokingly sent me the AWSUM_$HIT_08 virus, effectively nuking my HP Pavillion. Until I post an update of the disc’s contents, feel free to use the comments forum below to speculate on what he could’ve sent me. [Also, I just sorta used a line from Dune as the title for this post. I’m not sure if it’s just lazy or insanely geeky. Both, I imagine.]

UPDATE: Awesome Shit 2008 contains: Several music collections, including the complete Hall and Oats discography; Several cracked software suites, and the programs to properly open and install them.

That’s right: my office. I’ve been given my own workspace back in the Creative Services department, as I fill-in for one of our promo-producers while she’s away this summer on maternity leave. I’ll be splitting up my work week by shooting news stories the first half, and following it up by begging random photogs for the video I need to cut promos during the rest of the week. Enough about all that…back to my office…

It’s actually a small, closet-ish space, but I’m certainly not complaining. I’m loving it. And while today is my first official day working out of my office, I’ve wasted no time getting it all decorated to my liking. I’m keeping it mostly professional. Back when I had a mancave at home, my computer workspace was covered with all kinds of geeky memorabilia - making it look like a wealthy middle-school kid lived there. My place at work is much more tasteful. Here’s a quick by-the-numbers tour:

1. Dazzler (issue #1 -mint) - Who doesn’t love a laser-light superheroine on disco rollerskates? Dazzler might not be the most popular mutant in the Marvel universe (something the jackasses in the comic shop remind me of on a regular basis), but she did save the X-men from the Hellfire Club back in the day. So there!

2. Lost promotional poster – It’s signed by half the original castaways. I know it’s an ABC show and I work at an NBC affiliate, but they have yet to give me a Heroes poster…

3. Dolls Action Figures – The Punisher and Captain Kirk remain vigilantly at red alert over by my desk lamp.

4. Robot 2000 – I think it’s pretty obvious that I’d end up with one of these on my desk, right?

5. Top secret May sweeps plans - I probably shouldn’t talk too much about this one.

6. Photos – This is a bunch of cute photos of me and my wife arranged on a weird sputnik-looking thing I got at Urban Outfitters.

7. Cobra Commander – He’s a long way from his serpentine lair, but there’s important stuff in my office that he needs to oversee (meanwhile his subordinates plot against him in his absence).

8. WYFF Photog Staff Photo – This is so I don’t forget where I come from, even though I’m still slinging a camera and tripod half the week.

9. Flowers? – I got this lovely bouquet from my wife to place on my desk. I’m keeping it in front of the television, so that I’m not tempted to watch Rachel Ray and Judge Judy all day.

10. Lotus Notes office suite - Just terrible.

Today’s shooting assignment took me to the sleepy, little town of Jonesville to shoot video of a controversial church sign. The pastor wanted to call attention to the fact that Barack Obama has a similar last name to Osama Bin Laden’s first name - a similarity that perhaps makes him a Muslim, despite the fact he’s a practicing Christian and has denounced the Muslim claim about a trillion times.

To my surprise, many of the church’s neighbors found the sign offensive, and one lady even asserted, “No, I don’t think that they are brothers.” Personally, I find the sign offensive on several levels, and many for reasons of bad grammar and punctuation. Perhaps the pastor doesn’t have a question mark tablet. I’ll let that one pass. But, “Humm?” Pretty weak. [All that said, the pastor was a really nice guy and we were thankful he granted us an interview.]

Here’s a sneak peek at the WYFF photography staff photo for this year’s NPPA magazine mention. [Perhaps you may remember me bragging about it: we won the Medium Market Television Station of the Year award again this year.]

Zellmer took the photo, and he’s such an awesome photog that he was able to be in the photo at the same time. Now, doesn’t that blow your mind?

This weekend the wife and went down to Myrtle Beach for the South Carolina AP Awards. Hours before the ceremony we found ourselves feeding the disgusting catfish in the pond at Broadway at the Beach. For only a quarter you get to see hundreds of fish and water fowl battle over cheap food pellets, dropped from the grubby hands of somewhat loving tourists.

I used the nifty, new video service on Flickr to embed the following video clip. It’s a perfect way to share the occasional, short videos shot with digital cameras along with your sets of still photos.

Later, in a different spot we fed the fish again. This time baby ducks joined the fray, fighting for food [video clip]. I can only describe it as: sad-awesome-disgusting-rad.

Okay, maybe it’s lazy blogging to occasionally embed Onion News Network videos, but this one totally made my day. I would watch CSPAN all day long if it went something like this:

It’ would be totally pronk if this word soon skyrocketed to popularity on the internet - or at the very least, Virginia’s 11th District.

I’ve been enjoying a nice week off from blogging, and a few days off work. I didn’t really get out much. What’s new? Someone lit a car on fire in a driveway bordering the back of our apartments. That was fun. I mostly hung out by the security gate, letting emergency personnel into the complex, but I was still able to see the car explode.

While driving home the other night, I saw a dumbass driving down the road with two “20″ LCD screens installed in front of the passenger seats of his car. He also had a smaller screen mounted on the dashboard. It was - seriously - the most ridiculous, distracting thing ever.

I wasn’t able to get a really clear shot, but in this photo you can kinda see what I’m talking about. You can also see the driver that was tailgating him for about a mile. She was really into the show he was watching as he cruised about aimlessly, hoping to impress folks.

I’ve had a ton of folks ask me if I’ll be in Vegas for the NAB show this year. Sadly, I’ll be missing it for once - in the same year that all my other peeps seem to be going. I won’t really miss checking out all the expensive tech toys on the convention center floor. But I will miss kickin’ it with the other photogs at the b-roll.net bash. Instead, I’ll be following Lost Remote’s always-exceptional coverage of the convention, and hoping that Kevin Johnson or Lenslinger will send me a random camera phone pic from the show. I’ll also be playing a lot of Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 in which I’ll be fighting domestic terrorists that have taken over the same (virtual) convention center.

This pic may look like the million other weirdly-cropped photos of my face, but there’s one slight difference. I now have some mighty honcho sideburns, thus making me completely unrecognizable.

I only show one side because I’m still in the “making them the same length” stage.