S's DOLL

HERE'S A LITTLE MOMENT FROM MY LAST WEEKEND IN OREGON...
WE WERE AT STRIKE CITY BOWLING DOING SHOTS OF YAGER AND BOWLING UNDER BLACK LIGHTS...WHEN S. SUDDENLY RUNS OFF TO THIS MACHINE...

...LIKE A LITTLE 4 YEAR OLD, HE DROPS HIS CHANGE IN AND HUNTS FOR A TOY...

...ON HIS FIRST TRY HE PULLS THIS FUCKING GUY OUT...I'M NOT SURE WHAT CHARACTER HE'S SUPPOSED TO BE..."AVERAGE WHITE GUY" I GUESS...

...ANYWAY, WE TOLD HIM TO TAKE IT TO THE STRIP CLUB (OUR NEXT DESTINATION) AND TO PUT IN UP ON THE STAGE WITH DOLLAR BILLS IN FRONT OF IT. WE ALL THOUGHT THAT'D BE HILARIOUS. HE SAID NO, CAUSE HE FIGURED SOME STRIPPER WOULD STEAL HIS NEW TOY.

THE NEXT DAY WE ASKED HIM WHAT HE DID WITH HIS PRECIOUS PRIZE. HE SAID IT WAS SITTING IN THE BACK OF HIS CAR...HE THINKS. DAMMIT! HE SHOULD HAVE TAKEN IT INTO THE CLUB. THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN FUNNY AS SHIT!

BY THE WAY, THIS ISN'T THE STUPIDEST MOMENT IN BACHELOR PARTY HISTORY. THAT STORY IS NEXT...I'LL PROBABLY POST IT ON THE GUAPO BLOG TOMORROW.

Conversion

All it took was ONE trip into my neck of the woods...

a walk by the lakes -
a drive around town -
a visit to the local bars -

That's all it took for Dusty to covert.



It's a pretty awesome town!

BACK FROM E-TOWN

WELL...IT WAS ANOTHER WHIRLWIND TRIP TO OREGON FOR ME...AND THE WEEKEND OF A LIFETIME FOR SCHOPPE. ALL IN ALL, I TOOK ABOUT 110 PICTURES...ALL OF WHICH I PLAN TO EVENTUALLY UPLOAD TO FLICKR. MEANTIME...HERE'S THE HIGHLIGHTS...


I GOT TO EUGENE, AND WITHIN A COUPLE OF HOURS OF ARRIVAL, WE WERE OUT PLAYING GOLF...

...AND PLAYING GOLF...

...THE NEXT DAY WE HAD A WEDDING REHEARSAL...

...THEN WE PLAYED SOME MORE GOLF...

...EVENTUALLY WE GOT PIMPED OUT IN TUXEDOS...WENT CRUISING IN A LIMO...

...THE NEXT THING I KNEW...SCHOPPE WAS MARRIED...

...ALL IN ALL, IT WAS A PERFECT WEEKEND. THERE'S PLENTY MORE IMAGES AND ANECDOTES TO FOLLOW. CHECK THIS BLOG, OR THE GUAPO BLOG FOR MORE PICTURES...STUPID MOMENTS THAT WILL GO DOWN IN BACHELOR PARTY HISTORY...AND, OH YEAH, MORE PICTURES!

paparazzi

So in case anyone hasn't heard, the Blazers got the #1 pick in the draft. Everyone's going ape shit here. My story today... guage the ape shittyness!!!

Sorry no pic here, but the most interesting part of the day was going inside the team's ticket sales call center (not in India). I guess they were all there till 3am last night, and their computers all crashed. They did sell a cool Million $$$ in tix last night!

Anyway, I got a bit of OT because the GM of a swanky restaurant tipped us off that Uncle Phil Knight was going to be chatting with soon to be Blazer Greg Oden. So we staked the place out and played paparazzi... unsuccesfully. They snuck him in through the side door. We were skunked.
NOT!:


Our informant got Oden's agent to agree to a 5 minute sit down interview!!! He's a nice, genuine guy, a good choice for the (formerly jail-)Blazers. We didn't get the exclusive, 2 crashed our party late, but we got the first interview he gave in PDX!

So as long as we don't get Sam Bowie'd, all will be well in Rip City.

VOSOT PATROL!

While some might think that's some gang taskforce, we in the biz know that vosot patrol is our version of Russian Roulette. You're at the mercy of the desk... if something happens in Albany, (your state abbr. here), and it probably isn't package worthy, you're going. So be prepared.

This will be your view for the next 8-12 hours:


This will be your best friend:

Notice that he 2 way is off. More difficult to be reached that way.

and if you're newly relocated... this is your goomah:


Needless to say i'm not a big fan of being the floater on saturday morning. With props to intern Pete, I'd rather be leaving a floater after a long night of binge drinking. (eeeeww!)

Why large markets are way cool

Reason # 10 - Celebrity Visits



Wolfgang Puck cooked on the Nicollet Mall.

HITTIN' THE LINKS

DUFF AND I WENT OUT FOR A QUICK 9 HOLES TODAY.
WE DRANK BEER...

GOT STUCK IN THE SAND...

AND GOT HASSLED BY A FEW SQUIRRELS.

ALL IN ALL...A GOOD DAY.
(EXCEPT FOR THE ANNOYING ASSHOLES THAT WOULD WALK THROUGH THE FAIRWAY EN-ROUTE TO A NEARBY PARK.)

DOUCHE BAGS.

FACE TIME FOR EL GUAPO

That clip was great, Dusty...but it didn't have enough El Guapo...so...here's another for you all.

Tribute to the Banditos

How it flys...

On my weekend (Mon. and Tues.) I went to Lake Mead for the first time since I moved to the desert. It was awesome. Sunshine, cool water, and beer. Then I thought about it, I've been living in L.V. for a complete year.


So I started thinking about all the new experiences I had since moving here, there are way too many to post, but I thought a few highlights could be shown.



Bright lights gonna set my soul on fire...Vegas brought alot a new professional marks on my resume



Like news helicopter shots, new HD camera , and SAT lives

I threw two bachelor parties for two great friends

Plus I was in my friend's wedding with another wedding coming up. Always a groomsman, never.....getting that chain attached

I spent New Year's Eve flying high above the Strip with the best view of the fireworks. I'd say besides for New York, L.V. is the best place to celebrate the New Year. Nothing ever closes!!

I also got to finally snowboard on Utah snow, probably the best snow in the world. That is the truth, brah!

Everything happens here. Because everyone wants to hang out in Vegas. I seen it all and been to all kinds of events. Not one of them was bad.

Watched the implosion of the legendary Stardust

I met a bunch of cool celebrities, including my childhood hero Boomer Esiason, at events like the Nascar, and the Grand Prix

I've seen the sun rise after partying the night away way too many times. I think I hit a new level of drunkeness that only the few and best can reach.

After a full year of crazy parties and hot nights I'm ready for the next one to start.

Epic

Inspired by Borracho's long posts, I'm going to treat you amigos to my own blog epic in honor of two days of overnights. That's right, the overnight guy goes on vacation and I, being the least senior photog, get to cover for him. By the way, I've basically been awake for 24 hours straight, so bear with me.

Sunday, after only sleeping 3 hours, I woke up and headed downtown.


I started work at 11:30 pm. Overnights, the way I know how to do it, mainly involves me, sitting at the assignment desk, playing mindless computer games because there is no other way I can focus on the scanners. (I don't have a picture of this... It's WAY to boring.) Early, early Monday morning... around 1 or 2... I got sent to shoot gas price video. I can't even avoid gas prices on overnights.

My trusty iPod,


the intruder,


and I hopped in the car. One thing I love about working in a big market is this: Being sent to get gas prices doesn't mean simply driving down to the corner. I was specifically sent across town and up north to a gas station about 15 minutes away. Since I like driving and had nothing else to do (quiet night), I loved it. Besides, no one is on the road at this time. Sweet.



After I shot the prices, got lost going back to the station, and ate my breakfast, the morning show EP sent me off to Buffalo. Not only is Buffalo a city in New York - the home of the Sabres - but it's also a small town northwest of the cities. Two semi trucks loaded with bees were to arrive at an apple orchard at about 5 am. After getting lost again, this time in the dark on unmarked gravel roads, I got there at 4:45 am. The bees got there at 8:30. Mind you, my shift ended at 7:30, but hey, who's counting. Other than the fact that I was pretty tired, it was actually quite fun. If I hadn't have gone, I might have never gotten to go all "Corky" and put on one of these.



Now that's cool. I only got stung once, and got 3.5 hours of OT, so it wasn't that bad.

Monday night, I again headed to the station. From 11:30 to 3:30, I killed time at the desk. It was quiet. Now, I know my scanner skills are a bit lacking, but even I can tell when it's quiet. This was really quiet, and subsequently quite underwhelming. Though I'm getting pretty good at Text Twist.

This morning I got the cushy job of plaza cam. 2 hours outside. Only 4 shots with the weather guy. Plus a handful of bump shots. This is a great post.



I had a good time playing with my new toy...



Wide, baby!



Okay, so it's not mine to keep. My buddy is on vacation for two weeks and he owed me, so I get to play. It's great. I've always wanted one.

And I like our plaza... Nice view of downtown, big screen... It's a good spot for the morning. There is a slight problem with the light source in the afternoon - that light being the sun, but I won't get into that now.



Now it's my weekend and I'm glad that I was blessed with only two nights of Overnight. It's currently after 10 pm Tuesday and I've been up since 10 pm Monday... I'm ready to nap. Oh, check out a cool story I did. It aired on a Sunday night sports show. I also did a nat pack that aired on Monday, but it's not on the site. So too bad.

HELLO MOTO

My cellphone account was eligible for upgrades...and I was sick of paying for texting...so I took the plunge and bought a new phone yesterday.

I picked up this motorazor for 70 bucks...it'll be 20 bucks after the mail in rebate...which I will probably forget to send.

This is my first camera phone.
I'm not sure how...but somehow I get the feeling that giving me a camera phone is a bad idea. Now that I've added texting to my service plan...and have a camera phone to send pictures from...I'll probably be texting photos to people all freaking day. You might want to change your numbers.

i HEART beer

You may not know this, but I love beer. I FUCKING LOVE beer. Last night when I got home from work, I found a note wife had left out for me which read: "check the fridge, I got you a present." I opened the fridge to find a box full of THE BEERS OF THE WORLD! It's one of those variety packs you can pick up at Cost Plus for...like...10 bucks.

Anyway...this was one of the beers...

...it is from Guatemala. The strange thing is...when Dancer and I were in Guat, he and I drank this beer the entire time we were there, but it wasn't called Famosa...it was called Gallo...you know, because of the rooster. Other than the name, it looked and tasted exactly the same. It was pretty awesome. BEER IS PRETTY AWESOME! Which brings me to my second point.

After I finished proudly photographing my new beer, I realized, I have a small handful of beer photos from the last year plus. I hunted through my flickr page and pulled out about 13 photos of beer. I made in into a flickr set...it's a work in progress. So...beer photos will become a new photo project of mine. I figure it's a good way to rationalize drinking and photography...drunk photography, it could become the next big thing.

NEW EDITORS

Welcome to the SHOW! Here is quick look at the station's brand new HD Editors. Part of the phase two of our HD conversion. Now we are shooting, editing, live shot-ing, and of course broadcasting in total HD. These machines are powerful!



We got brand new servers to support the all the HD video. All of our daily raw video is saved for seven days, plus all of our archives will now be saved to its very own SUPER HUGE server, with instant access to all our past stories. Beats the hell out of the SLEEZY method



The editing is fairly simple. It's called Edius and it works much like Avid. You got the dual screens, keyboard short-cuts, bins, and effects palettes.



My clips are downloaded from my XD disk file transfer style. It takes like four minutes for about 30 minutes of video. Some guys think it is too slow. I love it! I don't think they know how to use it correctly. It is so easy too. Just set it all up, click download, walk away for about ten minutes, get a snack, and BOOM...time to start editing.



Then editing is super simple. Basic timeline with multiple tracks to mess with. Some of the guys think it is two complicated, but I like it, except for the audio. It's hard to explain, but there is no easy quick way to adjust audio. I also think most don't shoot like me. I'm very technical, I set up each shot and then hit record. Most just start rolling and then keep shooting without stopping. Very messy.



Also we got new flatscreen HD montiors, these babies are awesome. The slightest variation of focus length will show up like giant adult store billboard along I-5 in Oregon. The other day I was interviewing a doctor and I zoomed in to get my focus, pulled back out to fix my shot, and then during the interview he would lean forward a bit as he talked to my reporter. In my viewfinder it looked fine, BUT back at the station, it was clearly noticable how much out of focus he was. At first I thought my back focus was off, but as I watched the interview I notice he would come in focus whenever he sat back into his seat.

All said I think that these new editors are going to be great as soon as we all get used to the new ways of doing things.

Conan in SF

The girlfriend and I were lucky enough to win tickets to see Conan Obrian in San Francisco on Monday. We waited in line for four hours to make sure we got in. It was awsome! The real cool part was seeing what happens in between comerical breaks. It's AV GEEK kind of thin. Sorry no more pics, the NBC folks were nazis about cameras.