Halloween 2004

Every year I tell myself, "I'm gonna get started early on a Halloween costume," but every year I end up making a costume on Halloween day.

This year my costume was a little odd, if not creepy. I found an old photo of myself at age five, in which i was wearing a powder blue pimp suit. And, in my closet I just happened to have a nearly identical suit that fits me now. I bought it years ago on an impulse when Hasser and I were looking around Value Village.

So, I found a similar shirt, combed down my hair, and got ready to blow people's minds. And here you have it:



Me as myself at five.

Okay, so today's post isn't so much about me being JEALOUS of my friends, but rather, happy for them in a damn-that-lucky-bastard-I-wish-that-was-me kinda way. All of these things came in my inbox already this week.

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Mac and Dinah meet the Buffy All Stars.

This was the subject line: ready to be jealous?
This was the email:

"mAc & I went to the "High Stakes with Joss Whedon" event in Hollywood yesterday. We met EVERYONE. I'm sure this goes without saying, but it was AWESOME."

And right there was this photo of Allison Hannigan (Willow) and Dinah (lucky brat) getting all friendly. This was followed by ten photos of her and Mac hanging out with the Buffy/Angel cast and crew. The two that really sent me over the edge were their photos with Buffy creator (and current, awesome Astonishing X-men scribe) Joss Whedon.



Here's a photo of Mac (smug bastard) with Joss.

Wait. I didn't even meet him like they did, so maybe I can't really
call him Joss. I guess I should've wrote: Here's a photo of Mac and Mr.
Whedon.

sigh.

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Creators of Saw vs. Orange

This was the subject line: RE: Aloha
This was the email:

"The writer and director of SAW are superpissed at me right now...Go
read my interview at movieweb. They wanted fluff questions. I didn't want to give them fluff questions. It's a movie about people digging keys out of their gut for godsake."

This one isn't so much that I wish I was there or anything, but rather
that I'm impressed. Old college buddy, Orange is a film critic in L.A.,
and part of his job is to interview various celebrities about their
films for Movieweb. In one of his latest interviews - with the creators of
SAW - he maybe asked all the WRONG questions. So, I guess I'm impressed
with his total lack of decorum - which is why his reviews are so damn
funny. And, I didn't think the interview was all that bad, actually.

Oh yeah. Here's the interview: [link]

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Audio and his EQ2 Adventures

This was the subject line: EQ2 Anybody?
This was the email:

"Guess who's in EQ2 beta bitches!!!!!? (that's the pre-release testing version for those of you who may not know). That's right, Audioscience is."

Oh man. My friends and I have been waiting for EQ2 forever, and one of
my pals got the invite to play EQ2. But, rather that wait to hear
lengthy explanations about how fun the game is - we made him come over to
my house and fucking show it to us.



Here he is letting Melinda look, but not touch.



Here's Audio totally blowing my mind with some rad medieval wizardry.



And, as soon as he let us take control of the game, the first thing I
did was make myself a hot half-elf cleric. Aww yeah.
It's gonna be a long two weeks waiting for that damn game to come out.

sigh.

Oh man. Just spent the last week moving. I live right next to a Costco now, and I've already bought a giant jar of animal cookies for no reason.

Tommorow Dawn of the Dead comes out on DVD, and that reminded me to point y'all towards our film festival: Season's Bleedings. It's coming along rather nicely. Here's our official logo - designed by Portland's very own, Eric Kilkenny.



Hopefully we'll get some submissions! More updates to come. Tommorow I'm gonna wrote all about zombies, and my look at the EQ2 beta that the lucky bastard Audio got his hands on.

One word: vagina.

That's what one prolific little graffiti tagger decided his 'moniker' would be out on the streets. So, he went about spraying it everywhere - up on billboards, low on walls, and out in everyone's face.



I gotta admit, it was funny in the beginning. At first glance, Vagina just seemed like something a fourteen year-old would spray on the wall, and then laugh with his little friends. But, there was a weird-genius about it - as if he was somehow mocking the whole graffiti genre. Eventually, it got old after vagina ended up in over 100 places around town.

When we first covered the story, it brought out all the juvenile giggles and stuff around the news room. Some stations (even to this day) refused to even SAY vagina in their coverage of the story. Tonight one reporter in town said, "...the vandalism that begins with the letters V-A-G..."

There was the usual discourse before covering the story. Do we say...'the word.' We decided to just say Vagina on air, and not dance around it. It's a clinical word, so it's okay. My reporter, Wilson and I had to say it about a million times in the news van before we had to get out and talk to people about it. Just to get it out of our system. And even then, he still had a weird little grin on his face.



Last night they caught the guy (and his friend). Who wasn't 14, but turned out to be 20. We met his parents for a moment today, and they seemed very nice. I remember hearing the father was a minister, which I guess explains all the rebellion, or whatever.

And here's what "Vagina" [aka: Paul Thomas Langston] looks like in a mug shot:



Nothing like I expected - and, at the same time: exactly what I expected.

And for one last time...

VAGINA.


That is all.

I voted today, and damn it felt good. Much like many other states, Oregon has mail-in ballots, so we're able to "vote early." None of that 'folding chad' nonsense and all the prototype touchscreen computers for us - just the danger of mail theft, I guess.

Anyway, I couldn't wait to get my ballot. I feel like I've been waiting forever to vote. But, now it's over and I have to wait. I have to wait, amongst non-stop television ads, last minute campaign rallies, and all the continuing press coverage.



The biggest thing I'm worried about is finding out that someone I voted for all-of-a-sudden has a huge scandal uncovered. How much would that suck? I can just imagine turning on the television and see breaking news coverage, "John Kerry threw a newborn baby in a dumpster back in 1995." Oh man! What can I do? Nothing, I already voted for the baby...um...dumpster guy.

[fingers crossed]

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Hijacked.

I saw a thing on the news last night that caught my attention. A news team was kidnapped in Alabama and forced at (i think) gunpoint to go get money from various ATMS. I've been in enough weird places, where I could totally see something terrible like that happening. I wonder if I can carry pepper spray. Gonna need to check on that.

Sweeps is here (again). I've been a busy little photographer. Too busy to blog. I couldn't really blog about much anyway, since I'm sworn to secrecy on all the sweeps projects I've been working on. I can tell you one thing: We have the grotesque beauty pageant show on Fox, so I've been sitting-in on a ton of weird-ass plastic surgeries and medical procedures.

Just the other day I made a list of all the medical-ish stuff I've had to shoot in the last year:

botox in the face
botox in the armpit
lasik eye surgery
breast implants
lip injections (not collagen, but tissue from cows)
liposuction
some weird yoga spinal massage
some weird hydro-sonic fat massage

Hmm. There were more than that. Maybe I've had to emotionally block them out.

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Christopher Reeve

As you well know, Christopher Reeve (know for his winking and grinning in the Superman movies of the 80's) died on Sunday. I had a range of quirky emotions when I found out that he died.

Here was my internal monologue:

"Oh man. Christopher Reeve died. That sucks. I guess he really made something of his life after that accident. An inspiration and all that. Oh hell. I was totally making fun of him on Friday. I was saying that he looked like Professor X or Lex Luthor now and all that. Oh man...I was saying some really bad stuff after that. That sucks. Oh no! Chris Reaves!"

I have a friend from college who's name is Chris Reaves. So, right when I heard about Christopher Reeve I immediately thought of him.

"Chris Reaves must really be feeling this so much more than anyone else since he kinda-not-really-sorta has the same name as Christopher Reeve."

But, I held back a few days in emailing him, since I figured a bunch of other people thought the same thing.

Here's what he said when I emailed him:

I'm cool, thanks for thinking of me. Yep, the guy really was my hero, I've thought about him and hoped that he would walk again every day since his accident. I always thought I'd see him get up out of that chair someday. I found out when I came in to work on Monday at 4am, I sat down at my desk and looked up at the bank of monitors and my eyes were drawn to CNN and I thought, "hey a clip of Superman...cool...what...oh no. Can't dwell on it though, that's life."

True that, Reaves.

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when pit bulls go bad?

Qyntel Woods (of Portland Trailblazer fame) had his house searched on Monday on allegations of illegal pit bull fighting. And, even though I wasn't on the story, some random guy got in my face about the media "blowing the pit bull issue out-of-proportion" and that they're really "harmless" dogs.

Now, I've done tens-of-dozens of stories about how pit bull have: 1) mauled children, 2) killed children, 3) bitten people, 4) attacked people and other dogs, 5) killed other dogs. So, I'm pretty much convinced that pit bulls are right below velociraptor on the list of 'pets you probably shouldn't keep around the family home'.

SO, the very next day I'm sent to Vantucky Vancouver to press conference about another ring of illegal pit bull fighting. And, while we're at the Humane Society they let us take photos of all the dogs confiscated. They were covered in scars, and all kinds of nasty stuff. But, one of them really caught my attention.



This dog, for the entire thirty minutes we were there, was just tearing about his food dish. And, I thought, "How precious."

But, I can't totally blame the dogs - the owners share quite a bit of the blame. As a matter of fact, we went out the house where the dogs were confiscated, and it was right out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. They had chains and cages all around the front yard. And there was even a huge pen filled with live rabbits - which are fed to the dogs, to make them more savage. This was all in the front yard, mind you. Imagine all the stuff we couldn't see.

And, after all of that my reporter and I just turned to each other and said, "Just another day in Vancouver, Washington."

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EQ2:

Just watched the latest trailer for Everquest 2 today. Oh man. I need to start getting all the sleep I can now - because after EQ2 and Halo2, I won't be getting any. [in related news: Christopher Lee is the main (voice over) villain in EQ2]

Mount St. Helens exploded Friday, and I was ready. I went out and got gas masks, goggles, bottled water, and all kinds of gear that I'd need to cover the event. So, when Jamie and I got the call, ("get your asses in here now! The mountain is exploding!") we were ready to kick some ass.



I grabbed nearly all the gear in my news rig, and threw it into our live van. I was ready for zombies, nuclear winter, and the Apocalypse - a little volcano explosion was gonna be nothing.



So, we got to work at the same time, throw each other a high five, and got ready to haul ass to ground zero. And they sent us...



...to the airport.
Our job was to hang out at the airport and do live shots about planes being diverted.

*sigh*

It wasn't so bad, though. The station even sent us a live truck guy. He came speeding up to us in his sportscar, and jumped out, all dressed up. He reminded me of Winton Wolfe from Pulp Fiction.



He strolled up to us, and calmly got everything in order as we ran around getting our live shot ready.

We had a an adrenaline rush, but it wasn't as cool as going to the volcano. Yeah, it was a disappointment, but we took one for the team. And, we fucking tore that airport story up.

Oh yeah. And the 'explosion' only lasted like 20 minutes or something, and hasn't really done anything since. But, when it does: I'm so damn ready.