I bought a pack of these "learn Italian" flashcards last month, and totally forgot about them. Not that I've had much time to sit around and play memory games these days...or blog, for that matter.

But, that'll all change in the next 2 days, as I begin a marathon month of blog posts and video diary podcasts. And, Geoff and I will be updating our station's blog, aptly named, Geoff and JL's Torino Blog. Kinda like this blog, but without all the swears (and robots).



If you're sick of hearing about Torino and the Olympics already, then you'd be wise to avoid my blog for the next month - cause it's gonna be full of it. Anyway, I gotta go now...I'm gonna paste these flashcards all over the house.

Ciao! [wait. it is ciao, right? I better go look that up.]

I've been packing for the trip, but it still seems kinda surreal. But, nothing has made it feel more real than opening up my Italian cell phone kit and seeing one of those weird foreign electrical plugs.

Oh man. Last night was crazy!



The WWE show was in town, and there was no place I'd have rather been than drinking $6 beers with some hardcore redneck fans.

Thanks to my work amigo, Valdez, I typed in a special code to the Ticketmaster website and got some sweet-ass $0.75 tickets. Yeah, that's right: seventy-five cents for some decent working-class tickets.



Hasser, Chad, and I had no problems letting our wrasslin' opinions be known, as dudes in crazy costumes trounced on each other all over the stage. We had enough enthusiasm for ten fans - not that it was really needed. The row in front of us was a group of mentally disabled people (seriously, with hospital chaperones), and behind us were the most devout WWE/Kurt Angle fans ever. So, needless to say, we were treated to quite a show. And, if that wasn't enough, I was confronted by a security guard about halfway through the show (which was a complete misunderstanding on his part).

It was actually a great time. And now, after all of this, I'm kinda itchin' to watch "Smackdown" on UPN, or WB...or whatever it's called next year.


[ps - Dinah: you rule.]

I think the Torino promos started airing today, so I figure now's probably a good time to put them up on the site.



I think the creative services folks did a fine job dreaming these up and putting them together. All of my ideas for Geoff and I involved ninjas, lasers, and robot breakdancing - they told me that we just didn't have the time (or ninjas) to put make it happen.

Here's the three, 15 second spots in all their Quicktime majesty:

Torino 2006 - "truck" - Quicktime Mov [1mb]

Torino 2006 - "kids" - Quicktime Mov [1mb]

Torino 2006 - "pizza" - Quicktime Mov [1mb]

In case you didn't know: I'm the dork with the glasses that crashes into stuff. Also, I'f the clips don't work for you, I think we have a flash one that plays on on WYFF4.com

My inbox has been rather empty lately now that most of my friends have given up on real email and send messages exclusively through MySpace. [So, basically I get an email telling me that I have an email waiting to be read somewhere else.]

Anyway, occasionally I'll get some rather interesting emails (apart from the several Nigerian Lottery drawings I've won), and today I received the following:

"Your website still makes me laugh, and I still tell other sat truck guys and photographers to check out your page. I also started reading Hasser's blog, and I've emailed him, too. You guys seem to attract the ladies. How do you do it?

While sitting at a hockey game the other night, I drew this picture of you being chased by a guy in a Pillsbury Dough Boy costume. I sure hope you can outrun him."

"It's payday today and I'm gonna spend money on a bottle of booze to bring home to my honey." - KMFDM ("Money")

It's finally Friday, and more importantly...payday. Without going into too much detail, let me just say, "oh man. I'm glad it's finally here." So, just before logging off my computer I decided to create a little Friday playlist (or paylist - if you're into really bad puns).



There's probably a ton of other money related songs I could've put on the list, but the trick is actually making a decent playlist. There's the Dire Straits song - which is technically #3 on the playlist with the remix of Deep Dish's "Flashdance". And then there's the obvious Abba song and the theme from The Apprentice, but I don't actually have those songs in my library or could honestly stand listening to them for more than a minute. Furthermore, I purposely left off "Friday, I'm In Love" by The Cure since it makes go into psychitzoid embelisms.

------------------------------------------

Lost discussion [spoilers below]

There's no way the two clumsy, heavy-handed references to the Geronimo Jackson album wasn't some important or ridiculous clue. Maybe The Others (or the scruffy people we think are The Others) are the band, and Walt is the last musician they needed to complete their revival album. "The boy is very special" could easily mean, "The boy plays a mean blues harp."

Seriously, there's been some subtle/hidden references to stories like Gilgamesh, The Third Policeman, and Turn of the Screw. But, the Geronimo Jackson thing was just so forced. Anyway, I'm hoping it's a really awesome Jimmy Buffet satire like "Coconut Pete" from Club Dread, that would make this show a bijillion times better.

Or it could just be a red herring...

------------------------------------------

Google Deadpool (or whatever it's actually called)

This thing's been around for a little while, I guess. But I was recently introduced to it by my pal, Bryan. Since then, I've been seeing it all over MySpace and on various blogs.

Basically, you do a Google search to see how you die. Type in "name was killed by" (be sure to put your first name in there , and use the ""'s so it'll work correctly) and then it'll tell you what morbid fate is in your future or a prallel universe or something. You can get varied results by applying your last name or nickname, as well.

How did I fare?

"JL was killed by the powers that be."

The above shot is of my reporter, Tracy. We were taping an ice skating story, and decided to shoot her promo teases, "out on the ice". In between takes she skated around clumsily and I think she was probably picturing herself the star of Ice Castles, Ice Princess, The Cutting Edge or one of those equally sappy skating films.

Our story went well, but not everything was "as smooth as ice". At one point I got too close with my camera and distracted a little skating girl. She fell on the ice hard. Really hard. On her head.

And another fine moment came when I put a wireless microphone on a 63 year-old lady after she said to me, "I just decided that I was gonna ice skate today, so I came down here. I want to get back out on the ice again before I die."

Thinking that'd be a neat little story, I decided to film her for a while. At one point I said, "I hope she doesn't fall and break her hip on TV." Which was probably kinda insensitive. And, it's a good example of the kind of things I occasionally think to myself without realizing I'm actually saying it out loud.

Anyway, the old lady fumbled around a little bit on the ice and I eventually got bored of watching her skate. I turn my camera away, and a moment later: CRACK! I turn back...and this is what I see in my viewfinder:



I'm happy to report that she's okay, and was out on the ice again about 30 minutes later. After that, I pledged to get the story shot quickly before I had to hear the sound of another skull bouncing off the ice.

I was working on my comic book tonight, and as soon as I got done lettering this page, I kinda laughed out loud at this panel and the subtext.



I remember English teachers and professors talking about how authors will often end up consciously (or subconsciously) writing their experiences into stories (for example: all the war metaphors in various Hemingway novels).

So when I look at this panel of the guy running into into the fray with a camera slung over his shoulder, I thought to myself, "Been there."

The filming part, not the space battle part.

Yesterday I had a swell day at work. I wasn't behind the camera as usual, but instead I became a hefty piece of lens meat.



It was all for a series of promos about Geoff and I heading to Torino for the winter Olympics. Out of the three promos, I'm a full-on dork in at least two of them. And, Geoff kinda mocks me and talks to me in a shameful way [see photo above].

There's one scene where we were pigging out on Italian food and I swear the promo folks are gonna use the one take where I have a ton of cheese hanging out of my mouth. Oh well, It's out of my hands now. They start airing in the next week, and I'll stream some clips of them if you wanna see what kind of hammy actors we are.

I apologize in advance to all the people in this TV market who are gonna get sick of seeing me trip over snow skis, stuff my face, and zip Geoff's kids into suitcases over and over again.

After finding out that my page looks kinda weird in the Firefox browser (something I've always suspected), I finally gave-in to peer pressure and decided to download it. I figured I gotta see what the big deal is.

The Mozilla website boasts a bunch of cool features, but the one main feature that they didn't advertise is that it magically makes websites look terrible.

(That was sarcasm, Firefox lovers.)

Actually, it makes my websites look terrible - which is something I'm working on correcting. Not an easy feat, if you're a lazy website hack. Anyway, perhaps along the way maybe I'll fall in love with this newfangled browser. Hard to say, I've been let down before (Mosaic, Netscape).

I figure it's only a matter of time until I start doing some kind of podcast, so I decided to go ahead and upgrade to Quicktime 7 Pro.

Wondering how well it works, I loaded up a few of my short films and ran them through the compressor - as I thought it'd be cool to have some of my short films in my iPod.



So here's some new portable versions of a few old favorites (right click on file to save and all that):

MY ROBOT HUMPS - Video iPod [mv4] - 8mb

REPRESENT - Video iPod [mv4] - 20mb

CANDY CANE INCIDENT - Video iPod [mv4] - 17mb

PUMP UP THE JAM (AGAIN) - Video iPod [mv4] - 4mb


Enjoy! Now, I'm off to dream up some podcast ideas while I encode a bunch of other random stuff.

I'll be heading off to Torino at the end of the month for the winter games, but I figured I'd clue you in on some of the stuff we're doing here before we ship out. There was our olympic team trip to Ohio, and along the way there's several teleconferences to talk about stuff.



That was the case today, but we had a nifty video screen to look at while the TPTB discussed stuff with all the affiliates. It was kinda cool, and it kept me on my best behavior (aside from snapping annoying photos). That was until I realized, "Oh wait. This isn't Star Trek. They can't see through the video screen."

Anyway, I just thought I'd share the fun administrative stuff along with everything else. You know, mix things up a little bit.

The holidays are over and life it getting back to normal around here. I can tell because I totally geeked-out this weekend. First there was Friday's awesome Battlestar Galactica season premier, then I arranged and filed hundreds of comic books, and then there was tonight's lan party!

Hasser (having just moved, and not having broadband) threw his computer in a suitcase and rolled it over to LLR headquarters, so that we could keep a much anticipated "league night" appointment.




Basically, over the past five years a tight-knit little group of co-workers/friends have all met-up for late night Everquest adventures. It used to be something that would doom us to eternal sleep debt. We'd spend all night plundering virtual dungeons, slosh into work the next day exhausted, and work all day before heading home to our computers. And somewhere in there - much to the chagrin of our co-workers - there'd be many spirited discussions about hobbits and unicorns.




Anyway, over the years it's been increasingly difficult for everyone to hook-up at the same time. We've been fighting a losing battle against time zones, work schedules, and late-night cocktails. So, our solution has become "sunday night league night" - something that's been interrupted lately by the holidays, ice storms, cross-country moves, and hardware malfunctions. This weekend we weren't going to let anything stand in our way.

And, in closing: we rocked it.

At this point the story should probably end. After this everything else in this post will be about fighting lava goblins, and how I looted a really sweet Minotaur axe.

Some things are probably better left unspoken...at least until next weeks' league night.



[quick notes: The photo of our EQ gang is actually a recreation of a photo from 5 years ago when I was gonna write an EQ article on one of my old websites. Missing in the photo above is our fourth musketeer, Audio (a wood elf ranger we desperately needed last night). Reichen, where were you? Next week!]

Okay, so I have a new black iPod (which should be pretty evident by now since I won't shut up about it) that I take everywhere. But, there's one place that I'm sorta hesitant to use it: my apartment complex.

You see, just before the holidays this note (written on cute flowery stationary) appeared on the community bulletin board:

"MISSING: silver iPod mini. I believe that I left it in the workout room and that someone in the building has it. If you have it please return it. It is very special to me."

So, I saw the note and was all, "That sucks. I hope she gets it back."

The note was up for about a week before she updated it with a stern, typed-out note that was worded like this:

"I am VERY UPSET that my iPod has not been returned to me and I KNOW that the person who stole it lives in this building. I'm SADDENED that someone would be so selfish. I'm asking everyone who lives here to keep watch on who's wearing an iPod. My ipod mini was silver (which is very rare)."

There was more to the note, but I couldn't remember it all. After reading that, my first thought was, "Jeez. She's getting desperate." Now, I know that it really sucks to lose your iPod and that one of your neighbors may have it, but the note just seemed really annoying and desperate to me - considering that it was actually lost and not STOLEN.

Walking through the building is kinda annoying these days. I feel like people are zeroing in on the tell-tale white headphones and silently judging me as I ride in the elevator. Yesterday I felt compelled to flash my iPod around so the the nosy-chick-who-was-thinking-I-stole-the-damn-iPod would stop melting my head with here laser beam eyes.

Apparently, I'm not the only one who thinks this is too much. When I passed by the bulletin board this morning I chuckled after I saw that someone replaced her latest note with this:



I just know that this lady is gonna want to burn the building down after seeing that note. Oh well, at least I'll have my iPod to listen to while the firemen do their thing.

Watch out for the pervbot. He'll get ya.

Rather than start off the new year by recounting my New Years Eve celebration and listing all my various resolutions, I decided to kick things off with a bang by calling up my brother, Tater.



What up? Happy new year!

Happy new year, bitch. What're you doing?

Not much. Thought I'd call and check in with you. What did you do to ring in the new year?

I played poker and drank a lot of beer. A lot of beer. This morning I just sat on couch until like 4:30. No moving, except to feed the dog.

Oh, that's right. I heard you bought a dog.

Un huh. He's a cool little fucker. He's part German shepperd [and then he named like five different dog breeds that I can't remember]. He's got two different colored eyes. It's freaky.

Like Marilyn Manson! He's got two different colored eyes. You should totally think about renaming your dog Marilyn. Or Manson.

Um..I don't know about that. He's a freak, but his name's Max.

Hmm. You get anything good for X-mas?

I got a shotgun. My very own brand new 12 gauge.

Wow. That's hardcore. Was there anything you wanted but didn't get?

Not really, man. I still need season 5 of The Dukes of Hazzard on DVD. I got the movie from you, so that's the only thing I need now.

Any special new years resolutions?

Aww shit no. I ain't doin the weight loss thing. No reason to quiting chewin'. I'll kick ass in baseball for ya. How's that?

So your resolution is to do better in baseball. Does that mean you sucked at baseball this year?

No. Dude, I caught a fly ball bare handed last year. It was flipping amazing.

Is that good?

Yeah, that's something that pro players do. You see 'em do that every now and then on TV. It's kind've a rare thing.

I don't know. If I flip on cable right now I could probably find a bunch of people catching balls with their bare hands.

What?

Nevermind. I was thinking that you should make a list. Like the show on NBC, My Name is Earl. You'd be like Earl.

Fuck that. My list would be way too long. I have enough trouble getting through my people-I-want-to-kill list to make time for the I-fucked-up-and-I-want-to-apologize list.

Gotcha. Anything you want me to pass on to Angelo or the rest of the gang?

Rock on. Live like a rockstar.

And happy new year?

..And happy new year and all bullshit that comes with the holidays. Which reminds me...I'll be sending you your Christmas presents pretty soon.

Yeah right. As soon as you buy them.

(laughs) Yeah. As soon as I buy them.

Okay. Talk to you later.

Later.


[previous Tater interviews: (8/04) Dukes Of Hazzard movie; (8/15) Dukes Of Hazzard follow-up ]