Back in Upstate South Carolina tonight. Vegas was fun, but after my millionth time there I was sorta underwhelmed by everything. Here's my thoughts over the last few days:

1. Somehow I missed all the Britney Spears sightings going on at my hotel over the weekend. I think that if I had stopped at a slot machine at the right time, or shopped at the Celine Dion store then I might've seen her (or K-Fed). This is the second near-miss I've had with Brit-Brit in recent years.

2. NAB was "okay". I had fun last year, but this year was just more of the same stuff on the showroom floor. (I didn't have one of the fancy RTNDA passes that could get me into the more "talky" (rather than "showy") parts of the conference.

3. I had a blast at the b-roll photog bash on Monday night. It was great to meet-up with photog bloggers Weaver and Lenslinger (you'll have to check their blogs sometime this week for any photographic proof that we were ever together - I inexplicably never took a photo of us). But, I did get a shot with b-roll founder Kevin Johnson (who also has an affinity for killer eyewear).



4. I made fellow WYFF photog, James Cooper wear this hands-free photographer contraption at the show. I took this photo in a effort to embarrass him, but the joke was on us, as we both realized that we each wanted one of those things for ourselves.



5. Went to the CNN party last night. The Neville Brothers were the headlining entertainers. After seeing Aaron Neville up-close, the Horatio Sands SNL impersonation now seems a thousand times more dead-on.



I met a ton of cool folks in Vegas, and I was always surprised when someone would approach me and say, "Hey! I read your blog." Also, I'd like to take a moment to give a shout-out to Peggy Phillip, Keitha, and all the hard working photogs in Spokane, WA.


6. Pickler gone! Half of my American Idol theory has crumbled, but the bald guy could still win it.

There's a bunch of new gadgets, and HD tomfoolery at this year's NAB show. Plenty of broadcast technology - that in the hands of Evil - could be used for mayhem across the globe and beyond.

That's why I assembled the NAB SuperSquad!




The team consists of me, Robbie the Robot, and a ridiculoulsy hot chick (who may, or may not be a clone). Together we'll keep order on the showroom floor, while also monitoring all the various scopes and waveform montors to make sure everything is well within FCC broadcast standards.

My 'spidey sense" is going off! Gotta run.

-robot out.

I was recently informed that that your average Las Vegas tourist is recorded on camera at an average of 784 times each day. If that's true then I've been walking around semi-bored, or stuffing my face at least 500 (out of the 784) times.

Anyway, I'm getting ready for the NAB show tomorrow! I'll be doing some random blogging here at LLR, but the majority of my NAB blogging will be over at Lost Remote. I wonder how many times a day an avergae Las Vegas tourist at NAB is caught on camera throughout the day. It probably jumps up to about a million.

Talk to you later! I'm going to go find something to eat that isn't served within 15 feet of prime rib. Fingers crossed.

Haven't really had anything noteworthy to blog about, but I would like to take a moment to share the following revelations:

1. Every time I see a preview for the upcoming film, The Sentinel, I get confused and think it's a preview for an upcoming episode of 24. It takes me about 10-15 seconds to realize that it's not 24, and that's only because they put the obligatory shot of Eva Longoria on the screen.

2. I used to hate that Fox show, Bones. Now, I kinda like it. I'm still not sure if I think "Bones" is hot. Yeah, I do. Maybe not. Now I'm not sure. Probably.

3. That Dr. House is a freakin' genius. If I were to make my own modern "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", he'd be on the team - although I'm certain he wouldn't be much of a team player. Also on the team: Jack Bauer and Lara Croft.

4. My prediction: American Idol will come down to Kellie Pickler and the bald guy that sings all the grungy rock songs. You can quote me on that (but only if I'm right).

5. I will never read the DaVinci code. I've been saying, "Oh! I gotta read that before the movie comes out." Well, the movie is actually coming out soon, and I still haven't so much as even handled the book. I figure that the film adaptation is such a big deal that they'll try to be very reverent to the book, so I'm not missing much. It's kinda like those Harry Potter movies. No one is really missing the misadventures of Dobby the House Elf.

6. I'm never afraid of missing an episode of Prison Break. What are the odds of them actually escaping on any episode outside the season finale?

7. Totally sold on Mozilla Firefox - if only for tabbed browsing.

Saw this video on YouTube. It's some dude getting into a car wreck, and getting tossed all over the vehicle because he isn't wearing a seatbelt. [don't worry - it's not graphic]



What I find disturbing is the fact that: even as he's clearly in distress, he never grabs the steering wheel with both hands.

The other thing I find disturbing - now that I think of it: what's up with the dashboard camera?

While many people were enjoying a quiet Easter dinner, I was out on the streets causing all kinds of mayhem. Blowing stuff up. Shooting lasers at police officers.

I should point out that this all happened in a video game: City of Villains. I've been taking advantage of one of the free 7 day trial offers. So, that means I'm pretty much only evil until late Saturday. I couldn't really decide on what kind of insane super villain to create, so I just went with...me.



The majority of the folks that're playing villains are costumed in black, with lots skulls and scary barbed wire ornamentation. But, I found that my costume was somehow ten times more creepy.

[insert semi-evil laugh here]

Word. I'm heading to NAB/RTNDA again this year, and I'd love to meet-up with all my various online allies. And, I'm looking forward to hitting the b-roll photog bash with Lenslinger and Weaver. If you're heading to Vegas, lemme know.

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RANDOM TV THOUGHTS:

1.
My favorite line of any TV show this season was from tonight's (rerun) episode of My Name is Earl, in which Catalina consoles Randy's shame about being afraid of birds with, "It's okay...we all have our fears. I'm afriad of snakes and rape."

2.
I also had a good laugh out loud moment when I saw the previews for upcoming episodes of Medium, in which she (Arquette) comes face-to-face with "an evil medium". There's already an evil Medium? I remember when Quantum Leap tried to juice up the show with an "evil jumper". And there was the evil car in Knight Rider. And I think I recall and evil Pretender or something at some point. Anyway, all those shows were on also on NBC. Evil NBC.

3.
The local ABC affiliate WLOS, needs to get an HD signal on Charter cable already! I need to watch the final 4 episodes of Lost in HDef. I don't think I'm askin' too much - it's like, a whole 3 weeks away...

Since tonight's episode of House centered around "bloody underpants," I decided to sort've listen to the show, glancing up from time to time as I surfed the internet on my laptop - I nearly always watch TV and the computer at the same time.

Anyway, somehow I ended up surfing through YouTube for a while. I did nothing more than type the word robot into the search box, and it yielded at least an hour's worth of "entertainment"



The search results came back with a few thousand video clips, and the first few hundred were mostly just random people dancing like a robot for the camera. Pretty simple. Nearly every thumbnail was the same: someone standing there with their arms cocked in 'that robot breakdance stance' [the video above is one of the more elaborate/disturbing - and I all honesty, I didn't even watch the whole thing].

Nothing really amazes me anymore on the internet, but I did think to myself, "who are all these people that have the time to dance like a robot and then put the clip up on the internet? Nevermind the fact that they look like total dumbasses" Then I remembered that I kinda did the same thing two weeks ago, so am I to judge really?

And now (to make things worse), I really want to take all those clips from YouTube, chop them together, and form some massive robot breakdance video to repost. But, I probably won't - the madness must stop somewhere.

Today's assignment brought me face-to-face with a certified genius, and hero to sci-fi geeks everywhere. His name is Charles Townes and he invented the laser.

Once again: He invented the laser.



How rad is that? Some of my favorite movies and TV shows prominently feature lasers (with the exception of Star Trek and Star Wars which instead feature nonsensical "phasers" and "blasters"). Oh! And I'm always using lasers in my high-profile jewelry heists, you know, which helps out a lot.

Anyway, Mr. Townes - aka "Papa Laser" (not really) - was in incredibly cool guy. He told the "how I invented the laser" story again today for the billionth time, but still answered every question as if it was the first time he'd ever heard them. I'll tell you, if I invented something as awesome as the laser then I'd go out of my way to let people know. At least once a day I'd go to the supermarket just so I could tell a random grocery checker, "You are so lucky that I invented the laser, or else you'd have ring all of these groceries up manually."

Also, before we left for our interview I told my reporter Mark that he should ask Townes, "How do you feel knowing that you invented a weapon that the robots will someday use to enslave us?" But, Mark just smiled and said, "Um. How about you ask him that yourself?" Later on, during the interview I spoke up and said, "Hey...I got a question!" and I saw a very mild, this-should-be-interesting look appear on Mark's face. But it was cool, I asked a semi-normal question instead.

Today, I was also informed that: not only did Townes invent the laser, but he also invented the maser. Seriously. The laser and maser. Who knew?

Very seldom does my blog have a post where robots and photojournalism crossover in the same entry. But, today was one of those rare days - at least until the robot uprising (at which point I may too busy to blog anyway).

I was sent to a local gas station to shoot a press conference held at a noisy intersection. After I planting my microphone and tripod, I glanced into my viewfinder and noticed something rather odd.

There was a horikowa robot pasted to the front of the podium!



The robot banner read, "58% of Greenville's teenagers don't see underage drinking as a problem. Do you?"

Missing the connection between vintage tin robots (which go for like $500 on eBay) and teen binge drinking, I decided to ask the kindly PR lady. She explained that she too wondered the very same thing, and asked the advertising team if it "shouldn't be a 'drunk blonde girl or something instead?" They told her that the robot would get more people's attention than some generic PSA clip art - which makes sense, I guess. There really are a lot of PSA signs around town with teary-eyed children, staring down passing motorists.

It's still kinda weird though. But, at least there'll be billboards all over town with giant kick-ass robots on them. It's a good first step towards making this city more rad (and keeping kids off the sauce).

Also...

How odd is it that - of all the photogs at my station - I'm the one who ends up going to this completely random robot-related press conference? Providence? Coincidence? Robot conspiracy? I have no idea.

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That wasn't the only cool thing goin' on. The new Placebo and Morrissey albums both came out today. Good news for me! Bad news for my girlfriend, who isn't into the angsty, whiny Brit rock as much as I am.

I spent the weekend down in Myrtle Beach, which I think has more miniature golf courses per capita than any other city in the world.

Anyway, on the way out of town we stopped in an empty parking lot of a school supply company. The store was closed at the time. I'm not sure if that's because it was Sunday, or possibly their poorly selected company name [below].




Okay, gotta run....tonight's the season premier of Huff (on Showtime)!