I had a heart attack this morning when I went to glance over my website...and it wasn't there! Instead was my 404 redirect page, which routed traffic into the folders and files of my site. Scary.

Somehow the index was deleted from my blog, so I quickly republished and then changed passwords like mad. Paypal, Blogger, MySpace - you name it. Like I said: heart attack.

I'm so switching to wordpress this week.

"Oh snap!" I believe is what I whispered during the newsroom meeting yesterday when Andy Still (the news director) announced that Jane Robelot will be joining the WYFF4 news team in January. We were all rounded-up from our daily assignments and called into the newsroom, where moments later the Robelot made her grand entrance [video].

I didn't stick around for too much more after the introduction, as I was on deadline. But, apparently that was long enough for me to be caught in a rather enthusiastic photo in the Greenville Journal.

Anyway, when I got to work this morning, I realized that everyone still had "Robelot fever".

"Did you see her?"
"Did you talk to her?"
"Who's going to be working with her?"

This went on for most of the day, so when I finished up with all my work, I went Robelot hunting.



I heard she would be making an appearance on the one of the early shows, so I staked-out the news set and caught a glimpse of her through the peep hole. I quickly ended my spying when I realized there was a tour group of cub scouts on the other side of the door and I stood a good chance of freaking one of them out.

A few minutes later, after losing her trail (she left the set through the other door) I stumbled upon her in the newsroom and quickly snapped this semi-covert shot.



Just as I was finished taking the photo I heard someone yell out, "JL! Hey, JL...come over here!" I realized that it was the Robelot, since I was looking at her in reverse - over my shoulder - on the LCD screen. Talk about awkward. I was kinda confused how she knew my name, and she was probably confused as to why I was taking semi-weird-covert photos of her from across the room.

Anyway, she introduced herself, but before we had much of a conversation she was whisked off to do a phone interview. What was my impression, you ask? Answer: Nice lady, class act. She'll fit in nicely with the fine folks here at "We're Your Friend Four".

I have no idea if we'll ever be teamed-up, but I think the Robelot should have a chance to experience "the robot treatment" - which actually sounds cooler that it really is. [It basically involves riding around in my news van listening to techno music, and occasionally being interrupted during interviews while I swap out my wide angle lens.]

At the very least, maybe we'll become MySpace friends - I'll be sure to save room for her in my "Top 8".

Earlier I was going on about how Cinemax has been playing the Star Wars marathon over and over again every weekend. Well, I neglected to mention that prior to the actual marathon, Cinemax constantly played this (really long) music video set to Coldplay's "Fix You" (prompting Stereogum to write a post a few weeks back, titled "Coldplay are Star Whores")



After watching that, I'm still kinda torn about how I feel about both Coldplay and Star Wars. One thing I do know: I'll no longer associate this song with Kaleb Michael's funeral on season 2 of The OC - now it'll be people crying about Han Solo getting frozen in carbonite. Is that better? I'm not sure.

It's Monday morning here at LLR headquarters and I'm recovering from the holiday (shopping weekend). Here are a few random thoughts:

1. On Thanksgiving I was the lucky photographer who landed "vo/sot patrol", meaning that I ran all over town shooting various Thanksgiving-related stories. At each of these events I sampled some turkey. Later that day, we had a make-shift Thanksgiving lunch, at which I ate turkey. And even later I had turkey at home (all weekend). Next year we're having ham.

2. I was really tempted to get up early and "hit the stores" for some Black Friday deals. The deals that I was most excited about were somehow all at Staples and were gadget related. I snapped out of it when I realized what a dork I'd be, getting up at 5am so I can get (another) stupid memory stick to carry around in my pocket.

3. I can't believe that Cinemax is still showing the entire Star Wars double trilogy every weekend. More than that, I can't believe that I end up watching bits and pieces of it all weekend long.

4. The robot holiday tree has began to take shape. Stay tuned for photos.

Few quick items to report on this Tuesday evening. The first is showing off my promotional swag from NBC's show Heroes. My very own "Save the Cheerleader pom-poms!"



I saw this thing in the promotions office and was all excited, and then after thirty seconds or so I realized, "What the heck am I going to do with these things now?" The first thing I did was annoy my co-workers by doing the save-the-cheerleader-whisper-voice and then taunt them with the pom-poms. That extended the fun by another thirty seconds. But, I'm grateful for the item (thanks promo folks!) and I have a nice spot for it right next to my random Sunset Beach and The OC promotional items.

Anyway, the episode was good, but certainly didn't live up to all the hype.

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

I've been working hard on my sweeps projects over the past few days, and my Tech The Halls story finally airs tonight. But, the fun doesn't stop there! I got the green light to post outtakes from our promo shoot over on my station blog.

Here's a quick link to the video: ["Tech the Halls: Promo Outtakes"]

Watch any network during sweeps and you'll see the numerous promos and episodes touting the possible or imminent demise of a beloved cast member. It's an act of attrition that viewers have come to expect from their favorite shows, and the evening news here in Greenville is no different. Judging from this promo, it looks like I'll be joining the crazy lady from Desperate Housewives and Mr Ecko next Tuesday.



If you want to watch me get murdered by a sadistic yellow "pac monster", then just click on the link below.

WATCH: Tech The Halls (videogame promo) :15 MOV

[and there's this one too.]
WATCH: Tech The Halls (videogame promo) :30 MOV

[update: Clips are working now! Didn't realize the settings were case sensitive.]

I worked pretty hard at work today. Luckily, my job was to rock out on the loading dock.



That was actually just a frame grab from my video segment this week, so the actual number of frames that I'm rocked was more like 2850. No wonder I'm so tired!

In all my time at WYFF4, I'm still rather amazed that Nigel has never made it into the blog before today. And I never imagined that this would be the image [below] that'd introduce him.



We were shooting a promo for an upcoming sweeps story, which involves a great deal of special effects. Jar Jar also appears in the promo with us, but obviously he hasn't been added in yet - nor have our lightswords.

UPDATE: This just in to the LLR newsroom...we have obtained exclusive storyboard images. I'm the squiggly guy with glasses in panel two.



Feel free to imagine your own dialogue for the scene, as I can't reveal the subject matter until the promo airs (although I'll give you a hint: it may be something holiday related).

I was locked out of my apartment building tonight. The keycard I was issued has become increasingly weak with each passing day, and the electrickery inside it finally gave out.

Actually, it gave out a few days ago, but I've had some really good timing with other neighbors arriving. However, tonight one guy didn't recognize me and wouldn't let me in - which is responsible, I guess. In these situations there's a fine line in between coming across as "the goofy guy who is just locked out" and not looking like "the creepy guy who just has to get inside." Oh well. I got in eventually.

Since my card wasn't working anyway, I decided to strip it apart and see that makes it tick. But, judging from the components inside I can't see much actual ticking going on.



Obviously all of the magical faerie dust had dried up and that was the reason why the card no longer works. Don't need an engineering degree to diagnose that one.

I thought Sony had perfected video game crack when they released Everquest a few years ago, but that Playstation has taken it to a whole new level with Guitar Hero.



Now that Guitar Hero 2 is out, I see my lunch break (and whatever free time I have after work) disappearing altogether.

On a tip from the Reaves family, I went to Old Navy to check on some possible robot merchandise - which was only possible because I wasn't wearing an Old Navy shirt at the time.



Anyway, I hit the jackpot. There was so much stuff: ornaments, wrapping paper, dog chew toys. I bought a few things, but there was no way I could justify spending over $60 on a ton of weird Old Navy junk. Although I will say, the robot holiday tree will be at least 25% more rad.

In other robot news:
Humans taste like bacon. News photographers taste like prosciutto. [read whole article here]

In case you haven't heard: last night was the midterm elections. With a dozen other people, I was sent down to Columbia (the state capitol) to perform in the media circus - a thinking man's media circus, if you will. Think: "Cirque Du Solei meets voting fraud".



There were crews from three to four TV markets in each location, and that's a whole lot of live trucks.



The lens on my little digital camera was never wide enough to get everything in the shot, so you should just mentally double all of the action in the above two photos. You should probably also mentally double all the reporters "extrapolating the incoming numbers" and all the invisible, deadly carbon monoxide clouds surrounding the SNG trucks.

But, despite all the constant running around and last minute nonsense (the Governor couldn't vote; the Lt. Gov pulled someone from a car wreck; voting machine problems) all the stuff on my end flowed smoothly, thanks in large part to the Avid laptop I was fortunate enough to drag around with me.



This was the first big stress test for our new gear, and just being able to zap video to a laptop and back was HUGE - especially when our little race ended up being the one that went on all night undecided.

Anyway, I hope election stuff will be over soon so we can get back to dangerous foods and exploding cars. You know, the way television ratings are meant to be.

It's been a rather relaxing weekend. I saw Borat on Saturday, and then got to relive some of the magic as HBO ran a marathon of Da Ali G Show episodes later that night.

Oh! I want to know how many people (like me) yelled, "Holy S#!t!" at about 9:51 during Desperate Housewives tonight. I totally called who was going to be shot dead, and was still surprised when it actually happened. Of course, the other 59 minutes of the show were as lame as the rest of the season, so there probably wasn't all that much payoff.

Election day is only a few days away. Here's my favorite grassroots political ad thus far:

Here's a random shot from my work day today.



Umm...probably a good idea I don't say too much. Although I would like to mention the best line I've heard on TV this week (from 30 Rock's Tracy Jordan): "Live every week like it's Shark Week."

I believe Cooper and I were doing just that.


[update: here's the "doll video" - video link]