2007 Remembered

2007 has come and gone. It had its ups and downs, but on a whole, not a bad go-round. We had ourselves a heated presidential race, a major record broken, an Oscar/Emmy/Nobel Prize winner, and celebrities going crazy, going to jail, and going to hell. What a ride.

While the year was certainly better than 2006, I can only assume that 2008 will be twice as kickass. We at the Photocalypse have had some wild adventures over the past year, such as...

Partying with athletes...



Rubbing elbows with politicians...



and chasing down celebrities.



Shot some fires...



Shot some sports...



and shot some shootings.



I rocked...



I flew...



and I picked up and moved back to my home state.



Plus a lot of other random shit happened.








What a ride.

Hope you all had a great year!

Save the Owls

Typically, a Sunday morning on a holiday weekend isn't the most hopping time for news. People are either asleep, out of town, or asleep out of town. This morning was a prime example of that fact, as there wasn't even some cute photo-op going on in the touristy parts of town. It was, as our assignment editor put it, "The worst day ever".

With a scanner in hand, my sidekick reporter and I hit the road in search of anything that would get the day going. Around noon, we struck gold. "Owl stuck on power line. Rescue effort underway." Giddyup.

I think this story exemplifies just how desperate we had gotten. As we pulled up, we spotted the owl and, thinking that it'd died, realized it might not be the cheery holiday season happy story we were shooting for.

Upon closer inspection, we discovered that the lil' bastard was still going strong, despite being snared by fishing string that had gotten wrapped around power lines.

Mind you, this was nowhere near a river, lake or fish tank, so the presence of fishing line that high off the ground is a mystery in itself, although it wouldn't be the first time Sacramento's seen animals getting stuck in strange places.

Once the untilities folk arrived, the owl was cut down and caught in a trampoline-like cloth by fire fighters (which wasn't nearly as awesome as this).

Owl saved, story complete. Now this became the backup story, as something more important was sure to arise. It didn't, and our owl package went on to not-news-but-here-it-is-anyway glory. It reminded me of a video I saw of news in Sacramento right before I moved down, so I came prepared for anything.

After a successful news gathering effort, my trusty reporter insisted that we go to Hooters to get lunch and watch the Cowboys game. Who was I to disagree?

That's my new friend Sarah. We go way back. I order lunch, she brings it to me... it's a thing we have.

Holiday Traditions

I hope everyone had an excellent Christmas/holiday season/whatever!

I was fortunate enough to have Christmas fall on my weekend, which provided the first time ever that a Monday/Tuesday weekend was beneficial. I cruised down to the Bay Area to chill with the fam, including California's #1 party animal, Jasper the Christmas Dog:

I found him that stupid hat at Target. At first he hated it, but after an hour or so of rolling around and barking, he accepted his fate and moved on to entertaining the dinner guests. However, every time the ball would flop down between his eyes, he'd start trying to chase it until it fell back behind his head. Top-notch entertainment. It didn't take long before he was out for the evening.

After Jasper went down, I needed a new way to entertain my drunkenly festive self.

That's when I got to thinking... holiday decorations are expensive and are only useful for a short period of time. "Why did I spend $500 on that robotic Santa Claus when I should have bought my kid his ear medicine?" Well, being concerned about your holiday festivities, your checking account balance and your child's equilibrium, I came up with a perfect solution: the interchangeable holiday decoration. Think: Mr. Potatohead, but festive and not shaped like a stupid potato.

Delving into our basement, I found the key element to my brilliant plan: an animatronic Frankenstein Halloween decoration. After borrowing Jasper's festive garb, I was ready to complete my prototype.


That's right, with the addition of only a few Christmas-related items, Santa Frankenstein was ready to go. Why purchase a brand new Santa when you've got a perfectly good one sitting in the basement!

Heck, I can't hardly tell the difference!

Imagine the possibilities... it only takes some rabbit ears to make Easterstein! A pilgrim hat to make Thanksgivingstein! A pint of green Harp and an ugly girl to make St. Patrick's Daystein! I really think I'm on to something.

If nothing else, we've got a new family tradition... Here's my dad clicking the ON/OFF button for the scary music to the tune of "Jingle Bells".

He found moderate success.

So keep an eye out for Holidaystein! If all goes according to plan, he should hit shelves right around Valentine's Day... the perfect way to surprise your sweetheart!

Happy Holidays from Christmastein!

Christmas Cheer!

It's that special time of the year again! A time when you curse yourself for putting off Christmas shopping until the final stretch. However, this year I came prepared with a plan.

In one hearty swoop, I managed to crank out all my shopping in a single day last week, cruising from store to store early in the day while the commoners were stuck at work. I did so while avoiding shopping malls, big-box stores and one-day-sales, as my limited patience is rarely able to tolerate hoards of stupid, aggressive, cheap people. It's a weakness that I have.

There was only one minor snag in my plan... My dad wanted an Eagles CD that they only sell at Wal-Mart. Well, let me tell you, I wasn't about to brave the waters of pre-Christmas Wal-Mart, so I devised a scheme so brilliant that I surprised even myself... I'd order it online! I even selected the 2-3 day delivery, despite an additional charge of $9.

So a week later, the damn thing finally arrived at my humble abode.

Yeah, not too pretty. Upon closer inspection, I found that the CD case was beat to hell, certainly beyond gift-giving standards. Without time to ship it back, I was left with no other choice but...

That's right, I had to delve into Wal-Mart five days before Christmas. How was it? To quote Hieronymous Bosch, something like this. Yeah, not too pretty.

After a twenty minute wait in the returns line, a mean old lady told me that I could exchange it, but I'd have to go grab the other copy. Oh, and she might not be there when I returned.

Granted, I should have figured this step out ahead of time, but now I was left to wander the labyrinth of always low prices in search of this CD. It was brutal.

After circling the store twice, finding a goddamn smiley face around every corner, I was unable to find the home entertainment section. That's when I discovered that there's an upstairs as well.

After retrieving an untainted copy of the CD, I finally got back to the returns counter, only to find that the line had grown exponentially.

It took me half an hour to get through this damn line, only to find that the woman I'd left the damaged CD with had gone home, and they had to dig to find where she'd left it, as they didn't trust me at my word.

After almost an hour and a half, I finally scrounged my way out of that God-forsaken vortex of savings. As I walked out the doors, I was ready to pop one of those damn smiley faces right in the eye. I hate that place.

Which brings me to my point. I figure that the owners of Wal-Mart know how awful shopping there is. Their employees are disgruntled and their shoppers are disgruntled. The solution? Don't let people remember how much the place sucks! Cover everything in gigantic smiley faces. "We're not a bad company! Look at that giant smiley face over there... we make people happy!" It's like if you kicked some guy in the nuts while telling him that you two should grab a beer sometime.

This counter-intuitive marketing is all too common these days in this country, but the real sad part is that politicians have picked up on this strategy. Take the No Child Left Behind Act. Sure, it hurts all the schools that really need help, leaving plenty of children behind, but how could you vote against something with that name? What about the children??

Or how about the Patriot Act? "What, you won't vote for the Patriot Act? Why, that's unpatriotic!" And let's not forget Operation Iraqi Freedom. What a noble mission that was (is).

The bottom line? Yeah, something might suck. Wal-Mart sucks. The Patriot Act sucks. Jimmy Fallon sucks. But as long as people keep getting told that it's good, then... well... isn't it?

Maybe I should just hop on the bandwagon and quit bitching. After all, everybody thinks that since I work in television, I must be rich. That's hardly true, but to be honest, I don't see any imminent need to correct them. Hey, if that's what they want to think, who am I to confirm or deny their beliefs?

This is the kind of shit that you're forced to ponder when you have to kill 1 1/2 hours inside Wal-Mart. Let this be a lesson to you.

When the Sh*t Hits the Fan

Today started just like every other day. Just a normal day. That is, until I went to work, and the sh*t hit the fan. Which, in all fairness, is how normal days usually are for me.

Today's adventure can be best summed up with a classic Tommy Lee (the actor, not the rocker) quote... "What I want out of each and every one of you is a hard target search, of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farm house, outhouse, hen house and dog house in this area." That's right... we got ourselves a fugitive on the lam.

As I moseyed into work this afternoon, it appeared to be a slow day. A casual call from a photog in the field notified the assignment desk that there seemed to be a lot of sheriff's cars heading down the street. A short time later, another photog (who was late for work) phoned the station to point out an abundance of unmarked cops speeding in the same direction. "Strange things are afoot," I declared as I grabbed my magnifying glass and prepared to embark on some good ol' fashioned sleuthing. Oh, I also grabbed my trusty camera, and just in case, a reporter.

The best thing about our station is that is conveniently located right in the middle of the hood. A perfectly centralized location for covering violence, mayhem and the occasional hurly-burly discombobulation. Today, this came in handy.

Only a short skip away, the Sheriff's department was running a routine check-up on local gang members and parolees. In doing so, they rolled up on a commonly known trouble-house, to find an unknown subject bolt at their sight. One of the deputies chased after him, hopped a fence, and was shot in the neck. After being life-flighted out to the nearest hospital and operated upon, he died. That's when the sh*t hit the fan.

In my short-yet-fruitful career in television news, I have never seen a manhunt of this caliber. A fairly sizable portion of South Sacramento was completely shut down, causing massive traffic backups as rush hour crept up.

Several cars blocked every intersection in the area, bringing out over a hundred Sheriff's deputies, as well as Sac PD, CHP, FBI and ATF. There were guys in armor, guys in camo, guys in riot gear, all running through the streets with machine guns. Have you ever seen that movie The Siege? Me neither, but it looked a lot like the poster.

I don't know what that truck does, but I'll bet it's awesome.

In addition to the general chaos that erupts when a sizable portion of the city is closed down, five schools went into lockdown, causing parents to (understandably) freak out. Last I heard (around 9 PM), there were still kids being held at schools.

By the end of the night, the shooter was still at large. The road blocks came down, but on every other street corner there was a cop car with it's lights flashing or an officer with his police dog hurrying along the sidewalk. Oh yes, they were pissed, and they weren't about to stop until they found this f*cker.

I can't wait until they do.

So, as my day's going absolutely nuts and I'm frantically editing so that I can get to my live shot, the dayside crew rolled in. What did they spend their day doing? A package on "What if your skis or snowboard could talk?" up at Lake Tahoe. They even brought along a mini-cam so that they could get some awesome action video. Only problem? That photog don't ski. Meanwhile, I've been counting the days until I can bust out my board and hit the slopes. Not only could I have spent the day away from this madness, but I could have been PAID to board for FREE and SHOOT it for the evening news. Honestly, I couldn't imagine a story that'd make me happier. Damnitall.

Departure Video Redux

As I mentioned in my previous post, it was about a year ago that both Guapo and DonPeso left Eugene to come to Sacramento. In their absence the crew of disgruntled photogs had nothing better to do than shoot them a going away video. Little did I know that I would soon be joining them...

The original video was about 15 minutes long, and I did not shoot or edit it, so I can take little credit, although it does feature my now-infamous role as interim chief photog (a role that's second only to my Evil Anchor Man in Guapo's cinematic voyage REMbug). I decided to chop the film down a bit and re-present it in the wake of Guapo's second departure. Also, there's some pretty funny stuff in it that I'd forgotten about, but if you don't know these people I don't know how funny you'll find it, so you get no guarantees.

That being said, I present to you The KEZI Goodbye Tape Redux...

Goodbye to Guapo

It wasn't much more than a year ago when a group of photogs, the finest in all the land, ruled over the empire of Eugene, market number 120.

Throughout the local villages, it was well known that their skills were unmatched. That is, until one day when their commander, a hot-headed prick who was brazen enough to declare himself "El Guapo", stood up and said, forget this damn place, I'm off to California! And so he went. Chaos ensued among the remain photographers.

In the following months, the entire photography staff quit for bigger and better markets, as represented in this short film. DonPeso and I joined Guapo in the inland hub of commerce and politics that is Sacramento.

Now, only a short year later, Guapo has chosen to return to the fallen empire that we had left to burn. Tired of life as a desk jockie, he has given up his manager position to head back to Eugene, as he would rather spend his days going on adventures instead of sitting around and listening to mighty tales from kickass photogs. Frankly, I can't blame him.

While it's a shame that he's given up on his prior commitments like a little bitch, we certainly had some fine adventures here in California, including a beer-infused trip to a concert in San Francisco...



...an alcohol-fueled romp at a local casino...



...and a frightening trip to a Tiajuana bordello...

Indeed, they were some fine adventures.

While he'll be missed around here, he's got the guts to do what makes him happy, even if it means taking a step backwards on the career ladder. That's commendable. He's been a good pal, and he's taught me everything I know, so I wish him the best.

And don't worry, DonPeso and I will hold down the fort in his absence!



I assure you, those cigars aren't celebratory.


PS- in helping him move, I discovered this little jewel from his past... the high school yearbook photo!

Hahaha, what a dork!