Political Kiss-assing

Nothin beats politics. It's fun to watch the rich and powerful try to convince the poor and stupid that they're all on the same level, because apparently voters will only vote for people that they can relate to. Thus, we get the elite of our country trying to dumb themselves down to below the common denominator. Whether it's bowling with the common folk, shootin' the breeze with wrestling fans (my favorite voting demographic), or tossing back a shot (more like sipping) with the local boozies, these folks contend for the most powerful job in the world by trying to convince the country that they aren't better than you. If in any way they do appear better than you, then they are labeld an "elitist" or they "don't understand the average American".

Maybe it's just me, but I think that somebody better than me should be in charge. I want the top of Harvard's best to take charge because they'll probably have a good idea of what to do. I want the elite, the guy who's better than everyone else because he's smart and successful. What if your boss was some douchebag that you see every night at the bar yelling at the condom machine? You wouldn't respect him or do anything that he says. Well, let's say that guy was in charge of a country... Do you want Harold from the firing range with his finger on The Button? Of course not, you want that elitist prick who's better than you. You shouldn't be president, and neither should I. Woody Allen (or somebody else) said that he wouldn't want to be a part of any club that would have him as a member. Just because I get drunk and make ridiculous proclamations doesn't mean that the president should. I can't imagine what a country like that would be like.

On a somewhat-related note, I was back home last weekend, visiting with an old childhood pal. We were children of a new revolution, in that video games had forever been present in our lives, dating back to my parents' Atari 2600. Well, we decided to fire up the old Super Nintendo and relive the 1993 classic NBA Jam TE, one of the great works of art of the late 20th century. A fine way to escape from the ridiculousness that modern American politics can present.

But wait a second... why does that point guard look familiar?

No, this can't be... She wouldn't...

Indeed she had. The self-proclaimed "Hil-Rod" just won't give up. She and her husband, the lesser-known "Bill", had taken it upon themselves to ruin my beer-and-video-games day of relaxation by reminding me that I can't escape their desperate grasp.

If I had known in my childhood what I know now, then I definitely would have forgotten the cheat codes to access these wannabe ballers. Alas, memories from my torrid past haunt me still, and the slugfest for the next Most Powerful Man (or woman (probably man)) on Earth continued into my day off.

At this point, all I can do is hope that the Democratic back-and-fourth bickering will end soon so that we can finally get ourselves that dream ticket! I mean c'mon... we can't lose!

I've already ordered 10,000 "Clinton/Pippen '08" bumper stickers! If you want some, let me know... I can only fit so many on my own car.

Fun with Public Transit

While driving home from work last night, I was in serious need of gas. Like running on fumes and whispering prayers low on gas. Out of desperation, I pulled up to the first station I came across, and found that indeed the End of Days was near. $4.05 for regular. What has this world come to?

With gas prices hitting unholy heights, we decided to spend our day investigating local public transit as a commute alternative. It seemed like a noble story idea: save the viewers some cash and perhaps even some time. Our mission: ride the Regional Transit train from downtown to the end of the line and back. Time it, keep track of the cost, and show our viewers how easy it can be.

After that experience, let's just say I'm gonna stick with the $4.05 gas.

Aside from being crammed into the small cars (and realizing that it's very difficult to shoot while standing up on a moving train), the ride out of downtown wasn't too bad. It took about 45 minutes to get to the end of the line, people seemed friendly, and the horrific traffic flew past the windows. The ride back, however, was a different can of worms.

Half way there, the train stops and everyone is told they have to get off without any explanation, and that buses will pick us up to take us the rest of the way. Every time a bus pulled up, 50 people rushed it as the bus driver hollered that it was the wrong bus, but "buses were coming". Buses never came, people were yelling at each other, and 30 minutes later the train suddenly returned and continued us on our journey. The ride back: 1 1/2 hours.

But there's more to the story than that. Beforehand, numerous people were warning me about the types of people that you're forced to interact with on the train. I thought they were just being silly, but as the sun began to set, I started to rub shoulders with some interesting townsfolk.

Since I had a giant camera sitting on my lap, I decided to roll on some of the bizarre questions and comments that were being thrown at me from one young man, who for some reason took it upon himself to open up to me about everything you could imagine. While I didn't prompt any of his questions or indicate any interest in talking to him, I decided I'd let it play out and see where it went.

That incident resulted in the following:

Morning Fuel

I have never been considered a morning person. In the early hours of the day, I've been described as "cranky," "on-edge" and "Frankenstein-like" by various friends and loved ones. That is why a lot of eyebrows shot up when I declared that I was moving to Sacramento about a year ago to work a morning shift. Indeed, those eyebrow shoot-ups were waranted.

Fortunatly, a few months into the new position, I was moved to a nightside shift and I became functional again. My disjointed sleep-when-you-can schedule was left in the dust and I never looked back.

Until yesterday.

Unfortunatly I pulled the short straw and was assigned to fill in for an absent photog on the morning show. Thus, I returned to my roots and partied with all my sleep-deprived former homies. I also remembered how painful that shift can be, primarily because I couldn't get to sleep early the night before, giving me a rough two hours of preparatory sleep.

Here's how it went...

4:15 AM

I'm out of bed and ready to go, actually not feeling that bad, but I know that I'm not getting far without some assistance. To get the motors running, I reach for a tallboy of BooKoo Jugo.

That's right, regular juice is for suckers and stiffs working the 9 to 5. Us morning folk rock it out with Energy Juice, 99% juice and 1% kick-yo-ass energy cocktail (caffeine, sugar and various herbs that are basically fancy names for caffeine and sugar).

And... we're off!

6:15 AM

We're fifteen minutes into the morning show, and I've completed the first of four live shots in the two hour show. Fotunately, it's a relatively easy day, as our story is your run-of-the-mill gas prices gig ($3.99 for regular? I'm going to start gassing up with bottles of Mad Dog instead, it's cheaper and probably packs more of a punch). However, the Energy Jugo is starting to work its way out of my system and the lack of sleep is creeping its ugly head into my live truck window. But Hark! What's that yellow glow on the horizon? Is it the sun rising? No, it's the golden arches of McDonald's! Time to gas myself up so I can make it through the next 1 hour and 45 minutes of the show!

Now, as you may have noticed, McDonald's has recently been trying to hop onto the premium coffee bandwagon. The only problem is that they've kinda been half-assing it. It's hard to cut into Starbucks' share when you've got some 15 year old mixing shots of cappuccino while manning the deep fryer. While in New Zealand some years ago, I stumbled across what were called "McCafes", which were actually McDonald's coffee houses. They had a full menu of coffee, couches, and no partially hydroginated sodium-based potato-like entities ("fries"). I was fairly impressed (I'm easily impressed), and can't help but wonder why they don't go that route rather than a small curtain hiding the misguided barista efforts of Stuart the Fry Guy. Mayor McCheese should be ashamed.

10:30 AM

At this point, there's no denying it... I needed to get more sleep. We're out of town grabbing an interview for one of the nightsider's stories, and I'm feeling like my mind is slowly starting to crumble. Better gas up...

I figure a tripple shot latte oughta set me back on track. We stopped in at It's A Grind (the kinda cleverly named (but not really) coffee house), and after pounding that puppy down, we headed back into town.

As I walked back into the station, I felt that things looked a little different than when I had left. Had they remodeled? Were there new staff hires? No, turns out I was just slowly starting to lose my mind. I finally got to a point where my brain said "Alright, I'm through with you fuckin around. I keep telling you that you're tired, and you keep feeding me chemicals that tell me otherwise. Well I've had it, I'm out of here."

Shortly after this interaction, my news director wandered over to me as I stared blankly at the schedule and began a chat. I could see his mouth moving, but I could only catch one out of every couple of words. As I responded to a question that I only half-understood, all I could focus on was how slowly I was talking and how my words were slurring together.

Fortunately it was a slow day, and before I knew it I was passed out on my couch for much of the afternoon. Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to be off that shift, although the occasional excursion into insanity is often missed.

Flamin' Season

It's been a while since I've returned home wreaking of smoke. It had been a stint of many months, a record that I took pride in. However, that mighty streak came to a crushing end today as I walked into my apartment and realized that Work had followed me home. Unfortunately, this time it wasn't because I got to spend my day shooting a Cigars n' Strippers ball. No, today marks a much more important event... the beginning of Fire Season! (Although a few strippers would have spiced up the story.)

Yes, that special time has come early this year. In the ironically named town of Rescue, a man was burning the debris that he'd collected from around his yard in order to prevent a forest fire, when it got out of control (oh, sweet irony!).

At the time, I was shooting some local riff-raff playing a little roundball at a local park, in an attempt to localize the Sonic's reported departure from Seattle, as rumors of a Kings departure had been abound. Then I got the dreaded Nextel beep. Alas, I can never return to this basketball court, as I promised a clan of aspiring ballers that they'd be on the 10 o'clock news showing off what they got. What it is dawg, ya smoove?

By the time my sidekick reporter and I made it up there, the sun was setting and the fire was well contained. Junior photog JH was dispatched to the fire and got to spend the day shooting the hell out of his first real story. I got to wander through what was left afterwards.

After burning a few acres and destroying a home, the fire was wrangled into submission. It wasn't quite as dastardly as last summer's Angora Fire at Lake Tahoe, but it did some notable damage, and got this year's fire season rolling.

Now, as a sidebar, I'll note that I love the woods as much as the next manly man, but I learned an important lesson tonight: No matter how hot and stuffy it is in the live truck, you can't leave the doors open. Otherwise, you'll have to edit while dodging bugs and trying to peer through all the mosquitoes on the monitor.

Stupid nature.

Thus, fire season has begun, and reporters around the market are rejoicing in the fact that they'll get to play dress-up in the fire gear for live shots. Oh, those reporters...

Bad Boys

I've always been a fan of the Cops-style ride along stories, where you get to tag along as the Five-O walks the beat, cracks some skulls and writes some pain-in-the-ass tickets. I get some cool video, the cops enjoy looking tough on TV, and we all get to have a fun adventure together. Everybody wins! (Except for the bad guys.)

Yesterday's adventure consisted of a DUI warrant sweep through the mean streets of South Sacramento.

The targets here were folks who got busted for driving drunk, then decided to take the day off rather than show up to court. As a result, their public defenders are going unpaid and are struggling to put food on their families. Did these low-lifes even take that into consideration when they decided to break the law? Maybe next time they'll be a little more considerate.

12 houses were targeted around the area, which the cops swarmed on and searched through in hopes of catching these lazy gavel-dodgers who enjoy wetting their whistle and cruising the drag. As we approached the doors, I noticed that they were wearing bulletproof vests and had their hands resting on their guns. I was protected by my Fox News polo and a camera that probably wouldn't stop a bullet (actually it'd probably be more expensive to fix a bullet to the camera than one to my arm... I think it's company policy for me to dive in front of it if a firefight breaks out. Hey, times are tough).

Out of the 12 homes, only one dude was actually apprehended, and he claimed that his brother was the one that had been arrested, but the brother claimed to be him, so really he's innocent. My favorite part of the story came when he claimed he wasn't David, as a super flashed onto the screen declaring that he was. Now that's just awesome.

While no doors were kicked in, no shots were fired and no skulls were cracked, it was still a lovely afternoon of strolling through the neighborhood.

Oh, and twice neighbor kids ran up asking if the cops were "the Bad Boys". Unfortunately they weren't, but if they're available, I'd love to do a ride along.

Back in the Saddle

First and foremost, let me apologize for my absence.

I know a lot of rumors have been floating around the blog-o-sphere, so let me start off by setting some of those aside... I was not mangled in a riding lawnmower stunt, I was not recruited for season two of The Pickup Artist, and I have not contracted scurvy, typhoid or any disease commonly linked to a life of pirating. Rather, the explanation for my departure is much less interesting, so please pick one of the previously mentioned three, assume it as the truth, and we'll continue from there.

Whenever somebody asks me about my job, I say I love it because every day is different. I never know what I'm going to do until after I've walked into the office. But is that really true? I'm sure all you veteran photogs have long since passed this point, but for those of us who can count their years of experience on one hand, it seems that the same story is covered over and over again. This is especially true after spending years in the same market, as you start to recognize stories from the previous years. Sure, every once in a while something interesting or unique comes along, and you get to be on the front lines, witnessing it from a point of view that Joe Public would never dream of seeing. But the rest of the days, you cover the same stories again and again.

I think this is where I started to hit a brick wall. After being in Sacramento for a year and keeping up on this blog, I started to realize that I'm seeing the same thing over and over again, and I can only crack so many jokes about the housing market or American Idol fluff stories before I start running out of "A" material. So, after a few posts that I felt were a bit lackluster, I decided to take a little break until a noteworthy story came along... something that I could really have some fun with. As you can see, some time has passed, as I found that all the stories that came around were similar to previous posts, so I'd let them slide by without any witty commentary or douchebaggy cynicism. As a result, I've had little to report.

But rather than cave to the pressure and throw in the towel, I'm gonna make an effort to come up with brand new douchebaggy cynicism to go along with my daily photog adventures. Granted, it's not going to be easy... but damnit, if I'm not going to be an unnecessarily critical prick, then who will? This guy? I can't allow that.

So I'm gonna try to get back into the game. If after the next month or two I can't get a chuckle out of you, then perhaps it's time for me to hang up the ol' press hat.

Gone Dark

As you may have noticed, there's been a bit of a hiatus. This is due to a combination of moving into a new apartment, finding myself with a bit of writer's block, not doing enough of this, and wasting my time watching too much mind-numbing-yet-possibly-brilliant junk like this.

Don't worry, I'll get back on the wagon... or off the wagon... whichever means I'm writing stuff. More to come soon.