I just returned from Orlando where I am shooting a one-hour weekly show for Spike.

Apparently this shirt gets you a little extra attention at airport security. I received the full search and pat-down. I guess they didn’t notice the heart in the trigger. You know how flights to Vegas are filled with loud drunk people, ready to burn money? Flights to Orlando are the same except with families and screaming kids. We are shooting on a sound stage at Universal Studios. I woke up at 4am to watch the Space Shuttle Discovery launch from my hotel parking lot. To be clear- the space shuttle didn’t launch from my hotel’s parking lot, although that would have been a lot more spectacular for me. The shuttle launched from Cape Canaveral about 50 miles east of Orlando. I have always wanted to see the shuttle launch and I contemplated driving to the coast but the crowds and traffic would have made it impossible for me to get back in time for work. As it was, I stood in the parking lot by myself and watched a small light in the night sky slowly work it’s way into space. The shuttle is the one in the middle, third one from the left. I may have been far away and the pictures may be somewhat unimpressive, but it was still pretty cool to see and to imagine astronauts strapped into that thing hurtling into space. About half way up its arc, the low rumble of the launch finally reached me. The photos don’t show it but I could clearly see a smoke trail and, as the shuttle breached the atmosphere, it left a u-shaped wake of heat, particles and smoke. I think the woman at the rental counter liked me. She upgraded me from a “compact” to this Mustang convertible. She didn’t tell me when she gave me the keys, she just handed them to me and said, “Your car is in spot #4 and it is gray.” Nice. Some of the gear for the shoot. I was shooting with the Canon 7D with lenses EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5, EF 24-70mm f/2.8L, and EF 70-200mm f/2.8L ISii. We were also using a Panasonic HMC150 as second angle and to run sound to. We downloaded cards through a MacBook Pro to a G-Safe raided hard drive. Our shoot ended at 10pm and we had to immediately dump cards and hand them to somebody who jumped in a car to the airport to be on a plane at midnight to Nashville to hand off the cards to the editors who turned around the show for broadcast in 24 hours. Amazing. I have never gotten comfortable with the ergonomics of the Red Rock DSLR rigs. That said, the offset adapter is a must and the configuration I have found that works best for me is to shift the grips to my left so that my right hand is as much “under” the camera as possible so my left hand can be free to attend to the camera itself, focusing, etc. Even so, my wrists and joints usually get cramped toward the end of the day and I ditch the Red Rock in favor of old-school bracing with my body, posture, and objects around me. (L to R) Jimmy “The Mouth from the South” Hart, Hulk Hogan, and Dog the Bounty Hunter. Returning equipment to VER in the Mustang. The temperature was 80 during the day and 70 at night. I left the top down the entire time. The only time it went up was when the valets would park it for the night.