What’s going on world? AP Charles here.

The word has trickled down from the powers that be: I have been re-assigned to another show. I will now be working on “Morning Express With Robin Meade”. So when you are asleep in your warm, cozy beds at 3 A.M., I will be in the office helping put together a great show for you Monday through Friday. If Grayson allows me, I may get to be a guest blogger for the "News To Me" blog.

I can remember my first day working on this show. I was on a shoot with the guys and we were at Georgia Tech. Teague and Mike asked me to dance on camera (funny because I ran into some of my frat brothers and was stepping with them earlier that afternoon). From there on it was my staple to be “the weird random guy” in a number of shots. Unfortunately, not all of those made it to air. I’m going to miss searching the Web for great content. I’m going to miss the production meetings at “The Creek” (our production house), most of which primarily consist of us eating doughnuts and figuring out where we are going to shoot that weekend and what’s going in the show that week. I’m going to miss our Turner audio guys Gerald and Chris. I need to hang out with these guys. Gerald, I am not a lackey!!!

To the NTM Crew:
Thanks for all you guys have taught me. You guys have shown me so much and I know we will all accomplish great things.

Teague: Remember when I fell asleep on the way back from the NASCAR shoot and you decided to wake me up while filming me? Payback is coming…lol

Eric: Anytime you need a little advice on how to be the smooth ladies’ man, holla at me!

Mike: I know I am probably still going to get a few e-mails asking me to crank out a [transcription] real quick for probably the next week or two. It’s ok.

Aaron: Looks like your back on music reporting. Dude, hit me up if you need anything. “No Worries.” I’m stuck saying that now thanks to you.

Grayson: Dude, you are ultimate hook up guy. I swear you are like the concierge for "News To Me." Keep those contacts. (Sorry about Craft).

To all the viewers and readers of this blog, keep sending in your stories and pictures. It’s you that keeps this show going. ["News To Me"] exists solely because you guys can’t put a camera down. And we love it! I thank ya’ll. And who knows, you may see me on a shoot with the old crew sometime in the future.

Holla!!!

Associate Producer Charles behind the shades

What Up NTM World? Associate Producer Charles here. Every Thursday a different "News To Me" staffer is going to suggest three things on the web he or she thinks is something you might get a kick out of. This week, I’m on deck with my Thursday Three.

I think I need to mention that I am the youngest guy on this show. I’m only 25. That being said, I watch a ton of TV. Like you know you watch too much TV when you Tivo 2 things and then go into another room to watch something else at the same time. And while I can’t watch TV at work, I do take time out of my busy schedule to watch some of my favorite Web shows. So here are three shows that are in my “Web tivo” queue:

Up Stairs Girls
Two Words… “Working” Girl. Don’t worry, it’s all PG, but it’s damn funny.

Down Stairs Guys
These guys remind me of my roommates and my frat brothers when I was in college. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Hooking Up
Facebook, college life, and some of my favorite vloggers all in one place. It’s like having a huge bowl of jambalaya… just a bunch of good stuff all thrown together.

So now you know what’s in my Web show queue. Tell me what’s in yours. Have a site you think we should be considering? Leave it in the comments and we’ll check it out!

All of us who work on "News To Me" are pretty pumped about this weekend's show!  Producers Mike and Teague have been putting in serious hours creating what we think will be really compelling TV.  It's a story we have been "teasing" for over a month now and one that we have been working on for several months: The great Georgia Bigfoot Hoax.  No need to get into the background of the hoax here... we'll do that this weekend on "News To Me," but if you are a skeptic, suspicious, paranoid, wearing a tin-foil hat or someone who makes fun of those kind of people you will really dig the first two blocks of the show.

Interestingly enough, seems like the whole "News To Me" crew has memories associated with Sasquatch.  Do we believe?  Not necessarily, but buried deep in our grey matter we all have something that clicked when we started working on this story...

Eric Lanford:
In a previous life, as host of a different TV show, I actually went HUNTING for Bigfoot.

Coordinating Producer Michael Kane:
When I was an “Indian Guide” – that was a youth group in the ‘70s for losers who were too wimpy to make it as a Boy Scout – we went on a hike up to the top Atlanta’s Stone Mountain, the largest exposed slab of granite on Earth.

The trail to the top is pocked with large holes and craters. One of the older boys pulled me aside to warn me that some of those craters were actually Bigfoot tracks. I believed him, swallowed hard and soldiered up the mountain in a cold sweat. The mountain still haunts my dreams.

Producer/Editor Teague Kennedy:
Round about 1994 I was driving down a dirt road just after dark in search of a campsite in a woodsy area in central Florida. I had seen no people or cars since entering the forest perhaps 15 minutes earlier, when up in the distance I saw in my headlights what looked to be a naked man running through the woods. Needless to say we didn't pitch tent in the area. True story.

Associate Producer Charles Gilbert:
When I was 14, my friends and I thought we saw Bigfoot’s print in some dirt behind a house in our neighborhood. The footprint was huge. Then we looked closer. We noticed that it wasn’t Bigfoot’s print. It was mine. I am 6’ tall and I wear a size 15 shoe. Damn I felt dumb.

Corey the intern:
I got scared by watching "Harry and the Hendersons" when I was a little kid. Seriously, Bigfoot has never really interested me. I'm more fascinated by UFO pictures experts can't explain.

Associate Producer Grayson Thagard:
My Grandpa Red used to take me and my little brother out on his air boat into the Florida Everglades. "The glades" was a creepy place at dusk when the shadows got long, especially for a 7 year old. As we skimmed along the shallow water Grandpa saw something out of the corner of his eye and all of a sudden he shut down the giant fan pushing the air boat. In the absence of that roar we clearly heard what can only be described as a moan coming from the thick vegetation about 20 yards away. Grandpa told us in a whisper, that it was the sound of a Skunk ape, the "Bigfoot" of the swamp. It was a typical sweltering Florida July but I clearly remember hearing the sound again and suddenly being ice cold. That was my last trip to the Everglades.

Associate Producer Aaron Rustom:
When I was about 10 or 11, my best friend’s dad took us out to their cabin in East Texas so we could go fishing. As we got closer to the cabin, my friend’s dad started telling us about the “Alabama-Coushatta” tribe, who were native to the area, and the creature who lurked among them… a creature named "Sasquatch." He also told us we would be okay, if we kept "stink bait" in our pockets. Stink bait is used on trot-lines to catch catfish. And as the name implies, it stinks! It stinks so bad that even Bigfoot is repulsed by the odor. That whole weekend, every noise, every crackle, every time the trees blew, we rubbed more stink bait on us.

The funny thing is… there actually have been Bigfoot "sightings" in that area!

Ok, so those are OUR Bigfoot memories... do you have a bigfoot / ufo / ghost / unexplained mystery / story? Tell us! It IS Halloween after all!

In the meantime, sleep tight... we'll see you tomorrow at 9:30pm Eastern and Pacific on Headline News!

Murphy’s Law is defined as anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. That was the case on this shoot. It was one of those shoots where all you can do is laugh at this situation because you would otherwise pop a blood vessel due to stress. This will probably not be the only post about this shoot however; it will be the only one from my perspective.

Earlier in the week I spoke to Mike and he said we would meet at the Dawsonville Outlet Mall at 10AM. So I wake up Saturday morning and stumble out of bed like I always do. I put on my jeans and a shirt as I always do and headed to the shoot. This is where it all began to go down hill.

See what happened :

So I get to the Dawsonville Outlet Mall at 10am as planned. I look at all the other crew members and I realize that I am not in the khaki short club. Yes I threw on some heavy denim jeans to wear in like 90 something degree weather. I know I am a smart one for this. So I am thinking, “its an outlet mall, there have to be some cheap shorts somewhere”. So I run to one store…they aren’t open. I run to another store…their shorts are too expensive. I back to the first store…their shorts cost even more. Finally I run into the last store and end up spending like $26 on some shorts. Now this doesn’t seem too bad. But then Teague says, “Well we have to go to the Wal-Mart across the street to pick up some stuff”. Are you serious? I could have bought some shorts for like 8 bucks.

So anyway, we go to wal-mizzel and Teague and I are trying to figure out what flotation device to get Eric. (I know you are asking why we need this. You have to watch the show this weekend to see where and why). So the choices were between a regular inner tube and the children’s sea-horse floaty. I voted for the floaty, but we had to take a vote amongst the crew. We ultimately didn’t use one. But can you imagine Eric on a floating seahorse? I think Eric would have embodied the essence of cool on that one

So we loaded up into 3 cars, well really 2 cars and a minivan. Teague was going to be shooting Eric from one car, while Eric was driving another car. Now this seemed like a good idea…at the time. The whole thing seems simple enough. You just put both cars next to each other. What we failed to realize that it is not the best idea when the camera man is hanging out of the window. What’s worse is being on a two lane highway was no the best place for this. we had cars, trucks, and motorcycles trying to pass. We eventually ran out of highway and had to get back into single file formation. So I am thinking we are going to turn around and go back to the outlet mall. I was sadly mistaken, for we kept driving. Se here I am sitting in the passenger side of this minivan not knowing where the heck we are going. Apparently Gerald (our sound guy) and myself were on a need to know basis and apparently we didn’t need to know. We just followed.

So we shoot a couple of leads and switch around the driving arrangements. Aaron is driving one car, I’m driving the minivan, and Eric is driving with Teague and Gerald in the car. We had been driving for about 30 minutes when I began to pick up radio stations from North Carolina! How did we end up that close to North Carolina? I mean I figured we were going to North Georgia but wow!

Teague, Eric, and Gerald at the Tomato House

So we pull up to this old time gas station. We go and set up for the shot and all we can hear is Teague yelling at somebody. We look up and we see this green truck run over Teague’s tripod. He had set it up behind this truck and forgot he put it there. The guy in the truck obviously didn’t look before he backed up. So the guy gets out and he is a little pissed like “why are you hitting my truck”. I don’t know what Teague said, but the guy drove off without reaching towards his gun rack that was in the back window. What was interesting about this particular lead it that it only took like 30 seconds to shoot…if that. Eric nailed it the first time around and that was it. For Eric, that’s like hitting the mega-million jackpot…it never happens. So we load up and proceed on to, what was probably the most stressful scene to shoot.

The backdrop for the shot

The scenario for the next scene was that Eric was supposed to be on the side of the mountain and his car has broken down. Aaron finds this beautiful overlook and we decide to set up there. I am getting something out of the van and I look over at Teague’s car. Ironically the car we were going to use in the shot, actually started gushing antifreeze. It was like a running faucet. Teague starts pitching a fit. Only this time he had just cause to do so. I mean we are at the top of a freaking mountain and his car starts to break down. I mean who do you call in this situation? What do you tell them? “Ah yea, I’m at the top of Blood Mountain. Can you come and tow my car” I mean I don’t know how anything with more that 2 axles can get up that thing. So after looking at the car, Aaron determines that it is only the auxiliary canister that is leaking anti-freeze and not the radiator. So it was drivable. Thank goodness. That would suck if the car was still stuck up there. Oh but that’s only the start of what went wrong on this scene.

Now we needed the car to be smoking for this particular shot. And with Teague’s car breaking down, we thought that his show would be easy to get. We thought since the coolant was leaking the engine would already be hot enough if not smoking. But as you can guess, the block wasn’t hot enough. So we decide that we would throw some water on the block to get some steam going. But once again, the block wasn’t hot enough. So what do we do? Teague comes up with the brilliant idea to light some pine straw on fire right next to a car. All we needed was dry pine straw and a lighter. Quick question, who has a lighter? Of course they look to the smoker (me) for one. The funny thing is, I quit smoking about a month ago (it’s been a long month). So I am here getting ridiculed by everyone about how I am supposed to have a lighter. In the meantime, we try to light this stuff with a cigarette lighter and some tissue paper. I think we tried to do this for about an hour. During this hour, Teague has managed to get so riled up that he kicks his car (I mean it can’t get much worse right). I get stung by some sort of bug to where I have to pull the stinger out. Something else bit me on the back of my head. By this time everyone was just ready to go home. But it was only 2pm. We still had a long way to go. I guess you will have to see this weekend if we were able to get the stuff lit.

We arrive at this inner tube site in Helen, Georgia about 45 minutes later. Matter of fact, we drive dead in to the center of the town where so much was going on. As we are driving down the main street, Eric and I turn right to go into a parking lot. Unfortunately, Aaron didn’t get that message. Aaron missed the turn and kept going straight. So we’re calling him trying to figure out where he is and giving him directions how to get to where we are. After about 20 minutes, he is able to turn around and get to the parking lot. Mind you, it’s like 90 some odd degrees and I am outside carrying the run bag, the tripod, the flex-fill, and occasionally the shotgun boom.

"The Redneck Riviera"

So we walk up to what Eric called “the Redneck Riviera “ which was basically people drifting in inner tubes in knee-high water. Eric and Teague decide that this would be a great shot so, once again we set everything up. Eric walks out to some rocks that are in the middle of the water. He says his lines and then he makes his way back towards dry land. And then everyone hears a “ploosh” noise. We look over and Eric has dropped the walkie –talkie in the water. So Eric brings the walkie-talkie over to us and we try to determine if it is damaged. We dry it off and give it a test. The thing ended up sounding like a television set from the 1940’s. The sound was all distorted, and the transmitter wasn’t even working. Basically we gave Eric a walkie-talkie and he gave us a paper weight. What else can go wrong on this shoot?

Well we finish up all of the leads except for one. We end up leaving Helen and start making our way back around the mountain. We see a cow field and decide this will be the place for the last shoot. By this time it is beginning to rain. We pull over on the side of the road and set up for the last time. It just so happens that a billion cars and trucks want to drive along this one road. I mean it’s a freakin' mountain town. How many cars can pass through here? So we decide to shoot further down the hill, right off the street. Teague asked me to pull out the flex and reflect some light on Eric’s face. So I grab the flex and hop off the street…and land in an ant pile!. So I am jumping and cursing, and Teague and Eric just think I am complaining until I take of my shoe and show them. Teague said it best, “If the light is shaking on Eric’s face, don’t worry. That’s just Charles getting eaten by all the ants” I don’t know if the light is shaky or not. Like you, I am just going to have to watch the show this weekend and find out. We finish the shot and all I can think about is I want to get out of here.

The reason I call this shoot Murphy’s Law is that EVERYTHING went wrong. not knowing where we’re going; Getting yelled at by handfuls of traffic; a car breaking down on the side of a mountain; the search for a lighter; getting eaten alive or stung by 3 different types of bugs, equipment breaking. Like this blog post, the day was long and thank God this shoot is over!

We here at "News To Me" go to great lengths to inform and to entertain. And, sometimes, the entertainment finds us. Our shoot last weekend had all the makings of a good action movie. But how you ask?

Eric is a professional. I mean, come on, he's got his own show on Headline News!! But even professionals screw up every now and then, especially when they are trying to deliver their lines. Hence we have to do numerous takes to get a single shot. In this particular case, it was basically like hitting the rewind button a good 15 or 20 times.

So anyway, Eric is saying his lines over and over... and over again. Oh yeah, while crossing a busy street!!! Now, one would think that we would wait until the coast is entirely clear. Not this team. Eric would start delivering his line while the last car would come within inches of him. He must have been using the power of the "dark side" to avoid getting hit. Whenever he would mess up, he would stop in the middle of the street, turn around, and walk back to the curb. I forgot to mention that the traffic light was green and he DID NOT have the right of way. So yes, technically, he was jaywalking. But I mean it's jaywalking. It's one of those things that's only illegal if you get caught... right? Well, we did.

Sitting on the patio of the restaurant right next to us was a fully uniformed servant of the community. Is it just me or do cops always have on sunglasses? Anyway, I see the officer get up out of the corner of my eye and I whistle and signal Eric to get out of the street. Then I hear the cop's voice: "Sir, get out of the street."

So Teague, Mike, Chris (the audio guy), and myself are on one side of the street wondering how we can sneak Eric out of this situation like our VBS correspondents snuck footage out of North Korea (you gotta watch the show this weekend to understand that). Eric is on the other side of the street chatting with the cop. What's funny is that his wireless mic is still on... so even though we are on the other side of the street, we can hear the whole conversation. It went a little something like this:

Police Officer: Sir, just what the #$*! are you doin'?

Eric: We're just shootin' leads for a TV show.

Police Officer: Do you realize you were jaywalking? Let me see your license.

Eric: Really? I didn't know. We do this all the time (as he points at us).

I took my headphones off after that. I look over at Mike and all he is saying is not to tell the cop that this is something we regularly do. That's like admitting you litter on the highway.

So after about three minutes, the cop and Eric start crossing the street in our direction. We are thinking we are about to get a ticket. Thankfully, the cop was pretty cool and let Eric (and the rest of us) go with out any citations or warnings.

For the record, in no way are we advocating jaywalking. I think I should have put a disclaimer: "do not try this at home." The only thing we CAN advise you of is your right to be silent, your right to an attorney and we STRONGLY advise you to watch "News To Me" this weekend.

I am a music lover. I pretty much listen to everything, especially R&B and hip hop. So I am on this random myspace page and I hear this song called, “Intruder Alert.” I wanted to know who the song was by so I did a little digging and found out it was off Lupe Fiasco’s new album. I “YouTubed” the album (I made that word up) and I came across the newest music video off the album called, “Hip Hop Just Saved My Life.” I was digging the song but was curious who the artist was singing the hooks. I found out her name was Nikki Jean. So being the nerd that I am, I “YouTubed” her as well. Come to find out she’s an artist who was looking for her first big break - and she got it on this CD.

Jean is a frequent video blogger via her Youtube page called Nikki Jean Project. She now vlogs her highlights every day while she’s on tour with Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West and Rihanna. But one of her videos really jumped out at me. She recorded herself sitting in her car listening, for the first time, to the tracks she sang the hooks for. To finally hear her on voice on an album was a dream of hers since she was a child. Needless to say, the emotion in the video is moving. So I reached out to her, and asked her some questions, and got to the root of this story. The thing that jumped out most about this story is… well, I can’t really tell you that. You are just going to have to tune in this weekend for that. I have to write the script for it, but trust me, it is a truly humbling and moving interview.