On his way to a big-ticket fundraiser lunch in Buckhead, Rudy Giuliani decided to stop by the OK Cafe for a quick round of pressin’ the flesh and signing baseballs. I headed up there with the video camera to create my first piece for the Huffington Post’s new endeavor Off the Bus, a collaboration with the citizen journalism website New Assignment.net.

Unfortunately for me, there really wasn’t anything worth shooting, the layout was a nightmare, few people had anything interesting to say, and Rudy held his ultra-brief press gaggle behind the restaurant all of 20 yards from a major 6-lane thoroughfare (much to the chagrin of my camera’s built-in microphone). This is is definitely not my most interesting video by a longshot, and I wish I had been hooked up with HuffPo back when I caught Mitt Romney’s visit, as that event had a lot more meat on the bones (or in the buns). There was, however, at least the mildly entertaining example this week of just how little opinion polls still mean in the form of a waitress so bowled over by Rudy’s acknowledgment of the “little people,” “saying hi to everyone,” and “smiling and everything” that she’s now torn between Rudy and “whatsisname, Obama.”

Whatever did the trick, someone liked my piece enough to promote it to HuffPo’s front page (left column, “below the fold”). You special folks get the higher quality Blip.tv version:

Video thumbnail. Click to play.
Click To Play

YouTube version.

Blip.tv embeds.



Read more filed under Local News, Media, Netroots, Politics, Video