Did an Out this evening it was easier than the In. In fact quite a bit so, so much that despite having less people, taking less time, and being colder it still wasn’t so bad. At home I followed links, checked blogs and ended up wondering about a theme park I worked for. Some how I found a video of the new Christmas show which is a remount of the first Christmas show I did there. No faux PC happy holidays inclusiveness here. An example of a Christmas show that wouldn’t bow to pressure to include a Menorah or leave out a bit of religion in favor of a generic Happy Holidays message.
Yet I found myself missing it. Recall, I tell myself, it could have been me working on it instead of the run I took. (and regret) Me behind the chair and receiving the briefcase and insisting on doing my old track instead of being forced into a new one but mistakes are made and I just have to deal with that. In the video I caught the chair move from SL to center and than quickly upstage and I wanted to know if the hand had the spots telling him to shimmy like the soloist or if there were snacks left by secret santa and if a worry about tripping during the dash into the wing lingered in the hind brain just before starting to run.
It’s not high art and I wasn’t a great stagehand but it was a good time and many small things came back making me want to return and do it again: complaining about the doves, racing center to move the building and falling, the subtle adjustment of the snowflakes so the video was centered on them, the time the scrim tore, maintaining the foggers and when the tank blew a seal, sitting on the chair the time it rained watching movies waiting to see if we would get to go home, stealing a Christmas tree from props, drinking beer whilst wearing a giant sombrero in Fullerton, discovering Man4Sale was afraid of the snowmen and using it against him, when a couple folks from production made plywood trees for our Christmas party, when people would sit ‘below cracker level’, and how it was such a great experience even on the days it wasn’t.
Still it wasn’t to last. I was getting worried working there. Worried that it’d become my life. That in a decade I’d still be a part time tech, living at the Halfway House, it consuming my time and causing me to pass up other opportunities as I sink more and more into the company’s mindset and their way of doing things. It was only a few years before I got my 5 year pin and did the same thing everyone else did: get it, look at it with a mix of shock and wonder, let out a sigh and wonder where the years went. I didn’t want that life and I decided to leave.
My final show was a fitting end, a new ice show, the floor hadn’t been maintained and broke forcing the rental of a freezer unit, the zamboni’s near death forced odd solutions to scrapping, we had to ‘proceed with caution’, there were no cheddarwurst that xmas, the TD and I were having major problems and I nearly stopped caring. Still when
I watch the video I’m reminded of the good times and wish they’d last a little longer.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Programming
Turns out it's more like falling off a bike than riding one.
Everything went well but then in the bits where it gets hard those pot holes come out of nowhere... yet somehow you manage to do that trick, you know the one you used to practice in the driveway in an attempt to impress the neighbor girl, yeah that one gets pulled off.
Yet after a bit of embarrassment things get sorted out and you don't have to steal some training wheels from a neighbor kid.
Small things that tend to slip by when doing a festival show:
Don't make the second group of sound checks more complex, more numerous as the first group with the same amount of time. The quality sometimes slips.
Inform everyone of special additions. It's not fun being informed of a surprise right before it occurs if you're running the gear it occurs on.
Things will not run according to plan. Won't happen, something'll come up and things will get off schedule. If by some miracle they do find out who made a blood sacrifice.
So far New Voices is my favorite gig of the year.
Everything went well but then in the bits where it gets hard those pot holes come out of nowhere... yet somehow you manage to do that trick, you know the one you used to practice in the driveway in an attempt to impress the neighbor girl, yeah that one gets pulled off.
Yet after a bit of embarrassment things get sorted out and you don't have to steal some training wheels from a neighbor kid.
Small things that tend to slip by when doing a festival show:
Don't make the second group of sound checks more complex, more numerous as the first group with the same amount of time. The quality sometimes slips.
Inform everyone of special additions. It's not fun being informed of a surprise right before it occurs if you're running the gear it occurs on.
Things will not run according to plan. Won't happen, something'll come up and things will get off schedule. If by some miracle they do find out who made a blood sacrifice.
So far New Voices is my favorite gig of the year.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Just remember:
even though I had to tell them how to fold the soft good and one was in a higher job class it makes the strike go faster... right?
Now if you believe that noise I've got several well known edifices for sale.
And yes I am bitter but at least I was an electrician instead of a carp so more of my skills were utilized and I got to work with some friends.
Now if you believe that noise I've got several well known edifices for sale.
And yes I am bitter but at least I was an electrician instead of a carp so more of my skills were utilized and I got to work with some friends.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
New Year, New Idea
Since I ignored this blog last year it's time to try something new.
This is now Dead Hours: My Year on the Bounce. 365 days of me attempting to document my time bouncing between various gigs and the sort of things I do.
Why?
Because I can!
This is now Dead Hours: My Year on the Bounce. 365 days of me attempting to document my time bouncing between various gigs and the sort of things I do.
Why?
Because I can!
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Midnight Movie
Tonight another blockbuster opened at midnight it’s happening with such frequency these summers that it’s a cliché by now. This used to be special or different. The kind of time for films to be strange and different with crowds that reflected that but I guess times change.
I used to watch Elvira and went to Rocky on occasion but was never that big in it. Now in Seattle I see the listings at the Egyptian and find myself down there on occasion and that feels right. When I lined up for the ‘Two Towers’ or ‘Attack of the Clones’ it wasn’t the same, there was no edge or subversion in that experience. We were there for the movie instead of movie being secondary to the experience that has grown around it.
In college dragging a friend to ‘Rocky’ on the green behind Corbett, midnight sometime in October my Freshman Sophmore year, my friend was the Don Quixote to my Sancho Panza but he knew next to nothing of ‘Rocky’ beside the lingerie clad girls that night around campus. Back at my room I explained some of it to him and told him about the fun it could be.
Nothing better to do and sitting around Regents without a goal for the Friday he agreed. My roommate stayed. Pouring Jim Beam into coke bottles and in trench coats we headed off to Corbett.
We hung to the back since Don was a bit nervous of the crowd. Outside of his element he didn’t know how to deal. This wasn’t the dark streets with us just wandering but a crowd dressed in a sexy but not really seen way at our college. Not wanting to miss out I dragged him closer. Around the outskirts we’d pass people. Seeing a group with a guy from my dorm in a prom dress I pulled D. Quixote closer. Flamboyantly gay princess welcomed us into the circle.
It was random conversations with them but they knew ‘Rocky’ as I offered some of my coke and we talked about times we’d been, they offered a joint. Them in lingerie and drag looking more the part and Q and me in coats against the slight New Mexico chill. More Columbine than Fredicks but it was still a ‘Rocky’ so it worked. One, a vocal laughing blonde, suggested the Don should have gone as a tranny and we laughed at him in make up and a teddy. He was embarrassed, wandered off for more coke. They all said I should have been Eddy being a bit over weight with large hair but one said ‘Riff’ looked at my eyes and the way I kind of followed but was in charge. She was burnette and smiled infrequently in her leather maid and fishenet get up. Taking a long drag she passed it to me smiling.
Taking my turn I said, ‘Then I’d get a dance with you’ and passed it on.
I used to watch Elvira and went to Rocky on occasion but was never that big in it. Now in Seattle I see the listings at the Egyptian and find myself down there on occasion and that feels right. When I lined up for the ‘Two Towers’ or ‘Attack of the Clones’ it wasn’t the same, there was no edge or subversion in that experience. We were there for the movie instead of movie being secondary to the experience that has grown around it.
In college dragging a friend to ‘Rocky’ on the green behind Corbett, midnight sometime in October my Freshman Sophmore year, my friend was the Don Quixote to my Sancho Panza but he knew next to nothing of ‘Rocky’ beside the lingerie clad girls that night around campus. Back at my room I explained some of it to him and told him about the fun it could be.
Nothing better to do and sitting around Regents without a goal for the Friday he agreed. My roommate stayed. Pouring Jim Beam into coke bottles and in trench coats we headed off to Corbett.
We hung to the back since Don was a bit nervous of the crowd. Outside of his element he didn’t know how to deal. This wasn’t the dark streets with us just wandering but a crowd dressed in a sexy but not really seen way at our college. Not wanting to miss out I dragged him closer. Around the outskirts we’d pass people. Seeing a group with a guy from my dorm in a prom dress I pulled D. Quixote closer. Flamboyantly gay princess welcomed us into the circle.
It was random conversations with them but they knew ‘Rocky’ as I offered some of my coke and we talked about times we’d been, they offered a joint. Them in lingerie and drag looking more the part and Q and me in coats against the slight New Mexico chill. More Columbine than Fredicks but it was still a ‘Rocky’ so it worked. One, a vocal laughing blonde, suggested the Don should have gone as a tranny and we laughed at him in make up and a teddy. He was embarrassed, wandered off for more coke. They all said I should have been Eddy being a bit over weight with large hair but one said ‘Riff’ looked at my eyes and the way I kind of followed but was in charge. She was burnette and smiled infrequently in her leather maid and fishenet get up. Taking a long drag she passed it to me smiling.
Taking my turn I said, ‘Then I’d get a dance with you’ and passed it on.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Winter
I think it was Jon that said it standing in front of the Lickety Splitz in Bellflower. Pair of girls walked into a liquor store, near our age but classier in the starting winter chill of Southern California. Warm day turned into cool night so the long coats over mini skirts more fashion than function.
‘I like girls that swish’ he said as they piled into the car and drove into the night. Both of us left to wait and wonder. Nothing for us but to stand around with no plan or goal for the evening, give up and head our separate ways to repeat the night a few more times before I left. Stellar end to a stellar week.
Hurrying to my bus in Seattle I’m reminded of that saying. Almost midnight on a Friday near Downtown, a long day at two jobs, covered in glitter, grim and grief. Waiting to get home and put the last 14 hours of various bosses, double standards and box pushing behind me. Drink a beer, watch some cable and try to make a weekend out of it. Ignore the cabs dropping off well dressed sophistos, hipsters and the past 30 set trying to hold onto the illusion of youth. Dressed to the nines in either too much or too little, stumbling down uneven streets to some poorly lit bar that traded in more ambiance than alcohol. Dark but never dank which is what I wanted at that moment a place to lose the past day.
Past a young man too gone with exhaustion to care wanting to be home, peel off his workman blacks and get to bed.
I envied them. But had that vague feeling I couldn’t go into their world. Something kept me out of it.
Maybe it was the faded blacks, the tool bag or the glitter that looked like I lost a fight with an elf. Either way they passed by with only dirty looks as I waited for my bus.
‘Does this bus go to Ballard?’ it was soft and sweet breaking me out of the funk that was brewing. I looked over. She was even less prepared for the winter than me. Wearing shorts and chucks, shivering under a long crocheted (or knitted) sweater, ‘Yeah should be here soon I think… not sure really’ she asks if I had a long day and I laugh admitting it didn’t seem that way at first. She smiles looking somehow out of place from the Friday crowd just a little detail betraying the whole. I ask what brought her to Seattle and she tells me about her friends and family. Mentioned a brief description of places far away as I waver between awake and asleep nearly forgetting her name as the 15 pulls up.
She climbs up, hesitates, pays and sits down. The bus is half a block away before I realize it was yet another chance I missed.
‘I like girls that swish’ he said as they piled into the car and drove into the night. Both of us left to wait and wonder. Nothing for us but to stand around with no plan or goal for the evening, give up and head our separate ways to repeat the night a few more times before I left. Stellar end to a stellar week.
Hurrying to my bus in Seattle I’m reminded of that saying. Almost midnight on a Friday near Downtown, a long day at two jobs, covered in glitter, grim and grief. Waiting to get home and put the last 14 hours of various bosses, double standards and box pushing behind me. Drink a beer, watch some cable and try to make a weekend out of it. Ignore the cabs dropping off well dressed sophistos, hipsters and the past 30 set trying to hold onto the illusion of youth. Dressed to the nines in either too much or too little, stumbling down uneven streets to some poorly lit bar that traded in more ambiance than alcohol. Dark but never dank which is what I wanted at that moment a place to lose the past day.
Past a young man too gone with exhaustion to care wanting to be home, peel off his workman blacks and get to bed.
I envied them. But had that vague feeling I couldn’t go into their world. Something kept me out of it.
Maybe it was the faded blacks, the tool bag or the glitter that looked like I lost a fight with an elf. Either way they passed by with only dirty looks as I waited for my bus.
‘Does this bus go to Ballard?’ it was soft and sweet breaking me out of the funk that was brewing. I looked over. She was even less prepared for the winter than me. Wearing shorts and chucks, shivering under a long crocheted (or knitted) sweater, ‘Yeah should be here soon I think… not sure really’ she asks if I had a long day and I laugh admitting it didn’t seem that way at first. She smiles looking somehow out of place from the Friday crowd just a little detail betraying the whole. I ask what brought her to Seattle and she tells me about her friends and family. Mentioned a brief description of places far away as I waver between awake and asleep nearly forgetting her name as the 15 pulls up.
She climbs up, hesitates, pays and sits down. The bus is half a block away before I realize it was yet another chance I missed.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
The Doppelganger on the 91
It was July, boiling and no relief came from the cool breeze of the Pacific. Half awake sprawled on the double sideways seat near the rear doors of the number 91. My fedora mostly covering my eyes, my back pack as a pillow and a Hawaiian shirt toping off the outfit in a kind of mocking cool, I didn’t believe I looked good just different. After all that’s what mattered more. Not being some cookie cutter clone of a carbon image but trying for something individual.
In other words I had the look and feel of a classic dweed trying to be cool but nonchalant about it.
Didn’t really matter because at summer school. We couldn’t really be cool because there was no one to impress, just a handful of facts to be memorized and part of our freedom taken away.
That ride was my meditation. Through the kids going to the beach, or the adults going to and from work and all the rejects of other schools riding home I’d lay there listening to the road. Putting the few facts I stumbled on that day into order. Forgetting the host of people having a better time than me. The others that weren’t shackled to the bus but rather librated to go or come as they please.
In whatever form that came I’d wait out the ride and eventually get home. Disappear or hang out. It didn’t matter this was my last summer before adulthood and I tried to take some kind of advantage of it. If nothing else there was that MUD I had just found.
Then I came in.
I stopped and looked down at myself.
Electricity was in the air as I looked into my own eyes thick glasses in front of the same black brown eyes, mouths agape each of us looking for the words.
Here I way laying there I, or he, was staring down at me. We were the same but different. A different set of choices put him in a t-shirt and jeans and me in my poser cool garb. Both uncaring but for different reasons neither really confident or I don’t think he was as confident as I tried to be. I wanted to know what made him him and me me. What was the major difference but I got scared and couldn’t ask.
The bus jerked forward and he walked the couple steps to sit in the back.
I felt his eyes for the next few stops until I couldn’t take it and had to get off. I knew I fucked up but I couldn’t phrase the words right.
Couldn’t think the right way to say I knew it was me but also no me. Knew we were alike but different and that’s what haunted me. Was it just superficial or was there something more there?
Wandering over to Clark I tried to figure how the conversation would have gone. Did he have any better idea what was going on than I did or was he too trying to find that balance that I hoped existed. Did he have high hopes for the future or was it just me.
Did he have a girlfriend?
A part of me figured he must have known the answer because I didn’t.
Today over a decade after that event I still feel his wake. Coming from people who swear they know me but I figure they know him. Claiming I worked on shows that I wasn’t around for or couldn’t have done in places I’ve never heard of. Maybe if I try hard enough and go enough places I will run into him again. This time I’d like to be the cool one and him the dweeb.
In other words I had the look and feel of a classic dweed trying to be cool but nonchalant about it.
Didn’t really matter because at summer school. We couldn’t really be cool because there was no one to impress, just a handful of facts to be memorized and part of our freedom taken away.
That ride was my meditation. Through the kids going to the beach, or the adults going to and from work and all the rejects of other schools riding home I’d lay there listening to the road. Putting the few facts I stumbled on that day into order. Forgetting the host of people having a better time than me. The others that weren’t shackled to the bus but rather librated to go or come as they please.
In whatever form that came I’d wait out the ride and eventually get home. Disappear or hang out. It didn’t matter this was my last summer before adulthood and I tried to take some kind of advantage of it. If nothing else there was that MUD I had just found.
Then I came in.
I stopped and looked down at myself.
Electricity was in the air as I looked into my own eyes thick glasses in front of the same black brown eyes, mouths agape each of us looking for the words.
Here I way laying there I, or he, was staring down at me. We were the same but different. A different set of choices put him in a t-shirt and jeans and me in my poser cool garb. Both uncaring but for different reasons neither really confident or I don’t think he was as confident as I tried to be. I wanted to know what made him him and me me. What was the major difference but I got scared and couldn’t ask.
The bus jerked forward and he walked the couple steps to sit in the back.
I felt his eyes for the next few stops until I couldn’t take it and had to get off. I knew I fucked up but I couldn’t phrase the words right.
Couldn’t think the right way to say I knew it was me but also no me. Knew we were alike but different and that’s what haunted me. Was it just superficial or was there something more there?
Wandering over to Clark I tried to figure how the conversation would have gone. Did he have any better idea what was going on than I did or was he too trying to find that balance that I hoped existed. Did he have high hopes for the future or was it just me.
Did he have a girlfriend?
A part of me figured he must have known the answer because I didn’t.
Today over a decade after that event I still feel his wake. Coming from people who swear they know me but I figure they know him. Claiming I worked on shows that I wasn’t around for or couldn’t have done in places I’ve never heard of. Maybe if I try hard enough and go enough places I will run into him again. This time I’d like to be the cool one and him the dweeb.
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