Last Minute Add

It was cold last night. Sitting at home trying to decide if I'd watch Nova or some other program, maybe put on a movie. Just relax on a day off and I get a call around 8pm, 'Can you be at WaMu Theatre in an hour?'
Consider a few things here:
I'm ready to have a night off
It may or may not be snowing outside (I don't know but there's a weather advisory)
My tools are in my car which is being worked on
And if it runs 4 hours I'll be back at 1am

I say yes and am asked to let anyone I know that might want work (and knows audio) there's an emergency. So I call a friend and her and her boyfriend decide to do it. An hour later the gig starts and we have to take down the house system and a guy known for his ability to talk is there. I tell my friends I didn't call him.

Easy call and I'm glad I was on my crew because the crew stretching and straightening the projection screen and surrounding set pieces weren't having as much fun. Nothing like hearing 4 adults all giving instructions at once and none are repeated. It's comic but only from the outside.
Good call, 3-0-2 which isn't bad for a night that I might have been at home on my duff watching tv. And again dispatch knows I'll do most calls if asked.

Nothing like walking away from a night with money you didn't expect to make that trip to Beth's so much better.

Focus

The other day while ground supporting a genie I was told smart phones are a great thing.
Each focus when I'm in that lull waiting for instructions from the guy in the bucket am I reminded how nice smart phones are. Be it a phone or someone to talk with having something beside reading the safety placard because that can only lead to defacing those things and on the spot the witty plans of safety defacement escape me.

I'm also rather good at ground support. I've focused in this theatre a
number of times and am used to the odd backtracking and bizarre finesse that it takes to get a lift just where you need it. Not sure if I surprised the guy in the basket but I did get him into some odd spots and only hit the set once. So if it were a driving test I would have failed but at least I got the car parallel parked, right?

Easy focus, unit set, no flying scenery, no huge complex moving set pieces that require systems to be focus, set moved and then a nearby set focused. Cake to the point where a group of people could work on a few practicals and rigging a release for a fogger.

Unfortunately on the way home my car dies. Not a great thing and I'll deal with it tomorrow but as I told a friend on the way to the bar, 'That problem ain't going anywhere.'

Tech-tastic:

Or why I am a Sarcasm Hypocrite
Moved a show from one place to another. Not on tour or anything cool but from one venue to another. It went in alright, space difference and such nothing major except a BOC traveler is not rigged properly. What's wrong is anyone's guess but it threw off a screw and nut at 2 separate points today.
My fellow deck hand found the nut before lunch and I told him to hold onto it. During our run after lunch the BOC launched the screw. On headset I asked him if he still had the nut.
And here is where I'm a hypocrite.
he says, '(lead deck)?' and I reply 'Is that a joke or she has it?'
Yes I probably would have done the same but chances are I would have quickly said I had it and this hand didn't. So while I too would have made the same joke the circumstances might have been different.

Still a hypocrite though.

Memories of Gigs Past

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.

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.

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.

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!