Meet The Crew.

This, so far, has not been an easy tour. It's big, nay, it's huge. There's a lot of crap, and the problem is, there's not enough crew people to deal with it all. But on the lighting end, there's enough crew people if all they dealt with was the lighting gear. Instead they've been forced into other roles, mostly setting up curtains and set pieces, normally a carpenters job.

They work their butts off all day with little to no breaks to do anything. I've never seen them in catering. But they must be eating.

So here's my tribute to my very awesome lighting crew. The gear on the other hand... Another blog maybe.

This is Jeff. He's the lighting crew chief. His forte is politics. He's a competent lighting tech, but he's definitely my "go to" guy when it comes to getting things sorted out.



This is Emily. I haven't had much contact with her so far on this tour, since she was doing day shift at rehearsals while I was on the night shift. But I know for a fact she's a hard worker. In New York a couple of days ago, she was in her harness up 30' in the air hanging on a truss trying to get some of the bi-parting drapes to work, FOR THREE HOURS. Not a fun day. She sounds like another favorite crew person of mine, Desirae "Wheels". Are all women lighting techs supposed to have raspy voices?



Say hello to Jason. He's another hard worker, and I got to see it every night because he was on the night shift with me. When ever a light broke down, he was in his harness up in the rig fixing it. He's also a huge hockey fan. And like me, he's not a fan of specific teams or players, but really a fan of the sport.



And this is Kevin. As far as I'm concerned, the hero of the bunch. It's only his second tour and he's on probably the hardest gig anyone can have on a lighting crew. He's the dimmer guy. He has to run all the cables that get plugged into all the lights and power. Not to mention, he's also the "techo-weenie" on the crew who knows all the ins and outs of all the different electronic gear. So if something breaks or acts up, it's up to Kevin to sort it out. He's running around from the moment the load in starts to the moment the load out ends. And during rehearsals, he was, more often than not, the stand in when ever we needed to see a body on camera or in the light, as displayed in the above picture.

And he does it all with a smile on his face and the calmness of a Hindu cow. Kudos to him.

There you have it, my crew for the fall 2009 Maxwell arena tour. All Canadians. All the time.

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The Worlds Most Expensive Deodorant

I can't remember if I wrote in my blog or not (somehow I remember doing so) but I changed deodorants a few months back on the recommendation by Hurley of TV show "Lost" fame (Jorge Garcia) on his blog. I now use this salt crystal stick that you wet and rub. It's not an antiperspirant, just a deodorant. I still sweat but no stink.

It's considered and "all natural" kind of thing, and the easiest place for me to find it was Whole Foods. Granted they are usually more expensive your standard Right Guard, or Old Spice, but they seem to last for a very long time... sorta.

I'm guessing there's a downfall to having to wet a salt crystal. In that, if it is never dried properly, or is in humidity, it eventually softens and breaks. As was the case in Toronto. I had purchased one that was on a screw shaft, like your standard deodorant. Turn the knob at the bottom and the product moves up. Well, I think it had been humid for quite some time in the bottom of the stick because I went to turn the screw to drive it up, and it didn't move. Instead, little flakes of crystal, that should have been clinging to the shaft, fell into the bottom of the stick. So, in my infinite wisdom, I shook the stick hoping to lock some part of the salt crystal onto the screw shaft, instead the crystal shot out across the room, bounced of the wall and smashed into three pieces in the sink.

Needless to say, I needed a new one. I got online to see if Whole Foods is in Canada. Thankfully it is, and there is one on the edge of downtown Toronto. I asked one of my crew members who lives in Toronto how far the Whole Foods was from my hotel. He said about a 45 minute walk one direction. I did have that kind of time. We'd be programming overnight until 6 in the morning and then my day was spent sleeping before returning to the studio for another over night session. I had maybe an hour and a half, if I got up and went straight out the door.

So, to save time, I took a cab to Whole Foods. With tip, $15.oo Canadian. I bought the only salt crystal deodorant stick they had (different design) for $8.99 Canadian. In an effort to save money, and get in some exercise, I power walked back to the hotel, which took me 45 minutes.

So here it isThe $23.99 Canadian, natural and organic, salt crystal deodorant. That's $22.98 American. Pretty expensive for a deodorant.

I think this one will last me a little longer since there is no screw shaft mechanism, it's just a salt crystal shoved in a screw base with a plastic screw top. Plus, I leave the top off every chance I get to make sure it stays dry and solid. Unlike my pits, which, on a work day, are damp, but odor free.

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A Coin In Every Pocket.

I think my favorite coin in the world is the English Pound. It’s a thick, heavy coin. It makes a very unique kind of thud when dropped on the counter or bar, and it will stand on it’s edge without a problem.

I like the idea of getting rid of the dollar bill and replacing it with the dollar coin. That’s the way it is here in Canada, no dollar bills, only dollar coins. The coin is called the “loonie” because of the Loon pressed on it. They also have the “toonie”, which is a two dollar coin.

While I like the dollar and two dollar coins, there is a drawback; The jingling and the jangling when they are loose in you pocket. Normally not a big deal when you walk around, but I think the loonie and the toonie make a very specific sound that pan handlers around the city can hear and they insist on hitting you up for change. Can’t say, “No, I don’t have any.” Since I don’t have a coin wallet with me, I’ve been putting one coin in each of my pockets to cut down on the noise. I’ve also been experimenting with different coins in combination in each pocket to see what makes the least noise. I’ve determined that putting the loonie and the toonie together make the most noise.

Hopefully, in the next week or so, I can get rid of all these coins. I can’t exchange them. Maybe I’ll just send them to my brother, he too, likes coins.

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T.O. Food.

I've been told that Toronto likes to think of itself as the New York City of Canada. And since New York City goes by NYC, Toronto likes to go by T.O. (Toronto, Ontario). I have to put the periods in because if I don't it looks like I'm yelling, "TO".

I like Toronto. It's got that big city feel, but not unsafe. They do have a fair number of good restaurants in the area. I remember walking over to the arts district a few years back and having quite a nice tapas meal. But there is one place I always visit, for at least one meal, while I'm here. I could never remember the name of it, I just knew it was on the edge of the food court at the big mall in downtown T.O..I know the name now. Richtree Market Restaurant. The concept is not unique. It's basically a large, nicely decorated cafeteria, where you get food freshly made, and if so inclined, made to order. I've been there twice since landing in T.O.. I go every time I come. The prices are high, but not as high as on my first night in town this time.

I got in to the hotel around 8:30PM last Sunday, after decompressing a bit and talking with the wife, I went out in search of food. Here's one difference between NYC and T.O., NYC has lots of late night eateries. I wasn't picky, so I went to the Subway I saw on the drive in. I got to the door and tried to enter... locked. I looked at the business hours sign, "Sunday, 11:00AM - 10:00PM." I looked at my watch, 9:47PM. I looked at the clerks behind the counter, they waved me off, mouthing "We're closed." I shook my head, showed them my watch and stalked off. I was pretty mad because I had my heart set on a turkey and ham foot long. I walked around the city and found, not two blocks away, another Subway, this time the "Open" sign was on so I rushed in. There were two other people ahead of me, but they were doing there best to close, and I think I was the last person in. They had cleared off most of the food from the sandwich station but were still willing to serve me. So I asked for my turkey and ham foot long. I think the lady heard me wrong because she proceeded to make me a chicken and bacon foot long. Didn't matter, I was hungry, so I grabbed a bag of chips and drink and made it a combo. How much? $15.00 Canadian! When the U.S. dollar was strong against the Canadian, that wouldn't have been a big deal, but with the weakness of the dollar, that basically translates one to one. I paid $15.00 for a sandwich and a bag of chips. I'd have done better ordering room service!

Back to Richtree. My favorite "section" is the southeast Asian food. The first time I went (this trip) I had the Nasi Goreng. It's a rice based dish tossed with vegetables and chicken. I had the real McCoy when I went to Kuala Lumpur, and this stuff is pretty comparable. Although I don't remember cauliflower in Kuala Lumpur...

Today, I chose to have the noodle cousin to the Nasi Goreng, but for the life of me I can't remember what it's called!I also discovered a little money saving tip... The corner drug store here is running a special on Arizona brand fruit punch, 99 cents for that big can. Probably more calories than I need, but it definitely is a thirst quencher. I also splurged today and got what I thought was a fruit and yogurt parfait. Turns out it was strawberries and custard. Still delish, but I wasn't prepared for the custard flavor and texture. All this cost me, $13.oo Canadian. A much better deal than Subway.

Tonight and until I leave T.O., my schedule is shifting to nights, which means, I'll be waking up in the afternoons, looking for food. Richtree Market, I'll see you tomorrow.

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Days 1 Thru 6.

Maxwell load in started on Monday. Here's 6 pictures of the six days of load in (so far).Day one. Lifts in the room and the riggers are rigging. There's still lots to do. My goal for the day was to see all the lights in the lighting truss work. They didn't fly to trim, but they were working when I left (at a reasonable hour).


Day Two. Trusses are finally going to trim, as are the sound clusters. The riggers still have to do the rigging for the moving video wall. Yep, this tour has a moving video wall. It sits about 10 feet from the downstage edge, and opens and closes for the different acts. 16, count 'em 16 two ton motors to hold this sucker up. That's 32 tons or, 64,000 pounds. They actually had to wait until day 3 to start hanging the wall because an independent engineer had to come in and certify that the roof could hold the weight. Not just the video wall, but all the lights, sound, drapes, and truss as well. What was my goal for day two? To not have my butt fall asleep in the chair. Well, there was more for me to do, I've got a lot of new equipment I've not worked with before and spent most of the day learning the new toys.


Day Three. They got half of the video wall hung, and the rest of the stage was built. You can't see it, but there is a long "Y" shaped ramp that comes off the front of the stage. The lighting guys set out all the floor lights, which includes a bunch of LED colour bars along the ramps, hence the red glow in the room. My goal for day three, test the floor lights and keep playing with the new toys.


Day four. They got the entire video wall hung, and only half of it working, so that night, I had half a video wall to throw images up on and learn about how it all interfaces. They hung some drapes too.


Day five. The pieces are coming together. All the big bits are working, video screen online, and moving. You can't tell, but I've gotten control of some of the cameras and am practicing putting images on the video walls. The goal for today was to get presets for the video wall and interfacing with the "Encore" system set on the lighting console. The other goal was to stay up as late as possible since starting on Monday, I'm going to be up all night programming with the lighting designer.


And finally, day 6. Really just me touching up stuff and messing around with the gear, practicing practicing practicing. I did take a moment to take a picture of me taking a picture of the video screen of me taking a picture. Always strange when you have a camera set up behind you.

I might disappear again, it all depends on how programming goes. I might be choosing to spend my off time sleeping instead of typing. When the tour gets going, I'm sure I'll be posting more.

Until then...

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Quirky August #2

Here's another post I meant to put up in August.

Nicole and I went shopping in Glendale early one morning. Our Sister-in-Law showed us this neat little store that we wanted to check out again because it had cute children's toys and we had a 1 year old birthday to attend.

We got to the parking structure, which at 9:30 AM on a weekday was, as expected empty. So we pulled into a parking space and proceeded to perform our standard extraction from the car.

Before Nicole could even open her door, another car zipped into the parking space RIGHT NEXT TO US. A whole empty parking lot, and this person had to park right next to us. Now instead of a full open door swing, Nicole had to do a half open and then shimmy sideways out of the car.

A whole empty parking lot!This might be one of my Larry David "Curb Your Enthusiasm" moments, but, a whole empty parking lot! At least park one stall away from the nearest car! Isn't that the unwritten rule? Like stalls in a public bathroom, you always leave one between you and the next person, unless there isn't room to do so.

A whole empty parking lot!

Geez!

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Quirky August #1

Here's a post I meant to do in August. But I was on "vacation".

Nicole and I often take the dog and the kid for a walk late in the afternoon or early in the morning when the weather outside is cooler. August temps fluctuated so much that we had over 100 degree days and some days that barely reached 80.

On one of our walks, I was in control of the dog when I noticed something that might cause trouble. Pekona likes to eat paper, so these little shreds could prove a problem. As we approached, Pekona didn't seem terribly interested in the paper, but when I looked down I noticed this. Now why does this strike me as quirky? Maybe better to say, oddly humorous. Here we have, littered on the ground, paper. And where did this paper originate? At the "Environmental Programs Division". Last I checked, leaving litter on the ground was bad for he environment. Or did the Environmental Programs Division not get that memo out to it's employees?

Perhaps the letter that was contained in the envelope was just that, the memo telling the employees to "not litter, take care of our environment. That's what our program division does".

Whom ever dropped this didn't get the memo.

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3 Days, 65 Drops.

Back home in Altadena, Nicole and I use a soft soap and "poof" in the shower as opposed to a bar of soap. On the road, it's sort of hard to get a "poof" to dry properly, since you always stuff it in your shower bag, and a damp "poof" often end up moldy and smelly fairly quickly.

So on the road, I take a bar of soap. My favorite at the moment is the Irish Spring bar with little scrubbing crystals embedded in the soap. I used to use the Dove bar, which was better at moisturizing, but that never seemed to scrub off the dirty feeling. And no venue ever provides a wash cloth.

Since I haven't toured in over a year, I've discovered that I have lost my ability to grab a bar of wet soap. Every time I shower, I swear I drop that damn Irish Spring at least 7 times. And it doesn't help that it keeps landing with the loudest thud, and then shoots around the tub like a hockey puck.

As long as we're on the subject of my hotel bathroom, I did get a few wonderful surprises. Check this video out.


First off, it's roomy, with ample counter space. Second, there's a window, which lets in nice light in the afternoon (The room itself faces an inner courtyard so good lighting is limited until later). And finally, check out the power in that shower head! It actually has some pressure to it! Not like a lot of these hotels now days that put in the super low flow shower heads (I'm talking to you Holiday Inn) that have such poor water pressure, I've been known to take a whole shower without ever getting my feet wet! Something to look forward to after, or before, a long night of programming.

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Fire Flies

Flew to Toronto on Sunday. I'm here for two weeks while Maxwell rehearses for the next leg of his tour. More on that in later blogs. This blog is all about the journey here. Pictures and all.

Getting to Toronto. Sounds pretty easy, get on a plane, get off a plane, answer all the questions right at the customs desk and off you go. Leave it to me to make it difficult.

I've been touring a long time. In that time, I've learned a few ins and outs about the business. One of those is to request a specific airlines to fly. That way I can accrue all my miles in one place. The airline I chose is Continental. Why? They still serve food and the drinks are free. And as an "elite member", priority boarding, priority wait list for upgrades, blah blah blah. When I first contacted the production manager for this tour, I told him that I prefer Continental, and he said no problem. When I finally got my flight information, they had booked me on United! I inquired if there was a breakdown in communication about my Continental desires, and the problem was resolved.

Of course, it was resolved to late for the "automatic" upgrade to first class, I had to wait until I boarded the plane to see if the upgrade went through.

Now on to some pictures...
Let's play, "Guess which one's the roadie". Yep, the dude on the right, not the woman on the left. He was on my flight. I saw him walk up and immediately knew he was a roadie. I thought he was coming on tour with me, but when I changed planes in Cleveland, he wasn't there. Granted, he could have just been some dude who looked like a roadie, upon closer inspection, I noted that he was wearing an SSE Hire shirt. SSE is a sound company in England.
As we took off from LAX we banked right and for the first time ever, flew over Altadena and Pasadena. Yep, that's my house. Didn't have my new fancy pants camera, so I couldn't zoom in on my house. Picture was taken with my new phone camera (new phone, another blog). If you blow up the picture, you can see on the mountains on the upper right corner of the picture where the Station fire burned. The parts that are grey and white, burned, the brown and green was spared. Pretty close to the house I'd say.

For those who didn't know, the house Nicole, Sean Patrick, and I live in , was threatened by the Station wild fire that is still burning in L.A.. The fire is another blog I should write, but alas, I left on tour and left all the pictures and video I took of the fire from our street at home. So, that blog will come in sometime in October, when I return from this little tour...
The highlight of the flight was flying over the active part of the fire. It's well into the mountains, away from home and structures. Even from 20,000 feet in the air, you could make out towers of flames. It was pretty amazing to see the fire line coursing across the mountainside.
Lots of smoke still in the air. You can see a single plume of smoke in the distance.

After the fires passed into the distance, I started flipping through the SkyMall magazine. For those who've never flown or see it, it's basically a catalogue of crap you'd never buy unless you were trapped in a flying tube, missing your house and thinking, "Man, I need a ceramic Sumo guy for my non-existent garden." This however was the best thing I found listed. Well, at least the most humorous.
That's right, a shirt pocket underwater camcorder. Because we are always swimming with shirts on, and especially one with a pocket. And while I'm swimming, I'll be glad to know, I've got a camcorder that fits in there, that I can video my grand children floating in the pool.

By the way, I was upgraded to first class, when I went to board the plane, the computer tweeted at me and the attendant gave me a new boarding pass. First class, window seat. I prefer aisle, but I'm not complaining. Besides, they still serve free drinks and large meals in first class...
Yep, a burger in first class. YUM.

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Even The President Takes A Vacation.

Hello out there! I didn't forget my blog! And I wasn't really on vacation. There's been a lot to say, but I've been slightly unmotivated to publish. Not to mention, unemployed, which makes it tough to do anything, except clean the house. I've been directing my unemployed energy in to rearranging the kitchen. Amazing how much cupboard space opens up when you get rid of all the commemorative glassware.

I'm leaving to go on tour this Sunday. Out with Maxwell for 6 weeks. Two of those weeks in Toronto for rehearsals. Always strange to me, when the rehearsal time is half of the actual tour time.

I know I'm going to miss my son and wife. I'm sure he'll be walking by the time I get back. I can already feel my heart breaking if that happens.

I won't bore you with a long blog today. Too much to do to prepare for Sunday. Nicole is having surgery tomorrow to remove her gall bladder (she has gall stones) so her mom is coming to town today to help out with the boy. Time to clean up the rest of the house.

Instead, I'll have my brother write the post. Raymond is out on an extended tour of duty to the Northwest Hawai'ian Islands as the "Technical Dive Supervisor", which really means he's the guy in charge when they do really deep dives. So deep you have to mix three different gasses into your Scuba gear, known as "trimix" The unique gas being helium, used to keep your lungs inflated at the incredible depths they go to.

The "mission" he's on is posting blogs on the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) website. So here's his blog. I should probably mention that in his blog he talks about "50 minutes of deco," which refers to 50 minutes of decompression. Basically starting at 110 feet below the surface, they have to take 50 minutes to complete the final distance or the helium in the trimix forms bubbles in their blood stream, and we all know that's bad.

There are other blogs you can read. But I think my brothers is the best. Not because he's my brother, but because he really paints a picture in your head of what he sees. 85 sharks is a lot.

You can read my brother Raymond's (same last name as me) bio for this mission here. That hat he's wearing in his bio picture. I think I bought him that hat. The brothers look good in boonie hats (even Matt).

Back in a few days to tell you about the Station wild fire that forced evacuations in my neighborhood.

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