| MEAT is tonight |
[Jul. 16th, 2009|02:10 pm] |
MEAT starts a little later than usual tonight because of the Jim Rose Circus. MEAT starts at 11pm, immediately after Jim Rose.
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| work by the ton |
[Jul. 15th, 2009|03:23 pm] |
Saturday was the utterly amazing party, Sand By The Ton. It was epic in both it's awesomeness and it's clusterfuckery. It was a prime example of what happens when you create a huge event starting from the decor, and working inwards towards production and infrastructure. This means that it will look amazing, but critical things like electrical power and crowd flow are sorely mismanaged.
I was most impressed by the Bordello in the live sound room (which was also where most of the sand was). It was a wooden facade of a stylized old-west bordello. I suppose what impressed me most about it was that it was the most unique piece there. After a decade of Burning man art, I am unexcited by metal-sculpture that shoots fire, metal sculpture with LED lights, and thumpy rave land.
The carnival midway was wonderful. arcs of balloons and lighting overhead made it easy to forget you were in a warehouse. Sadly, the midway was THE only corridor through the event, so it was a slow moving constant sardine collision. That is, until the Fire department deemed it too hazardous and stopped letting people in. Remember that mention about crowd-flow mismanagement? There were some amazing sand sculptures as well. Amazingly, none of the above-ground pools collapsed.
So yeah, clusterfucks? there were many. I couldn't do much until the stage was built, and that showed up 4 hours late, right about the time I had to rush out of there to go to DNA. There was no centralized power, different areas/groups were handled differently. There was no master electrician and no power grid. I had to beg power off the lighting company because the folks in charge of my room didn't plan on power, nor did the event organizers as a whole. The next day, I spent a fair bit of time waiting on the elevated sound platform to be built. This was a huge platform, about 14 feet in the air. They finished it at 4pm, which was when the event was scheduled to start. Fortunately, the first band wasn't scheduled til 7pm. Unfortunately, I couldn't get my sound board up there until it was complete, which delayed soundcheck a lot. I was able to get one band soundchecked.
The biggest disaster I hit was when power to my sound board went down in the middle of a performance. It turned out the video projection people and the greenscreeen photobooth people (who had a huge bright photo light) had tied into the same dedicated breaker that I was using for my board. This led to much yelling. One of them tried to pull "procedure" on me and wanted to radio in to find "the guy" to tell me that they were allowed to use my outlet. "what's your name, I need to radio this in" was quickly shot down with "you just killed the stage. there is no performance thanks to you". I was able to eventually find them some dedicated power after I got mine back up. This disruption caused the lighting board to reset and not come back up. The stage lighting guy could not be found, so the lights that Vau De Vire brought in just for the bordello were quickly re-aimed at the stage. Eventually somebody on production was able to get the lighting board back up.
John was doing a stage on the midway which got shut down by the fire department when they closed the midway attractions.
At the end of the night, after the event was closed, there were still a handful of people milling about. The usual assortment of "but I know so-and-so" people and a few workers. One of the pools had started leaking and was flooding an artist area that had some extension cords. Some folks scrambled to start draining it. Of course, some of the hangers-on got in the way of this process and were standing on the hose that was draining it. This led to escalating attempts to get their attention and get them off the hose. This did not go well as a potential water-damage/electrical disaster collided panic with a "dude why you gotta be harshing my mellow, man?". This led to an aggressive confrontation and almost to fisticuffs. The hangers-on did not have any manner of staff credentials, but there were no security personnel around to escort them out. So they hung out and griped about being yelled at.
There are some amazing photos here (bordello somewhat visible at #67, #68)
Between DNA and setting up for this, I estimate I put in 48 hours of work in a 63 hour period. I was so exhausted afterward that I slept for about 14 hours and woke up with clay for muscles. |
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| helium + tazer |
[Jul. 14th, 2009|03:11 pm] |
a bunch of meatheads decide to taze each other. They do, however, have the brilliant foresight to inhale helium before getting tazed - which makes it a whole lot funnier.
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| 5 and diamond owes it's life to Johnny Depp |
[Jul. 11th, 2009|03:45 am] |
It just occurred to me that Johnny Depp was the prototype model for the 5-and-diamond quasi-vitorian burner type people. He popped out of the factory in 1993, 15 years ago. really, the only changes seem to be that they widened the stripes on the pants, added a Vandyck beard, and a leather holster. This also makes me wonder is there some shorthand term that can be spoken with venom or disdain to describe these people? you know, terms like "goth", "emo", "hipster"....
behold:
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| Saturday |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|03:44 am] |
I'm doing sound for one of the stages at Sand By The Ton this Saturday, July 11th.
Everything I've heard about those working on setup says this will be an utterly amazing event.
I gotta be over there friday morning to do some setup. I'll post more about what's set up when I get over there.
http://www.thebigartexperience.com/
200 TONS OF SAND
250,000 SQUARE FEET OF SPACE
1 CARNIVAL MIDWAY
5 SWIMMING POOLs
3 live stages:
The Mermen, The Mutaytor, Extra Action Marching Band, Vau De Vire Society, Gooferman, Eric McFadden, Polkacide, Beats Antique, 999 Eyes, Scarlet Bellows, Mark Growden, dropmotion
4 electronic stages:
Opulent Temple, SYMBIOSIS, Space Cowboys, False Profit, GravityPoint, neuroweapon
art by:
Dan Das Mann + Karen Cusolito,
Cyclecide Heavy Pedal Bike Rodeo
The Flaming Lotus Girls
Michael Christian
Justin Gray
False Profit Labs
Orion Fredericks
Evan Tracy
Michael Sturtz
Omega Recoil
Mark McGothigan
Eye Vapor Visuals
Solar Flare
Kinetic Steam Works
Department of Spontaneous Combustion
Boiler Bar Seaside Sanitarium and Medicine Show
saturday, july 11
4pm 'til late
at american steel
1960 mandela parkway
oakland, CA |
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| (no subject) |
[Jul. 1st, 2009|11:18 pm] |
Does anyone out there work for, or know someone who works for a place that sells or rents video installation gear? Not so much cameras, projectors, but studio gear, video installations, etc.
Specifically I need to borrow or buy a pro-grade s-video signal amplifier. I'd prefer "borrow", because I don't know if it will solve my problem. |
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| Bob Fosse - King of Pop's inspiration |
[Jun. 30th, 2009|10:42 pm] |
This is pretty amazing, most of Michael Jackson's signature 1980s dance moves were inspired (i.e. lifted wholesale) from the Snake in the Grass sequence from the 1974 film "Little Prince". Even the signature loafers with white socks look is pulled from this. MJ refined the dancing a lot, and did go with a different hat - but the mannerisms, body language, and moves are so utterly unmistakable.
It's arguable that both Michael and Bob Fosse are pulling from dance moves that date back much further, but those lack a lot of what would become absolute signature moves of MJs - all of which Mr. Fosse does in the top video.
Even more interesting is that MJ won a Bob Fosse award in 1997. |
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| Bad Touch |
[Jun. 29th, 2009|06:45 pm] |
I have rubbed a bit of the late King of Pop on a bunch of Killig Joke.
Behold
I had previously helped MJ touch Skinny Puppy's no-no spot as well. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 25th, 2009|10:35 pm] |
before it became literal, I believe that every child was touched in some way by Michael Jackson. I still enjoy many of his videos.
I have some breaking news on the real cause of his death. it turns out that KISS killed him.
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| transformers |
[Jun. 24th, 2009|03:46 am] |
This movie is distilled, refined, and polished Lowest Common Denominator. You will enjoy it and feel really, really, really, dirty for having done so.
I have never seen so many dick and fart jokes in a single movie before. I think only 2-3 of those dick and fart jokes involved humans. Seriously, miniature robot machine gun penis, and gigantic 2-ton robot testicles.
There were several occurrences of attempted or successful tentacle rape.
The autobots are a hyper-advanced group of ancient space traveling teenagers.
Hyper advanced space robots have no sensors more advanced other than human level optical sensing.
It is ok for robot kitties to be bulimic.
I am not a fan of gold toothed, dumb-as-paste rambunctious ghetto stereotypes - especially un-fond of this in ancient, advanced space fairing robots.
Give a teenage boy a giant pet robot with destructo-guns and he will beg for it to leave him alone so he can be "normal"?
In the previous transformers movie, when the robots fought, it looked like someone shaking a change jar, and then one robot emerges victorious. In this one, 25% of the movie is spent on slow-motion robot fight scenes. |
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| Moon |
[Jun. 22nd, 2009|04:12 pm] |
Moon was an excellent movie and you all should go see it.
It's one of those movies that rests a lot on slowly revealing the surprise, so I can't talk about it much at all, other than to say "seriously, just go see it".
Also, Kevin Spacey was cast in the role that his voice was designed for: a robot |
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| ring |
[Jun. 19th, 2009|05:26 pm] |
Early this morning I found myself somehow awake on the other side of the room, staring confusedly at this small black gadget with numbers on it that was making some sort of noise. I knew I was supposed to do something with it, and that was somehow related to the noises it was making. This was all very confusing and disorienting.
no, I don't like being woken up early by phone calls. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 17th, 2009|06:46 pm] |
I am amazed at how often the wheel gets re-invented here on the internet.
I'm also amazed at how often old FUD memes keep popping back up every few years. |
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| battle |
[Jun. 13th, 2009|12:44 am] |
Tonight is the finals for this round of Battle of the bands.
Sadly, this means that none of the bands are spectacularly bad.
As a result, I have no tales of musical suffering tonight.
Some were merely decent, and a few were quite good.
I still don't get angry teenage \m/etal at all - especially when performed by those old enough to drink.
I suppose I could mention the kid in the pale bleached bluejeans with the big torn out knees who was wearing a fashion trend that went out of style several years before he was born... but that feels like a bit of a stretch.
also, there are a lot of suburbanites here. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 12th, 2009|10:55 pm] |
Yesterday I was wandering through china town, and twice encountered the sounds of live peking opera drifting out of partly obstructed basement windows attached to unlabeled metal gate doors. It was pretty awesome.
Then I bought a tea set.
I used to live in the Sunset years ago, right on Taraval where there are a ton of chinese restaurants. I forgot how much I missed the stern, gruff, older chinese matron waitresses. No, I'm serious. I can't tell you how much better my egg rolls tasted after the 50-something waitress looked down at it in it's unfinished state near the end of the meal, shot me a disapproving glare and ordered, "you eat". she cracked what could almost be described as the beginnings of a smile for a fraction of a second when I snatched it up to finish it off.
I tipped extra. |
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