Political Trail in Indiana

Seeing that Indiana's primaries actually mean something for the first time in years, we have seen our fair share of stops from Borack Obama and Hillary Clinton over the last couple of weeks. And with two left before our votes are tabulated, they will certainly be making more stops.

I bring this up, because the AV company I work for has been called upon several times to provide sound and lights for these events. I'm just going to say up front, these are a pain in the ass. We get about a days notice to put the show together. The person who calls in the order is not the person who is the on site contact. The on-site contact has several helpers and every one of them has an opinion. Therefore, many changes occur when you arrive but you can never really get an answer or true decision to what they want done. Too many people chiming in and no one taking charge. Then there's secret service. All equipment must be set before they can do the final building sweep and no one is allowed in. I understand that, but it adds to the frustration. The rally's are insane, packed with people.


Here are the events I have been apart of so far.


Obama at Ball State, Muncie




Obama at Wayne High School, Fort Wayne






Hillary in Mishawaka




Hillary at Sarah's Restaurant, Fort Wayne






Bill Clinton at the Elks Club, South Bend



I'll be glad when May 6 is crossed off the calander.

Wrestling #14 - Orlando Trip

This is a couple of weeks over due, but still wanted to write it up.

So I went down to Orlando for three big days of wrestling. The main reason was my favorite promotion, Ring of Honor, was debuting and holding shows there. The other was to go to Wrestlmania. The final reason was to see a bunch of people I've became friends with over the years by going to these wrestling shows and meet some new ones.

So Thursday morning I head to the Fort Wayne Airport and hop a plane to Chicago, wait because of an hour delay (freezing rain), and board the the plane to Florida. When I arrive, I check my voice mail and the two friends I was picking up already arrived and waiting. After picking up my luggage, we get the rental car (Prius). This is the first time I drove a Prius and it looked simple to start, but I couldn't do it. So I had to go ask. The chuckled and said he gets that all the time, then told me how to get the car running. For those that care, I was doing it correctly but wasn't holding the brake long enough. We head out of the parking garage to head to the hotel where many of the RoH fans are staying. I fire up my brand new Garmin GPS and have my friend do the directions. Well it lied. We drove no where close to the hotel and basically had to back track. This was the foreshadowing many drives the entire weekend as I believe aliens have GPS signals scrambled over the city. We eventually get to the hotel and get our rooms. Then we start seeing familiar faces at the hotel and phone calls from other guys going to the live TNA event. We start watching TNA and I head back to the airport to pick up a couple of other guys. We get back to the hotel about 11pm and decide to find a grocery store. We set the GPS and go. Again it lied. Frustration started. We went to the hotel in defeat, finding a closed grocery along the way, and hang out for awhile and eventually crash for some sleep.

Get up on Friday morning, grab breakfast and see more people. Gather some troops for a successful grocery run. I get back the hotel. I was going to head to the pool and hang out, but instead get talked into driving to a local brewery (more like nominated) to get beer for Beerfest (more on that later). We go, have some beers, and take back growlers. Lots of alcohol getting stocked up. Have a preshow meal with the gang and make our way to the RoH event, which is by Orlando's Basketball Arena. Still see more old faces at the event. Sat down in the cramped front row for a night of awesome wrestling action. I wont go through the matches but the entire show was good. Steen and El Generico stole the night. Back to the hotel, our room is picked for the unofficial hang out. New faced and old pals travel in and out all night while ale flows. Finally call it a night about 4am.

Saturday, do the breakfast again and the gang decides to head to the RoH Fanfest (another thing I really didn't want to do). It was rather lame. Instead of driving all the way across town to the hotel, then back to the venue, we decide just to kill a couple of hours at a local restaurant/pub. Unfortunately after driving around the venue for about 45 minutes we figured out there was nothing. Another Garmin lie. We decide just to drive one direction and see what we find. Eventually came out to a mail area and ate at some place. Went back to the venue for the show (the WWE Hall of Fame was next door). I traded up to a front row ticket thanks to a buddy having an extra one and wanting to talk with some one he knew. Once again, not going into details of the matches, but this may have been the best wrestling event I have ever witnessed live. It was phenomenal. Back to the hotel for Beerfest...a gathering of beer lovers where we sample obscure beer from across the US. Tasted several great beers I have not heard of before and a few I never want to try again. Finally called it a night about 4:30am.

I woke up and grabbed breakfast. Found out a few guys continued on with Beerfest until 7am. They had early flights and didn't want to sleep. Finally got a chance to hang out by the pool with some people and just relax. We decide to head out early to Wrestlemania and avoid the heavy traffic, which we did. After grabbing some lunch, we made our way to the Citrus Bowl. We had some time to kill and checked out the end of WWE Fanfest, which was rather worthless. Got in line to enter the arena and found out seats. We had about an hour plus to kill before the show started, so we sat back and chatted. The event was very good (WWE good anyways) and I rather impressed with the set, being the AV geek I am. I was not impressed when the lighting rig went out for about two matches and the big monitors went out for about a match as well. I'm sure the WWE wasn't happy with that either or the malfunctioning fireworks at the end of the show. It took awhile to get back to the parking lot, and a lot of traffic had thinned out by the time we left. Got back to the hotel and started making the rounds and saying goodbyes. When that was finished, I packed and got about 2 hours sleep before the alarm went off for my early flight.

Gathered the other guys who were heading out with me and started to the airport. Returned the car, parted ways with my friends, got the ticket, and waited in the long ass security line. Got through to find out the flight was delayed...shocking but I had a long hold over in Cincinatti anyways. Finally got home in the middle of the afternoon, completely wiped out from the weekend of fun.

Then had to go back to work the next day. That sucks.

Tales from the AV World (part 2)

Why does a company bend over backwards to keep pleasing clients who are a huge pain in the ass? I honestly dont know. The headache and bullshit you put up with, in long run, just is not worth the trouble. Peace of mind can be a good thing.

Basically I'm referring to this small percentage of clients who want the proper $50,000 show for $5000. OK, that's most clients. But you deal with that part. Hell I understand every event has a budget. And normally we will try to work with in that budget...if you give a clue to how much you want to spend. A ballpark figure would be better than nothing. Also, if you know how much the same event cost the previous year, and you add more people and need more AV to cover the additional bodies, then why in the hell do you think the price will go down and why is you event budget less? I wonder if catering people go through this same shit with clients.

I'm talking about the clients who no matter how much extra effort you put into their event, they are NEVER satisifed. The event could go perfect and they'd bitch about the projection not being bright enough or the ligts dimming to far down for a video cue or presenters didn't get a mic in time (even though it was some one else job to get the talent to the audio guy, so they could put a microphone on them). They always complain about some minute detail, even when you are not at fault. The damn building could lose power and they point to the AV staff and scream. You could work 20 hours straight and they dont care.

I could go on and on, but what's the use. Like every other job, you deal with the shit. So many items in our industry has become consumer friendly that most people think they can do our jobs and why should they pay the extra amount. It's just not the case and often these people get burned. Or they ruin the cross rented equipment.

I leave you today with this humble saying: "This job would be great...if it wasn't for the damn customers."

Jimmy Kimmel Show clips

I came across these skits the other day from The Jimmy Kimmel Show and damn is it hilarious.

Tales from the AV World (part 1)

It's quite a normal question. A person asks me, "So what do you do for a living?"

"I'm an Audio Video Technician." Then I see their eyes drift away or go blank as they try to process exactly what that is. So I delve deeper, trying to explain. "I travel around the nation and set up AV for cooperate events. Putting up projectors, audio systems, lighting gear for meetings and events. Then I operate for the show, tear it down, and go some place else and do something similar for the next client." This is a fairly good, yet simplistic, overview of my job description. Often the person asked the question, just nods but I see they still don't quite get it.


My close friends joke around. "You plug shit in," they say, "wish I could get paid for plugging in a DVD player." While I do plug shit in, there's a little more to my job. There's routing!

Seriously, it gets frustrating. A lot of time, the clients hiring our services don't fully comprehend what our job entails and allow us to help thier event come off better. My career choice for the last decade (and not looking like it will change anytime soon) is difficult for people to get a handle on. If you tell a person "I'm a doctor" or "I'm a chef", they understand the job. With mine, not always as clear.

AV Techs, along with stage hands and other similar positions, are the unsung heroes with in the entertainment industry. We are the ones working extremely long hours behind the scenes on little food and sleep to make sure an event goes happens. We are the ones who make the fancy color lights swirl about the room. We are the ones who have the microphone live when you walk up to the podium...and please dont tap the mic. We are the ones who make sure the blue color coming out of the projector actually looks blue. Many of us spend most of our days and nights away from our homes, families, and friends living in hotel ballrooms, theaters, auditoriums, convention center, and other various places where meetings and events take place. You can normally find us in the dark corners of the rooms pearing up from a rack of gear or behind the stage with equipment strung out all over the place or hovering in the rafters above. We are the last ones to get thanked, if at all, for a good job when everything goes exactly as planned or better, and the first ones to get yelled at when a fuck up occurs on the program.

Yes we are special breed of person. Often I think most of us have a mental abnormality and a personality dysfunction to do what we do. It's a crazy path we have chosen for ourselves. But most us wouldn't trade it in for another.

I told you we were off!