My Blog Has Moved

For those who follow on google reader or something else that's rss, I've moved! I finally went and got my own ".com" jeffculmer.com actually. So if your still reading this site there won't be anything here any more, so go to the other site please!

jeffculmer.com

Another Montage

Well again do to being busy with things, I haven't had time to actually post about things, so I'll do another picture montage, (Alot of Pic's) of what I did the last couple days.

We cooked some good food this week.

I got in some xbox time while the wife was at work.

Started a new book.

I had a gig on Friday, it was interesting and a lot of fun, it was a showcase for this band, at a club/bar. That's Nick walking down our "loading dock".

We had some time after getting things set up, so we went next door to an old coffee shop, and got a snack while waiting for the show. I had a cream soda and a cookie.

If the squirrel would have attacked her, it would have been funny. I promise it would have.

It was at the bar, but I think it's a good idea for tech's to start putting tip jar out. People complain if it's not loud enough, or too loud, when the lights are in their eyes, or they can't see the talent on stage, but if it's good why don't you put a dollar in. Huh??? Why don't you!!

The Band had a super hero theme going on, so we had super hero masks!

(I stole this from Nick's Facebook, Lampa took the picture)
The Crew consisted of 3 of us, the band helped us load in and out, so we had fun with it. Here's Nick and I wearing the Transformers Masks.

Lampa. I mean do I really need a subtitle for this one, it's just to good!

Then it was time to work.

Yea that's right!!! Look at that LED in a club baby!! Those puny little par cans have nothing on me!

In a Club!

Works over, getting in some relax time watching the storms roll through. For those who care, I didn't catch the lighting with the "bulb" function on the camera I'm... just.... that... quick!!

Big League...

I found this the other day, and it reminded me of being a kid, during the summer I loved playing and watching baseball, I still do. One of the things that made it summer time, was big league chew! I use to love this stuff, I would always think it made me a better ballplayer, I would stick wads of it in my lip, and would enjoyed the flavors while standing on the diamond, or in the park playing a pick up game with the neighborhood kids.

Why do I feel the erg to buy some dip?

Today is montage Saturday with little explanation, not to steal the idea's of making a day of the week something like this guy does, this is a one time thing most likely, because I'm being lazy.

The Bus parked next to us. It actually got uglier the further back.

1983 Fire Truck, spraying the kids swimming in the lake. And some that were not swimming as well.

The Kids.

I wanted to yell Shark, but didn't, We're in Illinois.

No Fans, so I stood there and listened.

Storm Troopers get vacations too.

Reading Material.

FOH. Staying dry.

Hard at Work shooting the Flock of Seagulls wanna be's.

Hard at Work some more.

Hey dog, your mascara is running!

Am I Lazy?

You ever feel annoyed about something, but you don't want to say anything because your to nice, or want to make sure that it's not just yourself being stupid, that's where I've been for a while now, I've been so agitated and frustrated with things that I haven't been able to catch some shots or moments of crew guys working, I've been wanting to start a blog just about crew, (I know all about some non-christian crew sites, not interested!) I've been trying to get other "band crews" to do it and some do but don't stick with it, and honestly I think some don't get the point of doing a "Crew" blog, it turns into a personal blog, nobody cares, they want to read about your day and the gear you have and the stories, not what you did with your kids, start a personal blog if you want to do that, in a way my blog has been a crew blog but not totally dedicated to just the road stories, there's something funny and great about what we do, everybody in our industry, in any industry love to hear stories from other gigs, that's what we talk about most as crew is other gigs, stories, gossip, it's what keeps us sane.

I've always loved taking pictures of funny moments in a crew persons day, like the fella's doing a white balance up top, to me that's kinda funny, it's so demeaning to hold the sheet and stand there, but it needs to be done, so he went to each camera and held up the white sheet, it's just funny, I've done it. It might not be funny to some but if your a crew guy, you might find it a little funny just the way he's standing there looking at nothing while the other guy sits on a road case shooting the sheet, waiting for the eng. guy to tweek his camera in.

That's the funny stuff that I've been missing out on, because I've been frusterated with things, and been complasent with how things have been going, I was asked the other day what hobbies I had to take my mind off of work, since what we do always centers around work, even when we get together outside of work we're telling work stories, or talking about future gigs, anyway I didn't have an answer, besides xbox, which I don't get much time to play that, so I said photography, but yet I use to take a 100 to 200 pictures everyday at festivals, practicing, or catching the guys doing something (i.e. running camera, or taking a break between acts) and now I'm lucky if I've taken 100 for the whole festival. I can't figure out why other than I'm just not myself this summer, I'm distracted by frusteration. But that could be a lame excuse, and the real one is I'm lazy.

Cooking...

Last night I was getting the grill ready to cook the guys and myself some dinner, I'm sitting there waiting on the charcoal to heat up, ok what I was really doing was sitting there cursing the ready start charcoal cause it was taking forever, I look to my right cause I see smoke, and big wooshes of fire and there's the roof guys with their bbq it's roaring with fire, course the dude was spraying an entire bottle of liter fluid on it, (these guys .... lets just say they're not the sharpest tools in the shed) the one is smiling at me and motioning me over to their little grill site, so I walk over and he's like "Culmer, check these out", he reaches behind a caddie and pulls out 5 or 6 catfish on a string still gasping for whatever fish gasp for, he smiles even bigger and says "we're gonna eat them!" I asked where he caught them, "the lake", I was like "the lake that all these nasty kids take baths in through out the week?" He was like "yea!" I could tell there was no distrating him getting to skin these things and eat them.

I have to admit its pretty clever if your trying to save some money, and if you didn't have anything to do, or liked to fish which I don't, he was the talk of the backstage area, he had a nice little crowd while he skinned these things, course it could have been the other roof guy still spraying liter fluid on the grill making huge balls of fire every five minutes, all the while his brauts were on the grill, that could have been drawing some attention as well.


Myself, I made to order whatever the guys wanted, most wanted Cheeseburgers, some had bought some of their own special somethings that needed to be grilled, the best part of grilling last night was the burgers that I wasted, see here's the deal, why do cheap grills have such wide spaces between the .... grill? So here's the deal, I didn't know we had tongs in the rv all I found was a spachula, so I'm out there and one of the other guys was sitting at the picknick table eating his hotdog, and watching me grill, I'm flippen away like a grill masters master! That's right I am the grill master I'm thinking, then I flip a burger and the dang thing goes right through the openings of the grill and right down to the charcoal, I was like "Dang IT!!" Lee (the guy sitting at the table eating his hotdog) starts laughing, I come to grips that I just won't have a burger because one of them was mine, so I was like no biggie I guess.

I then came up with a new plan on how to flip my burgers, so they don't go down the stupid wide cracks in the grill, no more than 2 flips later I flip onther one, it hits my braut and starts to slide down between the cracks, I'm scrabling to save it, it was like slow motion, I stop it half way, blindly grab a plastic fork from the picknic table behind me, go to grab the burger, and again in slow motion as I'm going to poke the burger with the fork the forks end starts to melt from the heat, so now I'm stuck with this pokeless fork I try to poke it anyway as it slips from my grasps, and the 2nd burger falls between the cracks, Lee is laughing now pretty loud because it is pretty funny, I'm yelling at the grill, if I only would have tried and save the last burger in real time instead slow motion maybe the burger would have been eatable.

A Good Book..

Well it's another week of work, thank goodness, we had a long drive yesterday, it wasn't overall to bad, we had some good conversation, and I got in some good reading time, it's been a while since I've had a book that's been just a great story, there for a while that seemed to be the only kind of book I could find, just good stories, my kinda of stories, I had had a great run then I started finding books that looked interesting, and they were but not really stories that kept you thinking about needing to read more, or when your sitting around the catering table your re-telling the stories because the people your reading about are some bad to the bone type of people.

Today we loaded in another festival, everything went well, had to fix some stuff, it's funny because every time I have a problem with piece of gear I work with it's always in the most inconvenient place like 10ft up, but it's all good.

Sometimes being a team player means you have to make sacrifices, and sometimes being a good leader is being the one that makes those sacrifices for the team. I'm always trying to be a better leader, I've been reading this book about a leader that's a little like where I'm at in my life, he's a Staff Sargent that's been in a lot of wars as a sniper, seen a lot of action during non-war time, he has ton of experience, he would be a superb leader in a hirer rank, but because he's enlisted he's as high as he wants, and the people he deals with that are above him in rank are green and well ... just basically kids, or people that have been paper pushers that have read about war, or tactics in a manual, which reminds me of some of the roadies now days, the book isn't about his trials dealing with inexperienced leadership, but just his time doing some extraordinary things, and even tho he's not in leadership, all the guys around him look to him for guidance, even some of the officers look to him with questions, and how he deals with that while maintaining the respect for the rank above him, Just good stuff.

Game...

I don't claim to be a gamer, but I love the Splinter Cell games, well pretty much every game that has the Tom Clancey stamp on it is a good one but, the Splinter Cell games have been my favorite, when I use to have roommates, they went and bought the first xbox, and the first game I bought was the first Splinter Cell, it was awesome! And I was hooked.

It's been a while since the last one came out, I've played and beat it several times, this new game has been delayed for release several times, and then Ubi Soft decided to have a fan or something write the plot to the game, which took forever for the winner to be chosen, and blah blah... but finally it's ready, I mean it's not out yet, but in Oct. when the game is released (knock on wood) you can bet that I'll be in line outside Bestbuy by myself waiting for them to open so I can get a copy!

Cool Kids...

I had another rant about a type of person all typed out and ready to go, and it didn't have anything to do with the picture, I liked the pic so I thought I would put on here, the rant was aimed towards "cool kids" that are now adults, but I'm not sure I'm ready to get that off my chest just yet, I think I'll bottle that up for just a little bit longer, until then you'll just have to remember or think about somebody in your life right now that is the "cool kid", they can be an adult now, I have someone that I know that drives me nuts cause the person thinks he/she is just so dang cool! Only thinks in one demention, but yet that person is in a position. Anyway I really didn't want to start in and I don't want to go any further... so now I'm going to yell at the people being loud at the pool at 11:35pm because it's to late for fun!

I'm just sayin'...

More Rain...

This pretty much sums up the last two weeks, it smells like horse poo, and it's pretty much the whole lower bowl, the kids are loving it, and that's great... For them, but my feet are killin' me right now! From being soaked, to walking through the mud, to being on them all day.

I did take a small break from being on my feet this afternoon and got some soldering time in on a tile that needed some lovin'. But seriously getting back to it's pretty gross out, we're hoping that the next cohple days will be better but it's not looking good, it's not the worse tho, the worst was a couple years ago when I worked for a different led co. We were doing this country fest and it rained the whole time, then you mix beer, puke and pee into the mix and maybe some other things and it was enough that I gagged every time I walked out side the led trucks! Now that I think about that I wonder what I did with those pictures?

Working...

So the rumor has been going around that I don't really do anything but take pictures when I'm on a gig, now it's not that that's not true, but to clear things up I just wanted to point out that in the upper left corner of this picture (not taken by me since I'm in it!), and it's a little blurry but that's me cleaning by hand the tiles, I had time and they were dirty. And lets face it, when your don't have to spend your entire day figuring out how to do something you have some free time on your hands, I think it's funny that tech's that have a clue, and get their gig done quick are tagged as being lazy or always doing something else like taking pictures, (I'm not saying I have a clue just that I work with the same stuff a lot) and not really doing their gig, but yet the guys that spend all day setting up, always get the respect. Or more gigs.


How is it, we in this industry tend to reward the stupid tech's.. or rather the tech's that can milk a gig the whole day with respect, or even better yet the ones that say they know how to do something but don't, or EVEN better you train them how to do something, but they spend more time on their phone cause their to cool. But the tech's that get their gig done and things run smooth, there's really no respect just a... "well anybody can do it mentality", because everything went so smooth, and it all worked the first time, or the little hick ups were taken care of right away because they know the gear, but the mentality is by the employer is now we can go and hire dinky doo, that has to call you every 5 minutes, because they can't get the equipment to turn on?


I could keep going but now my lunch break is over and I have to go and take some picutres.

So we're heading to the festival this morning, 2nd day of the bands and the festival actually running but day 4 for us. We head to the backstage gate where we've parked for three years right be hind our semi... One of the things about doing festivals that makes interesting are the volesnteer security.

Road/crew guys always have fun with them because we're use to the one pass we have is all access, well in the summer time these festivals take it up a notch and have like 5 different all access. So that means your all access doesn't really get you into "all" the accessable places like where your semi is, or to catering.

Back to this morning this security volenteer that's just doing his job, wouldn't let us park where we always park because... He was given an inch of athority. And now he thinks he can be a jerk, so we said "ok... We'll park waaayyy out there where you tell us to park" we then carried the gear we had in the car to the stage.

We then went to the barn that gives out passes and got every different parking pass they had for the entire festival, put them on the dash, so no one could say we didn't have the right pass to be where we just came from.

Nota very good story but non the less I posted better than nothing at least.