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.

The Shower...

Next to the shower in the room is directions on how to use the shower, or rather to activate it,
1. turn on water to desired temperature.
2. Pull down on base of spigot (where water comes out) which will activate the shower
3. To disengage the shower, simply turn water off

Where the water comes out?! And the last one is awesome! Simply turn water off!
it's really not that uncommon, but it had been a while since I've seen it, and it made me laugh.

Today it rained a... lot! And that's all I really have for today, there wasn't any shows, just the other companies loading in, and it took them a while with all the start and stopping of work, with the rain and nasty storms, the merch tent that's bigger than the main stage blew down during the storm. And I ate some pudding.

It Was hot...

Day one of Ichthus Fest. well, load in, we're a day earlier than everybody else's load in, we need the forklift and space, and today we got it all to our selves, it was nice it took about 10 hours to load in, I'll show you why tomorrow. We didn't get here till after lunch, and it was hot! I felt sun burnt with in the first hour, I had SPF 50 on too! I layered that crap on but still felst crispy, it was good day though, we finished up around midnight, it's going to be a good week.

There was a group of people having a meeting out in the field, they asked for plug in for there little work light, so we let them plug it in then, then we turned on our light. This whole sentence is cheesy, but it was fun light up the whole field with the walls.



We get to the hotel/college campus (I'll get to the hotel tomorrow or the next day, it's a good thing though) and I new that I stunk but when I actually got in a small space, it was bad, my shirt was soaked, all day you could keep track of me, just by falling the sweat trail, everywhere I was working even tonight there was sweat dripping everywhere! It helped me realize that, either one I work really hard, or two I'm really fat! I'm pretty sure it's the 2nd one! The reason I'm showing just how dirty I was tonight which isn't anything out of the norm for the summer time, is becacuse the shower doesn't drain very well, so I kept moving further back in the tub as the water filled up, I looked down at the end, and there I was standing in a dirty.... really dirty tub, that still had enough water to be filled above my feet, it was....

The Last Week...

The last couple weeks this is what I've been up to, I haven't been out the whole two weeks, but what I've been working on is the LED in this shot behind the band, it's the newest LED that the Co. I've been working for has gotten. I've worked with it before and really liked it, when I heard that the Co. bought some I was excited. It's a lot of fun, there's a lot you can do with it, but it's taken up a lot of my time, not in a bad way just been busy prepping it to go out on different things and well this run of shows they have it out on, it took some time getting it ready and figuring out how to do different things with it, but in the end worth it when it turns on.

This last week has been fun, I haven't a whole lot to blog about, it's been busy and relaxing, I got a lot of time to spend with Patti. I've also got a lot done with work. The next couple weeks though I'm hoping to have more to blog about with more festivals coming up on the schedule, especially the next two, their fun and the weather also makes for some fun stories.

Scratch another off the List...

Patti a couple weeks back had a great idea, she had looked at the schedule for the Cubs and saw that they were going to be in Atlanta this week, so she found some tickets, made sure I was going to be home and then bought 'em. We then decided since it was a late game to stay the night after the game.

It was a fun little get away, not long enough, but besides it not being long enough it was a lot of fun! We've been needing a little get away, we've both been busy the last couple weeks, well more like the last couple months if I'm not at work she is. It's been good to be working, and when we have been able to do things it's been with a group of people. Which is fine but sometimes we just needed some together time!


We showed up really early, like a couple hours early, we waited in line for the gates to open, just talking and hanging out. We sat in the outfield for batting practice, we came close to catching some balls, but no cigar if you will, but still worth it standing 40ft. from Soriano and Zambrano as they catch some fly balls together, was worth it. Big Z was suppose to pitch Tuesday night but you know suspension and blah blah blah, I was surprised to see him. He was actually pretty cool with all the Cubs fans there last night yelling in support of him, and the Braves fans not yelling nice things, he waved and smiled at the comments. I mean he was 40ft. from us, we could talk normal and he could hear us.



One of the cool things about Turner Field is the LED wall, it's one of the biggest LED walls I've ever seen, and one of the heaviest weighing in at 50 tons, and really clean looking.


Our seats were way up there in the upper deck, Patti didn't like it at first, it was her first time in the upper deck, (haha) the best part was walking in circles up the ramp to the 400 level, it felt like we would never get there, and then the steap stairs almost to the last row, once up there she turned around and had a holy cow we're way up in the air moment, it was awesome! For the price we paid the seats were great! There's not to many seats in a ball park that are bad, and I thought we had good seats, I mean I don't think the Cubs could hear me chearing them on from up there but I liked it.


The game went into extra innings, we got to go a great game, the Cubs lost but they were a head the whole game, it went to 12 innings.
$4 a ticket sevearly bottles of Poweraid and water, multiple hotdogs, a slice of pizza, a pretzle and a bag peanuts, $80 later and another Ballpark crossed off the list with my wife. That's the priceless part! It was awesome!! I can't wait for the next get away we have!

Rambling that won't make...

Sometimes I feel like this bike, it use to be rideable until some musician left it behind the bus and then the driver drove over it. I guess my point is I work really hard and try not to complain to much, and yet I'm still in the same spot I was in before.

I heard today that successful people have a 10 or 15 year plan, are they successful because they have a plan? Or are they successful because they stuck to a plan? I think it's the first, I think people like the idea of having a long term Goal, so there for the people with the goals are successul because other people make them that way, heres the thing, the "other" (i.e. People that have influence or position in the world) people think this planned person is motivated and has a stick to it mentality. When in reality they just like talking about their "plan" but never really go through it, if we all went through with our 15 year plans we would have a lot more millionares out there.

I mean I have goals, I have a hard time reaching them, because like I said I'm working, some of my goals are work related, most are not like having kids with my beautiful wife.

How does one focus enough to keep one mind set for 15 years! And does having a plan or goal make you a better person in general? Or should you just live your life and see what doors open and try not to persuade them to open just so you can make your goal or plan happen?

What's that saying? Life gives you lemons, make some lemonaid.


I don't Know, going back and reading this it sort of makes sense, course my rant could be do to me being pissy because some of my favorite tv shows have been cancled next fall.

Yea it's been a while since I've posted, it's been busy, the first festival of the year is always a good one but this year we had extra gear there, it wasn't all that bad just caused me to have less time to do things, and as you can see in the pic, the first day was fun filled with some replacing things, all part of it except when it's on the top row. I'm sitting a spanset standing on a 2" lip, my toes fell asleep, course I was up there for over an hour.

That was the begining to my week of hard knock times. But in the end everything worked... sorta, I got home home for 2 days of prep and now I'm on a bus. It'll be nice when I get home on Sat. Do a little relaxing!

Baseball...

That's right folks, we're going to a Cubs game. It's going to be Patti's first MLB game, and it's the Cubs and Braves, the best part is she's the one that found the tickets, and the doubley best part is that we got the cheap seats for $4, you can't beat that. I don't mind the cheap seats cause it's a baseball game for $4 I mean come on people your going to see baseball! I'm stupid excited about the game and going with her. I love when we go on trips together, it's going to be awesome! And believe it or not I have never been to Turner Field, so that'll be fun to have another ballpark to scratch off the list, and I get to do it with Patti!


This week has been a long week, in a good way, I put in a lot of hours trying to figure out what to do for work things, and a lot of hours sitting in movie theaters. I saw Star Trek twice, once at the IMAX, and once in a regular theater, I also saw Angles and Demons, I really like going to the movies, to me it's just another form of relaxing especially when you go during the day when nobody is there.

Work was fun, Nick and I got a lot accomplished in just a couple days, it's always fun fabracating with sombody that has some road/shop experience, and enjoys doing what we do, which I needed help to come up with something quick and it needs to not be stupid. That's hard because I've spent a lot of time on things and then someone walks by and says why did you use/do that, when you could just do this, but when you don't have someone to debate things with you just do whatever comes into the brain first.

Early Shop time...

About 5am this morning I get to the shop, and once again I'm reminded how nice it is to have my 4 hour playlist on in the old head phones, and just plug away at a project. I've been a little nervous about all that's going on, I'm prepping 3 different LED things, for this one show, and because the gig is in CA. I keep double checking everything, I have this thing about being prepared, I hate getting somewhere and realizing that I don't have something, especially something that you can't just run to home depot and buy, so I've been trying to make sure I have everything all cabled up and ready.

I've recruited some help for tomorrow to make things go a little smoother, Nick is coming to help and hang out, I think between the two of us we might be able to get the one project that needs to be done tomorrow done, and I won't have to go in as early on Sat. I'm looking forward to it, Nick and I always seem to work well together and still be able to carry on conversations, usually their day dreams and schemes for the next tour and what would be cool, or about other shows that just blow your mind, but non the less a lot of fun!