May 5, 2011- Grand Turk

Sorry for the break in the writing in the past couple of days.  This week has been quite busy especially since I’m the tech on duty.  It seems that I don’t really have the time just to sit down and write.  Today we arrived in Grand Turk around 11 o’clock.  Sure enough, I heard the bow thrusters and chains clanking around 10:30.  I hope that I will get used to the noise after a while but it hasn’t really happened yet.  I will be very excited to get rid of this bloody phone.  It seems like people call me for the tiniest reasons yet I have to solve their problems.  Other times they call me for problems I have no idea how to fix.  Like today, I got a call saying the gigantic tv screen on the outside of Lido deck was frozen.  Uhh… I told the lady that I had no idea how to fix that and she should probably call someone with AV.  I wouldn’t even know where to begin if they wanted me to fix something like that.  The day went by pretty smoothly.  Dave and I decided to meet right after lunch (around 1) so we spent the afternoon fixing some mover errors and re-lamping the 4^th electric.  We are now completely out of wire harnesses for the movers as well as color sensors.  It is extremely rare to run through all of our stock but I guess Dave will help me get some more until the rig is up and running at 100% again.  The fourth electric probably has about 10 or more movers and I can’t even imagine how much this company spends on moving light lamps.  We also fixed a scroller in the grid.  Apparently someone just decided to remove the scroller from the fixture and hide the scroller somewhere.  God only knows why.  So we had to get another one from the lock up and drag it all the way through the grid on my hands and knees.  There was some other problem with the “good” scroller.  Apparently it was marked good but didn’t want to take the data from the console.  So I had to go all the way back and grab another one.  It took a little longer than expected and by the end my black polo looked like a white one from all the dust and debris up there.  I felt like I was working in a boiler room or something.  The odd thing about doing maintenance for the moving rig is that there is a short window in which you have to work and the room is too booked on sea days.  So that leaves you the days you’re in port to finish working.  That occupied our time until dinnertime.  Right after dinner I got a call from the disco saying that they needed two microphones set up for some function that they were having in there one wireless mic and one corded mic.  The wireless one was pretty easy, it was already set but ironically enough the corded mic was more trouble.  The mic was tied into a little DJ mixer but for some strange reason I couldn’t get it to work.  I tried everything, I switched out the microphone, the cables, tried a different input.  Everything.  After about 20 minutes fiddling with it I decided to call in Dave.  Listen, I have never claimed to be a sound person.  Never have, never will, but they still expect me to know everything there is to know about audio.  Dave couldn’t figure it out either.  We eventually came to the conclusion that the input on the back of this little dinky DJ mixer was fried and told them just to use the wireless mic.  They should be happy to have a microphone at all.  Oh well.   After solving these sorts of problems I set up for “Swinging with the Big Band.”  The show is a technically a fly-on entertainer but he kind of turned it into a third production show.  It seemed promising just because it dealt with swing music.  The show was pretty cool, it involved all of the dancers and even the band had to wear costumes that made them look like a swing band.  I was a little unimpressed with the chorography because I wanted to see some actual swing moves but it was primarily just over expressive arm movements and jumping.  Too Vegas I guess.  The lighting was pretty neat.  It had lots of different colors and movement.  The show had lots of reds, ambers, magentas, and dark colors.  I was really impressed with the design, it was flashy but it looked cool.  The show was booked as homage to Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.  He sang Bojangles and I was reminded of “Sammy and Me” at the Alliance.  The Alliance show had better vocals but the cruise ship had more razzle dazzle (go figure right?).  There was a point in the show tonight where we projected a video of Sammy singing and dancing and the actor onstage mimicked the entire video down to every little hand movement which was pretty cool.  There were two shows today both of them late, so by the time I had finished both shows I was exhausted.  I had asked Dave what he wanted to do about programming the “Edge show” (it’s a juggler) and he said that he wanted to program it right after the 10:30 show.  The show ended at 11:30 so I knew it was going to be a late night.  I met him in the booth right after the show had ended but Dave wasn’t there.  After about 15 minutes I decided to call his cabin and see if he still wanted to program the show.  I probably could have let it go but I wanted to get it programmed so I didn’t have to do it later after he left.  He answered after the fourth ring.  He still wanted to program the show. Drat.  He met me in the booth about 5 minutes later but didn’t seem “all there.”  Now Dave is a person who has had this job for a long time so he visits the crew bar quite frequently.  I didn’t think he was programming the show drunk, but knowing his habits I knew that he was at the crew bar before the show.  He was still quick and nimble at the keyboard so I didn’t say anything about it.  I’m not very familiar with the MA otherwise I would have programmed it myself so I just sat there and watched him start off programming.  We got about a quarter through the show when he started getting tired (the effects of the crew bar no doubt) so I started to give more input about what we should do for the show.  For the first time in a while I felt like a designer again.  Its nice having a complete moving rig, you can do a lot of things.  By the end of the night he was programming the show and I was designing it and he didn’t have a problem with that.  It was wonderful.  We finally finished the show around 3 am and I knew he was ready to pass out and go to bed.  Knowing how tired he was I asked him what time he wanted to start work tomorrow since we were at sea.  My tactic worked, he wanted 1 pm. Awesome!  The only bad part was that I had to be at the Legends rehearsal at noon so I didn’t get to sleep in as much as he did.