Stampede's opened.

We had an interesting show last night.

The day was lovely, warm, sunny, a few clouds.

I went to work early to visit my friend Stephen, who was working on the Navy display (I brought him cookies).

Then I ended up sitting under the stage, just reading, while waiting for work to start.

Sometime after I got under the stage, it started raining.

And I mean, RAINING.

The stage was so wet, I could see reflections on my monitor.

It made for a really interesting show.

There's a group of four guys who, halfway through the show, jump the stage on motorcycles.

It was too wet for that, so we skipped that entire bit.

There's a group called Circus Orange, and I'm not entirely sure what their act is (it's mostly suspended above the stage, which is out of view of my monitor), but they cut their act short for safety reasons.

There's another group who bungee jumps from a giant dream catcher in the middle of the stage, and I think they skipped that part, too (the metal on the dream catcher was slick with rain).

We have a group of Kiss impersonators. They went up on my elevator (after worrying about their wigs), but nearly got soaked from the water pouring off the elevator lid down into the elevator.

We have to keep two squeegees (think wide brooms, but with a rubber strip instead of bristles) in the elevator room, just to keep everything reasonably dry (or at least to get rid of the puddles).

It was a crazy show. But at least I got my band risers fixed (we've been putting it in notes and putting it in notes -- our coffin locks are shitty and keep breaking apart, making our scene changes agonizingly long and difficult -- but no one got around to it, so finally the elevator room stage manager rustled up some tools and hardware and we've been fixing them ourselves).

The band is funny. The other day, the trumpet player was warming up and played the first few notes of the Star Wars theme, and then stopped.

Then the next day, he did the same thing, so I finally said: "You keep playing the first notes! Why don't you play the whole song?"

The trumpet player sheepishly admitted he didn't know any more.

The trombone player who was standing nearby gave me a bit of a side-long look and started picking out the Star Wars theme (quite quickly, too), and soon I had the whole horn section jumping in to take their parts.

The percussion on the stage left elevator heard what was going on and started bashing their cymbals at the correct moments.

It was AWESOME.

I laughed so hard I had tears in my eyes.

Now, the theme for warming up has been the Indiana Jones theme.

I must say, I like that better than random honking and squealing that they usually do.

.

Rosie.

Before&After