Day 120

work. church. concert. drumstick.

the first two happened in the morning. we woke up early to put a coat of paint before cleaning up and going to church. by the time the service had ended, it felt like it was five oclock. the church was cool, kind of modernish and met in a high school.

from there we headed into seattle, passing more weird roads like 'puyallup', for the tristan prettyman, john butler trio, and g.love and special sauce concert. the clear, warm afternoon rolled into a balmy darkness. perfect weather for an outdoor evening show.

tristan, a girl with a poppy jazzish voice, went first and, on our way out at the end of the night, parker and i met the others in her band, the two dudes who play drums and bass.

the john butler trio is from australia. their rockish, bluesy, reggae mix and wide variety of rhythms and beats was incredible. they were the most inspiring and talented display of music and skill i've ever seen. death cab was good last week and over the past week, i've really come to appreciate dcfc's unique sound based on listening to their bass lines, but the jbt was stellar. if you want an idea of what i mean about why tonight was so awesome, check out OCEAN. john butler played this for about six minutes. at the end of the set, one of the used drumsticks were tossed and fell just out of my reach. we were standing in the front of the crowd about ten feet from the musicians' feet. a security guard stood between the gap of the stage and the crowd and handed the stick up to me through the stretching and twitching grabs of everyone else along the front row. the stick has the drummer's sig on it and is filled with nicks and nacks of rhythm and performance splendor.

g.love and his band was a weird combo of blues and hip hop. he played guitar with a harmonica on the neck and broke into raps halfway through songs. i don't know how i felt about this because it all seemed showy and not flowing from musical inspiration like the others had. if i want to relive their songs, i guess i could because i snagged the set list that was taped on the floor of the stage for their set. another security guard hooked me up on that. i don't know how i got so lucky in such a huge concert.

Day 96

the days of heat are back. humidity too.

today the speaker and i finished our shoot. we did one shot from the top of the eighty foot swing and went down that and then did the final third section from the top of the zip line platform. between the blob, the skyscraper, and the zip line, we have a quality product.

a couple of my starwood dv girls were super solid in their video making this week so i used their project for the nightly highlights. they were completely excited about this and this also saved us from making a highlight for today.

tonight was concert night so i did lights again for the rock show deal. fun and intense.

i don't have much time tonight.

Day 75

today was sunny with a high of seventy five. tonight was the concert. there's a really hyper eight grade kid here who's been acting up all week. his counselor wearily told me about the camper so before the concert i was trying talking to him. he wasn't really interested in being calm at all. a little later he came up to the booth right before the show and i showed him how to do 'rock show lights' and he started to calm down and go with the flow and lights and music. this was fun, but sadly in the end he started flipping wrong switches on purpose and wouldn't help follow the script so i had to kick him out of the booth.

before all this, i took advantage of some time off. moments for breaks come and go and when you see one, you gotta grabbit. i took a kayak and, with proper permissions, paddled all the way down to the right of the beach towards the distant point. everything, the mountains and waterfront and distant mainland mountains and shoreline, look familiar from the qwanoes vantage now and i'd been dying to see what new body of water or island or mountain was around this point. along the way i found the infamous rope swing that dangles from a tree that hangs over a coral reef drop off. dozens of purple starfish clung to the rocks of the shore and then, a few yards out, the ocean floor drops.

with the dock barely visible, i rounded the final corner of the point to find another point. sad. i wasn't too far from paddling to nearby saltspring island at this point, but am saving that adventure for an entire day off. laying down in the kayak and looking upsidedown behind at the flipped water and mountain horizon is really trippy. mountains and clouds become part of the deep and the sloshing ocean surface transforms into a ceiling, evolving and reflecting an untouched atmosphere.

tomorrow is the last full day of this week. all my starwood dv kids are coming back to rap up their projects and i'll be up all night compiling and mastering and burning them. this has been another good week.

Day 53

some of last night's excitement was still alive as i went to the office this morning. today was 'wide-eyed and liquified,' so the morning's games were all water-related and were held on the field. this included a massive, blue tarp with suds and a fire hose. i took the 'epic camera housing,' a waterproof video camera holder, out to the field. for forty minutes, i went down the sweet slip-n-slide with the kids and held the heavy plastic cylinder to get awesome footage. this also included jumping into the middle of several water games to capture the action and reactions and everything else that crazy, wet, hyper campers decide to do during a water frenzy. everyone loves the camera man in a game with water guns.

after lunch, i found that one of the other video guys wasn't too thrilled about going to the top of the double zip-line to do the 'exclusive speaker rap-up interview' that's gonna be put on the week's dvd. this sounded exciting to me, so i tied the camera to my neck and got geared up with randy the speaker. we sat perched with our legs hanging off the top of the zip-line tower and he talked to the camera. after saying 'dare to soar' for the last time, we both jumped off the ledge. it was kind of intense to jump after him because both of my hands were steadying the camera as we whizzed down, so i kind of leaned and fell. it was almost surreal.

tonight after q-town there was a special music concert by the band. during the show ryan was doing live video mixing from our balcony office, nick was running the dv7 and doing some shooting, little kim stepped in to help run sound, and i was doing lights and some short powerpoint. i'm starting to enjoy controlling and selecting spots and locations and was able to execute the songs' requirements. other than that, it was a free-will show. the little buttons made me miss piano though.

i promise i'm not trying to becoming a media-minded person. i never wanted to learn tech-talk, but i think i still might be learning some. its all good. i like my position and the opportunities it includes to participate on both sides of a staff position. camper interactions and staff operations and video productions are all valuable and exciting to me.

"there's excitement, adventure, friends, and a lot of good stuff i only had glimpses of during school or baseball or whatever. i do miss going to bookstores and holding actual, breathing books and the computer screen gets old, but other than that, the mountains and ocean and everything are good. cabin #19 all drew pictures for my office."