Re: OOC # 37
In reply to Billie Morrisson (msg # 982):
There have been several days where I've felt kind of run-down, my nose a little more stuffy than usual, my eyes burning more than usual...it kept me mildly alarmed, because that's basically the way my Covid bout started. But a fever had never materialized, so I think it's a combination of seasonal allergies, post-show-closing letdown, and my tendency to burn the candle at both ends. I've also been telling myself, "Hey, you can't get sick...you've got stuff to do and limited time to get it done!" Two weeks ago, it was taking down all the lights at our temporary stage. Last week, it was the trip to Vegas. Now, it's taking down the rest of the lights at our permanent stage (they are lower priority because they're all in under a roof and sheltered from the weather). I'm supposed to have some help for at least the first few days of the week next week (I think through 11/15), so I'm hoping to have them all down and moved into the space where we did our Seance show during the Halloween season. It's heated in there, and I can set up some folding tables for extra working space, so I have room to work on cleaning and servicing all the lights over the winter.
They've also decided they're making a long-term pivot in how we do shows at the park...I got back just in time for the last day of them dredging out our main costume storage area. A lot of the stuff is going to the haunted house stockpile...I'm trying to contain my anxiety at the thought of $600 suits being turned into haunted house costumes, but I'm taking some comfort in the fact that our production manager thinks that the costume storage space would actually be a really great workshop space for me, somewhere I could set up some legit workbenches so I can actually use some good benchtop tools like a bandsaw, drill press, belt sander, etc, which is something we were trying to do in our old rehearsal space, but it was never really working because there was just too much other stuff that had to fit in the same space.
Oh, and, yes, I survived Vegas. I'm glad we went during the week this time, instead of over the weekend, because while I had to work almost all night Thursday night getting the movie theater ready for the next week and ended up having to work at the park on Friday afternoon because they wanted to get all the dry-cleaning back and into storage, I've had plenty of casual time to recuperate a little bit from Vegas. Got to see Ka on Sunday night thanks to a friend that has worked with Cirque du Soleil in the past (it was originally going to be Love, but that show is dark on Sundays), the Seance show at Lost Spirits Distillery on Monday, I was going to see Blue Man Group on Tuesday but it was a last minute decision and by the time I'd settled on that one, tickets were sold out (ended up walking around The Strip, went to the Conservatory at the Bellagio and also got to see the Bellagio Fountain show, which I had thought had been shut down because of the Formula 1 preparations...turns out it's just that you can't watch them from the Strip because of the F1 grandstands that have been set up, but you can still see them from the casino side...) and we ended up going to a nightclub at the Cosmopolitan that had live-band karaoke...it's a whole different energy to do karaoke with live music performers around you, and even more different to be doing it in front of a crowd of 100+ total strangers, but AC/DC proved to be a popular choice and I actually did pretty good once I stopped trying to sing it like Brian Johnson and dropped it an octave to a range where I could actually sing it full-voiced. Even had some drunk guy ask me when I came off stage if I needed groupies (no, I do not need drunk strangers following me around Vegas for the rest of the night, but thank you...) and another guy who was singing "Twist and Shout" later asked me if I would sing the harmony part, so I must have done pretty well.
And then Wednesday night, we went to Rouge...which was a first for me. I've worked with burlesque performers for years, but this was my first topless revue. Some elements of it reminded me of Zumanity, which was the first Cirque du Soleil show I saw (mostly the thematic context of humans being sexual beings and we should accept and embrace that...) I was also sitting at one of the VIP tables next to my friend from Vegas, and the emcee ended up coming over and asking us some rather personal questions in front of the whole audience (mostly because we had both shouted out suggestions when he was asking general questions to the whole audience earlier in the show), and he ended up jumping to the conclusion that we were husband and wife, which made both of us laugh...we got a 'wedding picture' with some of the performers out in the lobby after the show as a joke (I then ended up spending the next four or so hours trying to keep my friend from getting into trouble as she tends to have an incredibly fine line between "pleasantly tipsy" and "belligerently drunk"), so when I flew home on Thursday, I was EXHAUSTED. The earliest I got to bed the entire time I was in Vegas was on Sunday night, and that was still somewhere around 1am.
One thing I do love about Vegas...I have never run well on the traditional "business hours are 9 to 5" schedule. I'm at my best around 10pm or so, and the hardest adjustment I've had to live with post-Covid is the lack of places that used to be open 24/7. My body runs on a Vegas timetable. Unfortunately, Vegas is WAY too crowded for my tastes (that was the other thing I loved about being down there during the week...Vegas is always busy, but it is so much LESS busy on Tuesday than on Friday!)