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| ACMs |
Tonight we had the 47th Academy of Country Music Awards at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. This is by far my favorite awards show that we do. It's not the actual show; I don't care for country music. It's the people. I've said it many times: I absolutely adore them. This year though I took a step back. I'm not gaga over M anymore, I'm bored to death of my job, I'm cranky as hell and don't really feel like being around people. Yeah, nice portrait, I know. So this year I asked my guys to just run the show. And they did. Not sure what's going on with me but I thought it best to stay away from as many people as I could given my disposition.
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| Seat cards for rehearsals |
I kept quiet from twitter on this show. A couple days earlier I tweeted a pic of the seat cards. About an hour later I get an email from the Academy asking to coordinate tweets with them because they want to be the 1st to put out any images. I get it. It's their show. So I got out of the tweeting business - at least for the show. I still took pics but only posted them to my personal FB page and saved them for the arena archive so when someone asks, "Hey, anyone remember what we did for barricades on the red carpet for ACMs in 2012?" we can look back.
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| Great set! |
My day was going pretty well until the programs. The dreaded programs. The ACMs give out this 3 pound program book to all attendees. It's like the fucking Restoration Hardware anthology that comes out yearly. There are 5 pallets of them. About 20 per box. Each box weighs about 50 pounds. It's my biggest pet peeve of this show. I hate the distribution, the set up, the concept. Put the goddamn thing on a CD or a swanky thumb drive and be done with it. So as usual I end up on the floor, dragging out 50# boxes from under the tables to refresh the ones already out, Leatherman in hand ready to slit my throat, or rather slice the tape to open the box bottoms, sweating and on my knees - and not in a sexy way. I fucking hate those things more than I hate people who talk in elevators. Next year I'm lining every single wall of the upper lobby with tables. And every single program will be preset on a table ahead of time so that no one will have to go thru what my staff and I did. Yeah, only took me 6 years to figure this out.
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| Remnants from the cake |
The show went off fine. I had the truck show feed on my TV in my office but didn't really watch it. It was more so I could see where we were in the program. Sometime after doors I went with Trubes to Seablue to grab a bite to eat when my radio goes off. For Toby Keith's Red Solo Cup they did a gag to kind of reproduce a part of his video. So we had to clear 3 ADA sections. That was the plan from the beginning with the show producer. At some point during a run thru someone else told my guys we didn't need to clear them. It's kind of a big deal to ask 30 people that they have to leave their seats for part of the show so they didn't want to do it if we didn't have to. In the end I made it clear, "Look, I don't care who said we don't need to clear them. I'm telling you we do." I'm not normally that stern with my guys but I was tired of people getting involved with a decision that had been made days earlier. A plan was in place. Don't fuck with it. In the end it went well. I watched the gag from the floor and it looked great. Apparently there was a wedding that took place. I missed that too. I only knew about it because my friend the fire marshal showed up during rehearsals saying he had to sign off on the candles on a cake. Huh? I guess I should have read the show run a little more carefully. I've got the show on DVR too but haven't managed to watch it yet. Doubt I actually will.
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| 1st to the stage @ ASJ |
Around 6.45ish I head over to the Marquee Ballroom. While the awards show is going on over at the Grand Garden we have to get ready for 7.30p doors to the All Star Jam. This is one of the most popular shows we do because so many high level country artists end up performing with each other in such an intimate setting. Everyone's in place, house band starts so we open doors. Only glitch was the ticket scanners didn't work. Our IT department disabled the wireless connection for some reason. We just faked it and checked tickets. 10 years ago no one had scanners so sometimes you gotta just go old school to get thru the night.
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| Red Carpet |
On my way back from the Marquee I take a look at the east lot where the red carpet was set earlier. Fork lifts, staging, carpet, banner truss all laying around. I look at my watch. 7.35p. Shit. The awards show breaks in 25 minutes. There's no way all this stuff will be cleared by show break. It should have been cleared by 7.00p so limos could stage there and I could let people from the arena exit out those side doors. But given the amount of material lying in the lot and on the sidewalk there was no way could I do that. So I call in the troops to let our staff now we won't be exiting on east or west sides of the building. Everyone exits out the main entrances and does the 'duck walk' out to the casino or across the street to the All Star Jam. It actually wasn't too bad. That's how good my team is. They know how to manage traffic flow better than any. Every event they make me proud. I'm so lucky to have such an amazing group of people.
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| All Star Jam |
Arena is clear so I head back to the All Star Jam. My mood is about 10x worse than it was earlier and I've had it, mentally. I know I need to be back @ 9.00a because my guy who normally comes in for the early shift has a M-F 9-5 job so I'm the lucky one who gets to come in and babysit the troops. I see my supervisors near the front of the Marquee and tell them that I'm headed home. It's only 10.00p. The ASJ won't be clear until at least 1.30a so I should stay until then but I'm so done if I don't leave now I'm not sure I'll actually ever return to work. They could all sense my frustration. It's not like I hide it well. "Go home. Get some sleep. We'll see you tomorrow," they say. Thank you God for my guys. They save my life every event.
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