A Man, A Jeep, No Real Plan

Amazing Stories and Adventures

Grinch 2017

Pittsburgh!

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Pittsburgh has been an adventure!

We arrived on Monday and immediately went out to Primanti Bros. for what I have been told is a tradition in Pittsburgh. All of their sandwiches come with fries and coleslaw on the sandwich. It is weird, weirdly good to be honest. I don’t think I will be attempting it on my own anytime soon, but I will definitely do it again next time I’m in Pittsburgh.

Tuesday a group of us headed down to the Andy Warhol museum. It’s amazing! Here are some photos from it:

Thursday evening I got the beautiful and gracious Heather Olcott to take me on a late night tour of Pittsburgh. I managed to stage some decent photos.

Friday morning the entire company got together to do a secret Santa reveal. This is one of the things I love about touring. We took over the hotel lobby and laid out all of the final gifts. There were tears as people discovered who has been their secret santa. You see secret santa is kinda a sacred thing for touring people. We all are away from our families and getting little gifts randomly throughout the weeks leading up to Christmas is just a great way to feel the love of our adopted family.

Another way we feel the love is a closing night party… it was a blast to get together with everyone last night and have a few drinks. Our tab was a bit impressive.

Today is our final show. There are going to be lots of tears as we run it one last time. There will be tears as we say goodbye to our cast post show (they all have flights home this evening so they can do Christmas with their families tomorrow). There will be tears as we close the trucks and say goodbye to this show. I fully expect my evening to be full saying goodbye to my crew at the hotel. Saying goodbye to a road crew is a bit traumatic. This group of individuals will never again all be in one place. We splinter off and all go our own directions. About half of the crew already knows where they are going next. The other half is going to just go home and be unemployed until they find something. The only thing that is sure is that we will never again all be united at the same time. We’ll all keep in touch, there will be the random reviving of group texts, and Facebook bickering over who actually was responsible for the high heel incidents. But at the end of the day, this tribe, this family that has formed will be gone for good. It’s going to be a rough day.

Goodbye Dallas!

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Sorry for the long gap in updates. Dallas has been filled with getting up early to adventure, running the show, and then staying out late to enjoy the nightlife. I honestly am struggling to put it all into words. Struggling so much that I have tried to write a post a half dozen times in the last 24 hours… So I am giving up and just sharing some of the photos I’ve taken.

As you can see from the above pictures, We partook in the vibrant nightlife that Dallas has to offer. Most of these pictures are from the night we tried to go 2 step dancing… some people were more successful than others.

These photos are all from my walks around Dallas. I know I was in the arts district, but there was just so much to see on the streets.

There is a tradition in the tour world of “tagging” a building that your show spends a decent amount of time in. Normally it’s a mural painted on a wall somewhere, but here in Dallas we removed a ceiling tile and decorated it. Each present has a different company members name on it.

Well folks, that’s what I’ve got for you. I’ll try to be better about updating this up coming week. This week will be the final week for the Grinch tour. We’ll be in Pittsburgh, so expect some fun adventures!

Adults need not apply…

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You know those friends that can read your thoughts, and have similar thoughts? You know, the person who you really shouldn’t be left unsupervised with because neither of you can adult correctly while you’re together. Well meet Parker.

Parker is an audio guy from Colorado who now claims to live in The City, yet he has spent about the same amount of time away from there as there since “moving”. He and I are on the same wavelength of refusing to grow up and since my last post we have proven it… repeatedly…

It all began while I was stumbling through the land of bourbon last week. I mentioned something about a “heels” challenge during load in. The conversation quickly escalated to “I bet I can last longer in 3 inch heels than you” and rapidly went down hill from there.

Fast forward a few days and Parker and I are stumbling around a Payless trying to find closed toe 3″ heels that we can actually work in… So, through my “day one” load in I learned several things.

1. There is no ankle support in those wedges.

2. It is possible to run, jump and climb in wedges.

3. Parker is stubborn.

In reference to the last lesson, the wager was that the first person to take off their heels lost. Parker was limping around, tears in his eyes (ok maybe no real tears, but his soul was crying), and trash talking the entire day. We both lasted to the end of the day. Parker claims I took mine off first, but we were off the clock and the agreement only covered while at work. That being said we reached a gentlemen’s agreement that we would not continue the bet on day two of the load in. Parker spends most of his day two in the orchestra pit and he had some safety concerns about all the cable and heels. In his defense he does bite it down there in regular shoes and he’d probably have broken his ankle if we tried to continue the bet.

So we had a rather well behaved day two of load in and opening night of the show here in Dallas.

Wednesday however Parker and I decided to stumble down to the famous Elm Street Tattoo. We really should have adult supervision… we talked to the guys down there and both got some work done.

Parker got two semicolons. One to represent the vibes he gives out and one to represent the vibes he receives.

I got 525,600 tattooed on my left forearm. This is a reference to Rent, but it means a bit more to me as well. I left Finding Neverland about a year ago. I left the road lifestyle and began a journey of figuring things out. I was burnt out, I was unhappy, I really just needed to go home and figure things out. In that year I got a lot of pet projects done around the farm. I spent months building the new Falcons stadium in Atlanta. I converted the garage in my condo into a wood shop…. above all else, I distressed and I more comfortable with who I am. Measuring that journey is something that can only be done through music. To quote the song from Rent that my tattoo is referencing:

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes

Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes

How do you measure, measure a year?

In daylights, in sunsets

In midnights, in cups of coffee

In inches, in miles

In laughter, in strife

In closing I would like to go on record as saying that Parker is a bad influence and I throughly enjoy every minute of it. So Parker, what’s the next bad idea?

The land of bourbon!

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Hello all,

Well we succeeded in moving the show from Madison, WI to Louisville, KY.

The move was a bit rough….

To be fair the load out in Madison was great, our locals did exactly as we needed, there was space to demolish Whoville offstage while other things happened onstage, and we shaved an hour off our load out time.

Then we got on a sleeper bus. That’s right, instead of doing the normal, hour nap, bus to airport, sleep an hour on the plan, arrive in next city and go straight to work thing…. we got on a sleeper bus and not everyone took advantage, but I slept a solid 9 hours. Ok, so I brought a my bottle of jack into my bunk and watched Star Wars while drinking…. but I was horizontal for 9 hours.

We arrived in Louisville around noon on Monday and had the best surprise ever. Our hotel rooms were ready. That’s right, we not only were able to check into our hotel rooms, but have enough time to shower, take a nap, and find food before our call time.

Atleast that’s what we thought. I took a shower, watched some TV, and headed out with some of the crew for a late lunch before our 3pm load in. At 2:15 we received word that the load in started at 2pm and we were late. By 2:25 I was in the venue and discovered that somehow the advance had been messed up and the locals did not have our lineset schedule (that’s the document that literally dictates where everything goes). So I got them the correct documents and we made things happen.

We knocked off around 11 and that’s when the land of bourbon began to call. Our local department heads invited us to their “private bar” for shots of single barrel Evan Williams. I ended up doing a quick dinner in the hotel bar and then discovering a dueling piano bar where the only thing more out of tune than the pianos were the “singers” operating said pianos. However a lot can be overlooked when the drinks are cheap and the pours are long. I retired to my hotel around 2, like a good little boy. Some of my compatriots however… well let’s just say that I strongly suspect they found an after hours club when the bars closed down around 4am…

Load in day two began at 8am on Tuesday. There were a few people a little worse for wear, but we had a clean opening night here in Louisville and post opening I chose to stumble into the land of bourbon.

I did not have to return to work until 6pm the following day and I began my journey at about 9:30pm. The night is a bit fuzzy, but from what I remember (and what I was reminded of after the fact) I went on a bender that would have made Hunter S Thompson take pause. There were atleast 4 establishments visited, 22 verifiable drinks consumed, one very broken hot mess of a blonde (who even black out me knew to flee from) and the stated goal of drinking all the bourbon in Louisville… I would like to take this moment to thank my dear coworkers for chaperoning and documenting my valiant attempt to drink all the bourbon.

Upon awaking on Wednesday I felt every last drink from the depths of my soul. It took me 6 hours, 3 liters of water, 2 cans of V8, multivitamins, and the best damn chicken noodle soup I’ve ever had, but I recovered from my failed attempt and was perfectly functional by work… another smooth show!

I have not had a drop since and I am unsure if I will be able to venture back into the land of bourbon on this visit. That being said, since my last journey was so epic… I think I am ok for a hot second. 😉