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Groundhog Day
Phil, you little punk! How could you? This was the view from my house this morning, looking like the start to an early spring day… I didn’t see MY shadow, how the hell did you see yours?!?! DO you realize how much extra motorcycling can be fit into six weeks?!?! YOU RAT!
Someone call the exterminator!
Winter X Games – Day Two
Welcome back to the Winter X Games, where the second day of racing, this time on skis, is in jeopardy. Seems that when it snows -it slows- as in slows the race course down. And that blows, quite frankly. Apparently, it also keeps the crowds away, at least that’s what everyone is telling themselves…
The Crist brothers, our favorites, are asked to evaluate the course’s raceworthiness. They drop in, and are SLOW! The eight inches of fresh powder blanketing the course has taken all the speed (not to mention good effects sounds) away. The two brothers look like members of the Powder Pandas kiddie training as they sluggishly drift down the course. There’ll be no need for Slow Motion replays today, provided they have the race at all.
After their agonizingly slow run, one of the Crist brothers, (I’m not sure if it was Jesus) said to the other, “Yeah. I’ll fuckin’ try that jump next time. What’s the fuckin’ worst that could happen? The snow is so fuckin’ soft and slow, there’s no fuckin’ way I can get hurt.”
So brave! Such strong and colorful language! Jesus Crist, you’re my fuckin’ hero!
Just race today, so I can go home!
There is a lot of discussion, various contingency plans are made. Who can stay until tomorrow? What if they run the race later, when does the sun set? Nobody knows what is going to happen.
Thankfully, at noon, the racers line up for the first qualifying race. They are going to have the event! Jesus Crist, Thank You!! I won’t have to stay another day!
The races are run, albeit slower than normal. My carefully placed microphones don’t pick up much in the way of racing sounds, because there isn’t much in the way of racing sound to pick up.
At one point, our director makes a request to Pat, the main mixer.
“Pat, can you give me more crowd noise in the mix? I know there’s nobody here, but give me more, OK?”
Right. I hesitate to remind them that more nothing is still nothing. It’s too bad my boisterous fan from yesterday didn’t return.
And with the last run, we have a winner, and are almost ready to leave. But first, we have to cover what I consider the strangest thing of all. After the final race is over, for some reason, there is a consolation race. This race determines the best of the rest I guess, the fastest losers, it determines the hotly contested seventh through tenth place winners, and most importantly, the aluminum, magnesium and zinc medal recipients. The most confusing thing is, this race of the also-rans doesn’t ever air!! All it does is delay strike, which delays our exodus from the great winter vacation known as the X Games, and most importantly, delays our DST (Drink Start Time) by a half hour.
“And that brings the Winter X Games to a close, at least for me and the rest of Venue B. This has been Frenchy, the smart-assed and sarcastic submixer reporting live from the spacious confines of HT-2. Good night, and good luck.”
Winter X Games – Day One
“Hello everyone and welcome to Winter X Games Ten! I am Frenchy, your smart-assed and somewhat sarcastic submixer for Venue B, the most exciting event of the X Games, except for maybe the motorcycles that do backflips, or the snowmobiles racing and jumping and landing on top of each other, or… well… there’s the snowboard park where kids seemingly defy gravity and injury to perform daring tricks… Hmm… our venue, six people racing on snowboards down a hill seems… well… slightly less compelling than all that.
But it is a beautiful day, and as you can clearly see the crowd is streaming in… wait… is that a stream or… seems more like a trickle. Huh? Where is the big crowd? Over at Moto X practice? Great.
Well, the microphones have fresh batteries, the cameras are ready, everyone is slowly freezing in place as we wait for the first qualifying run.”
The countdown begins:
“Riders ready! Ten Seconds!”
“Five seconds!”
Then, exactly one second later, BAMM! the gates drop, and the race is on. This happens every single time. In four years, I have yet to figure out how every second in Aspen seems to last for five, until the race begins. It’s one of the great mysteries of life.
The second run of the day was by far my favorite. As the six pack of racers flew down the hill, I followed the run down the audio console, opening the microphones closest to the action.
A lone fan, halfway up the mountain was close to one of the microphones as well. In fact, he must have been standing right next to it. As the racers passed, I opened that microphone. At the same instant, he yelled, “YEAH!!! GO YOU FUCKING PUSSIES!!!“
I don’t think anyone heard his off-color cheering, except me. I nearly laughed myself right out of HT-2. Ahh, the joys of live television!
And all those fucking pussies did go, until the event was over. Someone won the gold medal, but we were the real winners, because we got to leave hours before the night events of Venues A and C began.
One more day to go!
That day can be found here.
Vacation Home
Just to clarify, there are two audio mixers for each X Games venue. Submixers are responsible for capturing all the sounds of the course. All of those fantastic swishes, curses and crashes heard on the course are all mixed together into an amazing sonic masterpiece. Then the incredible effects mix is sent to the main show mixer, who usually buries it under announcers, graphics sound effects, music and other stupid noise until it is barely audible. (Unless of course that main mixer is Pat Cassidy, who reads this blog… then it all sounds excellent! Great job, little buddy!)
This year’s X Games is divided into three separate venues, each with a dedicated TV truck. The two cost-efficient submixing horse trailers supply all three venues with sonic masterpieces. HT-1 submixes all the snowmobile and motorcycle racing. HT-2 covers everything else, including the downhill snowboard and ski racing, as well as slopestyle, (a kind of skateboard park for snowboards), and the halfpipe.
Submixing sounds like a relatively easy job, and even better in a swanky town like Aspen, right? Why, then, does my smile in this picture, taken in the luxurious interior of HT-2, look so unconvincing?
Well, it COULD be the fourteen hours of travel to get to Aspen, through Detroit and Memphis, cold cuts and lousy soup for lunch every day, the awful three day case of the touristas (look it up) from that lousy soup, scarcity of bottled water to combat altitude sickness and dehydration, insomnia, bloody noses, imported New Zealand-ese shuttle drivers that get lost every single day.
Or it could be the asshole truck engineer shoveling snow off the roof of his TV truck who looked right at me, then sent a shower of fresh roof-snow down on my head anyway yesterday morning.
And of course there’s that inexcusable lack of Guinness at the beginning of the week.
It’s not any one of those things specifically, its the combination of ALL of them, especially the lack of a proper Winter X-Games Guinness hangover, that make my smile so forced.
Uhh… so where was I? Oh yeah… Sorry.
My time share trailer.
This next picture is highly technical. Fortunately, it was recently declassified. We in the submixing industry call this a BFM (Big Fucking Mess) or alternately, if it’s part of a really big show, it is called a HCF (Huge Cluster Fuck).
This spaghetti-like mess is how every microphone signal is distributed throughout HT-2. You’d think in five years we’d have found a better way to do this… But no, this BGDFSM is what we use.
After six days of working, setting up, finding and replacing way too many broken pieces and parts, chasing down mysterious hums, buzzes, pops, clicks and other various annoying crap, the shiny, happy, temporary inhabitant of HT-2 is as ready as can be for the upcoming tremendously exhilarating competitions.
More X Games fun and frivoloty can be found here.
Fortune
Confucius was very wise. He once said, “The way the wind blows, that’s the way the grass bends.”
And in a sense, both Confucius and this fortune were absolutely correct… The “winds of change” started blowing almost immediately after dinner. Hard. Hurricane force. If there was any grass in my room, it would have definitely been bent, and possibly scorched.
Those “winds” kept me, my roommate, and all of my neighbors, awake through the night.
Hopefully the windy season blows over before the month ends!
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