November 28th, 2005

Sheffield Day 3

Well, the dreaded day of work finally arrived. It would be nice if they’d let me have a four or five day paid vacation, but sadly, they don’t see it that way. The whole crew had to report at 9 AM to the HallamFM arena to set up for RAW and Smackdown. Of course I woke up around 2:30 AM and was wide awake until about 4 AM or so. I drifted back to sleep until the the alarm jolted me from a great dream about living in a beach house. Dammit!

After a traditional British breakfast of runny eggs, runny baked beans, extra salty and runny ham and of course a runny half-tomato, we boarded the bus and made our way to work. I feared all that runny foods would… well… you can fill in the blank with the “runs” joke of choice…

In England we hire a crew of local audio freelancers to help out. Normally in the US, I am responsible for all the patching and audio signal flow of the show. Not so across the pond. We hire a brave and cheerful man named Joff White to take over this job. I call him the British Frenchy…

My job here will be to submix all the effects, bringing all those fantastic wrestling grunts, groans and hits home to our audience. It’s actually pretty easy, and will be a fun change for me.

However, not having much to do makes a day drag on and on, especially without a constant internet connection. Internet access is spotty at best, but at least I have time to write all these updates!

The day progressed much faster than normal. The biggest issue of the day was getting the “embedders” to work. Embedders are devices that basically take a pretty simple procedure and complicate the hell out of it. I call this process “re-complication”. We have successfully re-complicated the whole television process to the point that it takes three days and five engineers to do what used to only take one. All in the name of progress!!

The show came together nicely. I stole… no, wait… I mean… err… I “re-allocated” an internet connection, once I found out where the super-secret router was hidden. Tomorrow should go much faster, now that I have a high speed internet connection!

After ten hours we were ready to leave. Our local audio crew was ready to quaff a few pints. I gave Joff my UK phone number so that we could meet up later… (I am just sooo cosmopolitan!) I’m hoping that Joff and company will know the secret code to bypass those rock-headed bouncers.

Getting into the elevator back at the Hilton, I had a “WWE moment” I was joined by two of our newer wrestlers on their way to their rooms. Since the elevator is very tiny, we were pretty crowded together. They introduced themselves. One, who introduced himself as “Chad”, I recognized as half of the tag team “The Dicks” The other guy I didn’t recognize until he said, “Hello, I am the Boogeyman!”

Imagine being trapped in an elevator with the Boogeyman and the only other person there is a Dick? Now THAT’S a WWE moment!

Abi and I decided to go for dinner at a Tapas restaurant. I’d never tried tapas before, so it sounded like fun. On the way to the restaurant, Joff called and said he and a few of the lads were in a cab on the way to meet us. I told him we were on our way to a tapas restaurant. He sounded a bit confused by that. “Do they serve food in topless bars now? We’ll be right there!”

I had to disappoint him.

Joff and the rest had already eaten, and since nobody was topless in the tapas bar, they said to meet them when we finished our dinner at my new favorite pub, the Frog and Parrot (naturally!)

Tapas consist mostly of appetizers that you order then share with the table. There were about thirty on the menu, from quesadillas to exotic-sounding beef dishes. There was a list of vegetarian dishes as well, which made Abi happy. We sampled a few of the many tapas, then went to meet up with “the boys”.

On the walk to the F&P, I noticed that, interestingly enough, there were no bouncer-cretins in sight. In fact, on Sunday night, downtown Sheffield seems very quiet. We were welcome to enter any bar or club we wanted to, even the ones that rejected us the previous night. All I could say is a hearty “FUUUUCK YOU!” to each of those snooty bars. If I wasn’t good enough last night to come in and spend money, they your place isn’t good enough now. I’d much rather spend all my money at the place that has been very good to me so far, the Frog and Parrot.

We walked in, and immediately noticed a TV crew was set up behind the bar. One of the WWE crews was out shooting “scenics” for tomorrow’s show. They were shooting the lovely and well-endowed bar maids serving beers to the locals. I told them I wanted to be in the shot. The scene was this: One bar maid hands a patron a drink as the camera pans down the bar, then a second one hands a beer across to another patron (me). We all toast, and then drink the beer.

Abi and the rest of the audio crew milled around behind us to lend atmosphere to the bar (After all, what could be more believable than a TV crew in a bar?) We had to shoot the scene three or four times to get it exactly right, and I managed to score three free beers! The bar maid kept refilling my rather large glass, and I kept dutifully emptying it. (The things I will do for art’s sake!) I am sure the scene won’t make air, but it should give people in the truck a good laugh when they see the French “local” toasting the others in the shot. What fun!

We talked about television, shared stories that only audio guys would find funny, filled them in on the latest gossip, and had a great time. We had many loud laughs until the bar closed at 10:30. They told us that this was the last weekend the bars would be closing so early, which was a shame in a way. I wanted to stay out later and laugh it up some more, but sadly it was time to return to the hotel.

Tomorrow, RAW from the UK!

Author: frenchy

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Sheffield Day 3

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