April's Fools and Fake Shows

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Kyle has malaria.
We’re doing a show in a retirement community.
Roofers will be installing a new roof on the venue.
And we’re doing a fire drill in the middle.

Sounds like a bad April Fool’s joke, doesn’t it? Welcome to my day.

I woke up and headed to the lobby, all excited to do a show (finally!) and saw Kyle on the couch. He looked sick. Really sick. We left in the truck and he explained that he didn’t sleep most of the night; up puking. He thought it was malaria. (He got it a few years ago in Uganda and said it comes back every several months.) Puking, fevers, chills, overall feeling-gross-ness. This is how bad a friend I am: When I saw he was sick, my first thought was “Crap! I was in the truck with him all day; I hope I don’t get it.” But when I heard it was malaria, I thought “Yea! I can’t catch that from him!” He was a good sport and came to work, but slept. I became the A1.5. Wow. It’s been a while since I’ve set up a system, gain staged, all these things. I’m glad I could help though, since I had zero lighting to do. Later in the day, we sent him to the hotel, then decided it’s probably not malaria. The Africans don’t think he could still have it that prominent in his system. Maybe food poisoning, or the stomach flu, which I can catch. Sigh.

Our show today was in fact in a retirement community. Wow. The building (which we refuse to call a ‘venue’) is a pyramid. Retrofitted to sort of accommodate things on a stage. The people who we’re working with here are great, though. Anything we need, and they’re on it! But, outside, they’re putting on a new metal roof. Not at all distracting (thankfully, this was over before showtime.) It sounds like they’ve got some decent hammerdrills up there. Then, as we were setting up (well, mostly me, as there wasn’t much to set up and Kyle was sleeping) the fire alarm went off. The Dead Irishman stood, and wandered groggily out into the light, where all of us continued to work, the lights and noise not phasing us. Beth was in the back, steaming costumes, totally oblivious to the fact she had set it off. It was fine, though, and a yellow fire truck pulled up to check things out.

We had some time off, to dink around (we didn’t have a vehicle, though). Went to the book store, imagine that. I got out without buying anything. We did to laundry, though, which was good, because Sarah and I were out of clean everything (when I emptied all my dirty clothes out of my bag, all that was left in it was socks.) When I was folding it, there was a woman in there, an old woman, who kept asking questions. “What do your folks think of you being on tour? Where are the kids from? Who pays for it all? How often do you write your folks? How to the kids’ parents feel about them being gone for so long?” I told her they’re from Uganda and she looked at me like I was speaking a different language. She asked again, I said Eastern Africa. A few questions later, “So, they’re all Chinese?” Oh my. Another resident of the facility asked if I was a “new resident.” Apparently I haven’t aged well.

The show went well. Craig mixed, but I gave him lots of cues and whatnot. Nothing really as far as lighting. It was overly uneventful.

I loaded the truck, which went well, except all our big racks came out at the same time (good) minus one (bad). So, as we told Kyle, we found a new way of loading the truck- completely inefficient, so we should never do it again. We brought food back to the Malarian (even though it’s not really malaria) and Sarah and I had a nice chat.

It’s so nice to be back on the road. Finally my brain is maybe turning back on and my body is happier. We still have to have tomorrow off. 2 days in a city is long enough for me, although this one has exceptionally nice beds and showers. (Oh, how my standards have lowered) Overall, it was a good day. I wish more of the things that went wrong were in fact April Fool’s jokes, but it all worked out.

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