Monster Jam Louisville

Kentucky, the bluegrass state. Wrong. The grass is white, covered in snow! Louisville Kentucky is a very familiar place to me. As many of you know I use to live there when I was a young little nugget. Things have changed as I have gotten older but the southern feeling of the community definitely brings back some sweet sweet memories. Why am I here? Two words.

                                                                    MONSTER JAM! 

I was asked to direct a two day show in the Freedom Hall Arena in Louisville Kentucky on Jan 15th and 16th. I flew out there on the Tuesday before to set up. I had Luis (a fellow coworker) there to help me with the set up. 

It was freezing here! We had plenty of layers on as we worked through the days. Long days might I add! There were lots of changes for this show that made an easy 8 hour day turn into a 16. I have worked with FELD before (The company who owns Monster Jam/Supercross/Disney on Ice, etc.) so there were a few people I knew already but quite a few who I did not. So as most people would agree, not everybody can get along. 

Which leads me to my lovely story of Matt. Matt was hired for this particular show only. He was in charge of the Audio portion of the show (Speakers/Mics/Music). He is one of those guys with a bad attitude of he's the only guy there that matters, even though we all have to come together to make a show happen united. Anyways, I caught him trying to sneakily steal a roll of our Gaff Tape. Sounds lame, I know. But Gaff Tape is used to tape down cables so people don't trip and can actually be quite expensive. So I called him out. He threw it back at me with a bad attitude, knowing I just caught him, and it hit my finger wrong. SNAP. Broke it. Needless to say, I did not like Matt for the rest of the show or probably forever for that matter. 

The best the paramedics on site could do was this lovely stick and some tape. An interesting conversation starter to say the least. And boy was it difficult to work with this injury. Directing consist of using your fingers to press buttons. This made my life a whole lot harder, but I managed and pulled off two fantastic shows! 

It was a long trip, a lot of hours of work, no sleep, broken bones, sore body but it paid off in the end. 

On a side note, I was able to go visit Churchill Downs, where the Kentucky Derby is held as well as my old time favorite restaurant back east O'Charleys. Met a few good people on my 3 hour layover in North Carolina, and gained a lot of respect from some awesome people working for FELD. Overall the trip was a great success! Minus the broken finger.