got a kick out of gunnars shitty opening band awareness campaign, and his back stage antics[;)]
To give some enlightenment on the backstage reference . . .
When having dinner with him and his wife on Monday Scaccia, had told me he’d got a full-access pass for me for the evening. He told the same on Wednesday as well. I guess maybe I was supposed to get it from him before the show or something, but I just assumed I could check in at Box Office and they’d have me cleared on a list.
The girl at Box OFfice told me she couldn’t find my name and even gave me the list to review to see if I could find my name on it. Sin, Jourgensen, and a bunch of others had plenty of names cleared but there was only one Roland rep tagged for Scaccia, so I’m thinking maybe the list didn’t get turned in or something.
No big deal. I’ve got awesome Ninja skills and can usually find a way back anyway and if not, so what. I really only wanted to say “Hey” to the Scaccia’s and Casey and Sin, and go back to partying with my crew. So I cased the joint and saw that there was a curtain-covered door on each side of the stage.
I would study the situation and was giving play-by-plays of my planned caper to my homies. I soon ruled out stage right as that guy stood directly centered in front of the door and never moved even two feet in either direction. Stage left was really dicey, too, as there was one guard about 15 feet up the ramp to the left, and the other guard who stood just to the right of the door, was really vigilant. He was guarding the door and also the access to the front photo moat. I figured my best bet would be to sneak by quickly when he was looking at the stage front . . . . but the longesthe’d ever turn was 5 or 6 seconds. The guy further up the ramp mostly just looked forward, and I wasn’t as concerned with him as I think if he caught glance of me trespassing he wouldn’t really know what he saw and just figure it was someone that had been cleared.
These guys were tough cookies. I also employed a few Jedi mind tricks as distractions. Door dude kind of was eyeballing me a few times as my lurking may have been suspicious, so I went up to him and gave him my business card, “Hey, Brother! I’ve been watching you guarding this area. You’re really vigilant and I like your style. Contact me sometime as I’ve got some contacts who would love to meet you.” I shook his hand and stepped back to my lurking spot. I saw him study the card and put it back in his pocket.
Yeah, I know, what kind of an idiot gives his business card to the people against whom he’s going to committ a trespass, right? Well, I’m just really confident and figured it would also make the victory that much sweeter, and if he did contact me later I could laugh and say, “Sorry, Buddy! I’m not interested anymore. I totally sneaked past you and you’re not as vigilant as I thought you were.”
Into the second half of the Ministry set, I got a text from Jenny (Mike’s wife) asking where I was. She said she was on the side of the stage (Mike’s side, of course) watching the show. Shortly thereafter is when I finally made my strike . . .
I quickly darted into the curtain, fumbled with it until I got behind it and started climbing through. Climbing? Yeah! There was NOT a clear passageway behind the curtain. Heck, I don’t even think it was an actual door. There were like random gear boxes and scaffolding and such . . . or at least that’s what it felt like. I couldn’t see a damn thing and was just trying to slog through and make my way to freedom. I don’t think I got but about 3 feet or so behind the curtain and couldn’t make any real distance because of all the obstacles. It felt like being in one of those stupid dark haunted house things where there’s like a million punching bags bumping into you from all directions.
Security pulled me out of the rat maze but instead of beating my ass or throwing me out, they were just absolutely dumbfounded by my actions. I think their words were something like, “You f*ing idiot! What the fk are you doing?” I kind of tried to play it cool and said something like, “Oh sorry. I got lost.” And then I made my way back to tell my posse what happened. I’m not sure if any of them actually SAW it, but would love to hear if they did as it must have been hilarious.
On our way out of the show I saw the same security guy that pulled me out (it was a black dude; different cat from the one I was waging psychological warfare on) and he made some funny remark and I slapped him on the back like we were best friends and we all had a good laugh at my failed stuntwork.
