Happy New Year!
Here's my new year card for 2022:
I have to thank Buc at Yellowhaus for taking this great picture and Cindy for being in the picture.
The inside of the card has this picture:
I have joked for years about wanting to be a white glove gaffer. The past year, I was anything but a white glove gaffer. It seems like more jobs have smaller crews meaning more work for everyone including me.
The white gloves are real. Chance, my assistant chief lighting technician (which sounds much better than "best boy") on Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, And Vile gave me the gloves as a wrap present and joke. I love the presentation case!
More about the white gloves: https://electricgrip.blogspot.com/2018/03/white-glove-gaffer.html
More about being a white glove gaffer: https://electricgrip.blogspot.com/2021/06/these-are-not-my-white-gloves.html
All my new year cards from past years: https://electricgrip.blogspot.com/2021/01/my-annual-new-year-card.html
PS: Most of my new year cards have featured a lot of photoshopping. On this year's card, there is none. The card looks great without it.
I did make some photoshopped versions. Santa hats have been a tradition. I did some demos with hats, but it didn't add anything. Likewise, I put the picture on a TV with Dick Mikemann Show captions, but again, it didn't add anything to the picture. It's funny as it is.
It wasn't easy picking a picture for my new year card this year. I had many great pictures to choose from.
Here is one of the pictures:
Here is another picture I was thinking of using. It is me working in the rain at night on a movie in Arkansas. It's a great picture. (Thanks Solomon!)
(Other technicians will notice the 4x4 Kino Flo; a classic old fixture. It's not a Kino Flo. It's a Kino Flo housing with Titan tubes inside. Perfect for a rainy night since the Titan tubes are IP-65.)
PPS: The year 2022 seems like it should be far in the future like some science fiction movie, but here it is now.
Looking back, I had a stellar year work-wise; probably my best year ever. I was super busy most of the year. Likewise, it was my best year ever for lighting and electric rentals.
My year was mostly commercial work. That's not a bad thing, I love working on commercials. Mostly local commercials, but I had a good number of regional and national commercials. I gaffed a couple low budget movies in Arkansas. Those were both fun.
At the same time, I was hugely disappointed to not gaff any union movies. I didn't even get an interview last year. I realize now that people in the union are getting all the work before I even get contact info. It's not a fair playing field and I'm not sure what to do about it. It didn't use to be this way.
PPPS: I occasionally get asked why do I have a stocking on one leg?
I had blood clots in the leg years ago. The clots damaged the check valves in the veins. Blood will pool in my leg if I don't wear the stocking. It feels comfortable to have the stocking on. The pressure squeezes excess blood out of my calf.
The clots were the results of poor care I received at Christ Hospital in Cincinnati and my surgeon Alfred Kahn over 20 years ago.
I went to the hospital for back surgery. I was immobilized for several days, but they "forgot" to provide any care to prevent blood clots. I found out that treatments to prevent blood clots is basic, standard care, but my doctor did not have a standard order for it and it wasn't provided at the hospital. My right leg had a blood clot from the ankle to the groin. It wasn't found until a week after I had a pulmonary embolism (which was misdiagnosed as pneumonia at Christ Hospital). I was fortunate not to die. It took me months to recover.
I tried to sue the hospital and surgeon. I couldn't find a lawyer to take the case. One lawyer told me, paraphrasing, "You have a good case but since you recovered, your case is too small ($200,000 to $300,000) to make it worthwhile to pursue." Reading between the lines, he was saying, he couldn't get rich off my case so it wasn't worth anything.
One lawyer I talked to even told me he had a case against Dr. Kahn that was identical to mine except in this case the person had to have his leg amputated because of the blood clot.
Our medical system is broken in so many ways. We have the most sophisticated and expensive care in the world but we don't have the best care.
Even less talked about are medical mistakes. EVERYONE (!) I know that has spent time in a hospital, has been the victim of a medical mistakes. No one, especially the hospitals are doing anything to fix it.
There are countless stories like mine. Here is a heartbreaking story about a man, his father, and our broken health care system:
PPPPS: This post went way down the rabbit hole. It started as a positive happy new year post. Sorry it has gotten so dark!