I took Max and Sam to see Van Halen last night. A special shout out to Uncle Gary for making this possible!
And I also just bought a new High Definition camcorder. It’s a tiny little thing (that was part of the objective!) and I thought I’d try and sneak it into the concert last night. After one abortive attempt to breach security, I made it through the second time. But while I was able to capture some really nice clips, the camera kept shutting off after a minute or two. I finally figured out that the errors were being caused by the motion detector in the camera (which guards its internal hard drive against shocks) was probably being triggered by the extraordinarily high sound pressure levels in the Arena.
Anyway, I put away the camera after the first few songs and just decided to enjoy the show. But then I thought I’d take it out one last time. And that was when the security guys surrounded me. They assured me as they whisked me out of the Arena that my children would be OK. They were civil, but demanded that I give them my tape from the camera. This is how it went…
Me: My camera doesn’t use tape
Security dudes: Oh, it uses one o’ them chip things
Me: Uhh, not really
Security dudes: You gotta gimme that chip
Me: It doesn’t record on a chip. It records on a hard drive
Security dudes: You gotta gimme that hard drive
Me: It doesn’t come out. It has an internal 40 gigabyte hard drive.
Security dudes: Well, you gotta give us that video
Me: Well, I can’t, really
Security dudes: Well, how do you get the video out of there? You have to give it to us…
Me: Do you have a computer with a USB 2.0 connection? That’s how I get the video out of it (showing them the little USB connector on the site of the camera)
Security dudes: (scratching head) Shit…follow us
And they impounded my little camera, assuring me I could get it back after the show. I hustled back into the Arena and caught the end of “Ice Cream Man”. Max and Sam were concerned, but I assured them it was all OK. And it was. We collected the camera right after the show, and all was fine.
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