Keith at Santa's Workshop -- 01Dec2012

The lady who books "acts" (I use the term loosely) for the Santa's Workshop at the Mission Viejo Civic Center finally figured out that nobody does it better than I do, so she let me sign up for as many of the nights as I wanted. I took all the Saturdays and Sundays that I wasn't already spoken for, and the last Wednesday (since it gets more and more people as the date approaches Christmas).

This was the first one, and, as expected, had a pretty small turnout. There are two possibilities of where they'll string the ropes to designate the line, and they chose the worst one, which puts me on the grass, behind a picket fence so the kids can't come up. I talked to one of the guys, and suggested that they do it the other way from now on, so we'll see.

Also, they run Christmas cartoons (Charlie Brown, Frosty, Rudolph, Chipmunks) on a projector back behind me. The sound has always been really quiet, so it's not a problem, but this time it was really loud. I asked the guy if he could turn it down, but he apparently couldn't figure out how to. It was pretty distracting, but I just powered through. After everyone was gone, I figured out where the volume control was myself, and turned it down. If it's back up next time, I'll know what to do.

Not a lot of response from the small crowd, but it was OK. The nice ladies in the Hot Chocolate and "Decorate a Cookie" booths clapped once in a while, so I didn't feel quite so lonesome.

I was also scheduled for the next night, Sunday the 2nd, but it rained all afternoon, so I didn't go down. I don't know if they still held the event or not, but I didn't want to go down and set up my equipment in the wet grass, nor get rained on and blow up the electronics. And there'll be more chances -- four more Santa gigs in the next three weeks, assuming the weather cooperates.