Hello, fellow Eternal Blue, Forever Green’s! I just had a flashback to the time the Great Michael Gspurning graced us with a really fun dinner at the Berliner Pub in Renton.
The SonarFeed #Crew were on location filming a commercial for the Berliner’s Oktoberfest and we had taken over the street shooting on Lee’s Harley Davidson, Manuela Horn "The Yodeling Dominatrix" on her mechanical sheep, Erin with his killer cameras and microphones.
SonarFeed #Crew Brazbit and Darkwynds were there with their killer equipment, creativity, and skill.
I was shooting some ancillary video for a related project and stopped to check Twitter. I saw that Michael was making an appearance at a local electronics store and I jokingly tweeted him, “Let us buy you dinner!”
I immediately forgot about it and we continued on with what became a really cool commercial for Renton Oktoberfest! (Brutes will like the extended version including the Red Sled).
Anyway, as I was videoing a pretty cool Rat Bug Volkswagen, a giant shadow crept into my scene from behind me. It was skinny and tall and I was startled as I figured I was about to get bounced. At the very end of the video you can hear me beginning to greet, “Mr. Gspurning”.
He walked up with a smile and twinkling eyes. Of course our whole video shoot shut down because we all wanted a beer anyway but adding Mr. Gspurning to the mix was just way too cool.
We grabbed the best table in the place and notified the staff that Sounders Royalty was in the house. We immediately got to chatting, drinking good cold beer and ordering food. Michael went on about his first baseball game (Mariners) and how he was fascinated with their baseball mitts as compared to his keeper gloves. Since I’m a sporting dude I ran out to my car where I keep 3 baseball mitts just in case a game of catch starts up and retrieved my Rawlings mitt.
He not only took that out of my hands but grabbed my baseball cap and my Ray Bans and in the blink of an eye, he was a Mariners infielder!
He asked about the index finger hole in the mitt and I told him that was so you didn’t get your finger broken by a throw zipped in from 3rd base. He took out his Magic Marker™ (before it was uncool) and drew a representation of a glove.
I am the owner of the only Rawlings mitt with genuine Gspurning artwork on it, presumably.
I still have it and it still has all the markings on it!
He told a story about playing in Greece and how a ref made a really bad game changing call (a red card of some kind if I recall correctly) and how his team stumbled upon said ref in a restroom at the airport. They politely let him know how wrong he was. You’ll have to ask Michael to tell you the story if you want to know it!
He took my cell phone and dialed my girlfriend who refused to believe it was him on the phone. Like I could do that accent!
Anyway, it was a fun two hours in the end of a great Renton summer. We didn’t know we’d only have him as a Sounder for a few years and he was splendid at that!
We all parted ways, SonarFeed finished the commercial and the 1st Annual Renton Oktoberfest was a smashing success!
I miss these guys and all the amazing people that helped get SonarFeed off the ground, from the 3 people who watched the first 10 episodes that were funny but also marred with hilarious technical glitches, things uttered live that probably shouldn't have been and everyone that threw in with us to help with tech, production, art and ideas. Our original goal was to have a live show talking Sounders with fearless personality. We swore, accused, laughed, drank, made threats, tried to create beefs with the pros of the Sounders scene and still managed to get many personalities to come on the show.
To all of you that loved us, thank you!
P.S. Oh yeah, here's some Inside Baseball from SonarFeed: The far right urinal in the Berliner's men's room has been unofficially known as the "Gspurinal" henceforth.
Note: The only person to call in a drink for us was the amazing Jason Buzzard.
Note: Lee Rayl almost started a war with Lithuania.
Note: Erin Riley almost died during the run.