It’s been a long three days, but the All-Star festivities were expertly executed and were a success for Switch.

The week started off for the interns at 1 p.m. on Monday. We arrived ready to work our fingers to the bone and were thrilled to later be rubbing shoulders with celebrities and ball players attending the Gala. My day consisted of about 5 different trips to Schnucks, Target, and Home Depot. I found myself purchasing 10 cases of water at a time, 24 white sweat towels for the performers, and Chewy Chips Ahoy for Nelly and his crew…. and they HAD to be CHEWY.

While I was out on errands, the other interns were moving and unpacking boxes, cleaning out the RVs which were soon to be greenrooms for Nelly and Chuck Berry, and helping Jill and Christina with any last minute details.  Finally, the clock struck 10 o’clock and, dressed in our navy polos and khakis, we put on our best smiles and began greeting guests flooding in from the various entrances.

The tent was filled with people dining on toasted ravs from the Hill, wine and cheese from the Boathouse, and mini burgers from the Loop. Besides food, guests enjoyed beer, wine and hurricanes throughout the night and were ready to dance the night away by the time the performers hit the stage. Nelly and the St Lunatics were up first and rocked the tent with some classics,” Hot in Herre,”  ”Ride wit Me,” “Country Grammar,” and “Grillz.” The crowd seemed to really enjoy the performance however I was approached by many elderly guests who seemed to be unaware of who Nelly is.

Chuck Berry followed Nelly and entered the stage in a red sequined jacket and a sailor’s cap…I didn’t get the costume choice but he put on a good show and definitely pleased some of the elderly people I spoke of before. Nelly joined Berry on stage and together they sang Johnny B. Goode closing the main portion of entertainment for the night. The crowd began to thin out around 1:30 a.m. just as we began to shut down the tent for the evening.

Tuesday’s set-up began at 11 a.m. under a cloudy and ominous Saint Louis sky. The tent grounds smelled like a frat at this point due to spilled beer and leaking trash cans but seemed to air out as the day went on. The other interns and I did a lot of tidying up and making sure everything looked presentable after last night’s festivities. The preparations for today’s events did not take nearly as long because not much needed to be set up or changed from what was done the night before.  The event began at 3 p.m. where guests were once again invited inside to dine on food from the various neighborhoods inside the tent and enjoy entertainment provided today by Ginuwine and his crew.

The first portion of his performance was a three-man dance crew who performed some ,”popping and locking” i guess you would call it, pieces and did a Michael Jackson medley complete with hip thrusting and a bedazzled glove. Following the dancers was another male singer who had an amazing voice and performed both originals and covers. Finally, Ginuwine came to the stage dressed to the T in a full suit. He got the crowd involved and sang some oldies including “Pony” and “Differences” but also a new song called “Last Chance.” The day was a successful one and with only one minor security breech, MLB seemed to be pleased!

Wednesday was tear down, and at 8 a.m. when I arrived at the site, much of the tent was already dismantled and the grounds were somewhat unrecognizable. We spent the day packing up the RV, which had served as a temporary office, and wrapping up the team banners and the all stars among us banners which we brought to the MLB offices at the Renaissance. Christina and the four of us interns enjoyed lunch at Subway and recapped the week. We chatted with her about what other types of projects were coming up for Switch and also what the aftermath was for these type of large events. We returned to the site for last minute clean up and concluded our day with a picture of all of us: dirt covered, sweaty, and exhausted.

This week we are going to take a nice look into the Manchester side of things with me, aka “Joe the Intern”.  This week has been jammed packed to say the least with MLB work, seeing how the All Star game is approaching very quickly.  One of the more interesting and impressive things that I had the pleasure to see being made was the cityscape that was just finished and being sent to the site shortly.  Let’s all give a shout out to the print shop and scenic shop for a bang up job, it looks great guys!  I think that the people that get to see it will be blown away not only by the size but the creativity as well.  If you have not gotten a chance to see it is a must do to go down and sneak a peak asap!

Another cool project that the DMG (Switch Digital Media Group) people are working on is a video that will be airing on FOX sports mid west.  It is for the Pujols family foundation and you are also able to make donations to pujolsfamilyfoundation.org.  The video is an inside look into the foundation as far as how it is organized and the people in it, or in other words Albert’s All Stars.  It is a great organization and DMG is glad to be a part of it!  I have had the pleasure of seeing bits and pieces of it and it looks great. The DMG people just keeping it real!!! Wazuuup!

Next on the list which was a personal high for me this week was getting to drive the Bud Light MXT! It is a little bit of a beast to drive but I handled it with poise!  It was easily the biggest truck I have ever driven and the coolest, thanks to big Bob Poole my neighbor here at Manchester for throwing me the keys on that one.

Four words: Intern Bash for Cash – the AMAZING event that we will be putting on later this month to show all of you a good time (cough*and to maybe raise some money for us*cough). That’s what this whole week has been about. We have been planning this for a few weeks now (ummmmmm?) but really started to hit it hard this week. The spending of countless hours brainstorming event ideas, finalizing and putting together solid plans, and creating a nice deck (on the verge of being a masterpiece for our very first deck, we’d say) has been all for you**. All we have to say is: be prepared. We are not bringing anything wimpy or played-out to the table for this Bash, so be on the lookout in the next week or so for further details!

On Wednesday, Andrew and I took an old-school fieldtrip to the CityGarden. The artwork was interesting, intriguing, and perfect for the beautiful day we had. After seeing all we could and having Mark hassle us to try and steal one of the pink, free-standing flamingos from the park, we walked over to Gio’s to have lunch with Scott, Danny, Mark, and Mike. We were blessed with a very cute waitress named Sam until our table was switched over to an intense, forgetful (to say the least) “priest straight out of a bad horror flick,” to quote Mark. I believe it was Mike’s “Sam I am” comment that placed us under the care of this warm, father-like figure. Thanks.

** and by “you” we mean us as well; think of it as all-inclusive

Just as I thought we had escaped the nightmare of thumb drive monotony, Callie and I found out that we had another 100 of the little things to unwrap, load, and repackage this week.  But, after last week, 100 was a piece of cake; we tore through that box!

We also started work on the logo for our intern blog section (what you’re reading right now!).  For this special task we were to work with one of Switch’s Art Directors, Lee Essner.  This led me on my first excursion down to the designer’s area on the fourth floor.

I had been to the fourth floor once to get some supplies, but I had never strayed too far from the lit areas by the stairs.  As I found out this week, designers are creatures of the night and prefer a dim, shadowy habitat.  When I went to meet with Lee for the first time, I felt like I was entering some sort of designer lair with just the glow of computer screens to illuminate the pathway before me.

At the end of the path was Lee.  Although being just a few years older than me, he possesses the wisdom of a time weathered elder and imparts his knowledge on others through his own cheerful, soft spoken manner.  Had I not known beforehand, I would never have thought that he could be such a force on the baseball diamond as he is.

Lee shared with us his method for creative inspiration and set us out on the search for ideas for our logo.  We came up with some good ones and gave Lee what he needed to get going on the artwork.  Start preparing now because its gonna be awesome for next week’s blog entry.

One especially tasty nugget I picked up from Lee is to start collecting things or examples of work that you think are cool.  He said that he has a hard drive “full of just crap I’ve saved over the years.”  This way when you are thinking of something and you remember that one piece of whatever from 6 months ago you can go and find it, no problem.  I started my collection today with this:

O, and one more thing I learned, Communication Arts is the bomb dot com.

This week our big task was to download files for a client onto one thousand flash drives. Not only was this job very tedious but it also brought out the competitive nature in a few of us. Michael and Andrew actually raced each other to see who could finish a row full of these thumb drives fastest. The race began and Andrew came out victorious with a satisfactory “done” spoken from across the cubicle. Good times.

Andrew and I had our first hand and arm photo shoot this week with Brent Coder and one of the photographers for Switch. It was amazing to see how much work it is just for a quick arm shoot. From the lighting, to the angle of our hands, to the angle of the can, the process was long and much more difficult than I thought it would be.

The three of us are also in the midst of planning The Intern’s Bash for Cash. This event will be put on by Andrew, Michael and I, and will include everyone at Switch. I don’t want to give away any of our plans but you will soon be seeing some promotional ads for this end of the summer party. We also may be asking some of you for input, advice or help if you are willing to work with us.

That’s all for this week.  Now I’m back to work on those flash drives.