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The Look on My Face Said It All
Field Notes from the Firing Line, Part One
The Look on My Face Said It All is the first installment in Field Notes from the Firing Line, a Slightly Feral Media documentary series following Alethea Mehdipour’s path into pyrotechnics, live event production, concert production, special effects, stage management, and proximate pyro through the field-note voice of Laverna the Rockin’ Raccoon.
The Long Fuse
The Long Fuse traces the early warning signs behind Alethea Mehdipour's path into pyrotechnics, from childhood fire curiosity and fireworks fascination to live event production, concert production, pyrotechnics and beyond.
This was not wise. It was, however, informative. The raccoon does not endorse childhood experiments in aerosol-based combustion. The raccoon does acknowledge that some data points are difficult to ignore.
Some children collect stickers. Some children collect rocks. This one collected evidence that fire was
interesting. The house survived. The hypothesis did not. For years, fireworks lived in the category of
beautiful dangerous things other people did. The things that make a crowd stop talking. The things that make humans look up. The things that turn a show into something the body remembers. The raccoon has always found that behavior worth documenting.
Fireworks were never just pretty. Pretty is optional. Impact is not.
The polite word is pyrotechnics. The less polite internal translation was closer
to blowing shit up... professionally.
This distinction matters. One version alarms mothers. The other requires training, signatures, licenses, supervision, paperwork, safety protocols, and entirely capable humans who know exactly what
they are doing.
The raccoon prefers the second option. Mostly.
Before pyrotechnics became a career path, it was
a signal. Before it became part of The Master Plan, it was simply one
more piece of data.
Danger made the human pay attention. Beauty made her stay. Control made her curious. The crowd reaction made it matter. The silence before the effect mattered most. The raccoon has reviewed the available data and
reached the following conclusion: This was never random. This was a long fuse.
In April 2025, at a Hairball load-in at Stormont Vail Events Center in Topeka, Kansas, the fuse finally found fire.
The Hairball Call
The fuse found fire at a Hairball load-in. April 2025. Stormont Vail Events Center. Topeka, Kansas. The human was working as a stagehand. This is important. Pyrotechnics did not arrive through fantasy. It arrived through labor. Truck doors. Road cases. Decks. Directions shouted across a room. Local hands trying to move fast enough to keep up with tour crew.
The stage decks were already built when Bryant, the touring stage manager and pyrotechnician for Hairball, stood above the local crew and directed traffic. The raccoon will refer to him from this point forward as The Pyro Dude. This is not because the raccoon lacks respect. The raccoon has reviewed the data. The title is accurate. The Pyro Dude had the calm command of a person used to being heard. Long blondish hair. Bandana. Road clothes. Rockstar competence. The kind of human who looks like he belongs on a tour and knows exactly where every road case is supposed to go. Because he did.
The raccoon regrets to report that he was also extremely hot. Rockstar hot. This is not technically relevant to the pyrotechnics licensing process. It is, however, relevant to the historical record. The human remembers asking his name because she was tired of yelling, "Hey! Friend!" and hoping he knew she meant him. This, too, is field data. Names matter backstage. So do directions. So does knowing which entirely capable human is telling you where to put the next case.
That day was not only a Hairball load-in. It was also Tobias's first stagehand call. The human's son. Seventeen years old. Young. Strong. Brand new to the habitat. The raccoon observed an important secondary development. The mother was not only working the call. She was watching her child become a capable young man in real time. Tobias unloaded trucks. He moved cases. He listened. He worked hard. He followed directions. He soaked it in. At one point, one of the tour humans called him onto the deck to help with something. The mother responded in the only reasonable way. She announced, loudly, that he was her son an that it was his first day.
Was this proud? Yes.
Was this slightly embarrassing? Also yes.
Was this feral mother behavior? The available data supports that conclusion.
The tour crew did something the raccoon has filed under remarkable human behavior. They taught him. They were patient. They explained things. They let a seventeen-year-old kid stand on th decks of a Hairball tour and learn by doing. This mattered a lot. Maybe Tobias did not know how much it mattered. The raccoon suspects he did not. But the mother knew. Or at least part of her did. She saw her little boy as a man, maybe for the first time. She saw him belong in a room full of road cases, tour crew, stage decks, noise, sweat, and work. She saw capable humans make room for a new capable human.
This is how live event production survives. Not through glamour. Not through applause. Through one experienced human showing one new human how to do the next thing correctly. The raccoon has documented this pattern before. Stagehands teach stagehands. Crew teaches crew. The work continues because someone makes room for the next person to learn.
That day, the tour crew taught Tobias. A little later, The Pyro Dude would teach the human. The raccoon did not know it yet.
The day was already changing shape.
The Look on My Face Said It All
The Look on My Face Said It All follows the moment at a Hairball load-in when Bryant, the touring stage manager and pyrotechnician, asked for help with proximate pyrotechnics and Alethea Mehdipour froze in place, turning one stagehand call into the first real step toward pyrotechnics, special effects, live event production, concert production, and proximate pyro.
When the trucks were unloaded, The Pyro Dude split the local crew into smaller tasks. This is normal. Touring production runs on movement. Road cases move. Hands move. Instructions move. Humans are sorted into the next required task. The raccoon has observed this behavior many times.
But then The Pyro Dude said he needed help with pyro. The available data indicates every stagehand nearby raised a hand. Except the human. This is unusual. The human is not commonly known for being silent,
still, or difficult to locate when something interesting is happening. And yet there she stood. On the ground between the docks and the stage decks. Back to the dock. Facing The Pyro Dude. Entirely frozen. Inside her head, the human was issuing clear instructions.
Alethea. You are going to miss this opportunity. Raise your hand.
The body did not comply. The raccoon has reviewed this moment repeatedly. The working theory is not fear. Fear has a different scent. This was recognition. This was the body encountering something it had quietly wanted before the brain had finished filing the paperwork. Fireworks. Stage effects. Danger. Competence. A rockstar-hot touring pyrotechnician standing in front of her offering access to professional explosives.
The system short-circuited. This is not an official safety term. It is, however, an accurate field observation. The Pyro Dude asked again. Everyone else still had a hand up. The human still did not move. Then he looked at her. Pointed. And said the words that would become part of the
official record: "The look on your face says it all."
The raccoon would like to pause here for documentation. The human has spent a significant amount of time
wondering what her face looked like in that moment. This remains an open research question. The available evidence suggests the expression may have contained some combination of awe, desire, shock, curiosity, danger recognition, career foreshadowing, and inconvenient attraction to
entirely capable rockstar men. Further study is warranted. The Pyro Dude told her to follow him. So she did.
The raccoon notes that this is often how important doors open. Not with a grand announcement. Not with a five-year plan. nNot with a polished resume. Sometimes the door opens because someone sees the
look on your face and decides you are capable of walking through it. That day, the human walked through.
The stagehand call had already been important. Her son was there. The tour crew had taught him. She had watched him step into a working room and belong there.
Now another capable human was making room for her. This pattern has been logged. Crew teaches crew. Stagehands teach stagehands. Pyrotechnicians teach the ones who are paying
attention.
The raccoon has reviewed the available data and reached the following conclusion: The human did not raise her hand.
The opportunity found her anyway.
The First Spark
The First Spark documents Alethea Mehdipour's first hands-on experience with proximate pyrotechnics during the Hairball load-in at Stormont Vail Events Center in Topeka, Kansas, including wiring pyro effects, handling match, fueling fire boxes, and discovering how stagehand work, safety, special effects, and live event production connect.
The Pyro Dude led the human to the pyro equipment. The raccoon would like to report that the first encounter with professional pyrotechnics looked dramatic. It did not. There were boxes. Sand. Wires. Clips. Small objects that appeared suspiciously harmless for items involved in making fire appear on purpose. This is one of the first lessons the raccoon has logged about pyrotechnics. The danger does not always announce itself. Sometimes it looks like a box. Sometimes it looks like a wire. Sometimes it looks like a small piece of material that requires the human to listen carefully and not become distracted by the fact that The Pyro Dude explaining explosives is rockstar hot.
The raccoon has reviewed the data. Focus was required. Focus was achieved. Mostly. The Pyro Dude explained the setup as they worked. He walked the human through the boxes. The wiring. The proximate pyro effects. The connections. The task. He gave careful instructions because the task was dangerous. But he did not speak to her as if she were stupid. This was important to the human. He spoke to her like she was capable. Like she was intelligent. Like he expected her to understand the system and complete the task correctly.
The raccoon has filed this under important human behavior. Capable humans recognize capable humans. Then they teach. At one point, the human was attaching a match and had to remove a small plastic cover. She squeezed too hard. Poof. The match sparked. It was not attached to anything. This was fortunate. It did, however, leave a gray cloud on the front of her shirt. The human, drawing from nearly thirty years of behavior science and crisis-response calm, looked at the evidence and said, in a flat clinical tone: "OH THAT WENT OFF."
The raccoon appreciates this response. No screaming. No flailing. No dramatic collapse. Just data. Event occurred. Match activated. Shirt now contains evidence. The local technician standing nearby reacted in one way. The Pyro Dude reacted in another. The local technician attempted to contribute the predictable background noise of a strange man making things sexual. The human ignored him. This was not difficult. The explosives were considerably more interesting. The Pyro Dude was a short distance away with his back turned, but he was paying attention. He immediately checked to see what had happened.
Then he did another thing the raccoon noticed. He looked at the human. He looked at the situation. He silently confirmed that she was all right being left near the older local tech. When he saw that she could handle it, he trusted her to handle it. No performance. No rescue theater. No unnecessary interruption. Just awareness. Assessment. Trust. The raccoon has reviewed this evidence and logged it accordingly.
The Pyro Dude was not merely hot. Though, regrettably, the data remains firm on that
point. He was competent. Competence is dangerous in its own way. Especially when paired with long hair, a bandana, tattoos, tour authority, and professional explosives. Further study is not recommended. The human would probably volunteer anyway. She is only human.
After the match incident, the work continued. The human poured fuel into fire boxes. This felt powerful. Not reckless. Not chaotic. Powerful. Controlled fire is different from fire. Fire with a plan is different from fire as a
childhood experiment involving Aquanet and poor supervision.
The polite word remained pyrotechnics. he internal translation remained consistent.
Blowing shit up...professionally.
The raccoon has reviewed the available data and reached the following conclusion: The spark did not scare the human away. It made the work more real.
That should have been a warning.
The Metal Barn in a Field
The Metal Barn in a Field follows Alethea Mehdipour’s drive to Inman, Kansas, for a Rainbow Fireworks pyrotechnics safety class after her first hands-on experience with proximate pyro at a Hairball load-in, marking the moment fireworks, live event production, special effects, and pyrotechnics became a realistic career path.
The human did not work load-out that night. She had another call. Another room. Another task. Another place to be. This is normal in live event production. The body goes where the call sheet says to go. The brain, however, is less obedient. By the time the human made it home and got into bed, the pyro moment had not left. The road cases were gone. The call was over. The shirt had survived the match incident. The son had survived his first stagehand call. The house had survived Aquanet. But the data remained active.
So the human did what curious humans do when their nervous system refuses to release a signal. She went to Google. The question was simple. Was this even remotely realistic? Could a person actually become a pyrotechnician? Not in theory. Not in fantasy. Not as a childhood crime-adjacent hobby involving hairspray and questionable supervision. Professionally. With training. With supervision. With licenses. With paperwork. With entirely capable humans willing to teach.
The search returned evidence. Rainbow Fireworks. Inman, Kansas. Pyrotechnics safety class. Free. Two weeks away. A six-hour drive for a three-hour course.
The raccoon has reviewed the available data and would like to note that many humans would have
closed the browser at this point. The human did not. Her response was simpler.
"I can drive that."
This was not a small thing. The human had lived small-town life. She had not spent much of her life driving alone across Kansas toward unknown rooms full of unknown humans and explosives paperwork. But stagehand work had already begun changing the map. Different venues. Different cities. Different calls. Different loading docks. Different crews. Different rooms where the only way through was to arrive, listen, work, and figure out where the next road case belonged. The range was expanding.
The raccoon has documented this pattern. A life gets bigger before the human realizes the walls have moved. So the human left before sunrise. Across Kansas. Long road. Open sky. Nerves. Curiosity. A field. A gravel road. A metal barn.
The raccoon considered this suspiciously appropriate.
Inside that metal barn were nearly seventy humans. None were new. ALL were there for recertification. Many came from generational fireworks families. Humans who had grown up around displays, inventory, family businesses, and the kind of knowledge that does not always come from a manual.
The human was the only new student. This was awkward. The raccoon has logged awkwardness as a common side effect of entering established habitats. At first, the room did not know what to do with her. Most rooms don't. Then someone asked how she got there. The human told the Hairball story. This changed the data. A surprising number of the fireworks humans there were Hairball fans.
Suddenly, the new human was interesting. Possibly even cool. The raccoon found this development amusing because the human has never been cool. The humans in the room were odd. This is not an insult. The raccoon suspects a person must be at least little odd to voluntarily organize their life around explosives, safety distances, timing, weather, paperwork, and things that go boom on purpose.
Odd recognizes odd. The room softened. The questions started. The story opened the door. The class itself was simpler than the human expected. This did not make it less serious. It made the path more visible. The process had weight. Rules. Responsibility. Training. Licensing. Supervised shoots. Safety expectations. But it was not impossible.
Before Inman, pyrotechnics was a question. After Inman, it became a path. The human understood the next steps. Three supervised shoots. A test. A background check. Fees. Time. Persistence.
The raccoon has reviewed the evidence and reached the following conclusion: The metal barn did not make the human a pyrotechnician. It did something more dangerous. It made her believe she could become one.
There was no going back after Inman. The fuse was no longer theoretical. It had a route.
The Waiting Period
The Waiting Period follows Alethea Mehdipour’s first supervised fireworks shoot in Hutchinson, Kansas, after completing pyrotechnics safety training, and documents how the path toward pyrotechnics, special effects, live event production, concert production, stage management, and proximate pyro moved from curiosity into a long-term career goal.
The raccoon has reviewed the evidence and reached he following conclusion: A visible path is dangerous to a determined human.
Especially one who has already driven across Kansas before sunrise to sit in a metal barn and learn about explosives. After the Rainbow Fireworks class, the human scheduled her first supervised shoot.
Hutchinson, Kansas.A fireworks display. A beginning. The raccoon will not overstate this moment. The human does not count that first shoot the same way she counts what came later.
It was small. It was early. It was practice. But practice is still evidence. Practice means the idea has left the imagination
and entered the body. The hands learn differently than the brain. The body learns weight. Distance. Timing. Heat. Waiting. Instructions. What to touch. What not to touch. When to ask. When to listen. When to step back. When to trust the humans who know more than you.
The first supervised shoot did not satisfy the human. It made her want it more. This, too, has been logged. Some interests fade when they become real. Pyrotechnics did not. The work satisfied something in the human’s brain. The structure. The risk. The precision. The rules. The fact that something beautiful could only happen because someone respected the system first.
This is the part the audience rarely sees. The crowd sees the fireworks display. The crew sees the process.
The audience remembers the finale. The crew remembers the setup, the weather, the site, the safety, the communication, and the
cleanup. The raccoon has become increasingly interested in the distance between those two experiences.
After Hutchinson, the path did not disappear. It moved. Life did what life does. The goal moved to the back burner. But the raccoon would like to be very clear about the evidence. It was a waiting period. It was not a going-away period. The human continued watching. Continued learning.
Continued noticing pyro and special effects in live music differently. Continued sending applications. Fireworks companies. Special effects companies. Anything with pyrotechnics attached.
Anything that might eventually lead toward proximate pyro for live music.
The polite version is persistence. The raccoon suspects the more accurate version is controlled obsession with paperwork. No one opened the door immediately. This did not surprise the human. She did not feel ignored. She knew eventually a door would open. The raccoon has reviewed this belief and finds it both unreasonable and historically consistent.
Sometimes the human simply decides something is going to happen. Then she behaves accordingly until the world gets tired and produces a doorway. This is not magic. This is pattern. The applications went out. The resumes went out. The goal stayed active.
The human kept working as a stagehand. Kept building live event production experience. Began photographing concerts. Kept learning the systems behind the spectacle. Lighting. Audio. Decks. Road cases. Crew calls. Venues. Backstage rhythms. Crowds. Chaos. Structure. The Master Plan continued assembling itself in pieces.
Then an email came. Sean McLaughlin. J & M Displays. A company the human already knew mattered because
J & M did fireworks and special effects. Not just the once-a-year sky boom. The larger world. The world closer to the long-term target. The email became a call. The call became an opportunity. The opportunity felt different. Serious. Focused. Real.
The Hutchinson shoot had been a step forward. J & M felt like a career move. The raccoon has reviewed the available data and
reached the following conclusion: The fuse had not gone out.
It had been waiting for the right ignition source.
Field Note Part 1 Complete
The raccoon has reviewed the data. The path did not begin cleanly. It began with hairspray. A wall. A mother with reasonable concerns.
A load-in. A son on his first stagehand call. A very capable touring pyrotechnician. One frozen human. One safety class in a metal barn. One first supervised shoot. One waiting period that was not a going-away period. Then Sean McLaughlin and J & M Displays appeared in the record. The goal moved. Not away from stagehand work. Through it. The summer was no longer only a stagehand summer.
It had become a pyro-technician summer.
The fuse had waited. The ignition source had arrived.
Field note Part 1 complete. The room left evidence. The raccoon collected it.
Slightly feral.
Entirely capable.
Credentials pending.
— Laverna the Rockin’ Raccoon 🦝🎆
Slightly Feral Media
Published by My Midlife Crisis Creative Inc.
Filed as:
Field Notes • Pyrotechnics • Live Event Production • Concert Production • Special Effects • Stagehand • Kansas
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