Seth Almost Gets Arrested

There’s no other way to show up for a performance than with three police cruisers surrounding you, lights flashing. And there’s no better way to leave a venue than with a court order to appear back in Conway, Arkansas for disorderly conduct. At least that’s how Seth likes to do it.

At every college, we pause before entering to take a photograph of Seth in front of the school’s ornate welcome sign. While we take the photograph, Seth drops his pants to reveal the pallid orb that is his rump. We then use this photograph to blow college students’ minds in a skit we commonly refer to as “Seth’s Butt.”

The strange thing is not that Seth was told he was lucky to have not been arrested. The strange thing is that this was the first time we’d been caught.

They gave Seth a really hard time. It was a regular blue state-red state culture war, played out between beefy Southern men with short haircuts, and a short man who had showed his hairy, beefy buttocks. Maybe we were caught because Seth dropped pants in front of the entrance to the University of Central Arkansas in broad daylight, but maybe it was because we had Massachusetts plates.

Meanwhile, our hosts more than made up for it by giving us one of the warmest receptions we’ve ever had, including buying us “sushi” for dinner and offering to bake us a broccoli corn bread.

In the end, a good time was had by all, including the fire ants who feasted on our ankles as we all hugged goodbye.

Back in the Saddle

I have a cough, I’m listening to country and I’m waking up in Best Westerns again. That can only mean one thing: Fall touring has begun. That, or I’m a sick trucker.

Our summer hiatus has come to an end (see previous entry), and we’re now four days into the Fall ’07 Tour and more than half way across the country. A week ago I was living in a cabin on a beautiful lake in northern Vermont, falling asleep to the silent wooshings of shooting stars and the loud cackling of loons. Now I’m falling asleep to the loud wooshings of my loony partner’s GI tracts, and cackling.

While traveling, the pace of life alternates between fast forward and a grotesque still shot where the actor’s face that you’d just been watching in beautiful fluidity is now unrecognizably frozen into a hideous contortion. There’s a phrase people in theater toss around: “hurry up and wait.” In our line of work, it’s hurry up and drive for 10 hours, while still hurrying.

Fortunately, the travel gods accept mundane suffering as a sacrifice, and reward us with bizarre and beautiful experiences one simply cannot have at home. In the past few days, this phenomenon delivered us the name of one audience member’s father. He happens to work as the profession most frequently volunteered by audiences when asked for a type of job. That’s gynecologist. (Things we also hear: Proctologist and “Shut up, you suck!”) The gynecologist’s name? Dr. Payne. His associates? Dr. Fury and Dr. Butcher. Their nurse? Muffy Beaver.

Then there was the hail storm we drove through just east of Buffalo, and a great boomerang throwing session in a Target parking lot. I’ve had a renewed interest in toys since learning how much the Yoruba orisha Eligua likes them. Eligua, the sweeper of obstacles and a notorious trickster, is as much one of my comedy idols as John Cleese. So far on this tour, the boomerang is my preferred toy. I like that something I hold in my hand one moment can soar unpredictably through the sky in the next. It’s kind of like [INSERT METAPHOR ABOUT TOURING].

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Ak.

The Dark Lord Waldemart

I’ve been living in a cabin in rural Vermont for the past two weeks, teaching a Shakespeare camp. As a result, I’ve been more in touch with the mythical Forest of Arden some 407 years ago than I have with the here and now. That’s why I was surprised when my girlfriend called to ask why I was on the front cover of the business section of the Chicago Tribune. The biggest surprise was not that I was in the paper, but that it was the business section.

Turns out our latest anti-Walmart Harry Potter video made some waves.

The video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuEAJFnMIjk

The movement:

www.waldemartwatch.com

The Chicago article:


http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-wed_waldenmartjul18,0,801652.story

Another article:

http://thephoenix.com/Article.aspx?id=43962&page=1

A Thing:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0707/5039.html

Another Thing:

http://openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=215



- ak.