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.