I PASSED THROUGH TORONTO AIRPORT, QUALIFYING NICELY FOR ALL THE EXTRA SEARCHES AVAILABLE. STOPPED FOR THE THIRD TIME IN TEN YARDS BY AN INDIAN GENTLEMAN, I ASK HIM POLITELY IF I AM irresistible to all Asian men. He laughs and assures me that it is purely numerical, but I suspect some deep Raj rage. The only compensation is that my hand baggage is then searched by three of the most beautiful security women I have ever seen, each one a gem for Shiva. I cannot resist telling them this, and they smile in that way women have when you compliment them on what they know already. Having passed through more steps than a recovering alcoholic, I am, finally, safe to travel. It has become so complicated to fly these days that sometimes I believe only a terrorist could get through an airport without a search.
Skip is waiting for me at Logan Airport in Boston, a quietly efficient man who is relieved to be out of three-figure temperatures in Arizona. He guides me to a shuttle, which drops us in a car park where our two tour buses are waiting. This is the moment of truth. Right on cue it begins to rain. A large gentleman of Dickensian proportions emerges holding aloft a tiny umbrella. He looks like an etching by Edward Lear, which impression is reinforced when a sudden gust of wind snaps the umbrella inside out and he is left holding a collapsed metal frame attached to a useless flapping rag: a nice comic touch.
This is English, our driver. He is from the Wirral, just by Liverpool. He gives me a quick tour of the bus, including my little stateroom, pointing out the Game Boy. He seems very fond of the Game Boy. He shows me the Game Boy controls and the Game Boy box. I don’t like to disabuse him that I never touch Game Boys. Fox TV is showing English football, which is good news for me. Glynn assures me we get two hundred channels of satellite. “Everything,” he says, “but the Playboy Channel.” I’m not quite sure what I am supposed to understand from this, so I look inscrutably at Manchester City failing to score. The girls on the Playboy Channel would surely do better.
Within minutes the rest of our party are clambering aboard. There are nine of them: John Du Prez, our musical director; Peter Crabbe, actor/singer; Jennifer Julian, actress/singer; Skip Rickert, tour manager; Gilli Moon, stage manager; Scott Keeton, guitar tech; Larry Mah, sound engineer; Tom Husman, merchandising; and Ann Foley, wardrobe. Everyone looks fit and well after their flight from L.A. John particularly. Peter has had a special bunk adapted to fit his six-foot-seven frame. He is looking very handsome and well groomed. Hoping for a little action on the road no doubt.
There is a little mutinous muttering from the men when they discover both girls are assigned to my tour bus, but I am responsible for the moral welfare of my crew, and I can hardly leave two attractive blondes with these sweaty jocks. They’ll be safer on my bus, and if not, well, I can always lock my door. Skip elects to share my quarters with the girls: the lovely Jennifer and the compact dynamo Gilli Moon, a hardworking sheila from Down-unda.2 Ann Foley, my foxy red-haired costume designer, is along just for the opening in Rutland, and announces she is thrilled that Eddie Izzard is giving her a credit on his tour. I always give her a credit, as she is fantastic, though she has a homing device that heads straight for Barneys. She said it was fun shopping with Eddie, though he still shops too much like a man. He needs to learn to shop like a girl.
“How’s that?” I ask.
“Don’t look at the prices.”
Day three,” I say, “and we are still in the car park.”
The girls laugh politely, but the gag turns out to be surprisingly prescient when, thirty minutes later, English, our driver, announces sheepishly that we can’t find our way out of the airport and are returning to the car park to start over. Oops. Perhaps it is a new Homeland Security thing, so terrorists can’t find their way out of Logan. Even the police can’t help and shrug politely. Eventually, a sympathetic limo driver shows us a way through the maze of reconstruction and we are on the road at last. Ah, the open road! I feel like Mr. Toad, filled with enthusiasm. The adventure, the romance, peep, peep! We are setting off to cross America; fifteen thousand miles ahead of us, from Boston to L.A.; unforgettable sights, unforgettable views…wait up, we’ll be traveling largely by night. Never mind; we shall see unforgettable views by night. We shall visit interesting places—oh, all right we’ll only be backstage at another theater, but goddammit we are traveling. I decide to try out the bed.
At 2:00 A.M. I am still wide awake. As we rattle through Woodstock, I raise the swaying blind to find myself looking into brightly lit Queen Anne shop windows. We roar past white painted houses, broad wide greens, a perfect, sleepy church. I can’t sleep as we bounce along the country roads. It’s like being on a boat on a slightly rough sea. Despite ear plugs, I can hear the grinding of the gears shifting below me and the gruff growl of the engine as we race up hills. Will this thing really make it the fifteen thousand miles to L.A.?
We pull into the car park of the Red Roof Inn, Rutland, at three in the morning.
“Oh no,” says Peter. “In my contract I demanded a blue-roof inn.”
I am the nicest of the six old Monty Python boys…. Well, Mike is probably the nicest, but I ’m certainly the second nicest. Actually, Terry Jones is pretty nice come to think of it, but I am definitely the third nicest. You know, Terry Gilliam can be very nice, especially at parties. Perhaps too nice at parties. So I ’m the…Graham Chapman was a very nice man and even John Cleese is a lot nicer than he used to be. So I guess I am the sixth nicest of the old Python group. What ’ s so fucking great about being nice, anyway?
I stagger up at dawn to find a message waiting from another of the greedy bastard agent’s beautiful women. This one is a sultry beauty called Tiarra, another gift from Shiva, who looks about nineteen and has been appointed for a paltry sum by Marc the hairdresser as my own special PR person. She informs me, via fax, that I have just the eight interviews in a row this morning. Manfully I stick my face into a muffin (muffin diving?), pop my tea bag into the coffeemaker (that is not a double entendre), swallow some hot Lapsang souchong (a smoky blend that is like tea and a cigarette), and hit the phone lines. An annoying sequence of unanswered calls from radio stations leaves me a little testy with the sultry Tiarra, but soon the jocks begin answering and I pick up on their coffee-driven energy. Everyone wonders why I am doing this tour. After about seven of these calls even I wonder why I am doing this tour. Maybe I should give up the whole show thing and just do interviews for a living?
Welcome to the Senior Comedy Tour. I was going to call this evening The Angina Monologues—but greed prevailed.
I have a joke in my show that this is a senior tour, but the local Denny’s is not joking. They have a senior menu, serving “senior food.” (I thought Senior Food was a Spanish chef.)3 There is a choice between the senior French toast, the senior Belgian waffles, and some senior omelets, which are probably made with old eggs. I settle for some senior poached eggs and a plate of middle-aged hash browns. The waitress, who is seventy, flirts with me. I resist her advances, since I believe in safe sex and will do it only with my lawyer present. After settling the senior bill I am ready to face “the get in.” This is a technical theatrical term, that, roughly translated, means you get in to the theater. I have asked the cast to be DLP (another very useful theater term that means “dead letter perfect).” One or two other very useful theater terms you may need: “stage left” means the right side of the stage; “stage right” means the left; the “wings” are the side bits where the union stagehands sleep; and the “flies” are the things on their pants they leave open. The “prompt side” of the stage is opposite the “OP side,” and “OP” means the side opposite the prompt side, which is where it is found, either on the right or left of the stage. In some houses the prompter, who is invariably late, sits not on the prompt side but on the opposite prompt or OP side. “Front of house” means the back of the auditorium. The “greenroom” is a room that is never green but is where the actors hang out when the bathrooms are full, and the “flaps” are uhm…Look, I don’t want to overburden you with too many theatrical slang terms at this point. Just stick with me, and I’ll guide you through it all.