AT LEAST THREE OF THE SEVEN DWARVES ARE PRESENT TODAY: CRANKY, GRUMPY, AND HORNY. I NEED A GOOD SPANKING, A STIRRUP-PUMPED ENEMA, AND A THOROUGH WORKOUT BY A BUTT-NAKED, HEAVILY OILED SEXUAL ATHLETE. I HAVE TO settle for doing my show in Seattle.
Our hotel sits on a hill of hospitals. Swab Hill would be a good name for it. I eye one or two passing nurses in a purely professional way, but they sensibly scurry on. Gone are the days when five dollars would get you whatever you want from anyone in scrubs in a medical building. Now they are all Health Carers. What the hell are rubber gloves for, anyway?
I’m testy because Jen inveigled me into getting up early and going to a radio station where a friend of hers works, and three interviews in a row before breakfast put me in a very bad mood. I’m cranky and angry and somewhat depressed all day. I want to stay in and write my diary and be grumpy.
Everyone votes the Hotel Sorrento the finest on the tour and nobody wants to leave, but sadly we have to embark this afternoon on a five-day run of gigs, sleeping on the bus, with no nice, warm festive hotels. As an incentive I propose we stay an extra night in Vegas instead of leaving directly after Sunday’s show and we won’t even have to leave until midnight Monday. This goes down very well with the scurvy crew. It’s a clever ruse so that they’ll spend all their per diems gambling and on titty shows and then they’ll be in the palm of my hand. This trip feels more and more like Master and Commander. If only the Royal Navy had sailed about doing revue instead of bombarding people with cannon, the world would be a far better place. Think of the time we Brits spent blasting away at the French. What a waste of good chefs! We should have been teaching them silly walks.
The Moore Theatre was more like a mine than a theater. Backstage the entrance slid steeply down a long concrete goods slide to some dodgy stairs, and then you crouched—there was no standing up—and proceeded along a series of narrow passageways before stumbling up a staircase with a four-foot overhead speed bump onto the stage level. It was so low even Gilli had to bend. Another series of bewildering turns led me to a tiny dressing room. A steep narrow staircase led up to the others. To say the theater has seen better days is flattering. It is utterly dilapidated, and the floor uneven, and the house badly needs a paint job. Tall and narrow, with two high balconies, one a nosebleed balcony, it is also very deep, but amazingly, once the houselights dim, and the bright stage lights go on, it does its job. It’s only a small stage so we can see and hear one another perfectly, and the audience yelps and laughs and falls about and shouts and applauds and stands up and demands more. As with all our shows after a night off, we are looser and yet tighter and have tons of energy. Jennifer, who said the immortal words “a c**nt as big as Canada” onstage the other night, tones down her wild words for the coffee-swallowers of Seattle. I however don’t tone down mine and give the first American performance of “Fuck Christmas.” It is greeted with rapture. So Vancouver was no accident. Afterward Seattle people ask me when it will be released!
The Greedy Bastard agent is on the phone trying to sell me further tours. I reasonably point out we haven’t finished this one yet. Before planning another I have to find out the MAE factor. That’s the Margin of Agent Error, the difference between what he says I will get and what I really get my hands on. In my experience with William Morris agents this MAE factor can be at least 75 percent, and as high as 90 percent. Then we will see just how ironic the Greedy Bastard Tour title was. The Greedy Bastard promoters have already clawed back all the Canadian profits from their Canadian partners.
I’m further depressed by finding no mention of The Rutland Isles in the Grammys list. John and I spent six months on this CD recording all the sounds and songs of these fictitious islands with Larry Mah, in a tiny garage studio, a recording triumph, and surely worth some mention, but not a nod of recognition. That’s it. I’m giving up. I’m nasty to the wife on the phone, and I feel rotten all day. So it’s a surprise when Hairdresser Marc leaves me a message congratulating me on my Grammy nomination. I have been nominated for reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, my second solo Grammy nod in this category. I got one for reading my kids’ novel The Quite Remarkable Adventures of the Owl and the Pussycat, though I lost out to a dead guy, Charles Kuralt. I thought that was very unfair. I think you should at least be alive to compete. Otherwise Mozart would win every year. Now I’m up against Clinton and Gorbachev. Fat chance there.27
Here’s a little number I wrote the other day while out duck hunting with a judge….