Around
the States in Eighty Days
Being an irregular and erratic account by the
Greedy Bastard himself as he sets out to traverse America on
a comedy tour.
Day
One. Somewhere over America
Monday
September 29, 2003. Air Canada Flight
As I leave home the tears in my daughter's eyes remind me
that this adventure comes with some real costs, and that the
reason I largely stayed home for the first thirteen years
of her life were by no means simply for her benefit. I try
and reassure her that Thanksgiving isn't so long away, having
a sudden flash of my mother sending me off to Boarding school.
Except it's me leaving home and going off again. Even my wife
looks sad which after twenty seven years with the Greedy Bastard
is certainly impressive. She at least is planning to see me
soon.
As the car searches for fast back routes through LA's increasingly
bad traffic I congratulate myself on NOT bringing a camera
crew. The observer alters the experiment as we all know from
our readings of Heisenberg (actually none) and the thought
of having to appear cheery to a small documentary crew first
thing in the morning actually makes me sleepy as I settle
down for the first of many (I hope) naps, unencumbered by
the effort of having to make smart one-liners to a lens.
I think of Mike setting out on his great journeys. Well mine
won't be so bold. Around North America in Eighty Days. He's
probably in Pakistan eating dog with an Oxford educated goat-herder
and part-time weapons dealer, while I am headed for an executive
class seat on Air Canada, but chaque a son gout, as the French
say when looking at English food. I still feel somewhat nervous
encroaching on the Palin territory of writing a travel diary
based on a journey and perhaps I should avoid the whole coffee
table book concept. Perhaps I can skip straight to the dining
table book and produce a book so large eight people can have
dinner on it. I want to avoid any unpleasant sense of stealing
Michael's thunder, though it is true, I reason, that all the
Pythons' have been involved in documentaries: Jonesy walked
half way to Jerusalem in crusader armour holding a spear,
Gilliam is the heroic subject of a classic documentary about
the non - making of a movie, and even Cleesy went to Madagascar
to invade the privacy of the lemurs. So this must be a Python
thing. What is this urge to probe and examine by ex-comedians?
Are they tired of dressing up as women? Surely not. In any
case I am mistaken so regularly for Mike I decide I surely
have the right to go ahead and be the first to write a dining
table book. Perhaps a bedside table would be even better with
lots of photographs of naked women. Publishers like that sort
of thing. But then there's the wife to face, and I don't really
anticipate there will be all that many nude women in the theater
at my shows. Perhaps if I do it serially on PythOnline, no
one can accuse me of doing it for the money. Everyone knows
the readers of PythOnline are tight bastards. It's a wonder
they interrupt their free downloading to even visit the site…
In
the two years of running PythOnline I never so much as managed
to sell them a Tee shirt. Talk about Greedy Bastards…
So yes, that's it, I'll write the diary and send it to Hans.
He knows how to treat a gent right.
The airport has a rare deserted feel to it and within seconds
I am searched and secured and shopping. Unfortunately Gucci
bags and Hermes scarves are not really my bag (or scarf) and
after haggling over some earplugs I settle for a flesh toned
Swatch. Is it too girly I wonder? Can you be too girly as
a comedian, my inner straight man wonders? Look at Eddie.
Now he wears tits on stage. Who are we to protest? We have
worn tits on stage for years… In fact this tour will
be almost my first time on stage tit free.
The flight to Toronto is on time and half empty or half full,
depending on your viewpoint, I am ever optimistic, constantly
expecting the worst. The stewardess offers me Spam, then gets
me to sign something for her brother. I shamelessly pimp the
Toronto show. Sell baby sell! The West slips by beneath a
huge round jet engine and I am struck by how colorful it is,
reds and blues and greens and torturous canyons of rivers
winding between towering cathedral bluffs. There is nothing
at all down there and I ponder a short fantasy about a tribe
of Indians offering this new promised land to the Israelis…
in no time the Israelis would have it blooming, if not Bloomingdales,
but would they really re-locate here? Even if lured by the
prospect of easy gaming facilities. And who would the Indian
tribe be - The Schmioux?
Soon the land beneath is covered by a strong rust and a lurid
green - it looks like a strange lichen, and then I realize
what it is - fall. We are crossing the Rockies and the leaves
have changed. This is too good a ride to miss. Inside the
passengers are watching a Jim Carey movie - outside the Rockies
even have a sprinkling of snow which outlines the winding
paths of their peaks and adds an improbable pure blinding
white snaking amongst the amber and russet of the forests.
Jim is talking to God.
The Greedy Bastard Tour is set to kick off in Rutland, Vermont.
I love the irony of this which is indeed no accident, having
been suggested as a starting point by the Greedy Bastard's
agent, who, no accident again, was formerly the head of the
Greedy Bastard's record label. Having sold precisely three
records of The Rutland Isles, he has been trying to lure the
GB out on to the road in a blatant attempt to flog off the
remaining twelve copies that lie unsold in the Artists Direct
storeroom. As I say on stage, the CD has been harder to find
than weapons of mass destruction. Of course nobody buys CD's
anymore and even when they did nobody wanted comedy CD's for
years.
The stewardess says she saw us on our first visit to Toronto
- good God thirty years ago - I remember we were all jet lagged
and fairly drunk as we staggered off the plane in Toronto
- and as we came through customs there was a tremendous scream
and shout and we all looked behind us to see which British
rock and rollers were arriving - only to be amazed by the
realization that this was for us. Our first experience of
the neo-rock and roll hype that occasionally surrounded Python.
We were placed on top of an open bus and led into Toronto
by car-horn-tooting, screaming fans. So this was North America.
Many years later the delectable and hysterical Catherine O'Hara
confessed to me that she was one of those screaming fans.
Now I'm coming into land and I have been told to stow my tray
table in the upright position. But alas there is no room for
me to get upright…. Ah the curse of the over literal.
I have had so much tea that I could tap away for eternity
blabbing on about the forthcoming three month tour and the
adventures that await but you have been spared this torture
through the dutiful exigencies of Air Canada, (the Airline
who sponsored our original tour, and who spent thirty days
just missing us with out set, since they were on strike. It
would arrive twenty four hours after we left town. It finally
caught up with us in Vancouver, by which time we'd forgotten
we had one.) (Actually, if I may start another parenthesis
immediately, (I'm not sure you're allowed to, much less insert
a parenthesis inside that parenthesis(sorry)) on my last tour
in 2000 the stage hands returned to me a large hooked pole
which we had left behind and which they had held for 25 years,
and now I'm taking it on the road again, by which time it
will surely have racked up a potential fortune on e-bay. And
talking of e-bay - I have the Python original albatross -
which I can no longer return to England since it is illegal
to ship endangered species any more and I literally have an
albatross round my neck.
I am flying in to Toronto because my promoters are also greedy
bastards and it is cheaper to have me flogging my show on
TV chat shows and pimping my ass to the newspapers than buying
expensive ads… In my experience there is nothing you
can't do for Promoters. They only reluctantly allow me to
spend a couple of hours on stage away from the relentless
interviews.
We are going on a bus tour. It may seem a little old at my
advanced age to be heading out on the road, but I have never
done this, and it seems to me to have a romantic gypsy feel
to it. I can't wait to see the buses. I like the idea of slipping
off stage into a bed that takes me to the next gig, rather
than having to show strangers my socks at the airport in order
to fly. As Kevin Nealon so brilliantly observed - how selfish
and unthinking of the shoe bomber. Why couldn't he have been
the bra bomber? Or the panty bomber? Kevin has left me farewell
messages, having just been allowed back on to Letterman -
a ten year ban for the lese majeste of having appeared on
Leno in the early days. He is a spectacularly funny man. Will
I still be funny? Was I ever? These are the sort of anxious
thoughts that fill my mind as we land in Toronto…In four
days we shall know the answer.
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