While at O’Hare this morning, a curiously typical financial transaction occurred.

[Nick throws a dollar bill in my lap]

Michael: “What’s this for?”
Nick: “You gave me a dollar for the vending machine last night.”
Michael: “Oh yeah, I forgot.”

[Michael hands the dollar bill to Tim]

Tim: “What’s this for?”
Michael: “I owe you some money for the cab driver’s tip.”
Tim: “Oh whatever.  No big deal.”

[Tim hands the dollar bill to Nick]

Nick: “Why are you giving this to me?”
Tim: “I owed you change from dinner in Kennesaw.”

[Nick puts the dollar back in his wallet]

For those of you just tuning into “Thirteen Ways” I feel compelled to reiterate that Tim is a self-proclaimed classical music tragic. Classical music is the egg in his omelette, the coal in his locomotive, etc. His love for the genre is so all consuming I have found little evidence that he has any idea that other types of music even exist.

Before settling into the podcasts, we happened upon a local classical radio station which was fading in and out of service. The announcer prepared us to listen to a Telemann overture for harpsichord at which point I made a snarky comment about my apathy towards the Baroque period in general. This fell upon deaf ears as Tim listened intently to the recording.

After a few moments passed he said something which both shocked and delighted me. I leave it to you, our esteemed readers to conjecture.

[UPDATE: Of course, the answer is bedpans and self-flagellation.  On ya!)

The poll closes on Friday September 19th at 11:59 PM.

From Lisa:
6/19/08 5:43 pm: Matthew and are taking van now. Eating dinner and then hiding in ghetto manor. If you have a problem with that let us know now.

From Matthew:
12/3/07, 8:18-9:55 pm
Matthew: Lookup the recipe for Hot Toddy
Nick: 1 tbsp honey, 3/4 glass tea, 2 shots brandy or whiskey, 1 slice lemon
Matthew: You rock

4/10/08, 9:54-10:06 am
Matthew: Ha ha. I just ate my lunch. No self control.
Nick: You can have second lunch in 2 hours.
Matthew: Mmm…

From Tim:
10/24/07, 11:05 am: Gonna be 5 mins late
12/11/07, 9:39 am: 5 minutes late…
12/12/07, 12:10 am: Bugger 5 mins late again…
6/29/08 8:06 pm: Harold and Kumar on comedy…rock on!
6/29/08 8:24 pm: I have far too much garlic bread if you want – rm 103

2/5/08 8:43-9:02 pm
Tim: Actually gonna go home n follow the election n work out…sorry mate
Nick: You could follow it online and drinkbyummy beer. Mmmm mmmm yummy beer.
Tim: This is tough but tonite im gonna be strong!

From Matt:
10/14/07 6:32-6:34 pm
Nick: Oh, by the way…Happy birthday dude. It is happy, isn’t it? No? I’m sorry. My sincere condolences on your birthday, then.
Matt: Thanks dude. I’m waiting for my flight to Richmond which is delayed. But all in all, good day.
Nick: That’s sucky. Sucky sucky sucky.

10/16/07 6:01-6:08 pm
Nick: Mike and I will destroy our instruments at 8:00 and the proceed merrily to Capitol ale house forthwith. Tim’s meeting us there, maybe Frank&Karen
Matt: Destroying instruments — nay! Vouchsafe thou must not belabor thy frustrations! Carry on with a god heart henceforth and hereafter!
Nick: Yea verily. What thou sayeth.

10/24/07 5:55-6:07 pm
Matt: Haven’t heard back from you. Assume everything was OK with the rental car?
Nick: Yup. I was quite late in picking it up.
Matt: Beezatch.
Nick: Yo bzatch. I just needed our Progressive policy number to add our rental car to it for the trip.
Matt: Ok it’s *********
Nick: Thanks dude

11/23/07, 7:25-8:10 pm
Nick: I’m picking your ass up. Look for the red hyundai swankmobile.
Matt: I will wear shades to shield my eyes from its glamour. Just touched down, still taxiing.

4/28/08 6:14 pm
Nick: I’m in front of yer place
Matt: And you smell bad, too.

4/2/08 10:38-11:09 pm
Matt: Kill s**t! Kill more s**t!
Matt: Do you want to kill s**t? I don’t know if I can take the demons without you…
Nick: I think I’m actually pretty tired, and besides, I want to give them a chance to kick your ass in nightmare mode.
Matt: I’ll just come back bigger and badder. Rest up, we’ll do it when you’ve got full health and energy.

From Michael:
10/18/07, 6:27 pm: When does the drinkin start?
11/3/07, 9:03 pm: Bitches. Where da partay?
11/29/07, 7:39 am: What bitches need from S’bux?
12/3/07: Shake it up punkin
1/26/08 9:28 am: Sugar. Come shove.
2/18/08 10:01 am: BTW, Work it.
2/19/08: Put on your loud strings. J’za’am.
3/13/08 11:09 pm: OMG youtube “f***ing ben affleck”
4/13/08: You are a whore and a skank.
6/21/08 10:46 am (Nick and Tim coming back from Creation Museum near Cincinnati): “Enjoy my handiwork, but don’t be late for your most improtant rehearsal.” -God

11/8/07 7:33-8:28 pm
Nick: Tim und ich trinken gehen aus das Kapital Ale Haus. Kommen sie mittungs?
Michael: Ja ja!!!
Nick: Gut
Nick (later): Wir sind hier. Wo sind du?
Michael: Ins autowagen
Michael; Ich mus ein Groizischsalat haben.

1/23/08 4:41-8:15 pm
Michael: You bitches going to Capital tonight. I needs me some grubbin
Nick: I could, but not sure when—we’re having dinner at Joanne’s.
Michael: Goodly. Tomorrow then. I haven’t been all week. Getting the shakes.
Nick (much later): I’m done—still up for beer?
Michael: I am already in the bed with tea and sushi. Wah!
Nick: Where’d you meet tea and sushi?
Michael: Umm. Eww!

1/29/08 10:11 pm
Michael: Atgt?*
Nick: TLBT Mon cherie?*

* Key to eighth blackbird frequently used acronyms
ATGT: All The Good Times, used in a situation where everything is F***ed up. Our version (and update) of FUBAR
TLBT: Tout Les Bon Temps, the French version of ATGT. Also acceptable is AGZ: Alles Gutes Zeit (with apologies for our French and German)

So begins a typical travel day on tour with 8bb. In contrast to the hectic, almost manic artistic, psychological and physical intensity of a concert day, a travel day consists of 12-ish hours of semi-comatose sleep-walking as we make our way from from hotel to airport, airport to hotel. I never feel like I truly wake up until we arrive, mostly intact at our destination’s closest brewpub.

We reach the airport at least two hours in advance of a 9am-ish flight. With an 8-person tour contingent plus the Phot’s cello, we are able to check eighteen items, each weighing no more than 50 pounds. This is where the repacking begins. The Phot uses his natural authority to commandeer a baggage check station, and we weigh, re-weigh, remove items, replace items, create a pile of bizarre objects to be repacked (a car’s metal spring, a bag of whole grains, gaffe tape) and corral a cluster of bags weighing exactly 50 pounds (no more, no less) into a designated “correct weight” zone.

On our most recent tour I took as carry-on, in addition to my flute bag, the vibraphone bars. These pack snugly into a small (10 cubic inches) case, but weigh as much as solid lead. Getting 60 heavy, sharp, metallic bars through security proved an entertaining exercise. This was the pattern:

“Bag check! Wow, these are heavy, what have you got in here? A musical instrument you say – I’ve never seen anything like this before… A “vibra”-what?! I don’t know about this, let me get my supervisor.”

Security folks do genuinely seem baffled in the face of most musical instruments, but luckily the guards appear to innately trust my adorable, “English lite” accent. It always has struck me as odd that Americans would accept at face value an accent that sounds for all the world like the one that subjected their ancestors to so many hardships. No matter, I was always waved through with a clueless shrug.

Before heading off to eat, 8bb members create a gargantuan pile of carry-ons at the boarding gate: cello, violin, viola, “the log” (the Mac’s axes), flutes, vibe bars, personal bags, tubes full of tar-paper (um…). Then there is the rush to find eggs. Whether scrambled, poached, fried or in an omelette, it matters not; our goal is simple: locate comfort foot, high in fat, salt and sugar.

I remember very few plane flights. This is not because I sleep particularly well, but because I spend the entire flight in a weird, zombie-like state of half-sleeping, half-waking inattentiveness. I am unable to read, to engage in conversation, to listen to podcasts, to do anything but sit, slumped awkwardly in my tiny seat, watching the pretty white fluffy things outside the window.

At our destination airport we play the “which bag has been lost by the airline this time” game, before arguing about who will retrieve the rental cars, whether we should all go to the rental car station (which, despite always being described as “in terminal” can be as far as 10 miles away), and whether the bags should be kept in one member’s hotel room or checked at the front desk. It can take us up to two hours to leave the airport.

After getting lost on unfamiliar highways (“Did that say 151N/295S? We are supposed to take 295N/195W, but I don’t see any sign!”; “Google Maps says take Exit 5!”; “But the exits aren’t bloody numbered!”) we locate the nearest Starbucks, do a quick search on Beer Advocate and head off to the nearest brewpub.

Below, curbside before a flight out of John Wayne Airport (Orange County) with all of our touring luggage:

Due to technical difficulties, and after much delicate negotiation, the venue for our performance of The Only Moving Thing was changed to Mendelssohn Theater, a playhouse of moderate (700 seat) capacity. Due to the small size of the new venue, we agreed to play two shows back-to-back; one at 7pm and one at 9.30pm. Crazy, right? It was definitely one of 8bb’s many it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time decisions.

Our day of hell would be the model for successive TOMT performance days: 9am load-in, everyone present; 10am tech setup, with Stage Manager Barbara Whitney, the Mac and the venue’s tech guys; 1pm general setup; 2pm sound check and Reich rehearsal; 4pm lighting setup then cue-to-cue rehearsal; general last minute freakout as concert time rushed towards us.

We made it off the stage 45 minutes before our first show. Apart from an intermission during each performance (which essentially gave us time to prepare the stage for the complex second half), we had only one 45-minute-long break during the next four long hours. This was 8bb’s Tristan (except with less sex and death) or Meistersinger (except with less insufferably pompous nationalistic bombast), and it brought to mind and old Birgit Nilsson comment, that the secret to singing Isolde was “comfortable shoes.”

Below, a final shot of 8bb with our tolerant chauffeur Mary Roeder:

Below, the University of Michigan’s incredibly sophisticated theft-aversion tactic: cause thieves such guilt that they return the music stand to its rightful place:

Replacing sand in the TOMT show were different sorts of grain: barley, quinua, millet. These make a whole lot less mess, and encouraged a lot of 8bb comments:

“New music that truly is wholesome!”

“Keepin’ you regular in 07-08!”

Below, UMich bribery at work. The university’s development office traded free popcorn for student signatures:

Below, an infamous intersection on State street. As on most college campuses, students drift across the road, totally oblivious to the law, safety, a sense of propriety…

“We should just run them down.”

“Great idea.”

“Nobody’d miss them. You just have to wash the blood out of the fender, then ‘bob’s your uncle’!”

Below, just another night out during an 8bb tour. The Mac and I each enjoy Michigan brewpub Grizzly Peak’s 9-beer(!) sampler. The verdict? “Meh… Pale imitation of good beer.”

Below, the Kap was feeling artistic during our dress rehearsal…

Below, evidence of how exhausted we all were during our double-bill in Michigan. Notice three bizarre spelling’s of “tomato” while writing our orders from Potbelly Sandwiches: tomatoe (the Duv), to-mah-to (the Aussie trying to be funny), tomatio (the Ing).

Saturday afternoon facebook updates, real and (mostly) imagined:

Timothy is hanging with 400 old people in Arlington VA, hoping for some met opera fireworks. 11:37am

…..hasn’t seen so many old people in a movie theater since Driving Miss Daisy. 12:03pm

…..feels nervous for Susan Graham, who looks uncomfortable as broadcast host and has the sexy and confident Natalie Dessay from last week to compete with. 12:31pm

…..just moved to the front row of the cinema to escape a bank of misbehaving speakers. 12.45pm

…..is crushing on Deb Voigt and her well-oiled (if steely and a bit inflexible) vocal machine. 1.15pm

…..wow, did everything just go split-screen? How very 1960s! 1.20pm

…..fell asleep during Isolde’s “I saved his life and now he disses me” monologue. Clearly 3 hours of sleep and a 4-hour commute isn’t good preparation for 5 hours of Wagner. 1.45pm

…..can’t believe that, at the height of passion, Tristan and Isolde didn’t even kiss on the lips. Come on! 2:26pm

……Michelle DeYoung is a striking stage presence, using her height (“a bit tall”) to her advantage, but everything above the stave sounds effortful. 2.35pm

…..is drinking Starbucks and resenting mall cinemas and their crap sound and lack of sound-proofing (esp when action movies are playing next door). 3:00pm

…..thinks someone gave Suzie-G a drink before the first intermission, cause she is smiling (and touching Jimmy Levine) a lot. 3:05pm

…..can read Met-virgin Robert Dean Smith’s mind: “smile; walk five steps downstage (or was that upstage); grimace; look passionately at Debbie; Christ she’s got a huge voice; can anyone out there hear me at all!?” 3:45pm

…..always finds King Mark’s “aria” just so bloody moving. God bless you, Matti Salminen. 4:15pm

…..loves the glowing beauty of the set’s tent-like background and the fantastic use of lighting, but the war-like “children’s toys” scattered around the stage during Act III seem a bit much. 4:45pm

……aaaaaaagh! broadcast director, please stop fiddling – no more split-screens! All we need during the Liebestod is a bloody great close-up! 5:20pm

…..perfectly tuned final chord! What an orchestra! 5:30pm

…..thanks the met for a fabulous 5 hours in the cinema and bloody great crick in his neck. 5:49pm

……is gonna sleep very well, once the caffeine has worn off. 10:21pm

Not to put too fine a point on it, Aretha, but we would be prepared to work with you whenever, wherever, and under whatever circumstances you desire, even if it means backing you in a Nessun Dorma arrangement while simultaneously carrying you on our shoulders over burning hot coals.

But, if it were up to us, our ideal collaboration would be Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire. I get particularly excited imagining you emoting, intoning this:

Rise, O mother of all sorrows
From the alter of my verses!
Blood pours forth from thy lean bosom
Where the sword of frenzy pierced it.

The final concert certainly felt like a culmination. Segerstrom Hall (in Orange County CA) was fantastic (somehow a 2000 seat hall felt like an intimate chamber music venue), the atmosphere was electric, Dawn was in great voice and she gave her most raw and uninhibited performance of the tour. In the urban wasteland of Costa Mesa the only place open after the show was TGI Fridays, so we all indulged with some novelty oversized meals to go with our novelty oversized drinks: 

Below, Adrien Brogna, our unimaginably polite young guitarist (who only showed frustration when an airport passport control innocently asked him if he was from Paris: “Non, non! I am not French. I am from Belgium!”), chowing down, American-style, on some meaty ribs. Adrien had eaten most of his entree with a knife and fork, until harpist Bridget Kibbey reminded him that he was in America, and that “We don’t eat ribs like that:”

Below, some rowdy, drunken folks. L to r: The Mac, the Phot, the Berg (who with the Kib are exhibiting their “WOW” setup), J-Flo, the Kib, the Brog, the Alb, the Dawn, the Kap:

Our favorite horny bloke (“hornist” just seems too formal), Eric Ruske, had a 5am flight, so didn’t come out after the concert. So we came to him: 

Below, the note – written by Dawn, signed by everyone and kissed by the Kap and the Dawn – shoved under Eric’s door when we failed to raise him from his slumber:

Eric! 

We were here!

We MISS you now

We will miss you more tomorrow!!

Dawn

The whole Ayre gang, waiting to be whisked away to the concrete paradise of Costa Mesa. From 12-lane suburban streets filled with hummers and enormous SUVs, to the 15-sqaure-block mall (filled to the brim with stores like Gucci, Ralph Lauren and Bang and Olufsen), everything about this odd little city seemed designed to make me feel decidedly, well, insignificant:

The Berg’s signature “WOW!”:

Only in California could a hotel lecture us about “saving electricity to help save the planet,” and at the same time have a fire inside an air-conditioned lobby while it is 75 degrees outside:

This photo, with the cherub-like J-Flo gazing innocently past the sign for what is clearly a very important room at Segerstrom Hall, is posted ENTIRELY without comment: 

I will continue to blog about the tour for the next few days, until I have run out of funny and touching photos to post.

Below, a Great American Patriot who possessed a “ruggedly individualistic masculinity” (oh, and John Wayne is in the photo as well). I am so used to flying into airports named after presidents that it was a surprise to see an airport named after an actor. Perhaps contemporary composers will be next: John Adams International Airport in Beijing comes to mind…

Below, nothing says “I love you” like a bunch of 2-day-old vending machine flowers (from the Seattle Airport):

“So, what fun touristy things did you do while in Seattle?”

“Um, we went to Starbucks…”

I have been meaning to write an entry about classical muzak since I visited London in December. Much to the embarrassment of my friends, I had to stand at the turnstiles of a London tube stop for some time, waiting for the end of a piped Haydn slow movement. A friend sent me this interesting article that suggests the authorities themselves are confused about why exactly they are “rolling out a compulsory classical diet” for commuters. Are they trying to “relax” patrons, or to scare away lawless youths?

Seattle’s gorgeous Benaroya Hall also pumps out the classic hits, seemingly to entice passing pedestrians through their doors. Below, Benaroya’s dressing rooms gave us access to this “background music,” and also – the first time I’ve ever seen this – a tuning “A 440″:

As a business, 8bb pays an annual fee to the federal government to receive all sorts of workplace health and safety signs. Below, Benaroya’s “Employee Polygraph Protection Act,” promising that no employee will be expected to take a polygraph test:

My room was small and dry, the bed was not particularly comfortable, the hotel bar (“Yeah, we’re open really late”) closed at 11pm, but the Mayflower Hotel in Seattle is officially my favorite hotel ever. Why? Power outlets EVERYWHERE: