LEG 7

shit.

 

The Coldest Cold I have ever felt, Leaving Quebec, and Detroit…

The coldest cold I have ever felt was on Saturday night.  My eyelashes froze together.  I shit you not.  I was ok in the negative 22 degree Fahrenheit weather that felt like 40 below with the wind chill in Chicoutimi, QC.  I had covered my head with two hats, my hands had three pairs of gloves each, my legs also had three layers and my torso had a tank top, long underwear, long sleeve shirt, a tshirt and a hoodie, with a fleece cirque jacket and the outer shell of my cirque winter jacket.  The only exposed part of my body was my eyes and I covered them every few minutes with my hands to keep them from freezing, still as the last road case was going onto my truck and even though the boys told me several times to go inside I was going to finish my job.  I was going to supervise the loading of my truck as I had done in the 26 cities before Chicoutimi.  Then my eyelashes froze shut and I was blind.   For about six seconds I stood there eyes closed unable to see asking the boys to help me because my eyes had frozen shut.  My friend came over to me and put his gloves against my eyes, the side that had the heating pads in them and my eye lashes came undone.  My toes were numb at that point, along with my nose and cheeks.  By the time my truck was shut, locked and ready to roll my eyelashes had frozen together twice more.  This time I used my own gloves heating pads to open them up.  This was just two hours of my life that were broken up into twenty minute stints outside so as not to actually injure myself.  The boys and two girls on the crew had to load out for another six hours on sunday in even harsher temps where not only eyelashes but nostrils froze together.  This is by far the most challenging load out ever, merely due to the cold let alone the language barrier that exsisted for half of the cast and crew. I have been in Quebec province since the beginning of December.  I have spent a month and a half in an area of Canada where English is the second language and instead of getting better at French I feel like all I can do is use more Quebec slang. Oil well. We got to Detroit six and a half hours after we left the hotel in Chicoutimi.  I ate dinner and drank with two friends until about two a.m.  then came back to my room and re-arranged my two double beds.  One is now a “couch” the other I moved next to the window so I can wake up to the river and the bridge in the distance.  It makes me feel like I am only a few blocks from the bridge only Manhattan is missing on the other side. I will be home on the second of February with several days in Brooklyn with my friends and the opportunity to celebrate my birthday with my friends.   I bought my ticket to England for July and Arizona for April to see my brother. Shit keeps getting better. 

 

I suck at blogging, Christmas suprise, Ground Hog Day…

I really do, I always forget and do something else instead.  Shower, sleep, work, studying french, going out.  All of these things trump writing in my blog.  I am however getting better at taking photos of stuff.  So if you know me and have the link to my flickr I have been putting stuff up and tomorrow I will add pictures from our Christmas party. For Christmas I flew to my parents house in Philadelphia and suprised my family.  My sisters and mom actually cried.  Everyone else was just happy I was there.  I did however get very sick about six hours into my 32 hour trip home.  I had a 103 degree fever and spent the night shivering in front of the fire at my parents house with about four blankets on top of me.  I was freezing and the great thing is that my mom slept in the family room with me so every time I woke up there she was to make sure I was alright or get me water which was nice.  Depending on people I have only been touring with for five months when I am that sick is not something I had any desire to do.  So going home was great I got to be sick around the only people in the world I want when I am sick.  It also made me realize that I somehow became a grown up because on Christmas day I got on a plane and flew back to Montreal alone and sick as a dog.  Immigration loved me.  I actually took a day off of work because I was to sick to come in, also because I did not want to get the whole tour sick with my plague.  That would have been much worse than me skipping a day.  It was nice though when I came in on Thursday and everyone was asking me where I had been and tried to give me a hug, I stopped everyone from doing that and told them I was sick.  But I am getting better and am going out tonight since two of my friends from Brooklyn are here and throwing a party on St. Laurent tonight.  So I will probably do more harm than good to myself by going out but whatever I have no really explored this town yet and really won’t get very many chances since we have two shows a day till sunday.  I do have off the 31st and 1st though.  I will spend part of the 1st traveling to Quebec City with everyone though.  Then on the 2nd I start another run of shows, followed by five days off.  JOY!  

 

It is hard to explain how someone becomes a part of your heart.  Even harder to describe how a dozen or so cram their way in there.  You will never be able to remember every story or moment but you have all of them, they make you.  Having none of everyday for months.  Being deprived of the happiness someone’s mere presence can cause is painful.  Noticing that someone else is beginning to be that and when you look around you realize they are one of the elite few and the only one you see from day to day in the current life you lead is scary.  Knowing that all your immediate happiness is about everything you are doing but now includes this person is shocking.   What happens when you go back to where the most pieces of your heart reside.  In different people who know you better than you know yourself.  Do you waver in the comfort of the person you rely on when everyone else is so far away. NYC on the 14th.  Just two more days to where my heart is, to where I am me, to where the joy is everywhere I turn.   

 

Madison, WI; Overheard at the Circus; Foreigners…

Madison is fucking cold.

Overheard at the Circus

“what you do?”-vitali

“frank dutch ovens me every night”-katie

“wait until i start eating healthy, i am going to melt your face off”-frank

Foreigners are interesting.

I wish I had more interesting things to say.

I am going to watch super bad and pass out now.

Tomorrow is going to last forever. We go back to being in one city for a week and not just a few days next so that will make tour much more relaxed. We have been in four cities in the past two weeks and loading in and loading out is just a pain in the ass.

 

Green Bay, 4 day vacation, no food past 8, rumors…

So Green Bay is um, I don’t know I have not left the block radius that includes the venue and the hotel.  I probably won’t either.  Whatever.

I have a four day break from December 13th to December 18th!  A bunch of people are going to go to Mexico and they asked me if I would like to go as well.  This is a big debate for me, do I go to Brooklyn and hang out with my friends or do I go to Mexico and sit on the beach?

Both will probably cost me the same amount of money but one is a resort with a beach and one is Brooklyn in December.  Either one would be lovely.  I need to decide this until tomorrow.

Dinner tonight was make your own fajitas.  For some reason I just did not want it, it did not smell good or look good.  So I just had beans and rice.  Now I am starving but there is no food in this town that is not deep fried after 8.  Which is currently driving me insane.  So I guess I will go to bed hungry and wake up and go get some breakfast or something.

Being on tour is like being at boarding school.  Everyone knows your business before even you do.  I should keep my business off of tour buses in the future.

 

Normal?, Tour Bus!, Fuck the Diet, My cousin bean…

So coming back to tour so far has been great, everyone loves my new hair cut and a bunch of people brought me presents from their homelands that I did not expect to which was sweet. (Though it made me feel like a jackass because I did not even get anything for people I am actually friends with. Oil well.) So sitting around yesterday, which was a rehearsal day, I was talking to Ivon who is a professional bicyclist. He does trick on a track bike for money. James who is a huge black man from New York, the shows ring master, with a 6 year old son who tackles him whenever he comes to visit. He also has a huge crush on my sister Anna. Eduardo who is from Brazil, has a wife and some kids. I have no idea how many, I just know he has some babies below the equator. Eduardo does an act called Bondolarous which is like stomping and swinging stuff. It does not really matter as I don’t think any of you really care. Moving on, sitting around with these guys the word normal just popped into my head. What the fuck are we all doing? How is this a fucking job? I work at the circus? Very simple things make us happy, ice cream, king size beds, hotels with decent bars, programs with new pictures. It is like they gathered these retarded loud people and put them on the road. Anyway in conclusion none of us are normal and its fucking fun.

So this upcoming transfer from Champaign, IL to somewhere in Wisconsin, will be the first time we will be on proper sleeper tour buses. To say I am not kind of stoked would be a lie. Pierre assigned buses for the 25 crew that would be riding on them. Two of my friends were on a different bus but we solved that by switching it amongst ourselves. So I am excited for the ride to Green Bay. (I just checked) We will be leaving on Sunday and going to Chicago for the day and having dinner and drinks then hopping on the bus and going the rest of the way. We are going to sleep on the bus on Sunday night then get up and load in. Which I don’t actually have to do until about 5 p.m. as my stuff is unloaded last. Anyway I am excited it should be fun and I have already been told that I would be farted on at least once which for some reason does not bother me at all.

The nutritionist came to the circus and had a little meeting with some people. She also hung up about 40 pieces of paper in the catering room with tips and guidelines for different goals. Then she gave Frank the head of catering a book that I can only describe as shit your pants funny. It outlines three different types of people Pitta, Kaffa and something else. I don’t remember the last one but during intermission we took the time to figure out what James (large black man mentioned above) is. We decided on Kaffa, which means his urine (according to this book) is white and foamy, his sex drive is constant, and his eyes are round white and kind. So basically he is my friend Johnny from home, which I say to him all the time. This book also contains a ton of vegetarian recipes, the photos of which all look like ovaries. OVARIES. Which visually is very unvegetarian.

Sidenote: Why can’t I find any Law & Order on tv? This is America right?

My cousin Bean (actual name Maureen) is a senior at Illinois University in Champaign. She is 22, and has a 30 year old boyfriend who when she told him she was bringing me to the bar he works at threw a hissy fit about not wanting to be paraded around. I have no idea where she finds these guys. Her last boyfriend was in a frat and gave her a paddle with a carving in it to her which expressed his joy at turning her into a JAP. I don’t know why he thought it was much of a change. She is an Italian princess, the only thing that makes them different is the holidays they get Uggs and Dooney & Burke purses during.

Also my favorite Irish guy on tour with a black mans name is now going to leave and go on tour with the Rolling Stones in January. I am not a fan of the crew changing so much. Who knows though maybe his replacement will be attractive.

Oh good Conan is on.

Also I lost the pair of chucks I had spent 2 weeks breaking in and just bought a new pair that is currently tearing up my feet. I am switching back to the Black Label Pumas until I figure out what the fuck to do.

It is fucking cold out.

Be Better.

 

Craigmurphey.com and Load In Day in Champaign, IL

So I went over to the venue at 1 p.m. to check things out, meet my truck at five and say hi to everyone. When I got there it was kind of great lots of hugs and double kisses. Almost everyone asked about my tour break and about saying goodbye to Craig. I put one of my Craig buttons on my jacket and everyone thought it was really cool how we remembered him. I showed my friends my “Be Better” tattoo and actually talked about him a bunch today. A few people even said they would make donations to his charity. His website is actually up just go to www.craigmurphey.com and check it out. There is a bunch of great info on there about Craig and his life and ideas for others to follow in his footsteps.

So saying hello to everyone and talking about breaks was great.

I went to check out the venue and it is the smallest place we have been so far. I have no storage for my stuff and can’t even keep it on a truck because we have to keep so much gear on them. The concourse is so narrow that I have no idea where I am going to set up the merch. I am in a bit of a pickle because the owner of Cirque is actually coming this week to check out the show, a big part of that is me. So I really have to figure something out. Once I covered my stuff I went and hung out in catering and watched Zoolander with some of the truck drivers who could not stop laughing. I hung out a bit longer then walked back to the hotel. It is freezing here and might snow hopefully while we are here. The spanish mafia was downstairs when I got to the hotel and looked like they were going to freeze to death. They were all bundled up just standing in lobby looking like lost puppy dogs.

Some union guy told me that New York sucked today and he would not shut-up about it, I brought to his attention that he lived in Champaign, IL. Then he talked some more but I blocked him out and stared at the wall. What a jerk. “New York Sucks”-jerk. “I am from New York”-me. “It Sucks its horrible…blah blah blah.”-jerk. I told him I was sorry he could not hack it.

Tonight I will be going to meet my 22 year old cousins 30 year old boyfriend. I am going to bring a dozen people to his bar and hopefully not completely offend him. I don’t know, I am trying not to judge but it is so ingrained in my soul that I can’t help it.

So I will just get warm and watch some family guy and wait for everybody to be done with load in.

Be Safe.

 

Back on the Road…

Arriving in Champaign I realized that I was alone again. Literally, I came back a day earlier than everyone else. How wonderful huh?

After how hard it was to come back and not even come back but enjoy it, being alone when I got here made it even better.

On October 18th a friend of mine passed away. Craig Murphey died when he was hit by a truck in Brooklyn, NY. I cannot even express how I felt when a few of my friends called me to let me know what had happened. I wanted them at that moment, to see them and hug them and kiss them. When I left everyone told me that they would be there when I got back. My heart broke for Craig, for his family and for my friends who loved him. I loved him, he was an example of what everyone should be. Of course he had his flaws but I have never met anyone that was so gracious, polite and open person I have ever met. I took for granted the time I had with him and that is one of the first regrets of my life. I hope to go back to tour and emulate his attitude toward life as best I can.

I had two great weeks on break, I got to spend allot of time in Brooklyn despite my families best efforts to guilt into staying at the house in Philadelphia. But I got to see my friends, so I was yelled at for not updating this blog so I will give it a shot this leg.

In about an hour I will be going out to dinner with my cousin and a few buddies I am on tour with.

I actually can’t even think about that though. I am sure in a few days when the tour is back in full swing I won’t be so homesick but right now all I want is my friends. It is easy to be away from my family, I have not lived with them for seven years. I built this family I have in New York and it is terrible to be away from them. It would be perfect if they could be on tour with me.

Wow what a whiny first post in months. Awesome.

 

Today of all days…

Yesterday I drove to Brooklyn for the day to spend time with my friends.  It made the three months I would have been away a whole lot easier.

Now I am alone in a hotel room in the middle of Pennsylvania, loosing my shit.  I am trying to not watch the television because six years ago is splashed with images that make me want to curl up and disappear.  Today will be hard, tomorrow I will work all day.  Setting up merch for a show that takes you through your life from infancy to enlightenment.  Hoping I feel better tomorrow is the only thing I am holding onto at the moment.

I wish I could write more, but I don’t have the heart.