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December 13 Diary The 'Burg Hello you nuts. It is I, the one and only Super Goog-ball. I am the master of disaster. If something will go wrong, it will go wrong with me. As you know, we had a show in Bruce's hometown. My flight was at 7:45 AM. I live in a part of Los Angeles that is not near the beach. The major airport, in LA , is called LAX. For those that are not familiar, I live in the valley. Now, for those in the know. the valley is where most of the young, beautiful people of California try to avoid at all costs. Not because there is anything wrong with the valley. They just feel like valley folk remind them too much of there fathers and mothers. It is not the place to be discovered. Of course, it is the perfect place for me, I love it here. I am not trying to get discovered. Not that anyone in their right minds is going to see me and think they have found the new Brad Pitt or Denzell.:-( But, come think of it. I can act with the best of them. "Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges!" What do you think? I think an Oscar is in my future;-) Anyway, back to the story. My flight is at 7:45 AM. On the morning of my flight I open my eyes from a deep sleep at 5 AM, but for some reason I don't move, even though I tell myself that I need to get up to make my flight. At 6:00 AM I jump up and start to panic. I scream that I am going to be late. Now anyone that knows me, knows that I cannot stand to be late for anything. I start running around trying to finish some last minute packing. I also need to shave, and get into the shower. I think I will shave first. I need to be in the car in 15 minutes. Lucky for me, I am not going to LAX. There is an airport closer to my house here in the valley that I love flying from, it is called The Bob Hope Airport or Burbank Airport. I start shaving. As many of you know. I have a lot of shaving to do. I start on my face. I am in a rush and wouldn't you know it. Ouch!! I now have a huge gash in my chin. It is bleeding like crazy. I search the medicine cabinet for band-aids. Of course, the only one I see has little animals on it. Why me? I think to myself. There is a lot of blood coming from my chin and I am not going to have to go the airport with this silly band-on my chin. I am now so pissed, that I refuse to shave my head. Plus, I need to jump into the shower and get on with it. I rush the rest of the shower, and get dreesed. Now, I have to let you know. I am really picky about what I wear. (I know what it sounds like). But hey! This is me. My wife, of course, always tells me that I have the gene (the gay gene). It's okay, I'm cool with it. I am a neat freak and I like to dress well. Stop laughing:-( After 20 minutes, I am finally on the road to the airport. It is only 15 minutes from my house, but because I got such a late start, I get there with only 45 minutes before the flight leaves. The airlines will not check a bag 45 minutes orless before the flight leaves. I am screwed:-( and I am bumming. After standing in line or about 10 minutes, I notice that the actor William H. Macy is checking in in front of me, and not looking very happy. I finally get to the counter and notice that my flight is cancelled. What? Why? It turns out that there is fog at every airport on the west coast, and my flight is now cancelled. This is the bad news. The good news is that United has re-booked me on a flight from LAX. Did I mention that I hate flying from LAX? On a good traffic day, from my house to LAX is at least 25 minutes. And there are no good traffic days. It usually takes me from 45 minutes to an hour and a half to get to this damn airport. And then when you get there it is packed and a straight pain in the ass:-( Did I mention that I hate this airport? And now my flight is rebooked from LAX:-( This is how my trip is starting out. I am bumming. At least the airline is paying for the taxi cab. (I don't have to drive, yes!). So, I carry all of my stuff to the taxi stand, get into the cab and head for LAX. Once there, everything goes smooth. I have to tell you that this is a flight that has no poopers or people sleeping on my shoulder. What was I thinking? I have a big duffel bag, two guitars and a shoulder bag. I feel like a pack mule:-0 I am freezing. When I finally get to the cab stand, no-one wants to take me to Williamsburg, which is a 45 minute drive from Richmond. There is a guy trying to convince one of the drivers to take me to my hotel. After 20 minutes, one dude finally says yes. I am now a black lolli-pop. It is always great to play with these guys. At the sound check. Sonny sounds amazing, Bruce has been shedding and is sounding better than ever. Doug is his usual perfect self. Bobby is killing, and JT is playing that funky organ that I love. We are back. I am always shocked by the way we can get together after being off for 3 months, and pick up where we left off. I think we all were looking forward to this show. RS Hornsby played with us on this show as well. At one point in the show Bruce and RS did a duet of a beautiful Grateful Dead song. They sounded great. We played at the college in Williamsburg. William and Mary basketball arena. The crowd was amazing. They were with us from the first note. We were in Bruce's back yard, and the crowd ate everything up. At one point, 4 guys came out and started juggling to one of our songs. It was great. Burce was on the accordian, and one guy kept dropping the bowling pin, and Bruce and I would look at each other and laugh. On another song, Bruce had people throw these different size blow up basketballs into the audience. Of course, a good number of these balls found their way to the stage, where at some point one of us would kick or throw it back into the crowd. But, it would enventually come back to the stage. It was great. We played for three hours. On the last song, my left thumb caught a cramp. I have never had a cramp like this. It hurt like hell and I still had to figure out how to play the last note of the very last song. Ouch!!!!!!! Thank God, we are finished. The show was great. As Sonny and I were leaving the hall, we ran into two couples: Craig and Jaime, and Charlie and Beverley. One of the ladies told us that this concert was great, fantastic. She said it was better than sex. I love this band, but I don't believe that we have ever played a show that made me feel like it was better than sex. Better than a coke maybe, but sex!!!!!!!!!!!!! NO WAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :-) We have a skating tv show to do in a couple of days here in VA. This means that I will spend those days here in the cold. I hate the cold weather. The second day off, and it is raining and cold. Did I mention that I hate the cold? The tv show will air on NBC Christmas morning. It is for Brain Boitano. I have never been a fan of skating. In fact, I hate skating. My wife tries to get me to watch it and I freak out (I know, it is hard to believe that I would freak out, or not) It's just not my bag. But watching this guy skate, I came to appreciate what he does. Brian is a bad mofo:-) I still won't watch skating. But I have much respect and love for what they do. We are closing the show and believe me when I say, this was a first for Bruce and The Noisemakers. I won't tell you what happened but, I would love to hear from whomever of you can figure out what made this show different from any we have been involved with. I left the Hornsby gig to go to Las Vegas to work with The Pointer Sisters. This is a whole different story. At least the weather will be great. On my way to Vegas, I had to change planes in Chicago. When I landed in Las Vegas, I had at least 6 messages from people wanting to know if I was okay. They were afraid that I was on the Soutwest plane that skidded off of the runway. Thank goodness I was on a different flight at another airport in Chicago. Thanks for giving a brother a call. I'm cool. I have to tell you this story before I go.. My wife and I were invited to dinner with my friend John and his family. You might remember John from the Atlantic City story. Well, now my wife wants to get involved playing practical jokes. So, she asks for my help in playing a joke of John. This is what I came up with. :-) We made sure that we arrived at the restaurant a little late. The restaurant has valet parking. I told her to slip the waiter 20 dollars to come to our table and tell John that there was an accident involving his car. About 15 minutes into the dinner, my wife excuses herself and pays off the waiter. She returns to the table, barely able to hide her laughter. I could not look at her for fear of busting up. When the waiter came to the table to give John the bad news, it was great. He let out a groan, and got up from the table fearing the worst. After he left, I let everyone else at the table in on the joke. After a couple of minutes, John returned with the waiter laughing his butt off. The whole table burst into laughter. It was great. John made a vow to get my wife back. Now, just like Atlantic City. I can sit back and enjoy the whole thing. John is now trying to get my wife, and Ron is still trying to get John. Heaven forbid that they all get together and realize that I am the puppet master and they are the puppets. And the really best part. My wife is paying me protection (what kind of protection? you may ask). ;-) The best kind. I am the king of all kings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Y'all watch your backs, The joke king might be in your town..............:-)
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