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Dateline: Wednesday February 6, 2002 - Which Mania, O Salem?

There are only 25 people aboard my United Airlines flight to Boston, and 10 are in first class. So even though it's 7:20am (another ow o'clock deal) I can somewhat luxuriate at 35,000 feet with the fellow coach slobs, write a letter, read, and try to sleep.

At Logan I find the T bus, echoing back to my Berklee days. When a domestic violence incident erupts into flying footwear at the Airport T station, I crack to a fellow passenger, "Hey, welcome back to Boston!" Dragging my luggage across to the Commuter Rail platforms at North Station, I buy a ticket to Salem. Back in 1990, my pal Valli had a boyfriend up there. I visited them once. He eventually turned psycho years later (we all go sometime), but in LA, so I'm OK now, I think.

As the sun sets over grey curbside snow and bare trees here on the North Shore, Bobs ex-agent Pamela meets me at the train station in her happy new red beetle. This cinnamon-haired powerhouse gave up agenting (unfortunately for us) for the other side of the table - she's now on the arts presenting staff at Salem State. She cannot believe it when Alex, who grew up in Massachusetts, tells us it was called "Seldom Straight" back in the 80's! Pamela has graciously offered me a chill pad with a water view. I'm here to take her up on it. Trunking my bags, I ask, "Where are we drinkin'?" I'm back in Massachusetts, baby! We dine at Rockmore Dry Dock on the waterfront - I oink out on fish and chips and am asleep on her featherbed by 1 a.m.

Dateline: Thursday February 7, 2002 - Salem? I Hardly Know 'Em

I accompany Pamela to her new job (so I can take her car for the day) and check out the Bobs venue possibilities. After mailing a valentine to my sweet back in LA, I come to a horrific realization while searching for a healthy breakfast to make up for last night: I have become what I used to mock. I am now a dyed blond, Southern California, sunglass-wearing goofus in search of a protein-powdered smoothie! Undaunted by my failure to find one, I take consolation, as usual, at Dunkin’ Donuts.

Later on in the day, Pamela explains her fascinating astrological charts for me and Alex and us as a couple. I wonder how a combined chart of the Bobs’ personalities would look, but noone could ever analyze that!

We dine with my pals Jim and Maria Gregoire at Salem Beer Works (as in "beer works for me"), where the pumpkin ale and fries also work. Maria is audibly bummed that her shark entree arrives sans fin garnish (her favorite part, I suspect) but Jim plunges ahead with scary tales of trips to Atlanta’s Guitar Center (he used to work there in Mass.) featuring crossbows, stratocasters, gongs and bulletholes (trust me, you don’t wanna hear those). Jim’s longtime K.I.S.S. obsession turned to pure caution when he recently removed an oversized Ace Frehley head with broken off hands from their dashboard, fearing he was fated to break his own hands off (this only makes sense if you read June 2 in June is Bobbing Out all Over).

Back at Pamela’s place we fall asleep after I introduce her to The Daily Show and I listen to Jim’s band’s new CD - The Soundkings Irony, Luck and Clean Living. It rocks!

Dateline: Friday February 8, 2002 - Cambridge Commoners

Back into Boston with Pamela to hook up with the guys, which happens at the Cambridge Marriott Registration Desk - timing is everything! When I was last here, Kendall Square wasn’t nearly so built up. I land a 15th floor corner room with an amazing view of Back Bay. Thinking back on the years I spent viewing a brownish yard and clotheslines in Somerville, I relish this new view of Boston... but I must confess a secret yearning to go back to Berklee again for a semester of complete learning immersion. Walking through floors of practice rooms, new sounds coming from all directions, the place was like a greenhouse.

Pamela and I head for Legal Seafoods next door (fish chowder, yeah!) I think I was last here in 1990 with my pal Mark, who teaches at Second City in Chicago. He moved there when I moved to LA later that year, but in a parallel universe, I moved there too, co-founding The Free Associates (a long-form improv comedy troupe that constantly got critical raves and hosted many new works festivals) with him. Wonder who I am now in that universe... probably a long, dark haired, single, lonely musical theater writer with a razor wit and an attitude problem. Eh. I pick this universe - it has fish chowder right now. Meanwhile back in this travelogue, Pamela and I link our illustrious pre-Bobs pasts: she dated actor/director John Neville-Andrews of the Folger Shakespeare Theater in 1988, the same year he guest-directed A COMEDY OF ERRORS at the University of Southern Maine in which I played Adriana! Interning at Portland Stage Company at the time, I saw a notice announcing the famed guest director; it said non-students could audition, so...Six degrees indeed!

At WBUR-FM, Richard Bob says hello to one of the station employees, who, apparently stunned by his voice, can only respond with, "Is that natural?" My super pal Chris Bannon set us up for an interview on their program Here and Now, ironically to be broadcast later in the year (March 28, 2002). You can listen to it here, (and now).

The MIT show is in Kresge Auditorium, where I could swear I did a show with Boston ComedySportz, a national improv comedy troupe, in the late 80’s. I’m having flashbacks of referees and terrible jokes. No wait, that’s not a flashback, that’s deja vue of this concert! We rock the small but mighty crowd (next time, please advertise, MIT folks!) and have a blast, making geek jokes (about ourselves), referencing the MIT Media Lab (I dated someone from there once....) and selling out of DVDs immediately.

Back at the hotel I call Alex, happy dogsitting for two huskies. Their owners, friends of ours, are in Australia with Bugs Bunny on Broadway (lucky lucky!). Wolfgang has been giving me the cute eyes lately (no, no, no, you are a dog and I like cats! Didn’t you hear COASTER?!)!

Dateline: Saturday February 9, 2002 - Not Inn Manhattan

The perfect Bobs hotel - Starbucks in the lobby! And the perfect spot to assign blame for my new cinnamon spice mocha addiction: Richard, Joe and Matthew. Surely I would never consume $3.00 beverages so often unless I was forced to enter these huts of desperation on a regular basis.

During the drive to NYC, I call Richard from my cellphone in the backseat to ask him to move his seat up. Matthew and Joe crack up when Richard looks at the display and says, "Oh, ‘Call from loser!’" Matthew says he can’t tell Richard and I apart from the MIT geeks. We’ll have to work on that. Joe tries to read (the influence of his new girlfriend!) on the 3.5 hour drive to NYC...we listen to Car Talk and Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.

The Manhattan Inn (30th and 8th) is a dim sum indeed, and after fighting with the desk clerk about changing to a closet facing 30th instead of a closet facing 8th for the same price and lugging everything up four flights of stairs I’m pooped.

But lo, the "Rockin the 70’s" decor at the Bottom Line cheers me, as does a gourmet dessert spread from Brian of Throat Culture! After dinner with our new agents at Prima (where Joe’s soup comes with shrimp HEADS - ew) we do a killer show despite the short notice of this gig, where Vocal Percussionist royalty Andrew Chaiken comes aboard for "Late Model Love." Matthew redeems himself on "Nosering" - he nails the second verse lyrics after having sung "How can I be calm, my bench is a girdle" or something like that the last few times... And as usual, NYC is a reunion: my Syracuse pals Elana and Jimmy and someone I worked with in LA in the early 90’s are in the audience.

Back in the closet on 30th and 8th, I turn the TV on a blank station to get the full blast of white noise, face it towards the wall, open the bathroom door to hear the fan, and settle in for a still sleepless night since it’s boiling with the window closed and loud with it open. Time to try another cheap NYC hotel.

Dateline: Sunday February 10, 2002 - Yeah Man, the Henry Van!

I AM MISSING THE ENTIRE OLYMPICS! (And even now, typing this in April, I haven’t watched the tape Alex made of the opening ceremony!). How dare they schedule the Olympics during a big Bobs tour. I make a Dunkin’ run to Penn Station, passing parents and kids a-scurrying to see Elmo at the Garden. Then I push my luggage down all those flights of stairs (yelling, "Clear!" as it sails into the lobby).

We head north to Pawling’s Henry Van Motel. "Yeah, man, the Henry Van," I say to a laughing Matthew over breakfast in downtown Brewster at Bob’s Diner (natch). The waitress cracks herself up singing, "Hungry man, he’s a hungry man" as Matthew orders breakfast, which in turn cracks us up. This small town awakens all my romantic notions of the area, like in the movie, "Nobody’s Fool" - makes me wanna buy an old fix-er-up and make hot chocolate while Alex shovels the driveway (I AM SO WEATHER DEPRIVED!). I make up missed sleep all afternoon and take an actual sized shower (the Manhattan Inn shower was for Fisher Price Bobs only).

Phil Ciganier, cooler than cool owner of the Towne Crier, has become Telly Savalas. The audience at the Bobs’ favorite Upper Hudson hangout includes pals of mine who drove up from New Jersey and is quiet at first, then rises to raucousness (sometimes they need a little coaxing). "Bulky Rhythm" in the set - in a slightly higher key I can Merman out as Matthew and Joe goof off polka-style behind me; Matthew can STILL hit the high note at the end! Joe gets flowers from some admirers, but what he really needs is a new leisure suit made from the gold lame (and I do mean lame) curtains hanging onstage. His current lime green suit is kinda droopy in the lapels...I take home a yummy dessert (you must go there to check this out) in a much expected downpour - it always rains, snows and/or ices when we play here!

Dateline: Monday February 11, 2002 - Days Off with the Criminally Insane

Joe seems anxious to get back to the city for our day off, so we drop him at the Patterson station of the Metro North line here in Putnam County on our way to Phil’s place for breakfast. As we drive away, I laugh maniacally to Richard and Matthew, "Hasn’t been a train there in years!!" (My joke wasn’t too far off base - Joe says he nearly froze there for 45 minutes waiting for the next train!) We wind north on Route 22, past the Harlem Valley Hospital (Matthew and I can’t stop adding, "for the Criminally Insane!"), which I swear is out of some Stephen King movie.

Last time I was at Phil’s place, his 7-year old son, Grayson, asked me, "Are you a girl?" This time, Grayson’s at school (hopefully learning how to tell the difference between boys and girls) and Phil cooks up an amazing omelette with a side of cool home renovation tales. Matthew’s hanging there for the day off, soaking in the forested view. Richard and I head back to NYC from the Dover Plains station, passing no signs of a frozen Joe at the Patterson platform. We pass the cellphone and tag team interview with a Santa Cruz paper for our show there in two weeks. They ask what we are currently writing about. Richard says you write what you know: he’s working on a tune about moving furniture, Joe’s doing the Roman Empire, and I’m obsessed with a guy in a sandwich suit.

New York is SO windy! A fabulous dinner follows at Zuni with my pals Sheila and Norma, discussing current projects. Sheila’s an incredible comedy writer. Back at Syracuse we both got down to final callbacks for almost every role in the drama department and were never cast, so we co-founded an improv troupe called Second Choice. I wrote music for her black comedy, THE EGG GAME, produced in NYC in 1996. Norma just finished editing a short she wrote and directed. I zonk out on their surprisingly comfy sofabed, blissfully quiet on the 40th floor. Kitty Matisse doesn't come and say hello so I cry all night (not).

To follow the Bobs down I-95 to Philadelphia and beyond, click here.

©2002 Amy Engelhardt (text/page), AlexStein (goofy captions)