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Chapter 20
"Northwest by Northwest (or, what I did for my summer vacation)" |
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Hey kids, move your cursor over the photos for Bobs fun-sized captions!
Dateline: July 1-2, 2002 - Interstate Five, My New Best Friend
Dateline: July 3, 2002 - Mormon Bobernacle Choir?
Dateline: July 4, 2002 - Fourth Right
Dateline: July 5-8, 2002 - Underground and Overground in Seattle
Seattle, Seattle, Seattle. We take a yoga class with Fiona. I do errands
for the upcoming camping trip. We set off goofy fireworks with Duncan. Alex and I take the
Seattle Underground Tour (a MUST - it’s fascinating!). We rejoice in the 60 degree weather
and watch the sky. I rehearse the opening dance number for the OCF show with Terri and
Kristina. We go to an artwalk in South Seattle. We nap. Alex flies back to LA for
the week. I drown my sorrows in shopping for the right underwear and jewelry for my costume
next week!
Sunday night we see a vaudeville show featuring German cabaret tunes, a contortionist,
the German clown Hacki, several Karamazov guest appearances and Godfrey Daniels. It’s at the
Nordic Heritage Museum,
which makes me smile when I see that includes Iceland (Alex
and my favorite place in the world besides Alaska and Seattle). I talk to friends in LA,
do tons of e-mail, send a video of myself to a theater in northern California I’ve been asked
to audition for (in LA this week only, natch - oh, and I didn't get it...)
and discuss music I’m writing for a New York
production in September with the authors. Monday I repack and prepare to descend into the
woods...and did I mention I have never camped before?
Dateline: July 9-10, 2002 - Eugenics?
Some of us go back into Eugene for a scrumptious dinner on Wednesday night at Zenon.
The food rocks, but for me the highlight is using the bathroom - over and over again. I
feel like a civilized being even though I’ve only been in the woods for two days!
Dateline: July 11, 2002 - We CAN Talk to the Animals
Our two full run throughs take forever - and I wonder if it’s like this every year - but it’s
so fun I have complete faith in what will be. Part of the charm of these shows is their
"tongue in cheap" quality that I noted last year
(See Bob Tale Autumn Adventures) -
and the fact that ad libbing
is par for the course. I couldn’t be more happy about that. One of the reasons I stopped
doing theater years ago was I felt it getting stale - it’s also why I started doing
improv comedy. This is the best of many possible worlds, here in the woods, where a goofy
script, replete with bad jokes and room for chance mistakes and spontaneous additions, my
goofy music and lyrics, and a combination of professional and amateur folks taking themselves
seriously enough to do this but not seriously at all. And frankly, the serious dreadfulness of
some professional theater I see now makes me long for the questionable but always hysterical
"coherence" of Stage Left. I'm warped for life!
We Bobs take off late afternoon for our show at the
Portland Zoo, an open air venue
with working showers (yay!) and a great crowd. Janie Bob is there, too. We do an
animal-themed set, attempting to incite inter-species riots with "Banana Love,""Red Riding Hood,"
"Fluffy’s Master Plan" and others. As the evening breeze blows through my hair during
"The Druid Song," I feel the exhaustion creeping in and half wish we were
staying in Portland... a wish that will scream to me at the top of its lungs when Joe Bob
forgets his costumes/mike bag at the venue and we don’t find out until we’re 50 miles down
I-5 on the way back to Eugene... don’t ask... it wasn’t pretty... and he’ll show you the bite
marks. But kids, these things happen. All part of the glamourous rock star life!
Dateline: July 12, 2002 - Booking Agents Never Own Maps
Oh, and at some point the "caterer"
(Rob Williams from Austin, Texas’ Flaming Idiots)
makes a baloney sandwich with his feet
that an audience member actually eats. Turns out Rob knows
Gerard Lebeda, one of my best
friends in the world back in Austin. (Yes, Joe, I do know EVERYONE!)
The fair opens today! About the
Oregon Country Fair: Think
Burning Man, if it was run by hippies.
Attended by 100,000 of them, young and old. You walk the paths, taking in the "odd" aromas,
The first show is also the dress rehearsal - with a prompter sitting in front of us
and much making up of lines and entrances. It’s totally hysterical. We Bobs leave AGAIN
for the airport - believe it or not, we have a gig back in SEATTLE tonight! We’re whisked
from SeaTac
to the Kirkland Performance Center for an anniversary gala celebration.
Our 75 minute set is very fun considering I’m pretty sure we all have heatstroke by now. At
the after-show reception, we serenade donors privately and Trist from
m-pact sits
in on a special request for "Xmas in L.A." He doesn’t know it at all, and it’s hilarious
when he stands there trying to jump in and ends up adding vocal sleighbells in the last chorus!
We hit the
SeaTac La Quinta around midnight. Our first actual beds in several days - and of
course we’ll be up at 5:00am for a 6:30 flight back to Eugene. (The choices were this
and 1:30pm), where we have to do FOUR shows tomorrow. More glamour!!!! I set out my morning
clothes, turn up the AC, climb into bed, and speak only these words: "Sweet Zombie Jesus!"
before I am totally unconscious. With FUTURAMA
cancelled, it's unlikely anyone will get that reference... Oh well...
Dateline: July 13, 2002 - Eugenics II, An Endurance Test
Alex arrives mid-day, saddened that the role of "Techie 2" which he’d hoped to assume
on Sunday, has mercilessly been cut from the script (it died a terrible death in rehearsal
- actual techies tried to say those lines whilst actually changing the set). So his lifelong
Dateline: July 14, 2002 - And on the 7th Day They Did Two More Shows
The shows go so fast - and I still can’t believe we’ll never do them again. The Stage
Left love fest is coming to a close. Alex and I start to
pack up and load the car - we’re headed for
Reedsport, Oregon tonight.
We take in the Du Caniveaux show at the other end of
the fair (featuring other Seattle friends and the non-Stage Left Karamazovs)
and say our goodbyes as I get my last mosquito
bite! Darkness falls as we blast across Route 126 towards the coast, dark green valleys
rising ahead next to sweet rivers.
Dateline: July 15-17, 2002 - (Route) 101 Tons of Fun
©2002 Amy Engelhardt (text), Alex
Stein (goofy captions)
After wrapping up a phone interview with
Utah Public Radio for
our upcoming gig in Logan, I do a final check of my large list.
After all, I’ll be gone for almost three weeks including Bobs concerts,
vacation time and camping for a week (interrupted by more Bobs concerts).
Hotels, tents and people’s houses. Air mattresses and flannel jammies.
Lo-carb bars and hard cheeses (15 lbs. down, thank you
Dr. Atkins!). Cellphone
and laptop (until I went into the woods). Lots of water and Diet Snapple.
Two Wild Things and a moose. Alex and I head up the boring 6 hour stretch of
the 5 (L.A.speak for I-5) and stay the night
in 95 degree Redding, CA after a great steak and blue cheese salad.
Day two gets gorgeous fast - through the Shasta area (yes, Virginia,
there really is a Weed, California) and into Oregon playing
my friend Christoph Bull’s cool Beatles-esque CD and an early
Beth Nielson
Chapman album (I just learned she’s a big Bobs fan!). We stop in Eugene
for a costume fitting for next week’s show - more on that later. (It's totally worth the wait.)
After horrible Portland traffic we pull into Seattle (ah, 60 degrees!) around 8:30pm for dinner with Matthew,
Fiona and Duncan, whose polenta volcano promptly erupts in gravy lava. We’ll stay the week
downstairs in Matthew’s mom’s apartment since she’s on vacation. Score! Leo the cat and
doggies Emma and Max make sure we’re settled in nicely.
Rainier pops up in front of us past downtown, surreal and huge. It’s not odd
at all that Alex is driving me and Matthew, in my car, to SeaTac for our mid-morning
flight to Salt Lake City - it’s a rehearsal for when we eventually live here in the
gorgeous northwest (our goal). In Utah, we drive two hours into the mountains to Logan,
where I once bought a camera
at the Wal-Mart on a National Parks Ahoy trip with Alex.
(Funny, the NPR guy wasn’t amused when I told him the story either...) We’re the main
act at the Logan Anniversary concert/fireworks celebration at the
Utah State stadium.
There’s no time to go to the hotel so I shower in the open locker room - insisting
that Matthew watch the door and charge $50 a peek (before my diet it was $25).
Eventually the stadium is packed with 15,000 people. We do a mainly
cover-laden set. Talk about surreal - you never really know if you’re getting
through at an event like this - but we have a blast. The mayor tells Joe and me
that the greater Cache Valley area is known for its dairies. "Come smell our dairy
air," he cracks. Joe doesn’t have the heart to tell him that Wisconsin owns the rights
to that joke, I abandon mangled geeky attempts to somehow joke about emptying the "Cache" Valley,
and several red gowned blond coeds are announced as area royalty, parading
across the 50 yard line with escorts. Their gowns look exactly like my new one, so
I opt for another outfit, deciding not to pretend I’m their evil twin. But I continue to
covet their "Cache Valley Dairy Girl" sashes and tiaras!
The whole evening is a charming picture book of apple pie America:
the sun sets behind us in a spectacular display behind the mountains, an
orchestra and children’s choir play patriotic songs, and breathtaking, seemingly endless,
jaw-dropping fireworks explode courtesy of the folks who did similar duties for the
recent Olympics. (Now if only they’d yank that
terrible "I don't know the difference between Iran and Iraq," supposedly patriotic but
totally offensive tune I’d buy into all of it!) I’m struck by conflicting thoughts -
Alex isn’t here, how did I get here, where will I be next year, will the hotel have the
Weather Channel - and oddly filled with emotion at times. The locker room smells of sulphur
- they set off the fireworks directly behind that building - so we pack up and head for the
hotel.
Back to Salt Lake early in the clean, crisp mountain time morning, hampered only by an inept
(and decidedly unpatriotic, I guess) McDonald's staff. I snarf the egg and Canadian bacon sans mcmuffin
(where all the carbs be) while gazing wistfully at the mountains. I think of all the
Utah hiking trips Alex and I took in the early 90’s when we both had day jobs in the business
end of the business in L.A. I’d love to do another Utah swing someday. When we land in Seattle
it’s cold again - yippee!
The night sky is wide and wonderful - god, I love Northern sunsets - and the rain moves
north of us for the evening. We meet Paul and fellow Karamazov Mark, their families and
friends down on Lake Union to party on Paul’s boat while watching the fireworks! We'd been
warned the lake would be jammed with boats but it's just pleasantly crowded. The kids love it.
A wonderful time - freezing and frolicking. (I’ve never been that cold on July 4 - it rocked!)
Riding down to Eugene alone, I am reminded of many previous solo voyages...
I kinda like it. I snarf a double bacon cheeseburger (but not the bun, thank you - I’m now
a carb counting hottie!) on the way, possibly my last meat as I head towards hippieville...
where the chaos is immediate and oddly welcoming in the oppressive heat. Mosquitos attack
from the get go - since the OCF area is underwater most of the year, if it’s been a wet year
there are bugs, if not there’s dust. It’s one or the other. Luckily, OFF, Claritin
and sunscreen are in my bags!
The next two days are spent sweating, rehearsing, sweating, drinking water, sweating,
wondering if the show will come together, sweating, showering at "The Ritz," a wooden, communal
H2O-a-thon where all inhibitions are abandoned since it’s just too freaking hot, applying more
bugspray, drinking more water, sweating again, and having a wonderful time with the Stage
Left gang. It’s amazing that all these people come together once a year and put such tremendous
effort into a show that will last for 5 performances and never exist again. Beautiful costumes. A
gorgeous set. An orchestra. All in the middle of the woods. Co-directors Paul Magid and
Cici Dawn (known in folk circles as Dusty Rhodes)
corral this year's show into shape as uber-arranger
Doug Clark, be-fezzed conductor Eben Sprinsock and I work out the musical kinks.
My first camping experience is rather deluxe - thanks to very helpful, welcoming friends
(you know who you are, Kristina, Terri and Heather!) a huge, donated tent (thank you, Paula!)
and a queen size air mattress. It gets very cold at night and I’m ecstatic. I end up getting
about as much sleep as I normally do on the road. The port-o-potty is gross, but I have
cellphone service! The only thing missing is Alex...
About "The Sheriff and the Sharif" - it's a one hour long musical vaudeville with various acts
involved, the brainchild of Paul Magid (The Flying Karamazov Brothers)
with original music and lyrics by yours truly... Plot: Two movies are being filmed by producer
Cecil B. DeMoyle in the autumn of 1929 - a western and a desert love story. Both go over
budget and the stock market crashes - so DeMoyle can only make one film but insists on using
sets and costumes from both. The writer pieces together a new musical. Hilarity ensues.
I play German film star Marlena Utrecht who plays the Princess in the Arabian Nights film,
which also features Richard Bob as the Evil Vizier.
The spaghetti western features Matthew Bob as the Evil Jim Gang
Cowboy and Joe Bob as Matthew's henchman. At one point we sing a "berber shiek quartet" with
me disguised in a robe and fake mustache (I'm Richard's henchman). If this sounds too ridiculous,
you've read it correctly!
cool crafts, varied food selections (although fairly meat and soda-free), and social commentary
in the form of stilt walkers, giant puppets, body paint, piercings and "entertainment."
Imagine slacker hippies with guitars, crooning, "The Man/He wants to get you/grow your hair
long/free your mind - oops, sorry, I gotta take this cell call." Tye dye and wood carvings, beeswax
and lanterns, massage and yoga, beatniks with pagers, music, dance and vaudeville on over five
different stages, and puppetry everywhere.
If I hadn’t gotten those 4 1/2 hours of completely solid sleep at La Quinta (which I later
learn is, oddly enough, Spanish for "Sweet Zombie Jesus"), this day would not have
been possible AT ALL. I can’t believe I’m napping, squashed in the two seats of a commuter
prop plane, but I am... And the air in Eugene feels cool at 7:45 am. We get
clearance from a higher-up (God Among Men Mick Goodrick, pictured with Goddess Amongst
Women Terri Sullivan) at the Fair to drive my car straight into the Stage Left area
(a small miracle that reduces the lugging factor tremendously) and are greeted by
newly-wakened folks holding coffees. It’s unreal.
The two "Sheriff/Sharif" shows go marvelously. I keep cracking up watching Richard,
Matthew and Joe do the song I wrote for them, "Tell Us Where the Lamp Is,"
Next up, a 45-minute Bobs only set for a very enthusiastic, packed-in crowd
in between the two musicals... talk about exhausting! With the desert backdrop behind us,
I miraculously forget to joke that it’s great to be playing at The Sands...or the
Aladdin....or The Dunes...
Uber-fan Jeff Harris shows up to witness the insanity of our day.
Should Jeff somehow muster up the ability to form words to describe what he saw
(he couldn’t then), I'm sure he’ll send it out to the netfobs list!
dream of being Techie 2 remains unrealized. However, our esteemed conductor
Eben hands Alex a cowbell so he can march around the
fair with the Fighting Instruments of Karma - their arrival and grand entrance at Stage
Left begins the show! Woo Hoo! After all my shows are done, Alex and I walk the fair a
bit together, an experience...well... you have to experience. Somehow it doesn't seem as shocking
to us this year... some of Alex's observational gems from last year included, "I never knew
paint was a garment," "I never thought I'd use the words hairy and cleavage in the same description,"
and "Isn't there some kind of clothing police force?"
Later on, we Bobs croon "The Druid Song" for a wildly appreciative Midnight
Show crowd of about 5,000 OCF performers and vendors (the public is kicked out around 6pm).
It’s oddly fitting since we did actually experience everything in the song this time -
including someone unfortunately injured by a falling tree at the fair! After this, our
fifth show in less than 24 hours, we go back to camp and attempt to sleep through the
drummers and yellers and revelers romping all night. It gets super cold and eventually
(4 am?) everyone shuts up.
Kristina, known outside the forest as the stage manager for the Flying Karamazovs, relaxes
in her jammies in the communal gab area. She says Sunday morning is her favorite time at
the fair - everyone is chilled out,
having breakfast together, and you just breeze through the next two shows. Yeah, it’s
pretty nice. Altogether I’ve had a great time camping, except for the noise last night
that was beyond our control. We collect our "hat money" from yesterday's "Sheriff" shows -
people pass the hat and money is split amongst all the performers - a whole $8.50!!!
I’m rich!!!! As required by law, I perform my happy dance for Terri and Kristina. (I think they
are in charge of hat money just so they can see everyone do a happy dance.)
We have breakfast at a Reedsport diner with Richard and Gina in the a.m., run into them
again at an
Oregon Dunes hiking trail (spectacular!!) and then at the
Samoa Cookhouse
(Eureka, CA - Alex’s favorite restaurant in the country!)... stop to walk through the
Redwoods
again (peaceful and inspiring)... witness an adolescent black bear casually crossing Route 101
around Crescent City...watch the fog roll in over cliffs and grasslands... resist Alex's desire
to stop at a Cowbell Factory Outlet to prepare for next year...
note the gradual change to redder soil and desert vegetation as we head south...
and sadly roll back into Smogtown...my car is caked with dirt... my laundry pile
is its own mountain range... and my rolls of film are being developed as I write this... and
my friend Cindy just got back from a week in Seattle...and I wanna go back!