Athens: The Show

Walking onto the bus for one last check before heading out to Athens, I was relieved to find that the Yuengling Light jokes had died down. Dave and Jeff were briefing the crew on the day’s game plan. I grabbed a few Red Bulls from the fridge for the road. Wheels Up wasn’t for thirty minutes but I mentioned to Jeff I was going to leave right away to get a head start. The UPS shipment was in a neighboring town, and the extra time would allow me to be at the theater, swag in tow, upon arrival. Jeff told me to hold on for a second while he found Jace in the back. A co-pilot was to ride with me on all the longer drives.

I took a seat across from Tucker. He was talking with Charlie and Greg about some possible filming ideas for the promo videos they were creating at each stop. When he was done, he called at Murph-pup to get under his table (“git in yer dogger house”) so that she was out of the way as people walked back and forth. His eyes caught a glimpse of my flip-flops.

“Dude,” he said, “you need to wear some proper shoes. Flip-flops are fine for relaxing on the beach but you don’t want to be wearing them when you’re running around and lifting stuff. You might be fine 30 out of the 31 stops, but it’s that one time where something goes wrong and you break a toe or whatever. Plus you’ll be able to move faster.”

“Cool, makes total sense,” I nodded. Problem was I only brought my flip flops and a pair of dress shoes on the trip. My suitcase was half the size of the next biggest one on tour. Others were six times as big as mine. Jace brought a bigger suitcase just for his hair products and makeup. I went with a minimalist packing strategy. I brought two weeks worth of underwear figuring those were the one thing I would need to change daily; six pairs of shorts that I could wear two or three times without washing if necessary; a few t-shirts because I was using the Corman method of “borrowing” one new promo shirt every other day; a few pairs of black socks in case I needed to wear the dress shoes; a jacket and a pair of jeans.

I started the van and ran up to the hotel room to switch shoes. It was so damn hot that I didn’t want to wear jeans, so I changed into the shorts that looked the least retarded with my brown dress shoes. Least retarded is a relative indicator because I looked like a clown’s interpretation of business casual. To cap off the look, I rolled my black socks down so they weren’t visible.

When I got down to the van I asked Jace if it looked bad. “That looks sooo gay,” was his reply and when Jace says something looks gay you know it’s really, really gay.

“Whatever, man. You don’t know shit about fashion,” I jumped behind the wheel. We took off for Athens. What Jace lacks in intelligence, he makes up for in youthful energy. Sure his biceps have the circumference of my thumb but his lean body mass makes for rat-like dexterity. At the UPS center, I tossed the boxes into the van while Jace slithered among the seats using his beady eyes to locate space and his gangly claws to arrange the boxes into place. We had the swag in the van and the van at the theater as the tour bus pulled up.

The crew had left early in case there was a problem during the ninety minute drive. Fortunately, the ride was flawless and with early access to the theater we had ample time to set up. Jeff had me drive the van right up into the complex. After navigating a few pillars with Charlie’s help in the mirrors, I had the van tucked neatly in a corner leaving plenty of room for pedestrians to walk through.

Bill, Charlie and Greg were having a ton of success with the preshow interviews. First they took the cameras into a TJ Max store, and when Bill was asked to leave he countered that he was allowed to film because TJ Max is Tucker Max’s dad. Later on, the video trio found a crazy character in “Shandrika from the Aaaathens.” I would estimate the combined time Charlie spent laughing hysterically at that specific interaction in the bus’ video editing bay over the course of the tour at 3 hours and 45 minutes.

Before the show started, I ran to a bunch of nearby stores searching for a cheap plastic cooler. Tucker and Nils wanted to have cold booze inside the theater for before and after the show. Every time I crossed paths with somebody, I wondered if they were secretly judging my shoes. I eventually found a cooler for 50% off at a CVS. After filling up the cooler and placing it on stage, the bus’ beer supply was dwindling, and less beer made the remaining Yuengling Light more apparent.

Dinner was easy. Jace went and bought a selection from Chick-Fil-A. “This is good. I’ve never had Chick-Fil-A before,” I said to Jaimee between bites.

“Wait, say that again.”

“I’ve never had Chick-Fil-A.”

“Seriously? It’s pronounced Chick-Fil-EH” She laughed, saying the “Fil-A” like Filet instead of Fil-ah as I’d been saying.

“Well, shit how am I supposed to know that? Why don’t they spell it F-I-L-E-T then? And why the fuck is a southern restaurant using French pronunciation? They’ve got cajuns in Georgia too?”

“They’re not cajuns; they’re Christians. That’s why they’re closed on Sunday.” Jaimee said. I stopped trying to understand America.

“Hey, you want a Yuengling Light to wash that down that Chick-Fil-ah?” Jeff called from the cooler.

“Sure,” I walked over to get it while Tucker ranted furiously about the beer much to Jeff’s amusement.

After eating, I posted up in the theater to make sure nobody was filming the movie. Eventually Jaimee came to switch out. Back at the bus, the booze situation was growing dire. I felt legitimately bad about the Yuengling Light fuck up. There were still twenty minutes until the movie finished and the post show started. I’d seen a beer store across the street. I figured it would be a nice gesture to go buy a couple of cases. Besides, they were giving us per diem and since I never had time for lunch, and our booze and dinner were covered, I wasn’t spending it. I hopped off the bus, and ran across a busy street to an adjacent shopping complex.

Inside the beer store, the older Chinese cashier made small talk while looking at my Canadian drivers’ license. Apparently, he’d visited Toronto once. This was a very common occurrence when discussing my Canadian heritage with Americans: they all act as though Canada is one giant homogeneous city, where everybody knows everybody and we all navigate to our igloos via an elaborate dog-sled infrastructure.

The conversation goes “So where in Canada are you from?”

“Calgary.”

“Ahhh,” they’ll say, pretending to know where that is, “That’s cool. I went to Montreal once.”

While I appreciate the attempt at familiarity, such a statement would be equivalent to me uttering “Oh you’re from Dallas? Cool, I’ve been to Boston.”

Anyway, as I ran out of the beer store with a case in each hand, my cell phone was ringing. I dropped a case to answer it. It was Jeff, “Griffin, where you at?”

“Across the street, picking up some booze.”

“Across the…  what? Get to the theater. The movie is done, and we’re heading in.” He hung up.

I lifted the cases. The bottles clinked with each step. I sprinted through traffic as fast as my dress shoes would take me.  The phone rang again. I dropped the cases.

“Griffin, where are you?” Corman.

“I’m running toward the theater right now”

“Forget that. You’re on bus duty.” I could hear someone in the background shouting “where the fuck is he?” I told Corman I was less than a minute away. He said Dave would wait for me at the bus.

Because we had a ton of expensive equipment, personal belongings and copies of the movie on the bus, somebody had to be on the bus at all times. Dave was looking out the window when I reached the bus. He opened the door and told me I would be watching the bus.

“Yeah, I know,” I walked passed him with the booze, “am I in shit?”

“No, I don’t think so,” he said unconvincingly as he hurried passed me to meet the others inside.

I stocked the beer into the cooler, and cracked a Yuengling Light. My attempt at correcting a mild fuck-up led to a bigger fuck-up that could have potentially impacted the show. Sitting in solitude, I was disappointed with myself. Half an hour is a long time when you’re alone with your thoughts, envisioning the crap you’re going to be in. The restlessness and boredom was punishment enough. When you’re pushing yourself to the limit, the last thing your body needs is idle time. My intentions were right but my execution and foresight were terrible. By the time people came back to the bus, I’d drank half a dozen light beers. Jeff came on and asked where I was earlier. I explained.

He shook his head and calmly said, “While I appreciate the thought, we need you at the bus when the movie is done. And next time tell somebody where the hell you’re going.”

“Yeah, my mistake. I don’t know how I fucked that up.”

Tucker mocked my answer in his (poor) Canadian accent “Gee how did I fuck this up, eh? All I did was leave the bus five minutes before the movie ends to go buy some more Yuengling Light.”

Outside it had started to spit rain. It wasn’t too much of a hassle, however, because the van was parked under a roof and we were able to use it to taxi all the equipment to the bus bays. After twenty minutes, we were ready to roll out. Some girls were riding on the bus back to Atlanta with Tucker. Corman, Charlie, Jaimee and Jace decided to ride with me in the van since the bus was crowded and we’d arrive earlier. We were making excellent time on the way back, when the sky decided to open up and dumped half the fucking ocean on us. I have never seen rain like that in my life. It went from droplets to all out typhoon in half a second flat. The rain was so intense it was as if the van hit an invisible wall . All the cars braked to ten miles an hour to avoid hydroplaning into oblivion. The wipers were useless against the current, like shoveling your driveway with a spoon.

“Goddamn it, this is fucking insane,” I said, my chin practically resting on the steering wheel.

Corman looked over, “and we were making such good time. Just take it easy.” He paused for a second. “Hey, what time did that hotel bar close yesterday?”

“Last call was midnight.”

Corman studied the clock; it was 11:15pm. “Don’t kill us or anything, but if you get us there before midnight I’m buying you a shot of whiskey and a beer.”

It’d been a long fucking day. I laid on the gas. The van’s engine roared against the punishing rain.

“We’re going to die,” Jace sighed from the back.