Enter Tucker

Once I finally let go of the airport clusterfuck, landing in Portland was a breeze. I walked through the airport and spotted Nils (not hard to do) Jeff, and Bill walking out of their gate. A few minutes of dicking around with luggage and the rental agency, and I was behind the wheel of a mini-van and heading toward the hotel with the whole crew, minus Tucker who was doing his JustinTV bit before flying in. I was told I’d be the trip’s designated driver, to which I responded “designated as in assigned to do the duty, and not designated as in remaining sober I hope.” During the main leg we will have a full-sized tour bus, which I will follow in a van from show to show. That way if we need to get around town, we don’t have to drive a tourbus through the In-and-Out drivethru. For the Portland and Seattle swing, we didn’t have the tour bus, so Jeff drove a second mini-van to make life easier.

The day had a constant pace to it, but the big first screening wasn’t until the next night so we were able to take our time and do things right. My day consisted of jumping into action when people needed things, but  staying the fuck out of the way otherwise. I picked up a few shipments and drove people around for most of the day.

For lunch, we all went to a fancy steak restaurant. This felt foreign to me because I’m a broke-ass Canadian, and the utensils are plastic when I eat out. It was the first time I started to see what a crazy mix of people this tour comprises. Our shorts or jeans, and t-shirts were a sharp contrast to the other dressed up patrons. The tour manager Dave was telling insane stories about bands he’s toured with, and Nils, Jeff, and Bill were giving each other, and the rest of us, shit from the minute we sat down. Bill Dawes is legitimately hilarious to the point where almost everything he says makes the table bust out in laughs. He was ripping on the waiter the whole time, which made our table stand out even more among the other patrons – no wonder they stuck us in the backroom. In response to the waiter asking if Dawes wanted asparagus, he said “I don’t eat asparagus. It makes my pee taste funny.” And later on Dawes requested that the food he couldn’t eat be wrapped up in tin foil like a swan. The waiter kind of laughed it off, and as he was walking away with the food Bill said “Outback (steakhouse) would do it.”

After dinner, Jeff relayed to Ben, Charlie and me our duties for the night. He said “And Tucker’s flight gets in at 8:45 tonight, so Chris, you’ll be swinging by to pick him up.”

“No problem,” I replied, and after getting lost in the 900,000,000 square foot Fred Meyers store with Corman looking for an extention cord, I dropped Ben at the hotel and left with just enough time get to the airport. At 8:40, I was driving down the last stretch leading up to the Arrivals section of the Portland airport, when I got a text from Jeff saying “Tucker landed.” I call Tucker’s cell and he says he’s waiting for me, so I stepped on the gas until I see him standing on the side.

I pulled over into the right most lane. At the Portland airport, they have stop signs every thirty feet to allow for pedestrians to cross. I guess the evening is a busy time, because they had airport crossing guards manning the stop signs. Tucker was standing about 10 feet beyond the stop sign. As I slowed down, the crossing guard stepped in front of my car. The car to my left tried to run the sign and the guard jumped in front of his car yelling “HEY!” to make him stop. I look from the guard to my left, to Tucker standing at my right and he’s motioning, not-too-happily for me to drive up so he can toss his stuff in. Yet the crossing guard is still not letting anyone go. I have a moment of panicked indecision, where my foot is not sure whether to hit the brake or gas. Finally, I stomp on the gas, and speed up to Tucker. He fires the door open and throws his bags in the back before hopping into the passenger seat.

“When I tell you to move, you fucking move. Don’t worry about that asshole, you’re working for me. If he wants to get mad, I’ll deal with him.” He said, as he started looking through his phone to see what he missed during the flight.

I said I understood, and reset the GPS to the hotel before heading out. About five minutes into the twenty minute trip back I was updating him on the day so far while trying to convert all the miles per hour road signs into kilometers per hour. I ended up coasting behind a vehicle doing the speed limit in the middle lane. I was mid-sentence talking to Tucker “Ben and Charlie are back at the hotel setting up the…” when Tucker looked up at the road.

“What the fuck are you doing? Pass him. PASS HIM.” He said gesturing at the mostly empty lane to the left. “Jesus Christ, you’re not in Canada any more. You will drive me insane if you drive like a pussy the whole way home. I cannot stand that. Can Not Stand That. You can’t coast along at 50 with the Mexicans if I’m in the car. I will push you out of the way and take the wheel myself. Actually, I will choke you out, and throw you out of the moving car onto the side of the road, and leave you there.”

My nerves were shot. Tucker really is a force. I bet a lot of people think that Tucker from the books is an amplified persona, but that’s not the case at all. There is no divorce between the Tucker you read in the book, and the Tucker you meet in person. The only difference might be that he’s drunk in most of his stories, but still, booze is like turning his dial from 10 to 11.

A little later on, I was coasting behind someone, this time in the fast lane, but there was room to pass using the middle lane. Tucker looked up from his phone again.  He was irate before his eyes fully focused. “Dude, will you drive around him. Look, if you want to be all risk adverse on your own time, that’s fine, but you’re on my time now. I pass people on the shoulders regularly when I drive, and you’re dicking around like a socialist. Do you understand? You will make me lose my mind.” By the time I dropped him off at the hotel door, he was about ready to rip the van’s sliding door off in frustration.

I parked the van. Took some serious deep breaths to slow my heart rate, and downed a Bud tallboy from the convenience store across the street. As I sat outside drinking the beer, I felt like shit. I hate screwing up, and get extremely upset when I do. I mean, yeah I’m a fucking idiot most of the time, but when it comes to jobs and work, I take it very seriously. I kept thinking about the risk-adverse comment Tucker made.  How would my life be different if I lived life unafraid of risk? Not stupid risks like punching a cop, but the simple risks that society works hard to prevent people from taking. And I’m a pretty big risk taker relative to most people I know. I always look for the unbeaten path, and have no hesitation at jumping on an opportunity — a mindset that led me to sitting in that parking lot having just dropped off Tucker Max at his hotel. Yet, relative to his mentality, I’ve got a lot of work to do. Fear and lack of confidence still influence day to day decisions a great deal. I’m not saying that Tucker doesn’t experience moments of fear of dwindling confidence (okay, the latter might never happen), but that among the general population, he is beyond three standard deviations to the right in those areas.

When I felt like less of a pussy, I headed to the conference room where Corman and Charlie were testing the equipment they were responsible for setting up at the next night’s show. Wires were running all over the place. I shouted into various microphones while they tested the levels and output.

Sometime around 11:30 pm, Nils walked in to see how things were coming along. Much like Tucker, Nils is a presence, but in a different way. First off there’s the fact that at any moment he could do to a normal adult, what normal adults do to little people in dwarf-tossing. Nils is incredibly witty, as anyone who attends the Q&A will see. He will burn you without even trying. And where Tucker is loud and animated, Nils is collected and deliberate with his actions.

Corman asked Nils to step up to the mic for a trial run. We joked about cranking the bass for Nils already baritone voice so that all the audience would hear is a wall-shaking, deafening boom every time he spoke. I suggested that we set up Tucker’s mic with auto-tune, and Nils laughed at the idea, especially if Tucker wasn’t aware of it. Nils then took the mic and speculated on the typical Q&A questions people would ask. “So, Tucker, how many STDs do you have?” “Where is the after party?”

I asked Nils what people would ask him. He grabbed the mic again imitating a Beer in Hell fan, “Who the fuck are you?” “Why are you here?”

I helped Ben and Charlie pack up, then Charlie and I returned to our hotel room. I was already exhausted having not slept in at least 36 hours, but I knew the next day, our first real showing, was going to require three times as much energy.

“Charlie,” I said, as I pounded out this entry, “what do you think we’ve gotten ourselves into?”

“I have no idea, man.” He said.

Within the next 24 hours we would have the full answer to that question. And even in our wildest estimations, I don’t think we could have prepared ourselves for the Portland spectacle.