The Holiday Inn Bordeaux is named after the region in France although the reason is obviously not apparent. It is a downtrodden area of Fayetteville, North Carolina. There is a 5-story, all white replica of the Eiffel Tower very close to the drive-in Subway on the corner. We arrived here last night about 2am after our show in Charlotte. We have been hopscotching into North and South Carolina for about a week.
It isn’t really news, though. Outside of major metropolitan areas, cabs service poor people who don’t have a car. This is a captive audience. Firms tell you they are coming just to get the option to get the fare so you don’t call anyone else. When you call back 20 minutes later and you get no answer, you have to decide if you should stick it out or call someone else. In one town, I once called for a cab and the woman politely told me: “Oh, he isn’t working today.” Today, after waiting 1 hour and calling 4 different companies (only one answered), I gave up and walked to supermarket and got dinner.
I didn’t want to go to the mall anyway really. My bags are overstuffed with the clothes I brought from home. But my boss emailed me this afternoon to ask me to go to the mall and get a birthday present from the producer for a 3 year old touring with us who is having the birthday tomorrow. She is the daughter of one of our stars. As much as I would have enjoyed staying in reading all day, I was genuinely looking forward to getting to buy a toy for a kid. I have no nieces or nephews and little kids are really cute and fun (until they are 18 and blame you for everything that is wrong in their life).
I will get up early tomorrow and try to get out to the mall at about 10am. Maybe I’ll have more luck then. The emailed directive said: “girly princess stuff or dolls.” Something tells me I may be scouring the supermarket tomorrow for something other than Princess Jasmine paper plates.
One of the performers said to the Charlestown audience: “It is great to be here in North Carolina!” Unfortunately, Charlestown had not moved and was still in South Carolina. She had done the near equivalent of sleeping with her husband’s brother (at least here in the south). She did her best to gamely joke it off. The rest of the company “felt her pain” as Clinton would say. None of us could really tell you where we were by that day.
In the last 8 days, we were in North Charleston, SC, Winston-Salem, NC, Clemson, SC, Ashville, NC, Salem VA, Charlotte, NC, and Fayetteville, NC. One company member told me backstage that the make up artist had fainted during a previous leg of the tour and an EMS worker revived her and asked her: “What city are you in?” “You’d better not ask her that.” The co-worker said. Puzzled, the EMS worker tried again: “What day of the week is it?” “No. Don’t ask her that either,” the co-worked said. “Try something with math.”
