Nice hat, Picasso

I set a new personal best for traveling hellishness yesterday. We had a weekend o' Drake Bell gigs, starting with Tulsa on Saturday, and finishing with Richmond, VA on Sunday. Sunday "morning" (if 4:25 in the AM can really be named as such) I awoke before my alarm, because my desire to avoid oversleeping overrides my desire for sleep. We hopped a plane to Cincinnati (I think). It was not a jumbo jet. It was a "let's gate check your saxophone, because if it's bigger than a box of kleenex it won't fit in the overhead bin" plane. The nice lady who was in charge of the gate-checked luggage said "we'll take good care of this" when I handed her my baby (and by baby, I mean Mark VI Selmer sacks o' fun, not an actual infant). When we landed everyone got their gate checked luggage after we walked off the six steps from the plane to the tarmac. Everyone, that is, except for me. After a tense five minutes of waiting for the also-nice luggage lady in Cincy to find my saxophone she said "it must have been stuff under some other bags, because it was hard to find." In the words of Bill Lumbergh, that'd be greeeaaaaaaaat.

We had three more flights after that point, with an afternoon gig in Richmond mixed in. All in all it was 24 hours from waking hotel bed to sleeping home bed. There were no alarm clocks in my life today.

I almost forgot! Whilst in Richmond I was talking on the phone to a friend. I was wearing a hat at this moment. I was backstage, and standing next to a fence. On the opposite side of said fence was the parking lot. A friendly fellow was strolling past and heckled me with this line: "nice hat, Picasso!" To which I should've replied, "yeah, but at least I haven't mailed an ear yet!" I was wearing one of these hats:



Perhaps he mistook my chapeau for a beret, the kind you find in a secondhand store.

I posted this heckle on Facebook and a friend replied with this:

"Picasso did love his hats. I for one like am delighted to hear that people are still referencing obscure artist biographical details in every day life. Does the heart good."

Now I'm back in the mix. Tomorrow (Tuesday, 10/6/08) I'm playing a solo show at Boardner's in Hollywood. See you there.