Master of Ceremonies: a True Story of Love, Murder, Roller Skates and Chippendales Diary October 15, 2008
Master of Ceremonies: a True Story of Love, Murder, Roller Skates and Chippendales Diary October 15, 2008At this point, from a diary perspective, things fell apart badly. I have some scribbled notes on napkins. A couple of incoherent sentences in the back of my Empty Book. A random rant on some hotel stationery. As I indicated earlier I approach every tour with this ridiculous idea of going to have so much time do so many things. I never cease to amaze myself with the sheer level of my stupidity, even in the face of overwhelming evidence.
Okay, here’s everything I remember. Well, the good parts anyway. Wednesday, October 15, I took a taxi from my hotel in the seedy groin of the Tenderloin, over the Bay Bridge, with this extremely cool dude from Oaktown who played me an amazing record by someone he grew up with, this guy name Raphael Saadiq. The record is called The Way I See It. It was so good. Very Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye. This is one of the things I love about being on tour. For meeting these people I would never meet., getting turned on to music I would never heard. I also really enjoy when someone asks me what I’m doing. When I can say, Oh, I’m on my book tour. When I was younger I was traveling and I wanted to impress someone, I used to make up a cool personality and/or occupation for myself. I’d pretend I was a professional soccer player. Or a philosopher from France. Or a thug from London. But now, it’s so fun to be able to actually tell the truth about who I am and what I do in this world with a sense of pride. I am grateful to be traveling the world with my new book. What a life I am leaving. I have to remind myself of that all the time. Because my mind and senses and focuses on such negative things. Why isn’t my book selling more copies? Why aren’t the people who are supposed to be helping me actually helping me? Why I get to have sex with porn stars whenever I want? The capacity for sheer joy of my baby girl Olive has is so hard to come by the more life you live, it seems. So I had to really focus on cherishing these little tiny things. Like this wildly enjoyable cab ride over the Bay Bridge with the cool dude from Oaktown, listening to these jaw-dropping jams by this friend of his.
I got to Berkeley high school, where I would be performing in front of two classes, with time to kill. So I killed it could. Berkeley high school is so huge. It’s like a galaxy unto itself, with its own gravitational pull, laws and customs, and fashion in our case you. I simply cannot imagine going to a school like that. When I was in 10th grade, there were 25 kids in my whole school, and 4 of those are related to me. My high school had a hundred kids in it. I don’t see how I could not get swallowed up whole in a place like that, And end up with a teenaged Jonah in this vast white whale. It was a mega-electric atmosphere, teen hormones bouncing around everywhere, loud talking, shrieks and giggles. And there are a bunch of Obama shirts, because it was Berkeley. A fair amount of Birkenstocks sandals shorts. And lots of freaky haircuts.
I love performing for high school kids. There’s always that initial reticence and mistrust beaming out at you from all these suspicious teenagers, who know so much yet know so little. There is a natural assumption on the part of the kids that you’re a dork. That you’re old and stupid and couldn’t possibly have anything interesting to say. But then, when I start to tell my story, I can feel them get engaged more and more. Except for one or two kids who are inevitably falling asleep or deep in some kind of daydream/daze/haze. After I’m done, at first they’re always reticent to ask questions. And after one or two questions get asked, they loosen up, and they’re just so curious. They so much want the grown up to tell them the real truth. Not hide it or gloss it over. Not paint a pretty picture, or try to scare them to death. Just to get some plain talking truth of an adult in the areas of sexuality and drugs and the things that most adults either won’t talk about, or feel all freaked out about, is a blessing for these kids, you can tell. I was performing from my book Chicken, my first memoir. This wonderful writer and great friend, Carolyn Wilson-Scott, she teaches Chicken in her class. Along with Frank McCourt, Mary Karr, all these amazing world-class memoirists. I feel very honored to be in that great company. I hadn’t performed for a very long time from Chicken. I forgot how much I loved to do it. Love to do it. It really inspired me to go back and put on my one-man show of Chicken in New York. I really want to do that in the new year. And here’s the kicker, Carolyn figured out some way to get me paid. I got $200 for performing at Berkeley high school.
And that’s why I love Berkeley.
That night me and Alan Black did our Art of the Memoir thang with the amazing Melissa Mytinger, late of the long lamented Cody’s. But she’s like a cat, lands on her feet. She teamed up with Berkeley Arts and Letters, and the good people from Booksmith. I had performed a few times at Booksmith in the Haight Ashbury, and I’ve seen many writers perform there. I was very curious to meet the people who bought Booksmith. Christin Evans and Praveen Madan turned out to be lovely individuals, I really appreciated that they took the time to trek out the Berkeley to be there personally. Christin asked some fantastic questions, and added this great perspective of book lover and now bookstore owner. You rarely get to have this kind of public interaction with someone who actually owns a thriving independent bookstore. In fact, it was the night of the last presidential debate, and as a result maybe 15 people showed up. And we all sat in a big circle. Very intimate. Very personal. It was like an old-fashioned salon. When people used to sit around in a circle and read their work out loud and talk about life and love and art. It was so unique and different. I really really enjoyed it. Alan said he did too. And I really love reading from my book sitting in a circle. As opposed to standing in front of an audience behind a podium and talking into a microphone. It was very sitting-around-a-campfire feel to it. Again, very personal and intimate.
And get a load of this, there was a videographer there and the whole thing was filmed. Again this is one of the reasons you go on the road. Because you never know what will happen. I had no idea these people would come in and film this event. FORA.tv. that’s the name of the company. I’m supposed to get some kind of access to the footage. It hasn’t come in yet. I’m curious what it’s going to be. So even though this was probably the smallest attendance of any of the Memoir events, it was one of the most enjoyable. And there were other big perks. Meeting Christin Evans and Praveen Madan from Booksmith. Getting filmed. Xtreme fun.
That night I stayed at my brother’s in Berkeley. We had a lot of fun playing this video golf game. I’ve never played any video golf games in this new gaming era. It was pretty fucking awesome. Seriously. We played until really late. I found myself the next day wanting to play again. Like a good drug. I was craving, even though I woke up kind of hung over and overly tired and a little stiff. I had fun hanging out with my brother playing that golf video game. He really kicked my ass. But it was much fun.
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