DIRTY ROTTEN TRAVEL DAY

"Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" on tour...

The audiences in Clinton Township never really do improve much. The Saturday matinee is an exercise in listening to one's hair grow. The evening show is a bit better, but there is still an icy silence that greets any humour that smacks of sexual innuendo or naughty words. Is it any wonder that I feel like I can judge the right-wing middle class with impunity? They wear their prudery like medieval armour.

As if to add insult to injury, Michigan gives us it's best gray, cold, damp drizzle for our drive to the airport in the morning. We wrap ourselves in the knowledge that we are flying to Louisiana where summer is underway. Its an idea we need to keep close since the bus is freezing! The A/C seem to be working again.

After the usual rape by various departments and personnel at the airport, we stumble on to our first plane. Yes - its yet another connecting flight. (Please, God, just put me on one plane and fly me to my destination.) Three hours to Houston, a 90 minute layover and another hour to Baton Rouge.

On the plane, I am in the window seat. A brusque and man-ish Latino woman crashes into the middle seat beside me and deposits her chihuahua into the lap of the woman in the aisle seat as she proceeds to settle herself in. The dog is not happy in it's little Legally-Blonde-esque pink carrier and proceeds to whimper. The whimpering is not a surprise since the breed quite commonly whimpers and shivers when a cloud passes over the sun. I do, however, take the dog's side in this case considering that being stuffed in a bag under a seat while the change in altitude wreaks havoc on your ears is probably not something your canine sensibilities can cope with. The dog's owner is useless in calming the creature. (In my mind, I begin to call her Imelda Marcos for no reason other than that she seems brutish and heartless.) At one point, I am forced to nudge her awake, refusing to allow her to doze while her pets cries are keeping everyone else from napping. Truth be told: I'd take a chihuahua over a baby any day. I had it easy compared to the poor sods 10 rows behind me in baby world.

After a 6 hour walk from terminal C to terminal B at BUSH(!) airport in Houston, I make for the nearest bar in the hope of dulling the throb of humanity and blurring the view. Howard eventually joins me but our conversation is rail-roaded by a drunk, lonely, insecure business man from Toronto. After hearing about his 13 cell phones (all in his briefcase), his house in Caracas and how quickly he fills up his passport (did you know you can get a 48 page passport for an extra $100?) I am done. Later, as we are boarding our flight, we see him weaving toward his gate, surreptitiously slipping a beer into his jacket pocket.

The flight to Baton Rouge is on another teeny, tiny plane....3 seats across. Our flight attendant is the gayest thing in the sky. This guy is gayer than Wayne Sujo on GHB doing an episode of "Will & Grace". He is in the only business he could find where his audience is literally held captive and he is obviously looking for an agent. It's as if he feels his very fey-ness gives him ownership of the bad pun and rolling eyes. When he tells us that all personal electronic devices must be turned off, he explains that the definition of said device is anything that runs on batteries and has an on/off switch. I hear Mel behind me wondering aloud if he's really willing to check that ALL personal devices falling into this category are off.

Baton Rouge is as I remember it....rough around the edges, not particularly pretty, low and spread out. I get drunk on the warm tropical air. I am transported back to my days living in the tropics. I sit outside and listen to the hum of night creatures and feel the caress of warm wind on my face and lose any sense of time or place.