The movie tour of  ‘I HOPE THEY SERVE BEER IN HELL’:  week 1

Recently, and against the advice of the more sober contingent of friends and family, I agreed to be the MC for a series of 30 screenings in 30 cities for a movie called ‘I HOPE THEY SERVE BEER IN HELL.’

Since my precise duties as the tour ‘MC’ were nebulous, the project was at once terrifying and impossible to say ‘no’ to.  Tucker Max has been a friend of mine for years, and even though the idea of spending hundreds of hours with him and his crew on a claustrophobic tour bus full of testosterone and toe cheese was indubitably daunting, the sheer scope and originality of it was intriguing – I mean, a city by city rollout of an independent movie for the sole purpose of creating grassroots word of mouth?  What could be better that than the idea that everyone involved would be directly responsible for the success or failure of creating this movement.  I mean, what could be more freakin’ ballsy?

The fear that it could be a colossal train wreck only served as fodder to make me want to participate.  The die was cast and I packed a messy month of toiletries and underwear in a worn-out Samsonite for my circumlocuitous cross-country journey.   How hard could a month be?

Well, even getting to the starting point of the tour bus proved difficult.  I took a 70 dollar cab ride to Newark Airport (as Jeffrey Ross calls it – “it’s like the Newark of Airports!”) and waited for 2 and ½ hours with Starbucks and stolen gossip rags until my Delta flight was finally called.

Right as I was putting my stuff down on my emergency row seat, a distinctly focused finger jabbed my shoulder.  I turned to see a 5’9” ginger man, with a white button-down shirt, a tie, and an official-looking lanyard.  He was staring at me like I just ate his last packet of Pop Tarts.

“Come with me,” he muttered, with a cocksure finger wag.  Without waiting for an acknowledgment, the ginger-headed man  briskly marched towards the rear of the plane.

“Ok,” I said after him.  Then a familiar emotion crept in and flushed my cheeks.  It was the feeling that I was in trouble conflated with the dubious terror of not knowing why – the same  “oh-you-going-to-the-principaaaaaalsssss office!” feeling I used to get throughout my public school tenure.  Heartbeat accelerating, I furtively followed the angry red-head man back to the hinter rows.  Why was I being summoned to the principal’s office?!

Suddenly it dawned on me – my t-shirt!  I’d been in the same t-shirt from the night before  (I would love to say ‘don’t ask’ but it really amounted to nothing short of laziness) which had displayed, prominently on the front, a graphic design emblazoned with the following words in large white letters:  FUCK SKULLS.

The tee is the design of a friend of mine, Bryden Lando, for his company called Future Heretics.  Although he and his clientele have the sense to wear it at night in shi-shi Hollywood hot spots (i.e. clubs that haven’t been completely overrun by Persians ), for some reason, like a dummy, I threw it on at 7am before my half-caf soy caramel macchiato.  Don’t get me wrong – I love the f-word and appreciate all the double and triple entendre the FUCK SKULLS phrase can engender; but I guess I was a little daft wearing it in public during the day… in front of impressionable children.

“Come here!” the ginger-headed fireplug whisper-barked as he turned into the stewardess alcove to have our little meeting.  As I pensively approached ginger balls, I suppinated my hands.  Right away, I decided to cut him off at the pass:

“Oh, I’m sorry – the tee shirt.  I totally forgot, I’ll turn it inside out.”

With that, ginger balls took a step towards me with a hot breath cocktail of coffee and Marlboro light.

“Okay, here are your options,” he said, accenting his proposal with a stiff karate chop hand.

“I’ll just –“ I attempted.

“ONE!” he shot back.  “You can change shirts right now.  TWO:  you can turn it inside out.  And THREE, you can get the hell off of my plane!”

“Yeah, I already said, I’ll turn my tee shirt inside out, no problem.”

Ginger balls stopped in his tracks and glared at me.  A telltale forehead vein began to swell and connected his hairline with his eyebrows , pulsating rage rivulet.

“Are you giving me attitude, boy?”

Oh my God, I AM back in high school, I thought.  I had to fight back every fiber in my petulant body urging me to treat him like a heckler at the Hollywood Laugh Factory.  “What is this, Officer and a Gentleman?  I’m not an elisted soldier –  I actually got good grades in high school, asshole!”

Instead of this, I opted for the more palatable “No,” and I walked towards the bathroom to flip my tee around, hands still up like a hostage negotiator.

“Where do you think you’re going?!” Ginger balls seethed.

“I’m just going.  To change.  My shirt.”   I punctuated my sentence politely, albiet passive-aggressively, as I Samurai-stepped backwards towards the lavatory.  My eyebrows raised in a commensurate ‘cool it buddy’ arch.

I got into the lavatory, slid the lock shut, and silently cursed at ginger balls for 35 seconds.  I even gave him the finger vis a vis the mirror above the sink.  After I flipped my shirt inside out, I walked back out into the aisle to see Ginger Balls still there, shaking his head at me like I just struck out in the little league championship game and he was the shitty dad.  He looked like an angry ginger Hobbit.

“What’s wrong?”  I said, unable to help myself.  “I turned the shirt inside out, why are you so upset?”

For some reason, I was obsessed over getting to the root of his antipathy towards me and my hilarious tee shirt.

“What did you say?” he said, eyes squeezing into a Clint squint.

“I don’t get it – I turned it around and you’re shaking your head at me.  What did I do to you?”

“Buddy, if you say one more word I’m throwing you off the plane….”

My brain offered several words in a mental buckshot of venomous retorts but somehow my mouth stayed shut.  I furrowed my brow and lowered my head in abject defeat.  I should have just said, ‘lo ciento.’

When ginger balls stormed off, I asked the stewardess exactly who the angry man was, and she said it was the pilot.

“What, that guy is emotionally unstable?  I don’t want a guy with Napolean Complex and anger management issues flying a plane – he’s gonna have an aneuyrism and wreck it!” I said, sincerely upset.  “I read the new Malcolm Gladwell book – those are the pilots that fly into mountains!”

I contemplated waiting for the next flight but finally settled down.

When he got on the PA with that soothing, smooth jazz voice, all I could think was, “What a fucking LIAR!  He’s not that calm, I’m never going to believe that voice again!”

Coincidentally or not, it was one of the most awful, turbulent flights of my life.  We flew right into Hurricane Bill but I was convinced he did it intentionally.  Freakin’ Ginger!

When we finally landed, I was greeted with the sight of the tour bus waiting to start the trip.  It was all worth it…. That shit was PEEEMP!!!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 25th, 2009 at 10:18 pm and is filed under All blog entries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.