Life's Rich Pageant

The business of booking a tour (even a short tour) is long, tedious, and mind-numbing. You never know the sort of response you're going to get when you fire out that "would you be interested in booking us?" email (you never know if you're going to get a response at all, in fact). To some extent you have to steel yourself against the inevitable frustration of interacting with folks who are themselves overworked and underpaid. It's a sure-fire recipe for agita.

Of course, some booking agents are a joy to work with -- I'm thinking of the ones who cut right to the chase, cuz that always makes life a lot easier. And then every once in a while you have an exchange with someone who -- even though they might not be able to help you directly -- approaches the booking dance in such an idiosyncratic way that it makes the experience weird and human enough to be entertaining in and of itself.

And when that happens, you have to smile, even if only in confusion.

So a big thank you to the dude from Washington state (he's a complete stranger to me, so I'm not at liberty to reveal his identity) who recently sent me this email in response to a booking request:

You guys are fantastic! You're too good to play here but we'd still love to have you! You also might be too BIG to play here and by BIG I mean LARGE but not FAT, because that would be rude, even if it were true, which it isn't, not that there would be anything bad if it were true, except for the potential discrimination on my part. You'd never fit in our little back room. Again, NOT due to any idividual girth, rather required cumulative elbow-room, which is not some Olympia hippie PC term which circumvents the hatred inherent in the word FAT while communicating the idea of FAT. No one has fat elbows... they taper. God, I wish you could play here. Could you maybe all squeeze? Circular breath? MIDI? No no no. Seriously, how many are you on this tour? Maybe we can butter the walls (no licking them fatty).