auckland, episode one: featuring the whiffenpoofs as jar jar binks.

i write from day twelve of whiffenpoof world tour. day twelve according to the calendar (here in new zealand it is june 8th), but actually only the eleventh day (if you count hours) that we have been on tour. the whiffs crossed the international dateline on their flight into new zealand, departing june first and arriving on the third. the second just...disappeared in a flurry of arithmetic. this is really an unimportant detail, but what else is one to blog about? right? seriously, validate me here. why else would i be posting the minutia of my life for you to see.

we are now in auckland (details from our stay in queenstown later), staying with families from st. kentigern's college, which is a high school. yes, apparently kentigern was a saint of some sort. his martyrdom was getting teased for his ridiculous name. i am staying with grandma and grandpa, whose house is very clean, smells like...grandma and grandpa, and who shut down their computer in between uses. they have dialup, so i am writing this from an internet cafe. i tried to load a page there today and had to leave the room. it was horrifying. rodney and kath are very kind and make delicious breakfast. they have become a symbol of life before the internet to me, their 70's house with their two faucet sinks, listening to full albums on their sound system that is unattached to computer or television. in so many ways they have it figured out, it seems: a comfortable life, a boat, a family, a great accent. can you be nostalgic for something that still exists? theirs is a life that i will never have.

last night, our first full night in city was spent singing at the american club. they had been drinking since 4 pm and were a chatty, appreciative crowd. its always a funny experience to go onstage with the whiffs and see how much the audiences love us. backstage the group makes disgusted faces at every chord that doesn't tune right, downplays the abilities of the group's singers, complains about the fact that we have to sing at all. but once the white gloves go on and the marching starts, no one out there seems to notice. i got an email from a friend a while ago saying that i avoided the appearance of cynicism that plagues many public speakers, and the only thing that i could think was "if only you knew". my set of white tie and tails look fine, if not a bit ill-fitting from stage. but once you get in it you realize all the little stains, the built-up bittersweet stench of three years' sweat (these are my tails from the winks), the fact that the arms are too short and the bowtie is fake. i'm writing this from the armpit of those tails right now.

the whiffs have worked their asses off to travel around the world and everyone--even the clients who see us as little more than a novelty from yale with the word "poof" in our name--believes in the product we are offering more than we do.

this morning, we performed for tvnz's (tee vee en zed) tvone breakfast program. we sang a number of thirty second teasers that appeared throughout the show, one full number, and joel and i were interviewed by new zealand's infamous paul henry. paul is a "loose-canon" (some call him intelligent, grandma and grandpa call him a galoot) who once told a female guest that she had a mustache! it was quite a scandal... the clip can be viewed at

http://tvnz.co.nz/breakfast-news/whiffenpoofs-perform-8-36-2772062/video

i guess i didn't quite think through the fact that the 20 dollar haircut i got in san francisco was giong to be appearing on national television a few days after i got it. oh well... as i confided in our host, if something isn't working for you, you can always drop the yale bomb.

i know that the tone of this post makes me sound just like the cynical whiffenpoofs that make this experience so frustrating at times. i am one. every whiff plays their part in this ridiculously lucky, talented, entitled, cynical, grey-eyed group of people who smile as soon as someone is watching. what else are you supposed to do, right?

my answer: jump out of a plane. more on that, and our adventures in queenstown later. the internet i bought is just about to run out.