second post in a day. if this continues, someone should let me know that i am trying too hard. i'm playing catch up right now, though, since i just got over the fear of picking a bad blog name and picked a bad blog name.
for those of you keeping track at home, or from your computer phone which makes the majority of what i consider to be home something that fits in your pocket--for those of you keeping track in your pocket or at home, here are the destinations for sniff tour:
• san francisco • queenstown • auckland • sydney • tokyo • kyoto • beijing • shanghai • bangkok • phuket • kathmandu • udaipur • mumbai • capetown • st. emilion • le mans • st. aubin • paris • keffalonia • istanbul • tel aviv • raanana • jerusalem • blue hill • providence • southampton •
spread the above out on a wide enough screen and make it a number line: i'm writing from just past the second bullet point in the line. somewhere around the first or second e. so a summary of what has happened from the first bullet point, where we left off last.
an uneventful flight from jfk landed us in sfo, whence we made our way to the snifflepoofs favorite domestic hotel location, the days inn. fortunately, we didn't have to spend any day there, just one night, after which we trundled into a luggage mini-van and a "vahn" as the bakers dozen like to call them. a vahn is just a 12 passenger van that fits all but the two people driving the luggage. in the bds you apparently also do things in the vahn like drink too much beer and fight across the seats and be awesome and tight, bro. wanna play some gamecube? the sniffs opted to not do that in favor of doing their favorite activity: doing whatever the hell they please how dare you try to impose structure on my experience. this is why the sniffs flirt with meaninglessness.
we ended up in carmel, singing the longest concert of our time in the group: a full hour with no intermission (srsly). the sniffs are really more of a "sing four songs at a cocktail party for your old yale buddies" sort of group, and it shows a bit. we sang nearly our entire repertoire. afterwards the group went out for free drinks (at least i think they were free, i just left) at a bar called ody's. i found a white haired old man there who looked like he came from hippie-central, ojai, california. turns out that he came from a place that i have already forgotten, but had been a follower of ojai's prophet-in-residence, krishnamurti. i have a hippie radar, apparently. people like him are a godsend at these sorts of things because they will talk to you at length about their vision of the future, their opinion about the internet, their version of god, etc.--all interesting things. this is a much better fate than talking in that i'm-obligated-to-speak-to-you-because-you-are-why-the-beer-here-flows sort of way to five or more old people who all ask the same questions. i love explaining the history of the snifflepoofs, but not as much as standing in the cold alone or swallowing ipecac.
i'll tell you a secret about the history of the snifflepoofs: IT IS BORING. there are no battles, no virtuous characters, nothing. there are 5 guys who like to drink and sing well. they keep doing it. the name is nonsense, as you might expect. actually. there is just nothing more to say. nonsense. nonsense.
from carmel onto the bohemian grove the next morning. now, if you don't know what the bohemian grove is, you should pretend that you do and look it up on wikipedia, because everytime someone talks about it they do so in that way that indicates they are clearly talking about something important you should also be aware of. you don't want to ask questions about things like that. that might destroy the illusion important to people at places like yale, the illusion that you know everything.
the bohemian grove is like a giant summer camp for old rich men who like music and art. or at least don't mind it when they have been drinking since noon and are away from all of their worldly cares. the rich people who are there seem to like it, because one of the rules is that you cannot use your cellphone. now, if you have ever asked any business person to put away their blackberry, you know that they will put up a fight. in fact, 35% of travelling business people prefer their blackberry to their spouse. furthermore, not using cellphones is a rule, and if you have ever seen people try to board a southwest flight or use a new computer program, you know that people over 25 cannot understand or follow rules ever. these people are definitely over 25. anyway, the bohemian grove is actually pretty awesome. its divided into 125 camps and has been called the largest open bar in california. each camp rents their plot from the bohemian club, which already has $25k annual dues and pays for improvements, maintenance, kitchen, staff, bar, etc. one is encouraged when traversing the grove to have a walker. yes, the people are old, but this is their version of the 7/11 go cups for booze. their is a tap at the registration tent so you can get your first walker out of the way before you set foot in the place.
along with talks for the campers, the grove also has a number of shows that take place on one of three outside stages. upon arriving we saw someone who i suspect was the president of wellsfargo talking in a cloud of cigar smoke around a lake about the roots of the financial crisis. advice for the business people there included "doing the right thing is the right thing to do." i didn't hear any loud shouts of surprise or indignation, surprisingly. at night, we performed "midnight train to georgia" on the midle-sized outside stage of theirs. the sniffs already had a few walkers and a few stumblers by then (as well as a delicious dinner of...venison?) at the giant outdoor eatery staffed by local high schoolers (the grove only operates for a few non-consecutive weeks out of the year) and lit by flickering flames of natural gas.
at night, among the redwoods, we went from camp to camp. sometimes on foot, sometimes in the giant owl-bemarked (its their logo) shuttle-trolley-trucks manned by dd's or high-functioning alcoholics. this is an activity called crawling and we crawled to eight camps or so before returning to aviary, the camp where the chorus stays. aviary is one of the youngest of the camps as their is no 20 year waiting list for people admitted as artists, nor is there a wealth-requirement. ran into one of the four (!) westphals there that night, reed, who shared beers with me. and one of his friends, who forced the sniffs to do tequila shots before singing. it sounded great on our end. we stayed up late into the night around the campfire. i think the people who pack pot in their bags gravitate to me for some reason.
on from the bohemian grove to san francisco proper. we stayed at the university club, reminiscent of the college experience because the rooms are dingy and poorly lit. the perfect place to idealize after you are gone. we saw the city, i saw an old a cappella friend. we sang at the club in the night to celebrate our centennial. some of the gays went out to a club and i hear there was a mild amount of debauchery (how can one...ménage without a little bit of that from time to time). afterwards there was a dinner where i did not escape the conversational fate i mentioned so many paragraphs ago. i tried to explain that i was computer science but liked other things, things that don't land you in a cubicle worrying about things that happen around a watercooler (what a mundane place to worry about), so they talked to me about consulting FOREVER. they even brought over other consultant to...consult with me about it. ok, it sounds good, but they were not entertaining people. then i switched and talked to the really out of place guy at our table. he deserved the name a little.
next day, final day of outfitting with my dad before our departure. got last minute supplies, said goodbye to my computer (i'm at an internet cafe called "global gossip"), saw--but did not notice--my dad read a much-more-awkward-than-expected personal email which later prompted my mother to cry and got on a plane to new zealand. goodbye america, you served us...big heaping portions of food that are giving the entire population diabetes.
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