longest day of tour

So as a Krok, I have important duties besides singing. Primarly: Shmoozing. Shmoozing is of utmost important to the Kroks; shmoozing with fans, shmoozing with hosts, shmoozing with potential hosts, shmoozing with assorted other wealthy people. And during my 4-week tenure on tour, I must say my shmoozing skills have greatly improved. I can shmooze with the young and the old, the rich and the only mildly less rich, those who speak no english and the australians (though that barely counts as english. seriously, what are these people talking about here?). Unfortunately, shmoozing really sucks. After a long day, the last things you want to do is put on a tux and a smile and shmooze. The worst is when they divide us amongst tables so we have to shmooze all with people we don't know and get no backup.

At least I thought that was the worst. But tonight I discovered something worse than having to talk to all the strangers at your table: having the strangers at your table display no interest in talking to you. It was the craziest thing! Maybe I'm just spoiled b/c usually people are coming to see us and thus are very excited to talk to us, but today I joined this table and they were just like "what brings you here tonight"
oh i'm one of the kroks.
"oh is your group involved in the children's hospital too?'
...no. we're the entertainment. you know how the poster says "a night with the krokodiloes to benefit the children's hospital? yeah. we represent the 'krokodiloes' part"
and then they went back to their dinner

needless to say, it was a long meal. finally i started chatting with the woman next to me with the most ridiculous hairstyle known to man (it was as if she just pushed her hair ontop of her head and then clipped it exactly where it bunched, allowing some clumps to strategically fall out of place and into her face and NEVER MOVING THEM OUT OF THE WAY. what is that!!?!?!). she was a "very important doctor" of psychology (so our host, also named Barry, told us). But when I asked what she focused on she went off on this whole thinga bout "ancestor psychology" which is apparently this phenomenon where if your granpa died on a certain day you are more likely to die on that day too. oy. and she works with dysfunctional children! red flag, your voodoo psychobabble isnt likely to stop their parents from abusing them. it all sounded very lamarkian to me (score 1: snobby psych concentrator comment of the evening. see mom and dad, i did learn something at harvard!)

anyway, it was an especially long day b/c we got up at 8am to go on a winery tour. it was really beautiful to see tha Yara countryside, and we drove through a temperate rainforest. and got lots of free booze in small portions. but we were all so tired it was hard to enjoy it (and by all i mean the 6 that were brave enough to get out of bed at 8am. or maybe just the 6 who couldnt say no to free things). Can't say I know any more about wine, but after the second winery everything starts to taste a whole lot better.

a note on our host: Barry Novie is just the nicest man who ever lived. Unlike our other hosts who are all crazy and clearly love the kroks, but in a wierd fanatical way that makes you wonder why, Barry is just geniunely touched by our music (god knows why) and loves bringing us here to sing for his friends and entertain his charity events. the man made a ton of money in real estate and is now a professional philanthropist. he really took to me b/c i am his namesake and we are both jewish, so we spent a lot of time talking about what being jewish in australia is like. he also gave me the history of its progressive elections, putting jews into important gov. positions for centuries. woot woot. anyway, it's great to know him.

and thus we left the eastern half of the globe. tonight was our final for-pay show and from here out we mostly sing at hotels and for our host families in their palaces (sounds like a joke. only half a joke). it's now 1am, and we leave the Australian Club in 3 hours to get a plane to South Africa, which will take 16 hours. SIXTEEN HOURS!!!! so this combined with the fact that i slept very little last night means that you should all expect a pretty incoherent blog post in 30 hours when i finally arrive. i've uploaded the rest of SIX FEET UNDER season 3 and WEEDS onto my ipod so that should keep me busy at least for a tidbit. oy, wish me luck.

keep the comments and emails coming!!! i miss you all!!! and i'm probably going to NYC on august 21 so if you live there get excited (note to self - buy tickets to NYC).

mwah
~Barry