WEDNESDAY, NOV. 14

Up in first class Nuno Bettencourt playing a conversational version of Led Zeppelin’s “Over the Hills and Far Away” on a custom-made acoustic, Gabe belting it out, as he does. Artist management and essential personnel, label execs, tour directors, getting seated and organized. A stewardess sets down a cheese plate and a glass of champagne on the little fold-down table in front Nuno. Mylah, in 1C, whips around.

"You can't have that, Nuno!"

"What the hell are you taking about?"

"You're juicing!"

“Yeah,'“ Nuno says. “Three hours ago I drank a glass of juice. Now I’m having this," he said, sipping the champagne. I didn’t sign anything.”

Mylah insists, “If you have that stuff you’ll have to start all over.”

“Start what over?” says Nuno, selecting a cheese cube. “You know how crazy you sound right now?”

Back in journalist-class, aka Economy, the usual leg-room problems and overhead bin log-jams persist, but there are also copious buffet carts (sacked, restocked, and immediately re-sacked) and absolutely zero rigamarole with the booze. Drinks appear in your hand as soon as you think them. You don’t even have to think of Armand de Brignac (aka Ace of Spades) for your glass to run over with it. It’s Def Jam house champagne, no matter each bottle is three-“hunge” (no time to say “hundred”, or “dollars”—already gone). Twice the price of Cristal, three times as drinkable, as champagne goes.

—

Weird clouds above Mexico City, diffuse greenish light from the street lamps down here. Everything and everyone eerily vignetted, haloed. Street dogs, kids playing with a downed wire, centenarian selling ancient Aztec appliances—this could be any city on Venus. Plenty of time to observe these phenomena from the charter bus window on the way to the venue, in traffic that makes rush hour on the 405 seem like an Indy race. Coming straight from the giddy Bacchanalia on the plane, this is a vicious momentum killer. Everyone on the bus is weary and thickly quiet: bibitus interruptus.

From the reserved balcony watching the couple thousand Mexico City superfans below. Glowsticks, test-tube shots, animal costumes, a group of girls drop to the floor and start screaming, just rolling and screaming, at whatever. Video cameras sharking through the crowd, every so often a camera light flips on and activates a localized freakout, people jumping up and down, flailing, sometimes while crying. The scene a show in itself.

A waiter or somebody came and said I had to leave wherever he said I was. I showed him the laminate, he shook his head and pointed downwards, kept on about it. Eventually he gave up and I asked for a tequila and he brought it to me. Affable Johannesburg DJ Roger appeared, and then everybody else came. More waiters failed to convince anyone to leave and gave up and brought tequilas and everything was fine.

Called Jimmy [Jellinek, Playboy Magazine Editorial Director] from there, explained best I could over the thumping club din. Jimmy going, Why are you in Mexico? Whose plane? Huh? Futile, and expensive, so I just said I’LL WRITE A THING AND SEND IT. (Note: this was never filed for publication, anywhere).

During the show I went downstairs. Worked through the dance party up to the front, where it felt like being on a trampoline with bad springs. Even in the dark you could actually see the floorboards warp, from some fundamental instability. Proceed nearest exit.

Outside the venue, fans running around. Crowds of Mexican hipsters, as they self-identify, I overhear. The identity here being a mash of third-generation punk and club kid, as opposed to the handlebar-‘stache-skinny jean-vintage synthesizer-artisanal-fuckall menace. Degrees of ticket panic, people looking for a miracle. Virtually no notice for the show, and the venue is far from central—you would have had to hop-to, to put it mildly. One ticket scalper going around pushing raggedy tickets with “Rianna” handwritten over the original event, with the wrong date. There’s unofficial product being hawked, typical craptastic stuff, the most baffling designs sold off a pushcart including a goat head turning on a rotisserie. Few if any of the roaming flower sellers, fruit sellers, mediums (?), trinketeers, pickpockets, etc. have any clue what’s going on (a tulip-pusher asked me, I told her I didn’t know). Huge swaths drawn here solely by the commotion. It’s a pandemonium economy.

Handed a drink stepping onto the plane. The plane is one of Delta’s fleet. Normally a shameful operation, thankfully nothing is normal. Champagne relentless, passed chimichangas were airborne before we were.

THURSDAY

Jeppe, Swedish contest winner, pointing around his sleeve of tattoos, enumerating: “Woman. Woman. Zombie. Devil. Angel.” He shrugged: what else is there? “It’s a good sleeve.”

He and his friend, Daniel, also be-sleeved, won their seats in an on-air radio contest, tandem speed-dialing, somehow knowing the winning minutiae about Battleship. The film. I wouldn't have thought pop fans to look at them, let alone dedicated ones, but the story with these two is that they’re in it to win it, whatever it is. And with Norse constitutions they’re a safe bet to be last men standing when this tour goes kablooey.

Which it most certainly will. .

Because:

Here’s one of the biggest pop-stars in the world, give or take, already with a work week that would send plenty of investment bankers to the bughouse, with at least two of those weeks now being compressed, and lumped on top of the regular week, and its accumulated effects to date. The standing (unreasonable) requirement that she show no sign of fatigue or physical weakness is intensified, because after everything that goes along with putting on a pop concert (travel, perform, party, all of it), where the pop star could ordinarily expect if not a bona fide break at least private downtime, to pass out, smoke, drink, scream, cry, she is instead expected (supposedly) to go in the back of the plane to not only interface with the hundred-fifty salivating bloggers and professional journalists who will absolutely have been drinking professionally all day, but she must chill also with positively electrified, smartphone-armed superfans, variously unhinged by sleep-deprivation.

Ridiculous scenario, her mingling, and it isn’t going to happen, or not to that degree, at least. Because everyone knows better. However. The slightly more sensible m.o. keeping the star sequestered for the punishing duration, means no one is getting the face time they expect, including and especially journalists who have a professional responsibility to deliver the fruits of said, who will be forced to deliver what they can, most likely in the form of a potential PR disaster, unless ‘any publicity is good publicity’, which it is not. The x-factor is the real-world effects, the physical and mental degradation of touring on people who are accustomed to regular schedules and conventional behaviors being body-checked through multiple time zones. God help anyone around here who has anything against getting drunk first thing in the morning.

Remains to be seen exactly how relevant my own tour experience will be, but I expect first off that we can pretty much wipe our asses with the itinerary. No way to move this many people around that quickly, never mind once people are symptomatic, per above, and half-drowned in champagne and so forth. That’s maybe 36 hours from now, tops.

But that’s why it’s called a publicity stunt. There’s no such thing as a level-headed stunt, just ones where people get hurt and ones where they don’t. This ride itself is the contest, of endurance. Prove your super-fandom.

For now, everybody’s going wheeee, pressed together in the aisles, forming cliques and so forth, flight attendants osmosing through with more drinks, on this very drinky flight to T’rono. A city that as far as I can say never fails to deliver a better-than-average middle-of-the-road experience.

FRIDAY

On a private airstrip near Stockholm, a massive shoal of particularly jazzy luggage stretches clear across the parking lot, looking like it came off a flight carrying no one over 30, not quite true but almost. The luggage also appears somewhat organized, maybe in part owing to simply being in contact with the ground in Sweden, where order prevails. The wee terminal building—teak and frosted glass, automatic toilets, softly tinkling chimes piped in, all very enchanting. And well-equipped to receive Gulfstreams and the like, for sure, but not Brobdingnagian juggernauts that descend to disgorge a major pop tour then for an hour continuously barf passengers and copious baggage all over the runway. Regards which: I’m not saying anything here about anybody generally or in particular, except that there is ample evidence to support an assumption that your average woman 18-to-25 who finds herself suddenly packing for a week with a pop star packs outfit options, and, lacking time to edit, might simply add another suitcase or three to contain them. The look on the customs guys’ faces as we approached… One guy frantically checked a clipboard, then dumped it, useless. And these are Swedes. Just wait til they get a look at this clown show with blaring elephants in Rome.

So there’s an hour or so in a lineup to an improvised customs check, regular procedures not surviving contact with the circumstances, then we’re off to the bus. Clean, slick, Blade Runner under-lighting, all manner of Swedish accoutrement. For legal reasons everyone has to stay put, locked in, while the Def Jam marketing VPs figure out what to do about the serious excessive baggage problem. Ultimately it is determined that all personnel, regardless of physical fitness and corporate or social position, must personally hump each bag across the lot to wherever it maybe belongs with respect to other bags. Spot-on visual definition of clusterfuck ensues. A hot surgical lamp flicks on, illuminating the Achilles heel of 777.

—

You enter the Radisson Viking via revolving door with a terrarium containing a lingonberry bush—mise en scène. Touches like that are common, and a reminder that there is serious r & d going on over here, all about solving first-world problems before they happen. Beds that float on giant magnets, portable deprivation tanks, happening biofuels, state-funded erotica, postmortem health care, you-name-it. It’s 2030 everywhere but the date on the cover of a random magazine picked up in the lobby. Reading it at the bar, some new favorable amendment to sabbaticals… Sweden is to the paid vacation as Jimi Hendrix is to the guitar. Also the little meatballs.

A restorative shower like a resurrection, then the first off-plane food since whenever, back in the hotel bar ordering off what is essentially the Ikea cafeteria menu, but real. We fuck with lingonberries. We fuck with more Swedish meatballs. We fuck with some—per the menu—“mushed” potato, and some martinis, which fuck back. All very grounding.

The venue is a multi-level party factory, variously themed drinking areas— vaulted ballroom, dungeon-y basement bar, terrace bar, the cavernous restaurant, chandelier-strewn, brothel-red. The balcony bar in there is the natural choice off the bat, but you rotate through all of them of course. Flash the official 777 laminate if anybody has something to say about the way you’re rotating (they don’t because, again: Sweden). Into the fray comes the flight crew (initially unrecognizable in civvies), flight attendant Leslie, aka the Wolf, leading the charge whooping into the ballroom for the show. The show starts late—hours late. This did not go over well with the audience. Nor the band, nor for any other concerned party. Some talk that the delayed showtime was due the local fire department (?) being summoned by the volume of smoke pouring from a backstage window into the street, threatening to make passerby irie. One respects this. If one is me.

There’s a red carpet situation here. Not for the pop star, for Jeppe and Daniel, briefly alighting on home soil after having won the Golden Ticket to ride the dipso Wonkavator that is 777, where they are by any measure representing their country admirably, and where despite inconveniences, the snozberries taste like snozberries. Velvet rope, sponsor backdrop (Universal, Rocawear), cameras flashing, fans, the whole nine, granting interviews, carpe diem, maximum tatted exuberance. Even better, they tell me they effectively set this up for themselves. Heroes, these two.

The basement club was reserved for the after-party thanks to a phone call from the home office (“Jay called in an audible”) and it has the usual mob-scene at the rope, practically a frenzy once the word got around that Kanye West is in town. (He’s isn’t, but ain’t nobody tryna hear that). The party was good, at times. Pockets of sloshed hilarity anywhere but the dance floor, pod-people flopping around to the sound of Euro-mindlessness, giving way to more appropriate party tracks, late-night, when the star appeared at the back bar, slinging drink. The general-population 777 laminate didn’t get you back there, into the roped-off VVIP. Frustrating only for those who did not recognize that there was plenty of weirdo action in the little boutique dildo shop over by the other bar, where everyone was tits-up, mishandling gleaming futuristic snozwangers and whangdoodles. Again: Sweden.

SATURDAY

“There’s no earthly way of knowing Which direction they are going! There’s no knowing where they’re rowing, Or which way the river’s flowing! Not a speck of light is showing, So the danger must be growing, For the rowers keep on rowing, And they’re certainly not showing Any signs that they are slowing. . . .” (R. Dahl, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory)

The sidewalk in front of the Radisson Viking, cacophony. Groans, phlegmatic hacking, expletives and mortification, anguished prayer, trails of personal items dropped from not-quite zipped suitcases being dragging around, a girl staring at her smashed cell-phone muttering Franco-gibberish, someone throwing up into a plastic bag—maniacally, almost. People in much worse shape than they could have expected, or imagined, probably.

On the plane there is weeping. 47H, 50C, a dozen rows back one poor girl is wailing, pleading “I just need to sleep! Please!” Her mother trying in vain to comfort her—they’re both simply too confused. The screaming adrenals, one’s central governor an electrical socket with a fork jammed into it. You can adjust, adapt to it, eventually, once you know what’s coming. But if your experience allows you to equate sleeping with anything resembling bedtime, or a bed, or being horizontal—that’s where 777 the Concept hits the wall. On day, what—two and a half? To be fair, you can’t run the numbers on this sort of thing. There’s no execu-speak for discussing it. Like the Chinese don’t have a word for “logic”.

Never mind that. Wheels up.

--

Returned from having cocktails in actual glassware up front. No one up there is under any illusions that the press back here has anything remotely interesting to file in the pop star profile department, apart from how late the shows are and about sitting on buses interminably, watching record executives haul luggage. Few professionals back here are expecting much more than that, most never did. Still, those in the nose actively trying to address the lack of copy problem in flight. Band members popping back for brief interviews and some socializing, and a press conference of some kind is imminent. Next to me Louise is busily reworking her piece about personal style and positivity to include a merciless shredding of her subject, and everything in sight. She doesn’t buy the p.r. regroup. “They’ve come up with several repulsive fillings for their sandwiches, and no one's eating them,” she said, after an unusually egregious lunch fail. (Mostly the food on board is just unmemorable, rather than inedible. You do your best to source on the ground, between transport lockdowns.)

Several people mentioned their publications are threatening to pull the plug. Leaves a journalist to pitch a piece about getting drunk on an airplane then sobering up on a bus, or else ghost-ride the next few days getting drunk on an airplane and sobering up on a bus without being paid for it. The Fuse TV guys have devised an ingenious prank story in lieu of no story (ideally they run with it), even the gallant and indefatigable Norwegian writer (mogul inside of ten years, you watch) is dubious about what he’s got so far. For the most part the bloggers, free from any restrictive nonsense like word-count, legitimate sources, facts, grammar, style, etc., can at least sort-of blog about how there's nothing to blog about, or about miscellaneous suckage, or the shows if feeling generous. They might get their fifty bucks, or hunge, whatever the going pittance is. If you’re with anything printed on paper, from anywhere’s Times to a rehab-center circular, “OMG I’m soooooooooo tired!” does not count as copy. That’s the journalistic endgame here. Incidentally: as suspected, bloggers do not drink like print journalists. They eschew whiskey, and lack unease.

—

Paris. City of Light. Lights along the roof, lights down either side of the aisle, adjustable reading lights above the seats…The bus lights the only lights we’ve seen thus far, or are likely to see for some time.

The increasingly decried waiting-around on this trip is the result of two separate issues. Whatever the balance of diva problem against basic logistics causes waiting around on the airplane, this had to be expected, if not quite explicitly scheduled. Long as the pop star is one, that’s not likely to change. And there we have food and drink available, practically unlimited at that. The second issue, waiting on the coaches with nothing available, is solely the baggage problem. Any solution is too little too late. All of the planning and execution that got this operation off the ground irreparably stymied by something so basic it didn’t occur to anyone. And I don’t think I would have thought of it, either, frankly. History is full of these stories.

Ducked out of the show to do some lightning-round guerrilla tourism. Whipped through the Pigalle, seized on some street food, jumped on the funicular, up to the Sacré-Coeur. On the steps there hit a joint offered me by some friendly young roustabouts. The one with the guitar wore a tam, among other accessories appropriate to stage three cultural confusion, and commenced requisite West African reggae jam. High time to get back to Babylon. On the way down the funicular became stuck briefly. Dangled there, growing more certain the only other passenger, an old man down the far end, was not asleep but dead. Then he puked. Can’t spell funicular without fun. Rolled back into venue as the last song ended. Dunno what it’s called, hereafter it’ll probably remind me of that reggae song.

After the show [Universal Music President Steve] Bartels was next door at the cafe having a beer, Gabe and Gabriella debriefing him on the trip thus far. The baggage difficulty, primarily. Showers, laundry, absence thereof. Bartels saying, “I don’t understand. Haven’t you guys heard of dry cleaning?”

“I think maybe you’re missing the schedule involved here, Steve,” Gabriella said. “We don’t have access to dry cleaning.”

“That’s ridiculous. Dry cleaners are everywhere. You have the same access I do.”

“That’s not what I mean by ‘access’.”

“I have a suggestion,” said Gabe, “as to why there’s a general disconnect here, and why meanings of words like ‘access’ are getting confused. Would you like to hear it?”

“Please, Gabe. Yes,” said Bartels, gesturing for another round.

“A private car drives you, Steve, straight out onto the tarmac and drops you next to the plane right before takeoff.” Bartels to his great credit is not a COO of a mega-corp who goes out in the field to bullshit his people that he has any sort of active servant mentality.

“Ride with me, then. Problem solved.”

“I can’t. We can’t. We can’t do anything at all because we have to handle the baggage, Steve. That’s the whole problem.”

Bartles said, conclusively, and slightly louder, “Open the bag. Take out what you need, close the bag. The bags stay on the plane. Take one smaller bag if you have to. Simple.”

The waitress brought drinks. Not quite the order, but close enough.

“Ok. I see,” Gabe said, to the general company. “There’s a method to Steve’s madness. And what he’s saying is madness, for sure. But I think what he’s suggesting is that people should not have checked baggage. That right in the beginning we should have informed everyone they should not bring checked baggage. I am hearing correctly what you’re not saying, right?”

“I’m just saying, if my peeps aren’t happy, I’m not happy,” Bartles said.

In reality, anything toward resolving the baggage situation at this stage is just aimless cat-herding and moreover has nothing to do with me, but I pointed out, gratuitously, somewhat involuntarily, that Bartels’ suggestion was sensible, and Bartels pointed and said, “See?” Gabe then pointed out that where I’m concerned what’s sensible is neither here nor there, reminding me, “You just have the one small bag and you left it Stockholm this morning.”

I then pointed out that, no, I remembered my bag, which is made of saddle leather. I accidentally left its contents in Stockholm.

At the afterparty glittery space mice in bikinis danced on a rotating platform, as they must, while champagne was firehosed into everyone present, including someone wearing a full Deadmau5 head who later fell over, possibly having drowned. Later—maybe pre-planned, a damage control measure, which would be highly appropriate at this juncture—the banquette area of the balcony is roped off from the greater balcony VIP area (roped off from the general public VIP area, of a club called VIP), the space being specially reserved tonight so the contest-winners can, in a suitably fabulous setting, meet their idol, since it’s not happening on the plane. (Someone clever has printed up Rhianna “missing” flyers, which appear increasingly). I near the roped area having a vodka and talking to a woman who was weighing in passionately on what she can only imagine to be the pressures of being a young pop singer, empathetic to the effect of sleeplessness on a singer’s voice, let alone her complexion. She’s hasn’t met Rhianna yet, happily anticipating her assured turn at the banquette. She says the people who are complaining about this trip need to sit back and appreciate what how hard touring is, and understand there’s a lesson here. I asked her how long she’d been with Def Jam. But she was a contest-winner, totally undaunted.

“Some of the other [contest-winners] are de-friending her [Rhianna] on Facebook, and un-following her and everything, but I keep telling them that’s ridiculous. You love her music and look what she goes through to bring it to you.” A tough sell. But all things being relative, I concur. Things being relative.

What happened next happened quickly. Upheaval at the far end of the balcony, crowd imitating a tree line with a pack of tyrannosaur smashing through. Six (eight? ten?) humongous thugs in dark glasses and long black coats moving through the room in a protective formation, fucked symbiosis around a central group of people, every object and body in the room displaced with maximum prejudice as if a deliberate obstacle, drinks upended, several sent flying, all this continuing full force across the balcony and into the VIP, where the girl I was talking to, who might be the only truly undeterred superfan left on the plane, is by some giant black-suited henchman yanked physically away and bodyslammed into a pillar, while Daniel, crestfallen but to that moment undaunted, having run afoul of another henchman, could be seen being punched in the face and thrown over a railing. This in the name of depositing—it is now understood—P. Diddy, or Diddy, or Puff, or whatever it is he calls himself this week, in the proximity of someone talented, that being his talent, or rather, skill. The extra-wide bodyguards then joined together, malevolent Barbapapas forming form a thug-wall, to keep out the bloodshot, teary, or recently blackened, prying eyes of the luckless contest-winners.

How many times must we ask: What price Danity Kane?

SUNDAY

Several hours waiting on de Gaulle tarmac. Star on an impromptu shopping trip, is the word. Well, yes, I should think so. Beverages flow.

Notably rough touchdown in Berlin (reminded, at three-hundred mph, to get around to that living will), a spilled drink or two, couple bins overhead popped open. Figured out why that rule about putting the tray tables up: driven straight into solar plexus. No good. Turning the electronics off, on the other hand, no. No one does it, nobody asks.

Def Jam VPs standing with counterpart German baggage-handlers by the terminal exit, assessing options regards this new catch in the ongoing baggage SNAFU. [EVP of Universal International Matthew] Voss over there, having made the compulsory temporary sub-lateral move from executive vice president of somethingorother to baggage-handler, taking lead. Meaning he'll be the one heaving weighty suitcases in and out of taxis, instead of people twenty years younger who don't have back shit going on, and the usual liability issues preclude anyone not directly employed by Def Jam from assisting. Meaning after commiserating about said back injuries, I can only watch. He can’t be talked out of it—is what it is. The baggage problem is cumulative: a handful of us will have to stay behind at the airport for an extra hour or so, to facilitate getting the bags where they need to go, according to the new brutally complicated procedure. There’s a coffee shop. There’s also beer, but that’s a knock-out drop at this point, not helpful.

—

Berlin. Cinematic drear, misty quiet… Mostly noir with a seventy-percent chance of expressionism. Woke from a brief doze on the bus to the venue, first sight was an enormous sculpture of Earth, continent-size letters across the equator, “DIE”. Disturbed by this ominous piece of work, until I remembered we were in Germany. Could simply have been die post office.

Led off the buses into an industrial building. As if Restoration Hardware half-assed a pop-up detention center. Better than being locked on buses, but rather poignant, unfortunately. Wifi and spaetzle aren’t going to do it, people are all done. Hit the Berlin wall. There is yelling. I get that, I can see why you’d be upset. Then, it’s not like the place doesn’t have doors.

Checkpoint Charlie. Found a museum open late, Currywürst Museum. An institution dedicated to a particular sausage arrangement. No question why I was the museums sole patron, given the shockingly expensive admission fee to walk through a schizo-orange hallway hung with sandwich ephemera, milquetoast 1960s American radio-pop on loudspeakers. Even taking your time you emerge two minutes later, at a currywürst counter. Ordered a quantum one: “with and without intestinal”, read the menu. First bite coincident with first note of “If You’re Going To San Francisco” Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair… Had a Moment with that. All that time in the Fatherland, why was I not informed about this delicacy? Why?

Over to this bar-café to join the Brits, who’d commandeered the back room to compare notes, uproariously. Every flare-up of mirth brought one or other of a grim old German couple from the adjacent dining room to glower in the doorway. They were watching a TV in there, where some psycho on Nat Geo was dismantling a lion’s jaw with a crowbar.

Making my way back to the venue, I followed some music to its source, a little speaker, like an intercom, attached at knee-level in an out of the way corner of what looked like a government building. Ultra-modular German electro coming out of it, singing something about the internet I think, a bit in English going, bounce and burn… bounce and burn. Crouched there in the dark getting my head around that when bouncing down Knockwurststrasse looking especially burnt comes the Hagar-haired Australian who sits a couple rows back. I said hello but couldn’t get his attention, even when I stood up and waved my arms, best I could. Might have been calling him the wrong name (Tom? Tim?), but I don’t think that’s why he kept going like that. His eintausend-metre stare. Well in the zone, this chap. Deep vacancy. Mentioned this to Sean as we were sitting down for takeoff, saying we should keep an eye on the Australian, he’s ready to snap. Sean looked over at the guy, and agreed. Anybody might go, but safe money’s on Hagar over there.

Wasn’t long after takeoff that this chant emerged from some section or other of uppity music & style writers demanding, “Just one quote! Just one quote!” I think it was DJ Roger but it might have been Jason from Fuse who said, “It isn’t exactly ‘Attica, Attica’, but exhausted and drunk on a plane, I’ll take it.” The chanting, and pounding seatbacks like war-drums, clapping stomping, so forth—and the Aussie launches. Full-bore nude streak through the cabin to the back lavs and up again. As streaking goes, extra points awarded—it’s close quarters to take his downunder on walkabout, banjaxed on whatever he got hold of on the ground. Couple more points for approximating Hey Kool-Aid crashing through the work-camp wall. Stadium roar, standing O, a real boost to the esprit de corps, that called for celebration.

I went up front right away, thinking—not well, it turns out—that the vibe up there would similarly have eased. Something happened, people were laughing, in fact, cheering. Not so. The steady diet of angry reportage online plus the continual havoc hasn’t broken anybody’s team spirit (Gabe went Zen days ago), but it’s perfectly clear to everyone on board that this thing is completely off the rails, and how serious that is or might get, who knows. It had been quiet-time up there, before the commotion in back jolted people awake. Not necessarily able to make out the words of the escalating chant, let alone able to discern a tongue in a cheek, and even if you could you don’t have to be a scholar to know what happened after Marie Antoinette shrugged and went back to bed, and she had quite a bit more than a Velcro-ed polyester drape between her and the rabble. The subsequent outburst and pounding on the aircraft in ways Boeing could not have anticipated was a little alarming even if you knew it was an explosion of relief. Up in first it sounded like godknowswhat, and the cheering might have as easily been screaming, at an underwear bomber or a maniac with a boxcutter, or crazed battle cries. So up in first, people sort of barricaded in the forward galley, on red alert.

But I’d gone through the curtain going, Nah, nah, everything’s fine, just an Australian all fucked up on something running around nude. What’s the problem? Ah. Well. Even if there’s no impending siege, there are laws. Also, what’s this Australian on? Does he need to be restrained? Tased? Is more serious intervention on the ground is warranted? Are any of the hundreds of people back there, punchy, batshit, clinical, otherwise at the end of their rope upset by an unsolicited testicle encounter, while effectively captive in an airplane on Def Jam dime? What other sort of incident or incidents might occur in the boozy-boozy chaos underway back there, or would occur if someone tried to stop it? Crosses probably not only my mind, that also it’s probably not the best idea to give law enforcement any reason to invite itself aboard a plane where passengers haven’t been through any real security screening since Los Angeles, including the famously if not publicly ganja-enshrouded mega-star.

Lotta moving parts, this thing. So, no: the vibe up in first was not chill. Not for a while, until the general directive prevailed: let it be. Embrace that the streaker is as good as it’s gotten, or will get. Embrace the madness.

Back in working class, the Happening full swing, not a shut eye in the house. Fully-voiced choruses of appropriated tour anthem “We Found Love In A Hopeless Plane”. Within minutes a rumor was in circulation: the Australian is actually in the employ of a silently affiliated promotions company that had “activated” him at the proper moment, a dick-swinging, helium-sucking, Manchurian candidate. This rumor, like all the rest, originated and propagated along a known, firmly established network, and was in short order and in the usual way exposed to systematic group examination in one of the common areas, from whence a verdict was sent speeding back along the appropriate channels to the obvious point of origin, and that particular nonsensical gossip was expelled from the system. The network back here is so firmly in place now you could trace the precise path of communication on a seat map, in no less detail than the flight plan, if anybody’s still bothering with that.