IMMORTALIZED - Michael Jackson The Immortal World Tour by Cirque Du Soleil

Chapter 3: First Tour Stop In The Good Ol' America

October 14, 2011 - October 16, 2011
Detroit, Michigan

We landed a little before two in the morning since there was turbulence as we landed in Detroit. It woke all sleeping up because of the plane shaking back and forth. “What the hell is going on?” Adrian awoke. “Just wind, calm your tits.” Ryan said in response. We had been dealing with it the entire flight, just not this bad. Once we finally landed, it was quite a different procedure. We had to actually enter the airport and go through customs. Luckily, it was early in the morning, marking no one there and they had opened a private area for the tour personnel to go through. While waiting in line to go through customs, I unlocked my passport, Ryan’s passport (for some reason), and the boy's passports from my backpack and distributed them. “As soon as you get through, give them right back to me.” I said. They nodded.
It wasn’t hard for anyone on the tour to get through. It was more to just register ourselves into the country. For people like the boys and I, Desiree, Shondra, Tara, etc, it was a breeze because we are citizens of the country. Once through customs, we were escorted to an area where we could pick up our bags, after they were checked. I saw they forgot to lock a part of the school case, which confirmed that they had snooped around it a bit. As normal, I place my smaller of my rolling luggage on top of the school case as I tilted and rolled it out to the bus. The driver helped me put it onto the bus, along with the rest of my things. On the bus, they did attendance and we were off. The boys were awake by this point and didn’t sleep for the twenty minute ride through Detroit. It was all becoming blurry for me. As we arrived at the hotel, we once again had to wait in line and get our keys. Thankfully this time, they had two envelopes for Adrian and Marcell’s room. One of them went with me while one with them. I got the room keys for Leo and I and we headed up a multitude of floors, almost to the top. We seperated into our rooms. “I’m coming in twenty minutes to say ‘goodnight’ I said to Adrian and Marcell. I wasn’t sure if they heard me or not.
I parked the school case and spent a few minutes settling in the room, where we would be sleeping for the next three nights. When I realized how late it was, almost four in the morning, I went over to the Abiatelli’s and enforced going to bed. There was no arguing. I’m surprised I even saw them awake. I’m sure they weren’t up long after I went to bed. Once I turned the lights off in my room and laid down on my bed, I only thought a few thoughts before I dozed off.
Whatever happened last night, nothing, I barely remembered as I woke up. I actually was confused and really needed to think of where I was. “Oh yeah, Detroit.” I said to myself, raising my head from the pillow. I reached over and grabbed my phone. ‘2:30’ it read. I’ve honestly slept the entire day away. My friends back in Bethel had already gone through an entire days worth of school. I had just woken up. And I love sleep too.
Adrian and Marcell eventually came into my room. They had been up a lot of the morning. Leo had yet to get up, and I sat silently in my bed watching TV. No word from Ryan. “What do you guys wanna do today?” I asked. Adrian had already planned out his day. I give them as much freedom as I can, and let them go places alone, within limits. If you want to go to the pool, they can go ahead. Adrian had apparently already reserved a 3:30 athletes massage at the spa. “Okay..... How about you guys? What are you guys doing?” I asked. They shrugged. We had decided that since Adrian was going to his thing, Ryan had made other plans, we’d go explore the hotel since it has a lot of Motor memorabilia, being the Motor City Hotel.
The afternoon was spent admiring all of these cars, motorcycles and all of these accessories the hotel had nailed to walls, behind glass and ropes. I tried not taking too many pictures but it didn’t work too well. I must of taken at least fifty, all which will go up on Facebook sometime today. This hotel does not have a pool, so afterwards we just had the idea of hanging out in our rooms. We didn’t want to go out until the night time anyway since the area we’re in apparently has a lot of cool lights at night that we want to see. Plus, we’re still tired AND have all day tomorrow before work. We are excused from this press day due to the problems last press day.
Dinner that night was at the Hard Rock Cafe. We had to take a Taxi since it wasn’t within walking distance. Taxi’s are very expensive in this city, so we had to split it, unlike the usual one of us covers the entire drive and we rotate. It’s becoming a theme for going to the HRC’s. Each one we go to, I get a sticker that has the local brands logo on it, and when I get back to the room, I stick it on my suitcase. It’s literally our favorite place to eat and they are EVERYWHERE, literally.
We stayed up late playing video games in Adrian and Marcell’s room, until almost eleven. We travel with an Xbox 360 and PS3, both which are stored in the school case while we transfer. The night was all about Mario-kart, which I virtually suck at, but Ryan rocks at. I don’t normally do video games. I had to eventually enforce bedtime at 11:30 when I realized that they weren’t getting tired. One bad thing about this tour is that since our schedules vary, nobody ever has a normal sleep cycle to follow.
I let Leo stay up a bit later than Adrian and Marcell since he was talking to his cousin on skype. I don’t know why his cousin, who’s two years younger than Ryan and I, was up this late, but I didn’t ask. Then I realized that we’re three hours ahead of Bethel. It’s not my problem. Leo was off skype and trying to fall asleep around midnight while I stayed up and returned some emails that I had been lacking doing all week.
The following day was our first US Premiere show. It was very exciting. When I awoke, a little after nine, I took a picture of what I saw first in the hotel room with the caption “Waking up to this for our first show in the United States today!”
I was first up this morning, which was Odd because Ryan is usually up before me. I ended up waking him up over a text and asking him to go find something to eat with me. “Pweeeaaaassse?” I texted him. “Ugh...fine.” He replied. The two of us met in the hallway and we went down the elevator to a breakfast buffet. We were seated by a gentlemen who didn’t seem too happy with his job. Some woman came and we ordered drinks, then were invited to go and serve ourselves at the buffet. Walking over to this mile long table, my mouth just dropped. “Holy shit, they have everything.” I told Ryan. He was near speechless, going straight for the plates, followed by the bacon which looked cooked perfectly.
Ryan and I spent an hour down at this buffet, just pigging out. The other three boys found us and sat at their own table about half way through our meal. They are responsible enough to do things on their own. When Ryan and I decided to leave, I told them to take their time, and meet us back upstairs when they finish. On our way up, we passed by Tina and Desi who were going out shopping. “What are you guys doing today?” asked Tina in her sexy asian voice. Her Sexy Asian voice is a joking voice that she uses when messing around with you. It’s deep and supposed to seduce you. “No clue, probably going to walk around the area.” Ryan said.
We did so. Once the boys were back upstairs and all five of us were ready to go for the day, we headed out of the hotel and walked around the streets of this short city. I’ve been used to large buildings and such but no, this was a short city, with actual houses, small shops, nothing like we’ve been dealing with for the past five months. It was hard finding something to do, very hard in fact. The most entertainment we got out of this city was buying a basketball at a Sports Authority and then going to the park’s basketball court and shooting hoops for an hour. Not surprisingly, this brought out some choreography from Jam. Hey, when you live, breath, eat and work these dances and this job for as much as we do, it’s more than natural.
We went back to the hotel around five, grabbed a few things, dropped off the basketball and then went out front of the hotel and waited for the shuttle. This was the first stop on tour where the arena really isn’t within walking distance of the hotel, so we needed to take a shuttle, provided to us. For some stupid reason, we got onto the shuttled timed at the busiest time, so we all had to pack into this small little bus. Marcell, Leo and I crammed into two seats in the back corner of the bus. But it wasn’t too bad. The ride is only about five minutes and we spent the majority of it singing along to the radio.
Before being able to start preparing for the show, there was an all staff meeting. This hasn’t happened since Ottawa, so something is probably up. Getting out onto the floor and looking at the stage, people gasped. I could tell that something was missing but couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Then it hit me. The upper half of the giving tree, the branches were all missing. “The branches are missing! Somebody stole our tree!” Marcell exclaimed. That was what this meeting was about, well a part of the meeting. “As you can see, the tree is missing. It’s up at headquarters being repaired for some technical problems. Hopefully we’ll have it back by Friday night for Toronto, definitely not for London this week though. So, for big numbers like Thriller where you dance on the branches, do the same thing but on the ground. You are all professionals, you can figure it out. Secondly, I’m sorry to say but your November break is going to be cut short by two days. Sorry, one day. We need to do some restaging and some work on some things before Salt Lake City, so instead of having the call day being the 27th of November, it’s going to be the 26th. We’ll then have rehearsals on the 27th, the 28th and have our first Salt Lake City show that night. Everybody got it? I’ll be sending out an email in a bit just as a reminder.” Cherylie told us. I had to repeat the entire thing to Adrian, Marcell and Leo who didn’t quite understand. Tara said she’ll tell their parents.
When it came to go out into the audience prior to the show, it was very exciting to perform in our home country for the first time. We’re nowhere near home, but its a sense of being home after being in Canada for almost five months. Getting to perform here is even better. Then again, we have another ten months of performing in the United States after our trip back to Canada after Detroit.
After the show, we did our normal after routine, without the packing up and went back to the hotel. I tend to plan ahead... a lot. I looked up things to do in London Ontario for our day off there on Monday, and there was nothing that really appealed to us. Nothing really at all. I figured that it would be a perfect day to spend some of it doing homework. So instead of pushing the boys to do school tomorrow morning, I’ll have them do it on Monday afternoon after I let them sleep in from the transfer the night before. Of course, it’s their decision, but they agreed with me.
Being that, I let the boys stay up as they wanted. None of them made it past one in the morning. Leo was the first to go, and I’m not sure what happened after that since they are in different rooms. Leo fell asleep on the couch so I ended up carrying him from the couch to his bed. He was out cold and didn’t even awake as I moved him. Once I laid down, I stayed up watching TV. I probably should’ve gone to bed but didn’t feel like it. I was too awake. That coffee after dinner was probably not the best idea.
I was woken in the middle night by a knocking at the door. So was Leo. At first we thought it was something coming from outside, but then it happened again. I got out of bed and opened the door. It was Marcell. “Marcell, what’s up?” I asked. I don’t know what time it was, but I have not completed my sleep cycle, so it was still early for me. “There is something going on in the room below us, and their really loud. We can’t go back to sleep.” Marcell said. I looked up and saw Adrian standing at the door, rubbing his eyes. I walked across the hall and into their room. I heard clear screaming and loud noises from below. I looked at the clock. It was four in the morning. I did the first thing that came to mind. I went onto the in room phone and called the front desk. “Front Lobby” a woman answered. “Yes.... Hi. I’m in room 773 and the people below us are screaming and doing some really loud stuff and it’s driving us insane. We can’t fall back asleep.” I told her. “Okay, well I’ll send someone down and if they keep it up in about ten minutes, give me a call back please.” She replied. “Thank you very much.” I said, then hung up the phone. “So?” Adrian asked. “They’re handling it.” I told him. I stayed up with them until the noise quieted down, and it quieted down fast. I had a brief moment where I thought one or both of them had been killed. Not my problem though. I sent the boys back to bed, went back to bed myself and didn’t have any more interruptions for the rest of the night.
This was not a long stay, in fact, this short stay in the US did not seem anything less than three days. Believe it or not, we fly to London Ontario tonight. Tonight will also be our tenth show, so it’s very important. Our first stop in the US will be over, it’ll be the tenth show, it’s monumental!
I spent a large majority of the afternoon with Adrian. I had bought Final Cut Pro for my laptop and sent it to Adrian’s computer. Yes, it’s illegal, but its very expensive to buy two. I had spent a semester the previous year in school going through a class on the program, so I was pretty familiar with it. I brought Adrian through a lot of the features on it so he would know how to navigate the program, something he was eager to learn.
Following the afternoon spent doing absolutely nothing in Detroit, we started packing up. A lot was unpacked in our rooms since we had spent a lot of time there. We barely found anything good to do in Detroit and for a lot of the time the boys played video games. So it took a good amount of time to actually pack up our things and organize what we needed.
After the night’s show, we headed back to the hotel, grabbed our things and spent no time getting down to the bus. We had left the arena late due to some visitors we had. I have no idea who they were but they needed to leave through the back door and none of us were permitted to leave the building until the security got this person out. Quite abnormal. So we booked it getting down to the bus, loading our things and heading onto the bus. We sat in the very front of the bus so we could quickly get off as we got into the airport. Sadly, all five of us fell asleep on the bus to the airport and were woken by Tara as she exited the bus to the airport. I quickly needed to regain focus and get them off the bus. I shook them to wake up. Marcell was playing games with me. I was able to get Adrian and Leo off the bus but Marcell would not move. I do not know what got into him. Usually it’s his brother who has a hard time with the waking up part, but I thought Marcell might be on sleeping pills, that’s how dead he was. I finally had been fed up. I put on my backpack, picked him up, carrying him like you’d carry a baby, with my arm under his but and my other arm holding his bag and carried him off the bus. Leo was right outside of the bus, waiting for us with his camera ready. He snapped a picture. “Really?” I asked him. He shrugged.
Luckily, as we went to board the plane, the TSA woman doing the wand understood that I was carrying a young boy who was sleeping and could wand us together, without waking him up. I like my job, why would I blow up the plane? I sat Marcell down in the seat against a window and sat in the seat next to him. “You’re brother is out cold.” I told Adrian. Looking over at Adrian in the seat across the aisle, he and Leo were nearly there too. Turning around, Ryan WAS there.
I’m pretty sure the only reason we took a plane to London Ontario was because it’s easier to get through customs than having to pull everyone off the bus at the border while driving. The drive is two hours long, but with the bus rides, security customs and flight, it’s about the same. We didn’t get into the hotel in London until a little before three. We probably cut maybe twenty minutes out of driving. But then again, I’m not the one paying for the flight. I just enjoy it. Partially. I didn’t get a lick of sleep on the flight while Ryan and the boys slept. I pondered if I would need to carry Marcell out again. It wasn’t going to happen. Once we landed and as we taxied, I shook Marcell to wake him up. He awoke with a startle. “I’m not carrying you off the plane, we need to go through customs, so you gotta wake up.” I told him. He moaned but understood.
Once off the plane and in line for customs, it was a bit longer going into Canada, but it moved relatively fast. We work for Cirque Du Soleil, they automatically love us. Once on the bus outside of the airport, Marcell was fast asleep. He lagged like a computer walking to the bus and putting his bags in the compartment. He couldn’t get on the bus fast enough. I wonder how long it will take him to find his room and go to bed?
So yes, we’re back in Canada for another three weeks. We just can’t get rid of Canada. I’m sick of Canada! Five months of the canadian bacon and mooses wandering the street. Well that’s a bit stereotypical, but it’s the first thing that comes to mind. It’s something that you always expect to see in Canada but never do, along with all the ‘Eh’s at the end of the sentences. That never happens.