I was supposed to be here yesterday. Which in this case, means Tuesday, because right now it’s 8 a.m. Wednesday.

Having completely confused you, let me say I was totally flummoxed when I showed up at the airport on Sunday night and they wouldn’t let me get on the plane. Turns out you’ve got to have six months of validity left on your passport to get into Singapore, and I only had four, mine expiring at the end of September. I killed myself to get ready, I flew from the east coast and am still somewhere over Nevada mentally and you’re not gonna let me go?

Then I don’t want to go at all.

It’s like the worst case of blue balls ever. I’m ready to orgasm and then..?

So I call Felice in the car and she comes back to pick me up and when I get on the Internet I find out there are these expediting companies, that get you a passport fast. I gave one a ring. Even though it was Sunday night, they picked up.

No can do. He had no slots until Tuesday.

Well, what if I just showed up at the Federal Building myself, I don’t live that far away…

He gave me a number to try.

Turned out they couldn’t see me until Tuesday either, which begs the question why I’d need the expediting company, but if I don’t get my passport until Tuesday it means I don’t arrive until Thursday and then I’m gonna go home on Sunday?

You see it’s an eighteen hour flight. I had no idea when I agreed. Twelve, fourteen even, no big deal. But I crack open the "Wall Street Journal" a couple of months back and there’s this whole article about the longest flight in the world being from L.A. to Singapore. Oh, you can go nonstop from NYC too, but because of the curvature of the earth, it’s the same distance.

Whoa.

So I e-mail Jasper, who runs the conference, and tell him my dilemma.

He calls and tells me to sit tight. They’re gonna fix it with the government.

Huh?

All over the world, the game remains the same, it’s who you know.

And I stayed up until two a.m., five p.m. in Singapore, the end of the business day, to see if there was a resolution, but no e-mail came in. I’m lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, literally wondering whether I’m coming or going.

And it doesn’t pay to wake up early, and I don’t, but when I do there’s e-mail from Adrian, Jasper’s fixer, that it’s all been taken care of, that I’ve just got to show this e-mail at the check-in counter and at immigration and it will all work out.

Yeah, right.

I mean for a moment there, I was relieved. Then I contemplated the situation, what if I flew all that way and I couldn’t get in?

So with trepidation, I entered the International Terminal at LAX last night. Or was that two days ago… Who knows?

And I made a bad choice. I found the one guy who didn’t speak English that well. And I handed him the printout of the e-mail and he shook his head no and then he said he had to talk it over with his boss and disappeared for fifteen minutes.

Whereupon, Troy Carter proceeds to check in next to me.

And when he’s gone, while I’m still waiting, John Meglen checks in on the other side. Well, if I ever actually get on this flight, at least I’ve got friends.

So the clerk comes back and says they photocopied my document. Maybe I’ve seen too many spy movies, it made my anxiety rise, but they were gonna let me on the plane, so I went with it.

In the lounge I ran into Bob Ezrin. Who’s telling me about flying to Beijing after Singapore to get this woman to sing on the Two Cellos album, and I had no idea what that was either, but they’re Croatian, if I heard correctly, and they’re signed to Sony and Elton’s got some involvement.

And on the walk to the gate to the bus to the plane, I introduce Meglen and Ezrin and they become fast friends and I’m left out.

Oh well.

Who knows where Troy is…

And the plane is all business class. And at first I think the lighting is bad, but then it turns out there are lights in the seats!

And in addition to having wi-fi, you can even use your phone on the plane. I guess once you leave U.S. airspace, there’s no danger… Ha!

And I’m doing okay for a couple of hours, they serve me scallops and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, and then dread starts to sink in. I’ve only got…fifteen more hours?

Which is when I see Ezrin and Meglen circling the plane.

They call me over and we end up discussing the status of the world. Everything from EDM to Celine to Vegas and we were having a grand old time until Ezrin pooped out and I figured we were done but Meglen wanted to keep talking.

Whereupon I heard how a boy from Montana ends up promoting everyone from Celine to Prince. He tells me how he squired McCartney and Nancy around Coachella after they landed in their plane just before Swedish House Mafia. McCartney stayed to the end, and then whisked off to Uruguay.

So John is the concert guy at Washington State. And he hangs around Concerts West long enough to get some work…booking limos.

And from there he goes to L.A. to Cohl to Pace to SFX to Concerts West.

And so much was off the record that I really can’t explain to you what’s happening at the tippity-top of the concert world right now. But I will say they had to cancel a bunch of Avicii dates in arenas. In secondary markets, not enough people wanted to go. But if it had been in a tent…

And the flight attendant comes over to tell us the patrons are complaining, that we’re talking too loud, which is of course astounding, since there’s so much jet and wind noise.

But we go back a few rows and continue and on one hand I felt I should go to sleep and on the other…hell, I was having a good time, and anything that ate up the time…

Eventually we did sleep, woke up to some quiche and sausage and landed in a torrential rainstorm. I thought the plane’s lights were blinking, but it was lightning. Again and again and again.

And right now I’m sitting in the Ritz-Carlton, staring out at rush hour traffic from an incredible room. With a couch and a large bathroom…I could live here.

Well, not quite.

And we’ll talk a bit of business, we’ll have a few good meals. And I don’t know how much of Singapore I’ll really see, then again, they say there’s not that much to see. But I don’t want to be one of those musicians who doesn’t know whether he’s in Cleveland, Dayton or Louisville…