24nov1998
Earlier this year, Kelly Lyles offered to take Wagner to Egypt with her to visit the Pyramids. This is something Wagner (not to mention Deuce of Clubs) has always wanted to do. Unfortunately, the terrorist / tourist attack at the Pyramids scotched that trip. Shortly thereafter, however, another Egyptian tour offer came in, this one from Wisconsin resident Tim Hansen. Naturally, the offer was immediately accepted. Egypt! I mean ... c'mon!
Well, Tim's tour turned out to be more than I expected -- as did the travelog he assembled later. The tour actually included xlnt photos of many longed-for sights: the Pyramids, the Sphinx, Petra, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Switzerland, et al., along with a number of Tim's adept Photoshop photodetournments. The travelog included four hundred+ photoscans (I mean, it might seem like it, but believe it or not, not every photo I take of Wagner ends up on the WWW) accompanied by a lot of textual commentary. A LOT of textual commentary (almost 100 pages' worth!) -- much of it, furthermore, resembling religious textual commentary. See, I hadn't realized this was more or less a "holy land" tour. In addition, there was a fair amount of somewhat personal and (to me) incomprehensible and/or uncomfortable material, more suited for Tim's personal website. Except he doesn't have one. (Well, I guess now he does.)
It wasn't the type of Wagnerian guest-conducting people are used to here at Deuce of Clubs. Wagnerian guest-conducting has always featured pretty much what my own Wagnerian conducting features: photos of Wagner in goofy places, along with some smart-ass commentary. While each guest conductor's work has a personal style, there is a certain tone and approach they share that some of Tim's material lacks.
Don't misunderstand me, here: young Tim is a good guy, and it was good of him to drag the Old Boy all the way to Africa. And he got some cool snaps, as you'll see. Nevertheless, having translated Tim's material into HTML, I was uncomfortable enough to contact him and suggest an alternate plan. Given that I hadn't really provided guidelines for his text (figuring precedent was enough), I would go ahead and upload his material as it was, but I would also use those of his photos I liked best to construct a sort of QuickTour of Wagner's Mideastern travels more along the lines of the usual Wagner fare featured at Deuce of Clubs.
The upshot: you have your choice between Tim's own account of his trip ("Perpetual Peregination"), or the Deuce of Clubs base-and-jaded, wot-the-hell-I-wasn't-even-there QuickTour ("Wag Like An Egyptian").
For you, the reader, it may be a simple question of how much work time you want to waste.
