Dan's Papers - July 18, 2008

The King of Saudi Arabia flew in a 747 to London last week, where he was met at the airport by Prince Charles. The Prince accompanied the King down the red carpet to their waiting limousine.

Among the things mentioned in the story was that the King traveled with an entourage that filled four other 747s that trailed after him. And it made me think about entourages.

I think there are pros and cons to having an entourage.

On the plus side is that you get to meet a whole lot of girls. Also on the plus side is that anything you want, there it is. If you have a hangnail, a man comes over with a cuticle-snipper and snips it off right away. If you need a drink, you just have to hold your hand out and an aide will put a glass of something in it.

But then there are the minuses.

One of the minuses is that you get to meet a whole lot of girls. This is fine for, say, the first half an hour. But after that, you're stuck with a whole bunch of yakkity girls.

Another minus is that wherever you are, there you are. And it's always the same as where you were before. It's very hard to get to see someplace new if you have an entourage. You could go to Mongolia, and there would be your entourage. You could go to Paris, and there they would be again. It gets kind of same old, same old after a while. You're in Turkey and there is your barber, old Harry with the gold tooth. Same as in Iceland.

One of the things that's both a pro and a con is that everybody in your entourage agrees with you. It's a plus because it encourages you to have a whole lot of opinions and not be shy about expressing them. But it's a minus because it encourages you to have a whole lot of opinions and not be shy about expressing them.

And so, people with entourages often make terrible errors in judgment. But you can hardly blame them. Dumb is dumb.

The real minus is that everybody gets to know it.

Another minus about having an entourage is that they're always there. This is a good thing when you want them there. But when you want to be alone or you want to be just having a dinner for two or something, what are you supposed to do?

"Shoo," you might say. But moving an entourage out of your way is a very, very big deal.

A neat little trick that I once saw was sending your entourage up ahead, and then not showing up yourself. I personally saw this happen when I was on safari with my fiancée, Chris, in Botswana two years ago. The entourage for the King of Kuwait showed up at a tent camp where we were staying. The people arrived at the camp in automobiles that had picked them up from their aircraft that had flown onto the little dirt runway six miles away. I think, frankly, that the first part of the entourage that arrived were planeloads of automobiles and drivers who then took those who came behind to the campsite.

In any case, there were a whole lot of people in this entourage and they kept arriving. There were the wives and the concubines and the cousins and the children. And there were the dogs and dog groomers and cooks and security guards. There were the makeup people and the housekeepers and the musicians and the mullahs. And there were two tents of technicians who unpacked truckloads of electronics and radios and computers so that the King could keep in touch with what was going on back home.

But he never showed.

Overall, I'd have to say that having an entourage is a good thing. Not many people have them. So you can, in confidence, drive around with a bumper sticker on the back of your car that reads "HE WHO DIES WITH THE MOST TOYS, WINS."

Of course, if the last car of your entourage is driven by somebody who tailgates, nobody's going to see that bumper sticker except him.

Although I suppose you could send that car on ahead.

I have a friend who has an entourage out here in the Hamptons. I once tried to ask him how he liked it, but to tell you the truth, I could not get through.