MY TRIP TO GALWAY CITYGalway is a cozy, picturesque narrow city on the west coast of Ireland.
Going to Ireland was like going back in time.
Galway is the host city to the Galway Comedy Festival, in its' 2nd year,
which I went to perform in this past April, 2007...
...Along with comedian
Rosie Rebel and my drum
accompanyment, Mr. "
Touching You"...
We received a very warm reception as American comedians visiting
the festival, and were quite delighted to see that along
with festival PR person Tracy Ferguson and Irish-American
comedian Fiona Walsh, Rosie & I made the frontpage of the Galway Tribune...
(I had to screen save it because the photo is protected so that
you will purchase the photo for $10 euro...how American! But
that was the shot on the front page of the paper...)
Coincidentally, the festival fell in the midst of a water supply contamination. A nasty
little bug named Cryptosporidium had invaded the water, rendering it unsafe for
human consumption. So we could not drink any tap water or brush our teeth with it,
or we would suffer the consequences, and by the consequences, I mean diarrhea.
(Though there was some stipulation that it was a guise to get bottled water sales up.)
Regardless, the city of Galway was quite beautiful...
...lined and decorated with (bacteria infected) water...
...interesting architecture...
...and cleverly named hotels.
OUR NEW IRISH FRIENDS
In the festival, we saw some great performances, such as
Abie Philbin Bowman in"Jesus: The Guantanamo Years".
The show is about Jesus's 2nd coming, since Jesus doesn't have a
passport and is tan, he gets sent to Guantanamo Bay trying to cross
the border into America. It was funny, poignant and very informative.
The Catholic League is not going to like his show one bit!
On Quay Street, a variety of performers would
assemble to compete for the change of passers by.
One our favorite performers was David McSavage,
whose main skill was insulting people, which he was very adept at, and then
getting them to pay him for it. He made a small fortune on the streets
antagonizing people running their errands. He'll be in NYC in May, so be sure
to catch his shows, especially if you are a masochist.
We also saw this guy. We're still not quite sure what his deal was,
but we liked him. He was like a long lost relative of
Haunted Pussy.
Here we are with Kernan, a very nice Irish writer we met. He gave us a
walking tour around the city. He didn't mind that we were dressed like
gay men, carried a guitar around with us, and kept making him pose
for photos, and we didn't mind that he looked like a 70s rugby player.
I also have a really strange smile and am wearing sunglasses
that are about 100 times too big for my face in this photo.
A drunk girl who we got to chatting with on the street insisted that we
take a photo with the Irish police, who are known in Ireland as "the garda".
In Ireland, the cops don't carry guns, so they can't shoot American tourists
when we bombard them with smiles and cameras, begging for photo
souvenirs. Actually, these officers were very good sports, and not bad
lookers, as you can see. As the crime rates are so low in Ireland, the cops
don't really have much better to do than pose for pictures, anyway.
After one of the shows, I asked the audience if anyone would drive us to
the Cliffs of Moher. Low and behold, a handsome young Irish gent named
Cian approached me and said that we had met in NYC over a year prior,
and that I'd given him a CD. When he saw my name in the paper, he was surprised
and delighted, and came to see the show, dragging friends. He also offered
to take us to the Cliffs, which I will always love him for doing. Here is Cian
above, holding a bottle of boiled water, safe for drinking.
The ride to the Cliffs and back were almost as magnificent as the Cliffs
themselves, littered with ivy covered castles just sitting along the roadside...
Gloriously plush greenery along the windy, narrow
roads which we drove on the "wrong side" of...
And uh...tractors...
We parked down the road from the Cliffs and walked to them because
they built a visitor's center that now you have to pay a bunch of
money to park and enter. We thought the idea of paying to see
a natural phenomenon was WRONG. (And, we're poor). Mary
is in disguise, as she owes the government a lot of money.
The Cliffs of Moher in all their glory.
In America, getting this close to the raw, dangerous majestic
beauty would never happen, due to our sue-happy culture.
But even the Irish lawyers are smart enough to cover their
asses by posting "No running off the cliffs" signs...
(Where's the "no kids on your shoulders near the cliffs" sign?)
...and "No trying to ride the seagulls" signs...
Not that anyone gave a crap. Perhaps this is why three or four tourists
blow off the cliffs a year.
If I took 15 steps backwards, I could play a folk song all the way down.
For a moment, I really considered pushing him.
On the ride home, we learned a little bit about the Irish culture.
Apparently, it is very expensive to take a crap in the Galway countryside.
Us Americans ate "chips" for at least one meal a day. In Ireland, they
really know how to do "chips", also known in America as fries. On their
chips, they put cole slaw, curry sauce, garlic sauce, cheese and more.
They charge extra for ketchup, which over there, is like a very thick, gross
paste, and tastes more like spaghetti sauce. It is wretched, to put it kindly.
Here we are in one of our favorite chip locations.
Rosie Rebel had a little TOO much fun in Ireland...
Look at this gleaming Irish countryside! It's like a scene from a dream
that I never want to wake up from. Don't be surprised if I move to Galway
someday. Write to me, won't you?
