Tour Journal -- EDINBURGH FRINGE FESTIVAL
Every day waking up in this apartment is so terrific. My two roomies, Ben and Mike, in addition to being swell fellas and hilarious bastards, make for truly enjoyable morning interactions. That's important -- not all friends are good for morning interaction, TRUST ME.
Just about every morning Ben gets up and cooks "pudding" which is actually oatmeal, and puts fruit cake chunks in it. I think he thought he was buying raisins, but instead he bought little hard green and orange chunks that make me want to barf up his nice gesture. Along with some nice orange slices or a hard boiled egg and tea, we've got ourselves a healthy way to start this bee-yotch RIGHT. I also take a multi-vitamin every day (they pronounce it v(lowercase i)t-a-min) because I gotta keep this machine well oiled. It makes me not feel so guilty about all the "chips" (fries) I've been eating.
I also like to go for nice bike rides on the new fluorescent day glo orange bike I bought. It's sort of a piece of junk, but it gets me from point a to point b relatively smoothly. I bought it off a nice junk shop fella who tries to kiss me and get me to have tea every time I walk by. It was 35 pounds which was kind of a lot, but I'm sooooo glad to have a bike here. It makes my life so much easier. I'm about 2 miles away from my venue, and I am also getting a nice work out every day. Ben and a few of my other friends have bikes too, so we take little bike excursions and ride around the city together.
You can even ride your bike to the top of the hill, the mound, or Arthur's Seat, which ever you prefer to call it. It's a rough work out and left me super winded, but it feels really good coming down and it's simply gorrrr-geous at the top.
More proof that the brits are innately naturally hysterical:
Tonight I was lucky enough to go to the opening press party at Guilded Balloon, one of the big fancy venues here at Edinburgh. So far, I've been to the Assembly, Hullaballoo and Udderbelly parties, and though those were all lots of fun as well with free drinks, free food and great shows, the Guilded Balloon was really the best, and I'd be lying if I said otherwise. The food was the best with tons of plates of vegetarian treats being ushered around by friendly folks dressed like grooms, the drinks were the best with lots of glasses of nice red wine and trays of mojitos with fresh mint, and the show was the best with great comedians, aerialists, musicians and even the chippendales!
My new pal Felicity Ward who I met in London after Reggie's show one night was in the Guilded Balloon preview show, and she nailed it! A feminist leaning Aussie with a guitar and a smart mouth, she's my kind of gal.
The comedians were almost all good, but the aerialists really had me in awe. I love gymnasts. It's what I would have been in another life.
Ooooh! Aaaaah!
Those people appear to be pretty comfortable hanging and spinning on objects that are suspended from rods that were just tossed up there a few days ago by brutes who are probably making minimum wage.
The other thing that had me in awe was the amount of free alcohol in buckets the ushers supplied to the audience. Every time I turned my head someone was shoving a Heinekin or a glass of wine in my face, and my face was opening up and accepting it with delight. I was going to stick around and catch Janeane Garofalo's show, but it was running late and I had to zip off to the opening night of my show!
Here I am in a lovely, classy little number, stopping just long enough to have my picture snapped.
I got to the venue early and sat on the stairs, going over my show and getting mentally prepared, when I felt a heavy splat on my script and purse. I looked closer to see two serious piles of bird shit. I couldn't believe it! I'd been shat on just moments before I was supposed to go on stage! A comedian friend standing near by commented on what good luck it was to get shit on by a bird, but I don't buy it. It's obviously bad luck, because a BIRD just SHIT on you. Of all the places the shit could have landed, it landed on ME. That is BAD LUCK. However, I should be happy, because one inch over and it would have landed on my pretty black dress, or on my FACE, and then I would have had to stop being a vegetarian and teach that beast a lesson.
I was really happy with the way my first night went. I had an audience, which was comforting! There was one guy who was heckling me through out the show but I gave him the what for and made him my bitch. At one point, the audience even applauded my return heckles. Ha! Take that, buster brown!
A friend in the audience shared some feedback from the show which gave me some ideas and I hope the shows will just get better and better.
I was feeling a little sad after my show for some reason. I think it was because I couldn't find my friends or the venue that Mike's show was at, and some things my friend had said in his feedback session had left me feeling a little reflective. I was riding around trying to find Mike's show, asking people for directions, and as usual, no one had any freaking idea where anything was or how to get anywhere. I swear. I have no idea how british people ever get anywhere at all. No one seems to know where anything is. As I was asking the 9th or 10th person where the Edinburgh Football Club is (that's where Mike's show is), I fell like a log off my bike. It was unbelievable. I just tumbled right off of it and onto the ground. And no one helped me up! There were 7 or 8 guys standing there and not one offered me a hand. Finally, a guy came over and was like, "Are you alright?" And I was like, "I'd be a hell of a lot better if instead of standing there with your thumb up your ass you helped me up." I didn't really say that, I sprung to my feet like a ballerina who was just tricking them all, and said, "Ya! I'm great! I'm fine!" I then promptly went around the corner, holding back tears, and inspected my wounds, which were pretty minor for how hard I'd fallen on that crazy hard Scotch concrete. I was not feeling too friendly and was sort of humiliated, so when a beggar came over asking me for change, he only got about three words into his pitch when he got a look at the expression on my face and said, "I'll just be on me way."
Tomorrow is Friday, that's party day. Hopefully no bird shits or no bike falls will be had.
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