The last few weeks I've been chillin with my home skillets in Edinburgh. It has been a whole new world here since I've been back because its been the Fringe. Edinburgh has the biggest Fringe festival in the world for the month of August, and it also brings a bunch of other festivals into town, like a gigantic comedy festival, fringe of the fringe, and the ever important international book festival.
The festival means that the population basically doubles with tourists, there are things to do here 24hrs a day, there are street performers everywhere, free shows, and celebrities walking around try to catch a glimpse of me all the time.
I've seen quite a few good shows. The first one I saw was actually just before the Fringe started and it was put on by one of Sarah's mates, who wrote a screen play and had it preformed. It was a pretty cool show and really introduced me into the indie feel of the fringe.
I should mention that I picked up a few shifts at Starbucks or as I like to call it now the abusive lover I can't stop going back to. Anyways the shifts have all been on George street which is a major tourist area and part of the fringe. So basically I talk to excited North Americans all day, as well as performers in the fringe. I have made a new friend at George street her name is Libby, is a Canadian/American depending on what you're looking for, who is from Utah and my new ticket and free accommodation to the Sundance film festival. Booya. The good thing about this is that my whit and charm has landed me free tickets to a few shows. One free shows I snagged was a stand up show by Greg Behrendt- aka the author of 'he's just not that into you'. He was hilarious, and I of course made an ass of myself by laughing like and obnoxious trucker on some sort of volume enhancing drug. Libby was welcomed too my comedic world with this delicate display.
Ive also gone to quite a few shows by myself that have been hilarious. My first official fringe show was entiled a Ruddy brief history of swearing. It as hilarious, and informative ( and included the Japanese curse baca!!). other shows that I've seen have included numerous stand up shows, street performers, comedic book reading, and the Moscow state circus. The later was and 80's costume/music spectacular, focusing on the life and times of Rasputin via high flying acts, clowns, and cross bow dazzlement. Could you ask for more?
I went to a stand up show on a whim a couple nights ago performed by a man named . Paul Foot He is the biggest spaz in the world who has the most outrageous haircut and flails around the stage and told three jokes- one about vans, one about loneliness, and the final one on seeking revenge on bed and breakfast owners via a "red Indian" themed psychological nightmare. It was hilarious and I also enjoyed that Russle Brand was among some of the other 15 people in the crowd (now BFF's BTW).
I have one final tid bit for everyone before this long ass blog is over. It has to start however with an explanation of a tv show over here that I quite enjoy. Its called Nevermind the Buzzcocks. Its a quiz type show that has celebrities and musical guests on two teams that basically just make fun of each other and answer a couple of questions. The link I put up there is a particularly good episode because it has Amy Winehouse on it. Now this show is made even better by its host Simon Amstle whom I've developed a crush on because of his stringy body type and witty humour. So I enjoy this show, and Simon just so happens to have a show in the festival and Sarah and I just so happen to be walking through the Pleasance ( a beer garden surrounded by festival venues) when low and behold Simon strolls by. I of course say the first thing that comes to mind to Sarah "OMG its Simon Amstel, I have the biggest boner". Simon comes a little closer and laughs quite loudly- I see this, as anyone else would, as a sign to strike up a conversation. "That's quite the laugh you have there" I say. " I know I really have got to change it" Simon says in a rather coy tone. "You know I've been told the same thing, but I think its got character" I cleverly counter, finishing with a cheeky giggle, and possibly a hair twirl. "You give my friend a big boner" chimes in Sarah with a clever grin creeping across her face. At this Mr. Amstle distorts his face into a horrified/confused/disgusted(/intrigued??) look and simply walks away. And by walk away, I mean right out of the beer garden never to be seen again. Great.
PS. the next show I'm going to see is "The Ladyboys of Bangkok"
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Flat Art Attack
alright so I'm back in Scotland- Edinburgh to be exact of course and from the lack of blogging it should be clear that I have been having an amazing time.
I'm living with my friend Sarah and Claire and they are great flatmates- both are artists which makes for both an entertaining and at times slightly frightening living situation. I shall give you some examples:
Claire enjoys writing songs in her spare time. My favorites are two ukulele numbers one called Sigourney Weaver- about the disaster that is Sigourney's hair in the Alien movies, and another that I'm not sure the name of but has a lovely melody with even lovelier lyrics. My favourite lines go 'I thought you loved me but you gave me chlamydia, well at least it wasn't aids, a. i. d. s., aids.'
Sarah on the other hand likes drawing pictures. Some of my favourites are on t-shirts with clever puns, others are violent and scare me- like the birthday card she drew me, or the pictures that are sometimes on the mirror when I get up in the morning (they often cause me to cry myself to sleep).
The recent art that has entered in this particular fashion came from a conversation that Sarah and I had about how we would do our hair for an upcoming wedding. Sarah announced that she would be doing her hair in a queef. I cleared my throat and asked her to repeat thinking I had surely not heard her properly. Alas she repeated it just as I had heard.
She asked me what the face I made was for and I explained that I think that the meaning of the word must be different and she needed to tell me about what she was talking about. Apparently in the UK queef means an elevated hairdoo usually poofed up in the front- not air escaping from a vagina in a fart like fashion like I had initially thought. Once we had a good laugh about it I was off to bed. The next morning the word queef had been written in speech bubbles all around the tub- something that really wakes you up at 7am.
I'm living with my friend Sarah and Claire and they are great flatmates- both are artists which makes for both an entertaining and at times slightly frightening living situation. I shall give you some examples:
Claire enjoys writing songs in her spare time. My favorites are two ukulele numbers one called Sigourney Weaver- about the disaster that is Sigourney's hair in the Alien movies, and another that I'm not sure the name of but has a lovely melody with even lovelier lyrics. My favourite lines go 'I thought you loved me but you gave me chlamydia, well at least it wasn't aids, a. i. d. s., aids.'
Sarah on the other hand likes drawing pictures. Some of my favourites are on t-shirts with clever puns, others are violent and scare me- like the birthday card she drew me, or the pictures that are sometimes on the mirror when I get up in the morning (they often cause me to cry myself to sleep).
The recent art that has entered in this particular fashion came from a conversation that Sarah and I had about how we would do our hair for an upcoming wedding. Sarah announced that she would be doing her hair in a queef. I cleared my throat and asked her to repeat thinking I had surely not heard her properly. Alas she repeated it just as I had heard.
She asked me what the face I made was for and I explained that I think that the meaning of the word must be different and she needed to tell me about what she was talking about. Apparently in the UK queef means an elevated hairdoo usually poofed up in the front- not air escaping from a vagina in a fart like fashion like I had initially thought. Once we had a good laugh about it I was off to bed. The next morning the word queef had been written in speech bubbles all around the tub- something that really wakes you up at 7am.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Magical Madrid
after a blog mini-break I'm actually going to finish up my summary of my Roman/Spanish adventure. I failed to inform you about my time in Madrid.
I was in the capital city for a few days by myself and really had no idea what I was going to do there because I basically just decided to go because I got a ticket for free and only a tenner for my bag. So off I went, armed with a hostel booked and directions to get there.
Well I arrived in the evening to a nice quiet hostel that was in a neighbourhood that was quite obviously in the middle of the gay district (this will come into play later on in my adventures). My room had six beds in it, of which three were available for me to chose from. I decided to chose a bed near the back of the room, mainly because the other two beds were end to end- and by end to end I mean that if I had slept in one of them I would have been touching feet with the person in the other bed.
There was a girl in the room at the time who said she was just about to head to a flamenco show with another guy from the hostel and asked me to join. For sure I was joining in this adventure. This flamenco show was traditional to the max. It was all in Spanish and the first bit appeared to be some sort of play like ghetto set up of a practice session with the musicians where the main guitarist- who I would describe as being a Spanish version of David Suzuki- would stop and talk to the audience or yell at the lighting and tech guys. Turns out the guy we were with is from California and spoke Spanish and he said what was really happening was that they were not acting, Latino David Suzuki was actually pissed at the venue and the dancers just hadn't got their costumes on yet.
Luckily the second half of the act included costumes, amazing music, and some crazy ass dancing. There is insane passion in the dancing and I've never seen feet move so face- or faces look like they are passing kidney stones, or having a zipper installed on their ass cracks.
All good though me and my new friends strolled around the busy squares afterwards, and they told me about some things that I should see and they told me about a huge flea market that happens in the streets on Sundays. My new little friend was going to go and we decided that we would head down together. But first things first we obviously needed a coffee from Starbucks. Shit doesn't open until 9 and its only 830- but don't worry there are still people out partying from the night before who would like a coffee at this point too: enter stereo typical camp gay couple and their token short fat flamboyant friend. These men were amazing. Short/fat guy whom I will now refer to Latino Danny Devito had a directors scarf on and waved his arms in the air like e was surrounded by flies.
He took one look at my friend and yelled 'you are very gay'. He was convinced of my friends gayness and explained in various ways how he was gay. We were laughing hysterically and then learned the phrase- you are more gay then a peseta; which is a very pretty Spanish coin. Anyways they ranted on and on and Latino Devito talked about my lovely blue eyes for awhile until the store opened. He then went in and stole a bunch of caramel waffles and pissed off all the employees.
It was off to the flea market which was actually the largest flea market in Europe= amazing!!! I got some fantastic stuff and had a wonderful time looking at everything from leather to used light switch sockets- interesting.
The rest of Madrid I went around the city and art galleries and found a bunch of peacocks in the national park which I then chased and collected the feathers I scared out of them as a lovely souvenir.
I was in the capital city for a few days by myself and really had no idea what I was going to do there because I basically just decided to go because I got a ticket for free and only a tenner for my bag. So off I went, armed with a hostel booked and directions to get there.
Well I arrived in the evening to a nice quiet hostel that was in a neighbourhood that was quite obviously in the middle of the gay district (this will come into play later on in my adventures). My room had six beds in it, of which three were available for me to chose from. I decided to chose a bed near the back of the room, mainly because the other two beds were end to end- and by end to end I mean that if I had slept in one of them I would have been touching feet with the person in the other bed.
There was a girl in the room at the time who said she was just about to head to a flamenco show with another guy from the hostel and asked me to join. For sure I was joining in this adventure. This flamenco show was traditional to the max. It was all in Spanish and the first bit appeared to be some sort of play like ghetto set up of a practice session with the musicians where the main guitarist- who I would describe as being a Spanish version of David Suzuki- would stop and talk to the audience or yell at the lighting and tech guys. Turns out the guy we were with is from California and spoke Spanish and he said what was really happening was that they were not acting, Latino David Suzuki was actually pissed at the venue and the dancers just hadn't got their costumes on yet.
Luckily the second half of the act included costumes, amazing music, and some crazy ass dancing. There is insane passion in the dancing and I've never seen feet move so face- or faces look like they are passing kidney stones, or having a zipper installed on their ass cracks.
All good though me and my new friends strolled around the busy squares afterwards, and they told me about some things that I should see and they told me about a huge flea market that happens in the streets on Sundays. My new little friend was going to go and we decided that we would head down together. But first things first we obviously needed a coffee from Starbucks. Shit doesn't open until 9 and its only 830- but don't worry there are still people out partying from the night before who would like a coffee at this point too: enter stereo typical camp gay couple and their token short fat flamboyant friend. These men were amazing. Short/fat guy whom I will now refer to Latino Danny Devito had a directors scarf on and waved his arms in the air like e was surrounded by flies.
He took one look at my friend and yelled 'you are very gay'. He was convinced of my friends gayness and explained in various ways how he was gay. We were laughing hysterically and then learned the phrase- you are more gay then a peseta; which is a very pretty Spanish coin. Anyways they ranted on and on and Latino Devito talked about my lovely blue eyes for awhile until the store opened. He then went in and stole a bunch of caramel waffles and pissed off all the employees.
It was off to the flea market which was actually the largest flea market in Europe= amazing!!! I got some fantastic stuff and had a wonderful time looking at everything from leather to used light switch sockets- interesting.
The rest of Madrid I went around the city and art galleries and found a bunch of peacocks in the national park which I then chased and collected the feathers I scared out of them as a lovely souvenir.
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