I’m doing the Edinburgh Fringe this year and I’ve already fucked it up: Entry 27 The Jeremy Kyle Cock show

It is the next to the last day at the Fringe so I drag my ass out of bed and make my way to the Grassmarket weekend market and enjoy posh people’s yard sales. There is a lot of breakable stuff and costume jewelry my grandmother would have loved to own but would never have put on. 

I saw an incredibly expensive dream catcher and it reminded me of the one we had in the house growing up. My mother collected Native American art and there was so much of it in the house people thought we were part Native American. Looking back, I think her being an orphan, she really identified with the displacement they have experienced. The Trail of Tears played a significant theme in the decor now that I think about it. I don’t know why that’s never occurred to me before.  Ugh, that’s grim. At least she was a fan of Southwest pastels which made our home look like the set of the Golden Girls if it was filmed in Nevada. 

Anyway,  there seem to be new people in town and they look less tired. The end is in sight but as I overheard a woman at the next table say “Edinburgh’s never really over. It just keeps going.” She’s right. It can be a hamster wheel. 

The weather is unseasonably hot for this part of the world and I should have cut the show down a bit when I saw people really struggling not to pass out but I wanted to see if I could power it through and make it work anyway. I think they would have appreciated more oxygen but everyone seemed very happy with the show and the venue staff said they were hearing great comments outside the room. 

I really like this point of the fringe where I have memorized the show to the point that I can just really get into it. I even added a new bit and it fits like a glove. It’s nice to “live in the show”. I don’t know how else to put it. 

I see a video of myself doing stand up on the Twisted Mirror TV App and think, “I have got to get a lip brush to apply red lip stick with. I look insane.”

I see the most pierced woman in the world on the Royal Mile. Her name is Elaine which means she was born to have over 6,000 piercings or go into accounting. 

I do the finale of Imaginary Porno Charades and did a pretty good “Peter Pants”  and threaten to beat a team member with a stool to get them to guess “The Jeremy Kyle Cock Show”  but fail with that one. 

Naked people ran through the show as tends to happen at some point towards the end of the Fringe. It’s happened so often with this one streaker that I can tell they’ve been hitting the gym over the past couple of years and think, “ Good for them. It’s nice to see people taking care of themselves at the Fringe for a change.” 

After eating a pound of warm cheese, I make my way to an industry bar. People are not so much starting to unwind as much as unravel. People are pushy making their way to the bar and making the most out of the last few hours of the most social time of the year. I run into Yuriko and I am so proud of the both of us for having fun this year. Yay us. 

A little after three, I get a taxi home and have a lovely chat with the  driver about the festival. 

He doesn’t go to any shows. He is too busy but go to a sport thing to unwind ( the mixture of Edinburgh accent and unfamiliar team names make it impossible for me to decipher what sport he is actually talking about. )

When he asked me, “ What do you do for fun during the festival?” I said, “ Listen to podcasts about Jerry Epstein, the Opioid Crisis and for-profit prisons in America to remind me that in the grand scheme of things, the festival doesn’t really matter.

The taxi-driver said, “ Well, as long as you enjoy it...”

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I’m Doing the Edinburgh Fringe and I’ve already fucked it up: Entry 22&23 Two 4 One

Alright, the boyfriend came a few days ago and gloriously shook up my daily Fringe routine. After Brunch at Belushi’s, we head to Bob’s Bus a venue and a bar with sofas. My boyfriend’s walker is outside and acts as a sign to all that pass by that the mischief maker is in. 

Edinburgh is physical brutal on everyone but the hills and cobblestone are particularly vicious for those with a walker or wheelchair. The other day I saw an able-bodied person zip past me on a Segway three times and I just wanted to deck him. 

We stay in the bus for a few hours and watch comedian Chris Betts’ solo comedy hour upstairs on the bus. It’s a great show with some convincing reasons to take up smoking. 

I go and meet up with my superb flyerer a couple of hours before the show. It’s a grueling job and the people that do it deserve a pat on the back and the knowledge that what they do is very much appreciated. 

Italian comedian and longtime friend Stefano Rapone comes to the show and for a Sunday, it is a downright raucous and fun audience that picked up on even the subtlest jokes and segues. I get to push them further than most of my audiences. Not that the show is pretty much imprinted on my brain, I feel more relaxed and able to play a bit more. 

The boyfriend, Stefano and I go get a bite to eat after as we talk about the shows we are going to see and what we have seen. I go and do a spot at a midnight show that is less of a show and more of a cult which is how the host describes it and it fits. The spot went fine but I was still buzzing from my earlier much higher energy audience. Who cares? Mmy boyfriend is in town! It’s time for pickle tickles and bed, an excellent way to end a fringe day. 

The next day is date day. I am super excited because I’ve gotten my boyfriend to agree to come with me to a play I’m sure we will both love. Every year for my birthday I make him take me to a musical and then TGI Friday’s because he hates them both and the fact that he does it anyway shows me just how much he loves me.

My boyfriend is a Shakespeare nerd and I’ve gone to see proper Shakespeare theatre with him before but even the best performances are taxing. Listening To traditional Shakespeare for more than an hour is like listening in on an intense corporate takeover meeting in a second language. You know it’s important you follow what’s going on but your vocabulary just isn’t what it needs to be for a lot of it. 

This show sounds perfect for us. One of my favorite comedians doing a one-man Shakespeare play in layman’s terms in an hour. I even check to make sure the venue is accessible and it is. My boyfriend is only excited by the opportunity to tease me for liking this comedian and if it means he’ll come with, I’m fine with it. I’m also excited to watch this play because the last time I had to read it, it was taught by a substitute teacher that later I found out is now in jail for being a pedophile. It would be nice to remember this particular Shakespeare play as something other than “something a pedophile taught me in school”. 

It is a really great performance. It made the play accessible and really fun. My boyfriend and I later both reckon it will do well in schools. As soon as the performance ends, my boyfriend says” Well, that was pointless. Why wouldn’t you just watch the real thing?” I should have known he would feel that way especially since he quoted whole chunks of the original as we made our way to the venue. What a nerd. 

I had a lovely and lively show and afterwards took a friend to see one of my favorite shows of the Fringe, Karaoke Saved My Life. I enjoy going and egging other people on to get up on stage and sing something out of their range. There are a lot of people with great voices in the audience and are most likely in shows at the Fringe themselves. Those people are fun but not the funnest. The funnest are the one’s that belt it out as best they can with no technical ability but are all heart. The second best are the ones that suddenly discover for the first time they have a beautiful voice. It’s like watching a chick hatch from an egg. 

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I'm doing the Edinburgh Fringe and I've Already Fucked it up Entry 21:Disney Crap

I have tried and failed to watch three shows. One’s run is already finished, one was too far away to get to in time and the last one was sold out.  I made like I was playing baseball and took the bench at Starbucks. I have never been one to plan my fringe ahead of time. I always plan on reading the broscure when it comes in but is is a dull read-through,  a three-hundred plus page thesaurus of , “brilliant must-see show”. The boring photos in the programme are either due to the fact that they are famous in the UK or that they have no idea what they are doing at the Fringe and their image is giving you a pretty good clue as to what to expect.

I decide to buy tickets to the Rose McGowan show for the next day because I loved listening to her cut through the bullshit and rip Hollywood apart on a podcast that didn’t know quite how to handle someone so unwilling to play the game anymore. I don’t know anything about it and am prepared for anything. 

  The show is rammed tonight and everyone is game for the show although some have clearly had too much to drink and it gets a bit rowdy. I tend to attract hecklers probably because I don’t hate them and relish to opportunity to say something mean to someone that really deserves it. I can put someone in their place every now and it’s nice to exercise that muscle. A comedian friend wanted to come into my show but it was just too packed and I have no problems with making drunk punters sit in a sauna of a room but I would hate to do that to someone I would actually see again. 

The show goes well even though I know parts of  the show so well at points that I could almost be going too fast like a Southern  auctioneer in my race to finish the show before the heat finishes my audience. 

I go to the Disney Dance party. There is, sad to say, very little Disney in it. I was expecting to do sing-a-longs and instead tried to jump up and down to Green Day for an hour. The bright side is four of the people at my show earlier were also at this party and it was nice to drink and try to dance with them. 

I then braved the industy bar and ran into my new Fitbit buddy, Caroline Mabey.. I’d say we navigated the networking waters pretty well and I headed home at approximately 2:45 am. (I have realized that I hate everyone after 3:00am and it is best to just to go home before the less-likable me comes out.) On my way home,  I eat street-vendor  bratwurst and I know this is a sign I am drunk because it smells like heaven.

 Night night.Er.r uhh..good morning

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I’m doing the Edinburgh Fringe this year and I’ve already fucked it up 2019: Entry 18 Horizontal Mambo No 5.

Sleep! How long has it been since the last time we’ve seen each other? Yes, it has been too long. I agree but I am so glad we caught up! I feel so much better now. 

Struggling to keep my head out of the Fringe bubble as the guilt of not seeing more shows is creeping up on me. I aim to see one show a  day and this year want to see more stuff not comedy related just to cleanse the palate.

I am slow leaving the house as I was waiting for the other people in the flat to leave before I stank up the toilet. The window is too hard for me to open and will just have to trust that an open door with dissipate the stench eventually. I discover I have a useless superpower. That power is the ability to stink up a bathroom so bad that I give people super human ability to open impossible windows, not unlike when you hear of adults lifting cars off children after an accident. I am mortified that I didn’t realize there were still people in the flat and upon them  entering the toilet a  mere five minutes later, I hear them yell, “Ugh, that is RANK!” followed by the sound of a stiff window opening.” Damn you, burrito!  I scurry to my spot at Funny Cluckers at the Three Sisters on Cowgate.

I was going to go to a show at 6:00 but it is sold out and that is fine. It’s a show my boyfriend will want to see when he is in town next week anyway. We’ll sort that when he gets here. 

I forget how dead Wednesdays can be. Big names often take the second Monday of the Fringe off. B-listers take the second Tuesday off and everybody else can do with taking off a Wednesday here and there. I am very lucky to have 4 lovely people. None of them know what they are in for and are game all the way through. The lovely thing about having a small audience in an oven like that is that everyone can still breathe and no-one looks like they might faint. I probably could have done a bit more crowd work but crowd work with an audience of four can give the impression that the show is a conversation and it’s not.  It was fun and intimate show . It felt like being in command of the lunch table in grammar school. We all got the giggles throughout.

There is a dropout at Imaginary Porno Charades and I happily fill in. I love this show but this time I get a really hard one and I am not talking about my dick. I cannot get my team to guess the song “Horizontal Mambo No.5”  To be fair, I don’t think Horizontal Mambo sounds that dirty. It sounds like a gymnastic dismount during a Cirque De Soleil show.  I get caught up trying to get them to guess “Horizontal” by miming a line graph and focusing on the y- and x- axis but time runs out. 

After the show I have a chat with John Robertson, my twin at the Fringe who has put on red lipstick while I wasn’t looking to do an impression of me. If only he’d put some on his chin, then it would have been spot on. I’ve learned that since I hold the microphone in the had I have less control over, I often hit my mouth with the mic, getting lipstick on it and then when I inevitably hit other parts of my face with the mic, I get  MAC lipstick swipes all over. At least MAC lipstick smells nice. I am reminded of a show title Ian Fox suggested for me, “Spring Day’s Finishing School and Other Places I’ve Demanded a Refund From. 

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Click here for more info about my Fringe 2019 show.

Could be me, could be John Roberston of the Dark Room. Who knows?

I’m doing the Edinburgh Fringe this year and I’ve already fucked it up 2019: Entry 17 How Karaoke Saved My Tuesday

Wow. I did not get enough sleep last night and am cranky as hell.

I somehow fell asleep before 3:00am but my body forces me awake at 9:00am.  

Tuesday audiences are typically tired and say things like, “I’m looking for the comedy show?” when asked what they are looking for in  hallways hosting 5 comedy shows simultaneously. 

My spot and Funny Cluckers, an afternoon of adult comedy, doesn’t jell with the audience. I genuinely think they thought were in for an afternoon of chicken puns. I tell them I have a show at the Fringe they can avoid. That made me laugh but not them. Today is my day to hold the bucket and I try to convince musical comedian  Robin Das Boot to hold the bucket instead because they liked him better. He hands me a massive stack of flyers for his show to hand out and it is more than my one-hand can handle and drop a couple hundred on the floor. Robin and I laugh pretty hard as we switch back duties. 

The washing machine is broken at the flat so I need to sort out where to do laundry. I am very Japanese in that I like to get it done and out of the way first thing in the morning. It makes you feel accomplished and ready to take on the world because you’ve already done the “hard bit”.  I am not jazzed about the idea of  carrying laundry  down and up seven flights of stairs. 

I have a much needed nap before the show and it is the smartest thing I’ve done all day. I feel much sharper and feel I can handle my room which is intolerably hot again.  I have another full room but am racing through material at 1.5 speed. It is all good fun and I can’t help but feel like Bette Midler in her bathhouse days.  I am working on adding a few bits here and there to the show but I don’t want to add them until I am absolutely sure they will work. The room is too hot to experiment much. 

I decide to go to s show done by the nicest guy at the Underbelly Cowgate, Karaoke Saved My Life. I’ll be honest. It saved my Tuesday. I took the very funny comedian Niamh Marron with me and told her I wasn’t exactly sure what we were in for but I knew it would be fun. It was pure Fringe FUN and I am going to go again with more people. I don’t know where else I would get to see a show like this but it used story and pop songs to bring strangers together to have a really positive night out. The secret to karaoke is knowing that it is not about singing well, it’s about giving your all in the moment to the song and the other people in the room with their tambourines and triangles. Everyone was so lovely and warm at the show, I felt like I was being hugged all the way home.  Deffo going back again soon.

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I’m doing the Edinburgh Fringe this year and I’ve already fucked it up 2019: Entry 14 SPANK

I stay in the flat as long as I possibly can and get out the door at 2:15. My room smells musty as I have done the laundry and have hung clothes on every available surface that is not nice furniture, as the landlady requested. Not realizing this whole time there is a drying rack in the hallway closet. The ladylady suggests I use it as the musty smell has wafted into the hallway a bit. 

How was I supposed to know it was in the hall closet? I don’t go through people’s hallway closets, who knows what kind of weird shit I’d find in there. If I found bodies in there my first thought would be, “I don’t want to move mid-festival. I’ve got enough to worry about.” 

There are new people in the flat, a mother and daughter doing a children’s show. They are amazed I do a show every night at 9:05. When I tell them I am doing another show at one in the morning, their jaw drops. I really hope they don’t come to my show.

Being a Saturday night, the crowds  are just as I suspect, more tired than Friday as they are still recovering from Friday night shenanigans. The energy is more frazzled and attention spans are as short as can be. I warn my audience as it fills up that it is going to get hellishly hot as I pass around towels and fans. Three women stand at the door who want to be in the room simply because it is full. I ask them to leave, saying I am doing them a favor and they are slow on the uptake. It was a great show although 4 had to leave mid-show as they were just about to faint.  Them leaving gave everyone else a bit more breathing room and energy. A couple of the punters said they came to the show because they were told it was a claustrophobically dark comedy show. I think that is a great way to describe the experience. The show in that room is like someone made an escape room out of an Auschwitz oven. 

I do a spot at  SPANK for the first time tonight. It’s a late night comedy show that is just silly fun. In the middle, a comedian or anyone that wants to promote something will get a minute on stage to promote it if they get naked. Tonight,  I do not get naked but a rather sweet punter did on stage just to tell the audience how much he loved his partner. It was very sweet. There is also a lovely guy doing a show at the same venue space at an earlier time called “How Karaoke Changed My Life” and he gets a shoutout without having to  getting naked because everyone loves him so much. I want to go to this show because apparently he just  sings whatever song the audience wants to sing with them. It’s too bad the show isn’t called “Karaoke Without Cunts.” I hope he can get more people into his show. 

On my way back home, a very drunk man asks me if I sell weed because I happened to be hunched over trying to zip my messenger bag closed in the rain. I unfortunately do not sell weed and tell him so. I wish I did, then I could afford to do the festival properly. 

I call my boyfriend and in my drunk on three beers, two-octave higher than usual voice tell him I love him and stumble home at 2:30am. 

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I’m doing the Edinburgh Fringe this year and I’ve already fucked it up 2019: Entry 7

Show day three and it is the first Saturday of the Fringe. The holiday makers have settled into their hotels and are walking around town bewildered with backpacks looking like freshman at their first day at uni.

Since I overdid my walking the day before, I do my best to stay in the flat as long as possible to give my legs a rest. I have very mild cerebral palsy that affects the right side of my body. Naked, I look like my dominant left side of my body has been beating up the comparatively  scrawny right side for its lunch money for a few decades. My left side has been working overtime and I don’t want to piss it of this early in the fringe. I don’t leave the flat till 2:00.

I go a do a spot at Funny Cluckers at the Three Sisters. It is Ian Fox’s compilation show of adult humor and Saturday’s audience was full but very sober. No boozy brunch for these people. They were nice and got onboard with the show eventually. 

Afterwards, I walk to the Meadows park listening to a podcast with my headphones on about how women shouldn’t walk around with headphones on because they could get attacked and raped. I took one headphone out of my ear mid-podcast. 

My temporary solution  to turn my nightly sauna into a comedy room before my more permanent solution arrives from Amazon is putting bags of ice throughout the room. Low and behold it works! Especially since someone put in a fan.  A bucket of ice in front of a fan did manage to bring the temperature in the room down from a boil to a simmer. 

We had a full house last night. So full that I had to stand on the sofa to be seen by everyone, even in that tiny room. 

The show is going well. I am tweaking bits here and there but generally the show is in good shape. I am rushing the show a bit still since the room is so hot. I am doing my best to give the audience no time to even think about how hot it is. I sound like an audiobook being read at 1.5x speed. 

I am still shit at the bucket speech but that should improve in time. I used to think I was a good salesman as a kids because I sold a lot of candy bars for school fundraisers. Looking back I realize a disabled little girl hawking chocolate bars door-to-door by herself  is hard to say not to.  A disabled adult that just made you sit in a sauna for an hour…well, didn’t they just prove in sweat how much they liked your show? Why should they give you a tenner? My solution which should arrive today or tomorrow will hopefully help.

Afterwards, I ran into Chris Betts, a very funny Canadian walking out of one of the Monkey Barrel extension rooms. He was on his way to see Glen Wool work on new material and I tagged along. Wool was amazing as usual.  I’ve seen Glen Wool live a few times and we did the same gig once last year. He is a nice guy whose leather vest and saunter  always makes me think of the Bounty Hunter in Raising Arizona,  especially now that he has a baby. During the show  I wonder if he will get a pair of bronzed baby shoes and attach it to his belt.

On my way home, I run into a friend that 8 years ago, at the fringe, introduced me to my now boyfriend and has said my favorite sentence of the Fringe ever. “I can’t flyer for you now Spring. I have to crochet a scarf.”

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Click here for more info about my 2019 Edinburgh Show