A Day at the Fringe (Day 1)

Sunday was Ray’s first day going to the Royal Mile during the full blown festival month of August. We had tickets to see a comedy act that evening, so I figured before we go to the venue I would show Ray a little bit of what my mom and I experienced last August when we arrived in Edinburgh. We got off the bus near Greyfriars Bobby (near campus) and walked down George IV Bridge to the Royal Mile. Already there were tons of people, traffic and blocked off roads for pedestrian use. I warned Ray that this was close to what you would experience in New Orleans during Mardi Gras!

As we got to our usual intersection of the Royal Mile and George IV there was a huge crowd and Ray was starting to feel anxious because, as he admitted later, he did not prepare himself for this. It was wall-to-wall people and there were several groups of performers parading around the mile promoting their theatre, music, or art performance that evening. The first person I was able to get a picture of reminded me of someone my mom and I saw last year:

I loved the colors on her. Ray said she moved to pose for someone’s photo, but I missed it. I forgot at that time that Ray had some change in his pocket and I wish I had tossed a little something in her box. Slowly I walked Ray down the Mile and towards St. Giles Cathedral where I knew there would be performers. Plus there was the tent full of wares to peruse. As we approached Parliament Square in front of Giles I saw a pretty interesting performing and Ray and I stopped to watch. His name was Arizona Jones and he was doing an interactive comedy act and fire juggling act. But it was more than just fire juggling. He also played with a wire whip. Here are the four parts of the performance that I recorded:

He was really quite a bit of fun and put Ray is a better mood. We did dig deep and each gave a quid for the enjoyment of his performance. Ray is currently very interested in how much performers have to pay to get a street slot and wonders how much street performers make on average at the Fringe Festival. Then there was a brief stop at the tobacconist on the Mile and we had an interesting conversation with the salesman. I didn’t realize he was from the States, but the three of us were discussing the lack of tequila sales in Scotland. I had noticed they had El Jimenez, which is a pretty decent tequila and he told us how he tries to sometimes get some over from the States, but there just isn’t an interest. It looks like that might be mine and Ray’s overseas gimmick with our friends.

You see, all of our friends have their own cultural things they like to share and Ray and I have been sharing a lot of Ray’s Latino heritage with the people that we meet. It would probably be a really fun night for a small group of our friends to share a meal of Mexican food accompanied by a good tequila. Could be fun.

While Ray was do a small bit of shopping, I scooted out of the shop and got a few more photos of street performers and a group of parade performers advertising their play. It kept drizzling off and on, so crowds kept scattering and things like that. But here’s what I caught:

After all that we kept walking down the Mile. We were handed several lobby cards promoting various events at the festival. I saw the crazy tattoo lady who has tons of piercings all over her face and some tattoos and has different colored dreadlock hair. I didn’t get a picture because she was huddled in a group; maybe when we go back out. I asked Ray if he wanted to stop at Starbucks, but as we passed it was PACKED with people. So we took a turn off the Mile and down South Bridge trying to head towards our venue. What we didn’t realize was that Cowgate (the street our venue was on) was underneath where we were standing! How were we supposed to get down there? A left, then a right down an alley and steep hill, then another left and all of a sudden we were right next to our venue, which was across from the fabled pub of student preference: Bannerman’s. We sat outside on a bench for a bit, but then it start pouring rain so we went into the BabyBelly hub: The Rowan Tree. It was a really neat little pub. The atmosphere was very old and everything was old brick. It felt almost like a wine cellar.

We sat there until we heard the call for seating. The downside to this was that the guy we asked about seating didn’t tell us people were lining up outside to get in. So when he made the “5 Minute” call there was already a line. But we went out to the line and waited to get in. Didn’t really complain or anything. What could we do? Then we were ushered in this other almost vault-like space with a stage. There were really low ceilings and then it opened up into the front where there were high ceilings. It was really interesting. We scooted in towards the wall, but the row in front of us was non-existent. We hoped there wouldn’t be issues and people would have to move. There wasn’t and all of a sudden the show started.

I mentioned in a previous entry that we were going to see Dean Haglund’s X-Files Improv show hosted by the Comedy Festival @ the Fringe. Dean Haglund used to play a character named Langly, who was part of The Lone Gunman. The Lone Gunman were a trio of underground conspiracy nuts who Mulder and Scully would tap for help in their investigations. I was really excited to see his show, because I liked The Lone Gunman.

The show was nothing like I thought it would be. It was sectioned into five parts, each segued by a personal bit about what Haglund has been up to since the X-Files. As part of the introduction, Haglund needed to create a theme for the show and the audience shouted out Andromeda, Smoking, and Herpes. So the theme of the overall story was the Andromeda Smoking Herpes. The first part involved an audience member who Haglund chose from the audience. This audience member had to do sound effects as Haglund played out the morning of the story that would unfold. It was hilarious. It ended with an alien who had Andromeda Smoking Herpes attacking some innocent person (Haglund’s first character).

Part two was the autopsy of the alien. For this, Haglund brought up two audience members of his choosing. They would be the assistants. Haglund would talk through the autopsy and tap the two people when he needed a line. Once again, hilarious and thus the running gag of the “toy dog” started. Part three was the press conference and for this Haglund invited another audience member on stage to be his arms while he gave some random speech about the Andromeda Smoking Herpes. Here’s the picture (those aren’t his hands):

Once again, hilarious! Part four is when Haglund took slips of papers from the audience with random sentences written on them. Once again he drew another audience member to participate on stage. For this, himself and the participant were cued to read the slips of paper to further the dialogue of the scene. Both mine and Ray’s were read and they were quite funny. This part of the show almost left me with wet pants it was soooo funny. My slip of paper said “the scary nuns looked through the window” and Ray’s said “beagles are the best F***ing dog ever!” The beagle thing fit in with the “toy dog” schtick and there had also been a running gag with cats being involved with the aliens. Just pure hilarity.

The final part of the show was Haglund doing battle with the alien. Another audience member was invited on stage, and this time it was someone the audience voted in. During the previous part, someone wrote on their piece of paper “I pooped on my friend’s IKEA table while I was drunk.” Haglund just had to know who it was and then said “ok, anyone but Louise can come on the stage and help me.” But it got turned around and we all voted Louise onto the stage. For this scene, Louise had to pose Haglund as he fought the alien. Here is a picture of him shooting the alien with his frozen beam gun fingers:

After the show we got to go meet him and I didn’t have the cash on me to buy a program, so I had him sign my ticket stub. Ray and I got to say how much we enjoyed his show and thanked him. It was awesome.

And when we left the pub, we had to walk along Cowgate towards Grassmarket (which is where they burned tons of witches back in the day). We were hoping to find a spot to eat, but nothing was appealing to Ray. So we kept walking until we got back up to Tollcross/Lothian and we found a nice little Italian restaurant. Then we went home and enjoyed the evening talking about how much fun we had.

I also looked up this product which Haglund created called the ChillPak. It is for your laptop. You put your laptop on top of the Chill Pak and it cools your laptop down. Laptops have a tendency to overheat, especially when the user treats it like a desktop computer. The Chill Pak is supposed to help save your laptop and your computer from getting burned. By cooling the laptop it’ll help your computer run faster and not lag as much. It’s worth a shot and they’re reasonably priced. So if you have a laptop and are having heat issues, check out the Chill Pak.

That’s it! I hope the rest of our days out at the various festivities are just as exciting as they were today! Get out to Princes Street and see the street musicians. It will be fun now that I know how to get around.