The Edinburgh Festival Fringe started out as the fringe of the Edinburgh Festival. Now, the best visualization is a petticoat wrapped around a needle. So in its last weekend I went to see it.
Pink Floyd's bass player is trying a second career as a standup comedian. He has found a way of looking like it's his first time on stage all over again, but who cares when you've got inside touring-stories-gossip from so many major bands?
Baby wants candy performed the first and last ever rendition of the musical 'The day I trod on dog poo', which included the earworm 'This is the worst day of my liiiiife!' And, unlike when I improvise a song on stage, it didn't sound out of key. Lock, Stock and Improv looked more like something I could do, which is exactly what I wanted most to be doing the whole hour long.
Sean Lock made me reflect on cultural differences in comedy. Stand-up: guy on empty stage. Maximum allowed time-interval between laugh-salvo's: 10s. Minimum frequency of dick- or otherwise testosterony joke: one every three. A point forcefully made by Domestic Goddi Wonderland with a sketch on a late standupper's widow who decides to pay her inherited debts by replacing him. She finds she was a source of inspiration.
Unfortunately for my theory but not for me, Jack Whitehall, the youngest comedian I've seen so far, made grown-up stand-up. Still though, Hans Teeuwen was a wholly different thing. As clearly thought by the string of people who vacated their seats. Or by the guy who almost laughed my head off (and no, he wasn't Dutch.)
The second day I had been alone and therefore in charge of the program. I thought some good old swing would make a good closing act. It did, and the beautifully stylish grandmother in the audience swinging along with her granddaughter said it all.
Except it wasn't the closing act. I didn't leave according to plan. Obviously.
The word 'Brel' in a description of an act close in both time and location had me break free from the station entrance in a sprint towards the venue. Brel had me swaying in my seat, hypnotized.
I still didn't leave according to plan. But that was because there wasn't a plan. The fact that on Saturday the last train leaves at 00:30 is obviously no guarantee to that happening on Sunday. The fact that the police tell you that there most probably are night buses from a bus station nearby is obviously no guarantee that the concept of 'night' doesn't include 05:55. The fact that a service is called 'public transport information' is obviously no guarantee that they have accurate information on public transport like, say, whether night buses leave on Sunday or not. They don't.
As was helpfully looked up on the internet by the same man who had helpfully pointed the way to the bus station by walking me there, had helpfully told me to come back if I got stuck, helpfully hadn't flinched when I did, had helpfully walked me to the square where the night buses didn't leave, as the public transport information service not so helpfully couldn't tell him when he helpfully called them, had helpfully called a taxi, and then had helpfully used his cash teller as an ATM so that I could pay said taxi.
Time for a little commercial break: The Stand isn't just a great place to see comedy in Edinburgh or Glasgow, it also employs extremely helpful staff.
The taxi driver started the journey by asking whether I had heard the story of the girl who got raped in a Glasgow taxi only days earlier. Would the 5-hr discovery tour of Edinburgh by night have been the safer option after all?
Pink Floyd's bass player is trying a second career as a standup comedian. He has found a way of looking like it's his first time on stage all over again, but who cares when you've got inside touring-stories-gossip from so many major bands?
Baby wants candy performed the first and last ever rendition of the musical 'The day I trod on dog poo', which included the earworm 'This is the worst day of my liiiiife!' And, unlike when I improvise a song on stage, it didn't sound out of key. Lock, Stock and Improv looked more like something I could do, which is exactly what I wanted most to be doing the whole hour long.
Sean Lock made me reflect on cultural differences in comedy. Stand-up: guy on empty stage. Maximum allowed time-interval between laugh-salvo's: 10s. Minimum frequency of dick- or otherwise testosterony joke: one every three. A point forcefully made by Domestic Goddi Wonderland with a sketch on a late standupper's widow who decides to pay her inherited debts by replacing him. She finds she was a source of inspiration.
Unfortunately for my theory but not for me, Jack Whitehall, the youngest comedian I've seen so far, made grown-up stand-up. Still though, Hans Teeuwen was a wholly different thing. As clearly thought by the string of people who vacated their seats. Or by the guy who almost laughed my head off (and no, he wasn't Dutch.)
The second day I had been alone and therefore in charge of the program. I thought some good old swing would make a good closing act. It did, and the beautifully stylish grandmother in the audience swinging along with her granddaughter said it all.
Except it wasn't the closing act. I didn't leave according to plan. Obviously.
The word 'Brel' in a description of an act close in both time and location had me break free from the station entrance in a sprint towards the venue. Brel had me swaying in my seat, hypnotized.
I still didn't leave according to plan. But that was because there wasn't a plan. The fact that on Saturday the last train leaves at 00:30 is obviously no guarantee to that happening on Sunday. The fact that the police tell you that there most probably are night buses from a bus station nearby is obviously no guarantee that the concept of 'night' doesn't include 05:55. The fact that a service is called 'public transport information' is obviously no guarantee that they have accurate information on public transport like, say, whether night buses leave on Sunday or not. They don't.
As was helpfully looked up on the internet by the same man who had helpfully pointed the way to the bus station by walking me there, had helpfully told me to come back if I got stuck, helpfully hadn't flinched when I did, had helpfully walked me to the square where the night buses didn't leave, as the public transport information service not so helpfully couldn't tell him when he helpfully called them, had helpfully called a taxi, and then had helpfully used his cash teller as an ATM so that I could pay said taxi.
Time for a little commercial break: The Stand isn't just a great place to see comedy in Edinburgh or Glasgow, it also employs extremely helpful staff.
The taxi driver started the journey by asking whether I had heard the story of the girl who got raped in a Glasgow taxi only days earlier. Would the 5-hr discovery tour of Edinburgh by night have been the safer option after all?
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