DAY 1: THE FRINGE BEGINS
EDINBURGH DIARY
Edinburgh is a lot colder than I expected.
I showed up to the Fringe Festival with two other american comedians with no spots. Intending to rove around and beg for shit. Hope something good happens. First show we went to was in this Irish pub named after a babbelic Irish masterpiece nobody reads.
Seemed like a pretty good crowd.
Dude who was running it was a portuguese fellow, so I started speaking portuguese with him. Anything to try to ingratiate myself. Cause I mean, getting accosted by three asky beggy doltish american boys with nothing to offer you, no proof they’re funny, just the glinty ardor in their eyes, ain’t shit anybody’ll be too keen to fold to after three weeks of getting lambasted by the Fringe’s rejection gauntlet.
And the dude for sure thought we weren’t funny.
Especially since it was a european show and Eric said something about, Isn’t the UK in Europe? that the fellow didn’t take kindly too.
(Still a mystery to me: I guess not post-Brexit? I guess it’s not continental Europe?
IDK.)
The show was about to start and a moody german pulled up late. We tried to introduce ourselves to him, but this tall hunched bald teuton wasn’t having it (he was wearing the same outfit as the lusophone; black t-shirt and jeans: maybe mid-career Louis Ck is still the continental european idol).
He went out and opened the show. Low-energy, and then sat down on the stool. A very loose style of comedy: no punchlines.
We were sitting behind the stage, in an ante-room before the bar, we could see his back.
Portuguese guy leaned over: “This crowd sucks.”
Didn’t look like it to me.
German did a deflating 20 and huffed off.
Then the moody lusophone went up.
The terrinha got a lot of shit going for it: fado, roundabouts, Antonio Lobo Antunes, but I don’t think funny is their strong suit.
He got off stage after a kissing-the-mic-like-a-cock closer and his pre-show haughty vibe melted into a pure humility. Shaking our hands, smiling like a politician, saying it’s never like that, promising that if only we had been denizens of the great continent he’d put us on the show. We assured him we’d seen worse.
And we stepped out into the gray day.
The second taste we got of the festival’s funnies was when we were accosted by a lady with a BBC microphone asking us to react to what was voted the best joke of the fringe.
Me and Max said sure, we would love to react on camera.
The joke was something like:
“I was trying to sail the smallest ship in the world, but I bottled it.”
I think I still don’t get it. Think there’s some britishism there I ain’t wise to.
But we thought: if that and the Europeans is our only competition here, we good.
By the way this whole day I was fucking hungry and tired.
I didn’t sleep on the plane. I was being a baby about the turbulence. Plus this fidgety woman next to me yanked my blanket away from me in the middle of the night, leaving me blanketless in the bitter airplane cold.
I ended up falling asleep for 30 minutes. I was awoken by breakfast plopped onto my lap: a chocolate calzone, heated hot. I considered it for a second, and then looked at my phone.
I wasn’t about to eat a chocolate calzone at what was technically four in the morning my time. And the existence of such a decadent monstrosity bummed me out.
Only meal we had at this point was at a breakfast place we clambered into with our suitcases. The service was slow and the waitress told us (in nearly incomprehensible scottish) that she wanted to kill herself.
We wandered thru the gray and the rain, and I felt like a character from Santantango, wandering soaked, uncaring, hoping for a sudden unexpected salvation.
Pseudo-salvation came in the form of a canadian comic we knew from New York who was putting on a show. She said her one woman show was gonna be unpacked cause of the rain and the Monday so we could come thru & she might throw us up.
We left her, went to check out another show: this flag show where I tried to use my brasilian cred to get on, but the lady said it was all booked. And she was being pretty unrigorous with the definition of flag, so she didn’t need another nationality.
We went to go and get Fish & Chips (which became a sort of fixation for me thru-out the day), but the wait was gonna be too long and we were gonna miss the canadian’s show. So we eschewed the meal and went over to the venue.
Couldn’t find the room at first. I asked one of the workers there where it was.
And maybe I was too gruff with the sudden ask because she just about jumped out of her shoes. (Max and Eric say maybe I’m looking a bit scary or off-putting with my raggedy beard).
We found the room. There were about five audience members. But they were listening. The canadian told us we were each gonna do 10.
Some dude was on stage and he was doing fine.
Then she went up, and for a second I thought she was gonna do a whole hour & then send the 3 of us up for 10 each which would’ve been a unique torture to inflict on these five Scots in the room. But she did 12 and then Eric and Max went up for 8 each, and I closed.
Did one written joke and started screaming about the fish and chips and the calzone and cocks and I went behind the curtain and interviewed the crowd about haggis and cocks.
You know, my act.
After that we finally got our Fish and Chips.
By that point, we were pretty beat and decided to call it.
“Are you a man or a mouse?” I asked Eric, wanting to strive on.
“A mouse,” he said.
Humbling, rainy first day, but at least we got a spot, and I got my battered haddock.