Thursday, August 07, 2003

Last night's show was unique--about 5 minutes into the show, which is a sizable chunk, about 15 people came into the space. That's not totally unheard of, as people are often late, but it was notable in that they all came at once and, more importantly, one of the people crossed my stage to sit on the far side of the theater. Then, when he realized that he had gone through my playing space and captured everyone's attention he did the truly bizarre thing and crossed BACK through my space again.

I'm good at dealing with weirdness, but this topped it. I stopped the show, ran it back, did a 30 second summary version of everything they had missed up to that point and then jumpstarted from where we were. People I know who saw the show said that it was a really sharp evening, but the whole affair skewed my perceptions--the rest of the show was just work, work, work for me to settle and re-establish rhythms. Blech. Like I've said before, nobody likes a challenge, even if it brings out the best in them.

Had dinner with David Sterry and his lovely wife Arielle at Henderson's, one of the premiere vegetarian places in Edinburgh, which is to say that they actually do have vegetables, which really places them a cut above. Then we saw Alex Horne's show, which was chuckle-filled and had a nice style even if it didn't rock my world. It's all about scale--sometimes it is better to see something that doesn't try to change your worldview or transfigure you into light.

Oh, and I was on a mentalist's show yesterday as a celebrity guest:


It was interesting--he doesn't claim to have "psychic" powers, but only to be a keen observer of human behavior. He's really quite excellent at his job and is adept at all the kind of feats you would expect him to be. I actually hang out with him in the dressing room most nights and Marc's a neat guy who never, ever gives even the faintest of clues as to how his systems work. He was able to tell what words I had chosen from my own book w/o him seeing, and I could detect no thmb marks for the pages or other obvious and known ways he would be able to tell...he simply ran through lists of letters and watched my reactions.

Ah, Edinburgh...everyone has a cooler schtick than me.

Notable: ran into a drunk Scottish man who heckled me for having "the stupidest show he's ever heard of...who the fuck wants to hear about your fucking jobs, you fucking crybaby!" Then he somehow segued into a speech on how the "Apple Mac" changed everything, forever...which, I have to say, I agree with.

6:10 AM