so that's that.

victor and i are sitting in a pub next to georgia & pete's place.
we're out of our flat on west preston st. it's such a sad thing;
leaving. it makes me think of when i was a kid and leaving santa
barbara at the end of the summer to go back and live in oklahoma...
leaving the fantasy to go back to the reality.

speaking of that... and this is way too perfect, but it happened.

after cleaning my room and packing and putting everything out in to
the hallway, i went to sit on my bed and look out the open window to
the beautiful day that is today. i was feeling heavy and sad with the
realization that the festival is over and all that tension and
pressure and excitement is now gone from the city.

a truck pulled around the corner, parked and turned on its flashers. i
guess there's a company here called "reality" because that's what it
said on the back of the truck: Reality.

Too perfect.

Irregardless. We head home tomorrow morning.

Last night we went to see topping y butch. They're an extremely gay
cabaret act. one young, hunky guy in red leather and an older guy in a
matching red leather skirt and vest. nuts. they sing gay songs and do
campy stuff. i did the comic discipline show with them. they're,
appropriately, very sweet and it was a nice time.

headed off to the gb to check out the closing party there.

They'd closed off the entire building except for the back entrance
(hello!) to the phat cave. Everyone who'd worked there was there so I
went in and said goodbyes. Ran into mickey d who told a horrific story
about him and his flatmate shrooming and falling down in a bathroom.
pretty gross but wildly funny.

headed over to the pleasance. the bbc radio was doing a "60 comics in
60 minutes" shoe and paul byrne grabbed me "they've only got 59, can
you do one minute on stage?!?"

of course.

so i made my fringe stand-up debut on the final day of the festival.
my "act" was "re-enacting" the posters that everyone had seen for the
last month. seemed to go over pretty good and everyone got the posters
right.

burnsy was "backstage". he seems to have had a psychotic break of some
sort. really weird.

he looked all fucked up with his shaved head, soreness for some
reason unbeknownst to me and what seemed to be major drunkeness... his voice is
gone and he's lurching around like a crazy monkey. he walked up to me
and slapped me on my balls. hard. i reflexively elbowed him in his
balls. he lurched backwards and fell over some shit. he looked way
surprised that i'd hit back. way surprised.

i felt bad, which i think was what he was going for.

"why did you do that,mate?"

"if you hit me in the balls, i'm going to hit you in the balls...
that's how it works. it's reflex."

then he sorta kinda apologized and i apologized, too. he showed me his
fucked up shaved head and told me that they were going to shave it
correctly on stage with a razor and shaving cream.

after i did my bit, i headed back down to leave and saw andrew
maxwell. he was going up to the bbc thing to do five minutes.

i went up to watch after realizing i needed to see someone do
something great, so i went up.

andrew maxwell was on stage. burnsy was laying on the stage with a few
people around him, covering his head with shaving cream. Maxwell said
something about a snowman on mushrooms and it all made sense.

weird. weird. not fun.

Today was a flurry of activity getting the flat straightened and
cleaned. We said our goodbyes to Tom, who rode off like a crazy man on
his bike towards Germany. Then we loaded our bazillions of bags in to
a cab and headed to Georgia and Pete's flat. They're nice enough to
let us crash for our "extra day" here.

There's free wireless internet in this pub. Very cool. I've sent an
email to my bride aksing her to pick us up.

Oh... once again... a snafu...

I made it very clear that my posters should not be thrown away again
this year. So they kept them at the office for me to pick up. Sunday,
Georgia showed us our press packs. Edcom was cool enough to keep
folders of all of our clippings as was the Gilded Balloon.

Georgia thought I was going to swing by and pick up my posters. I
thought she was going to pick them up and have them at the flat. So.
She left our press packs with the posters.

They've been thrown away. Balls.

Oh. I've come up with something very cool to do for the 4 shows in
L.A. Very cool. So if you're reading this and plan on coming to any of
the big shoes in L.A. please bring something very cool to put in the
DHL box.

Walking around. it's so different. i'm at a horrible internet cafe
near princess street. expensive and touristy. blech. hoping jessie
hops on to aim so i can say hi.

i'm so ready to go. by this time tomorrow, we'll have just taken off
and will either be on our way home or plunging into the sea.

hello, tsa. eat me.

¶ 9:07 AM