so much has happened and i've been actually involved so i haven't
written about it as i'd hoped to. i'll try to catch it all, but i'm
sure i've forgotten some stuff...

a few days ago, provenz' arrived from London. Burnsy wanted to meet
him at the airport with a bunch of folks wearing the "slutty nun"
outfits he wears in his shoe.

i met up with burnsy, paul, misha at their flat. he made some egss
(quite good!) and we putzed around utnil they all got dressed in their
slutty nun outfits. he'd hired a bus to take us to the airport. we
picked up jamie godly on the royal mile and headed off.

the idea was to meet provenz' at the airport and film his reaction.

so we hung out in the airport while burnsy et. al acted loud and
obnoxious and drank a bit to prepare for the arrival of provenz'. i
kept having to tell burnsy to "quit directing". when you're the
subject of a doc, you don't want to be saying to the camera guy "get a
shot of this, mate!" and then act like the camera's not there. it's
sorta cancels out the entire idea...

long story short:

we waited for a long time as people got off the plane. at one point a
guy walked past me and said "he's right behind me" so i got the camera
ready and out walked ricky gervais and stephen merchant. pretty funny.
but still no paul provenza.

eventually he walked out and perfectly ignored the four people in
slutty nun outfits.

beautiful.

it's why provenz' is a genius. burnsy did what he could to get the
attention back to him but it failed, miserably. provenz' "won".
genius.

our last two shoes were just wonderful. great performances and big,
full houses. i don't think we ever officially sold the venue out,
though saturday's shoe was full. there were about 12 guests, so that
may have been it. yesterday there were also people in the balcony, but
not as many.

after the big shoe sunday, we gathered all of our crap and headed to
negociant's (that's how it's spelled.. with the apostrophe) for yummy
foodness. i bought lunch for me, victor, jen, emma & leon. would've
liked to have gotten leon something big and nice but i'm not wealthy
enough to go around buying ipods for people who are cool and great.

georgia has a packet of all of our press clippings and reviews. oh, we
got a truly shitty review in the metro. they really hated it and had
liked it last year. i think it was the same critic. man. 2 stars. that
sucked.

he may have been right.

there were so many things going on sunday night which was the final
night of the festival, that it was difficult to decide what to do.

provenz' had scored me a ticket to stewart lee's show. he is a
stand-up who wrote "jerry springer - the opera" which was on its way
to being a huge hit when christards began raising a fuss ending up in
stewart lee being charged with blasphemy. blasphemy. come on, people.

provenz' said it was a show that seemed to have been written just for me.

correctamundo.

stewart lee lays out all of these wonderful ideas out in the 1st half
of the show. he speaks sort of like a british steven wright and in
that wonderful style, he has this almost impish look on his face...
"cheeky" they call it here. but there's this weight behind it. the
weight one can only get after having received death threats from
idiots for the better part of a year.

the second half of the show is him gently scooping up the stuff he'd
lay out in the first half while telling a story which is truly
blasphemous as he felt that the stuff in jerry springer - the opera
wasn't really blasphemous and if people were going to take him to task
for blasphemy, he might as well really go for it.

then he ends it with this lovely "button" which is a perfect
illustration of his style. it's that extra little thing that you might
have thought of, but wasn't really funny until stewart lee points it
out.

and the blasphemy... well, i was in heaven.

so after that, i met up with leon as we were goign to put the
aristocrats performance on my apex media controller but there was some
confusion about the tape and camera. so, we didn't.

i found the worst piece of pizza in scotland and then met up with jen,
who couldn't find food, so we finally located one of the six bazillion
fish/chip places here.

a bit after midnight, we headed to spank! (you love it!) to watch the
final show. i snuck a few friends in and that was nice. it was a nice
final show. my favorite part was steve oram coming onstage as a hack
cockney comic telling the worst and most obvious jokes in the world.
the audience had no idea it was a character and were stunned in to
silence. beautiful. just beautiful.

they had a round robin where all of these other comics could stay on
until they audience wanted them off. pretty brutal. victor got up and
took his clothes off.

well done.

oh... right...

the night before, i went up on spank! (you love it!) for the naked 1
minute promo. now. my johnson is not a large one, but it's not a small
one, either. i think it's firmly (ha!) in the average sized johnson
area.

however... when one goes up on stage one's johnson shrinks a bit. so
i'm doing this promo, talking about the nigerian spam scam scam when i
look down and i see, sticking out from my crotch (which i had shaved
onstage the night before) the smallest little weiner i'd seen on me
since i was a kid. man, it was fucking embarassing. people actually
began yelling at me about my small cock. horrible. not only am i a big
fat pale pig now, my cock has shrivelled up to nothing. fuck.
humiliating.

so humiliating that the comic after me even made a joke about me. he
also said "that guy shaves so his little dick looks bigger...
pathetic". i had to leave.

i shudder when i think about it. fuck. horrible.

lesson learned: fluff before going on stage nekkid.

glen wool did a set the night before and he rules. he wasn't at this
festival but he came for the final weekend to do some standup at
various venues. i think he's so great. he's got this moron trucker
appearance but he's really insightful and darkly funny. he talks about
offensive insults and says that there are no words now, it's just
combinations of words and concepts... so he throws a few out and
finishes off with "you're the guilty orgasm of a rape victim".

geniuses walk among us, people.

i also went to see steve hughes again saturday night.

he is sooo good. just beautiful and wickedly insightful and funny.

after his shoe we were walking back to the library bar to meet up with
a bunch of people when he pulled out a joint. "you fancy a hit of
this?"

what the fuck? i smoked it. I figure if you're going to smoke pot for
the 1st time in 24 years, you want to smoke it with steve hughes. it
made me dizzy and i felt sorta woozy in my stomach, and then my mouth
dried up and then it all went away except for the dryness in my mouth.

so that's me. a few puffs off a joint after 24 years and i didn't go
schizo. (yet!)

irregardless...

i'm bouncing the chronology around, but too bad...

danny james was going to leave yesterday as he's been really sick with
some salmonella poisoning but stayed around last night to do a final
shoe. he left this morning and left a nice massage on my phone. he's a
great guy. i think i've made a good friend here. he's really talented
and has a really nice outlook on life and i like him a lot. i'll miss
him.

this morning (2pm) i began packing and cleaning. it's sad. it's really
sad. this happened last year, too. i got really sad about leaving and
heading back to the real world. the place where you have more
responsibility than doing one show a day for an hour. and then fill
the rest of the day talking about you and your show and seeing other
shows and comparing them to you and your show.

back to the real world. tonight is our final night in our flat.
tomorrow we're sleeping at georgia and pete's and then we leave wed.
at 9am.

i miss jessie so much i ache. this is the lonely ache. man. i just
need to sit with her and hold hands and have her head on my chest.
it's so fascinating how humans find other people. i'm so lucky to have
her in my life. i hope she doesn't figure out what a dork i am anytime
soon.

i'm at beanscene. they've replaced the eddie murphy doctor doolittle
II with some b/w movie. dunno what it is, but it has to be better than
the doctor doolittle II movie. right? right.

i have one suitcase packed with all the crap i brought over and the
other one is just waiting for the final stuff for our journey home.

not sure what we'll do tomorrow, but it's nice having an "extra day".

i will actually miss this place this time. go figure. of course, the
weather is lovely again.

that's how they getcha!!

the bloody cunts!

¶ 10:10 AM