A glorious weekend part 2: Food, fringe, frolic
Food: Last weekend while Andrea was in town we had a great sushi dinner at Wasabi on Broadway. And it hit me -- I've never eaten so much fish in my life as I have since coming to the prairies. So I did some checking and discovered that, according to the Water Stewardship Fisheries Branch, Manitoba has about 100,000 lakes. And I've been to... one of them. Lake Winnipeg, where Falcon Beach is shot. Once. For an afternoon. Apparently I spend too much time in front of the computer, writing about beaches without actually setting foot on them -- and my only enjoyment of the water comes in the form of consuming its helpless inhabitants, often with a glass of shiraz.
Fringe: By lucky coincidence, Andrea had a friend from Edmonton who was in town with his one-man play "Wool", all about his six months spent on an island in the Hebrides working at an inn surrounded by sheep. As Fringe plays go it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been -- the staging and performance were excellent (marred only by the fact that the actor read fifty-percent of the lines from the script he had with him on stage; note: no post-modern flim-flammery can pull the, ahem, wool over an audience's eyes when it comes to memorizing your damn lines). But the real problem could be traced, as is almost always the case, to the writing. A collection of half-interesting anecdotes that don't gel into a coherent theme does not make for riveting theatre -- especially when the performer is clearly more interested in using the play as a thinly-veiled form of personal therapy. My point is, if in doubt, stop being a douchebag and get yourself a story editor.
Frolic: Highlight of the Fringe came when Andrea wanted to relax on the grass in front of the public stage in the heart of Fringe Land. Some thick-necked guy with bad teeth and the face of a lifetime boozer was on stage rambling about one thing or another. I was having a lovely time until I realized Mr. Rambler was singling me out. "The guy in the blue shirt beside the girl in the skirt." I feined obliviousness, but Mr. Rambler was not to be thwarted, and eventually he pulled me up on stage to help with his "routine." It became clear that he was going to try to break the world record for the number of back-handed pushups performed in a minute. And he needed me to hold the clock and keep time for him. Another sucker had been conscripted to count the number of said back-handed pushups, and the two of us waited for, oh, about twenty minutes while Mr. Rambler yammered on, creating what must have been for him a build-up of tension but for someone like me who isn't really trained in dramatic ways of holding a clock on stage -- embarrassment and frustration. When Mr. Rambler finally removed his headset mike and got down on the backs of his hands and starting heaving himself up and down while I counted down the minute and Sucker #2 counted off the push-ups, kids in the audience started yelling, "Those aren't even real pushups"; and when he finished his one hundred back-handed pushups he was confronted by two drunk men (one in a wheel chair) both wanting to challenge his newly minted record. I feel like I comported myself rather well in my time-keeping role, but poor Mr. Rambler was ridiculed by the M.C. until he was out of ear-shot. I kept wondering if the guy actually travels the country with this routine, push-uping his way from Fringe to Fringe, from one country fair to another, and who the hell buys him beer?
Fringe: By lucky coincidence, Andrea had a friend from Edmonton who was in town with his one-man play "Wool", all about his six months spent on an island in the Hebrides working at an inn surrounded by sheep. As Fringe plays go it wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been -- the staging and performance were excellent (marred only by the fact that the actor read fifty-percent of the lines from the script he had with him on stage; note: no post-modern flim-flammery can pull the, ahem, wool over an audience's eyes when it comes to memorizing your damn lines). But the real problem could be traced, as is almost always the case, to the writing. A collection of half-interesting anecdotes that don't gel into a coherent theme does not make for riveting theatre -- especially when the performer is clearly more interested in using the play as a thinly-veiled form of personal therapy. My point is, if in doubt, stop being a douchebag and get yourself a story editor.
Frolic: Highlight of the Fringe came when Andrea wanted to relax on the grass in front of the public stage in the heart of Fringe Land. Some thick-necked guy with bad teeth and the face of a lifetime boozer was on stage rambling about one thing or another. I was having a lovely time until I realized Mr. Rambler was singling me out. "The guy in the blue shirt beside the girl in the skirt." I feined obliviousness, but Mr. Rambler was not to be thwarted, and eventually he pulled me up on stage to help with his "routine." It became clear that he was going to try to break the world record for the number of back-handed pushups performed in a minute. And he needed me to hold the clock and keep time for him. Another sucker had been conscripted to count the number of said back-handed pushups, and the two of us waited for, oh, about twenty minutes while Mr. Rambler yammered on, creating what must have been for him a build-up of tension but for someone like me who isn't really trained in dramatic ways of holding a clock on stage -- embarrassment and frustration. When Mr. Rambler finally removed his headset mike and got down on the backs of his hands and starting heaving himself up and down while I counted down the minute and Sucker #2 counted off the push-ups, kids in the audience started yelling, "Those aren't even real pushups"; and when he finished his one hundred back-handed pushups he was confronted by two drunk men (one in a wheel chair) both wanting to challenge his newly minted record. I feel like I comported myself rather well in my time-keeping role, but poor Mr. Rambler was ridiculed by the M.C. until he was out of ear-shot. I kept wondering if the guy actually travels the country with this routine, push-uping his way from Fringe to Fringe, from one country fair to another, and who the hell buys him beer?
posted by Jeremy Boxen at 12:49 PM
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