Category: morgueatlarge

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent April 2004]

Long-time readers of these morgueatlarge emails will be accustomed to my regular updates on the whereabouts of Leon Verrall, my old buddy and initial travelling companion when leaving the shores of home for parts unknown.

Well, he’s in London, working backstage, and if you care enough to want to know more, you should probably check out this link…

[link updated 2024!] http://taleturn.com/leongod/index.htm

Of course, if you’ve been reading my blog you’ve heard the background to this already. That’s a not-so-subtle plug for my blog, which is kindly hosted by David Ritchie at this url:

[updated to] https://morgue.isprettyawesome.com/

cheers all, more from me soon…

~`morgue

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent March 2004]

Long time no email, but the reason is that little has happened. As Europe starts to thaw, though, the travel bug starts to kick in, and that means some emails should be swinging out from Edinburgh in the nearish future.

Cal and I are just back from 4 days in the Netherlands. We hopped across Saturday morning to Schiphol, the only destination in Europe served by Edinburgh’s airport – quite an education to see how many places trains from Schiphol can reach inside of an hour. But we were heading to Amsterdam.

Going to Amsterdam is like going back to University. You enter a world that is entirely set up to provide you with excuses to get very drunk, very stoned and very laid. The bare facts of sex, drugs and, er, more sex and drugs are treated so matter-of-factly that you might as well be living in a hostel. And the whole red-light district is really not that different from half-price cocktail night at Zebos. (Non-wellingtonians – Zebos is a prime haunt for underage drinkers in NZ’s capital city. At least, it was two years ago. I might be out of date.) There’s even some serious stuff going on (museums) which you can drop in on for a couple hours each day, before the fun starts.

Of course, University wasn’t like that for most people. For most, as far as I can gather, it was kind of like walking through a carnival with hardly any money, seeing all the banners and watching all the rides and occasionally splashing out and trying something, like say taking a look at the monkey with the head of a fish, an having an even chance it was way less interesting than the huckster out front made it seem.

Where was my point again?

So. Amsterdam. I’m not gonna talk in this email about the prostitutes and drugs, mostly because I didn’t try out either. Suffice it to say that everything you have heard is true, and that no matter how many times people tell you that everything you have heard is true, you won’t quite believe it until you go there and see for yourself.

Instead I’ll talk about the Anne Frank house. (And he changes the tone of the email with a single giant wrench!)

—–

I’ve still not read Anne Frank’s diary, but I was familiar with the contents – family in hiding, Nazis discover them, horrific ending that is hard to summarize without seeming inappropriately flip. Anyway, in preparation for this visit I read a little bit about it, still not the actual diary (though I plan to, still, yes, I know I know) but quotes and notes, enough to know what was going on and who the people were.

I had no idea what I was letting myself in for.

The queue is long, and the place is full. It’s like a mourner’s procession, or gawkers slowing at an accident, but it’s both more profound and more sinister than that. The participation in the Anne Frank House experience is an integral part of its nature – it is a shrine, now, and Anne’s sad fate has become a conscious and conscientious symbol of the horrors of the Holocaust, and indeed the horrors of human nature. As you pass through the narrow rooms it is impossible to forget that this is what Anne’s diary recorded, above all – the nature of living, as a human, in a difficult world. People getting by, morning turning into night. Her account is both all-encompassing, because it is about every human, and devastatingly unique, because of the specific circumstances in which she wrote.

From my journal:
“I spent the whole time feeling as if my heart had turned to wood and was trying to float to the surface. A strange jolt to come through a door and see the room Anne lived in, all the images of film stars still glued in place on the wall. It won’t be easy to forget. A good thing.”

A horrible place. Another reminder of the black rents the Nazis carved across the continent just a few short decades ago, rents that will take a few more generations to heal – if they ever do.

—-

Some travel irony for you:

Hotelier in Rotterdam: “I think all Europeans should learn their mother tongue and English. It is stupid that some don’t! I hate the fact that we all have to learn so many languages. It’s those peoples like the French, they are so arrogant, only wanting to speak French!” Name of hotel: Hotel Bienvenue.

—-

I may not have sent out a morgueatlarge in a while, but I post on my blog every few days now. Getting the hang of it, slowly, although still prone to longwinded political-type rants, so fair warning of that. Currently at the top (March 3 entry) is a photo of me in Rotterdam, if you like that sort of thing.
Blog is at: http://www.additiverich.com/morgue/
Go read it.

—-

Happy birthday to my dear papa!

Peace to you all

~`morgue

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent January 2004]

Edinburgh’s big street party to see in the new year has become somewhat infamous over the last decade, and is now reputedly the biggest in Europe. It’s certainly a folded page-corner in the Lonely Planet of many a traveller. The Hogmanay celebrations run for days, with events both ‘afore and after.

I was newly arrived in Edinburgh for last year’s Hogmanay and the ever-prepared Blair managed to produce a ticket to the street party for me. The party is free but ticketed, and once the free ones go the black market starts up – it’s typically up to £20 for a ticket, depending on how lucky you are and how late you leave it. Anyway, we got in, jumped around, looked at the fireworks and had a right old good time!

This year, after some plans to be in Belgium for the holiday season fell through, Cal and I agreed to open our home to antipodean orphans, and so we had a strong compliment of good Kiwi folk for the big day, including Alastair Galloway who materialised out of the rain at about 5pm on New Years Eve. The rain was heavy and it was cold and windy. Reminded me of home, to be honest – wind and rain always do. With his pack safely stowed at Broomhouse, we went to a favourite eatery for an Eve dinner, filling up the central table with Cal and myself, Alastair, Julian, Yuuki, Sibs, Trimmy and suspiciously non-Kiwi Kathleen. Guid fuid, induid, followed by leisurely chatting until the arrival of Jess with her own band of Kiwi travellers. And we set off.

The rain was coming down with some enthusiasm now, but spirits were high. Even the wind didn’t feel too bad. We passed through the gate, our wristbands checked, and descended the slope of the mound towards the massed throng in Princes St. Thousands of people filled up the road. We dove straight in.

The strange absence of music was soon explained as we wandered near enough to a speaker to hear the PA announcement – the street party was cancelled. Nasty weather. Everyone had to bugger off home. Thank you very much for your co-operation.

Miserable outcome! We wandered through the crowds for a while, soon finding that even the midnight fireworks on the city’s seven hills were cancelled. The largest rendition of Auld Lang Syne ever was right out.

By the time the minutes of 2003 were running out, we had found ourselves near one of the entrances to the street party, on the outside as it happened, where a large number of people had just decided to stand around and wait. This we did. One game punter scrambled up a lamppost and stripped off his clothing piece by piece, tossing it out to the crowd. It was unclear whether he gave up when down to his trousers due to modesty or because of he understood the lethal difficulty of trying to strip them off in the wind and rain atop a streetlamp.

Soon the ragged cheering of midnight’s arrival began, as everyone’s watch and cellphone separately decided the time had come. Everyone snogged everyone else and smiled happily, because that’s all they wanted to do anyway, street party cancellation or no. Members of our little circle proved instrumental in beginning a rather large circle singing Auld Lang Syne, not to mention lots of more general jumping around hugging people and an astonishingly successful and seasonally inappropriate conga line. It
were cool fun.

In the steadily improving weather we wandered around to the Grassmarket beneath the castle, and were eventually let into The White Hart, a lovely wee historic pub, reputedly haunted (not exceptional in Edinburgh), in this case by the ghosts of the victims of Burke and Hare, the bodysnatchers who once worked the area. I saw no ghosts that night, except perhaps the face of one of our number who proved rather the worse for wear come four in the morning. The rest of us had a lovely big yarn to all and sundry in a nice warm pub. And then finally home to bed as the clock swung past five.

A happy night. Condolences are not necessary, at least to me. Those poor geezers who flew up from London and paid quids for worthless tickets – they’re the ones to console.

And then, by the way, it was 2004. And so it still is.

———

This year the night afore had giant metal elephants instead of big pink giraffes. For what it’s worth.

———

And we’ve moved at last. In Belmont Gardens now. Step out the front door to a view over the tops of houses to the distant Pentland Hills to the south. Sweet. (Not to mention a housely guest book that reads like a greatest hits of my university friends.)

———

Hello to everyone! Those off to Kapcon this weekend – my best and fondest regards.

Cheers
Morgan

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent December 2003]

I used to make my own Christmas cards, the infamous Why Be Normal series that emerged each December (and often on birthdays, too). The pinnacle of these, in ’98, involved musing on which was better, real or fake Christmas Trees, and working it out by putting them both in a wrestling ring and
letting them fight it out. I don’t think I’ll ever be funnier than that. So I don’t do those cards any more.

It’s snowing today, big white cornflakes drifting down. Cal’s first snow. It’ll be our first Christmas together. And since this is my second Christmas in the northern hemisphere, I get to be all knowledgeable about
things and touched by how excited Cal gets at the snow. (Of course, anyone who saw the video I sent homewards will know quite how excited I got at the snow last year.)

It’s looking to be fun. Old friends Julian and Yuuki are heading up from London to warm our hearth on the day itself, and we’ll also be joined by new friend Kathleen, one of the many Christmas orphans in Edinburgh. I know of a couple other orphan-gatherings and with luck we’ll find a way to crash all of them by the end of the night. (With luck no carols though.)

Then the famed Edinburgh Hogmanay. Again, my second one of these, this time mustering a fair roster of folk instead of just-me-and-Blair like last year. (Hi Blair!)   We all have to sing Auld Lang Syne at midnight and everyone’s getting a water bottle with the words on so we can all learn it. I intend to just grunt drunkenly instead of worrying about proper type words. Should be magic.

I’ve now been resident in Edinburgh for over a year. That’s sorta shocking to me. Time flying and all that. I’m still in the same place and job I’ve been in since March – Broomhouse (little Bosnia to the locals, apparently) and Queen Margaret University College, still doing the same nonsense, still six foot four and a half. Cal is well settled now also, and I’m finally getting used to having someone else around 24/7, after so many months of random solitude and independence. I loved living alone, but I think I like hugs-on-tap a bit more.

Slowly getting momentum back on writing stuff. The New Novel is stirring once again in my cerebellum or my occipital lobe or my camille paglia or whatever the neurojargon is. Various short bits are waiting in the wings also. Bit disappointed that I haven’t achieved professional publication yet but I think my lack of actually submitting stuff might have something to do with it. Complicated business, what what.

Lots of energy has been going into eternal time-sink of roleplaying games, but with good cause. The Ottakar’s Roleplaying Club that I willed into being six months ago is thriving and building a new generation of collaborative-creative minds whose enthusiasm and damn good ideas keep surprising me week after week. I’ve also had the privilege of leading a game called ‘Providence Summer’ which was about kids and teens in 1961 Providence dealing with the failures of their parents and the hard choices of finding new futures. The five players delivered wild plot twists, deep and engaging characters and heartrending emotional arcs. Every contention I have had, that roleplaying can produce experiences as powerful and real as any other fiction medium, has been borne out in this game.

Speaking of which, it was a great thing to see Return of the King on the big screen. The local connection, of course, but also the message that this is sending to the mass-marketed creative sphere, in tandem with Harry Potter – story is everything. Lord of the Rings will be making money on DVD for decades. Who the hell will be watching Matrix Revolutions in two years’ time? Every hope I had for these movies, back when I first heard that Mighty Joe Young and Godzilla were forcing Peter Jackson to put Kong on the backburner and Rings was announced as the new project, has been fulfilled. We’re looking at the defining pop-cultural moment of the new, er, 25 years or so, just as Star Wars was key for the last one.

I am a happy morgue.

I miss home, a bit. Mostly I wish I could be having all these new experiences without leaving all my friends and family on the other side of the world and out of my life (endless stream of welcome visitors excepted). Looking forward to seeing all your faces again.

Take care, everyone. Compliments of the season.

Peace and love and, seriously, goodwill to all.

~`morgue

Why Be Normal?

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent November 2003]

hey everyone!

I’m continuing to wrestle time out of non-time up here in the descending-to-winter-again Edinburghland.
(With Christmas pending, I think I’ve been nominated to turn into a reindeer and draw a sleigh, except (a) wrong ungulate – me am moose, and (b) still can’t draw*.

Anyway. David in his great love for all humankind set up a blog for me and said ‘go’. So, I did. It’s here:
http://www.additiverich.com/morgue/ [EDIT: THIS LINK IS LONG DEAD OF COURSE, AND IT LINKS TO THE VERY BLOG YOU’RE READING BECAUSE I COPIED ALL THE POSTS HERE, OKAY THANKS – MORGUE IN 2024]

I still haven’t quite figured how I’m gonna use it, but to start off I have a BURNING QUESTION to ask everyone from NZ. I DESPERATELY NEED YOUR HELP.

Also, to draw in reluctant souls, I offer a free gift and a photo of me in my famous orange kathmandu jacket. Go and enjoy! And help! And enjoy!

~`morgue

* except for the surrey I drew when I was seven, with a fringe on the top, like that song in Oklahoma, ‘The Surrey With The Fringe On The Top’. That was One Fine-lookin’ Surrey, Let Me Tell You What.

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent November 2003]

We’d almost missed a whole festival. The Edinburgh Film Fest is a short one, two weeks in length and packed to the brim with screenings. Almost every single screening is followed by a question and answer session with the director or star or both. It’s astonishing. And I managed to get to one film. Just barely.

Thursday 21 August we went, to Potestad, a film about Argentinian political disappearances in the 1970s, or more thematically, about the way making compromise in the face of corruption leads to loss and despair. It was a fascinating film. I think my favourite thing about it was the use of the main actor, Eduardo Pavlóvsky, throughout, despite the fact that much of the film takes place in flashback to when he was a young man. It works surprisingly well, much better than you’d expect if I just described scenes of an old man wearing a rugby jersey and running downfield with his young teammates. The film was based on a stage play, written and performed by Pavlóvsky, but you’d need to look harder than I did to see where that has limited things. Stunning. I wish we could have stayed for more of the director’s discussion afterwards, but no, we had to race across town for a very important show…

…the arrival of Lucy! Yes indeed, we were finally to enjoy guests taking advantage of the floorspace to see the festival. Lucy bounced off the train, tilting her head side to side as she does and grinning hugely as she also does, and proceeded to be a wonderful guest indeed.

The next day her other half John materialised, and that evening I joined the group to make a quartet ready to enjoy some great entertainment. By this stage of the fest word of mouth had been getting around, and tonight was a double-helping of good word. First up was ‘Ladies & Gents’, a grimy
Glasgow-set underworld thriller performed in a public toilet. They split the audience in half, and one half headed into the dimly lit Ladies, the other half was led into the Gents. Both groups, each about 20-strong, were carefully placed against the walls of the bathrooms and told not to move even a step… and then the music started playing, and the show was on. A nasty, bitter piece tasting of revenge and murder, you watched events unfold in your bathroom, occasionally hearing loud noises from the other one. And then, at the end of the scene, reeling from what you’ve just seen, you’re herded back outside again, past the other set, and into the other bathroom. Then you see the other side of the story, and only when you’ve seen both sides through does it all fall into place.

Beautiful. And it gains immense style points for being performed in a public loo.

Buzzing from that odd, but good, experience, we wandered the evening for a while and gravitated towards our other word-of-mouth special selection: Kiwi geniuses Jermaine and Brett, Flight of the Conchords. I’d relented my point of view that I could see them anytime in Wellington – they were setting the fest on fire and it seemed foolish to miss out on supporting my countrymen at the same time as having a sure ticket to the folked-up land of funny. As it happened, moments before Cal bought the ticket the Perrier nominations were announced, with Conchords included, and the price for tickets jumped by
half; but it made for a hell of a sold-out show.

And yes, they were good. They were as good as anything over here. They deserved that nomination, and the kudos it has brought them. (I didn’t see eventual winner Dmitri Martin, but if the reviews were accurate then that man deserved to win. His set sounded insanely good.) See these guys when
they come your way. To do so is wise.

Saturday 23 August – the final weekend of the fringe festival! Flyer hawkers were in a frenzy handing out paper to anyone in range, the bars were full of jaded semi-conscious comedians, the running jokes of the festival were well-established (Aaron Barschak). Lucy and John picked the show, and they picked a doozy. It was called The Return, by a small Australian company, and it was set on a late-night train ride from Perth to Fremantle. Basic plot: two yobs alone in a train car. Vulnerable young woman gets on and sits down. Go. Crikey, I don’t think I’ve been nearer the edge of my seat for years – the tension was incredible, and the humour when it came would have been funny even if it wasn’t a relief. Another victim of theatrical-plot syndrome, but as I’ve said before, it comes with the territory. Hell, it was brilliant. I think it ranks as the highlight of my entire festival. Outstanding.

Late night funny stuff to follow. We checked out Dwight Slade, an American comedian who was friends with Bill Hicks (if you know who he is, you’ll understand). Sadly, he never quite got the crowd working – his humour wasn’t the political viciousness that Hicks-hungry punters were hoping for, and while he certainly didn’t bomb, the show didn’t explode either. Not bad, not bad.

Criminy! Sunday 24 August! Only one show – the comedic stylings of John Oliver, getting talked up as the new Ben Elton. It was good stuff, with a very funny bit at the end about anti-war protests that recruited a bunch of other comedians playing the same venue as placard-carrying cameo artists, with a line or two each.

Unfortunately for Oliver, seeing as it was the last night of the show, the comedians decided to completely sabotage this sequence. They substituted all manner of nonsense for the scripted lines and the bit culminated in hugely popular comedian Daniel Kitson dancing around the stage grinning for a while in a spectacular coup-de-grace that Oliver handled with admirable aplomb.

Great fun, really, and a nice way to end the festival.

John and Lucy jetted away the next day (I shan’t clutter up the email telling you about them, but it’s worth pointing out they’re Very Nice People) and Cal and I hunkered back into normal life, after a fashion. The
International Festival was still going on and a few late Fringe events were still occurring, but most of the crowds were gone and the furious pace was letting up. I was looking forward to a final Fringe event: Spearhead were playing on Thursday August 28. Spearhead and frontman Michael Franti are a San Francisco socially conscious music outfit that just happens to make the best damn sounds I’ve ever heard. My favourite band, I’ve only seen them twice since they formed in 1994. I was really looking forward to time number 3. Their gig was the first thing I booked for the fest. I’d been ready for a month.

Naturally I got sick.

Brad and Willy went in mine and Cal’s stead, and I have heard from them and other acquaintances that it was a damn good show. I heard “best gig I have ever experienced” more than once. And I feel damn good that some good came from my tickets. Yeah.

Saturday night was the grand finale. August 30 and the fireworks display over the castle. It’s renowned by fireworks nuts throughout the world. It deserves its reputation. A little over a year ago I sent a morgue-at-large email that spoke excitedly of the fireworks at the Thames Festival in London. Here in Edinburgh I met their grander, snazzier, bigger older brother.

And I felt fine.

—-

Here endeth the account of Edinburgh Festival 2003.

Enjoy your early November!

~`morgue

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent November 2003]

Okay, the secret explanation for our busy first fest weekend: all tickets were 2 for 1. The deal carried on until the end of Monday. So after work on Monday I zipped into town and checked out the next on the list: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, a New Zealand production about NZ poet/prophet James K Baxter. It was an accomplished piece, marred by the inexperience of some of the actors on display – a large-cast production, it had to cut corners to tour this far.   Still, an impressive and moving experience, appreciated by its respectably-sized audiences.

Then we grabbed some dinner and crossed town to see Camarilla. This was a politically-charged thriller/drama by a hot young Aussie playwright. It starts with a bomb going off in central London. Injured in the blast is the daughter of a prominent radical academic. The shockwaves of that explosion rush through the family, straining relationships and forcing decisions. An interesting, thrilling piece that engaged with the new post-9/11 world; the ending was a bit too pat, maybe, but that’s par for the course in a one hour drama.

There’s a lot of one-hour drama over here. I always had the impression in New Zealand that one hour was too slight for a serious dramatic piece – I have been well and truly proved wrong.

A few days of rest and the town went mad. Edinburgh’s packed with visitors during festival, throngs on every pavement. The Royal Mile, in the old town sloping down from the castle, is filled with colourfully dressed characters handing out leaflets for their shows, with street performers, with sightseers, with those in the long long queue for the box office… (this was the very first year they’ve tried internet booking, and the site fell over after about a week from the huge demand. They’re really quite backward over here, everyone.)

On Friday Cal and I were wandering near the Student Union building, Teviot, and were offered free tickets to a show by Irish comedian David O’Doherty. Despite our worrying experiences with the alleged Cream of Irish Comedy we signed on, and got an interesting show – mostly consisting of O’Doherty sitting with a keyboard on his lap playing and singing amusing ditties about how miserable and crap he was. Not bad at all, actually, and at that price how can you go wrong? We zipped out at curtain and ran down a few streets to get to our next destination in time: Don Q, a dramatisation of Don Quixote. This was a hell of a show, with the three cast members performing a large number of roles with great authority. It was funny, and very clever, but ultimately it dragged a bit too much for my taste – I suspect it stuck too close to its subject matter. In any case, it was jolly good fun and certainly not time wasted.

The next morning Cal and I rose bright and early to get to a morning show: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. This was a youth drama club show, I think, with a cast of about twelve teens. And it was great. The jokes were terribly cheesy and it didn’t really have anything much to do with any previous version of Baron Munchausen, but it kept me vastly entertained as the scene shifted in short order from england to the moon to the desert and more. Two highlights: firstly the utterly inspired song, the only one in the show, ‘Where is my camel?’ that was stuck in my head for weeks after (“She’s got two humps on her back, and she knows the desert like the back of her hoof, now she’s gone forever, can somebody tell me – where is my camel?”). Secondly, the Queen of the Babies.

The Queen was an 8-month old baby. Two attendants carry on her (suitably regally draped) high chair and then proceed to wait on her as another character engages her in conversation – talking to her, and improvising appropriate responses to whatever she does in response.

Man, that baby loved being on stage. She shook that rattle like crazy and grinned like anything. But even you clucky types can’t possibly appreciate how extraordinary it is to see an infant on stage. It was deeply, deeply startling.

(I want to note, while I’m talking about babies, that the smiling baby face in the sun that giggles at the Teletubbies is one of the most potent images I have ever seen. There’s something about babies, man. We’re hard wired to pay them attention. Freaky.)

(Hello to all the mums and fathers-to-be, or -have-been for that matter…)

Sunday we had a midday date at the theatre for ‘Twelve Angry Men’. The classic jury-room drama was being performed in one of the more prestigious venues. It was getting a lot of attention for casting 11 comedians in the very serious roles – the only non-comedian in the show was in the only vaguely comedic part. And it was great. The staging, the performances, everything was excellent, especially mad comedian Bill Bailey as a hard-nosed conservative. (Bill Bailey for Doctor Who!)

But drama was to come. It was stuffy-hot in the theatre, and a young woman was overcome. She left her row and was walking down the steps to the exit to the foyer, which was alongside stage right. But as she walked down she sped up, faster and faster, and collapsed forward at speed, cracking her head hard against the front of the stage.

Everything stopped.

Another moment of profound strangeness – the performers all gazing horror-struck at this woman. It was as if all the characters in a movie suddenly stared at the audience.

Then things swung into motion. ‘Is there a Doctor in the house?’ one actor cried, and there was. Everything stopped, we waited, and it turned out she was okay, only bruised. She was carried out after fifteen minutes of careful attention, and the performers gathered themselves, and the Doctor retook his seat to applause, and the house lights darkened and the show went on.

Magic.

After 12 Angry Men we went down to the Meadows, a huge green space criss-crossed with tree-lined walking lanes. It was full of large tents showcasing acts from throughout the festival, and it was all free! The sun was brilliant and we wandered around for ages. We saw out the day’s free shows watching Aussie guitar comedy trio Gud viciously and profanely abuse the old people in the front rows of their tent,, and it was pretty damn funny to be honest. Kiwis, heck them out next time they cross the Tasman.

But it wasn’t over yet! We were just getting warmed up!

Tuesday 12 August and we made it to my one and only Book Festival event (Cal went to many more, as she wasn’t working at the time – lucky girl). Alastair Macintosh & Roger Levett talked about their new books, about ecology and social responsibility. It was pretty exciting stuff. The question/answer bits were good, although I was rendered grumpy by someone who insisted on arguing that global warming hasn’t been proven yet, which is a rant for another time.*

Then we chilled out for a wee bit. On Sunday we jumped back in the game. This time we were in line for San Diego, one of the star attractions of the ‘proper’ festival, the new play by Scottish prodigy David Greig (who?). Starring NZ’s adopted son Billy Boyd, no less. It played three nights, we saw it on opening night, and it was mesmerizing – dream-logic, shifting symbols back and forth across a stage littered with suitcases, linking (or not linking) eight or nine different plotlines of people finding and losing parental connection in Scotland, London and San Diego… I loved it, but the reviewers mostly hated it. It was one of the true polarising events of the festival, and I was pleased to come down on the positive side. It didn’t
change my life or anything, but it was a damn good show.

Tuesday 19th August. The month was slipping by and no mistake! We were determined to get more out of the festival… Murder at the Savoy was our next stop, a lighthearted light opera about a murder in an opera company, featuring Roderick what owns the house in which we live and directed by Fiona what also owns the house in which we live. It was a relief to find that this was really quite delightful!

Almost at the end… one more weekend to go, plus a few straggler events… not far now…

…but that can wait.

~`morgue

* Okay, a rant for this time. Basically, my logic goes like this: if global warming isn’t happening but we act like it is, then some corporations get messed up. If global warming is happening but we act like it isn’t, then the whole world gets messed up. I know which I value more. Arguing over the finer points of the proof is a complete blind alley. Rant rant rant…

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent November 2003]

Three months of very severe busy. Here’s some short-form updates:
* we did the festival
* we had many visitors, including Lucy and John, Kirsten, Leon and Matt E
* I supervised the steady expansion of a bookshop-based roleplaying club
* I scored a freelance web content development contract for really quite stupid money
* Cal got a big exciting job
* we travelled through England
* lots and lots of other stuff

I’ve been just about bouncing off the walls this past week, desperate to get some time to catch up on all the things I need to catch up on, including this. And now the time has arrived – Matt has been kicked ou^H^H^H sadly left us, and I can stay late at work and tap out this email. Smoove.

I believe I promised a Festival report. Here goes.

—–

FEST

The Edinburgh Festival is, as we like to say back home, world famous in New Zealand. It’s a big deal if a Kiwi act makes it to the festival, and even bigger if they actually do well. I was waiting for the Festival from the moment I decided to stick around in Edinburgh, determined to see every damn thing I could manage.

It’s actually a bunch of festivals all running simultaneously. Wellingtonians, imagine the Jazz Festival, the Film Festival, the Festival of the Arts and the Fringe all at once and you’re getting the idea. The bulk of the fest is the Fringe – which operates according to the ‘you bring it, we’ll list it’ system of welcoming all comers.

The real competition in the Fringe is for venues. The big venues, such as the Gilded Balloon and the Assembly Rooms, are able to pick and choose the best of the best, and they release their own Festival brochures featuring their own acts. Their reputations are sound indeed. A lot of other people come to the Festival with shows to put on, and every conceivable venue is used. There were something like 200 different venues for the Festival. The competition means the venues cost a fair chunk of cash, and that comes through in the ticket prices – the Festival this year was filled with lamentations for the lost days of yore when tickets were £3 and innovative risky shows weren’t put off coming by the cost of the venue. This led to a rival festival down the road in the cheaper confines of Leith, a ‘people’s festival’ where the tickets weren’t extortionate and the bars weren’t full of pissed London-based comedians. An interesting situation and you can probably tell I’m about to start ranting about my point of view on it all, but I know you’re not bloody interested in that lot, so I’ll skip to the good stuff.

On Weds July 30 Caroline and I had a pre-Festival warm-up with ‘Jeremy Hardy vs the Israeli Army’, a documentary following a London-based comedian who went to Palestine with the International Solidarity Movement. Harrowing stuff, and the filmmaker was on hand to talk about the film afterwards. It was a good document of the ISM’s people and processes, which served as a good counterpoint to some of the hysterical propaganda that circulated about them following the deaths of ISM activists Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall. Sobering, but enlightening and ultimately a rewarding experience.

It was to be a very political Festival. Many performances were commenting on the Middle East situation, almost without exception being very critical of the Bush administration and the UK’s role in what is seen over here as ‘Bush’s war’. Perhaps the strangest outcome was the infamous Comedy Terrorist, Aaron Barschak, desperately trying to wring a show out of the time he crashed a royal birthday party dressed as Osama. (Now *that* frenzy was something to be seen.) He was ignored by audiences, although every outlet reviewed the show, and the consensus was ‘terrible, you have to feel sorry for him’. It was an odd direction for the often-scornful media to throw some sympathy.

I didn’t go and see Aaron Barschak. I relate this story here simply because the 2003 festival will be remembered for him; and because one of the newspaper profiles revealed his co-conspirator, the Colonel Tom Parker to his Elvis: none other than New Zealand’s own “comedy genius”, Brendhan Lovegrove. (I apologise if anyone reading this is a friend of Brendhan, or a fan, but seriously, the guy never gave me anything other than vague bodily discomfort.) So there’s a Kiwi connection you won’t read about on http://www.nzedge.com/!!

Anyway. Politics out of the way, we kicked off our Festival with the very funny Wicker Woman on July 31, which I picked because I love ‘The Wicker Man’ and, well, why not give it a shot? It turned out to be a fortuitous selection, as these reviews make clear: http://www.population3.co.uk/reviews.shtml. A damn good show, although it never did hit it big.

You might wonder how it is that a show like this, with such excellent reviews, could fail to succeed? Simply put, the competition is intense. There is so much happening so fast that it’s hard for cream to rise to the
top. But Population 3 will not be forgotten – sometimes it takes a year or two to build up the word of mouth. Case in point: Flight of the Conchords.

Kiwiland’s folktastic duo were the underground rumble at last year’s fringe, the show the comedians wanted to see. This year, they came in with no publicity machine, a show they’d cobbled together at the last minute, and a good rep with the right people. I knew they were out there, but I wasn’t interested in seeing them. I can see those guys anytime back home. Any time.

Instead we welcomed August with ‘Homage to Louis’ from the Jazz and Blues Fest. The venue wasn’t what I was hoping for – it had all the ambience of an old folk’s home, and the audience was mostly grey. But quite frankly I didn’t care. It was a great show, covering Louis Armstrong’s whole career, with a lot of emphasis on some of his wilder early material. I’ve never seen any appeal in tribute acts, but this one worked for me, even the lead singer doing his best Satchmo scratchy voice for the vocals. Brilliant stuff.

We followed with a bit of stand-up, the Cream of Irish Comedy. Cue joke about how the cream has curdled, or whatever. I have never seen a comedian die as thoroughly as the last guy here did. Yikes. NOT FUNNY.

Sunday. We zoomed into town in time for Dark Earth, one of the big events of the theatre programme, a shadowy portrayal of Glasgow urbanites coming across a family scrabbling a living in the Scottish borders. I liked it a lot, although the ending crossed over into an unappealing hysteria (theatre seems to do this a lot – it has its big emotional scream-and-shout finales without really justifying the emotions on display). It’s been criticised for being too allegorical, or for cramming too much social commentary in, but that didn’t bother me in the slightest. I got a lot out of it.

We spilled out into the daylight and rounded the corner in time to enjoy the Cavalcade that was the proper opening of the festival. Float after float after float, most of them advertising some show or other, all led by the massed ranks of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo’s marching bands. Phenomenal fun.

Then back around the corner to catch some physical theatre from the University of Nevada Las Vegas. It was called The Human Show, and after watching it we scored free tickets to Joe: The Infinite Universe immediately following. Physical theatre’s not my thing and my appreciation for dance doesn’t go much beyond the level of ‘hey, that’s cool’, but it was a nice afternoon’s entertainment.   I enjoyed Joe a lot. I’m not even gonna try and describe it. There were bodies, they moved, there was lighting, there was sound, there was a science lecture.

Then we cannoned across-town to the Underbelly for The Mighty Dread, a piece of hip-hop theatre about a south London rapper who can’t be emotionally honest to his girl and loses her – and then challenges Love itself to a verbal showdown. That was the hook that grabbed me – verbal sparring with an anthro’d Love sounded wild, and since it hadn’t been too long ago that 8 Mile had mainstreamed battle rhyming I was counting on some good stuff. It turned out I liked pretty much everything *except* the battle – after an hour of build up it amounted to three brief stanzas: ‘love sucks’/’no it doesn’t, chill out’/’oh, okay then’ which was a sad anticlimax. I’d wanted a roaring swirling philosophical debate cat-and-mouse wordwar and I just didn’t get it. Still, they’re a young company and I enjoyed the show, so I’m not going to bitch any longer. At least they had some non-white faces on stage, anyway.

The night was to end with Live Ghost Hunt, a mock-doc ‘let’s find some ghosts in this very building’ piece of broad comedy. It was nice and occasionally innovative but quite mild, really – I think it would have worked better with a pint or two fizzing up my brain. Still, made me jump when they sprang the ghost on us, which was at least part of the point.

And that was that. We trundled off home, collapsed and slept. It was the end of Sunday 3 August.   Only 25 more days of festival!

MORE TO COME…
———

I have about 2 weeks until our next visitor turns up, so I’ll try and be disciplined and get all caught up by then…

Wish me luck!

Morgan

[originally an email to the morgueatlarge list, sent September 2003]

It’s been a crazy and enlightening year.

Thanks to everyone who’s read these emails.

Thanks to everyone I’ve met.

Thanks to everyone waiting for me back home.

Life is sweet.

~`morgue