home
buy tickets
the show
read
press
schedule
contact
scam-o-matic
scam blog
(donate!?)


watch the video
BUY SOME COOL STUFF!
buy some stuff
. dean cameron's nigerian spam scam scam!

Scam Blog
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
  los endos - dean

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.

 
Monday, August 29, 2005
  so much - dean

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!

 
Saturday, August 27, 2005
  so close it's close

fish came to the big shoe today.

loved it. hung out and had a chat afterwards and are supposed to hang in a bit.

huge day yesterday.

'crats screening in the a.m. then off to do the show, then met up with
mistress of comic discipline and her writer, hugh, to go over the
questions for her big shoe. she is someone who enjoys stressing out
for her shows. not so great to be creative with, but it seems to work
for her at least.

back to the flat briefly to grab cameras to tape burnsy with.

met up with him and the crew at the pleasance dome and taped his first shoe.

provenz' and jen split to pick up food for me as i headed to the
pleasance beyond with burnsy, et.al for his 2nd shoe.

madhouse with all of them freaking out. indulgent. freaky. weird.

smaller house than they would've liked, but welcome to the club.

show went quite long as burnsy was entertaining himself quite a bit!
so i had to split early to do the comic discipline shoe.

setting up was weird and annoying as mistress o does not trust anyone.
as i began to tape my questions to the podium, she said, you have to
tape those down so they can't be seen and i yelled at her "i just put
the paper down on the podium and will be taping it down very, very
soon, but i just put it down. okay?!" it was tense and annoying.

sorta like doing the show. if you're going to have your guests pretty
much write the show, you should be nice and respectful to them. really
nice and really respectful.

remembered that glen wool was doing phat cave, so i got there just in
time for the end of his set. he's doing spank! (you love it!) tonight
so that will be good...

everyone wants provenza. everyone. people are coming out of the
woodwork to be his buddy. ahhhh yes.

met back up with everyone at some theater, but was so tired that i went home.

it was a much longer day that i've described. so long that i can't
describe it. especially as i'd spent the previous day at the airport
and then at other shows. nuts.

did edcom showcase again this morning with victor. went great. sean
collins was really funny as was carey marx and eddie naesans.

our shoe today was nearly full. finally. balcony was lined with peeps
and the floor area seemed completely packed.

burnsy and fish were there as was provenz. really, really, really cool
fo burnsy to finally come see the big shoe.

there was a minute where no one knew where danny james' camera (which
i borrowed last night) was. it's found now.

that is all. must go off into the big final saturday night of the
festival and get shitfaced on diet coke and laughter!!!

 
Thursday, August 25, 2005
  the aristocrats - dean

victor's mom: do not read this. not only will you scratch your name
off his birth certificate. you will burn it and then disown him.

everyone else: this is pretty graphic and sick. be advised.

so there is a thing called "the naked comedy showcase" at the fringe.
it's a one time thing and, well, leon, victor and i thought it would
be a fine place to perform "the aristocrats".

if you haven't heard of the aristocrats, it's a joke that is the
subject of a documentary directed by paul provenza, my director and
produced by him and penn jillette, another friend of mine and one of
the first to "get" spamscam.

there's lots of info around on it now and i'm too lazy to say much
more about it as I'VE GOT A LOT TO WRITE...

Leon enlisted a female brit comic, Joyce (or something... not sure
what her name was, even though i did act like i ass fisted her... very
70's NYC disco bathroom, but i digress).

the naked comedy showcase was exactly that, a showcase where you could
do comedy naked. we closed the night after a naked chick clown and
three naked stand-ups. they were all fine; the clown was pretty
awesome. she did yoga.

the stage was one of the cave venues. it's a venue in a... well, cave.
it looks like something out of pirates of the carribean or... pirats
of scotland. cave in a castle. there was a little "wing" sort of thing
where i hid "supplies" for the act.

leon, victor and i got up, naked, to talk about an act we'd all seen
at a little pub off the royal mile that has been overlooked by the
press and punters and, most importantly, the perrier judges at the
fringe this year.

we said we'd try to recreate their act, but this was something that
the father had explained in his broken english... maybe he was
hungarian or something... had been handed down through their family
for years and years...

it began with the father covering the stage with big plastic garbage
bags; bin liners as you heard this sweet lilting hungarian lullabye
being sung by a daughter at the back of the pub. joyce began singing
bullshit hungarian lullabye in the back as i lay out the trash bags.

we then sang a bit of "doe, a deer, a female deer.." while doing a
soft-shoe. then a bit more of the hungarian lullabye.

then i came back on stage with a pink garter belt that jessie and i
had gotten from the comic discipline show (i'm doing it tomorrow
night, by the way) and said

"...then the father and two brothers tied each other off with a pink
garter belt and began shooting each otehr up with heroin as you heard
this child's beautiful voice... we thought that was odd and then the
father brought out this electric razor and began shaving his pubic
hair off..."

i did exactly that. there was a woman in the third row who covered her
eyes in absolute and pure shock.

then we started playing with our cocks as our narration continued:

"...the guys tried to get their cocks hard, but couldn't because of
the heroin..."

we turned around and acted like we were jerking each other off.

"...they even tried jerking each other off, but that didn't work, so
they all lay down in a triangle and began trying to suck each other to
get hard... "

we were. we were in a triangle on the ground, miming sucking each
other. victor's "isaac" was quite close to my mouth and if i was as
cool as i think i am, i would've put it in my mouth, but i'm not that
cool. ah well.

the crowd, however, seemed to believe we were actually sucking each other off.

"...this didn't work either, so the inexplicably black brother begin
pissing in the other two brother's mouths..."

victor grabbed a squirt bottle full of lemonade from the wings and
hosed me and leon down with it, his back to the audience. that sorta
sucked as the lemonade was fucking cold. it was the worst thing about
being an aristocrat...

i then moved to the wings and scooped up a handful of vanilla custard...

"...this caused the father to finally get hard and he jerked off and
shot his load all over the other two guys..."

i flicked the custard all over them and smeared it on my cock in a way
that made it sorta kinda look like i was actually jerking off and
shooting my manchowder all over them. i really wanted to get hard, but
it is very difficult with an audience.

"...they all began eating the father's jizz..."

we ate custard from my hand and they'd scoop it off their chests and eat it.

"...at this point the daughter entered the stage..."

joyce had smeared chocolate nutella down inside of her ass cheeks and
down her legs. it looked really fucking disgusting

"...she had just reached puberty and was havign her first period and
pulled a tampon out of her cunt..."

joyce did a bit of slieight of hand and held up a french fry covered in ketchup

"... which she ate..."

she took a bite, as did leon, victor and myself

"..and shared with her brothers and father..."

then we did some sort of magical presentation type moves in front of her cunt...

"... the daughter then pulled a rabbit out of her cunt which she
squeezed until it shit in the fathers' hand..."

i then dropped chocolate covered raisins into our mouths...

"...then they began fucking... everyone fucked everyone..."

i "mounted" joyce.who was on her knees, from behind as victor and leon
waved their cocks near her face and simulated sex with each other as
well.

"...then the brother shit on the floor..."

leon magically dropped a snickers bar from his ass

"...and he and the sister shared it..."

they each put half in their mouth on their knees as i slapped my cock
on the middle of it.

"...this gave them diarhea..."

i snuck a handful of chocolate nutella...

"...and the father fisted the daughter's ass and pulled out more shit
which they all then ate and smeared over themselves and each other..."

the audience was screaming with delight and horror at this point. i
wondered about all my training at the loft and my relationship with my
mother.

"...then they made little moustaches with the shit and began singing
la bamba..."

we did and danced a bit

"...then they smeared the shit on their faces like blackface... except
for the black brother who made his lips white with cum..."

leon, joyce, and i rubbed the nutella on our faces... not a lot,
though, because we're pussies and clean-up was going to be a bitch...

"...and they sang a little minstrel act like al jolson.."

we sang 'mammy...how i love ya how i love ya...' then i went back and
got the bottle of lemonade

"...then they took turns pissing on the daughter..."

i went first, and as leon and victor finished off the bottle, i filled
my mouth with cream corn and chicken soup...

"...and the father, who had been kicked several times in the stomach
and pissed and shit on then finished it all off by vomiting in the
middle of the stage..."

i did so.. .very graphically with sounds, etc.

we then got to our knees and spread our hands and sang "ta daaaaa".

the naked MC walked up and said

"you told us where the act was playing, but you didn't say what it was
called..."

and we all said "THE ARISTOCRATS" whilst snapping a 'crat. (the
gesture drew carey uses when he tells the joke in the movie)

the place went nuts and we then went to the rear of the venue to clean
up (leon had brought paper towels and baby wipes... it was fun wiping
shit off of each other) as people filed out congratulating us.

a woman with a crucifix who watched most of it through her fingers
aksed me and victor for a flier.

i should point out here, by the way, that i had the smallest cock of
the three of us and my man boobs are just a bit smaller than joyce's
real female breatages... i am a big fat fuck.

it was videotaped. it is now referred to as "the career ending tape".

the naked comedy showcase ended at 9:20. I sped over to do danny
james' show with rhys dharby until 10:30. I met up with karen o and
her writer, hugh, from the comic discipline show and walked over to
the pleasance courtyard and talked with them about doing their big
shoe friday night. by about 11:30 i headed to the gilded balloon to
get some chicken samosas and a soda. i sat and chatted with mickey d
for a bit about our performance. he seemed impressed.

i then wandered down to spank! (you love it!). saw victor, jen f-hall
and cindy. victor leaned in "it's already a legend, sir".

snap!

 
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
  home stretch - dean

Our little questionaire thingy we filled out when we arrived was
published. Spontaneous publicity...

http://www.threeweeks.co.uk/detail_edaily.asp?id=1863

three weeks also gave us a good review, yet it sorta seems that they
didn't really watch the show. it might've been a hangover assignment.
hmm. ah well. we got 4 stars and that's all anyone really gives a fuck
about anyway, right?

right!

it's not online yet, but i'll post it when it is. believe you me!!!

had a lovely conversation with jessie yesterday. she's back from
france and is glad to be home. she raised a good point. why is the guy
running an ice cream cart on the street throwing 'tude around? he's
running a fucking ice cream cart on the street.

important to think about.

did a radio interview about the aristocrats yesterday. that's the kind
of celeb muscle i have over here. then i sat in on burnsy's interview
and we chummed around. he made the guy put his mike down and told part
of his version of the joke.

holy shit.

sat with burnsy for a bit and chatted. he's getting lots of attention
this year and he's remaining cool about it and is aware that he could
freak out. it's fun to watch.

jen hall, who is a hero, came to the big shoe yesterday. we had a good
one. i'm feeling great, victor is sick. so is cindy. she travelled
across the sea to get sick. better you than me, i always say. but it
is a total drag. being sick sucks anyway and shelling out a pantsload
of money and taking time off work to get sick is really rotten.

so we had a good shoe and a fine audience. we're going to break even
at least, they tell me and that's important.

after our shoe, i walked jen and myself in to see michael mee's show.
i didn't care much for the performance, but i did like the writing a
lot. jen enjoyed it immenseley.

i had my "artists's meeting" at edcom which seems silly and pointless
and discovered that we have to be out of the flat on the 30th. we're
not leaving until the 31st, so that will be interesting. hmmm.

i went home and crashed as i'm now doing and then headed to burnsy's
show to pass out fliers. he's nice enough to pimp our shoe at the end
of his. very cool.

got a chicken sandwich, called jen and we headed over to blaha's apt.
for a get together. it was us, the cast of billy the kid and the
pajama men. very nice. had a nice long chat with jen. we took some
photos and then i got sleepy and headed home. i stopped off at the
library bar and chatted with danny james and others. ran in to daniel
packard. i talked to him in an attempt to clear the air at the cock-up
the other day and he was a prick about it. so:

fuck you daniel packard. i had nothing to do with you not having a
place to stay here. eat me.

on the way out, found the three weeks daily wot had our hangover 4
star review and frantically texted people about it. woohoo...

maybe we'll stay with daniel packard on the 30th.

 
Monday, August 22, 2005
  6 shows/9 days - victor
Only 6 shows left, but 9 days until we actually go home. Cindy got here last Wednesday, which is GREAT!!! I then proceeded to get sick on Thursday, which sucks. I was trying to brave through it, but then Cindy got sick on Saturday. (Oh, for feck's sake!) So we've spent the last couple of days at the flat at night, trying to get better.

Cindy was supposed to go to Loch Lomand earlier today with one of my flat mates from last year and I was going to meet them in Glasgow for dinner. It was going to be fun. Instead Cindy stayed in bed because she couldn't sleep last night (which in effect means I couldn't sleep last night. if you have a girlfriend you know the speech I speak.), while I got up to go do "Pick of the Fringe" with Dean. After the showcase, I went back to the flat and work her up and she decided to come out because she was sick of the flat. I wanted her to see "Basic Training" a one man show by this guy I know, Kahlil, but he took the day off. So she came to see my show instead.

Afterwards, we went to see a show that happens after ours. I was mislead to believe it was a show about jazz, but it so wasn't and I was so disappointed. Cindy started doing yoga towards the end of the show, to make some use of the time.

Now I sit in the drawing room of the flat I stayed in last year trying to muster up the strength to go and do something, because sick or not, staying one more night at the flat feeling sick, is a shitty idea.

Maybe I'll take Cindy to see Steve Hughes tonight...oh wait, it's already too late for that.

Well, maybe we'll find something else to watch.

Maybe I'll try and drink this cold away.

Maybe, I'll catch pnemonia.

Maybe, I'll die.

Who cares, we'll be back in LA in 9 days. Hells yes!

Skinny Black ManThis has been an offical message from The Skinny Black Man
 
Sunday, August 21, 2005
  7 shoes - dean

only a few more shoes to go, peeps.

the weather has been absolutely wonderful. i don't even take my
sweater with me until tonight... of course it's raining and chilly,
but the past two days have been breathtaking. sunny, enough wind to
make it tolerable... man, it's great weather. the rain is actually
welcome. the venues have no a/c in them. i don't think there's a/c
anywhere here because, well, it's raining and cold so much, so when
it's hot outside like this, they become sweltering furnaces inside.

ours has these black boards up against the windows and it retains the
heat and it's hot three feet away from the boards. as soon as i get
there, i open up the door to the fire escape (the only one in the
city, perhaps?) in hopes to cool it off a few degrees.

hot. hot. hot.

my friend, chuck eye, has notified me that the other two geiko v.o.
spots i did are now running on t.v., so that's great news.

coming here causes me to lose a month of v.o. auditions, so that
residual income is tres good.

missed a call by 5 minutes this morning from jessie telling me she was
heading back home. man, i miss her. it sorta seems that her being here
made it worse now that she's gone. plus, the fact that we're having a
just above average run, makes it tougher. last year at this time, we
were gathering a full head of steam and beginning to sell out.
granted, all of our crowds have been at least twice as big as last
year from the get go, but... you know, i'm an asshole who is never
satisfied...

"maybe i'm just like my mother... she's never satisfied"

thanks prince!!!

last night, i went and videotaped two of burnsy's shows. the first one
at his regular venue, the kingdome, and the second at one of his two
extra shows at the pleasance beyond. very cool. he had perrier in last
night and his shows are all sold out from here on. amazing.

it is such a wonderful show and it is so interesting and eductational
to watch him do the same stuff night after night and keep it fresh.

there's a guy there involved in taping who i knew from last year who
is, ostensibly, a socialist, but all he talks about with me are ticket
sales and audience sizes and money. very competitive, it seems, and it
is quite funny to me as i'm just happy for anyone who gets good
audiences. even though there is that dark part who wants everyone to
die. so. i don't know why this guy has a boner about my ticket sales.
he's a good guy and i'm glad his show is doing well.

irregardless...

today's shoe was nice. good house, the top wasn't as difficult as
usual and i played, A LOT, with stuff. Leon even noticed after the
show. he actually cracked me up during his bit.

the last two days i have a huge jug of water when i get up and on my
walk to bristo square. i stop at dreamcatcher for a muffin and coffee
(order white coffee... that's the secret, why didn't they tell that to
me last year... fuckers!) then head to the pleasance dome to use their
luxurious facilities. much more comfy than ours at the flat. sorry.
thought you should know.

anyway, that jug of water has been catching up with me the last two
performances. yesterday i actually considered wetting my pants just a
bit to take the pressure off and was so freaked out that i was going
to that i made a shambles of the "key speech".

What i need to do is wake up earlier. i'm getting up after noon. it's
soooo fucking self-indulgent and lazy.

Burnsy's plugging our shoe after his and i need to get up there to flier.

i know where to make cuts now and will be doing that after tomorrow's
shoe. i want to trim 3-5 pages. it is important. we're just a tad too
long. just a tad... so close.

tonight it's the "flatmate show" with danny james. we'll all be on and
that will be fun. i will miss them.

i look forward to missing them.

rock on.

 
  hitching my wagon - dean

in the interest of using others' success to promote myself, i was
interviewed in the guardian about provenza's movie, the aristocrats,
and they actually used a couple of things i said:

http://tinyurl.com/atkd2

 
Saturday, August 20, 2005
  schadenfreude - dean

this makes me feel better. that's the kind of mood i'm in:

http://tinyurl.com/cahob

 
  grumpy gus - dean

i'm feeling grumpy.

poop on everything.

i want to come home.

 
Friday, August 19, 2005
  interview - dean

did an interview with a very cool guy named ewan for a podcast here:

http://tinyurl.com/8jply

or

http://edinburghfringe.thepodcastnetwork.com/category/podcast/

it should show up monday or so.

 
  more about yesterday - dean

so, that's pretty fucking cool about fish. it would be great if they
came to the big shoe.

I didn't get home until nearly 4am, which is pretty standard for most
people here, but it is, perhaps, a new record for me. That is fucking
late, people.

I knew that I'd be able to sleep in today and i most certainly did. I
slept until nearly chinese dentist time. Went to dreamcatcher to check
email quickly and got to the venue just in time for the kids' shoe to
be letting out.

one of the guys in the kids' shoe is going to the venue in kuala
lumpur where we're going in july and says it actually exists and we're
not going to be murdered in a field near the airport. so, that's cool.

did i mention that? we got an offer to do spamscam at a theater in
kuala lumpur for two weeks in july. pretty good money and, well, it'll
be in malaysia. you can buy pirated photoshop for 20 bucks.

it was so beautiful today. hot, hot, hot and sunny. absolutely
perfect. maybe even too hot. Inside our venue it was boiling.
uninhabitable. i don't know how people do it.

opened the door, the vents... anything i could do to cool the room
off. it was still really hot.

Realized that i'd left my digital camera at dreamcatcher. anil was
nice enough to head off to retrieve it. i'm amazed at how sweet people
are here.

show began and the intro went well, i'm not using the mike for the
intro, it seems better to do that... seems less like a presentation
and more intimate somehow... dunno..

i get over to my machine to say "great, do you have any toast!?" and
my key light goes on and then POP. it goes out. we're in darkness... i
say softly... "uh-oh" and then colin managed to find a light that lit
me up and we had one of the best shows we've had in a while.

during the show, we could hear it shitting down rain. i mean rain like
it was the end of the world. i couldn't believe it. today was the
first day that i haven't brought a sweater and was dreading walking
home in the pissing rain. fortunately, this is scotland, so when we
were finished with the show, the sky was clear again as if it had
never happened.

a friend of hot rod's from the u.s., craig smetko, turned up after the show.

chatted with him afterwards and recommended some shows. he's going to
be here for a while, so i hope to hang with him more.

went in to the press office and saw that khalil is getting a fringe
first. it's soooo funny. i got an email from him many months ago where
he aksed about coming here and i told him not to do it. he's been
getting 5 star reviews, doing sell-out shows and now he's gotten this
award. remember: do not ever listen to my advice. or just do the
opposite.

pajama men also got a 5 star in the scotsman.

the bitter, horrible actor part of me get so jealous of that stuff. i
hate that part of me. it just sucks. the part of me who lived with
eric and tony as their careers were taking off, on the other hand,
knows that it has nothing to do with me and my show. their reviews
aren't taking any stars or words of praise from mine.

there's a part of me who is whispering in my ear "you suck, you and
your show is stupid fluff" and it's all i hear sometimes.

blech.

but... it's very awesome for them as they deserve it. they're truly
great shows. they should be noticed.

there's room for everyone.

only 9 more shows. then two days off. then home.

then what?

 
  9 more shoes - dean

So close, yet so far...

Man, it really seems like it will never end. My knees and back have
given out. I'm walking like an old man. Really painful. I have some
vicodin but I'm scared of shredding my liver and addiction. Ouch.

Yesterday, I dragged my lazy ass out of bed to get to Steven Berkoff's
show "shakespeare's villains".

As I expected, he is a big ham. Man, he sure does know "the text" as
we like to refer to it, but he acts it like no one would ever act it.
Howard Fine would stop him after sentence one. Indicating, showing
off, everything one does with shakespeare when you've been doing it
and you're doign a one person show about shakespeare's villains people
pay to see.

But... I sure did enjoy his lecture stuff about it, though. I
loooooove hearing people who know what they're talkign about talk
about stuff. You know, he wrote an entire book about playing Hamlet
and, well, he's doing a show about Shakespeare's villains, so... yeah.
I'm glad I went, it's good to get away from all the
cuntcuntcuntcuntfuckfuckfuckbollocksbollocksfuckfuck of the festival
and see soemone ham through Iago.

Also, and this is how one would begin the parody show, he came out
sorta yelling at the tech staff because some fans were on. "David,
would you PLEAAAAASEEEE turn the effing fans off!" Saying "effing" is
so funny.

Irregardless, it was nice. Plus, the building was absolutely lovely.
It was at the Assembly venue up on the hill and as you walk up the
steps, it is built in a way that another building shoots up behind the
venue. Stunning. Plus the sky and sun... man, it's pretty over here.

Grabbed some food and internet and went off to do our show. The venue
is soooo hot. Jesus. There is a kid's show before us, James Campbell's
Onomatopea Society and it's a big whomping hit, so there are 100
sweaty and excited kids in there heating the room up. We get in and
open the doors and try to air it out, but it is sweltering. Sometimes
I feel as if i'm going to pass out. Man.

The show was another average one. I'm trying to change stuff that I do
to keep it fresh and maybe find some surprises. dunno. Sometimes I
feel like I'm done with it; that we should never do it again. Then,
after the show, i see how much people like it and i change my mind.
I'm insane.

Hiked back over the hill to the Assembly Rooms to see Will Smith (no)
- Misplaced Childhood.

He's created a character who grew up rich and was a huge, geeky,
marillion fan (there is no other kind of marillion fan). It's very
funny, the conceit being it's the 20th anniversary of the release of
Misplaced Childhood and he is revisiting the thing that marked his
childhood: his punishment for not bringing his outdoor p.e. clothes.

There are filmed segments with him and Fish, the former lead singer,
and they're pretty great. Fish is really fucking good. He should act
more. Seriously, he could be a great bad guy or corporate leader.
Really subtle and funny and charming.

Glad I saw it, and it was nice to see that there are other Marillion
fans lurking about.

As i was hiking back over the hill, the sun was nearly setting. The
castle was absolutely mesmerizing. I went in to the park and watched
the orange of the sun change the view of the castle every 10 seconds.
Words fail. Watching it was sooo odd. Thinking of history. Of our
short times. Castles. Things built for royalty. This festival. People
trying to better their station. The struggle. The wars. The defeats.
Love. Death... all that stuff one thinks of when watching sunsets and
castles.

Met up with Paul Byrne and Brendon Burns. Burnsy is doing two shows in
a larger venue and it's a sort of culmination of his shroom thing from
glastonbury and they're documenting it via video. I have a video
camera, albeit a crappy consumer camera, and have been enlisted to
ass-ist.

Met Luke, his delighful son who he talks about in his shoe and I shot
them working on getting lighting cues, etc. just right. It's funny how
some people "act natural" when they're being filmed. Sweet.

Was about to head home when I realized it was the night we buy drinks
for the fliering staff. I headed to the pleasance dome and chatted
with the fliering staff. What a tough gig. Better them than me.

Then i walked georgia and becky in to spank! (you love it!). It was so
hot. This is how hot it was. Ready? When we got in the room, my
glasses fogged up. I mean not a little... but they fucking fogged all
the way up. It was horrific.

Stewart Lee, one of the co-authors of jerry springer, the opera, was
doign a set. I must see him. He seems like an actual genius. When his
set was over, becky and georgia headed off and I found myself in the
library bar at the gilded balloon.

I'm sitting with steve hughes when I see Fish. Holy shit.

then I see will smith (no).

okay... what to do.. I walk up to will smith, to introduce myself when
he sees me.

"hey, you're dean cameron. you were at my show tonight!"

i was quite stunned

"i met you last year when i saw your show. It's brilliant, i want to
come see it again!"

how cool is that? So i tell will smith that i'm one of the few
american marillion fans and he points at fish who is standing by the
bar chatting with a couple of ladies (of course). I say "I know... I
saw him.. maybe you'lll...." and before i can finish the sentence, he
drags me over to Fish.

"Fish, this is dean cameron, he's doign a brilliant show here and...
well, tell him what you told me, dean..."

I tell Fish that i'm an american marillion fan and I saw them do
misplaced childhood at the roxy and then saw them at the palace and a
shitty theater in riverside on the clutching at straws tour. then i
told him how great i thought he was in the video segments of will
smith's show.

He brightened up at the compliments and the fact that i was an american fan.

"we must see your show, then!"

Will smith explained a bit about the show and fish gave me his card
and wrote his phone number. Then he said soem stuff in scottish that I
ddidn't understand.

So i wrote him an email last night, reminding him who i was and about
the show and got an email back from him. He's going to try and come
back next week and if he does, he'll see the show.

That is so fucking cool.

the really cool thing was seeing an email from "Fish" in my inbox.

Who knew?

They're now kicking me out of the internet cafe.

More later.

 
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
  where am i? - dean

what day is it? where am i? what am i doing? what time is it? are we there
yet? did we win? who am i? how did the show go? what year is it? what is my
name? who are you? what country is this? why are you here? hi.

I am firmly in the "what the fucking fuck was I fucking thinking" period of
the month. I'd like to go home tomorrow, please. Or do another show. Oh
right. I'll be doign another show.

A little over a month before the festival, Jon, our producer, emailed me
asking if a guy could sleep on our couch in Scotland for a few days. I wrote
back saying "Sure, if it's okay with everyone else..." and promptly forgot
about it.

So this morning, well... about 1pm, I slept in because I'm in the middle of
some sort of really, really, really intense depression, Kirsty called to
tell me that "my friend" is coming in tonight and to make sure that I'm at
the flat to let him in.

What?

This is what we call a cock-up. No one else had heard about this and Victor
and Danny have their girlfriends here so another person would bring the
total to 7 people in the flat. Apparently no one else was aksed or told
about it and it was presented as my responsibility and that the guy is my
friend. Um. No.

Long story short: it's all taken care of and the guy is staying somewhere
else. Man. The idea of that really sucked the balls off the rhino.

Last night I saw Eddie Naessan's "Little Terror". Stand-up by an Irish actor
who gets a tiny lump behind his ear and now has half his face pretty much
paralyzed. Hey, you stupid hippes: Socialized medicine sucks. It is
horrifying. Fucking horrifying. Useless. Fine for checkups. But if you have
something seriously wrong with you, you're fucked. He didn't go under the
knife for something like 3 years. "could be anything... it seems okay...
come back in 6 months..." motherfuckers.

He has a great section about "spiritual" people. Paraphrasing here... they
still believe all the bullshit but they're too lazy to get up sunday
mornings to go to church.

The guy has a wonderful style and is so inexplicably nice about it all... I
got teary during a bit of it. It would be good if more people saw it. I feel
so proud of many things about America. Sorry. I just do.

We are not getting as many people in to the show as we would like and it's a
bit daunting. It's hovering around 50-60, which is fine, but it's not so
great for the size of that room. Plus, the beginning is always weird. It
feels like have to drag them in a basket to get them with us. Dunno.
Annoying. Need to be having fun and it's not fun until the middle of the
show. Weird.

After the big shoe today I went to the Assembly rooms and bought tickets for
tomorrow for Steven Berkoff's show about Shakespeare's villains. I think it
might be a bit sucky and pretentious, but then again, what the fuck? But,
he's got that cool thing on his forehead.

I'm also going to see a show called Misplaced Childhood. I'm looking forward
to this. It's a show by a guy named Will Smith (no) about the influence of
the album Misplaced Childhood by Marillion. Saw the write-up and posters and
was very excited. Turns out there is talk that this is the big Perrier show
this year.

It's a British comedian named Will Smith doing a show about a prog-rock
concept album released in 1985 by a band no one's ever really heard of.
Let's see you try to cross the Atlantic with this one, sir...

Today, I saw Jerry Sadowitz' close-up magic show at the Assembly Rooms. I
sat next to a big fat british guy with halitosis. That was lovely.
Fortunatly Jerry Sadowitz rules. He's Jamy Ian Swiss on crystal meth. He
gets in your face with totally racist jokes and insults everyone and anyone
and then kills, kills, kills with his magic. Deceptively basic stuff,
cups/balls, cards, etc. but motherfuck... the guy is lethal.

Heard some people in line talking about going to Las Vegas and seeing Penn y
Teller and that was cool.

Now I'm at Beanscene enjoying the warm evening air and wondering if we'll
ever finish.

To avoid the poor kids flyering, I always have my iPod on. I have an
extraordinary amount of genesis on it. I didn't realize I had that much
Genesis. Hmmm. It's sort of lovely walking around this part of the world
listening to old Genesis.

Plus, I keep it on shuffle, so I'll go from Supper's Ready to a nerf herder
song. (I also have an extraordinary amount of nerf herder)

Having a lovely time. Wish you were here... instead of me.

 
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
  a day - dean

i was invited to play cricket today. what the fuck? why wouldn't i
give it a shot?

I began the day by dropping my laundry off at a fluff/fold type place.
the flat has a washer. no dryer. i guess that's common. that sure
doesn't make sense. perhaps it shall be 'splained to me.

walked 2.5 miles past leith to the cricket field. it was a lovely walk
made nicer by the fact that it was just around noon and the weather
was a delight. google maps was perfect with all the turns and that, my
friends, is fucking amazing.

cricket. as a batter, you have to protect the wicket from being hit by
the ball. as a member of the other team, you're trying to hit the
wicket with the ball and knock the two little things off the top.

that's the game. well, as much as baseball is hitting the ball and
running around the bases to get to home plate. everyone has their
stupid games and baseball and cricket are just as stupid as each
other. it's a game. what the fuck, right?

it was "aussies against england". I was, of course, put on the aussie
team. mickey d., a comic here who organazized the match, is such a
sweet guy. i think i'm going to his shoe tonight, by the way.

so, i'm on their team. they put me in the position you'd put the
american who's never played cricket, right?

there are no gloves. except for the "catcher". and that little fucking
ball is hard. that is one hard little ball. christ.

it was like softball. long stretches of nothing followed by brief
flurries of activities. some of the guys were REALLY serious about it
and others were there to have fun. Leon was on the English team, of
course.

The guy from Irishman, Scotsman & Englishman (i don't remember the
exact title, but it was a week before i realised he all three guys on
the poster and that, apparently, isn't rare..) got up to "bowl" after
several others had. you trade off, i think. or at least we were. on
his first bowl, he hit the wicket. instant hero. we'd made one other
out. kieran, who was a flatmate last year, made an astounding play,
also, by tossing the ball behind him without seeing and hitting the
wicket. it was, well, wicked.

i had to get going but they decided it would be fun to have the american bowl.

once i got the hang of throwing a ball with a straight arm, i did
okay. not too many hits.

then. i got a wicket. i hit it right in the center. hero. i got a
wicket. apparently, i rule.

then i caught a taxi, where i found someone's phone. i called the last
number and it was the guy's daughter. i ended up leaving the phone at
the box office.

went to do the show. wished we hadn't. just lackluster show. quiet
audience. started off poorly. we had to work a lot. to our credit, we
didn't give up, but it was just a tough fucking show. i'm sure we're
doing something wrong. or not. maybe we're just spoiled. i mean,
afterwards, people are all smiles and chatty and they drop shit in the
box and are very happy. but it sure was quiet.

who knows? 12 more shows. that's what i do know. that's a lot. that's
fun. that is a pantsload of shows. if you're doing a play in l.a.,
that's nearly a full run.

after last night's shower i have proclaimed that i am now officially a
big fat fuck. it's so annoying. i have a big fat gut and i'm saggy
everywhere.

it's so depressing.

can't stop eating crap. blech.

hi. i'm a big, fat, fuck.

saw jeremy lyon's shoe yesterday. holy shit. i remember from last year
seeing it and feeling so dirty afterwards. it's very similar this
time. you just feel sick. it's so very artaud. man, it's gleeful
ugliness. that character could be so pat and obvious, but he makes it
soooo damned good. man.

went to andrew maxwell's shoe at 8. they tell me he hit big this year
on a tv show. he is so comfortable on stage. so solid and present.
learned about not letting phones and people going to the bathroom bug
me. he has something to do, so bullshit like a phone isn't going to
interrupt it.

he does do a great thing with sound, though. the trachtenbergs are
above him and they had some words because the sound was too loud. they
had been keepign it down, but the volume has raised over the past few
days, so whenever they'reheard in maxwell's venue, he has the sound
guy play this loud explosion to fuck wtih the trachtenbergs. really
funny. cheap. but funny.

so anyway... he is great with wonderful insights about the world.
there's some lefty stuff that bugs me and some of the info is wrong.
but it works okay and didn't ruin the show for me.

hung out with him and some other folks afterwards and that was nice.
he told stories about an old timer here in the u.k. and that was
wonderful.

today, i did a guy from the observer talked to me about the
aristocrats and i tried to sound intelligent. we shall see. there is,
as there should be, quite a bit of excitement about it.

very fucking cool.

i wish our show went better today. i'd feel happier.

at least the weather is warm.

rock on.

 
  bad one - dean

from the hairline.co.uk review: "amateurish at best"

yes!

 
Monday, August 15, 2005
  yesterday - dean

We are firmly in the "this will never, ever, ever, ever end" mode. It's a
point where two weeks seems much longer than a month.

go figure.

I am still, oddly, having a fine time, though Victor now seems to be going
through the loneliness and alienation that I was struggling with last year.
Cindy shows up soon (he's literally counting the hours) and that will, most
likely, improve his mood.

Yesterday was "Fringe Sunday" which meant that there was a big to-do in the
meadows. I "beanscened" for a bit and was sort of driven away from my comfy
spot on the couch by a crazy person with a thick brogue who wouldn't stop
talking to me. Even though i would say "I can't understand you" after he
would say something to me. Then I headed to the big shoe.

We had a respectable amount of people, nearly 70, i think, and had a great,
great, great show. Just solid and wonderful. Victor was having stumbles at
the top, he said, but it all came out in the end. We've had more critics in
and I'm hopeful that their reviews show up soon, ass-uming, of course, that
the reviews are good ones.

Victor and I headed to the office, which is a GREAT house here and I
compressed the already compressed correspondence into a workable 10 minute
show for a "best-of-the-fringe" show. I also printed out two hard copies of
the script, just in case we have a computer fuck up again.

Headed back to the flat to drop of my machine and then Victor and I went to
a pizza place and each got 10" pizzas, which we ate on the way to Danny's
show. It's nice to work off the food as you're eating it. Hmm. I doubt
that's how it works.

Irregardless....

By the way, no one here gets that. It's a surefire laugh in the states but
it just whizzes over their UK heads here. I wonder if it's because they
think that I'm a stupid American who doesn't know that's actually a word or
what...

Irregardless...

I did Danny's show again. I was a guest with Jeremy Lyons who has a show
where he plays a drunken kid's entertainer. I saw his shoe last year and it
rules. I'm going to try to see it today. We did very well.

The shows will be here: http://www.radioblahblah.co.uk/download.htm at some
point. I like doing radio. I like "being a guest". It's fun. I feel like
Rupert Pupkin saying that. Hmm... "LIZA... SOMETHING ABOUT YOU WHEN YOU COME
OFF THE ROAD... AM I RIGHT, PEOPLE?!"

So... Then I rushed around tyring to find a show that I had seen a very
small flier for. It was a bass player who plays bass and tells stories.
There are, of course, TWO shows with bass players playing bass and telling
stories. One is Guy Pratt, who has played with a bunch of "big names" and
another is a guy whose name I couldn't remember but I knew his shoe began at
11:15 and that it was somewhere in Edinburgh.

I ran back to the GB to find the Three Weeks with the review of his show so
I could find his name and venue and there were none left. I finally found a
guide and learned the show was at C Central. No one knew where it was. "Aks
a pedi-cab driver". The city is lousy with pedi-cabs. Until you're looking
for one.

Finally, back on the royal mile, I found one. Of course he gave me the wrong
directions. But... I finally found it and only walked in about 5 minutes
late. Steve Lawson is the man's name. stevelawson.net is his site. Luckily,
I sat in a place where I couldn't see his fingers, so I was forced to just
listen. It's sort of noodly stuff that i wouldn't normally listen to, but it
was really cool. He uses lots of loops with Echoplexes and other cool toys
and has 6 string basses and fretless stuff and creates really lovely sounds.
better still, he tells great stories and is definitely a bass player... self
deprecating and funny. everything great about our breed, though I am nowhere
near as good as he is. He's astonishing.

Afterwards, I went to Spank! (you love it!) and got in! There was some woman
comic who I enjoyed until she began slagging Nike like an obvious hippie.
Then Robin Ince did a set. This is cool: He was making fun of brendan burns
and said "Stir my beer with your cock!" which means that Victor's
shenaningans (i said shenanigans!) have made it into the ether. Good job,
Victor!!!

Then a sketch group came and did their signature bit which is a thing with
glasses. Hard to describe but fascinating and wonderful. People are
geniuses.

Hey... this is a long entry, eh?

This morning (12:50pm) we did the best-of show at the Pleasance Courtyard.
We did the compressed version and it seemed to go really, really well. Huge
house in the venue where Reg Hunter was last year.

We were both tired, but a great audience will wake your balls up but quick!

That's me done. Off to the GB. I'm, once again, stealing wifi at the
Pleasance Courtyard performer's lounge. Why doesn't the GB have this?
Cunts!!!

Rock on!

 
Sunday, August 14, 2005
  14 days in

Well, we left America 2 weeks ago now. And already, I don't know what that means. Cindy is coming over (Thank God!) in....uh....3 days (sorry had to check what day it was) and it seems like an eternity away. Time has slipped away from me. I know we have 14 shows left and that's the only concrete thing that I can think of at the minute. The show has been going very well. We've gotten great reviews, nices houses (we had 108 people yesterday, that's 30 more than the capacity of our venue last year and it's only the first full weekend of the festival) great feedback and....I've drank lots of Guinness. My penis has been viewed by an audience of about 200 people, the incident was written up in "Metro" (a local paper) and I have been asked to take place in a naked comedy showcase, as a direct result. Mission accomplished.

I'm not quite ready to come home yet, but I do miss my girlfriend terribly. Last year, I had no one to miss, and I wrote about Dean being miserable, because he missed his wife. I lamented about how good it would be if I had someone to miss. I stand by that now. Although, I hate being apart from her now, I am very thankful that I have her to miss. I just wish she were here. Now. Right now! Alas, she is not, so I sit here and write and lament. She called me at this morning, drunk. She told me she was stuck at a party, because she was too drunk to drive and wished I were there to take her home. Yes, she misses me, too. It's a good thing.

Until next time!

Skinny Black ManThis has been an offical message from The Skinny Black Man

 
Saturday, August 13, 2005
  review links - dean

the fest 4 star review
http://tinyurl.com/9pbmf

the scotsman.com 4 star review
http://tinyurl.com/7u8lg

gilded balloon's review page:
http://tinyurl.com/c9asn

 
  doo dee doo dee dum... - dean

we're certainly in the middle of things, aren't we?

over 100 people in the show today. great balls, that's a good thing.
lots of press in and very few comps, many tickets sold. more than we
ever sold last year, that's fur sure. this is very, very, very cool.

midway through, the laptop i use (a vaio) froze. It had frozen a few
days ago, but then started back up within a couple of minutes. This
wasn't doing anything, so by the time my letter came around, i just
walked over to victor's machine and read my bit. Colin is with us
enough that he kept the light on me and out on my former place.
Walking over to the other guy's machine is the signal "HOLY SHIT MY
MACHINE HAS CRASHED.... DO SOMETHING!!!!" and I read a bit more
slowly, watching out of the corner of my eye to see if Victor was
victorious in fixing the problem.

No.

So we traded off back and forth trying to figure the problem out.
Finally, I turned the power off to re-boot. It was a bit sticky as it
was the time that Aboyami approaches. So, I had that letter memorized
and went *back* over to my machine and "read" it from there. The
machine finally rebooted during the aboyami and ensuing ibrahim
letters and i only had to pause the show a few seconds while i located
our snafu point.

if there are any computer types reading this who would like to sponsor
the show with two new, reliable laptops, we'd be happy to plug you
from stage either verbally and/or with stickers and shit like that.
i'm serious.

and no, neither of us have this shit memorized. it's only been two
years. it's weird, if i have the starting sentence, i can muddle
through the piece, but I really don't know the show. hmm. perhaps i
should get the script printed out for these emergencies. that's
tomorrow's task. good thinking!!!

in addition to colin staying with us, leon came on as if there was
nothing wrong. his girlfriend was in the audience and thought the
whole switching back and forth was some part of the show that she
didn't understand.

dat's acting!!!!

afterwards, i went to have nachos with victor, leon and his
girlfriend, whose name i will know by tomorrow. spank! (you love it!)
is doing well and that's good. he said he hopes to pay off the
pineapple boys debt from last year with the profits. that's really
cool.

the festival is nuts. one of the comics at late 'n live went in to the
audience and beat up a heckler.

what's "fringe" about the story is that he then went back on stage and
finished his set.

it's a great world.

it was so hot in the theater today during the show that between the
heat and the stress of the machine freezing, i thought i might pass
out for a minute. it was weird. i hate those moments when i feel my
age. it's so weird. it's sad.

last night, i went on to danny james' radio show. danny is one of our
flatmates and i'm really growing fond of him. he's a great guy and we
have a similar sense of humor and awareness of who we are. he records
the show and then broadcasts it the following day. i'm not sure where
or if it's archived. i'll find out.

ed byrne (not the lend me your comb guy) and ian coppinger were on
before me and they are really, really, really, really funny and i felt
afeared before i went on.

my first joke about liberal porn died sadly but after that we hit a
groove and i think i was a good guest and it went well. had a couple
of good laughs and i think i made the show better. that's what we do
as guests.

then went to the library bar and hung out with the edcom people
downstairs. it's a great group and everyone seems very happy.
generally, the shows are doing quite well and the weather's good and
everyone is in good spirits. the tuesday/wednesday doldrums have passed
and those are traditionally the slowest days of the festivals and we
all are happy it's past.

then a fire alarm went off. this has been happening pretty regularly
since the beginning of the festival. though everyone is calm, there's
that lizard thing in the back of my mind of "do i die tonight?" which
makes me want to trample and scream. but. i don't.

oh... right... i had taken a valium. i have some extra... um... yeah,
so i had a valium.

as it was kicking in, quite relaxing, we were all outside in bristo
square (not square, by the way) waiting and someone came up to me and
said "do you know your government is responsible for 9/11?"

i paused.

"i was pretty sure it was people who believe in god who flew some
planes in to buildings"

"no. it was your government. it was all planned"

"yes, by religious people"

"it's all documented in a book called the new pearl harbor. you have to read it"

"the idea that the crazy people couldn't organize their hate over
years and years to fly planes in to buildings is racist. just because
they're fucking brown. that's the only reason people think it's a
conspiracy. you have to have white guys organizing everything... "

"there were no hijackers. the book is by a christian scholar..."

"well, right there you've lost me. he's a christian; he doesn't have
an ability to process information. he is a fool, even without the
racism"

... the racism thing sort of stumped him. it's the same thing with the
pyramids; brown people could *never* figure out how to build something
like that. it has to be aliens or some shit. fucking assholes.

extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof, okay?

i mean, no, i have no evidence that the crazy religious assholes from
afghanistan hijacked the planes and killed people other than what i've
read and if you're going to give me conspiracy stuff, then i'm sure i
can illustrate how fairies and gnomes conspired to make the buildings
go down, too. right?

also, i really don't fucking care. it's very sexy to get in to these
things, but the truth is often boring. though, a bunch of people who
believe in god getting together to hijack planes and kill people is
pretty fucking interesting. you don't *really* need *another*
conspiracy on top of that, do you? the initial conspiracy: imaginary
friend, hatred, nothing to live for, imaginary friend, more hatred and
the aformentioned imaginary friend seem like a fine conspiracy, right?
or am i just an asshole who doesn't think "outside the box"?

so. that's that.

back to the show. i noticed over the last couple of days that we'd
both strayed a bit off track and we chatted about it before the show
and gave each other some notes which helped us both to kill today.
it's a good thing to work with someone you like and respect. i can
only imagine doing this show with someone who is a dick. it would suck
ass in the bad way.

we're at the point in the trip where i wake up and say to myself "what
the fuck was i fucking thinking? i promised myself to never come back
here. what the fucking fuck?!?"

but... it's actually beautiful and was hot and sunny outside again.
also, i'm allowing myself to spend money to live well and i don't have
to worry about victor eating this time. he is also having a great
time. i think.

cindy arrives in a couple of days and that will be good for him.

me too, as it breaks the time up.

there are four sections to this trip.

1. arrival
2. jessie
3. before cindy
4. final week after cindy

provenz' has a great joke; well, it's not really a joke. it's
something he says onstage sometimes: "Hey, Scotland, how about a free
refill?!"

the concept of free refills hasn't reached across the atlantic yet.
however, a waiter told me "don't bother" as i was leaving a tip the
other day.

that's why the service sucks. there's no incentive.

it's almost nine. it's saturday night. i'm blogging.

yeah!

 
Friday, August 12, 2005
  gone gone - dean

I walked jessie out of the flat to the taxi to the airport. My time
here will now be a bit worse. Ah well. It sure did rule having her
here. She makes me get off my butt and do stuff.

We went down to the park off of Princess st. yesterday and lay on the
grass and looked at the castle and kids chasing birds around and
laughed. it was lovely.

Then we rushed back to see something that hadn't opened yet. Drag, as
it would've been nice to stay in that park.

We finally saw a piece of shit yesterday. Pretentious, pointless and
dull. It had gotten 5 stars in some paper and a glowing review in
another and was theater so we thought it might be good to see. There's
movement stuff in it and she thought it would be good for the Gorey
thing she's asst. directing. No. It was an hour we can't get back.

The show wasn't so full yesterday and that's always disappointing. Not
a great show, either. I'm hopeful that the weekend will kick us back
in to gear. If not, I'll off myself.

Then she and Victor went to see some japanese mime thing. Okay. Good
for you.

I met up with them after having coffee, muffin & internet and we had
dinner with Michael Blaha at a great indian restaurant. Man, the
finest chicken tikka i've ever had. everything else was great, too.
the waiter was a martin short character from poland. great food and
conversation with Michael, Victor y Jessie. Sitting in the next table,
were people from L.A.

It's amazing.

Then I took Jessie back to see Alex Horne-when in rome, which I
thought was the pajama men a bit back. The show is so deeply great and
british. So low-key and funny and sweet and menacing. I love the tim
key character and his ineptness and charm. There is all sorts of
random stuff in the show with the audience and i ended up in the
powerpoint presentation and the audience sang a song to me as their
favorite audience member. just nutty and cool.

went back to the gb and saw the mistress of comedy gameshow thing with
shenoah and mark from pajama men and chris whatshisface. really cool
and funny idea and victor and i are going to do the show at some
point.

got back to the flat around 1:30 or 2 and told comedy stories with
danny, victor y tim. talked about doing a heckle club show here. it
would rule.

ahhh.... heckle club.

i miss my wife.

 
Thursday, August 11, 2005
  pain, pain... - dean

yes, it's that time. whining time. my back hurts from walking
everywhere. well, actually, it doesn't hurt from walking everywhere,
it hurts because i'm a pussy.

okay. that's done.

yesterday we had one of our finest shows. not a lot of people, but i
finally managed to get the 'let's go on a ride' feeling out to the
audience from the get-go. there was a "cock-up" with getting jessie in
to a show and i was waiting outside the venue, thinking that the other
show hadn't finished. It wasn't a big deal, but we started a bit late.
maybe that was a good thing. it may have been one of our best shows.

oh, speaking of being a dick... a friend from "thatguy", dan, showed
up. he taped the show last year and came and saw it again. in my
post-show delerium, i introduced him as matt. i had this weird aphasia
where i knew it was dan but i said matt and then my brain convinced me
it was matt. i'm so insane. irregardless, he made this insane and
wonderful music vid thing that's, well, insane and wonderful. man.
people rule. especially the people i know. so there. eat me.

after our big shoe, we met up with flee and eddie and went to see noel
faulkner - shake, rattle & noel. (GET IT!?) really charming older guy
with stories about growing up on the fringes of the music biz with
tourette's before anyone knew what the fuck tourette's was. rather, he
was too poor to go to a doctor who knew what tourette's was. it's
pretty cool seeing a guy click, pop, shake and make weird gestures
while telling you about clicking, popping, shaking and making weird
gestures. there was no "pity me" shit at all. it was mostly about his
adventures growing up. the tourette's was a bit tangential to it all
but it informed everything he did, like doing a drug run on a boat to
colombia for fifty grand. (he then wasted it on holistic medicine)

he has this one line which was so beautiful it nearly made me cry:
getting older is great. when people are mean to you when you're young,
it hurts you, but when you're older, you realize they're just cunts.

lovely.

that and the constant lower back pain.

anyway... loved the noel faulkner shoe.

then we went in to see "dirty fan male". wow. this is a great show.
it's a guy who began answering fan letters sent to his sister who was
doing soft-core "page 3" type layouts in the early nineties. she began
a sort of fan club empire for other girls and he and his mum and a few
others ran this sort of empire out of their garage.

it's our host and a guy in a tux with a keyboard who interprets the
fan letters. the trap is that they make fun of the desperate and sad
guys who send letters, but there really wasn't any of that. it was a
bit of a celebration of the nuttiness of our sexuality. how weird it
all is when you step back and just look at it. the people who write to
the girls are a bit more eager to share theirs. who knows why?

irregardless.... it's a great show. the guy doing the interp kills me.
sometimes he would underscore with his keyboard, other times he'd just
read a letter as a character, or he'd sing a song. he did an
"uplifting paul mcartney medley" at the end that killed me. with the
full-on bullshit paul mcartney "thumbs up" bullshit that paul mcartney
does now. all in the style of that uplifiting paul mcartney medley
bullshit. ahhhh.

geniuses walk among us.

dfm has a bit in common with spamscam as there is one guy whose idea
it *wasn't*, doing most of the heavy lifting of the show. Ah well...
Though, to my credit, i do quite a bit more work than the host of dfm.

we scurried over to brendan burns' show. i wanted to see him again and
wanted jessie to see it. he has the flu or something and was a bit
scattered and under the weather. that didn't stop him from giving a
great show and killing. i love his eagerness and his insights. i don't
know how they fucking do it. man, i'd love to be able to do that. it
must feel superhuman after you spill yourself out and people love it.

we grabbed food at a chip shop and then went in to see tim minchin.
he's filling the room at the same time where i was with pc cowboys
last year. nice to see the room filled. i enjoyed tim minchin. it's
fluffy and it looks like there is a lot of money behind him. a whole
lot. he's getting a lot of play here and that's good. i think he's a
star and it seems that others feel that way too. basically, though
it's soooo much more than this, really, really, really well crafted
funny songs. sort of bastard son of harpo and tom lehrer who looks a
bit like john lithgow in buckaroo banzai across the 8th dimension.
some good stand-up and a great peace song for jews and muslims.

you don't eat pigs
we don't eat pigs

it seems it's been that way forever

you don't eat pigs we don't eat pigs


why not not eat pigs together

genius.

then (we're doing a lot... i'll sleep when jessie's gone) we went to
spank (you love it!) and two women reinforce the unfunny woman comic
stereotype. then alex horne came up and did a speedy fast punfest and
a crazy pre-recorded thing that was fucking weird and great. then tim
minchin popped in and sang some songs and was sexy and did the pig
song.

then it was 2am and time to get fucking home, people....

i'm having a great time!!!

go figure.

oh. the weather is amazing. warm. lovely. it was never this nice last
year. everyone agrees. so there.

 
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
  good beans - dean

the last couple of shows have been teeth pulling, but we get them by
the end. i'm figure out how to make them "love me" at the head of each
show. then it's much, much, much, easier.

we've now gotten three 4star reviews. sales are great and everything
is coasting along nicely. we've also received a fairly firm offer to
play London next spring. This is so cool. especially as it just began
as a fucking joke with me fucking about on the internet. Go figure.

Having jessie here makes things so much better. she's such a sweet
person and is just sunlight. I'm a lucky man. Until she figures out
what a dick I am and splits. But, I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

We've seen a bunch of shows:

The Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players. This is a family act (the
aristocrats!). The father writes songs to found slides. Then they play
the songs and talk about stuff. It's very sweet but the sound was off
and it was difficult to hear. I have a huge crush on the daughter.
She's 11 so I'm really fucked, aren't I? It's a really cool concept
but it needs to be heard. I loved the father's nonstop rambling.
Pretty awesome.

Steve Hughes - Saw him last year and I have a crush on him, too. He's
what everyone thinks Bill Hicks was. He actually is smart and funny.
His insights into politics and race are so beautiful. And he has one
of my favorite observations ever, which I'll ruin right now: Fucking
men is very macho, fucking women is gay. He expands on that and it
kills. His set is perfect and it just washes over you and spins around
inside. He reminds me of Justin Hawkins from The Darkness.

The Pajama Men - These are two Americans, I think. Or maybe they're
Canadian... This is one of those shows I watch and just think "how the
fuck do people do that?" It's deeply, deeply funny and they're sooooo
good and so slick and so confident in what they do. They either won or
were short-listed for the Perrier award last year, which doesn't mean
anything except they were noticed by a bunch of other people for being
fucking great. Really nice guys, too. They came to the show yesterday
and were very sweet.

After the show yesterday, which wasn't really after the show, as we
hang by the doors where the audience exits, gethering shit to send to
Nigeria, some woman started on about needing to talk to Bobby. Bobby
had the music stands or some shit. I was just finishing a show and
couldn't understand a fucking thing she was talking about. Finally I
figured out she meant "Becky", who is one of our producers. There is a
very quick turn-around after the shows and the people after us have a
lot of shit to get on stage. We have a huge screen to get rid of and
computers to dismantle. So she kept talking to me while I'm trying to
break shit down. Yammer Yammer Yammer and I'm trying to be nice then
she says that we owe her £72 for the music stands.

The fuck?

I say "If you don't want us using the music stands, then I'll just buy
some other stands."

"No, I've already made a deal with Bobby."

"Then you should talk to Becky. I don't have the £72. But we'll be
here for a month, so you'll get your money."

"We're here for a month, too."

"Yes, I know, so Becky will be here and you can work out the money
with her. How's that?"

On and on... Bottom line is I do not like this woman one bit and she's
cutting in to me breaking down and my joy after a performance. Plus,
the fucking news about the fucking music stands. Motherfuck. We have
access to music stands here. Everyone has their fucking hands in your
pockets for music stands. Music stands aren't £72 to rent. You can buy
music stands for that much. We did last year.

I put her on the phone with Becky and then give her the phone number.

To sum it up: Eat me. Eat me lady. Eat me and you can eat your music
stands, too. How about I get in your act's face after a show? Like,
right after a show? Actually, right before they finish and then for
the next 10 minutes? How would that be?

There. That's done.

Other than that, I'm having a killer time. Loving the festival this year.

It's really hot outside. So hot, I've left my sweater at home!!!
That's the kind of pollyanna confidence I have in the day!

Meow!

 
Monday, August 08, 2005
  yay! - dean

Yay!!!! Jessie's here! Yay!!!

Great show yesterday. 60+ people in the audience and they were with us from
the get-go.

Got our first audience review:
http://www.edfringe.com/reviews/read.html?id=SPAMS

Very nice.

It was so beautiful yesterday I actually wore short pants. I'm wearing them
today, too!!! That's how beautiful it is. The weather is... wait... i'm at
beanscene. just looked out the window. it's overcast now. hmmm...

irregardless...

it was lovely yesterday. was so excited after the show that jessie was
arriving. walked around happy in my short pants looking for a place to get
keys copied for her. no luck.

she arrived and i walked her around a bit, showing her the venue, etc. we
ate dinner at a fine indian restaurant, namaste, then picked up tickets for
the opening night fringe party. walked six million miles to that. stayed for
ten minutes, walked six million and one miles back to the flat and promptly
fell in to a deep sleep. i took a great photo of her crashed out in bed.
really funny.

before she left, she got her hair done and added some bright red streaks. it
looks great and crazy. perfect for her.

here's hoping we have another great show. we've done 5? is that right? holy
balls.

man, victor has just stepped things way up. he was already great but now he
is really doing some really nice finesse stuff. it's prodding me to get
better.

annoying.

speaking of... no word from the spamscam.com weenie.

that's all.

rock on.

 
Sunday, August 07, 2005
  zoo story - dean

v. and I did a quick photo shoot at noon for fest magazine. i don't care
what it is, i just hate getting my picture taken professionally. if it's
casual with friends, i'm all about it, but once it's "for something"...
blech.

fine problem to have. just so's you know.

rushed from there to a 12:15 showing of zoo story.

it's such a beautiful play and i always think about how it must've just
freaked audiences out when it was originally produced back in the 60's. that
sort of class warfare right there in front. the eloquence of the jerry
character. his rage and acceptance of it. it's so beautiful.

i think the director didn't fight enough for the other character, but that's
a common trap. it was still a good battle, but the trap is that the jerry
character is so sexy and eloquent that the other guy is just left to watch.

i'm glad they didn't update it, other than change the salary and add a
stephen king reference, but they didn't do the obvious thing like make jerry
"urban".

the two actors were wonderful.

It's also weird because now I'm too old to play jerry. i did it in peggy's
class a million years ago and i got a bit nostalgic for those days while
watching it.

man, it's a great play.

acting is hard work. it sure is.

i guess one of the actors is a big to-do here. saw michael blaha afterwards
and that's what he said. the guy playing jerry is also doin the odd couple
and that's sold out, they tell me. hmm..

i'd forgotten that they play one movie a month here at beanscene. this
month, it's doctor doolittle II - electric boogaloo. it sure looks shitty.
talking animals and eddie murphy making money.

i'd like to start doing movies and tv again. it seems like the thing to do
when i get back. i miss it.

we're selling a shitload of tickets. it's good. it is very good.

the theater holds 130 or so. i'd like to sell that out at least once. i bet
that would be cool to do the show for that many people.

the best news of all is that jessie arrives today. yes!

rock on. this is sooooo much better than last year.

 
  genius - dean

My friend, Chuck Ivy, sent the following email off to the guy who has
spamscam.com

Holy shit.

Letter below:

First, I must solicit your strictest confidence in this transaction;
this is by virtue of its nature as being utterly confidential and top
secret.

I am the Legal adviser of the Contract Review Panel instituted by Mr.
Snickers Holding Corp. (a subsidiary of Cattle Prod., Inc.) to probe/
review all Contracts executed and guacamole recipes made during the
Scottish run of the play "Urgent & Confidential: Dean Cameron's
Nigerian Spam Scam Scam". My colleagues on the Panel have mandated me
to seek your assistance in the transfer of the domain spamscam.com
into our control for the period of one month.

As you may know, the actor Dean Cameron and members of his posse
wasted dozens of hours through spurious contacts and emails to
foreigners between January - July 2003 and this is now the subject of
a successful play. In the course of our review, we have discovered
the domain spamscam.com, which the actor could not transfer from the
dedicated account of Network Solutions, Inc. before his sudden trip
to Edinburgh in August 2005. It is this domain that my colleagues
and I have decided to acquire for us through your assistance. This
assistance becomes crucial because we cannot acquire the funds
necessary to pay off the current owner in our names and as fictional
TV characters we are not allowed to own or operate foreign bank
accounts (or domain names). We have thus developed a, fool proof,
legal and totally risk free scheme through which the domain can be
transferred to our DNS account within a very short time. The scheme
is to use our position and influence on the Panel to represent you as
a foreign Contractor beneficiary of the domain. We shall arrange all
documentation to support this claim and get Approval for the transfer
of the domain for our benefit on your behalf.

The scheme is perfected to be 100% risk free and we are sure the
domain can arrive our Account within 10 working days from when you
agree to assist us. You should acknowledge the receipt of my mail
through the above e-mail address so we can further discuss the
modalities of your cooperation and negotiate the charge for the usage
of our Account. You definitely have a lot to benefit from this
transaction as we are prepared to give you between 20% of the
guacamole recipe as soon as we secure it in our account.

Please, endeavor to send me an e-mail indicating your interest as to
enable me furnish you with my confidential telephone/fax number
through which we can communicate with you in confidence (in your
response) as the need for secrecy is great to this transaction. We
expect your urgent response.

Yours faithfully,

Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law

 
  And so it began.....h
Warning!!!If you are easily offended by full frontal male nudity or "dirty" words like "cock", then you should stop reading now. If you are my mother....well you're probably not too surprised. Also, if you are easily offended, don't go see "The Aristocrats". While there is no nudity in "The Aristocrats," there are quite a few colorful words in that brilliant documentary by Paul Provenza. If you're not easily offended, see it!

So it seemed like it was going to be a good night at "Spank," the late night comedy show imported from London. The venue was packed, the crowd was into it and the comedy was good. I was sipping on a beer having one of those rare moments, when I wished I still did comedy, so I could perform for this crowd. But, alas, those moments are too few and far between to motivate me. Brendon Byrnes (sp?) had just ripped the place up with his uncontrollable comedy and leaned over to ask me for a cigarette, when Leon said it was time for "One minute naked show promotion." You could come up on stage and promote your show for one minute, as long as you were naked. I figured, "Why the hell not, I've been naked for much less in the past," but my thought took too long, someone was already on stage taking his clothes off. I won't comment much about that, except to say that there was a lot of controversy once he took his pants off, as to whether on not he actually had a penis....nuff said. So, he sat down and I thought I'd missed my chance, but no they asked for someone else. I quickly stood up and walked onto stage. Leon (Dr. Aboyami, in the Spam Scam) looked surprised. Why wouldn't he be?

In "Spam Scam Scam," do to the nature of the show, I don't do anything outrageous. Most times, I don't even look at the audience directly or connect with them, until the very end of the show. And since Leon has never seen me in America, he has no idea that I'm notorious for "naked time" at Sacred Fools Theater, or that I convinced my sketch comedy group "PunchBelly" to do a show called "4 Naked Guys" where we actually walked through the audience to the stage naked, and did a little dance with "4 NKD GYS" written across out collective asses. So, of course, Leon was surprised.

I quickly took off all of my clothes, only pausing briefly on my boxers for dramtic effect. I walked up to the microphone and stood there watching the audience go crazy. This was awesome! I quickly rattled off the details of the show, abruptly stop, looked directly into a woman's eyes and said, "How you doin?" The crowd erupted with laughter. "You people don't know," I said, "I'll stand up here all night if you let me. In fact, I'll put my cock in your beer and stir it for you let me!" I wasn't necessarily serious when I said it, but I did realized from last year, that you'd best not say anything you weren't prepared to do, because someone will probably call your bluff. Sure enough, Brendon comes marching up on stage with a nearly full pint of beer. I promptly drop my nads in it, stirred it up, and handed it back to him. Not to be out done, Brendon walked to the edge of the stage held up his beer and took a big drink. The crowd lost it. Had I not been standing there naked with my member dripping of cold beer, I might have been a little grossed out, but as it was, I repeated the details of the show, grabbed my clothes and walked off stage.

I made my way back to the stage and Anil (Dr. Aboyami last year and good friend of Leon) grabbed me in a bear hug and whispered in my ear "You just became a legend." I said thank you, but doubted anyone would remember me in a few hours....I was wrong.

The next day I made my way to the venue at about 3 o'clock as normal and no fewer than five people said that they had heard about my exploits the previous night. Then David, our press agent, popped in and told me he heard about it as well. The thing that surprised me the most is that of all the people who have approached me about it, only 2 of them were actually there! Hey, if that's what it's going to take to get people to our show, then so be it. Let the naked times begin!



Skinny Black ManThis has been an offical message from The Skinny Black Man
 
Saturday, August 06, 2005
  ahhhhhhhhhhh - dean

oh, that's much, much, better.

yeah, today's show. killed. much better. it seems that it's up to me.
if i connect with the audience at the head, then we have a good show.
if i don't, then it's a struggle to drag them along; trying to get in
their good graces.

we had 68 in the audience today. 10 were comps, but that is a great
number. here's hoping we grow. they loved it today and we had a good
time. i'm cutting some stuff. of course i don't let victor know. gotta
keep him on his feet.

victor is really, really rocking it lately. he is really having fun
with the part and is able to finesse some stuff; really getting the
differences of the scammer and ibrahim/mariam/abayomi and layering the
scammer underneath each one. it's nice because i feel pushed to get
better.

provenz' is off on his rocketship ride on his little movie, the
aristocrats, and isn't here to go nuts. last year, he and brendan
burns licked each others' scrotums at a late night comedy show.

last night during SPANK! (you love it!), Leon's (abayomi) late night
comedy show, there was a "one minute to promote your show naked".
victor will undoubtedly post details, but what you need to know is
that victor ended up stirring brendan burns' beer with his cock.

brendan burns finished the beer.

who needs provenz'? not us, my friends, not us...

we are most definitely at the fringe, people.

 
  dickheads

As I wrote before, some dickhead company has registered spamscam.com
which is no good for me as spamscam.com appears on all of the fliers
and posters here in scotland.

they said they'd be happy to lease the domain to me through august for
$2500. cunts.

the person's email is: LionHeartt@aol.com

feel free to email him and tell him he's a bitch and then sign him up
for spam.

in other news:

the sleep thing is silly.

i hit bed at 10:30pm last night. out. out. out. woke up at 7am. Again,
said "this is silly" and forced myself to sleep for another hour. woke
way up at 8. showered, shaved, then walked around edinburgh for an
hour.

got home a bit after nine. hit the bed. woke up at 2.

i don't understand.

it's nuts, people.

here's hoping today's show rocks.

that is all.

LionHeartt@aol.com

send him an email. he'd love to hear from you.

 
Friday, August 05, 2005
  not so good - dean

wow. wow. wow.

today's show sucked ass in the bad way.

well, actually, the show was fine. the audience seemed sort of, well, deaf
and blind. or not. maybe the show did suck today.

i always hate it when performers blame the audience for their rotten shows.
it's like someone who fucks people over but says that everyone else is
fucking them over. but, man, i don't know what we did differently from
yesterday. hmmm...

it seems that sometimes the audience doesn't like me. as if they're rolling
their eyes when I speak.

we've had shows like this before and I just try to talk as fast as I can so
we can all move on with our lives.

some people walked out, but it may have been they just had somewhere to be.
or they couldn't stand being in the room with the nigerian spam scam scam.
either way, it's weird watching people leave.

torture builds character. what doesn't kill me makes me sleep 'till three
the next day.

I woke up at 7:15 am today. Stood up and thought "no fucking way am I
getting up now" and then forced myself to get back to bed. slept until 11.
finally got out of the flat by noon. after beanscening for an hour, i walked
around with my ubiquitous iPod a bit. sat in the courtyard outside of the
gilded balloon, listened to music and watched the boys skateboarding;
feeling like the main character in death in venice. there was a hippie
copule sitting next to me smoking a joint and farting.

pleasant.

georgia from edcom5 and katie from burningissues, david burns' pr company
saw today's "show". i think they understood that we were pulling teeth,
but...

irregardless, victor and i went to negociants, had some chicken nachos and
let the show fade away. then i went and tried to steal wireless access from
the pleasance performer's lounge. failed. so did dara obrian. obrain. he
spells his name weird.

oh this is funny: spamscam.com is on our posters and fliers. i have nothing
to do with spamscam.com. so, i just wrote to the owner. i wonder how much
he'll fuck me over for the money.

went to "the shambles", the place we stayed last year. saw claire and the
gang. very nice.

now i'm going to the flat. i feel sleepy.

weird!

jessie arrives soon. yippeee!!!!

If I knew why the formatting was off on this, i'd fucking fix it.

that is all.

Yeah, definitely sleepy.

Beautiful day today. Except for a bit where it was raining and cold. If it
stays like this (HAHAHAHAHOOOOOo) then this will be really great. If my wife
meets some strippers who want to stay with us during her stay here, that
will be great, too. Same chance.

Rock on.

 
  day 3 - dean

it's sooo funny. I left the flat around 11:30am and it is a beautiful
day. I'm at Beanscene, my internet home and it's raining. Wow. It's
funny. It's a cliche, right? Awesome.

Man, we're still reeling from the show yesterday. had to hold for
applause for victor yesterday at the end of the show; that's how much
he killed it.

i've been stealing internet access at the pleasance offices. i changed
the default start page on the imac there to spamscamscam.com. it's
called leaving a trail

i rule.

met the press folks yesterday and i'm thinking this blog will show up
on the gilded balloon site, too. that's the kind of spontaneous
publicity we need to get ahead!!! too bad the blog is so boring.

hmmm...

i killed two people in their sleep last night. i broke in to a flat,
slit their throats and then fucked the wounds.

there. that's more interesting, eh?

went to the press launch at the gilded balloon after the show and got
jostled and turned down haggis balls. seriously. then i went across
the street with khalil and victor (the only two black people in
scotland, and i know them!!) and we had nachos at negociant's. i
fucked up and ordered the veggie nachos. hmm.

then i had that "MUST SLEEP" thing and went back to the flat and slept
from 6-9. Michael Blaha gave me a ticket to see the pajama men. I'm
thinking that i stumbled in to the wrong show. the show i saw was two
guys doing a latin lesson. it ruled. it was really clever and well
done and it's one of those things that I watch and think "how do
people get this funny and creative?".

I saw a poster for it later and I'm pretty sure I didn't see the
pajama men show. hmmm.

What's funny is later, at the party at the gilded balloon where the
acts go to meet the nice people flyering for the shows, i was raving
about the pajama men show and someone else was talking about it and
looking at me like i was insane... i think. maybe we were talking
about the same show, but... man, i think i saw a different show.

i'm hoping the pajama men are great, too. that will make it all even better.

i'm stupid.

i'm having a good time. go figure.

 
Thursday, August 04, 2005
  Surprise! It's raining!
Yep, that's the big surprise of the day, I woke up at around 2pm (was out until 5) and got a message from Dean, asking me to bring the umbrella he left at the flat. Long story short, I forgot it. I showered and headed out to do the show and about 2 minutes into my walk, it started pouring. I find it hard to believe for a second year in a row that this isn't typical Scottish weather in August (as everyone keeps saying)especially considering the only experience that I have is rainy and cold. Oh well, at least we have the show. And speaking of....

The show was great today! We had about 40 people in the audience (apparently one of them was a reviewer) and we kicked their asses. Last year when Paul Provenza was directing the show, he was setting up the laughs in the show to build to certain points so that by the time we got to the first phone call, people's stomachs would be hurting. Today, we achieved that. By the time the first phone call was over, we could have stopped the show and the people would have been satisfied, but we continued on and just kept building on the laughter, and by the end when Dean introduced me, he had to stop and let the applause die down, before he could introduce himself, and he was met with equal applause.

It's shows like today that make me remember why I still like to do this. Some people like to do it for the art, to say something specific, to try and better people. And while I don't think you can escape doing that if you do a show correctly, that's not my main purpose. My main purpose is to entertain. And today (and almost all of the days we do this show) we did that. And we did it well. I love this shit!

Skinny Black ManThis has been an offical message from The Skinny Black Man
 
 

this could be very, very, very good...

great house today. perhaps 30-40. maybe our best show, ever, too. man,
we killed.

there's a disco vari-lite that is pissing me off, though. it should be
taken care of by tomorrow.

we had a critic in today. man, great show. holy shit.

the tricklock troupe came and loved it. they'll be at sacred fools
when we get back. we'll be doing late nights.

sandra cox's underwear are a big hit at the show wrap up. thanks, sandra!

i've wandered in to the pleasance performer's lounge and am using
their internet. i wasn't told about tihs place last year and only
found it two days before we left, so i feel a bit entitled to it.

we're killing. holy shit.

my ipod magically repaired itself. i let the battery die, then it was
saying that it was safe to take it out of disk mode,even though it
wasn't. then the battery really died. now it's back up.

apple makes superior products.

sure, okay.

 
  scottish fun - dean

So, it's going okay so far.

There is some nutty shit going on with my iPod. Yesterday the display was
showing 5 songs (embarassing ones, by the way) yet still playing other ones
and i could fast forward. It was set on shuffle, so there was no rhyme or
reason, I suppose if I was in Apple marketing I could say that I had an iPod
shuffle with a very large drive. Hmm.

So, I let the battery run out in hopes that everything would begin anew.

No.

Now it's stuck in disk mode and says it's "OK to disconnect".

You know, I've had nothing but trouble with apple products. My iMac is
fucked beyond belief. At least with my PC I know what the fuck goes wrong
with it, right?

Hmmm..

That aside, I'm having a nice time. I got that "must sleep now" thing
yesterday and slept from 6pm until 10 then was up until 3am. Played
blackjack for no money with two of my flatmates who are very excited to see
the aristocrats movie.

I'm at beanscene coffee. Their wireless is much better than last year,
though it disconnects sporadically. neat.

I got jessie's phone working and mine is topped up with millions of pounds.
Now, i just need to figure out how to dial the u.s.

I'm an idiot.

Shoe #2 today. We have a critic coming and there's a press meet y greet
afterwards. Saw David Burns, the publicist, after the shoe yesterday and
that was nice. Hung at the edcom5 office after the shoe. they have highspeed
wireless and dogs.

Cool.

This could be okay. It really could.

Rock on!

 
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
  first shoe - dean

What a difference a year makes:

We knew what to expect; what difficulties we'd encounter and took care of it
so the show went off without a hitch today. I mucked up the opening and our
tech guy, Colin, followed along and it went great.

Leon Fleury, who will be our Aboyami, is great. He did a great job today
with no real rehassle and only me giving him line readings.

About 15 minutes in to the show, everything switched on in my head and I
thought "Ah, right. Here we are. We're doing it." and it began to rule.

The audience is different here, but it will all come back. It had better.

Right now I've got the jetlag nods. It's this thing where the body says YOU
MUST SLEEP RIGHT FUCKING NOW.

We're at the edcom5 office. There's wireless here.

Rock on.

 
  so far so good - dean

well,

so far so good. they had the projector and the music stands. we
started tech a bit late (10pm) and didn't finish until 1am, but it
seemed to go okay. we have our first preview in a couple of hours.

the flat is lovely and clean and we met the bicycling comedian. he's a
sweet, manic sort of guy with huge legs. there is a wife signal in my
bedroom, but it's locked. bastards!!! i must get to the bottom of
this. though, it's probably good that i have to leave the house to get
net access...

the weather is cloudy and not as warm as i'd like, of course, but i'm
not complaining. it's a nice change right now from the bazillion
degree heat in burbank.

i got my phone topped up and got a chip for jessie's phone and topped
hers up, too.

thanks to the two valium and one vicodin, the flight was non-existent.
i do remember a really obnoxious little kid sitting next to victor.
why his parents didn't put him between them, i'll never understand.
maybe because they're from some shithole where you let your screaming
kids annoy skinny black actors.

anil, the aboyami from last year, is here. he will do the show
sometimes, he's doing a show right before us in the same venue, but
we've arranged for leon fluery from "SPANK" to be aboyami this year. i
think he'll be great.

becky singh, our producer is so great and helpful and everyone seems
very excited.

here's hoping it goes well.

thanks to that little apex controller, i don't have to lug my laptop
around town.

we're also really, really close to the venue and that's sooooo much better.

this area of town seems nice, too.

rock on.

 
Monday, August 01, 2005
 
this is an audio post - click to play
 
  packed - dean

Okay. I'm packed. One suitcase is full of stuff for the show. I should make
Victor haul some of it so I have more room for ME.

The bastard...

Next stop... winter.

No, really, I'm not going to complain. Really... I mean it..

Cough.

 
logging what goes on before, during and after producing the two person show "Dean Cameron's Nigerian Spam Scam Scam" at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and beyond.

ARCHIVES
June 2004 / July 2004 / August 2004 / September 2004 / October 2004 / March 2005 / April 2005 / July 2005 / August 2005 / September 2005 / December 2005 / January 2006 / July 2006 /


Powered by Blogger

©dean cameron