Derek and I don't generally go to things, we just don't. At most we'd go to one concert a year, or a show if we know someone who's in it. A friend of ours is performing in Rent during the Fringe, so I'll be going to that (Derek too, if I can't find anyone to go with). Basically I don't generally pay attention to performances or concerts coming up, so when an act pops up that I would have liked to see I usually can't get tickets. That happened here too. Ricky Gervais is coming to town for one night with his new show, Science, and of course it sold out in a snap. I would love to see him live sometime! Between The Office, Extras and his HBO special I have laughed harder at his jokes (delivery) than I have at probably any other comedian.
We are going to get our fill of comedy in the coming month, even without a hit of Gervais. Following the recommendation of a friend of a friend, we're hoping to go to the News Review, a comedy review of the past year's news stories. We're also going with a group to An Improvised History of the World, which should be fun. And with 2 for 1 ticket specials, some of these smaller shows become very appealing. £10 for a good night of comedy isn't bad at all.
To get a better idea of what's on offer I picked a hardcopy of the massive Fringe program. At 288 pages and organized by genre and venue, I've never see anything like it. Flipping through I spotted an ad for Jimmy Carr, who will be doing a solo stand-up comedy performance on many nights during the festival. You may remember Carr from that hilarious and awful game show, Disctraction, that aired on Comedy in Canada a few years back. Derek finds him rediculously funny (he's very witty and controversial, saying awful and awfully funny things), so we got tickets to see him for Derek's birthday.
This past weekend felt particularly Scottish. The Gathering 2009 took place down in Holyrood Park, and about 50 000 people came out to taste Scottish food, watch Highland games, hear the music, compete in Highland dancing and meet and find out more about the clans. 140 clans had tents and information, including my family's, the Davidson clan, and it was just a great atmosphere and a beautiful sunny day. On Saturday night a huge clan parade took place, as members of each of the participating clans marched to the bagpipes (including those of the Canadian Legion's pipe band) along the Royal Mile from Holyrood Palace to Edinburgh Castle. And this convinced me that I wanted us to see the Edinburgh Military Tattoo this year rather than next. And since we'll likely hear it every night, we might as well see what all the noise is!
I went onto the Tattoo's ticket website yesterday and sadly found that every night was sold out, amazing considering it doesn't even start until Aug. 7. But there was a glimmer of hope: at 10am on July 27, a limited number of tickets to the Aug. 6 preview of the Tattoo would be released. Even better was that these would be half-price. So we were up at 6am this morning and in line by a quarter to seven. It was worth the 3.5 hours in line -- we got great seats in a better section than we would have if the tickets had been full price. And I am so excited!!!
An interesting side-note: we're in the background of some STV news at 6 footage today showing some of the many of us who stood in line for hours. And the girls who were next to us in line had their photo taken for the Scotsman newspaper, so we'll probably check that out tomorrow. While we were in line I got chatting with the girls, who were also international university students, and the one's friend brought me back a hot chocolate along with those for the other girls in the group. It was very thoughtful, and the sugar buzz helped make the time go by.
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