My last post was about how the festival was over. This one is about the return of normalcy to Edinburgh. Already, the city has 90% fewer people in it, and is feeling particularly empty since most of the students haven't returned yet. The Fringe Festival ended so abruptly, and so unlike it began -- it just sort of wasted away. It's like one day just not enough people could be bothered getting up and going to work to make things run, Kate said. Everyone just seemed to tire at the end, and were glad to let it slip away unnoticed into the memory of August. Back on the train, back to your home, back to your bed for some rest... Sounds like everything I could use right now. I'm trying to put a positive spin on going back to the states.
I must admit, I'm as tired out and run down as I've ever felt, even for the change to pleasant weather and immediate lack of anything pressing to do. A few pre-departure errands must be finished, but nothing is pressing, really. I'm slowly sorting out clothes, dishes, and all manner of things to leave behind to lighten the load on the way back. Sigh, so much to do and yet so little...
I really just want to sleep for the next 6 days, but I need to pack.
x
Thursday, August 30
Tuesday, August 28
August Ends...
So that's it. The Festival is over. Just like that. Well, not exactly just like that -- it's been a long, heavy haul. It was a lot of work, but it was fun and definitely worth it. The last week or so, especially, has been especially crazy, not in terms of work so much but more in terms of celebrating the end. I now realize just why it is deemed a bad thing for bars/pubs/clubs/beer gardens/venues to be open until 5am... A few too many nights in the library bar (where we got in thanks to Fresh Air connections, woo!) that just ended up being rather ridiculous.
But now that the Festival's over, I can see the city slowly emptying out and getting back to normal. Just in time for me to leave. I've got mixed feelings about going home: on the one hand I'm not ready to leave Edinburgh, but on the other I'm never going to be ready to leave and I am looking forward to seeing my parents and friends and home again. It's very bittersweet. I wish I could go home for a month and then come back and continue things here. But that's the way life marches on, with regard only for plans and programs and other such reasonable things. I am going to miss my friends here so, so much.
I honestly cannot believe how fast the summer has gone by. It feels like it's been a large chunk of time -- that's for sure -- but that it's just passed very quickly. Time flies when you're working 39 hours a week in a crap job, and even more so when you're running coverage of the Festival.
Let's try and think of more Festival highlights, put a slightly happier spin on things:
-A record 6 (possibly 7) "celebrity" sighting night: Frank Skinner, Mark Watson, Jimmy Carr, Jonny Vegas, Mickey Flanagan, and Kirsten O'Brien. Best bit: Tim going up to Jimmy Carr and Jonny Vegas (who were talking to each other) and asking for a photo: (in a very obnoxious American accent) "Are you Jim and John from Ipswich?"
-People watching in the Library Bar: the woman who told me, "Oh no, it makes you look fabulous, daaaaahling" with reference to my strong but expensive cocktail; Uncle Pervert; an American comic (one of the Walsh Brothers) passing out pink balloons; Arnab Chanda and Dan Clark; a comic who claimed his boyfriend was going to kill him for dying their dog puce (he spilled beet juice on it); and so on and so on.
-PR people shepherding guests up to the studio, with their various egos (the PR, not the performers). The best comment, from one particular woman with expensive-looking sunglasses, too much botox, and braces: "Oh, these celebrities, you just can't trust them to be reliable can you?" Honey, I'm sure all the comedians and acts you represent are talented in their own right, but unless they're performing at Edinburgh Castle this Fringe, they're not celebs. You're wishing you were in LA repping Posh n' Becks, and have taken it as a personal insult to your ego that you are not realized to your full career potential. (Sorry for the heavy psychoanalysis -- I may have been away for a year, but I understand the LA-style-glamour-mindset all too well.)
-A fantastic and hilarious interview I did with The Brothers Juan from The Incredible Bull Circus
-Getting 100+ reviews of Fringe shows up on the Fresh Air website! Many thanks to all those who wrote them and helped me post them up when I was lagging behind!
But the best was realizing the dream. Okay, that doesn't really mean anything, never mind. What I mean is, for our first year as press for the Fringe Festival, we did an amazing job, quite frankly. It was the hope that in a few years venues would be using quotes and stars from our reviews to put up on the posters and press boards around town... Welcome to the future:
And those are only a couple of the dozens that are up around town. Ace.
We did bang-on good job, in my opinion, with over 100 reviews and 127 interviews up on the website. All of them quality. Of course I may be a little bit biased, but for a student radio station competing with the likes of festival press heavyweights The Scotsman (big newspaper), Three Weeks (massive compilations of reviews), The Skinny (awesome alternative magazine), and others, we've done excellently. I think it's very telling that most people assumed we were getting paid for our work, and were very surprised to find out we were all volunteers. Right, enough tooting my own horn.
I have learned that I never want to work for the media. Well, that's a lie -- I never want to work in marketing. I hate selling things (note my hasty departure from the shop floor of Monsoon). I'm rubbish at promoting things I have no interest in. Ergo, I'm better at evaluating and covering culture than trying to get someone a better slot or more press. I'd rather be the press. Whee. Future in journalism? Who knows. Future at all? I thought we were here.
See you back in the states in 10 days.
But now that the Festival's over, I can see the city slowly emptying out and getting back to normal. Just in time for me to leave. I've got mixed feelings about going home: on the one hand I'm not ready to leave Edinburgh, but on the other I'm never going to be ready to leave and I am looking forward to seeing my parents and friends and home again. It's very bittersweet. I wish I could go home for a month and then come back and continue things here. But that's the way life marches on, with regard only for plans and programs and other such reasonable things. I am going to miss my friends here so, so much.
I honestly cannot believe how fast the summer has gone by. It feels like it's been a large chunk of time -- that's for sure -- but that it's just passed very quickly. Time flies when you're working 39 hours a week in a crap job, and even more so when you're running coverage of the Festival.
Let's try and think of more Festival highlights, put a slightly happier spin on things:
-A record 6 (possibly 7) "celebrity" sighting night: Frank Skinner, Mark Watson, Jimmy Carr, Jonny Vegas, Mickey Flanagan, and Kirsten O'Brien. Best bit: Tim going up to Jimmy Carr and Jonny Vegas (who were talking to each other) and asking for a photo: (in a very obnoxious American accent) "Are you Jim and John from Ipswich?"
-People watching in the Library Bar: the woman who told me, "Oh no, it makes you look fabulous, daaaaahling" with reference to my strong but expensive cocktail; Uncle Pervert; an American comic (one of the Walsh Brothers) passing out pink balloons; Arnab Chanda and Dan Clark; a comic who claimed his boyfriend was going to kill him for dying their dog puce (he spilled beet juice on it); and so on and so on.
-PR people shepherding guests up to the studio, with their various egos (the PR, not the performers). The best comment, from one particular woman with expensive-looking sunglasses, too much botox, and braces: "Oh, these celebrities, you just can't trust them to be reliable can you?" Honey, I'm sure all the comedians and acts you represent are talented in their own right, but unless they're performing at Edinburgh Castle this Fringe, they're not celebs. You're wishing you were in LA repping Posh n' Becks, and have taken it as a personal insult to your ego that you are not realized to your full career potential. (Sorry for the heavy psychoanalysis -- I may have been away for a year, but I understand the LA-style-glamour-mindset all too well.)
-A fantastic and hilarious interview I did with The Brothers Juan from The Incredible Bull Circus
-Getting 100+ reviews of Fringe shows up on the Fresh Air website! Many thanks to all those who wrote them and helped me post them up when I was lagging behind!
But the best was realizing the dream. Okay, that doesn't really mean anything, never mind. What I mean is, for our first year as press for the Fringe Festival, we did an amazing job, quite frankly. It was the hope that in a few years venues would be using quotes and stars from our reviews to put up on the posters and press boards around town... Welcome to the future:
And those are only a couple of the dozens that are up around town. Ace.
We did bang-on good job, in my opinion, with over 100 reviews and 127 interviews up on the website. All of them quality. Of course I may be a little bit biased, but for a student radio station competing with the likes of festival press heavyweights The Scotsman (big newspaper), Three Weeks (massive compilations of reviews), The Skinny (awesome alternative magazine), and others, we've done excellently. I think it's very telling that most people assumed we were getting paid for our work, and were very surprised to find out we were all volunteers. Right, enough tooting my own horn.
I have learned that I never want to work for the media. Well, that's a lie -- I never want to work in marketing. I hate selling things (note my hasty departure from the shop floor of Monsoon). I'm rubbish at promoting things I have no interest in. Ergo, I'm better at evaluating and covering culture than trying to get someone a better slot or more press. I'd rather be the press. Whee. Future in journalism? Who knows. Future at all? I thought we were here.
See you back in the states in 10 days.
Wednesday, August 15
This Should Be A Super-Long Amazing Post of Awesomeness
Who wants to take bets on the above statement? I've got a fiver that says it won't; I'm far too interested in listening to Presidents of the United States of America at the moment.
Let's see how I can possibly recap the past month or so... We'll split things into pre-Festival and post-Monsoon...
Pre-Festival days were pretty similar to what I described all summer long: boring, full of the drudgery known as work, etc. A wee excursion to Paris on the weekend of the 13th (of July), was a welcome intrusion, seeing as I hadn't been to the city since I was nine years old. It was quite cool to be there for the Bastille Day celebrations (read: fireworks/"feur d'artifice") and be able to practice my pathetic French, although most shops were closed for the holiday so I got exactly zero shopping in. How sad. It didn't render the whole trip useless, but still... Paris and no shopping? What sort of woman do I consider myself? Not that kind, that's for sure. At any rate, I trudged on with work for a few more weeks until the beginning of the festival...
All this Festival madness began on or about the 2nd of August, when we at Fresh Air started broadcasting our Fringe Festival coverage. The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, for those of you who don't know, is the biggest of all the festivals on in town in August, and features mostly comedy shows (stand-up, sketch, all kinds) but also lots of theater and music and other genres of shows. I'm the Press Office Liaison/Reviews Coordinator for our Fringe Festival coverage, meaning I am responsible for booking press tickets for our crew and editing the resulting reviews to go up on the website. Reviews aren't the main thrust, though; live (but then recorded and made available for download) interviews are going up all the time, as well as fantastic audio features.
I realize I've just spent a paragraph selling Fresh Air to you. Sorry, too much time spent liaizing with Press Offices and trying to schmooze PR people for tickets. Right. So I've been involved with interviewing, editing interviews, ticket-getting, writing and editing reviews... there's little I haven't done around the station. It's all unpaid and time consuming and exhausting, and gets me anywhere from 15-25 urgent e-mails a day. Still, it's better than working in a shop for minimum wage! Did I mention I'm not getting paid to do this? Not so easy on the wallet, the way prices all over town get jacked up for the festival -- 3 or 4 pounds and up for a pint -- but as a Scottish friend put it to me, it's just overdue revenge on the English. The funniest thing about not getting paid is realizing that everyone we work with, all the PR, all the Press Offices, all the other press and artists and comedians and musicians... everone seems to assume we're getting paid. It's a sometimes pleasant, sometimes annoying feeling when you get the reaction, "Oh! So you're not getting paid anything to do this? At all??" What did we say? It's student radio, people. Use those little brains you were given. Actually, that's a lie, we DO get paid -- in sunshine and rainbows.
So you can tell I've been busy since the start of August? Yes, I struggled through a week of part time in front of house before quitting at Monsoon, and am all the happier for it. This is my first week free of work, and I'm, of course, thoroughly enjoying it. How could I not? Freedom is amazing, even though it makes me dread settling into the post-graduation rat race even more than ever. With any luck, that's a little way off. (Wahey, student loans, I'm lookin' at you!) I think I have too much of a problem with authority (christ, I sound like I've got a box full of asbo's) to ever work for a company or large organization. Guess I'll just have to start my own business.
Alright, let's see, how about some festival highlights? You didn't ask, and yet I still deliver. You're welcome:
-Interviewing Les Dennis. Yes, that's right, "Who?" Same thing I thought. Wrong wrong wrong, as I learned when his PR screamed, "Didn't you read the press release?!" at me. "Of course not," I said. "I looked at your website and googled the show. It just said there were some famous British actors in it, whose names I didn't recognize." Any Brit will know Mr. Dennis from his Saturday afternoon so-bad-it's-actually-sort-of-good game show hosting for years, but he's not a name any American would recognize. Particularly myself. Sort of like, the Bob Barker of Britain, I think. But less old and less dead. Right, long story short, he's in a play at the Fringe and came in with the author and co-cast member to chat about it on Fresh Air. The interview, is (I think) insightful and intelligent, and doesn't make too much of a fuss about the huge star in the studio. Unfortunately, the rumor around town now is that Fresh Air doesn't know who Les Dennis is. Sigh, I'm such a black sheep.
-Getting to go to loads of press launches. Previews of various venues' line-ups, where one was often plied by the odd free drink or two. 'Schmooz and booz' was the atmosphere, which, I decided, was unsatisfactorily Los Angeles-like. Sure, having a pint in an outdoor beer garden in pleasant weather is nice -- except when everyone's trying to act like they're someone important. I hate the egos of PR/Press people.
-The atmosphere of the city. It's crawling with... foreigners. Ick. English, Aussies, Americans, you name 'em, they're everywhere. I count myself out of this group, as I am a resident. Not for much longer, but I've been here a year and I know the back streets, so that counts for something, right? Anyway, you can't deny that there's a really fun atmosphere about, even if the Scots have almost been diluted out and the prices have run through the roof.
-Having seen more shows than I can shake a stick at. Woo. Too many to count in two weeks, and plenty more to come. Not to mention a lot of exciting films coming up at the film festival!
More later. I'm tired. Hey, this turned out to be a long post after all... you owe me five pounds. I accept cash and check, no cards, though.
Let's see how I can possibly recap the past month or so... We'll split things into pre-Festival and post-Monsoon...
Pre-Festival days were pretty similar to what I described all summer long: boring, full of the drudgery known as work, etc. A wee excursion to Paris on the weekend of the 13th (of July), was a welcome intrusion, seeing as I hadn't been to the city since I was nine years old. It was quite cool to be there for the Bastille Day celebrations (read: fireworks/"feur d'artifice") and be able to practice my pathetic French, although most shops were closed for the holiday so I got exactly zero shopping in. How sad. It didn't render the whole trip useless, but still... Paris and no shopping? What sort of woman do I consider myself? Not that kind, that's for sure. At any rate, I trudged on with work for a few more weeks until the beginning of the festival...
All this Festival madness began on or about the 2nd of August, when we at Fresh Air started broadcasting our Fringe Festival coverage. The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, for those of you who don't know, is the biggest of all the festivals on in town in August, and features mostly comedy shows (stand-up, sketch, all kinds) but also lots of theater and music and other genres of shows. I'm the Press Office Liaison/Reviews Coordinator for our Fringe Festival coverage, meaning I am responsible for booking press tickets for our crew and editing the resulting reviews to go up on the website. Reviews aren't the main thrust, though; live (but then recorded and made available for download) interviews are going up all the time, as well as fantastic audio features.
I realize I've just spent a paragraph selling Fresh Air to you. Sorry, too much time spent liaizing with Press Offices and trying to schmooze PR people for tickets. Right. So I've been involved with interviewing, editing interviews, ticket-getting, writing and editing reviews... there's little I haven't done around the station. It's all unpaid and time consuming and exhausting, and gets me anywhere from 15-25 urgent e-mails a day. Still, it's better than working in a shop for minimum wage! Did I mention I'm not getting paid to do this? Not so easy on the wallet, the way prices all over town get jacked up for the festival -- 3 or 4 pounds and up for a pint -- but as a Scottish friend put it to me, it's just overdue revenge on the English. The funniest thing about not getting paid is realizing that everyone we work with, all the PR, all the Press Offices, all the other press and artists and comedians and musicians... everone seems to assume we're getting paid. It's a sometimes pleasant, sometimes annoying feeling when you get the reaction, "Oh! So you're not getting paid anything to do this? At all??" What did we say? It's student radio, people. Use those little brains you were given. Actually, that's a lie, we DO get paid -- in sunshine and rainbows.
So you can tell I've been busy since the start of August? Yes, I struggled through a week of part time in front of house before quitting at Monsoon, and am all the happier for it. This is my first week free of work, and I'm, of course, thoroughly enjoying it. How could I not? Freedom is amazing, even though it makes me dread settling into the post-graduation rat race even more than ever. With any luck, that's a little way off. (Wahey, student loans, I'm lookin' at you!) I think I have too much of a problem with authority (christ, I sound like I've got a box full of asbo's) to ever work for a company or large organization. Guess I'll just have to start my own business.
Alright, let's see, how about some festival highlights? You didn't ask, and yet I still deliver. You're welcome:
-Interviewing Les Dennis. Yes, that's right, "Who?" Same thing I thought. Wrong wrong wrong, as I learned when his PR screamed, "Didn't you read the press release?!" at me. "Of course not," I said. "I looked at your website and googled the show. It just said there were some famous British actors in it, whose names I didn't recognize." Any Brit will know Mr. Dennis from his Saturday afternoon so-bad-it's-actually-sort-of-good game show hosting for years, but he's not a name any American would recognize. Particularly myself. Sort of like, the Bob Barker of Britain, I think. But less old and less dead. Right, long story short, he's in a play at the Fringe and came in with the author and co-cast member to chat about it on Fresh Air. The interview, is (I think) insightful and intelligent, and doesn't make too much of a fuss about the huge star in the studio. Unfortunately, the rumor around town now is that Fresh Air doesn't know who Les Dennis is. Sigh, I'm such a black sheep.
-Getting to go to loads of press launches. Previews of various venues' line-ups, where one was often plied by the odd free drink or two. 'Schmooz and booz' was the atmosphere, which, I decided, was unsatisfactorily Los Angeles-like. Sure, having a pint in an outdoor beer garden in pleasant weather is nice -- except when everyone's trying to act like they're someone important. I hate the egos of PR/Press people.
-The atmosphere of the city. It's crawling with... foreigners. Ick. English, Aussies, Americans, you name 'em, they're everywhere. I count myself out of this group, as I am a resident. Not for much longer, but I've been here a year and I know the back streets, so that counts for something, right? Anyway, you can't deny that there's a really fun atmosphere about, even if the Scots have almost been diluted out and the prices have run through the roof.
-Having seen more shows than I can shake a stick at. Woo. Too many to count in two weeks, and plenty more to come. Not to mention a lot of exciting films coming up at the film festival!
More later. I'm tired. Hey, this turned out to be a long post after all... you owe me five pounds. I accept cash and check, no cards, though.
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