Set your Tivos, DVRs, and (poor you) VCRs

To BBC America, Friday Aug 1st, 7pm EST and 4pm PST for the BBC America World News Hour.

Supposedly there will be a segment on the Edinburgh Fringe during that broadcast that will hopefully feature some footage from our show! The shoot went well but there's no telling if they'll really use us, but I think the content of our scene was right on target for there, "American Comedy after George Bush" theme.

If the segment doesn't air on that broadcast, don't worry. I'm sure it will end up online somewhere and I'll try to track it down.

Here's some pics from the shoot. We're in costume. My thighs look AWESOME.

A very good day.

Woke up at 8:45am.  Feeling somewhat rested.  Jet lag is improving.  Ate cereal while reading Vanity Fair.  Showered and headed to the venue, picking coffee up on the way.  Tech run-thru went well.

12pm.  Flyered along High Street, a.k.a. The Royal Mile, for the next two hours.  Exhausting stuff.  Retired to apartment at 1pm.  Did I say two hours flyering?  Must have been one.  Felt like more.

Ate Starbucks sandwich, cat-napped for 20 minutes, got ready for show.

3pm.  Our show begins.  Awesome crowd.  We decided to paper the show, i.e. give away free tickets to help generate word of mouth.  Good decision, at least as far as the performance is concerned.  Got tons of laughs, including lots of new laughs from the for-the-Brits jokes.  Our for-the-Americans jokes got laughs too.  Forty-five minutes later, we take our bows.

4pm.  Post-show debrief then back to the house.  Body tired.  

6pm.  Summon energy to go grocery shopping.  Will have to make do with Scottish milled "porridge oats".  I'm sure they are just like Quaker but I'm suspicious.  Blueberries and walnuts look good though.

7pm.  Hang around house b-s-ing with Anne and Jeff.  We're feeling great about our show.  Up top.

8pm.  Pasta e fagioli and bad wine for dinner.

9:30pm.  See our technician's husband in comedy show.  Laugh a lot.  Emcee flirts with the pretty Americans forced to sit in the front row.  (The pretty Americans are me and Anne.)

11:40pm.  Blogging about my good day.  Tomorrow we're taping a scene from our show for the BBC and are getting interviewed for a segment on what will happen to comedy in the post-George Bush era.  What was that?  Oh yes, that's right, I'm being TAPED AND INTERVIEWED by the BBC.  I'm sure it's less exciting than it sounds, but still.  In the evening, we're splitting time between our venue's Press Party, and two "it" parties we got invites to.  I am so on the scene.  I wonder if I'll fool anyone into thinking I'm cool.

Love to all,

Anna

Couple Pics

Right outside our apartment:

Around the corner:

This is what Leslie would call Self-Care

Turns out that even better than cheese and caffeine is water and exercise.  Who would have thunk it?  Went for a run this evening along a beautiful cliffside-looking mountain.  Just what the doctor ordered.  Made my vertigo-like symptoms of jetlag disappear.  Now I just need to cement the goodness with an Alexander laydown before bed and a long, restful sleep.  And morning pages when I wake up.

In other news, the sun showed up today in full force.  Followed by a torrential downpour.  Followed by a rainbow.

I wish I had a picture of the rainbow.  Instead, I have a picture of Anne and I in front of the Walter Scott Monument on Princes Street.

Tomorrow morning we have a tech run-through, then we're out flyering for our first preview performance at 3pm.  Cross fingers for us and send us good vibes!

-a

And P.S. --

Anne is totally using British inflection when she asks questions here.  Good to know I'm not the only mimic here.

I am uber jet-lagged

I think we worked it out -- in the past 48 hours, we've had about 8 hours sleep.  For those of you that know me well, and most of you do, you know this is not a good thing.  I've also ingested a lot of cheese in the past 24 hours, and even more caffeine.  So let's just say I'm really looking forward to shopping for some fruit and greens and oatmeal and then crawling under the covers until morning.

Managed to score one more tech rehearsal tomorrow morning.  It helps that we are nice folk who give our venue technician gifts like chocolate croissants.  So we'll be able to a get a full run in before we have a (probably small) audience tomorrow night.

It's getting exciting.  Met all the nice people at our venue -- press folk, box office folk, tech folk -- as well as some fellow performers.  I think it's going to be a good month.

Gotta go buy a cell phone, and some veggies.

-a

The Eagle Has Landed

So here I am in Edinburgh.  Finally.  Our flight was delayed about five hours.  I didn't even know they let planes take off at 2:30 in the morning.  Needless to say, I'm in a bit of a daze.  Thanks to Anne's Tylenol PM, I got some good hours sleep on the plane.  But then once we arrived, and had to hustle our stuff to our apartment and try to catch the last few minutes of our tech rehearsal, I was surprised how much I was struggling to find nouns or focus my eyes.  I figured it was just bad jet-lag -- until I realized I hadn't had my morning coffee.  That was quickly remedied, and wow I'm such an addict.  Within minutes I was right as rain.

So now I'm sitting in our apartment, which is a very cute little flat right in the historical center of the city, where all the Fringe madness is situated.  An extremely convenient location.  

In one respect, Edinburgh is very much like home.  A familiar-feeling city to any American thanks to the Starbucks, Subways, and Pizza Huts that are scattered about.  However if you tilt your head up, you see gorgeous stone architecture looming above these commercial outposts and you realize you are indeed abroad, and in a very beautiful and historical spot.

The weather is indeed schizophrenic, as we were forewarned.  When we arrived at our apartment it was sunny and a bit warm.  After lugging our heavy suitcases up three flights of stairs and quickly changing clothes, we headed out of the apartment not 15 minutes later and the fog had rolled in.  An hour later it was freezing.  Kind of like living in the Inner Richmond I think.  My brother-in-law would love it here.

The next 24 hours are going to be a doozy.  Thanks to our delayed flight, we missed most of our first tech rehearsal, but our second one is tonight at midnight.  Then our final tech is tomorrow morning.  The rest of the day will be about acclimating, getting a UK phone, finding groceries -- I hope I can have my oatmeal with blueberries and walnuts every morning! -- and resting up.  First preview is Wednesday.  Fingers crossed.

Speaking of resting up, I'm going to see if I can grab a power nap before we meet with our tech person.  Right as rain has deteriorated into biz-hausted.

We have a show blog now too, fyi.  http://americatheshow.blogspot.com

Later skaters,

Anna

Edinburgh Bound!

It's Sunday afternoon and I'm packing in my apartment in NYC.  Haven't showered yet, as you can tell from my pic (thanks MacBook Pro!).  My flight leaves tonight at 10pm and at 10am GST tomorrow, I will arrive in Edinburgh.  And the adventure begins!

I'm excited, a little bit nervous, and mostly curious to see how these next few weeks of my life will turn out.  I can't wait to work the show in front of an audience and see what kind of response we get across the pond.  I'm really proud of the work we've done.  I love our show.  It makes me laugh and I think it's really smart, thoughtful, fun, and funny.  Hopefully others will think the same, but all I really care about at the moment is that I love it.  That's all that matters.  Of course, that's what I say now.  Talk to me in a week if all we get are crickets in the audience.  Nah, bite my tongue!  It ain't gonna happen.

Okay, gotta get back to packing.  Check in here over the next month to read more of my ramblings and thoughts.  (This pic is where I'm headed, btw.)  Hopefully I'll get fancy with more pics and even video blogs too.  Love to all of you and thanks for all your support!

Love

Anna