SUPERLAMBBANANAS

Currently in Liverpool, a place where everything is insignificant when "compared with Liverpool's most famous export of all, the Beatles." It's a self-deprecating statement so bitterly true that the city's tourism agency has taken it on as an official slogan. I'm not sure I'd be so severe, but for the most part, their right.

Arrived here on Sunday after a brief stop in Matlock for a Peak Performance Workshop in Matlock with good ol' Graham Langley. As a former drama teacher, Graham describes storytelling in terms of Brecht and Stanislavsky, so it was excellent to be able to talk storytelling in my own language for a few hours. Matlock was a nice little town but I was only there for a night, so I didn't get quite a good feel for it. However, located in the middle of a gorge, it reminded me of a quaint little UK Gatlinburg, as the streets were lined with nothing but bed and breakfasts and ice cream shops and arcades and rides up the mountain in cable cars. Still, I met a bundle of new storytelling friends and even shared a lunchtime feast with them.

Sunday was a miserable day of travel. My uphill walk to the workshop was entirely in the rain and consisted of me sweating and cursing and getting lost near "the UK's premiere Ford dealership." I had to take several trains to Liverpool that night and one got cancelled and I was stuck for more than hour in a sandwich shop. As always, I had a distraction nearby and gladly took the time to continue breezing through On the Road.

I spent most of my time Monday at the city's World Museum, looking at all things space and dinosaurs and aquariums and African masks and giant bugs. A lovely little girl came up to me in the aquarium to show me that she had found Nemo and Dory and I thought it was the cutest thing I've possibly ever seen. There was also a FREE planetarium show and an ant colony exhibit that proved fascinating. The ants walked 10 feet across a rope hanging overhead and back to get gigantic pieces of flowery nutritional goodness for the queen. I spent about 20 minutes watching in awe. Folks, ants are some strong ass motherfuckers.

However, the highlight of Monday was the parade of Superlambbananas. As the European Union's capital of culture for 2008, Liverpool has decided to honor it's most famous work of art,the Superlambbanana, with a series of about 50 Superlambbanana replicas. They all look, well, quite frankly, like a lamb with a banana for an ass. But really, can you think of a name in the entire history of the world that is greater than the that of SUPERLAMBBANANA? I think not. On my way to the museum, I got stopped by a woman who saw me admiring one of the Superlambbanana replicas. She was from the board who oversaw all the Superlambbananas and asked me silly questions such as, "What percentage of your trip today was based on your desire to visit the Superlambbananas?" I said 25% because I had no idea what she was talking about.

Monday night I was also supposed to visit a local storytelling circle but I found out it was canceled once I got to the bar it was supposed to be hosted at. I have learned that storytelling circles are very, very, very informal, so it was no big surprise. I also had to cancel a trip to see a storytelling competition in Frome (rhymes with broom) for Wednesday because there are no trains that run out of the city after 9 pm to anywhere else that has accommodations less than $100 a night.

Well, at least I'll always have my Superlambbananas.

Off the Beaten Path

Spent last weekend in Derby (pronounced DAR-by) otherwise known as the middle of fucking nowhere. The city really had nothing to offer except things like this:

So instead I spend my time doing things like this:

Nonetheless, I ended up having a great weekend at the Amber Valley Storytelling Festival, even with the 30-minute walk to the bus station, the 30-minute ride to Shipley, and the 30-minute walk to the park that it took me to get there and back every day. Tack on me getting lost for an hour on Saturday, and me missing the bus back to Derby on Sunday and having to wait 2 hours reading Haunted and eating fish and chips in the yard of an abandoned hospital, and all in all I spent 8-9 hours simply going to and fro. But oh my, was the festival wonderful. It was a small storytelling festival for children with some very big names attached, so I it was a great opportunity to mingle with established performers in an intimate setting. I spent Saturday introducing myself and going to nearly all the performances, while Sunday I sat down and interviewed Sophie Snell, Debbie Guneratne, and Pete Chand. Pete just so happens to organize Festival at the Edge, the UK's largest storytelling festival, and promised me an introduction to any performer I wanted there, which is is such a lucky connection. Unfortunately I didn't get a chance to speak with Bharit Patel, a fantastic mask performer who wins my favorite telling of the weekend, but hopefully I will be meeting up with her in Birmingham before I leave. In the end, a great weekend of storytelling with lots of wonderful connections made.

After Derby it was onto the Isle of Man, a tiny little place located right in the middle of Ireland and Scotland's oceanic border. In fact, on a clear day, you can climb the Isle's tallest - and only - mountain to see Ireland and Scotland at the same time. More on that later...

My dear friend Will Halicks is in the UK studying the legend of the black dog, and the Isle of Man is known for being the point of origin for one of the world's most famous black dog stories. Knowing this, I meet a storyteller named Kit in Birmingham who is from the Isle of Man, hear a couple of tales in the native "Manx" tradition, and you get me and Will meeting up for 3 days of Manx Mayhem. I shipped out on Monday by ferry from Liverpool, only to have Will miss his ferry from Dublin and get delayed a day. I took the surprise alone day to curl up in my bed and breakfast, start work on a story about a man who sells balloons, and enjoying splendid views of the ocean:

After a gigantic English breakfast at the B&B I headed to the Manx National Library and Archives for some joint research with Will. I spent a few hours there by myself before Will arrived working through a number of Manx storytelling collections, which draw heavily on tales about deceptive ferries, or "Them Ones," as the locals like to say. The whole island's history is rich in the storytelling tradition, and Man's founder is even thought to be a 3-legged wizard who shrouded the island in a blue mist so it could never be found. He could also throw defending ships into the ocean whenever he wished, and whether you believe any of this or not, it's true that the Isle of Man was never conquered by the Romans even when all of its neighbors were, and you still have a 3-legged man on the country's flag. Upon Will's arrival we started digging into black dog tales for a few more hours, explored the coast for some magical footage for his documentary, and spent all night in a pub catching up about the study abroad experiences that made this the first time in 8 months we'd seen one another.

The next day Will and I made it an early day so we could conquer Snaefell Mountain, the point where you can see Scotland and Ireland, and England and Wales, and heaven and Earth (according to local tourism ads), all at the same time. We took an hour-long train ride to the top, leaving the bottom with clear skies and the best of hopes. We ended our journey in a haze of fog that wouldn't let us see more than 10 feet in front of our face. The conductor said it was maybe the third "bad view" day that had all year. So much for luck. Instead we ate delicious cake and drank tea in the mountain's coffee shop to warm our bodies and souls and then headed back down to make it to Peal Castle by bus. We roamed the town for some more doc footage and then hiked a mountain where we could see Ireland. Take that, fog. After a delicious Chinese dinner we took a ghost tour of the town with plenty of black dog lore and then had a pint with the tour guides afterwards, adding a totally new perspective on what realms storytelling encompasses.

Now I'm in Edinburgh to visit the Scottish Storytelling Centre and get my fill of haggis. I have already seen many a man in the traditional kilt and hope such sights continue.

The Adventure Begins

Here I sit in my Birmingham hostel, eating fajitas and listening to The Ting Tings. There are a few others gazing at me as they eat their Ramen, and a pair of girls are watching The Craft on a couch behind. I've spent the day sleeping in, getting breakfast at 2 in the afternoon, shopping for Brit music around the city, and cooking the delicious feast in front of me. All of this brings me back to a blog update, because this is the first day of my UK adventure that I've had free since I arrived.

My first 9 days were spent in London, mainly being a tourist. I was centered out of Clink Hostel, a nice place with a great location to the train and Tube stations. I took a free tour of the city on Thursday, saw all the palaces and important things. Took advantage of of seeing two free plays courtesy of Julie Fishell, who's leading a UNC-based London program, both of which were about middle-aged woman fucking with the minds of others to deal with their own midlife bullshit. Only one woman invented fictional characters in her head and pretended they were her own family, and the other forced a broken shot glass into a guy's neck. I liked the latter a bit more. I spent a night walking the Thames River and looking at the city from the top of the London Eye, all part of a sweet little man date with my friend Tony, who's also here for the summer. I spent a whole afternoon in Hyde Park, watching people rant and rave about the Iraq War and the coming of the Antichrist at Speaker's Corner, watching swans and searching for an elusive Peter Pan monument. I spent time in an area called Elephant and Castle, where there was plenty of elephant paraphernalia for me to stare in awe of. I went on a double decker bus. I went to the Tate Modern and saw 10,000 pieces of silverware hanging from the ceiling. I ate a full English breakfast. I ate bangers 'n' mash. I was witness to thousands of British teenagers drinking on the Underground in protest of the new law banning alcohol consumption on public transportation immediately on June 1. And, yes, I was even witness to a drunk's "personal relations" in my hostel room. I'm sure he was probably at the Underground party.

All this time in London, however, was building up to a storytelling workshop led by Ben Haggerty, one of the UK's most prominent and successful performance storytellers. There was 10 of us in the group, all from wildly different backgrounds - a student, a minister, a musician, a theatre director, a child psychologist, a librarian, a couples counselor, an interfaith mediator, an educator, and a play worker - yet we were all searching for a useful way to place storytelling back into our own individual lives. Ben was an outstanding teacher but an equally compelling human being, fitting the stereotype of the charming British gentleman in every way. Over the course of the two days we played games, shared personal stories, analyzed fairy tales, discussed the dynamics of performance, and took the stage with a memorized piece of our own. It was striking to see the strange balance that storytelling rides between theatre and writing, and all in all many of Ben's teachings deeply resonated with the way in which I see my own artistic aesthetic. Long story short, I'm knee deep in one of the greatest learning experiences of my life, stretching myself into a new medium in order to help strengthen and define what my own creative ideals are. As Ben says, "The more choices, the more freedom."

Now I'm in Birmingham, where I spent the last night two nights watching two separate storytellers perform. Birmingham is like a calmer London - most all the same cultural benefits, half the noise. Regardless, I still got lost both nights. It's a curvy road-system they have here. From what I can tell, there is giant music scene in Birmingham, and I might return at the end of the month to see The National again. Yesterday I went to a "Myths and Monsters" exhibit at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery that had giant animatronic dragons and yetis. There I learned that the word "concessions" does not, in fact, refer to food. It actually refers to discounts. So when someone asks if you would you like concessions, then immediately take the offer. You're not paying for food, you're getting a cheaper ticket! So after turning down several "concessions" in London and spending lots of money I didn't need to, I finally figured out how to get a student discount when it came time to see the magical creatures. Today I also went flea marketing, and an 81-year-old woman gave me a kiss and a Mickey Mouse airplane for free because I was a sweet little American boy. I leave tomorrow for the Amber Valley Festival, a weekend of storytelling for children, and then onto Edinburgh for a week after a brief trip to the Isle of Man, where my dear friend Will Halicks is studying the Black Dog ghost story. Castles and the Highlands await, and I couldn't be more excited.

So really, all is grand. Besides storytelling, I spend the rest of my time reading and writing. I go to lots of museums, look at a lot of art. I drink at 5 in the afternoon because that's just what they do here. I make strong use of the public transportation system. I try to avoid crazy people - one man in London asked me if I had a big cock, another threw change at me. I take lots of pictures. I sketch in my journal. I learn. I journey. I adventure.

I search for choices.

Silver and Gold

BEST OF 2007

1. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
2. Radiohead, In Rainbows
3. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
4. The National, Boxer
5. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
6. Kanye West, Graduation
7. Band of Horses, Cease to Begin
8. Tegan and Sara, The Con
9. MIA, Kala
10. Beirut, The Flying Club Cup

Tree of Illumination

Today was the last as a Signature intern. I slept in and went to work at noon and received a phone call from UNC that I had just been granted $6,500 to study storytelling across the UK next summer. Then I set up the "Tree of Illumination" which is 2' tall fake tree that I covered in handmade ornaments of famous Signature associates like Ed Norton and Ethan Hawke and Chuck Mee and Parker Posey. There is also a Lois Smith star and a disco ball. It's a long kept Signature tradition. Then my boss told my to bide my time til the goodbye party so I listened to music and told everyone I loved them and finally we ate carrot cake and drank ginger ale.

This was my day. I did nothing else except eat cake and get money and set up holiday decorations. I like to think that it was perfect.

Forget About Horses, We Ride Elephants In These Here Yankee Parts

In the past few days, I've met the three most exentrique characters I've yet to encounter in New York City: a gay Asian cowboy, an "invisible elephant" researcher, and a obese hobo lady who thought I was going to kill her with an ax. I think the subtitle of this post would thus be "A Few Musings on Crazy People." Let me explain:

-1-

I made the decision a few weeks ago to purchase cowboy boots with my birthday money, probably something to do with my affinity for alt-country or whatever. I Googled, did some research, found a place with a wicked cool name - Whiskeydust - only to call and find out it had closed for business the day before. However, the nice lady on the phone recommened a place called Stylish Shoe near Washington Sqaure Park, so with my Sunday off I made it a mission to complete some serious boot shopping. The store, though you could never know by its title, was boot heaven, straight out of Back to the Future 3, and when I found myself overwhelmed with too many options, I asked for help, thinking some retired good ol' boy from a ranch would come out from behind those old timey swinging bar doors and ask, "Whataya need, partner?"

Instead, I was met with a gay Asian man listening to Rage Against The Machine. Working in a Country & Western attire store. Something was not right.

Sure, maybe you can go all Brokeback and conenct gays and cowboys, but Asians don't exactly work into that equation quite as much. And cowboys they definitely don't listen to anarchist mainstream metal. Nonetheless, the "cowboy" asked for my shoe size, price range, and color preference, gave me a quick look up and down, and returned with a box and a promise - "These will be the boots you're going to fall in love with." He pulled out, of course, the perfect boot, and after he taught me how to get them in my jeans, he went off to let me "be with the shoe." He changed the Rage Against the Machine to some satellite radio world pop station, and by that time I really had no idea what the fuck was going on with this man anymore. But as I walked around the store, it was obvious that this crazy, strange, telepathic wizard of a cowboy was doing what he needed to be doing in life, and I was in love with the boots on my feet. I tried on a few pairs just for the hell of it, but my heart was already taken, and as I gave the man my money, I knew I was where I needed to be in life myself - in the most diverse, wonderous place around where every notion of expectations can be shattered with a bit of talent and determination. It should be noted, however, that the cowboy's wall of autographed pictures of 1980s hip-hop stars really solified such an idea in my head.

-2-

On my way to get the aforementioned cowboy boots, I walked by a table full of elephant paintings. Elephants are my favorite animal, and oddly enough, I had already bought another piece of elephant artwork, of sorts, a few days earlier, so I stopped to look around. The following conversation recounts the 15 minutes I spent with the elephant artist, an unnamed man who clearly enjoys smoking meth:

Meth Man: "Sunday special, white boy! Half off! I make this shit, I price it, half-off, anything you want. $10!"

Me: "Ok, thanks."

Meth Man: "You like elephants?"

Me: "Yeah, they're my favorite animal, actually."

Meth Man: "What you know about elephants, white boy?!"

Me" Um, well, lots of things I guess. What do you know?"

Meth Man: "I know about the invisible elephant."

Me: "Oh. That's nice."

Meth Man: "You don't believe me, white boy. But you know what, I'm gonna prove it to you. You got a piece of paper?"

Me: "Um, yeah, actually." (Reaches into bag and pulls out a scrap sheet of paper.)

Meth Man: "Here's a pen, boy. You better right this down. I'm going to tell you the name of the invisible elephant. And then you gonna go home, Google this shit, and then you gonna believe me. Ok? Ready? Ok. Here you go. Loxodanta. That's L-O-X-O-D-O-N-T-A. Loxodonta. Three words. Africana. Now I know you can spell that, white boy. And the last one. Cyclopsis. C-Y-C-L-O-T-S-I-S. Cyclopsis."

Me: "Um, do you mean Cyclotsis?"

Meth Man: "No! Cyclopsis. C-Y-C-L-O-T-S-I-S. Loxodonta Africana Cyclopsis."

Me: "Ok, I'll have to check that out. So, have you, um, seen the invisible elephant?"

Meth Man: "Hell no! That shit materializes and then dissapears right before your eyes. How could I see that? But I researched 'em. In Kenya."

Me: "Well then, that's pretty neat."

Meth Man: "Half-off, white boy! $10. I charge what I want."

Me: "Well, just let me look for a bit."

Meth Man: "Ok, but don't you tell me that you ain't got no money. All you white people say you ain't got no money. Now I know better. We the ones that don't have money. So when all you white people don't have money, I know the world's going to shit. So if you don't want something, just let me know. I made these. I know they are pretty. I know they're masterpieces. This one, see, special edition. Everybody wanna know how I do it. But I ain't going to tell ya, even if you buy it, but I'm just saying, I know it's good. They damn good. So don't tell me you ain't got no money. I know better. You ain't going to hurt my feelings, cause I know these masterpieces. So you just buy or don't, don't give me no bull crap."

So I didn't give him any crap, and now I have this artwork hanging in the bathroom:


And as you can tell from the provided link, the Loxodonta Africana Cyclopsis is just the scientific name for your common fucking African elephant. So hey, the guy at least knows his elephants, but I still feel a bit cheated.

-3-

After said boot shopping, I headed to the subway. Earlier in the day I had stopped by a costume store and bought an ax for our Halloween interpretation of the 3 little pigs and the big bad wolf - I was going to be the pig who built his house out of sticks, so naturally, I was dressing up like a lumberjack. So here I was in the subway, all shopped out with comic books and boots and an ax and all this good stuff, tired of carrying all this crap, so I just sat down on the bench in the subway station and started cramming it all in one bag. And then this woman behind me screams and starts yelling, "Boy, what you doing with that ax?" I turn around to find a large woman sprawled out on the bench behind me, a box of chicken fingers on her stomach, pointing at me as she licks honey mustard off her other hand. And so I laugh kind of apologetically and say, "Oh, it's just for Halloween, plastic, you know, not real at all. No need to worry."

That was not the right thing to say, apparently.

The chicken finger lady starts yelling at me, "Boy don't you laugh at me! I don't know what you is going to do with that ax. I don't care if it's plastic. How am I supposed to know? Don't you be laughing at me. You shouldn't be saying all this shit. You should be saying - because what you should not be saying is, 'Oh, sorry, it's Halloween, candy all this crap.' Cause what you should be saying is, cause you better not laugh at me, you should say, 'Oh, sorry ma'am, are you ok? Can I do anything for you? Cause I'm sure you have no money to buy yourself some cigarettes or a cup of coffee or food. Can I buy you a cup of coffee, cause I am so sorry I laughed at you.' Cause boy, I ain't got no money to eat. You better get me something now, boy. Get me something to eat."

And she continued this speech, even as I wandered onto the A train and she sat there munching on the giant box of chicken fingers that she kept on top of her engorged belly, calling me boy and asking me to buy her more fucking food.

-FIN-

Is This Best Buy Kosher?

My internship demands I run a lot of errands. Pick up blue prints in Union Square. Check. Buy wood glue from the corner hardware store. Check. Cart over 18 boxes of clothes from Target to the rehearsal hall and try not to run over one of those annoying little dog that are fucking everywhere. Check. Carry a tuba 10 blocks to a brass instrument consignment seller. A pain in the ass, and I felt more like street performer than an intern, but astoundingly, somehow, yes, check.

But today, today topped it all. I was left alone to set up our new $10,000 board room projector, and to my surprise, $10,000 does not buy any of the necessary cables to run said $10,000 projector, it just buys a big fat ugly $10,000 projector. So after an unsuccessful stop at RadioShack for a VGA component, I was off, per my supervisor’s recommendation, to B&H. “If they don’t have it, no one will.” I hopped down to 34^th and 10^th, only to find a McDonald’s, wait for my boss to return my “I’m lost” message, buy a Snapple, and then have my boss call and apologize for giving me the wrong directions. However, once in the doors of B&H, I knew my journey was well worth the hassle.

Once inside the establishment, I was surrounded by lots of Jews and lots of electronics. Somehow these things do not go hand in hand, but I digress. The store was big and bigger, packed with TVs and computers and cameras and lots and lots and lots of people. I was immediately reminded of Asheville's local Super Wal-Mart on tax free weekend. Seriously. Only Wal-Marts are much easier to navigate. Here, I couldn't anything, just a bunch of Jewish employees and digital junk, so when I finally asked one of the B&Hers where I could find a VGA cable, he typed something in his computer, told me to wait 3 minutes, and gave me a receipt to take the front. After I found the "front," which was actually just the middle, I paid for my receipt and was given another receipt, where I went to the actual front and waited. Here I realized there was a giant conveyor belt over my head, over everyone's head, over the whole store, and there in the back corner far, far away was a little man throwing things in bins and whisking them all around the store, like he was some crazy wizard running a Coca-Cola bottling factory. I turned in my receipt and a silent Jewish man found a bag on the wall and handed it to me and pointed to the door to leave.

B&H, quite simply put, is a crowded, disorienting Willy Wonka-esque Northern Wal-Mart run by Hasidic Jews, and I'm not sure my shopping experiences can ever be the same again.