The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

The Fringe festival is finally over. Four weeks of kitsch, circus, cabaret, magic tricks and sideshows freaks all ended and now it’s time to return to the land of boring normality. It’s sort of sad that the magic is now over for another eleven months but quite glad in a way.
The more I think of it, the more the four weeks of fringe binge seems to resemble Nanowrimo. Thirty days of frenzied squiggling take centre stage along with an assortment of write ins and other events so eating, gardening and doing stuff like house work or posting online just get left by the wayside.

This year they really got too big for their boots. There were some 700 shows which meant that the program guide was written in the sorts of font usually reserved for terms and conditions or telephone directories.
Thank God they had decent sized fonts at the website and it’s always possible to enlarge anyway. I could even make a list of favourites which turned out to be bugger all use because the site constantly logged users out for no apparent reason.

So the inner goblin came up with an old fashioned pen and paper wish list and turned up every other day at the box office to see if anything on the list had cheap tickets for that day.
Between previews and Rushtix I ended up paying full price for only 3 of the 22 shows I went to.

There were posters for an assortment of shows plastered all over the city and many of the performers or their minions would lurk around the venues spruiking their shows handing out leaflets or doing the 30 second elevator pitch. This is itself was a wonderful source of entertainment.
Some of the artists resort to extraordinary measures to get noticed such as circus performers juggling chainsaws. If their show hadn’t been on at the public transport unfriendly hours of 10pm, I would have queued up for a ticket. That was in 2014 and the same people came back this year with an 8pm show and it was one of the best acts of the whole four weeks.

There were so many shows this year that a whole bunch of really good ones had low attendances as they simply did not have the resources to promote themselves while others - usually the stand up comedians - got sell out crowds with rather sad and insipid shows. Simply putting “Best of …..” In a title would get it to the top of the lists (always displayed in alphabetical order) and pull in suckers who did not realise that it was more likely to be a collection of left overs rather than the cream of the crop.

It turned out that the cream of the crop were over on Side Show Alley putting on some really seriously sick and twisted stuff and of course the serpent sniffed them out. It did suck having to leave 15 minutes before the end of the show in order to catch the last bus.
These days so much stuff is online anyway but you have to be there to feel the scare and to know that it’s the real deal without the smoke and mirrors.





Then there's a short documentary on Youtube with some of the X rated snippets which they did perform at the show and which are definitely not for the squeamish. There doesn't seem to be any English subtitles but the pictures paint a thousand words.

Izzie has been pretty much absent in Cyberia lately. There are simply too many temptations of late in the other world especially since the Freak Show (also known as Fringe World) came to town.
The days of pigging out on 2 or 3 shows in one evening are well and truly over. Not due to lack of choice. There's more than 700 shows to choose from which means almost guaranteed Fear of Missing Out.
But the days of $5 cheap tix are well and truly over. Most of the last minute cheap tickets are now between 10 and 15 - mostly at the $15 end and all with the newly introduced $1 booking fee.

But today's outlay of 16 silver sickles was worth every single solitary cent and if there wasn't so many shows to choose from, it would be well worth going back for a second gawk at the ghastliness.

No grand gorgeous bright shiny Spiegeltent for the League of Side Show Superstars - just a simple no frills canvas contraption.
The show started with 2 very pretty frilly show girls wearing red and pink circus gear all glittering with sequins. Each held a rose stem between her teeth and stood stock still without flinching as the pair of macho blokes let loose with the stock whips with all sorts of cracking and lashing going on. The whip masters sliced the roses from the stems and left no other trace of their deadly weapons.

When one of the circus girls proceeded to squeeze herself through 2 stringless tennis racquets, i could not help but think that this is one of the items in the "La Soiree" show up the road which charges $70 for a seat.
But all that was totally tame.

The MC and his assistant set up a dingo trap and demonstrated its lethal force by using a can of beer to trigger it. The top popped off and the can was well and truly squished. They then reset the infernal device and he triggered it again but using his arm. He wandered around the stage to thunderous applause with this thing hanging off his elbow with barely a wince and not a trace of blood. Certainly not for the squeamish.

The acts got more gross and more outrageous and as they had the most basic of stages surrounded on 3 sides by the audience, there just seemed to be no obvious way that they could be faking it.
Not the man using using his bare hand to hammer a nail through a piece of wood nor with the help of a hook hanging from the most sensitive part of his male anatomy to hoist up a very heavy bowling ball and certainly not Ruby Rubberlegs twisting and folding herself up to fit in a rather small see through box on the stage.

It all made trapeze swinging, fire eating and hula hooping look positively boring.

It's almost like it's pointless seeing any more shows since nothing can remotely compare for sheer craziness and disgusting grossness on steroids and now an insatiable curiosity to wonder how on earth it is humanly possible to perform such perverted and painful looking stunts without any apparent sign of injury and not a drop of blood to be seen.

But that hasn't stopped the serpent from signing up for The Coin Operated Girl especially at the preview price of a measly $10

The serpent slowly slinks back to mundane muggle reality after a four week feast of freakishness. Totally pigged out on a Fringe Binge over the last few weeks. As most of the shows happened to be scheduled during the times normally dedicated to squiggling, slinking or doing Coursera homework, all those things have been sadly neglected of late. Now it is finally time to catch up and as a seriously introverted serpent to finally muse and ponder over all the recent adventures.

As if the Fringe Binge wasn’t sufficient to feast upon there was also an arts festival. This included a concert by one of my favourite singers ever as well as a wickedly wonderful writer’s festival last weekend. The Michael Leunig talk was sold out and this duck loving serpent missed seeing her idol in real life. Radio interviews are not quite the same. But did get to see the wicked and very twisted Margaret Atwood and China Mieville. Having the pair of them together in one room taking the piss out of the pompous presenter and just about everything else under the sun was a most amusing experience. Here’s hoping that Auntie ABC will broadcast their feast of snark some time soon

There was even a pitch fest where aspiring writers could book a spot and get their three minutes of fame persuading a big wig from the University of WA press to publish their precious manuscript. Presenters were bookings only but anyone from the public could sit in on the action. It was not quite the same standard as the Nanowrimo Pitchapalooza but it was interesting to see a real live Book Hunter in action


And it was simply not possible to go past the tent offering ‘A glass of wine and a good book”. They were only itsy bitsy samples but with six stalls most with 6 different wines for tasting it was not too difficult to snaffle a glass or two between them all

Most of the fun ended last Sunday. Paid a nostalgic last visit to the urban orchard and the adorably gorgeous freaky Spiegeltent. Now the whole area around the museum, art gallery and state library looks like the spooky wasteland that it usually is for the other eleven months of the year

It was with more than a sense of relief returning to the usual habits of pottering around Dursleyville in the daytime, slinking back to the Lair for twilight to water the weeds and do other garden stuff before finally creeping upstairs to slink about in Cyberia.
The weather is slowly becoming more civilized but is still too pickly to do any proper planting. Will be waiting for the first rains of ‘autumn’ before finally risking any precious seeds

Soon it will be time to start plotting and planning for Camp Nano. With 18 shows visited in the last four weeks there should be no excuse for lack of inspiration. A bunch of Zombie Drag Queens dressed in budgie smugglers running away to the circus could be a good start

Now we got one week left of another freak show. The state election is on Saturday and it's going to be so much fun doing a bit of polling station hopping