Give me a minute and I'll change your mind, Give me a bullet and I'll change your life

Late Festival Weekend recap -

Work travel is eating what's left of my attention span but there was a bunch of great stuff last week that I didn't want to not get down, not the least of which was the twins taking turns making their Festival debut in costume as little jesters - they were so damn excited it more than made up for Dad's apprehension and stress.


Day 1: Aidan
Aidan took to this like he was born for it, which should frighten his mother plenty. It took him all of 5 minutes to get past trying to perform for me and realized there was an audience there that would give him tons more applause, "Awwww" and cash. That's right, just sitting and eating breakfast in the street the boy got paid. Damn.
At one point he was overcome with emotion over all of it (the sun, sugar and exhaustion probably helped) and just blurted out "Daddy, I'm so glad we're spending time alone together...and you too George". Awwwwwwww.

Day 2: Owen
Owen was a little more difficult performance-wise as he didn't really get the part about it being a "job" and didn't see why we couldn't just go play whereever we wanted to - good point kid. He did a great job and made more a point to see the shows he wanted to see and I think enjoyed getting to be a little part of them as well. Through the parade he was glassy-eyed and dragging but everytime I looked down he gave me a huge smile and kept on waving to the crowd the whole time.

Some of it was extremely tense and wore me out - like having them in the opening gate crowd, which is always a crush of people, or making sure they always knew where dad was and were keeping hydrated and all that good practical stuff.

Some of it was way too much fun and wore them completely out - both were wiped out by the time they were picked up after parade and allowed me to breathe again.

Then there was the stuff that they didn't even seem to notice and seemed weird to me that they didn't even mention, like just sitting down in the middle of the street to eat breakfast or strangers handing them cash or dad comminicating with them using only noises (which I prepared them for a little) but overall they both did great at just playing and even taking a bit and running with it from time to time.
Ah, my boys. Never was there a prouder clown of his little clown-army.

Once the kids were away things took off
On Saturday we had a ton of commitments, starting at Tennis (which we killed), then into a wedding for some interacting with the party (where I pissed off the groom in a big way. great), into our regular gig at the Wine Tasting (which we OWNED from end to end) then into our stage show (which was AWESOME) and then took our stage show back to the wedding party. The wedding party was d-o-n-e by the time we got there, people looked exhausted, the bride and groom were completely wasted and generally people just wanted to leave, not sit through another act. It was a tough gig.
The cool part was over the course of our short show we not only got them back into it and fired up but pulled a good show out of the air (and even got a smile from the groom, who apparently didn't want to kill me anymore) and managed to work "Squid" into Romeo and Juliet at the bride's request (demand, really). Anyway, we were proud as hell when we walked out and the best man yelled "That was AWESOME" as we were making our exit - so we earned our peanuts that show.

Sunday was another good half-day of parental pride and stress followed by shows galore.
Tennis on Sunday gets a special nod for being incredibly fun and I was feeling on when we hit the stage, which is funny given how not-on I ALWAYS feel right before we step onstage. We were playing fast and loose and messing with the show the right ways (read as: ways the crowd didn't need to know about but made the show better) and generally kicked much ass. It was the last time I saw my voice for the day.

We dropped a prop anvil on Mark in the Feast - kudos to a guy for laying there and trusting that we aren't actually going to crush him for laughs, despite all evidence to the contrary, including the fact that we've happily hurt him for laughs several times. Ah.....can't explain that to the kids yet. Maybe next year.

Our show was a little rough and weird, at one point after finishing an Anime-Hamlet we actually asked the audience how many poeple 'got' what we just did, the show of hands was really really small. Ok - we alienated the audience a bit.

Over to the cage for some role-reversal with Mark and a patron kid that got pushed into it, dressed in my clothes, smacked in the head and then made to throw things at me. It was awesome, even though it went on for. ev. er. So much fun, it amazes me some days what we get away with out there, which might be my favorite element to it all - getting that "Hey! I've got an idea!" and being able to just do it with total disregard for 'how are we going to get out of this' or 'am I allowed to do this?' - which could be good or bad. This weekend it was great.

Hit the street for essentially the rest of the day for some of the best, most high-energy street performance of the year. The time flew by, I stole an electric cart (kudos to Chad for figuring out "Lowrider" on the accordian in record time - I could not have asked for better), had some great play with little kids, tried out some classic "Puppet bits" with glee and scared the living crap out of a couple of people.
BOOM - cannon came and we weren't quite done yet.

ran into Matt carrying a kettle drum over his head and George proceeds to give him a good, solid hit to the groin with a juggling club. I don't mean he tossed a club at him - he walked up and essentially punched him in the sack while the guy was carrying a weight over his head in both hands. Ah, art.
The best part was that his wife asked George to do it.
Ah, love.

After Matt recovered (from a second hit too) and got back up we saw the finale of the "Dreams!" bit, which actually knocked him down. You know a bit is good when you can knock someone off their feet or can be empirically proven to be stronger than a punch in the nuts. That bit is now officially done.

I can't believe that the upcoming 2 days are the last of the season - it doesn't help that I missed 3 days this year but George and I just hit stride on a number of things and it feels like we're just getting out of the gate in a lot of ways.
Next year - no kids.

Alright - I'm in San Diego on Coronado Bay until the red-eye flight tomorrow and the client just called to say our 10am call time has been moved to 8am - good thing I'm on central time and didn't really sleep anyway.

Butch in suit on the bay.