26th March 2007

I have had a fantastic weekend! Unfortunately this puts me in two minds about what I can actually tell you all about it. But then again I do feel that we are all old friends now after spending so much time in cyberspace together. In fact, I am growing to love you all deeply and trust you all implicitly. I see you, not as random people from Campogalliano, Shenyang and Imola, but more like family. And as you are all more like family now, I think we should embrace this newly found union and backpedal through the years to catch up on all that may have wriggled past our collective consciousness. So that is 32 birthday and Christmas presents you all owe, a little something for when I graduated and you can make up for all of the lifts I never got to the discotheque by purchasing a nice set of wheels for me.

So, with that sorted, I will regale you with stories of freaks and unbelievable feats of human endeavour. For the record, I am not making reference to my webbed toes. For in Auckland it is festival time (see AK07 post previously not commented on by most of you) and that has brought some fantastic shows and performers to the southern hemisphere to amaze and entertain. Don't panic now, I haven't gone all cultured on you all, but I did go to see the most fantastic show in a tent. I do believe that it could be the most amazing show in or outside of a tent. For this was no ordinary tent, it was The Famous Speigeltent.

The Spiegel Tent


The show was La Clique and I was lucky enough to be taken by Penny Ashton, the fab poet and comedienne who hosted the second of my Auckland comedy stints, who knew one of the acts in the show. And what a show it was. It is nearly impossible to illustrate it with my limited vocab and grammatical follies but I will give it a go! The tent itself is large but from the outside it looks like a small bigtop. I am not sure if a small bigtop counts as a hyperbole but there we go. It is decorated in the style of a ye olde carnival tent with a small beer garden outside. I had no idea what the show was about, but judging by the queue, it should be a good show. Once inside I saw that seats were arranged, not infront of the stage as per ordinary shows, but with a piano to stage left and concentric circles of chairs focussed on a tiny, 2m diametre at best, circular stage in the centre of the room. The inside of the spiegeltent was really atmospheric, with coloured glass windows and mirrors around the edges and the bar. It is more like a really old building that a tent, so much so that you forget you are in a tent at all. While the tent is a star in its own right, what was to follow was astounding. One seat in the front row became available and was offered to Penny, but she insisted that I take it as she had seen the show a number of times before.

So off I went, to sit less than a metre from the strange little stage. The lights went down and the show began. From then it became a blur of flesh, skill, physical anomoalies and comedy. The English gentlemen, apparantly Australian but I won't hold it against them, produced a strongman/balancing/comedy miming/gymnastic feast and this set the tone for the night. Nothing can really be put into one catagory. It is like breakfast, but a bit like lunch but with a taste of dinner and snacks in between. What these fellahs could do made the audience gawp and cringe, cower and laugh all in one. Imagine being laid on your back and your mate does a handstand on one of your upreaching hands. Just one of them. Then you slowly have to stand up with this idiot staring down at you and his feet 6 feet above you. Try doing another handstand, but this time you are doing it one handed, while balancing the supporting hand on your mates head as he is stood up reading a newspaper. All on a 2m max stage and punters all around you. One false move and whammo!

That do anything for ya? Well try a stunning young woman with the most amazing eyes whizzing great big hoola hoops from all and any part of her body, with the hoops missing your nose by inches. I never thought I would ever, EVER be writing about someones hoop being within an inch of my face, but there we go. Hoola hooping might be something remembered in the gloom of childhood, this woman, Yulia Pykhtina, was asounding.

Although I probably have the order somewhat awry, we had one of many recurring slots by Miss Behave. From the UK and Penny's friend who organised the tickets, she was rude and cheeky. While dressed in skimpy rubber, scaring and flirting with the audience in equal measure. Sword swallowing with a large pair of scissors, it was her raport with the audience that was so entertaining. You just knew there was more to come.

Enter Captain Frodo. It turned out that I recognised him from a Graham Norton show a while back. While seeming to be clumsy and inept, he displayed his double jointed disposition. Now some of you might be able to do that crap thing where you can touch your thumb back to your wrist. Very impressive. Try dislocating your shoulder and climbing through the head of a tennis racket. Your whole body through. Then while halfway through......one arm, your head and one leg, reach down and grab a smaller tennis racket and start all over again. His act was flawless in its presentation and I think was my favourite. Tough choice though. I am not sure I should say this but do a search on youtube for Captain Frodo and you might see him on GN. This was better though. Much better if that is possible. He came back later and proceeded to stand ontop of an upturned rubbich bin. Not that impressive? Well he continued to produce smaller rubbich bins from inside the previous. Each time he stayed on top of the top bin and somehow slotted the smaller ones under himself and stood on that one untill he was sat on a baked bean tin, 6 cans/bins high on top of a piano, over 10 feet in the air. That wasn't enough, he put his legs behind his head and had a chat with the audience while only his buttocks were touching the bean can! Unbelievable.

The guest was a really nice suprise for me as it was Paul Zenon. Not many have heard of him in New Zealand, but I have seen him on loads of TV shows in the UK and have always liked him. A bit like a more sly and con-man esque David Blaine, and without the pompous eye on hand crap. Although he wasn't as freakish as the rest of the acts, he was brilliant and had the audience ducking for cover with a physics trick involving a snooker triangle, dog lead and pint of Newcaastle Brown! A good old Yorkshire lad!

After a break and a beer, the show continued with Miss behave popping a long rose through her tongue and bating the crowd some more. Also doing repeated slots was Azaria Universe, who was really funny and got progressively more naked. She was great at the clowning around but when she suddenly produced two huge white sheets and proceeded to climb them to the ceiling, she showed that she was a fab gymnast, especially when she did the plummetting and rolling number from the ceiling as seen in the BBC idents, albeit they were red sheets.

Rima appeared on the piano as the lights went up, dressed in middle eastern garb. She had her back to us and looked just like a 4 year old belly dancer. Then she turned around and we could see that, although less than a metre high, she was a beautiful and talented ADULT belly dancer. You know she is there to be watched, but you know that in polite society it is wrong to stare at a midget!

Meow Meow was a feisty prima donna caberet singer who brings new meaning to the phrase "audience participation". At any point during her act she had between 1 and 8 men holding her in the air while she serenaded the audience in the style of Edith Piaf, including yours truly! A great act but you had to be there! Miss Behave popped up again for her finale, swallowing a 2 foot long sword and bending over to show the audience! Truly a girl that has controlled her gag reflex.

I know that I have missed loads out but I am aware that I have written loads again and I keep getting whingers telling that I write too much. But to finish the show, David O'Mer plopped into a bathtub and then performed amazing gymnastic routine while splashing the audience with water and hanging from ceiling straps. It was amazing and you could hear the knickers in the female contingent ripping off as his perfectly sculptured body, dripping from up high, cascaded around the room. Remember that the stage is only 2 metres in diametre, if that. I feel that I, once again, have to pre-empt a homosexual suggestion from Fenners et al and lay my cards on the table in that I am 100% heterosexual. But this was a beautiful man. I understand that there were a number of gay fellahs in the audience too. Maybe it was their pants ripping with Davids act! After all, there is a man drought in Auckland by all accounts, for both ladies and gay blokes. With such a lack of choice and despite the no touch policy, I suppose the women and gay fellahs take what they can get. After all, buggerers can't be choosers.

If you can ever get to see La Clique at the Spiegeltent make sure that you do. It is the most brilliant show ever. And to make the evening better, we were drinking with Paul Zenon for ages after and he put us on the guestlist for his show on Saturday too! Top fellah! No celeb photo for the blog though I am afraid! I am slipping. The Zenon show was great but I feel that you have all lost the will to live. I PROMISE TO WRITE SMALLER POSTS. But I couldn't miss any of the Spiegeltent out.

Dan

Rockbusters.

No one has even attempted the last Rockbuster. Don't let me down on these! Even you Jess Morrow, sneaking a look from Espana!


So...I will leave the last one and add a new one. Get your fingers out on these please.


T.S.

Roll call in the hospital? Over there, the ones clutching their chests? That's the heart attacks. The ones wheezing? Thats' the asthma people. What about them with the inabilty to move their left hand sides?


New one.

E. Do you want a game of tug of war? Well it's up to you, you own it


Good luck.