ED2013 Columns ED2013 Comedy ED2013 Week3 Edition

Letter to Edinburgh: The Axis Of Awesome’s Lee Naimo

By | Published on Tuesday 20 August 2013

Axis Of Awesom

Regular faces from Festivals past, but not here this year, address the Fringe community. This week, Lee Naimo of Axis Of Awesome, who isn’t bothered at all about missing the Festival this August. Oh no, not one little bit. Honest…

Idiots of Edinburgh. Wow, what an idiot you are. You stupid, idiotic idiot. I can’t believe you’re in Edinburgh. How could you be so dumb, you dummy?

How could you do that to yourself? Why would you even want to? I can’t imagine anyone wanting to be in that city in the month of August, traditionally Edinburgh’s worst month of the world. Why would you want to stay out drinking until 6am, then stumble home, racing the sun to your conveniently-located apartment that you share with your fellow performers? What a freaking drag.

Why would you want to get up at three in the afternoon, hungover and happy, and walk in the sunshine through the disgusting green and horribly beautiful Meadows to meet your Festival friends? Who would possibly want to climb Arthur’s Seat to watch the sun rise and/or set over what is possibly the greatest festival city in the world, Edinburgh. Or as I like to call it, Boring-Face StinkTown.

Not to mention the cavalcade of stupidly awesome shows you can go and see. You probably start your afternoon off by seeing some theatre, bettering yourself culturally and all that wank. Then you might hit a few comedy shows by some of the world’s best comedians, grabbing a quick delicious burger in between laughing (and probably crying about how your show isn’t as good as theirs, oh woe be to you, wah wah wah). Then there’s the seemingly endless parade of late night and variety shows, from ‘Late n Live’ to ‘Spank’ to that other one that the Pleasance do.

But you’re not done yet, oh no. You’ve got to top it off by dancing your stupid face off at some incredibly well-crafted late night dance thing like ‘Hot Dub Time Machine’, yelling over the top of the precisely-selected music to your drunk friends that “this is the greatest thing I’ve ever been or ever will be part of, I love you, wow let’s go get another burger after this” or some other such drivel. You make me sick.

And in between all this you have to perform your little show to the people of the world, be they few or many, for their applause and adulation, or in some cases their fists. But we all know that’s not why you’re really there. That’s just an afterthought to the drinking and cavorting like an orgiastic orgy-attendee in Roman times or some other appropriate analogy.

I do not envy you poor deluded souls, with your venue passes on your ‘lanyards’, or your ultimately stronger legs from climbing six flights of stairs several times a day. Nor do I pity those whose hearts turn to stone after performing the same routine 5000 times all over the glorious city of Edinburgh, coming out at the end of August as far better performers than they were a mere 28 days ago. You bought this on yourself.

I’m so so so glad the Axis Of Awesome aren’t there this year to greet our fans, to drink with our friends and spit on our enemies (which we can’t do because Dead Cat Bounce aren’t there this year either). One of us was foolish enough to put forth his humble offerings, or ‘show’, to the comedy gods – Benny Davis in ‘The Human Jukebox’ is on for the rest of the Fringe, 10.45pm at the Gilded Balloon (it will literally blow your mind with it’s awesomeness, go and see it if you have any self-respect left).

As for Jordan and I, well, we don’t miss that dumb place at all. I certainly don’t want to see the best comedy the world has to offer all in one place, or to drink my way though the money we made at merch that night in the Loft Bar with some of the greatest people I know. What a ballache.

On a final note, good luck for the final days of the Festival. Take a holiday in September, you’ve earned it, you big idiot.

Benny from Axis Of Awesome performed at Gilded Balloon Teviot at Edinburgh Festival 2013. Lee and Jordan from Axis Of Awesome did not.

LINKS: www.axisofawesome.net



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