Liz's Little Blog

Art of Difference...

2009-03-19T23:16:00.001-07:00

has been a blast... it officially comes to an end tomorrow but the friendships, contacts and memories will last way beyond. The stand up, the play, the events have all gone well. Tonight i'm performing at a drag kings event which should be an experience... i'm going as michael jackson but shussshhh don't tell anyone. no review but the lovely people at gasworks / art of difference wrote this on their blog about me...

Currently, there's a great show on, Liz Carr's It Hasn't Happened Yet.
The marketing for AOD hardly pays decent tribute to the show that
audiences get to see. Liz is not only a comedian who has spent a
lifetime witnessing and privately finessing her comic skills, she's
also one that went from comic newby to seasoned cynical stand up genius
in just a few years.

Nothing is sacred with Liz Carr and Melbourne is seldom graced with a
talent like hers. Her play, which tells the story of Alix tackling the
mainstream as a crip jokester, is a finely hewed piece where theatre and
standup are seamlessly interposed. It seems ironic that one of the best
recently arrived comic talents of the UK is not going to earn the
plaudits of any of the queer, straight, street, art or community press.
You guys suck so badly for not having your ear to the ground. But it's
your loss not ours.

To Liz Carr, a talent that we are all going to know about soon, and some
of us were there when... SALUT.

and too everyone who's supported this trip and made it all possible... salut to you all xxx

(more, much more soon....)

A Land Down Under

2009-03-11T06:30:00.000-07:00

4 hours, one near miss on the runway (i kid you not) and 2 films later, we arrived in Melbourne. We were met by Urzula from the Art of Difference team - she didn't hold up a card with our name on it but as good as she had a black and yellow AoD t-shirt on, whisked us away in an accesible cab and paid me. it doesn't get much better than this.

Within 24 hours, we'd been in america, new zealand and australia and you know, they practically blurred into one. Not because i was travel weary but because wherever you go, there's the same hotels, same restaurants, same channels on the tv, same same same... from my experiences of australia at the beginning of this century, the disappointing thing is that it's resembling america more and more - culturally at least. familiarity is reasurring and i'm as guilty as anyone of wanting that at time - checking into a big brand hotel because i know it'll be accessible, tuning into the us sitcom i love and eating the food i know... but what's happening to difference? uniqueness? identity?

some things do change, however... day one - we slept then went to the southbank which much like our own southbank in london is a rivers edge walkway with fairy lights in the trees and over priced restaurants lining the route. pleasant and a good place to have an easy meal. Day two - i had to take jo to the melbourne museum. The last time i was here i remember the highlight for me was an exhibit of the Neighbours set, with charlene's wedding dress the centrepoint. As you approached, you could hear 'suddenly', the classic song by angry anderson that was playing as scott and charlene got hitched. sigh. a childhood milestone for me. Alas - we got there and the wedding dress was nowhere to be seen. i was beside myself. it seems the exhibit changed 18 months ago and has been replaced by a taxidermists wet dream - phar lap - some racehorse that's a bit of an australian icon from the 1930's and now the most popular attraction in the museum. sigh again. kylies wedding dress or a stuffed horse? i know what i'd prefer to see. Culture? hummmfff.

and so day one was a day of pottering... we walked and walked all around the town. heading to Lygon street - the italian area - for lunch for one main reason - underbelly. the fantastic series detailing the gangland wars in melbourne. we discovered the series last year on our oz trip and have been following it on cable in the UK. it's a jungle out there don't you know. We ate italian food and imagined the shootings and got quite excited at possibly eating garlic bread from the same place as a gangland shooting by the carlton crew.

then it was off to the Moomba festival - a waterfront festival, apparently the biggest free community festival in oz. It was a holiday here in oz - labour day so families were out in their thousands.... there were lots of fair ground rides which i opted to avoid - carnies can't be trusted you know. Too many kids wandering around with those demonic oversized stuffed toys that parents had won for them by shooting rubber ducks from a conveyor belt. A round the world food extravaganza which was infact a 10 stall extravaganza and the most popular one selling sweet corn to an unending queue. Some music, some crap comedy in a show called hoodwinked wherre apparently very famous oz comics tried to hoodwink us and each other as to the meanings of certain words and in doing so weren't particularly funny. The used words like gimp and wog. hmmm i'm wondering how my comedy is going to be received over here...

we watched the hightlight of the festival - the closing fireworks. we lined the yarra river and the bangs heralded the beginning of the end. I remembered how as a child, i'd been terrified of fireworks. They're noisy, they're essentially little bombs and they can cause a fair bit of damage. I sat there and contemplated a rogue banger heading off course and straight towards me. i can't duck. if i did it would hit jo. we'd have to roll off my wheelchair and onto the riverbank in a comando style move. no doubt we'd break bones. would broken bones be better or worse than getting a firework in the face? i was relieved when it ended and we left the festival unharmed. it was a close call.

we headed back to the hotel. we got a mcdonalds on the way home to the holiday inn where before bed we watched american idol... globalisation? damn right...

so far but so good... and a bit edited!

2009-03-07T09:27:00.000-08:00

We're in 'transit'. I'm tippy tappying away from auckland airport, about to catch a flight to Melbourne for the Art of Difference Festival. One of the flight attendants (that's what you have to call em these days apparently) was like 'poor you' when we said we would only be in NZ for 3 hours but I'm not that arsed really. Me and jo think we must be a rare breed as people who aren't particularly fussed by new zealand. I've been to Wales? I don't want extreme sports to be shoved down my throat and i hate rugby. *shrugs*

Now the usa is a different matter. Only 2 nights in LA as a 'medically required stopover' hehe nahhh it was to go to Universal studios and buy underwear. America is my guilty secret really. I know i shouldn't like it, but i can't help myself. We were staying in hollywood - the orchid suites, just behind the kodak theatre where the oscars are held. We'd applied for tickets to be in the bleachers seats along the red carpet this year but it wasn't to be. Instead we had our own red carpet, ate canapes from M&S, booed jerry lewis' ridiculous 'humanitarian' award and stayed up all night in our pj's watching it live. ahhh the glamour. and here we were.

I've been to hollywood before and unless you know where to go, it has to be the least glamourous place to be. a favourite site is not manns chinease theatre but the people who wear fancy dress and stand around the hand and footprints of the star, trying to coax you to have your picture with them. Today, we relented. (i say today but i don't really know what day it is. we left the usa on friday 6th. we flew for 12 hours and now it's sunday 8th in NZ. somewhere along the way, we have lost the 7th). We had our pic with spiderman. mainly because he strikes a pose on the sidewalk (get me with the lingo eh?) where he crouches with his leg out and his hand up as if making a web. it's a classic pose that you'd know if you saw it. anyway, in his saggy, ill fitting suit, you can see his rather lacking in muscles frame, his red sports socks over his calves - doubling up as his red boots and the way he struggles to get up from his crouched position - told me he was't the real deal. but he gave us such amusement, we had a pic and paid him a dollar. he was most concerned we got his jauntilly angled foot in the picture. we did.

20 minutes till we board. didn't see any one famous in hollywood - apart from spidey of course. hoped to see peter faulk but have stalked him before and was worried about breaching the injunction. he has altzheimers apparently. Now when he says his catch phrase 'just one more thing...', he can't remember what he wanted to ask. sad. if it can come to the great detective, it can happen to us all.

Anyway, underwear and scaring tourists. jo now only buys bras from victoria's secrets. it sounds so pretentious to say 'ah yes we have to go to the us for our bras' but that's the truth (knickers in oz actually - we love bonds) i bought something in fredericks of hollywood. it's black, purple and very cute but that's all i'm saying. went to universal studios - love that place. known for the backlot tour where you do see sets they're using - they were filming for desperate housewives the day we went. apparently. unfortunately we missed the tour. no amount of saying it was my make a wish dream, convinced them to let us on before they closed. instead, we consoled ourselves with the simpsons ride, 6 times on the mummy roller coaster and once on jurassic park. then the haunted mansion. it's a walk through ride where things scare you, people jump out at you 'but won't touch you' and i thought yeah yeah... but oh my god it was brilliant. there is one bit where you have to walk thru a coridoor of body bags, moving them out of the way to get thru. jo was behind me. coward. at one point, we came out of the lift, to join the main darkened coridoors. as i wheeled forward, a bunch of japanese tourists were passing by, saw me, screamed and ran away. only when a safe distance away did they realise wasn't part of the horror experience. bless her - the main woman who screamed, came up to me later and shook my hand. If only i had a 'novelty hand' that would have come off as she shook it... now that would have been scary!

All the flights have been good. leaving from heathrow, they now have special buggies not for special people but for 1st class and celebrities. All thanks to posh spice. Bless her, she's skinnier than me which must explain why she needs to ride a buggy to board the train - her spindly little malnutritioned legs can't bear weight. we've been in premier economy all the way so far - in virgin that just meant bigger seats but in air new zealand we were treated like royalty and the films - slumdog, the wrestler, boy in striped pj's etc... fantastic service and food. Shame we don't like new zealand more really eh? better go. onwards to oz... in economy!

First things first

2009-02-25T14:20:00.000-08:00

I'm a virgin blogger so be gentle with me... over the coming weeks I'll hopefully be using this blog to chatter away about my trip to the Art of Difference disability arts festival in Melbourne, the Melbourne Comedy Festival, bits of sight seeing in between and then to the accessible escalators of Japan. Join me here or via http://lizcarr-theresalwayssomething@blogger.com

until next time

x