Since we couldn’t be in Edinburgh this year, comedian and saucy songstress Jessica Delfino has sent dispatches through both the literal Scottish fog and the Festival Fringe alcoholic one.
Being a New Yorker in Scotland offers its own interesting set of issues. The very words New York City put glimmers in people’s eyes. They think the streets of NYC are paved with gold and that everyone there is obviously a movie star. Audience members who follow me outside after the show, hoping to catch a glimpse of me slipping into a stretch white limo and slinking off, are surely more than a little disappointed to instead see me get onto a rickety mountain bike and pedal away carrying my guitar and purse, like a pack mule. I feel as a New Yorker it’s my duty to live up to the polish and shimmer that I’m supposed to have, so I do dress up for shows, I do apply a shade of showbiz red lipstick every evening before my show, I do sign autographs after shows, and I do sip red wine all sophisticated like, while the brutish Scots glug down pint after pint and exclaim, “Oy!” and “Arr!,” both in awe—and in ugghhh—of my New York pizzazz.
Lots of my American friends are here: Kurt Branohler and Kristen Schaal, Ben Lerman, Jamie Kilstein, Mike Amato, Carolyn Castiglia, David Calvitto, Marshall Cordell. The list goes on and on.
