PMR

Hoo. What a very very strange Perpetual Motion Roadshow last night.

The Laff was about the 5^th place I called, and when they said yes, I was simultaneously overjoyed to have a roof over the performers heads and trepidatious about what all else might be going on under said roof.

Aaron J. Marko bore the brunt of it. Aside from the ceaseless blatting of the ridiculous motorcycles that circle the Market, there was one woman in particular. Let’s call her Jane. About 5 foot, stout, wearing a well coordinated outfit: black silky track shorts with white stripes up the side. Black nylons, black sandals – the kind you slide on with open toe and heel. A while knitted tank top with a white crocheted cardigan over top. Her ginger hair was pulled back into a low pony tail and she wore big round thick glasses with light coloured plastic frames that made her look owlish. And sort of like Bubbles.

She sang and she danced. A sort of modified flamenco, arms up and fingers splayed, sometimes snapping, with off-tune La, la la las interspersed. Over top of Aaron’s reading. It was just occasionally, until she came back from the bathroom and danced her way to her seat, singing loudly and tacking a crooked path across the back of the room. Aaron stopped reading to laugh, the crowd laughed too. Jane laughed, sat down. There was clapping to mark the end of a remarkable performance. She took it for encouragement, rose from her seat once more, and started all over again.

Emerson said, later on, “You know, the good shows will fade from my memory after a while, but I will never forget this one.”

Tonight, another reading. The one David Scrimshaw mentioned on his blog a while ago. It’s at Invisible Cinema at 8 pm, and I’ll be damned if I can remember the guy’s name, but it sounded good. Probably not as surreal, but can’t have everything.