So we need a toilet for the show - as some of you know. And a bed. And tampons. Our tech was Monday and the problem is on Sunday many stores were closed and on Monday it was a holiday so apparently many stores were still to be closed. 

We set out Sunday morning in search of all the things. We discovered a few things of great importance. 
1. They do NOT have Cheezies here. Morro needs to find a new comfort food and Jasp can't find Cheezie fingerprints in her diary. 
2.  They DO have Tampax brand but NOT Life brand which is not great for the part where Morro discovers that the tampons are Life brand and how ironical that is. 
3. The hardware store is open on Sundays and holidays and they DO have a toilet for us to buy. YAY!
4. (Yes a few is supposed to be 3 but oh well) We CAN'T find a bed! Jasp is going to have to sleep on the floor.

We spent the rest of Sunday inside looking out our window at the beautiful rainy view of chimeny stacks and green green trees, longing for a bed and Cheezies. We also used up all the internet looking for them. Did you know you can use up the internet!?!

Monday started off with a bang. We left the flat at 9am with our two props suitcases (minus tampons and Cheezies) and ran to the hardware store. There is was - our toilet. Well, actually it was a big box with the pieces of a toilet inside that still needed to be assembled but ...  We bought the toilet (it was the most expensive toilet that we have ever gotten, it's not even pink and we forgot our credit card at the store BUT WE GOT IT!) and hurried off to the theatre: The Gilded Balloon. 

Our technician is pretty cool. His name is Lewis Loveday and he seems pretty smart and we made him laugh at our tech which we thought was a good sign. Our stage is teeny tiny so it turns out it is a good thing we didn't get a bed yet because it wouldn't fit. We puzzled together the toilet and placed it centre stage. It's beautiful. And Lewis made it look pink with the lights. As we looked at the toilet, glowing in its spotlight, and then at the box that its pieces were birthed from, we had a eureka moment. We can use the box as a bed! Morro tried it out and promptly fell to the floor. She actually kept trying it out thinking that maybe it would work  at different angles but it kept being a box and therefore Morro kept falling on the floor.  So we decided to set out to look for something to fill it with - "structural integrity" as The Sir calls it. 

Polling people on the street we got various ideas of what we could support the box with: newspaper, wine bottles, toilet paper rolls, foam... FOAM! Mission: find the foam. We took our empty toilet box and set out to find a store we were told was called "The Foam Store". It's a lot harder to find things without the internet but people are so nice to you when you are carrying a toilet box around asking for advice and if they have heard of a store that sells just foam.  After two hours, many creative box carrying methods, and an on foot tour of several areas of Edinburgh, we found the store. It really is a store that sells just foam.  Sadly, it was closed. We just missed it by half an hour so we'll have to come bak tomorrow.  But at least we know it exists. If you look for long enough things really do come true.  

We have landed in Edinburgh! Our greatest adventure is actually happening. The flight was great and we couldn't sleep because we were so excited but they gave us red blankets and macaroni and cheese (because they just knew that was our comfort food). We could see the castle and the big seat from the plane. Once we landed we discovered that there are piles of fringe programs in the airport and there are strawberries. 

Once we got here and arrived in our flat (which is awesome and has giant windows) we put up a poster of Leonardo DiCaprio, unpacked our pink phone, made a bed for Peabody and set off to explore the streets. 

BUT first we needed food so we went to a café called Victor Hugo. The girls that worked there, Bella and Debra, were so nice. They gave us a big list of places to go and pastries with our yummy lasagna. They also said that they are going to come to our show. They are officially our first Edinburgh friends. 

Then, with hot chocolate and marshmallows in hand, we set out on the town to explore the streets and put up some of our posters. Basically, this is the coolest place EVER! Everyone is so nice and wants a poster or flyer for the show, and we even got to hang a poster beside Lionel Richie - can you believe it!?!?! Oh and we found a food festival where we had vegetarian dumplings, and made a list of restaurants that we need to eat at, and met a couple from Germany that just moved here, and discovered all the places that have scotch whiskey and "Malt of the Moment" if we want to get drunk, and climbed lots of stairs, and THEN we found one of OUR BIG POSTERS that we paid for!!! AND THEN we found our venue - THE GILDED BALLOON!!!! It's all lit up and glowing and looks magical. 

We finally got back to our flat and then passed out in our bed like two little clowns who have been awake for two full days.  Good night Edinburgh - our home for the month. 

We want to know all about your job stories too. The good, the bad, and the ugly..

Send us your fun or terrible job stories or pics and we'll post 'em.

Send to morroandjasp@gmail.com or add a comment yourself in the blog comment section.

Love and happy working.

The real question is:  Do we really neeeed to work? Who invented money? Because that’s the only reason we work... right? Although Morro does enjoy volunteering with the animals at the shelter, and for some reason really likes cleaning up garbage (she even wanted to go garbage collecting for her birthday last year). But Jasp would sometimes kinda rather sit on the couch and eat bonbons.

But what drives you? Work? Life? What’s life if you don’t work? ... Playing all day? But what if you can’t find a job? Then it’s neither work nor play. What if you work all the time and there is no play, or if you play so much there is no time for work... but then you can’t afford to play, and then what does that make you? ... Then you are back to square one - neither work nor play every day.

But if the point is to do one so that you can do the other, or to do one until you are able to do the other, which one do you choose? Because as soon as you do one, it limits the other, or maybe enables the other. Is it possible to do both at the same time? But then who gets to do that? Does that even exist? What does that even mean? But why shouldn’t we all do that? If we are only here for a short amount of time then why not enjoy it... right? Isn’t that what ‘they’ say? Who is ‘they’ anyway?  

So why do we have to work at all? Oh yeah, to play. Because playing is enjoying. Right? But we can’t play without work, or unless we magically get to do both together. which is the dream... maybe, we guess... But when that’s not possible maybe finding just the right amount of work and play on the scale of time maybe, perhaps is the key... UNLESS  one doesn’t want to play, they only want to work. Maybe people like to work, maybe they work so they don’t have to play because other people want them to play when they are not working, and really they just want to work, which means a perfect balance scale would not be good. Oh my!

So, we don’t know. What do we do? What is one... or two, supposed to do? Is there even a ‘supposed to’? Except that we have to work because someone invented money. We tried to barter but only certain small independent businesses would even entertain the idea and Jasp got into a few heated arguments about it. So back to circle one – how do we work if it’s hard to get a job, and how do we play if we can’t work, and then what do we do all day?

So the real question is: What is the meaning of life?

We took a road trip. Later we found out that there are closer GM plants, including the one in Oshawa, but we went to Tonawanda because wanted to make a day of it. And you don't get to have car snacks without a long drive. Also, it's not every day that we get to experience crossing the border and the American border crossing guards love clowns. They try really hard not to show it but they love clowns.

The first thing we had to do when we got to the plant was watch a safety video. It featured the word “safety” about 39 times in 7 minutes (the majority of them being in the first minute and a half). Also it taught us that we MUST wear safety goggles the entire time. Only problem is that the goggles were not exactly designed to fit over a variety of nose shapes and sizes so it made for a bit of an uncomfortable tour.

Then it began. Well it began before but now it began for serious... The factory......the factory tour...THE ACTUAL FACTORY TOUR! As the double doors swung closed behind us, it hit us like a wall of sticky pudding. Whap! A smell of perfume and glue and mouthwash all mixed up in one stew crawling up your nostrils and into the forehead of your face. They said it was coolant. Cool.      

The first stop was the big washing machine incubators. A giant robot arm lifts a big lump of metal in and then it gets swished around with coolant and drills and then POP! Out it comes like a piece of toast but metal toast and instead of being brown and buttered it’s shiny and with holes. Then we interviewed some people including the head honchos of the incubators who debated over if it was better to be in charge or if it was better to be on the “line”. Then they told us how long they had been working at the GM plant and how the floors used to be wooden and the roofs open = dangerous and slippy when it rains.

Then to the “line”. As in the assembly line... where people do the same thing over and over and switch and then over and over and switch and then over and over and then they go home. It was a bit different than we thought it would be because it looked really fun. And there are machines that help you lift things, and the conveyor belt doesn’t move until your finish your job (not like when it all goes to shit for Lucy). Also each team gets to pick their own music which makes it a lot more like a dance club where you get to perfect your sweet moves.

We got to interview more people, like managers and team leaders, and they were all sooooo nice to us. We learned about unions and layoffs and taking care of the line and your team because a minute of production lost is actually worth thousands of dollars. We watched flying robots and cleared the way for mini tractors. All for the engine. Just the engine. Because at the end of the day, they take all these engines and whisk them off to another plant where they grow the rest of the car. Can you believe it? Hundreds and thousands of engines seven days a week, around the clock.  

Fordism at its best... GMism that is.

Signing off on another adventure,  Morro and Jasp.

It was the day of days. We got to intern with the natural Resources Playwriting group at Factory Theatre. Like with real people who really write plays for reals and legit and a real dramaturge. Sometimes some people say that we don't do real theatre so we wanted to see what the real stuff was really like so came here. It was the 'write' things to do... get it. SO first we made them baked goods because that's what you do when you want to fit in to a crowd (make them love you with sweets). They totally loved the banana bread (which is from our cookbook - notice the product placement, that's what professionals do). Then Iris, the dramaturge (isn't it funny how the word 'dramaturge' is so close to the word 'dramaturd'?), made us do private writing in notebooks that she gave us. AND we had to sit in the corner, we didn't even get to sit around the table with the real writers. Jasp took forever to answer the questions that Iris gave her but Morro was finished early and started writing notes to Jasp in the top corner of her book. Jasp tried to ignore her but she secretly wanted to write back really badly.

Then all the writers went around and shared things that they wrote for the exercise which was about like what was your first job, and worst job, and how did you get it and stuff like that. And David Yee was like "Iris when are we going to do serious work" and Iris was like "we are doing serious work", or something to that effect. Most importantly Damien Atkins shared a story about how he once got a job by making the people hire him because he cried in the interview so they felt badly for him. AMAZING ADVICE!!!!! Oh and Marjory Chan had a job where she sat in an empty news paper box and read books or something like that - we are not sure how she got paid but there was a long discussion about the seating arrangement in the box and it sounds like a dream job (dream as in amazing, not as in asleep).

After all that was done the writers read some work that they had written for homework. They have homework and its not even school. Okay we always do homework but we give it to ourselves  - you know work that we do at home - but this was homework that someone else gave them. And they all did it. They read. And Iris said stuff like take that do-hickey and put it up there and rotate your ankle ninety-six degrees and you'll have a play.   

Then they made us do a pretend interview. Like as if we were interviewing to join them or something and so we took Damien's advice and tried to make them cry by telling them a sad story. Not sure if it worked yet, we'll wait to hear back. 

Then all of a sudden they just left. Like somehow they all knew what they needed to do for next time and somehow they all knew it was over and Morro stole a piece of a plant so she could grow it at home to always feel inspired and Jasp took a picture of a painting on the wall that she liked and Iris said now get out clowns because I have other clients coming.

So we left and we know no more now about what it means to be a writer than we did before.

Once upon a time there was a shoe shine. We cannot disclose where or when this shoe shine existed for the protection of the company and the employees so from now on in this entry we shall refer to the shoe shine as Hideout # 7 and to the employee who trained us as Agent Double O Awesome.

We arrived at Hideout # 7. Well, actually it wasn't all that easy. We got a bit lost and got locked in a stairwell for a little while until some friendly stranger heard us knocking and yelling and they let us out. But then once we got out of there and asked for directions we arrived at Hideout # 7. Well, actually we arrived but then Jasp decided she couldn't work without eating something because she didn't have time to get ready and eat before we left soooooo we had to go back out and find some food. But then we arrived at Hideout # 7. For realz.

From here we executed our training. Agent Double O Awesome demonstrated the patent shining technique which included a fancy blue sauce application and lots of putty... oh and some whipping around of a cloth. Then we got to shine. That's right ladies and gentlemen we got to shine some shoes. Okay we mostly just shined each other's shoes but we shined (shone?) nonetheless.  First the salt removal, then the toothbrushy soap (yes you actually use a toothbrush), then the zipa de do da, then the putty (some call it polish) and a shoe massage (weird right?), then you slap it a bit with the cloth (if you are really good you can snap the cloth... its pretty cool). It's actually pretty fancy if you can do it all properly and even a bit sexy. Also it's really fun to stick your hands right into the putty and smear it all over the show. Well, Morro thought it was fun anyway.

We got to shine a man's shoes under the careful supervision of Agent Double O Awesome. Then we got to watch another man drop off like one hundred pairs of shoes to be shined. He wasn't even wearing them but they all had fancy wooden shoe fillers inside to help keep them looking good. Then a small child wanted her rubber boots shined. She was pretty great. We shall call her Agent Double O Great. Then we got to listen while Agent Double O Awesome carried on conversations with costumers while shining. Multi-tasker extraordinaire.

When we left, Agent Double O Awesome was still shining those one hundred shoes. She might still be there now. Thank you Agent Double O Awesome. Hope to see you again soon at Hideout # 7. Mission complete.

Recently, we had the delightful pleasure of going to the All Green Sculpture Studio and meeting with Lindy Green to learn about what it means to be a curator and run a gallery. While the day was inspiring to the max Jasp is pretty sure she would get board doing this job after a while, because try as she might the sculptures are never going to speak back to her. Morro on the other hand, has had her inner artist awoken and has been in her room "making art" since we got home so that she can "be prepared" if an opportunity to show her work should arise. We shall see.

Here are some things we learned about curating art (in our own words mostly)...

Know the art - Pick themes and stuff and explore work that fits together like a puzzle with all kinds of strange wacky pieces. If you see everything you'll start to know what is good and what is just paper mache and full of hot air (that is happening in Morro's room right now...).

Know the artist - Don't pick a newbie (like Morro) to fill a whole show. Do your research and see the history of the person so you know if they can deliver the goods.

Layout is important - This does not mean that you get to pick your favourite piece and put it in your favourite place. It means that you have to think about lights and shadows and the spot in the room that everyone sees and the eye catcher of a sculpture , you know the one that has some va va voom so when people walk in they are like "wow, that hit me... you know, just hit me.. in a good way".

Also Lindy told us that the best part of her job is when its all empty and quiet and she gets to decide where the new pieces for a show are going to live. So basically that sounds like its own kind of art which is pretty cool.

By the way it's an awesome gallery if you want to check it out: thealgreengallery.com