Rest of Christmas Vacation

What I did on my Christmas vacation.

The day before Christmas my family drove down to the Twin Cities to visit my mom's side of the family. We went to Grandpa K's house, which is where the gathering was. Since I had been there last, an addition to the house had been put in and it was quite amazing to see. That house had remained unchanged for my whole life and to a huge room added to the back of it was quite strange. But it was good because we had ample room to gather. Before the house always felt crazy cramped with the huge family gatherings. I got to see a bunch of relatives and that was nice. Then I got to drive the family car back to Brainerd and that was fun.

Christmas day was fine. I got my presents and that's always cool. Christmas dinner was good. The rest of the day was spent watching a ton of movies. My family loves to watch movies.

The day after Christmas I went shopping for the rest of my Christmas presents. Then, before I knew it, it was time to leave and head back to Chicago. This time my flights back were uneventful and without delay, which was probably the best present I could have gotten.

Stuck at the Airport

I'm at the Minneapolis airport right now waiting for my connecting flight. I should have been at my parent's place 3 hours ago. Here's what went down.

1. took the brown line to the orange line to midway at 7am and the trip was fine. Not crowded at all. When I got to Midway it was snowing very lightly.

2. got through security super fast and although the monitors around Midway showed that my flight was "on time" the screen at the gate said my flight was delayed 15 minutes. No biggie. My flight was scheduled originally for 9:10am, and now it was scheduled for 9:25.

3. At 9am the plane arrived at the gate and everything looked like it was fine. I board the plane later and that is when I noticed that it was now snowing more heavily.

4. I had to turn off my phone and I don't where a watch so I cannot be certain of the time we spent waiting for the plane to be de-iced, but I'd reckon 30 minutes. So I'd guess it was around 10:10am when we pulled away from the gate.

5. Midway looks like a winter wonderland. I saw three snow plods, each behind each other, going pretty fast while plowing a runway. Visibility at this point was pretty bad.

6. The pilot got on the speaker after sitting out on the tarmac for 40 minutes and told us that we expired the de-icing wait period of 40 minutes and that we had to head back to the gate for the plane to be inspected and perhaps de-iced again. He also said that visibility at Midway was so bad that planes could no longer land. Visibility minimum at Midway is 1 mile and apparently it was less than that at Midway. He mentioned the visibility minimum at O'Hare is 1/4 mile so planes were still landing and taking off at O'Hare. So at Midway, planes couldn't land but planes already there could take off. So our plane could take off but should anything wrong happen, we would need to land at the closest airport. Under normal conditions this would be the same airport you just took off from. But because we couldn't land at Midway, O'Hare was the alternative. But for some reason the digital data about the weather conditions weren't being transmitted to our plane and that's why we were out on the tarmac for 40 minutes and that's why we had to go back to the gate to de-ice again.

7. After about 40 minutes of whatever, we pulled away from the gate again. The airport was deserted. There were no other planes at the airport. All the gates were empty. It was a crazy winter wonderland out there and the storm so bad it looked like the planet Hoth. It was so eerie but also kind of cool.

8. I arrived at Minneapolis at 1:30pm; my connection flight to Brainerd took off at noon. So I missed my connecting flight. The kick in the butt is that Brainerd's airport is so small that they only schedule two flight to Brainerd from Minneapolis per day. The first one being at noon. The next flight to Brainerd is at 9:20pm.

9. So I've been at this airport for 3 hours now and I've got a little less than 5 more hours of waiting ahead of me. If I rented a car, I could have been home by now. But that would mean calling Northwest Airlines to make sure they don't cancel my reservations on the return flights due to not being on the flight to Brainerd. It's a headache I didn't want to deal with; also with renting a car I'd have to drive back down to Minneapolis to return it and my return flight on Saturday are also super early so...

10. But I'm safe and warm in the airport and I'm able to surf the Internet and entertain myself while I wait.


Happy holidays everybody!

Why is it so Cold?

I did Armando last night. I showed up at the theater to get a bag out of the Felt cabinet for my Christmas travels and got talked into sitting in with the cast since they had so little people for the show. Because of this I felt the impetus to volunteer myself for the monologist.

I've taken a thing Shad Kunkle does when he does the monologues. He asks the audience to ask him a question about himself that they might want to know. It's a great way to jump into the monologues. Instead of asking for a personal question, I ask for any generic question. The question I got was "Why is it so cold?"

So almost all of my monologues where about being in the cold weather or dealing with things of that nature. I also had on these huge moon boots because I had come straight from a rehearsal which I had gotten to straight from work. (I keep my work shoes at work and I left my regular shoes at home) So I talked about my moon boots, too.

The cool thing about being the monologist of Armando is that you really don't have to be funny. The players who riff off of your monologues have to be funny. I'm sure it would help the show as a whole if you could deliver monologues that were also funny, but I don't have that power. Some of my monologues were funny but definitely not all. I wish I was at the place were I could give funny monologue after funny monologue but I'm not. I'm no Mike Birbiglia, that's for sure. And that's why I don't do stand-up.

Holiday Party

I'm on an improv message board that gets a lot of flack for being an invite-only message board. The amount of people on it is very small and it allows us that are on it to feel like a nice secondary family. I use it during the boredom of the workday to entertain myself. We do various bits during the day and we root each other on in each other's creative projects. It's a supportive environment even though at various time the biting comments can be a little mean.

Anyway, we had a holiday party on Thursday night. It was a fun time and I was glad to talk to people. These types of outings bring out my social awkwardness. I usually fail to use the time to connect with people. If I'm in a conversation, my focus is on the topic on hand rather than strengthening personal bonds. And I get the strong feeling that the conversation I'm in isn't that great and that the conversation one table over is much more interesting and I want nothing more than to join them. These are aspects that I'm aware of and I'm trying to work on. I'm trying to be more content with the conversations I'm currently in. I'm also trying to work on maintaining friendships. It's a hard task when I'm feeling quite introverted.

Bruised

I've gotten injured quite often this past week.

I fell off my bike last Wednesday, hurting my left forearm and hip. Then Sunday I had unexpected pain in my back shoulder region. This then transformed into an aching left pectoral muscle and whatever muscle is your armpit muscle. Then last night at the iO Holiday party I slipped on the wet dance floor and bruised my right knee pretty bad.

Perhaps I'm going through another growth spurt?

Fun Packed Weekend

My weekend was jam packed with fun times.

I played in the 8pm CSz show on Friday. It was a blast and my teams was super fun. We tried out Musical New Choice and it went pretty darn good. 5 Thing was fun even though my teammates tried and failed so hard in trying to get me to guess Twinkies. I did the sound for the 10pm show and their first half was really rough due to a drunk asshole who was there with a group from his company. He was so bad that we kicked him out and he took his whole group with him. Then the second half of the show was pretty great.

I got talked into playing in the Beatbox that night. I wasn't scheduled but I played. It was a fun show and I got a little tipsy on a beer right before the show.

The next day I battled a headache the whole day but I was able to keep it on a low simmer throughout most of it. In the early afternoon I played Whirlyball with the Beatbox crew. I hadn't played Whirlyball in years and it was nice to play it again. This time I was able to avoid getting nasty bruises which you wouldn't think you get but you can get them. Then I got myself one of the ugliest sweaters I could find for the DSI Holiday party later in the eve. I biked around town during this day, which was pretty warm for winter. This was also the first day I was able to really test out the new balaclava I bought on Thursday. It works very well and I'm glad I purchased it.

Before I went to the DSI Holiday party, I went to my friend Tony's birthday party in Edgewater. It was at a fancy wine bar called In Fine Spirits. They have quite the wine and mixed drinks menu. I got myself a Pinot Gris that was very tasty. It was a nice time and I got to have some nice conversations.

Then, in the 11th hour of the afternoon, I went to the DSI Holiday party. I missed most of it and really only came for the gradual and slow decline part of the party, but it was still nice to see people in the holiday spirit. I ended up with a funny white elephant gift and was glad that my gift, a Threadless T-shirt, went to an appreciative person.

Today I had two rehearsals and a show. First was a Shock Corridor rehearsal that went as well as could be expected for a rehearsal at 1pm. Then it was a PennyBear rehearsal. We got to work on some stuff and we made some progress on some new material that we're trying to create for our new run and for our Playground show this Friday.

Shock Corridor had a show tonight. It was a great show and I felt really good about it afterwards. I even got to do some longer scenes where the give and take was pretty great. For some reason I'm hardly ever in those types of scenes and it was good to be in a few of them.

All in all, it was a great weekend with lots of activities and a modicum of sleep.

Koren Karaoke

Late last night, after the Sketchfest meeting and Felt, I went to my friend Ben's birthday karaoke party. It was up at the Korean karaoke place on Lincoln, just up the street from The Hidden Cove. It's the type of place that has private small rooms for your party and all your friends can sing the songs you want and you don't have to wait for some dumb asshole stranger to get done with their attempt at Sweet Home Alabama before you get to sing.

It was a fun party and I had a fun time singing songs like "My Life" by Billy Joel out of tune and in front of friends who didn't care how out of tune it was. Good times.

A Hitch in Winterizing

Today was an orientation meeting for the upcoming 2009 SketchFest. It was pretty much the same as last year's orientation meeting but in the South stage instead of being in the North stage.

While listening to the organizers talk about specifics, I decided to get a picture of the meeting for this blog. As I was taking a picture, Brian Posen called me out for taking a picture. I turned to Martin Wilson, who was sitting next to me, as if he did it. Martin pointed me out for all to see. I'm hoping those there thought that his pointing to me made people think it was actually him.

The real story is about my wipe out on my bike as I was on my way to the theater. I was biking down Roscoe and as I turned to go south on Racine, my bike slid out from under me as I tried to turn through a slushy part of the street, and I fell down sort of hard on the asphalt. My bike slid a good 6 feet away from me. And my phone popped out of my messenger bag holder. Afraid for my bike, which was in the middle of the intersection, I quickly sprang back up. "Are you all right?" asked a man in his car which was stopped at the stop sign on Racine. "Yeah, I'm fine" I said in a manly voice that surely showed how tough I was. A lady in car stopped at a stop sign on Roscoe leaned out of her window and asked "are you sure you're okay." "Yeah, I'm sure," this time said in a slightly embarrassed tone.

I've been biking around this city a lot and this was the first time I was thrown off my bike. I thought me and the street had a pretty cool relationship. I trusted the street and felt safe and fine in taking corners at high speeds. Now I'm a little wary of the street. I'm not so cocksure about taking corners in the wintertime.



P.S. My right hip and right forearm are a little bruised. My helmet also protected my head in the fall. My head didn't hit the street all that hard, but the point is that I did hit my head and the helmet protected me.

Snowy Day

It was a snowy day today.

Went To See A Play

I went to the theatre this eve.

I went to see 7 plays, one of which was my friend James wrote. It was an evening of 7 short plays, all under 10 minutes in length. James' play was called A Cab Honks Outside and I really liked it. The writing was pretty darn good and the actors in it were great. The direction was simple but good. It was funny and moving and it had heart without being hokey.

Well done James!

PennyBear News

The story behind how we got a new run is pretty funny to me but unfortunately one that I cannot publish on the Internet.

The point of this post, though, is to inform you few readers who read this that PennyBear has a new run. This time at iO. It will be in the Del Close Theater stage on Fridays at 10:30pm in January. We may get extended but that will be entirely dependent on getting an audience to come to our show. So we get at least 5 shows and a chance to show our stuff to the iO scene. We also hope to use this chance to get good quality video of our live performances.

Insomnia

I've got insomnia. Or at least I think I do.

This past week I've been having trouble falling to sleep when I'm in bed. In addition to that, in the past few days I've been going to bed later and later because I'm just not tired. And I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong to prevent me from falling asleep. I'm not drinking caffeine at late hours in the day so that's not it. I try to lull myself to a tired state by checking sites on the Internet but my eyes never seen to get tired.

I'm super tired after work. When I'm on the train going home, I feel really tired and I would love nothing better than going to bed right when I get home. But I've got rehearsals or shows to do. So I eat dinner and then head out for those things. When I get back home late at night I should be even more tired. But I guess I've got my second wind and that wind won't wane even past midnight.

The Feeling of Being an Adult

This morning I felt like an adult. I was up early in the day, inside and warm while outside it was being turned into a winter wonderland, and drinking coffee like my parents, who are the epitome of being an adult. I felt like today was a day to get things done. A day of new beginnings. The first day in a long line of days where I'd be very productive and feel like an adult. The items on my To-Do list would get done and I'd feel great getting them off the list.

Could this be the start of a whole month of being an adult? Could I start a blog project and call it "31 Days of Being an Adult?" This morning I felt like I could.

Later in the day I got an email out of the blue from a casting agency. It would appear that I got referred by iO (along with other guys my type) for a small part in a movie with Meryl Streep and Steve Martin.

"Holy shit! A movie with Meryl Streep and Steve Martin! Where do I sign?!"

Not so fast... Though I could fit within the physical description of the part ("all Adam's apple," an "Anthony Michael Hall in Breakfast Club type"), the character is supposed to be 17 years old. Now I look young, but certainly not as young as 17. I sent my headshot and contact info over anyways but the casting agent agreed that I couldn't pull off 17. Damn it.

I found it a nice juxaposition of feeling today. Feeling like an adult in the morning and then later in the afternoon hoping to be thought of as a teenager.

5th or 6th Dimension

Many wise people say our reality exists in 4 dimensions: 3 spatial and 1 time dimension. There are many theories as to what the 5th dimension is, but the one I like the most is the land of your own imagination. Then what is the land of someone else's imagination, the 6th dimension?

Whatever they are, I seem to spend more time in the 5th and 6th dimensions than I do in reality. I'm either day dreaming about some odd thing or I'm watching TV or a film. Lately I've been staying in bed longer and longer, resistant to getting up and doing things. I think about all the errands I need to do and get paralyzed by chores. I'd reather be daydreaming about how great life will be when they all get magically done with no work. I'm also spending more time watching shows. The past week I've become obsessed with the show Bones. I bought the second season on DVD and have spend almost all of my free time watching the episodes and special features.

Are these the signs of seasonal affectedness disorder? I hope not. Despite my natural inclination towards melancholy and laziness, I do feel an increased drive within me to become a doer. I also get the most done the busier my schedule gets. And my schedule for December is pretty darn jam packed. This is a good thing.

Tim Comes Back Today

Written in the morning:

Tim is supposed to come back today. The roommates and I have been trying to think of some kind of good natured prank that we could pull on him. He's been away on a boat with Second City and his room has been empty this whole time. No subletters. But we've had fun saying that while he's been gone that we've been using his room to house hookers.

We could have a couple of actors play the part of hookers and be in his room for when he arrives. But that would take actual work in finding two willing ladies to do that, and we also don't know exactly when he's arriving today. We could rearrange his furniture but that got vetoed. We thought about putting his childhood stuffed animal into a weird sexual position with some other stuffed animal but that was deemed too cruel. We could fill his room completely up with balloons. This would probably result in each roommates passing out in trying to blow up that many balloons. We've come up with lots of idea but none of them felt quite right.

In the end we'll probably not do any sort of prank. Hopefully he won't think the lack of a prank is any reflection on how much we've missed him.

Later in the evening:

We settled on getting Tim a cake. I went to Jewel and picked out a cake. I decided to purposely make the cake a "cake fail." This is a reference to the blogs cakewrecks.blogspot.com and failblog.org. Check out the sites to get an idea as to what I'm talking about. Above is the cake we got Tim.

In case you can't quite make out what it says, it says "Welcome Back Tim. Picture of boat."

Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving

This morning was a hard morning. I partied last night and I paid the price in the hour after I woke up. Felt, which has been at the 10:30pm slot at iO for a couple months, unexpectedly got to be moved up to 8pm last night. The 8pm show that bumped us from our normal slot couldn't go on because too many of that cast were out of town. This meant being done with Felt at 9:30pm and being able to party since there was no need to be at work the next day. I went to the Holiday Club for socialization and karaoke.

Normally I'm not much of a drinker and I hardly ever feel the impetous to buy hard liquor. But I decided to try it out and ordered whiskey & soda for myself. I didn't get too drunk, but I was nice and tipsy by the end of the night. I got to sing one karaoke song but most importantly I had fun talking to friends. I lasted until last call and then went home.

I had quite a headache this morning.

Though I thought I had adequately rehydrated myself before bed. Thankfully I was prepared; I had already stocked my fridge with Starbucks Frappaccinos (caffeine!) and Gatorade (rehydration plus electrolytes!). Unfortunately it look about an hour of pain for these two things to combat the headache. You know when the headache is bad when you're in the shower pressing your forehead to the cool surface of the tiles for temporary pain relief.

The rest of the day was great. I went to Thanksgiving dinner at Jay & Mel's place near the neighborhood of Ravenswood Manor. The gathering was small but perfect. I got to watch Tropical Thunder for the first time (pretty funny but not amazing) and the dinner was very delicious. Afterwards we played Uno and Totally 80s Trivial Pursuit. Like most board games, it was great at first but then became something of a chore towards the end. We combated that by giving overly helpful hints to the answers so that we could finish the game. Because, I mean, you just HAVE to finish the game, right? You can't just quit because you're triptophan tired, right? Right. I'm glad we agree.

All in all, it was a pretty nice Thanksgiving.

Somewhat Uneventful November

Why haven't I blogged more often since the election? Because nothing really noteworthy has happened to me really. I guess I could have switched over to blogging daily about the minutiae of everyday life but I didn't. I dropped the ball on that possibility.

Sorry.

But it's never too late to try. My new goal is to try to mix it up - sprinkle in the noteworthy posts in the hopefully comic takes on the mundanies of my everyday dealings.

Updates

Beatbox
I've been in a couple shows this month and I'm getting gradually better at free-style rapping. I'm hardly an adequate cipher, but from where I started, I've gotten better. Baby steps.

Also, the past show I was in was super fun and I had a blast in. I was in some fantastically fun scenes and I was pretty good (for me) at rapping.

PennyBear
We've finally started rehearsing again. It's felt like it's been forever since we last met and fortunately there isn't much dust to cast off ourselves. We've been coming up with some fun new exercises to create material and some of the material looks promising.

We've got a show coming up in December. We open for Williams & Martinez's sketch show on Dec. 19th. We also got word that we got into SketchFest again! Our show is Jan. 15, which is a Thursday. The second Thursday of the festival. Later in January we'll be flown down to Florida for the Gainesville Improv Festival to teach sketch writing workshops and to do our show down there.

CSz
Still a lot of fun and I'm doing okay at reffing. I had one so-so time at it that was full of stepping all over my tongue to get words out of my mouth. But I followed it up with my best (my opinion) reffing yet.

iO
Our team has two new additions to it as players and we've got a new coach.

Roommates
Tara was part of another SNL showcase; this time they were looking for writers for the show. The showcase was good and, again, Tara did great.

Ryder is coming back this Sunday. This is both good and bad. Good because he'll be back. Bad because now I have to kick out the whores who we've been using his room as a brothel.

Before and After

Back in the spring of this year, during a PennyBear meeting, we got to talking about the Before & After category in Wheel of Fortune. We came up with a super long version and decided to try it out as a sketch. We tested it out at the Playground and as expected, it didn't do too well.

Somehow this past week I've gotten on a roll of putting different long versions of Before & After in my status on Facebook. It's quite sick how much fun I have in creating them. Here they all are now, for your viewing pleasure.

• Nike air supply room with a view to kill bill volume 2 legit to quitters never win lose or draw four score and seven years ago.
• Taco Bell South side walk the walk-er Texas Ranger Rick Springfield, Illinois lottery winners circle jerk-y boys don’t cry the beloved country.
• Steven Tyler Perry's House of Payne Stewart.
• Tomorrow Never Dies Hardcastle & McCormick Center for the Performing Arts & Craftsman Tools of the Trade.
• Jumping jack flash gordon's fish sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me, myself, and Irene Dunne.
• Final fantasy island music man on fire woodrow wilson phillips head screwdriver.
• Chew the fatman and little boys on the sideways and means committee.
• Sexiest man of the year of the dragon ball z cavaricci.
• rock around the clockwork orange chicken dance dance revolution.
• It was the best of times it was the worst of times new roman holiday inn keepers of the faith hill side strangler.
• The Chicago seven up yours with a rubber hosea.

Historic Night

Obama wins!!!!!!!

This is a great moment in American history. I can hardly believe this is actually happening.

Election Night

Ah, I can't take it!!! Indiana is too close to call. Virginia, which every site I visited said it was going to go blue, is too close to call and leaning McCain. Noooooooooo! But Florida is leaning Obama but it's still too close to call. Same for North Carolina.

Election Day

I'm SO EXCITED!!!!!

It's finally here and I'm at work right now and I have no urge to do any work at all. All I want to do is check out the election coverage on TV and keep refreshing fivethiryeight.com.

Last night Tara, Scott and I watched the live poll results of Dixville Notch, NH. For those that don't know, Dixville Notch is a town in northern New Hampshire that historically (since 1960) has their primaries and general elections at midnight. All of the registered voters gather in some hall, fill out their ballots, and then at midnight drop the ballots into the ballot box. If all of the registered voters have voted, then the town can close the polls and count the votes. This usually happenes a minute after the polls open. Last night the count was 15 for Obama, 0 for Nader ("sorry Nader" the guy said), and 6 for McCain. It's a landslide victory!!! Dixville Notch hasn't voted for a Democrat since 1968.

After that, our apartment had a fun time of doing bits about that town's name.

Me: You know who I haven't seen in awhile? Dunbar Dixville Notch.
Tara: You know who I haven't seen in awhile? Jon Dixville Notch.
Scott: You know which actor I haven't seen in awhile? Dixville Van Dykesville Notch.

Fingers Crossed for Roomie

Wednesday night my roomie Tara was in a showcase show for 3 producers of SNL. They came from New York to check out funny women in Chicago. They went to Second City first and then came to iO. At iO, the showcase had only 8 women in it and Tara was one of them. I went to it and watched it with a bunch of my fellow CZers. I wasn't too nervous before it - unlike some of my friends - but there were moments during the show that I got nervous for the performers. But mostly the show was pretty good and my roomie was amazing. She really did a great job. Afterwards we all went next door for drinks and it was good times.

Today we got the news from Tara that she is being flown to NYC to audition again for SNL, this time in front of all the producers, included Lorne Michaels! This is the best. The totally deserves this and I hope she has a fun audition. Fingers crossed.

Tara will be one of 6 Chicago funny ladies to be flown out there. The others are Emily Wilson, Shelley Gossman, Laura Grey, Colleen Murray, and Katie Rich. Good luck ladies!

Early Voting

I voted early today. I wanted to try and do it in the morning but sleep got in the way. So I showed up at the early voting location in my ward, Merlo Library, a little before 1pm. The line wove around the aisles of the library and ended near the entrance on the handicap ramp. I had hoped the line would move fast but this was not to be. After waiting around 20 minutes and only moving 15 feets forward, I decided to get out of line and vote later in the day. I had a rehearsal at 2pm and had I stayed in line I probably would still be there now.

So after rehearsal I showed up at Welles Park in Lincoln Square hoping for better luck. This line was shorter than Merlo but it also ended just short of the entrance doors. A volunteer outside the building told me the wait in line would be one hour. It was 4:30pm at the time and I knew that the place closed at 5pm. However, the volunteers assured everyone in line that as long as you were inside the building before 5pm we'd get to vote early that day.

It did indeed take an hour to vote, but I was in no hurry. In fact, no one in line was frustrated by the pace of the line. Many people commented that this was the one occasion that a long line was comforting. I felt that way too. I've never been so jazzed about an election before. I made sure I was registered, I printed a list of recommended judges, filled out a sample ballot that I brought along, and I voted early. At work I'm constantly looking for new election news and refreshing the electoral maps of a few different websites. Obama may have a good lead in the polls, but there's that underlying fear that somehow these polls are way off base or something goes down that fails to count thousands of Obama votes. My level of anticipation is so great these days. I'm impatient and want Election Day to come sooner.

But I have to wait. So I'll try to be patient and wait for things to unfold naturally. I'm taking November 5th off from work. I'll either celebrate or sob all day long.

Pumpkin Carving

Our apartment had CSz peeps over for a pumpkin carving gathering. Tara and Sarah bought ten pumpkins for a bargain and brought them over. We laid out newspaper over the table and coffee table along with donuts and cookies. There was also hot apple cider. It was cool having people over. Unfortunately I had to leave midway into it for an iO show. Fortunately the show was a good one.

I came back and only a few people were still at the apartment. Even though it was late, I started carving a pumpkin. It was just like eating pancakes; all exciting at first, but by the end I was fucking sick of them.

That last sentence was a joke written by the late comedian Mitch Hedberg.

People You May Know

Facebook has a feature that shows a list of people you may know based on that fact that you have mutual friends. Because I'm in the improv scene, and many elder improvisers have gone on to get big time writing or acting jobs in the showbiz industry, it's not that strange to be only two degrees of separation from famous people. But it IS strange when their faces and names appear on Facebook and Facebook is almost asking me to friend them.

Famous people I may know:
Mike Birbiglia
Paula Poundstone
Michael Showalter
David Wain
Michael Ian Black

Door County

I just got back from Door County, Wisconsin. For those that don't know, Door County is the peninsula between Green Bay (the actual bay, not the city) and Lake Michigan. Before my family moved to Florida from the Chicago suburbs, we vacationed once a year in Door County. We had done this 3 or 4 times before the move. Usually we visited this part of Wisconsin on Columbus Day weekend since Illinois schools got Columbus Day off. I'm not sure if they still do these days.

My parents decided to visit Door County this Columbus Day weekend and I decided to rent a car and join them for a day. I drove up yesterday morning and "made good time" as my dad said when I arrived in the afternoon. While I was there, we revisited places we went to every time we visited Door County; which we found to be 15 years ago after we did the math. We went to a fish boil at the White Gull Inn and had breakfast at Al Johnson's Swedish Restaurant. We also shopped in the quaint villages of the area: Sister Bay, Egg Harbor, Fish Creek, etc. I got some delicious coconut and chocolate fudge and we drove into Peninsula State Park to check out the trees with their brilliant fall colors. It was a good trip and it was nice to see my parents again this year.

Marathon Bike Ride

Saturday I went with friends on a bike ride in the burbs. We met up super early and used Matt's church's van to drive out to Dundee. I believe the Fox River runs through it. Along this river is a bike path; that's the path we rode on. We rode north to start and turned around at Crystal Lake after taking a break there for a bit. Round trip the whole thing was a little over 26 miles. My knees started to hurt around mile 24, so it was good that we didn't go much farther. Hopefully I'll last longer next time.

The experience was real fun. Fun bits, hanging with friends, the feeling of being active, feeling good about being awake so early in the day, getting exercise; all in all a great time.

And there was bacon. Need I say more?

Gilley made a video of the ride. Here it is:

Dundee Diecycle Trip from Dave Gilley on Vimeo.

Things That Go BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP In the Night

Around 2:30 in the morning, a smoke alarm went off in the laundry room of the apartment. My room is next to the laundry room so I should have been the first one to wake up. Instead, I incorporated the beeping into my dream. Until Scott's voice was heard, then I woke up. I woke up still groggy and had trouble finding the location of the smoke alarm. It was also constantly beeping at such a pitch that had I found the alarm first, I might have smashed it out of frustration that my ear were being assulated. Scott found it and got to stop beeping.

We couldn't figure out if it was a smoke alarm or a carbon monoxide dector. Tara was awake at this point too. There was a weird haze in the laundry room and we started to scare ourselves at the prospect of a carbon monoxide leak. We opened all the windows and called the fire department. Is the leak from our apartment or perhaps from the dry cleaners downstairs? Is there an actual leak or is it just a low battery alarm spasm?

I checked the heater in my room and found that the gas line to the heater was still on "open" and hissing but I hadn't been using the heater at all since last winter. So I turned the valve off and heart the hiss of gas stop. Was this the source of the problem? If it was, why hadn't this problem occured earlier in the year?

The fire department sent a truck over and fire fighters came into our place with their own dectors. Nothing registered. But by this point the haze was gone. One of they guys had a faux hawk and Tara dubbed him Faux Hawk Jones. Since there was no problem they could find, they told us it was probably a low battery problem and then left.

We were still a little freaked so we left the windows open and went back to bed. I'm still blogging so obviously I'm still alive.

3 Things

Computer - fixed. I made an appointment at the Genius Bar at the Apple Store for Thursday night after work. There was a 30 minute delay but it was worth the wait. The tech fixed the problem and now my computer works again. I was right that the problem was due to too little memory left. So now I'm doing research on external hard drives to buy. Dear reader of this blog, if I know you in real life and you have any advice on external hard drives, I'd like you to help me out.

100 push-ups, so far so good. Meaning, I'm still doing it and just able to eek out the minimum amount needed for the last reps. But I am feeling more manly lately, which is a plus I guess.

Job - seems okay so far.

Memory Problem

My laptop won't run. It'll turn on, but I get the above image on the screen and that's all it will do. A blinking icon in the shape of a file folder with a question mark on it. No programs get started, I'm not able to access anything, and if I hit the power button it simply turns off. This is because my hard drive is almost full. It was fine Tuesday but then I just HAD to download season 4 of The Office and I got the message that my startup disc was almost full. I stopped the downloads and decided I'd deal with this the next day. The next day, yesterday, I tried to turn on the computer and was met with this surprise. Now my computer won't work and none of the User Guide tips are helping. As someone who's mood is unfortunately tied into the functionality of my gadgets, this is not good.

Stop the world, put everything on hold, this is priority number one.

First Day at New Job

Yesterday was my first day at the new job. So far I've been in a training/computer room learning about the information management systems they have here at the Firm. I hope to learn the tasks of my actual job soon.

More Red Ball

Red Ball with Rance on Saturday. We were at the McCormick place on the ITT campus on the southside. There was shade and nice weather and the people seemed much more happy to interact with the Reb Ball than at the Field Museum. There were also nice looking college ladies around... and the realization that I'm a decade older than most of them. Yeesh.



Red Ball with Baker. We were at the Chess Pavillion on the lakeshore bike path near North Beach. Less interaction with the ball this day, mostly because most people were there to jog or bike down the path. Some stopped and looked at it. We also got to see Vince Vaughn bike by which was neat.

This concludes my assignments with the Red Ball. Thank you Red Ball.

8 Year Anniversary of Being In Chicago

Eight years ago, on Sept 17, 2000, I moved to Chicago. In three weeks I'll have officially lived in Chicago longer than I lived in Florida. Also, three years ago around this time of year I moved into my current apartment. This is the longest I've lived in one residence in a long, long time.

100 Push-Ups Program

You may have heard of the 100 Push-ups thing on the Internet. It's a 6-week training program that purports at the end of the 6 weeks you should be able to do 100 push-ups in a single rep. It may be a load of BS, but I've decided to try it.

I've read the pages of later weeks and it appears that if you are not able to do the push-up reps of a certain week, they recommend repeating a week. So this program might accually take longer than 6 weeks.

My initial test showed me which column I'm supposed to be in but I decided to go down one column because mine looked to hard. I did Day 1 of Week 1 yesterday and OH. MY. GOD my arms are freakin' tired. How am I going to last until the end?

Week of Me

I took a week off in between jobs. So I'm working on me. I'm a work in progress.

Canceled

The title is in reference to 3 CSz gigs I've had in the past week get canceled on me. I could have used the newly free time to get stuff done.

One good thing having newly opened up free time on Saturday was being able to have lunch with my buddy Matt. Matt was in town this week from Edinburgh with his wife. I got to see him Wednesday and Thursday nights too. It was good seeing him but I shot myself in the foot schedule wise. I was supposed to free up my nights during this time but forgot. So instead of being able to hang out and get way too drunk at the Brauhaus on Friday night, I had 3 shows.

One of those shows was the Beatbox. I made myself be more aggressive in the show and not flinch away from the free style raps. I get much better this week.

Weird Dreams

I've had two odd dreams in two nights. Both inspired, I think, by an accident an acquaintance of mine was in. She's a teacher for the deaf, I think. She had a scooter accident with a van and is laid up in the hospital with multiple broken bones. But she's alive, which is main thing. Anyway, this event has crawled into my subconscious and into my dreams.

The first night my dream wandered over to some park at night. While I was trekking over to some destination that has since faded, on the sidewalk next to the park was my friend James. He was doing sign language translation to the song that was currently playing. This must have been the song that was playing on my clock radio in the conscious world. Back in the dream world, the sight of my friend doing this was odd, but in my dream I was like "oh yeah, that's right, James knows sign language. I forgot about that." It was also funny that I didn't question at the time the logic of doing song translation on a street corner. And the fact that he wasn't the only one doing this on the street corner; there was another person there, some faceless lady, also doing song translation. So weird.

The second dream was much more freaky. While doing something that I can't remember in the dream, news came my way that my friend Pad was in a major accident. He was walking across the street when he was hit by a van. Because I was the architect and writer of this dream, I knew where this story was headed. I was a character in this story and I had dread that he was dead. I had no idea at the moment if he was or not. I was on my way to the hospital to see him. When I arrived at the hospital the writer side of my brain let my character self in the dream in on the secret that Pad was dead. I started crying in the dream just as I walked into the waiting room, which was full of mutual friends. Everyone had this devastated look on their faces. It was a horrible dream.

I hope she has a speedy recovery.

Training the Temp

I'm training a temp to take over my job. I came to work yesterday to find him sitting in my chair. My boss didn't tell me they were bringing in a temp; this fact alone speaks volumes. Just add it to the long list of reasons I'll be glad to be leaving this place.

Weedend

Friday
Shock Corridor show - good, fast paced
Rattlesnake wicker park show - fun. Great to be performing with them again.
watched a great Reckoning show at the wicker park venue.

Saturday
Red ball gig through CSz - a neat thing to be part of, but the last hour of the 3.5 hour gig was hard to get through.
Bubbles Academy charity kids show - neat to do, but the end was difficult because we lost the kids' attention.
My first ref slot at CSz was canceled - was actually bummed about this.
K-stud's birthday party - got there WAY early and later in the night played Rock Band.

Sunday
Stayed indoors.

The Return of The Vermont People

The Pub Quiz at the Hidden Shamrock, hosted by John Glynn, started up again. We got 2nd place out of 3 teams. But it was dramatic because we tied after 7 rounds and had a bonus round to see who would get first place. We would have gotten first place straight up but we second guessed a few of our questions that ended up costing us the prize.

Labor Day

Labor Day this year was nice. I went to my friend Katy's pizza/birthday party at her place. A bunch of fellow Snakes were there and it was good to be with them again. Afterward I went to the Music Box for a showing of a sing-along version of The Little Mermaid. It was super gay, and silly, but also a lot of fun.

Malt Liquor? I Barely Know Her!

Malt liquor done me in.

Friday night was the Beatbox's 100th show. The audience was packed and the show was great, fun, and hilarious. Right after the show there was a toast with King Cobra malt liquor. I had half a small, plastic cup of malt liquor. That's all I had.

The next morning I was hung over from not properly hydrating myself once I got home. I went to Shock Corridor rehearsal that afternoon. I wasn't feeling too great but at least good enough to rehearse. Then I went home and laid down on the couch trying to will away my headache. My stomach was pretty gassy so I knew I couldn't risk taking an Advil because it would create way too much gas in my stomach and I'd have to throw up. I didn't want to throw up; at that time.

I got some coffee from across the street to help with my headache. I got halfway into the cup of coffee when I felt a change in my stomach. I knew there was a good chance that when I went to CSz for my 3 shows that night that I'd throw up on stage. I needed to throw up NOW! So I did. Ugh was it gross.

After a quick brushing of the teeth, I went over to CSz to do my shows. I was Mr. Voice twice and played on a team in the middle show. How I got through it I'm not quite sure. I also learned that spearmint is supposedly a calming agent for the stomach.

New Job

I got a new job. Before the NY Fringe Festival, my friend Zack informed me about an opening at the company that he works for. It was for a file clerk position. I sent my resume to him and asked if he'd kindly add it to the pile. Long story short, I got the job. I interviewed for it and then two days later I got the job offer. I'll be makeing more money for doing a job that almost like my current one and I won't have to be on the phones at all.

I gave my 2 weeks notice at work but won't start the new job until a week after that. So I get a week long vacation. Course it's a vacation with no pay, but I'll take it. I need a week to just chill out and get some needed ME time.

Farewell Lauren

Friend and fellow Felt puppeteer/cast member Lauren moved to New York City yesterday. Wednesday night, she had her packing already done and - instead of hanging out at an empty apartment while driving herself crazy by focusing on the huge life moment of loving away from the city that she grew up in - she decided to distract her mind by playing in Felt one last time. She's super talented and crazy hilarious. I think it's only a matter of time before her and her comedy partner in crime Candy are guest comics on VH1's Best Week Ever.

Good luck Lauren.

Chicago Seems Smaller

After work I walked through the Loop to go see my friend Thea's band, Let's Get Out of this Terrible Sandwich Shop. Having spent 7 nights in a hotel just west of Times Square, I couldn't help but feel like Chicago was this small hamlet of a city instead of the 3rd biggest city in America. The theater section of the Loop seemed like a sandbox compared to the Sahara that is Broadway in NYC. Chicago has taller skyscrapers but it seems like there's less tall buildings here. It was an old feeling. Chicago feels smaller. And I'm okay with that.

NYC Fringe Reviews for PennyBear

PennyBear got reviewed four times during the Fringe Festival. Two of them got us and the other two didn't. Here are the reviews of the ones that got us.

From curtainup.com:
Pennybear
Refreshingly inventive writing and stellar acting had me hoping Pennybear's next sketch wouldn't be their last. This cast of four and writer/director James Whittington get it right in this self-written work, and it kills. Minimal props and creative staging lend excellent focus to the hilarity at hand including truth or dare in the trunk of a car, a never-ending rollercoaster ride, father/daughter bonding over menstruation, heinous airport customer service, and the accidental demise of two suicide jumpers. With a background in Chicago improv, Marla Caceres, Padriac Connelly, Nancy Friedrich and Jon Forsythe seal the deal with emotional commitment and spot-on comic timing. Ensemble acting doesn't get much better than this. At Players Theatre. 55 minutes. [Winchester]

From nytheatre.com:
PennyBear
reviewed by Judith Jarosz
Aug 21, 2008

This Chicago-based troupe presents an hour of comedy sketches of varying lengths, and on a wide variety of subjects. Some of these subjects are more "risky" and others "safer," though almost all are very funny. This is due to some clever scenes written, directed and executed by five very talented artists who are as diverse as their material. The performers include a tall brunette, Marla Caceres; sturdy, bearded Padraic Connelly; the curvaceous, red-haired Nancy Friedrich; and lean, gangly Jon Forsythe, who all work very well together and seem to enjoy what they do as much as we enjoy watching them. (The fifth contributor is director James Whittington.)

As I said, the subject matter varies greatly and most of the sketches involve dark twists, like the one with two corporate co-workers chatting cheerily from their respective cubicles as we slowly learn that she has an emotionally sadistic boyfriend and he still lives with his control freak mom who is nutritionally stuck in the 1950s. Or the sweet lady at the airport ticket stand, who turns into a robotic Nazi. As is usually the case with sketch comedy, occasionally some of the scenes ramble or fall flat. And some, such as the scene with the father talking through the bathroom door to his teen daughter reading instructions on how to insert a tampon, walk a challenging fine line between funny and uncomfortable. But it is really a credit to the performers that most scenes remain funny even as they turn darker.

There is sketch where Forsythe's character gets stuck on a roller coaster that works wonderfully due to his great physical comedic ability. As he keeps whipping around the track getting more and more frantic while his helpless friend stands by, you feel bad for him, but can't help laughing. It reminds me a lot of Steve Martin's work. Another scene has unicorns at a party making out, and let's just say that their horns take on a whole new meaning, with creative use of props, especially for the "climax."

Although there is no real story line throughout the piece, it starts out with Connelly miming putting a needle on a phonograph album, resulting in a scratchy voice of a director who introduces each cast member and starts off the show. We also hear from this voice at the end of the piece, as a way to wrap it up. Director/writer James Whittington makes great use of the stage area and props, and I can only assume that the simple set and lighting, which are not credited, are a group effort. I enjoyed watching this troupe and would definitely check them out again, and bring friends!

NYC Fringe Festival

Flew in Sunday
Took bus into Manhattan from LGA
Found hotel
Smallest hotel room I've ever seen
Went to Brooklyn
Subway system is confusing
Subway is super noisy
Subway making me FEEL TENSE!
Brooklyn looks and feels like Chicago
Brooklyn is quiet
Brooklyn is nice
Hanging with Justin & Anna
Largest controllers ever
Fold-out cot barely fit in room
Hotel bed and cot fill 90% of room space
Techs Monday
Venue director super late
Can't tech all of show
Given extra tech day Tuesday
Venue director late Tuesday
Worst tech ever
Got headaches
Drank coffee
Check into Fringe Central in Little Italy
Watch Olympics in hotel
Ate first crepe - delicious
Switched to slightly larger room
Don't tell staff 4 people in 1 room
Pad on floor with comforter and me on bed with thin sheet
A/C on full
Sleep in sweater
Ask for extra blanket 2 days later
Sightseeing throughout the week
Public Library
The Met
Central Park
Battery Park
Times Square
Empire State Building
Chrysler Building
Rockafeller Plaza
Grand Central Station
Get to see Dayna & Sunita
Open show for 11 people
House gets bigger every show
50 people by last show
Nancy's Digbat gets Timeout NY recommended
Did the Power Hour
People like our show
Went to an "Urban Roadhouse"
Actual fight broke out at "Urban Roadhouse"
Pretended to listen to conversations while looking over shoulder at Olympics coverage on bar flat-screen TVs.
Meant to get up early in the mornings
Slept in late every day except Sunday
Took train to bus to airport
Plane 22nd in line on tarmac
Flew back Sunday
Luggage wheel breaks 3 blocks from home
Had fun
Glad to be back

Lollapalooza

Day 1
Bands I saw:
Rogue Wave (lame)
Holy F*ck DJ Set (good for 15 minutes, then went away)
The Kills (nothing special; the press release photo of the girl in the band looks like my friend Molly)
Gogol Bordello (sounded good from a distance; not in the mood for the music though)
Mates of State (good set; the sounds was a little off)
CSS (amazing show)
Radiohead (could only stay for an hour and ten minutes, but they were pretty darn great)

Thoughts:
Getting in was a pain; super packed. Way more packed than last year. Texting and calling friends was a nightmare. I have AT&T and the festival is sponsered by AT&T but the service was shitty. Very hot. Spent and much time in the shade as I could.



Day 2
Bands I saw:
MGMT (so-so; better towards the end)
Explosions in the Sky (nice background music for napping)
Okkervil River (average)
Battles (good show, but after 15 minutes wasn't in the mood, needed to hear a song with lyrics. so I walked over to...)
Broken Social Scene (so-so)
Wilco (good set)

Thoughts:
Average day. No awful bands, but no amazing bands. Not as hot was day before but still pretty hot in the sun. Spent lots of time in the shade.



Day 3
Bands I saw:
Black Kids (so-so)
Iron & Wine (so-so)
Flogging Molly (great show but again, wasn't in the mood; douche bag factor way up for this show)
Gnarls Barkley (okay)
Girl Talk (stage filled with fans; sounded like a good time)
Nine Inch Nails (not a fan; heard Closer and then left)
Kanye (again, not a fan; didn't really even listen to his songs)

Thoughts:
Weather-wise it was the best day. It got cloudy mid-afternoon so it protected us from the sun, so most of the day felt like we were in the shade. With the so-so shows and tiredness factoring in, Sunday was my least favorite day. (Just like last year)

Overall the festival was nice but definitely not as good as last year.

Beer Pong

We hosted a fundraiser for PennyBear and tried to lure a ton of people with Beer Pong. Those of us that have been around the improv scene remembered the glory days where the biggest improv parties were the beer pong ones. But it's been years since anyone through a beer pong party so our attendance was rather small. But we were able to have a Beer Pong tournament it was a lot of fun to watch.

In the end, we actually made some money on the fundraiser. Not as much as we were hoping, but we were in the black, so that's good. I also forgot to take a single picture with my camera during the party. D'oh.

Parents Weekend

My parents came to Chicago this past weekend. They came specifically because I wanted them to see my sketch show. It was good to see them. I hadn't seen them since last Thanksgiving. They arrived Friday afternoon and we had dinner that night at Leona's. As usual, they peppered me with questions about what's going on in my life. My dad was also concerned about being entertained at the show. He wanted to get an exact sense of the type of humor he was going to be presented with before the show. It was sort of odd but I indulged him.

Dad: Is it one long sketch?
Me: No, a series of sketches. A sketch revue; a sketch show.
Dad: So like SNL?
Me: Sort of, but we don't do political satire or impressions of famous people. It's more like slice of life scenes but there's an odd twist that makes it odd, but still real.
Dad: Like what kind of twist?
Mom: You'll find out when we watch it.
Dad: I just want to know if I'll get it.
Me: I hope so.

They liked the show. It was good to have them see me in a show that I was proud of; both of the show as a whole and of my performance. Before this all they'd seen were so-so improv shows I'd been in. I'd never have an amazing performance in front of them. As such, I'm sure they thought I was mediocre and that I should probably focus on a real career rather than this acting thing. I'm sure they think of improv as a nice hobby. So it was good for them to see that I can actually act.

It was also good to hear their thoughts on the sketches. Parental feedback is always a delight because they're critiques always seem to come from an alien place. Mostly this came from my dad who didn't pick up on some of the more subtle moments of the show.

They also came to see a ComedySportz show the next day even though I was only doing the announcing for it. They liked it overall but my dad didn't like how they didn't show the final score at the end. This made him think the show was rigged. I assured him it's not.

Saturday during the day I rode the L out towards O'Hare so they could pick me up and go to a movie together. They've lived in the suburbs or butt fuck nowhere (Brainerd) for over 30 years and as such they fear driving in the big city. That's why I came out to the suburbs. They only drove into the city when they had to: for the two shows they went to see. I teased them about this but they didn't care.

Pitchfork 2008

I went to Pitchfork today. It was nice to go and some of the bands were cool to hear but I'd say overall the Festival on Sunday was average.

I got to the festival around 12:30, with definitely enough time to see the Dirty Projectors. I saw them live awhile ago with a friend and I liked them a lot more than what I heard of them on an album that was recommended to me by a different friend. At Pitchfork they were just as good as they were the last time I saw them live. They have an interesting sound. A lot of bands lately have both guys and girls singing the words together but with this band, they do it in an unconventional, almost staccato harmony style rather than the cutesy style other bands go for.

The food was good and well priced. Over the course of the day I helped myself to ribs, pulled pork, corn on the cob, pizza, beer, and water. Lots and lots of water. The sun was shinning and it was pretty hot. Not crazy hot like it was 2 years ago. But if you were in the sun, you definitely felt the heat. In the shade, the temperature was perfect. And towards dusk the temperature fell slightly enough to make it pleasant even if you were in the sun.

I saw only a couple of fellow improvisers and my friend Jon came later in the day with his girlfriend and friend. The festival is much better if you have a buddy. I was alone for much of the first half of the day. I'm fine with being by myself. I'm by myself a lot and I'm cool with it. You get used to it. But there are some places where the feeling of being alone is more pronounced. Concerts and festivals are definitely those places. So once I had friends to hang with, I felt much better.

In addition to the Dirty Projectors (good), I saw Apples in Stereo (okay), King Khan and his Shrines (interesting, but in a good way), Spiritualized (naptime), the Dodos (i liked them but their songs were SUPER long), and Bon Iver (okay). I wanted to see Cut Copy but there was some sort of delay at the airport they flew into so they were super late. I figured that meant they weren't coming so I left while this crappy pick-up band played. My friend Jon told me later that they did actually show up and play about 4 songs. So it sucked that I missed them but I was glad to be home after a long day in the sun.

Build-A-Bike Class 7

This week we dealt with shifters and derailleurs. It wasn't too much different from brakes although I had a heck of a time putting my shifter wire on the front derailleur with enough tension on it.

This will end up being my last class in the course. I've got a Sunday ticket for the Pitchfork Music Festival and I'm going to that instead of class. Luckily the last class is basically - from what the teacher has told me - odd and ends and other loose ends stuff. So nothing extra to learn, just extra time if you need it. I put my pedals back on my bike and test rode it around the area. It felt good and the brakes were extra tight. I hardly had to press down on the brake and the bike would stop.

It was a fun class and I hope to go back during the shop's Open Shop hours on Saturdays to mess around with the things I've learned on my road bike.

Two Saturday Parties

I went to two parties yesterday.

One was a backyard BBQ/party that was thrown to celebrate multiple CSz birthdays this week. To paraphrase, it was called the "Tamara, Megan, and Tara and NOT Rene have birthdays party." Rene decided to have his birthday party separate from the group. The backyard was Tamara's and it a great backyard; very spacious and grassy. Great for games like cornhole and donkey balls. I showed up way too early but I had a good time. I even took a nap during it to recharge. The grilled food was good, too. I had a come from behind victory against Tamara in donkey balls and I mopped the floor with Natalie in cornhole. Later I was part of a 4-person donkey ball team that towards the end eroded into a two-person team. We were beaten by the other team.

Towards the end of this party there was a pretty fun game of movie-title mash-ups. It involved giving the synopsis of two movies as if they were one movie. Then the guessers would have to guess the movies, which involved a bit of "Wheel of Fortune" Before & After category finesse. For instance, one that I came up with: "what's that movie where Gregory Peck defends a black man for a crime he didn't commit while Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn get into mischief?" "To Kill A Mockingbird on a Wire." Get it? It's "To Kill A Mockingbird" and "Bird on a Wire" mashed together because they share the same last/first word. In all honesty, my clue wasn't as coherent as it appears on this blog. And those of you that read this blog are probably reader's of Arnie's blog, and he's already summarized this game better than I.

The second party was a farewell party for my friend Dayna. I've known Dayna since our early days in college. We were in the same college improv group. She joined it, I believe, 6 months after I joined the group. She also moved to Chicago 6 months after I moved to Chicago. So our journeys through life has been sort of similar up until this point. Her improv experience in Chicago was a little rougher than mine and she'd been itching to move to NYC for some time. She'd been delayed by this horrible housing market. Luckily she got a profit on her condo and is moving to Astoria Queens. She's super happy to move and I'm super excited for her. I hope she was tons of awesome things happen to her in New York. Luckily I won't have to wait too long before seeing her again when PennyBear goes to NYC for the Fringe Festival. Her party was at Holiday Club and though when I arrived the gather was small, it quickly gathered steam and mass as the night wore on.

All in all, it was a pretty fun day.

Another Sneak Preview

I saw another sneak preview movie thanks again to my friend "The Ferg." This time it was Hellboy II: The Golden Army. This was another solid grade B movie. The visuals were amazing and the action and story were pretty good. There was a lot more comedy packed into this movie than the first one; perhaps a tab too broad and unrealistic at times, but still enjoyable. There were certain character choices that made no sense and I think that's why this movie isn't an A in my book. Though the crowd I saw this movie with - dorks and nerds - freakin' loved this movie. They were the kind of over-appreciative audience you'd love to get as a performer. I felt like I was at TJ & Dave, only instead of TJ & Dave, it was a movie.

CSz Banquet

The above picture is of Sam - who won 3 Howie Awards at the CSz banquet - and Martin - who wasn't nominated in any category.

I mostly wanted to mention that because it's a fun dig at Martin and because I know Martin reads this blog. How's it going Martin?

~~~

Now that CSz has its own theater again, we were able to celebrate how awesome we all are with a banquet. The banquet was last night. It was at Marcello's and we had a huge private room to ourselves. Everyone was dressed up really nice and everyone looked great. All the gentlemen looked distinguished and all the ladies looked radiant.

The food was good and the entertainment was great. Joey, Tara, and Rich emceed the opening presentation. It lovingly made fun of different aspects of the theater and it was a joy to be able to get all the jokes. After that was the awarding of the Howie Awards (the Oscars of CSz). Most of the people I voted for got the Howie award in their category. Afterwards a bunch of us went over to CSz for an after party. I got pretty tipsy. So tipsy, in fact, that I spent 2 hours drinking water at home to sober up enough to not get a hangover headache today. I succeeded but I'm absolutely exhausted today. I should have gone to bed right after work, but I didn't. See the next post for why.

Build-A-Bike Class 6

Brakes - easiest class so far.

We learned the differences between brake and shift housing. They gave us new brake cable and housing and showed us how to put them on our bikes. Got to use a tool called the 4th Hand, and learned how to center my brake pads. The instructions were easy to follow and I got done with tons of time to spare.

Next week: shifters and derailleurs.

4th of July

I had a really great 4th of July day. I went to two BBQs that afternoon. The second one was a Rattlesnake & Friends BBQ party. It was up north at Katy's place and we were able to get to the roof and chill out there from time to time. I bought some cheap steaks and when I cooked two of them I found out why they were cheap. Not good at all. Well, a little good because I ate them both. For the most part the BBQ was low key, which was perfect. The weather was beautiful and the company was great.

Later at night I went to another low key hanging out, but this one was even more low key than the low key BBQ. It was nice to chat on a porch, get updates of people's lives, and do bits back and forth.

But a day spent doing low key things is tiring. I was thinking about my bed by 10pm. I was simply exhausted by midnight.

Out of My Throat

This past CSz rehearsal I elected for the "What's Your Problem?" session.  In it, eight of us got to improvise and then be told what are tendencies are to be aware of them and then try to correct them.  Mine has always been trying to enunciate better.  Matt said I talk out of my throat and to help vary it up I should try to talk not out of my throat; to get out of my throat.  But that's not what I want to talk about.

To start the session has us walk around the stage and, in turn, pretend to be one of the eight that was on stage.  So at one time I had 7 people pretending to walk and talk like me.  There would be two halves to this: 1) walking and talking like this person in a show and 2) walk and talk like this person in a social situation, like at a party.  These exercises are always a little weird because some people you know really well and can do the mimicry pretty well.  Others you don't know so well and you feel lost in trying to do a fair representation of them.

What I found weird was when it was my turn to be mimicked, I myself was trying to do an accurate representation of me.  "What am I like in a show? What to I normally do?  I think I do this thing so I'll do it."  That's what I was thinking.  Then in the party situation I was talking to Rance, who was trying to do me.  "What do I normally talk about at parties? How do I stand usually in this situation?"  Basically I was really over thinking this.

I also didn't really take in what other people were doing while mimicking me, even though that's really what I wanted to do.  I really wanted to step back and take it all in.  And during the party situation, I wanted to roam around and see what the different groupings on stage were doing; how did they think I acted at a party?  Instead, I small talked to Rance while at the same time thinking "this is boring, I get the group over there is having a better conversation."  And I felt that if I went over to another group he'd get offended that I ditched the conversation we were having.  Because I know that's what I think in social situations.  I'm constantly looking for a better conversation and it's something I'm trying to fix.  I want to be able to give 100% of my attention of the person I'm talking to; to give them respect.  So I guess I actually did a good job of acting like myself while I was over thinking about how to be myself.

Office Stories

Small anecdotes about my office.

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The office across from us was having cake.  Damn them.

I work downtown in an office building like so many thousands of other people in the Loop area.  The building my company is in now is new... for us.  We moved there in December and there used to be an empty office across the hall from us.  Now it is occupied by a Chicago branch of a New York university.

I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that I loath my job.  I don't hate it; that's too strong.  No, I loath it.

loath [lohth, lohth]
–adjective
unwilling; reluctant; disinclined; averse: to be loath to admit a mistake.

On my way back to work from a break- reluctantly - I was walking down the hall and saw the people in the other office space having cake.  To quote one of my favorite comedians, Maria Bamford, "you could almost hear the happy scrape of plastic fork against paper plate."  The people in that office looked happy.  I used to be that happy.  Our company used to celebrate birthdays in a two-month grouping.  My company used to care about morale.

"I hate you, other office space," I thought to myself.  "I don't loath you; I hate you."  I hate you for bringing home clear that I should be in a different job.

~~~

Today the big wigs from the bank that owns my company are in the office.  The previous week we had cleaning crews come in every night after we all left the building for three nights straight.  They mostly super duper cleaned the carpets.  We had to remove everything from the floor to aid in this task.  I forgot during the middle day of the three and had a sign waiting for me on my chair, reminding me to pick up my things off the floor.  How nice.

My area actually needed the cleaning the most.  About a month prior to this I had spilled milk all over myself.  I spilled milk into my lap.  My pants were splattered with milk stains, my chair was soaked in milk, and the carpet underneath had a nice puddle of milk.  This happened when I accidently knocked over the Silo cup I was using as a bowl for my bowl of Corn Flakes.

I usually eat breakfast before I get to work.  However, when I wake up too late for breakfast, I buy a pint of 2% milk and quickly eat my rushed "bowl" of cereal before 8am.  I am also very good at not spilling things around my desk.  Not on that morning.  That morning in particular I had to carefully pick out of the carpet miniscule specks of Corn Flakes and soak up the milk with a ream of paper towels.  My pants dried pretty quickly and the wet spots were hardly noticeable.  I also grabbed a new chair.

As the big wigs walked through my area, they did not notice a dirty carpet.  This is because it was indeed clean.  They also did not notice the chair in the corner of the room.  Good thing too, because this chair still has a milk stain on it.

~~~

  
As I mentioned before, my company moved to our new office space back in December.  On the second day at the new space, my co-worked threw a fit and quit in a huff.  He was the mail room clerk.  Until we hired a new clerk, I did the mail.  That lasted 2 months.  During that time my own daily work created a nice back log.  Only recently have I worked through that mound of work and am close to being caught up.

Now that my desktop is almost clean, I was able to get my new cork board put in behind my computer screen.  Before this, a white wall was behind my monitor.  Now I have a nice beige three foot by five foot cork board to look at and pin papers too.  This isn't much, but it's enough to make me slightly happier at work.

~~~

I have to cover the reception desk during her lunch break.  Most customers that call will be transfered to customer service.  Around 99% of the call that come to the reception desk.  Why they don't just all go to customer service in the first place is beyond me.  After all, this is an office and logic and offices don't always coexist.  I've gotten pretty good and not letting customers get me angered.  Today I had a lady mildly cuss and I pointed it out by asking her "please to not cuss."  I guess she thought "God damn" wasn't a cuss because that polite request set her off.  She objected to cursing, cursed some more, wanted to speak to a manager, and threatened to cancel her policy and go to the Better Business Bureau.  I quickly transfered her call but I still felt a hot wave of distress for a good 5 minutes after I transfered the call.  I somehow felt personally attacked on some level or had my sanity questioned when I labeled "God damn" as a cuss.

But that lady's got nothing on the dude who called in a few months ago and immediately berated me and my company for having no one that spoke English and being based in India.  When I told him that those thing were not the case and that we were located in Chicago, he then made a wonderfully racist comment against Hispanics.  I had fun chewing him out, telling him "I've never been so insulted in my life" and "you should be ashamed as an American for saying such things" before hanging up on him.

Quick Notes

PennyBear's second show was good, perhaps better than our opening weekend.

Rehearsed for the first time with my new iO group. It was a good rehearsal and the scenes I did and saw were good. It was good to have fellow Snake Katy there.

I saw Dunbar's show, Space Future, finally and it was good.

I went to see WALL-E on Sunday and I liked it. Probably not as much as a few of my friends who also saw it, but I did like it.

Had the 5th Build-A-Bike class and this time around we learned how to true our wheels. This was the class I was looking forward to most. This is because I'm a fan of the movie Breaking Away and there's a scene in it where the main character fixes up a bike and during part of this montage he trues his wheels.



Didn't get to hang out with friends much. I'm sure that will be remedied this holiday weekend.

Sneak Preview

My friend Jon got tickets to a sneak preview of the movie Hancock, which stars Will Smith. We got to the theater well ahead of time so we were able to get pretty great seats. One thing, though, was that they took our cameras and cell phones with picture-taking abilities away to prevent people from making bootleg copies of the movie. Had I know this I would have left my camera and phone in Jon's car. They put everyone's stuff in individual small manila envelopes and gave us raffle tickets so we could find our possessions after the movie. So it was like a coat check, expect instead of coats it was recording equipment. This kind of freaked me out a bit since it was SUPER suck if I lost my camera and phone. But I got my stuff back so I'm cool.

The movie itself was better than I thought it would be. It was a good movie, not great, not awful, not so-so, but good. There was an actual plot to the movie (that they wisely withhold in the trailers) although some of the character development could have been a bit better.

I'll Bring the Awkward Intelligence to the Table, You Bring the Casserole

Here's the review of PennyBear in the Chicago Tribune by Nina Metz. She first talks about a play and then talks about my group:

'Elephant' topples easy metaphors
Strange Tree scores; PennyBear troupe is back

By Nina Metz | Special to the Chicago Tribune
June 27, 2008

The elephant in the room dominating Emily Schwartz's latest play is no metaphor but an actual elephant (OK, mechanical elephant)—and if that doesn't tell you something about this playwright's wry sense of humor, may I suggest a quick scan of the title.

[Ms. Metz goes on about Strange Trees; but let's get to the part about PennyBear]

I caught a performance by PennyBear at this year's SketchFest in January, and the local troupe made a big impression with their unusually vivid characters and clever material that often verges on the disturbing. This is not your standard sketch group.

Their current show, "PennyBear: A Collection of Miniature Plays and Curious Diversions" is a mix of new and old material, and the four writer-performers are just as strong and confident as I remember. Nancy Friedrich has a nicely demented thing going on under her pretty-girl surface—it's as if her eyeballs are about to bounce all over the place any minute. Jon Forsythe brings an awkward intelligence to the table, and it's a good balance to the straight-man energy of Marla Caceres and Padraic Connelly.

Co-written and directed by James Whittington (who recently worked on the current Second City mainstage revue), the show is observational and darkly weird. One bit has a father reading the pamphlet from a tampon box to his daughter (the scene goes beyond the standard "ew" of the premise); another is just a quick joke about amorous unicorns reaching climax.

Almost all of it works, and the glue holding these scenes together is a voice-over that mimics that sound of an old instructional record: "Now, let's begin emotional warm-ups."

It's retro and funny and it gives the show a polish most sketch revues lack.

Reader Recommended

 PENNYBEAR: A COLLECTION OF MINIATURE PLAYS AND CURIOUS DIVERSIONSTwo elementary school students have been caught with weapons in class and await the police while their principal attempts to empathize. 'I have lots of knives,' she coos. 'I've been married twice.' And she too would like to kill some people--the board of education for starters--but doesn't follow through on it. This seven-minute scene, one of a dozen brief gems in PennyBear's second full-length evening of sketch comedy, typifies everything this quartet of subtle, simpatico actors do well. They and their savvy director James Whittington warp reality just enough to let absurdity out, then play that absurdity for truth rather than laughs. The result is consistently engaging, honest, and hilarious--though almost none of the pieces has a satisfying ending. --Justin Hayford Through 8/1: Fri 10:30 PM, no show 7/4, Apollo Theater, studio, 2540 N. Lincoln, 773-935-6100, $8-$10.

Last Lottery Show

Last night was the 7th anniversary of the Lottery at iO. For those that don't know, the Lottery is a show where one student from the first 5 levels of iO is picked to play with veteran improvisers for one class session. These 5 young student improvisers then meet every Monday night for the length of the show (2 months) to rehearse and then come back Tuesday nights at 10:30pm to perform their show. Usually they invite 4-6 veteran improvisers to play with these students. When it was started 7 years ago, I was in classes. In fact, I was in level 5, which is the last class level you are eligible for the Lottery. My fellow classmate, Josh Chamberlain, was one of the first students in this show. It's a great way for people to get known and a lot of current improv veterans are alumni of this show.

The Lottery is taking a hiatus (hopefully just during the summer). This is due to low attendance, which I think might be due to people taking this show for granted. It's no longer the spectacle it once was that drew huge crowds. Same thing could be said for the Armando. Anyway, last night was the reunion show where the 6 Lottery casts of the past year get to play with more veterans. This year the veteran groups were Dutchess, Improvised Shakespeare, 3033, The Reckoning, Revolver, past Lottery hosts, and Rattlesnake High School.

I think ours was the largest grouping on stage. We had 5 students (Robert, Margaret, Prescott, Blythe, and Travis), 6 members of Rattlesnake (Paul, Mark, Carrie, Rex, Bill, and me), Noah, and TJ. We opted to mirror the first grouping of the event and decided our form would be a tag-out form. It was a lot of fun and it was neat to improvise with TJ and Noah. But it was even more great to be on stage with Rattlesnake again. I really miss those guys.

One more thing. Jorin, one of the current co-hosts of the Lottery, was giving away 17 of his old T-shirts that are now too small for him. He passed several out in between groupings. During one grouping show, I found myself in the green room and a wonderful thing happened. We were looking at the shirts Jorin was giving away. I tried on one over my clothes and it fit pretty tight. And I'm pretty skinny. So then Danny and Noah decided to try a shirt on. It was quite hilarious and I just HAD to take a picture.

Build-A-Bike Week 4

Class 4 was about wheel hubs. Wheel hubs also have bearings in them, which allow the wheels to spins. The adjustments on wheel hubs are the most delicate and important because it's the part of the bike that spins the most. This week was the hardest yet and also the messiest. It was also the first time I stayed until the end of the class to get it right.

So far we're learning how the different parts work and how they're assembled. This is a cool thing to learn. One thing I'm not learning is knowing when these different parts need replacing. Or how often these parts need fine-tuning. Perhaps this is something that will be covered in a later week.

Hell Week

PennyBear's new show opened last Friday night. We had about 20 people there, which was much better than our 5 people-opening night during our first run. We also had 4 reviewers there. I think our show is stronger than our last show. I was proud of the material in our first run, but I'm even more proud of the stuff we've created since then. Our show is a mix of old and new sketches and I think our running order is the best it can be. That said, the audience reactions to stuff was different that what I was expecting. As such, I'm unsure how our reviews are going to turn out. I hope we get at least one favorable review.

The week leading up to the show was exhausting. Each weekday night we met and rehearsed stuff. I'm not a coffee drinker (caffeine makes me too hyper; I'm quite sensitive to the drug) but I needed to rely on it heavily during this week to keep me awake at my day job. I thought I'd get some sleep during the weekend but I had a hard time falling asleep. It was until last night - when I forced myself to go to bed at 10pm - that I actually got a good night's sleep. But even today I feel tired at it's only noon.

Build-A-Bike Week 3

Week three was headsets. Headsets allow you to steer your bike and swivel your handlebars. This time my bike was like the rest and that was nice. So I finally got to experience some "click and crunch." One thing that is nice about the class is that we always finish early.

Exhaustion Weekend

PennyBear's in the tech phase of our show. Which means trying to not panic with all the work we have to do before we open June 20. Saturday we had tech from 8am (yes, in the morning) to 5pm. It went by faster than I thought it would. We got a ton of stuff done but we still had much more work to do. Then on Sunday we had an actual lighting and sound tech cue-to-cue. This was supposed to have gone from 8am to 1pm. Only the Apollo Studio double booked a church group in the space until 10am. So we were only able to get into the space and start our cue-to-cue just after 10am. We almost got through the whole show cue-to-cue but fell a few scenes short by 1pm. So the double booking screwed us out of that.

Add to these long days a bunch of shows in the evening; one Friday night and two Saturday night. I got to bed Friday evening around 2am and Saturday evening around 1:30am. Friday was because I had to watch Beatbox and Saturday was because I had to make an appearance at a friend's 30th birthday party.

Shock Corridor

Thursday night I had my first show with my new iO team, whose slave name is The Associates.  Most of the group met the previous night for a rehearsal.  I was busy missing Felt for Pennybear rehearsal - we're in the final stretch before the opening of our new sketch show.  I must admit that it still feels very weird to be on a different team, even though I haven't really interacted that much with my new team.  Many of them are super excited for this new team and that's great.  It's much better than the alternative - a bunch of jaded people who are only in it for themselves.  But their glee in the situation is something that I cannot quite participate in; at least not yet.  It's still too soon.

Which begs the question: should I have sat out a schedule? Thinking that it would probably take two months to get over the sting of the dismantling of RHS.  Maybe.  But I'm not one to take a break from improv.  And I think I can still participate in this new group while getting over the loss of my team.

Anyway, Thursday night was our first show and it was a good one.  Good for a first show.  If we were a veteran team, it would have been an average show; I think.  While it's way too early to tell if this team has a shot, having a good first show doesn't hurt our chances.

Oh, and the name we decided to play as that night was Shock Corridor.  This might be our new name or we might still have to go through the laboring process of finding a new name.