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. 

Second Build-A-Bike Class

In week 2, we learned about bottom brackets on bikes.  Bottom brackets allow you to pedal your bike.  They have small ball bearings in there that allow the cranks to spins in a nice smooth fashion.  Older bikes usually have adjustable bottom brackets.  Newer bikes have cartridge bottom brackets.  Everybody else in the class had adjustable bottom brackets while I had a cartridge type.  Because of this I finished way before the others because I didn't have to fiddle with the fit of the bottom brackets.  Though I did learn some neat terms, like "click and crunch."  My road bike also has a cartridge bottom bracket so at least when it comes time for me to work on my road bike, I've got the experience of removing and installing cartridge bottom brackets to my bike.

Next week we work on headsets.

Accidental Drunk

This last weekend I had no shows. That rarely happens, which is both good and bad. Good because I'm at a level where I'm involved in a bunch of cool things and it's good to be busy with creative things. It's bad because it means I'm a little overworked, usually underslept (new word I'm trying to coin), and generally not experiencing life outside of shows. I approached this weekend in a good mood. I was glad to have the weekend off from shows. I still had to do things, but I was free to hang out with people and have fun. Somehow this led me to drink more beer or wine than I usually do.

Friday night I watched Beatbox and slowly got drunk on Fosters. Saturday I went to Chris Lee's going away party and got pretty darn tipsy on white wine. Then I got on my bike and headed over to the Oakwood for my friend Mikaela's birthday party. More drinking was to be had there. Sunday I awoke to a horrible hangover, and even after getting up, doing tasks, and eating a large burrito to soak up any remaining alcohol in my stomach, I was still hungover Sunday night. I didn't mean to drink so much, but somehow I did.

Anyway, I'm going to try to play it cool alcohol-wise for a couple of weeks or so.

First Free Thursday

Rattlesnake rehearsed on Thursday nights and so I've had something booked every Thursday for over three years (how long I was on Rattlesnake). Yes, occasionally rehearsal would be canceled, but I haven't had Thursday night blank for a long time. I could have used this free night to clean my room and do something productive. Instead I decided to bike to Ukrainian Village to watch game 1 of the NBA Finals.

It was a fun time but the weather outside was unbelievably hot and humid that day and night. I sweated buckets on the ride over. I also marveled at how large of an apartment my friend Ben has all by himself for very little money. We had cold chicken, warm pizza, and cheap beer. Sometimes during the commercials we'd switch to clips of the 1986 Summer Olympics that Ben has on cassette. By the end of the night a nice small gathering of people were there. We watched the Celtics win, I got to do some funny if somewhat annoying announcer bits, and after the game we played a bit of Mario Kart. Not a bad night.

Build-A-Bike Class 1

I had my first Build-A-Bike class on Sunday.  The instructor, Alex, has us introduce ourselves and tell the group how we heard about the class and what we want to get out of it.  There are 8 people in the class including myself.  I heard of the class through a friend and I told them that what I want to get out of the class is the ability to repair my bike by myself and not feel like a total idiot when I go to bike shops.  The Alex went over the history of West Town Bikes and the programs it's involved in.  Then we went over the names for the parts of the bike.  After that we went over the different tool we'll be using throughout the class.  Alex stressed that single purpose tool are better than multi-purpose tools.

Since most of the first class was just discussion and talking, we didn't get much actual work with our bikes, but Alex assured us that we'll get plenty of bike work in the coming weeks.  The things that we did do with our bikes, however, were to take off our pedals, chains, and cables.  We get to store our bikes at the shop during the course of the class, and we get a bucket to put all our parts in.

It was a nice first class and I'm eager to learn more about my bike.

Last Rattlesnake Harold Show

To paraphrase: We did this and then this and then this happened. Laughter.

Rattlesnake High School had our last show Saturday night.  We got to go second since it was our last show.  Bullet Lounge opened for us.  Apparently their show was so-so.  Our show was great.  Levin flew in just for the show.  Taylor just happened to be in town for a wedding and was able to sit with us also.  So we had 11 on stage and each person had a good show.  Each person contributed to the show.

The place was packed and it was nice to see veteran faces in the audience in support of our last show.  TJ was even there.  Even more surprising, Charna was there too.  I got to do a slight jab at her and the Commission during the show, which was awesome.

After the show we were treated to some free drinks bought by a couple people and then headed over to Holiday Club.  We closed that place and then went to the Oakwood.  I left that place for home around 4:30am.

I'm still pissed that our team was cut, though.  Those assholes have their heads up their asses.

Sat in With Beatbox

To paraphrase: blah blah blah rappity rap rap rap.

I sat in on my first Beatbox show.  I was little nervous but not too much.  I knew I would be protected by Jay on beatbox and the amount of raps I'd have to do would be very few.  So I was able to concentrate on doing good scene work.

The first half of the show was really good.  I did the first scene with Melissa and it was a really fun scene.  I was a dad who took his daughter deer hunting and she felt really bad about shooting the deer.  I had some fun additions about feeling the spirit of the animal leave the body and how the animals of the forest were laughing at me since my daughter was crying over the deer.  The second half of the show took a nose dive into blandness.  The audience also fells asleep during this period.

All in all, a pretty good first show.