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.