Silence Test

My throat feels like a cheese grater went down it. It could be something serious. Or it could be that I hurt my voice in last night's Felt show. Either way, it hurts and it sucks. I'm going to try to speak as little as possible to give it a rest. So far I haven't uttered a word since I've gotten up. Let's see how long I can go without speaking.

Annnnnd...
[Pushing START on stopwatch]
Go.

Slow Recovery

I'm feeling a little better. The shoulder and neck pain is still there but much less so. I've got 95% of my energy back and I don't feel like I have a temperature anymore. My throat does feel gross because some phlegm has decided to take up residence in my vocal box. I happily await for the moment either tonight or tomorrow when a cough with dislodge the squatter.

I have been taking the daily vitamins every day (daily, duh) and that's good. When I'm fully recovered I think I'll actually start doing the "ups."

Body Moving, Body Mooooo-eeeeerrrrrrrkshpt

Pardon the interruption but the 80 year-old man in my body would like to speak.

I woke up this morning with slight back ache near my right shoulder. I had trouble moving my neck to the right. By noon I knew I was sick. I think I have a fever. My body is hot/overheating, I also get chills now and then, my muscles ache, my throat feels like an oven, my ears are bright red, I have no energy, and I didn't have my Advil with me when I went to work.

The bottle I have at home is practically full so I decided not to buy another bottle at lunch. Instead I bought orange juice and one-a-day multi-vitamins. Luckily I have the night free so I can crash in my bed right after work.

I really hope I nip this thing in the bud tomorrow.

Headaches

I get headaches from time to time.  Probably too regularly so.  I know I probably should have it checked out but I don't want to.  I feel that most of them are preventative and if that's the case, then I doubt they're migraines.  Thought their intensity, when they do come along, does feel pretty strong.

Thursday night I got a pretty strong one.  I think it was brought on by constant computer screen viewing and a lack of hydration.  I started feeling it around 2pm at work and I tried to make it go away.  I drank a lot of water and I took 2 Advil.  And I made sure it wasn't hunger-induced by snacking regularly and eating dinner right after work.  All was to no avail.  I felt awful.  It was not going away.  The weather outside was pretty disgusting too and the inside of my head matched it.  So I decided to turn to the only real solution for these types of headaches: sleep.  I actually went to bed before midnight.

The next day I felt better but I could feel the headache pains in my head just sitting there, waiting for me to slip up so they could return.  They were waiting for me to skip breakfast.  They were waiting for me to not drink enough water.  They were waiting for me to do anything remotely unhealthy to my body so they could return.  I was having none of it.  I ate breakfast, hydrated myself regularly, and drank some caffeine to help the blood vessels in my head.  That was the final blow and the headache pains were gone.  I had won.

I celebrated Friday night by having fun with friends.  I played darts at Mullens and came in second out of three.  I watched my friend Paul do his "Sex Ed" character at Graffiti and it was hilarious.  I then hung out with friends at the L&L and at CSz.  I also celebrated Saturday night.  Rattlesnake High School had a great show and afterwards I again hung out with friends.  However, this time I drank way too much beer and not enough water afterwards.  That's when my arch rival came back.

I awoke on Sunday to a extremely large headache.  Hangovers are the worst, mostly because they are very, very preventable.  They make me question my actions the night before.  Thankfully I wisely stocked up on Starbucks Frappuccinos a couple days before.  I expertly predicted I might drink too much this weekend.  Such good thinking makes me high five myself in knowing myself so well.  I knew I'd make poor decisions and then regret them the next day.  I am so wise.  So brilliant.  I'm so smart it hurts.

Things On My Mind

Last Friday I had a CSz spillover show at the CCPA. It was for two high school groups. They were a great audience - engaged but not too crazy, as some high school groups can get. The show itself was a blast. I also had a good show performance-wise.

One of the groups was a band from Pelican Falls High School in Minnesota. On Sunday CSz members got an email alerting us to a horrible tragedy that befell this high school. Right after our show, they got on their two buses and headed back to their school. Unfortunately, one of the buses crashed just north of Minneapolis and one student was killed; many others were injured. It just blows my mind thinking back on the show. I imagine an ethereal person coming to that show and announcing that one person in that room would not be alive in less than 12 hours. Of course you don't expect those around you to die, and of course you could go any minute, but you never expect it to actually happen. Especially to a 16 yr old. It's so sad.

~~~

Lollapalooza's line-up was announced Monday. I'm underwhelmed.

I'm caught up on ketchup games.

I'm reconnecting with old schoolmates on facebook. It's nice to find out what they're up to but at the same time I don't want to re-enter their lives. That's terrible of me, right?

I'm thinking this year is going to be great. So far things have been pretty good, despite running into exes in January. I visited my friend in Europe already this year. Next weekend I fly to North Carolina to do a Felt show. Next month Pennybear is probably going to LA for a sketch fest there. I really hope we go and that my LA friends come see the show. Especially my aunt and uncle. Then Pennybear will have another run at the Apollo. My parents might even come down to see one of the show! We've also submitted ourselves to the New York Fringe Festival, which I think we have a chance in getting into. We might film some of our sketches, which I think would be fun and help us get more exposure. And I'm motivated to bike more often and be outdoors more. I might even go to the West Town Bike's open shops on Saturdays.

Oh, and I signed up for the MadSkillz workshop at CSz; it's a improv rap workshop run by the Beatbox's Rene. I'm going to be horrible but hopefully I'll have fun at the same time while I'm embarrassing myself with my terrible rhyming and thinking-on-the-fly skills. I'm much more of a pause-while-I-think-of-the-right-term improviser.

Drunk Brunch

James & Marla hosted a "Drunk Brunch" at their place on Sunday. It was for three different occasions. Marla and Pad's birthdays, and to celebrate the return of Tony & Mikaela back to Chicago. Pad wasn't there, however, due to an illness.

It was good to see Tony and Mikaela.



It was a little weird, though, because I was the only single person there. I was among either married or engaged couples.

Aviator Sunglasses

Since I'm trying to wear my contacts more often, I'm able to wear sunglasses. So I bought myself some cheap sunglasses at Jewel. I was hoping to find some classic brown/tan aviator sunglasses. I'll have to be content with black aviator sunglasses.

Handlebar Tape

My handlebar tape on my bike was starting to fall off. I noticed that underneath the tape was this think gel cushion. So when I went to buy new handlebar tape, I bought the ones that came with gel cushions. Perhaps I bought cushions that were thicker than normal? Now my handlebars look massively thick. And the ends have a large amount of electrical tape which indicates that this was my first try at changing the tape. But that's okay. The important part is that I did it myself.

Funny as it may sound, my favorite part in doing this was cleaning the old adhesive off my handlebars. I took my time and made sure I did a good job getting it super clean. All my focus was on the handlebar. It was like I was in a Zen moment. I was at peace and the rest of the world melted away while I focused all my attention to one thing, one task.

April Resolutions

April 1st used to be New Years Day back in the dark ages I believe. That's how we got the term, April Fools. These days people make resolutions after New Years Day and try to keep them for about a month before they are broken. I wanted to do something similar for April.

I had been wanting for awhile to get some things in order. If you know me, then this will come as no surprise. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I need to clean my room, get my headshots duplicated, and start doing push-ups and sit-ups regularly. I thought I'd start on April 1st. But towards the end of the day, when I have time to get some headway on these things, I generally forget about them.

I would like to still try to do them, just 4 days late.

Public Enemies

Universal Studios is filming just down the street from where I live. It's a new Johnny Depp movie called "Public Enemies." He plays John Dillinger. Michael Mann is directing it. I hope it's better than the last movie that filmed in my neighborhood: "Wanted," the piece of shit movie where apparently a select few have the ability to curve bullets. So dumb.

My Friend's Roommate's Friend's Co-Worker is my Roommate

Here are more of the status updates I've done since my last post about the subject:

Jon:

• is.
• trying to be poetic.

• is ready to be mortified.
• on Wednesday, instead of doing Felt, I went to the Green Mill to see the show Mortified. My friend Sarah was doing a reading in it. For those that don't know, Mortified is a show where different readers read funny entries from the journals they kept as a teenager. It's pretty funny and Sarah did a great job. A bunch of CSz people were there to see it too. Afterwards we went to Fat Cat, a bar nearby. Somehow during the evening we started giving people nicknames. I got "butt slut" somehow.
  

• asks, "what about your love sauce?"
• I got this inside joke wrong. I was supposed to write "what about your dipping sauce" but I forgot the exact wording in it. Basically I entered into a conversation at the middle and overhead someone say something about dipping sauce. I asked them, "what about your dipping sauce?" Everyone thought it was funny.

• has a Rattlesnake High School show tonight at iO @ 8pm. Be there!
• I had a RHS on Friday. It was one of the worst shows I've ever been a part of. I was horrible. The team was awful. The audience was quiet. The host was not good. The dreamer was a student. The second team after us tried really hard to do a good show but nothing that night was good. The day before we had rehearsal and I felt like I was in some sort of slump. Was I burnt out on improv? The Friday show didn't help my mood. The best part of the show was the notes afterwards. We laughed so hard while talking about how horrible the show was.

• is the loneliest number, worse than two.
• Three Dog Night lyric from Joy to the World. I was also feeling a bit lonely. Spring sucks.
  

• fears he is an April fool.
• not really. I wrote this on April 1st.
  

• would throw away the cars and the bars and the war and make sweet love to you. Sing it now!
• another Three Dog Night reference! Wow, two in one week. I'm gonna have to ease up on the Three Dog Night references; I think I've used up my quota for the year already.
• also, I probably would make sweet love to you. Yes, I am talking to you, stranger that somehow came across my blog.
  

----

What these status updates missed, were some other neat things that happened this past week. Pennybear is still working on new material and I think some of the stuff we are generating is really great. Felt will be going to North Carolina for a festival put on by ComedyWorx in two weeks. Battlestar Galactica's season 4 starts this Friday. I won't be home when it airs because I'll be in a show, but Saturday I get to watch it with some other fellow BSG fans. I had sushi this past weekend and it was good to have. I hadn't had sushi in awhile so it was good to have again. The world is indeed a small world, which I discovered during sushi. I met this lady who works with my roommate and she was at dinner because she's friends with my friend's roommate. So to Space Balls the phrase: my friend's roommate's friend's co-worker is my roommate. I've been hanging out more with my friends, which is good for me. I've recently re-read some of my old posts and it's good to see I'm in a better place this year.

Lollapalooza Ticket

One week ago I bought my 2008 Lollapalooza 3-day pass ticket during the Early-Bird ticket process. I missed out on the $60 3-day pass ticket marking things a few weeks before. For that promo, they told you sometime in the next week they'd make those limited number passes available but you'd have to keep checking into the website to find out. I forgot about it until a few days after the rush for those passes.

The line-up has yet to be released but I the rumors of bands in it this year were enough to get me to buy the Early-Bird passes. I'll be going to it again this year (that's 3 years in a row) and this year I'll be going again with my concert buddy Marla. I probably won't try to get really close the stage this year since I've become Old Man Concert Goer and get easily annoyed by these young kids. I've already uttered the phrase "you can hear just as well from the back of the crowd and you have room to breathe."

My Bike

The bike in front is my road bike that I use when the weather is nice to get around Chicago. I love it and it is tied with my computer as my favorite material possession. The bike behind it is my hybrid bike; the first bike I got in Chicago. It's definitely the unloved step-child.

I had hoped to use my hybrid bike in a Build-A-Bike class at West Town Bikes but, of course, the class I wanted was full and has a long wait list. And they don't have a class on my one free week night. Bummerville.

Spilled Milk

I like to eat breakfast. Breakfasts are awesome. And I cannot function without eating breakfast. I think it has something to do with having food in my system and being able to not pass out from lack of energy.

If I wake up early enough (read: when I'm supposed to wake up) I have breakfast at home. Usually a bowl of cereal. If I don't wake up on time, I have to decide which is more important: taking a shower or eating breakfast. Sometimes taking a shower wins. Sometimes eating wins. Sometimes the choice isn't up to me because I've run out of milk and wasn't smart enough to plan ahead and buy milk the previous day. So on mornings I don't eat breakfast at home, I buy a small bottle of milk (Milk Chug) and bring it to work. I have at my desk a box of cereal and Silo cups that I use as a bowl. I also have spoons.

Yesterday I had no milk so I took a shower.

I also spilled a cup of milk and corn flakes into my lap. I had only take a couple bites of cereal when I accidentally knocked the cup off my desk and into my lap. Long story short, my pants, chair, and the carpet around my chair had a large wet stain for much of the day.

I left my camera at home so I wasn't able to take a picture of the colossal mess.

Status Obsession

I've become addicted to changing my status on facebook. I only signed up to this thing a little over a month ago and I've already got more friends than my myspace account, which I've had for about 2 years, I think.

Here are all my statuses since joining this thing:

Jon:
is going out of the country
is having fun in Edinburgh
is glad to be back in Chicago
is sooooo ready for the weekend
is tired of being tired
is finally getting that overdue haircut
will huff and puff and blow your house down
is amused by his roommates
is doing a Pennybear show at the Playground at 10pm. Come by, won't you?
updated his f*ing blog. Are you happy, Martin?
remembered to set his clock forward an hour
is not the worst host; Cesar is
pities the fool
is totally wasting his off night
is really addicted to changing his status daily
is in the midst of a sexual scandal
cannot believe it's not butter
is anti-poke, bite, chomp, wizz, clang clang, tea party or any other fake or real applications. Except for the ones that aren't annoying
isn't listening and waiting for his turn to speak
has that special something... but only on the dance floor
is lightly basted
is easy like Easter Sunday morning
is on a vision quest.

Felt

Above is Nathan, he's the puppet I puppeteer in the show Felt. In a few months we'll celebrate our 2-year anniversary of doing the show at iO. I'll go ahead and plug the show for any strangers that somehow come across this blog.

every Wednesday night at 8pm
iO's Del Close Theater (the upstairs stage)
3541 N. Clark St.
Chicago, IL
tickets are $5

The show begins with an opening improv group of humans. Then we take a short break to set up the puppet stage with our black curtain to hide the puppeteers. Metallica's "Enter the Sandman" plays for our intro and then Nathan gets the suggestion. I'm not really certain how it always fell to me to get the suggestion, but it's set now and I'm not going to question it. I imagine when I'm not there for the show, that Cesar/Jesse probably gets the suggestion.

With puppets, the laughs are easier to get. As such, we really have to remind ourselves that we don't have to do too much to be funny. If we try too hard or overanalyze the scene then it becomes too much. So it's good to be able to dial it down and slow the scene down a bit.

Hurt Toe

Comedy Sportz had a rehearsal devoted to dancing last night. It was a ton of fun and I think everyone had a good time. However, I stubbed my toe during the first part of the rehearsal. When I got home I took off my sock to see what was the matter. I was surprised to find a toe that was pretty darn injured. It's definitely bruised but its color is more red right now than black and blue. I thought it might have been a large blood blister but it's not. It just a large red spot near the cuticle of my toe.

It hurts to go up on my toes when I walk on my right foot. So I hobbled to work today. And I'm hobbling around the office. My motility is slightly reduced. I have a CSz March Madness show this Friday and I hope the swelling goes down by then so I can run around and be active for the show.

~~~
Speaking of March Madness, our MM CSz team won our first round of shows, so we're in the second round. After helping the team win last Saturday, I got myself a beer and stayed around to catch a bit of the Hot Carl. Then I and a couple friends went to a birthday party at someone's apartment where I had some more drinks. After that we headed to my place and before I knew it an impromptu party broke out. It was cool to have people over, even though I was super tired and resting my eyes on the couch while other people were mingling.

In the morning, my two friends and I (who both crashed at my place) had brunch with one of my roommates. I then spent the rest of Sunday just relaxing. This was one of the most fun weekends I've had this year.

Pennybear

This is the poster for Pennybear's last show at the Apollo Theater, which was this past Fall. Pennybear, for those that don't know, is the sketch group with whom I do sketches. I did a lot of sketch in college. In fact, by the time I left my college improv group, I had become the most prolific sketch writer in that group's then 10-year history. Something like a little over 100 sketches. But when I came to Chicago, I didn't do sketch, just improv. I did try to be a part of a group back in 2003 but I really didn't take it seriously or put in any effort at that time.

A year ago at this time I was in an elective class at iO where essentially we got a taste of the Second City style of creating a show. It was a lot of fun and very challenging. To my surprise and delight, the stuff I helped create were good. My friend Nancy was in this class as well. She and a couple of my college friends had just started a sketch group and she thought I'd be a good fit for the group. So I was invited. Again, to my surprise and delight, the group was fun and my level of involvement was much greater than 4 years before.

I've been really proud of the material we've created and I enjoyed our first run at the Apollo. Last Friday we tested out a few sketches at Graffiti (a show at the Playground Theater specifically for sketch groups to show off their stuff) and they seemed to go over well. Our next run will begin in June, and I'm looking forward to seeing what new material we produce in the coming months.

Warsaw

My friend got married yesterday in Edinburgh, where he lives. He met his wife while backpacking through Europe; she's Polish. They decided to just go to city hall and have it done that way. Later on this year they'll visit her family in Poland and his family in America. But they decided to have their bachelor and bachelorette parties in Warsaw.

I had been promising for a whole year that I'd visit them in Edinburgh but hadn't done it yet. So I decided to join them and others for the bachelor party in Warsaw. I first went to Edinburgh and crashed on their couch for 4 days before we all went to Warsaw. Warsaw was a nice enough city, and as well as could be expected in February. The bachelor party was fun and it was even more fun later in the evening when the bachelor and bachelorette parties merged into one party when we all met up at a super small and cramped dance club. However, the most fun on the trip wasn't the sites that I saw, but reconnecting with my friend, who I hadn't seen in over a year.

Newbie Brunch

I met with my fellow Summer '07 CSz newbies for brunch yesterday. I have to be more specific than just "newbies" because there wasn't just one newbie class last year and because another group of people have been hired after us. It was good to regroup with these guys.

Comedy Sportz

I've been doing shows at Comedy Sportz for a little over half a year now. The shows are a lot of fun and improving there is a fun challenge. Doing short form exercises different improv muscles than long form. You have to almost always be hitting your stride in short form if you want to win over the audience. I don't mean be crazy emoting guy, but just be "on," attacking the scene, constantly making strong and bold choices in the scenes.

I'm weak at singing and rhyming, but I'm really pushing myself to get better at both of them. I'm getting better, but in baby steps. Just last weekend I had one of my worst shows ever. I wasn't making strong choices and I was getting eliminated early in elimination type games. And both the owner and the artistic director were there for the show. But on positive about that show was that I finally truly felt comfortable during Da Do Run Run; I was thinking of rhymes easier and faster. The very next day I captained the red team and had one of the most fun shows I've ever had there. We really brought our A-games that day. We even did a pretty good job in the game called Audience & Hammerstein ("Hello, I'm Chocolate.")

I got to play in the first show at the new space. It was one of the two Friends & Family shows. I got to play in the second half of the show. The show was probably THE BEST show I've been apart of there. The first half crews were on fire. The second half crews were also bringing it. I played Word From Our Sponsor for the first time in a show and it was great.

Rehearsals are also fun, though there isn't much stage time since the ensemble has about 40 people in it. Here's a picture of some people having fun during rehearsal:

2008 Summaries

I've been yelled at for not maintaining this blog on a regular basis. All I can say to them is too bad.

Here's a summary of 2008 so far:
January

• Why do I keep running into ladies that I dated in 2007?
• Another Second City audition where I do uninspired scenes and don't get called back.
• Sketchfest was fun
• 31st birthday
  

February

• Get a passport
• Sign on to yet another online dating site.
• Go on a couple of first dates; feel no spark.
• While drunk, sign up on Facebook
• Perform in the newly opened Comedy Sportz theater on Belmont!!!
  
• Use the passport
• Take in the beauty of Scottish and Polish ladies
• Think about how neat a vacation affair would be
• Don't make any kind of move
• Come back to America
• Deal with jet lag.
• Facebook is silly.
  

March (so far)

• Man, I'm really tired a lot.

Jan. 6, 2008

Friday night I enjoyed doing nothing at all.
Saturday I enjoyed sleeping in before going to shows at CSz and iO.

Later that night I went to the Grafton for a co-birthday party. Real life couple Sarah (in the picture above) and Arnie were having their party together since Sarah's was on Friday and Arnie's was on Sunday. There were a lot of people there and I ran into a girl I dated for a month last year. That made me want a pint of beer. Before I arrived I wanted to just have soda.

Today I've battled a hang over. In the evening I went to Sketch Fest to check out Chewties. Their show was good.

Jan. 4, 2008

Last night's show was a good one. We had 27 people in the audience - so not quite as many as I thought we'd get, but bigger than we had at the Apollo. The audience seemed to love the show and we got a few people coming up to us cast members that they liked our show.

Today's my parent's 33rd wedding anniversary. They're celebrating it in Mexico with my aunt and uncle. Congrats Mom & Dad.

Jan. 3, 2008

Tonight is Pennybear's only show at Sketch Fest. I'm excited for this but at the same time I'm preparing for no one to show up and ending up being disappointed by our failed attempt at capturing the hearts of the festival goers.

Below is Nancy and Marla running lines before the show.

Jan. 2, 2008

Back to work. Ugh.

The temperature was 6 degrees Fahrenheit

Here's a picture from the party I went to New Year's Eve:

Jan. 1, 2008

Slept until 2pm. Went to bed at 4am.

The weather was freakin' freezing and the howling wind sure wasn't helping things. Had tech for Sketch Fest with PennyBear.

Home Sick

Today I'm home from work because I'm a little sick. I'm getting better; I feel much better since this morning. But I'm not able to relax on the couch and watch TV because we've got cleaning ladies here today cleaning up the place. But I haven't had time in the past week to actually clean my room enough so that the cleaning ladies could finish up the job of cleaning my room. But my bathroom is gonna get cleaned and this makes me very happy.

Last week I put in my vacation request at work for the all of Thanksgiving week off. I have to be at work the day before Christmas but I get the day after Thanksgiving off. So I get to visit my parents during Thanksgiving this year but not Christmas. Oh well.

The Halloween show of FELT was a fun one and the costume and talent contest between the puppets was pretty fun. Lauren won the contest with Carrot. She dresses Carrot up as a "carrot bandit" and her talent was giving a dramatic monologue but the monologue was actually the lyrics to "The Little Mermaid."

Boom Chicago was in town last week also and a bunch of people I knew were auditioning for it. A few got callbacks, which is great. Once again I failed to learn about this in time to sign up for a slot. Oh well, maybe next year.

Late Friday night I went to the Hideout where a couple of DJ's were taking turns in spinning some great tunes. It was unusually warm that night and inside the Hideout the dance area was quite steamy. But I had fun.

I did Mr. Voice for the first time at ComedySportz on Saturday. It was a 6pm show and I did an okay job at it. Then I rushed north for an 8pm Rattlesnake show. I thought the show was okay but our coach and others have said it was a really good show. So what do I know? I know that I'm losing the ability to judge whether a show was good or not. I guess that means I'm doing a better job of just being in the moment and not being so concerned with how I think the show is playing out.

Later on in the night I did Rant and that was fun although I thought my positive rant about liking Law & Order wasn't all that great.

Pennybear had our last show of our 6-week run at the Apollo last night. It was a good show and we had a good crowd. I got to catch up with a few friends I haven't seen in awhile so that was good.

Sleepy Time

After I got home from work last night, I only had enough energy to watch Sunday's episode of Dexter (On Demand!) and eat a bowl of oatmeal. An hour later I was super tired and I had a headache. I decided to do what I haven't done in months: go to bed early.

I went to bed at 8pm! I didn't fall asleep right away but eventually I did. I woke up in the dark and still felt exhausted. But I felt like I slept a long time. It must be around 3am, right?

I look around and see some light is getting into my room from the kitchen area. I get up and look and I see that the light is actually a light that's been left on in the living room. I will turn it off, but not before I relieve my bladder. That's when I hear the front door being wrestled with. Panic mode starts in and I freeze in the bathroom. All of my attention goes to my ears, searching out for more noise. That's when I hear one of my roommates walk into the apartment. But at 3am?

I go to my night stand alarm clock to check the time. It has a wash cloth draped over it because I don't like how bright the time shines in the pitch black of my room. I uncover the alarm clock and find out that I was mistaken: it's 10:45pm. I only got a 2 and a half hour nap.

Luckily this nap didn't prevent me from falling asleep and getting a proper night's sleep. I went back to bed at 11pm and this time slept soundly until my alarm clock woke me up this morning.

Notes on the Past Week

Last Tuesday I had CSz rehearsal and it was fun to feel like we were actually rehearsing things. It never hurts to work on practicing the games we do in shows. It definitely never hurts to practice musical improv. Especially for me since I'm not so good at it.

Trivial Pursuit is fun at first but if it takes too long to finish, it becomes like Monopoly which no one really wants to play ever. But at least with Trivial Pursuit you can exercise your brain muscles.

Felt is having a Halloween show this Wednesday... on Halloween. It's nice that it'll be the actual holiday for the show. Our puppets will be in costume and there will probably be a puppet talent show to see which puppet goes away with a prize. That should be fun.

I was hoping the Rockies could have at least made the World Series somewhat exciting. But they didn't.

Sent happy birthday wishes on Friday to: my roommate, my sister, and my best friend.

I'm glad I decided against Critical Mass last Friday because I would have been soaked to the bone. Instead I was safe and warm in my apartment getting hooked on Stranger Than Fiction when I told myself I was supposed to be cleaning my room. I need more TV watching discipline.

RHS show was fun and I did a great pratfall that was 0% prat and 100% fall. But it looked great and I didn't get hurt and I played it off like I did get hurt which means I'm a great physical comedian.

Saw the movie Control on Saturday. I liked the beginning of it a lot because they didn't hype it up but made it look real and ordinary, the beginning of the band. But I didn't love the movie either. I'd say if you don't want to spend $10 to see it in a theater, then wait for it to come out on DVD.

Later that night I had a CSz show and it was real fun. I'm getting comfortable playing with this theater and that's great. Then much later I went to a Halloween party in Wicker Park and was one of maybe 3 other people not in costume. The other 50 people there had really great costumes that were all very creative. I went with non-improvisers and was sort of surprised to run into a couple people I recognized.

Channel 101's Yatch Rock is a wonderful show and I wish I could do something like that.

Pennybear's show was a fun one but it was also a little wild. Another great audience, which is nice. Next week is our last show so hopefully we can sell out the theater next Sunday.

Week Abbr.

Poss. last TM Felt show. 2 silly.
Sub Nahnsen 4 RHS. Fun charac., lil 2 much same energ.
Fri. 8pm CSz. Good T's.
Bike to WP. Meet up w/ VB. Bike to LSq.
Pub crawl 4 JN; totes fun. 4 beers + no nachos. Graffton, Daily, R. Vill., Oakw.
PMU Sat morn w/ VB.
2pm lines.
Sat. 6pm; almost compl. 5 Things.
Cray-z warm weath. sweat. bike.
1030 RHS. Fun t's.
Midn Rant. OK.
Bess bd par-t @ J's. Sup tired.
Goldn Ang w/ JF.
2 nites n row: 3am bed-t.
Good sleeps. EZ Sun.
Pennybear: 19 paid, 2 comp = 21 people! Energ., respons., laughn. Good t's.
Friend hang out aft sho @ LH. Sup warm.
CLE 2 BOS 11
Cold front, rainy Mon.
Dexter On-D.
Thea bd par-t @ Brauhaus.

Pretty Darn Busy

These past few weeks have been pretty busy. Because I've been puting myself down as available for all my free weekend nights, I'm getting what feels like a lot of ComedySportz shows. Last week I had 3 shows (2 on a Saturday) and this weekend I have 2 shows. Add on top of that the start of the show Rant at iO, which opened this past Saturday at midnight. Add to the mix sketch rehearsals that involve running lines and tweaking moments during sketches. Not to mention Sunday night shows of Pennybear.

And that's just the weekend.

Between Tuesday and Thursday I've got 2 nights of rehearsal and one night of puppet improv. As such, I'm doing absolutely nothing on Monday nights and I'm going to hold onto that free night as long as I can. That's why I haven't gone over to iO to catch the Armando for that night.

My day job is also getting me down because I've been having to take customer service messages due to an understaffed CS department. While taking messages from irate customers, I have to fight the strong urge to quit my job on the spot. October would not be a good month to be without a job because soon it will be the holiday season and many places take a break from looking to hire people during this time.

I never did hear back from the Onion girl. Oh well. Too bad. But don't feel sorry for me, because things are looking good in the horizon.

Celebrating 7 Years of Serving Chicago

Seven years ago yesterday I moved to Chicago from Florida. I celebrated it by going to work and then watching TV at home. I also went to Home Depot with my roommate Tim get get fluorescent bulbs and a few other things for the apartment. Once back home we changed the old fluorescent bulbs in the hallway and the common area bathroom.

~~~~

I brought my bike to the bike shop Sunday after finally throwing in the towel in trying to find my missing key to my bike's wheels. So I'm having an entirely new wheel lock system put in. This time I'll actually register the key with the wheel lock company so that I don't have to go through this again. I have learned a valuable lesson. Thankfully doing this won't be too expensive.

But... I'm excited because that means after work today I get my bike back and then I can ride around Chicago again! Freedom! It really feels like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

~~~~

This week I've been reminded just how busy I actually am and how it makes finding an open night for scheduling a date with a lady super hard. Especially when one weekend she's out of town and then next weekend I've got a wedding and the opening of a sketch show. This latest Onion girl seems great... now if we could only actually meet. Someday... someday this will all get easier.

To-Do List

Yesterday I made a To-Do list for myself, hoping it will motivate myself into action. So far so good. This list has 61 items on it. I'm not going to publish it here, as it would take too long. Suffice to say it involves cleaning my room, buying new stuff, selling or giving away old stuff, and getting more organized.

The list has only been in existence for a little under 24 hours and I've already got 3 things done. The biggest of the 3 was cleaning out all the shit underneath my bed. There were a lot of old Readers and envelopes under my bed. And a shit ton of dust. But it felt good getting it done.

I plan on getting another 7 things done today. Yay productivity!

Day 31 - Last Day

push-ups and sit-ups: I really blew it this last week on this challenge. I totally forgot to do any ups this day.
One thing that is interesting, my abs have been aching for about a full day now. Perhaps they are trying to tell my body to keep doing the sit-ups and that the inactivity is hurting them.

alcohol: none.

So this concludes the August Challenge.
On the ups, I did good up until the last few days.
I successfully didn't drink a drop of alcohol.
I successfully didn't log on to my online personal ad to check to see if anyone had been checking out my profile.
And I successfully woke up before noon on the weekends.

Good for me.

Day 30

push-ups and sit-ups: none. From waking up to getting back home from a delayed flight back to Chicago, I didn't have any time to do any ups.
alcohol: after the funeral we went to this American Legion place for the reception. There was a bar next to it and I was offered a drink by one of my cousins. I had to decline. I also didn't feel like drinking. So: none.

Day 29

push-ups: 11. Even remembered to do them despite being in Minneapolis for a funeral.
sit-ups: 30.
alcohol: none.

Day 28

push-ups: 10. Guess taking a day off wasn't such a good idea.
sit-ups: 40.
alcohol: none.

Day 27

push-ups & sit-ups: I got a huge headache later in the day, which is when I do my ups and so I decided to go to bed and not do the ups. So no ups done on this day.
alcohol: none.

Day 26

push-ups: 14.
sit-ups: 40.
alcohol: none.
weekend wake-up: 7:15am; from a call from my dad telling me of my grandmother's passing away. After being up for an hour, went back to bed and slept until 11:30am.

Dark Day

My grandmother passed away today. She was 78. She was a great lady and had this great jaded way at looking at the world. I always got the sense that when things went wrong she was able to deal with it as if she expected it to go wrong. Kind of a "what can you do?" attitide. A been-there-done-that kind of thing. But she wasn't jaded all the time. She loved her family - for better or for worse - and she loved to laugh. She also had been a smoker for decades - I think she started smoking when she was around 13 years old. I always expected her to get lung cancer but she never did.

In the end it was heart failure; my guess caused in part by the smoking. My grandpa, her husband, who is also 78, is a great guy and my heart goes out to him during this painful time. His sister died about a month ago and now he lost his wife. Just not fair. They were married just over 50 years.

My grandma is succeeded by 5 children, 14 grandchildren, 8 great grandchildren, and various other friends and family. I will miss her.

Day 25

push-ups: 14. Better.
sit-ups: 40. Also better.
alcohol: none.
weekend wake-up: 10:30am.

Day 24

push-ups: 12. Ugh.
sit-ups: 35. Double ugh.
alcohol: none.

Day 23

push-ups: 12. I keep getting worse. Perhaps I shouldn't do these right before I got to bed, when I tired. Yeaaaaah, that's a pretty good idea.
sit-ups: 35.
alcohol: none.

Day 22 - start of week 4

push-ups: 13
sit-us: I had a show this day at 8pm and in the show I did about 8 sit-ups. Then 3 hours later I did my sit-ups and got to 30. So 38.
alcohol: none.

Bowling Greatness

Last Thursday after work my company had a company party at Lucky Strike. We had 8 lanes all to ourselves in our own little area and there were appetizers and later nice food served. The food was pretty good. I haven't bowled in probably a little over a year.

Back when I was in middle school, I joined a youth bowling league and it was fun although I was pretty bad at it. I think my average eventually got to around 120. But I never broke above 150. I think the league was only a fall league - meaning it only met in autumn - but I could be wrong about that. Either way, I only did it for 2 autumns before I moved on to a different hobby. Zoom forward to college and I bowled occasionally because there was a bowling alley on campus very close to the theater I was always at. I think I got my average up at around 140 during this time.

But then one day I just fell into the "zone." I got 6 strikes in a row and then in the 10th frame I got 3 strikes. My final score during that game was 222. I was so amazed I could hardly believe what I did. Luckily I was bowling with a friend so I had a witness. I believe my next highest score was around 180.

I bowled two games at Lucky Strike during the party. I got 114 the first game. Then I decided to try to get a spare every frame. I nearly did; only the 10th frame didn't have a spare or strike in it. And I got a turkey. This second game I got a score of 201. Again, I was amazed at my good fortune. But this time I had a camera.

Day 21

push-ups: 14. What the F arms?! Why can't you get better faster like your cousin, abs? I would have thought you'd be at 20 by now. Time to shape up.
sit-ups: 50. I did alternating twisting thing again this time. It didn't hurt until 30; I must be getting better!
alcohol: none.

Day 20

push-ups: 13.
sit-ups: I did crunches this time, just to see how different they were. 40.
alcohol: none.

Day 19

push-ups: 11. Spoke too soon I guess about the first 10 being pretty easy.
sit-ups: 40. Same thing as above; the first 14 were okay but then I started to slow down and feel the burn.
alcohol: none.
weekend wake-up: 11:30am.

Lollapalooza - Day 3

I was excited for Day 3 mostly because local band, The 1900s, were at the festival. I again woke up later than I wanted and rushed to the park and got to their early show half-way through it. I got to hear 3 songs but at least I got to see them. They had a good show and even got to meet Jeanine, whose one of the band members. My camera's battery died soon afterwards so I wasn't able to get more pictures taken of Day 3. But this is okay since Day 3 was pretty much a disappointment from that point on. It also felt hotter than Day 1, was WAY more packed, and the ground was wet and muddy in many places because of the rain during the night. So here's a few more pictures of The 1900s.





The other acts I saw on Day 3:
Rodrigo y Gabriela - amazing guitarists and I would expect to soon hear their music in Chipotles and Starbucks across America.
Amy Whinehouse - not into her stuff at all; kind of have a knee jerk reaction to the hyper surrounding her; wasn't impressed at all with her set and found her show (I left halfway through) to be boring.
Iggy and the Stooges - Great show; Iggy's such a spaz; he invited the audience on stage and instead of a few kids it turned into 300. It was crazy. I left halfway through the show to check out Peter Bjorn & John.
Peter Bjorn & John - their sound system blew out during their second song; waited 15 minutes before leaving; learn 15 minutes after I left that they finally got the sound system back and played a few more of their songs.
Modest Mouse - like their stuff and they sounded good but didn't really make an effort to connect or interact with the audience and so I though their show was so-so.

I didn't stay for Pearl Jam because I don't really like that band but those that did stay, I hear, had a real great time. Overall, Day 1 was the best, Day 2 had the best weather and I got to see YYY's for the 3rd time live, and Day 3 was a bust except for The 1900s. The organizers did a great job and their only slip up was putting the Cold War Kids on a small stage because their audience for their show was crazy huge and it was very hard to get through this crowd when I was trying to get over to see Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. There weren't any huge lines at the food tents and only time there were huge lines was on Day 3 for the beverage booths.


Doing the whole festival took a lot out of me and I don't think I'll be able to do it again next year. Maybe I'll only get a one day pass next year, if I do go. This is a picture of me at the end of Day 2.

Lollapalooza - Day 2

I woke up later than I wanted on this Saturday (check out Day 4 of Challenge for that info) and getting up and going down to Grant Park felt like having to go and clock-in to work on time. Saturday and Sunday really felt like this festival become my job. The first band I got to see was this band that I heard had 29 people in it. It's a Swedish band called "I'm From Barcelona" and on this day they had 20 people on stage. One of which was dressed up in a bear costume. They seemed to be genuinely happy to be at the festival and their enthusiams was contagious. Their songs were pop-y and cute.


After that I checked out a little bit of the for-kids band The Sippy Cups before tracking down my friend Bess at Tapes 'n Tapes. I thought Tapes 'n Tapes had an okay show. Then it was on to Stephen Marley. I'm not that into Regae but those that I could tell loved that type of music were having a great time during the show. I listened to a bit of STS9 before walking to the other side of the festival to get a spot close to the stage for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. I like this band but the reason I went to them early was so that after their show I was hoping to get an even closer spot for the next band on that stage - the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. But it seemed that everyone that was in front of me had the same idea.


Clap Your Hands Say Yeah were okay but the show made me kind of dislike the lead singer. His mic volume wasn't high enough either, so that was a little frustrating. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs had a freakin' amazing show and I loved it. They really brought it and I think this was my favorite show of the festival. Things got rough though in the crowd on their last song. It became sardine-ville and after their set people were pushing in, trying to get extra close for the next band on that stage, Muse. I was packed in so much it became a little hard to breathe and it reminded me of those soccer games in Eurpose where people get crushed to death by the shear volume of the crowd. I was right next to the barrier for the AV aisle (it ran between the stage and the AV tent) and because I figured getting out of the super tight crowd would have taken around 30 minutes, I had a security guard pull me over the barrier so that I could get out. Once free I was able to breahe easier.

I had a 10:30pm show at iO so I checked out a little bit of Patti Smith before eventually leaving the festival.

Day 18

push-ups: 16. I can tell I'm getting better even though the number I can do isn't getting higher. The first 10 are getting pretty easy now.
sit-ups: 50. Same with the sit-ups. The first 20 come pretty easy. The muscles don't start to burn until 23.

alcohol: I've got a bottle of wine on my book shelf. Normally I don't pay any attention to it. Today, though, I looked at it and though that since today was kind of yucky weather-wise, that it might be nice to have a glass or two of this wine. Alcohol occasionally is fine, I don't want to come off as Straight Edge by any means. The thing that is neat - and is always neat when I try this challenge - is that I recognize the difference between actually wanting a little bit of alcohol as apposed to having some because someone offers even if I don't want any.

In this day and age, I've felt that when someone says to you "can I get you a drink" or "can I buy you a beer" perhaps we take that to mean "I want to bond with you right now." Somehow the fact that you are both drinking a beer or a glass of wine together makes it easier to stand next to each other and talk about what's going on in your lives.

weekend wake-up: 10:40am

Day 17

push-ups: 16
sit-ups: 50
alcohol: none.

Lollapalooza - Day 1

Once I got into the park I was much happier. My festival buddy, Marla, was already there and she was at Electric Six's show. I couldn't find her so instead I situated myself behind the audio tent and put on sun block. When I was applying sun block to my ears, my hand brushed my glasses frame and knocked the frame off the glasses. I rarely tighten the screws that hold the frames on the glasses. I didn't even attempt to find the tiny, tiny silver screw on the gray asphalt street and resigned myself that it was lost. To my surprise, my glasses did a very good job staying on my face with one of the frames missing and they were able to stay in the right spot so that I could see clearly around myself. I expected them to drift down my nose or hang crookedly on my face so that one or both eyes was always out of focus.

But the start of the festival didn't look good. Were my troubles with getting in and having my glasses fall apart omens to how the rest of the festival was going to be?

Thankfully no.


Later in the day Marla and I caught The Rapture's show. They were amazing and the crowd was really into them. I was already a fan of the band but became even more of a fan afterwards. Marla commented that they were her new favorite band. I'd put their show in the Top 3 of shows I saw over the 3 days of the fest.


Another show that was in my Top 3 was later that first day. It was the Daft Punk show, which ended Day 1. Marla and I were relatively close to the stage, which was curtained off with a black curtain to hide the stage set-up for the show. Their show was, for a lack of a better word, amazing. Everything that they could have done to make their music show-worthy for an outdoor concert was done.

Light show. Check.
Mixing their own music so songs are on top of other songs so that it's not just like the songs are on the CDs. Check.
Cool stage set-up. Check.

I was worried before the show if I'd be entertained but those doubts were erased during the show. They BROUGHT it. Sure, it could have been all pre-recorded stuff, already pre-mixed, and they guys in the robot suits could have been some random actors and not the actual real two French guys that make up Daft Punk. But I have faith that it was the real guys and that they were mixing their songs in person.

Well done Day 1; you rocked my world.

Lollapalooza - Getting In Shouldn't Have Been This Hard

I got off work at noon. I got some pizza for lunch and ate it over by The Bean.


Then I walked through Millennium Park to get to the Festival, which was at Grant Park.


However, I mistakenly brought the receipt instead of the actual ticket so I had to go back home, get the ticket, and come back. Super bummer. I basically did the same thing with Pitchfork Festival (except completely forgot to bring the ticket) so I guess I didn't learn anything.

Once I got back to the festival it was around 3 hour after I planned on arriving there.

Day 16 of August Challenge

push-ups: 5. I got to 3 and all of the sudden the right side of my pelvis area started to hurt real bad. It's in the same location as the appendix and I really hope my push-ups didn't make my appendix burst. Knock on wood. I should check webmd.com about this.

sit-ups: 30. The pain in my lower right side was still there but I pushed through the discomfort. But I still wasn't able to do nearly as well as I did yesterday.

alcohol: After work the company I work for had a summer party at Lucky Strike. Most people were having drinks since the company was footing the bill. I had Sprite instead. Then, after my rehearsal, a few of us Snakes went to a bar and I was offered a beer since I covered a teammate for the location and coach fees. I accepted at first but then decided to not to abandon my monthly challenge. So I had a Sprite instead. No alcohol today. Still dry!

Day 15 - start of week 3

Today is the start of week 3 of the August Challenge.

sit-ups: 46
push-ups: 16
alcohol: none yet.

~~~~

I did FELT last night for the first time in 2 months and it was good to be back. We had a couple sit-ins and it was my first time to play with Jorin since he was added to the cast. The show was good and despite the fact that summer intensive is over at iO, we still had a large audience.

I also finally recharged by camera batteries and uploaded the pictures on it to my computer. Soon I'll have time to post pictures and entries for Lollapalooza.

Day 14 of August Challenge

sit-ups: 40.

push-ups: 14

alcohol: none. We pizza, pop, and beer at rehearsal tonight. The pop was only Pepsi, which I don't like. Luckily my friend Sarah offered her water bottle to me. So the temptation to have a beer was there tonight but didn't drink any.

Day 13

sit-ups: 40.

push-ups: 14!

alcohol: none.

Day 12

sit-ups: 20. I barely made it to 20 too. By 7 I was already feeling the burn in my abs. I'm not sure why. The only thing different is that I did the ups around 10pm, instead of waiting until just before bed-time.

push-ups: 13. I wanted to go for 14 but my lower back said no.

alcohol: none.

waking up during the weekend: 11am. Okay, I know that so far I haven't failed this challenge but having each of the times being between 11am and noon is a little pathetic. I'm hoping for around 10am next weekend. It's also my goal that sometime soon (within 6 months from now, say) I'll be waking up between 8 and 9am. I want to become more productive during the weekends and actually get stuff done. Step 1 is waking up earlier. Step 2 is actually using that gained time with doing productive things. Things other than sitting on the coach and watching TV.

Challenge #5: Broken! No! I don't want to speak on this subject that much, because it's just a little too personal for my comfort, but I must admit that sometime during this past week I just wasn't able to take the pressure. I'd say that I did it just so that I wasn't always thinking about NOT doing it. I rarely think about the topic in general but the fact that I created the challenge made it so that the topic was always in my mind, even if it was only at the back of my mind. I'm being vague on when the challenge failed on purpose.

Day 11

sit-ups: 30

push-ups: 11

alcohol: none.

waking up on the weekend: woke up at 11:15am. Still not great considering that I initially woke up around 10am. I thought at the time "sweet, 10am is much better; I've done good this weekend" but then I fell back asleep.

Day 10

sit-ups: I forgot to do my sit-ups this day. I normally do the ups right before I go to bed and I actually do my push-ups first and my sit-ups second. These past few days I've done my sit-ups while I'm bed. Then I flip over and stretch my stomach the opposite way to avoid abdominal cramps. This is fine since I usually fall asleep on my stomach anyways. But for some reason when I got into bed I forgot to do the sit-ups. But I did do my push-ups.

push-ups: 12

alcohol: After my Newbie show at CSz, I went to a bar for our stage manager's birthday. I didn't drink though. I wasn't even asked, though, by a waiter if I wanted a drink. So I wasn't extra pressured for a drink.

Day 9

sit-ups: 30

push-ups: 13

alcohol: none still.

Day 8

Sweet. I've been doing this challenge for a full week now. Today starts week 2 of the challenge. Let's see how much I've progressed since then. First, I reminder on how well I did on day 1:

Day 1
sit-ups: 10
push-ups: 6

Today, Day 8
sit-ups: 26. An increase of over 150%!
push-ups: 13. An increase of over 100%!

Granted, I didn't really push myself on the first day so the percentage increase is purposely inflated. This week I shall push myself to go farther than I think I can and actually stop the up when I actually cannot physically continue and not when I give up mentally.

alcohol: still dry.

Day 7

sit-ups: 20. This time I did this method: sit up normally, sit up and twist to the right, sit up normally, sit up and twist to the left, normal, right twist, normal, left twist, and so on and so on. That way is much tougher to do. I think tomorrow I'll try a total non-twist attempt and see how much I've improved over the week.

push-ups: 11.

alcohol: None.

Day 6

sit-ups: 18. On sit-up number 6 I decided to try that thing where you twist your torso to one side so that you also work out your side muscles. Man that started to kill two sit-ups later. I was surprised I was able to get to 10, let alone 18. So good job me.

push-ups: 8. Who's still a weakling? This guy.

alcohol: None and no urge to do so either.

Day 5 of August Challenge

sit- ups: 12

push ups: 6

alcohol: none.

waking up: 11:00am. I set my alarm at 10am and kept hitting snooze until 11am. I also went to bed at 4am so getting up at 11am is good for me.

I blame a hard weekend of walking around and being exhausted by seeing a lot of music for my poor performance in the ups.

Day 4 of August Challenge

sit-ups: 20.

push-ups: 10. Wow, I'm doing good.

alcohol: none. I went to a party after my iO show and was offered beer on two separate occasions. Politely declined the offers. Didn't really feel like drinking anyway.

weekend wake up: 11:30am. I set my alarm for 8am and it went off except I hit the snooze button and then fell asleep again. I didn't hear the alarm go off again and woke up 3 1/2 hours later. I went to bed around 12:30; woke up at 5:20am and had to take some puffs on my asthma inhaler. Could the waking up at 5:20 have made me extra sleepy during the 8am hour? So much so that I couldn't hear the alarm after I hit the snooze? We'll never really know.

Day 3 of August Challenge

sit-ups: 20

push-ups: 6

alcohol: none. My friend Marla is my Lollapalooza buddy and she mentioned that tomorrow she'll want a beer. I remarked "yeah" as if I also would want one tomorrow and then remembered my August Challenge. No real urge to drink today though.

Day 2

Oh no! I already failed at a challenge! I'm such a loser. It was #4. But I did it on accident. Don't believe me?

It was my July self that did me in. I had dowloaded a video clip of a nude scene in a movie that Alison Lohman was in. I normally watch such videos and then send them to the trash can. For whatever reason when I downloaded it, the screen was blank but I could hear sound. I got frustrated and moved on to some other thing. This evening after I got back from a Rattlesnake rehearsal, I noticed an .avi clip on my desktop. "What's this?" I said to myself. I opened it up and played it because I genuinely didn't remember saving a video clip to my desktop. It was the nude scene. Half way into the scene I suddenly remembered the challenge of number 3. "Oh no!" I said to myself, this time out loud. Although technically I wasn't on the Internet when I viewed the clip, it did come from the Internet and the underlining issue with challenge number 4 is to not view pics or video of naked ladies. So it's only day 2 and already one of them has bitten the dust.

But this does not mean I can now look at pictures of naked ladies all I want since I already failed the challenge. No. Because doing so would make challenge number 5 impossible. And I still want to be the master of my domain on that one.


Sit-ups: 15. Good job me.

Push-ups: 8. I was at 4 and I started to feel my arms respond with "hey, we did this yesterday! What the Hell are you doing to us?"

Alcohol: Was offered to go to the Holiday Club after rehearsal but I decided to go home instead. That's as close as I got on this challenge. Still dry!

~~~~~

Tomorrow is the first day of Lollapalooza and I've got a 3-day festival pass. I've also got a half-day at work tomorrow so I get to walk over to the festival at noon. I'm super excited for this. But the downside is that a) I cannot see The Bourne Ultimatum until next weekend and b) I don't have time to check out another Comedy Sportz show before my own newbie show.

The August Challenge

Last year on a whim I decided to not drink any alcohol during the month of August. I had been hung over one too many times that previous July. I think I even decided to do it on August 3rd and realized that I was still good since the last time I had drank any alcohol was something like July 28th. This time I was 13 hours into August before I decided to so it again.

But since I succeeded at this challenge last year, I feel I need to go further. And why not go overboard with it? So that's what I plan on doing.

For the next 31 days, I will try to post everyday about how I'm doing with my challenge. Here are my challenges:

THE CHALLENGES
1. To not drink any alcohol.
2. To do push-ups and sit ups everyday
3. To not log onto the Onion personals to check to see if any ladies have checked out my profile recently. No loggging in at all.
4. To not check out any pictures of naked ladies on the Internet.
5. To not master-b at all.
6. To wake up before noon on the weekend.

Numbers 3-5 are going to be tough. Number 3 maybe not so much because after awhile I'll forget about my profile and then won't care about checking it everyday. I expect to fail at number 5 but I'll try not to. I vow to give an 100% effort on this challenge. I also won't do a daily update about those three numbers because the object is to think less about sex and I can't do that if I'm updating everyday about it. So unless I fail at a task, I won't mention those three things again until September 1st. Oh, and I'm allowed to kiss ladies, but I've decided that I cannot make the first move. I don't expect any lady to throw herself at me but you never know, miracles could happen. I also want to allow for the loophole for making out because I don't want to be like "oh no, this girl wants to make out with me but I can't because of my personal challenge!"

Also notice that I don't have "do not go onto the Internet at work" on this list. This is because I want to try to do tasks that I think I can attempt without driving myself mad. I need the Internet at work in order to be happy. This is not a challenge in trying to punish myself. The is a self-improvement challenge. Also note that on September 1st, I fully expect to drink alcohol, not do any "ups," check out my personal ad stats, check out some naked ladies on the Net, master-b, and sleep past noon. Should making out or asking ladies out on dates come up that day too, then it could possibly become my best day ever this year.



DAY 1
Alcohol: still dry. Not even offered any so this hasn't been a challenge yet.

Sit-ups: 10. I could have done more, but I was starting to feel the burn at 7 and I thought, "you know, I'll stop early so that when the month ends it will look like I've progressed really well."
Push-ups: 6. Man I'm a weakling. I hope I can say that my August 31st self can beat up my current self easily by the month's end.

Progress: So far I'm on track! Good luck me!

Skeleton Attack no more

A week ago today was Skeleton Attack's last show. It was a so-so show but the packed audience was about 75% friends of Skeleton Attack. When they came out for their suggestion, they had to wait a full 20 seconds to get it because the audience was clapping and cheering so much. And then at the end of their so-so show, the audience gave them a standing ovation. It was great to see people really liked and respected them as a team. The Harold Commission didn't. And it's hard to hate the commission since I know the people on it and I'm friends with a couple of the people on it. When the next schedule was released, only 2 Skeleton Attackers found themselves still on the schedule. This is a shame because those that got cut I feel have slipped through the cracks.

I feel like I no longer really understand what iO wants from its performers. I'm actually glad that I have this CSz newbie training to take me away from iO for a few weeks. Perhaps having been away from the theater for a few weeks will prove refreshing for me once I go back. I haven't been in a Rattlesnake rehearsal for 6 weeks and I'm back this Thursday. I'm looking forward to it. It will also be the first rehearsal for our new sit-in.

Harry Potter

When I got back from Montana, the release date of the 7th book of Harry Potter seemed closer than normal. I knew that with all my rehearsals and actually having to do work at my job, I wouldn't have time to read all 6 of the previous books before the next book was released. But I just had to. Therefore I decided to chip in a bunch of change and buy the audiobooks off of iTunes.

Starting on Tuesday, July 10, I started listening to the audiobooks as I did my work. It was fun to listen to the books but a few times it felt like a big chore. The first week I would switch off between the audiobooks to actual music just to switch things up and not make it boring for me. Then after the Pitchfork weekend, I did the math and I didn't have much time before the 7th book came out. It became my mission and so every minute of free time was spent listening to the audiobooks. Books 1 and 2 were finished in a day each but the rest of the book are much bigger. Book 5 alone was cut up into 11 parts that were each 2 1/2 hours long. That's around 23 hours of listening for just one book. I found that I was able to get through about 16 hours of listening each day!

I listened to it while on the train to work.
I listened to it while at work.
I listened to it while on lunch.
I listened to it while on the train back home.
I listened to it while I made myself a sandwich.
I listened to it while I went to ComedySportz rehearsals.

I couldn't listen to it while in rehearsals.

But then once rehearsal was done, I listened to it while I went back home.
I listened to it each night till around 1:30 or 2am. It was ridiculous. I will fully admit this was stupid but in the end it paid off. At 10:30pm on Friday - 1 1/2 hours before the 7th book was to be released - I finished listening to the 6th book. I then walked to Borders and waiting for midnight to come around.

There weren't that many people in costume at the Borders I went to - by Diversey, Clark, and Broadway - but that was okay. I waiting in line with my group - blue wristbands, the 3rd group in line - and didn't get my book until 12:45am. My roomie Tim got his at 12:10 he said - he went to Barnes & Noble. By the time I got back to the apartment, he was way ahead of me in the reading.

My mom came into the area on Saturday for a funeral for her aunt - my great aunt - and I went out to the burbs to see her. It was nice to see her since I rarely get to see my mom but at the same time, I was eating into my time to read the 7th book. I know, I'm a bad son. But my mom wanted to read the book too! While we waiting in her hotel room for the time to drive me back to the Metra train station, we both were reading Harry Potter - her the end of the 6th book (which she needed to do before she started the 7th book) and me the start of the 7th book. It's hilarious, I know.

I finished book 7 around 2am Tuesday morning. I'm not going to publish any spoilers. I will just say that I loved the book.

Careful Not to Burn Out

When I got back from my vacation, I had a bunch of things to do each night for 8 straight days.

7/5 10:30pm Skeleton Attack show
7/6 10pm Pennybear sketch show as part of Graffiti
7/7 10:30pm Rattlesnake High School show
7/8 9pm Skeleton Attack rehearsal
7/9 7pm first ComedySportz newbie rehearsal
7/10 7:30pm first ComedySportz rehearsal with the rest of the ensemble
7/11 7pm ComedySportz newbie rehearsal
7/12 8pm Rattlesnake show

I wanted to celebrate this long stretch with two nice days of listening to bands at the Pitchfork Music Festival but this was not to be. I'm not sure if I already wrote about this, but my bike has a flat tire. Instead of a quick release system for the wheels, I got safety locks put on the wheels so that you have to have a key to get the wheels off. I've misplaced the key in my room so my bike is still out of commission. This limited my mobility in getting to and from the festival. I went there on Saturday but only for a few hours and I was too busy Sunday to go.

Because my nights are taken up with these newbie rehearsals for ComedySportz, I've had to cut back on one of the sketch groups I was in. Perhaps when I'm done with the newbie training I'll have more time to devote to it. Maybe not; I'm not sure. I'm trying to be careful not to burn out.

Montana Vacation

My Montana vacation ended a little over 3 weeks ago. It was fun and relaxing. The experience was different from previous years because there were much more people there that I didn't know that well. I could have been a little more proactive in talking to people but I wasn't. I think I knew I needed some alone time in the wilderness and that's that I chose for the most part.

I took a lot of pictures on the trip and you can see some of them on my flickr account: http://flickr.com/photos/ehtysrofnahtanoj/

Busy Tuesday

First news first... I got hired at Comedy Sportz!!! The two nights of auditions were actually fun and I actually did a really good job in them. I was able to remain calm (somewhat) throughout the process and I was able to subconsciously make really neat decisions. I even didn't suck at the singing exercises. Good for me.

My fellow inductees:
Jess Ring (fellow Strike Force alum)
Josh Breit (fellow Strike Force alum)
Erin Pallesen (he's a guy)
Erin Carr (she's a girl)
Sarah Maher
Megan Green

Two out of 3 of my roommates are also Comedy Sportz members so our apartment just went from 50% Comedy Sportz to 75% Comedy Sportz. My roomies are promising to haze us newbies real harsh-like. I'm kind of nervous about that. I hope it's nothing like Vincent DeNofrio gets in Full Metal Jacket.

~~~

But mostly on my mind is my trip. I was able to get the rewrite done, call my uncle, get my checks on the common room table for the bills, and get in touch with Paul.

What I still need to do:
Fix my flat front tire on my bike (Kozy's; first find my wheel lock key)
Write the Care Bears sketch.
get travel sized toiletries (Jewel)
Clean my bathroom
clean out my portion of the kitchen closet
call Mikaela/Tony to see what they are doing Thursday
get video from Paul (DVD malfunctions prevented a hand-off last night)
check 5-day forecasts in LA and Montana
buy a zip-up black track sweater to replace the one I have that's missing the zipper
Say goodbye to my co-worker Justin whose last day is this Friday, which I'll miss since I'll be in MT
Get a hair cut.

Comedy Sportz Call Back

I had a Comedy Sportz audition last night and I got a call back. That's pretty cool. I've never gotten a call back before. Nice. The call back is tonight and I'll try not to suck.

But my mind's mainly on the Montana trip. Here's a list of things I need/want to do before my flight Wednesday morning.

Fix my flat front tire on my bike (Kozy's; possibly fit between work and call back)
Do the rewrite on the Toilet Seat sketch I wrote. (try to do tonight after call back)
Write the Care Bears sketch. (same as above)
get travel sized toiletries (Jewel; tonight or tomorrow)
Clean my bathroom (tomorrow)
clean out my portion of the kitchen closet (tomorrow)
pay bill/put checks out on the common room table (do this after work today)
call Mikaela/Tony and Uncle Joel for seeing which night I can visit them when I'm in LA (tonight or tomorrow)
get video from Paul for Levin's dad, Harrison (need to contract Paul first)
check 5-day forecasts in LA and Montana (tomorrow)
buy a zip-up black track sweater to replace the one I have that's missing the zipper (tomorrow)
Say goodbye to my co-worker Justin whose last day is this Friday, which I'll miss since I'll be in MT (tomorrow)
Get a hair cut (has to be tomorrow after work)

To-Do lists help.

Creativity at Work

My job is pretty boring and mundane. I scan documents into a database, make sure the scanned images go into the files they are supposed to be in, and then bind the documents together and but them in boxes to be shipped off to a storage facility.

On the tops of the boxes I write the box number. After awhile I started being a little more creative with the ways I wrote it. I basically create or proximate fonts for the numbers. This past week, though, I've been more creative than usual.

Ticket to Paradise

Another reason Monday was a good day was that I got permission from my boss to take the last 3 business days of June off so that I could combine them with the first two business days of July that I have off and have time to go to Montana again this year. Since no one from Chicago is going this year (save for me) renting a car would be too expensive and I'd never be able to get there as fast since I'd be the only driver. Flying in and out of Montana is muy expensive. To make a long explanation short - I will be flying into LA, driving to Montana with the LA crew in a 12-seater van, and then after 5 beautiful days in Montana I'll be flying out of Great Falls, Montana back to Chicago.


I'm really, really looking forward to this trip. I feel like I NEED it more this year than the previous two years. I'm not sure exactly why the need is stronger this year but I think it may be because I'm feeling a little trapped and/or stagnant in Chicago/my job.

Good Signs

Last night, Monday, was my first officially free Monday night in years. Because I had all the time in the world (or 15 hours before work the next day) I decided to get on the 22 Clark bus to get back home. The idea was to be able to sit and read a book my friend gave me a month ago to read. And to occasionally look out the window and marvel at the beauty of Chicago in the summer. But the bus was packed and I stood the whole ride up.

I took the bus also because I wanted to go to Best Buy and buy Guitar Hero II. I played it all night and it was a ton of fun.

I took a break from Guitar Hero for dinner and that meant going to the corner store for some bread, cookies, and cereal. As I walked outside, the feeling of freedom swept over me. I felt like a normal person with all their weeknights free. I could do anything! Hang out at a bar, go to a pool hall with a friend, go see a movie, bike on the lake front path. It was like I had just moved to Chicago and I had no commitments at all. It was just like the feeling I got at the start of summer vacation when I was in school. I felt great.

And as I walked back home with the groceries in hand, I saw this:


A complete rainbow arch. It was so great. I'll take that as a good sign that good things are coming to me.

Taste of Randolph Street

This past weekend was Jonny's birthday weekend. He wanted to spend it at the Taste of Randolph Street and at a bar called Johnny's. I had a Cage Match show later that night so I knew I couldn't do Johnny's so instead I met up with him and a few of his friends at the Taste of Randolph Street. I biked down there, which was great, and it started to pour as I did, not so great but a ton of fun.

I got to catch the last 2 songs of The Changes when I got there. I also saw The Walkmen and then later the Smoking Popes. I didn't care for the Popes and I saw only so-so on The Walkmen. What I did love was the drummer of The Walkmen. Jonny is right in saying this guy is the living personification of Animal the muppet.


Later Kilgore Trout did a show for the Cage Match of Fallen Teams. We actually had a good show. We did a kind of Four Square-esque show with transitional edits and it made for a sort of wacky, yet still grounded, super-fun show. I had so much fun that I wanted to win so that we could play again in a month in the second round. But we lost by 5 votes to Rumpus. Good job Rumpus.

Quick Notes

Katy, Terry, Andy, and I (from Rattlesnake) got to play with POB and Eddie Pina in a Reckoning show slot. We did the form The Reckoning have been playing with recently and although the first part of it was a little wonky, after a certain point it became really good. I got to do a fun scene with POB that was classic Captain of police and his loose cannon detective. Mondo fun.

The BBQ at Duffy's place was nice. The corn was super spicy hot from the cayenne pepper and I got to eat some nice meat on a stick, which was the source of many dumb but fun jokes.

The Rattlesnake show with 5 peeps was fun but also a little weird. It was a lot more game-y and odd at times than normal. But in a good way.

There wasn't enough people in the audience at midnight for a Cage Match so instead it was postponed for next week where there will be a double header. But since there was enough people to warrant giving them a show for their money, the two teams combined and played as one. It was dumb and I don't think funny at all but it was fun for us players to be bad improv.

Last night I was Armando and gave monologues as well as pulled lights. I asked the audience to ask me a question about something they might want to know about me and I got "are you drunk?" "No," I said back. So I talked about alcohol and my experiences with it and my thoughts on the subject. The deconstruction scenes off the monologues were really good and fun. Hardly any literal things were taken but a lot of tangential and thematic stuff, which is always the best.

Today the Lollapalooza schedule was released and I'm excited about seeing shows this summer.

Activities

My weekends have been pretty busy recently and I've been having a lot of fun. I'm having so much fun that I think it's pushed me into being selfish with my fun time. No more doing of things that I only partially enjoy. I recently started to only partially enjoy doing lights for Armando. So I decided to quit doing lights. I have one last lights duty and then I have my Monday nights free. I'm excited about that. More time to have fun. Or time to organize my life. I've been doing lights for that show since late February of 2003!

When I've told friends that I'm quiting lights for Armando, they tell me that I ought to be playing in the show. While that is nice to hear, I don't really think I'm at that level yet. Honestly. Two days ago I did the Lottery for the first time and my individual performance was not so good. I was hesitant and in my head and definitely not at a veteran level. I'm also not going to hang around iO on Mondays nights in the hopes that I get to play. I'm going to enjoy my Mondays nights for at least this summer. Besides, like most players, I'm hoping that one day Noah will tell me I'm now good enough to play with Armando any time I want.

Another cool aspect of being super busy during the weekends is that when I think about dating some lady it starts to feel like a weight around my neck; an obstacle to having fun with my friends. This is a good place for me to be in. I want to enjoy being free and single.

Three weeks ago a bunch of people that are all on the same message board decided to meet together at this German bar for fun times. It sure was fun times. I can't believe it's only been three weeks since that time. I've done so much stuff that my memories of the time in the German bar seem like they happened 3 months ago.

My last three weeks:
Tues 5/15 - German Bar; too much fun until way too late at night for me.

Wed - Felt and a Skeleton Attack show. Both were great.
Thurs - Atticus Finch reunion show at the Playground for it's 10th anniversary. Hang out with Tony who's leaving for LA
Fri - a writers' meeting on a new sketch project at iO. Afterwards went to see Maria Bamford at the Lakeshore Theater with Manley and Facklis. Bamford is hilarious, I love her.

Sat - Molly's huge birthday/going away party.

skip over 5 boring days to the following Thurs - hang out time with Rattlesnake and one last time with Molly. Pizza and hanging out at Gilley's place of employment eating weird candy.

Fri - kick-ass RHS show.
Sat - early morning helping Molly move stuff into her moving van. Eat lunch afterward and say good-bye to Molly.

Sun - Pennybear (sketch group) rehearsal. This has been more fun than I thought it would be. Skeleton Attack has good show. Later I go to Carol's with the team and friends Thea and The Ferg join me.

Mon - Memorial Day: sleep late and go to BBQ party at Brett's. Play ping pong, Guitar Hero II, and an invented-on-the-spot game dubbed "32" that involves frisbees, 8'x4' sheets of drywall, and box defenders that are literally in boxes. (you had to be there)

skip forward 4 boring days to Fri - I think I saw the movie "Once" (pretty good) and later went to Shott's b-day party at a way too-overcrowded and hot&humid Johnny's bar.
Sat - RHS show (so-so) and later bike down with Thea to the Hideout for a band's album release party but mostly to see Ben Johnson open for the band with some comedy stylings.
Sun - super early morning Penny Bear rehearsal. Followed by noon writers' meeting for iO sketch project at Charna's house. (better than I thought it would be; the meeting, not Charna's house)
This past Mon - Jamie Swise does Armando and his stories are all awesome.

Tonight the Snakes that are still in town (Topaz is in LA for LA Festival) are getting to play with still-in-town members of The Reckoning (just POB as I understand it). Then Saturday there's a welcome-back-to-Chicago BBQ for Erica & Ryan, a RHS show, and then Kilgore Trout (4-person show since people are out of town) has a show in the Cage Match of Fallen Teams.