FuzzyCo

If you came out to see Cinema 2.0 this weekend, thanks a lot. If you meant to but didn't, you lucked out because our projector wouldn't work and we had to cancel the show. Poop.

It's been a nagging worry of mine since I got involved with all these multimedia-heavy productions -- what do you do if the technology fails. I've seen regular improv shows go on even if the power goes out, but with these shows we're pretty much dead in the water if any one of several pieces of tech fail.

Congrats to my co-worker Kyle and his wife Beth -- Paige Katherine Kolbe was born at 2:23 PM on Saturday, 2/28/2004, weighing 8 pounds 7 ounces and is 20.5 inches long.

Update: Photos...

Peg writes:

Mary and Lee are proud parents! Their son was born March 2, 3:58AM ..... Mary was AMAZING, and Lee held her up the whole way...sometimes literally! Baby Davis is 9lbs 9oz, 21 whopping inches, a big boy with lots of dark hair. Photos...

Update: the baby has a name... Graham Bertram Davis.
Update-er Lee has posted photos

I took this picture today for Warren Ellis' World Wide Wednesday. 1 2 3 4 5 me 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 wrapup It's weird to be looking at pictures of people who've also sent in their pictures to a British writer's website and think, hey, I've done shows with that guy.

I just bought a house! Well, a condo. Well, half a condo. But still, I just bought half a condo! I can get my stuff out of storage! I don't have to have my desk in my bedroom anymore! I get to pay a mortgage! I get to pay mortgage insurance! It's all madness!

Saturday night at "Midnight and a half"* Bare performed at the Belmont Burlesque Revue. (We performed as "Himmerick & Gerdes" because we thought that sounded more Vaudevillian.) We did some sketches from a book of Burlesque comedy bits that Megan had, and one original piece. Someone was supposed to take pictures, but they didn't. So I don't have any pictures of Shaun and me in oversized jackets mugging shamelessly. I took this one picture of Madame X from waaaay offstage with my little camera, and then I got caught up in remembering the set list.

* It's tricky to advertise a show after midnight -- we did have one person get confused because we had put "Saturday at 12:30 am" on the posters and they came Friday night, because it is, technically, Saturday once you get past midnight.

Sunday night, Beth and Shaun MC'd the Lavender Cabaret's appearance at the Beat Kitchen. I had my good camera, but the light in there was terrrrible. So you get a blur-a-licious picture of Beth and Shaun improvising some bit or another.

Hey, if Second City can claim him, we can too; Jose Hirohito and His All-Girl Orchestra alumnus Joe Kelly has been hired by Saturday Night Late as a writer. It'd be hard to find a nicer guy than Joe, and I wish him all the best in his new job.

I had complained about the photobooth at Schubas because it had eaten some of my pictures -- they just never came out. The machine still sucks -- a photostrip I did on Monday had one panel just totally black -- but I guess the ones that don't come out must get stuck in the machine somewhere and whoever maintains the machine retrieves them, because a photostrip of Meredith, Erica, and me from the Damnation Game pubcrawl was stuck behind the plexiglass of the photobooth.

By the way, I was at Schubas on Monday to see Dan Darrah. I've known Dan for years through improv, but had never heard him perform with his band. He's great!

Here's some pictures of the new condo. We are definitely painting the entry way.

"acidic, but funny comedy of duo Himmerick and Gerdes" says Ray Koltys in his review of the last Belmont Burlesque Review.

My friend Lawrence has started a new site called Happy Jawa Film Review, specializing in reviews of Star Wars fan-films.

Here's a panorama Noah took at the beginning of the day as we were loading up the stuff from Canal Street Storage (nice space, friendly employees). You can see Amanda in her car on the left, Shaun and Patrick putting some random pieces of furniture in the pick-up and is that a shadowy Fuzzy in the U-Haul?

So, the move went great. We got everything in one day -- all the stuff from storage, and from both our current residences, and a bonus couch from Kate (who was moving the same day). We even got done in time for Shaun to house manage at The Playground and me to perform there with The Mighty.

Big FuzzyCo thanks to Amanda*, Ben, Homer, Jenny, Megan, Merrie, Noah*, Patrick*, Phillip, and Taryn* for helping us move. (* indicates Medal of Honor of doing 2 shifts.)

Now I just have to unpack everything.

I know you've been jealous that I had a copy of Dancing With Gaia and you didn't. Well, now you, too, can own a copy of my feature film debut on DVD(-R) or oh-so-obsolete VHS. Order now!

I just got the new iChat AV and I'm making sure it works with the camera here. I'm fuzzygerdes on AIM or iChat. Man, look at me twitch.

Fight Club is back on. Same place (3209 N. Halsted) same time (Tuesdays @ 10:30 pm).

Dan says, "It's an open jam, but not in a drunk late night bad kind of way, but in a smoky underground jazz club open jam. It's a show with no audience, everybody plays. Raw, unrehearsed, uncompensated, uncompromised. Improv at its most pretentious."

Everyone is welcome. We start exactly at 10:30 pm (and end exactly at 11:30). If it's your first time, you're in the first scene. Other than that, your level of participation is entirely up to you. We all try to bring our best work; we're all working to improve.

Anyway, it's a little late to imagine anyone who might even come tonight reading this in time, but we're running through the end of April.

Phillip came over last night and we started logging and capturing Party Beach footage. We shot the beach scenes in August, the interiors in October (I think), and we're editing now. Movies take a long time. (Usually.)

I haven't actually finished unpacking the office yet (where did all my powerstrips go?) so I had to clear off a space to edit in. And oh, dear, dear Final Cut Express, why don't you have batch capture?

WNEP's Around Midnite Series is wrapping up in April (with a special Gong Show finale May 15). You get two more doses of freaks on parade (Apr 3 & May 15), one more hit of dirty-talkin' poker players (Apr 10), a special appearance by Your Little Ponies (Apr 17), and a final bad movie made fresh and new (Apr 24).

"For a one-shot action comedy shot in 21 hours, it’s a good 'un." That's the official festival description of Ted McGillicutty, Man of Action, a FuzzyCo short that has been accepted for the Chicago Really Short Film Festival, Friday, April 9, at The Abbey Pub (3420 W. Grace). $1 off with this flyer.

Ted, as it's affectionately known around the FuzzyCo office, was originally shot for the Fast Forward Film Festival back in January 2003. It was shown at that FFFF, and was chosen for the FFFF best-of DVD, but this is the first film festival with a selection process I've submitted it to, and so its first acceptance. Yay!