FuzzyCo

I saw the charts that Anil Dash and Tim Bray made of their blog archives, so I made one, too. I noticed that Tim has incorporated his old USENET posts into his blog structure. I thought about doing that for a few seconds and then I thought of six better things to do with my time than to recover the text of old juggling and improv questions. What I should do someday is bring some of the pre-2001 material (like getting my first tattoo in 1997) into the blog archives so it's easier to find and categorize. Oh well, I'll get to that in my copious free time.

Last year I did a year-in-review thing where I took the first sentence from the first post of each month and it proved to be an interesting snapshot of the year, so here's 2006:

January 2006: Am I allowed to say that we had a terrible New Year's Eve? more

February 2006: After reading so much science fiction in a row, I was feeling a little genre-shame, so I dug out a buzz-worthy book from last year (my copy's cover notes that it's a Today's Book Club selection) -- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. more

March 2006: Just so you know, if you want to get me to help you with your thing, all you have to do is say "it's an art project." more

April 2006: I've been sitting in as "Comic #2" in Lavender Cabaret's Femme TV burlesque show for the past few months. more

May 2006: Our Tetris DS friend code is 7277-1792-4430. more

June 2006: The Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority (aka Asheville [NC]: any way you like it) is holding a contest to design their new TV ad. more

July 2006: I finally did my first Chicago Critical Mass ride, and I'm kicking myself that I've been in Chicago this long and never done one. more

August 2006: We're back in town, rested and refreshed from the honeymoon -- the first honest-to-goodness vacation I've taken in years. more

September 2006: How many subways of the world have you ridden on? more

October 2006: I promise this is not going to turn into an all-cats-on-beds-all-the-time blog. more

November 2006: It's almost election day, and so time for me to harrange all my friends to a) vote and b) vote out some judges. more

December 2006: Goldie's Trail Bar-B-Que is a Reid family staple, and I've got my meal down, now, after trying most of the menu over the years: barbequed sausage sandwich, side of the garlic bread, steal a few fries off of someone else's plate. more

In August I completed my self-imposed goal of reading 50 books in a year and I said I was going to stop counting -- well, I just stopped counting in public. I definitely slacked off in pace, as I only read 29* more books in the rest of the year. But I was intentionally focussing more on video games in my personal media consumption. Now I have to decide if I'm going to set myself the same goal this year.

51. Lulu Eightball - Emily Flake
52. Lady of Mazes - Karl Schroeder
53. Chasing Vermeer - Blue Balliet
54. Clockwork - Philip Pullman
55. Wall and Piece - Banksy
56. The Big Bounce - Elmore Leonard
57. Parakeets - Nikki Moustaki
58. Old Man's War - John Scalzi
59. Skinny Dip - Carl Hiaasen
60. The Bourne Identity - Robert Ludlum
61. That Noise - Dan Telfer
62. Beauty and the Biz: The International Adventures of America's Third-to-Next Top Model - Elyse Sewell
63. 1632 - Eric Flint
Digital Portrait Photography and Lighting - Catherine Jamieson and Sean McCormick
64. Penny Arcade 1: Attack of the Bacon Robots - Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins
65. Penny Arcade 2: Epic Legends of the Magic Sword Kings - Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins
66. Manifold: Space - Stephen Baxter
67. Castleview - Gene Wolfe
68. Swag - Elmore Leonard
69. Definition of Awesome - Zach Miller
70. Terraforming Earth - Jack Williamson
71. Penultimate Peril - Lemony Snicket
72. The End - Lemony Snicket
73. Psychlone - Greg Bear
74. Improvising Better - Jimmy Carrane and Liz Allen
75. From Campus to Combat - James Alter
76. I Know You're Out There - Michael Beaumier
77. The Areas of My Expertise - John Hodgman
78. Sick Puppy - Carl Hiassen
79. Queen of Angels - Greg Bear

* And a half -- I'm in the middle of Darker Than You Think by Jack Williamson.

There's something about the nature of improv groups that guarantees that as soon as you take a cast photo, it'll be out of date. But for the next ten minutes or so this (or this or this) is the official Pastor of Muppets ensemble photo. Now that Erica has joined the group as well, PoM shows are your one-stop Reid-Gerdes performance fix, so check us out. And hey, we've got one of those fancy Myspace pages the kids are all crazy for, so you can add as a pretend "friend" and then we can "bother" you about our "shows".

You can watch the last several months of the Phoenix Neutrino Project on Google Video: October, November, December.

Just a little more looking back at 2006 and we'll get on with 2007. Here's every city I spent the night in, with an asterix indicating multiple, non-consecutive visits. It was a pretty light travel year this year, with only one trip to an improv festival and mostly family-visits otherwise.

Austin, TX
Chicago, IL*
Cleveland, OH
New Orleans, LA
New York, NY
Phoenix, AZ
Santa Fe, NM
Starkville, MS
Vicksburg, MS*

(Via kottke.org)

Sometimes, it seems, I go to great lengths to take new technology and shoe-horn it into old frames. Like the time I tried to install a CD player into my lamented 1974 Datsun 260z. Or like how I'm taking the data from a completely separate blog and cramming it into a table* at the top of my front page to make a list of upcoming performances.

But that does mean that if you're one of those hyper-modern people who uses a Blog Reader (or technically, an RSS aggregator) you can now subscribe to a feed of my upcoming shows and performances. You can also subscribe to Erica's shows, if you're a fan (and who isn't).

* Modern web designers, feel free to gasp. And then give yourself a heart-attack by going to look at my CSS file for this site and discovering that it doesn't exist. I'm really looking at getting that taken care of by 2008.

As Kate says, "just in time for Valentine's Day", she's made the above image into notecards available in her CafePress store. And what says "I love you" more than a monkey farting hearts? Nothing, that's what.

Bilal Dardai (playwright, Neo-Futurist, married man) is doing one of those things -- the Interview Meme -- on his LiveJournal.

Rules are as follows: You comment on this entry requesting an interview. I respond with five questions. The questions will theoretically be tailored to you based on what I know of you (or want to know). You copy and paste those questions into your own journal, and write the answers, along with these rules. Anyone wanting an interview from you continues the game by requesting an interview from you.

So here are the questions he asked me and my answers to the same:

1) You always strike me as a very even-tempered individual. Have you always been as such, or did you have to actively cultivate this demeanor? Is there anything that can get you truly, truly angry?

Yes, yes, and yes. I was going to say I've always been pretty calm, but I realized that "neurotic" would probably be a better way of describing the demeanor of my youth. I've been actively pursuing sanguinity for a number of years now (FuzzyCo motto #6: Therapy is Great!). But get me tired and grumpy or show me great injustice and you'll hear some cursing. I'm not proud to admit it, but the number one thing that really gets me swearing-and-shaking furious is frustrating sections of video games. I have, to my shame, flung controllers.

2) Is there any job/career besides your own you've always wanted to try?

In my youth I wanted to be a forest ranger.

In my adulthood I've wanted to try everything. And I do dabble in a lot of different things. I used to be a handy-man for rental units, and a bookkeeper for a headshop, and a graphic designer (all at the same time). These days I do a little programing, a little web design, a little photography, a little video-editing. And there are seriously times when I'm on the train and there are the ads that the CTA is hiring train repairers and I really wonder how long it would take to get trained in hydraulic systems repair and what it would be like to have that job. Could I be a cop? A teacher? I think about that all the time.

3) List your five all-time favorite video games; defend your choices if you think they need defending.

In alphabetical order:

Galaga
Karateka
Monkey Island (the first three)
Samba de Amigo
Tony Hawk (all versions)

4) Is there a show you've produced that you're proudest of? How about a show you've performed in?

In the summer of 1995, my friend Matt Martin decided he wanted to direct No Exit. I was already producing a bi-weekly 'coffeehouse' music event at the Wesley Foundation (the Methodist Campus Ministry), so we somehow managed to convince people that Sartre's examination of hell would be an appropriate summer production for The Wesley Players. It was my first time producing theater, and I was the technical director as well, so I'm proud that the show went off at all. But I'm also really proud that we sold out our entire run* and that we came in on budget and made a tiny ($5) profit.

I think I'm proud of all the times I've taken risks and gotten on stage and done something new (new to me, anyway).

* To increase the claustrophobia for the audience, we put the audience on stage and built a stage on the floor -- so we only had 35 seats. And our run was three shows in one weekend. So 'sold out' was 105 patrons.

5) In a best case scenario--that is, you went when you wanted to, how you wanted to, and everybody was okay with that--describe your funeral.

Goodness, what a question. We've been trying not to think about funerals in the Gerdes household, but here goes:

When my grandma Ahlrichs died, she wanted (and we had) a memorial service, not a funeral. Her body wasn't there (in fact, it was in rural Iowa, so the nearest crematorium was hours away and she was somewhere in transit while we were having the service. It was, at some level, just a big family get together and people kept saying (and then catching themselves), "we should do this more often." So, something like that. Oh, and play Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy's I Only Have Eyes For You.

Did a photoshoot Wednesday night for the latest Blewt production, Impress These Apes. Perfect Cup didn't have any problem with us taking a bunch of pictures of guys in gorilla* masks, which frankly surprised me a bit. People are so touchy about that sort of thing, these days.

* I kept putting my foot in my mouth by calling them "monkeys". They are, of course, apes.

Lawrence and Emma and Simon breezed through town and I was able to join them for lunch at Union Station. I am fortunate, indeed, to have such delightful godchildren.

I finally did the same change to this blog that I did to the New Improv Page back in November. I think I've got every thing working OK, but let me know if you notice any weirdness (with the web pages, this is, we strive for weirdness otherwise).

Happy Birthday to Don't Spit the Water's box office manager, Gena, seen here being serenaded by Nicky Mouse. Erica rocked out some Cutie Bumblesnatch action at the year's first DSTW show.

I get all excited by the script or the show concept, I audition or lobby to be included in the show, I get cast, I'm thrilled! ... and then I realize all the rehearsals and memorization that's in front of me for the next, god, what is it? 4 weeks. And then actually doing the show over and over for 5 weeks. What have I gotten myself into?

Don't worry, in a few weeks I'll be excited again to be 'various male roles' in the third episode of Rogue 8 -- written by the lovely and talented Dan Telfer. But for now, let me just sit here and think about all the video games I won't be playing until late March.

Erica got called in as a last minute replacement for Impress These Apes -- a comedy talent show run by hyper-intelligent apes who might want to destroy mankind with their earthquake machine. The contestants get bonus points for all sorts of things (one contestant already has 5 bonus points for getting the most views of his audition video on YouTube) including selling a pair of designated tickets for each show. So, I have two tickets to every Impress These Apes show* for the next 8 weeks. If you'd like to accompany me to a show, just let me know.

* Monday nights at 8 pm at The Playground (3209 N Halsted).

After Week 1 of Impress These Apes, Erica's in an incredibly tight 4th place (only 2 points behind the leader). This week's challenge (which you can see above) was to write a song introducing yourself, with bonus points for rhyming "apes", "mankind", and "earthquakes". Next week, the contestants have to do 3 minutes of stand-up.

As a follow-up to his interview of me, Bilal has answered my questions.

I dunno, maybe you just don't like video and you'd prefer to see still photos. I can't read your mind.

I yammer on a lot about Kate, but Dan's in Japan, too. And now he's got the website to prove it.

Reader Review: Impress These Apes! (Recommended)

In Blewt! Productions' talent show, the face of the human race depends on eight contestants impressing three apes from the future whose intelligence has increased to the level of, well, amateur comedians. Each week the same eight performers compete in a different category, like music or stand-up. There's a silly backstory to this lively show, anchored by loony host (and local stand-up) Jared Logan, who convincingly behaves as though he's missing a frontal lobe. But there's also real stakes: the producers held an open audition, and after eight weeks the winning contestant gets $250. A volatile mix of the staged and the sincere, Impress These Apes delivers the best kind of inconsistancy; can't-look-away failure and spontaneous charm. It's American Idol meets lowbrow comedy. -- Ryan Hubbard

Southwest Spirit magazine* reminds us of the importance of editors, typesetters, et cinema, et cinema. Or maybe they reeeeeally like gin.

* December 2006, Drink of the Month

I let my Xbox Live subscription lapse because I never play online. But every time I turn on the Xbox, it complains that I need to update my credit card info. It turns out you have to call in and specifically cancel. And, because it automatically renews, when it tried to renew the last time with an expired credit card, it put my account into a 'suspended' state. And the only way to cancel the account is to first get it out of that state, by giving them a credit card number, and then they'll immediately cancel the account and refund that money. I told the customer service rep that that was, quote, "retarded".

All of this is academic, anyway, since all the Xbox Live Customer Service computers are down. "Is there any way you could call back tomorrow, sir?"

If you weren't at Impress These Apes last night, you missed a great night of standup. Erica surged ahead to tie for 2nd place with her awesome set. Her last joke fits in all the bonus points, which is why it doesn't make a lot of sense. Next week: dance!

Lots.

Lots and lots.

Forty minutes on hold just to talk to someone (you can't cancel online). Unlike the "dude, our computers are down" guy, the CSR I got today noted that my account had been in "arrears" for over 60 days, so I couldn't get a refund. I asked to talk to a supervisor and after 20 minutes on hold got kicked back to the same rep. "An issue" was preventing me from being connected to a supervisor and I could call back later and ask to talk to a supervisor. I told her that they'd won and it was worth $50 to me at this point not to be on hold any more. So I paid up just so I could cancel my account.

I paid $50 to cancel my account. Let's all ponder that ridiculous statement for a moment.

I think this just made my decision for me about ever getting an Xbox 360.

The February Chicago Magazine profiles me (along with the editors of several other Chicago group blogs) for being the city captain of the Chicago Metroblog. Amongst the neatness is this little pixel portrait of me, based off of a photo that Erica took.

Illustration by Nana Rausch for Chicago Magazine

We had the first blocking and fight rehearsal for Rogue 8 last night -- and boy are my legs tired! (Except, seriously, they are -- I'm a Ninja in the show, and ninjas got to fight. It's their nature. I need to remember to stretch out a bit more before these rehearsals.)

It's a delightful time to be even peripherally involved with Blewt productions. In Chicago, Impress These Apes
has gotten a good review in the Reader and now an excellent write-up in Time Out, accompanied by two large photos taken by yours truly.

And in Charleston, SC, Don't Spit the Water made the cover* of the City Paper pull-out guide to the Charleston Comedy Festival and got a great write-up inside. If you're in the area, Erica will be playing Cutie Bumblesnatch and I'll be introducing Dr. Baron Ludvig von Evilschlager tonight and tomorrow night at Theater 99 (280 Meeting Street, Charleston, SC).

* Let's not tell them that Earl LaRue, as played by Robert Buscemi, won't actually be at the festival.

I seem to have left the cable to connect my camera at the theater, so you'll have to wait to see my awesome Dr. Baron Ludwig Von Evilschlager costume. But I got a spit on a spit-light night, and the audience seemed to like the Doctor, so I'm riding pretty high. As is likely to happen at festivals, we followed up the show with lots of hanging out and we're just getting back to the hotel room now. Time to sleep up for tomorrow's show.

Our flight out of Columbia, SC is delayed and I'm really happy because it means we're going to get to see the whole game.

I'm staying put here in lovely snow-bound Chicago.

You probably didn't notice, unless you tried to leave a comment or use the search box, but the database behind all of the blogs I host here (this one, Erica's, The Wedding One, Erica's performances, my performances, the New Improv Page, and R. Buzzy) went south sometime last night. I had just finished setting up a Vox blog as a temporary measure, when Dreamhost got back to my help ticket and restored the database.

Their backup was about 24 hours old (which is better than my own most recent backup, which is 2 weeks old) so I lost a few comments from Tricia and Melissa -- sorry guys. But we're back up and running.

Last night was the 3rd night of Impress These Apes and Erica is now in the lead, by 7 points! It was the dance challenge, and everyone had to choreograph and perform a three-minute dance to a random piece of music they had received at the end of last week's show. Erica got Once Bitten, Twice Shy -- and rocked it out.

Next week: magic!

So after a perfectly hideous time getting there, Erica and I got to Charleston, South Carolina on Friday afternoon and had a perfectly lovely time the rest of the weekend.

We were in town to be 2/3 of the comedians in Don't Spit the Water at the Charleston Comedy Festival (Mike Wiley was the third).

I was both excited and nervous because, while I've been a guest comic, and have even hosted the show, the only other time I've been a try-and-make-the-contestants-spit comic was for a Halloween show where I was playing Erica's character Cutie Bumblesnatch, so all my bits were written for me. This was going to be my first time using my own material to try and make an audience member laugh so hard that they embarrassed themselves in front of their friends by spitting out a mouthful of water.

And I'm happy to report it went very well -- I got a couple of spits the first night, even with the biggest jag-mo contestant the show has ever seen throwing off the stats. And the second night went well, as well, with lots of people telling us after the show how hilarious they thought the whole thing was.

After the show on Saturday, I led the whole crew on one of my infamous Fuzzy-is-fixated-on-the-perfect-meal journeys, with the added twist that the place was closed when we got there. Sorry, fellows. So we ended up eating at a chicken place and then barely escaping before the Jazz/Funk Fusion Band With Flute and Steel Drums started playing. And then Christopher drove Erica and I to Columbia, South Carolina.

Sunday we got to spend a lazy day in Columbia with Christopher and Katie, and we got to meet Mokey. In the afternoon, we had a delightful (for certain values of delight) waiting at the Columbia Metropolitan Airport for our much delayed flight. The delay did give us the opportunity to watch the entire Bears-Saints game.

Loads and loads of jugglers list "rubber chickens" in the lists of ker-azy things they can juggle, but none of the major juggling suppliers sell them. And why should they, I suppose, when they're so easy to build. I realize this is of rather specialized interest, so the instructions are after the jump...

Allow me to introduce Dr. Baron Ludwig von Evilschlager. ("Get it right -- Doctor! Baron! I was born a Doctor, but I went to six years of Baron school and I will not have my hard work ignored!") He's got an IQ of 2000 and heads up Evil Labs. And, um, he juggles and wears Heelies:

Look for him at an upcoming Don't Spit the Water. When I'm done with this play.

Brandi Ediss' great set of black and white pictures from week 3 of Impress These Apes reminded me that I'd never shared my photos from week 2. If you can remember that far back, it was the stand-up challenge, which is why the "brick" wall.

Erica remains in the lead of Impress These Apes after this week's magic acts, though by a narrower 3 point margin. To really appreciate Erica's calm delivery in the video above, you should know that she went up just after this mayhem.

Magic factoid: this weekend we were in Vegas and saw Penn & Teller and Erica was pulled up to be the lady in the knife throwing bit.

Next week on ITA: musical theater! The contestants have been paired up and have to write an original scene that leads into a randomly selected song -- Erica is paired with Jim Fath and they got A Whole New World.

For a wedding present, our friends Matt and Trish gave us a trip to their home in Las Vegas and carted us all around town for the weekend. It was an action-packed vacation, full of gambling and drinking and kittens and guns and nightclubs and sharks and casinos and magic. Speaking of magic, we saw Penn & Teller on Saturday night and both Erica and Matt got to go on stage for different tricks. So cool.

Some small Vegas observations:

It's nothing new, I know, to talk about the unreality of Vegas, but it was still astonishing to be at places with actual things -- the Stratosphere, which is actually tall, and the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay, which has actual sharks -- and on your way in they take your picture against a green screen so that on the way out they can sell you a picture for yourself superimposed against a picture of the place you just were.

There were ads all over town announcing that David Hasselhoff would be appearing in The Producers, and all featuring just him in a tuxedo. We had a long debate over whether he would be the Zero Mostel/Nathan Lane producer or the Gene Wilder/Matthew Broderick producer. We eventually decided that by putting him alone on the ads, they were trying to tell us that he was such a powerhouse actor that he would be playing *both* parts. (We were wrong -- he'll be playing the cross-dressing director.)

Cliches come to life: at the airport leaving Vegas, two girls were sitting behind me and going through their digital cameras deleting the pictures of the boys they had kissed over the weekend.

It's time once again for FuzzyFest -- the annual celebration of the day I was born! Please join me on Saturday, February 3 for:

a performance by Pastor of Muppets at the Playground (3209 N Halsted) at 8 pm

and/or

the appearance of Dr. Baron Ludwig von Evilschlager at Don't Spit the Water at the Playground (3209 N Halsted) at 10:30 pm

and/or

drinking and conviviality at the Twisted Spoke (3369 N Clark) around midnight.

The Chicago Public Radio website features a "photo of the day" drawn from a Flickr group and today's photo is by me. Hoo-rar!

I'm sure I know a higher-than-average number of people who own gorilla suits, so I want to make sure that they know it's National Gorilla Suit Day. However, not everyone is thrilled with the holiday.