FuzzyCo

Lastlast weekend the Chicago Neutrino Project bundled into three cars (plus Dan down from Michigan and Alison flew up from Texas) and drove over to Oberlin, Ohio for the Oberlin Improv Conference. The show was plagued by some technical difficulties, but a fun time was had by all -- and I was happy to see my sister Jeanne and her still-newly-wed husband Jeff who drove all the way from Cleveland to see the show and then hang out with us at Brewster's at the Oberlin Inn (one of two bars in town).

Most of the folks left Saturday morning, but Sean Cusick and I stayed to teach workshops (and Erica stayed because she likes me) and panel discuss and then watch improv long into the night (with, I'll freely admit, a quick trip to the bowling alley next door -- with as long as I've been doing improv, if I watch too much in a row I get twitchy).

We're big fans, now, of The Feve (Oberlin's other bar), and the albino squirrel, and hanging out on Tappan Square, and everyone at Oberlin. Yay!

Oh, and pictures.

Where's Mustapha? Kate reveals him!

Look, I'm not sure you need to know why I did this to a blameless duck. But I thought it'd be a shame if no one saw it. Just enjoy it. Gaze into its calm eyes. Let the sparkle carry you away...

This is one of my favorite jokes, and I tell myself it all the time to remind myself of the importance of context:

"Waiter, these noodles are terrible."

"Sir, it's not noodles, it's sauerkraut."

"Oh... well then it's excellent."

It only took pretty much everyone whose opinion I respect recommending The Wire as "the best show on television, ever", or some variation thereof, before I decided to watch it. And, yes, it turns out, for dramas, it is.

Kenner posts the deets of a hilareeous office email sequence. (It's on his MySpace blog, so I hope you don't need to be logged in to view it.) The original image is from this guy -- I totally ganked it since I was just sending it out to 6 friends.

After I just finished my reasonably-complex instructions on how to edit Sony Digital Camera MPEG movies on a Mac, I found out about the $30 SimpleMovieX which edits those movies just fine.

(via Daring Fireball)

If you've been watching Ninja Warrior on G4, but aren't up to date, look away!

Of course, it's not that much a spoiler, since it actually took place in October 2006 and I already saw the results on the Wikipedia page and all. Anyway, above is Makoto Nagano's complete winning run from the 17th edition of Sasuke. I'm not sure it's quite as impressive if you haven't seen the hundreds of people failing at each stage (when Bunpei Shiratori wiped out in the 16th edition, Erica and I both let out shrieks of dismay) but it's definitely better without G4's terrible editing.

(via Dan Telfer)

Do I have friends in Phoenix, Arizona who aren't already involved in the Phoenix Improv Festival? If so, they should be informed that Bare will performing at 8:30 pm tonight (Friday, May 11) with Bassprov.

Fuzzy's Pizza in Peoria, AZ is, oddly enough, a Chicago-themed pizza and hotdog place.

Previous Fuzzy sightings.

These two guys, Eric and Filup, are doing some sort of promo gig where they're driving across the country in a Chevy Aveo to go to LA and "make it big in comedy". They hooked up with the Phoenix Improv Festival and actually were the MCs who introduced Bare. Above is their video, with a 1-second glimpse of Shaun. I'm just off to Shaun's right, so just picture that in your mind and I'm sure you can imagine how the show went.

What do you do if there are no baboons around?

#8 in an on-going series.

BT has a new band and he asked me to come to a rehearsal and get some PR shots of them. They sound good (which makes it easy to get behind making them look good) and are nice guys (ditto). As usual, I made a little set of some of the ones I like. The band will make their own choices for their MySpace page and such. I'm happy to note that I've been getting some good use out of the super fisheye lens my dad got me a couple years ago for my birthday (thanks, dad!), especially in tight band rehearsal spaces. My favorite thing about band photos is that I don't need to worry (or at least, I don't worry) about accurate color, subtle lighting, or distortion. That's rock and roll, man!

"Erica made me watch" is my only defense, but I watched tonight's finale episode on my own while she was in Mississippi. Oh, it's trash, but it's such delightful trash that plays so well at aping the fashion industry.

I had my three month eye checkup and everything is fine. My flaps, as before, are perfect. I've still got halos at night, but I think I'm just noticing them less (and my doctor keeps saying he's confident they'll get better with time -- which he's been saying from the start). I can see 20/20, albeit not as crisply as with my glasses. My eyes still get tired after 3/4 of a day of staring at the computer. And a bug flew into my eye the other day, which is something that never happened when I wore glasses, so that's a new experience of post-LASIK eyes. Whee!

The Office is one of the few programs that we absolutely have to watch every week, and usually within a few hours of when it was actually on TV (thanks, TiVo). This third season was awesome. Done and done.

Me, sans glasses.

I've been suffering under a massive comment spam attack for the last few days, so I've had to turn moderation on for all comments -- so if you leave a comment, it may take a few hours to show up. Sorry, but the bad guys are winning right now.

A few years ago I bought a $50 MP3 player from Secondhand Monkeys for Erica. And then I got her an iPod, so the lil' MP3 player got tossed in a drawer. This winter, I was between iPods and I pulled out that MP3 player to have something to listen to while riding the train. Unfortunately, it used a non-standard USB cable which I couldn't find in any of my assorted-computer-parts boxes. So I emailed Pat Misterovich from Secondhand Monkeys, who has moved on to projects like the Pez MP3 Player, asking if he still had any of those cables I could buy. And he just sent me two, which was delightful.

And then Erica got me a new iPod and the Secondhand Monkey player went back into the drawer (this time with its cable rubber-banded to it). But the point of the story is just to note that there is still good customer service out there and that if you're in the market for a novelty MP3 player, I know where you should go.

A dirty little semi-secret here at FuzzyCo is that I don't open Evites. Sorry if you've tried to invite me to something by that method. I've had to endure some ribbing from my friends -- "Is it that much work to click on a link?" And, frankly, the answer is kinda "yes". So I was happy to find out that it's not just me. Anil Dash, writing about Evite-competitor Socializr, says:

The fact that Evite's emails don't include the bare facts about the event you're being invited to speaks to their contempt for their users. I'm sure they had elaborate meetings years ago to justify this, but the right answer go[t] lost along the way. [emphasis his]

I've never used Socialzr, but I'm willing to encourage my friends to start using it for their group invites, if they'd like me to actually show up. (And, yes, it's all about me.)

Update: I don't have any events to invite people to, but I thought I'd put my money where my mouth is and sign up with Socializr. Seems nice so far.

Dear Uncles,
I am playing with your Legos. They are very cool. Thank you.
Love
Jake

I was out running, early, and saw a bird pulling a worm out of the ground. Done and done.

Since we're talking about comments (and not that there was any doubt around here about who's in charge), I now have my official moderator's certificate.

A friend of mine wrote a review of the new Bust-A-Move Bash! for the Nintendo Wii and emailed it out to a few of us. For a variety of reasons, he doesn't want his name attached to it, but I think it's a great review and I wanted to share it. Also, there's tons of swearing in the review, so it's after the jump...

Photo by Michelle Edwards

The Phoenix Improv Festival is, I have to say, the friendliest of all the improv festivals I've been to. For example, every ensemble gets a "den mother" assigned to them -- a local who will pick them up for the airport, get them to the shows, and fulfill requests like "take me to a tattoo convention" or "we need a construction hardhat and some Jagermeister". Also, everyone gets a gift bag that, in addition to the usual info sheets and maps, always has something handmade and special. Last year it was coloring books and this year it was finger puppets. (Note to self: take picture of awesome finger puppet.)

Last year, we took the Chicago Neutrino Project (with plenty of assists from Detroit and local folks) out to the festival. This year, we didn't get/have to do any such thing, because there's a Phoenix Neutrino Project. Graciously, in the Neutrino Nation spirit, they let Shaun, Greg, and I sit in with them. I don't know how the show went (they promise a Google Video of the show sooner or later) but I can tell you that I had the most fun and felt the most relaxed I've ever felt doing a Neutrino Project show. It was so awesome to just sit back and trust that other people were running the show.

Friday during the day Jose, the friendliest of all the friendly Phoenicians, organized a surprise trip to Fuzzy's Pizza. Oh, you.

Friday night we had our Bare show. Bare has performed at every PIF that has had non-Arizona groups (that is, 5 of the 6 PIFs) and we've got, if I can say without modesty, a bit of a reputation in Phoenix. We do always try to bring our A-game and to consciously try new things. We had worked out a format for our show over the few weeks before the festival, something that involved a fair amount of sitting around talking. At the last minute, we realized that we had been scheduled to open for Bassprov, whose whole (excellent) show is two guys sitting around talking. So, it was back to the drawing board, since we're not dicks. (Really, we're not :-) We tinkered around with our ideas a bit and ended up coming up with a modified Living Room. It was crude and vulgar and bickery and went, as best I can tell, pretty well.

This year, not only did I take pictures, there's a Flickr group so you can see everyone else's pictures as well.

We saw Grindhouse at the Brew and View, which I think might have been the perfect place to have the kind of complete experience that Rodriguez and Tarantino were trying to create with this movie. I enjoyed both halves, but I really appreciated the layers that Tarantino brought to Death Proof.

Hot Fuzz is the same creative team behind Shaun of the Dead applying that same treatment they gave zombie movies (half-reverent, half-mocking) to cop buddy flicks.

The result is both hilarious and exhilarating. Team Gerdes gives it an A+.

Erica and I finished up the third season, and hence all of, Black Books tonight. It's not quite the marathon it might sound like as it's the standard Britcom 6-episode season. We're really sad that these 18 episodes are all we'll ever see of misanthropic Bernard Black, flighty Manny, and self-absorbed Fran and their improbable adventures in Bernard's book shop. However, we rest assured that we'll see these actors again since it seems there are really only 6 or 7 actors working in Britcoms (at least, judging by the number of times Simon Pegg, say, pops up in other productions).

I'm posting this here partly (mainly?) for my own benefit because, for some reason, whenever I'm trying to tell someone about a free utility they can use to figure out what's using all the space on their Mac's hard drive I can't remember the words "Disk Inventory X" for anything.

"Well, if you're going to clean the tub, let's give the cats a bath, first."

"Even Latte?"

"We are not insane."

Lawrence came to visit 100 years ago (in internet time, anyway) and it was very nice to see him. The end.

P.S. We went saw this and this happened.

Look, I don't ask much of you, just that you see all my shows and love me and say I'm pretty and go here ...

and vote for Kate's design (Scroll down the middle or just search for "Let's Play"). Scoot!