FuzzyCo

I've always been impressed with improv groups that celebrate their 100th show or whathaveyou, not just for the longevity, but because I've never kept that good of records, to even know when the 100th show was. Until this year, when I started using a modified blog to create the little performance calendar on the FuzzyCo home page (and another on Erica's sidebar). So now I can tell you in 2007 I did:

• 50 improv shows
• 16 comedy shows
• 1 standup open mic
• 12 theater performances
• and 5 "other" shows

for a total of 84 shows.

I also read 38 books (down from 79 last year), saw 34 movies, and played 14 video games all the way through (I'm in the middle of about 6 others).

I ran 335 miles, including 18 miles of the Chicago Marathon.

I posted 2004 photos on Flickr, posted 243 tweets, and made 410 blog posts here at FuzzyCo and another 261 at the Chicago Metblog.

Juno was delightful. Very real, yet very funny. Or... very funny, yet very real.

FuzzyCo grade: A

Note to all Blewt employees: the Blewt uniform dress code will be strictly enforced at all meetings going forward.

This little guy really brightened up our New Years' Eve.

• How to Do What You Love
  via Making Light
  (tags: creativity life inspiration)

Remember that crazy comedy competition that Erica and I were each in a season of? It's made two three different "best of 2007" lists.

From the 1/3/08 Newcity, "Top 5 of Everything":

Stage

Top 5 Shows
"A Steady Rain," Chicago Dramatists "Another Day in the Empire," Black Sheep
"Diversey Harbor," Theatre Seven
"Impress These Apes," Blewt
"Machos," Teatro Luna
—Nina Metz

Time Out Chicago's best of 2007 comedy list:

Impress These Apes Lordy lord, was this show funny during its two "seasons." The apes' banter delighted us every week, and the contestants sure knew how to bring it--Jim Fath's Darth Vader stand-up routine in the first season springs to mind, as does the freak-show challenge night in season two, for which Erin Pallesen covered his (not her) face with clothespins. Pinch us.

From the 1/4/08 Chicago Tribune, Best of '07: 10 reasons to take a chance:

Chicago theater wouldn't be half as interesting without all the storefront companies that prove you don't need big bucks or big names to stage a great show. Sometimes theater is just better when it's down-and-dirty.

Sure, tiny venues can be a little crude and funky, but where else can you get as close to the action? While the Equity houses in town rarely lack for press and patrons, the fringe companies keep plugging away in the face of hardship.

That's drive—the kind of scrappy, experimental sensibility that results in shows you won't see anywhere else.

Each week in "On the Fringe," Kerry Reid and I look to spotlight the scene's best—and warn you against the worst. Here are some favorites from 2007.

Nina's picks:

1. "Impress These Apes" (Blewt Productions): A talent contest like no other, this off-beat, semi-improvised show featured some of Chicago's funniest actors duking it out for the top prize. If you missed it, don't make the same mistake twice: Look for another installment to begin later this summer.

Up next: Blewt brings back its interactive game show "Don't Spit the Water" for a yearlong run at the Playground starting Jan. 12.

Yes, I'm slow, but hey -- this is the first time I've run since October.

Erica and I joined the gym -- for me so I can get on the treadmill and start running while it's still cold. I'm considering trying to do the Grandma's Marathon up in Duluth, and that'd mean I'd need to start really training in February. I do not want to run outside in Chicago in February.

I confess I have a weakness for 'factoid' books like The Reverend Guppy's Aquarium -- a collection of essays about "how everyday items were named for extraordinary people". This one has perhaps a bit more depth than the usual bathroom book -- Dodd gives deft biographical sketches of all of his subjects, beyond the simple circumstances of their language-enhancing exploits, and he also does his research, penetrating past oft-repeated hearsay to find the truth. Reverend Guppy, for example, was not actually a Reverend, but hated tying ties and so affected a collar of his own design that later biographers assumed was a clerical collar.

One nit, picked: Dodd's previous claim to fame was being the "as told to" of the Rolling Stones' autobiography and he name-drops Mick Jagger and Keith Richards at rather odd moments.

But I'll forgive Dodd any self-agrandizement for relating these two maxims from Jules Léotard's (the original "daring youing man on the flying trapeze") Mémoires (published at age 22 -- the quick celebrity autobiography has been around since the mid nineteenth century, it seems):

Never judge a man by his mustache.

and

Make sure you never catch typhoid fever if you have something else to do.

Words to live by, my friends.

FuzzyCo grade: B+

Kate loaned us her Komaneko DVD and it's the cutest. thing. ever.

Komaneko literately means, from what I understand, "frame-by-frame cat" and it's a stop motion animation about a young cat who herself makes stop motion animations. The DVD has several shorts that total about 55 minutes and a making-of feature that's also about an hour. It might tell you how much we loved it that after we watched the shorts we watched the whole making-of feature, even though it's all in Japanese with no subtitles, just to get some more Komaneko.

It looks like the DVD is only available as an imported Region 2 DVD, so get that region-free DVD player cracking!

Black Butte Ranch, Deschutes County, OR
Chicago, IL*
Charleston, SC
Columbia, SC
Kenosha, WI
Las Vegas, NV
Oberlin, OH
Phoenix, AZ
Portland, OR
Salt Lake City, UT
Vicksburg, MS*

Here's every city I spent the night in during 2007, with an asterix indicating multiple, non-consecutive visits.

Compare and contrast with 2006

You make a nifty chart like this one year and it seems a shame not to keep it up to date:

I've been doing this for a few years now -- constructing a quick year-in-review by just taking the first line of the first post from each month. It's obviously very superficial, and touches on few of the really big things that happened in my life year, but it's nearly tradition around here, so I'll let it stand.

January 2007: I saw the charts that Anil Dash and Tim Bray made of their blog archives, so I made one, too. more

February 2007: So I'm in rehearsals for this play. more

March 2007: I think the two things that mark this as a Hiaasen book for younger readers is that the cast isn't quite as huge as usual, there's no sex, and the ending is much more unambiguously happy. more

April 2007: Okami is, if nothing else, the most gorgeous video game I've ever played. more

May 2007: 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. more

June 2007: Still in Mississippi. more

July 2007: Where all my Canucks at? more

August 2007: Well, there's that, then. more

September 2007: This morning I wandered around downtown Chicago taking pictures of the cast of WNEP's Soiree DADA as they... DADAed. more

October 2007: The Hot Kid exists at the intersection of Westerns (it's set in Oklahoma), gangster stories (it's the 30s), and true-crime fiction (in a touch of meta, one of the characters writes for those sorts of magazines). more

November 2007: The last-last time Erica was in Mississippi, Tricia gave her a "Ghost Hunter" camera to bring back -- a disposable camera that automagically* inserts "ghosts" into your photos. more

December 2007: Part of the reason I was so hard on Cascade Point, I've realized, was that it's in my least favorite segment of speculative fiction -- the future as a simple mapping of the past* -- the starship version of a tramp steamer is even called a "tramp starmer", which really rings hollow to my ears. more

Before I say anything about Kissing Snowflakes you should know that a) I am not in the target demographic for this book, being neither a teenager nor a girl and b) I'm friends with the author, Abby Sher (improvista, essayist, and now novelist). Having gotten those caveats out of the way: it's wonderful. Sam(antha) Levy is headed to a Vermont ski resort with her brother, father, and brand-new step-mom, and without her best friend. Can anything good come out of the trip? Maybe Drew, the handsome, blond ski instructor? You'll find, in alphabetical order, art, betrayal, caddish behavior, a dog, drinking, friendship, kissing, literature, mom-issues, (talk of) sex, and some skiing.

FuzzyCo grade: A

• Waiting for Godot—and Much More—in New Orleans
  (tags: art theater NewOrleans)

Anyone had a good experience with an oral surgeon in Chicago? Team Gerdes is looking for a recommendation. Leave a comment or email me, plz. Thx.

Hopefully Andrew has the original in his hands by now, so I'm going to go ahead and post this...

Follow me, here, for a moment, as this ties together several of my areas of interest.

In 2005 John Hodgman (This American Life, The Daily Show, the PC in those Mac/PC commericials) wrote a book called The Areas of My Expertise, a fake "compendium of world knowledge". It had a long section on hobos which included a list of 700 Hobo Names, names like Boxcar Ted and Guesstimate Jones and Microfiche Roy, the Side-Scroller. As part of the promotion material for the book, Hodgman released an mp3 of himself reading the entire list while Jonathan Coulton plays guitar in the background (live, one take - fingers of steel, that man). The book, by the way, is hilarious.

Inspired by a challenge from BoingBoing, some illustrators, including Adam "Apelad" Koford, set out to illustrate each of the names. An informal group covered all the names, but eventually Koford illustrated all 789* names by himself as well.

In early 2007, the LOL Cat internet phenomenon, which had been around as "Image macros" for years, really took off. In June 2007 Koford "revealed" that his grandfather, also a cartoonist, had actually invented LOLcats with his 1912 cartoon "The Laugh-Out-Loud Cats". The cartoon was the adventures of Meowlin Q. Kitteh and his kitten friend Pip, both hobo cats. I was an instant fan -- the combination of old-tymey humor, internet jokes, and the cuteness of the cats hits some magic combination of switches in my brain. The Laugh-Out-Louds Cats are created via an interesting process -- rather than being drawn on any sort of schedule, they're drawn as people buy them. For $20, you get the orignal artwork mailed to you and Koford posts a scan to his website. It's been popular -- where even a daily comic strip would just produce 365 strips a year, the Laugh-Out-Loud cats hit number 666 (on New Year's Day 2008) after just six months. At times, Koford has also used the same model to offer custom monkeys or animals or new hobo names via his website.

Also in 2005, Erica's good friend Andrew Livingston began to play bass in the Mike Doughty Band, which he continues to do to the present day (new album out February 19!). Everyone in the band had nicknames and Andrew was named Scrappy, which was quickly shortened to Scrap. Because it's what Mike calls him onstage, a lot of people only know Andrew as "Scrap Livingston".

Which is an awesome hobo name.

So that's what we got Andrew for Christmas 2007.

The end.

*The second paperback edition of the book included bonus hobo names.

• Cool Tool: FuBar Demolition Tool
  I've done demolition with a shoddy crowbar -- wish I'd had one of these.
  (tags: tool tools destruction)
• Shamisen Hero!
  How have I never heard of the Yoshida Brothers before? Those guys rock.
  (tags: game music)

The rules:

1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random

The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. www.quotationspage.com/random.php3

The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/

The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

If you upload it to Flickr, tag it: "Cd Cover Meme".

My addendum to rule 3: I'm a stickler about such things, so my photo is the first Creative Commons licensed photo from the third photo on. The above photo is by capn matt mudd.

(Via Sean Bonner)

The February 2008 Playboy magazine (with Tiffany Fallon on the cover as Wonder Woman, if you're scanning the racks for it) has an item on SMITH Magazine's forth-coming book Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Famous & Obscure Writers. One of the names in the list they've excerpted may be more familiar to readers of this website than to regular readers of that magazine:

Bonus factoid: I sent that memoir to SMITH via my third tweet ever.

Half Life 2: Episode One* was rather disappointing, especially since I had just finished playing Half Life 2 -- it's basically the last two sections of HL2 in reverse order. That alien fortress we just blew up and escaped from? -- you have to go back in. And the besieged city we snuck into to get to that fortress? -- now we have to sneak out. For a game that really impressed me with its varied level design, it felt rather lazy.

Episode Two satisfied my expectations, however. There's several interesting new environments -- a mine overtaken by alien insects and some nice cross-country travel -- new enemies, and some new game mechanics. And more importantly, the story is really chugging along. I can't wait for Episode Three. (And I'm really impressed/frightened by how easy the Steam online service makes it to buy a game and just have it.)

* Surely one of the most confusing sequel names ever. Doesn't it sound like Episode One should come before Half Life 2 or is part of it or something?

• The Best Peanut Butter in the World
  Anybody know if you can get Parkers Farm peanut butter in the Chicago area? (via Daring Fireball)
  (tags: food PeanutButter)

So the CD Cover Meme thing kinda took off with my crew: Lawrence, Emma, Simon, and Erica all did ones (actually, I think Lawrence did a bunch). But best of all, Elizabeth and Bryan did one, then decided to record a song from the album, and then decided to make a video for the song. Crazy kids.

Well, it hasn't actually been a whole year since I had my LASIK surgery, but I had my 'one year' visit yesterday, ending my official follow-up period. My flaps looks great, I'm seeing 20/20 and from now on, my doctor said, my eye care is as though I'd never had LASIK -- an eye exam every two or three years. As I (rapidly) approach 40, presbyopia is going to kick in sooner or later and I'll need reading glasses -- ah, glasses, my old nemesis, you never remain far away, do you?

I got this little "Xbox" game in a box of Froot Loops. I put Xbox in quotes because this game, and all of the others they're giving away in this promotion, have nothing to with any current Xbox game. They're kinda super-crappy little games and I'm a little surprised that Microsoft would devalue the Xbox name like this. Oh wait. I forgot--they're pretty good at devaluing their own brand names themselves.

I've been intrigued by Mike Figgis since we saw Time Code during the rehearsals for A Day in the Life -- it's a flawed movie, but an incredibly interesting idea. And Leaving Las Vegas was gut-wrenchingly good, so I knew he had chops. So I was looking forward to reading Digital Filmmaking. And indeed there's some practical advice here and some broad opinions about the future of film and the possibilities of cheap filmmaking. But most importantly, it had me itching to get my hands on my camera and get filming.

• Sticker Guy - Online Catalog
  (tags: stickers diy promo)
• Open Source SimCity: overview
  (tags: programming software)

I've been fighting to get PSP video working consistently for what feels like years now, and so I'm going to document the workflows that work for me. For reference, I'm running Mac OS X 10.5.1 and I've got the latest PSP firmware, which at the moment is version 3.8.

DVD 16x9 source
Handbrake 0.9.1
Choose the PSP preset
Change Codec to "AVC/H.264 Video /AAC Audio"
Go into Picture Settings and Change Width to 480, Close
Go to Advanced Tab and type "level=3" in the x264 Advanced Option String
After encoding, place file into the /VIDEO/ folder of the PSP (no renaming required)

DVD 4x3 source
Handbrake 0.9.1
Choose the PSP preset
Change Codec to "AVC/H.264 Video /AAC Audio"
Go into Picture Settings and Change Height to 272, Close
Go to Advanced Tab and type "level=3" in the x264 Advanced Option String
After encoding, place file into the /VIDEO/ folder of the PSP (no renaming required)

AVI (or other video file) 16x9 source
ffmpegx 0.0.9x r1 (this is a version behind)
Choose the PSP H.264 preset
After encoding, place file without renaming (it'll be named MAQxxxxx.MP4) into the /MP_ROOT/100ANV01/ folder of the PSP

AVI 4x3 source
ffmpegx 0.0.9x r1 (this is a version behind)
Choose the PSP H.264 preset
Go to the Video tab and change the Video Size to 272 x 208
After encoding, place file without renaming (it'll be named MAQxxxxx.MP4) into the /MP_ROOT/100ANV01/ folder of the PSP

The last two are not ideal, but they work.
ffmpegx can be a pain to set up.

• Design Police | Bring bad design to justice.
  Woop, woop, it's the sound of the police
  (tags: design stickers)

While I was off getting other people custom cartoons, Erica was conspiring behind my back to get me a custom Laugh-Out-Loud Cats!

After Doom and Quake, I pretty much left the PC and filled my FPS-itch with Marathon and its sequels on the Mac. In recent years, though, it became economical to build a cheap PC that could play late-90s/early '00s PC games just fine, and those games are often available in cheap bundles. So in between Wii sessions I've been fitting in some recent-retro-gaming. The hoopla over Bioshock got me interested in that development team's earlier games: System Shock and System Shock 2. I couldn't get SS to run past the first room, but SS2 ran just fine once I found a magical config file setting on a forum somewhere.

SS2 has two things going for it: it's got a good story that unrolls steadily through the whole game and it's almost frustratingly hard. I mean, your freakin' laser pistol falls apart every 10 times you shoot it!* It's also frightfully flexible in terms of how your character develops -- you can be a shoot-everything marine or a smarty-pants tech or a creepy-brain psionics guy, or you can try and mix and match skills from all three areas as get get "cyber" upgrades. I probably didn't take proper advantage of the subtleties of this system, and I'm sure that hurt me as I moved into the last section of the game (more on that in just a moment). The oddest part of the game is right at the beginning when you go through 3 years of training in the Space Navy**, where each year is represented by walking through a shuttle bay door, watching a loading screen, and then reading a little story about what happened on that tour of duty.

So in the last section of the game you go out into the big biomass that's glommed onto your spaceship*** and the game goes from hard to really-freaking-hard. Hard enough that I kinda stalled out on the game a few months ago. But I still wanted to see how the story ended, so last night I cheated. (I felt better about myself when, in the course of searching for these cheat codes, I read someone else's account of "I only made it through the end of the game by using cheat codes.") Even all god-moded up, there were some jumping puzzles and such that took me a while to get through.

FuzzyCo grade: B+

* I exaggerate. Slightly.
** Or whatever it was called.
*** Do I need to shout SPOILER for an eight year-old game?

George Pelecanos is one of the writers of The Wire and The Night Gardener, while not actually set in the same universe (as we'd say in the scifi world), feels very much The Wire-esque. Of course, Pelecanos has been writing these sorts of books for longer than The Wire has been on the air, so I suppose The Wire is very Pelecanos-esque. Whichever and whatever, I'm really glad to have discovered his writing--it'll be another way to satisfy my Wire fix when the series comes to it's all-too-soon end.

The Night Gardener is set in Washington, DC and suburban Maryland (not far from the seedy Baltimore of The Wire) and follows some just-trying-to-do-their-jobs homicide cops as they try to solve several murders. The death of a young man might be connected to some decades-old serial killings, but this is no flashy Bones or CSI and these cops are on no great crusade.

"How do you solve a murder? Tell me. 'Cause I'd really like to know."

"What are you talking about?"

"Would finding the killer raise those kids back from the dead? Would it bring closure to the families? What would it solve, exactly?" Ramone shook his head bitterly. "I lost the idea a long time ago that I was accomplishing anything. Occasionally I put assholes away for life, knowing they can't kill again. That's how I speak for the fallen few. But as far as solving goes? I don't solve shit. I go to work every day and I try to protect my wife and kids from the bad things that are out there. That's my mission. That's all I can do."

We also get to see things from the perspective of criminals and school children (just like on The... alright, I'll stop now).

FuzzyCo grade: A

That should be a lovely mustache button from the Moustache Factory. Worse, the just-a-plain-mustache button is not currently for sale. Where Is My Muuuuuuustahce?!?!?

Cloverfield is awesome!

There have been plenty of monster movies told from the perspective of ordinary people -- most zombie movies are, for example -- but I think this is the first giant-monster movie (or kaiju, as we say in Japan) that follows a group of ordinary New Yorkers as they just try to flee the city. The ubiquity of video cameras these days certainly makes the movie's central conceit plausible -- that is, the entire movie is filmed from the point-of-view of a consumer camera that the protagonists happened to be using to film a going-away party. (There's a funny shot when, moments after the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty has come bouncing down the street, three or four other people are standing in front of it with digital cameras and camera phones.) The handheld camera and Hud's* voice constantly coming from just behind the camera really create a sense of intimacy that makes the terrifying moments even more frightening.

A lot has been made of the secrecy surrounding this film and the appearance of the monster ("Cloverfield" is, for example, just one in a series of code names the movie has had that just happened to stick). But I don't think are really any Sixth Sense-level spoilers in the film. Not that I'm going to give anything away, but I really think this film is much more about the journey than the destination.

FuzzyCo grade: A

* Chicago comedian T.J. Miller.

P.S. The one reason not to see the movie is if you get nauseous from hand-held camera work. Much of the movie is definitely filmed in shaky-cam and one of our movie-watching crew says he only saw about 10% of the movie, from looking away to avoid puking.

I think Superbad was even more vulgar than we expected it to be, but was also a lot more sweet and touching than we expected. What an odd combination.

FuzzyCo grade: B+

The 1998 LucasArts adventure game Grim Fandango has wonky controls, a couple of game-stopping bugs (especially when played on modern hardware), and some annoyingly obscure inventory puzzles. But it also has an engaging story unlike any other game -- a noir mystery set in the Aztec Land of the Dead. Oh, and a gorgeous soundtrack. It was well worth the trouble playing through.

FuzzyCo grade: A-

Thanks to the new bar at the Chicago Comedy Company Theater and Lillie's desire to have as many legal bartenders as possible, Erica and I are now Illinois BASSET* certified bartenders. Thanks to a two-hour online course and test we know all about Illinois liquor laws, how to cut off intoxicated customers, and how bad alcohol is for lil' fetuses, etc.

The online course was as laughably bad as you might imagine. Typos abounded: you should always check a "diver's license" because it might be "faudulent". There were videos about dealing with customers that I'm pretty sure were filmed in Wisconsin, for two reasons. One, in a video suggesting that you could "slow down" heavy drinkers by suggesting food or a glass of water, the girl responds to the suggestion of food by ordering some "cheese balls". And two, the actors' natural friendliness and affability is evident in every scene. In the one about cutting someone off, the 'drunk' says "I'd really like another drink" and when told "no" responds with two minutes of apologies about getting so 'crazy'.

One neat thing about this certification, other than the nifty certificates we got to print out ourselves at the end of the course, is that it marks the checking-off of a to-do item Erica and I have had since the start of our relationship. Back when we doing the chatting that turned into flirting that turned into going out, one of our recurring topics of conversation was Erica's casting about for a second job. She was thinking of picking up a bartender job somewhere and wasn't sure what sort of training or certification was required. I did the research and discovered that those hundreds-or-thousands of dollars 'bartender schools' are not required -- in Chicago you just need your BASSET license. So I offered to pay for the class and test for her birthday and take the test with her. Circumstances changed and we never did take the class, until now. So, oddly, sitting around on a Saturday afternoon taking online quizzes was somehow romantic.

* Beverage Alcohol Sellers and Servers Education and Training

I watched a screener of Chasin' Gus' Ghost, a new documentary about jugbands of the '20s and their influence on the '60s folk music explosion and hence on modern rock music. And about modern jugband music. And about current efforts to recognize many of the early performers, often with new grave makers. And it's that sort of "and... and..." that is the film's main weakness -- the filmmaker just found too much cool stuff and tried to cram it all into the doc. As much as I love jugband music, 2 hours might be just a little too much, all at once.

FuzzyCo grade: B+

I really enjoyed the first two Jumper books by Stephen Gould and so I was a little nervous about the upcoming movie adaptation (as was Gould himself last year). I mean, a bad movie doesn't actually hurt the books, of course, but you don't want something you like dissed by a terrible adaptation. So it was interesting to discover that Gould had gone in an new "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" direction with the latest Jumper book.

The movie, as might be expected, changes some of the 'rules' of teleportation and history of the world that Gould had established in the books. In the books, Davy Rice is (probably) the first teleporter in the world and his interactions with the authorities reflect the uncertainy they have coming to grips with his unusual abilities. In the movie, teleporters have been around for centuries and there exists a secret organization dedicated to killing them. Davy is introduced to the new world by another Jumper who has already been fighting back at that organization. So the new book, Jumper: Griffin's Story, inhabits that new world entirely and is the backstory of that new character.

There's a certain degree of similarity of Davy and Griffin's stories -- I suppose partly because they're both, essentially, coming of age stories. But it was still a great read and I'm actually excited to see the movie now -- I want to see what Griffin's like after all he went through in the book!

FuzzyCo grade: A

Dirty Chai = (Soy) Chai + a shot of espresso.

I only heard of it recently from Sean Bonner, but they knew it by name at my local Starbucks. Turns out it's been around since at least July 2006.

It's not just the caffiene -- the espresso really lends to/intensifies the earthy flavors of the chai. It's a perfect winter drink.

Erica and I really only have time for about two regular TV shows -- usually that's The Office and whichever of ANTM/Project Runway is on at the moment. With the writer's strike taking our Michael and Jim and Pam away from us*, we've been catching up on some quality television of the last few years. Specifically, right now we're powering through Arrested Development and we just finished Season One.

Do I have to tell you all the ways the show is great? You've all already seen it, right? I mean, Christopher kept looking at us like idiots when we didn't respond to his cheery "Annyong!"

FuzzyCo grade: A

* Don't get me wrong -- we support the strike. But I can still be first-world-inconvenienced.

Dan (H) is very kindly helping me fill the mustache-shaped hole in my life.

Born Standing Up is Steve Martin's memoir of his stand-up career. That career was, more or less, "I worked really hard for years and had a couple of lucky breaks along the way and then I got famous." The details are, of course, what makes the story and Martin provides engrossing ones. Also fascinating, especially in my usual "casting about for my artistic purpose" state, is that Martin was pursuing an "avante-garde" comedy by age 20. The passage where he decides this also provides my favorite piece of advice from the book:

[As a postscript to a letter to a friend, Martin writes:]
I have decided my act is going to go avant-garde. It is the only way to do what I want.

I'm not sure what I meant, but I wanted to use the lingo, and it was seductive to make these pronouncements. Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.

FuzzyCo grade: A

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Zombie Ninja Pro-Am has no Zombies or Ninjas in the game. The Pro-Am part is accurate, however, because it's mostly a golf game. Mostly. After you shoot the ball down the course with a fairly standard golf mechanic, you have to fight your way down the course as Shake or Frylock, through a variety of monsters from the series (Turk-e-trons, the giant Crabs from when Carl used the Enlarging Ray on his privates, etc). There are eight golf levels and three more levels that are golf cart races against the frat aliens (DP and Skeeter).

I'm not going to review the game (as much as I really review games anyway) because I do some very occasional contract work for Midway. But I will note that I've finally given back to a community that's helped me with tons of games -- I wrote a game faq!

Are you tired of the whole Pirate vs Ninja thing? So are they...

Go vote for this Apelad t-shirt! (Voting is almost over, so quick-quick!)