FuzzyCo

You know what I should be watching in my scant free time? I should be watching season 4 of The Wire so that I can catch up and start watching the current season 5 so I can stop frustrating my co-worker JKB who wants to talk about all the plot twists and turns each week. But, for some reason I got it into my head that I needed to watch Columbo. And, of course, I'm a completist so I started with the first made-for-TV movie (I'm not too crazy, however, so I haven't gone back to the pre-Falk short mystery that became a stage play that became Prescription: Murder.

There's a lot that's dated about this movie, and a certain slowness, but you can already tell why Falk's Columbo is so captivating.

FuzzyCo grade: A-

I can't let it rest, because there are other Barack Obama Miis being posted on Check Mii Out, but they're just not as good as the one Erica made. I've determined this scientifically, people. (Also, I finally got the export from Mii Editor to work so I could bring you this high-quality version. Print out your own poster at work on the work color printer. Your employer will thank you!)

To get Erica's go to Check Mii Out, Posting Plaza, Popular, Search (the magnifying glass), Change (the circular arrows), and then enter the entry number 4764-4332-9025.

And heck, why not T-Shirts too? Combine your support for Barack Obama and your love for the Nintendo Wii on a high quality(?) Cafe Press t-shirt.

Blewt fielded a team in this year's Chiditarod -- Chicago's own shopping cart race and mobile food drive. Everyone dresses up and decorates their carts, so we went as the Silly Funny Goof Gang.

The race was a lot harder than I thought it would be -- the course is just 4 miles long and there are 5 mandatory stops along the way where you have to spend at least 20 minutes each (kinda sorta like the real Iditarod). But somehow we ended the thing completely wiped and a day later I'm still sore.

The Chiditarod is heavily documented -- there were still and video cameras everywhere. The Chicago Methods Reporter is even doing a special 24-hour "journalism party" to assemble the mass of material into one coherent report. There are already hundreds of photos on Flickr -- I take so many pictures of us myself, it's fun to see yourself in others' eyes as the 'wacky other'.

Erica and I spent our Sunday acting in a short film written by our friend Matt Larsen. Should this be our Christmas card this year? More photos from behind the scenes.

• An hour and a half with Barack Obama
  (tags: politics obama)

I've definitely broken commenting for my (few) commenters who use TypeKey. Regular commenting seems to be working OK, but I'm guessing I'll break it, too, before I'm finished fixing everything.

I've finished a whole month of my self-imposed 367 Days challenge -- taking a self portrait a day for a year. Most people do 365 days, but I thought I'd be fancy and do it from birthday to birthday and take the leap year into account. So, of course, February 29 was the first day I missed. Oops.

Gary Gygax is dead and I am sleepy, so I'm off to bed. Commenting is now only a quarter broke. Probably.

I probably spent 100 times more hours just reading the D&D manuals than actually playing a campaign. Thanks, Gary.

• 1000 True Fans
  Another foray into the 'how famous do you have to be to make a living' question
  (tags: creativity life)

I suppose if you dump 2 cups of butter and sugar over anything it would taste good, but these apple dumplings were extraordinarily good. We made them without the Mountain Dew, but only because we forgot to get a can.

(via Making Light)

I've never seen Jackie Brown, but now I've read Rum Punch and if Tarantino just avoided messing with the story too much, I'm sure it's a great movie. Because it's a great book.

FuzzyCo grade: A

Shout outs to iFixit for their excellent disassembly guides, which got me in and out of Kate's iBook with a minimum of cursing and zero lost screws.

Hey, you're a jaunty little potato. Cute chef's hat. That's a nice batch of french fries you're leaning so casually against. Wait... did you make those fries? Out of your family!?!?

Dan asked me to blog my Don't Spit the Water experience from this weekend and heck if I won't.

After Don't Spit went on hiatus over the holidays, Steve asked me to challenge myself and set aside my tried-and-reasonably-true character Dr. Baron Ludwig von Evilschlager and come up with some new characters. Now, I've written before about my temptations to just improvise everything. So I decided to really challenge myself and not just come up with a new character or two but to brainstorm at least three new characters* and at least outline all of the pieces they'd need to do a DSTW show**.

Erica and I have been watching a fair amount of Yo Gabba Gabba and I thought it might be fun, and rather in the DSTW sense of humor, to play a children's TV host who sings really repetitive songs. So I came up with David, the host of Sing-a-Ding-Ding***, "Minnesota Public Television's highest rated show for children between the ages of two and two-and-a-half".

Now, having said I prepared ahead of time doesn't mean I actually assembled my costume nor created backing tracks for the songs until Saturday afternoon. But I'm happy to report that Garage Band is as easy as people say and that a vest, a kickball t-shirt, and a stocking cap make a great children's show host outfit. (I also, ironically, prepped a new Dr. Baron bit that afternoon for a midnight show that same night.)

Andrew DeWitt and Jim Fath were also debuting new characters that night, so, let's be honest, the whole show could have tanked. But, in fact, it rocked. Interestingly, just a few weeks ago Erica and Steve did a workshop with some new DSTW comedians and she had been telling them that the spits don't really matter -- what matters is if the audience is entertained. This show was a perfect example of that. We got zero spits (Steve got two during hosting bits, but that doesn't count for us comedians). But the audience had a great time and really enjoyed the show.

(And Dr. Baron went really well with the later audience as well. All in all, a good night.)

* I ended up creating four.
** Three one-minute bits, a two-minute bit, and some 10-second bits for the finale.
*** Props to Erica for that name. And for taking photos all night.

I'm feeding Shaun and Kristen's cats, and as I was leaving their place this morning, I glanced out the window to look at the top of the awning next door (I have an affection for an upside-down plastic alligator that's been there for 2 years) and there was a hawk sitting there, with a torn up pigeon in its claws. Because of the arrangement of the buildings, it was about 8 feet away from me. I tried to get my camera out, but I guess the movement spooked it, so it flew away. I went outside and I could see the hawk up in a tree in the backyard:

I went back up into Shaun's place and out on the back porch and I was able to get a couple of shots there. If you look closely, you can see the pigeon:

(Hawk? Falcon? Eagle? I invite correction or specific identification from my bird-watching friends.)

The results of this year's Chiditarod have finally been announced and Blewt's Silly Funny Goof Gang weren't very fast runners (we came in 46th out of 77, nearly an hour behind the winners) but we were awarded "Best Fashion". Yeah, that's right, we're pretty.

Well, huh -- I suppose that once you come up with the pun "deadbeet" there are only so many ways to draw it. On the left, a deadbeet icon I created for the Deadbeets website around 1996 or so. On the right, a detail from Joe Ledbetter's King of the Deadbeets from 2006 (also available in toy form, which is how I found out about it).

I'm approximately 0% Irish* so I usually don't bother wearing anything green on St. Patrick's Day. But this year I've got an Irishman I can get behind.

Pedants will point out that the feast day of St. Patrick was actually Saturday, March 15 this year (moved to avoid running into Holy Week). To which I'll respond that my local grocery store had decorations up proclaiming "Happy Shamrock Day" -- St. Patrick's Day is well on its way to the same fate that has befallen Mardi Gras in this country. Stripped of any cultural or religious significance, it'll be just another Excuse to Drink Day where you wear a seemly-arbitary color of beaded necklace.

Did I get off-track? Oops. Happy You're-Irish Day!

* I'm sure if you back far enough on my Norwegian side, there'd be some cross-North Sea genetic transfer. But if you go back far enough, we're all African cousins. Hmm... I think I'm all out of "point" today.

OK, check it -- Monday night I said of a friend of ours, "well, at least she didn't display her butt on Display Your Butt dot com." Erica asked, "is that domain available?" It was. A few photos of the Blewt crew hanging around for Chicago Underground Comedy later and Team Gerdes Plus Noah is proud to present:

The Doughty show on Thursday night was great from start to finish. The show opens early with an un-announced set from some mysterious gentlemen in beards who may or may not be called Piad are called Ron Blackmon. They did some adventurous improvisation--they weren't just jamming, they were exploring. The results, at least Thursday night, were musically interesting, but incredibly inspiring. It reminded me of the exhilaration I used to find in some of our improv theater experiments. I think I've been a little more focused lately on entertaining the audience -- which is, of course, not a bad thing at all. But I think it'd be good for me to try some more out-there stuff every now and then, again.

The Panderer's Scott Wynn possesses the ability to sound really, really enthusiastic and really mellow at the exact same time. I feel really dumb that I didn't pick up his album from the merch table. We're going to be in Austin the same time as the fellows next month, so hopefully I can pick one up then.

Photos from the show.

V. busy weekend, with many pictures. Saturday, I went to my Saturday comedy writing workshop group, to refine some material for my upcoming standup gig at the Blewtenanny. That evening, I did a show out at the Chicago Comedy Company Theater, which is in the process of becoming the Laugh Out Loud Theater. Got some shots for Display Your Butt (the classiest site that a site with that name could be).

Today, for the Easter, Erica and I took pictures of the cats and then went over to the Knights for Easter Egg decorating and NCAA basketball. So close, Dawgs, so close. Then off to Sheffield's for a viewing party of Rock of Love 2. On this week's episode, the remaining girls were confronted with their exes. Except for Ambre, who was confronted with her good friend Adam. The party tonight was a surprise party for Adam. It was great fun, but it was so noisy (many people had already watched the episode that morning) that we had to watch the episode again when we got home (yes, had to).

When Erica did the Soiree DADA show last year, the city had Jim Newberry take some really great photos that were used to good effect to promote the show -- they were printed in quite a few listings and reviews. This week Noah was downtown and noticed that one of the photos was on several banners across from the Cultural Center. Erica and I went downtown this evening and it's really pretty incredible to see my wife's (scowling, white-faced) face on multiple banners.

Given my recent experiences with movie adaptations of childhood classics, I spent most of my time while watching The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe holding my breath, waiting for the brick through the window of my childhood memories. So when I got to the end of the movie and there hadn't been any terrible* desecration of the source material I felt a sort of puzzled relief and realized that I hadn't given myself any chance to actually enjoy the movie. I'm sure the filmmaker had a loftier goal than a begrudging, "well, you didn't f' that up too bad" from his audience, but that's all I've got to give.

FuzzyCo Grade: B-

* It has been a while since I've read the Narnia books, so maybe there's something horrendous that I missed.

P.S. If nothing else, the movie gave us this:

It was pointed out to me that some of my Chicago friends, who might even have a passing interest in seeing me perform every now and then, are reading my site in a feed-reader and so don't see the handy calendar that's right up at the top of the home page. I'll note that you can also subscribe to a feed of my performance listings, but I'll try to be better about noting upcoming shows every now and then. I've got three shows coming up this weekend, all at the Playground Theater (3209 N Halsted, Chicago) so it's a good weekend to promote.

Tonight (Friday, 3/28) at 8 pm, I'm performing with my improv group Pastor of Muppets. In all modesty, we've been on kind of a roll lately and, there, I've just jinxed that. The Senate and Feast of Pedro are performing in the show as well.

Tomorrow night (Saturday, 3/29) at 10 pm, I'll be the announcer and tech guy for Don't Spit the Water -- Chicago's crazy live game show. You won't see me much, but you'll hear me all through the show.

At midnight that same night I'll be doing standup in Blewt's newest show, the Blewtenanny, hosted by the handsome Bryan Bowden. This is my first non-open mic standup appearance. Nervous much?

• LOCKHORNS ALOUD
  Jill Bernard reads the Lockhorns to you, daily
  (tags: comics comedy)

I'm on a roll with adaptations of children's books, so I watched The Golden Compass. I know there was some controversy around the movie, but dang if I didn't think it was a gorgeous, rip-rollicking adventure and I thought, even if other fans didn't, that it was very true to the spirit of the books (even if not always the letter).

FuzzyCo grade: A

Erica and I are both big Project Runway fans. A few years ago, we tried to feed our addiction with the British version of the show, Project Catwalk. We couldn't even make it through the first season -- the show focused way too much on personal conflicts between the designers back at the house, and the Brit version of Tim Gunn, Ben de Lisi, was far more an egotistical designer himself than a mentor to the neophyte designers. PC has gone on to have two more seasons, but we're too gunshy to check them out.

This year we discovered two other foreign versions of PR -- Project Runway Canada* and Designerspirene* from Norway. Designerspirene is not in English, but it's easy enough to follow along both because we know the structure of the program and because the focus is on the designs produced. Perhaps it's been a bit harder to become attached to any of the designers, because we don't really know any of their stories. (Beyond, say, the fact that Pål André seems to have a hard time getting started on any of his designs.)

But the real discovery was Project Runway Canada -- the designers were all talented, Brian Bailey looks like Philip Seymour Hoffman in a bad fake mustache, but he's a great mentor, and the focus was firmly on the clothes. It's Canada after all -- there was one bit of name-calling that was followed by, I'm totally serious, the name-caller apologizing with a sincere "that was out of line, thanks for calling out my bad behavior." And Erica said that the final collection of the winner was her favorite set of designs over all four seasons of PR.

Oh, and Iman hosts the show and she's crazy.

* Don't click these links if you don't want spoilers. Do people read footnotes? Is it too late?