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July 24, 2003
Fraternal Understudies
We had a Fratricide rehearsal last night to plug-in Zach Ward, who's understudying Mike Burns. Homer had scheduled two rehearsals and a meeting to get Zach up to speed, but it just took the one rehearsal. Somehow it doesn't seem fair -- the rest of us had to work for weeks (and the actors worked a lot harder than I did) to get the show where it is now, and Zach can just waltz in and be ready to go in a few hours (he did have to come in off-book (that is, with his lines memorized. Is anyone reading this who didn't know what that meant?)). It's not that Zach is so brilliant (I mean, he is, but my point is...) there's just something about coming into a show where everyone else already knows what's supposed to happen that makes everything easier.
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)
Stage 15
We're watching the Tour de France in our house. Which is to say, Shaun is watching the Tour and I can't not watch the TV if it's on, so I am, too. I knew I was finally hooked when the TiVo screwed up taping stage 15 (a real nail biter, let me tell you) and I made the effort to go to the web to watch the video clips. Man, I need to get on my bike, more.
Posted by Fuzzy at 9:49 AM | Comments (0)
July 22, 2003
Much Better
In the end, The Science Project went rather well -- counting movies we made in rehearsals at the Museum, we made 18 short films and most of them are pretty good.
I was all set to junk my car, but Ray at the garage convinced me to put a new engine in. He even offered to help me fix up some of the fiddly bits wrong with the car. ("I just love those old cars, man.")
And the terrible, terrible thing turned out OK. Maybe even (in a round-about and horrible way) a good thing. Huh.
Posted by Fuzzy at 3:57 PM | Comments (0)
July 18, 2003
Terrible, terrible day
Terrible, terrible night last (for reasons I won't share - so there). I got up at 4 am to get the tapes and DVDs ready for the Science Project for today (the tapes I theoretically could have gotten ready before this week, but I can't make a DVD of the day's shows until the day is over).
And now I'm sitting in a parking lot of a nursing home in Northlake, just off 290. I was on my ways to another west suburb for day-job-work and my car blew up. The operating assumption is that I've blown a rod (I found a cool chunk of metal inside the engine that I can't even figure out where it came from).
AAA just called me back to follow up on the tow truck that's an hour late. Boo.
My car certainly has its quirks -- it doesn't like to start in cold weather, no power steering, failed the Illinois emissions test rather spectactularly. But it's almost as old as I am (1974 Datsun 260Z just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it) and I'm not feeling so hot all the time myself, so I can sympathize. I hope it can be saved (OK, almost any car can be saved. I hope it can be saved for less than the cost of the car itself).
In happier news, Nick Green of the Chicago Reader reviewed Fratricide and said nice things. He said I gave the show a "crisp precision throughout". Cool. Glad to know it.
OK, they've promised me the tow truck will be here in 20 minutes. I didn't eat any breakfast this morning (and now the K key is popping off this keyboard. Great.). OK, I'll stop complaining. Hey Man, life's a bitch, lemme buy you a beer (ha! Fratricide call-back! But you didn't know that because you haven't seen the show yet!)
Ah, I see the tiny broken piece of plastic on the k key. I'll leave it off and try to super glue it, I guess. I wonder if you can buy just one replacement key for an Apple iBook? Or if you happen to have a spare k key lying around, send it my way, would you?) (How do you keep typing k if the key is broken, Fuzzy? I'm typing right on the little rubber button that sits under platic key top. I imagine if you were a better typist than I, you could take all the keys off and let the keys massage your fingers, like those sandals with the knobby plastic bottoms.)k
UPDATE: It's a hole in the engine. It'll be a couple grand to get a newish engine. Poop.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)
July 17, 2003
Day 1, done
I just got back from the first day of the Science Project, and boy are my arms tired.
Seriously, I'm exhausted. I was up until 4:30 am, taking care of last details and organizing the practice movies we had made so we could show them while we were making new ones today. I hit some seriously sound problems at about 4:00 am and decided to give up after a half an hour. Got some sleep and all that.
Today we had sound problems at the museum, too. I shake my fist at you, sound.
It all makes me rather nervous, because I can't be there tomorrow (I shake my fist at you, day job).
But we made some nice little movies today, notwithstanding the comments of the grumpy lady at the very end of the day.
Posted by Fuzzy at 4:21 PM
Not that you asked...
My best advice to a young producer/director? Learn to delegate, so you aren't sitting on your office floor at 2:30 am the night before a show, cutting up quarter-page flyers. I'm just saying...
Posted by Fuzzy at 2:42 AM | Comments (0)
July 16, 2003
Science Project is a go!
I was out at the Museum today to do our tech run-through for The Science Project. It was a pretty fast tech, because the Museum staff had set most of it up for me (ahhh, so nice to be working with competent people). And it's really just projecting video and playing sound. I guess some of the other groups have complicated setups. Not me.
So... the cast has one last get together tonight -- we're going to go over some last-minute details and watch some award winning shorts to steal their ideas open our minds to the possibilities of short film. And then tomorrow at 10 am we start making movies!
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:18 PM
Just call me Fuzz
The New City came out today and Nina Metz has given Fratricide what can only be described as a rather nice review.
"interesting and often very funny", "amazingly novel", and "wholly worthwhile" are, I believe, the pull quotes from the piece.
The line she references about listening to Dave and shopping at the Gap was an ad-lib by Brian that Homer asked him not to do anymore, because it pooches a joke in a later scene (so don't come to the show just to hear that line). And my name is spelled "Fuzz Gerdes" in the review for some reason. I mean, some of my friends do call me Fuzz, and so I guess I'm glad that Nina feels so close to me that she can call me that in public... (I think I'm batting 1000 for nitpicking-about-details-in-good-reviews).
Posted by Fuzzy at 4:30 PM | Comments (0)
July 15, 2003
Homer Lynx
Opening night of Fratricide went well. Homer packed the place with friendly faces, so we'll see how the show is received by a more strangerly audience next week. And I guess there were press in attendance, so we'll see if reviews come out.
I don't think it's traditional for a director to give the producer a gift on opening night, but Homer was so stressed through the process of writing, producing, and acting in this show, that I wanted to give him something. Video games play a recurring role in the show and Homer mentioned that his favorite video game system was the old Atari Lynx (an early handheld gaming system). So I tracked one down on Ebay (actually, the tracking down wasn't the hard part, it was winning an auction. I lost 6 or 7 auctions for Lynxes before I won the one I gave him).
Posted by Fuzzy at 1:20 AM
July 11, 2003
Real Fast...
Fratricide opens tonight at 10:30. If you're a Ben Taylor-fan (and who isn't), he'll be there... pushing "play" on the CD player. (Ben joined us at the last minute when we discovered that Noah would need about 3.5 hands to run all of the sound and light cues. Noah is talented, but not a mutant. Well, not that kind of mutant.)
Everything came together beautifully at our last tech run through and I can heartily recommend this sketch show that my friend Homer wrote and I directed. Especially if you like mean-spirited and self-loathing humor about young men, some of whom are gay.
Also, Bare has a show at the Playground tonight at 8:00. We're up first, followed by three delightful groups.
And Don and Jen are getting married tomorrow. Unlike the last two items, I'm not mentioning this to try to entice you to the event (oh, yeah, by the way, that's what I was trying to do with the above two items -- entice you to come to the events. I'm not typing for my health, here, people.) but rather to delight you with the notion that even a hideous monster like Don can find love in this world.
Posted by Fuzzy at 9:22 AM | Comments (1)
July 8, 2003
Shhh....
I'm used to having my ears be all clogged up -- sinus problems, you know. But just before the 4th, it got really bad and I decided it was worth a trip to the doctor. I probably had an ear infection. Or ear cancer. Or something super-serious.
Ear wax. "Impacted Cerumen." Oh.
So, a visit to my friendly (really) otolaryngologist and his little vacuum cleaner and voila -- I can hear. I can hear everything! Everything sounds really weird. I have to wonder how long I've been not hearing things. High-pitched sounds are especially loud and a lot of things sound very echo-y. My own voice sounds funny to me (as K. said, "it's sounded that way to me for awhile, I'm glad we're finally on the same page now.")
Posted by Fuzzy at 9:44 AM | Comments (0)
July 2, 2003
Experiments web page up
The Museum of Science and Industry has put up a webpage for the Experiments... Science+Art performance series. That we are, you know, a part of.
Their page links straight to the FuzzyCo home page here, rather than the Science Project specific page. Which means, I suppose, that I have to keep things clean here on the main page for the next few weeks. Not that I'm usually all potty-mouthed up here or anything, I suppose I just like to think we're all adults here at FuzzyCo and I could launch into some naughty discussion at any moment. (I also suppose that using the words "potty-mouthed" and "naughty" reveals how very innocent I really am.)
Posted by Fuzzy at 2:54 PM
July 1, 2003
"The Movie"
The last (as in, second) show of our mini-run at Lakeshore Theater went fine. We had about the same number of people at the show (60 or so). Ben was joined by keyboardist Pete Prezzano on music -- again everyone noticed how much it added to have a live score. And Don Hall jumped in at the last minute to VJ the show and he only screwed one thing up, which is pretty good.
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:15 AM