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July 31, 2004
All-Star Neutrino Invitational
Last night I was a camera guy for the All-Star Neutrino Invitational -- a Neutrino Video Project with participants from all the different cities that do the show -- New York, Seattle, Washington DC, and Chicago.
Posted by Fuzzy at 4:21 PM
Roadtrip - Panna II
Alex took us to Panna II for dinner last night. Ker-azzy lights everywhere. It was somebody else's birthday, so we got the full effect with a great Indian Happy Birthday song and light show.
And the food was great and cheap.
Posted by Fuzzy at 4:08 PM | Comments (1)
July 30, 2004
Roadtrip - Hello NYC
We made it! We zoomed straight into midtown and saw a toothless lady beating on a guy in the middle of the street. Yay New York! Now we're at Erica's friend Alex's place and I'm getting all up on his wireless.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)
Roadtrippers
There are tons of other Chicago improvisors making this same trip by road and plane. These guys left Chicago just before us and we chased them across 3 states and finally caught them at a Denny's in Pennsylvania (I think. The states all blur together).
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:50 PM | Comments (0)
Roadtrip - on the way
17 hours of this (only mostly dark). Sammy drove the whole way. KOKO have a lot of fun together. Which is good... for them.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:44 PM | Comments (0)
July 29, 2004
Roadtrip!
In just a few hours I'm going to get in a car with Erica and three other members of KOKO and hit the road for New York. KOKO is going to be performing at the Del Close Improv Marathon (they perform Saturday, 7/31, at 2:30 pm).
Originally I was just going to tag along to visit New York and support KOKO at their show and see a little improv. Then Kurt called -- because so many people from around the country were going to be in town for the DCM, Neutrino was opening up their Friday night show to members of the other Neutrino project casts. Would anyone from the Chicago Neutrino Project be in New York on Friday night? Well, me (and Andrea Swanson). So we'll both be part of the Neutrino Video Project show on Friday night at 10 pm 9:30 pm at the PIT (154 W. 29th St., between 6th and 7th Ave).
Then Asaf called. "I see you're going to be in New York on Friday. Would you like to sit-in with The Sickest F***in' Stories I Ever Heard?" But, of course. So I'll be the "bartender" in the New York SFSIEH, also at the PIT, Friday night at 11 pm.
Two shows -- not bad for "just tagging along". (I looooove getting invited to do shows. I don't know if people assume I'm too busy, or if they just think I'm a talentless hack, but I don't get asked to do shows very often. So ask me to do your show, bucko!)
Saturday night we'll be seeing Avenue Q -- I'm looking forward to some foul-mouthed puppets. And Sunday morning it's back in the KOKO-mobile to return to Chicago. I'm taking a wireless laptop, but we'll see if I have time or inclination to post anything.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:31 PM | Comments (0)
July 28, 2004
The motorcycle parking story
I often park my motorcycle like this. I don't even want to know if it's legal in Chicago. I see lots of other people doing it and I only park between two cars when there's plenty of room -- both because I'm polite and because I don't want a car knocking my bike over trying to get in or out of a parking spot.
And, seriously, parking is one of the main reasons I ride a motorcycle in Chicago. It takes 15-20 minutes off any journey that involves trying to find parking. It took Shaun half an hour to find a parking spot near our house last night.
So... on Saturday night my friend Paris Green asked me to come take some pictures at the Belmont Burlesque Revue. I showed up at The Playground just before midnight and parked right out front, about 4 feet in front of a big old Buick with custom plates -- "WAKE UP 9".
A few minutes later my friend Beth came inside and said, "the guy whose car you parked in front of is all worked up about how close you are to his car. I told him me had plenty of room on both sides of his car. He asked if I knew whose bike it was. I said I did, but that it was irrellevant because he wouldn't have any problem getting out. He asked if I worked here. I said 'no' and that I was going to stop talking to him because the whole conversation was ridiculous. The kicker was that he said he wasn't leaving yet. Gah!"
Beth didn't say so explicitly, but I assumed that the guy had gone on his way following his conversation with her. So I wasn't thinking about him at all a few minutes later when an older man walked slowly across the front of the stage towards the bathrooms. He was walking slowly and rather hunched over, but wearing a brightly patterned short sleeve short and a bad wig. "Wow," I thought, "burlesque shows sure draw out some creepy audience members." He was peering around looking for something and it looked like he was either looking for the bathrooms or trying to peek into the dressing room where the girls were changing. "Creep," I thought, "he's probably trying to peek."
Some of the guys from the show were hanging out back by the dressing room and I heard Mark say, "Can I help you, sir?" A short conversation ensued and then Noah was leading the man towards me. "Fuzzy, you're parked in front of this guy..."
Gah, indeed. I instantly decided I didn't want to repeat Beth's conversation, so before Noah was even finished with his sentence I had grabbed my keys and headed out the door. Fortunately, the cycle started right up (nothing more embarrassing than a non-starting motorcycle when you're trying to be snotty) and I zoomed the bike 30 feet down the street and parked 5 feet behind a different car.
"Sorry to be a problem," I said to the guy as I headed back into the theater. Dammit. I really wish I could be a jerk sometimes. "That's alright," the creepy jerk mumbled.
And the show was delightful (how does Tomas swallow that balloon?).
And of course when we walked outside after the show, WAKE UP 9 was still parked in the same spot. I shook my fist at the sky. "Damn you, creepy jerky mumbly guy, where ever you are."
We hopped on the bike and headed north. And there he was! Standing on the corner of Halsted and Roscoe, right out in front of Roscoe's, his floral shirt gleaming under the street lights, just standing and staring his little hunched eyes straight out into the street, surrounded by the swirling gaiety of the 1am happy boys of Boystown.
I had 5 seconds to yell out something mean or sarcastic or wittily biting. And I choked. The light changed and off we zoomed into the night. Good night, creepy jerky mumbly staring guy, good night.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:30 PM | Comments (2)
At least we got socks
How the mighty have fallen -- undefeated most of the season, we lost again last night. It was a nail bitter -- a tied game going into the bottom of the fifth (kickball games only have five innings). And they got one in.
At least we had nice socks -- Strange Cargo had these tube socks in (more-or-less) our team colors. 13 for $14. What a deal!
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:42 AM | Comments (0)
July 26, 2004
Andrew Bird
Andrew Bird (with Kevin O'Donnell) @ Summer on Southport, 7/25/2004
Thanks to Chicagoist pointing out that you don't have to pay the suggested donation at street fairs we got in for the $6 Erica had in her wallet. The woman at the gate told us that all the money was going to the school but the poster says that the street fair benefits the Southport Neighbors Association. Sounds like a giant scam that I'd investigate... if I cared.
Anyway, spending so little left us enough to get meat on a stick. Oddly for meat on a stick, Erica was complaining that it seemed almost too healthy.
I only know a few people in Chicago who blog and we ran into a bunch of them (well, 3) at this show: Allison and Michael of Kady Ditch and Jessa and Kenan. Kenan took a much better picture and wrote much more intelligently than I would about Andrew Bird's music.
Posted by Fuzzy at 4:49 PM | Comments (1)
July 23, 2004
A little touch of home
So today's edition of NTK (a techy news & gossip newsletter from the UK) has a reference to an archive of found pictures. I'm browsing the dozens of pictures from all over the world and then I said to myself, "Hey, I know that sign... and those tattoos. That's the Town Hall Pub."
The Town Hall has four things to recommend it: plenty of Grateful Dead in the jukebox (if that's a good thing to you), friendly staff, cheap shots, and... it's close to a theater (and theater people like their drinking).
The Town Hall is just down the street from the old WNEP Theater space, so it was our usual hang-out after shows (and I believe Town Hall is still the sponsor of WNEP's Theatre League Softball team). And now that The Playground is in that space, it's become that theater's post-show spot.
And one of the Town Hall's patrons needs to be a little more careful about which directory of their harddrive they open up for P2P sharing.
Posted by Fuzzy at 4:42 PM | Comments (0)
July 22, 2004
Overheard at Punkin' Donuts
At the Dunkin' Donuts/Baskin-Robbins on Clark and Belmont:
"Look, they have Pistachio ice cream. You know, the green ice cream with the little peanuts in it."
(My OCB made me check the Baskin-Robbins website: they actually have Pistachio Almond -- Pistachio-flavored ice cream with almonds. She was wrong twice.)
Posted by Fuzzy at 4:32 PM
Chicago.Metroblogging
I've started blogging over at Chicago.Metroblogging. It is, as the name implies, Chicago-oriented writing. I'll likely cross-post everything I post there here also (though not vice versa -- there will be stuff here that's not there). But there's plenty of fine writing over there that's not by me.
Posted by Fuzzy at 4:18 PM | Comments (1)
"It gets dimmer."
Danny's Tavern in Wicker Park is a house that's been converted into a bar. It still has the comfortable feel of hanging out at a house party (though evidently back in the day you could hang out in the "kitchen" or on the back balcony). It's also the the site of a monthly reading series. A couple weeks ago, my old Kids Around the World teammate John Beer emailed me and asked if Bare would be interested in doing a special comedy version of their reading series. "Sounds great."
Shaun and I (and Erica) showed up last night promptly at 6:45 to discover that place was still locked, so we had some chicken (a little dry, but tasty. excellent mashed potatoes) at Nick's Pit Stop around the corner.
Back at Danny's, we met John's co-host (whose name I unfortunately can't remember). "Here," he said, pointing to a small area beside the DJ booth, "is where we usually put the readers. Will it be enough space?"
I looked around. It was enough space -- one of our first shows was on a stand-up club stage that was about 5x10' -- but I was a little concerned about how dark it was -- candles and two lamps with yellow bulbs and a single yellow-bulbed track-light were all the light in the room. It was hard to make out his face. "Can it get any brighter in here?" I asked.
"Actually," he said, "it gets dimmer. But people's eyes adjust."
Sigh.
And, actually, the show went fine. John and his co-host managed to swing one more track light at the "stage". We kept the jumping around to a minimum and concentrated on verbal humor. And the audience was very attentive to our mangling of the life of James Joyce. And we got to say hello to Jessa.
But still. "It gets dimmer." Lordy.
Posted by Fuzzy at 3:50 PM | Comments (1)
July 21, 2004
Late plugs
A late plug is better than no plug, I suppose. Gapers Block (one of several fine Chicago-oriented blogs) just added a plug for tonight's Danny's Reading Series featuring, cough, cough, Bare. (Thanks to Jessa for plugging the plug.)
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:27 PM | Comments (0)
Denied
So, kickball was rained out last night. It worked out for the best, because otherwise I would have been late to the Vidiocy showing and wouldn't have seen Candyland (it was shown first).
I hopped into a cab at Chase Park and the cab driver told me he wouldn't take me to Belmont & Broadway -- he was on his way north to pick someone up who had called for a cab and had just picked me up because he assumed he could drop me off on the way. I guess I understand (I'm a little too reasonable sometimes) but it was raining! Because of an accent barrier it took us a block to figure it out (he thought I said Balmoral & Broadway -- I thought he was asking what route I wanted to take to Belmont). Sometimes I wish I could get a good angry on -- yell at the cab driver and glower for an hour or two or something. Instead, I said "all right, then", got out of the cab, waited at the corner and caught another one fairly quickly.
For some reason I decided it important to document my wet self in the second cab.
At the Vidiocy showing I met up with Candyland stars Shaun and Jin Kim.
Candyland was, as I said, shown first. People laughed at all the right parts, so I was happy. The other 7 semi-finalists were all fine films. A standout, in my mind, was Rick Rios' Sugar (starring, full disclosure, my co-worker Scott Anderson) (Sugar ended up coming in fourth).
Candyland was not one of the four finalists. And it's chock-full of copyright-infringing songs and dialogue (the dialogue I might get away with as parody, but not the music) so I don't think we'll be submitting it to any other festivals. So onto the shelf it goes. Good-bye, Candyland. The short time we had together was... short.
Death (Shaun Himmerick)
Antonius Block (Jin Kim)
The game
Megan Diemer in one of the alternate endings
Jin Kim and Brian Goodman in another of the alternate endings
It was all a dream...
Posted by Fuzzy at 3:44 PM
Pop
I got iced tea, she got orange pop.
Posted by Fuzzy at 2:55 PM | Comments (1)
July 20, 2004
Kady Ditch website
The Kady Ditch website, featuring pictures I took of the band, is now live.
We didn't make it to Uncommon Ground in time last night, so we missed their song in the open mic competition. And they didn't win, so no encore. But there are a jillion songs on their website. And Allison posted more of the Holga shots.
We were late because we at the opening night of LiveWire Theater's Much Ado About Nothing. Erica and her partner Jeff Gandy choreographed two dances in the show. (Their new company is called We're Dancing Y'all! -- "choreography for non-dancers".)
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:45 AM
Bare at the Gong Show
Photo by Cholley Kuhaneck
Bare performed at the Gong Show this weekend. An hour before the show we changed our minds about the act we were going to do. So we showed up at the theater with a box of snaps and a couple ideas. Shaun wrote a stand-up routine about sex and dating and then I used the snaps to negatively-reinforce him whenever he swore. Which was, as usual, a lot. Pow. Pow pow pow.
We didn't win, but on a night full of gonging, neither did we get gonged. That's a victory in my book.
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:42 AM
July 19, 2004
Muppet Butts
Muppet Butts, Beatnix, Roscoe & Halsted
Posted by Fuzzy at 4:55 PM | Comments (1)
Kady Ditch vs Holga
I finally got back the pictures I took of Kady Ditch with my Holga camera and got the negatives scanned in. Great, moody, we're-a-hard-living-band-who-know-hard-lives-of-pain stuff.
Update: Allison posted even more of the pictures.
Posted by Fuzzy at 4:29 PM
More semi-action
Our entry in the latest Vidiocy contest, Candyland, is one of ten eight semi-finalists (out of 49 entries). The showing is tomorrow night (Tuesday, 7/20) at the Lakeshore Theater.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:06 AM
July 16, 2004
We put the semi- in semi-finalist
Semi like a truck, that is -- I just found out today that Ted McGillicutty, Man of Action has been selected as one of 15 semi-finalists (out of 113 entries) in the Second City Shortcuts Film Festival. The semi-finalists will be narrowed down by a committee to a field of 10 and shown on July 31 and August 7.
It's odd how un-nervous I am about this -- probably because we did the real work so long ago (though my contact did suggest that I color-correct part of Ted before I handed in my final copy). So much of my background is in live performance that it still feels a little magical to me that we have this tape and people can see it who haven't seen it before and they enjoy it as much as people who saw it before.
Update: Here's the list of the 15 semi-finalists
Posted by Fuzzy at 3:04 PM
July 15, 2004
Sadly, I report
Well, the round-about way to say it is... we're not undefeated anymore. In fact, we were pretty soundly not-undefeated. And worse, it'll (probably) be on National TV. HGTV (Home and Garden Television) is producing a show called "The Games We Loved" and they sent a camera guy out last night to interview some kickball players and get some of the game action on tape.
I was a little surprised to see that the camera the guy had was basically the same as mine, and that, even though he'd brought a tripod, he did a lot of his shooting hand-held. I'm more professional than I'd thought.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:39 PM | Comments (0)
5-E-X-Y
On the Red Line this morning.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:18 PM
July 14, 2004
Neutrino Scotland tickets available
You can now purchase tickets online for the Neutrino shows at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I'll be doing the August 6-10 shows. Just so you know. When you're buying your tickets.
Posted by Fuzzy at 1:35 PM | Comments (0)
Haagen-Jerry's Chocolate Peanut Butter and Peanut Butter and Chocolate
It's my new decadence -- combine in one bowl: Häagen Dazs Chocolate Peanut Butter (which is chocolate ice cream with peanut butter ribbon) and Ben and Jerry's Peanut Butter Cup (which is peanut butter ice cream with peanut butter cups). It's got it all: chocolate ice cream, peanut butter ice cream, chocolate chunks from the peanut butter cups, real peanut butter, and that peanut butter-flavored-mush that's inside the peanut butter cups. It just screams, I got your "you got your chocolate in my peanut butter" right here, baby.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:12 PM | Comments (2)
July 13, 2004
Candyland
Right now I'm waiting for a DVD of Candyland to burn. I think I'm done editing, but I'll bounce it off Erica tonight and Kyle tomorrow and see what they say.
Tonight was a little tweaking of the edits, but mostly sound. Lots and lots of sound. Surprisingly for something shot at the beach, the sound isn't too bad. Every now and then you can hear someone in the background yelling at their kids (or you could until I went through and replaced those sections with generic wave crashings).
Bing! It's done. That was fast. (Of course, the thing is only six minutes long.)
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:05 PM | Comments (0)
Memphis Fest cancelled
On the off chance that you're a Bare fan in Memphis and had already blocked off September 2-5, you can unblock those dates because the Memphis Comedy Fest has been cancelled.
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:55 PM | Comments (0)
Candyland
I'm waiting for a section of a movie to render right now (it's gonna be in black and white and I shot the whole thing in color, so I have to strip the color from each clip, which is turning out to take longer than I expected) (oops - I was applying the same effect three times to each clip -- no wonder it was slow).
I'm editing FuzzyCo's latest Vidiocy entry. (The official site always seems to be a showing behind -- here's info about the current contest.) Vidiocy is yet another of Chicago's fast filmmaking projects -- this one you get three weeks or so. Which is really too long for me to handle. I lose that delicious sense of urgency I get from the 21 hours of the Fast Forward Film Festival. So I lolligag around and before I know it, it's a day or two before the due date and we have rush around as though it was the FFFF and the results suffer in comparison to people who really did spend three weeks of effort on their films.
This time we didn't do as badly, planning-wise. Shaun and I story-boarded out our ideas last week, called some friends, and planned for a shoot all day Saturday. Shooting was going to take all day and it was our last chance to shoot before the deadline, because Shaun is out of town all week for work.
Unfortunately, on Saturday, half of our cast was delayed at a charity kickball tournament. As time wore on and we got through more and more of VH1's 40 Greatest Reality TV Moments on the TiVo we realized we weren't going to be able to film everything we had planned, especially the "traveling all over Chicago" part. So we decided to chop the movie down to the part on the beach, especially convienent since the beach is a few blocks from our house.
But that generated a plot problem -- how to end the movie in its truncated form? Shaun noticed recently that all our improv training means that we're really good at coming up with beginnings, but not so great at conclusions -- on stage you can just sweep a scene away and start anew.
"Well," I said, "it's one of two endings -- either Jin wins or Death wins. ... Why don't we film both? In fact, why don't we film a dozen extra endings?"
So that's what we did -- our short film, a parody of The Seventh Seal with chess replaced by Candyland, is followed, ala 28 Days Later, by a few alternate endings.
It'll be shown Tuesday, July 20, along with the other entries, at the Lakeshore Theater.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:14 AM | Comments (0)
July 12, 2004
The new Snickers(?)
The new Snickers flavor is a bold departure from the original.
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:53 AM
July 9, 2004
My girlfriend, the supermodel
Last night I had a date with Erica to go to an art opening. I was running a little late (as usual) and a block away from the opening I ran into a union demonstration. Unions - yay. Four block detour - boo. There were these clumps of cops hanging around hospital in riot gear and I wanted to snap a few pictures, but lately I'm feeling a little nervous about taking such pictures.
The show is in the City Gallery in the Historic Water Tower and is called "On With the Show!" It features protraits by Victor Skrebneski and two other photographers (Tom Maday and Michael Voltattorni) of people who work in Chicago theaters. Erica is an Assistant Ticket Office Manager at the Goodman Theater and had been photographed by Skrebneski back in February for the show. She was nervous going in, because she had no idea how her shots had come out, which one they might use, and so on.
When I finally met up with Erica she was waiting down the block from the Water Tower. "Someone's already recognized me and said 'Nice photo'," she said. As we got to the door of the Water Tower, Skrebneski grabbed Erica and manouvered her inside. "I have a surprise for you," he said.
Nine Erica Reids, filling up an archway. Erica was blown away. She was, as someone remarked to her that night, "the Queen of the exhibit."
And the photos are (as I expected) great. He really captured Erica -- serious and beautiful for about 20 seconds, and then laughing her head off (and even more beautiful).
There were many other fine photographs, including ones of people I know from other theaters -- Alison Riley, General Manager at Second City, Vivienne Dipeolu, also from the Goodman, and Nick Sandys, Fight Director for the Lyric Opera (and others).
(Click on this picture for a pop-up enlargement)
After the reception, Erica and I headed over to Aria to try the tiny tinis (on Chicagoist's recommendation). We got one round of 5 tiny martinis each and it was the perfect classy drunken end to a great evening of Erica-rock-stardom.
Posted by Fuzzy at 3:41 PM | Comments (7)
July 8, 2004
Undefeated... by not playing
The kickball game was called on account of rain last night, so we're still undefeated. It was a shame, because just after the decision was made to call the game, it cleared right up and was all sunny and rainbowy. Oh well, more time for heading over to Carol's.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:43 PM | Comments (0)
July 7, 2004
Moon over gas station
When I was driving home from Indiana I stopped to get gas and noticed that the moon was huge and low and yellow. The klieg lights of the gas station were just off to my left, casting a long shadow of a couple getting gas for their car across the pavement. "I'll never get all these different light levels in one shot," I thought. I was wrong. (I cheated just a little with the Shadow/Highlight adjustment in Photoshop.)
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:35 PM
Happy Family!
The best thing about the July 4th weekend was spending it with my uncle and cousins and their families. I'm standing next to my Uncle Jim, who's a retired Purdue Agronomy professor. I lived in a small house that's essentially in his backyard for 3 years. Next to me is my cousin Kristi with her three kids around her. They, and her husband Todd (down at the other end), just got back from a year in Spain. My cousin John is sporting a wicked 'stache these days. My cousin Karl talks. Professionally. This trip was the first time I'd met my cousin Gretchen's child Nikolai (who's having his ears protected). Rounding out the group is family friend Charlotte and her three children. (Hey, I went right-to-left. Because it all starts with me!)
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:09 PM | Comments (1)
July 6, 2004
Happy America!
I had a delightful 4th of July with my extended family down in West Lafayette, Indiana. I got to throw water balloons and visit a prairie and drive a Model T and see Spiderman 2 and eat beer-can chicken.
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:21 PM | Comments (0)
July 2, 2004
Water fountain
Water fountain, Lincoln Park
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:28 AM
July 1, 2004
Bare
Here's Shaun and I, outside The Playground just before The Deuce last night. Picture with one of my many craptacular little digital cameras (this was the SiPix Blink, if'n you care).
Posted by Fuzzy at 6:12 PM
Jessters in Shirts
Clif and Chuck of Men in Shirts and Jesse of JoKyR and Jesster (I had to look it up to get the capitalization right) were all in town for Liz Allen and Jimmy Carrane's Individual Assessment Workshop and they all came out to see Shaun and I mug it up something terrible as Himmerick and Gerdes at the Belmont Burlesque Revue.
Posted by Fuzzy at 6:01 PM
Beta Test Car
The CTA has put these test car(s) on the Red Line. The car has more center-facing seats, which they say gives more room for standing passengers, and those iconic subway hanging straps. The car has fewer seats than a normal Red Line (54), but the same as a Brown or Orange Line train (44). Poop -- I counted while I was on the train, but now I forget. I see if the Rememberer knows.
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:44 PM
Erica
Even Erica has to wait for the train.
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:35 PM | Comments (0)
Parker
Parker is a hefty cat.
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:33 PM | Comments (0)
Sidewalk art
Sidewalk art, Winnemac, west of Broadway.
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:31 PM
Rebecca Rine @ The Elevated
Rebecca Rine at The Elevated Stand-up Showcase, June 30, 2004.
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:29 PM | Comments (0)