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March 29, 2005
Chicago Metblog post: Guru
Posted on the Chicago Metblog: Guru
Posted by Fuzzy at 9:30 PM | Comments (0)
Guru
originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago
If nothing else, you'll know who Del Close is when I say he was the Alderman in The Untouchables who says, "I will pay you the courtesy of being frank."
But of course he was so much more than that. He was a fire-eater and stand-up comedian who became one of the first members of the first modern improvisational theater company, The Compass, and went on to devote his life to exploring the possibilities of improv as an art form. Along the way he was a teacher and inspiration to a laundry list of actors and comedians: from the Second City and original cast of Saturday Night Live, to the cast of SCTV, and the Upright Citizens Brigade, and hundreds of students at the ImprovOlympic.
For the last two years of Del's life an improv actor named Jeff Griggs helped him with his weekly errands. Now Jeff has written a newly-published memoir, Guru: My Days with Del Close.
Guru covers Del's entire life and career in interspersed chapters, but focuses on the time Jeff spent with Del. So we get a very personal portrait of a larger-than-life character that many people only knew as an intimidating teacher and director. Del was brilliant but Jeff is not afraid to show us that he was also a little crazy, sometimes smelly, a mysoganist, and a child-hater. (That's one of my Del Stories(tm) -- at a festival in Austin, TX I overheard Del demanding that his driver be replaced because she was pregnant and he didn't want to be that close to a potential child.)
The improv website YesAnd.com has posted an excerpt from Guru.
(Full Disclosure: Jeff Griggs is a friend of mine and Del Close yelled at me one time in a workshop in Kansas City.)
Posted by Fuzzy at 9:24 PM | Comments (0)
March 28, 2005
Bare show tonight
Tonight Bare will be appearing at the Bird's Nest Bar (2500 N Southport). Let me mention, as I always do, that the wings are great -- try getting a mixture of the teriyaki and hot sauces -- delish. And the last time we performed at the Bird's Nest we saw someone do their first set of stand-up comedy ever and rock. Will it happen again tonight? The only way to know is to show up...
And... the first PBR is on me!
Posted by Fuzzy at 1:26 PM | Comments (0)
Chicago Metroblog post: Will Prevail
Posted on the Chicago Metroblog: Will Prevail
Posted by Fuzzy at 2:04 AM | Comments (0)
March 27, 2005
Just back
Just back from the Town Hall after BBR and for Sam here's a link to an old post about the Town Hall.
Posted by Fuzzy at 3:24 AM | Comments (0)
March 25, 2005
Photos
A couple of weeks ago I took a bunch of photos of KOKO for them to use as PR shots. #278 on my nigh-infinite list of projects is a portfolio on this site to advertise that I do that kind of work. For now, you can see one of the shots on the page listing the groups that will be performing on the showcase stage of the Chicago Improv Festival on April 30 at 9 pm.
Also, Steev has posted a chunk of photos I took at last week's Don't Spit the Water!. Having mentioned in the last paragraph that I'm pimping myself out for photo work, I feel compelled to mention that I took those shots sitting off to the side of the stage, with my tiny-but-not-very-fancy camera, and whilst drinking. (Tools do not equal talent, but that little camera is not so great with the theater lighting.) Whee! Is that Peter De Giglio, star of WNEP's Let There Be Light, trying not to spit the water? I believe it is.
And speaking of Cutie Bumblesnatch, if you're planning on seeing DSTW! primarily to see Cutie (aka Erica) then you'll want to skip tonight and next week -- Erica's dad is off to MD Anderson for some more tests (boo, cancer. boo, I say) and my good egg of a girlfriend is going along for moral support.
If you're going to see DSTW! just to see people try not to spit water (which is a fine reason) then go, go!
And, since I guess this has turned into a what-you-could-do-this-weekend post, I'll mention that the above-mentioned LTBL is closing this weekend (I'll be there) and Saturday night, just in time for Easter, is the Belmont Burlesque Revue's Seven Deadly Sins Pagaent. For the first time in several months, I'm not performing any comedy at the BBR and so you'll find me in the audience, likely with a drink in one hand and a camera in the other.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:32 AM | Comments (0)
March 23, 2005
Chicago Metroblog post: I supply your office humor
Posted on the Chicago Metroblog: I supply your office humor
Posted by Fuzzy at 3:00 PM | Comments (0)
March 21, 2005
Neutrino DC
Ben Taylor represented Chicago at the Neutrino All-Stars show this weekend in DC and he brought back this sign as a souvenir for me. Congrats, all.
Posted by Fuzzy at 2:20 PM | Comments (0)
March 19, 2005
What's in your bag?
The tech blog Gizmodo runs a periodic feature called "What's in your gadget bag?" where they ask tech figures like Cory Doctorow, Glenn Fleishman and ... Dave Barry what kind of gear they haul around with them. A few hundred users of the Flickr photo sharing service are using the tag whatsinyourbag to share the same information with each other. I figured it'd be a good chance to clean out my bag to take everything out, take a picture, and join the crowd.
From left to right
Timbuk2 Commute bag with Strap Pad and iPod case
bills
Sniff tissues
checkbook
spare business cards and Playground discount coupons
Stereo headphones for Treo 600
no-W button from Dan
keys with garage door opener
Game Boy Advance SP (Fire Emblem inside)
extra GBA games: Advance Wars 2, Super Puzzle Fighter II, Donkey Kong Country, Warioland 4, The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
Sony DSC-U30 digital camera
ibuprofen & ibuprofen/pseudophedrine
Maglite Solitaire flashlight
iPod (20 GB) with Sennheiser MX400 headphones
Macally Podwave mini-speakers for iPod
Griffin iTalk microphone for iPod (I never use it)
PocketDock 6-pin Firewire and line-level adapter for iPod
lens cleaner cloth for glasses
spare batteries for digital camera
spare MemoryStick for digital camera
spare SD memory card for Treo 600
Handsfree headset for Treo 600
Glide dental floss
Garmin Geko 201 GPS (which has an exposed power button, so it always gets turned on in my bag, so it's always dead)
SmartDisk 30 GB Firewire harddrive
Moleskine pocket notebook
RCA to S-Video adapter for Powerbook
ziplock bag of change (got my bag a second look the last time I went through airport security)
Halls Defense Vitamin C lozenges
Sony 256 MB USB Drive
Kensington 256 MB USB Drive
Headphone adapter for Game Boy Advance SP
Stereo headphone adapter for Treo 600
Pens, mostly Uniball varieties and Sharpies
Treo 600 PDA/phone (I did a whole post about the software I have installed on it)
I used to carry a Gerber Recoil Auto-Plier and/or a Leatherman Juice S2 multi-tool everywhere, but I keep taking them out of the bag to fly and then forgetting to put them back in.
And of course there's a book in there. Right now I'm reading Jeff Griggs' memoir of Del Close, Guru.
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:50 PM | Comments (0)
Chicago Metblog post: A good meal: Tanoshii
In address some reader (well, Shaun) response, I'll now post a quick link here whenever I post something over at the Chicago Metroblog -- today I posted A good meal: Tanoshii.
Posted by Fuzzy at 1:53 PM | Comments (0)
A good meal: Tanoshii
originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago
Last year my not-very-adventurous-eating roommate came home and said, "it's worth getting to know the sushi chef at Hama Matsu." "But you don't even like sushi," I said. "Well, I guess I do now."
Erica and I did eat at Hama Matsu (5143 N Clark) a couple of times and the sushi was alright, but we didn't really heed the advice to get to know the chef. That, it turns out, was our mistake as I've been reading articles and reviews about how Mike Ham (that chef) is really at his best when his customers let him run wild with improvisational sushi.
Mike has his own place now -- Tanoshii at 5547 N Clark -- and Erica and I went over this week. It's BYOB, so we picked up a six-pack of Dead Guy Ale on the way and hiked up through Andersonville to Mike's tidy little restaurant. Mike, wearing a green kimono-tunic (it was the night before St. Patrick's day -- the other two chefs wore tunics with shamrock trims), stopped by our table and opened our first beers.
Armed with our knowledge about the way to eat at Tanoshii, we just glanced at the menu and ordered some miso and goma-ae and asked the waitress to "just have Mike feed us." She quizzed us about spiciness, raw vs. cooked fish, portion size and put in our order.
I will say that after our soup and appetizer came out right away, the sushi took forever to come. That night we were in no hurry to go anywhere, so it just gave us time to get through a couple beers and be cutesy with each other. But I could imagine that if you were on any sort of schedule, it would drive you crazy.
But the sushi that came -- kawowza! It was a sort of sushi-salsa, a tight cylinder of spicy tuna, cucumbers, onion, and avocado, with fried chips to scoop it up with. Delicious. I could have eaten 7 or 8 more orders of it, but just to get some variety, we asked for a second order of something more like a traditional roll. What came out was six pieces of a tuna-onion mix on rice on a piece of lettuce. At first I thought the lettuce was a garnish, but when one of the chefs saw me picking up the first piece he told me, "No, no, the whole thing." I don't usually think of lettuce as a strong flavor, but with subtlety of the fish and rice, the whole thing had a very fresh, vegetabley flavor.
And that was that. And it wasn't that pricey. And Mike is nice.
Another sushi place worth mentioning, with similarly adventurous combinations of flavors, but in a more upscale environment and with, you know, a menu, is Kaze Sushi (2032 W. Roscoe). Their menu changes seasonally, but when we were last there we had a lobster/strawberry roll that blew our minds.
Other opinions:
Gapers Block - Fork it over - Tanoshii
Chicago Reader - Restaurant detail - Tanoshii
EatChicago - Tanoshii's sushi (and green tea)
Posted by Fuzzy at 1:51 PM | Comments (0)
Doing it up
As I write this, members of all four casts of the Neutrino Video Projects (Chicago, DC, New York, and Seattle) are likely sleeping-in in DC, resting up from last night's performance of the Neutrino All-Stars to do it all again tonight. I wanted to be there, but it had looked like my day job needed me all day Friday. By the time we figured out that it wasn't as crucial a day as we had thought, I couldn't get a plane ticket for any sort of reasonable price. Oh well, it means I get to do the CCC show at The Playground tonight.
We're getting geared up to do something similar in Phoenix next month. Last month when Shaun and I were in Miami performing as Bare at the Miami Improv Festival, we got chatting with Election Show 2004 (whose cast overlaps quite a bit with the Seattle Neutrino Project). "Doing any other festivals this year?" "We're going to Phoenix." "So are we!" "We should do a Neutrino down there!" "We should!" "Let's go stand outside because we're in Miami and it's warm!"
So, we contacted the organizers of the Phoenix Improv Festival and they leapt at the chance to have the critically acclaimed, world-renowned Neutrino Project performed at their festival. Leapt, I tell you.
It's been interesting planning this. Getting ready to do a show this technically complex in a far-off city, with cast and crew members I've never really worked with before, has gotten me to get off my butt and get some things formalized I hadn't before. I made a tech plot that shows what plugs into what in the theater! It's something I've scribbled on countless pieces of scrap paper trying to explain the show to people, but now I've got a shiny PDF with boxes and lines and everything.
It also got me to do the sort of FuzzyCo Media Blitz(tm) that I know how to do and always plan on doing when we go to a festival, but somehow I never quite get around to it. "Oh, the festival organizers will do publicity," I always think. And it's true, and I'm sure the PIF is doing an excellent job with the press. But at some level, press attention is something of a crap-shoot of what happens to catch the eye of what particular editor on a particular day. Like how after Steev went on WGN to promote Don't Spit the Water, the sports anchor was so tickled by the DVDs of Silly Faces* and Silly Dances that he's been using them, including prominent displays of the URL, as intros and outros to his segment for weeks.
So, I bugged April, the PIF's press coordinator, for her Phoenix press contacts. She sent over a list with phone, email, and website contacts -- very 21st Century. I looked up mailing addresses for all of them** on the crap-shoot theory -- if April had already sent them all emails, maybe a physical thing in their hands would be a different stimulus that might get a response.
I sent out 19 envelopes with press kits for both Bare and Neutrino Project in each one, and everybody got an extra goody targeted to their market. Radio stations got an audio CD with Shaun and I doing his "Big Tony, Little Tony" sketch*** and audio clips from three Neutrino scenes. Newspapers got a data CD with high resolution photos of Bare and the Chicago Neutrino Project cast. And TV stations got a DVD of a Neutrino Project show. (I was planning on making a "selected scenes and best-of" DVD, but I decided timeliness was more important, so that got shelved for the moment and I just duplicated an entire show.)
So... tell everyone you know who lives in Arizona. Saturday, April 16, 2005 at The Playhouse on the Park Theater (1850 N. Central Avenue, Phoenix, AZ). The Neutrino Project (with Cog) at 8 pm. Bare (with Hemi & The Buzz) at 11 pm. Whee!
*Featuring 60 seconds of *my* silly face.
** Well, almost all -- if you happen to know the mailing address for the Phoenix-area Clear Channel stations, wanna pass that along?
*** Yes, sketch not improv -- I'll grimace at you when you call my improv a "skit," and then happily turn around and exploit that confusion when I'm doing PR. Sue me.
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:53 AM | Comments (1)
March 18, 2005
Reasons I like knowing Steev
Because when I hang out with Steev, sometimes I get an invite to go see a jug band play at at a neighborhood association potluck in a church basement. And I win a door prize.
Want to hang out with Steev? Come to Don't Spit the Water tonight and you can pretend you're his friend. Erica will be there, too, as Cutie Bumblesnatch. Whee!
Posted by Fuzzy at 9:28 AM | Comments (0)
March 14, 2005
Pimpin' El Rey
One of my favorite artists is El Rey Del Art -- for a year I was in his El Rey of the Month club so my room is chock-full of el rey goodness. And now he has a blog, full of fascinating posts about his techniques and esthetic.
In completely unrelated news, except that both make me happy, if you use Firefox (and why don't you?) you can install the Pimpzilla theme. Awww-yeah. I think it's the little "glint" that all the buttons get when you mouse over them that makes me smile so much.
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:30 AM | Comments (0)
March 12, 2005
Here doggie, doggie
Yesterday we visited a pet store that had prairie dogs. Evidently you can't buy or sell (or move) them, but you can have them.
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:45 AM | Comments (0)
March 11, 2005
*Chicken* Delights
originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago
Chicagoist has already reported on the latest in the Burger Delights "story" -- the Burger King restaurants that morphed into Burger Delightses are now becoming Chicken Delights. I just wanted to point out that these changes are rather obviously not being done in any sort of organized fashion. It was just a week ago that the Burger Delights at Broadway and Foster replaced their Burger Delights tarp-over-the-still-visible-Burger-King-sign with a real sign. And now... you can see that big line across the middle of this sign -- someone had to cut the sign in half and replace the top half. And why a new font? It's just sad. (Though the 'leet speek in the sign below is a nice touch.)
Previously:
Chicagoist: Burger .. King .. Delights?
Chicagoist: BurgerGate 2005: The Saga Continues
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:39 AM | Comments (0)
Reids
Erica and I are in South Carolina visiting these jamokes. We're having a lot of fun running around town yelling, "Go Cocks!"
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:19 AM | Comments (2)
A lil' compare and contrast
originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago
First off, have you noticed the Chicago Metroblog's spiffy new photo header? Instead of a single shot of the city, it's randomly built each day from pictures in the Metroblogging Chicago Group Photo Pool at Flickr. Whee!
So when I was going through my 2004 Chicago pictures to upload some into the group, one I picked was this photo of a sad pile of belongings on top of a mattress out on the sidewalk of Addison just west of Lincoln:
I didn't pick it because I thought it was typical of Chicago, but rather because it was, to someone, a significant moment. In Chicago we have alleys, so a pile of anything out on the sidewalk means something is out of the ordinary. This pile is someone's story of an eviction or a breakup gone wrong or something.
Last week I was in New York all week. New York does not have alleys. So in the middle of a fancy-pants shopping/business district (5th Avenue and 56th Street) at lunch time there was this pile on a sidewalk:
In New York, this is not a story. It's just trash.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:09 AM | Comments (0)
March 10, 2005
You might want to get that looked at
Hey buddy, you got a little... on your arm... no, the other one... a little higher. It's a... oh, is that part of your arm?
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:17 PM | Comments (0)
Hey Big Spender, Why Don't You Buy Me a Absolut(tm) Appletini?
originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago
We went to Sweet Charity Tuesday night at Broadway in Chicago at the Cadillac Palace Theatre. (Mini-review: Christina Applegate dances pretty good for a former sitcom star. Northwestern grad and former Chicago actor Denis O'Hare seems to have wandered in from a different looser, and funnier, play. Save yourself the $82 ticket and buy a copy of the 1969 movie with Shirley MacLaine. And it's only in Chicago for another two days, anyway.)
Anyway, in the middle of the first act, Vittorio orders a gran-something tequila. It sailed right on by until intermission when I was flipping through the program, as one does, and there was a full page ad for Gran Centenario tequila. I'd been product placed! In the script of a 35-year old musical! What's next? Willy Loman casually hoisting a Pepsi? Falstaff ordering a Budweiser Select?
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:14 PM | Comments (0)
March 9, 2005
Watch!
My barely-a-month-old watch broke sometime this morning -- the minute digit is missing its lower half. It's turned into a "don't-sweat-the-details" watch. I can tell what hour and ten-minute it is. "That's close enough," my watch says now, "does it really matter if it's 4:55 or 4:56?"
Posted by Fuzzy at 4:57 PM | Comments (0)
Standing on a place that may no longer exist
Here's me and some friends on July 23, 2001 near the top of Mount St. Helens. (The banner, which someone else had made and loaned us for our picture, lies. This is near the top but not at the summit. Mary and I were the only ones from our group who made it to the summit that trip.)
Mount St. Helens has been grumpy for some time and had a big burp today.
Posted by Fuzzy at 2:45 PM | Comments (0)
March 7, 2005
I'm sure it's a pink shirt
Erica is walking in the Mother's Day Y-Me Race Against Breast Cancer and if she gets her donation bar up to $100 she gets a free t-shirt (and, um... I guess the money goes to fight breast cancer or something).
Posted by Fuzzy at 8:37 PM | Comments (0)
Don't Spit the Water
photo by Speedy Hoerner
There are photos from Friday night's Don't Spit the Water, including Shaun and I as Eduardo Salacious and the Indescribable Horror (not "Unthinkable", as listed on the page). Is my girlfriend the best ever or what?
Posted by Fuzzy at 3:08 PM | Comments (1)
March 2, 2005
Far out, dude
It is statistically possible that you are in some sort of work training while you read this. And some subset of you are being trained by a doctor of some sort. But unless you are one of the six other people being trained with me here in New York, it is unlikely that your trainer is Doctor Cosmo. Possible, but unlikely.
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:41 PM | Comments (0)
Scale
As I go to and from the office here, I've been walking beside this for a couple of days now:
It wasn't until I went across the street to the Starbucks in Trump Tower that I realized I've actually been walking beside this:
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:36 PM | Comments (1)
March 1, 2005
View
The view from my hotel room. Much better than the last time I was in New York when my view was of the brick wall three feet across the air shaft.
Posted by Fuzzy at 7:53 PM | Comments (0)
The Gates
The Gates last night at the start of an incipent snow storm. I didn't walk much farther than this row because it was, as I just mentioned, night and snowing. And I was hungry. (P.J. Clarke's took care of that. Yum.) And then they took it down today. The Gates, not P.J. Clarke's.
Posted by Fuzzy at 7:27 PM | Comments (0)
It's on the corner of (blank) and (blank)
Dear New York snow,
That's really not very helpful for visitors to your city.
Sincerely,
Fuzzy
(Yes, it was two blocks of snow-trudging before I realized that the other side would be visible.)
Posted by Fuzzy at 7:23 PM | Comments (0)
Hot-tay
I'm missing my hottie. Fashion by Target Dollar Spot and Diesel Sweeties. (The comic it's from.)
Posted by Fuzzy at 7:13 PM | Comments (0)
Short Cut
originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago
Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset's "Short Cut" in front of the MCA
Gapers Block wrote about it. The Tribune wrote about it. But neither of them gave you a picture. Ta Da.
Posted by Fuzzy at 6:44 PM | Comments (0)
To me... whoa
originally posted on Metroblogging Chicago
To you, a perfectly ordinary sidewalk.
To me... a radical transformation of my personal geography.
My office is tucked into a corner of the downtown Northwestern campus and this building has been under construction for four of the last five years I've worked there. For four years I had to walk on the other side of the street whenever (a lot) I headed southeast from my office. The sidewalk has been open for a couple of months now and still every time I find myself on it it BLOWS. MY. MIND.
(Of course, you can see the crane in the distance -- Northwestern has two other buildings under construction in the same area -- more sidewalks blocked for another four years).
Posted by Fuzzy at 6:02 PM | Comments (0)
Wham, wham
Then, logically, rock beats happiness.
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:38 PM | Comments (1)
Waldie's World
Erica's sister-in-law has joined the blogosphere.
Posted by Fuzzy at 1:45 PM | Comments (0)
Don't Spit the Water
Hey, Erica's choreography was on national television! Sasha and the Noob and Time-Keeper Willis did a promo for Don't Spit the Water on WGN this morning and that dance they do with basketballs -- Erica choreographed that (there's more to the dance than the bouncing back and forth -- you'll have to come see the show to find out).
This Friday only, Shaun and I will be the secret mystery comedians at the end of the show. Shhh... it's a secret.
Posted by Fuzzy at 1:17 PM | Comments (0)