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October 28, 2005

Extra O and Es

Halloween Party

There's a difference between things that actually spooky and creepy and things that are spooooky and creeeeepy. My office, this afternoon, is definitely the latter.

Posted by Fuzzy at 4:30 PM | Comments (0)

Frightfully (boo!) busy weekend

Tonight (Friday, October 28) is the closing night of the Neutrino Project. For reals this time -- no crazy last minute extensions. And, as I always say, we may never do this show again. Ever. Closing night festivities likely at The Spoke.

Tomorrow (Saturday, October 29) Erica and I are moving half a block. If you'd like to help out, we'd love to have you. I'll be getting started around 9 am, but it'll be lots of short trips with the pickup truck, so there's plenty of opportunity to stop by and help any time during the day. If you participated in the Great Moving Crisis of 2004, rest assured that nearly everything is already packed in boxes and assembled in a staging room. It's like we planned ahead or something.

Tomorrow night, exhausted from the move, Erica and I will be dragging our sorry asses to Don't Spit the Water at 10:30 pm to participate in a very special Halloween show. Can you guess what's so special about it? Hint...


Posted by Fuzzy at 11:15 AM | Comments (1)

October 27, 2005

Ninja!

Everyone knows ninjas can't run restaurants, because everything they cook is poison.

Posted by Fuzzy at 10:32 AM | Comments (0)

October 26, 2005

Hempertable Mostelfactory

Mainly, I just wanted to write that name down somewhere, and here is as good as anywhere else -- I can find my own website easier than I can find my moleskine.

The last time I was a guest comedian for Don't Spit the Water I was "Kevin Higgins", a shock comic who realizes in the course of his set that all of his material is completely inappropriate for this audience, but soldiers on nonetheless. I picked the name because I wanted him to sound completely ordinary. One of my coworkers informed me this week that he had been searching for a friend of his, named, of course, Kevin Higgins, and found me instead.

Today I was trying to describe a standup comedian whom I can no longer remember the name of, and I used the name Hempertable Mostelfactory. If you Google that, there are no results and Google asks if you meant "Importable Qstylefactory", which is equally euphonious. I think that may be the name of Hempertable's first album.

I'll be guest comedianing at DSTW again on Nov 12, and I just may be Hempertable Mostelfactory. Whatever he does.

Posted by Fuzzy at 5:15 PM | Comments (1)

October 23, 2005

Halloween DSTW

If you go to the page for the very special Halloween Don't Spit the Water, you may notice some slight differences in your favorite Don't Spit the Water characters. Spooooky differences.

Posted by Fuzzy at 1:14 PM | Comments (1)

October 22, 2005

Sexy dancing tonight

Tonight's Belmont Burlesque Revue features a new dance number choreographed by Miss Erica Reid.

Posted by Fuzzy at 1:16 PM | Comments (0)

Daaaaanger

First off, we're never extending a Neutrino Project run again -- it's just never worth it. I mean, I love doing the show, and our over-all quality doesn't change, but audiences always fall off immediately and everyone's schedules are all full up suddenly with projects they had put off until after the original end-date of the run. The last three weeks of September, the show was running like clock-work. Last night, between everyone's now-busy schedules we were really light on actors and camera people. And cameras -- everyone in the show is willing to step up and be an camera-person, but we had forgotten to secure an extra camera and so we only had three cameras for four teams.

So, we tried something new and different -- we used the Improv Kitchen's green screen studio as our fourth camera. Of course, we had never done it before, so it required a lot of frantic pre-show tech setup (cheers to the IK's Liviu who really stepped up and made it happen and to Ryan Stone for stepping in on tech). And, because of the green screen processing, it couldn't be taped, so we were live. Whenever it came time for team 1's "tape" to be played, Ryan would cue Shaun and me in the studio and we'd just go live for 2 or 3 minutes (once I saw Ryan give us the universal "stretch it out" hand signal, as evidently a tape was late) until they cut us off.

There were plenty of bobbles with our lapel mics (oops -- we're still live!) and more blue screen between tapes than I usually like. But it worked, the show happened, and I think it was pretty good.

We also stuck a group in a cab, which I think has been done before by other Neutrino casts, but we've never done (I think).

Posted by Fuzzy at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)

Sunset over Suburbia

Sunset over Suburbia

Thanks, Sacramento-area (I was never sure if I was in Rocklin or Roseville or Stripmallville or what) for a delightful 22 hours. Hey, I was on both coasts in less than a week! Neat.

Posted by Fuzzy at 12:00 PM | Comments (0)

A lil' Neutrino story

A little Neutrino Project story I don't want to forget to get down...

If you know me, you know I'm somewhat of an authority-phobe. I often get nervous when we're doing the Neutrino Project, especially in cop-heavy Wrigleyville, that some police officer is going to decide that what we're doing is illegal and hassle a crew, which would, if nothing else, screw up the timing of the show.

So when we were up in Ann Arbor a few weeks ago, my team had just come out of the BP where we had been filming* and as we were filming out by the "$5.78/gallon" sign I saw some cops across the street. I got my usual little twinge, but they walked by. We finished shooting and headed to meet the others for the final scene. As we were headed down the street, I noticed that the cops were a few feet behind us and keeping pace and I started to come up with all my Neutrino excuses: "It's a theater project" or "it's a student film". (Crap! Does Michigan have a film department?) The cops caught up with me at an intersection.

"What's that you're drinking, there?"

What's that I'm drin...? But, I... I was so flummoxed that it wasn't about the cameras that I couldn't say anything and just turned my AriZona "Caution" energy drink so that they could see the label.

* It's unusual that we get to film in chain or corporate stores. It made my little post-punk heart sad when I was location scouting in a chain sandwich shop (rhymes with Jimmy John's) and the tattooed and pierced lone employee didn't want us to film there because of what "corporate" might think. CORPORATE?! That's The Man! Aren't we supposed to stick it to him?

Posted by Fuzzy at 11:42 AM | Comments (2)

October 21, 2005

Sci-Fi Movie Canon

John Scalzi's The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies just came out and one of the chapters is "The Canon: 50 science fiction films to see before you die". There has been, of course, plenty of debate about John's choices, but it's also a great chance for a meme! Ones I've seen in bold:

34 out of 50, if you're keeping score at home. Not that it's a contest. Unless I'm winning.

Posted by Fuzzy at 12:55 PM | Comments (0)

More Livingston

Pizza!

How could I have neglected to mention that Christopher and Katie got to see Andrew and the whole band a month before we did?

The October 15, Park West show that we saw is now available from the Internet Archive's Live Music Archive.

While we visiting with Andrew, Erica kept bugging him to play "the Cow song" for me. Eventually, Andrew asked Mike if he could borrow a guitar and played and sang "Keeping Watch Over Some Cow" for us. It's a classical guitar piece from 16th-century Spain, Guardame Las Vacas, with Andrew's original lyrics. (And it sticks in your freaking head -- I've been singing it for days.) Mike made him play it a couple more times, and now Andrew is playing it in the show.

Posted by Fuzzy at 12:32 PM | Comments (1)

Moving Party

"Party" probably more in the sense of "search party" or "Scott directed his party to push on for the South Pole," but we'll certainly have beer and pizza.

Saturday, October 29. Exact times still flexible, but since we're moving half a block, it won't be hard to find us at one house or the other. If you participated in the Great Moving Disaster of Feb '04, rest assured that Erica and I are already packing.

Update: I've gotten at least one confused email -- this is a daytime help-us-carry-boxes-and-couches "party." What most people would just call "moving".

Posted by Fuzzy at 8:46 AM | Comments (1)

October 18, 2005

And then...

And after staying up late with Andrew, we slept in a bit on Sunday morning and then went and signed a lease on a new place. Erica and I are moving half a block down the street from what is now Shaun's place. Moving party soon. Very soon.

Posted by Fuzzy at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)

Andrew "Scrap" Livingston

Andrew and Erica

The other guys hung around in New York for the weekend, but we flew back Saturday afternoon so that we could go see Erica's friend Andrew (his "tour name" is Scrap) play bass in the Mike Doughty Band. As in Mike "M" "Soul Coughing" Doughty. It is the cheese!

We couldn't get together with Andrew in the afternoon because he and Mike went and did an in-store at Borders. But post-show (post-awesome show) (dang that Pete McNeal is a great drummer) (I mean, everyone else is great, too) we got to hang out with Andrew for a few hours before they fired up the tour bus and headed off to Indianapolis.

This is now two shows in a row where I've seen the performer before in a smaller venue and noticed the difference. (Kaki King from the Tin Angel to Martyrs' and now Mike Doughty from the Abbey Pub to Park West.) The Park West is a great venue (comfy chairs, cocktail waitresses), but there's definitely a difference -- during the rockity stuff it wasn't as noticeable, but Mike sent the fellows away for a few songs and played quieter stuff and the conversation murmur was evident and distracting.

I took a bunch of pictures during the show. Here's a Flickr set, or you can see which of them Mike liked.

Posted by Fuzzy at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)

Don't Spit the New York

Rain

And then after the ACM show and a quick taco with Ben and Emily, we ran home to pack for our trip to New York. Don't Spit the Water had a show at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre on Friday night. Erica was performing as Cutie Bumblesnatch and I went along to help out. And hey, New York!

Well, hey, rainy-all-day-but-we-walked-around-all-day-anyway New York. Boo. And I forgot to bring an extra pair of pants, which was a problem when my only pair was soaking wet just before showtime. But I bought a new pair, that I kinda needed anyway. Yay!

After the show, we headed over to the Triple Crown and ran into a bunch of my Neutrino peeps and former Chicagoans. New York is such a small town.

Steev has pictures from the trip. I just sent him some shots from the actual show, hopefully he'll put those up. Oh, and I have a little Flickr set I just made.

Posted by Fuzzy at 7:15 AM | Comments (0)

October 17, 2005

My quick approximation of what it'll look like

dan-trish-mashup.jpg

Very quick approximation.

Congratz Dan and Trish!

Posted by Fuzzy at 3:21 PM | Comments (0)

Good question

Noah asks, "Why were you by the Division Blue Line?"

A couple of months ago, Ben Taylor introduced me to Seth Boustead, the executive director of Accessible Contemporary Music. Seth was putting together a concert of silent movies with new scores written by ACM members and he was looking for shorts for the project. It was mentioned that some of the musicians might be improvising their scores, so I suggested that it might be cool if I improvised some video as well, shooting just before the showing. I hit on the idea of making a sort of portrait of the Milwaukee, Division, Ashland intersection, where the Chopin Theatre is located. I think Seth was a little skeptical, until he came and saw the Neutrino Project and saw that we really could shoot quality video very quickly.

So, on Thursday night, Erica and I got off the train at the Division Blue Line stop and starting exploring and shooting. All the edits were done in-camera, and about an hour later we had a 4 and a half minute silent short and we headed over to the Chopin.

I was introduced to Jason and Ryan who are We Can and We Must and gave them a quick overview of the short. There wasn't any time to show them the short before the show started, so they just, you know, improvised.

Here's the short again, now that I know how to make a poster frame. It's a 11 meg Quicktime movie that (probably) requires Quicktime 7. (You can also right-click here to download the movie.)

Posted by Fuzzy at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)

Ted at Image Union screening at Music Box

Ted McGillicutty, Man of Action

FuzzyCo's award-winning short film Ted McGillicutty, Man of Action will be shown at the Music Box Theatre (3733 N Southport Ave) at midnight on November 4 and 5 as part of Image Union's Short Film Showcase.

Posted by Fuzzy at 12:09 AM | Comments (0)

October 13, 2005

Let's see...

I'm heading OUT the door to go to NYC with Don't Spit the Water, so if this doesn't work, I can't fix it.

But this should be the movie we made last night, scored improvisationally by We Can & We Must

Click here to view the movie (or right-click to save it to your computer).

Oh, and you probably need Quicktime 7.

Posted by Fuzzy at 3:56 PM | Comments (1)

Papa Reid update

No Change, which is good.

Posted by Fuzzy at 9:05 AM | Comments (0)

Video from Talkin' Funny

Steve has posted video from the episode of Talkin' Funny I was on.

Posted by Fuzzy at 9:03 AM | Comments (0)

October 12, 2005

Talked Funny

Talkin' Funny - Erica

I had a good time on Talkin' Funny last night. I wasn't sure how serious to try and take it, but Erica did a great job of weaving between actually answering Sasha's questions and just inhabiting the world those guys live in -- their little dance break was hilarious. Though, by the time she was on, all 20 of our viewers had switched to the Sox game.

One of the first call-in questions I got was about my still cameras and it threw me a little and I started babbling about my love for crappy/odd cameras like my Lomo (which is broken) and my Holga. I'm sure what the caller really wanted to know was that I shoot most of my pictures with a Sony F707. It's a four-year old camera, but I looove it. I've even tried out its update, the F828, but I didn't like it as much. My next most-used camera is my weensey Sony U30 -- it's got no zoom, slow auto-focus and lousy low-light performance. But it's about the size of a pack (and a half) of Hubba Bubba so I carry it just about everywhere. I also have a Nikon D1 that I got on a bargain, but I rarely use it because it's heavy as a brick and it's got a really loud shutter, both of which are annoying for live performance photography. Then some scattered film Nikons and a nice Minolta. And a box of crappy sub-phonecam digital cameras.

So, out of all those cameras, the only one I had with me last night was... the poop-tactular camera built into my Treo 600. Didn't stop me from taking a bunch of pictures.

Posted by Fuzzy at 2:58 PM | Comments (0)

DSTW TONY CP

Don't Spit the Water is Time Out New York's Critic's Pick for Comedy this Friday night.

Posted by Fuzzy at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2005

This week in FuzzyCo

It's a week chock-full of Fuzzy, but in unusual ways...

Tonight (Tuesday, 10/11) I'm going to be on Talkin' Funny on Chicago Cable Access, CAN-21 at 7:30 pm. Talkin' Funny is hosted by Don't Spit the Water's Sasha and the Noob (in character). I'll be talking about producing non-mainstream improv shows like the Neutrino Project or Cinema 2.0 and the show takes audience calls (though, hopefully not as many as they took last week when Don Hall was on) so if you have a question, call on in.

Wednesday night (10/12), I'll be shooting a short movie around the intersection of Division, Milwaukee, and Ashland (doing Neutrino Project-style in-camera editing) and then taking it inside the Chopin Theatre (1543 W. Division) where it will be shown and improvisationally scored as part of Accessible Contemporary Music's Sound of Silent Film. I'm a little nervous because I've stuck to my improv guns and resisted every opportunity to prepare material ahead of time. Erica and I will be showing up at the Division Blue Line stop at 6:30 with a camera and a blank miniDV tape and minds open to the possibilities of the neighborhood. Eek.

Friday night (10/14) Don't Spit the Water will be performing in New York at the UCB Theatre (307 W 26th) at 8 pm. Erica (as Cutie Bumblesnatch) is one of the featured comedians. I'm tagging along to help out with gear and video cameras and such. And if you see someone in a gorilla costume...

Saturday night (10/15) we'll be back in Chicago to see Mike Doughty and his band at Park West. You'll be able to recognize me -- I'll be the one in the audience.

Posted by Fuzzy at 1:13 AM | Comments (7)

Anti-Halloween Follow-up

wickerman.jpg

I just got an email from someone in response to a post from earlier this year. In summary, my buddy Kyle is looking for an early 90s anti-Halloween video he saw on Chicago TV in the early 90s. My semi-anonymous correspondent writes:

Thought you would like to know that there is an anti-halloween movie out made in the '70's, called 'The Wicker Man'. It involves a cop that tracks down 'satanists' who have kidnapped children. He finds the whole town has reverted to paganism and in the final scene he is burned alive in a wicker shaped man, all the while screaming bible verses while he burns. A pathetic move actually, but maybe it is the one you are looking for. I understand it may be on video. I doubt you will find it on DVD.

Thanks, semi-anonymous correspondent, but you're a little off the mark, here. To begin at the end, The Wicker Man is certainly available on DVD. And far from being a "pathetic" movie, it's "now regarded as a classic of British cinema." Annnnd... it's not really about Halloween as such, more an examination of the nature of religion and community. But, (for reals) thanks for trying to help!

No, what we're looking for here is American semi-amateur acting and earnestness, along the lines of the Hell House shows.

Posted by Fuzzy at 12:39 AM | Comments (3)

Thx

Dan Izzo

Thanks to Dan, Trish, and Sabrina for being the best hosts in the universe, and to Mark for helping out with tech, and to Erik, Clif, and David for running.

I haven't watched the show yet, but Greg tells us that Porcupines Float was a pretty good Neutrino Project movie. And I think that the X Show was 33% less cluster-fucky than the last time we Chicago barbarians invaded that Ann Arbor stage.

Posted by Fuzzy at 12:17 AM | Comments (1)

October 10, 2005

MK:SM on C-A-D

ctrlaltdel-mksm.jpg

It's exactly like that.

Posted by Fuzzy at 4:41 PM | Comments (0)

October 7, 2005

Just in time for Halloween

From the folks that brought you the Cyborg Name Decoder, it's the Monster Name Decoder:


Fearsome Unholy Zombie from the Zodiac Yonder
Evil Redhead-Injuring Creature of Anger

Posted by Fuzzy at 2:29 PM | Comments (2)

Neutrino-rific weekend

Tonight! The first of extension shows for the Neutrino Project at the Improv Kitchen. We'll see if people pay attention to closing dates and assume the show is done, or if people keep coming in the same sorts of numbers.

Tomorrow! We drive to beautiful Ann Arbor, Meechigan for our second show at the Improv Inferno. Allll you Michiganers, come see the show!

Posted by Fuzzy at 2:25 AM | Comments (0)

Blogacatmas

It's the first Friday of October, which means that it's Blogacatmas, the one day of the year when it's totally cool to put pictures of your cats on your blog.

On a lazy Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago, I noticed that the three cats of the house were in three adjacent rooms, each napping in a little kitty-circle.

Parker
Parker

Mustapha
Mustapha

Latte
Latte

Posted by Fuzzy at 1:41 AM | Comments (1)

October 5, 2005

Kaki King

Kaki King
Kaki King at Martyrs, October 1, 2005

On Saturday, Erica and I went to see Kaki King at Martyrs'. We were trying to make it a fancy night out, and so we wanted to go out to a restaurant first and then go to the show, but we were running a little late and we ran into Phil and Monica and chatted for a while and then decided to just head straight for Martyrs'. Which worked out extraordinarily well on several levels. For one, we had an incredible ham and fig pizza. And we had gotten there just in time to get the last front-row seats, which was great for both taking photos and for listening to Kaki's quiet and subtle music. The last time I saw Kaki King was in a smaller place in Philadelphia and the entire audience was nearly completely silent for the whole show. At Martyrs', there was a pretty constant murmur from the back of the room and I think it would have driven me crazy to be farther back and known that I was missing some subtleties.

Some other Kaki links:
Kaki King Live on NPR's Weekend Edition
Kaki King shows at the Live Music Archive
Kaki's (out-of-date) Photoblog
Ask Kaki King

Posted by Fuzzy at 1:46 AM | Comments (0)

October 4, 2005

Neutrino Extension

Neutrino Project Extension

I realized that I've been mainly talking about the Neutrino Project when we have external validation. An extension isn't really external -- we decided to do it -- but we wouldn't have extended unless people were coming to the shows, which they are. So, there you go. What?

Whatever, I'm too busy to make sense. Four more chances to see the Neutrino Project. One more chance to see us in Ann Arbor, this Saturday at 8 PM. Awesome.

Posted by Fuzzy at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)

Swears

Even when he's just typing, Shaun swears a lot.

(From the MKSM "Fight Night" chat.)

Posted by Fuzzy at 8:40 AM | Comments (0)