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December 30, 2005
Review: True Stories I Made Up
I've had a long, complicated relationship with stand-up comedy. In my childhood, stand-up albums by Bill Cosby and George Carlin were part of my early exposure to comedy that led to my wanting to get into the field in the first place. But in the early 90s as I began to discover improv, my enthusiasm became somewhat militant. Combined with some lousy personal encounters with jerk-faces who happened to be stand-ups, and I decided to write off the whole genre. Improvisors were making art, I thought, stand-ups were just telling jokes.
Well, the years have passed, and I've matured a little and I've come to two realizations. For one, I made a conscious decision to reach out to other theatrical disciplines for techniques and inspiration that I could bring back to my improv (I should tell y'all the contact improv story) and in that light, performers like John Leguizamo made me realize that there was a blurry line between some stand-up and something I'd call Solo Performance. And also, I've mellowed-out some and decided that there's nothing wrong with a joke every now and then.
So Bill Hicks, and then Patton Oswalt, and then Mitch Hedberg, and and then all the Chicago Underground Comedy comics who come play at Don't Spit the Water have been leading me into stand-up more and more. And with my usual collector's obsession, I've been acquiring comedy albums like there's no tomorrow. And so when some comedy CDs showed up in my mailbox "for review" I thought, "Well, I have a keyboard and opinions..." So...
Daniel Tosh, True Stories I Made Up (Comedy Central Records)
I had never heard of Daniel Tosh before this album came to me, but he's on my list now: this album is funny.
Daniel (is that too familiar? Mr. Tosh?) tells jokes. Not "knock knock" or "my wife is so fat," jokes, but not personal monologues or true-ish stories, either -- the title of the album is accurate, these are Stories that he's Made Up.
I don't do segues, get used to that. A lot of comics do: "I was at the mall last week..." No, you weren't. Do your joke.
The topics covered are the usual free-range of the modern comic: sports and plastic surgery, the benefits of lying and the difficulties of explaining a nightmare to someone else. But it's not the topic, it's the flights of fancy inspired by the topic.
I don't like to do jokes about stereotypes, but we all know basketball players can't swim very well.
Oh, and it's his delivery, too. Daniel deliveries all the jokes with an astonishing confidence, and in fact is kind of mean. The meanness was really interesting to me -- in one bit he's calling any women in the audience who've had plastic surgery "whores". A few minutes later, he's talking about his girlfriend's breast implants. It's a Made Up meanness.
But Hollywood, on their moral high-horse, they won't make a movie about a retarded chimp. Unless, of course, you count a Vin Diesel movie.
The CD comes with a DVD of a half-hour Comedy Central Presents special (well, 20 minutes, sans commercials), which is a great new development in stand-up CDs. So much of comedy is visual and it enhances the CD to be able to visual his expressions, even with a largely verbal comedian like Daniel Tosh.
Daniel Tosh, True Stories I Made Up, gets a FuzzyCo "yeah, that's good."
Hey, you can win a copy of True Stories I Made Up from my other website -- The New Improv Page.
Posted by Fuzzy at 4:59 PM | Comments (1)
Lazy Sunday
Yeah, boyeee.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:37 PM | Comments (0)
Snow Sculpture for Chicago
Photo by Martha Williams for Time Out
The historic Goldblatt Building (1613 W Chicago), originally the first store in the Goldblatt Brothers Department Store chain, is now a City of Chicago office building. The Department of Cultural Affairs commissioned 12 artists to create works of art for the building.
Weeks ago, before I knew all this (and before there was any signage), I ran across the only one of these pieces visible from the street -- Tony Tasset's Snow Sculpture for Chicago. It's a note-perfect pile of dirty Chicago snow, complete with embedded trash, on display in a display window. It's awesome. It's startling when there's no snow on the ground, and it's verisimilitude when there is snow is striking.
Two weeks ago, I drug a friend over to West Town to see the sculpture again and there was now a sign up identifying the artist and describing the work. There was also a photographer inside the case taking a picture of a man I assumed was the artist. While I was animatedly exclaiming about the sculpture, the photographer motioned me and my friend forward. And now, in this week's Time Out, there we are... me observing Tony Tasset on display beside his artwork that's about observation and display. Or something.
Time Out Chicago: Art avalanche
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)
Drinkin' and Singin'
I met up with Dan Telfer's bachelor party at the Green Mill last night, but the place was full (I did not realize that the Alan Gresik Swing Shift Orchestra was so popular) and they were only letting people in as people left, so we headed over to Carol's Pub for some cheap beer (Me: "Do y'all have Blue Moon?" Bartender: "Never heard of it." Me: "Awesome. Two Miller Lites, please.") and karaoke. More photos on Flickr...
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:08 AM | Comments (1)
December 29, 2005
Contest
Hey, over at one of my other sites, The New Improv Page ("a resource for the world of improvisational theatre") I'm running a contest where you can win some new standup albums. Perhaps you would like to enter...
Posted by Fuzzy at 9:27 AM | Comments (0)
December 28, 2005
I have no musical talent
Things I absolutely do not need, but have decided I absolutely must have: a Kazooka electric kazoo and a $20 ukulele.
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:49 PM | Comments (1)
Reid Family Christmas
We spent Christmas in Vicksburg, Mississippi at Erica's parents' place with her brother and sister-in-law and various extended family. And cats. Lots of cats. I've posted a set of pictures at Flickr.
Posted by Fuzzy at 3:08 PM | Comments (2)
International Dadaism Month
I've been a fan of Dadaism since my teen-aged mind was warped forever by the Dada Ducks in Daniel Pinkwater's Young Adult Novel. And now comes the oh-so-delicious International Dadaism Month: Feb. 4, April 1, March 28, July 15, August 2, August 7, August 16, August 26, September 18, September 22, October 1, October 17 and October 26, 2006. Thanks, Lawrence, Kansas.
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:55 AM | Comments (1)
December 23, 2005
In Mississippi
I believe that, traditionally, the 5th day of Christmas is 5 Reids a-golfing.
Happy Birthday, yesterday, to Christopher.
We're on dial-up here. Worse, need-to-remember to send the Reids more memory for this computer, AOL dial-up. A leetle sloooow.
Posted by Fuzzy at 4:16 PM | Comments (2)
December 21, 2005
I guess that's a good thing, right?
Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks has won Gamespot's "Most Surprisingly Good Game" of 2005. "We thought it would suck and it didn't!"
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:28 AM | Comments (0)
December 19, 2005
CMB posts
I tried (and failed) to go to Santarchy. I took some pictures of icicles. And I drank hot wine.
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:17 PM | Comments (0)
Glögg Off!
(Originally posted on the Chicago Metblog)
We agree wholeheartedly with Chicagoist's Chuck Sudo, Glögg is the way to make it through the winter. But let's be serious -- are we going to make our own Glögg? No, we are lazy. That is why we are drinking spiced, spiked wine instead of doing laundry.
So for your benefit, Erica and went to Binny's this weekend and said, "give us one of each Glögg you have. We're gonna have an old-fashioned Glögg-off!"
We decided to drink samples of each bottle in order of ascending alcohol content, under some theory that that would let us better retain our taste buds through the process. To clear our palate between Glöggs we had some slices of Manchego (an incredible Spanish cheese) that we had also picked up at Binny's after being enticed by an in-store tasting with actual Spanish people. And for times' sake, we didn't use a double-boiler or anything fancy to heat the Glöggs -- we microwaved them in demitasse cups for 20 seconds. (Cf. "lazy" above. Also, that's how we drank Mr. Hans' all last winter.)
So we started with St. Christopher Glühwein at 8.5% alcohol by volume. Now, St. Christopher is a) from Germany, not Scandinavia and b) not actually a Glögg because there's no distilled liquor added to the wine. But you know what, it's pretty tasty. The back of the bottle says it contains red table wine, sugar and aromatic spices (cinnamon and clove). And that seems to be enough -- subtle but tasty, and it would be pretty easy to add a shot of vodka or brandy to punch it up if you felt you needed that (I think mixing two liquids doesn't violate my laziness rules). And it's $5.99 for a 1 liter bottle.
Next up was Vin Glögg, "A Winter Wine," from Glunz Family Winery & Cellars, at 13.5% alc/vol. We had high-hopes for Vin Glögg -- it's local (-ish. Glunz are in Greyslake, but the Glögg is made with California port and red wine), in a very attractive bottle, and is flavored with blended oils of citrus fruits, nuts, clove, cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon, "and a couple of secret ingredients." And is it ever flavored! As soon as we opened the bottle we exclaimed, "citrus-time!" Vin Glögg is almost over-poweringly citrused and spiced. Erica says it was like drinking a fruity drink, rather than wine. A tag on the bottle suggests that "some folks like to add a cinnamon stick or a couple of cloves or a twist of lemon or orange rind" but I can't imagine doing so -- the resulting flavor explosion might kill you. $9.99 for a 1 liter bottle.
And last, but not least, our old friend Mr. Hans' Andersonville Glögg, "A Taste of Scandinavia". As far as I know, this is the Glögg served at both Hopleaf and Simon's. We first encountered Glögg at the Hopleaf last winter. At the Hopleaf most drinks come in a specific glass and the special glass for Glögg, it turns out, is an old-fashioned punch glass, which always makes me feel like I'm getting drunk with my aunt. And getting drunk you will be -- Mr. Hans' is a stiff 19% alc/vol. At our tasting, we struggled hard to discern what might be the spices making up the "fine wines, brandies, and select spices" that go into Mr. Hans', but the best we could come up with was "rocket fuel." But if you come in from the cold and want something to warm your toes, Mr. Hans' Rocket Fuel may be just the ticket. $9.99 for a 750 ml bottle.
Without going into the complicated rating system we used, we give the Glögg-off Gold Medal to the not-a-Glögg-at all St. Christopher Glühwein, the Silver to Mr. Hans', and the Bronze to Vin Glögg.
As we invite some friends over to help us finish off the 2.75 liters of Glögg we have in our kitchen, we may try some of the suggested additions to Glögg drinking, like adding a raisins and a blanched almond to each cup. But that might be too much like work.
Oh, and while we're on the topic of hot alcoholic beverages, I'll mention our other favorite no-work-but-heating-it beverage, also a Hopleaf discovery: Quelque Chose. A tart cherry beer, I'm willing to go the extra mile and get out a pan of water to gently heat a bottle of Quelque Chose.
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:14 PM | Comments (0)
Christmas time is here again..
Our first Christmas tree together (awwwwww). We sprung for the 4.5' fake tree at Walgreens. The guitar is an opened-early Giftmas gift from Shaun -- it's the guitar controller from Guitar Hero, the second-best specialized controller game ever (Samba de Amigo still rules my heart). Mustapha is Mustapha.
Posted by Fuzzy at 2:03 PM | Comments (0)
December 16, 2005
Holiday Office Parties
The Fuzzy Gerdes Holiday Office Party Method has served me well for the last couple of years, so I thought I'd share:
- Visit the buffet and eat some good food Have a drink
- Chat with your various inter-departmental friends that maybe you don't see all that often
- Have a few more drinks a little too quickly
- Return to your desk and finish your online Christmas shopping
- Go back out to the atrium and grab another drink
- Come back to your desk and make some intemperate online shopping decision Go back to the atrium and see who's left to catch an early train to the suburbs and who are die-hard partiers. Grab another drink.
- Come back to your desk and make a blog post, relying on MarEdit's spell-checker to catch your worst typos. Grammar is your own problem.
Posted by Fuzzy at 4:17 PM | Comments (0)
There's only so much I can take
Listen, Phisher community, I've put up with a lot of terrible grammar from y'all, and a lot of emails from "banks" I don't even bank with (how successful is a world-wide phishing attack on the Second National Bank of Aberdeen, Pennsylvania going to be, anyway). But you really should make sure you're correctly spelling the name of the bank you're trying to convince me needs me to "update my information". I mean, Wells Frago?
Posted by Fuzzy at 8:58 AM | Comments (0)
December 15, 2005
A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam
My favorite Canadian, my brother-in-law Marc, is now a US citizen. Whee!
Mom says: "We went to San Antonio today to Marc's naturalization ceremony. It was great. 460 people from 66 countries became US citizens. Was so glad I got to go."
Posted by Fuzzy at 10:41 PM | Comments (0)
Mouse Beard Fred
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:49 AM | Comments (0)
The wedding blog
As a side effect of moving FuzzyCo to Dreamhost earlier this year, I had this domain ericaandfuzzy.com just lying around doing nothing except pointing to FuzzyCo (which wasn't very fair to the "ericaand" part of the domain. And then Erica and I announced our engagement. So what better to do than start a wedding blog? Nothing, that's what.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:23 AM | Comments (1)
December 13, 2005
Merry Christmas
Here we are "a-caroling" from this weekend's Belmont Burlesque Revue Holiday Spectacular. I am not wearing so many pants. But I do have on snowman boxer shorts. Which you cannot see because of my $24.95 7-piece (of which I am only wearing 5) Oriential Trading Company Santa Suit.
Posted by Fuzzy at 9:34 PM | Comments (1)
December 12, 2005
Fuzzy Pro Skater
I'll admit -- I'm a little obsessed right now -- I'm playing Tony Hawk Underground 2: Remix on my PSP on the train and Tony Hawk Underground at home (pictured, my skater "Fuzzy"). A lot.
Posted by Fuzzy at 6:06 PM | Comments (2)
The Imaginary Don Hall
I'm taking a Windows Server Admin class this week (whee!) and one of the pretend users is Don Hall. He's a Sales Manager.
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:40 PM | Comments (0)
December 9, 2005
Snow Shoveling
I posted some thoughts on Shoveling Snow over at the Chicago Metblog.
Posted by Fuzzy at 12:12 PM | Comments (0)
December 8, 2005
FuzzyCo Year in Review
Via Mugsy, a "your year in review" meme: I've taken the first sentence of the first entry of each month here and it's an odd little overview of what 2005 was like for me.
January 2005: Raza Obrera wear orange overalls and have a harp player who dances around with his full-size harp the same way a guitar player does.
February 2005: We're in Miami!
March 2005: Hey, Erica's choreography was on national television!
April 2005: I spent part of my Saturday painting the trim in the front hallway (finally finishing an 11-month-old project) and listening to Mitch All Together in memory of Mitch Hedberg, who died last week.
May 2005: Pretty uneventful second weekend of the Chicago Improv Festival -- except for the Odd Political Thing that I had to fix in my video unexplainably reverting to the Old Wrong Name the one time the Important Person was there.
June 2005: Over on the Chicago Metroblog I just posted a round-up of our favorite french fries (yay - alliteration).
July 2005: Some weekend suggestions from FuzzyCo HQ: The exhibit at the Lincoln Park Zoo that Kate did all the art for has opened.
August 2005: We're back from Ann Arbor -- a wonderful trip; Dan, Trish, and Sabrina are delightful hosts.
September 2005: Though this one could be a poster pull-out quote: "Newcity's 5 shows to see now."
October 2005: Even when he's just typing, Shaun swears a lot.
November 2005: We finished up our 5th full run of the Neutrino Project in Chicago with another daaaangerous show.
December 2005: I left off that last post a little abruptly... I had to go run meet the plumber, who, once again, did not show up.
Posted by Fuzzy at 3:05 PM | Comments (0)
December 6, 2005
File under buttons, cute as
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:41 PM | Comments (1)
Frankie J
Our friend Frankie Janisch has had a rough couple of years. A former performer and business manager at the ImprovOlympic, his real passion was food (though he combined both loves in his Taint shows and his stints on the Food Network.) Back in 2001 he opened his own restaurant and small theater -- Frankie J's on Broadway (with the MethaDome Theater -- named after the methadone clinic the space was for a while) -- and immediately ran into trouble with the Sheet Metal Workers Union. And then there was the ongoing, would-be-funny-if-it-wasn't-my-friend, fiasco of trying to get his liquor license on a dry block.
Well, after giving it the good fight for far longer than most of us would last, Frankie J's has been closed for the last couple of months. Shaun had a drink with Frankie last night and wanted me to pass this along:
Frankie is doing well. The restaurant and theatre closed. Yes. All the bureaucratic paperwork and city rules and "shenanigans" going on in the city caught up with him. He thanks all the well wishes he has gotten. He is avoiding e-mail and phone for a while. But he hears about the support and is grateful. BUT Frankie is not gone. Frankie will be back in the spring with more and bigger things. Watch for things coming this spring.
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:27 PM | Comments (0)
December 5, 2005
Another show
Last night Erica and I drove out to Oak Brook to see Kristen in Once Upon a Mattress. She's been getting rave reviews, so we went to see what all the fuss was about.
If you like musical theater, and poofy-sleeved costunes, you'd do worse than to see one of the remaining 16 shows (over the next two weeks) of Once Upon a Mattress. (I hope that doesn't sound like faint praise. Kristen was funny, the rest of the cast was fine, the costumes were colorful. I'm just not a fan of the genre and I think there are things I'm not appreciating.)
And since it's Christmas, the Drury Lane lobby is 35% glitterier. 35% more than "very, very shiny".
And since we were in Oak Brook and got lost trying to get back on I-88 East, we stopped at the big McDonald's that's across the parking lot from McD's Corporate HQ. Fancy. I was hoping for some test-market items on the menu (McRibs Pizza! It could work!) but was disappointed in that. So we just had to rock out to the non-stop techno and relax in the comfy chairs by the fireplace. For reals.
Posted by Fuzzy at 3:10 PM | Comments (1)
A show
Erica and I saw a show a few nights ago. For the sake of the friend who we went to see, I won't tell you the name of the show or where it's playing. At intermission I turned to Erica and asked, "Is [our friend] in the second act?" "I don't think so, but they'll notice if we're not here at curtain call." So I ran down the street to a liquor store and bought a fifth of Jack Daniels. That let us get through the second act.
There were good lines. A few interesting ideas. Many of the performances were fine. [Our friend] was both funny and touching. There were good moments. But the thing, altogether, was terrible. Terrrrrrible. You've heard the phrase "the whole was greater than the sum of the parts"? Like that, but backwards. I'll give them this -- it was so astonishing, this badness, that I spent the whole time watching the play and contemplating its awfulness. Like Jen, I never once thought, "gotta remember to pay bills tonight" or anything.
Posted by Fuzzy at 11:21 AM | Comments (2)
December 2, 2005
Thanks
Thanks for the kind words from Chris and Noah and Hixx and Dan and all the folks at the Chicago Improv Network and all the commenters here and all the emails and the card from Kate R. and Jose for being too excited to type so he called as soon as he read the news here.
Posted by Fuzzy at 5:05 PM | Comments (0)
FuzzyCo Shorts: Candyland
Click to play 14 MB Quicktime movie - requires Quicktime 7. (You can also right-click here to download the movie.)
Whoo-oo, I've posted the second short film, so now it's really a series. Very occasional, but a series none-the-less. (And if you have already subscribed to the FuzzyCo Shorts vodcast (or via iTunes) you would have gotten this short last night.)
Candyland is a short we made for the Vidiocy short film festival/contest back in July 2004. We were given a single word suggestion ("Candyland") and had 21 days (or so) to make a film under 10 minutes long. We made a two-minute film that's a sort of a parody of Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece The Seventh Seal, only with (and I'm giving away the only joke here) the game Candyland instead of chess. (Remember in Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey when they play all those games against that bald Death guy? Same thing, only Shaun wouldn't shave his head.) But then we added onto that 2 minute film another 2 minutes of "alternate endings", and then another 2 minutes of out-takes. The interstitial screens are supposed to be like you're watching the special features on a DVD. Does that come across?
The Vidiocy fest pre-selects 8 films out of the 50 or so that are made to be screened for the judges and actually be in the running to win their prizes and Candyland made that cut, but didn't get any farther in the judging. C'est la vie.
If you'd like to go back and read what I wrote about the making and showing of the film in July 2004, it's here: post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4.
Posted by Fuzzy at 8:39 AM | Comments (1)
December 1, 2005
Some deets
I left off that last post a little abruptly... I had to go run meet the plumber, who, once again, did not show up. Sigh. So then we had to go to a free gin and gadgets event and drink a bunch of gin. Whee!
So, to answer your first question, Fall 2006. We still need to pick/find a venue, which will influence the exact date.
And I like to say "we've announced our engagement" rather than "we're engaged now" because we had decided a few months ago that getting married would be a grand idea. But we thought it would be good to wait until after the move and we got things more settled around the house and our lives before we announced anything. And we wanted to go get a ring, but there just hasn't been time...
So we were going to visit my family in Texas for Thanksgiving and we decided that it would be good to tell them while we were down there. Saturday night at dinner we did just that and everyone was very happy and Mom had a great time introducing Erica as my fiancee at church the next morning. Monday morning my dad took me aside and asked if we were having an artist friend design a ring or some other big plan like that. No, we just really haven't had time. "Well," he offered, "would you like your grandmother's ring? She never had an engagement ring, but it's her 40th anniversary ring. It'd need to be resized..." Would I? And how!
I carried the ring around with me all afternoon in my pocket. I thought about keeping it a secret until we got back to Chicago and making a big production of it, but I knew I couldn't wait that long to share it with Erica. So when we got back to my parents' house from lunch, I asked Erica to come sit with me on the backporch. It was just a little chilly (for Texas, that is -- it was probably 65° or so) and we cuddled up together on a lawnchair and my mom brought us out some blankets. We just held each other and talked about things for a while and then I asked her to reach into my pocket (I wasn't trying to be cute, we were all crammed together in that lawn chair and I couldn't reach into the pocket myself). She reached in, but all she was finding were receipts. "What am I looking for?" she asked. A little box, I said. Well, she knew right away what it was and she was, I'll say, delighted. And I was, too. And then we took a nap :-)
I think we got the best of both worlds -- we had mutually decided on getting married (I really think the whole "waiting for him to pop the question" thing is ridic.) but I also got to surprise Erica, if not with a proposal, with a ring.
Delightful... that's what it is. Erica makes me happier than I ever knew I could be, and so I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, but this gives me a chance to announce that to everyone, and that fills me with delight. Yay! And then we get to get married! (Well, next we get to plan a wedding...)
Posted by Fuzzy at 2:22 AM | Comments (8)