FuzzyCo

If I’m chewing on an artistic or technical problem late at night, I’ll go to bed and then toss and turn and keep half-waking up and mulling over the problem and possible solutions. One in ten times this happens, I’ll wake up with a great solution to the problem, fully realized. More often, however, it goes like it did last night. I went to bed thinking about how exactly to edit the opening to a new Blewt variety show we just filmed. Around 3am (I checked the clock, thinking it was almost morning) I started to think that a puppet or animated cotton work glove would be a great mascot for the show (let me be clear, the show has nothing to do with gloves and none appear in the show). Over the rest of the night, in this dream state, I worked out an entire mechanism for building a wireframe inside a glove, propping it up in front of a green screen, and then stop-motion animating it. In the morning, I realized that a) I’d re-invented the Hamburger Helper glove and b) that this was the dumbest idea ever in the history of ever.

So if you’re a subscriber to Time Out Chicago, issue #425 showed up in your mailbox today and page one greeted you with that handsome bunch up there. This is the last print issue of the magazine, and most of the pictured staff have been laid-off, including myself. Friday was my last official day with the company, though I’m doing a little bit of contract work, helping the new reduced staff get transitioned into their new roles as primarily a web team instead of print journalists. But as Frank Sennett, our outgoing Editor-in-Chief, pointed out in his Afternoon Shift interview yesterday, it really is an amazing crew for a website and I don’t doubt that they’ll continue to be an important part of the Chicago cultural landscape.

As for me, it was great being on the Masthead of TOC for the last seven months (especially right next to such a good friend), but I’m off to new adventures of my own in the Chicago cultural landscape. I had put the word out on Facebook and Twitter (and obliquely, here) that I was looking for a job and a lot of great friends pointed me at various IT jobs. I’m not ruling out a regular IT position, but TOC has made me very picky—I’ve been spoiled. Until that perfect job comes along, I’m going to try putting together various freelance gigs and see how that goes. Friends have been very generous in that regard as well, and I already have gigs lined up in a variety of my talents: IT, web work, video editing, photography. If someone would come along with a job as a ‘beardy guy’ I’d be just about set.

I’ve entered the Mythical Beast Wars contest plenty of times, but this week I was asked to judge. Chip let me pick my own monster and I went with a griffin, a childhood favorite and on Purdue’s seal. There were a lot of great entries this week, so it was hard to pick a winner, but I did it.

Erica made* us rewind this commercial about 600 times so we could watch that tortoise** bite that guy’s finger over and over. We watched it in slo-mo, so we could see that the tortoise closes its eyes right as it bites. Anyway, I used a YouTube->GIF tool to make this for Erica to save the Tivo’s Instant Reply button:

Aw, heck, why do we even care about the guy or context or anything:

By “made” I mean, I happily Boop-booped over and over.
*It’s on land with a domed shell, so it’s a tortoise not a turtle.

Alright, it’s taken me a week into 2013 to get this all in order, but through the magic of editing-the-date-field, these will all be filed away in with 2012. It’ll just look like I had a really busy December 31.

In 2012 I did:

• 11 comedy shows
• 1 storytelling show

for a total of 12 shows. The least in one year since I started performing.

I also read 28 books, saw 27 movies, and played 16 video games all the way through.

Shows, books, and movies are all way down from last year. And the big reason is the next paragraph.

I ran 525 miles, biked 258 miles, and swam 28 miles and completed 22 races, including the Chicago Triathlon Triple Challenge and a 15K in Istanbul.

I posted 671 photos on Flickr, posted 330 tweets, and made 177 blog posts here at FuzzyCo, 50 posts at Four Squirrels, 47 at Push Butt, 14 at Chicago Flag Tattoos, and 13 at the The Unnamed, Mostly-Chicago Race Review Podcast.

Numbers from 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007.

I can't remembered who asked for this, but who doesn't need a endless animated gif of Clay Goodpasture on a rotating rhino?

I've long been fascinated by repurposed or custom action figures. Noah has given us two different amazing gifts of our giant Pez heads and two Munnies. And years ago, someone gave Jason Chin a Jason Chin-action figure that was, as far as I know, just a re-packaging of an existing figure, and with my limited artistic skills I've always wanted to do that sort of thing for someone.

I happened on these dollar store wrestler action figures, with a folding chair as a prop, no less, and instantly thought "Time Keeper Willis". The mace became a wireless mic and I made TKW's big clock out of a button and gold elastic. It looks really good around his neck (I should have taken pictures when I had it out of the packaging) but I was so enamored with using the molded blister pack that I had to tuck the clock in to the side.

The timing worked out well to give copies to Bryan, Steve, and Paul as this is the one-year anniversary of our pilot airing. Remember when we were on TV? Yeah, that was cool.

I keep trying to figure out a syntax where I can say that I'm posting this job opportunity "like a boss", but it's just not quite working. Anyway, I started at Time Out Chicago this week as the Director of IT and one of my first duties is to hire a help desk tech (I think the position is called "systems coordinator") to report to me. I'm a pretty OK boss. Just ask any of those jerks I managed at Playboy.

Today is 7/11*, and so the company with the same name is giving away free Slurpees. Cleverly, the free size is a 7.11 ounce cup.

On the way home with my free Lemon Creme** Slurpee, I was thinking that 7 and a bit ounces is really all the Slurpee I want -- I drink sodas and sweet tea, but a Slurpee is a bit sweet even for me. And then I was thinking that 7.11 ounces is a pretty odd size -- is that some even number in metric or did 7-11 have cups custom made? Nope. A quick glance at the bottom of the cup reveals the shocking truth: you're actually getting 8 ounces!***

* In the U.S., anyway. In Europe I imagine the same promotion has to wait until November 7th.
** I still haven't found a 7-11 with the Watermelon-Lime flavor that Coudal said was so good.
*** I only just noticed the little plus symbol beside the 7.11 when I was posting this picture.

Q: Fuzzy, I know that you and Erica have a snappy casual style, but can you dress up for a formal occasion like a wedding?

A: I think this photobooth photo speaks for itself:

(Congrats to Emily and Kevin!)

"What's up dear, are you enjoying with this humorous YouTube video?
Hmmm, that?s good, I am also watching this YouTube comical video at the
moment."

Indeed. When am I not watching a YouTube comical video at the moment?

If you want to see some of the finest second camera work on a puppet-hosted talk show ever, then you want to see the new episode of the Jameson show.

A little behind the scenes story: while Phineas was showing us all how to make a screen print, I learned that once you start pulling a screen, you have to keep going -- if you let the ink dry out on the screen you have to strip it and start over fresh. So once we started filming, Phineas had to finish the evening's work. But after we were done with the interview, Noah and Greg remembered a piece of footage they wanted to shoot with Phineas. I offered to take over pulling the screens. Phineas gave me a super-quick lesson and then monitored me for a few prints and then I was on my own. I ended up doing that last screen for about 20 of the 100 prints Phineas was doing. When they go on sale, will this knowledge that I touched a couple of them send the price skyrocketing amongst things-Fuzzy-touched aficionados? We can only hope.

I'm well used to the thing where people start a new email conversation by just replying to the last email they received from you, regardless of topic. But when the new topic is a request for IT support and the email they're replying to is about how to request IT support (hint - it's not by emailing me), it's just a fingernail down the chalkboard of my brain.

Click through for the Onion's delightful headline about my bar.

(via Martino)

I call it Eddie Murphy-ing, Erica calls it Parent Trapping, but whatever you call it, Parker would appreciate it if you donated to WBEZ.

Parker's been in our videos before, but this is the first (and second) time she's been cast in someone else's. She's going all Eddie Murphy on it.

I did not realize how close I was to internet success. Go here and listen to 0:50—5:47 of this week's The Talk Show. Anyone want to send me a Das Keyboard?

(Windows Phone!)

Holi is a Hindu spring festival of colors. And so a Holi celebration, or in our case, a Holi-themed nightclub event (warning, sound!), features pots of perfumed colored powders for you to throw at each other. You wear white so that you start out looking as you see above, and end up looking as you see below. Thanks to Sylvia for dragging us out.

I could tell you what product this is the box-end for, but it'd probably be more boring than what you could imagine would be a "gift unusual" for both "the sportman" and "shut-ins".

Erica and I got in a last minute I Want to Draw a Cat for You order — us as cats as Cutie Bumblesnatch and Prehistoric Human — right before Steve's appearance on Shark Tank. We knew that however Steve's appearance went, he would get inundated with orders. So, as friends, we thought we'd add to his burden. Hmm, maybe we're not that nice of friends. Anyway, if you haven't seen this week's Shark Tank yet, definitely check it out on Hulu. Steve is up first and it's quite a performance.

If "hot ladies in off-brand Snuggies holding a fat kitty wearing a Snuggie for Dogs(tm)" isn't already a thing, well, it is now.

This ad pissed me off so much that I trudged two blocks out of my way in the snow (uphill both ways!) to take a photo so I could rant about it.

"When was the last time you cried at a Cubism Exhibit?"

Really, Lyric Opera? You want to play that game? Cubism: 1907–1919. Opera: 1597–1921*. You think ragging on a early 20th century art movement is the way to score points and get people to come see your ancient and dying niche art form? The couple of hundred people in Chicago who might be interested in going to a Cubism Exhibit, those people are not your enemy, they're the same people who might possibly come to a Lyric show. They might go to a Cubism Exhibit in the afternoon and then a Lyric show in the evening. But now you're criticizing them for having enjoyed that afternoon exhibit (when was the last time there actually was a Cubism exhibit in Chicago, anyway?) and making them feel defensive. Dammit, this ad makes me want to go out and paint some Cubist paintings. I mean, it has to be more fun than falling asleep in the middle of the First Act (g'damn Billy Budd).

"Only Lyric combines music, song and theater into one incredibly moving performance."

Really? Only Lyric? Because you're the only opera in town, Lyric? Oh wait, you're not? Huh.

Other ads in the series highlight the positives of the Lyric with comparisons to pop culture -- "More deceit and intrigue than a Hollywood marriage" -- but I really think they misstepped with this one.

* Death of Caruso. You heard me.

I didn't say that I solve mysteries, I just hunt them.

Who you calling obsessive, Willis?

In 2011 I did:

• 2 improv show (one with puppets)
• 13 comedy shows (two on TV)
• 1 standup appearance
• 1 storytelling show
• 0 theatrical performances

for a total of 17 shows. That's just two one more than the 15 that I remarked last year was probably an all-time low.

I also read 41 books, saw 69 movies, and played 8 video games all the way through.

I ran 208 miles and completed a half-dozen races, including the Tough Mudder and the Chicago Triathlon for the third time. I did not keep track of my biking or swimming distances very well this year.

I posted 823 photos on Flickr, posted 425 tweets, and made 232 blog posts here at FuzzyCo, 7 posts at Four Squirrels, and 93 at Push Butt.

Numbers from 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007.

OK, so we all know at this point that the legendary Van Halen tour rider clause about removing the brown M&Ms from backstage was not just rockstar antics but was a clever hack by the band to see if people were actually reading their contracts, a bellwether if you will, a canary in the coal mine: if there were brown M&Ms backstage, then there were possibly more serious and life-threatening issues in the stage setup.

So too I have begun to treat the appearance of my name in emails as an indication of how much I'm going to need to double-check someone's work. I mean, "[INSERT_NAME_HERE]" or "Dear Network Administrator", sure, it's an instant discard, but let's go through the sliding scale:

• Fuzzy - great, you can read, that's my name
• Erik - alright, it is still my legal first name, and maybe you're not comfortable with the implied familiarity of the using the name that's in my email address, that I sign all my emails with, that's in my sig… Fine. But I'm going to keep my eye on you.
• Eric - alarm bells are going off. You've now picked an alternate spelling of a name I don't use. I'm going to be double-checking any Excel sheets you send me to make sure that you're using the SUM function and aren't just adding up columns of numbers by hand (true story).
• Fussy - fail. Or you're messing with me. Maybe I am a little OCD, but now I'll trust any information you send me as far as I can throw it.

Erica's been real sick and I've had nagging colds, so we've been doing a lot of really productive sitting-on-the-couch, and also some watching-alot-of-documentaries. All is not completely quiet around here, however. Entries continue to trickle in for PushButt.com and we're posting Drunk Monkeys episodes weekly at FourSquirrels.com (theoretically on Fridays, though the cough medicine keeps making me forget until Friday afternoon or Saturday morning).

But somehow Erica is a lot more attractive in MC Frontalot glasses than I am.

We’ve got episode 7 of Drunk Monkeys up and it’s the last episode of our first “season”. But never fear, drink fans, because a new season will start next week! And I’ll probably call the next one episode 8. So why did I bother calling it a season or a finale at all? Exactly!

Impress These Apes-alum Daniel Kibblesmith was on Millionaire Matchmaker this week (I think it aired Monday, but being Bravo it's showing about 3 times a day all week) and was on the cover of Monday's Red Eye promoting the same. It's awesome to see a friend get such great publicity, but man, that cactus looks so sad. Oh wait, I know how to fix it:

There's a big article in the Sun-Times this morning about Don't Spit the Water, Erica, Steve, and Paul were on WCIU this morning to promote the show, yadda yadda yadda, whatever. The real news is, guess who we ran into in the green room?

Fun fact: Steve-O has naughty words tattooed on his knuckles, so for TV appearances he uses a sharpie to make them say "SAVE ROCK".

I sent a few of my friends the link to How to Properly Hide Booze in Your Facebook Pictures. Kristen replied, "Wow, on my facebook page I do the exact opposite and hide all my cats with bottles of liquor so I look cooler." I totally forgot that Erica does that all the time:

(Link via @apelad)

Update: a finger-wag at Sad and Useless for totally hiding the original attribution of those photos in a tiny (Via) link. Booze Cats is your premiere source for your photoshopped-cats-over-liquor photos.

As promised, here are some of the videos from this last week's challenge at Impress These Apes. The contestants randomly chose a Threadless tshirt and had to make a 5-minute comedy video inspired by the shirt.

Thea Lux's video, inspired by Funkalicious:

Impress These Apes - Week 5 - Thea from Blewt! Productions on Vimeo.

Impress These Apes - Week 5 - Jo from Blewt! Productions on Vimeo.

Impress These Apes - Week 5 - Steven from Blewt! Productions on Vimeo.

Impress These Apes - Week 5 - Chris from Blewt! Productions on Vimeo.

Erica got her camera out before I did and was able to capture the shot of the century.

If you are familar with the show Fashion Police, you know that they have a segment called "Bitch Stole My Look!" where they find photos of two celebs wearing the same outfit and then ask the question "Who wore it better?". Just after I posted my photos from this weekend, I happened across this poster in the hall here at work, which prompts me to ask the same question:

I'm sure Erica will soon be sharing the story of why we were in the ER last night, but I noticed a small thing while we were there: either the brand or model of hospital bed Erica was lying in was "Stryker" and the wheelchair we used was a "Gladiator". I thought that those were pretty active names for things you use when you're specifically NOT in any shape to strike anything nor compete in gladiatorial games. Erica said, though, better that than the "Sad Sack" and the "Busted Up". I suppose, I suppose.

Many thanks to Steve Gadlin for the best 24 seconds of my day:

As an mp3: Fusi Gerdes

Related: Four Songs About Fuzzy

At lunch today the cashier pointed at the bottom of the receipt, as they often do these days, and indicated a URL and a code. "If you go and fill out this survey, you can get a free meal". Now, free meal is a bit more definite than the usual "chance to win $PRIZE" for these sorts of things, and it's a small local chain that's one of my usual lunch spots, so when I got back to the office I visited the site. The survey was hosted by Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, so I wonder if it's someone's classwork to help out the restaurant with customer surveys? Anyway, the whole thing was pretty standard, but buried in the "please rate these statemtents from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree" were two statements that were A) poor survey design, because they contain too many variables and B) kind of felt like they were testing to see what the restaurant could get away with.

The quality of ingredients a restaurant uses is less important to me than making sure the restaurant abides by proper health codes and regulations.

I will dine at a restaurant with sub-par customer service if the food tastes really good.

So that first one—WTF? Both are important to me. If I say I disagree, does that mean I'm advocating that they use quality ingredients but give up on cleaning the place? And the second one… well, I'd probably actually agree. I mean, I eat at the Billy Goat. But I don't want them to know that I'm willing to trade really good food for rudeness.

I'm way behind on my little media-consumption reviews and, even if no one else cares, it's useful to me to have these up here. So I'm going to try and blow through a bunch here. They'll probably be even shorter and make even less sense than usual. Whee!

The dangers of scaling up clipart way too far include having an insane vigilante walk up to your front door.

You have heard of planking? If not, don't worry, it's just what all the kids are doing. It's cool, old man. Here is I, planking it but good at the 16th Playboy Lingerie Party. Yeah, that's how I roll.

I'm sure they're still working the bugs out of Groupon Now, but someone might want to let them know that the Bronx and Chicago are a little more than 2.7 miles apart.

Erica, here is that ringtone of the Wikipedia pronunciation guide to Azerbijan that you requested.

As an iPhone ringtone: Azerbijan.m4r

As an mp3: Azerbijan.mp3

(Original by EncycloPetey, available under a CC Attribution-Share Alike license, which means these files are as well.)

I mean, you love Latte. Everyone loves Latte. But she's almost 17 years old and she's such a weirdo, playful is not an adjective we'd usually use to describe her. And part of that, I think, is that she's so needy (see weirdo, above) that if she sees a person looking at her, she'll drop whatever she's doing to come 'talk' to you--cf. the end of this video (which I shot while trying not to look directly at her).

I'm so OCD!

In 2010 I did:

• 11 improv shows
• 1 comedy show
• 3 standup appearances
• 0 storytelling shows, theatrical performances, or "other" shows

for a total of 15 shows. This is, I pretty sure, a low since I started performing 20 years ago.

I also read 29 books, saw 68 movies, and played 15 video games all the way through.

I biked 505 miles, swam about 39 miles, ran 208 miles, and completed over a dozen races and the Chicago Triathlon for the second time.

I posted 1,214 photos on Flickr, posted 551 tweets, and made 232 blog posts here at FuzzyCo, 5 posts at Four Squirrels, and 90 at Push Butt.

Numbers from 2009, 2008, and 2007.

The ever-talented Noah Ginex gave us these painted Munny figures for Christmas. The level of detail is quite amazing (except that, you know, I haven't worn glasses for four years now :-). He even managed to paint Erica's new forearm tattoo on the inside of the figure's rather little arms.

They join the Erica and Fuzzy Pez Heads that Noah made us for our wedding and the DADA Flutter and DADA Little Piece of String dolls that Noah's girlfriend Stephanie made us. We feel well-incarnated by that household.

I say I'm not trying to make Sylvia jealous, but really I'm trying to make Sylvia jealous:

Photos from Hawaii are trickling onto Flickr, Erica has made a couple of preliminary posts about the trip.

One of the benefits of having an artist house-sit for you is that you return to art made for/about you:

I drink way too much Coke, trying to stay awake in these training things.

Hey, do you need a big, old, heavy tube TV? How about two?

I have two Sony Wega 27" "Flat Screen" TVs. (I put the term in quotes because the piece of glass at the front of the device is certainly very flat, but this is definitely not a nice thin LCD TV or anything -- it's a big, fat, heavy beast.) One is a KV-27FS100L and the other is a slightly different model number, but looks the same and has the same features. For this kind of TV, it's pretty nice. It has coax in, two sets of composite inputs, one S-video in, and even a component input and analog audio out. They're both in great shape. I have original remotes for both. Name your price. Heck, nobody but my friends read this anyway, so I'm sure I'll just end up giving it (them!) to you.

Can you spot Team Gerdes in this latest Steve Delahoyde short?

I turned on Ping in my iTunes. I'm not sure why. But you can look me up as "Fuzzy Gerdes". We'll see if that lasts—that's not the name on my credit card, so I might need to change it back if billing complains. That's just one of the oddnesses of Ping that I can already see.

Anymal. You like that? I swiped it from Emmy Blotnick's post over at Urlesque. Any animal = anymal. I tried to leave a comment over there thanks her for the neologism, but their system ate it. Anyhoodle.

Erica and I made our animal-drawing videos to prank Steve, but if we were mentioning websites, I might as well get the domains and put them up, right? And if I'm putting up websites, I might as well put up actual Order Now buttons, right? So I've sold two whole animal drawings and order #2 has blogged their general satisfaction with their purchase ("Artistic ability aside").

Perhaps you're confused between all your options of having an animal crudely-drawn for you, what with I Want to Draw a Cat for You, May I Please Draw an Owl for You?, and I'll Draw Any Animal You Want. Well, thank goodness urlesque is here to break it down for you: It's an Animal Drawing Face-Off, Because All These People Want to Draw for You.

So, likely I deserve this gentle ribbing I found on my office door yesterday morning. I did biff both knees while learning to wear bike shoes that clip onto the pedals and then bonk my head with a pellet gun sight at Schützen Verein and then scrape both (recently healed) knees up pretty good and twist something in my foot from tripping while running. But hey, at least I'm out there biking and shooting and running. If I survive my training, I'm going to be incredible!

The Chicago Just for Laughs festival has started and tonight I got to go to a special semi-secret warm-up show by the Conan O'Brien writers, who are performing tomorrow at the Bank of America Theater downtown. The show tomorrow will be hosted by Andy Richter, but filling in for him tonight was Jimmy Pardo, accomplished standup comedian and host of the Never Not Funny podcast (and warm-up comedian for the Tonight Show for Conan's seven months in LA). Jimmy's material is good, but what he's probably best known for is his crowd work. I.e., making fun of people in the audience. And in the odd, dim lighting of the Lincoln Lodge, who can Jimmy see in the crowd? Fuzzy Gerdes. That's it. So the first ten minutes of the show was me. Whee! (Though really, it was very funny and not at all mean.)

And hey, Reggie Watts is cool, huh? Glad I finally got to see something live, albeit short, from him.

Update: I'm a "local comedy personality".

Last weekend we went to the Tree House Shelter's Kitten Shower—a fund-raising event in anticipation of the spring kitten influx. There were raffles and games and prizes and such, but the main thing for us was just going and petting a bunch of kitty-cats. Who's a good kitty? So, we did. I took some pictures of the current residents of the shelter, including some four-week-old-ish kittens.

That camera you were interested in, with Amazon-kick-back link enabled.

Wouldn't "0% non-fat" be 100% fat? #nerd

Things I learned from Whitman's at Easter -- Easter Eggs are pooped out by ducks.

It was all I could do not to start singing "Wondrous Boat Ride" from the Wilder Wonka.

Not a speck of light is showing
So the danger must be growing
Are the fires of Hell a-glowing?
Is the grisly reaper mowing?

This is also from our most recent foray into modeling for Johnny Knight's lighting class. This (and the rest of the photos here) are by Laurie Newman, who started out emulating a shot by Sacha Waldman of Rachel Griffiths and Peter Krause from Six Feet Under. I say started, because Laurie then had us move on to more "lovey" shots, which is where we ended up with the shot above. Awww.

Our friend Johnny Knight teaches a photography lighting class and occasionally Erica and I model for his students, who are each trying to replicate a famous photograph. We did so last week and just got some of the results back. Here we are all dark and mysterious in a photo Benjamin Gonzalez took (more here), re-creating the lighting of a photo of the band Dead Can Dance by Michael Grecco:

Another rapper that Erica is like.

On Sunday, my friend Greg Inda called. "I need a mountain man for a fur trader photoshoot. I had someone lined up, but they just called in sick. How soon can you be here?" Who can resist a call like that? The real question is why I wasn't his first choice as a mountain man. I mean, c'mon, look at that beard. That stoic gaze. That easy way with a plastic shotgun.

Greg promises more photos from the shoot soon (there were also pretty ladies in furs involved).

Erica may not want to rush home—our house is haunted by a ghooooost!

Thanks to Zulkey for introducing me to ghost cat.

Erica's out of town doing some not-so-fun stuff and so Parker has a little message for her (and for you too).

Everybody in our house is a Saints fan, even Parker. So yeah, we're all pretty excited about the win.

Are you a Windows server admin type and, since you read FuzzyCo, you're obviously super cool? Come work for me! More a helpdesk type, with both Windows and Mac experience? Come work next to me!

Check out these awesome glasses our friend Leigh made us with Schmerica and Schmuzzy on them.

Did you know that Parker has been around since 1910? It's true.

From Ben and Emily's wedding.

So, I'm in a Microsoft Live commercial that was (is?) playing at Best Buys on the loop that plays in the computer monitor section. My emails to the company that shot the commercial, trying to get a copy, have gone unanswered. Do any of you, my dear internet friends, work at Best Buy and is that loop on a DVD or something that you could "borrow"? If so, lemme know, plz thx.

Over the weekend Erica and I got to attend our friends Ben and Emily's wedding. I've known Ben for years and he's often "chill" or "in a good mood" or "happy", but Saturday he was grinning from ear-to-ear the entire day. It was so good to see two people so thrilled to get married.

A fun thing I'd never seen at a wedding before were the table numbers. Each table's number sign was an envelope with a blank book inside and they asked everyone to leave a message for the couple that they'd open on their Nth anniversary.

Also on each table were glowstick necklaces. Emily explained that on the day she and Ben met, she had been to a relative's birthday party and came away with a surplus of glowstick necklaces. Later that evening, when she ended up by chance at Ben's birthday part, Ben spent a lot of time taking photos of her playing with the necklaces and it was part of what started them talking.

After we'd heard this explanation, one of the women at our table, Ruby, hit upon the idea of joining dozens of the necklaces to surround the entire room in a "perimeter of love". She conspired with Erica and Seth, the MC, to construct the ring and then surprise the couple with it just before their first dance. I was a bit nervous, because it definitely had the potential to be disruptive to Ben and Emily's evening, but I really think it came off and I hope Ben and Emily enjoyed it.

Hey look! It's our friend Sarah-Ji being all official wedding photographer.

Ben and Emily didn't have a wedding cake, they had wedding pie. Swoon! I think they might have been Hoosier Mama pies, but I'm not 100%.

Unbox your own.

My 2009 resolution is to go to a college that knows grammar, but maybe that's just me.

It's pretty gauche to complain about travel delays - Louis CK hit the nail right on the head with his recent 'everything's amazing, nobody's happy' routine* - but here I am at (well, on the tarmac of) Dulles airport in DC, on my way to NY. And hey, I'm glad** we're being safe — bad weather and a series of perfectly reasonable choices left us with too little fuel and so we've landed here to refuel and wait for La Guardia to reopen — but it would have to be the one time I'm actually on a schedule and in a bit of a rush. This was already an emergency work trip and everyone's hope was that I'd be able to fix the problems before the start of business on Monday. The hope of that fades the closer we get to Monday...

Oh good, to mollify us, they're going to play '17 Again'.

Update: My god, if there's a city on earth to arrive tired and hungry at 1 am, New York City is it. Traffic was light and my cab got me right into Manhattan and I found a Yelp-recommended street vendor just a block away from my hotel which has filled me up with delish chicken, gyro, and rice.

(Funny thing: the street vendor's website says "Part of the secret to this delicious meal is in the white sauce. Nobody knows what it is, but everybody knows to ask for lots of it." I thought to myself "c',mon, this is New York. Surely everyone knows what tzitzikas is." I get to the cart and two meatheads are ahead of me, asking the guy "Hey man, what's the white sauce?")

* In case you're not familiar, I'll update with a link when I can.
** There's a woman sitting in front of me who argued at length with two of the flight attendants. As best I could understand her complaint, it was that because she had a home 'weather station', the airline should never have unexpected weather conditions.

I love this woman more and more every day.

3 Wolf Moon + Keyboard Cat =

Update: they've made it into a shirt and rushed it into print!

The article doesn't explain why our friend Grady Dixon (right), who is a metrology professor at Mississippi State University, was part of making a world-record-setting 482 lb barbeque sandwich. But I'm not sure any reason is required.

Photo by Erica.

Coincidently, It Came From the Neo-Futurarium VIII: Legend of The Neo-Futurarium opened last night with Cool As Ice and continues for the next five weeks with dramatic readings of more awe(some|ful) movies.

"And when the Cribs crew comes over, I'm gonna be like, 'You know, if you don't have a bucket of shoes in your foyer, you ain't no big dog.'" -- Mike Doughty, Smofe + Smang

The Blob figurine from the 7-11 Slurpee Wolverine Tie-In Straw is, himself, drinking a Slurpee. Hey kids, drink Slurpees and you, too, can be a supervillian whose superpower is being huge.

Totally out of context.

Update: SOLD. Thanks to all who were interested.

For sale: my 1986 Suzuki Intruder. This is a great bike -- it's always run solid and it's a comfy bike to ride. Great for couples -- Erica likes the queen seat (she doesn't feel like she's going to slip off, like she does on crotch rockets, and she can sit uprightish). I rode the bike a lot for general transportation around Chicago, but we got a car and so I just don't ride it enough anymore to justify the space it's taking up in Shaun's garage.

The bike is not currently running -- it was running fine two years ago and then I put it into storage. I'm very confident that it's just that the battery is dead (that is one of the few annoyances of this bike -- the battery is in an awkward place and you really need a stand to get it out) but I should note that I'm selling it as-is. I added some of that tank stabilizer stuff to the gas tank before it went into storage.

Either Shaun or I has owned the bike for the last eleven years (he gave it to Erica and I as a wedding present three years ago). In that time it's been laid it down just once -- a nice slow topple at 5 mph at a rainy stop sign. That resulted in a scratch across the gas tank and a bent handle bar that Champion Cycle straightened out for me. I'm also always dinging the turn signals as I get it in and out of the garage. They're easy to replace, and also easy to bandage up with electrical tape (which is what they are right now). Other than that, no accidents. And the bike has been living in a garage for the last five years, protected from Chicago winters and summers.

700 CC engine
21424 miles
Clear Illinois title

I've got a whole gallery of photos up at Flickr so you can see the bike from all sides.

How does $700 sound? Questions? Give me a holler!

Update: SOLD.

They've^[1] installed a new elevator system in the building where I work, and I feel the need to rant about it a little.

The system seems to me to be an example of a very clever system that ends being really much worse than a simple system.

Here's the way it works: Before getting on the elevator, you punch in the number of the floor you want to go to and the system directs you to an elevator -- the main lobby there are six elevators labled D through I^[2]. You go and get in that elevator - a small strip just inside each door shows the floors that the elevator will be stopping at, so you can confirm that you're getting on an elevator that is going to your desired floor. That's important because there are no floor selection buttons inside the elevator.

The theory, I suppose, is that the system can rationally distribute people between elevators -- grouping people headed to the same floor and so on. It is true that at peak times (morning and lunch rushes, for example) the lobby was a swirling mess as people would eye the various elevators, trying to intuit which might arrive next, self-selecting into groups of coworkers and then sort of lunging at an elevator. There's also been a change in how the designated 'garage' elevator works with the new system, but I think that may be more of a policy change than any technological shift, and is certainly an edge case specific to this building, so I'm going to ignore it.^[3]

The biggest flaw in the system is that I had to tell you how it works. Elevators have a remarkably consistent user interface -- you press one of two buttons (up or down) to summon an elevator going the direction you want, you get in the elevator, locate the button for the floor you want to go to, and press it. I've been wracking my brains to think of any variations I've encountered and about the only thing I can come up with is very tall buildings where there are banks of elevators designated for different floor ranges and you need to read a designation and self-select for the correct set of elevators.

The system was just installed this week and the main lobby has been a mass of confusion every day. People come into the lobby and stare around for an 'up' button to press. If someone notices their confusion, the system can be explained to them (the security guards have been doing little else all week). But if an elevator happens to come, newcomers to the building confidently get into an elevator only to encounter a blank panel where they expect floor buttons. Depending on how quickly they realize the situation, they either try to compete with the flow of people into the elevator or are stuck riding the elevator to the pre-selected floors. If they don't get off at one of those floors and select their floor there, they'll ride the elevator at the mercy of external selectors.

People will learn the system, of course, and that confusion will lessen. It might even a fine system for a building with mostly office workers and only occasional vistors. But our building has a large number of doctors' offices -- every single day there are new patients coming to the building who have never been there before. The confusion is going to be on-going.

And speaking of doctors, that's another flaw in the system -- a signifcant portion of our elevator travelers seem to have strollers or be in wheelchairs. The system assumes that everyone is a perfectly average size and will happily assign 3 stroller-laden travelers to the same elevator. And if someone passes up an elevator because it's too full, the system has no idea and still stops the elevator at their pre-selected floor.

Finally, the system can only rationally distribute riders if every single person punches in their desired floor. We may be able to learn the new required behvaior, but for the moment we've been well trained by every other elevator system that if you see someone you work with, you can just get on the same elevator as them and you'll get to your destination. That's still true, but if you just join a coworker instead of punching in your floor yourself, the elevator car will likely be overfilled.

Oh, and this is the tiniest, and most correctable of all the problems with the system, but the system has a touch screen interface in the main lobby (the higher floors have keypad with small LCD displays). They haven't done whatever little Windows UI trick is required to hide the cursor, so a little Windows arrow jumps to where you touch with your finger. It just looks shoddy.

I'm certainly not opposed to change^[4] and there's no reason that just because 99% of the elevators in the world have the same UI that you couldn't develop a new, better one. But if you're going to replace such a simple, widely understood system, your new one had better be just as easy to understand and offer significant benefits. I really don't think this system, especially in our office building, does either of those.

[1] The system was installed by Schindler Elevators. I'm guessing it's their Miconic 10 Destination Dispatch.

[2] Why would you want to start the lettering at the heaviest used end of the building? I guess you wouldn't.

[3] To be fair, that may be one of the benefits of a system like this -- to allow the 'smart' system to handle the logic behind edge cases. I know that this is the first step of an elevator modernization effort in the building that's going to involve replacing the actual elevators as well, and I suppose the system could deal with weird situations like "elevator H can't go above floor 12 this week" that would be more difficult to explain to people with signs or policies.

[4] You kids, however, should get off my lawn.

Happy Birthday, Parker!

Parker's been feeling under-dressed lately, so I got her a kitty tie by purry for a birthday present. Now she's ready for business.

That middle puppet is very unrealistic.

(Photo by Greg Inda from a photoshoot to publicize this.)

Jim Coudal links to a story just now with the link line "Twitter can be dangerous". To summarize, a young woman twittered about a job offer from Cisco and wondered aloud "Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work." Tim Levald, Cisco's Community Development Strategist found the tweet and responded, "Who is the hiring manager. I'm sure they would love to know you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web."

Cue gnashing of teeth and dire warnings that nothing is private anymore and that "in these economic times" you shouldn't ever say anything bad about anyone. And, you know, sure. I myself certainly never (well, hardly ever) blog about work. But you know what, it does get my goat a bit that all the blame is likely to piled on this young woman. Because Tim Levald comes across as a bit of a dick in this short exchange. His job is to develop community and his first response to a comment about his company is to publicy mock and belittle that person (and an assertion that Cisco is aware of all internet traditions) not a quick DM with "You do know that your tweets aren't protected and that people from Cisco are finding them on searches."

Because if Tim is really "versed in the web" he might be aware that Twitter lets you compose messages of 140 characters. Which often loses something called nuance. Maybe all of this young woman's friends, who were who she thought she was communicating with, understand that by "hating the work" she means working at all or it's an injoke or who knows... we're not her friends.

The internet gives us more and more chances to make social gaffes. It also gives us all more and more chances to be generous and let people gracefully back out of those gaffes -- or more and more chances to be a dick.

Update: I wanted to make sure I wasn't being too unkind to Mr. Levald, so I went to look at his Twitter stream. He's asking people to retweet the exchange with an all-caps "#FAIL" tag. God, what a dick.

Alicia Carrier, of ten dollar drawings, created this awesome addition to our "slug on a bandaid" series.

This is really just in response to a question on Twitter by Zabeth, but I didn't think I could fit my answer in 140 chars.

Over iamdiddy's last 200 tweets (as of about 15 minutes ago) there were 17,649 characters, for an average tweet length of 88.2 characters. Of those 17,649 characters, 708 were exclamation points (4% overall) and 137 were questions marks (just under 1%). The longest string of exclamation points was 10 and the longest string of question marks was 7.

On average, then, we would expect an average tweet by iamdiddy to have 3.5 exclamation points and 0.6 question marks.

(I could get a bigger sample if I was willing to go more than 10 pages back. But I'm not. Bedtime!)

If you notice that you're down to the last 10% of a tube of toothpaste (or bottle of shampoo/dishwashing liquid/box of flea powder/whathaveyou) and buy a new one, then using the last 10% will take as long as using the first 90% did. (Of course, if you don't notice, the last 10% will take one day to use up.)

This tube of toothpaste has looked like this for about a month now, I think, and it just keeps producing toothpaste.

Ooops, I mean... SPOILER ALERT, if you haven't seen last night's Top Chef yet. Oops.

Umm... anyway, doesn't that make you want a Tshirt showing your support for the crazy-eyes-iest of the Top Chef finalists?

Popsi and Fatsi inspired me to draw Pacsi:

Who else is a fan of a certain crazy-eyed cheftestant on a certain reality competition cooking show? Do you maybe want a t-shirt to show off your loyalty?

If you're like me, you thought the best commercial of the Super Bowl was the Nanerpus commercial that was so rudely interrupted by some Denny's nonsense. Until we can get our own Nanerpocti, here's some desktop backgrounds for you. Each thumbnail below links to a 1024x768 image -- you know how to set a picture as your desktop background, don't you?

"It's Nanerpus! You can call me the Nanerpus, Nanerpus. And guess what? I love pancakes!"

Wait, you want an iPhone ringtone, too? OK.

Update: By popular (well, two people) request: a Nanerpus mp3. (I've repeated the Nanerpus song three times to make it a suitable ringtone length.)

Latte is having some teeth issues, so we've switched her to wet food. Parker has decided that wet food is the bestest thing ever in the world ever and comes running from the other side of the house at the merest crinkle of a wet food packet.

We're a cocky bunch over at Blewt, but even we would never say that Second City (you know, founded in 1953, Chicago institution, gave the world half its famous comedians) could learn a "lesson" from Impress These Apes. But we're sure flattered that Nina Metz said so in her review of the new mainstage show at Second City for Newcity Stage.

Ultimately, though, there is something missing in the creative drive. … If “Impress These Apes” has shown us anything, it’s that funny people—given the right motivation and freedom to play—will generate unique and indelible material. Second City can’t accommodate the freeform structure of “Apes” (nor should it) but I think there’s a lesson in there somewhere. Second City has always had impeccable taste when it comes to hiring talent, but shows like this suggest there has to be a better way to take advantage of what these folks have to offer.

I can't believe I forgot to mention this in my Apes Finale post...

Monday afternoon emails were flying around the Blewt production team with last minute details and one came through that the intro video was missing and could I bring another copy. I had to call Erica, who was already in transit to the theater, to have her stop at home to grab the external drive that had the video files and bring it with.

So I found myself in the theater setting up a little video editing station and re-rendering my Apes video. Since I have to fire up Final Cut, anyway, I thought, why don't I make the video somehow special for the last night. And my mind leapt immediately to Spaghetti Cat.

If you're not familar, Spaghetti Cat first appeared as a unexplained cut, in the middle of an interview, to a picture of a black cat sitting in front of a plate of spaghetti on The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet (a spokesperson later claimed it wasn't a mistake, it was a "bleep photo"). But Spaghetti Cat rose to fame(?) when that clip was featured on The Soup. The Soup has since created their own Spaghetti Cat puppet and it's become a recurring character on the show, and one of our favorite things.

But there was a problem: I couldn't get a wireless connection in the theater to download a still of Spaghetti Cat to embed in the intro video. Fortunately, Noah was at the theater with a big pad of paper and pens -- he has been doing sketches and caricatures before the show all run. He'd never seen the clip and so I had to describe the Spaghetti Cat for him to sketch. And so it was that the Impress These Apes was treated to a full two seconds of the random appearance of this guy:

I heard laughs throughout the theater and I have no idea if they were laughing because they recognized the character, or simply at the absurdity of the sudden, and unexplained, appearance of a cat. Eating spaghetti.

This is, of course, exactly how they get you to link to their thinly veiled advertising. But it's worked on me -- Parker is #10 (at the moment -- only 9 votes from the top!) on Purina's Pet Charts. (Parker, by the way, eats only Iams.)

Update: Thanks, y'all. Your clicking got Parker to the top cat spot today, and just a couple clicks behind an admittedly cute dog.

@zoocoup

Does anyone have a copy of the 1997 documentary Hands on a Hard Body that they could loan Team Gerdes?

Update: Nevermind. Got it.

Who is… the Masked Bandit?

Aha!

I'm so glad my little buddy can still make people happy.

I don't blog about work, but this one is pretty trade-secret-free, I think.

Advantages of my new cubicle:
* Convenient to the bathrooms
* Convenient to a coffee machine
* Convenient to the water fountain
* Convenient to the elevator
* I'm trying out using an exercise ball as my office chair¹

Disadvantages of my new cubicle:
* Convenient to a coffee machine²
* Totally away from the windows. If I stand up and squint I can see a square of daylight off in the distance.
* Smaller than the old cubicle. But I did a pretty good job of sorting in the move. Of course, no matter how small or organized of a move you're making, the last box always contains completely random stuff that really should be thrown away. I'm still going through that box.
* Actually near other people. I've been pretty lucky over the last few years that I haven't had any near office neighbors, so I could play my music pretty loud and so on. We'll see how this works out.
* Zero cell phone reception.

We'd like to welcome a new Onomatopoet to Onomatopoetically.com: Lisa Fairman. And what better time to encourage you to head on over there and submit a word for one of us to say. There's a super-easy form on the side bar -- just give us your name, optional website (so we can credit you for your suggestion), your email (so we can let you know when your word is published), and an onomatopoetic word, like Kachunga, Piddle, or Kadingdingdingdingkerplombus.

Update: I got Onomatopoetically listed in the iTunes podcast directory, so you can now subscribe to the site as a podcast through iTunes. You can subscribe using your favorite newsreader (or directly using the "Advanced" menu in iTunes) using this link.

You got your salami sticks in my peanut butter and chocolate! You got your peanut butter and chocolate in my salami sticks!

When we were out in LA, our friend and Camenae-ite Sarah Levin made sure that we stopped by Kid's Dental Care (4905 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles). This child-focussed dental office has a large mural stretching across the front and around the side, with characters from various fairy tales (and sports figures like Michael Jordan) dancing and cavorting.

What good fun! How colorful and delightful for the children!

What fun those jesters are having! And those pigs are... what are those pigs doing?

That's, um, that's just wrong. Though I suppose we can always use more bacon.

I have a stale joke that's stuck in my head all the time--whenever I'm presented with a "New and Improved" or somesuch, I can't help but think (and sometimes say) "Oh, as opposed to Old and Worse". But here, then, is the actual product. Non-Ultra Joy. Not even just Joy and Ultra Joy -- Non-Ultra.

I love my wife. Very much.

1UP has an exclusive preview of Shaun's new game.

Erica and Megan are off to Mississippi on the great cat trip -- there's still a chance to reserve a fine Mississippi cat for your Chicago home. Let me or Erica know if you're interested.

Does anybody understand fiction? A couple years ago the Mayor of Las Vegas complained that Rainbow Six: Vegas was "based on a false premise" and tried to block the release of the game.

And now the city of Barcelona is grumpy about the soon-to-be-released Wheelman*.

"In a press release today the Doge stated, 'Despite Mr. Shakespeare's scribblings, the city of Venice does not have an usury problem.'"

* Full disclosure -- Shaun produced it.

It doesn't take much to amuse us.

There's lousy cell phone reception in office where I work, unless you come stand right by the windows. That is, right on the other side of my cubicle wall. But you have a phone at your desk, so why would you need to use your cell phone? Oh, because you need to argue with your significant other or a collections agency or anyone else who needs a good arguing with and you don't want your coworkers to overhear. Just, I guess, me.

"Every time you sniff and say somebody has 'too much free time,' the part of you that used to love making things for pure joy dies a little." - Merlin Mann

I'm eliminating the phrase "too much free time" from my vocabulary. Even before I came across this pithy sentence from Merlin, I had been thinking that a lot of the stuff that I do, other people would probably think was a waste of time. So, just because someone else has come up with an odd way to invest their energy, that's no reason for me to belittle them. Now, I'm still gonna laugh at them, but I'm not going to question their basic motivation for engaging in the activity. Cool?

Update: Making Light shares a video of Clay Shirky speaking at Web 2.0 and answering the similar question "Where do people find the time?" It's a 15-minute video and well worth a watch.

Oh my lord. Here's a new ad campaign for Swedish Fish (long a Fuzzy-favorite anyway). In case you can't read it on this copy, there's a tiny "Nej" (No) under the kitty and a "Ja" (Yes) under the fish and the tag line is "A friend you can eat". There are 4 other images in the campaign, including a redonkulously cute bunny on a waffle.

(Via AdFreak)

I have, at work, a slightly-oversized coffee mug. It's from Crate & Barrel, sturdy, and a pleasant (I think) shade of green. This is, if I may digress from my point a bit, one of the ways I cope with the corporate environment. Years and jobs ago I got that mug and a complete, single set of silverware (knife, fork, tea spoon and soup spoon) specifically to bring into the office. Eating team-building deep dish pizza with plastic silverware will drive you crazy, I believe.

But the point is oatmeal. I make instant oatmeal in that mug for breakfast many days. (McCann's Instant Irish Oatmeal, Maple & Brown Sugar flavor, to be precise. An unsolicted endorsement. All natural flavors, and isn't that refreshing to see every now and then.) And if I hop up from my desk right after I finish my oatmeal and rinse the mug out it cleans up in a trice. Lickey-split. Easy as pie.

If I wait 15 minutes or half an hour or longer -- glue. There's a hard film all over the cup and tiny bits of oatmeal get welded to the bottom. It takes soaking and scrubbing to get it clean.

It seems hard not to think that there's a life lesson lurking all too obviously there. Clean up your messes right away and they're easy to take care of. I just wish I could learn that lesson, at the very least with regard to the mug.

OK, check it -- Monday night I said of a friend of ours, "well, at least she didn't display her butt on Display Your Butt dot com." Erica asked, "is that domain available?" It was. A few photos of the Blewt crew hanging around for Chicago Underground Comedy later and Team Gerdes Plus Noah is proud to present:

Well, huh -- I suppose that once you come up with the pun "deadbeet" there are only so many ways to draw it. On the left, a deadbeet icon I created for the Deadbeets website around 1996 or so. On the right, a detail from Joe Ledbetter's King of the Deadbeets from 2006 (also available in toy form, which is how I found out about it).

The results of this year's Chiditarod have finally been announced and Blewt's Silly Funny Goof Gang weren't very fast runners (we came in 46th out of 77, nearly an hour behind the winners) but we were awarded "Best Fashion". Yeah, that's right, we're pretty.

Hey, you're a jaunty little potato. Cute chef's hat. That's a nice batch of french fries you're leaning so casually against. Wait... did you make those fries? Out of your family!?!?

Gary Gygax is dead and I am sleepy, so I'm off to bed. Commenting is now only a quarter broke. Probably.

I probably spent 100 times more hours just reading the D&D manuals than actually playing a campaign. Thanks, Gary.

I can't let it rest, because there are other Barack Obama Miis being posted on Check Mii Out, but they're just not as good as the one Erica made. I've determined this scientifically, people. (Also, I finally got the export from Mii Editor to work so I could bring you this high-quality version. Print out your own poster at work on the work color printer. Your employer will thank you!)

To get Erica's go to Check Mii Out, Posting Plaza, Popular, Search (the magnifying glass), Change (the circular arrows), and then enter the entry number 4764-4332-9025.

And heck, why not T-Shirts too? Combine your support for Barack Obama and your love for the Nintendo Wii on a high quality(?) Cafe Press t-shirt.

It's got to be karmic payback -- occasional-designer-Fuzzy defended Pixish against charges that it was spec work, and then actor-Fuzzy was presented with an audition this week where the power relationship was very askew and pay is uncertain.

Derek Powazek defended Pixish again in more detail, mainly by talking about the power-relationships difference between spec work and Pixish. That is, it's spec work if a big company does it to a little design company. Pixish, he argues, is different because the power relationship is different, especially because the process is open. (Insert here the stuff I said about Threadless earlier.)

But besides the power (and the money) there's another criticism -- spec work is both a symptom and exacerbation of a devaluation of design. Some companies, I'm sure, solict spec work as business proposition -- why pay for anything if you don't have to? But many others likely do it out of ignorance. Design is "just moving words and pictures around", right? I could do that, if I just had the time, the client thinks, so it should be cheap and easy for the designer to throw something together. (Clientcopia abounds with just such stories.) (Of course, I think design is becoming a more accessible and distributed skill.)

It's a lot harder to quantify that devaluation, of course. And it's a lot more emotional because it's tied up with questions of respect. (Threadless, to go back to that example, has, I think, increased the respect for design among their audience -- the comments in the scoring section of the site are often filled with cogent and constructive design criticisms.) Every time a client lowballs you because they don't think design is important, it reminds you of when your Archtypical-Aunt-Tilly asks if you're "still doing that work with the little pictures" and you want to scream a little*.

And if you think you hear that as a designer, it's a lot worse as an actor/comedian, believe you me. If someone asks me about "your skits" one more time -- to the moon, Alice, to the moon. Last week, I came off stage after an improv show, which the audience had paid to see and I had been paid to perform, and one of the audience members congratulated us on the show and asked if any of the cast were "aspiring comedians". Sigh.

So we're back around to the audition I just did and I probably shouldn't say anything more because I do actually want the work (it'll be fun! it's building relationships!) but just know that it's all a little wonky and you probably shouldn't trust any pontificating I do. Because lord knows, I love me some pontificating.

* Feel free to yell "projection!" at any point here.

I'm working on a longer blog post about this in general, but I'm not done with it and I couldn't make this fit in a tweet as hard as I tried:

Cabel Sasser asks if Threadless is spec work: No, it's not 'spec work' to accept unsolicted designs, which is all Threadless is doing. They just happen to be very open about their process and their initial selection committee is 'everyone who participates in the site'. If your design is selected you get paid and you're entirely free to use your unaccepted design elsewhere.

"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings, valentine!"

"Freedom", eh? Sorry, but I think Optimus Prime is trying to break up with you. "I need my freedom, human. I'm a truck *and* a robot -- there's more of me than just one person can love."

But the browser on this backstage computer is too old to support Twitter, so this is the only way to answer the question, "What are you doing, blogging?" with "yes."

Order has been restored. Thanks, Mustache Factory. (But how do you feel about sandwiches, Fuzzy?)

Dan (H) is very kindly helping me fill the mustache-shaped hole in my life.

That should be a lovely mustache button from the Moustache Factory. Worse, the just-a-plain-mustache button is not currently for sale. Where Is My Muuuuuuustahce?!?!?

Hopefully Andrew has the original in his hands by now, so I'm going to go ahead and post this...

Follow me, here, for a moment, as this ties together several of my areas of interest.

In 2005 John Hodgman (This American Life, The Daily Show, the PC in those Mac/PC commericials) wrote a book called The Areas of My Expertise, a fake "compendium of world knowledge". It had a long section on hobos which included a list of 700 Hobo Names, names like Boxcar Ted and Guesstimate Jones and Microfiche Roy, the Side-Scroller. As part of the promotion material for the book, Hodgman released an mp3 of himself reading the entire list while Jonathan Coulton plays guitar in the background (live, one take - fingers of steel, that man). The book, by the way, is hilarious.

Inspired by a challenge from BoingBoing, some illustrators, including Adam "Apelad" Koford, set out to illustrate each of the names. An informal group covered all the names, but eventually Koford illustrated all 789* names by himself as well.

In early 2007, the LOL Cat internet phenomenon, which had been around as "Image macros" for years, really took off. In June 2007 Koford "revealed" that his grandfather, also a cartoonist, had actually invented LOLcats with his 1912 cartoon "The Laugh-Out-Loud Cats". The cartoon was the adventures of Meowlin Q. Kitteh and his kitten friend Pip, both hobo cats. I was an instant fan -- the combination of old-tymey humor, internet jokes, and the cuteness of the cats hits some magic combination of switches in my brain. The Laugh-Out-Louds Cats are created via an interesting process -- rather than being drawn on any sort of schedule, they're drawn as people buy them. For $20, you get the orignal artwork mailed to you and Koford posts a scan to his website. It's been popular -- where even a daily comic strip would just produce 365 strips a year, the Laugh-Out-Loud cats hit number 666 (on New Year's Day 2008) after just six months. At times, Koford has also used the same model to offer custom monkeys or animals or new hobo names via his website.

Also in 2005, Erica's good friend Andrew Livingston began to play bass in the Mike Doughty Band, which he continues to do to the present day (new album out February 19!). Everyone in the band had nicknames and Andrew was named Scrappy, which was quickly shortened to Scrap. Because it's what Mike calls him onstage, a lot of people only know Andrew as "Scrap Livingston".

Which is an awesome hobo name.

So that's what we got Andrew for Christmas 2007.

The end.

*The second paperback edition of the book included bonus hobo names.

I've always been impressed with improv groups that celebrate their 100th show or whathaveyou, not just for the longevity, but because I've never kept that good of records, to even know when the 100th show was. Until this year, when I started using a modified blog to create the little performance calendar on the FuzzyCo home page (and another on Erica's sidebar). So now I can tell you in 2007 I did:

• 50 improv shows
• 16 comedy shows
• 1 standup open mic
• 12 theater performances
• and 5 "other" shows

for a total of 84 shows.

I also read 38 books (down from 79 last year), saw 34 movies, and played 14 video games all the way through (I'm in the middle of about 6 others).

I ran 335 miles, including 18 miles of the Chicago Marathon.

I posted 2004 photos on Flickr, posted 243 tweets, and made 410 blog posts here at FuzzyCo and another 261 at the Chicago Metblog.

I've been threatening promising to make this video for months and finally got around to it. She also circles the coffee table in the living room and people sitting in the office. She also just sits, sometimes, so you don't worry that she's an endless circler.

In honor of Columbus Day, Erica and Jim Fath's musical number from the first season of Impress These Apes.

I'm kinda old school, in that I like having a landline phone in the house, especially because I've had bad luck with cell phone reception in my last two places. But since we're moving in a couple weeks I thought it might be a good time to move the landline number off of AT&T (née SBC) and lump it in with our RCN service to get bundle pricing and save a little money. So I wanted to see if any of our Chicago peeps had any good or bad experiences with the quality of RCN phone service?

I did not even know that I had been waiting for Beyonce to make a mod/hip-hop dance video. And yet, there it is and it's perfect.

Parker has been 'capped' by Anton at the Lolcatgenerator. My photos of Rio and Bear have also been... enhanced. Ah, Creative Commons, what can't you do.

Johnny Knight took some photos of me (with beer) for a thing he did for the Drinking and Writing Beerfly Alleyfight. He is not to blame for the lolization.

Seriously. I'm on like page 280 of 6000 and I keep almost catching glimpses of discussions on the internet. I knew that if I was going to read this last book with any sense of surprise, I'd have to read it quick before the plot was just out there in the zeitgeist. Soon, I'll bet you, people will be using events from the book as examples in pop culture, just because so many people have read it that it'll be a cultural touchstone. (Or maybe I'm over-estimating the influence of a bunch of 12-year-olds and nerds.)

Photo by Erica.

(Again, the original photo by La Shinda Clark.)

I can't get enough lolcats and so must make my own.

Where all my Canucks at? What-what!

This is largely a note for myself. Vatterott has four Ts and one R.

The artificial, extended pause just before a result or contestant's name is announced on a reality show is over. ("The next name I'm going to call is.......") I so decree. It has become a cliche, but worse, a useless cliche. I mean, the horror movie cliche of "we all jumped at that noise but it was just a cat" is despised, but it works -- you jump at the noise. The extended pause no longer works. The contestants are as nervous as they're going to be anyway. And it doesn't increase our tension, because we're used to it. It's just annoying at this point. Please note. Over.

It's been a long-standing rule at FuzzyCo that if you advertise your product or service to us via Unsolicted Commerical Email (aka The Spam) then we can't buy it, even if we might have wanted to. (It's happened -- I've opened an email, thought "hey, that's a neat gadget" and then realized that it's from a company I've never given my email address.)

In a similar vein, I'm announcing a new rule: if you advertise your product or service using fake "lost pet" flyers, then we can't purchase or support your efforts, regardless of our feelings about your offerings. Real lost pet flyers are too important to have the medium polluted with commercial messages. Not that I wanted to watch John from Cincinnati anyway, but it's definitely off the list now.

My new favorite spam subject is "that mcgrady is garyville". I think I'm going to start using it as a disparaging remark. Oh man, that mcgrady is so garyville.

Still in Mississippi. Home soon.

I was out running, early, and saw a bird pulling a worm out of the ground. Done and done.

A few years ago I bought a $50 MP3 player from Secondhand Monkeys for Erica. And then I got her an iPod, so the lil' MP3 player got tossed in a drawer. This winter, I was between iPods and I pulled out that MP3 player to have something to listen to while riding the train. Unfortunately, it used a non-standard USB cable which I couldn't find in any of my assorted-computer-parts boxes. So I emailed Pat Misterovich from Secondhand Monkeys, who has moved on to projects like the Pez MP3 Player, asking if he still had any of those cables I could buy. And he just sent me two, which was delightful.

And then Erica got me a new iPod and the Secondhand Monkey player went back into the drawer (this time with its cable rubber-banded to it). But the point of the story is just to note that there is still good customer service out there and that if you're in the market for a novelty MP3 player, I know where you should go.

What do you do if there are no baboons around?

#8 in an on-going series.

This is one of my favorite jokes, and I tell myself it all the time to remind myself of the importance of context:

"Waiter, these noodles are terrible."

"Sir, it's not noodles, it's sauerkraut."

"Oh... well then it's excellent."

Look, I'm not sure you need to know why I did this to a blameless duck. But I thought it'd be a shame if no one saw it. Just enjoy it. Gaze into its calm eyes. Let the sparkle carry you away...

Where's Mustapha? Kate reveals him!

Who died and made you in charge of what are legitimate names? I didn't want to sign up for your stupid collegy thing anyway, but Foresman sent me this stupid link and grumble mcgrumbley grumble.

Anyway, I'm now EF Gerdes on Facebook. If you wanna, what the hell do they call it, Face me or whatever.

Inspired by this guy. Dialogue by Erica.

Dan got the new cathead accessory for his XBox 360. I'm waiting for the wireless one.

I think my usual Little Corner order is 8 points. Sometimes, at unfamiliar places, I do like to get my server's opinion, but I'm usually a pretty hard-qore orderer.

(via Outside Counsel)

First person* who can guess why I had pieces of paper taped to the TV wins a DVD of Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood (his adaptation of Macbeth). Click the picture to view it larger at Flickr. Leave your guesses in the comments.

* Other than Erica, who was there helping.

Update: It's been sussed out. Rather quickly. But feel to make a ridiculous guess before you read the comments and then share your suppositions.

Thank goodness we didn't let anyone bring their digital cameras along when we knocked over that gas station, but Dan sent along his photos from earlier in my birthday evening and Chris Biddle handed me a CD of photos from which I added a few to my birthday set.

What a birthday! After getting up at 5:40 to go give Don Hall his birthday present we picked up Alex and Alyssa from the airport. On the way back into town I took a gamble that the cold weather would decimate the line at Hot Doug's and I was right, so we had an excellent lunch there. While everyone else took naps, I had a rehearsal and then got home just in time to head back out to the Playground. The PoM show was redonkulous -- we had every active member there, plus PoM alum Steve, Alex (who just got on a team at The PIT), and Andrea Swanson all sat in. I think there were 100 people on stage. Don't Spit got canceled, because the heat in the theater was all wonky -- I was a little bummed, because it meant I won't be able to do Dr. Baron Ludwig von Evilschlager until March, but it did mean we got to get drinking early. We left a note on the gate at the Playground, but it was so cold that the tape was having trouble sticking. I hope it held and that no one showed up for the show and got confused. We spent the rest of the evening at the Spoke as friends came and went. Why do my friends like such violently named drinks -- car bombs and shotgunned beers? I owe Dan Telfer enormous thanks for sticking around until the bitter end to be my designated driver and for walking back to Broadway and Belmont in sub-zero temperatures to get his car and come back and pick us up. And now I'm old -- whee!

Christopher and Katie got all dressed up to go to a fancy event on Saturday and Katie lamented that their digital camera was out of batteries. Fortunately, the event had photographers on hand:

Happy Birthday, Don Hall! (Tim Whetham, we'll get you next year.)

Our flight out of Columbia, SC is delayed and I'm really happy because it means we're going to get to see the whole game.

Lots.

Lots and lots.

Forty minutes on hold just to talk to someone (you can't cancel online). Unlike the "dude, our computers are down" guy, the CSR I got today noted that my account had been in "arrears" for over 60 days, so I couldn't get a refund. I asked to talk to a supervisor and after 20 minutes on hold got kicked back to the same rep. "An issue" was preventing me from being connected to a supervisor and I could call back later and ask to talk to a supervisor. I told her that they'd won and it was worth $50 to me at this point not to be on hold any more. So I paid up just so I could cancel my account.

I paid $50 to cancel my account. Let's all ponder that ridiculous statement for a moment.

I think this just made my decision for me about ever getting an Xbox 360.

Southwest Spirit magazine* reminds us of the importance of editors, typesetters, et cinema, et cinema. Or maybe they reeeeeally like gin.

* December 2006, Drink of the Month

Just a little more looking back at 2006 and we'll get on with 2007. Here's every city I spent the night in, with an asterix indicating multiple, non-consecutive visits. It was a pretty light travel year this year, with only one trip to an improv festival and mostly family-visits otherwise.

Austin, TX
Chicago, IL*
Cleveland, OH
New Orleans, LA
New York, NY
Phoenix, AZ
Santa Fe, NM
Starkville, MS
Vicksburg, MS*

(Via kottke.org)

Last year I did a year-in-review thing where I took the first sentence from the first post of each month and it proved to be an interesting snapshot of the year, so here's 2006:

January 2006: Am I allowed to say that we had a terrible New Year's Eve? more

February 2006: After reading so much science fiction in a row, I was feeling a little genre-shame, so I dug out a buzz-worthy book from last year (my copy's cover notes that it's a Today's Book Club selection) -- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. more

March 2006: Just so you know, if you want to get me to help you with your thing, all you have to do is say "it's an art project." more

April 2006: I've been sitting in as "Comic #2" in Lavender Cabaret's Femme TV burlesque show for the past few months. more

May 2006: Our Tetris DS friend code is 7277-1792-4430. more

June 2006: The Buncombe County Tourism Development Authority (aka Asheville [NC]: any way you like it) is holding a contest to design their new TV ad. more

July 2006: I finally did my first Chicago Critical Mass ride, and I'm kicking myself that I've been in Chicago this long and never done one. more

August 2006: We're back in town, rested and refreshed from the honeymoon -- the first honest-to-goodness vacation I've taken in years. more

September 2006: How many subways of the world have you ridden on? more

October 2006: I promise this is not going to turn into an all-cats-on-beds-all-the-time blog. more

November 2006: It's almost election day, and so time for me to harrange all my friends to a) vote and b) vote out some judges. more

December 2006: Goldie's Trail Bar-B-Que is a Reid family staple, and I've got my meal down, now, after trying most of the menu over the years: barbequed sausage sandwich, side of the garlic bread, steal a few fries off of someone else's plate. more

Time zones are kerazy -- Kate just called us from the future! Happy New Year, Kate!

I mean, if you sit in the exit row they ask if you're willing to assist in case of an emergency. And then you notice that if you do pull the door open, they'll send you to jail.

I know the reason Steve has never run a glossy magazine ad for Silly Faces was that he was waiting for the right spokesmodel.

Hey, you're all smartly people -- go help Kate come up with potentially-confusing English colloquialisms for her Japanese neighbor. (She's got anonymous comments turned off, so you'll need a Blogger account, but you've got one, right? You might be able to use your Google ID, as well.)

The ceiling over our shower is leaking when the guys upstairs take a shower. When we first moved into the place, the ceiling in our bedroom was leaking whenever the (old) guy upstairs would take a bath at 1 am. This was a problem, because it's our bedroom and we keep things in the bedroom that we don't want to get wet. The shower's a little different because, hey, things are meant to get wet in there. The landlord has been so generally lousy that I was almost tempted to just let it leak. Except that one of the Jo(h)ns* upstairs takes showers every morning as the same time as I do. Which means that I get dripped on in my shower from his shower. Gross. (Or, Free Extra Shower Water -- it's all perspective, I suppose.)

So when the guy came out last year to fix the leak in the bedroom, he ripped a big hole in the ceiling, fixed what he thought was the leak, but left the hole so we could monitor it for a few days. It was a good thing he did, because he hadn't patched the whole leak or something and it continued to leak (it did all eventually get fixed).

When the (different) dude came this weekend to work on the bathroom leak, he evidently did not share the same trouble-shooting philosophy because he tore down the sagging ceiling, caulked something (or nothing**), and then put up new sheetrock and mudded and taped it. It's too bad, then, that he didn't actually fix the leak and that water is now coming out from the edges of his sheetrock patch. (In fact, it kind of made the problem worse, because instead of leaking from a single point more-or-less over the center of the shower, it's now leaking from all the way around the edges of the patched part.) R-tard.

So now the landlord has to arrange for someone else to come out at some time when both we and a Jo(h)n are home. I was on the phone with him yesterday at around 3 in the afternoon and he asked, "Are you home now?" "No," I told him, "I have a job. To, you know, pay the rent." A-hole.

* Our new upstairs neighbors are John and Jon.

** It's hard to know just what he did because dude spoke about six words to us the whole day. He made a couple of trips to bring in his stuff (one of which took 40 minutes -- no joke) and then closed the bathroom door. To protect us from the dust and noise or play dress up with Erica's makeup? WE DON'T KNOW! He didn't even say, "I'm done," he just... left. We sort of hovered for a half an hour before we started putting stuff back in the bathroom, in case he was coming back.

It's time for a periodic round-up of appearances of my name...

Fuzzy is, of course, the dog in the newly revived Wigu.

Someone at work left me this George Carlin Witticism-A-Day page on my desk. Ha ha. Thank you, George. Call me when you're funny again. (Oh, I can't even pretend to be mad at George Carlin -- Class Clown was one of my first stand-up records, and I still can't believe my parents let me keep it at such a young age.)

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

I was having some trouble following the words in the Happy Feet Trailer, but Erica has them memorized and Mustapha has already learned all the steps.

If you're in the middle of NaNoWriMo (Dan, I'm looking at you) and you're having any trouble, maybe it's because you're not following the rules for writing.

(via Justine Larbalestier)

But what, you ask, is it like to take a road trip with Erica? Your questions answered in 8 seconds (3 MB MPEG movie).

For Zabeth, because while I have adequate Photoshop skillz, I seem to find it impossible to attach a picture to a Myspace comment.

... why the election went the way it did: adorable babies, who each voted twice!

Hey, I read Dan's NaDruWriNi and that reminded me...

Erica and were both wearing our Mad Bomber hats (a fire! oh, no, poor mad bomber!) whcih, if you're not familar, are big rabbit-fur lined hats with big ear flaps. Sterotypical "Russian" winter hats, except that Mad Bomber has been making them for years and have evolved them with modern fabrics, etc, so Erica's is a bright red and mine a bright blue. On the Red Line tonight, there weren't many seats free, so Erica was sitting next to a guy who was pouring over a racing forum (form?) and I was sitting across the aisle from them. After we've been on the train for a good 15, 20 minutes, the guy starts talking to me across Erica. Between his accent and low volume and the noise of the train, I caught one word in three.

Mumblemumblemuble Russian hat?

Me: (smile politely)

mumblemumblemumble Russian language?

Me: No, I don't speak Russian, I just have this hat.

mumblemumble (words that sound like Russian)

Me: (smile politely and shrug)

mumblemuyble (either "how much did you pay for it?" or "do you want to sell it?" -- really, I'm not sure)

Me: It was a gift. (This is a lie. I just didn't want to get into it.)

mumblemumblemumble, etc, and so on.

Later, he got super excited that the guy sitting in front of him had a cell phone camera. Whee!

So I'm supposed to be writing drunk, butr I'm not really. Mostly, I'm writing tired. I mean, I had two beers with dinner at Cleo's (a 312 and a Newcastle), but that was at 4 pm and we did some shopping (Rotofugi! Alcala!) before we went to Dessa Kirk's studio for the Fast Forward showing. Because Dessa's studio is so far southwest from us, and we're not so familar with the neighborhood, we hung out near Atomix for as long as we could after we dropped off the movies, with the above-mentioned eating and shopping, but then we ran out of things to do, headed for Dessa's and ended up getting there about two hours early. We helped Sean and Atom set up chairs, so they gave me a Sam Adams. I drank it kind of fast, so then my stomach was feeling a little bloopy and so I didn't drink anything else through the showing, which started rather late.

We had two movies in the festival, which is enough of a story and I've got pictures and stuff, so I'll wait to tell that when I upload the movies and stuff. But suffice to say that one of the films came in second in the festival, which is pretty freakin' awesome.

We left whatever neighborhood Kedzie & Lake is and took the Green Line back downtown and then the Red Line up to Belmont in time to catch the very tail end of Don't Spit the Water. But we were really there to see A Demon Who Never Appeared, another Blewt production run by our friend Jared (and Kumail -- no offense to him, it's just Jared's our friend so that's how I reference it). It's a variety show with a through-line featiuring the characters who run the show -- Dr. Kumail, Maestro Hannah, Colonel Wigspliter, and the Demon. We've been meaning to see it for months and never have, so it was good to see the show tonight. Funny stuff. I drank a Fat Tire during the show. One of the big bottles. But that show also started late, so it was nearly two by the time we got out. We'd heard that Scot Goodhart and Holly Gibson were having their engagement party at the Holiday Club, but we were worried that the HC might close at two, so we just came home.

And I know that for NaDruWriNi you're not supposed to edit and I'm making a looooot of typos, but I think that, even fully rested/sober, that the way I type is to make a ton of typos and then immediately backspace over them and correct. I'd have to make a strong effort to leave the typos in.

So I grabbed a glass of pear brandy to sip while I'm typing this (really, a shot glass, but glass sounds classier. And I am sipping, not shooting. That'd really be a waste of good brandy.) The bottle of Malort was sitting there saying, "You're already being dumb by drinking something probably minutes before you go to bed, so why not be really stupid and drink me." But I resisted.

And now it's very late -- we were up until 2 or 3 last night shooting the FFFF footage, and then got up at 8 this morning to edit it -- so it's been a long day. Like I said, more NaSleWriNi than NaDruWriNi. So, to bed, I guess.

It seems incredibly unlikely that I will be doing Nanowrimo this year. But I think I can handle one night. With drinking:

It's the same night as the Fast Forward showing, but I can get a good head of steam going with some drinking while I watch the films. Some of those films need the help of a drink or six.

(via Girl in Black)

"For these 15 contestants, Project Runway is the chance of a lifetime."

It's called a "Little Sprout" -- for about a $1.50 you get this little plastic guy with a half-dozen gummy worms in his belly and a little dirt-and-seeds bag on his head that will, in a week or so, grow a little head of grass. I'm all about novelty candy, and I think this little guy was well worth it.

And, my lord, I just discovered the Kids Brands Grass Heads "hair" cutting contest. How am I going to cut my Grass Head's "hair"? Does it even matter -- do they possibly even get 25 entries every 3 months?

Get ready for the lamest piece of sharing ever. Ready? Here we go:

I usually keep my wallet in my back right pocket. But these jeans are developing a hole in that pocket, so I moved my wallet to my back left pocket. And it has thrown everything off. Somehow, a big fat wallet (I have too much stuff in my wallet) on the right was fine, but a big fat wallet on the left is unacceptable to my body. It feels weird when I sit down; it even feels weird to walk. I might even have to fix the hole in my jeans or take stuff out of my wallet. The horror! What a terrible life I lead.

Photo by Brian Loden for the Vicksburg Post

This is what I married into: a town where people wrestle fawns, for what are, I'm sure, very good reasons. (J'adore Vicksburg!)

It happens occasionally.

Shaun and Kristen got two new kittens: Zordon (the tabby) and Murphy (the tuxedo cat). They. Are. Adorable.

Of course, with Lady and Robert, this means that Shaun and Kristen have four cats and officially crazy cat people. Too bad, guys, it was nice knowing you.

There's a daily comic called They'll Do It Every Time that's been around since 1929 and features Alanis Morissette-level "ironies" of everyday life. Like, some people don't see a tip jar, but do see a spot on their car or people notice dust who are themselves messy.

One of the charms/annoyances of the strip is its stuck-in-the-forties use of "slang". Like, that tip jar is a "kitty can". And the narrator says, "oh, yeah" a lot. Barb at Crap Every Day (who reads TDIET every day, bless her heart) noted today:

This strip almost riled me up to the point that I didn't notice that it's another "Living on the edge" entry. Almost. Ditto the horrifying looking cabbage (is that neon green?) and the "yum...yeah...yum-m." It's like these people have Tourette syndrome, and their tic is to say that word "yeah" a lot.

And that made me wonder, what if the characters in TDIET really do have Tourette's, or just swear a lot, and Scaduto is just cleaning it up for the newspaper. So I made an example, and it really does make the strip seem more enthusiastic.

(I've posted my example after the jump, because it has some swears...)

I don't normally do head shots, but I can make an exception for you... Just hold still...

You know that scene at the end of every home make-over TV show, where the family is standing in the middle of their formerly-familiar house, oohing and awing over the plasma screen TV and how spacious it all feels and just a little dazed and oh, isn't awesome how you pull on the elephant's trunk and the lawn sprinklers come on?

That's how we felt when Kristen's cleaning lady, Vicky, was done with our house on Monday. We had thought we had organized by the end of the day Saturday, but compared to Vicky we had done nothing. Vicky and her daughter-in-law put away everything in the kitchen and dining room, and then cleaned every surface until it gleamed. They cleaned off the tops of the cabinets where no one every looks. They pulled all the pots and pans out of the cabinets and replaced them so that nothing falls out when you open the doors. They... rearranged all of the photos and newspaper clippings on the fridge so they were arranged in a more space-efficient manner (I do wonder if Vicky might have some OCD issues).

In all, they spent 7 hours cleaning (and organizing) our house. It was incredible. What a wonderful wedding present. I'm still nervous about setting a dish down in the kitchen -- I don't want to mar Vicky's amazing work.

Of course, I also now know how those people on the TV shows feel a few hours after the camera crews have left and you're opening all of the cabinet doors in the kitchen wondering, "now where did they put the toaster?"

In this week's Time Out Chicago, there's a photo of the Fowler Family Radio Hour. Yeah, I took that photo. [Brush imaginary dust off label.] Yeah, I'm a big shot photog. Someday I'll be a big enough shot to get a photo credit.

And hey, have I mentioned that you can hire me to come to your show and have me take pictures, instead of waiting for me to randomly wander in and take some great shots that will be suitable for publication in our cities finest journals of entertainment? Well, you can.

Not to get all LJ on you here, but here's the ingredients for a nice night: ride 7 miles home, go to your first yoga class and find out what all this stretching stuff is about, get a big mess of Persian food from Paradise, drink a big calimocho, and watch a bunch of Tivoed SNL cuddling on the couch with your hunny.

The best thing about the Creme de Fleur at Oh the Pain is that they don't make them every day. If they did, I eat one every day and I'd weigh a metric ton. Tonne. Whatever.

This will make no sense if you don't watch The Show with Zefrank, but here's my Power Move (1.5 MB MPEG Movie).

Our upstairs neighbors like to have parties. And English is not their first language. So I think this new sign on our front door means, "come on up." Or maybe "push the buzzer" (they did newly label their buzzer button). Or maybe something else?

Hey, do any of y'all have the season finale of My Name is Earl on your DVR and could dump a copy off to tape or DVD for us? TiVo and I had a little fight while I was trying to record Hide and Creep and we ended up missing the season finales of both Earl and The Office. We ended up buying the The Office episode off the iTunes Music Store and watched it sitting in our home office, sitting in our office chairs. Very apropos. But Earl remains a mystery.

Update: Got it. Thanks all.

Erica: According to this box, this printer will make us doctors.

Fuzzy: World-weary doctors. Yes.

Noah Ginex interviewed Erica and me (but we were only allowed to answer one word at a time) for his new podcast. We're in episode 3, which may or may not be directly downloadable, but you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes and then select that one. If you listen to the podcast in iTunes or on your photo/video-capable iPod, there are many pictures of us ganked from my Flickr account.

We're running a contest on the New Improv Page giving away Lewis Black's new standup album.

Erica reminded me that she had taken a picture of a Fuzzy's Pizza when she was in Houston last year:

And Dan sent me this picture of a place he and Victoria saw last weekend:

My brother just sent me a picture of Fuzzy s Place (he thinks the apostrophe fell off) a NASCAR bar in Somewhere (he was lost), Tennessee.

That reminded me of another Fuzzy's Place in my inbox, courtesy of Matt Stratton, Fuzzy's Place, a blues club in Atlanta, Georgia.

And the classic, Fuzzy's Place, a strip club in Duluth, Minnesota. (The place wasn't open for the evening yet, but my good friend Karl got them to turn on the sign so we could take a picture.)

And to round us out, from my foreign correspondents, Fuzzy's Grub in London, UK.

And no pictures, but there's Fuzzy's Wolfrose in Bellerose, NY and Fuzzy's Pizza and Italian Cafe in Houston, TX.

Did you maybe bring it to our house for Erica's birthday party? Maybe? Yours?

Update: It's the plate Kate brought the cat cake on. Thanks to Dana for remembering.

On April 12,

Events

1861 - American Civil War: The war begins with Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.
1954 - Bill Haley and His Comets record "Rock Around the Clock" in New York City. Initially unsuccessful, the recording would help launch the rock and roll revolution a year later.
1961 - Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man to fly in space.
1981 - The first launch of a Space Shuttle: Columbia launches on the STS-1 mission.
1994 - Canter & Siegel post the first commercial mass Usenet spam.

Births

1903 - Sally Rand, American dancer and actress (d. 1979)
1916 - Beverly Cleary, American writer
1922 - Tiny Tim, American musician (d. 1996)
1923 - Ann Miller, American actress and dancer (d. 2004)
1928 - Juanita Bane, Erica's grandma
1940 - Herbie Hancock, American pianist and composer
1947 - David Letterman, American talk show host
1950 - David Cassidy, American singer and actor
1962 - Takada Nobuhiko, Japanese professional wrestler
1964 - Amy Ray, American musician (Indigo Girls)
1971 - Shannen Doherty, American actress
1979 - Claire Danes, American actress
1979 - Erica Reid, American choreographer and actress

I have uncovered the secret desires of the CTA.

I have another "Where's Mustapha?" picture, but I can't post it because the flash highlighted every piece of debris on the front hallway floor and so details exactly what kind of a disaster zone we're living in right now. I'll tell you that, but I won't show it to you.

I was going to use all my non-canoodling time while Erica's in Mississippi to clean the house all to pieces. Instead, I got sick as a dog. Oh woe is me, and no lovely fiancée to nurse me back to health. And worse and worse, last night I took NyQuil (or WalQuil or some equally vile green-flavoured mess) and it kept me up! Oh well, at least I used the time (un)productively to fiddle around with a blog template issue that had been bugging me.

(To wit: it used to be that when you got to the bottom of the main page of the other blogs I host, you were met with just the blank bottom of the page, with no indication whether there were earlier posts. Now there's a list of the 6 most recent posts. Check out the bottom of Erica and Fuzzy to see what I mean.)

Where was I? Sick? Awake? Loooonely? Yes, yes, and yes.

Well, that and I got to the Final Boss of Daxter.

Oh, and let me complain about that for a second. In this video game I'm playing, all the levels are named (Construction Site, Lumber Mill, Hive Queen, etc.) and you can see the name if you pause the game. The final boss level is named "Final Boss". And I hate when video games do that, and they do it a lot. A "boss," if you're not familiar, is a more-powerful-than-ordinary enemy at the end of a level, and are a pretty-standard feature in level-based video games. But "boss" is the technical term. This enemy at the end of the game isn't anybody's manager. Using the technical right where I, the player, can see it is anti-immersive. In movies, for example, you don't have a voice-over that says "let's do a tracking pan over to see how the protagonist is doing".* Video game manuals and on-screen help do it all the time.

* I'm sure there's some exceptions to this, but you know what I mean.

Wednesday night I was halfway down the block from my hotel and I realized that I had ventured out into the New York night without a camera -- and ten steps later I saw a man covered, head to toe, in blinking lights. That city takes no time slapping you in the face with your deficiencies.

That night was a failure in terms of getting to a stand-up show, but a success in wandering around the city. (I have a $8 MTA card left over from wandering -- free to the first NY-based FuzzyCo reader to say "gimme".)

Thursday night I got over to the PIT to see Threat and Neutrino. This month is Threat's ninth anniversary of performing together. Neutrino was doing their first stage performance together (as opposed to the Neutrino Video Projects) in three years. Shaun and I have been performing together, off and on and in different groups, since 1992. Bare is 6 or 8 years old, depending on whether you count Bare Essentials Theater from Denver. (I don't have a point here, just rambling about numbers.)

After the show I hung out over at the Triple Crown with some of the Neutrino folks. I like those cats. Rebekka and I talked weddings. Square dance band!

I had been making fun of my co-worker Kyle because every time he comes to New York he eats the same exact thing: he stops at the Hard Rock Cafe on the way back to his hotel and gets a Nacho Supreme (or whatever they call it at the HRC -- a "Nacho Sonny Bono" or whathaveyou). I realized that every time I come to New York I eat at the same 4 places: bagel with lox at Smiler's or Ess-a-bagel for breakfast, Men Kui Tei for lunch, get out of work late, run straight to a show at the PIT, grab dinner afterwards at the Triple Crown. To make myself not feel quite so lame I had something different at both Men Kui Tei and the Crown this time. Tonkotsu Ramen = yum.

Also got to have a drink with Alex and Alyssa and watch the end of the Texas/West Virgina game, which Texas won in the last 0.8 seconds. I'm happy to report that I yelled out "Woo - Texas!" in a New York bar.

I think of Chicago as a public art friendly town, but hoodly-doodly there's a lot of art in New York. Especially in the lobbies of big buildings in Manhattan. I was making my slightly-tipsy way back to my hotel Thursday night, talking to Erica on the phone, and I had to stop and exclaim, "Inflatable Incredible Hulks!" Unsurprisingly, Erica said, "What?" "Inflatable Incredible Hulks! This lobby is full of inflatable Incredible Hulks. And a few monkeys. But mostly inflatable Incredible Hulks. I think it's art."

My family are pretty much the only people who still call me by my birth name, so when my sister got the save the date card in the mail yesterday and it said "Erica and Fuzzy are getting married" she had to explain to my niece and nephew what a nickname was. Jake decided he wanted his nickname to be "Sam" and Amelia wants to be "Mia".

Allow me for a moment to speak to a very select audience (except, really, you'll see that I'm speaking to all of you -- I'm being sneaky). I'm a computer support professional and I have a lot of friends, and to some of those friends I'm their computer support friend.

ring, ring
Me: Hey [redacted] - haven't heard from you in a while. What's up?
[redacted]: Well, I'm having this computer problem, and I think I'm screwed ...

If you're one of those folks - awesome. I'm happy to help. But let's work together to make sure that the next time you call me, it's without a audible note of panic in your voice: please, back-up your important computer files.

If you're a writer, pick up one of those USB key drives. You can get a 512 MB one for, like $30, and you can fit hundreds of Word docs on it -- make it part of your "whee, I finished a draft" ritual to put a copy on the little drive. If you're a graphic artist, CD-Rs are seriously $0.20 a piece -- go crazy! I'd even be happy to help you work out a back-up strategy that works for you and your budget. So then you can sound like this when you call me:

[redacted] (cheerfully): Hey Fuzzy, I know we haven't spoken in 6 months, but my computer seems to be a pile of smoking plastic, and I'd like to talk to you about how to set up a shiny new computer and restore all of my carefully backed-up files onto it. Whee!

Please? Thanks.

The terrible part is that there's a entire grocery store in the first floor of my office building, so with just a short ride, I can buy healthy food, cheaply. But I still spend an inordinate amount of money getting crap from the vending machines in the breakroom. They recently 'upgraded' the vending machines (and raised the prices in the process) and here's two observations.

There's no more slot A-1! Two whole machines are controlled from one money-ingester and keypad and it's all numbers. I am not a number!

Golden Eye! No, not that GoldenEye. It's an infrared sensor that promises to detect whether or not something falls to the bottom of the machine. So if your snack gets stuck or you accidentally choose the row with the empty spot in front or whatever it'll refund your money. Viva la future!

Just so you know, if you want to get me to help you with your thing, all you have to do is say "it's an art project." Boom, I'm there. So it was that at 9 pm tonight I was out with 70 other people putting little green army men every 3 feet along Lincoln Avenue. For 5 miles, from Lincoln and Clark to Lincoln and Western.

Peace activist Sallie Gratch had brought the Mouths Wide Open Army Men Project to Chicago, as covered in a recent Reader article (PDF link), placing green plastic army men in random locations around Chicago. She inspired the organizers of the "March First" art/activism project to take that a step farther by placing 4300 army men "marching" down Lincoln Avenue. Each army man has a sticker (or should have -- the prone guys lost their sticker pretty easily) that says "Bring Me Home" and the Mouths Wide Open website.

The whole project had taken just three weeks from conception to execution, and the mood of those gathered at the Lincoln Tap Room afterwards was pretty chill. With a minimum of effort each (I covered just 2 blocks) we had accomplished a pretty big project. Would anyone understand / think about / be affected by the message of the project? Who knows. But together we had all done a thing.

Update: a set of photos, a blog post from Rachel Mason, Miss Single USA discusses getting involved.

So, when we woke up Saturday morning, the house was not ready for a party. And we had a limited window to borrow Shaun's truck and get party supplies. And Erica had a rehearsal. Panic! Panic!

What saved us was Noah. Yay Noah! Noah came over around noon and spent the next 7 hours helping us clean and organize the place. We got the living room looking like this:

Play a bonus round of "Where's Mustapha?"

Which, I suppose, looks like a regular living room. And you know, Fuzzy, the pillows and blankets are a little untidy on the couch there. But if you'd seen the GIANT PILE OF BOXES that used to be where that red futon is now, you'd know how impressive this is.

Dan and Vicky are on their honeymoon in New York right now and sent out an email this morning suggesting that we Tivo Conan O'Brien tonight as they would be in the front row of the audience. We're watching the show right now and they haven't done a pan of audience, so we haven't seen them, but we've heard Dan's distinctive guffhaw several times. Ha-ha-haw!

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...

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.

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.

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.

Oh no, Von's is on fire! A significant percentage of the way-too-many books I own came from Von's.

(via girl in black)

Very quick approximation.

Congratz Dan and Trish!

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.

I rarely talk about the media I consume (and consume I do -- just finished Thud! It was great! 30 books in the series and it's still awesome.) but this is important. We're in the fifth cycle* of, as I like to say real fast and like I were just a little buzzed, "'Murica'sNeshTupMidel". So, hey, last night they made that pageant girl cut her hair! They said they were doing it for a new look*, but we all know they were doing it just so she'd freak, which she did on cue. But what I really wanted to mention from last night was James St. James. I did a little mid-show googling when they said he was an author... he wrote Disco Bloodbath, which became the documentary Party Monster and then the movie Party Monster (actually, it also became the paperback Party Monster as the book was renamed, too). And of course he has a blog... where he of course talks about being on the show.

And speaking of blogs, we tided ourselves over between Seasons Cycles Four and Five by watching the Seas Cycle One DVDs. The singular standout that (dammit I'm going to say it) season was the intelligent and articulate Elyse. Erica did some googling her own self and discovered that she has a LiveJournal. Evidently, she didn't go off to medical school, as she proudly proclaimed when she was eliminated, because she's working as a model in, right now, Hong Kong. Her LJ is every bit as cool and funny as I'd have expected from her on-screen personality.

(Originally posted on the Chicago Metroblog)

Shaun and Jin just got back from Baton Rouge, where they were volunteering in an impromptu food bank. They were organizing incoming pallets of donated food into a grocery store-style arrangement (they were, in fact, in an old grocery store space). They were receiving donations collated from individuals, like when you put food in that pile at the grocery store that they say will be shipped to the Gulf Coast, and came back with some gentle suggestions for people donating in that fashion:

Don't donate single servings. Many boxes of food seemed to be packed on the assumption that they would be handed to a single family. They're not -- someone is going to have to sort your box out into general categories of food. And a single pack of peanut butter crackers is, at best, going to end up crushed at the bottom of a pile of snack foods or, at worst, just be thrown away. A single Slim Jim or a tea bag? WTF, my friends, WTF?

Don't donate "fancy" foods -- Trader Joe's Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Roasted Red Peppers are much less useful than peanut butter or mac & cheese. Which segues into -- people may not be able to cook the food -- so microwave popcorn is pretty useless. Shaun says, "I found dry lasagna noodles. I love lasagna, but good luck finding hamburger, sauce, ricotta cheese, etc here at the food bank."

Don't donate your left-overs. That half-bag of popcorn may be "perfectly fine" but we don't know where it's been and volunteers are told to just throw away opened containers.

Oh, and don't donate your unopened leftovers either. There's a reason that pumpkin pie filling is still in your cabinet, so no one else is going to want it either. The same goes for canned sliced carrots and lima beans.

This would seem obvious, but don't give perishables. Shaun opened up a pallet from California that was half-full of bibles (OK, sure) and filled the rest of the way with bread. Well, it had been bread when it left Cali but was a bunch of bags of mold by the time it got to Louisiana.

And, dear god, do not donate prescription medication. I'm looking at you, Mr. A. Pena of Houston, TX.

Do give in bulk. And things that can be eaten straight out of the can and that make a full meal are encouraged. And do donate -- I snark because I care.

The only mouse to use whilst downloading all yer warez and pirate booty -- the official Disney Pirates of the Caribbean USB Skull Mouse. (PC and Mac compatible, you scurvy knave!) Available for five doubloons and two proofs of purchase from specially marked boxes of Kellogg's® Apple Jacks®, Kellogg's® Froot Loops®, Kellogg's® Rice Krispies®, or Kellogg's® Tony's Cinnamon Krunchers™.

Get yours before Talk Like a Pirate Day (note: "Allow 60 days for delivery," so it's not actually possible to get yours before Talk Like a Pirate Day. Also, "actual item may vary," so you might actually get a happy clown or something. You never know.)

Kate found someone putting Mustapha in a cloak and then Dorothy Gambrell put him on a beer can.

(Neither of those are actually Mustapha. Do not be confused, even when you see multiple Mustaphas.)

"Shuffle songs" on the ol' iPod was really great to me this morning, fashioning a great mix for bike riding:

• Last Tube (Live from Bonnaroo) - Trey Anastasio*
• Yeah (Pretenious Version) - LCD Soundsystem
• DP's R Us - Fila Brazillia
• You Make Me Feel - Milosh**
• Bonus track: grabbing a juice in Treasure Island to Minha Rua - Quarteto Em Cy

For seriously, one of things that keeps me going is making fun of dumb people.

Andy Ihnatko continues to lead the life I'd love to lead if only I wasn't doing all the things I'm doing that I love doing already. Huh? Anyway... last weekend he set off on the The New England Ironman Diner Decathalon, visiting 10 Diners in 6 New England states in one day. In the course of his extensive notes on the journey, he lets off an excellent rant discourse on the attraction of diners:

Look, here's why I like diners: they nail the compulsories. Stereotypically, they're not interested in making you a short stack of pancakes cooked with artesian-style whole grains on a stone-floured hardwood-fired grill, served with a kiwi/loganberry compote and the Penguin edition of "Boswell's London Journal." No, they want to serve you the most perfect stack of ordinary pancakes you've ever eaten. Ditto for a BLT, a club sandwich, or a slice of apple pie. Diners are all about simple food done exactly right.

Erica woke up Sunday morning with the word "chopsteak" floating in her head, so off it was to the Little Corner Restaurant (the place that always makes it sound like you can't remember its name), not that we would have needed much prodding, anyway. I got the no-thanks-I-don't-need-a-menu, two-eggs-scrambled-pork-chop-grits-raisin-toast-buttered, and Erica got the same, but with eggs over medium and a chopsteak that perfectly satisfied her craving.

A danger of MarsEdit is that its easy spell-check features give my 4 am posts a veneer of sanity that would otherwise reflect their actual "peppel are dum" nature.

I don't know why I didn't work it out myself. If baby otters are the (old) new kittens, then adult otters are the cats of the water.

Certain things are in process and certain other things have been purchased (bookshelves can be more expensive than you'd think) and so Erica and I are in what we call a "no-spend zone". No CDs, no DVDs, no books, no video games. No board games, my new obsession. None.

And, oh, there are temptations. I broke down at Funny Ha-Ha. If you're a performer, and you're standing in front of me, and your CD or DVD is priced $10 or less, it'd probably take wild dogs ripping my arms off to prevent me from handing you a crisp Hamilton. Damn you, Steve Delahoyde, for knowing my weakness.

And then... stuff like this triggers some primordial response in my reptilian brain or something. A GameCube and two controllers and two games! I want to buy one for every kid I know.

And damn Steve twice, it's exact opposite of a no-spend zone, but if I had a spare $200 you know I'd be all over this.

Do you like responding to imaginary questions, Fuzzy?

Yes, I do!

Is that because you're too lazy to write interesting sentences?

Shut up, imaginary questioner.

Fine, be that way.

I'm sorry, imaginary questioner. Ask your questions, please.

... Oh, alright... So have you had an interesting week so far?

Yup!

Is it all stuff you don't feel like you can talk about publicly?

Yup!

Monday I had a meeting with someone who's putting up a play pretty soon. They had asked me to direct it (I know I was their second choice behind Steev Gadlin. I have no idea how far down the list he was. Homer once told me I was his sixth choice to direct Fratricide) and I had declined. But I agreed to have a few meetings and help advise on the show. I was a little worried that it was just a wimp-out way to direct the show but wash my hands of the show if it wasn't a smash hit. But it really was just advice -- the arrangement gave the writer/producer the freedom to reject my advice if they wanted to. Which they did, sometimes. "Does the show really need to open with a giant chicken doing the robot?" "Yes, it does." "Well, alright then." But I think we hammered out some important questions about the overall structure of the show and I'll be coming back for more advice-giving after they've had a few rehearsals.

Over the weekend I did some follow-up stuff for one article on the Neutrino Project and today I did a phone interview for another. I don't know why, but I feel like it's somewhere between uncouth and unlucky to mention the publication until the article actually comes out. Is that right or am I just dumb?

Don't ask me.

And tonight I'm headed off to Funny Ha-Ha 4-Ever at the Hideout. I've got my good camera and I'm hoping to snap a few snaps.

Well, good luck with that.

Coming back from Michigan, we changed radio stations just in time to hear the band leader exhort the band to "make it funky now!"

"It's always a good sign when the band is encouraged to make it funky," I said. Then I thought for a second. "Of course, it'd be even better if they didn't need to be reminded."

I found a cell phone this morning on the way to work. I called the last-dialed number and it was the phone owner's sister. She took my cell number and a few minutes later the phone owner's dad called me back. He asked me to drop the phone off at the office of the phone owner's mother. I feel like I know the whole family.

On behalf of Erica, apology accepted.

Adam posted some musings yesterday about RyKrisp crackers and the tension between doing one thing and doing it well versus endless expansion. The only problem with these musings is that I am a jerk and can use Google.

RyKrisp crackers are manufactured by Bremner Biscuit, which is owned by Ralcorp ("a leading store brand company").

"The combined Cereals, Crackers & Cookies segment has annualized sales of approximately $650 million."

And to answer the question Adam poses in the title of his post, it looks the RyKrisp stockholders should be reasonably happy:

(Except in May. What the f' happened in May?)

I just did a CMB post about the coffee shop in my office building closing down and made me remember that I had wanted to check something Erica had mentioned...

Erica's parents' house has a SBD of zero! I know they don't suffer for lack of coffee in the Reid household, so I'm very impressed. (If I crank the radius up to 50 miles, I do get one-and-half.)

We grilled the chicken breasts on the grill outside. Amazingly, cooking them "as long as it takes the water for the linguine to boil" proved to be the exact time needed to cook them perfectly. We chopped up the chicken and gently heated it up in a pan with the sauce (Spicy Tomato & Pesto) while the linguine cooked. Combine, sprinkle with parmesan. Done and done and delicious.

Two weeks ago after kickball at our official league sponsor bar, everyone (myself included) ignored the perfectly good baseball games going on on all the TVs and got really caught up in the women's college softball championship game between Michigan and UCLA.

Last night, it was Dancing With the Stars. People roared with disgust when John O'Hurley was given a 7 -- scoring lower than the horrible Rachel Hunter (what were the judges thinking!).

At one point, after a different table cheered as the White Sox began their rally to pull ahead of the Diamondbacks, Scott stood up and said, "could you keep it down -- we're trying to watch some dancing here." He was joking. Except not really.

E3 is next week, so there are likely going to be a ton of these sorts of previews of Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks, the game Shaun is producing, but GameSpot sneaks in early with a preview that gives the game a solid "Given ... as well as ... we weren't really expecting much... However ... combined with ... might just make this the first good non-traditional fighting MK game."

Might make? I say MK:SM is definitely the first good non-traditional fighting MK game. (Oh, Special Forces was soooo bad.)

While we were in Phoenix a couple weeks ago, we ate at the Schlotsky's across the street from the hotel a couple times. The second time we ate there Shaun got the Angus Steak & Provolone sandwich -- tasty, he says, but more importantly it gave us the name of our next show:

I think it'll be like Bassprov, in that'll just be us two talking on stage, but it'll draw from Sickest Stories, in that we'll grill real steaks while we talk.

I am just having an excellent food week. Whee!

Last night I headed over to the Burger Joint. My friend Kyle (by the way, whose latest (first) article for Playboy magazine, Sound + Art, is now online on the Playboy.com website) told me about this place after one of his trips to the New York office. Hidden behind a curtain in the lobby of the swanky Le Parker Meridien is the entrance to Burger Joint. Coming out of the hushed elegance of the lobby, you duck through a door and suddenly you're in a loud, dimly-lit room. The decor is wood-paneling and painted brick and the air is thick with the smell of grilling burgers.

The menu is simple enough that I can list the whole thing here: burgers, cheeseburgers, fries, whole pickles, brownies, beer (one kind), pop, and milkshakes. I ordered a cheeseburger with the works, fries, and a vanilla milkshake. I was a little surprised, given the bare bones feel of the place, when they asked me how I wanted my burger cooked. But it made sense when I got it, because this was no thin burger -- it was thick and juicy. The fries were thin and crispy, like I like 'em, and I was impressed that the milkshake was pretty good despite being made in a blender instead of a Shake Master 3000. And, really, the cognitive dissonance of the whole experience can't be beat.

Burger Joint
inside the Le Parker Meridien
118 W 57th St
New York, NY

Today I made some treks for food. This morning I got a little lost trying to find a bagel place (Ess-a-bagel, I discovered -- not knowing it's name was one of the barriers to finding it) that I remembered was right around the corner from my friend Alex's place. I getting kinda tired, as I was lugging around both my bags, and starting to wonder if my memory of how good the bagels were at this place was really worth this journey over grabbing any of the millions of other bagels available in NYC and just getting to work. So I gave up and called Alex, who told me where it was. And then I got lost again. And then I found it.

So, was it worth it? Well, it was a good bagel with lox. But I'm not sure it was soooo much better than the ones around the corner from the hotel. Or maybe my tastebuds were just tired by then.

Ess-a-bagel
831 3rd Avenue
New York, NY

For lunch, I hiked down to Grand Central Station to visit the venerable Oyster Bar. On the way down I passed a street vendor who specialized in BBQ and then once in the Grand Central Market I saw a Brother Jimmy's, whose passing from Chicago I still lament (Anyone know where to get a dry rub BBQ in Chicago? Anyone? Anyone?). This one of the challenges that face a chowhound -- there's so much good food in the world that it's easy to get distracted on your way to your goal. But I was strong and made it to the Oyster Bar with an empty stomach.

The Oyster Bar opened the same year as the Grand Central Terminal itself (anyone? anyone? 1913.) and it looks like it has expanded over time to to fill more of its corner of the terminal. There are three seating areas: a sitdown area, a lunch counter-style area, and bar seating in front of the oyster prep area. I was there in the mid-afternoon, so there was plenty of seating and I sat at the bar.

The menu is huge, with a huge selection of not just oysters (but a couple dozen varieties of those) but other seafood and fish and different ways they could be prepared. Ptolemy, who had recommended the place, had recommended the clam chowder, so I ordered that. And then I thought I would stick with something that felt a little "safer" than raw oysters, but I didn't want to ignore the name of the place, so I got the fried oysters.

The clam chowder was thick and creamy and pretty good. After I was about halfway through the bowl, my server was walking by and saw my bowl. "Why didn't you say something!?" he exclaimed and threw some packets of oyster crackers on the counter. I put a handful of crackers in my soup and suddenly "pretty good" was transformed into "incredible". The crunchy, salty crackers were just what the maybe-a-little-too-thick-and-creamy soup needed.

The fried oysters and their accompanying french fries were alright, but they were, after all, fried oysters and fried frenches and after a while I was pretty full of grease and a little regretful, after hearing some comments around me, that I hadn't gotten a pan roast.

Oyster Bar
Grand Central Terminal
New York, NY

Wow, I get most of my news from NPR and the Daily Show and sometimes I forget that the average media is as bad as they make fun of (the latter rather than the former).

I had the CBS Early Show on for a few minutes this morning and they were covering the story of a fatal school bus accident. They gave the statistic that out of 40,000 roadway fatalities last year, 6 were school bus riders. They showed a clip of a NTSB official commenting that busses are generally very safe because of their size and because of 30 years of safety design. They elaborated with stock footage of crash test dummies to demonstrate how those high padded seats form a safety "cage" around children. And then they went to the anchor who had an in-studio guest and the first words out of the anchor's mouth were "I was shocked to learn this morning that Virginia and most other states do not have mandatory seat belt laws for school busses."

Why?! Why are you shocked!? Did you listen to your own broadcast? It sounds to me like school busses are amazingly safe. 6 deaths out of 40,000? 30 years of safety design? But let's start some useless scare-mongering! Aggghhhh! [Throw hands up and switch the channel back to Comedy Central.]

Well, I was in Chicago for 5 and a half hours last night/this morning. I think it's the shortest period I've been in town since I moved there (if that makes sense). And as much as I love my city, if you only have 5 hours to be in Chicago, 1 to 6 AM Monday morning may not be your best bet. But it was worth it to see my sleepy girlfriend for a few minutes.

But I have bookended Chicago with meals at two of my favorite restaurants: Lo-Lo's and Men Kui Tei. And if that's not worth traveling 2,400 miles, I'm not sure what is.

Last year when I was in Phoenix for the Phoenix Improv Festival, one of the festival after-parties ended up at Lo-Lo's Chicken & Waffles. I'm not sure if the year's worth of raving I've done since had anything to do with it, but this year a visit to Lo-Lo's after the Friday shows was on the official festival schedule, with reservations and everything. I was told we were going to be sitting in a newly-built section of the restaurant, which made me worried that the essential nature of Lo-Lo's had changed. I was relieved when we got there that Lo-Lo's had certainly not moved from their dimly-lit industrial/residential neighborhood and that the new addition, while it did seat 20, was just as charmingly awkward as the rest of the house-turned-restaurant. Lo-Lo's has a fair variety of soul/southern food, but I stuck with the meal I've been craving for a year: pretty good fried chicken and one of the best waffles I've ever had.

Lo-Lo's Chicken & Waffles
10 West Yuma St
Phoenix, AZ 85003
602-340-1304
"Still closed on Mondays"

And here in New York, I had lunch at Men Kui Tei, a little noodle shop just down the street from work. I really need to get out and explore all the food possibilities available in NYC, but it's tough when there's such great noodles waiting just half a block away. Today I had the Char-Shu Ramen, which is the Shoyu Ramen (soy sauce flavored noodle soup) with extra slices of roast pork. The pork was tender and tasty, with just the right amount of fat, and I finished off every drop of the broth.

Men Kui Tei
60 West 56th St
New York, NY
212-757-1642
"We DO NOT accept any type of CREDIT CARD"

And on the way back to work I saw that Print on 56th has a big selection of English candy bars in their front display, so I got a Cadbury Dairy Milk Turkish for an afternoon snack. Not quite as good as a Big Turk (I prefer a higher Turkish Delight-to-chocolate ratio) but still delightful (no pun intended).

And by "cowboys", of course, I mean "power adapters". I have (quick count on fingers) six identical Sony digital/video camera power adapters. One is with the camera that Adam Witt borrowed. Another is in Shaun's truck from when he borrowed the still camera. Somewhere in this house are four power adapters! I should be tripping over them. I should be saying "why can't I see anything else for all these power adapters!" But, instead, I'm going crazy trying to find just one.

OK, my buddy Kyle is looking for a video that he saw on a local Christian channel (or cable access) in Chicago around 1992. It was an anti-Halloween film that included trick-or-treating children being kidnapped by Satanists. At the climax of the film, a cop (or priest) (or priest-cop) confronts the head Satanist and points a gun at him. "By the power of Satan, I command that gun not to fire," says the head Satanist. "By the power of Jesus, I command this gun to fire," says the cop-priest. And fire it does.

If you know this video or have any leads, let me know.

This doesn't help identify the video, but it's just funny: Kyle and his friends were drinking when they watched this on TV, so at the end of the movie, they called the local church number listed on-screen to argue with the Christians about the co-opting of pagan holidays. Kyle's friend who did the talking was Jewish enough (or drunk enough) that he couldn't remember when Christmas was.

"And further-more, Jesus was not born on December 20!" he crowed triumphantly.

"Exactly, sir," agreed the hotline volunteer.

This is the cover of the Uline shipping materials catalog -- thank goodness they're finally encouraging people to use foam when they ship puppies. I've received so many bruised puppies in the mail...

Just back from the Town Hall after BBR and for Sam here's a link to an old post about the Town Hall.

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?

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?"

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.

Then, logically, rock beats happiness.

This is from the display case of the Miami Museum of Science store. Should they really be selling things to kids that have to have an antidote?

When we went shopping for a wig for Shaun to be the Fat Southern Senator, we ended up getting this Einstein wig and mustache kit at Fantasy Costumes. But please note that it is not a costume, it is a disguise. For all those times when you want to fool people into thinking that you are actually Albert Einstein.