At Four Squirrels, our food and drink blog:
At Push Butt:
I have just made a small update to Onomatopoetically.com which allows the audio clips there to be easily played on iPhones and iPads. Because, you know, that's what's kept us from posting over there for two years.
So Erica and I have a new website that we've been quietly updating for a few months now. The design's not done (what around here every is?) but we've got a fair amount of content there already and so I figure it's time to be a little more public about the site. Please let me present Four Squirrels!
Erica and I consider ourselves adventurous eaters and drinkers and the site is a place for us to share those adventures. Sometimes that's going to be recipes, sometimes it's just "here's a thing you can drink" (or, "avoid this terrible beverage"), and sometimes just musings (as the thing I posted just today is).
(Oh yeah, the name doesn't mean anything -- I had the domain left over from a project that never happened.)
I just can't leave well enough alone. I've updated the blogging software that powers all of our sites here at the FuzzyCo Minor Web Empire. And then I'm going to flounce off with a bunch of rough edges left. So… sorry if anything is broke around here (even more than usual). I'm going to redo some stuff this weekend. Probably. Whee!
There's one week left of voting for Erica and Parker's video in the Roommate of the Year contest. She's currently 130 votes behind the other video in her category, so if each of you reading* creates 65 fake email accounts and signs up, you could help her catch up in a day**.
* I assume there are two of you.
** I'm sure this is against the rules, and I don't actually encourage you to sign up more than once.***
*** (wink)
For the month of June I'll be a guest editor of the Coudal Partners Fresh Signals link blog. It runs down the middle of their front page or you can, of course, subscribe to the RSS feed in your favorite news reader. My posts can be identified by a tiny "envelope" icon at the start of the post and by my initials ("fg", that is) at the end. I'm quite honored to have been asked, as the list of previous guest editors is full of people I respect.
I've just set up a dedicated web site for what is, basically, one joke, repeated over and over. And the whole thing would probably be better addressed by a Flickr group. But I know what makes me laugh, and gosh if it isn't covering up some letters in a sign to make it say, for example, Push Butt. I'm welcoming submissions, so get out those cameras and those fingers.
After a short (well, 3 month) hiatus, we've started posting again at Onomatopoetically.com -- the site where we say words that sound like sounds. We've got about a dozen new ones recorded and I've posted three right out of the gate and I'll be posting the rest over the next few weeks. Of course, if you've already subscribed to the site as a podcast in iTunes, the new words just showed up magically in your iTunes today.
To you and yours from FuzzyCo.
A long dormant FuzzyCo show may (nay, will probably) be returning to Chicago real soon. I'm super excited to tell you everything, but the venue has asked that we hold off revealing anything until they have the full package of an evening ready and have made their own announcement. And so, I tease.
Team Gerdes-Plus-Noah is proud to present another in our growing stable of odd little websites: Onomatopoetically.
The site was inspired by a site cartoonist Adam Koford (aka Apelad) put up -- Onomatopedia.com. On that site, Adam sells original cartoons inspired by onomatopedic words supplied by his customers. (I bought a cartoon of the word "poot".)
I like making funny sounds, so I thought it might be fun to do a similar thing with audio. The domains onomatopeia.com and onomatopoeic.com are held by a domain speculators or somesuch, but onomatopoetic is an acceptable alternate spelling and I liked the way that that it has "poetic" buried in there. Onomatopoetically describes how we're going to be saying these things and makes the domain name so long and difficult to spell that no one is ever going to be able to find the site*.
So the way it works is pretty simple. You suggest an onomatopoetic word (either a real one like "bark" or just some sort of sound spelled out) and if we like it, we'll record ourselves using it in a sentence and then post it on the site. It's likely to be pretty sporadic, so I suggest subscribing to our feed in your favorite feed reader.
* Oops.
If you were planning on coming to the Town Hall Pub today to help us shoot a music video, please don't*. We're having to reschedule the shoot. Stay tuned. Thanks.
* I mean, unless you just want to visit the bar for a tasty beverage.
I guess we're back on the air, here. If you've tried to send me email over the last 24 hours or so and it bounced, please send it again -- I think we're back up and stable now (fingers crossed). If you enjoy car wrecks, you can go read about how my internet host had a bout of crippling slowness, thought they fixed it, discovered they had not, and then discovered that a process in their system had decided that the best response to the whole situation was to delete everyone's DNS records. La la la. Oh yeah, and all the while their supposedly off-network status page that's supposed to kept us loyal customers appraised of network problems like this got borked, too.
For future reference, if this site is ever down for any extended period of time, I'll likely post on fuzzygerdes.vox.com. Unless, like today, I'm in a training class all day without real Net access. Urp.
I've been suffering under a massive comment spam attack for the last few days, so I've had to turn moderation on for all comments -- so if you leave a comment, it may take a few hours to show up. Sorry, but the bad guys are winning right now.
Fuzzy's Pizza in Peoria, AZ is, oddly enough, a Chicago-themed pizza and hotdog place.
The Chicago Public Radio website features a "photo of the day" drawn from a Flickr group and today's photo is by me. Hoo-rar!
It's time once again for FuzzyFest -- the annual celebration of the day I was born! Please join me on Saturday, February 3 for:
a performance by Pastor of Muppets at the Playground (3209 N Halsted) at 8 pm
and/or
the appearance of Dr. Baron Ludwig von Evilschlager at Don't Spit the Water at the Playground (3209 N Halsted) at 10:30 pm
and/or
drinking and conviviality at the Twisted Spoke (3369 N Clark) around midnight.
The February Chicago Magazine profiles me (along with the editors of several other Chicago group blogs) for being the city captain of the Chicago Metroblog. Amongst the neatness is this little pixel portrait of me, based off of a photo that Erica took.
Illustration by Nana Rausch for Chicago Magazine
I finally did the same change to this blog that I did to the New Improv Page back in November. I think I've got every thing working OK, but let me know if you notice any weirdness (with the web pages, this is, we strive for weirdness otherwise).
I discovered today that I had broken the FuzzyCo Vodcast back in May. I also haven't posted anything to it since May, so you weren't really missing out on all that much. But it's back! I'm sure future posting will be as erratic as ever, but at least it's working. If you'd like to subscribe to the Vodcast in a News Aggregator, here's the RSS feed. Or to subscribe using iTunes, click here.
I answered some questions for Jill Bernard so she could write a side-bar to a piece she was doing on festival submissions and they ended up publishing my tips as a complete article: Improve your Submission Tape.
Update: a site update at YesAnd.com seems to have removed the article, so I've posted it here at FuzzyCo.
Jason Stephens of Split Pillow writes:
The Around the Coyote Arts Festival, one of Chicago's biggest festivals, is having their winter show in Bucktown Feb. 10-12. As part of the festival, they screen short films at Rodan (1530 N Milwaukee) at 6pm on both Friday the 10th and Sunday the 12th. This year, the festival asked to screen exclusively "The Best of Split Pillow." A movie you were involved with has been selected by the Festival selection committee (we gave them every short film Split Pillow had ever had a hand in producing and they made the decisions). Congratulations.
The FuzzyCo film being shown is Dog. It was filmed for Split Pillow's Challenge, so over Memorial Day weekend 2004 we filmed a script written by another team (Jamie Pilarski & Lauren Austin) and we handed off the footage to yet another team to edit (Jennifer M. Fah). The FuzzyCo team included Shaun, me, Sarah Pappalardo, Andrea Swanson, Clifton Highfield, Jin Kim, and Ryan Stone.
I live-blogged our efforts, so take a little trip down memory lane with me:
Challenge - first night & day
Challenge: 1st Location
Challenge: 1/3 done
Challenge: 2nd location
Challenge: Editor Friendly
Challenge: 2/3 done filming
Challenge: Exteriors
Challenge: 99% done
Challenge: 100% done (filming, anyway)
Via Mugsy, a "your year in review" meme: I've taken the first sentence of the first entry of each month here and it's an odd little overview of what 2005 was like for me.
January 2005: Raza Obrera wear orange overalls and have a harp player who dances around with his full-size harp the same way a guitar player does.
February 2005: We're in Miami!
March 2005: Hey, Erica's choreography was on national television!
April 2005: I spent part of my Saturday painting the trim in the front hallway (finally finishing an 11-month-old project) and listening to Mitch All Together in memory of Mitch Hedberg, who died last week.
May 2005: Pretty uneventful second weekend of the Chicago Improv Festival -- except for the Odd Political Thing that I had to fix in my video unexplainably reverting to the Old Wrong Name the one time the Important Person was there.
June 2005: Over on the Chicago Metroblog I just posted a round-up of our favorite french fries (yay - alliteration).
July 2005: Some weekend suggestions from FuzzyCo HQ: The exhibit at the Lincoln Park Zoo that Kate did all the art for has opened.
August 2005: We're back from Ann Arbor -- a wonderful trip; Dan, Trish, and Sabrina are delightful hosts.
September 2005: Though this one could be a poster pull-out quote: "Newcity's 5 shows to see now."
October 2005: Even when he's just typing, Shaun swears a lot.
November 2005: We finished up our 5th full run of the Neutrino Project in Chicago with another daaaangerous show.
December 2005: I left off that last post a little abruptly... I had to go run meet the plumber, who, once again, did not show up.
Getting my act together to take real screen grabs from the TiVo is not going to happen any time soon. So I just pointed my littlest camera at the screen and took some shots the old fashioned way.
Update: Of course they have the story on their website. Duh.
So... the London Metrobloggers were mentioned and quoted in the mainstream press for their street-level coverage of the London bombings. The New Orleans Metrobloggers are currently getting the same sort of attention for their personal coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Today on my lunch break I was interviewed by CBS 2 Chicago for a piece they're doing on... spiders. Well and so. The piece should air sometime next week and you can be sure I'll post more information as I have it.
Some notes from the interview:
As we were setting up for the interview, me sitting on a park bench, the producer, Lisa, to my left and Aleph(sp?) and the camera directly in front of me, an old man came and sat down very close on my right. We all three just stared at him for a moment and he gave us a look back like, "it's OK, I'm next." (When dumb-founded staring didn't work, Lisa asked him to move and he was happy to do so.)
I've been feeling bad lately that all I have for my video camera is a plastic white-card for doing white-balancing -- I know I should get one with shades of black and grey to help with color correction later. Until Lisa scrounged in her purse to produce a folded memo that Aleph white-balanced off of.
I'm not sure how much of what I said they'll use (if anything) -- it's a short piece. But let me confess, even if they never air them, to two things. Erica pointed out, when I was recounting the afternoon to her, that I mangled the words to "Itsy-bitsy Spider". When I reference "according to the comics I read as a kid, Spiderman is so strong because he's got the proportional strength of a spider," it's an accurate statement, but I am, of course, fronting -- I still read comic books.
And another confession: the above photo is staged. We were done with the interview and Lisa offered to take some shots with my little camera. Thanks, Lisa.
It's a big weekend here at FuzzyCo HQ. Which I've started calling FuzzyCo HQ. I think you'll all just have to deal with it.
Friday night, Erica's improv ensemble KOKO will be performing at The Playground at 8 PM (Mustang Repair, Show Pony, and American Dream also appear). If you're a fan of those ladies, you'll be delighted to know that all 5 members will be at the show, which hasn't happened in awhile.
Then, at 9 PM it's the Neutrino Project at the Improv Kitchen. You've read about the show in the Tribune and Time Out. I've been yapping out the show for years. Just come see it and get it over with.
Saturday morning the Little Corner Restaurant is open again after the owner's three week vacation and it may not affect you, but it brightens our whole weekend.
Saturday night, Erica is doing a short play as part of the Abbie Hoffman Theater Festival. Change goes up at 8:15 pm. It's only 20 minutes or so, but there's plenty more going on during the festival -- plenty of good stuff and undoubtedly some crap. But at $25 for 41 hours of theater, that's about 61¢ per hour. How can you pass up such a bargain?
And since you'll already be up late at the Abbie Hoffman, you can duck down the street at midnight to see Documentary South, at The Playground. We only have three shows left and it's really a different improv show, so please come out. And this week we have special guests The Franchise opening up for us.
And my friend Lawrence is visiting this weekend. Again, doesn't affect you, just thought I'd mention it. Whew. I'm worn out just typing it all.
If you can read this, the move was successful. Here's looking forward to a stable and happy FuzzyCo.
Things are going to be a bit quiet here for the next few days as I try and move FuzzyCo.com to a more-stable server. Come see the show if you're in Michigan!
I have successfully upgraded the back-end software that runs the blogging here at FuzzyCo and the New Improv Page to Moveable Type version 3.12. Do you care? Probably not. You shouldn't notice much difference in my site, except that maybe now I'll be able to put the time I had spent on fighting comment spam towards actually writing a post or two.
I did a simple update last night that ended up taking down the whole FuzzyCo server. Which makes me a little nervous about my planned upgrade to Movable Type 3.11. (But I have to upgrade soon, because comment spam is driving me crazy...)
I signed FuzzyCo up for the Fast Forward Film Festival on Monday night and we were team #1, so I'm guessing there are still plenty of spots left.
Evidently this Fast Forward is going to incorporate the organizers' friends Zach and Bob from the East Coast. We're going to have Alex in from New York (and Shaun's dad from North Dakota) that weekend, too, so, not to pre-plan, but I have a feeling the FuzzyCo entry is going to be guest-star-a-riffic.
In just a few hours I'm going to get in a car with Erica and three other members of KOKO and hit the road for New York. KOKO is going to be performing at the Del Close Improv Marathon (they perform Saturday, 7/31, at 2:30 pm).
Originally I was just going to tag along to visit New York and support KOKO at their show and see a little improv. Then Kurt called -- because so many people from around the country were going to be in town for the DCM, Neutrino was opening up their Friday night show to members of the other Neutrino project casts. Would anyone from the Chicago Neutrino Project be in New York on Friday night? Well, me (and Andrea Swanson). So we'll both be part of the Neutrino Video Project show on Friday night at 10 pm 9:30 pm at the PIT (154 W. 29th St., between 6th and 7th Ave).
Then Asaf called. "I see you're going to be in New York on Friday. Would you like to sit-in with The Sickest F***in' Stories I Ever Heard?" But, of course. So I'll be the "bartender" in the New York SFSIEH, also at the PIT, Friday night at 11 pm.
Two shows -- not bad for "just tagging along". (I looooove getting invited to do shows. I don't know if people assume I'm too busy, or if they just think I'm a talentless hack, but I don't get asked to do shows very often. So ask me to do your show, bucko!)
Saturday night we'll be seeing Avenue Q -- I'm looking forward to some foul-mouthed puppets. And Sunday morning it's back in the KOKO-mobile to return to Chicago. I'm taking a wireless laptop, but we'll see if I have time or inclination to post anything.
I've started blogging over at Chicago.Metroblogging. It is, as the name implies, Chicago-oriented writing. I'll likely cross-post everything I post there here also (though not vice versa -- there will be stuff here that's not there). But there's plenty of fine writing over there that's not by me.
We won the award a few months ago, but I just found this picture of us accepting the eFilmCritic.com award for Ted McGillicutty, Man of Action at the Chicago Really Short Film Festival. As you can tell from my formal wear, I was expecting to win an award.
So... I'm going to Scotland the first week in August to sit-in with Neutrino as they present Neutrino: The Instant Movie at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I'll be running camera and acting in the movies and running tech and handing out flyers and so on. In other words, the usual.
Neutrino has posted a nifty trailer that features footage from their last two appearances at the Chicago Improv Festival and so has a few Chicago Neutrino Project folks scattered throughout.
Jin and Shaun represented FuzzyCo well in WNEP's Duo Improviso last night, coming in second place. (Cough, cough. Don said, "the Duo Improviso has one first place winner and nine second place winners.") The Duo was held on the set of Loser's Bracket, which explains the boat, bass, and bar in the background.
One of my jobs as the Chicago Improv Festival multimedia coordinator is to organize an archive of all the pictures and video (mostly digital) that were shot this week. If you were here this week and shot any pictures or video, I'd love to get a copy of it. Them. Whichever. Send me an email (fuzzy@fuzzyco.com).
Pictures from CIF? I've taken a few. Stories? A thing or two has happened. Time to post it? Nope. I left the Schad/Fuz/Haus party at 4:15 am so I could get home by 5:00 to drive Shaun to the airport (I had one beer at the party, thank you very much). Tonight I'm doing video bits on the mainstage (I'm waiting for a few DVDs to burn right now) and then I'm off to run the Improv All Night until 6 am. Shaun was supposed to run it, but he's off to a wedding in Nashville. I owe him an IAN, since two years ago I was the IAN coordinator and got food poisoning that afternoon and Shaun had to go straight from running one of the other stages to do IAN all night.
A party? We had some DJs lying around gathering dust, and what are we going to do with all that beer, and, hey, there are all these CIF attendees standing around with nothing to do. A party!
3036 N Lincoln Ave - 2nd Flr
Friday, May 7, 10:45pm
It's Schadenfreude and FuzzyCo and the Big House, together again for the first time.
We're asking everyone to chip in $10 to help us cover the price of DJs, live band, food, shocking amounts of drinking fluids, and a party that should hopefully run very very late. Want to know which dozen of your friends have already RSVPed? Check out the evite.
Well, the Chicago Improv Fest starts tonight and takes over my life for the next week (in fact, it's taken up most of this week already). I'm the "multimedia co-ordinator" which, as far as I can figure out, is a fancy name for "video guy."
We'll see if I can get a chance to give you a glimpse of the sights and sounds of the biggest week in improv(tm).
I'm finally updated my GeoURL to reflect my move one mile north and one block west.
I was also the big winner at the last Sickest Stories, raking in a big $8 (I might have won more if the dealer could have stayed focused on the game instead of his own stories)(I kid, I kid).
We had an excellent range of the kinds of stories we've had over the years at SFSIEH... puke stories, poop stories, awkward sex stories...
Thanks to Don, Shaun, Rebecca, Amanda, and everyone who came out to see it for giving the old show a nice send-off. (sniff)
A few years ago, Don Hall and Shaun Himmerick were talking at one of Don's summer cookouts. Shaun likes playing poker and wanted to develop a show where he could just sit on stage and play poker (there have been worse artistic impulses). Don had just seen The Weir, where the characters just sit around in a bar and tell ghost stories. It'd be great, Don said, to do a show like that, only WNEP-style, so they'd be gross stories.
Before you could say "You got your chocolate in my peanut butter..." they had created a new show, "The Sickest F***in' Stories I Ever Heard". (The asterixes are part of the title. I loooove swearing, but Don and I both think it's funnier that way.)
The show is a simple idea: five people sit on stage, drink real beer, smoke real cigars, play real poker for real money, and tell real stories from their lives. Which, you know, tend to be gross.
It's so simple and so compelling, that we've produced the show for three seasons and it's been performed in Boston, Memphis, New York, Seattle, and Toronto. And tomorrow night at midnight is your last chance to see this show in Chicago.
The Around Midnite Series, which has been Sickest's home for the last years, is wrapping up this month (Your Little Ponies next week, Cinema 2.0 the week after, and the Gong Show Finals on May 15). And so is The Sickest F***in' Stories I Ever Heard.
We've had dozens of guest players over the years, but for this final one we're bringing it back home to WNEP. The cast will be me, Don Hall, Shaun Himmerick, Amanda Cohen, and Rebecca Languth. I've got a couple of stories I've been saving up...
WNEP's Around Midnite Series is wrapping up in April (with a special Gong Show finale May 15). You get two more doses of freaks on parade (Apr 3 & May 15), one more hit of dirty-talkin' poker players (Apr 10), a special appearance by Your Little Ponies (Apr 17), and a final bad movie made fresh and new (Apr 24).
Fight Club is back on. Same place (3209 N. Halsted) same time (Tuesdays @ 10:30 pm).
Dan says, "It's an open jam, but not in a drunk late night bad kind of way, but in a smoky underground jazz club open jam. It's a show with no audience, everybody plays. Raw, unrehearsed, uncompensated, uncompromised. Improv at its most pretentious."
Everyone is welcome. We start exactly at 10:30 pm (and end exactly at 11:30). If it's your first time, you're in the first scene. Other than that, your level of participation is entirely up to you. We all try to bring our best work; we're all working to improve.
Anyway, it's a little late to imagine anyone who might even come tonight reading this in time, but we're running through the end of April.
Hey, if Second City can claim him, we can too; Jose Hirohito and His All-Girl Orchestra alumnus Joe Kelly has been hired by Saturday Night Late as a writer. It'd be hard to find a nicer guy than Joe, and I wish him all the best in his new job.
Sunday night, Beth and Shaun MC'd the Lavender Cabaret's appearance at the Beat Kitchen. I had my good camera, but the light in there was terrrrible. So you get a blur-a-licious picture of Beth and Shaun improvising some bit or another.
Oh, I can see what you're dreaming of... you want... you desire... MP3s of news satire radio segments I did 4 years ago. And so you shall have them.
![[Schadenfreude]](http://fuzzyco.com/news/mime/schaden-logo-04.jpg){kind=logo}
(Little cough, lean in a little too close) Have I mentioned that I'm the executive producer of the Around Midnite Series? OK, I don't really do that much (no, really, I don't really do that much).
When we moved the AMS over to the Lakeshore Theater, we lost one of the shows that made up part of the series. Rather than try and find a new show that could commit to once-a-month performances from January to May, I decided to fill the slot with 5 different groups and call the slot "Wild Card." The first Wild Card was WNEP's Angry White Guy last month. This month, on Saturday, February 21 (at, duh, midnight) we have Chicago's own Schadenfreude.
Schadenfreude is one of Chicago's best sketch comedy groups and this marks one of their rare live appearances since they began airing their radio show on WBEZ (91.5 FM). And it's only $5.
(This weekend at the AMS is The Sickest F***in' Stories I Ever Heard, in a special all-female Valentine's Day edition.)
I set up a nice procmail filter this morning to handle the MyDoom mails that were filling my mailbox. Only I messed up on a return or two. The point? If you sent me email today, I didn't get it. Oops. Try again, please.
A few days ago I was asked if I had any shows coming up. "Nope, not really," I said. Little did I know. Here's what's suddenly been added to my plate:
Bare has a show at Frankie J's (4437 N Broadway) this Saturday night at 10:30 pm. Normally, Shaun and I try to be good about sticking around to see the other groups perform, but we were a last-minute addition to the schedule, so we both have to leave right after we perform to get to our other committment... The Sickest F***in' Stories I Ever Heard, at its new location, Lakeshore Theater.
Also, this week Chicago Sketch Fest starts and on Monday, January 12, at 8 pm I'm going to be a part of OctaSketch, a sketch version of the 24 Hour Plays. And then next Sunday, a show I'm directing (again), Fratricide, goes up at Sketch Fest.
And tonight I'm going to a callback for a show that should have me busy with rehearsals through March. If I get cast, of course. If I don't get cast, expect me to quietly never mention this exchange ever again. "Show? What show?"
More office-moving problems. But now FuzzyCo should be stable. (Fingers crossed)
Oops -- we were offline for a day, just now. Offices getting moved, servers getting turned off by accident, and so on. Sorry.
Man, I leave the city for 10 minutes, and you all get up to the craziest antics...
So the Playground is closed at the moment, which means the Bare show next week is in doubt (the least of their worries, I'm sure, but it matters to me). And WNEP is leaving their space and going itinerant again. But it looks like the Around Midnite Series will be taking December off and then moving to Lakeshore Theater (still as a WNEP production).
I just finished a poster for the next Belmont Burlesque Revue, featuring, well, you can see above.
You've probably already left work where you do all your web-surfing, but here's what you should find yourself psychically-influenced to do this weekend:
We had a Fratricide rehearsal last night to plug-in Zach Ward, who's understudying Mike Burns. Homer had scheduled two rehearsals and a meeting to get Zach up to speed, but it just took the one rehearsal. Somehow it doesn't seem fair -- the rest of us had to work for weeks (and the actors worked a lot harder than I did) to get the show where it is now, and Zach can just waltz in and be ready to go in a few hours (he did have to come in off-book (that is, with his lines memorized. Is anyone reading this who didn't know what that meant?)). It's not that Zach is so brilliant (I mean, he is, but my point is...) there's just something about coming into a show where everyone else already knows what's supposed to happen that makes everything easier.
I just got back from the first day of the Science Project, and boy are my arms tired.
Seriously, I'm exhausted. I was up until 4:30 am, taking care of last details and organizing the practice movies we had made so we could show them while we were making new ones today. I hit some seriously sound problems at about 4:00 am and decided to give up after a half an hour. Got some sleep and all that.
Today we had sound problems at the museum, too. I shake my fist at you, sound.
It all makes me rather nervous, because I can't be there tomorrow (I shake my fist at you, day job).
But we made some nice little movies today, notwithstanding the comments of the grumpy lady at the very end of the day.
I was out at the Museum today to do our tech run-through for The Science Project. It was a pretty fast tech, because the Museum staff had set most of it up for me (ahhh, so nice to be working with competent people). And it's really just projecting video and playing sound. I guess some of the other groups have complicated setups. Not me.
So... the cast has one last get together tonight -- we're going to go over some last-minute details and watch some award winning shorts to steal their ideas open our minds to the possibilities of short film. And then tomorrow at 10 am we start making movies!
The Museum of Science and Industry has put up a webpage for the Experiments... Science+Art performance series. That we are, you know, a part of.
Their page links straight to the FuzzyCo home page here, rather than the Science Project specific page. Which means, I suppose, that I have to keep things clean here on the main page for the next few weeks. Not that I'm usually all potty-mouthed up here or anything, I suppose I just like to think we're all adults here at FuzzyCo and I could launch into some naughty discussion at any moment. (I also suppose that using the words "potty-mouthed" and "naughty" reveals how very innocent I really am.)
I finally got my phonecam-to-website gateway working. I'm at Fratricide rehearsal
right now (it's a dance/music rehearsal with the choreographer, which is
why I have time to diddle around with this stuff).
We're in the final stretch of rehearsals for Fratricide -- my friend and
Cinema 2.0 cast member Homer Marrs wrote a sketch show about gay guys
and frat guys and dead guys and stuff. And asked me to direct it. And so
I am.
A two DVD-set of The Challenge movies is now available. (The short I shot and directed is called "Ying Ling : Ling Ying" and is on DVD 1.1) Split Pillow has a sample clip from the movie (1.6 Meg Quicktime). The clip is the "getting to know each other" montage from the middle of the short and features a song that the editors wrote and recorded just for that montage. You can also see my "the stupid kite won't actually fly" special effect and Matt in a skirt and some great frolicing.
If you're in Chicago this weekend you'll want to head over WNEP at midnight Saturday night to catch an encore show of Cinema 2.0. The kids will be doing Destroy All Monsters -- a brilliant Japanese giant-monster movie with an all-star giant monster cast. And Japanese ladies in sparkly hoodies. And people who keep flying around in a rocket ship. I'm sure it'll all make sense.
(P.S. WNEP, not the Playground, where the run was. Halsted and Belmont. Halsted and Belmont.)
If you happen to be in St. Louis and aren't sure what to do, oh, 3 hours from now, come on down to CITY Improv at the Union Station and see Bare at the St. Louis Improv Festival at 8:30 tonight.
I just got back from the showing of The Challenge films. The Challenge is yet-another fast filmmaking project (I was having a conversation at the shoot last night and we were getting each confused between talking about The Challenge, the 48 Hour Film Project and the 72 Hour Feature Project).
The Challenge was a 62 Hour endevour, where screenwriters wrote scripts in 14 hours, production crews shot the shorts in 24 hours, and then editors edited the movies in 24 hours. An interesting twist was that many of the teams (writing, actors and production crews, and editors) were assembled randomly. And if even if you wanted to participate in all three phases of the project, as several people I know did, you still had to hand off your work at each stage to a different team. That was the weirdest part -- to try and film carefully enough that someone else could edit the footage under such time constraints (which care is probably normal good practice for shooting, but is rather different than the majority of the shooting I do for The Neutrino Project or the short I shoot and edit myself for things like the Fast Forward Film Festival or Vidiocy). Even with all my care, I got a little lecture from the editor tonight about things I could have done to make his job easier.
The actual shoot was long and tiring, but fun. We all showed up at 10 am on Saturday, I met the actors and assistant director for the first time, we got our script, and headed out to shoot. Our script called for a burly member of the cast to play a little Chinese girl, and once we had crammed him into a too-small tank top and skirt (and sometimes Depends) all we really had to do was point the camera at him and let the laughter ensue. Matt, the burly one, had also been a screenwriter for the project, so he had had no sleep and was rather loopy. Oh, and we had an 11 year-old in our cast, which kept the cursing down below the level I think we'd usually have on a shoot this time-constrained.
People kept asking me "are you always this patient?" In the morning, the answer was a puzzled "sure, shouldn't I be?" Near the end of our 10-hour shoot I had to grit my teeth to spit out "yes, yes, I'm always this patient."
In the end, our short came out fine. The editors made some different choices than I would have (I'm toying with the idea of doing an edit myself, but I'm not sure how much I care) but people laughed, so it must be all right.
Update: some behind-the-scenes photos.
If you've been in contact with me over the last few weeks, you've surely heard me complaining about the "proposal" I've been working on. This morning I finally got our proposal for the Museum of Science and Industry Live Performance Series finished and delivered, via the web, of course. I also made it into a web site, so the evaluation comittee could look at it online if they wanted.
I'd share it with you, but Shaun thinks you're all evil and black-hearted and will somehow steal all of our brilliant ideas before the presentation and interview we have with the evaluation committee on Wednesday.
So, I'm done complaining about the proposal. Now I can switch to complaining about the reel I need to put together for the presentation. And the work I'm doing for Fluke. And the video I need to edit for Versailles.
Shaun and I did an interview with Lucia Mauro a little while ago and I guess it has come out as a profile of FuzzyCo in the latest Performink. I've gotten several compliments already, but I haven't received my subscription yet, so I have no idea what's in the article. I'm sure I'll post a link here as soon as I can Here's the article -- relentless self-promotion is what I'm known for, after all.
Back in November I did the Sybilization solo improv performance thing and in one of my shows I created (as one does in an improv show) a character named Mouse Beard Fred, who was a creepy guy who had a mouse named Malcom living in his beard. In the show, he tried to attack a woman who turned out to be a kung fu expert and easily handed him over to the police. Who then put him in a box, that being, as far as I can tell, the standard punishment for attacking women in that improv world. (Often, describing an improv show is like describing a dream -- "it made sense at the time.")
My friend Noah Gigex saw the show and was so taken with Mouse Beard Fred that he informed me after the show (informed -- not asked) that he would be making a cartoon character out of him. And it seems he has. And plastered him on a variety of Cafe Press merchandise.
Joey deVilla has this "theory that in the infinite set of universes -- the multiverse -- there was one particular universe in what happened to us right here was being watched as a TV show over there. We then made a solemn vow to live in such a way that we kept our ratings up." I think ratings are pretty high right now on the Fuzzy Show.
Hey, Fuzzy, it's your birthday. We're gonna party like it's your birthday. Hey, Fuzzy, it's your birthday. (repeat)
So Friday night, Dave Colan, Lance Hoffman and I headed over to Atomix Coffeeshop to pick up our Fast Forward Film Festival suggestion. This FFFF the suggestions were provided by Found Magazine, so every team got a color photocopy of two found photographs. Our team, Team #17, got a picture of a bearded man posing for a portrait and a polaroid of a Jack Daniel's bottle on top of a red car.
After an hour and a half of brain-storming, we decided that Dave looked enough like the man in the picture that he would play our hero -- Matt McGillicutty, Man of Action -- and that we would be making an entire cop movie in three minutes. And Lance had made the mistake of revealing that he could play the saxophone, so we knew we'd stick that in somewhere. We made a few phone calls to try to line up extra actors, of which only Andrea Swanson answered her phone, and set up a filming time of 8 in the morning. I went home, set my camera to recharge the battery and went to sleep.
Saturday morning, I woke Shaun up at 7:50. As much as I complain about Shaun, I love that I can wake him up after a late night of drinking, say "we're making a movie in 10 minutes and you're the villian" and know that he'll just say, as he did, "OK, I'll take a quick shower -- what do you need me to wear?"
Lance, Dave, and Andrea all showed up on time and we began to work out the choreography. I had decided that a) because of the tight schedule, I didn't want to do any editing and b) it would coolest if the whole cop movie took place in 3 real minutes (and in the 20 yards from my front hallway to the back gate of our parking lot) so I wanted to do the whole thing in one continuous shot. Because Lance was our only extra actor, he had to play the other 3 characters (plus himself with his sax), so we worked out all the moves to let him get off camera and change costumes.
We did a take for practice, without using any of our "special effects" and tried a take for real. We got all the way to the last thirty seconds of the take and my landlord drove up to the back gate, ruining the shot. We did another take where I accidently got Lance changing costumes on camera, and then finally a good take. And then we did one more for good measure. And it was wonderful.
And it was 9:30 and Andrea and Dave both had to leave to go to rehearsals. We didn't watch the tape (experienced film makers will recognize the ominous sounds of foreshadowing music playing in the background here) because there wasn't time to do another take anyway, and it was so cold we didn't want to go outside anymore, and from what I had seen through the viewfinder, the take was perfect.
I dropped those two off at their rehearsals and then Lance and I went looking for somewhere to record his sax solo for the film. All the theaters I have access to were being used, so I called Don Hall because he's a trumpet player and smart. He suggested that for a wind instrument, we just record in a bathroom for it's concert hall-like reverb. So we ended up back at my place.
Lance wanted to watch the tape to see how long to make the solo. And the take was great. But it was 4 minutes long. FFFF films are supposed to be 3 minutes or less. Crap.
But there was nothing I could do. There was no time before the 5 pm deadline that all 5 people could meet up again. So I recorded Lance's sax solos and sat down to edit the film down to 3 minutes.
By chopping out a bunch of walking-from-point-a-to-b, and removing Lance's on-screen sax part altogether, and without any sort of title or credits, I was able to get it down to 3 minutes exactly. It was a shame, because with editing Lance's quick changes weren't as funny anymore, but we didn't know how strict they were about time, and I didn't want my first FFFF to get summarily ejected for going over time. Shaun drove the tape down to Atomix just before the deadline.
A few hours later, Shaun and I went over to Collaboraction's space for the FFFF showing. It was supposed to start at 8, and Sean U'Ren had even made a announcement at the suggestion-giving that the showing would start at 8:00 or 8:15. The first film was shown at 8:50. I'm not complaining, I'm just, you know, complaining. Because of the delay, and our 9:45 call time for The Neutrino Project, we were only to see the first 4 teams' films. So we have no idea how the edited film was received. We showed the uncut 4 minute version as an opening short at The Neutrino Project, and people loved that one, so I hope people liked the edited version.
Oh, and one of those 4 films was 3 and a half minutes long. So maybe we could have gotten away with an extra minute. Oh well.
I'm going to see about getting the short up on iFilm or somesuch. If anyone has any suggestions of their favorite internet short-film posting sites, let me know.
I'll be making two movies this weekend, though fortunately one of them will only be three minutes long.
On Friday night, many of the Neutrino Project crew and I will be getting together to make a three-minute film for the Fast Forward Film Festival. That movie, and 29 others, will be shown at Collaboration (thanks, Lee) Collaboraction (2046 W Carroll) on Saturday night (Jan 11) at 8 PM. (We're not procrastinating, that's how the FFFF works.)
And Saturday night at 10:30 PM, we'll be doing The Neutrino Project as usual. This week we have a guest videographer -- Adam Witt of Schadenfreude will be sitting in with us. Adam did some great stuff in rehearsal, so I'm looking forward to seeing it on screen.
And Andy Eninger, who shot with us during the preview shows, will be sitting in on January 25. Andy has a cinematography degree from a Hungarian film school, and I'm not sure how you can get much better than that.
Unfortunately, someone sitting in means someone has to sit out, so Adam Devlin-Brown won't be shooting this week. But he came up with an excellent idea and he'll be shooting behind-the-scenes footage of how the show is put together. I did a full-featured DVD for Superpunk (deleted scene, commentary, sub-titles, easter eggs, etc.) and with all the supplemental materials I'm accumulating for the Neutrino Project, I'm starting to think about doing one for this show. I probably shouldn't have said that out-loud -- I still haven't finished dubbing peoples tapes from Sybilization.
Before the Chicago run, Andy previewed One Man Seen at the Toronto Improv Festival in August. That performance made Glenn Sumi's Top 10 Comedy Shows of 2002 in the Toronto NOW, calling it an "astonishing piece". (Fellow Chicagoans Bassprov made #4).
Lucia Mauro's Year in Review in the latest Performink included the FuzzyCo production One Man Seen as one of the "most inventive and empowering productions of 2002". Congrats to Andy, Gary, Heather, and Shaun.
Sybilization opens this Sunday (Nov 3) at the Playground. Six other improvisors and I have spent the last six weeks working with Andy Eninger and outside directors (I worked with the inimitable Jen Ellison) learning Andy's Sybil solo improv form. The shows at the Playground will each feature three or four of us performing Sybils and one or two other solo performers (musicians, poets, dancers, etc.). I'm really happy with the work I've been doing and I encourage you to see one of my shows on Sunday Nov. 3, Nov. 10, or Dec. 8.
I just got a copy of Andy's performance of One Man Seen from the Toronto Improv Festival, and the description KP Robbins put in the "Commodity Description" field of the customs form would be on every One Man Seen poster (if this Sunday wasn't the close of the show):
VHS Cassette
Original Comedy/Theatre
Non-Pornographic
Declared Value: $0
I've been cast in the newest round of the Sybilization workshop/performance group, and producer Megan Pedersen has set up a Blog for the cast.
TheatreChicago said One Man Seen was "brilliantly executed" and the Chicago Reader said Andy was an "improv savant".
Phillip Mottaz said The Neutrino Project had the "magic of magic".
One Man Seen opened, Neutrino opened, Movie journal updated, Neutrino journal updated. Can I rest now?
Two FuzzyCo openings in one weekend! I'm going to be dead by Monday!
Saturday, 10:30 - The Neutrino Project. Only two shows, only $5.
Sunday, 8:00 - One Man Seen. The preview was great. A reception follows opening night.
Well, the side of my head made the poster for Dancing With Gaia, even if my name didn't. (My DWG journal.)
I've finally joined the 21st Century and moved over to an automated blogging system for these little entries and for the journals I keep. And speaking of journals, there's a new one for my latest project, The Neutrino Project.
There's only ONE more chance to see 1000 Monkeys. Erin Cunningham called it "fantastic." Greg Inda called it "wonderful." Theatre Chicago.com said it was "nothing short of magical." And they should know, because they saw it.
Here's a FuzzyCo milestone - the first FuzzyCo production that I'm not in. We're producing Andy Eninger's new one man show, One Man Seen. It doesn't open until September, but let's get some buzz started, people.
Another project that's finally done (gol-danged audio sync problems!) is the Superpunk DVD. You need one.
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