FuzzyCo

Due to some Pastor of Muppets-related confusion and a lucky coincidence of Shaun's travel schedule, you have the rare chance to see Bare, our two-man improv group, tonight at 8 pm at the Playground (3209 N Halsted, Chicago).

Shaun has not performed any improv in a full calendar year (our last Bare show was in July of last year) while I've been performing more than ever. What kind of hideous train wreck might this evening be? What terrible things will said? Can our friendship stand the strain of this upcoming show? Or will we, as we have all-too-often in the past, pull brillance out of our desperate asses? Only one way to find out -- come see the show!

Homey Loves Chachi and Mort perform on the same bill and tickets are a measly (measly!) $10.

For the last couple of years, my two-man improv group Bare has been performing more outside of Chicago than at home. And now that Shaun's in the UK for six months, we likely won't even be doing many shows anywhere. Which makes it an extra-extra special treat for all three Bare fans that we're doing a show tomorrow night (Saturday, July 7, 8pm) at the Playground. We're talking about bringing back Pageant of History -- though we're willing to take requests (Hotel? Small town? Who would do that? Actual Theatre?).

Mustang Repair and Homey Loves Chachi are performing on the same bill and all three groups will joining together to perform a Dream for a silent auction winner from the Playground's recent 10th anniversary celebrations.

Photo by Michelle Edwards

The Phoenix Improv Festival is, I have to say, the friendliest of all the improv festivals I've been to. For example, every ensemble gets a "den mother" assigned to them -- a local who will pick them up for the airport, get them to the shows, and fulfill requests like "take me to a tattoo convention" or "we need a construction hardhat and some Jagermeister". Also, everyone gets a gift bag that, in addition to the usual info sheets and maps, always has something handmade and special. Last year it was coloring books and this year it was finger puppets. (Note to self: take picture of awesome finger puppet.)

Last year, we took the Chicago Neutrino Project (with plenty of assists from Detroit and local folks) out to the festival. This year, we didn't get/have to do any such thing, because there's a Phoenix Neutrino Project. Graciously, in the Neutrino Nation spirit, they let Shaun, Greg, and I sit in with them. I don't know how the show went (they promise a Google Video of the show sooner or later) but I can tell you that I had the most fun and felt the most relaxed I've ever felt doing a Neutrino Project show. It was so awesome to just sit back and trust that other people were running the show.

Friday during the day Jose, the friendliest of all the friendly Phoenicians, organized a surprise trip to Fuzzy's Pizza. Oh, you.

Friday night we had our Bare show. Bare has performed at every PIF that has had non-Arizona groups (that is, 5 of the 6 PIFs) and we've got, if I can say without modesty, a bit of a reputation in Phoenix. We do always try to bring our A-game and to consciously try new things. We had worked out a format for our show over the few weeks before the festival, something that involved a fair amount of sitting around talking. At the last minute, we realized that we had been scheduled to open for Bassprov, whose whole (excellent) show is two guys sitting around talking. So, it was back to the drawing board, since we're not dicks. (Really, we're not :-) We tinkered around with our ideas a bit and ended up coming up with a modified Living Room. It was crude and vulgar and bickery and went, as best I can tell, pretty well.

This year, not only did I take pictures, there's a Flickr group so you can see everyone else's pictures as well.

These two guys, Eric and Filup, are doing some sort of promo gig where they're driving across the country in a Chevy Aveo to go to LA and "make it big in comedy". They hooked up with the Phoenix Improv Festival and actually were the MCs who introduced Bare. Above is their video, with a 1-second glimpse of Shaun. I'm just off to Shaun's right, so just picture that in your mind and I'm sure you can imagine how the show went.

Do I have friends in Phoenix, Arizona who aren't already involved in the Phoenix Improv Festival? If so, they should be informed that Bare will performing at 8:30 pm tonight (Friday, May 11) with Bassprov.

Another way we were spoiled when we arrived in Phoenix was with an official festival goody bag. There were schedules, guides to local eateries, toys, and a festival coloring book, with a page for each group in the festival. Our two pages were:

by Michelle Edwards of The Remainders.

It's true, you know. I do like photography. And Shaun does like strip clubs.

by The Original's Jacque Arrend

This is the secret story behind an otherwise ordinary Neutrino Project publicity photo.

Saturday morning brought some pressing news -- Lo-Lo's Chicken and Waffles, my annual Phoenix after-show dining spot -- was now only open until 10 pm, so if I was to get in some chicken AND some waffles, it was going to have to be now. Troops who were conscious (I guess the second poker game went until 7 am) were rounded up and breakfast was had. Man, I love those waffles.

We got back from Lo-Lo's just in time for me to go teach my workshops. Originally, the workshops were scheduled to be taught by Shaun and I together, but we decided that it would make more sense for both of our careers if I concentrated on teaching workshops and Shaun concentrated on hanging out by the pool. Well, it made sense the way Shaun explained it.

In any case, I had a great time. The first workshop was full - 12 students - and we cranked through the mass of information I was trying to jam into their heads about making bold character choices. Of course, I have no idea how much value any of them got out of it, but it felt really productive. For the next workshop, I guess I had lost some students to the Bingo Jam, so I only had 3 people. Intense would be the operating word for this session, as we went the full two hours, meaning everyone was up for 2/3 of the time.

Post-workshops, I had to run back to my hotel and change to get over to the venue for our Bare show.

The Phoenix Improv Festival spoils the performers unlike any other festival I've ever been to. They pay for all the performers' hotel rooms, which, frankly, is the best you're do financially from a festival unless you're a headliner at a huge festival. Every group is assigned a "den mother" - a local person who can drive you around and help with any questions or problems. And they're incredibly patient with our unreasonable requests and last-minute changes. This year, for example, Shaun jokingly asked for two custom t-shirts for Greg and Starcevich, and they produced them. And when, on Friday afternoon, we decided that our show would be a combination of Hotel and Screwed (our version of Michael Delaney and Andrew Secunda's Nailed Down) and so we would need two pairs of extra-large shoes and a drill, Jose just said, "I think I know where we can get those."

"Jose," I said after Shaun was done with his laundry list, "if I was running a festival, I wouldn't take that kind of crap. That's a ridiculous list."

But, Jose produced, and so half of the show was slow, patient near-us conversation between two characters, and the other half was a frentic, absurd mass of at least a dozen characters, each running off their own suggestion. We ran back and forth between the two sides of the stages, occasionally occupying both sides of the stage at the same time. That, Shaun and I agree, was the only part of the show that didn't work. It was easy enough to be by yourself on the Hotel side of the stage, but on the Screwed side it was really difficult to get into the rhythm of our conversation alone. Anyway, I give the show a B+.

And then we were getting ready for our second Neutrino Project show. I do feel a little bad that I didn't see more of the other groups, but it really did feel like I was always getting ready for- or recovering from- a show of my own. So, I missed all the groups between Bare and Neutrino Project. Sorry.

During this break, Shaun blithely told Kristen and Chuck, as though we did it all the time, "Go knock on some neighborhood doors and see if we can film in someone's living room." Well, they went wandering around the immediate neighborhood of the theater and found a house where they were holding public garden tours. Zing, and yay for Shaun's chutzpah.

I did my set of scenes with Alison and with Matt Martin. Matt is now an Air Force Major, but back in the day he was already a part of National Velveeta before I joined that group, and he introduced Shaun to improv at a summer camp they were both counselors at. He also co-founded, with Shaun, Bare Essentials, the group that eventually transformed into Bare. So it was cool to be back performing with Matt.

Greg, as usual, was the only one of us who got to see the whole show and he said it was even better than Friday's. So yay.

Here's how you know I was really busy all weekend -- I hardly took any photos. Selections of the ones I did take are in a Flickr set.

Kristen Freilich also has a Flickr set of 65 photos.

And Kevin Patterson has posted an astounding 656 pictures from the festival (there's also a smaller set of his best 65 shots). He even took pictures of the Neutrino Project while it was being projected.

It seems I didn't pack my camera USB cord, so pictures will have to wait.

On the plane here I went through the festival schedule and realized that a) I'm going to be in Phoenix just a bit less than 48 hours and b) in that time I have three shows, a tech, and am teaching two workshops. So there's not going to be much time for sightseeing.

There's an official festival coloring book, with pictures of all the groups to color in. It's pretty freakin' awesome.

Yesterday we did our first of two Neutrino shows. Greg, our usual arbiter for such things (since he's the only one of our group who sees the whole show) says it was pretty good. I'm just going to have to trust him on that, because nobody pushed record on the VCR. Sometimes I really try to let go of my control-freak-iness and then something doesn't get done because I didn't do it... Anyway, I climbed a tree for my scene, and ended up 'stuck' there for the rest of the show. I 'fell' out of the tree right at the end of the show, but Shaun was already fading out the shot and so didn't get it. Ah, improvised film.

After our show I watched Apollo 12 do a really spectacular show and then the up-since-4-am-chicago-time hit me all at once, so I regretfully went back to the hotel and took a nap. But what's important at a festival is not the shows, but the partying, right? Well, anyway the crew came back to the hotel and woke me up and we went over to the Bikini Lounge. Four years ago when we started coming to Phoenix, the Bikini Lounge was an empty, grimy little dive bar. Now it's a super-crowded, grimy little dive bar. Yay, progress.

At the bar, Jose said I needed to come next door to The Trunk Space gallery and see a show. Indeed I did need to see that show. Travis Nichols does some amazingly cute, fun art. Art is fun! Yay, art!

OK, I'm off to get some breakfast to have energy to teach some workshops. Oh, impressionable minds, bend to my will!

Shaun and I are headed to Phoenix, AZ this weekend for the Phoenix Improv Fest. This will be our fourth PIF (and I believe we've performed at every PIF that featured performers from outside Arizona).

Also coming along with us are some of the Chicago Neutrino Project cast. Last year we realized that Election Show 2004 was going to be performing at the PIF, and that Election Show had a strong overlap with the Seattle Neutrino Project cast. So we put together a special combination cast Neutrino Project show for the festival.

This year we're bringing along some of Detroit's Neutrino Project cast and pulling some of Phoenix's finest improv actors to create another All-Star Neutrino Project.

Bare performs Saturday night (4/22) at 7:00 pm
Neutrino Project performs Friday (4/21) at 7:00 pm and Saturday (4/22) at 10:00 pm

All shows are at the Viad Center (1850 N Central Ave, Phoenix, AZ)

I'll also be teaching two workshops on Saturday afternoon at 1:30 pm and 4:00 pm. The workshop listing says I'll be covering "Risk Taking Performance: Break out of safe choices, focus on you as a performer, and learn to better take care of yourself on stage. Decide what rules apply to you and which don’t." Which sounds about right.

Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks has won Gamespot's "Most Surprisingly Good Game" of 2005. "We thought it would suck and it didn't!"

It's crazy-last-minute, but Bare will be performing tonight in... 2 and a half hours, at the Playground Theater (3209 N Halsted). It'll be our first time on stage together since the Phoenix Improv Festival. Eek.

It's exactly like that.

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

(From the MKSM "Fight Night" chat.)

If you haven't gotten your fill of Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks reviews yet, you can find links to tens of them, and a composite score, at GameRankings.com: MK:SM for XBOX and Playstation 2 (many of the reviews are platform agnostic, but some are not).

I'm also, umm... happy?*, to report that with the release of his game Shaun is out of "working 100 hours a week" mode and into "sleeping in until 10 am, then heading into the office to send Fuzzy 'Bare should go to this festival' emails," so you should see Bare performing out again soon.

* I'm happy for him, but it was kinda nice having the place basically to myself for half the year. When's your next game start production, Shaun?

Visiting us is enough to drive a man to blog: Chirping Octopus (aka Ben Waldie).

IGN has reviewed Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks and given it a 8/10. Not bad.

Well, Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks has gone gold (that means, it's done and been sent to be manufactured and shipped to your favorite games store) and so the endless interviews with Shaun and Ed and previews of the game are giving way to reviews. And so far they're coming in pretty good. Playboy Magazine gave the game four rabbits. Need I go on?

The game is due in stores next Tuesday, September 20. I pre-ordered the game so I could get my lil' Jin figure. I only wish it were a talking action figure so it'd be like having Jin with me at all times. Forever.

Shaun had been planning on taking some time off once the game was done and maybe just riding his motorcycle around for a few weeks. But things changed in the world and as soon as the game was finished, he filled Ol' Crumple Zone up with water and power bars and headed for the Gulf Coast to help however he could. He txted me yesterday that "NO really is a mess... Basically martial law. Headed to baton rouge red cross." Wish him well.

Shaun sent me an email today asking if I had any pictures of him suitable for using in a magazine or on websites for his MKSM interviews. I went back though my photo archives looking for appropriate pictures. Now, most of the time I take a picture of Shaun it's because we're out-on-the-town, usually at an improv festival, and most of them are completely unsuitable for professional use (though I would have said that about this one...). And since I'd gone to all the work of making a gallery for him to pick shots from, I'd thought I'd share with you the Best of Shaun, 2001-2005.

As MK Online notes, this interview Shaun did with Gamecloud "doesn't touch on very much that hasn't already been revealed". In fact, some nights Shaun falls asleep on the couch and starts telling Mustapha all the features of Shaolin Monks: "Multi-directional Kombat system... mumblesnort... set in the world of Mortal Kombat 3... snore... Multalities... grandpa, why are you wearing a penguin-suit?... Ko-op mode..."

More swearing and typos from Shaun in his second Developer Diary about MK:SM.

Shaun didn't like the picture that MK Online used to illustrate his Developer Diary, so he had them replace it with another one. The new one is cropped down from a picture we like to call "Shaun over-indulges". Drink, check. Smoking and pizza, check, check. T-shirt for violent video game, check. Vapid expression while watching someone do bar karaoke, check check check.

Shaun has a blog. Sorta. He's doing a Developer Diary about Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks. The first entry catches the reader up on 2 years of development. You can tell it's really Shaun and not some marketing droid by all the misspellings and swearing.

Shaun is about to do a live interview with Gamestop about the game he's producing.

Update: It's the 12 pm clip entitled "A Man Called Reggie" (not, oddly enough, the 11 am clip called "Midday with Midway") and Shaun comes in about 28 minutes into the clip.

Photo by Michelle Edwards

The Phoenix Improv Festival, as I mentioned, rocked. All of the organizers and volunteers were great -- shout outs to Bill, April, Darin, Stacey, Jose, and Mark for making our stay so enjoyable -- and we did (I say humbly) pretty-good shows and I had fun teaching two workshops. And super thanks to Michelle Edwards for taking some cool pictures of Bare. Yay!

I came back from Phoenix and was thrown into the maelstrom of CIF, and Documentary South rehearsals, and Erica moving in and so I've just managed to get my photos sorted and now posted. Enjoy!

Hello from the party suite of the Phoenix Improv Festival. One of the great things about this festival is the hotel arrangements -- we're all in the same hotel and the festival has a suite with drinks and this computer and a poker table and snacks. The hotel management, I understand, did screw up on the reserved block of rooms, so there are non-festivalians on each side of the suite, so we have to play the "shush" game, where every few minutes as the volume of the room escalates as everyone tries to talk over everyone else, someone will notice that the volume has gotten a little extreme and start a "shhhhhh" that lowers the volume for 10 or 15 seconds.

We did Neutrino AND Bare tonight. The Neutrino Video Project went well -- it was all Chicago shooters (me and Shaun and Starcevich) and a combo cast of Chicago and Seattle and Jose from Phoenix and special guest sit-in Ali "True Porn Clerk Stories" Davis. (And Greg Inda came out from Chicago too, which made me super happy that I could just trust that the in-theater tech would be taken care of and I could run around with my team worry-free.)

It was a little odd to do a Bare show so soon after the NVP -- despite what I just said, I do kind of ramp up the stress for a NVP, jumping around all jittery before the show (there's sooo much that can go wrong technically in this show, especially in a new venue) and then the show is so tight and frantic, so I was pretty wiped after the show. But we did have a full show between the NVP and Bare (Joe Bill's Scramble and Baby Wants Candy) so Shaun and I were able to run back to the hotel to drop off our gear and grab a burger at the BK next door and chill out a little. And then I chugged a Pepsi and a Reeses' Peanut Butter Cup (just one) in the dressing room to get my energy back up right before we went on stage.

We were trying something kinda new tonight -- I won't bore you with our long-form meanderings, but we wanted to focus on a longer scene and it did end up that almost the whole thing took place at a single church service (from the excellent suggestion "the woman at church who sings too loudly") with a cast of about 10 characters. And Shaun got to punch Jesus.

OK, I should get off. I have to teach a workshop or two tomorrow before I fly back to Chicago for 5 hours and then fly off to New York. Busy week.

Well, I'm going to be told to "turn off all electronic devices for landing" very shortly, but we'll see if I'm as fast a typist as Steev "Demon Fingers" Gadlin.

I'm on the plane to Phoenix for the Phoenix Improv Festival this weekend. I'll be doing two shows this weekend, both on Saturday, both at the same venue: The Playhouse on the Park Theater on 1850 N. Central Avenue.

Bare, of course, is my two-man improv show that I do with Shaun Himmerick. This will be the third time Shaun and I have been to the PIF, and we've all ready decided that after our experiment in boldness last year, we're going to do a light and crowd-pleasing batch of improv for Phoenix. Anyway, when we do our show at 11 pm, we'll still be coming down off the high of doing a Neutrino Video Project at 8 pm.

Shaun and I produce the Chicago version of the NVP (there are now casts in 4 cities, and I heard a rumor of a fifth the last time I was in NY) and when we found out that a number of the Seattle NVPers were going to be in Phoenix also, we proposed to the PIF organizers that we could put on a Neutrino Video Project. They accepted, and we started the fun work of organizing this very tech-heavy show between two different producers and in a third location (it's the little details -- I'm still not certain how far it is from where our tech booth will be to the projector -- did I bring enough cable?). But I am really excited that we'll be joined by the Izzos, who I haven't seen since they moved up to Ann Arbor to start their own improv venue, the Improv Inferno.

In Phoenix for PIF. Composed longish post about same on plane, but ultimately defeated by elbow of Hefty McHeftsalot. Went out until 2:30 am (late, but do-able party time) but it is (body/Chicago-time) 4:30 am -- very late (plus drinks). Sleep now.

Tonight Bare will be appearing at the Bird's Nest Bar (2500 N Southport). Let me mention, as I always do, that the wings are great -- try getting a mixture of the teriyaki and hot sauces -- delish. And the last time we performed at the Bird's Nest we saw someone do their first set of stand-up comedy ever and rock. Will it happen again tonight? The only way to know is to show up...

And... the first PBR is on me!

As I write this, members of all four casts of the Neutrino Video Projects (Chicago, DC, New York, and Seattle) are likely sleeping-in in DC, resting up from last night's performance of the Neutrino All-Stars to do it all again tonight. I wanted to be there, but it had looked like my day job needed me all day Friday. By the time we figured out that it wasn't as crucial a day as we had thought, I couldn't get a plane ticket for any sort of reasonable price. Oh well, it means I get to do the CCC show at The Playground tonight.

We're getting geared up to do something similar in Phoenix next month. Last month when Shaun and I were in Miami performing as Bare at the Miami Improv Festival, we got chatting with Election Show 2004 (whose cast overlaps quite a bit with the Seattle Neutrino Project). "Doing any other festivals this year?" "We're going to Phoenix." "So are we!" "We should do a Neutrino down there!" "We should!" "Let's go stand outside because we're in Miami and it's warm!"

So, we contacted the organizers of the Phoenix Improv Festival and they leapt at the chance to have the critically acclaimed, world-renowned Neutrino Project performed at their festival. Leapt, I tell you.

It's been interesting planning this. Getting ready to do a show this technically complex in a far-off city, with cast and crew members I've never really worked with before, has gotten me to get off my butt and get some things formalized I hadn't before. I made a tech plot that shows what plugs into what in the theater! It's something I've scribbled on countless pieces of scrap paper trying to explain the show to people, but now I've got a shiny PDF with boxes and lines and everything.

It also got me to do the sort of FuzzyCo Media Blitz(tm) that I know how to do and always plan on doing when we go to a festival, but somehow I never quite get around to it. "Oh, the festival organizers will do publicity," I always think. And it's true, and I'm sure the PIF is doing an excellent job with the press. But at some level, press attention is something of a crap-shoot of what happens to catch the eye of what particular editor on a particular day. Like how after Steev went on WGN to promote Don't Spit the Water, the sports anchor was so tickled by the DVDs of Silly Faces* and Silly Dances that he's been using them, including prominent displays of the URL, as intros and outros to his segment for weeks.

So, I bugged April, the PIF's press coordinator, for her Phoenix press contacts. She sent over a list with phone, email, and website contacts -- very 21st Century. I looked up mailing addresses for all of them** on the crap-shoot theory -- if April had already sent them all emails, maybe a physical thing in their hands would be a different stimulus that might get a response.
I sent out 19 envelopes with press kits for both Bare and Neutrino Project in each one, and everybody got an extra goody targeted to their market. Radio stations got an audio CD with Shaun and I doing his "Big Tony, Little Tony" sketch*** and audio clips from three Neutrino scenes. Newspapers got a data CD with high resolution photos of Bare and the Chicago Neutrino Project cast. And TV stations got a DVD of a Neutrino Project show. (I was planning on making a "selected scenes and best-of" DVD, but I decided timeliness was more important, so that got shelved for the moment and I just duplicated an entire show.)

So... tell everyone you know who lives in Arizona. Saturday, April 16, 2005 at The Playhouse on the Park Theater (1850 N. Central Avenue, Phoenix, AZ). The Neutrino Project (with Cog) at 8 pm. Bare (with Hemi & The Buzz) at 11 pm. Whee!

*Featuring 60 seconds of *my* silly face.

** Well, almost all -- if you happen to know the mailing address for the Phoenix-area Clear Channel stations, wanna pass that along?

*** Yes, sketch not improv -- I'll grimace at you when you call my improv a "skit," and then happily turn around and exploit that confusion when I'm doing PR. Sue me.

photo by Speedy Hoerner

There are photos from Friday night's Don't Spit the Water, including Shaun and I as Eduardo Salacious and the Indescribable Horror (not "Unthinkable", as listed on the page). Is my girlfriend the best ever or what?

Spurred on by Jill's note today that Jesse had posted some pictures from Miami, I got off my duff and put up a gallery of some of the shots I (and Erica) took at the Miami Improv Festival 2005.

Jesse Parent, of JoKyR and Jesster, has posted some photos from the Miami Improv Festival.

We're in Miami! The Miami Improv Festival is ticking along and we're ticking along with it.

The best part is that it's 70°out! We sepnt the day walking along the ocean front at South Beach (it looks just like Vice City!). Though, come to think of it, we never actually walked over to beach. We had a great lunch, though.

Last night we did our show which, judging by the kind words afterwards, was pretty good. After the shows we all went out to a karaoke bar with half a live band (it was odd) and at 4:30 am Erica got to live the dream -- she sang "Miami"* in Miami. Woo-oo.

OK, time for a disco nap before the shows tonight.

Hey, I'm performing in a variety of shows over the next few weeks!

Friday night (January 28) I'll be at The Playground (3209 N Halsted) at 8 pm, performing with Chicago Comedy Company and James Brown Celebrity Hot Tub Party. Yes, my kickball team. Six of us on the team are improvisors, so Rene signed us up at The Playground for a guest slot. (Feast of Pedro and Inside Vladimir will also be performing.)

Saturday night (January 29) I'll be back at The Playground, but for the midnight show -- the Belmont Burlesque Revue. Shaun and I will be "Gerdes and Himmerick" -- our vaudeville-esque comedy duo. The shows features a variety of musical, comedy, magic, and burlesque performers.

Monday night (January 31) Shaun and I will be Bare, our two man improv show, at the Bird's Nest Bar (2500 N Southport). We're up with some stand-up comedians and another sketch or improv group. The wings, as I often mention, are excellent.

And then next weekend, it's a (semi-)tropical getaway! We'll be doing two Bare shows at the Miami Improv Festival. Thursday, February 3, is my birthday, so come to that show. Yes, fly to Florida and come to my show for my birthday!

Because we knew that our Sketchfest show was going to be a one-time-only kind of dealio, we planned ahead and it's one of our best documented shows. We had our friend Michael Starcevich come out and video the show (a two camera shoot!) and Aaron Gang came and shot a bunch of stills. I've combined Aaron's shots with ones Erica and I took backstage for a sketchfest-a-photo-rama.

The crew backstage

(Right after the show I went straight home to pack for a work trip to New York and that's been keeping me busy for the last couple of days. I'm sitting in LaGuardia right now waiting for the plane home and I finally have a few minutes to write this*.)

Mustapha prepares for his first role

Well first off, let's talk about* a one big difference between a sketch show or a play and the improv that I usually do -- the day of. With an improv show all I have to do is make sure I'm dressed nice and then show up at the theatre an hour early or so, mainly so that the house manager or producer doesn't have to worry about whether I'm going to show up (it happens -- people flake). With this show, not only did it occupy most of my free time for the month up to the show, but it completely occupied the day of the show with last minute printing out set lists and organizing and making sure props were in bags and so on and so forth. But the time we were packing the truck to leave for the theatre I had already put a day's worth of mental energy into the show.

Shaun traded his station wagon for a pickup truck this summer (and I got rid of my beast of a 30-year-old sports car) and we had so many props and a live cat to transport, so we decided to make two trips. I drove Shaun over early with a load of props and then came back for Mustapha and Erica.

And forgot the jackets.

The jackets that Megan slaved over for weeks. The designed-then-redesigned jackets. The I-bought-a-new-leather-jacket-just-for-this-show jackets. The start-off-the-show-with-a-bang jackets.

Erica even asked "Do you have the jackets?" before we left the house the second time and I answered something along the lines of "Of course (I'm wearing a jacket)". Because I was. Wearing a regular jacket.

Panic!

I gave Brian and Megan the keys to our house and sent them off to get the jackets. Which, of course, induced more panic (on my part, anyway) that if they were delayed, we wouldn't have the jackets nor Brian and Megan to play their parts.

The dancers backstage

Shaun and Greg go over the tech

Oh, and Greg had had a simple request for the tech setup. He was going to be running both light and sound cues by himself but he had discovered that the CD player in the tech booth was behind him as he sat at the light board. He had asked that I bring a small CD player that could be placed beside the light board so he wouldn't have to turn around. I forgot that, too. We suggested that he recruit the Sketchfest-provided tech guy to run the sound cues off his verbal commands.

Well, Brian and Megan made it back with the jackets and Greg (I found out later) recruited Rachel Michalski, Superpunk's tech goddess, who had come along to see Superpunk do their 30 second bit in the show. Ten minutes before Rhythm Method finished we were escorted from the conference room where we'd been hovering into the just-off-stage dressing room.

And then we did the show.

Patrick Brennan MCing

And it almost all worked. And what didn't work (sound cues, mostly, and Mustapha freaking out a little more than we expected him to, and me staring blankly at Shaun for a solid 10 seconds when I spaced on my first little dramatic speech before I remembered it) all seemed to fit into the motif of the show, about our partnership and our show falling apart.

People were wowed by the dance (which got us off to a great start) and tickled by Ben's bumps and confused by all the interruptions to the show and they actually laughed at many of the bits, even the ones that we just wrote so that Don could interrupt them.

I never set out to do anti-comedy or anything, but Shaun and I seem to be pretty good at shows that leave the audience half-amused and half-wondering how much of what they had just seen was real.

All in all, I was happy with how the show turned out. I don't think we'll be doing it again any time soon -- too many people and things to organize. And I'm not sure Mustapha will want to do the show again.

Erica and I took some shots backstage and then Erica snuck out and took some shots of the opening number, so that's what I've got here. Aaron Gang came to the show and took shots throughout, so I'll put up a gallery of those as soon as I get them.

My hottie girlfriend sitting around being hot

And hey, thanks to Tom and Kate for coming to the show (I happened to see them after/before the show -- thanks to you, too, if you came to the show).

We did the show!

The tech only got 10% screwed up, Mustapha only freaked out a little bit, and just now I got up to walk across the room and my legs were weak, but we did the show.

Pictures and more later.

• Hymie McTavish and an Elvis Impersonator (288K mp3)
• Space Ninja Delicatessen (380K mp3)
• Three Hookers, a Math Test, and a Kitten (304K mp3)
• Fat Southern Senator (296K mp3)
• Montage (1.6M mp3)

The Chicago press is full of Sketchfest articles this weekend and we get a few nods:

Newcity says, "Highlights include performances by Chicago's FuzzyCo ..."

Chicago Reader says, "Rhythm Method and FuzzyCo. These are two local groups."

And MicrocinemaScene has reviewed Dancing With Gaia, that indie film I was in. About my contribution to the film the reviewer says, "Featuring ... Fuzzy Gerdes ..."

Kittyloaf finished the jackets and for all of the problems she had, they came out great. There are little christmas lights all around the back, with a battery pack in each pocket. And the whole back section is just glued and velcroed on, so we can turn them back into regular jackets, or have her do the original metal-stud idea later.

We had our tech at the Theatre Building last night. Because they have to get through tech rehearsals for 80 or so groups, we had a strict 45 minutes. As I had feared, we were "that group" and had to beg the next group for 5 minutes to run through the dance at the very end. Otherwise, it went about as well as could be expected.

And that's the last time we'll see the whole cast until Sunday at 5:00 pm. When we'll, you know, do the show. Eek. Just 7 or 10 props left to find or build, and Shaun and I should run through the show another 20 or 30 times. Wheee!

Update: Oh, and completely redo the sound cues CD (a bunch of the cues can be consolidated, we discovered, and I had left off two sounds).

A couple of years ago I was the Sketch Stage venue manager for the Chicago Improv Festival. I sat up in the tech booth and made fun of any group that had tech requirements more complicated than 'lights up/lights down' -- "They have to know that they're coming to a festival, which means they have no familiarity with nor control over the space and we're on an incredibly tight schedule."

Pot, allow me to introduce kettle.

We have 47* sound cues in our show. (I know this because I finished editing and assembling all the sound cues tonight. Add "sound designer" to the list of credits I won't bother giving myself in the program.) We have dancers, a cat, a couple bags of costumes and props, and leather jackets with battery-powered Christmas lights on them.

We did also, however, have our first* all-cast rehearsal tonight. Nobody was off-book and people kept goofing around, but I felt really good about it. These are all people we've worked with before on high-stress projects like the Neutrino Project and they've always come through. I trust them not to let me down.

It was a holiday weekend, but for us it was also one week before the show (and just a few days before our only full-cast rehearsal) so we kept fairly busy.

Thursday night they let us out of the office an hour early, so Shaun and I headed out to do some costume/prop shopping. We stopped at Strange Cargo and ordered some custom t-shirts for the cast and Superpunk and looked for a Tiny Tim hat, but couldn't find one. Then we drove out to Fantasy Headquarters where we found tons of the incidentals we needed -- toy guns, bunny and elephant mask, ninja hood, etc, etc. We've been planning to invest in a bear costume (Why? Why not -- what can't you do with a bear costume?) an we looked at the ones they had, but we discovered that Fantasy HQ only rents them. Somehow it seemed to me perfectly reasonable to spend $700 for a bear costume and use it for a 30 second bit (but have it for any future uses) but completely unreasonable to spend $85 to rent it for a 30 second bit.

Friday during the day we headed over to the Arabesque Dance Studio to meet with Michelle from Lavender Cabaret and two of the other dancers. Michelle was doing the choreography for the opening number and we had given her freedom to either have us stand around on stage while the dancing went on around us, or to make us part of the dance. She opted for the later and we had a full two hour dance rehearsal learning the 2 minute dance she'd choreographed.

Saturday and today we just did some run-throughs off both the show and the dance number on our own. I made a first pass at a program -- Sketchfest is likely to have a program for the whole festival, but so many people have contributed to this show I wanted to make sure they got some kind of credit.

And Ben Taylor dropped off a CD of more "bumps" (little musical introductions to the scenes). We had had a big miscommunication about one of them (the one that needed to be the shortest, say 2 secs, was the longest, about a minute and a half) but I'm sure he'll have a new one for me tomorrow. After I post this I'm going to make a first pass at putting together the sound cues CD.

Whew.

Oh, and tomorrow night we're doing a set at the Bird's Nest Bar (2500 N Southport) where we'll likely be trying out some of the scenes from the show. Have I mentioned enough times how good the wings are there?