Tonight I was driving home and The Wombats' Let's Dance to Joy Division came on. It's a fun song, but the lyrics really struck me tonight:

Let's dance to Joy Division,
And celebrate the irony,
Everything is going wrong,
But we're so happy.

So, yeah. I need to dance around stupidly a little more. Things have been hard (though, they're getting better! Until they get worse again!) but that's no reason to be a grumpy gus. I've got the greatest wife in the world and a lot of fun stuff going on. And I've got my health (usually). And two weird cats. And a bunch of good TV to watch. Whee!

Erica and I went out on Saturday to do our small part for a video shoot that Steve had organized for a meeestery project. He's posted just the barest teaser for the project, and if you stare reeeally hard you might see us in there.

I didn't have a lot of free time on my recent trip to Redmond, but my hosts did take us on a great cruise around Lake Washington and I got into Seattle a couple times for fish and photos of signs and street art. More photos here.

Not to get all indier than thou on you, but I've been a Ruth Buzzy fan since Phil and Matt's last band (Honest Engine). So it's with a heavy heart that I pass along the news that Ruth Buzzy will be playing their last gig on September 4 at The Hideout.

The Hideout
1354 W. Wabansia
Chicago, IL 60622
www.hideoutchicago.com

Thursday September 4th $8 cover
With Juffage and Lacona
They go on at 9:30pm

FuzzyCo grade: B

So, I'm in Redmond, WA for the next three days. I spent the afternoon down in Seattle by Pike Place Market (what can I say -- I'm a tourist). There seems to be approximately nothing to do in Seattle tonight - at least judging by the Seattle Weekly and The Stranger (the two free weeklies in town). Oh wait, that's a little bit of a lie. There's a free "Stand-up Showcase (comedy)" at a Cafe. I saw that, weighed the pleasure-pain ratio from most free stand up nights, and decided to head to my hotel and get a good night's sleep before my 7:30 am shuttle ride to this thingy* tomorrow.

I had an early dinner at the Pike Pub and Brewery -- a decent fish and chips and an excellent Pale Ale. What else should I eat in Seattle, those of you with knowledge of the same? I don't think I'm going to have a lot of free time, but Thursday night is still a grey area and I definitely have time for a breakfast adventure on Friday morning.

* I'm under NDA about the content of the thingy and I'm too lazy to check the NDA to see if I'm under NDA about what the thingy is at all. So, thingy.

(There was to have been a Pastor of Muppets show at 8 pm, as well, but the show has been canceled due to Market Days.)

Last weekend we had a special guest for both Don't Spit the Water and Sickest Stories: Jay Maynard, the "Tron Guy". He was in town to sit in on Sickest, so we had him as an audience contestant for Don't Spit as well. David from Sing-a-Ding-Ding (my reader-chosen role) was unable to get him to spit. Oh well.

For Sickest, I was actually up in the booth. In honor of Jay's appearance at the table, Chris had assembled a cast that included The Flash, Darth Vader, Harry Potter, and Santa. And Superman was in the box office. Me, I had a robot t-shirt on. Oh well.

The pictures above (and many more) are by Erica, who really got some great shots.

The conceit of the movie is an interesting one -- Elliot Sherman (played by writer-director Michael Showalter of The State and Stella) is the nice-but-bland guy who always gets the girl stolen away by the romantic lead at the end of the movie. And he's realizing, in a not-quite-realizing-he's-in-a-movie way, that he is that guy. And so he's determined not to lose his fiancee to her high-school sweetheart who's suddenly returned to town. But is she really the one for him anyway? (I'm not giving anything away that isn't obvious in the first 5 minutes of the movie.)

As with most romantic comedies, it's all pretty obvious, but it's still a very sweet little movie.

FuzzyCo grade: A

But what I think they've come up with is a pretty kick-ass action movie that extracts the best parts of Millar's story. And, I have to confess, I was pretty taken with how well it uses Chicago as a backdrop for the story. Blahblahblah, secret order of assassins. But it actually all sort of held together.

FuzzyCo grade: B+

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.

I'm a little shy about this, but here's a little song and animation that I made for Erica for our second wedding anniversary this week.

As soon as I was done helping Noah with Pollywog in a Bog, I turned my attention to a music video that I had actually agreed to do before Pollywog took over our lives. My friend Tim (who's the captain of the Austin Metblog) had been looking for someone to make an animated music video for one of his band's (The Bad Rackets) songs and I stuck my hand up. The song is called "Somebody Dropped the Baby" and it posits, more or less, that Dubya must have been dropped on his head as a baby -- how else could we be in such a mess?

The design brief was "a Flash video like a Monty Python animation". I actually ended up doing all of the animation in Final Cut Pro and Motion and I like to think I've come up with an animation style that's inspired by Terry Gilliam while still being my own brand of crudeness. The baby body was provided by some friends of mine who I'll leave anonymous, in case they don't want it public, but I owe them a ton of thanks. All the president heads and so on are from government photos which are, by law, free of copyright. Hooray!

You can watch the video above, or you can go to YouTube and then click on "watch in high quality" (directly underneath the Views count) to more clearly see my crude animation.

Tonight we're doing our one and only performance of Ninja III: The Domination as part of the Neo-Futurists' It Came From the Neo-Futurarium series of staged readings of terrible movies. I love bad movies and I've wanted to be a part of this annual series for some time now -- this year I happened to luck into a part in Camenae's production when someone dropped out of the cast. I'm the narrator, but in this show that's not a boring off-stage kind of thing; I'm a very active narrator. It's been a lot of fun just rehearsing this show (the cast also features Team Gerdes friends Caitlin Savage, Erik Schnitger, and Sherri Stouffer) and I can't wait to actually put it up in front of an audience tonight.

And since I'm mentioning one-off performances, I'll quickly note that Don't Spit the Water is closing its open run soon and so you have just a few chances left to see one or both halves of Team Gerdes in spit-inducing action. Erica will be performing as Cutie Bumblesnatch just one more time, on August 9. I'll be up in the booth as your favorite announcer, 100% Gerdes, on July 26 and August 9 and I'll be on stage as a comedian on August 2. As which one of the many I've played? I'll let you (help) decide. Take this poll! I've turned off the feature that blocks multiple votes, so feel free to stuff the ballot box, or suggest other characters you'd like to see.