Punch-Drunk but I'm still sober. Fourteen years, a whole lot bolder and I don't flinch

Monday morning blog -  stuff from all over the place

the weekend in quick review:

Friday night - we lost, that was inevitable.  But we had fun and I think for the most part had a really strong set, it settled down in a couple spots where you realize later on there could've been some really cool stuff but retrospect is both great and shitty that way.  I had a really good time both onstage and in the booth, Adorable is one of my favorite groups of people to play with and Drum Machine might be my favorite thing to tech for.

Saturday was spent relaxing around the house as we were able and had a nice date with the wife

Sunday afternoon was the NICU reunion - we saw the boys' neonatoligist and Aidan's primary nurse and they both remembered our boys and were happy to see them.  the whole thing made me all misty-eyed and choked up a few times - those people saw our kids the sickest they will ever be in their entire lives and knew us while we were going through the hardest things a parent can do and you don't realize how thankful you are or how much that means all the time.

Sunday night was a total high point - not only did the afternoon shape up to be totally beautiful outside so I got to hang out with the boys in the yard and watch them "work" in the garden and play with the new puppy but then I was reminded of a bunch of things I love about the IAGG and doing silly shit with Five Man Job.

I was totally convinced there was going to be nobody at the show last night, since it was wonderful out and the streets and rooftops were packed with people just wanting to hang outside and we do our show in a dark, often hot, windowless room.  We were all shocked by the number of people that poured into our windowless room to see our show, and that's when I remembered - unlike the rest of the shows I know, our attendance actually jumps up in the summer!  I think we're just the right combination of feeling like a groovy, funny little party and the show hits at the right time of night when people are out enjoying the weather for the weather's sake and then decide they need something to "do".  Either way, I love spring/summer at the IAGG.

then I got to kick off the show running tech for the Survivors of the Undead Plague, which may also be my favorite thing to tech for.  I love that they didn't freak out at me for fucking with them early on and now it's become part of the show.  I want to do that show everywhere, I think it's one of the coolest examples of the fucking madness that sets should be.  All the characters can die, nobody is safe, the plot barely matters, everyone is having so much weird fun that they're getting exhausted and it's funny as hell.  

On the Five Man Job front - I thought last night was a return to form for us, stupid as that may feel and sound.

FMJ has been in a weird rut for a while as a group and all three of us individually with our improv-junk, me especially.  I was bitching and moaning about it to Jill and she pointed out that I 'don't get my hands dirty' anymore and it was one of those clouds-parting, lightbulb-clicking-on moments that made clear what I had been doing wrong for a long time.  We used to do the goofy, super artsy, organic-as-shit Transformer thing all the time and I think we all got uncomfortable with just being that stupid onstage - so we (meaning I, I wont speak for Dan and Lauren) backed off of it in favor of trying to put on a good show without getting into the super-abstract, often silly-looking bullshit (read: want to be funny onstage without looking stupid.  let's be honest).  And then we wondered why we weren't doing sets "like we used to" - we were lacking energy, variety and things generally just felt harder.  As a result we would come offstage feeling further and further from what Five Man Job used to do and couldn't figure out why, and kept stiffening up and getting less 'out there' to try to fix it.

It didn't make any sense given that the artsy-physical bullshit actually produced cooler results and we were backing off of it because we all felt awkward just being that silly and not worrying about what it "was" - which is exactly what we teach people to do - because it works better.

stupid retrospect.

Anyway, we got up and said Fuck It and got back to being noodly, organic, freaky dumbasses onstage (and were waiting for the improv-set-destroying laughter of Jimmy D in judgement of our arty-ness) and got back to the silly, super dark goofy fun that we hadn't had in a while.  

Outside doing our post-set notes everyone felt really good and I couldn't be happier with what came out last night.   the end of our set, which was all three of us doing this weird replay of an earlier scene on the floor with 'finger people' in the role of either puppeteers or seeing it from space was a perfect example of just how fucking silly we can be and just sitting there not giving a fuck with Dan and Lauren felt awesome.

footnote:  even though the set was fun we should probably frame it better than 'we're going to do some faggity shit' - which is totally a quote from a Susan Messing workshop in which she called us all cunts and made us do all this super physical nonsense with great results - but still probably isn't how we should define it to our audience.

anyway - happy as hell.  

Tonight Dan and I are doing Total Bullshit at the Beat and I'm excited.

I love doing this show, it's not always "funny" in the same way that improv is and can swing from being super weird and hilarious to all touching and sweet and deep or just angry and strange.  it makes me want to book a run of 'spoken word' performances somewhere and just scare the living crap out of people or make them laugh at things they didn't expect anyone could ever find funny.

8PM - at the Beat - $3

at the office today, getting ready to leave on the first work trip in a little while (going to Philly for the first time) and I think the trips being less frequent actually makes it harder to leave and be gone.  When I'm in and out all the time everyone can adjust to it and you fall into patterns that make it work, but when I'm home for a month and then gone for most of a week it seems to sneak up and jar everything out of place.

This trip is going to be interesting since I'm part of a crew and not just a lone operator, which helps fill all the dead hours in between work on the road but also puts me a little more out of touch with home and stuff since I'll have other people and projects to attend to than just the normal tech duties.  This is not what I need just over 2 months out from TCIF.  

I finally set a date for deleting my Myspace account so I can stop using that annoying fucking site.  May 1st my account will self-destruct.

I just have to track the blogs I had been reading on myspace differently and as soon as I can find a working solution to the IAGG web needs I can get our shows off of Myspace as well, it served a purpose at one point but if the site never works it doesn't make a difference (I know the calendar says April 13th twice, I can't get in to edit it) so we'll shift some of it to Facebook, mostly for the performers and find a good public place for the calendars and such for the public.

I asked the teenager if it was even worth giving him his UA the day after 420 to try and get his driving rights back and he said 'probably not' so he's still being stupid even though he wants the results to change.  I don't expect the boy to be squeaky-clean by ANY stretch of the imagination (and if you have ever seen Total Bullshit you know that he's still being way better than I was at his age) but if he wants to have it both ways he needs to at least get better at getting away with it.  I can't catch him doing the shit I've caught him doing and NOT do something as a parent but on the other hand we aren't exactly trying to catch him doing all of it - he just sucks at not getting caught.

I don't think any parent needs or wants to know everything their teenager is doing when they're out of the house.  it's not good for the kid and it certainly isn't healthy for the parents but I can't exactly coach him on how to pull one over on his dad, that's one skill he's going to have to figure out on his own.

enough time wasted - I have to get some work done in the 2 short days I'm in the office before hitting the road.

did I say this blog was going to be 'quick'?  

I meant I was typing really fast.

that's way too long, if you made it this far, kudos to you, dedicated reader.