Broke out of town though he left a trail of bodies a mile wide

TCIF Day 1 blog -

After all the waiting and planning and hustle the Twin Cities Improv Festival finally arrived yesterday, just as sure as the little countdown timer on my desktop said it would - and it was awesome.

People kept checking with me asking 'how you holding up?' , which I find funny because to me this is the fun part, all the footwork and sending emails and scheduling and hounding press contacts and crap doesn't do it for me, that's the part that will wear a guy down. When we opened house and there was a line of familiar (and new) faces ready to kick back and enjoy the festival there were no worries. A quick recap -

Larynx and T- Rex Force - set the tone. If you had never seen Minneapolis improv before I would have to say that Larynx put out a pretty top-notch introduction, it was playful and dark, which are probably the two best adjectives that capture the style here. We play dark and somehow make it fun.

Stevie Ray's and SCRAM - brought the house down. Stevie is always an odd part of the whole Twin Cities scene, he's off in the suburbs in his own theater workin' it and when they bring the show they bring the whole show. It was great.
SCRAM was mind boggling, sweet, smart, specific, technically insane and brought people to their feet. It was one of those sets you watch in disbelief of what you're seeing until the lights go out and there's nothing to do but stand up and applaud. If you missed it you missed out in a big way.

Vaudeville with a Pig and 123 IMPROV! - kicked the party off right. Watching this show and knowing that we had a good number of visitors in the house to see it was awesome. You wanna see something brilliant? These guys are brilliant for fun.

The party was great - a chance to say hello to performers just getting in to perform, share a couple drinks and just have some fun together. That's why we do this, right?


Day 2 - morning.
Back in the theater this morning and you'd never know that we were here too late last night because not only did the staff rock it all night they worked after we dragged our asses out of the space and off to bed. You should tip them and I have to thank them. People act like the producers make the show run when really it's the staff at the doors, running drinks, getting the lines of people in the door and making sure everyone is taken care of. Thank you again and again.

Today is really a lot of waiting time now, lots of the performers for tonight actually got in to see the space last night, one of my favorite parts of doing this - I am proud as hell of the theater we get to perform in and I'm excited for them to get to play in our sandbox because it is a damn cool sandbox.

the only part I have to say I have mixed feelings about is the Five Man Job set - just like the festival itself I've been talking about it for so long that it's strange that it's actually here. tonight.
Dan Hetzel departs Five Man Job after this evening and while I'm excited for Dan, his new wife and more than a little jealous that he'll be living in the idillic San Diego weather I am really sad to see him go.
Dan has been part of this thing since we taped a note to his locker in the Brave New Workshop telling him he was in the group and he's been a major part of creating the style of play we have. We've been to Chicago together many times, Miami, St. Louis, Atlanta and through that weird little tour of the Midwest we did and everywhere we go I've been able to relax and have fun knowing that I've got one of the best there is on stage next to me.

Come see Five Man Job tonight and give the man a hand.

People keep asking about 'highlights' of the Festival and I'm totally unable to help because of the shows we've got on the schedule for the whole festival. More than a couple times last night I was asked who to come see on Friday and I caught myself listing every show - pH/Election Show, Coldtowne/Five Man Job, Rampleseed/Irish Mutts, Girls, Girls,Girls/Pimprov AND Neutrino??!! I dare you to find a better lineup in any city on any weekend.

You get the idea - "I'm stoked" is a ridiculous understatement.
This is what it's all about.

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.

where's the shadow government when you need them??

Just some random things that didn't fit into this morning's blog -

I am super stoked for Punch Out - Adorable vs. Drum Machine.
have you gotten sick of hearing about it? great. be there. When the Punch Out has been running for a couple years I will mellow out about it, just like with the IAGG. So let's make that the deal. Deal? Great.
I'm still crazy excited about this show.

I am not looking forward to losing Dan from Five Man Job - he's always a source of the weird and we won't be the same without him. He and I have been improvising together in one form or another longer than almost anyone else.

I cannot wait for the new Five Man Job - this group has gone through so many changes it almost doesn't make sense to keep the name but we've always kept the same sort of vibe and energy and I think that's pretty awesome. this time will be no different - only awesome-r. no pressure.

my kids are so crazy cute and smart and with the weather warming up I just want to spend my days at home with them playing outside. I have to settle for small increments of time after work/before bedtime. tonight the boys came outside with me to 'do some jobs' and played happily while I was shoveling gravel again. Aidan came over and helped me hoist the shovel and said
"I bet you didn't know I was super strong....because I have calcium EVERY day!"

that is all.

for those of Us....Us of lesser Gods

Happy Birthday to Lauren Anderson - 

Yesterday was a strange day on all sides, beginning with the grey, crappy weather that seemed to be weighing everyone down and the completely surreal experience of having to take my kiddo in for drug testing and ending with a pretty damn awesome show.  In between all that my mother-in-law (who is also my next door neighbor) got a brand new 9 week old German Shepard puppy named Gracie that should just be names "Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, Who's a cutie??" because that's all she's going to hear for a while.

Had an alright rehearsal with Adorable and Five Man Job, which we've doing for awhile together and everyone was in that same funk and just unable to shake up any sort of energy to really throw into things, except for Josh, who uses the fact that we're all low energy to just go over the top (as if we're usually getting in his way).  

The line "it is the Cow Of Demons, as there is no Spanish word for 'steed'" was just too much for me.

Five Man Job things are funky, both exciting and kind of a downer with Dan's departure and the addition of a new member.  We've got a few weeks at the IAGG coming up to get ready for TCIF and then the Festival itself to really rock the paint off the walls with Dan and I'm stoked.

Sex & Aggression had a super fun set last night followed by Aric and Corey doing what may have been the funniest thing I have seen in years.  After their set my ribcage hurt from laughing so hard and I seriously couldn't watch the end of the show because I think I blew that fuse, I was just done laughing for a while.  It was awesome and I wont belabor it (since reading about comedy is like listening to ballet) beyond pointing out that is what I love about improv - if you were there you got the biggest laugh in a long long time and if you missed out it will never happen again, which makes it even cooler for the people that saw it.  or it should.

but the big news is the confirmation I got from the BNW on Punch Out - if it does well we can look forward to more of them.  So it's on you now, people.  If you want to have another show which gives more stage to more improvisers ( I know I do ) - it's time to step up.  that's the deal.

Vaudeville With A Pig vs. The Gay Straight Alliance.  

Friday at 11pm |  $10  |

In other show news - Mike, Dan and I are performing Total Bullshit at the Monday Night Comedy Show on the 14th and 21st and I'm both very excited and kind of nervous to see how our crap flies with a different audience.  I really like that show.  Those of you that have spent more than 2 minutes with me know I like telling a good story and even though I've never thought of myself doing "spoken word" or "stand-up" this is a really comfortable cross between the two and I enjoy the hell out of it.  

time to work.