funny

I wanted to let any of you out there in cyberspace who may care about two COMPLETELY IMPROVISED and totally FREE shows that I'm going to be in THIS WEEKEND at the iO WEST's Andy Dick Experimental Black Box Theater.

Yes, someone named a theater after Andy Dick...

1) Friday May 23rd at 11pm (following Heather & Miles at 10pm, who are incredible and I highly recommend seeing them)

2) Saturday May 24th at 8:30pm (following Laurel Coppock's "Breakdown City" at 8pm, which I can't recommend highly enough!)

I will be performing with my improv group HAMMERSPACE (www.myspace.com/hammerspace_improv).

These shows are all-ages, totally free, completely improvised, and really go a lot better and are more fun (and funny) when there's a good crowd... so it would be awesome if you could make it and see me wrestle with my new creative obsession -- LONG-FORM IMPROV!

Here's the details:
HAMMERSPACE
5/23: 11pm
5/24: 8:30pm
@
iO WEST - Andy Dick Theater (*note: this is not the mainstage, the entrance to the Andy Dick is on COSMO)
6366 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90028
http://west.ioimprov.com/

I was looking on a shopping site and saw the most unusual album, Pat Boone: In a metal mood. Pat Boone did a metal album, that was just strange, I thought, "nobody would buy that". So after I got it in the mail I listened to it, and it was just so odd. Hearing Pat Boone performing songs like "No More Mr. Nice Guy" "Holy Diver" "Enter Sandman" and "Crazy Train" was unthinkable, it was just the strangest experience.

UM HI!!!!!!!

Addi Somekh of Balloonhat.com (he's also the balloon-bassist in the awesome band Unpopable) recently went to a nursing home and made some spectacular balloon hats for the residents.

The experience got edited down and set to some sweet Evangenitals music (song: "Hello" from our new album Everlovin) and then end result is sheer heart-warming goodness.

Today I did something I hardly ever do... I wore underwear. Why, you ask? Well...

I was having a theater-filled day with my main squeeze Patrick to celebrate the closing of the play (that he was starring in, that's right!) and one of the stops on our tour of Los Angeles theatrical offerings - right after seeing Del Arte's production "The Golden State" at the 24th Street Theater was the smash-hit sensation "Point Break Live" going down on weekends at Charlie O's Bar at the Alexandria Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles on Spring Street. Aww yeah...

Now, if you don't know already... Point Break Live is a live theatrical version of the awesome classic movie "Point Break" in which the Keanu Reeves character is picked from the audience. I had been invited to the show by friends involved with the production (Bill and his wife Anne - who's sister is the producer of the show) so I was real excited to go. My friend Shaughn Buchholz had recently gone and gotten picked to play the lead role of Johnny Utah, so I had a general idea of what we were in for.

So, the underwear. The underwear was for the rare chance that I got up the nerve to "audition" for the role of Johnny Utah AND was the audience favorite AND got picked by the director to play the part. If all of that HAPPENED to happen, then I would need to be able to do costume changes backstage... thus, the underwear.

As for why I never wear underwear... that is for another blog post.

As luck would have it... I *DID* muster to courage to audition for the role, and much to my surprise, I got it. That's right folks. For a few hours tonight, my name was Johnny Utah. I had to wear a wet suit, was soaked, smacked, fondled, tackled, squirted, and otherwise abused much to the delight of the crowd. I did exactly as I was told and delivered a most monotone and deadpan performance, only speaking what was on the cue cards, and only moving when told to move. I got to hang from the ceiling in a harness, chase a man through the streets with a gun, yell a lot, and learned to surf in the mix. It was exhausting and awesome.

I highly recommend the show. Tobias Jelinek, who plays Bodhi (the Patrick Swayze character) and Jennifer Jean who plays Tyler/the Lori Petty character (and studied improv at Second City AND we've had the same teacher - Scot Robinson of The Lampshades) were friggin' inspired. And Christi Waldon who was my personal PA and helped me survive the whole show was absolutely adorable.  I will be eternally grateful and in awe of her energy. 

Great cast, great concept, a great friggin' time at the theater. Thumbs up, yo!  What's more... I got the whole thing on tape! Woo-hoo!

All in all, today was a very good day.  I'm exhausted, I'm inspired, I've got fake blood in my hair.  It's a wonderful life indeed.

Happy Holidays!

Hope you are having a wonderful week full of cheer with your near and your dear.

I don't know how, but my improv team "Not From Chicago" won AGAIN last week, which means we will be defending our defending our hard-won Student Cagematch Champion Belt at the iO WEST's Andy Dick Theater in Hollywood TOMORROW NIGHT (Thursday) at 10pm.

As an added bonus, my dearest Patrick Ian Moore will be joining the team this week -- the first time we shall ever perform Improv together! -- as many of my teammates are home for the Holidays.

Holy crap!

My improv team "Not From Chicago" hath done it again. Tonight we won our 2nd Student Cagematch at the iO WEST, which means we're going up against a team of frisky newcomers next Thursday at 10pm. Mark your calendars!

Patrick is going to be joining my group as a "guest star" to fill in for vacationers, so this will be a rare opportunity to see the two of us improvise together for the FIRST TIME EVER! Woo-hoo!

We need LOTS of friends to turn out and VOTE FOR US because.... (drumroll please).... if we win NEXT week, we become the challengers in the MAINSTAGE cagematch at the BIG theater! That is very important in Improv land. Seriously.

Oh boy...

This Thursday night at 10pm my improv team "Not From Chicago" will be defending our hard-won Student Cagematch Champion Belt at the iO WEST's Andy Dick Theater in Hollywood.

If you don't know what any of that means, let me explain:

A few months ago, I started taking Improv classes at iO WEST (formerly the Improv Olympic) and I fell in love. I found a nice group of dorks who enjoy making fun and furious long-form improv with me and we formed a team. We call ourselves "Not From Chicago".... as we are not from Chicago. Get it? Don't worry about it.

The important thing is that we participated in our first Cagematch last week (competitive improv!) and due to the fact that a bunch of friends turned out to vote for us, we WON! The whole thing is more or less a popularity contest, so it is imperative that we have folks come out to laugh, cheer, and VOTE FOR US.

If we win 10 times in a row, we end up on the Wall of Fame. If we just win a couple more times, we get to have the valuable experience of performing improv in front of a live audience.

For our first Cagematch, I hardly invited anyone I knew because I was petrified. Luckily, my teammates delivered and their friends turned up en mass. This week, it's my turn to show my bare ass to the world (metaphorically) and invite my friends and loved ones to come watch me wrangle with this new passion of mine. I am raw, I am rough, and I am willing to make an ass of myself in public. Huzzah!

Hope you can make it!

Come see "Not From Chicago" in
The iO WEST Student Cagematch
Thursday December 20th
Andy Dick Theater
10pm
FREE!

(there's valet parking and everything! cheap bar!)

iO WEST is located at:
6366 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA
Corner of Hollywood & Cosmo

my nose is caked with slime & gunk and my throat feels like i swallowed broken glass. i tried to walk the dog and felt as if i were going to fall over. by the end of the walk i felt a little better, though my skin felt rather prickly.

i am now embarking upon a shower to cleanse myself of two days of sweat and sickness and purify my very soul. somehow i feel that this will cure me. i've got some dr bronners peppermint soap in there, so i know that i shall be blessed.

amen.

So I was sitting at home starting to doodle on some music for this "History of Water" piece that I'm working on and I decide to try to play "WATER" on the guitar.  I figure the best way to do this is to convert the word to Spanish (AGUA) and play the nearest chords to those letters (I substituted "D" for the "U", since a "D" is like a "U" that fell over against a wall)... 

I ended up jamming for about an hour on what turned out to be a variant way of playing the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil"