I am very excited today, for a couple of reasons. Probably most influential is that I got a full night s sleep for the first time in what feels like a year. Secondly, The Bureau presents Comedic Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh kicks off with Gold tonight - sketch comedy at 8pm in the Colony Ballroom.
The show is free and if you show up early you get a coupon for a free California Tortilla burrito.
Third is that today is Movie Monday! Obviously it s not, but even more obvious is that I watch The Office too much (although it is the only half-hour I spend in front of the television each week).
But today I did get my free monthly DVD from the club and it was , wherein originated one of Tom s and my favorite quotes - Hold on; you re gonna feel this. In addition, on Monday the entire (unbelievable - a rating of 9.7/10 on IMDb) series run was for only $33.
00 (right now they re selling it for $54 but that s still half the normal price). This was a perfect situation for me because even though I have all the episodes on DVD, somehow my discs grow legs and walk off. Currently only one of the eight total discs is on my shelf.
That s how amazing this show is; people are always asking to borrow the DVDs. With free two day shipping, I opened up the package today and basked in the warm glow of pure, unadulterated humor once more.
This is gonna be a good day, folks.
I am very excited today, for a couple of reasons. Probably most influential is that I got a full night s sleep for the first time in what feels like a year. Secondly, The Bureau presents Comedic Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh kicks off with Gold tonight - sketch comedy at 8pm in the Colony Ballroom.
The [ ] I ve had the window open since last night. It s 60-some degrees, the air is crisp and carrying a little water, and the sun has been behind clouds all day. I ve got The Postal Service and The New Pornographers playing, and I can smell Fall.
Life is pretty good.
It ended up with four slides (1 was a title slide and 1 was an introduction).
Callbacks are always a tough process.
You know that no matter what, you re going to be giving a majority of the people who came out bad news at the end of the night. I won t go into the internal processes, but we did not ignore anyone or brush things under the table. We discussed each auditionee among the group and the post-callback discussion lasted until 5:20am.
There were four people who stood out as stellar, but there were so many who were very, very good and very close to what we were looking for.
As I said earlier, the unsavory task of calling every auditionee, fell to me the morning after. I was amazed by how professionally and genuinely nicely many of the people took it.
It really showcased what a great group of performers came out to the audition process. I know what it is like to get that news, and I know the feeling in the pit of your stomach or the burning behind your ears when you hear it. I m a jerk just for mentioning that it was hard on me when I know full well it was worse for them.
But many of them said they would come back in the Spring to audition again, and some even asked specifically what they could work on. A few volunteered their services and skills to help the group, as well. That shows a lot of dedication to their craft, an interest and loyalty to the group, and speaks volumes about their character.
I was very pleased.
It wasn t all tough news though. The four members we invited back are all outstanding, and they continue our tradition and goal of always bringing members into the group of a caliber that we are still striving for.
As I mentioned to Jeff, I don t think I would have made it in if I had been up against these people a year ago. It s been my aim to always make the group better and never be satisfied with standing still.
The show is another expound-upon topic.
Because we were performing on the same night as Sketchup and Erasable, Inc., we decided to focus on stand-up, which is something that sets us apart from the other groups. Joe hosted and Graham, Kelly, Mike G, and I performed our stand-up, then we did the Pirate sketch from last January.
As Mike has pointed out before, . It has the potential to be good because you surprise people and exceed their expectations, but we basically perform in an open food court for people who aren t there to see stand-up comedy, who are walking around and talking with friends, or eating their dinner. It s good to do these shows and get the name out there, but they just don t have the energy (or the crowd) that our own shows do.
Personally, I felt like my stand-up set was one of the best I d done in a long time. Most of the set was brand-new, and the jokes that I had told before had only been told once or twice (at Topaz and Bossa a couple months ago). Jon told me after the show that I should follow every joke with a treatise explaining the premise of the joke to help the other 95% of the audience get it.
There were a couple jokes that got two rounds of laughter - the early chuckle from the quick thinkers and then the three second delay laugh . That actually doesn t bother me because I like to take advantage of that time to decide on my next joke. Overall I was extremely pleased and comfortable, and I thought my clan joke, which was brand new, did hit pretty well.
And the Habitat For Humanity joke which took out of his chair also did well. I still haven t done Jess Hess favorite joke - Nerd Gym - since the very first time I did stand-up. It may be a legend in that sense - if you missed it the first time you ll never hear it.
Last night concluded with a nice welcome celebration for the newbies at Tom s. We can tell they will fit in very well. We all had a blast and enjoyed our various age-appropriate spirits.
This place is empty - a lot of my friends are out of town this weekend because we don t have a home football game - and there is no hockey, so I am bored out of my mind. Luckily, there is hockey every day each weekend in October, including a couple of those great memories from my childhood - the early game. Waking up before the sun to drive an hour or two to the rink, seeing the misty fog still hovering over the ice, watching the steam rise from the bench.
I love those.
The rest of my family took advantage of the hockeyless weekend to visit my sister out at college. I ve talked to her occasionally and it seems like she is enjoying her first month of school.
I m going to spend the rest of the evening writing. Tomorrow is The Bureau s writing deadline, which is when everyone brings in their sketches and we sit down and table read. And as the writer of Carmen Sandiego, I would not want to disappoint anyone.
I m also looking forward to Studio 60 on Monday with Melmo, Wes, Bond, and Bronzo. And Tuesday is with the newbies - our traditional Welcome, New Jacks dinner. In the past we ve done Fuddrucker s (because of Doran s interview) and Mongolian Grill (because it s our home away from home).
Churrascaria is new for most people in the group but some of us have had it. I had it when I was younger at the Lakefront in Columbia, and I think Dan and Liebman have both been to Green Field.
The last two weeks have been rough for a variety of reasons but with a lot of excitement mixed in.
I think I needed a relaxing day like this to get settled.
Also, I finished another season of , waiting for to start again, and am working on the first two seasons of . MI-5 has some of the best storylines of any action show, and Scrubs is extremely funny, though I find that the dramedy aspect of it sometimes overwhelms the absurdist humor.
I appreciate the challenge of writing that way, but I often think I d enjoy it more if it were less grounded and more surreal - like Arrested Development. All the pieces are there, they re just tempered by the emotion. I ve had the window open since last night.
It s 60-some degrees, the air is crisp and carrying a little water, and the sun has been behind clouds all day. I ve got The Postal Service and The New Pornographers playing, and I can smell Fall. Life is pretty good.
I have a lot of other stuff to write about that s sitting in note form, but this is for immediate release -
I have a lot of other stuff to write about that s sitting in note form, but this is for immediate release -
MSN does something right.
Perhaps by default, this is becoming a weekday-only site. Perhaps it is because when I spend 50 hours a week in front of the computer at work, I don t have as much incentive to do it at home - though I do, because I work on projects as well.
Regardless, the pattern is showing that I post during the week and not so much on the weekends, which isn t unusual. It will probably return to a 7 day format when school starts up again.
Friday I got out of work early and had dinner with a lovely friend.
I am working on a new joke involving this unusual situation. When you hear it, you ll know what the situation was. After that, I met up with Tom and Kelly and saw .
Wow.
I went into it expecting it to be a rehash of all the old jokes and no plot because it wouldn t be necessary. It wasn t.
It was so much better than that. All the homages are there, yes, but they get taken care of early in the movie to get people acclimated, and suddenly it s new stuff 100%. There is enough of a plot to tie the whole movie together (perhaps moreso than most Kevin Smith movies) but at the same time, you almost progress through a series of vignettes as far as the big jokes are concerned.
And believe me, these jokes are often gut-bustingly hilarious. If you ve ever laughed at a Kevin Smith, I guarantee you ll love this one.
The only element that detracted from the experience was that there must have been a blind person sitting behind us.
I say this because his buddy literally described every on-screen occurrence to him. I mean everything. Ok, he s gonna open the door.
No, not yet. Ok, he opened it. Ok, he s standing there standing now he s looking out the window I don t even know how to react to that.
How do blind people deal with foreign films that aren t dubbed? I imagine that is a rough experience.
Saturday Doran, Graham, Matt, and I went to Bethesda for the Laugh Riot at the Hyatt.
Chris Palmer was hosting, which is great because Chris is such a nice guy.
Hallo, hallo, good to see ya. And, I m sorry, but your name again ?
Andy! Of course, right, right. Excellent to see you again.
But he says all of that with a British accent, so it s even better.
Brandon Ivey and John McBride were the two features and then did a 45 minute set. Here s how funny Rory is - I know all his material.
And when I say I know it, I mean I literally know, word-for-word, the jokes. I ve seen him live a hundred times, I ve been there when he comes up with some of the stuff, and I did his website so I ve watched and cut a lot of audio and video of him. And guess what?
I still die when I hear that stuff. The whole crowd does.
Two things were interesting about the show.
First was that it s not the normal weeknight bar scene, it s a nice room in a gorgeous hotel. As I said to Doran, I don t think I ve ever watched comedy in a building that smelled nicer than I did. That also means that the clientele was a lot of the hotel guests, who were there with their kids.
15 year olds, 12 year olds, and even little children (one as young as 3). I have to admit, I didn t think of this at the time, but that 3 year old stayed quiet for a two hour show, which is pretty impressive. But the reason this is important is because of the blueness of the comedians.
Chris Palmer is a 58-year-old British father of 3 - I don t think he even knows any bad words. I m kidding, of course, but he always does a clean set. Brandon Ivey also did a 100% clean set.
His response to a heckler was Would you say that if your mother was in the room? and You are a good example of insensitivity. (His heckler piece is one of the funniest things I ve seen on stage.
) Then John McBride got up and did his stuff, which I ve seen before and enjoyed at Bossa - it s not filthy but it s not clean either - it was enough to make his mother blush (she had traveled in to watch the show). Then comes Rory. He s not a dirty comic as much as he s a funny comic who curses.
A lot. More than a 12 year old should hear, I guess I m trying to say. But that little girl laughed a lot, so I guess it didn t bother her.
The other thing that was unique about the show was the non-laugher. This guy sat in the very front row, in the seat directly in front of the stage. Because Curt uses a stage the size of a napkin, the performer really can t stray too far, and thus, he ll always be able to see the face of the guy right in front.
Doran and I were also front row next to this guy, so we could see him the whole time. He didn t change his expression at all during the first three sets. When Rory got on stage, he knew about him from Brandon, so he tried to crack him.
Throughout the set, this guy just glared at Rory and nodded occasionally. He did get the guy to break with this line Hey, honey - let s go to the concert and sit in the front row and show those fuckers how much I hate rock and roll! Finally, Rory asks the girl next to this guy if they re dating.
No, married, the guy replied. Rory says Oh, that must be great. Does he ever just come home and say Hey Honey- and then glares into space for over a minute.
I don t know if you ve ever tried glaring without changing your expression for 90 seconds while 200 people in the room crack up. The guy s wife was in tears.
After the show we celebrated with a good-time party.
Sunday was Rock Roll day. I rediscovered one of the greatest bands of 1991 - . The Beets were a parody of The Who, The Beatles, The Police, and a number of other Brit rock bands.
They were from the show - which I remember watching when I was five (and starred Billy West, of fame). Anyway, after finding some of their great songs - I Need More Allowance , Shout Your Lungs Out , and their #1 all-time hit, Killer Tofu - I listened to AC/DC Live - from their world tour, also in1991 - and some more of the greatest rock of all time. Then I watched .
I met with Shari last night about and doing some more tech stuff for Rory, , and . It was basically this conversation:
Hey, you know the stuff you love doing and would be content to do for the rest of your life?
We d like to pay you to do that.
Also, you ll have amazing connections with the funniest people in this city. And we re agents as well. And we d like The Bureau to perform at the comedy festival.
And it will look great on your resume. And more great stuff.
Then I watched , to close out a weekend of great media including more of and the first three DVDS of - a fantastic show made even better when you realize how much of it is truly improvised each take.
And if you re looking for more good music, check out DC local . Rory described them as similar to The Strokes, and I feel like they have a bit of Incubus in there as well as a few others. Regardless, it s good stuff.
News reports to follow if people did stupid stuff over the weekend. So that s pretty much a guaranteed yes . Perhaps by default, this is becoming a weekday-only site.
Perhaps it is because when I spend 50 hours a week in front of the computer at work, I don t have as much incentive to do it at home - though I do, because I work on projects as well. Regardless, the pattern is showing that [ ] Oh, man. Devotees, unite.
TownHall.com has (seriously. No, seriously, stop laughing) on why it s ok to marry your cousin.
If you ve ever seen Arrested Development, you are already furiously clicking the link by now. For those of you who are uninitiated, feast on the greatness that is.
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