(S)Kid nation

You guys, this is what reality programming is all about. Intricate Machiavellian social experiments, broadcast for the enlightenment of Americans.

Starring 40 children.

Get ready to cheer, cry and be appalled at the parents who would let their child be on this show. Seriously, why couldn't you just send your kids to summer camp like the rest of your book club?

10 years of improv communism

As you may infer from the logo, The Playground is celebrating its 10th Anniversary this week. The Senate was asked to open last night's show, which was an honor we jumped upon with vigorous abandon, if indeed that is something one can do. It is possible I am combining several phrases for effect.

At any rate, The Playground is a great theater that has been a wonderful place to perform in my relatively short time in the city. And it's the nation's first non-profit improv co-op. So that's something. Take that, other theaters who have actual owners.

Check this place out if you're ever in town, but especially this week. It's a great place and I hope it's around for another 10 years and more.


In other news, my brother just called. He's hanging around LAX on a layover before he and his wife go to Hawaii. Within three minutes, he met Supernanny and saw Calista Flockhart and Rob Lowe.

I said he should have asked Rob Lowe about Atomic Train. He said that, in his mind, he punched Rob Lowe in the face.

What a magical fairyland!

This was a children's show?

Seriously, you guys. I don't know why we weren't more terrified of this show at the time. Because looking at it now, we should have run for our lives.

Maybe it's the mostly black backgrounds, signifying that this show is taking place in some kind of vortex where no light dare show its face.

Maybe it's the super-creepy puppets with tall teeth and horrible hair and faces ripped from the very fabric of evil itself.

Maybe it's the overall sense of foreboding that comes from that echoing "Hall of Fame." *shiver*

Regardless, it was, and remains to be, a very strange show. But I guess it taught me about letters?

Thanks for the nightmares, Letter People!



P.S. And it was produced by KETC in St. Louis? I trusted you, KETC!

P.P.S. Check out this one for a Mr. X who talks like Jimmy Stewart and then the trippiest Letter People song EVER. No wonder it never made it to air.

On the shoulders of (kinda short) giants

So the ComedySportz CIF show went really well, thanks to a house full of screaming high school band kids. We get it, band geeks. Say a musical term and you'll scream in recognition. Name a specific instrument and that section will cheer with pride. If that section is two or less people (I'm looking at you, Sousaphones), those two dudes will stand up and pump their arms in representation of all Sousaphone players everywhere.

It's almost Pavlovian at this point. And I love it.

It was still a great show even apart from the easily excitable band kids. I was really honored to be chosen to play in the CIF show with MadTV's Frank Caeti*. I think I was the only person onstage who had been playing with CSz for less than 4 or 5 years. Maybe all the other newbies were busy doing their one-person show and getting a development deal with Comedy Central, I don't know. But I still feel pretty proud about it.

It's still cool to feel proud about things, right guys? Shut up.


* Super nice guy.

He played Sweetchuck

This week is the Chicago Improv Festival, which means that a lot of cool shows are going on and a few comedy celebrities are hanging about. This makes for pretty fun times. Unfortunately, the only shows I have time to go to are the ones that I'm in.

Which of course isn't bad. I'm very proud to be a part of two shows in CIF this year. One, pictured above, was on Wednesday - a special edition of The Improv Match Game. Tim Kazurinsky (not pictured) of SNL and Police Academy fame, played on the panel and Tim Meadows was seen to be hanging around the bar*.

Check out this clip of The Improv Match Game on WGN Morning News. Proof that sometimes, even morning newscasters can be stupid. (You'll notice I played no part in it. I'm the announcer for The IMG, so there was really nothing for me to do. Plus it was super early.)

And then tonight, I'm in the offical ComedySportz entry into CIF. I'll be playing against a team captained by MadTV's Frank Caeti. Frank was a great ComedySportz player when he was in Chicago and has been a champion for (and of) the theater ever since, so I'm really looking forward to it.


* It's annoying, but there seem to be a lot of Tims in comedy. Aside from those two examples, I can think of at least 5 or 6 other Tims in the Chicago improv scene off the top of my head. Are Tims more sociologically predisposed to be funny? Or at least desire attention? Someone should do a study.

Who wouldn't want to swing on a star, really.

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this one. I come to you, my friends of discerning and sharply-honed taste in all matters of popular culture.

Stardust is, ostensibly, a major motion picture. I can only assume that it will be released in theaters somewhere around the vicinity of August 10th.

You may now take a couple minutes to enjoy the trailer for said motion picture.

On the surface, it has many elements that seem to imply quality. It's based on a graphic novel by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess. That's some solid geek cred right there. It has, if not a blockbuster main cast, at least some wonderful secondary casting: Ricky Gervais, as pretty much the same guy as always. And I think the world has waited quite long enough to see Robert DeNiro as a sky pirate, thank you. Plus, it's a magical world of fantasy and adventure. What more could you want?

Here then, are my questions:

1) Should we be excited?
2) If so, why aren't we excited yet?

I just happened to find this trailer during my weekly perusal of the Apple trailer site. This is not the sort of thing one should stumble upon whilst carousing about the Interwebs. That pleasure is reserved for things like Russian Ark (96-minute take, cooler in idea than in execution) or discovering that they made a sequel to Cube.

I know that August leaves a lot of time for a big marketing push, but still. For a movie that looks as expensive as this one does, you would think the name would come up from time to time. People have been talking about Transformers for some time now and we're just starting to get official trailers and whatnot.

Why then, has there been no mention of DeNiro as a sky pirate?

Perhaps people have been talking about Stardust and I merely assumed they were speaking of the Ziggy variety. If that is the case, I do not apologize. It is an excellent song.

See, here's the exception

Happy anniversary, Rebecca. We did it! A picture with a quilt in the background! Hooray!

You know what's NOT typical? Ro getting all mad about stuff.

MUTEMATH - "Typical"

Hey, look everybody! A really cool music video! Nothing to get upset about here!

Sure, the filming stuff then playing it backward thing has been done (see: Coldplay's "The Scientist," among others), but it's still pretty cool! Certainly nothing to get all riled up about! No sir. No excessive outbursts needed in the comment section of THIS post!

Seriously though. People are mad because I don't talk much about or post pictures of my girlfriend (who is, without a doubt, pretty awesome)? Here's why:

a) I'm not a 14-year-old with a Livejournal. Some things are private.
b) It would make Ro happy. From here on out, I'm basing all blog (and really, life) choices on how much they could potentially frustrate Ro. Because I think it's pretty funny.
c) Rebecca has yet to have a picture taken of her in this lifetime that she would approve for public consumption. I like them, but she's picky.

So it's doubtful that you'll be seeing much of her, not because I'm not proud, but because I'm not a jerk.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule...


P.S. That is a pretty cool video, right? Come on.

Seriously, she was good

This is Addie. Well, technically it's Addie and me, but I figured most of you would recognize me. Addie is the dog.

I met Addie when I went with my girlfriend Rebecca to visit her family in Texas over Easter. Addie is a relatively new addition to the family, so both Rebecca and I were meeting her for the first time. We learned many things about her, such as:

• Her favorite toy is a little tire on a rope, which she will slobber all over and then dare you to grab it from her mouth.
• She is an excellent jumper, especially when attempting to get the tire on a rope.
• Just when I've calmed her down enough to pet her, she can be riled up again by Rebecca singing Abba songs and excitedly waving her arms. She will then jump some more. (Addie, not Rebecca.)
• She is easily excitable, especially by snow.
  

Yes, snow. Texas over Easter weekend = 3 inches of snow. Addie liked to eat it.

Most of my pictures from the weekend are of Addie because she was such a good girl.

It sounds like Brave Saint Saturn

It's possible that working in an office for a year has caused me to devolve to the point where funny pictures of cats with captions are now hilarious to me. If that is the case, I apologize.

But I don't think Myrtle in the next cube over would find Astro Cat on a Moog quite as funny as I do. And that makes me feel pretty okay about it.

I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? - Making captioned pictures of adorable animals safe again. For all of us.

It's not delivery, it's cumbersome

So Tara, my roommate and bane of my existence, does this promotion for DiGiorno's last weekend. Apparently, she was paid in free samples. This is our freezer now.

Thanks for making me move a bunch of stuff around to get to my Hot Pockets, td. Geez.

P.S. Can I have one? Or are they all for Braders*?

*Our other roommate who makes an oven pizza pretty much every night. He probably wet himself when he opened the freezer door and saw that. Right, Braders? Come on.

Newbies no more

ComedySportz held auditions this week for new ensemble members. That means it's been almost a year since I was hired. Crazy times. It's weird thinking about my class not being "the newbies" anymore.

It's been a heck of a year for CSz. We moved out of one space, watched it get torn down and then watched absolutely nothing get built there. (The lot is still rubble. Thanks for making us move out, jerks.) Since then, we've kind of been nomads, and by nomads I mean that we've been in two different spaces.

We're still building our new space on Belmont. We've had some setbacks, but it'll be worth it in the end. Like a lot of things this year, I guess. Just hard to look at the bigger picture sometimes.

Whatever, it's been a pretty amazing year. I got to play at both IIT and a Jewish day school. I played for my parents a few (dozen) times and a lot of extended family as well. Plus, I got to know a lot of cool people, especially my fellow newbies.

Let's keep that e-mail chain going, Class of '06! We needs to plan our hazin'!

Wasn't there already a bad movie with the same title?

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: New Zealand cinema.

Zombie sheep. Brilliant. We can only hope it somehow makes its way to our shores.

Sidenote: Isn't this a strange production for Mel Gibson's Icon Productions studio? Although it's entirely possible that the zombie sheep are also anti-Semitic. The trailer left it open to interpretation.

P.S. Don't silly movie trailers tell you so much about me and what's going on in my life? Give me a break, at least I'm posting.

Is this dumb? It's probably dumb.

More on the Des Moines adventure in a minute. But first this.

Why do series finales of TV shows make me so sad? Is it, I don't know, the finality of it all? Saying goodbye forever to characters I've grown fond of? Or are the chemicals in my brain so easily manipulated that a well-constructed montage set to a great closing song can just make me feel things.

Well, whatever it is, it happened this week when I watched the series finale of The O.C. Yes, I watch The O.C. I got on board at the very beginning and never jumped off, even when parts of it got pretty stupid.

It's sad that it's ending and that it went out on a shortened season. But at least they got to have a proper sendoff and wrap everything up nicely. Look, everyone is happy! And the series is bookended! What could be better?

Gah. I feel so girly. Stupid, easily manipulated emotions.

Farewell, Seth Cohen. What network TV character will people compare me to now?

I guess it was kind of pretty. That was nice.

A lovely weekend in Des Moines. Thanks, winter. You're good times all around.

I had to push the Stallion out of this parking space, by the way. Yep, I'm pretty manly.

I always had a thing for Penny

Ventriloquist's Week indeed...

Holy God.

Someone has taken my most frightening childhood nightmares and put them onscreen.

As if they weren't terrifying enough in my head. As if it wasn't bad enough when R.L. Stine put out no less than three incarnations of this nightmare in print form. As if one psychotic ventriloquist's dummy attacking you wouldn't be scary enough.

This movie has literally one hundred such dummies - come to life, running around, cutting people's tongues out.

Plus, it stars Donnie Wahlberg.

Please people, do not force me to watch this movie. The trailer alone gave me nightmares. I questioned my motives the entire time. "Why are you watching this, Tim? This is a terrible idea. Please stop. You can close the tab at any time. JUST STOP OH GOD THERE'S A HUNDRED OF THEM!"

That must have been a fun pitch meeting.

"Okay, I grant that a living dummy is scary, but Chucky's been done. We need to up the ante."

"How about more dummies? How about 10?"

"Make it a hundred and you've got yourself a picture."


P.S. I'm pretty sure it was a hundred but I'm sure as hell not going to watch the trailer again to fact check it.

Improv babies

One of my teammates on The Senate recently had a baby. As any proud parent would, he brought the little thing to rehearsal last week.

This is little Evangeline. She's a whopping three weeks old now and less alien-looking than this picture would have you believe. Completely adorable. She barely made a peep the entire two-hour rehearsal and when she did, it was a brilliant initiation.

Seriously, she gave you a lot to work with. Great stage presence too.

Of course, we were all instantly reduced to cooing adorers, which I'm sure was interesting to the three new people sitting in with us. Irene held her for so long, we thought she was going to run off with her. It would be just like Irene to turn into a baby stealer.

Evangeline's head is still pretty soft. That's fun.

Import, I say!

Now that The O.C. is officially on its way out, the search is on for the show that will receive the honor of having the best soundtrack on television.

And...search over.

While I swore I would never get into a show about high-school football, of all things, Friday Night Lights just had to put all of its episodes online when everything else went into reruns, leaving me nothing to watch during my lunch hour. Thanks a lot, nbc.com.

It's actually fairly compelling and well-made, and wins the "Best Soundtrack" award by virtue of playing at least 30 seconds of Explosions in the Sky per episode. Even if this was the only bit of music they played each week, they would still win. It's that good.

Sometimes I listen to EITS as I'm walking down the street and suddenly my actions become charged with narrative import.

Try it, it's fun.

Brick by brick

Check it out, everybody! ComedySportz is building a new theater and they have a fancy-pants new "lookit whut we're buildin', y'all" website to go with it.

Yes, the personification of ComedySportz talks like that.

Anyway, you owe it to yourself (and to me, let's be honest) to go to this site, watch the hilarious video starring my roomie td, and consider seriously how much money you want to send our way.

Theaters don't build themselves, people. Let's all pitch in, like an old-fashioned barn-raising.

Only it probably won't get done in a day.

And the participants may never see each other.

And you're sending money in the form of little 1s and 0s through the ether instead of tangibly hammering something.

It's the same in spirit, is what I'm saying. Same in spirit.