I Don’t Know If I Can Make Anyone Die Laughing But I May Just Die Trying!
This weekend, Fearless Comedy will be putting on Die Laughing, a fifty hour comedy marathon. Right now, it looks like we might get hammered with a massive snow storm as the event starts but that doesn’t matter. We’re going to make this show happen.
The good news is that the entire event will be streaming so you can watch it even if you decide to cower in your home. And I’ll be doing a lot of performing that weekend. Here’s a schedule if you are just going nuts wondering when I’ll be on stage again.
Friday, April 4th, 7:00 PM – Big Fun Radio Funtime
We’ll be doing encore presentations of two of our favorite scripts and then Geoffrey Brown and I will perform 30 minutes of original Citizens’ Band tunes! We’ll also introduce our weekend long songwriting challenge.
Friday, April 4th – 10:00 PM – Vilification Tennis
There will be insults a-plenty and Duck Washington will debut as our newest cast member! Also, Kelvin Hatle will present his brilliant “News from Lake Vilbegone.”
Friday, April 4th – 11:00 PM – Geeks Without God
We’ll be recording a live podcast featuring comedian Patrick Bauer. The topic will be Tarantino movies. Pop culture reference!
Saturday, April 5th – 4:00 PM – PowerPoint Karaoke
I’ll be sitting in judgement on comedians who are making up a presentation from scratch! Is it far that I judge them? Yes it is fair! For I am ME and I SHALL wield petty power!
Saturday, April 5th – 8:00 PM – 12:00 AM – Hosting
I won’t be the star of the show but I’ll be introducing them!
Sunday, April 6th – 1:00 AM – Geeks Without God
Our second live podcast will feature Elizabeth Ess! We are going to talk about Hobby Lobby and birth control. Should be totally filled with comedy about knitting. There is also a decent chance I’ll be bald at this point.
Sunday, April 6th – 2:00 PM – Judging a Book By It’s Cover
I’ll be hosting this silly game in which contestants must describe the plot of a book based only on the cover illustration.
Sunday, April 6th – 6:00 PM – The Dregs
The Dregs will be doing our music and comedy thing with a special challenge to help raise money. Song choices go to the highest bidder!
Sunday, April 6th – 8:00 PM – Fearless Lab
A completely random hour of Fearless Comedy! And I’m the host! If Geoffrey and I get paid to write any songs, we’ll be performing them during this final hour of the marathon! It’ll be awesome! I’m using all exclamation points because I’ll probably be hopped up on Five Hour Energy Drink at this point in the weekend!
Putting it Together – Collaboration
Putting it Together is my Monday “artist talking about art stuff blog”. The title comes from “Sunday in the Park with George,” the best (and possibly only) musical that is entirely dedicated to an artist talking about his art. Is that pretentious enough?
Collaboration is one of those words that theatre people throw around in the same way corporate America throws around the word “Paradigm.” We make it sound really important. Can you actually produce theatre without collaborating?
Can you produce business without a paradigm?
While I’m certain that you can do business without paradigms (or synergy), it’s pretty hard to produce theatre without collaboration. Even if you are writing a one person show and the person in question is you, you probably aren’t going to be running your own lights. You might want someone else to direct your show.
Everyone needs to have a Schedule
As part of a renewed focus on writing stuff, I’m creating a blog schedule for myself. If you follow this blog, here’s what you can hope to find. If you don’t follow my blog, I imagine you aren’t reading this.
Monday: This will be all about the projects I’m working on, my creative process and my artistic journey. I’m calling it “Putting it Together” because it sounds very self important.
Tuesday: Dregs blogging! I’ll be posting on The Dregs website about our latest projects, music, gigs and more. I’ll also have a post on this blog about the latest episode of Geeks Without God, which goes live every Tuesday.
Wednesday: Movie blogging. I’ve been writing my Alphabetical movie blog on and off for a while and I really enjoy the exercise of trying to write about the mental journey I take as a result of watching the film rather than the film itself. I’m going to “force” myself to post about a movie every week. If I’m feeling super productive, I might even write two entries on the same day!
Thursday: Open. What am I, a machine? I might write about something. I might not. Give me some space!
Friday: Shit that Pissed me off. My attempt to find humor in the news events that have struck a nerve. Kind of a rage blog.
Saturday: NO BLOG FOR YOU!
Sunday: Comedy blogging. In other words, I shall attempt to write something funny. On purpose.
If all goes well, I hope to begin this on Monday, February 3rd. My first installment of “Putting it Together” will, somewhat ironically, be about how I suck at self promotion.
Fringey Fringe Fringe
I’ve got to apologize to myself for failing to do a good job of promoting my Fringe shows this year. With the Fringe just one week away, it is probably time for me to go into full “see my show” mode.
I’ve got two shows in the Fringe this year and I’m really looking forward to both of them.
Back in February, I didn’t have the slightest idea what I was going to do for the Fringe. Not a big deal, I thought, the lottery hasn’t happened yet!
Well then it did happen. And one of the numbers to which I was attached was drawn. Suddenly, I had to come up with an idea.
My idea was “Schrödinger’s Apocalypse.”
Hey look! Three people reading a book!
Geeks Without God Gets Reflective about Comedy
This week’s episode features emergency fill-in guest Joseph Scrimshaw. Joseph is in the midst of a big Kickstarter campaign so it seemed like a great time to feature him on the podcast. We got him to tell us all about the Kickstarter (of course) and then we talked about Joseph’s favorite obsession, comic theory.
Speaking of Joseph’s Kickstarter, my band, The Dregs, will be contributing a song to his Flaw Fest album assuming it gets funded so now I’m not just excited because I like the idea, I’m also excited because I want to write a song about guilt for Joseph’s album.
He also decided that Bugs Bunny is an atheist and I’m all for putting Bugs in our court.
So hey, listen to the podcast and support the Kickstarter! It’s what friends do!
KickStart Me Up
I’ve been talking up the latest Kickstarter I’ve been running and guess what? I’m going to talk it up some more.
On April 12th, the Dregs and 4 Pints Shy will be doing a show together. This in itself is a big deal because we haven’t really done one before. Not like this anyway.
We’ve performed a couple of brief shows together at the festival and they were a lot of fun so the idea surfaced to do a full-scale show together and at first that was all it was going to be – a show.
How Can I sing about Christmas?
When The Dregs perform our Holiday shows, we sing a lot of inappropriate music. Songs like “Do you Have what I Have” and “I Want a Hysterectomy for Christmas” are Dregs fan favorites. So popular, in fact, that we get requests for them all year round.
But we also sing some traditional stuff every year and this year especially, I had more than one person ask me how I dealt with singing religious lyrics. It’s a fair question that comes from the knowledge that I’m not a Christian and I’m pretty darn vocal about it.
The question primarily comes from other atheists. I get it. As a non-Christian, we all get bombarded with religious music at this time of year. For every rendition of “Let is Snow,” we have to listen to eight versions of “Oh Holy Night.” We get tired of constantly being told to fall on our knees because we just don’t want to do it.
I may be an atheist but I still really love Christmas. I don’t just like it. I love it. I love the decorations (christmas lights are pretty). I love the way everyone is a little bit more cheerful this time of year. When I’m talking to people on the phone at work, they are a little more patient with issues. They are a little more pleasant and understanding.
I don’t know if it is because they are anticipating they will find a set of Indiana Jones blu-rays in their stocking or because they are super excited their savior was born in a manger over 2000 years ago. I expect the former is more common than the latter but I don’t really care.
A Spooooky Geeks Without God
Another Tuesday morning and another episode of Geeks Without God! We have another installment of our Geeky Boners in which we talk about all sorts of geeky stuff but mostly Borderlands 2. Man o man is Nick obsessed with Borderlands 2.
I was also allowed to pimp my band a little bit. So that was cool.
Actually, the episode ended up being our longest yet because we proceeded to talk about how much we all like Halloween and it turns out we like Halloween nearly as much as Nick likes Borderlands 2.
So listen up if that’s your thing!
Another Podcast? What is it with me?
I’m a bit behind on this one but last week’s Renaissance Music Podcast was recorded live at CONvergence 2012. The Dregs performed two live songs for the podcast and I also told a story about a time I tore up my knee for comedy. The good folks at the podcast regularly feature Dregs music so if you are a fan of the Dregs or you want to hear some funny stories about working at the Renaissance Festival, please check them out.
CONvergence 2012 Highlights
There were a few low points at CONvergence 2012 but they aren’t even worth mentioning. Most of them had to do with last minute planning failures and my complete inability to sleep past 7:30, even when I went to sleep at 5:00 A.M.
So forget that stuff, here’s some of my best moments from CONvergence 2012 (more or less in chronological order):
Grail Diary 