Fat Bitches Be Sangin

This is it, ladies and gentlemen.

These past few weeks of me not posting anything on here have been spent seeing shows and friends that I won't have the opportunity to see again for, at best, a long time.

I leave Chicago on Saturday morning and thus have no intentions of updating this blog again, unless I am in fact able to move back out here - be it this summer as an intern or after graduation for the rest of my life.

If either of those wishes come true, you'll know, and perhaps you'll find some more ramblings here to waste your time on.

I don't think I need to say too much in summary of this life-changing semester, as you all know how happy it made me.

Instead, I'd like to narcissistically end this whole thing with a few screencaps featuring myself from the DVD of our Monday night performance (which I will probably be forcing you to watch awkwardly and repeatedly at some point in the near future).

The semester technically ended with a pizza party, but I don't feel like doing a Google image search for pictures of pizza right now, so let's all just pretend that the semester ended with our class show and agree to close this blog out the same way.

Thank you all for reading.

Peace.

All That Really Mattered Was Tuesday

I need to brag about Tuesday evening now.

I can’t remember if I’ve explained this on here before or not, so, quickly, one of my teachers is on one of the best teams (The Reckoning) at iO, and I’ve been going to their shows every Tuesday and Thursday night basically all semester.

Accordingly, I almost wet myself when I found out Tuesday afternoon that they were going to be joined that night by Ike Barinholtz of MadTV (I know, I know, but this guy actually turned out to be really funny, and I’m not being sarcastic), Tim Meadows, and John Lutz from Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock. We got our hands on some tickets before it was too late and I don’t know if I’ve ever been so impressed by an improv show.

They did a phenomenal 45-minute set, took a break, and then did another 45-minute set, this time joined by two other original members of The Reckoning, Brad Morris (who does Uncle’s Brother) and Pat O’Brien, who have both been unable to perform with their old team for quite some time due to their busy schedules as Second City Mainstage cast members.

In both sets, even with such a high number of people on stage simultaneously and even with so much star power in the group, everyone participated equally and everyone was hilarious. Whether you know much about improvisation or not, I hope you understand that what happened that night was special, to me at least.

I think the best way to convey to you all how much fun I had at this show is to share the somewhat darker truth. No bullshit: this show was so good that I actually felt a strong but weird combination of sad and pissed off when it was over. I think what really happened is I realized just how much I am going to miss being in Chicago, having these kinds of opportunities and living this lifestyle. Less than three weeks left for me here, people. It's sickening.

On a happier note, while waiting for my peoples to make their way downstairs so we could leave, Tim Meadows walked by me on his way out. He wasn’t with anyone and we made eye contact so I felt compelled to do it.

“Great show, man,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said in his Tim Meadows voice as he exited the building.

Moments later I watched as he walked down the street alone. It was late, and I had the sudden urge to give chase and try robbing him for something only Tim Meadows could possess, i.e. a flash drive with the first draft of The Ladies Man on it, or a personal memory of something that happened involving only him and his good friend Chris Farley.

You’re all pretty much caught up now.

Tomorrow marks the start of our final week of classes, and I use that term loosely at this point because the majority of our time from now on will be spent rehearsing.

Next Monday and Tuesday we have our preview and showcase. Wednesday afternoon we have a pizza party and the dream semester officially comes to an end.

Talk to you sometime between now and then, maybe.

Presentation Pictures

On Tuesday morning we had those final presentations I mentioned a couple of posts ago. It was a pretty fun morning, aside from the fact that we collectively screwed up big time by all believing that we were supposed to start at 10, and not 9. My prediction is that we are all looking at an automatic letter-grade drop for that mishap. Oh well. Anyways, most of the pictures that were taken turned out poorly, but I’ll share some of them with you nonetheless.

We'll start with some pictures of Jordan and I silently performing a series of actions for Adam's presentation. His topic was Foley Artists so he was on the other side of the stage making the sound effects of us...


Getting sick on an airplane.


Eating popcorn at a movie (picture taken shortly before I (un)intentionally grab Jordan's crotch).


Getting gay married.

Moving on, Jordan's topic was puppetry, and he wrote a scene about a therapist who relies on a puppet to try and help his patient (played by Luke).


The puppet is a rotisserie chicken.


Those ping-pong balls are the eyes.


The patient didn't particularly care for this puppet so he beat the hell out of it for 30 seconds to a minute. This was one of the most inexplicably hilarious things I have seen in a long time. Those are chicken parts all over the floor.


I don't know when or how Luke's shirt came undone, but watching him gasp for air with his chest exposed and chicken parts all around them was also a classic visual to me.

And now for the documentation of my presentation, which I think went really well.


My topic was costume design so I wrote a scene about three male strippers. This is Ethan, playing the role of veteran stripper Kyle, whose stage name is Doctor Dick, a.k.a. the Surgeon Genital.


Luke played the role of one of the new guys, Danny, whose stage name is Grandma Girthtacular.


Adam played the role of the other new guy, Brad, whose stage name is Baby Big Balls. To clarify, Adam is wearing a diaper.


The bickering over whose stripper costume is sexier is starting to heat up at this point.


ETHAN: I don’t know buddy. I’m definitely familiar with the concept of MILFs, but, uh, I’ve never heard of BILFs.

ADAM: Do what now?

ETHAN: A BILF. A baby I’d like to fuck. I’m not so sure that that fetish actually exists.

ADAM: Are you kidding me? Women love babies. Why else do you think they have them all the time?

(a little later on)

ADAM: Oh like the panties drop ‘cause you dress like a surgeon?

ETHAN: Women get naked for doctors all the time. Haven’t you ever heard of fake tits?


LUKE: Guys, cool it. I think all of us have great costumes. My only issue with you, Brad, is that I was here first.

ADAM: What the hell does that have to do with anything?

LUKE: You’re stealing a key element of my gimmick.


LUKE: I can’t play a convincing old lady without wearing a diaper for the incontinence. But I also can’t have you stealing my thunder. I should have exclusive rights to the diaper bit, because I was here first.

ETHAN: Technically I was here first.


ETHAN: Basically goes without saying that no good surgeon would ever abandon a patient mid-procedure to go take a shit.


ETHAN: There’s clearly only one way to handle this. We have to work together. Function as a three-man team.


ETHAN: We’ll call ourselves The Poo-Pants Group.


Yeah, you wish I had taken video.

Last Weekend (Part 3 of 3)

Sunday was basically spent saying goodbye to David, napping, watching TV, and trying to find a homeless person to give left over Harold’s Chicken to until it was time for us to go see Uncle’s Brother (Tim Meadows and mainstage cast members Brad Morris and Joe Canale) at iO.

Anyone who has been reading this blog with any kind of regularity knows that I’m obsessed with Uncle’s Brother.

This time was extra special though, and not just because I had Dem Homies Dat Keep It Gangsta But Also Like To Sew On The Weekend For Fun Productions sitting with me.

This already amazing group of improvisers was joined by some guy whose name I can’t recall from UCB theater out in L.A., and also by Wyatt Cenac, who you may recognize from The Daily Show.

Guy whose name I can’t remember held his own and was fine.

Wyatt Cenac brought the house down in every single scene he was in and made me understand why he has a job with The Daily Show. He was unbelievably funny and made this particular evening a truly excellent experience.

That’s all I got for last weekend. My guess is that it probably doesn’t seem as nuts as I had led you to believe it would be by breaking it down into three separate posts. Well just you wait until you see the forthcoming post about this past school week.

Last Weekend (Part 2 of 3)

Saturday wasn’t quite as action-packed as Friday was, so this will be quick.

Basically, we spent the majority of our day just waiting to eat lunch at Gino’s East, a popular deep-dish pizza place located just off Michigan Avenue. We got our table pretty much immediately after arriving, but for whatever reason, it took much longer for us to get our pizzas than the standard 45 minutes we were told it would be.

A few of the things I felt like we may have been missing between our arrival and our food’s arrival: our college graduation, Barack Obama’s first term as president, the birth of my never-wanted child, and a championship season for the Cubs (things got really loud in there for a little bit).

All complaints aside, here’s what you need to know about Saturday: shortly after we sat down at Gino’s, two girls approached our booth. These weren’t just any ordinary Chicago girls. These were, in my estimation, the most stereotypical rising ninth-grade girls one could imagine. They had braces and wore too much makeup. At least one of them was wearing Ugg boots.

They kicked off this inexplicable exchange by giggling awkwardly. Brad greeted them partly out of courtesy but mostly out of curiosity, and that’s when they asked if they could take a picture with us. We realized that a woman we assumed to be one of their mothers was standing eagerly nearby with camera in hand, and without really asking for more information like we should have, we complied. The Miley Cyrus wannabes joined us in our booth, one on each side. The picture was taken, they said thanks, returned to their table and then left the restaurant shortly thereafter.

As a result, we spent the first half of our eternal pizza wait trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. A lot of hypotheses were formed, proposed, and dismissed. We decided that there was no scavenger hunt going on. There were no dares being made. These girls weren’t just boy-crazy. There is only one plausible explanation for this occurrence.

The fact of the matter is that these girls looked at us, then each other, then back at us, then back at each other, and at that point, the short one turned to the awkwardly already really tall one and said:

“Hey, like, is that Dem Homies Dat Keep It Gangsta But Also Like To Sew On The Weekends For Fun Productions, like, sitting over there?”

“Um, yah,” the awkwardly already really tall one replied. “I freakin’ love their music even though I’ve, like, never heard it. Let’s go get a picture with them. Mom, get the cam-rah.”

And so it was.

The rest of the day consisted of us agreeing that DHDKIGBALTSOTWFFP had officially arrived on the scene, talking about what we should have said or done during this bizarre incident, and exploring every abandoned inch of Navy Pier while the rest of the people in this city wasted their time not freezing their nuts off.

Last Weekend (Part 1 of 3)

Straight up: Club Shar was hoppin’ this past weekend.

D-Orr visited all the way from North Carolina Thursday evening through Sunday afternoon, and the other three members of my hip-hop super-group, Dem Homies Dat Keep It Gangsta But Also Like To Sew On The Weekends For Fun Productions, were here Friday night through Sunday night.

I probably don't even need to say any more in order for you all to understand that a fun and ridiculous weekend was had by all; but I will.

Here’s how this is going to work. I’m gonna give each day its own post in an effort to make it easier for anyone actually reading this shit to get through it all.

So, starting with Friday night, we went to a preview for the new e.t.c. show and it made us all laugh rather hard.

Hey lady in the green shirt sitting three rows behind us at that show, if you’re out there reading this, I just want you to know that I sincerely hated your guts and I think everyone else in the building that night did too. I’d be willing to bet that your shitty behavior during that show was typical of you, and I have pity for everyone that has to hear you run your mouth so endlessly and stupidly on a regular basis.

I apologize to everyone (except for said dumbass) for polluting this blog with such an angry rant. I just really felt the need to talk trash to somebody who is pretty much guaranteed never to see it.

Back to happier things.

After the show, we made our way over to Wrigleyville and consumed some of those gigantic pizza slices I’ve posted pictures of on here before. The main thing to know about this adventure is that after we ate, we decided to take a lap around Wrigley Field before getting back on the train. During probably the most isolated and least illuminated stretch of this lap, we crossed paths with a scrawny, bespectacled college guy who appeared to be heavily intoxicated. I’m really not kidding when I say that I think this guy was trying to get robbed.

Holding valuables in one hand, he put the other up as if to stop us, said hey, and then as we continued to walk past him, turned to us and yelled, “That’s it?”

I’m only kind of sure that I then heard him spit at us, but I know for a fact that we saw him, five minutes later, purposely turning left off of the sidewalk in order to stumble down an alley where hopefully, some other large group of guys would be waiting to beat the hell out of him and take all of his belongings.

Enjoy your holiday everyone. Parts 2 and 3 will both be up before the weekend is over.

Just The Edumacational Parts

Sorry for the delay; this weekend was nuts. I’ll get to that in the next post, which should be up sometime tomorrow or later this week, depending on what else I have going on.

For now, I’ll just bring ya’ll up to speed on the “academic” highlights I’ve had since the last time I updated this junk.

- Last Thursday, we each pitched an idea for an original sitcom and a possible pilot episode to go with it. I based mine on my father’s time spent working as a librarian. This assignment was difficult but intriguing. I just wish we could have had more time to improve upon our ideas.

- On Friday we had tech rehearsals for our final presentations in Context. It would be a pain in the ass to explain the whole assignment here, so I’ll refrain, but all you really need to know is that I wrote a scene about three male strippers bickering over each others stage costumes. This went quite well and was really fun to watch at the run-through on Friday, so I’m pumped for the actual performance tomorrow morning. I may try to take pictures, but I can’t make any promises on that.

- This morning for Physical and Vocal Training, I performed Mooj’s monologue/rant of increasingly perverse sex acts from The 40-Year-Old Virgin. The assignment was to learn and try to replicate an authentic accent or dialect from any movie of our choice, and I chose to go with the route that enabled me to say things like “butthole pleasures” and “alligator fuck house.” Real school is going to be such a major adjustment.

- We put together a tentative running order for our show today. For the time being, it looks like my stage time will consist of rapping, messing with an audience member or two, doing some backup singing with the rest of the ensemble, and maybe throwing a few lines out here and there in some larger cast scenes. Things are definitely subject to change though so we’ll see what happens. We also named our show today. “Hot Women and Children First” emerged victorious, with “Poop, Rape, Bears” falling in the final round of voting.

That’s really all I have for now. Besides, I better get back to memorizing. For other people’s pieces tomorrow, I am playing the roles of Tom Brokaw, the bully in an unhealthy gay relationship, and a beat poet/rapper. Typecasting all around.