Finishing out the year

Merry Christmas, Erdmaniacs. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. Rich and I were able to go to Dallas for 2 days, thanks to no shows on Christmas eve or Christmas. I hadn't been there in nearly two years, so it was nice to be there and be in 70-degree weather. But our trip to Dallas was, of course, two days after the mainstage show opening. It went fairly well - the show itself went as well as we could have hoped, aside from one immense brain fart on my part toward the end of the show, but it was a weird audience, as I'm told opening nights often are. Lots of industry/press folks who watch things very differently from an average audience member. Even though I'd been to openings before, I had somehow thought that there would be more energy and excitement in the room, and there really wasn't. So that was a little disappointing. But all in all it was a huge relief to finally open the show. We then had two shows the following night, and they went really well. I think we already feel like the pressure's off. I felt a little better about things when I got a call Friday morning telling me that the show had been Jeff Recommended. That means that the Jeff Committee (sorta like the Chicago Tony awards - you may remember a previous entry when we went to the awards for last year's shows) found at least one element of our show that they liked. This is a good thing, and means that other members of the committee will continue coming to the show for the next few weeks and could ultimately nominate people/things for Jeff Awards next year.

So my first mainstage process comes to a close. I've learned a lot, and I look forward to my next process when I can put what I've learned to use. Overall, I'm happy with what I've created for this show and I think it will be fun to run in the upcoming months.

Yesterday we flew home from Dallas, caught up on a little TV (did you catch any of "Deal or No Deal" last week? Pretty great.), and then I went to a very fun Armando. It's always fun this time of year, because alums are in town and audiences are big. Following Armando was the Improv Match Game's 1-year anniversary show. There were 8 of us on the panel instead of the usual 6: regulars Jeff Griggs and myself, Jason Sudeikis, Dan Bakkedahl, Charna Halpern, Frank Caeti, Armando Diaz, and Kevin Dorff. It was a terrific panel, and we had a huge audience. It was a great time. Rich pulled out all the stops for prizes, and the winner got Blue Man Group tickets thanks to IMG intern Rebecca pulling some strings. Before the show Rich goes to the audience to get contestants. One of the people he interviewed was a 13-year-old kid who's favorite subject in school was lunch. I had really hoped he'd play, but Rich made the right decision and chose two adults, since things can get a little risque. But the kid got a Bob Guiney CD during the show, so really, wasn't he the big winner?

This week we have 2 shows every night, but no improv sets and, more importantly, no rehearsal, so it still seems like an easy week. Saturday is New Year's Eve and we do a show at 7 and one at 10. The 10pm show will end just around midnight, and we'll do an imprvo set to ring in the new year. It will involve a cast member in a diaper. That's all I know for sure. And then starting Sunday, life will go back to normal. There you have it.

And the other two weekends?

Overheard yesterday as I was walking down Southport:

Guy on cellphone walking behind me: "I don't want to go out for New Year's. I already have a couple of parties to go to. I party probably 50 weekends out of the year; why would I want to go drink with a bunch of amateurs?"

I've also heard that Christmas is this weekend

48 hours from now the show will be open. Tonight we did our last improv set until New Year's eve; traditionally there's no set the night before a show opens nor on opening night, and for the week following we have 2 shows every night because of the busy satire-loving holiday season. For the past week or so we've been having true improv sets, as opposed to trying out new scene, so already it felt like things were getting easier.

We spend just about all 4 hours of today's rehearsal working on a new show closer. We'd been closing with a couple of different songs, both of which are entertaining and are still in the show, but they didn't really fill the role of a closing number. This one should suit that purpose a little better. We put it straight into the show tonight, and while there were some line screw-ups here and there, I think we did a pretty good job for the first time out. Unfortunately, we only get one more practice show, if you can call it that. But we also have one more day of rehearsal; I think we'll be in good shape. I will say that it was a delight to watch my castmates (and myself) flounder with lyrics while committing 100% physically to the song. The special award for this goes to Matt Craig, who raised a chair over his head while singing something roughly to this effect "hamma nerbut leemar Mabel onsa tuna fridge." To be fair, "Mabel" is a legitimate part of that line.

Last night (Monday) I played Match Game along with my director, Ron West. He did great and it was fun to have him on the panel. Next Monday is the big 1-year anniversary show, and I'll be playing with a great all-star panel. Not that I count myself as an all-star...you know what I mean, right? Jeff Griggs and I will be the "regulars" there to keep it grounded. Keep these big stars in check.

My next transmission will likely be after the show has opened. To those who have come to see it or will see it or have said nice things to me in the past few weeks, thank you. It means a lot to me. And I mean you especially. Seriously, all these other people who read this are jerks. It's you that I'm really talking to here.

Kinder, Gentler

It's hectic times like these that it's easy to forget about things like one's paralyzing fear of celebrities. But fortunately I was reminded of it when Richard Kind showed up to play our set tonight. To set this up properly, you should know that tonight's show was probably the best we've had since going into rehearsals for this show, or at least our audience was the best we'd had. I think we ran about 7 minutes longer than usual just because of holding for laughs and applause. Crazy. So then on top of that, a celebrity shows up to play our set. And I'll tell you, Richard Kind was terrific. He seemed nervous backstage at the prospect of improvising and not doing "old school" sets where we'd get some suggestions from the audience and then go back and plan some ideas. But you'd never know he was nervous from watching him. He was funny and a good improvisor. What more can you ask?

We open a week from tonight. On the one hand I feel like we're pretty much done, but on the other I feel like we have no time left to polish what we have. Today we talked about coming up with a good closing scene/song to sum things up and put a nice little bow on things. Currently we have a fun musical number to end the show, but it doesn't really act like a closer because it doesn't address what the show has been saying. So with any luck we'll be able to hammer something out in our 4 remaining days of rehearsal. Stay tuned.

Snow, Strangers' Legs, and Robots

This week we had our first big snow of the season. Thursday Rich and I headed out for lunch before my rehearsal, and as we went in to eat it started lightly snowing. By the time I got out of the show that night, we had about 6 inches on the ground. Fortunately, I got out of my street spot ok, but I got stuck trying to get into the parking area behind our building. I tried to turn in and got stuck right away, so Rich came out and tried to push me out. After quite a bit of effort, we finally got my car back into the tracks made by previous cars in the alley, and we realized we would have to drive to find a shovel. At this point it was close to 1am. So we headed out to a couple of 24-hour grocery stores, with no luck. Eventually we called a Walgreens down at Clark and Barry, and they had some. We bought two shovels and headed back up to our place and shoveled a path for me to get in and for Rich to eventually get out. By this time it was about 2:45am. And by this time I remembered why it was such a good idea to go live on a cruise ship for most of the winter.

To date there is still quite a bit of snow on the ground and there have been a few other times where Rich and I have had trouble getting out of the parking lot, so I've started keeping one of our new shovels in my car. You never know.

In show news, it's now 10 days to our opening. My guess at this point is that the material is all there, but the running order and the length of the scenes will change. Our show is running two hours right now (with intermission), which is about 10 minutes too long. But I think our show gets tighter every night, so it should just take a few internal scene cuts to get it down. Last night (Saturday) we just did an improv set, rather than try out any new scenes. Ron (our director) played with us, so that was fun. Tonight Ron was in LA, so we were on our own and did another improv set. It was really nice to just improvise with no thought to how this scene might work in the show or whatever. It'll be nice to get back to that.

There is a scene in the show where I end up laying on the floor at the end, and then when the lights go out I'm supposed to grab two props that have been thrown out on stage before I leave. This is often a little tricky, since I've been laying on the floor and I can't always tell where these props have landed (they're thrown from offstage). Last night I was pretty sure one of them had landed just downstage of me, just at the lip of the stage. I guess I didn't realize how close to the lip of the stage I was, because when I went to grab it in the dark, I ended up grabbing an audience member's thigh. Pretty good huh? Live theatre, everybody!

Tomorrow (Monday) I'm going shopping with our costume designer for my show clothes. I really hate trying on pants, so that may not be too much fun, but I can't argue with new clothes that someone else is buying for me.

This week on E! they've been doing a countdown of the top 100 SNL moments. The one I've enjoyed seeing recapped twice now is Sam Waterston doing the "Robots" commercial. If you don't know what this is, I urge you to find out. I think it was number 42 or so on the list.

Growing Pains

I'm happy to report that we have our new TV and there was no ordeal involved. I know, I'm as stunned as you are. Having our new TV prompted us to take a trip to IKEA on Monday, as we needed a new entertainment center of some sort to hold our various components (DVD, Tuner, CD player, VCR, XBox, Phonograph, Atari 2600, etc.). We also needed some sort of kitchen storage shelf and some speaker stands. So off we headed to lovely Schaumburg, happy to be free of the weekend shopping bustle and general craziness. We were not prepared for the very mature discovery that lay ahead inside the enormous revolving doors of IKEA: we have outgrown this place. Currently, I can count on one finger the number of real wood, as opposed to particle board, pieces of furniture we own. Looking at one "birch effect" shelf after another, Rich and I realized that now that we're homeowners and in our 30's (youch!), it's time to stop living like we're in a dorm. Which isn't to say we left IKEA empty handed. We did buy an end table for our living room that matches our coffee table...which is from IKEA and is particle board but is somehow a lot nicer than the other stuff. And it will allow us to replace a different, much less desirable end table. We also bought some speaker stands and some wooden hangers (and $2.99 for 8, how can you not?). And some trivets, for the one time of year that we take hot things out of the oven and need a place to set them down.

So it wasn't a wasted trip; come to think of it, even if hadn't bought anything it wouldn't have been wasted, because we made an important decision and reached a bit of a milestone, I think.

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