Well - still pounding away on a corporate gig - recording voice-overs, doing rewrites, scrapping ideas and pulling new ones out of my butt - all while maintaining my teaching schedule. Makes for very long days. I am also seeing if I can make it through the work week without wearing jeans. I am very jeans dependent. And I only have two pair that I rely on. It's really not fair to the jeans. They deserve the break.
THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY
Yesterday, I asked...
"A group of third graders in Waycross, Georgia have been suspended because of their plot to do what?"
66% said "Protest the Iraq war" - Yah. They are worried it will still be going on when they are senior citizens.
No one went with "Swap downloaded music" or "Start a prostitution ring"
34% got it right with "Kill their teacher"
According to First Coast News, nine third grade students suspended at Center Elementary in Waycross for an alleged plot to attack their teacher. "This plot was uncovered at the point that something dangerous was brought to the school," says Lt. Dwayne Caswell with Waycross Police. Police say the students were hatching a plan to harm their teacher Friday morning. They even brought items from home to carry out the plan.
Okay, it would be real easy to rail on about violence on TV and in video games and how these kids minds are being poisoned and their parents are lousy, etc, etc, etc. But there's one side of the story that's still missing. How much of an asshole does a teacher have to be to piss off a group of third graders?... to the point of premeditating murder?
"Johnny Diablo recently opened a strip club in Portland, Oregon that only features strippers who are what?"
27% said "Hefty" - All the poles are bent from the use. The strippers lose the dollar bills on their own body.
10% said "Unshaven" - One shouldn't shed during a lap dance.
9% said "Libertarian" - No tipping. Just a flat tax.
54% got it right with "Vegan"
According to the urban travel guide Gridskipper, what might be the world's only vegan strip club opened last month in Portland. There are no leather or other animal products used in any of the on-stage costumes, and most of the strippers say they're vegan as well. Instead of the usual bar grub, the menu has vegan replicas of chicken nuggets and the like. As the owner, a long-time vegan himself, Johnny Diablo, has charmingly put it in interviews, "the only meat we have is up on stage."
A vegan strip club also attracts unusual heckling from the patrons. "Hey, baby! Do organic fries come with that dairy-free soy shake?"
Well, I tried to post a new News Quiz on Friday and Blogger was just having none of that nonsense. I couldn't even get rid of the old one and ended up moving it to the bottom of the page. Any way, coming off a busy week and going into a busy week. The upside is that I got to spend all day Saturday shooting seven fake drive-in movie trailers for an event in a few weeks. We didn't get the budget we wanted, so we ended up taking the original scripts and just doing them on the flying - changing them and coming up with other ways to do them. It was a lot of fun. Here are the movie titles I wrote for the project: Star Truck, Who's Afraid of Virginia the Wolf, Drive Hard 2: Drive Harder, Rock 'n' Roll Trouble, Truckstop of the Dead, Chris (the male version of Christine) and Mother Trucker. Very silly and they look like they are turning out to be very funny. We might end up posting edited version - sans client references - to the Fig website.
SOUTHWEST AIRLINES
I like Southwest Airlines. They tend to be very reliable and the people tend to be very friendly. Lately, though, it seems they are over selling all their flights. All the ones I have been on. While that can be very uncomfortable there can be advantages. On Friday afternoon in Raleigh, they asked for volunteers to step off my flight. You would get a voucher for the cost of the flight plus a hundred dollars. I took it. The next flight was a couple hours later. The Raleigh-Durham airport, by the way, while small, is a great airport. Everything is reasonably priced, the food is good and they have a spa. I killed an hour getting a facial (insert your own joke here) and a neck and shoulders massage. It was great and not very expensive. The best part is that I was able to give my voucher to Julie who bought a round-trip ticket to Orlando for only $30. It was worth sticking around for that.
METALUNA AUDITIONS
WNEP Theater announces auditions for Metaluna and the Amazing Science of the Mind Revue, by Joe Janes and directed by Jen Ellison. Metaluna will be produced at A Red Orchid Theatre, July 17 - August 16. Auditions will take place April 19 & 20, 10am - 4pm at the Peter Jones Gallery ( 1806 W. Cuyler, 2nd Floor). Please prepare 2 minutes of anything: Magic tricks, cooking tips, personal stories, a monologue, etc. To schedule an audition time, please send an email to auditions@wneptheater.org. You may also schedule an audition by calling 773/552-3133 on April 8th, 12pm - 5pm (Calls at any other time will not be accepted.) Walk-ins are welcome, though we cannot guarantee a time for you.
ROBOWRITER ASSIGNMENT
Mr. Othic filled in for me on Saturday and came up with this assignment for generating material... Write a list of 10 songs that you either really loved or hated, then take three of those and let the title, the lyrics, or the music inspire them. Then write down 3 one-line comic premises for each song, then write a scene from one of those.
"Garrett A. Dalton of Connecticut may have been busted on a worker's comp scam when he was seen doing what?"
33% said "Teaching an aerobics" - Feel the burn...and s-t-r-e-t-c-h that lie! No one said "Climbing a tree" or "Giving a lap dance" 66% got it right with "Racing in high heels" According to the Republican-American, Garrett A. dalton, a state correction officer who was collecting workers' compensation because of a back injury has been suspended from his job and arrested after news photographers captured him competing in a radio-sponsored 40-yard dash in high heels. You know, I try to come up with witty things to say here, but all I really have for this guy is...idiot.
I'm off to North Carolina today for a fun project. I'm helping out on an in-house training video as a "creative consultant." My job is to sit around and say "Hey, try it this way..." while Catholic school girls wash my feet and dry them with rose petals. Tough gig, but I am up for the challenge.
If you miss me, you can see my face downtown on these banners. My face is the one split in half by a light post.
(Photo by Fuzzy.)
THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY
Yesterday, I asked...
"A bearded man in Rome is wanted by police for robbing stores and banks using what?"
25% said "Whining" - But I said I want the money now (he said, stretching the "now" into two siren-like syllables)!
12% said "Seduction" - Well, hello. Did heaven lose an angel? ...All the cash, please. ...That smock would looks lovely on you. ...10's and 20's. In this bag.
No one said "Motivational Techniques" - Are you afraid? Good. Face your fear! Put the money in the bag, you can do anything!
62% said "Hypnotism"
According to Orlando's Local 6 News,a mysterious bearded man in Rome is wanted by police for using hypnotism to mesmerize cashiers and bank tellers while he steals thousands of dollars. Surveillance video from inside a store that aired on CCTV showed the man walking up to a supermarket cashier and apparently mesmerizing her before stealing cash.The same man is believed to be responsible for robbing banks. A bank teller said the man approached her, leaned over and told her to "look into my eyes," the report said. The next thing she noticed was her till was empty. Another cashier handed over more than $1,200 after she said she became mesmerized by the man. Local 6 reported that the victim's don't remember any of the theft, only that their actions seemed natural at the time.
I guess the "help you quit smoking or lose weight" market has dried up for this guy. I hope he is working up to something bigger, because this sure seems like a waste of his talents. The obvious "show me your boobs" possibilities aside, this guy could be making wheel barrows full of cash as a religious leader, an infomercial pitchman or campaigning for Hillary Clinton - "Yes, she was under sniper fire in Bosnia. Yes, she did save her daughter and Sinbad's life. These are not the droids you are looking for."
"A con artist in Pennsylvania is scamming McDonald's restaurants out of food by pretending to be what?"
40% said "A youth minister"- Blessed are the empty calories.30% said "Ronald McDonald"- Anyone willing to fess up to being Ronald deserves a break today.10% said "A food drive rep"- Feed the hungry...crap?20% got it right with "A high school basketball coach"According to the Associated Press, police in three western Pennsylvania towns are looking for a man who pretends to be a basketball coach and scams McDonald's restaurants out of food and money using bad checks. Police say the man drives up in a school-type bus and enters the restaurants ordering about $50 of food for his "team." The man then pays with a $150 check that appears to be from a school district and takes his food and his change, in cash.Seems pretty elaborate for stealing just $100 and $50 in crappy burgers. This man's gifts are being entirely wasted. He should be in politics.
In my Columbia Comedy Workshop class, we're working on a scene where a couple is having dinner at a restaurant and nothing happens. They just have a nice conversation. No heightening. Nothing at stake. Nothing out of the ordinary. However, by the end of the scene, nearly everyone in the background at the restaurant is dead. It's a fun scene and in putting it together, I realized how little attention is paid to the "background" in a scene, especially those written for the stage. Typically, if you even have people in a scene in the background, it's usually to emphasize the effect that the couple is in public and someone is making a fool of his or herself. They are just a little more than window dressing. A little.
So, the assignment for this week is to write a scene where the story - or stories - that you are telling play out in the background. In our show, we have three scenarios playing out. It doesn't have to be that many. It could just be one. Whether the scene in the background is connected to the foreground scene or not doesn't matter too much. The main thing is that the foreground scene establishes what's "normal" in this setting while the background scene does all the work of telling a story. You definitely don't want pertinent information being delivered in the foreground scene once you have started the background story. It might get lost. Nor does it have to be set in a restaurant. Any place where you can have two or more people in the same room, such as an office, train station, doctor's office waiting room, etc.
It's a fun, but challenging exercise. We tend to rely on our dialogue to tell the story. In this case, we are intentionally relying on our dialogue to NOT tell a story and allowing one or more to play out through action. Good luck!
THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAYOn Friday, I asked...
"British author Sebastian Horsley was recently denied entry into the United States on what grounds?"
50% said "He wore a anti-Bush button"- While always in fashion, he was not wearing one.
37% said "Terrorists like his books" - I'd be more frightened if Oprah did.No one said
"His pen could be a weapon"
12% got it right with "Moral Turpitude"
According to The Times, Horsley flew to New York to promote a book about his time as a drug addict and his insatiable love of prostitutes was turned back at the airport on the ground of “moral turpitude”. Sebastian Horsley, 45, had arrived, dressed in his “dandy uniform” that includes a velvet scarf and a stovepipe hat, for the US launch of his memoir Dandy in the Underworld. Instead he was interrogated for eight hours at Newark Airport about past drug taking, his links to Kate Moss and the contents of his hat (to which he replied: “My head.”). His convictions were ages ago. If you are not going to let people into the country because they admit to having done drugs or being with prostitutes, then we should start shipping them out, too. Start with D.C. and then move to the state capitals.
In slight defense of the immigration officer, you are going to raise a little suspicion if you show up at the airport looking like this...
