The World's Greatest...

RoboWriter Assignment

Another simple idea that can be a lot of fun. I am currently working on a scene for a Sketchfest show that features the world's strongest man and the world's richest man together. They are half-brothers meeting on the one-year anniversary of their mother's death. Don Hall will be playing Jackie Ralston, the world's strongest man to my Harve Cheekum, the world's richest man. Jackie is the kind of guy who likes to demonstrate his strength through stunts, like pulling airplanes with his teeth. At their mother's funeral, he was the sole pall bearer carrying his mother's body with his scrotum. Nice image, eh?

To get started on your scene, start with a trusty ol' list of ten. Fill in the blank on The World's Greatest ___________. Let your imagination go from the obvious to the ridiculous.

1) typist
2) fish slapper
3) hand shaker
4) trombone player
5) mountain climber
6) gardener
7) mathematician
8) candle maker
9) horse whisperer
10) shell collector

Build your scene around that character who is the world's greatest fill-in-the-blank. They can be someone who has exploited their gift, such as a typist who works the carnival circuit. They can be someone who has capitalized on their gift, a hand shaker who has become a politician and can get whatever he wants if he can just get you to shake his hand. It can be someone modest about their gift and they have a quiet, ninja-like quality to their trombone playing and handling. Regardless of the approach, have fun with it and play big.


THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY

On Wednesday, I asked...

"Celine Dion is out. The new theme song of the Clinton campaign is sung by whom?"

50% said "U2"
- Swap the Canadian chick for a bunch of micks? Nope.

30% said "The Dixie Chicks"
- No way. Hillary is a republican in democrat's clothing. If she went country, it would be Tobey Keith all the way.

20% said "Paul Simon"
- Yep. Except it's a recording of Senator Paul Simon playing "You Are My Sunshine" on a wax comb.

Surprisingly, no one picked the right answer "Big Head Todd and the Monsters"

According to ABC News, Celine Dion's "You and I" was unveiled as the people's choice for Clinton's destiny filled run for the White House. The song played on, from Iowa to South Carolina, without missing a beat. But, now, only the sounds of silence can be heard from the Clinton camp's Celine CD. Instead on the trail these days, Big Head Todd and the Monsters are in and their "Blue Sky" is seemingly the campaign's favorite as the New York Senator enters and exits the stage. I think this is good news, but unfortunately, an example of how her presidency would work. She would make a choice and then Bill would change it. Bubba's got taste in music. He must have hated that song like he hates carrot sticks.

Check Back Later

Thanks for stopping by. I have a pretty funkity day schedule-wise. Not sure if or when I will be bale to update the page today. I have signed on for another corporate gig that's already beginning to expand and grow out of control. The beast!

I have a workshop at 826 today, as well, and Robowriters tonight! Check the sidebar for on these two. And check out the Blogspot Blog of Note, A Lucid Spoonful, all about how culture and mythology affect how we eat,

- Joe

Warning Signals

99% of the world expelled a sigh of relief yesterday when we found out through very reliable sources that Iran dismantled their nuclear weapons program four years ago and has not ramped it back up and could not easily ramp it back up. The 1% that didn't find it to be good news are the war mongers in Washington hoping to make the Middle East the U.S's sandbox.

WASHINGTON — Defending his credibility, President Bush said Tuesday that Iran is dangerous and must be squeezed by international pressure despite a blockbuster intelligence finding that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago.

Bush said the new conclusion _ contradicting earlier U.S. assessments _ would not prompt him to take off the table the possibility of pre-emptive military action against Iran. Nor will the United States change its policy of trying to isolate Iran diplomatically and punish it with sanctions, he said.

"So, I view this report as a warning signal that they had the program, they halted the program. And the reason why it's a warning signal is that they could restart it," the president said.

You can read the rest of this story from the Associated Press HERE.

Forget the fact that Iran is a good eight years from enriching enough uranium to make a bomb or that we have enough eyes and ears and noses pointed in their direction that even the slightest whisper of a "secret" weapons program would set off bells and whistles all over the planet and let's forget the fact that this all sounds suspiciously familiar to the saber rattling that led to the pre-emptive strike on Iraq so they wouldn't use their weapons of mass delusion on us. And let's quickly forget that this intel didn't come out of the blue for the administration which means they've been ignoring it and lying to us about Iran - much like the reliable intel that said Iraq was not a threat.

If acting president Governor Bush says this is a warning signal, then by golly, it's a warning signal and we should listen! But if this news about Iran is a warning signal, then what's a signal that things are all okeedokee?

Based on this adminstration's actions, and lack of actions, this is a partial list of signs that everything's all right...

- Soldiers and civilians being killed in Iraq and Afghanistan
- U.S. children without adequate healthcare or education
- The national debt spiraling out of control under the supervision of a self-proclaimed "fiscal" leader
- A war that's going to cost trillions of dollars
- Obstruction of justice
- Decline of the U.S. dollar globally

And, for the record, other things George considers a "warning signal" - clear skies, the constitution and white doves with olive branches.



THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY

Yesterday, I asked...

"A NY dog named 'Trouble' has gone into hiding because of what?"

35% said "Botched plastic surgery"
- Yeah. Too much collagen in the dog lips. Made him look like Goldie Hawn.

10% said "Mange"
- I don't think this dog would suffer from such a common condition.

10% said "Bad haircut"
- This is a dog. Not Mrs. Tom Cruise.

45% got it right with "Death threats"

According to the BBC, Trouble, a dog that inherited $12m from late New York hotelier Leona Helmsley is in hiding after it was targeted by death threats. John Codey, who manages the dog's trust fund, told US television network CBS last week the cost of Trouble's security, medical care, chef-cooked meals and grooming was about $300,000 a year. Sheesh, is this a dog or John Edwards? I don't know much about dog care, but I would happily follow Trouble around and pick up his poop for 75K a year. Trouble's lifestyle is disgusting, but who the heck is giving a tiny dog death threats? Watch your back, Poochie. Wouldn't want you to have an "accident." On the "carpet."


The dog is the one in purple.

Karl's Roving Brain

You have probably already heard about Karl Rove's attempts to rewrite history in his upcoming memoir. He has already stated on a few news talk shows that it was Congress that rushed Bush into the Iraq war in the fall of 2002. Bush and his posse, apparently, wanted to be more cautious and not make the war political during an election year. Hmmmm.... not how I remember it and, so far, not how anyone other than Rove remembers it. The most surprising thing about this assertion is that Rove's pants did not catch fire or get hung from a telephone wire. You can read more about ol' asbestos pants and his lie HERE.

We here at the BS corporate office have scored an exclusive. We have an excerpt from Karl Rove's memoirs. It recounts a trip he and George Bush made to Baghdad in the autumn of 2003, months after we won the Iraq war.

In the early hours before dawn, George and I were still too giddy to sleep. At 4am, we heard all the mosques broadcasting their call to prayer. In celebration of their liberation, they changed the traditional Arabic chant to "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy" as sung by James Cagney. We both stepped into the hallway in our pajamas and giggled at the sight of the headline of the IRAQ Today newspapers at our hotel room doors. There just beneath its colorful banner, in English, was "Iraq Loves USA!" And then a subtitle, "We Hope They Take a Liking to Us and Stay."

There was a large window at the end of the hall. George and I decided to watch the sun rise over a new Baghdad. We threw up the sash and peeked out. We knew a Saddam-less Iraq would be transformational, but we had no idea how much! As the sun rose over the little houses with their white picket fences, we heard birds chirping. There along the street was a small horse pulling a milk wagon. The milkman, all dressed in white, delivered the day's dairy to Baghdad's housewives. I don't know how long we stared out that window transfixed. We saw long yellow busses being filled with skipping and laughing children on their way to school. We saw the local barber open up his shop while chatting with a friendly Iraqi policeman. A little boy helped an old woman cross the street. A teenage boy and a teenage girl, he in his varsity jacket, she in her cheerleader outfit, shyly met at the corner and walked hand-in-hand toward the local high school. And there was Sam, the local pharmacist, opening up his soda shop and general store. Any doubts anyone had over liberating the Iraqis would surely melt away if they saw what we saw. The people here are better off without Hussein, that's for sure. A newspaper boy on the sidewalk beneath us looked up and waved cheerfully at us. George threw the boy a gold coin to go buy the biggest turkey he could so George could take it to the troops and congratulate them on a job well done.

Next Chapter: How They Won the Iran War Without Me

THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY

Yesterday, I asked...

"Which of the following is the title of a new reality game show in development?"

35% said "Who Wants to Have an Affair"
- This one just seems so likely, it probably has gone into production since yesterday.

15% said "Who Wants to Be a Surgeon"
- This is the one I would watch. Game show and a way to help uninsured Americans get the operations they need.

8% said "Who Wants to Eat Spiders Out of My Ass"
- My idea. Look for it on FOX.

42% got the right one with "Who Wants to Marry a U.S. Citizen"

According to Reuters, Morusa Media, a Los Angeles company, is touting a new reality game show called "Who Wants to Marry a U.S. Citizen" that aims to create televised matrimony between legal citizens and immigrants who have temporary visas. As in the "Dating Game," which ran on network TV for more than two decades starting in the 1960s, a single U.S. citizen gets to ask contestants various questions. Toward the end of the show, he or she decides which one to select as a potential mate. Well, that sounds boring. I have a suggestion for an elimination round that involves spiders.

Denise's Friday Night Book Club (Book Optional)

THEATER REVIEW




Denise's Friday Night Book Club
Written and Directed by Greg Wendling and Brian Crowley
Friend Productions
Donny's SkyBox Theatre
Fridays at 10:30pm through December 14th
Tickets are $10; $8 for students; $5 TC students

A by-product of The Second City Writing Program and the Skybox Theater has been the development of sketch revues where the writers are separate from the cast. (Most sketch revues are written and performed by the cast.) In many ways, this helps boost the quality of these shows because the writers are focused on writing and the actors are focused on character and scenework. There's typically less ego involved regarding the ensemble, so the show as an overall product gets more attention.

Unlike many sketch revues in Chicago, Denise's Friday Night Book Club doesn't feel slapped together in an Old Country Buffet of mixed themes, styles and quality. Many things about it are just right.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should inform you that Greg and Brian, the writers and directors, are also a part of Robot vs Dinosaur - Chicago. I'm already of fan of their writing. And of them. My fiancee and I have an agreement. She'll go see one live show a month with me. I used to drag her to everything I went to see and it was killing her love for theater to bare witness to the amount of crap I endure. So, when I take her to see a show, I try to make sure it will be of high quality. Brian and Greg's show seemed like a good bet, and it was. We both enjoyed it.

The Denise of the title is a housewife/tyrant who runs a book club with an iron fist. The other ladies are relieved at Denise's ill-fortune of breaking her pelvis and are spending their book club time drinking wine and enjoying each other's company until there's a startling knock at the door. She has sent her whipped husband in her stead with a list of questions about the book and instructions to report back detailed information on everyone's responses.

This scene becomes the spine of the show as we periodically check back in with the club members and their struggle to wiggle out of the Nazi-like clutches of Denise. Most of the scenes deal with issues of power - finding power, losing power, abusing power - all at a very everyday life level. While not at all intending to be satirical in nature, DFNBC manges to show us that the same personality disorders that lead to shady elections and oppressive regimes are very much alive and well and living in middle-America.

One of my favorite scenes from the evening involved to co-workers, Meryl and Regina - performed by Katie O'Brien and Kristen McLaughlin. Kristen's character accidentally swears while making a mistake at the computer. Katie, her cubicle mate, takes this as an opportunity to bond and give herself permission to "unleash." In the hands of less experienced actors and writers, this scene could easily have gone blue quickly and become more about the vulgarity than about Kate's character's undercurrent of desperation to bond with her co-worker.

Less successful was a scene where a man tries to kill himself. Not because of the dark humor, but because of a logic problem with his final decision. I won't give it away because it will also give away the end to the scene. I'll just say, all he had to do was rewind and look up the name. Another scene about a man excusing himself from a business meeting of women to use the bathroom and the women all think he's going to masturbate is well-executed, but doesn't really go anywhere.

Brian and Greg's writing is sophisticated in that most of their scenes are about the characters and their relationships. None of the scenes come across like "here's the funny idea and now we're going to hit you over the head with it for four more minutes than we need to" as many revues do. Their quirky Letterman-like attention to detail tells you that these guys really care about the people whose stories they are telling.

The tricky part about the scenes is that I think they would work better in the hands of more experienced and more mature actors. Some of the scenes, and characters in some of the scenes, that I thought were just okay, might have been more believable and popped in the hands of older actors with more life experience. And that's nit-picking. It's a really good show.

Megan Presslak, Katie O'Brien, and Kristen McLaughlin excel in the (thankfully) multiple female roles Greg and Brian have written for them. Matthew Mages and Josh Shuter have their fine moments -Matthew as a boyfriend who has found a guy just like his girlfriend and Josh as the man accused of doing questionable activities in the restroom- but, at this point in their development, lack the chops to ground all their characters.

There are two shows left, so go see it. Denise's Friday Night Book Club moves in the right direction for sketch comedy revues. Smart, funny and rare in this town.



MINI-REVIEW

MASS RECALL
A Lead-Based Holiday Sketch Comedy Revue
Written by Ritija Gupta, Joseph Jurek, Jessica Murguia and Lauren Vinopal
Directed by Ritija Gupta
Gorilla Tango Theatre
Saturday, December 8th at 6pm
Tickets are $10

Again, in the interest of full disclosure, all of the writers on this show have shown up to RoboWriters on Thursday nights. On one level, it was very exciting for me to see many of the pieces they worked on in the writing group a few months ago being performed to a packed house.

Mass Recall is the first production put together by a group of students still currently in the Second City Writing program. They are full of enthusiasm for sketch comedy and jonesing to put on a show. While certainly rough around the edges, there are a few gems in this show. Scenes where a man has asked Satan - his childhood friend - to be his baby's godfather, a Jane Austen takeoff, and a phone sex call gone awry are all clever and fun and show the potential of this group. The rest of the show tends to be standard sketch and subversive holiday fare relying too much on racial slurs and vulgarity, substituting shock for humor. A few scenes just never find their footing enough conceptually. A scene where a bear on the verge of extinction has potential, especially since the bear turns out to be such an asshole, but it is too heavily plotted and has too many angles it's trying to work. The bear's a blast, though, especially as performed by Scott Fenstermaker.

I admire this group for their moxie and they are worth a look if only for the bragging rights later of "Oh, yeah, I saw them at Gorilla Tango years ago..."



THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY

On Friday, I asked...

"Parliamentary candidates in Thailand have been accused of buying votes for an upcoming election using what?"

35% said "Free iPods"
- No, but that might work for buying my vote.

14% said "Free Massages"
- That would be nice. Every election would have a happy ending.

7% said "Free DVDs"
- Even they don't put much value on a pirated Dane Cook movie.

42% are standing at attention with "Free Viagra"

According to the AFP, parliamentary candidates in Thailand's upcoming election are trying to buy the votes of elderly men by passing out free Viagra, a local government official said Friday. Guess it's the modern day equivalent of candidates passing out cigars. In this case, very happy cigars.

Saturday Morning Cartoons!

Nothing speaks Americana to me more than a man in a red, white and blue jumpsuit propelling himself over big things like swimming pools full of sharks on his motorcycle. What a way to earn respect!Stunts by this guy in the 60's and 70's were big news. Even bigger when they weren't successful. I'm sure it led to countless broken arms and legs from kids like me trying to jump over ditches on our bicycles. Yet, I don't recall any parental groups having a freakout over him being a horrible role model. At his peak, everybody loved him.

In "Saturday Morning Cartoons!-style," here's a tribute to the last great daredevil, the recently departed, Evel Knievel.

Search Yourself

ROBOWRITER ASSIGNMENT

A simple idea to get the ball rolling on a new scene. Pick your favorite search engine - Yahoo, Google, Whatever - Dogpile is a good one because it combines several different search engines - and look up your name. You've done it before, now you are getting permission to do it. Create a character based on the people who share your name, but aren't you. Then build a scene around that character. If you have an unusual name and a search engine doesn't bring up anything not you, then try using variations of your name, such as Bill or Billy instead of William. Still nada? Then use the name of a parent or sibling or use your mother's maiden name. When searching my name, I come up with a professor who's an Internet librarian and another guy who's a jazz musician. I might build a scene using one or the other or combine the two. Good luck.



EVERYDAY NORMAL GUY

My brother Don turned me onto this rap genre parody by Jon Lajoie that's pretty funny. I thought at first it was just going to be a pal(er) imitation of "Lazy Sunday," but it stands on its own. Check it out. Contains some harsh language, so crank it up if you are at work.


Every Day Normal Guy Rap Song - Watch more free videos



THE BS NEWS QUIZ OF THE DAY

Yesterday, I asked...

"Due to too little sunshine and exercise, a surprising number of U.S. children are contracting what?"

Nobody thought it was "Gout," "Vapors," or "Gamer's Thumb"
100% nailed it with "Rickets"

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, too little milk, sunshine and exercise is an anti-bone trifecta. For some kids, shockingly, it's leading to rickets, the scourge of the 19th century. But cases of full-blown rickets are just the red flag: Bone specialists say possibly millions of seemingly healthy children aren't building as much strong bone as they should, a gap that may leave them more vulnerable to bone-cracking osteoporosis later. Already there's evidence that U.S. children break their arms more often today than four decades ago, according to a Mayo Clinic study. Of course, I have to stick my two cents in about milk. I edited that part out from the question. I think milk is meant for cows and should only be drank by cows. What kids aren't getting is enough calcium, which is available in ample supply through many leafy green vegetables as well as broccoli, sweet potatoes and oranges. There. I'm off the dairy horse (or cow) now. I only used this question because I like the word "rickets."