Saturday, May 27, 2006

states of being

a commercial actor named randall and i went to tennessee on that audition. he's an easy going type, so there was plenty of yammer. i spent the better part the road-trip to toronto not speaking. not because there wasn't anything to say. mostly, adam slept and, mostly, rene played music. for six days.
in nashville, while randall was getting ready and memorizing lines, i went to a taco bell on the same block as the hotel where the audition was being held. immediately, the woman at the cash register greeted me with "how are you doing, sweetie?" in fact, all of her sentences ended with sweetie. behind her, another employee (in that purple shirt and those black pants i knew so well in my days as taco expediter 'omesh') began laughing. the cashier asked him what was so funny. he told her how much he loved her. and hugged her.
i was inside a retarded taco bell.
the tacos were made to perfection and tasted as fresh as mexico. the service was unparalleled. but the place was a mess. one special employee attempted to straighten up the soggy fountain drink area. orange drink spilled onto the napkins, little wads of straw paper soaked in syrup. she was interrupted by a regular customer. they hugged and laughed and talked. for a long time. it was the most adorable excuse for not working imaginable.
walking back thru the lobby of the hotel, i stepped passed a man in a suit and his demonstration: two yards of grass plugged into frames, a pair of scissors, and unbagged clippings. he was selling something.
upstairs on the mezzanine floor i signed in. they asked us to do the script once and then improvise it in our own words. the director had a long pony tail, and his shirt was too small. actually it fit everywhere except his exceptional belly. as he turned his body, his cell phone, clipped to his belt like a satellite, knocked over a cup of ballpoint pens. there were rubber bands in his beard. maybe.
during my turn to tryout for the spokesguy, i read the words off a cue card that was
fit over the lens of the camera. a hole was cut out in the middle of the card and, therefore in the middle of the paragraph. i was standing only a few feet away, so i couldn't really fake as though i were looking into the lens. i read the copy and when i got to the hole i said "hole".
in my improv, i simile-ically likened the internet to a lonely highway in the desert and their company as an oasis. it really felt like a hundred degrees. and there really was sand in the waistband of my underwear.

Monday, May 22, 2006

good-bye!

3 days on amelia island, in a condo a bud-bottle's throw from the calming surfing calm. the gig was for an insurance company that made a gazillion or two over the past year's disasters. but this was a party at the ritz-carlton (a cup of coffee, a fresh juice and a muffin = $15) to celebrate their amazing sales staff. i had 3 lines. steve, playing the host, skipped 1 of them. after the hard slog, we kicked it back to the ATL in one of the filthiest dialogues ever heard in a rental car - ever. what's a man-sock? i uttered it, and i still can't be sure.
while eating at a restaurant last night with cruchic and bo-d, i caught the last few seconds of a georgia lottery commercial (you bet!) i'm supposedly in. didn't see me. and i narrowly avoided a lottery commercial audition on friday for the miniature state of connecticut. lotto blotto.
tomorrow i kick it back out of the ATL to nashville for a spokes-guy audition with suddenlink. their ceo is superstitious. maybe the raconteurs will be grilling out in the front yard of their rock 'n roll compound.
keepin' it digital in '06.
update:
when they hired me to play the cashier they said i had the JUICE. i thought that meant i'd killed a guy and gained skreet respect. well check it out. not only do i have it, it's printed on the wall over my head.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

2400 miles.

that's how far we drove, ATL to YYZ and back. we took the short way home. the last evening of the catch 23 found us, the suits (misprinted as the two suits in rhode island), in the finals with instant theatre and neat squared.
we served up fun simple fare, but the scenes are timed in catch 23 to the tune of 23 total minutes for each team. before our final round we were informed we had 22 seconds left. was our team's head that far up our team's ass? so rene and i attempted an episode of knight rider in 22 seconds. i referred to him as david instead of michael, which i justified out of deference/reverence to hasselhoff over the knight-mare. the truth is, i never watched knight rider. instant theatre won and really deserved to win. their longform killed.
the space, by the way, was a professional black box at an old distillery called...the distillery. beautiful in every way, it made for some incredible improv, and will look fantastic when we get the DV edited. super special thanks to adam pinney for riding with us the whole way and shooting the shows.
best line(s) goes to graham wagner hosting: "welcome to the catch 23 finals. it's the monster truck rally of improv, only instead of trucks it's skinny white guys."
and not-hosting.
kurt: "imagine if the earth were bounced a billion times."
graham: "it was. that's why it's that size."

Thursday, May 11, 2006

you never rode the dream machine

we got into toronto about 15 minutes after the show we were in began. a strange smell (name one) wafted up from the front wheel that wasn't worked on in providence (our brakes went out). yet we hit the stage with all the gusto and frere jaque of a feral rhino. kurt smeaton played with us, and we ended up winning the first round of the catch 23. yay, kurt-lanta!
toronto is an amazing city. think new york, but clean. i rollerbladed all over downtown yesterday. there's enough room for bicycles and bladers to share with street trolleys and cars. the rails are a bit of a trick.. in fact there's this rubber goo they use in between the rails and the asphalt which simply grabs the shit out of rollerblades. imagine skating on the beach for about 2 seconds. i almost broke my face, but then realized how expensive it is, and didn't.
the free train toots on this week: among the freebies count getting my brakes replaced on my blades (thank you sports checque at the eaton center), free tram for rene and adam who had no canadian money, i got a free coke at the casino-rama (adam did not), we got free drinks at the catch 23 tuesday, and our wonderful, kick-ass host, alex tindal, has been kicking out the free vegan food everynight after midnight. seriously, vegan chocolate chip cookies, vegan fajitas, and (lo-fi) popcorn. this guy cooks late at night, then refrigerates his food to delay the reward. duly noted.
there's a photography festival going on in toronto until may 16th-ish. i bladed to a gallery on west queens yesterday and saw some gigantic prints a dude did of a phosphate factory in calgary. also, there was a showing of photos a guy did of many exposures of people - some fully exposed (read as: nude) some not (read as: ghostly). some old (read as: flabby) some young (read as: creepy cuz there were nude adult genatalia right next to them).
tonight we watched a bunch of improv - groups from winnipeg and edmonton. our buddies kevin gillese and arlen from edmonton did a really fun two man show that rollercoastered thru four story-lines and mixed cheap 80's power pop with emotional montages. very funny. graham wagner (you know him from iron cobra but his beard is like charles manson these days) hosted and invariably tidied up the place.
i've taken two showers since i left home last friday.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

i'm not santa, kid. just a guy in a wheelchair

there's this scene in swimming to cambodia where spalding grey is having his perfect moment in the waves off the coast of thailand. suddenly, he has a panic attack thinking about his wallet and personal stuff on the beach. the way he describes it, something like a dark line connecting his forehead to the stuff, and the stuff morphs into a pile of hot shit on a steel counter, that he's inexorably tied to, that is pulling on him.
i think i felt a fraction of that here in providence. which is weird 'cause this is a hip, laid-back town. but within the first hour of arriving i heard an argument about drugs and secret police cameras, a man tried to sic his dog on me, i chased away a group of thug teens eyeing all the equipment in the car, i bought chapstick, a truck nearly careened into a telephone pole in front of us, a group of bikers met peacefully in the street, i nearly bought nail clippers, a man was accused of stealing at a gas station, and i generally got pulled from the waves of a perfect moment and worried about my hot pile of shit.
actually, providence is great. our host gave free accomodations, the space we played in was rad, they gave us free dinner (i had an orange soda with vanilla ice cream float and a bowl of spicy tomato soup with corn and bread), gave us free drinks all night, and then paid us for our gig! which, by the way, was fairly decent, except for one dude telling us to stop because we sucked. which we didn't. did we?
right now we're getting the brakes fixed on my car. $430. that does suck. but i forgive you providence. you gave us free stuff and paid us for our jackassery.
hopefully the car will be fixed in the next hour so we can make it to toronto by our 9 pm showtime....

Sunday, May 07, 2006

beantown

well, they traded joe thornton to san jose earlier this year. the frustration is palpable. we passed fenway, drove thru the big dig. it had some leaks. but the city is absolutely beautiful. i'm saying this without actually having seen it by daylight, but boston at night kicks ass. a year ago our host, dustin, totaled his car staring at the crazy architecture, and he's a bonafide artiste.
we attended a birthday party for some girl. the backyard had a small dj stage, and when we arrived husky and musky we're doing some freestyle rap over some shitty lo-fi funk beats. one keg, a bonfire, and two slathered bbq ribs later, i found myself in a dilapidated rv, watching a one-hitter get passed around and around, but never to me.
we dragged rene's dj equipment up a steep hill, and he quickly doused them with actual good music.
after being cornered by some aggro who wanted to hear us tell jokes ("you guys are comedians? you're not very funny.") i slipped indoors just in time to hear this dude flourishing on an old piano. he was obviously talented, which belied his jock frame. he let up for a second, took a breath and sincerely asked if anyone in the house was trying to sleep. no. he launched into something classical. i took a stab at a joke: "if they weren't sleeping before, they sure are now." he proceeded to pull the rug from under me, pounding away at this truly gorgeous, technically insane piece. then he rolled me up in the rug, dipped me in shellac and mailed me home to mommy.
tomorrow we play providence.

Saturday, May 06, 2006

welcome to taco bell, would you like to join the marines?

richmond, virginia. reminds me of chicago. artsy. on the drive in, we saw people in galleries actually looking at art. turns out it's first friday, and all the peoples are invited to check out the art and eat. also turns out there was an AC/DC coverband playing at a club called the nanci ray gun. the guy who sang as brian johnson told us his myspace account. blaxl rose.
these guys rawked.
richmond has a great wait staff. everywhere we've been. toodles til boston tonight.

Friday, May 05, 2006

catch 23

we leave this morning (in about a half-hour, i better pack) for toronto. along the way we will be performing our two-man improv show "roadtrip" in providence, seeing an AC/DC coverband in richmond, and performing rene's improvised cartoon at the catch 23 tournament of wonders in toronto.
great folks and fanfare await.
check back each day for the next week or so for installments. i'll be attempting to brush my teeth daily, take pictures, and possibly see some playoff hockey somewhere.
miss you already.