dates

juat added a few dates to the ongoing cupholder spring tour including some chicago shows and one tour that takes us from chicago to dallas to pennsylvania and back to chicago in three days. YIKES. that some crazy overnight driving.
more shows for April in the works and plenty of stuff popping up for the fall from the natty conference we went to.
finally bought new shoes today. it's been almost two years. they feel squishy and nice on my feet.

it's b

mileage

the cupholders have gone 16,233 miles since our first tour in September, 2004. That's a lot of miles...

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road writings

so when i'm not driving and completely exhausted, i tend to write on the road. but i can't write philosophy type blog entries unless i'm here on the computer. so i write little short stories and poems, and every once in a while i try to write a funny country song (still haven't been able to. always come out sad.)

so here are a couple poems

pasttime
spliced flies in a pod genocide
the vaseline meats shake hands
smog room for the both of us
snaps and sparks pop the mark
green out window roll with fingers
pores pour, chicken skins and sores
flood hits the spot, turgid and taut
flitting filters fitting fastly for fun
roll it over and hit it again

_________

ODE
3 or 4 in a row
were no-gos
now it's changed

the eyes roam
front and back
out on the range

hunter-gatherer
just need a latherer
something to fill this dent

spread all over
field of clover
i drop drops where i'm sent

the road before
is unfinished lore
and sweet unseen mauve

the road behind
are ties that don't bind
i have no time for love

__________

more to come....
it's the b

word of wisdom

if you ever kill a twin or drown someone in a lake in a rural area, do not, i repeat, DO NOT cut out the newspaper clippings associated with the event and put them in your closet. and certainly not in a photo album next to pictures of the person you killed.

this is what i was thining when i woke up this morning and it has been eating at me all day because i couldn't remember what it was. it just came to me.
that's all.

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national conference

we made a ditty of a little CD booklet for our demo CD. these photos are our scientist bio photos.
the concept is an improv testing lab where we'll perform comedy tests on students and other scientists. it looks to be pretty sweet if we can finish all the painting in time. we're going to miss mike at this conference, though. he's one of our best salesmen.


Joseph Leftwich has a masters degree in Psychocomibabbology. After attending Harvard University he traveled the globe studying the psychology of comedy in other cultures and wrote a report that his wife said was, “charming.” He can be seen in this fall’s ABC series, NUM83RS, as Dr. Tube. He is ecstatic about working in improv. SPECIALTIES INCLUDE: Water Comedy, Dialects, and Mimesis Driving.


Sir Miller Firsch, Ph.D. was awarded his doctorate in Comedic Studies from Oxford University in 1978. He has been published in Scientific American 17 times and had one comic published in the Schenectady Daily News in 1983. After being knighted in 2001 he was captured by Cuban Nationals and set free once his act was deemed “amusing” by Castro himself. SPECIALTIES INCLUDE: Brit-com References and Awkward Hugging Comedy.



We found Ace Manning when he was an infant floating down the Rhine in a wicker basket. We have since done several thousand hours of tests on him. He enjoys his red oven mitt. Over the years he has come to understand the powers of improv through the tests that we perform and says he is “A-Okay” with the scarring it has produced. SPECIALTIES INCLUDE: Thermal Improv, Pun Avoidance, and Fruit-based Inuendo


Malcolm McDowell is an actor who has been in a few movies.
Jeremy Lamb is a scientist in our improv testing laboratory. He graduated from Johns Hopkins in 1999 with a PhD in improv physics. The degree was later stripped as it was proven that he has never even been to Maryland. He joined up with us after his Dad begged for his inclusion. SPECIALTIES INCLUDE: Funny-word Comedy and Posing Studies.
______

i don't know why bill looks like an arab. the picture just came out that way. funny what the camera reveals sometimes.

that's all. we miss mike.

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CHAI Fest

Here are the Cupholder Workshop descriptions I just sent off for CHAI (Cool Hip Awesome Improv) Festival coming up next weekend in Sioux Falls, SD. Can't wait.

1.) Improvising By Yourself
Teacher: Bearded Lamb of Bigly Huge (Hugely Big)
Are you tired of other people getting in the way of building what you want on stage? Discover the ego feeding frenzy that is improvising by yourself. Find comfort in being alone on stage through a series of exercises and games. And learn some veteran tricks for killing time and holding attention. Three check marks for this one.

2.) Elements of Narrative
Teachers: Jon Benner and Michael Joplin of Available Cupholders
Stop wandering around the stage talking about whatever. Good improv is about good storytelling and this workshop from grizzeled hardnoses of touring improv will turn you into a story machine. They'll tell you what makes a good story and what fixes bad ones. Three check marks for this one.

3.) Looking Back
Teachers: Ace Manning and Bill Stern of Available Cupholders
Everything you need for a scene will be brought up in the first three lines. See how much more focused and funny your improv can be when you pay more attention to what your partner is doing and always think back. We'll also cover the elusive "button" tactic for ending scenes. Three check marks.

Sound interesting? They're open to the public. Just go or already be in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
See you there.

b

the sad times

on the timeline of life there are many encounters with death. some people are exposed to the loss of someone close at an early age and some meet this formidable opponent once maturity has divulged its ugliness. yet until you have experienced it first hand, you're merely grieving for the grieving. as i grow older i, naturally, have more instances with death and dying just as anyone would. we get older and people we know go away permanently. it's just how it goes. so sparing the altruistic nonsense phrases we all know about grieving, except the one i just said about how it goes, there is little that can be said in said sad times.
one of my closest friends lost a brother today. a brother? now that's not usually how it goes. a good percentage of us have lost grandparents and anyone who can read has undoubtedly lost great grandparents. most everyone i know has never lost a parent. but the same can't be said for people i know who's brothers and sons have been lost.
i'm sure it's just a function of it being my personal experience and mere coincidence but it still makes me wonder. I have a bad run when it comes to hearing about males i loosely know passing away. When i was 7 i had a next-door neighbor named Dennis who was a pretty good friend of mine, the only one in the approaching list i feel i was close with. I went to school in another neighborhood so he was pretty much the only person i knew around my house. we hung a good deal and had a great time. i think he had some kind of congenital kidney disorder and he passed away after i had know him for maybe a year. his death had a profound effect on me and caused me to grow up a little faster than all the other little cupcakes at school. they learned what it was like to lose a friend from My Girl. I actually lived it.
The more I write and pause to think I'm reminded of boys i knew who have died. There was the rumor about Joe Chessar, a kid who had gone to my middle school but ended up going to a different high school. Turned out to be true. He drowned in Lake Travis.
Jon Walker fell off a cliff while camping in high school. He was in my micro-computer class and i still remember the empty chair the first day back from the weekend after it had happened. Mrs. Dailey said something nice and we went back to typing exercises.
Then there was the suicide of J.R. Berry who after his grades went sour at Texas A&M jumped off a parking garage. And Esteban Allemand who was killed in a car accident after high school. Then my step-cousin of sorts if there is such a thing, was also killed in a car accident just a couple years ago. And today, my friend's older brother was also taken in a car accident. He was 32, I believe. Certainly too young for his parents to have to say goodbye.
I have to be honest. I was not that close with the preceding list of the parted. But i am still heavied by their loss. It is their family's I feel for the most as I will not miss them directly. But through association i feel terrible for those who will miss them greatly. i hate to see people go but i also hate to see people i love in pain and that's what my friend is feeling right now. nothing but pain. it just sucks but it is necessary. You know this whole life thing just goes away in a flash sometimes. we form bonds with people even though we know that bond will someday be severed. it's a testament to the human race that it can be so optimistic as to develop those life long attachments even after thousands of years of loss and suffering. the suffering subsides and old bonds are strengthened, maybe a new one is made.
what's important is that we recognize another's grief and recognize what it is in ourselves that makes us love each other.

and do it more.

R.I.P.

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a very private letter

oh, it'll be so much fun. we'll have cake. bunt cake. with hot cocoa, too. then we'll cry together until the sun comes up and then we'll cry at breakfast. then we'll run naked through the woods hunting venison. when the sun goes down, we'll sprout wings and throw up the uncooked deer meat we thought we could digest onto farmers below. finally, we'll say goodbye again, wiping each other's chins clean. that night, we'll smile-cry alone.

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recent pictures

3:00 am


3:03am


3:37 am


3:49 am


3:58 am


3:64 am

3:724 am

THE NEXT DAY

6:47 pm


7:15 pm


7:15:03 pm

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Meta Tags

So I was rudely awakened this morning at around 11:30 by a call from a stranger; a colleague I guess. He stated his name and what company he works for but I couldn't understand either of them because he spoke fast and had a city-folk accent. he asked me why i had a meta tag for his company on the available cupholders web site. i tried to explain to him that I didn't know what meta tags are and I was genuinely concerned that someone had hijacked the site and worked some kind of spy-ware mojo on it. He asked who the designed of the site was and I said it was me. He got upset and said he wanted the meta-tag to his company removed and then said the name of it again but it was too fast and pissed off for me to understand. He said that I knew what he was talking about which kind of pissed me off because I didn't. I told him to explain to me what it was he was talking about so I could fix the situation. He just repeated himself and hung up.
So, I went to the web site to try to figure out what he was talking about. He seemed pretty irate and I don't like to tick people off unless they deserve it. I soon figured out what a meta-tag is.
Back in the day when I was researching NACA (national association for campus activities) I found an agent's web site. They dealt in comedy and at the bottom of the page was a whole bunch of space with nothing in it. I highlighted all of the empty space and discovered invisible text of all of their competitiors. I had always wondered why porn sites had done that. I then realized that this is what they do to hijack other people's searches for their site. Although it doesn't really work unless your page is more popular than their's already, I think. So, I copied all of the what-I-didn't-know-were-called meta tags and pasted them into our cupholder page. and i did it on the beardedlamb page which is why you can search for "mozambique improv" in google and come up with bearded lamb.
I thought it was interesting that he was so knowledgable about web design so I decided to search for his company once I figured out what it was he was saying by searching for the only word I understood (amusements) on my page and finding the meta tag. what i found was very interesting. the most obscene usage of meta tags I have ever seen (just scroll down and highlight the empty space under the graphics). I find it hilarious that people are always so worried about other people's actions being as underhanded as their own, so they try to stop them. Like someone who assumes you're stealing things from them just because that's something they do and assume everyone does. It's the untrusting spouse who may be more guilty than the accused.
While the meta tags are underhanded, I don't think it is illegal and I debated what to do about his tag in particular. I should remove it because he called me and asked me to remove it. And so I did.
I replaced it with "hypocrite."

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what am i doing? it's almost 4am

apathy? no, naprapathy.

That third picture is pretty scandalous, eh?

it's only five and half days

Oh, I'm not spontaneous, huh?

ROAD TRIP, BABY. LET'S ROLL.

you like dat?
doesn't even fit on the stupid map.

b