new york

so i've been in new york for a few days getting ready for a conference on improv, that whole AIN thing. so i got here monday and after hanging out with my lovely host who has so graciously opened up her home and laptop to me for come-and-go-as-you-please usage (and who i found out reads this blog coincidentally), i had pretty much nothing to do. for tuesday, i did something i've always wanted to do which was have no plans or any idea of where i'm going or how to get there in Manhattan. did it. had a great time doing it. my camera's batteries died halfway through the day so i don't have a lot of proof for the things i experienced but nonetheless, here is a bulleted list, becaue i know we're all very busy people.
- walked up 5th and 6th avenues intermittently taking in the people and the sites.
- had a flat ass piece of pizza.
- walked toward the chrysler building to see the lobby. there is no lobby from what i could tell.
- walked into grand central station. it's as huge as the pictures suggest except that its shorter in length than what i imagined. but still very tall and michael jordan has a restaurant in one corner of it.
- found the sony plaza where i checked out the newest pointlessly expensive sony products.
- figured out i wanted to go to central park but felt too stupid to ax people where central park was.
- found central park shortly thereafter.
--the next few all are in central park--
- saw ducks in a pond.
- was surprised to find native outcroppings of metamorphic genius rocks shist, micah, and gneiss. (i was almost a geologist.)
- found "the dairy." which houses an information center where you can buy shirts and watch archival film footage of the park from way back when.
- found the shakespearean garden which is a small windy path through a bunch of flowers and plants with random shakespeare quotes stuck about the path.
- found a puppet theatre next to the shakes garden.
- found a castle where they take weather readings for central park. climbed to the top and looked over to see a rather large theatre nearby. Delacroix?? Theatre.
- walked through a large field called sheeps field.
- saw a sign that said, "please no dogs in sheeps field." and though, "how will the sheep know where to go?"
- walked through what looked like a film shoot for a Bollywood film. hung out for just asecond to see if there was anyone i would recognize. realized that was stupid.
- found a turtle on a stick by a huge pond. looked like he was having a good time.
- came upon another film shoot. climbed a gneiss outcropping to see if i micah get a look at what they were filming and thought, "holy shist, that's dermot mulroney." i watched for about thirty minutes what was later i found out the filming of Griffin and Phoenix. the shot that they did several times was him carrying amanda peet past a rock by the water and walking past a steady cam guy who was just kind of loosely moving a bit. it was pretty involved and there were about thirty people there working on various little jobs.
- they called lunch and as people started to head away from the site a girl told me lunch was at Jockomo's on 74th street. hey, i looked like them, i was wearing shorts and a baseball cap and a t-shirt. i totally looked like a production asst.
- went to jockomo's and got some stuff from the buffet. no one really talked to me and i kept my mouth shut cuz i didn't want anyone to ask me what i was doing for the film. "Uh... uh.... I'm Dermot Mulroney?"
- left after there was no dermot and no amanda peet.
- back to central park. made it to the reservoir which is this huge lakeish body of water. i walked around it in the wrong direction. the signs said counter clockwise but i wanted to go counter counterclockwise. so i did.
- recieved dirty look from old lady who had to go around me with her little speed walkery self.
- found a map. the first of the day. and noticed that the metropolitan museum of art was in the park.
- found that.
- enjoyed very much a gigantic painting by stephen hannock and two amazing portraits by chuck close. got lost in the flemish portrait section of the museum looking for american landscapes. museum closed before i could get to the roof garden. damn.
- realized that i was developing a hip injury from so much walking.
- called my mom.
- walked back down into midtown and watched the first few innings of a yankee game that was being shown in bryant park on a huge movie screen.
- couldn't take the jagovs rooting for the yankees.
- left.
- came back to host house.
- slept as if a baby. or a dog. actually, it was more like a dog baby.

a great tuesday and great urban hike on a beautiful day in new york.

WISH YOU WERE THERE.
b

blog

blog.

observation on tour

just an odd observation on tour.
some of the people i encountered on our last tour are either stupid, careless, or generous. sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. went to a waffle house in the 20th hour of a 30 hour drive from PA to TX. had a waffle and a coke. and a smile. went to pay at the register. boy behind counter who oddly shared my name was distracted by similarly aged waffle waitress tussling his hair. misreads her handwriting and accidently gives me a 2 dollar discount. i say nothing.
later that day somewhere in East TX i buy a can of soda from a convenience store. total was 65 cents. i gave her a dollar. she gave me 65 cents.
back here in chicago at the end of the tour a lady gives me too much change for a gas purchase. as if they really need the extra 2 dollars.
karmicly speaking it all seems to make sense considering my current money situation. hovering near zero. but then again if karma really is involved i'll end up having to pay for my dishonesty. luckily there's no such thing and its all coincidence and my brain trying to make sense of something that doesn't make sense.

yet with all this help from strangers, i'm still a po, po foole. i should keep buying stuff and getting it for cheaper than advertised. i should buy big stuff like houses and islands so i can get incorrect change on those, too.

i should buy some time so i can have more to give to you.

til tamale,
b

i shaved my head on stage

it was a sketch idea i had for the third well hung jury show we ever did. it was at our high school back in austin and the idea was basically i come out with a shaver and start to shave my head. but after a few swipes it gets jammed and stops working. so for the rest of the show my head has two stripes of hair missing. it worked and it was pretty funny.
what the cupholders are about to do takes this idea to a whole new level.
i have to start with what seems to be a tangential anecdote but will seamlessly make it's way back to making sense. the cupholders belong to an association that is supposed to facilitate or at least aid in getting us booked at colleges and universities in the US. we give them a lot of money for a membership every year and in return they give us the contact info for the groups that do entertainment booking on these campuses. using their typically inflated budgets they bring acts to their school for a good price. the market is highly competitive. we make cold calls and send out promotional materials to the schools and get a good deal of bookings this way.
the way we make the most damage is at the association's regional booking conferences. these are huge conventions where the agents representing acts pay to set up booths in a huge hall. students come from all over the region to "shop" around for entertainment. our charm is useful at these events and ace's good looks have booked us a t least a few shows. we do our best to connect to people and try to make an impression.
but there is more to the conference than just the convention hall with all the booths. each night of the conference which is three nights long, all the students go to watch showcases of available acts. these twenty minute samplers of entertainment are the key to successful booking. in order to get these showcases you have to pay a fee in addition to your booth fee and delegate passes fees. but just paying a showcase fee does not guarantee you a slot. they have a selection committee that determines which acts should be showcasing for each region. we have submitted to these and are convinced that our not having an agent (we represent ourselves) has been a major handicap for the committee.
but there is salvation in the form of something called the on-site showcase selection. at a few of the regional conferences there is one open slot on the last night of showcasing that is open. all the student delegates vote on which act they'd like to see perform. we have lazily pursued this goal and not been successful in getting a showcase. which brings me to my point. we have promised that bill will shave his head if we get that showcase slot. now when i shaved my head for the jury some 7 years ago, it wasn't all that long. bill's hair is strikingly gorgeous and he takes great pride in its existence and glory. that's what makes this a good gimmick. we're hoping people will want to see bill shave his head for comedy. and once we have them hooked with our gimmick, the other 18 minutes of the showcase slot we get will be packed with sweet improv. we'll gimmick them and hit upside the head with what they really want. then they will book us mightily. or at least that's the idea.
here's a flyer that we'll be giving out at the conferences. wouldn't you vote for us?
i might.

the front

the back.

cupholders RISE

b

tx our tx

out of bounds was stupendous. a great time with great shows and great company. lotta fun. makes me yearn for my austin. finally got a tx belt buckle today. put it on a few minutes ago. looks pretty sharp.
we drive back sans michael joplin on saturday. we're gonna miss him something terrible. bill and i who historically had little to do with sales for the touring company are going to have to take on his workload and make some magic happen. we need income. this fall might be thin as far as money goes for us personally.
and sadness is all around. i think our time with the current van has run its course. it's just too big for us and we put 40,000 miles on it in the first year of service. we need to downgrade that baby to something with better mileage, and a better loan. so sad to see the starcraft go.
my longhorns look to be in pretty good position to do some serious damage this year. what with miami, oklahoma, and thanks to us, ohio state already losing a game, the top ten opens up a bit. if we can go undefeated after beating up some big teams it might be real nice. my spirit is already in LA. i feel like a husk of aman in chiago and pretty soon, i'll be a frozen useless husk of nothing in the deep cold of deep north. boy, i can't wait.
the good news is i'm alive. and i have good friends and good family and a warm place to crash if i have to get out of the tundra. if i can maximize my time in chicago preparing for a foray into the world of LA what with side projects like music recording, film projects like occ: future guy, and improv work with the cupholders i can really use it as a nice prep for huge rejection in cali.
i think i'll give that mountain of rejection a few years, maybe morem before moving on to yet another frontier. either new york or austin if i feel the need to give up the big life. retire with no money and a lot of stories and improv abilities in my first home.
ah, tx. i miss her and i haven't even left yet.

i'm going to watch survivor with my mother now. goodbye.

B

what a world

don't have a lot of time. sleepy and all that. we just finished a huge mini-tour that took us from eau claire, WI to dayton, OH to Boston, MA to Austin, TX in 4 days. yeah, it was a lot fo driving and we spent about two hundred thousand dollars on gas (we only roll on premium.) the tour was great and we taped the shows en route to having a new promo dvd for cupholder bookings.
went to the second night of the out of bounds festival here in austin. real good stuff. saw good sketch and saw my buddies tv pilot that they shot here in austin. it was incredible and makes me feel like we need to really crack the whip cuz we're behind on our short film prowess.
trying to organize a few workshops to be run on sunday at the convention center in austin that is housing refugees (sorry, i don't agree with replacing that word with evacuees just to make us feel better than other world situations.) just want to run some classic improv games with the kids who are probably really tired of sitting around and not running around and going nuts. hopefully, we can put it together.
there's an improv troupe here that's from new orleans. they weren't scheduled to perform and people are reluctant to give up stage time. i'm trying to figure out how to incorporate them into my one man show tomorrow night. i may just give up half my slot and let them have it. it migh be nice for them to get up on a stage and be somebody else for a while.
a friend of mine is going to mississippi tomorrow to write some features for the UT newspaper. she was telling me about some pretty horrible stuff. i hope she's okay. im already worried about her. plus she took my power inverter so i can't plug in anything in the van. bummer. i was really looking forward to bringing a blender with me and making mixed drinks while driving around tomorrow.
girl, when you left, you took inverter and my heart.
sales for the urban cowboy soundtrack have been promising. especially considering i haven't even performed my solo show since its release a few days ago. but tomorrow i'm doing that show and i'm going to try to sell some cds. i want everyone in america to own one by 2008. that way i'll have enough money to cover whatever john travolta sues me for. maybe he'll fly in his quaaaaantas plane to my house and bother my relatives until i surrender all the money i made from the cd, which of course will be neatly piled in a bundle next to my tortoise cage. well, must be going. curriculum has to be written for my physical comedy class tomorrow.

keep it above the belt,
b

in a world...

in a world where one has no time to finish promised diarys, one must wonder if one should make such promises. the inspiration has passed unfortunately, but week in weird places was pretty good. we got plenty of support from the local press which makes me wonder about the crowds tues. - fri. but saturday's crowd of around 35 was pretty sweet. and our shows were good all week. the van safari was really something but like i said i have lost the inspiration to write about it. instead i write about these things:
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I JUST FINISHED MY FIRST ALBUM!!!
Sure, it's really just me singing along with and admiring and mocking an existing cd that was made by completely different artists in the 80s, but it still took me about ten hours to make, and it's pretty damn funny. it's called Bearded Lamb Sings Along to the Urban Cowboy Motion Picture Soundtrack. and it's just that. it will be available for sale at upcoming cupholder and bearded lamb gigs and maybe even up online if i can get clearance from the powers that be, which is really code for if i get my lazy ass to put it up there.
the track listing is pretty nice, too. there's some classic country tunes on there as well as some darkhorse b-sides that sneak up on you. this could be really huge. hopefully it won't be, otherwise i'm sure i'll get sued mightily by about ten different music publishing companies. that's the cover up there at the top. it's supposed to hook you into the blog post.
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it was a good day for the jury and the dropping of my name in austin, tx papers. check me out:

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-09-02/arts_feature.html
http://www.austin360.com/xl/content/arts/xl/2005/09/arts_09-01-05.html

it's always strange when you're more popular in a place you don't live than the place you do live.
always.
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we hit the road tomorrow for a three day mini-tour before heading to austin for the out of bounds festival. we're going to be trying out a new college format that incrporate a couple games at the top to satiate these people's need for short form which is pretty out of control. then we warm them up to longform with a little bill on the keyboard action, then we hit them with 25 minutes of flowy to close it out. chunk style. just like campbell's soup. it may be a little bit expensive, but it will get you through college.
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it's weird to see refugees flooding into neighboring states as if coming from some kind of war zone. it's sad to hear that people are shooting at helicopters rescuing the sick and bringing aid. the whole thing just makes you really think about how jacked up things can get without any of your own doing. sometimes things strike at the most random time and the only thing you can do is chalk it up to the randomness of the earth. no one would plan things like this. no one who loves unconditionally.
they should just play "bad news bears" on the jumbotron in the astrodome. and yes, the original, as if there was another REAL bad news bears. i think it would keep people's spirits up. it's the 8th wonder of the world, you know.

that is all. go forth and sleep mightily.

b