KingLou Drops Science 2.0

Yesterday was my 2nd father's day ever. It was nice. I woke up to Jodi and Ace bringing me my father's day cards and the delightful gift of a new waffle iron. Guess what is for breakfast for the next month? If you guessed pancakes then either you didn't read the last sentence or you don't know what a waffle iron is for. He's a clue, "Waffles." That also happens to be the answer to my earlier question. So I gave it away. So what. For a treat we went to a new place for brunch. Five Front. It was a really nice place to have brunch for a change. They have an awesome patio garden and the food was really decent. The service was a little on the slow side but the coffee came often. You'll never guess what I ordered. If you said "Pancakes" again I don't understand why you are reading this. No, I ordered waffles with blood orange syrup. It was yummy. I don't know how "Blood orange-y" the syrup was but I do know that there wasn't a lot of it. I guess that was good since it made me use the syrup more carefully rather than the usual syrup bath I force upon my waffles. Ace was his usual charming self. There was a couple behind him and he couldn't stop staring at the girl and she couldn't stop staring at him, either. He is such a flirt it's silly. After brunch we took a long walk that culminated with everyone taking a nap when we got home. The rest of the day was spent either walking around or getting dinner ready. I ended the night playing Halo against the some of the jerks I know. It was a eally nice day. THE FINAL DAY OF COLOR IT CLEAN This past Thursday was the last performance of the Gunshow sketch run, "Color It Clean" We had 2 great shows up to this point. Really big laughs and bakc slapping all around. This last show seemed to be heading in that direction, too. The open groups had gotten some really big reactions and were going well. Then it was our turn. The show started with the classic "Dick Hole 1" a quick bit where a man gets his dick stuck in a hole in the wall. It's a runner so this is the set up for the rest of the show. It usually gets a laugh and some groans. It got nothing. At least thats what it seemed like from the back. The next sketch was blood bank. It did okay. But it was missing some laughs. Jokes that had hit with 100% before were falling totally flat. I guess that describes the show in general. There were some laughs but mostly the gags were at 1/2 appreciation levels. In hind sight there were defintely some laughs going on there but for some reason they seemed muted. So we went out on a low note as far as audience reaction was concerned but over all the material proved to be very strong and consistent. I was pleased. Now it's time to start a new sketch show while we make more and more improv craziness. Next up: MORE Providence memories...

It's been a week since Gunshow got back from the Providence Improv Festival. It was the first trip as a group to anything that involved more than a subway or a cab and it was a total success. I must apologize for the delay in blogging about it. I was just totally overwhelmed with the details of the trip. Starting with the drive up there things were pretty crazy. We decided to drive up together in a mini-van so Matt agreed to rent the thing and we'd all meet him for pick up. For some reason it was decided that the best place to pick everyone up was the last stop on the N/W line. I have made my arguments as to why this was a crazy decision but it was what happened. Ryan found out late that he wasn't going to be able to make it with us on the van so he was taking a train up and was scheduled to arrive about 2 hours after us. As predicted by Goldstein we ran about 30 minutes behind schedule and got on the road at 4pm. Some had argued that by leaving from Queens we'd be THAT much closer to getting out of the city. Actually we were THAT much closer to being stuck in the traffic hell of Triborough bridge and Major Deegan nightmares. For seating I was relagated to the backseat since I don't get car sick. Two of our passengers claimed to be highly suceptible to car sickenss. I don't mind sitting in back but I do worry about going to the bathroom when I am stuck in endless bumper to bumper traffic so I went into defensive mode and fell asleep. When I woke up I was in a way better mood because we were not in a sea of stalled cars. We did run into some shitty traffic but not to the same degree as one finds in the wasteland of the Bronx. Once we got out of the city proper we made good time. We arrived in Providence, check in and headed out to see some shows. As it turned out we barely beat Ryan and his train by 45 minutes. Sigh. Friday night show: Saw a set by Improv Boston that was pretty decent. Good short-form that had nice playful moments and some really fast on the feet thinking. My favorit emoment was when player kept denying his obvious murder by claiming that the bullet, knife or pitchfork had hit a Saint Christiopher medal he was wearing. Then another player asked his with some exasperation "Does you head have any kind of force shield, invisble armor, contact lenses? When the answer was no he stabbed the guy in the face with a pitchfork (it hadn't worked on the chest earlier due to a vest of Saint Christopher medals.) The 2nd group, out of the gutter was an all first generation portugese improv and sketch troupe. They showed some videos and did some send ups of the differences between american and Portuguese families. There was some improv, too, I think. I don't recall really. Afterwards we met Ryan and the stallwart fellows who went to pick him up from the train station at the Trinity Brewhouse. We ate while Ryan, Matt and Ashley went to the midnight improv jam. By all accounts the jam was, well, a JAM! We went to the after party at Tazza, the official PIF bar. After being there for 40 minutes, or enough time to see the end of film being projected on the wall, the Bruce Willis film The 5th Element, the lights came on. Bar time. Total downer. We stumbled back to the Holiday Inn and shot the breeze until about 4am and then went to sleep. My favorite bit that came out of that late night talk-a-thon was the idea of a guy who had to explain how is father had gotten all the way up his ass. "Well doc I was changing this light bulb and I just so happened to be nude. It was really hot in my apartment and I was really sweaty in my house so I asked my dad to hold the ladder. Well long story short I slipped off the ladder and I guess, well, I guess I landed on my dad. I'm sure you get this sort of thing all the time but I swear this was a total accident." That and the idea that Ryan was so high that he couldn't determine what sensations his body was sending him. So his statement "Ahhh, this is the shit" took on a whole new meaning. It was fantastic. As I was trying to fall asleep I kept laughing about it in the dark. It reminded me of simpler times. Times before I would cry myself to sleep. That last part is a joke. End of Part 1.

Over the last few months we've been playing cat and mouse, literally. We have a mouse. I've seen it boldly dashing around our little NYC kitchen. Our cat, buster, who has traditionally been a mouse slayer (35+ mouse souls devoured), hasn't been able to lay paw one on this little guy. We don't want to use glue traps because honestly, although they do the job, they are nasty. When I came home today, in itself a minor ordeal thanks to some sudden and huge raindrops, I was greeted by our furry dasher. I was in the kitchen making Ace's yogurt when suddenly it ran along the top of the counter. AHHH!!! I yelled. Ace thought it was funny for daddy to yell. I finally decided that we had to do something. Buster was suddenly active and smelling everywhere but this mouse is smart and we need to dispatch him to mousey heaven ASAP. I asked Jodi to pick up some snap traps. I have never had use for such a thing before but I set the trap with some bread and peanut butter. Fast foward to after dinner. I got up and started cleaning. I hadn't heard the trap so I figured we hadn't been successful but that didn't mean I couldn't look. So I peeked and low and behold... the fucking mouse ate all the bait. Both traps picked clean. I put the traps together wrong. I finally managed to get them set right and re-applied the delicious bait. Now I sit here... in the dark... waiting... EDIT: VICTORY

A bad breakfast is enough to ruin my day. Like the whole day. Shot. All because of one breakfast mishap. That is how today is shaping up. We went to the Happy Day's Diner on Montague for a change of pace since our regular diner has been seating us in the old folks and church going crowd section instead of the children section. The wait staff in the childrens section love Ace and are very nice to him. The waitstaff in the old folks section like Ace, too, but not to the heights of the childrens section. It ios nice for the odl folks to be around Ace. He seems to take their minds of their decrepit situations. So we went somewhere else. Happy Days Diner. It was gross. First of all there has been a change in the management. The place used to be run by an Indian family. Now it is run by what I was guessing were Russians. Lets just say that the new managers are not keeping up the memory of the old ones. The high-chair came and it was full of food. Cheerios and scum. The waiter wiped it out a little and gave it back but the ourside was also filthy. The fingers of a thousand maniac babies swiping their slobbery paws on it's receptive plastic sides for ages. Just nasty. So I had to re-clean the outside with a baby wipe and it was NASTY. Then we ordered. I got the standard Waffle. I am not exaggerating when I say that it was the WORST waffle I have EVER eaten and I have eaten a LOT of waffles. The waffle itself was bland but with a hint of a really unpleasant flavor. The syrup was obviously watered down and gross. The waffle even seemed grossed out by the "syrup" because it didn't want to absorb it into it's bland sponge. I ordered a side of bacon which arrived with the waffle. This could have been a saving grace. Good bacon heals many rifts. This was not the case with Happy Days Diner bacon. It was flavorless, rigid and just in-line with the rest of the meal. One of the pieces of the five was okay and even bacon flavored but it was too little too late at that point. Classically about 10 minutes after the meal was in my system I started feeling really depressed. The shittiness of the meal going up into my brain as the awful waffle started it's journey to fecesdom. A journey it was well on it's way to before I ate it. Then the dominos of my depression started to tumble and the wonderful traps I set for myself sprung one after the next. We forgot to rerserve the patio for Ace's birthday party next month. Plenty of time? Nope. Someone already reserved it. Yesterday. The temps are up in the 80's for the next week. We need to put in the A/C's now! Oh wait, someone is insisting that we get the windows cleaned first. Wonder when that will happen (tick tock). Well at least we could go for a bike ride with Ace. Oh wait! I seem to have lost the keys to the lock on the child carrier so it's useless in the basement. Thanks a lot, you shitty waffle.