KingLou Drops Science 2.0

Last week was a blur. I spent most of it editing a video for my friend and former improv coach, Dyna Moe. Her normal editor was busy with paying work so I stepped in. I was a lot of work but I do enjoy editing. People tend to be pleased with my results. And here is a link to those results. My Wife the Ghost. I did the main editing for the whole show and fellow Gunshow guy Ryan Sturt did all the green screen stuff and the final output. I just plum ran out of time. On monday I went to the screening and it was a big hit. I was pleased. Over the weekend Jodi's parents dropped by the big apple to hang out with Ace and the gang. We took them to the Atlantic Antic. It's like a mile long insanity parade on Atlantic Avenue. It was quite the display. I was sad there wasn't the usual amount of crazy political stuff for sale. Last year it was like a Democrat love fest. This year it was back to the usual junk and beer. Thats the nice thing about the Antic. You can actually drink at it and it's cool. All the bars set up beer gardens and some new brewery, Six Point was on every banner in site. Even if it wasn't the beer being sold. I had some of their Belgian Indian Pale Ale. It was yummers. At one point we stopped at the Waterfont Ale House (WARNING: TERRIBLE WEBSITE AHEAD) for some food. It was very yummy. However I had to step outside for a minute and I saw a seriously disturbing thing. There was a black guy there with all this medical braclet shit all over his arms and IV tubing hanging out of his wrist bandages. It looked to me like this guy had just torn the shit out of his arms and run out of the Long Island Hospital down the street. He had made it like half a block and then seemed to be having a lot of trouble when I saw him. He was shaking and looked like he was rolling over to die or something. So what did I do? I said "Oh man! YEESH!" and went back into the bar for some more Six Point. The guy was gone when we left the bar. Thats what I like to tell myself anyway. So this week of work has been spent basically catching up on all the work I put off to edit the My Wife the Ghost stuff. Like 30+ hours of editing and stuff! So I am way behind on my lecture DVD's and so on. Besides that work is thge usual. I managed to break a spoke on my rear wheel again. That's #4 for the year and the 1st on this wheel. I had the old wheel switched out after I broke 3 spokes in a month. Now it looks like I am going to have to have the whole wheel rebuilt at this rate. I performed twice this week. On Tuesday I performed with a re-united YOUR MOM at Galapagos in Williamsburg. We did a sketch we had last perfomed 2-3 years ago because someone put out a call for groups that had sketches about Unicorns. It just so happens that we did. Idin't really think we were going to get back together to do. But I am glad we did. It was fun performing with that gang again. We got a really good response. Then Weds Gunshow performed at Ash Weds at that bar that it's at that I can't remember the name of. Anyway, it was an okay show. I think we're all a little burned out in the form and want to try some new stuff. If we ever get a chance to rehearse then maybe we'll get to try some new stuff. Who is to say. This Saturday, Jodi has an opening at Exit Art. Looks like Ace and I will be making the trip over there. Before the opening Ace and I will be having a baby daddy date with Fritz and Stella. Lets see if my first ever Daddy date happens! Then on Sunday I am going to be writing for SNR. It's my first time sitting in so I am a little nervous about it. We'll see. I should probably tell people about it, huh.

Last week Gunshow went Austin, Texas for the Out of Bounds improv festival. It was our second improv fest and trip together. This time we were going with no coach and also we were joined by Jodi. The flights on American were smooth and easy. The flight from Dallas to Austin was delayed because the toilet wasn't cleaned properly and the pilot wouldn't fly with it fouled. We waited for like 30 minutes and then the pilot decided to clean the toilet himself. Bravo to you good pilot. One thing that is interesting to me when we visit these smaller towns for these festivals is getting used to the lack of people around. I mean when we got to both Providence and Austin I was like "Where is everyone?" I mean in Austin it was 4pm and much like Providence the only people evident were derelicts and more derelicts. Seriously. We saw almost no people who didn't look like they were looking for a shadow to lay down in or had already found one and were asleep. Also we walked to the famous 6th street area to check it out. Apparently it's one of those places that doesn't actually start happening until the sun goes down. During the daylight hours it kind of had the feeling of the living room after a raging house party. It was kind of dirty and everyone looked hung-over. We were all starving so we stopped at Marisscos mexican food. It was decent. It was also empty except for one guy who was alone and had about 6 beer bottles in front of him. Somehow Ryan decided it would be a good idea to sit right in front of this guy and block his view of the TV. The restaurant was totally empty and he managed to stand right in front of the guy. Luckily we managed to get a nice big table away from that guy. Ryan ordered a lemonade served in a goblet. It looked like a liter of lemonade. The final thing worth mentioning about the Marisscos was that the menu had odd graphics in it. The theme of the restaurant was seafood and the menu included images of whales (or what actually looked like 1 mutant whale with 3 flippers), several dolphin silhouettes and strange bubbles which I decided must be stem cells. However none of these things were on the menu as far as I could decipher. The first night of the festival. We went to the theater / cafe and waited for the show to start. We had heard good things about Tight from Mr. Kwako (local NY improv guy) so we bought tickets. While we were waiting a strange guy kept kind of hanging around our table. He was making odd noises and starring at the table. After like 20 minutes of feeling weird about this guy I realized that it was Kate & Finn's friend Buzz. When I finally realized who it was I said Hi and he was like "I've only been hanging around making noise for like 30 minutes." I wasn't even sure it was him for like another 20 minutes after that. Basically that was my only discussion with him. He didn't come to see our show. He was the only person I kind of knew in Austin. Oh well. The show we saw: Kick the Squirrel - terrible hodgepodge. 4 person show. One woman who for some reason spent about 1/2 the show lying on the floor with her legs apart. There was one guy on the team that was pretty good and his part of the show was nice and well done. The rest was like a train wreck. I was just watching the intro to their show and I was instantly brought me back to how awful it was. Tight - Awesome 5 person show. Interviewed Stinton about his day. He talked about being shown around the town by a guy who works for his beer importing job. He talked about beer in general. It made for some great scenes. "Hit that hoppy note" Just a really well put together show. The host of the show was a weirdo writer for the Austin Chronicle who was very boastful of the LOCAL TALENT! But it turned out that the entire team had moved from Chicago together within the last year or so. I think one of them actually lived in Dallas or something. After witnessing awful then awesome improv we came home to be greeted by the delightful fact that we had no water in our fancy hotel - the city of Austin turned off the water. Not only are they looking out for the residents when it comes to ozone (all the buses were free the first day we were there for Ozone Awareness or something) but they also make sure that Austinians are being frugal with their water usage at 3am. Very thoughtful! Especially if you are also trying to keep people from using the toilets in any meaningful way. After the shows we went to Casino El Camino which was not the official show sponsor but apparently it was the official improv bar of Austin. The McManus of 6th Street. They were showing Frankenhooker on the TV. I was surprised how few people had actually seen it. Brought me back to the early 90's when I saw that movie with Finn & Mike. Good times. About a week after we saw that film we saw the main character in Cousins, the Chinese restaurant that we always ate at back in the day. Free wine! That actor guy thought we were creepy because we kept starring at him. Hideout upstairs. The theater we performed at was actually really great. We were in the smaller upstairs venue but it was actually close most of the places we play in NY. 55 seats and a nice little stage. According to the story we heard it was owned by a rich guy who doesn't make the groups who play there pay any rent or theater fees. It's like the holy grail of small theater and the kind of thing that can only happen in a place like Austin. Damn! MiniGolf - Part of the festival was the famous mini-golf tournament. It was hot hot hot. The teams were mixed up from the improv groups. I kicked ass for the first 10 holes. Had to take a break due to the way the thing was set up. When we started up again I sucked! I still had the best score of the team by like 10 strokes but I was not happy with my own performance. I am so hard on myself with the mini-golf. I am just going to burn myself up. Ashley's team won even though she admitted that they cheated the entire time. By winning all the teams involved in the winning team get automatic invites to the festival. So we got double re-invited. Batting Cage -Matt bought some tokens was generous enough to share them with me. One word. Humiliating. Basically the machine throws 16 pitches per token. The first token led to 16 dull thuds against the backstop. 16 swing and misses. THUD! By the 3rd token I managed to nick all the balls to that the THUDS weren't quite as thuddy. I managed to make contact maybe like 5 times out of 48 pitches. Only 1 was a decent line drive, It sucked. Luckily for Gunshow Dan Winckler had his mom's fancy Lexus SUV to ferry us home from the mini-golf. We were all starving so Dan offered to take us to place called El Arroyo. After getting rather lost we finally found it. El Arroyo (the ditch) - Giant industrial fans everywhere. Winks claimed that it was 10x better than any NYC mexican. Food was good. 10x? Hardly. Winks complained that the his chicken fajitas were skimpy on the chicken. "Uh, I don't want to complain but is this the usual amount of chicken that comes with the fajitas? I mean I have ordered this before from here and I recall there being more chicken. I mean it's not a big deal but I just thought there was going to be more chicken." I tried to comfort the waitress and let her know it wasn't a big deal but she went ahead and got them to give him more chicken. I will say that I enjoyed my meal and really liked the refried beans. I wish I had gotten a margarita while I was in Austin... Why didn't I?.... weird. I had a vision that Dan's fajitas came out of the kitchen with more chicken but as the waitress passed by the giant cooling fans that were everywhere the chicken was getting blown off the fajita pan until she arrived and the plate was like 1/2 a full as when she started. Our show. We did an okay show. There were a couple of moments where I was kind of like "What just happened." and a couple of classic Gunshow pile on moments. The audience enjoyed the show regardless of my internal super negativeness. It was good enough that we got an automatic invite to next years festival. The show itself involved some visits to haiti, children who hex other children for their mysogenist cartoons and some role playing therapists who were really into acting methods. Weird little bits from the trip Shiner beer was the only local beer that I could find represented in the bars. I mean besides something as pedestrian as Lone Star. Shiner was a decent beer. I sampled the Heffevize and Bock. The Bock was not as nasty as I recall my original Bock adventures back when I first moved to Milwaukee. I was really into Huber Bock and Dubble Bock back at the ripe age of 18. But I recall those being nasty and thick.Syrupy. If I recall I was told that Bock beer was the what the breweries scrapped out of the tanks when they cleaned them once a year. Why that sounded luke something I would want to drink at the time is beyond me. I am kind of doubting that is true at this day and age. Now that I think more about it I am associating the Bock beers with the nasty beers that Alex Hestoft used to encourage me to drink at Landmark import nights. Stuff like McEwan's Ale and other nastiness. Ah learning. 15th Street Migas - Migas are a type of breakfast egg scramble apparently. And according to the guy working at the Double Tree 15th Street Cafe the Double Tree has the BEST Migas in ALL of Austin. I was doubtful of that statement but Jodi ordered them and enjoyed them a lot more than I enjoyed my buffet breakfast taht included oddly tough pancakes, rubbery hash browns and some weirdly sweet and sticky croissants. I will say that the bacon was adequate. 'Dillo was the nickname of the free public transportation. They look like old fashioned trolleys and that seem to be the vehicle of choice for free public transport in many municipalities around the globe. The funny thing was that all the 'Dillos are color coded but were actually all the same color. So it wasn't until you saw the little LED in the upper left hand corner of windshield that you had an idea of you were going anywhere. Party at the Double Tree. The improv festival arranged a party at the hotel we were staying. The arranged a burlesque Show. 4 parts - Flash Dance with a heavy blond lady, classic vamp with a brunette with more classic burlesque body and then a campy bit with a redhead as death. Then finally a las vegas ladies with head dress bit. It was fun and best of all the audience was really appreciative, I was glad because sometimes that kind of thing, especially one where the audience is all lonely dudes who never see live women naked, can become kind of scary. After the sexy lady show the improv nerd dancing began in earnest. Its at times like that which bring to the front of my mind that improv is typically an all WHITE sport. I mean it was a showcase for some of the whitest dancing I have born witness to in sometime. Everywhere I looked I saw elbows flailing at awkward angles and hips thrusting to a beat not being heard on the actual dance floor. One surprise was when the DJ started playing Yaz, the perennial gay favorite, the people who flocked to the dance floor were some of the last folks I expected. A mammoth sized guy, a comic book type goth nerd, and someone who looked like they definitely spent more than one summer doing LARP stuff suddenly sprang to life and sang each word with vim and vigor. Weird that an 80's gay classic still works it's magic with nerds of that level. Not to suggest that these guys weren't in the songs target demographic. Earlier in the day we had casually overheard an austin native saying on his cellphone that he'd witnessed some bears in town and then went on to clarify that he was talking about big hairy gays guys. So it could have these guys he was talking about. I watched Hitch on the plane back to NYC from Dallas. It was so-so. Not terrible but had a couple of entertaining moments. The ending was like 5 Will Smith speeches in a row. Pretty hard to handle. Hollywood has his banter style down to a science. I was surprised that he didn't say "Aw Hell naw" but the end does have a feel good Soul Train Dance Line bit that is just such a corny played out thing. It's awful. It even included a white guy doing the splits and ripping his pants. WHEE!!! I may be crazy but I think that a steward (also of the Yaz liking variety) just gave Ryan and Matt free booze.... just a theory at this point. Jodi thinks that he may have given them a roofie. Which of course would be hilarious (EDIT: He did give them booze but in the end it wasn't drugged.)

Tomorrow Gunshow is going Austin, TX for the Out of Bounds improv festival/mini-golf tournament. Jodi is coming along for the trip. It's the first time we're both leaving Ace for more than just a dinner date. We'll be gone for 3 full days of his little life. He's going to be staying with my mom on the Upper West Side. In the basement of her building they converted a laundry space into a huge kids room so at least we know that there is stuff for him to do. That doesn't mean that we aren't freaking about it. Today the janitor/custodial artist guy in my build at work told me that he noticed that I have lost weight. It is true. I have lost like 10lbs just from cycling to work every morning. He added that if decided to eat right that I could get back to my 13 year old physique. Hey, when the janitor notices that you're looking thinner you know you're doing something right. (I am flexing right now. GOTTA GET HUGE! PUMPED!)

I just totally fucked up and deleted my fucking entry. Fuck. Anyway, I basically said I had been slacking on my posting and covered the following topics. Jodi's birthday, me not being paid what I was told I would be paid and a dumb picture of of some anime. So last weekend was Jodi's birthday. I surprised her in the morning with some presents and a cake. Cake for breakfast was a treat on her birthday when she was a kid. Who knew? Not me! After that we just frittered away the day until Mike came over to babysit Ace so we could go get some dinner. I told Jodi to Alma. Its a newish mexican place in Red Hook. The food was pretty darn good as were the many flavors of margarita. I recommend the flavored over the traiditonal which were kind of bland after the magnificence of the Tangerine marg. One funny note was that our pregnant waitress didn't hesitate to tell us which margarita was her favorite prompting Jodi and I to hope that she hadn't been anjoying her favorite for the last 8 months. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is hilarious! But seriously the waitress was like 8 month pregnant and waitressing. NUTS! The really cool thing about the restaurant is that it has an amazing view of Manhattan and roof deck for a really unique experience. We ate indoors because the wait to eat outside was like 30 minutes minimum and they don't take reservations for the deck. They don't need to. The thing is like a magnet! After dinner we walked off our meal by hoofing it over to theZombie Hut. We worked our way through a frozen zombie for 2 in a crazy volcano bowl. It was yummy. But it wasn't as cool as a Tiki Love Bowl from At Random in Milwaukee. Check out the pictures of At Random. So fun! So lets talk about the work we had done on our house while we were in Rye! While we were gone on vacation Jodi asked this artist/handyman guy she knows to watch buster and while he was living in our palacial crib to do some fixit type stuff. Mainly he was going to patch all the floors in the floor of the kitchen that mice were coming in through. After 45+ mice I 1) lost count and 2) decided it was time to pay to have something done about it. So he did that. But that was all he did in two weeks. We had left a list of other things that he was supposed to try to get around to but he admitted that the first week in the house he didn't do shit. Our other main complaint had been that our sink was shooting water out of the base and leaking underneath into the cabinet. He didn't get around to that. So that kind of sucked. I decided to take a look at the sink myself and lo and behold I actually managed to fix it but just taking the faucet off and reseating it. Hooray for me. But wait... what happened? The same fixit guy who didn't look at it orginally came back to the house to fix something he fucked up when he was laying the new floor. He neglected to remount the counter tops so when when we wanted silverware we had to lift the counter up to get at it. He also was dismayed at his own flooring job because of the fact that nails were coming up throught the new linoelium. Hooray for him. So after fixing the cabinets he said "I'll fix this sink while I am here." Jodi told him not to because I had fixed it but he insisted on taking a look. He started fiddling with it and.. well... long story short.. he totally fucked the sink. He had to replace the whole thing with one I had originally bought for parts. ONly problem is that one doesn't support the sprayer. So now I have a sink with a sprayer that does nothing and a sink that looks like frankenstein put it together. His solution was that we should buy a new sink of a different variety )"since that style doesn't seem to be working for us" and he'll install it. Huh? How about you replace the shit you busted, dumbass?! Jodi's having a hard time being mean to the guy. That's not my strong suit either. In other anggravation news: Earlier this week I was looking at my pay statement and freaking out about money in general when I decided to do a little math. That's when I figured out that I was being underpaid by $3k. Turns out they had been giving me the same $ as the guy I replaced. I just a got a raise, too. But with the raise I was actually $500 short of what they said they were paying me from the start. Luckily I got it all ironed out and everything is hunky dory. I will get my back pay in one hugely overly taxed sum but at least I will start get my real salary. And finally I leave you today with some weird anime that my friend Dyna Mo IM'd me. It's work safe but Sexy & Wild!