PCQOTD: 11-29-05

Erudite:
"Out my way fool, I'm the illest. Bulletproof, I die harder than Bruce Willis."

Ain't Life Grand?

Fate does not smile upon me when I take vacations.

I've been stressed out the past few months with my busy schedule, so a while ago, I decided to take the whole week after Thanksgiving off to relax and do just whatever I wanted to. Good idea, right?

Well, as luck would have it, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I got sick. I hated that, because I missed what was my favourite DSI class so far, Jennings' Level 3. Then, I *had* to go into work the next day, because there were things I had to take care of for my substitute while I was gone. So I didn't really get better. I had a grand time on Thanksgiving, but going to two events didn't exactly help out my health level. Then each night since then, I've had some sort of responsibility that I bucked up and ground through. So far, the vacation hasn't been the ducky situation I had hoped for.

To top it all off, I've been stressing about various stupid things today, and seem to have brought on an reoccurrence of a little medical problem that runs in my family, a little heart defect that makes my blood pressure shoot through the ceiling in an instant. So basically, I almost passed out while driving today, which is a bad thing. What really depresses me is that I'm going to miss a second Jennings class. Of course, as is typical with me, I feel I'm letting other people down by not being there to work as part of the group, but I'm also disappointed that I'm missing out on such a great synergistic learning experience. I really love that class.

Anyway, I guess I need to calm down and relax. That's what this week was for, right? I need to stop kicking myself for all the planned projects I've been dragging my feet on, and just enjoy myself for a change. Let's be bright and optimistic: I've gotten to watch some good movies I never had the time for before, have read some good books, and drank a lot of delicious orange juice. Time to relax, regroup, and repair.

Behind The Music

Inspired by my friend, fellow ComedySportzer, fellow night Attacker, fellow video game geek, and annoying Nightcrawler imitator ( :) ) Kit Fitzsimons, I've decided to tackle another iTunes meme.

Go to your iTunes/Windows Media Player/WinAmp and put it all on shuffle. Say the following questions aloud, and after each one press play. Use the song title as the answer to the question.

What do you think of me, iTunes?
"Top Tune Melody of 1979" by Disconet
Hmm...that's an auspicious start. I'm not sure how to read those tea leaves. "Maybe I don't know if this is right or wrong, but soon we're going to move it all night long." I'll take that as acceptance.

Will I have a happy life?
"M*A*S*H - Suicide Is Painless"
Well, iTunes is remarkably good at reading mood, anyway.

What do my friends really think of me?
"Rebel Rebel" by David Bowie
Huh. I always thought of myself as more of a quiet, helpful fellow.

Do people secretly lust after me?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly" from WKRP
Well, I think that's right up there with "when pigs fly". This is rapidly becoming very depressing.

How can I make myself happy?
"I'm having...chest pain!" from the old "I've fallen and I can't get up" commercial
Hmm. Reminiscent of M*A*S*H, actually.

What should I do with my life?
"These Dreams" by Heart
Yeah, I'm good at dreaming. Not following through with my dreams, but dreaming I'm good at.

Why must life be so full of pain?
"Yogi's Boink Walk" from the Hanna Barbera Sound Effects disc
Maybe people keep hitting me on the head with coconuts?

How can I maximize my pleasure during sex?
"S.O.S." by Paradox (covering the ABBA song)
"Whatever happened to our love? I wish I understood." Yeah, definitely depressing. Not much hope there. "When you're gone, how can I carry on?"

Will I ever have children?
The Lost In Space Robot says, and I quote, "I cannot accept that course of action."
Good robot.

Will I die happy?
"World Championship Wrestling Theme 1985-1987"
Well, at least wrestling is usually a positive in my life.

Can you give me some advice?
"Theme from Cannon"
Excellent. I'll be getting my advice from an overweight William Conrad. "Eat a bucket of chicken, my son."

What do you think happiness is?
"I Found A Million Dollar Baby (In A Five And Ten Cent Store)" by Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians
Oh, if only I could.

What's my favourite fetish?
"Alive" by Fuzzbox
I can't even understand the lyrics to this song. Try again.
"At Last I Have Control Of Your TV Set" by Ren and Stimpy
Well, I do like watching porn.

What is my significant other thinking at this very moment?
"Licking Stick" by James Brown
Definitely my type of grrl.

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?
"Klavier" by Rammstein
In other words, destroy the Tootsie Roll Pop. It is irrelevant and gauche.

* * *

I've decided to ask my own question of iTunes, not included on the official meme list, in hopes of making this less depressing.
Will I ever find love again?
and iTunes comes back with "Domino" by Kiss
"Ain't the Virgin Mary, love her I confess, got my hesitations, 'cause she kisses like the kiss of death" Well that's nice. "She's a bad habit that's good-good-good."

MemeTunes

Inspired by a meme on the blog of my friend and fellow Mr Voice, Wade Minter, I've decided to leap in and give my answers to this meme survey of my iTunes collection.

What's In Your iTunes

How many songs?
14653

Sort by song title:
First- ˜Ÿ‘J‚j⁄†…ïæˇ by ∞G∞‘∞n∞≠∞j∞J (some Korean pop thing, I think)
Last- 續集 by DJ Tommy (ah, Ted's asian fetish revealed. :P )
Heck, let's go for titles in English as well.
First - ? (Modern Industry) by Fishbone
Last - Zwing Ting by Streamer

Sort by time:
First - WeFunk Episode 346 - 3 September 2004 (4:00:32)
Last - Down (A "Crazy Climber" sound effect (0:00)

Sort by album:
First - Rules And Regulations by We've Got A Fuzzbox (-Fuzzbox-)
Last - Drunk Daddy by Cherry Poppin' Daddies (Zoot Suit Riot)

Sort by artist:
First - Numbers by !AIBoFoRcEN<- (a Kraftwerk cover song)
Last - Viva Las Vegas by ZZ Top

Top Five Most Played Songs:
1) Kevin Spacey - Christopher Walken Star Wars Screen Test
2) Bizarre Love Triangle by Frente
3) Japanese Tourist (Simpsons quote)
4) God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen by Barenaked Ladies & Sarah McLachlan
5) Girl by Frente
5) Shazam TV Theme
Boy, that's both depressing and telling. Two of those are songs me and my ex-girlfriend Leesa played all the time. It's been a year, but I'm still hopelessly in love with her. Sigh.

First song that comes up on Shuffle:
Weinie Whistler by Bobby Jimmy (aka Russ Parr from the Up To Parr morning show)

Find "sex", How many songs come up?
96. What can I say, I'm a pervert.

Find "death", How many songs come up?
37, but one of those is "Super Karate Monkey Death Car" from News Radio

Find "love", How many songs come up?
511. Oh, Leesa...

PCQOTD 11-23-05

Plebian:
"Only you can prevent forest fires."

Erudite:
"There is nothing you can do to me that the communists have not already done."

Squishy Turkey

Okay, this looks disgusting. I love it.
Jell-O Turkey

Crotch

The weekend continued with a Sunday dinner at Oh Brian's. Attendees were Amanda, PT, Ethan, and yours truly. We determined that we need to produce a show starring an anime form of Amanda, that PT should be a farmer with Tourette's Syndrome who has sex with his animals and is upset that his goat won't eat cans, and that Ethan's idea of heaven is to have sex with a woman while playing guitar, watching Scrubs, and eating ribs. (Failing that, he'll just have sex with the ribs.) Amanda won't eat free salad but still got a mint, PT's leftovers look like a pig trough, and Ethan slipped into a beef coma.

So we're going to Kentucky to see a wild west gunfight, a bottomless pit, Jesus in wax, and can-can dancers who show off their crotches. (Sorry, Amanda!)

THAT'S A MATCH!!!

Whoa, what a weekend.

Friday night saw a smooth run of ComedySportz, and then I had no responsibilities for the rest of the evening, so I decided to jet, even though everybody told me that the Mr. Diplomat show with Marc Jacobson was going to rock. I ended up standing outside with Zack Bly to chat about various things, and we were met by a panicky Zach Ward at about 9:15. It was 15 minutes to showtime, with a packed house already, and Jacobson hadn't shown. 9:20, still no Jacobson. Jon Fabris shows up and lets us know that M.J. was over at Tyler's having a good time, so I run in and tell Zach, and Zach sprints off to find the star of the show. Jacobson shows up on his own five minutes later, so I sprint off to find Zach at Tyler's. I am in horrible shape. I beat Bly down there, but I was still feeling it an hour later. Anyway, the show started off without a hitch, but was rather weird, and I ended up taking off. Not before I saw an amazing sight though; Jacobson started asking Scott Jennings how many cars he could sell. That was the first time I've ever seen Jennings at a loss for words.

Saturday saw another ComedySportz show come and go. This one had a huge attendance, due to a young little league team buying up half the theater. It was nice to have so many paid tickets, it was good for the theater. I'm not good with kids, though, and will try to avoid doing shows with them in the future. The shrieking chaos affects me. My good buddy Larry Weaver showed up to see me do my Voice thing, so that was cool. I hadn't seen him in forever, so I got Mike Bamford to take over my 9:30 tech shift (thanks Mike!) and Larry and I went to Armadillo to have a margarita and wings and talk wrestling.
I zipped back to the theater at 11:00 to catch SIC perform before donning the beard and cowboy hat to become Randy Savage for another performance of Ross White's Match Game. Let's just say we killed. It went over great, and everybody was on there game and even better than we were on Sunday. Unfortunately, Dave Siegel was sick, so we had no Ronald Reagan for me to feud with, but PT stepped up and did a John Belushi that had the crowd screaming. I loved the Walken that Jason Quinn did on Sunday, but he switched to Christopher Lloyd on Saturday and was inspired. I wish I had taken a picture of him that night, so I could make "THAT'S A MATCH!" catchphrase t-shirts. Too fun.

Match Game will return someday!

PCQOTD 11-21-05

Starting today, there will be two Popular Culture Quotes Of The Day, the normal one that I display at the office to the rank-and-file, and a second one created just for The Transmutation Effect and its more learned readership. (Where, of course, "learned" is pronounced with two syllables, and really just means geeks who watch too much television and read too many comic books.) The difficulty and/or obscurity of the second quote will be adjusted as people do or do not get the right answer and/or if I feel like it. With that, I now give you, your Popular Quotes Of The Day, both flavours:

Plebian:
"Gimme a break, gimme a break, break me off a piece of that..."

Erudite:
"But I was going into Tashi Station to pick up some power converters!"

PCQOTD 11-18-05

"Good night Johnboy."

PCQOTD 11-17-05

"To infinity...AND BEYOND!"

Pure Genius

Bill Watterson's graduation speech, made to the graduating class at his alma mater, Kenyon College, in 1990.

I got a lot of inspiration from reading it today. Read it. It might change your life. Or it might just reinvigorate your life a little. Re-read it when you need it most.

If you don't know who Bill Watterson is, smack yourself in the head and go buy this. Better yet, buy this. I have it, and it's worth every penny.

PCQOTD 11-16-05

"Help keep the pet population down; have your pet spayed or neutered."

Liverpudlians

Oh, I almost forgot. One more amusing moment from this past weekend: Ethan, PT, Amanda, and I went out for a late dinner on Sunday night around 10:00. The only thing we could find open was a lonely chicken wing restaurant. For some nutty reason, as Ethan, PT, and I drove over there, we started doing bad Liverpool accents and became, respectively, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison. We kept up the accents while ordering food, and the counter guy actually said to me, "I know that's not a Scottish accent...where are you from?" I blanked on where the Beatles were actually from, and just told him we were from Manchester.

Snap Into Bonzo

So this weekend we had the premiere of Match Game in the DSI Comedy Theater. Rossi invited me to join the celebrity panel as Randy "The Macho Man" Savage, and how could I refuse? Anybody who knows me well knows that the original Match Game is my favourite gameshow of all time; mix it with wrestling and acting like an idiot, and we're golden.

I spent a lot of time trying to put together a costume of the 1980s Macho Man, with the wide glittering robe with his name on the back, but my sewing machine choked on the sequinned fabric, and I ended up going with the 1990s "NWO" Macho Man. It turned out pretty well, with a leather jacket, black cowboy hat, black "LWC" shirt, shades, and the OMEGA title belt. The piece that really made the costume, though, was this great $8 beard I bought at the local army/navy store. It was hilarious.

I was surprised at how well the actual performance went off. For a bunch of folks who had never done the format before or worked as a group, we did quite well, if I do say so myself. We had Jason Quinn as a fabulous Christopher Walken, Katy Jack as a precious-but-criminal Martha Stewart, Dave Siegel as a brilliantly dim Ronald Reagan, and two folks I met for the first time but whose names I forgot 'cause I suck, playing Peter Falk and Marv Albert. Reagan and the Macho Man got into a little tiff as the game progressed, and the entire show ended in a donnybrook as Savage jumped on the table and attacked the former president.

We're doing it again on Saturday night at 11:00, and it promises to be even wackier.

PCQOTD 11-15-05

"These answers have been hermetically sealed in a mayonnaise jar on Funk and Wagnall's porch since noon today."

Confucious Say...

So I got some Chinese food for lunch today; some really bad Chinese food, but that's beside the point. The point is, I got two fortune cookies. Woohoo! The first fortune was nice and inspiring: "Aim for the sky, because even if you miss, you'll still be among the stars." I think I'll keep that one. The other one simply read: "A well-aimed spear is worth three." Three what? Three cents? Three brand new Chryslers? Three really crappy overbreaded fantail shrimp? I am troubled by the abrupt end of my fortune.

PCQOTD : 11-14-05

"And now you know the rest of the story."

PCQOTD 11-12-5

"Mom always liked you best!"

PCQOTD 11-10-05

The Popular Culture Quote of the Day : Novermber 10, 2005

So this is something I've been doing at work for over a year now. I have a little lucite frame on my desk, and each day I slip in a printed card with the PCQOTD on it. People make a point to come by my desk and try and identify the unattributed quote.

The quotes are probably far too easy for the type of person who would bother to read my blog, as they're intended for a general audience in a municipal building, but I thought you might enjoy seeing them anyway. Gives you a reason to check Ted's blog each day. The PCQOTD is carefully chosen so that it has a good chance of being accessible to a wide variety of people from a wide age range. It can be from any facet of popular culture, film, television, song, celebrity, politics, commercials. Perhaps, if folks are interested, I'll do a special, additional PCQOTD just for the blog, that would be a bit more of a challenge to identify.

With that in mind, here is today's official Popular Culture Quote of the Day. This is actually a little more difficult than the average one, since everybody's been getting them correct all week!

"You cannot break the spirit of a Winchester."

Far, Far Too Funny

So I wasn't going to do an improv-related post today after yesterday's marathon essay on Jennings' class, but a few moments from last night's ComedySportz practice have to be shared.

Jason Quinn was ON. He absolutely KILLED on "Chameleon". I wish Jason could've seen Corey's face while he was doing the "envious guy in a kitchenware store" bit. Corey was positively losing it when Jason was dramatically pleading to become a useful, happy spatula instead of the pitiful "ladle with holes in it". Just tremendous.

But by far the funniest moment of the night, and yes, the funniest moment EVER on the DSI stage, was when Corey, Amanda, and Rogers were playing "Mirror, Mirror". The "evil" team had just tried to kill an old man when Zach blew his whistle to switch in the "good" team. Corey immediately screamed out "let's save him!" and began doing chest compressions. Amanda, to Corey's left, started giving mouth to mouth. Problem was, Rogers thought the old man was laying the other way, and he started giving mouth to mouth too.

Think about it for a moment.

The explosion of laughter was roof-shattering. I loved the way Amanda was doubled over on the side of the stage when she realized what was going on.

Family-friendly? No. But it was rehearsal, it wasn't intentional, and it was a perfect comedic moment.

As I said afterwards, at least the old guy had something to live for.

Chapter Twosville

So last night was another fine Jennings Level 3 class. We warmed up with some wacky games, one of which was rather difficult, but it didn't have that "ha-ha! we fooled you, you screwed up, and you're OUT!" feeling that my experience with some other warmups has given me. Basically, the whole thing seemed more light-hearted, and more like a warmup than a competition. The game in question was "George", which involves a series of odd cooperative handclaps in a circle, followed by calling out your own name and somebody else's name. That was hard enough to coordinate and do in something resembling rhythm, but then people would move to take other people's positions, and assume their name, which made it more complicated. Fun, though, due to the way it was presented and the lighthearted atmosphere.

We did some two person, three line scenes again, just like last week, and then let them extend into longer scenes, keeping up the character dynamics, eye contact, etc. Then we learned the concept of the second beat (well, *I* learned it; I'm sure everybody else was quite familiar with it), where the same characters returned, and Jennings timeshifted us by an amount he chose. That went well, and felt really good. The whole eye contact thing has struck a chord with me, as I try and read what my scene partner wants out of the scene. I've always been one to watch somebody's mouth instead of their eyes, but now I do more eye-watching, trying to get the complete picture.

I've also gotten a lot out of the concept of coming into the scene without preconceived notions of where it should go, just playing the moment and going with the flow as I share with my scene partner. Jennings had us all reach out to one side or behind us or whatnot during our scene, and grab something without knowing what it was. This was supposed to reinforce the notion of no preconception, and it really resonated with me and helped me out. For instance, in one scene, Lisa was my wife and had been in a bad accident, and I reached over to grab something for her. I grabbed it as if it were a cylinder, but in my mind it became snowshoes (for some ungodly reason), but Lisa saw it as rollerskates, which was totally cool.

Jason and I seemed to click well when we did a scene involving two "somebodys", one of which was a slick jock and the other a self-deprecating fellow. They quickly became monkeys when I reached up to pick a nit out of Jason's hair and eat it. This got a great reaction from my fellow students, and Jennings later remarked that it was a good way to show the audience who the characters were without coming out and saying "we're monkeys." That made me feel good.

Later on, Jason and I weren't on the same page when we timeshifted and I failed to pick up the hints that he was 50 years in the past, while I was a year in the future. Whoops! Well, Jennings didn't make me feel like a complete idiot, which I totally appreciate, and I learned from my blindness. That's the way it should be.

Jason and Kit had a great scene where they were complimenting each other, but really hated each other. The first beat had an awesome extended handshake, with Jason squeezing the hell out of Kit's hand, and Kit's neck was so tense, veins were poppin' out all over. It ruled. I love violence.

Oh, and we learned edits.

Okay, Blogger just lost the second half of this post, twice, so let's just stop here.

REEK! REEK! REEK!

So how's this for an offensive product? This cracks me up to no end. Believe it or not, this is a Madame Alexander doll that replicates that warm and fuzzy scene from that feel-good movie, Psycho. The playful little doll is wearing a "Bates Motel" towel (because, I guess, going the extra step from "knife slashing" to "nudity" would be going too far...) and features a silhouette of everybody's pal Norman coming in to offer her a bar of soap -excuse me- a sharp knife plunged into her heart.

You can buy this wonderful item here. If you enjoy that, you might also want to check out the Madame Alexander "Birds" figure, available here. Good luck sleeping at night with these on the shelf!

I Done Good...

Strate & Coltrane
Originally uploaded by TedHobgood.

So this weekend was fun. I voiced Comedysportz on Friday and Saturday, when we hosted the DC Comics from Washington. I edited some special entrance music for them, a Wonder Woman club mix for Friday and a jungle version of the Superman movie theme for Saturday. My work on Friday was a little shaky, but I came out of Saturday feeling really good. I obviously still have a long way to go, and the computer is ridiculously unresponsive, but overall, I think I did damn good on Saturday's show. I don't usually have a very high opinion of myself, so I guess this means something.

I was particularly happy with the presentation of the final score. I used the superschweet "Tom Sawyer" mix I edited, and leaked the scores out in a really dramatic fashion. I think it worked well, and made for an exciting ending to the show.

After the audience left, I felt a little left out when I saw the rest of the Comedysportz folks posing for group pictures, but then I just reminded myself that the Mr. Voice position is sort of an invisible helper, like the days of wrestling announcing. My job is to support the folks who are on stage, and add a garnish to what's actually being visually presented. I actually enjoy that sort of role generally, as I love helping people. It does feel a little empty sometimes, though, when you feel left out of things. Fortunately, all was made well a few minutes later, when I made a point to seek out the DC folks and say goodbye to them. They all complimented me on my voicing and thanked me for my contribution the the show. That made it all worthwhile, and really made me feel great. A little pat on the back goes a long way with me.

So Saturday CSz rocked. Friday, I took some pictures of the fun Take The Box! show, as seen here. After the show on Saturday, I went out to Fenario to hang out with Jackson and Beth, and we drank lots, laughed like fools at Hee Haw and MST3K, and Jackson and I sang acoustic guitar versions of old tv themes. Sweet.

Sunday saw me and Brantley geek out on the Xbox, killing trolls and Beholders. Then Manders called me up, and she, PT, and I headed over to Ethan's to hang out, eat at California Pizza Kitchen, and walk around Ethan's gated community, enjoying his wealthy kingdom, identifying stars, and trying to come up with song titles for all the numbers from one to ten.

And we're going to Kentucky.

Rooting Around The Usual Haunts

This hasn't been the most productive week, but I've enjoyed myself. Started off the week with relatively few citizen complaints about Halloween, had Jennings wonderful class on Tuesday, Wednesday featured lunch with Alex. I had to leave ComedySportz practice halfway through due to a migraine. I went home and treated it with Burger King and an Imitrex--that kicked he migraine's ass, and mine too--I was feeling groovy and out like a light soon after.

Thursday saw my one real day off at home playing the new James Bond game, "From Russia With Love." It's okay, certainly not horrible, but not a real thriller. Seeing Sean Connery's 1960's form and hearing his elderly voice is pretty funny.

Tonight we have a smorgasbord of entertainment, as I'll be voicing for Comedysportz, with our special guests from Washington, the DC Comics. I have some good intro music planned for them, and a nice groaner joke that I made up myself. Then I'm introducing Ethan to Los Patrillo's to see if it pleases his Mexican food addiction, then back to the theater for Take The Box, then home to host Ethan and Kit in another of our wacky X-Men funfests.

Join me for the wonderfulosity.

The Odd-Numbered Innings Are The Ice Innings

Okay, so I had my first Jennings class tonight. I was all worried about it, because I haven't liked my improv skills lately, and was not progressing well (although Sunday's performance did rock). I had thought about quitting improv all together for a while there. And I was worried that I wouldn't like Jennings' style; people have told me he's critical, and I can easily be damaged by rough criticism.

Well, I'm glad I didn't quit improv. This class rocked. Jennings is critical, but he does it in a very helpful way. You can really tell he cares about you improving, and his comments are helpful and not barbed. The dynamic of this class is great too; the group seems to mesh well. There's the old gang of Lisa, Jason Quinn, Megan Stein, and Jake, and we're joined by Kit (which rocks--love working with Kitters) and two guys I'm meeting for the first time, Nick and Dino, both of whom seem really cool.

We did some great exercises, some fabulous two-person scenes, and we danced. I learned to make eye contact, did slow motion kung-fu with Kit, and smacked Jake (who was really cool about it). Megan and I totally clicked on the "stare into the other person's eyes and guess what they're thinking" bit. All in all, I am frightfully excited about the prospects of this fine class.



PS: the title of this posting comes from Jake and Dino's hi-fucking-larious baseball scene.

Picture of the Day 11-1-05

How'd you like to face these guys in a dark alley? Wahey!