TWIB Notes

Saw the Bettie Page movie last night. The shortie review? It was not very good. At all. There was basically two parts to it. The first part which was Fun Good Times: Bettie Enjoys Posing For Girly Mags! And then the second part is Oh No!: Bettie Feels Bad About It. Mostly, my movie experience was Oh No!: Nate Feels Bad About It.
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Another Huck gig tomorrow. The Bitter End. 9:30 pm. Be There! If you want, write me and I'll save a ticket for you at the door for $10 instead of $15. It should be fun. The Shelk parents are coming to it too!
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The 'Zards are in the playoffs for the 2nd year in the row! How sweet is that?(Very) Plus they are playing LeBron and the Cavs. Hopefully, they bring the sweet pain again tonight and pound the kid till he proves he can take the hurt.
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Just in case you were curious, Wandy Rodriguez is 4-0 so far with 2.53 ERA this year. Wandy Yeo has not arrived yet. Game stats to be compiled at a later date.

Full Disclosure

I was just writing someone and referenced a class called "World of Math". This is not actually a made up class. This is a class I took in 7th grade. World of Math or WOM for those of us in the know was a class taught by a Swedish guy to a bunch of math geeks. And I took this class willingly. We made a bunch of multi-sided shapes like the dodechahedron. (Twelve sides) Or perhaps you're familiar with the icosahedron? You know, that's the 20 sided shape that's the big die used in Dungeons & Dragons when figuring out what your character will be(oops! I've said too much)(I think there's a secret code among those geeks when you use or hear a word that only a D&D geek could know like 'encumbrance'.) We made these out of paper. And we also made tesellations. There's are the shapes that can repeat endlessly. For instance, wallpaper. It's full of them. M.C. Escher is famous for them(see the pic). And we'd solve all sorts of fun logic problems. You know the ones, the ones that go, "Eddie and Simone like Rhea and Simone and Rhea like Sam. But Sam doesn't like Eddie. If they all have to be in boats together, who's in which boats?" Somewhere along the line though,I started to reject my WOM past! I decided fervently that I wasn't going to be a nerd. For the previous few years, I had taken to a habit of buttoning all of my buttons all the way up. You can see this in school pictures from probably 1984-1987. I'm certain that in 8th grade, the buttons come way down. Plus I didn't take WOM II. Which my other WOM friends were trying to cajole me into taking. I put my D&D books way in the back of the closet. I quit Boyscouts. I decided not to go to Thomas Jefferson, the science and math magnet school(Nerd Tech as it was known at my middle school). But you know what? I still doodle tesellations when I'm on the phone. I still like computers. I still like those logic puzzles. WOM still lives! The lesson of Dom Edge-Nissen have not been in vain! The nerd lurks within...

Too Cool For School

I am tired of seeing this type of guy at auditions:

--blue blazer
--blue oxford shirt untucked, unbuttoned at least four buttons
--tie unloosened, hanging around the first buttoned button
--jeans
--Chucks
--And sometimes, if we're lucky, sunglasses

Maybe I'm just getting old but I hate it. It's so fratty. It's so slacker. It's so lame. This is type of guy who thinks a lampshade on a head at a party is funny. This type of guy also wears the necktie as headpiece. This type of guy also thinks the hard hat with a straw connected to two brew dogs is a sensible and economical purchase. He purchases giant foam fingers. He uses "Are you tired? Because you've been running through my dreams all night" style pick-up lines. He nicknames girls "Nice Eyes". He believes he is the real Tom Cruise Risky Business character. I am sure he does sing Bob Seger tunes in his tighty whitey's.

I feel like a mom. Why can't he wear sensible slacks? Tuck in his shirt. Straighten up. Comb his hair. Does he have to try so hard to achieve a pose of casual indifference? Just be yourself, dude. I don't care who you are, there's no need to wear sunglasses indoors. (Bono claims his eyes are sensitive to sunlight and that's why he always wears sunglasses now. I don't believe him and I don't believe you either, Mr. Man.)

My First Improv Group

So tonight a small faction of Winnebago del Fuego, my first improv group, is performing in the Cagetmatch at UCB. 11 pm. $5. If you're around. It's basically those of us that still perform improv.

For funsies, I am going to update you on the rest of the gang. Dorothy's gone to Philly but I still feel like she's around because I read things she writes in Metro everyday. I see David on the street sometimes because he lives in the East Village too. He still bartends at Riffifi. Which I haven't been in literally years. Amy was on Guiding Light as Phillip Spaulding's maid. A lot of people, this might not mean much. But in the Shelkey family, my sister and my mom watched CBS soaps. So as a result, I watched CBS soaps.

So I know all the families from the Young & The Restless, As The World Turns, and Guiding Light. Plus Bold & the Beautiful. And I even remember Capitol. I feel the need to tangent. I preferred Bold & The Beautiful because it had Hunter Tylo. I remember when Michael Damion was on As The World Turns. I remember when Meg Ryan was. She played Betsy who was always going out with Steve Andropoulous. And what about Julianne Moore? She played Franny. And the best part was they made her have an evil twin who was Scottish or Irish. I forget which. I remember when Reva(Kim Zimmer)from Guiding Light was on MacGyver. That girl from Providence played a Greek waitress on GL. And the guy who played Bradley Raines is in almost every movie you ever see. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0714310/

What's my point? Oh yes, so when I found Amy was going to be Phillip Spaulding's maid, I was EXCITED to say the least.

Lemon is still producing cartoons. And Brad moved to LA. And the rest of us, we're still at UCB. So come out tonight to see me, Flynn, Katie, and Birch!

Jesus Is Alive!

Some Easter Weekend Notes:

--I met the guy who wrote "Hands Across America" this weekend on Amtrak. How do you like that?!
--It's only when you're not trying to dye an Easter egg brown, that you get one that way. If try to make it brown, it won't work. (This seems like something that could be in one of those "What I Learned" books that you keep in the bathroom.)
--It's difficult to find all the easter eggs even if you saw the Easter bunny hide them.
--My family plays this game called King Egg. Or Kinging. Something like that. Anyway, you take an egg and someone else takes one and you move them towards each other to smash the other person's egg. Such is the peculiarlity of physics, one egg will crack, the other will not. But here's the interesting thing: My Aunt Marilyn cheats! She doesn't move her egg. She lets the other person always move in. There's a remarkably high no crack rate when you don't move your egg.
--Finally, my niece Kayla kept exclaiming "Jesus Is Alive!" on Sunday. It was good to see someone get excited about it. I mean, if someone who was dead, and is now alive, it's worth exclaiming, right? I think so.

Captain Beefheart On Your iPod

So I don't know if you ever saw this, but a while back, I did a voice for this cartoon for So! animation. It's called Farminals and I got to do it with these awesome pals--Birch Harms, Flynn Barrison, and Eliza Skinner! How cool is that? For fans of those people realize:

Birch plays a duck named Webster
Flynn plays a donkey named Denton
Eliza plays a little chicken named Chick
(I play a cow named Captain Beefheart)

Anyway, it's now on iTunes(free!). So check it out!

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=137885105&s=143441

My Swanny Lies Over The River

After seeing Purns' post on origami, I was reminded of a curious plot development in one of my favorite shows: Prison Break. In it, for at least two or three times, Michael(our hero) has used a paper swan for various things. In this week's episode, we now realize the significance of the swan. Apparently, his older brother(the one who's sentenced to die on death row right now for a crime he didn't committ) used to place a paper swan in Michael's room when they were young. And a swan in origami means safety or watching over someone one, protector, some b.s. like that.

You know what? End result? I don't buy it. Lincoln Burroghs(get it? they're in prison and trying to break out. that's like Conrad-esque foreshadowing!) just doesn't strike me as the type of guy who 1) learns origami and 2) knows what the various shapes and animals of origami symbolize. He's a blue collar tough guy type. It doesn't ring true, Prison Break writers! Still, it's a good show. I'll keep watching. Best part of this week's show was learning that the country guy used to have a girlfriend with a kid, and wasn't always the evil Big House rapist. It would be nice though if everyone wasn't all of a sudden revealed to be good that seemed bad. All of the prison inmates now seem victim of circumstance. Are we to believe that no one in prison should really be in prison? Are we the people outside those walls, the real prisoners... of OUR MIND!?!?!?

These are the questions that are raised when an English major watches a Fox tv show.

The Hat Switch

Sometimes you need to watch something if only to confirm how awful it really is. Yesterday, I stumbled across "Over The Top" on HBO.

In case you were wondering, it's awful. Here's the set-up. Sly Truck Driver is tasked to pick up snotty military school kid to take to his mother across country(is Silver Spoons derived from this by flipping the script?). Because Sly Truck Driver is a Truck Driver, they are taking the trip in his big rig. Along the way, Snotty Miltary School Kid grows to accept and dare we say it, even love, previously inaccessible dad. This is done through montages and short learning moments. Among them, early morning calestenics down in front of the cab of said truck. Along with a light hearted tease from Sly Truck Driver to Snotty Son to try driving said truck. This is a result of Snotty Son complaining that anybody can drive a truck.

Needless to say, it is more difficult than we or Snotty Son realize. We all grow to respect Sly Truck Driver more. And I haven't even mentioned arm wrestling yet! One of Sly Truck Driver's past times is armwrestling(and he always turns his hat around while armwrestling. Is this important? Oh precocious reader, you just wait!). Apparently, this is what truck drivers do to pass the time in truck stops and bars along your route. We learn there is a big arm wrestling championship in Vegas. Meanwhile, we realize that Sly Truck Driver's estranged wife and Snotty Son's mom is dying. That is why they are traveling together. So that they can get to know each other before Mom dies. Son resents Sly Truck Driver now but has lost his Snot. Enter Robert Loggia as Evil Grandfather. Evil Grandfather wants to prevent Sly Truck Driver from bonding with and living with Son(remember, snot is removed at this point)(even though snot is removed does not prevent the Son from traveling everywhere in chinos).

This is when another huge montage takes place---Sly Truck Driver starts working his way up through the tournament and Son works his way across the country to Vegas to see his dad win. And at the end of the this montage is when the best line of the movie is spoken. And this is the reason the whole 2 hours are worth it. In an interview that Sly Truck Driver is doing, he mentions that "when I turn my hat around, it's like a switch going on. And I love that feeling. I feel like a machine. Kinda like a truck." Which is you know, pretty profound, because Sly Truck Driver drives a truck.

Did I mention that the winner of the arm wrestling tournament wins a truck? Yes, those are the high stakes that are involved in this ridiculous sports movie. Needless to say, Sly Truck Drive wins, not only the love of his son, but the sweet truck.