Scavenger Hunt

...alternatively titled "How I stalked Robin Ince."

Before the Beginning: Who is Robin Ince?

Robin is one of my 5 favorite comedians (the others being Ricky Gervais, Josie Long, Lee Camp, and Derek Hughes). He got a lot of fame from opening for some of Ricky's tours when Steve Merchant edited a documentary of how that experience nearly killed him. In fact, instead of talking about his career, Ricky pretty much just uses his blog to alternate between making fun of Karl Pilkington's head and Robin's thumbs.

But Robin does a lot of great innovative stuff with comedy. He has a great podcast with Josie Long. He does a book club, which is comedy, literature, interpretive dance, and accordian music all in one. He's done some acting (ie The Office), and he writes for TV (ie Skins). Oh, and his standup is hilarious, at least when he's making references to things I actually understand. He's very high brow most of the time, talking about philosophy, science, and religion. His gimick is that he talks really really fast. In fact, that's why Karl can't stand him. I never expected to see Robin live because it seems he mostly tours in the UK.

The Beginning

On Robin's Twitter on Monday night, it said that he'd be doing a gig in a bookstore in NY tomrrow night. I live in New York! But wait--there are tons of bookstores in NY and apparently none of them were listing him on their events list because I couldn't find ANYTHING on the web about him doing a gig on Tuesday night. This caused much despondancy, but determined I attempted the following:

1. Called his agent
2. Emailed his agency, who said the agent was in the air on his way to NY to see the show, and no one else knew the location of th gig
3. Asked on a RI Facebook group about it
4. Facebooked Robin's neice, who texted Robin, who said he didn't remember the name of the bookstore either, which explains why he didn't post it on Twitter.

Right when I was about to give up, believing that God doesn't want me to go and see this atheist comic, Housingworks Bookstore posts on their Twitter that they just added Robin to the list of comedians they're having at their weekly Tuesday comedy night Punch Up Your Life. Miracle! I had actually checked their website earlier that day because they're the only bookstore I know that does comedy. I'd been there once before. I'm in!

The Show
The audience was in a mood, probably because they made us stand in the rain for half an hour while they set up the stage. This annoyed me because I wanted to browse their books. But anyway, it was Pete Holme's birthday, and he was co-hosting as usual. Rob O'Reilly was there. I think it's the third or fourth time that I've seen him perform just out of coincedence. The girl after him wasn't getting any laughs, probably because she was sick and having a bad reaction to mixing Sudafed with beer. She said, "Why are you all being so weird? You do realize that we judge ourselves on how much you laugh."
I thought Oh, great. I wonder how Robin will do. He's about 10 years older than all the other comedians, there's a cultural difference, he's high brow (compared to Rob O'Reilly who makes awkward sex jokes), and he makes obscure references to stuff.

Turns out, he totally broke down the walls. He had people laughing finally. I think part of it is that he has SO much energy. First, he apologized for doing a gig in his coat. "I don't usually do a gig in my coat, but I couldn't find a peg. I'm 41 one years old now, and I can't just leave my coat lying around." He started with Descartes' Cogito and I thought "Oh good, here we go." He said "Everyone's heard I think therefore I am. But some people don't think and they still are! Annoyingly those people seem to be the loudest." He went on to talk about his amazing 2-year-old son who said "fuck" in context before he was two. Then inevitably went on to talk about politics (A country with gay marriage is a country on its knees. Ooo, cheeky republican.) and briefly touched on evolution. It was a very good show.

After/During the Show

I really wanted to go and say hi afterward and it looked for a moment like he'd ducked out, but I was happy to see that he came back. I left partway through the show because it was almost ten and there were still 2 comedians to go. I live over an hour away and had to get up for work this morning. So on my way out, I went over and introduced myself and said I was a fan and got my photo with him (above). He said "Sorry, that show was a bit manic. I haven't slept!" He was really nice and pleased to talk to me even though the show was still going on. How cool.

Back in the World

Finally went back to work yesterday. I had a ton of stuff to catch up on, but I like having a ton of things to do--staying busy.

After work, I dropped off a book at The Drama Book Shop, which is a neat cinema and theatre store in Manhattan. We hope to be doing an event there in May.

Then I met up with Erin, who's moving to Wyoming for the summer. We went to the filming of comedian Lee Camp's new DVD. He was on fire last night! This was the fourth time I'd seen him live, but I think this was his best performance. It was mostly new material. And! Guess who introduced him. Kelly Carlin, who said Lee reminds her of her father because she saw him on Fox and said he has balls.

Lee's kind of a motivational speaker when it comes to changing the world. He talks about our reality-tv-watching snuggie-wearing society that would rather keep brain-dead white people alive for 15 years on a feeding tube than give little starving African children any of that food. That sort of thing. He said if he were 108 and couldn't do anything but sit and watch Regis & Kelly and no one would let him die, he'd spill his apple juice and crap his pants every hour in rebellion because the only difference between that and hell is that Regis and Kelly are in the room with you.

Ups and Downs of the Week

Up: I had a job interview last week for an awesome position with an awesome company.

Down: Because we had no heat last week, we all caught colds, myself included.

Up: I shot a video of one of our authors giving an anecdote from his new book. When I'm done editing it, it will be on Facebook. You'll have to become a fan of Backbeat Books to see it, so you might as well do that now. Click here for link.

Down: Because I was sick, I missed Tim O'Brien's book signing on Monday. Major bummer.

Up: Alison and I are making a children's picture book. It's all very exciting and in the beginning stages. More on that later.

Down: My cold spawned Pink Eye, which meant two days of nothing but sleeping and listening to music b/c I only had one eye.

Up: The doctor gave me magical eye drops which means I should be ready to return to work on Friday and go to the comedy show with Erin.

The Dark Ages

We had hurricane-like wind and rain over the weekend. We lost electricity on Saturday night. We didn't get it back until Monday evening. And with no electricity, that means no oven, no fridge, and most importantly, no heat. I slept in the living room because it was 59 degrees, which is warm compared to the icebox of my bedroom in the attic. When I went to the grocery store, the electricity was out there too, so all the meat had gone bad. Not many people showed up to church because a lot of members live in Hamilton Beach where people were stranded because of power lines fallen on the only route out. But now the electricity is back on and I've never been more thankful to have working heat!



Book Event
Last night, I went to one of our author's book events. It was a good turn out of about 25-30 people in a little book store downtown Manhattan. The presentation was complete with a slideshow showing images from the book, and the content was basically like a live excerpt. A lot of people seemed to be knowledgable about the subject matter or at least theatre and women's studies, so there were plenty of questions during Q&A.












Drawing

I had a weird dream about strange worm-like dog creatures chasing me through beaches and prairies, but then Geoffrey Rush came in and saved the day. This is the opposite of that dream I had where Sean Connery refused to rescue my family trapped in an elevator.














Upcoming

Tim O'Brien book event
Shakespeare book event
John Green book event
Lee Camp comedy event
Job interview tomorrow

Spring time around the corner

Neverwhere review

Link to my writing blog to see my review

Upcoming Events

Tim O'Brien will be signing books in two weeks at B&N Union Square.

John Green will be doing 2 NYC gigs in April. I bought tickets to the first one since it's on a Sunday and the other one was TBA on a Monday night.

Collage

I don't usually do collages, so I thought I'd try. It's magazine clippings with tape and the background added in with Photoshop.

It's getting to be spring!

I got to walk on the beach for the first time since the snow started.

TV

I don't believe this. They're starting a reality show that's for the book publishing company. Basically it's "So You Want To Be An Editor?" Here's the link.

I finished watching the first season of Lost. I imagine it would be easy to write if you don't have an idea of what the island actually is. I will wait to be impressed with the clever writing until they tell us the answer. I can see the formula that makes the show like popcorn, makes you want just one more handful and then another and another. All the characters are interesting enough and slowly developing. The trick is to put in a bunch of secrets, unveil them slowly, and throw in random new elements like a case full of guns, etc.

Completely gave up on Survivors on BBC America. Although decent acting, the characters are flat and archetypal, and the story is just not unique or interesting enough.

Haven't watched more of the Ricky Gervais Show yet because I don't have HBO.


and just for fun...

The new OK Go video from the guys who brought you the treadmill music video . Apparently EMI disabled OK Go's embedding abilities for their treadmill video which caused a huge decline in how many views it got per day. So now the band has abandoned the record label and is releasing the next CD on their indi label. Their next video is going viral too. Astounding. Watch below:

Ryanhood

In college, I was on the Campus Activities Board, and at the conference where we chose which acts to bring to campus, one of the days was MC-ed by an acoustic alternative duo called Ryanhood. We ended up bringing the duo to campus the next year.

Last night, Ryanhood was in New York City (which they said does not typically happen for them). They gave a free show at The Living Room.

It was a really nice show. They have bands cycling in and out every 45 minutes, so it was a short show, but well done. They played some of my favorites as well as some songs I hadn't heard before. I think it was the first time I saw them with their full band.

They began one song by saying that a lot of the places they play are places called things like "Oshkosh, Wisconsin" and it's filled with people who want to get out of there. They all seem to want to go to New York City. And that's what the next song is about. I was like "That's me!" And I did get out of Wisconsin and go to New York City. And then they announced that the song was Gardens and Graves which used to be my favorite Ryanhood song (when I only had one of their CDs). So after the show I went and told Cameron that I was one of those people last year in Wisconsin who moved out to New York and that I was in CAB when we brought them to La Crosse last year. He asked what I was in New York for and I told him book publishing. They're off to Boston today.


These are not my videos:



Gardens and Graves:



PS. and unlated, Hattie Hayridge is on Carpool this week. Check it out on www.llewtube.com

New short story: Below the Wind (read it here)

Write Every Day In March

My goal for March: Write every day.

This does not include emails and blogs and things of that nature. I mean creative writing. Fiction, mostly. This isn't like November where I have to work on one big project. It doesn't even have to be mildly good writing. I just need to get that part of my brain moving. Who knows--maybe I'll be able to keep the habit. I'm not putting a time or word count goal per day. Just write something. That's all.

I'm working on a story right now called Below the Wind. I'll post it on my writing blog when it's done.


Other news...

I am officially working more hours at my internship, but I'd better find something full time by July or else my commute's about to get a heck of a lot longer. Though, I do plan on moving closer to the city before then anyway. It's all up in the air. We'll see how the cards fall.