Thunderdome Round Three Review

Okay, it has been a couple of days and I can start thinking straight again. My car not starting after leaving the bar Saturday night weakened my excitement just a tad though. As it is being worked on this very moment, I can take this time to reflect on the best of the three shows so far.

My main thought on the whole night is that I would have loved to see that very same show with a completely neutral audience. I believe it would have been the tightest and toughest voting decision of everyone that saw it. Each team had a clear case for themselves. That being said, I think the winner deserved to win. But still, everyone did such a great job, I can't help but think of what a crowd of neutrals would have thought.

Okay, now the teams.

The three ladies of Spite (Trish Berrong, Nikki DuPont & Megan Mercer) started the night off with a bang. To be an all women team AND go first in this event is a tough challenge. I thought that, but I know the ladies didn't. Great scene work, great characters, great relationships, great sense of play, great everything. If there was anything critical I could say about it, it would be that their scene edits, which were simply starting the next scene with the last line of the previous scene, were often drowned out by laughter from the audience and therefore kinda hard to tell if a new scene had started or not. Also, one of the ladies seemed to do most of the editing. But those were so small that it didn't effect the performance at all. I just notice those things.

Then came the three men of TBA (Pete Calderone, Micheal Montague Jr & Josh Steinmetz) delivering the ballsiest set of the night, a rock/opera piece entitled "Soundtrack of your Life" complete with instruments. After what was a week of behind the scene drama dealing with the men of TBA and the ladies of Spite (Put the two together and you have the troupe Tantrum that performed at 7 before Thunderdome), that can only be described as an Andy Kaufman-esque all-team rehearsal that was orchestrated by TBA, I was worried about their performance. Come show time though, they delivered. First with a guitar, then with a keyboard, and finally with a violin??? Yep. Their all-male musical love triangle was awesome, and well executed. It ended with a nice all-instrument, all-singing, light-fading ending number. TBA was the only piece that had multiple applause after scenes. If there was anything critical I could say about it, it's tough to do an all-male show without there being a little gayness, it's tough. TBA fell down that trap, i believe. But nonetheless, out of all the sets, this one I would love to see again.

Finally Makeshift Militia (Magie Hogan, Ryan Meharry, Grant Prewitt & James Nelson) exploded on stage with a great song, a great chant, and just pure young college energy. Yes, they had brought the most audience. Yes, that audience probably knew who they were going to vote for before the show even started. But still, if Makeshift would have come out and presented something awful and still won, they would have not been respected by the improv community. It's a good thing that didn't happen. Their story line piece that revolved around a father and son, 2 government officials, and a robot was very entertaining. Their relationships were strong and emotional. This set probably involved the most realistic emotional choices of the whole night. If there was anything critical I could say about it, the piece itself was very similar and formulaic to a piece that a team presented the previous month. But after seeing what they did at rehearsal, I know this was clearly a coincidence.

In the end, after a night of three very solid performances that each had a clear shot at getting anybody's vote, the team that brought the most people won. But still, everyone did such a great job, I can't help but think of what a crowd of neutrals would have thought.

Improv Thunderdome Round 3

This show sold out a five days ago, ten days before the actual event. Un-heard-of. Ed and I and my son Collin went to the coffeehouse today to arrange seats and maximize our potential, well, Collin didn't help. He just jumped on and off the stage and pretended he was a chicken. He might have moved one chair.

Preparing for shows, my biggest problem has always been worrying what kind of audience we are going to have, or if we're going to have any audience at all. Even though I am not the one performing, it's nice not to have to worry about that. It's something I think I'd like to get used too.

Eastern Promises

Lisa and I purchased a movie On Demand the other night. We were both in the mood for something that neither of us knew much about. After scrolling through the screen for a while, we finally decided on Eastern Promises based on the Viggo Mortensen's Best Actor nomination clip they showed at the Oscars.


Viggo Mortensen

Before the Oscars, There Will Be Blood was the only nominated live-action movie either of us had seen this year (we saw Ratatouille in the theaters). After seeing that and only that, there was no doubt in my mind that Daniel Day-Lewis would win Best Actor. In fact, I think he is the sole reason that movie was nominated for Best Picture. Take out his performace, and that movie would have just been okay.


Daniel Day-Lewis

Back to Eastern Promises. Great movie. Viggo plays a Russian limo driver for the Russian mob somewhere in London. His performance was mesmerizing. I think I personally judge how well I like a character by how often I try to talk like him afterwards. Who knows how many times Lisa and I were walking around saying, "Give me the blood of the lord, Eli", after seeing TWBB. But Viggo's thick Russian accent definitely comes in a strong second. In fact, if there was a second place at the Oscars, my bet would have been on Viggo.

This wasn't suppose to be a movie review or anything like that, but if your looking for something to rent in the future, this would be my recommendation. And for the ladies, there's even a ten minute bloody turkish bath fight scene with Viggo's meat and potatoes flinging all over the place. You heard me.

Ford Expletive

I hate cars. Me and cars do not really go good together. I had two cars in high school. My first one, a blue Toyota Corolla, lasted 2 weeks and was destroyed in a rain induced accident. Not my fault and I was fine. My second car, a red Toyota Tercel named Shogun, somehow lasted through my senior year. Jump-starts were an every other day occurrence. Another car accident later, again not my fault, and it was put to rest. My third car was a Chevy Blazer. It was slowly murdered due my lack of care. (It needs an oil change how often?) It's engine exploded on the highway. Next came my Aunt's Ford Taurus. It became obsolete when I was just barely able to break as I entered a mechanic. The breaks were so bad that the guy wouldn't let me drive out of there. Throw in the fact that I kept dumping this junk into the radiator because it was suppose to plug a hole in one of the tubes. Ahhhhh cars.

I have gotten better. I take much better care of our car now. Regular oil changes every 3000 miles and tune ups whenever we've got an out of state drive. Too bad it took a half a dozen cars to get to this level of expertise. But still, I know that me and cars will never have a healthy relationship.

We recently received out federal return and had it no more than a day before we spent 75% of it on our Ford Explorer. Tires, brakes, belts, plugs, aligning, and all that jazz. I knew it was something that needed to be done so I was not that put off by it. The tires and alignment was the reason I went in. While I was there I said, "Give it a full inspection." The grease monkey responded with, "You want a 24 point inspection?" I asked if that meant that they would give the car a full once over. The guy said sure so I said okay.

An hour later I get a call telling me that new brakes were necessary. Knowing that our bank account was thriving due to the return, I didn't even let the guy finish. "Do it and call me when you're done." Two hours later I drove away with a fresh feeling car.

This was last week. Today my car won't start. It's in the driveway just sitting there. I called Sears and asked what all the 24 point inspection entails. They said everything but the battery, ignition and starter.

Fucking GREAT!!!!!!!

Digger Phelps is Retarded.

I should know, I have worked four years with the developmentally disabled.



Anyone who purposely wears a tie to match his highlighter needs to be under 24 hour supervision. If he were to stand up from behind the desk, you would see that his fanny pack matches as well.

"W" stands for Winner!!!

I had to withdraw from one of my online classes yesterday. I am miserable about it. Although it was the right thing to do, all it means is that I am taking a big step back in preparing for my graphic design associates degree at Johnson County Community College.

This is my first time taking online classes. Business Math seemed like something I could handle without the need of a human instructor. Wrong. As much as I love math (and I do, I love it) this class was hard. The formulas seem easy enough, but I think that the fact that I am trying to do this all on my own is the problem. I just need that person, that figure to ask the occasional question to. Once I have that, I'll be fine.

I'll be back next semester, Business Math! Just you wait!!!!

Improv-In-The-Dark recap

I think it went well. Not just the piece in the dark, but the show as a whole.

Kansas City Improv Legend Trish Berrong had posted something in her blog that I had been thinking a lot about lately and tried to take that to heart for this show. My mind was free from worry and had shifted to having fun and enjoying myself.

Now I'm not going to go into great detail about the first half, but let me just say that the sense of play that I felt we had was similar to what can only be described as the younger troupe days. We started the show with a funeral piece about a dead 16 year old girl of all things. Yes, this was a comedy show. We felt that staring the show with this was kind of a risk, but we believed that we could pull it of because it is a very character driven piece. I think the audience enjoyed it.

Next came a simple round of scenes where the only thing we focused on was editing the scenes with chairs. This is where I really felt that our sense of play was top notch. Frog killings, staring contests, nonsensical teachings, and cancer-ridden bank robberies. Ahhhhhhh, just like the good ol' days.

For the second half, we got a suggestion (which we didn't really use i guess) and turned off the lights, completely. Did a little improv in the dark for about 30 minutes and the quickly brought the lights back up and blinded everyone in the theater. That is the second half in a nutshell. I am not going to talk about the content of the piece because frankly I don't remember that much about it. Not that it was bad, I think it went well. In my mind, however, the whole thing was kind of an experiment. We just wanted to see if we could pull it off and if the audience would enjoy it. There were some odd moments with the sound effects and music, but those were minor. It was Braeden's (our Chief Composer of Audio-Effects Orchestration) first live show and I think he did an exceptional job. He isn't even an improvisers, just a friend who is a talented musician who has seen us perform a lot. The more we do this, the better we'll get and the more solid of a product it can become.

Be sure to check out Improv-in-the-Dark again on April 26th when the Trip Fives do a show with the very talented improv troupe Babel Fish. Don't be afraid.