This photo, taken back in November, is from the iO photo archive, taken (and sent to me) by iO's official photographer, Angela Manginelli. I forgot how crazy my hair and beard got.

The photo archive is a savvy investment for the theater. If one of its hundreds of performers eventually stumble into some kind of success, their picture can easily go up on the wall along with the other beloved and/or famous alumni.

I don't have many illusions about becoming famous, but this might be a good picture to go up on the wall if I do. It reminds me a little of some of the older pictures on the walls at Second City, everyone with beards and mustaches and unkempt hair. Back before the metrosexualization of professional comedy.

This picture might look better in black and white. If nothing else it would hide the fact that my pants don't quite match my jacket.

This may be my favorite name for a business establishment in Chicago. Executive Tans. Those words just don't seem to belong together. Do people waltz into a tanning salon with a top hat and cane? Is this where Rich Uncle Pennybags goes to get some color?

I laugh every time I pass this place.

Steve and Jordan are doing a two man sketch show at iO that is getting glowing reviews, and rightfully so. I saw it a few weeks back and it was easily one of the best things I'd seen in a very long time. I'd even go so far as to call it inspiring. The kind of show that makes you(/me) want to do more and better.

Still... I couldn't resist teasing Steve a bit about how fawning the TimeOut review (in the Theater section, not just the Comedy section) was.

Me: The praise is all deserved, but there was one line that struck me as kind of over-the-top.
Steve: What line? Here, I have it in my bag. Was it the part in bold?
Me: [reading] No... uh... oh... this part. "It's the two brief, unsettling monologues that elevate the show to (even past?) the level of a theatrical event." Past theatrical event? What does that even mean? It's more than theater itself?
Steve: [chuckling] Yeah... it's very likely the best review I'll ever get in my life.

Unfortunately, it hasn't helped attendance much.

Steve: When these reviews came out we thought, "Here we go." But the next day there were still only 40 people in the audience. Fridays at 10:30 is just a tough slot.

Glynn (right) continues to do the thankless job of recording all of our Whirled News shows and posting them online as a weekly podcast. We're not sure if anyone out there is bothering to listen to them, but it's nice to have them there.

(I've actually stopped listening to them myself because I've decided I hate the sound of my own voice.)

We've recently started recording a brief commentary at the end, where we take a few minutes to talk about what we thought of the first act. Again, it may not be that interesting to anyone, but it's fun to do. We talked at length about a scene from tonight's show that I think is a good example of everyone finding their own game to play in a scene in a way that is complimentary and not a big mess.

[Warning: I am now going to over-explain an improv scene, something that can really only result in being boring.]

It started with an initiation from Steve that he was a lawyer defending Shane and I in a court case and that we were going to be judged by "a jury of impressionist painters." "It's going to be Van Gogh, Gauguin, Picasso, and... another guy."

This led Shane to immediately jump on a game for himself which was... knowing more about art than Steve. "I don't mean to tell you how to do your job as a lawyer, but strictly speaking I've always thought of Picasso as more of a modernist. I was expecting more of a Manet or perhaps a Seurat, as long as you consider pointillism as within the realm of impressionism."

Now, I know a passable amount about art history, but I'm not going to be able to keep up with Shane in this game, so I pick my own game which is... play dumb. More specifically, play a dumb guy trying to hide the fact that he's dumb. So, Shane rattles off a string of art facts and I simply respond with an emphatic, "Ah-greed!" Figuratively winking at the audience a little.

At this point Padraic (left) enters announcing that Frank Caliendo and Dana Carvey have been added to the jury. So now he has his own game, which is periodically entering with different plays on the word "impressionist." "Good news! We just got three new people on the jury that put their hands in plaster!"

I proclaim, "I would like to go on record as being confident that there will be no more kinds of impressionists," and Padraic immediately enters saying, "Guys, you'll be amazed! We just got people added to the jury who are easily astounded by what they see and hear."

Big applause.

Steve: [during the post-show commentary] That is actually one of the never ending joys of playing with this cast. I'm going to put out a half- or even quarter-baked premise, dip my foot into referencing impressionism, and watch someone else knock that out of the park. I felt such a childish thrill when Arnie was like, "And I bet there won't be another one," and my internal monologue was like, "I bet there won't be either... but what if there was?!"
Eddie: Arnie, did you think he had another one?
Me: Uh... it was kind of a win-win for me.
Padraic: Yeah, for you.
Me: Either I'm setting Padraic up really well, like I'm supposed to as an improviser, or I'm being a dick, but winning.

Today we posted our last Daily Dis or Dat on the You Don't Know Jack site. Starting next week, instead of doing a full game on Mondays and a Dis or Dat the other four days, we're going to put up two full games a week.

Reactions in the message board were generally positive. People seem excited about getting to play two games a week, but many were sad to hear the Dailies were going away.

One person wrote, "Huh, May seems to be the bringer of bad news for me this year... First two friends from school die, then my World of Warcraft guild dies, and now daily DoDs?"

I lucked into some free tickets to a live recording of a local public radio show, 'Sound Opinions', which included a live performance by Death Cab for Cutie. So, I ended up, in the middle of the day, in the third row in an intimate little auditorium in the Chicago Cultural Center, watching the band play and be interviewed. Really... more being interviewed than playing, they only did five songs, but the interview was pretty interesting and lively.

At the end, the hosts realized they needed to record some fake song introductions "in the space" so they could be edited in later, to smoothly transition from interview segment to music segment.

So, everyone would go quiet and one of the hosts would pause to collect themselves and then say into the mic, "Hey guys, why don't you play another song." Then everyone would laugh and the band would tease them.

Ben Gibbard: [laughing] That was so unconvincing. You couldn't have sounded less like you wanted to hear us play a song.
Chris Walla: Garrison Keillor is going to issue you a radio ticket.

Walla, by the way, at one point early on made a throw-away comment about not really liking comedy, and then went on to crack more jokes than anyone else.

More improv lessons on MTV's 'The Real World'. There was no iO West in last week's show (at least as far as I could tell while fast forwarding through it) but this week the cast had their second class, which was basically a quick montage of, again, solid advice from Charna. "Improv is writing on your feet." "Make characters really you with some extra added information." "When someone's trying to enlighten you or teach, do your best to catch on quickly." Also... if you need to go to rehab, go to rehab.

I'm kind of fascinated by the idea of people trying to figure out improv from these short clips and sound bites.

Again, the cast went to see a show at the theater and again MTV showed about two seconds of it. A blip. Like an establishing shot, or that part in a movie where someone is half-watching TV late at night in a hotel room, and the camera cuts to the TV for a second to show an old fashioned cartoon. Like that.

This week's blip was an improv team on stage slow motion fighting.

I could complain that they're not really, you know, showing improv... but they kind of are. You go to some improv shows... you're going to see some slow motion fighting.

During the wedding reception on Saturday, Sarah and I snuck upstairs to take a look at some of the Swedish American Museum's exhibits.

There were a lot of very unhappy looking mannequins. Is it possible to have a camera near mannequins and not take wacky pictures? No, it is not.

Looking at this picture now, I notice there are dozens of little name plates on the wall. I hope they are names of contributers to the museum and not people who died in some horrible swedish tragedy that I was too busy taking funny pictures to learn about.

Not feeling great.

Mother's Day.

First I called Mom. She was finishing up dealing with the stuff we'd removed from the farmhouse. She sent Grandma her 'Last Supper' painting and tried to bring her the box of her old jewelry.

Mom: She liked the painting but didn't want the other stuff. She said to set aside some jewelry for her... to wear whenever she dies. The rest she told us to sell. The girls tried a jeweler which wouldn't take any of it, and a pawn shop would buy just one of the pieces for $17. All that jewelry she was certain was so valuable. I think when I get old I'll just burn all my stuff.

Next I called Grandma. We talked a little about the farmhouse drama. She was upset that Kenny's daughter had supposedly burned all the beds. "Those beds were in good shape. I put a slip cover over all of them." Who knows. Some of the those beds had to be pretty old.

I told her that everything I would have wanted was already missing from the house. But I did stumble across my birth announcement, the card my parents sent my grandparents when I was born. It was the one thing I took with me. I'm not sure what to do with it, if anything.

I tried changing the subject to happier things.

Me: I went to a wedding last night.
Grandma: A wedding?
Me: Some friends of mine got married.
Grandma: President Bush's daughter got married last night. Did you know about that?
Me: Yeah. I don't think I'd go to that wedding.
Grandma: Oh?
Me: I'm not a big fan of President Bush.
Grandma: Well, maybe that's why you weren't invited.