11.24.09

I'm driving to Madison for Thanksgiving. Using really conservative math, I think I've made this drive about 200 times over the last decade. Big changes I've noticed:

Lyndon Station has a way nicer gas station these days. I don't think I would have been nearly as freaked out ten years ago when I locked my keys in my car there, if it had been big and shiny (with an amazing jerky selection) and hadn't seemed like a killer's shack inside and out.

Those people with the big republican sign in their field have started to make less sense. Now instead of simply supporting McCain, their enormous plywood sign says something like "Keep Your Change! Go Armed Forces!" or something like that. Non sequiters are the best tool the right wing has.

And.... Yeah. THAT'S IT.

Wish me luck staying awake as I travel through the ancient greek afterlife punishment that is five hours on I-94. I must have been a jerk who told everybody they were boring in my past life, and now I'm forced to travel the same insanely boring stretch of highway over and over again, with nothing to look forward to except maybe, just MAYBE, a ridiculous radio dramatization of someone's journey towards Christ on 98.9, Wisconsin's religious FM hit parade.

Happy holidays, friends.
-H!

11.8.09

You wanna go? Let's go.

Dear world,
last night, Wes Anderson and Spike Jonze came to me in a dream. They said they wanted to make a movie of my life, featuring lots of in-camera effects, cross-section shots of dioramas and music by Nico and Band Of Horses. I was about to agree and sign over the rights to my autobiography, when suddenly George Clooney burst through the window and kidnapped me! He took me to Steven Soderbergh's mountain lair, where I was kept prisoner for fifteen years with only a picture of Julia Roberts and a plate of potstickers to keep me company. Finally, Soderbergh released me, and I went on a quest for vengeance. The dream would have ended with me cutting out my own tongue and then getting hypnotized in the snow, except I'm mostly just interested in movies made by straight white american hipster dudes. And Sophia Coppola. So instead I leapt onto the back of a passing Wild Thing and rode off into the sunset.
Love, Eric.

This reminds me... Foterson is playing with us this Monday! If you enjoy improv group infighting, please attend.

-HANNAH

9.10.09

Holy shit you guys. This week is to excitement as the night is to dark. I don't even know if that makes sense, but I'm too busy to make it make sense any more. We just got back from the Austin Out Of Bounds Comedy Festival, and I think I'm almost finished recuperating from whatever the rental car version of jet lag is called.
I have a serious improv crush on Austin's own Parallelogramaphonograph. They did an improvised screwball comedy that made my Martin and Lewis, Crosby and Kaye, Kelly, O'Connor and Reynolds loving heart skip a number of beats. Like I told Valerie Ward, I felt like I was watching Anchors Aweigh. Only with MST3K levels of self-awareness. Frickin' fantastic.
I printed our posters today. In case you haven't noticed, all our artwork this time around is taken from vintage or antique photos that I dug up in the antique stores of southern Wisconsin. Tony Daloia is the talented jerk responsible for photoshopping our faces into the distant past on the postcard. Our poster is a still from a 1939 movie. I will buy you a drink if you can tell me the title. Good fucking luck.
Love, Hannah

8.09.09

Tonight was a night of firsts. I got to do puppet-prov while operating Professor Dinosaur, and then got Eric's junk forcibly smashed into my neck and shoulders during Splendid's set. Also my first high speed car chase scene. All in all, an intense night. I'm sure the adrenaline will keep me awake for hours. That and the fact that when I sleep, the junk smash nightmares will come.

7.24.09

Without time travel, there are only so many ways I can get to the future. One is to sit here and wait while eating hasbrowns from Trader Joe's. The other is to get Splendid Things on twitter. Oh wait, that'll just send us to last year. Dammit! Oh well, doing it anyway...

7.4.09

Postscript to last blog entry...
I'M IN WISCONSIN. Now that it's dark, everybody and their mom is setting off enormously explosive fireworks in their backyards. America is sploodging sparkly fire all around me! Yay!

7.4.09
What the FUCK is going on outside right now? I'm sitting here in my mom's basement playing bejeweled, and all of a sudden it's world war three out on the golf course.
Oh yeah. Never mind.

Dammit. I forgot to go see fireworks. :(

06.03.09

I felt a scratching beneath the floorboards today, right under my feet. I froze, then shifted my weight experimentally which set off a scrabbling frenzy below. What fresh Lovecraftian horror was this?! At least one (but probably two) juvenile red squirrels are trapped in the walls and floor of the house I work in. They run around under the living room intermittentlly throughout the day. You can hear them jangling the radiators and bumping against the bottoms of the stairs. They seem to be trapped. It would be nice to let them out, but then they'd run around the house and scare the children. This past weekend two of them got out of the walls, scampered up the basement stairs and invaded the kitchen for a few minutes, then retreated into the walls. It's like that Dr. Seuss book, "In A People House." Only with the potential for rabies.
I don't think I'll catch a glimpse of them before they either die or escape. I did, however, tangle with a sparrow today in the laundry room. I feel trapped in a fairly benign, urban version of Jumanji.

5.01.09

I was eating lunch today with the three year old kid I nanny. She took a bite of her sandwich, chewed, swallowed, paused, then looked at me and said "You're a lobster." I laughed. She thought for a second, then added. "You're... a factory." I raised my eyebrows, waiting. And then it came. "You're a lobster factory."
Whether it was meant as an insult, a thought experiment or a monkeys-at-typewriters moment or randomness, the fact remains. I want to do improv with three year olds.

In other news, when I was dropping off Splendid Things postcards at the Smitten Kitten this evening, I found a dollar bill lying in the street. If it belongs to you, my sincere thanks. When I saw it on the sidewalk I felt like that part in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory when he sees the very corner of the golden ticket poking out from under the wrapper. The possibility of it being a twenty was so goddamn thrilling, I didn't even care that it ended up being a one. GOOD TIMES. My pleasures are few and simple.

4.09.09

Spent the morning re-reading parts of Seham's Whose Improv Is It, Anyway? and eating cereal fortified with anti-oxidants. I've definitely got some stuff to discuss with Michael next time I see him! Good stuff. I was too tired last night to do anything other than sleep (SORRY ANDERSON!) which was probably a good thing. When I read stuff about the history of Chicago improv right before bed, it can go one of two ways. Last week I had a dream that I was doing this really hack improv jam with a slouchy, bored line of improvisers I didn't know on a moodily lit, huge stage... but then I realized that Steve Carrell was on one side of me and Stephen Colbert was on the other, and we totally all made out.
Then there are the dreams in which Rachel Mason is chasing me through an abandoned house while a blizzard rages outside. I don't like waking up crying.

3.24.09

A week or two ago we shot some web commercials for the Smitten Kitten. Hilarity obviously ensued. Here's a behind the scene's pic of Michael provoking a smirk out of Eric while filming. Also pictured is Amy, our web mistress and cinematographer or second assistant AD or whatever. I don't know movie job words.

We had our second show last night, with Doug and Tim of Gay/Straight Alliance. Fuck yes.

3.11.09

Check this shit out...

TINY MARKERS, Y'ALL.
These are the best birthday present I've ever given myself (besides two hours and forty minutes of electric blue, nude Cruddup early last Friday morning). They come in a miniature tennis ball tube, and they produce a rainbow of colors guaranteed to cure depression and compel you to draw little effeminate flowers all over everything.
Good stuff.