Live from the Haywood Park Hotel Ballroom, stealing internet from the Bier Garden, it's the Spirits of AshEVILle Live Blog! We're 6 hours away from the event. Dress and tech rehearsal was supposed to start 20 minutes ago, but less than half the performers are here so everything is off to the usual Asheville start. And now most of the performers who are here have gone to Bier Garden for a drink. I guess that compensates for me using their interweeb.
The setup of the place is pretty nice, Halloween Express have put decorations out and on the table, and the Urban Peasantry people are putting up panels. There's a full lighting panel, and a sound check has just started. Beer is yet to arrive, but that's probably a good idea, with us having six hours until showtime.
The past few weeks have been a blur and I haven't been keeping up with the bloggy world (and if you're a friend who whom I owe an email, that goes for you as well).
Tomorrow is Halloween and the Spirits of ashEVILle Masquerade. The Feral Chihuahuas will be performing a bunch of sketches - I've got pretty limited participation in this one, but I will be reprising my turn as Bruce, the Ghost of Halloween Past.
Tickets are $20 online, but if you go to either location of Asheville Brewing Co, and mention the facebook ad (this counts as a facebook ad, I guess), then you can get them at a discount.
I was planning on going to the BlogAsheville party tonight, but I've come down with some lurgy - I hope it's a fun party, the last two were awesome fun.
Last night was a good night for the Oxymorons at Razcals - one of the biggest crowds yet, most people stayed for the whole show, some really funny moments, and at the end there were were so many cries for more that the rest of us (I wasn't in the cast last night) got up to do a special show-ender. I got to pretend to be Carrot Top. Some days I wish I was Carrot Top.
Wednesday night - that's tomorrow is another special show, one of our new "Feral Chihuahuas Presents" shows. Katie, Sarah and I are going to be providing some entertainment at the Martini Wednesday event at The Venue. We have a few more of these "Feral Chihuahuas Presents" where a few of us will be doing our thing in an intimate venue.
Now for the big news - on Halloween Night the Feral Chihuahuas will be part of the biggest show and party Asheville has seen in a long time. The venue is the Haywood Park Hotel Ballroom, and here's what is on tap...
Sketches from the Feral Chihuahuas
Sideshow entertainment from Arts2People
Beer from Asheville Brewers Alliance
Costume Contest
DJs
And...
The debut of the second Feral Chihuahuas Musical! Tommy has taken perennial favorite "The Halloween Carol" and ramped it up with new jokes and songs. I'm a terrible singer, but I'm going to work my ass off on getting this right.
Come back here for ticket details and a full line-up soon.
Didn't get to perform on the weekend, which was a bit of a disappointment, but I heard that people who went to the show at Coxe Ave on the weekend had a good time and a creepy time. Which I think was the intention all along.
Unexpectedly, it looks like I'm in the show tonight at Razcals. So come out at 8pm for a free show with the OxyMorons - it's going to be a really intriguing lineup of morons tonight, possibly someone I've never performed before with (does that sentence make sense?). Free show - keep Razcals happy by buying drinks and food.
I'll be doing improv with the OxyMorons tonight at Razcal's bar - Old Fairview Road in East Asheville (Fairview represent!). I'm looking forward to tonight's show, should be an all-star lineup out there. Show is free, just buy enough food and drinks to keep yourself slinging outrageous suggestions at me.
There's some new videos up at the Feral Chihuahuas YouTube from this season...
Man Douche. Yes, we were using Axe cans as the spray and we all smelled like Cinjades at the end. Adam was the true trooper of this shoot, he took a full face of body spray to the face in that end shot and didn't flinch. You can also see a reason as to why I went with the short hair this year, check out the mane underneath the wig in that first scene.
The Intro for "King of Kings" - I love the intro, was never too big on the sketch (though it gave me a chance to eat cheetos on stage). I love my poking my tongue out in disgust at the end, we don't do many profile shots.
Wyman did some amazing work on these, even after we showed them during our shows this year. Way to go Wyman!
Went to see "Inglourious Basterds" on the weekend. Brilliant from start to finish, and Christoph Waltz is the perfect villain!!!! The every syllable dripping sarcasm works through the whole film, and kudos to that first scene being stretched to breaking point to set the scene for what a prick he is going to be to everyone.
Tonight is the OxyMorons show at Razcals - if you're looking to laugh tonight I can't recommend this more highly. Come down and challenge the Bastard! It's an interesting venue, personally I love trying to win over the crowd who come not realising there's an improv show on. If I can get a laugh out of them, it's a victory. Takes me way back to two bad early stand-up experiences, both in Australia.
One was at a bar in Melbourne that ran comedy regularly, but most of the time it was just the comedians in the crowd. I was trying to do my set, and there were a bunch of guys playing pool who were way louder than the few actually listening. I was trying to time punchlines to after one of them making a shot, so at least there would be some reaction.
The other was in Hobart, Tasmania. A bar that had never done comedy before decided to try a comedy night, and it was a one-and-done situation. There weren't a lot of people there, but of the few who were there to listen to the comedy, two of them were kids writing a report for their High School (and since they had to have an adult with them - in bars in Australia anyone can come in provided they're with an adult), their mother was there sitting with them... and her knitting. She sat there alternating being appalled and pretending not to listen, and smacking the kids if they laughed - it didn't help that of the three comedians, I was doing the filthy stuff, we had one guy doing mostly drug-related material, and a goth kid doing monologues about being suicidal. To cap it off, the bar didn't turn off the jukebox - so particularly during the goth kid's set, he was getting drowned out by the singing.
I love me a hostile crowd! But I also love a bar full of people who want to laugh - so here's hoping tonight is more of the latter than the former. Bring it on, Razcals!
Been gone for a while, didn't get any official performing in while I was gone, sadly, but now I'm back and ready to get back into it.
LAAFF is coming up over Labor Day weekend - it seems to be year on/year off that I do something at LAAFF and this is an "on" year. If you take the LaZoom shuttle bus to and from LAAFF, there's a chance that you'll get some Bastard or some Feral Chihuahuas entertainment while you're being shuttled.
The OxyMorons are still going strong at Razcals on Monday night - and karaoke comes straight after us! Come see the show and then challenge me to sing something. I'm a really terrible singer!
So last weekend I did just about the most disgusting thing I've ever done in the name of comedy, and it should be in a film at the Feral Chihuahuas shows this weekend. I have a prior commitment out of town, but Tommy, Andrew, Katie, Sarah, Drew and Adam will be bringing the funny to the Asheville Arts Center for one last time. I think the next Feral Chihuahuas show will be a Halloween Extravaganza, so don't miss this. There's also going to be the debut of the new Feral Chihuahuas t-shirt.
Asheville Arts Center, 8pm Friday and Saturday night, $10 - all new sketches, songs and films!
Monday night I think was my best performance with the OxyMorons at Razcals. I was really happy with how things went at 35 Below earlier this summer, but overall I think last night was a truly great show. Eating cottage cheese with hot wax while Drew wrapped me in bacon, followed by a disaster of a Mexican-themed party with Sarah, continuing my unbeaten streak in Feudalism (Drew and I nailed "Film Noir"), and then some truly inspiring audience suggestions for "I like my men like I like my ..." rounded out an evening of laughs.
The OxyMorons are at Razcals every Monday at 8, with karaoke following at 10. I'm not always in the show, so check back here and I'll try to keep you updated on which shows I'm in, but it's always a good laugh and FREE!
It's show #3 of our big summer season - "Introduction to Western Civilization"
We're packing together sketches of historical significance with new films, audience participation, crazy new bits and a possible return of a great hit from the April Fool's Day show - "George 'the' Bastard Reads Notices".
I've got a lot of roles in this show too, probably penance for not being able to be in the last show (I'll be writing and in films, but I won't be on stage for the season finale).
Visit Feralton at the Asheville Arts Center (308 Merrimon Ave) the Friday and Saturday at 8pm to find out
Can Emily Dickinson impress her poetry teacher?
Did Nirvana write the plot for porn?
Can you take financial advice from a man with bad hair?
What can the French New Wave do for you?
What did Hamlet really do to Ophelia?
Whose feet did I give a thorough rubbing to this week?
It's been a while, and things have been motoring along in the world of the Bastard.
The Feral Chihuahuas went to Ohio to the Shadowbox Sketch Comedy festival. Shadowbox is quite the entity, and if you happen to be near Columbus, you need to check them out! It's like a commune with a theatre - the gang there do everything from writing to performing to cooking. We were treated like royalty, and if you've been to a Feral Chihuahuas show you know that we don't just bring the funny, but we love to entertain and we were the party planners for the late night gazebo sessions at the hotel. I have no idea how we weren't kicked out of the rather nice Marriot Courtyard.
For Day #1 we got a tour of the facility at Shadowbox and worked through our material on the stage. In typical Chihuahuas fashion we were something like 87 minutes longer than we thought we were, so cuts had to be made. I was hoping we'd cut everything I was in but Facescroll so I wouldn't have to change costume at all, but I ended up in two of our pieces so there was one piece of rapid costume changes.
Performance went well - the audience at Shadowbox were there to LAUGH!!! All six of the groups got at least one great reaction, and our set went really well. The only role I had that was meant to get a lot of laughs was as Postings in Facescroll, and it suits me pretty well, I just have to deliver lines in a silly voice, no acting required.
A few of the Shadowbox people came and joined us at the hotel late at night - yay for 3am drinking and philosophising with fellow funny people, particularly the guys from Laughter League, Cell Camp and the Indicators. Here's some samples of these groups...
Laughter League's "You-scan-it" sketch. Although the idea has been kind of done before, the cap is brilliant!
Most of the sketches that I really liked by Cell Camp aren't on their YouTube, but I wish they'd done this one live - "Can I fart in here"?
The Indicators also don't have their funniest stuff online - they were the first group I got to know (because their table was between ours and the buffet).
Far less hungover than I had any right to be, I emerged for Wednesday's festivities. The plan for Wednesday's show was to highlight the "best of the fest", although I wasn't sure about them breaking up sketches into smaller parts to thread through the show, it might have been a better idea to give each group two sketches, one long and one short. For us, they picked "Gangster Rap for the Hearing Impaired" so I had a whole day to watch and hang out. I ended up being picked for one of the few lines in the Garrett Morris sketch, so I suddenly had something to do. In the sketch, a lot of us had to play kids - Joe from Laughter League and I both had beanies, "just in case" (hey Joe, if you're reading, did the picture of us come out?).
Wednesday night's show was a blast - a lot of audience members came to both shows, so at the end I had a few crowd people come up and say they liked Face Scroll (and one person who confused me for someone in Cell Camp - with great apologies to whomever in Cell Camp looks or sounds like me). I got to see almost all of the show from the little back corral area, and Shadowbox's lighting and mic effects really helped a few of the sketches. Drew and Tommy stretched Gangsta Rap out for an eternity!
There was some pretty nice press around the event too. Metromix Columbus pointed out that the Feral Chihuahuas took the risks and got the rewards. Columbus Dispatch gave us much love, with reviews of the shows on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Staggered back to the hotel late at night to see that the Laughter League had commandeered the pool, so joined in. This was followed by more drinking and merriment, and a fairly sombre drive back to Asheville on Thursday.
Shadowbox! Can't thank you enough for amazing organization of a terrific festival. I want to go back!
The Feral Chihuahuas are back with Show #2 of the summer series - Social Patchworking Sorcery. I'm looking forward to this in a big way. For a start, I get to play a waiter. I play a lot of waiters, although I have never been a waiter. I think enough of the rest of the Chihuahuas have been waiters, and want to see what my take on it is.
Second, there's going to be a really great film/sketch tie-in. I haven't seen the film parts yet, but the film/sketch tie-in excites me. Sarah wrote the script and I got my grotty fingers into it, and it's my favorite three-parter in a long long time.
Third, I will be wearing the pants I wore in "Vending Love". I don't get to wear them very often, and that is a shame. So come see what it's all about. Downtown Asheville is going to be a noisy, overcrowded mess, so drop $10 on an evening with friends, laughs, and easy-to-find parking. It's at the Asheville Arts Center, 308 Merrimon Ave.
Well I'm back from my four day trip to an undisclosed location. Not sure if I've changed the world, but I may just have made it a funnier place. I did a little blog maintenance when I got back, I finally got around to modifying Shad Marsh's blog (VOTE FOR HIM!!). As official stand-up comedian of the Marsh For Mayor campaign, I will be coming up with jokes and offensive stances to further sink his perilous ship. I've added Nathan Adams' page of intriguing art and performance in Asheville. I'm a big fan of Nathan and was hoping to use him in a stand-up night that originally fell through but may be back on (look for details in September).
The full article is great, and the press version has some really nice reprints of pictures including some from our season-opener just over a week ago! The next set of Feral Chihuahuas shows are this upcoming weekend - Friday and Saturday nights at the Asheville Arts Center. I'll have some new stand-up, and we're finally working the films into the sketches, so come out and see a series of firsts.
Been one crazy week here in Bastardville, three shows, a mystery illness, some travel and some more travel coming up soon.
The first two Feral Chihuahuas shows are in the bag, and if you missed them, make sure you catch some of the remaining shows. If you were there, you know you need to catch more of the shows. Great audiences each night, delicious drinks, venue rocking, and the stage for Feralton helps out a lot with the show.
Got an unexpected laugh on Saturday night by being caught on stage moving scenery and throwing myself behind a curtain, so look for a few more stage-hand antics. I am not in that many sketches, so I try to make sure that I'm setting the stage to make it look good.
Monday was my first show at Razcals - great to see some of the Drinking Liberally people there, and a few new faces (the couple from Alabama, if you've made it here, hi!). Looks like those shows are building a reasonable crowd, but it would be nice if they could be a bit more popular.
Didn't make it to a bunch of things at the end of the week with some mystery stomach bug, and I'm travelling the next few days, but I'll be back in Asheville next weekend for more Feral Chihuahuaness!
So in my absence, go see the Oxymorons at Razcals on Monday night at 8pm. Drinks specials, free show and now air conditioning!
Last night we finished putting together the set and the technical details for the summer series. We've gone ambitious - there's a set for Feralton, creepy Feral Chihuahuas will be looking at you from all angles, and we've re-set the stage so there should be none of the bad lines of viewing that there were in a few sketches in the April Fools show. I put an impressive blister on my thumb working on these sets.
I've got some new (some of it topical, but I promise - no Michael Jackson jokes) stand-up to open proceedings tonight and tomorrow night.
Semi-dress rehearsal with the new set went well last night. We have never rehearsed as much for one show (whether that will show tonight is a matter for debate and debauchery).
Shows are July 3 and 4 at 8pm. There's still tickets available for both nights, $10 online or at the door (if any tickets are left or anyone walks out in disgust - I call that "vertical applause").
If that wasn't enough comedy (or Bastard) for you, I'm also doing improv with the OxyMorons at Razcals at 8pm on Monday night. I'll be coming up with one-liners based on your ideas, so come out and stump the Bastard!
The debut of new Feral Chihuahua Adam Meier - see him on film, see him live
A new set constructed for this summer season
Hysterical live sketches and films that you will see nowhere else
Two musical acts
Stand-up from George "the" Bastard
Pre-show slide-show - come early, sit close and enjoy some pretertainment
Get your tickets now - there's limited seating, and our last show sold out well in advance. Select a date from the drop down menu and you're on your way to Feralton!
In between rehearsing for the upcoming Feral Chihuahuas season-opener I'm going to be in a few shows over the weekend.
It's the third year of the Asheville Community Theater's Late Night Comedy Series at 35 Below, and this weekend will be two shows by the Oxymorons. These will be the first shows to really feature some of the newer members of the improv group, and will be my re-introduction to improv.
Shows are Friday and Saturday nights, 8pm at 35 Below (enter on Market St). Tickets are only $10
After the show on Saturday, I'll be heading down to NC Stage Company for the Best of No Shame Theatre - my piece "The Rise and Fall of the Alliteranation" was nominated. Show starts at 11 and should be a riot. Tickets are $5 at the door - this will be one of the strangest shows you will ever see!
Ideas this awesome never come along - homeless people, the musical? When it gets produced, I volunteer to be the ticket-taker.
Hey man, I just need you to come see my show, you see my old lady is with my car at the garage and I just need $3.57 to get to her or I'll lose my car. God bless.
Decided to try a new, leaner, meaner, more slim-lined Bastard look for this summer so I cut off most of my hair on Friday.
Rehearsals for the July 3 and 4 Feral Chihuahuas shows start tonight! It's going to be a great show, tickets should be available in the next day or two from our brand-new website.
Tonight you can catch the Oxymorons live at Razcals - I can't be there tonight but that just means that "beer sausage" most likely will not get used in a game.
I know it had come close a couple of times, but I was always keeping my fingers crossed - the idea was brilliant, the coffee good, the crowd extremely dingy and sour. They were a sponsor of the Feral Chihuahuas two years ago and I ran a pretty decent open mic night there (with an ugly fallout, but that wasn't Caffiend's fault).
Now I'm going to need to find a new place for morning coffee (it was pointed out on the weekend that I always have either a beer or a coffee in hand).
There's going to be a closeout bash for Caffiend tomorrow night, I'll stop by.
I didn't end up on stage at Razcal's last night, I chatted with the owner and threw in "helpful" suggestions from the crowd. The new owner has really changed the feel of the place, there's an airy game room, amusing food and some very friendly staff. Not a huge crowd, interesting thing was that people who were clearly not there expecting a show stayed and had a good time. I hope we can advertise the next one (NEXT MONDAY 8PM - most likely I'll not be in the cast for this one since I'm scheduled for a Feral Chihuahuas researsal that night).
However there is one other great reason to go to Razcals
BEER SAUSAGE!!!!
This is the greatest name for a menu item ever.
So come out next Monday for some Improv and BEER SAUSAGE
Tonight is the first of the new OxyMorons shows at Razcals. It's a free show, and I've heard the food there has picked up in quality severely. I'm going to be in a few of the larger games, so stop by for a drink and a laugh - show starts at 8pm.
I caught the Beards of Comedy show at 35 Below on Friday. Small crowd, really needed a bit of punching to warm up - this may be an Asheville thing, I've found out if I come out and start shouting and getting in people's faces straight away I get a better reaction than if I try to feel my way into a set. Always tough going to the first show in a series, so I hope they got some good crowds and laughers as the weekend went on.
We're getting closer and closer to the Feral Chihuahuas season opener! July 3 at Asheville Arts Center - more details and ticket information here soon!
Well, it appears that David Carradine left this world while choking little grasshopper. What is amazing is that people hunting all around the interweebs for Autoerotic Asphyxiation are landing on our YouTube video of my Autoerotic Asphyxiation sketch from last year's summer season - we're over 20,000 hits on it!
I was pleasantly surprised to hear that "The Rise and Fall of the Alliteranation" has been picked for this year's Best of No Shame Theatre, which will be on June 26 at 11pm. I read through it again this week, and I think it's a neat little sketch - doesn't really fit with the work I've been doing with the Feral Chihuahuas but it was fun to write. So it will probably be put to bed after this show - come on out on the 26th at 10pm (come straight from the OxyMorons show and double your Bastard in the one night)!
Stretch your funny weekend out this weekend by coming to see the first OxyMorons show at Razcals on Monday! 8pm for the return of improv to places that legitimately serve alcohol, woohoo.
I have a great fondness for "The Chaser" - their urban guerilla stuff (they were the ones who got an Osama Bin Laden impersonator into APEC) is great, but some of their sketch comedy stuff is not so hot. However I'm pretty amazed that they were taken off the air for this sketch (I laughed at it).
The Feral Chihuahuas are waving a fond farewell to our home of the last two years, 35 Below at the Asheville Community Theatre. It was a terrific venue and the shows there were a lot of fun, but we had to turn a lot of fans away, so we've got a new venue for our shows - we'll be starting our series at the Asheville Arts Center.
35 Below is running the Third Annual Late Night Comedy series (and there's a chance you might even see George "the" Bastard performing). It kicks off this weekend with the Beards of Comedy, highly recommended by the Robot Johnson guys.
And if you make it all the way to Monday, come see the FREE show at Razcals featuring the OxyMorons.
Or go take advantage of the free live show this week downtown that will be the fans of Phish and the Beastie Boys.
Asheville is about to go berzerk about the Beastie Boys, who I thought had disappeared into a black hole of their own hype men in about 1989. I've had a couple of people ask if I'm interested in going, which makes you realise just how few friends you really have.
It may be worth showing up just to see what the crowd is like. Does Asheville have enough lime green track suits in stock?
It's always worth a peek at the online Asheville Citizen-Times because at random times during the day they put up stories with a minimum of spellchecking, editing and aforethought.
Today, the Bastard's favorite street name makes an appearance. I guess the subheading was declared too bland. On the other hand it is rather a nice Friday morning to be sitting out in downtown Asheville with open containers of beer and cocaine. I think she was just making the most of things.
This headline conjures up some more stunning visuals on a slow news day (apart from beer and cocaine on Short Coxe!). Phish phans are phucking coming and they will clog the streets of Asheville. You know if there's any city well-equipped for the onslaught of broke smelly jam band fans, you'd think it would be Asheville.
I had one of the least stressful returns to the US ever - my passport and documentation are usually such a mess that leaving or entering any country is a hassle. I have a green card, four cancelled visas, an Australian passport and am usually drunk getting on or getting off a plane. It's tempting when you're an immigration official to dwell on the cancelled visas. In Philadelphia once I spent a few hours quality time in the little room they keep you in when they aren't sure if they're going to let you in to the country. Hilarity continued to ensue as by the time they let me out of the little room, my suitcase had been considered abandoned and everything was laid out all over two tables of another little room that they had for miscreants.
In any case I'm back and I'm embarking on a few new things.
Last night I did my first full-on improv show in about 20 years, performing with the OxyMorons for the last show at Buddha Bagels. Great audience, fun night, trying to impersonate Jack Nicholson I decided I sounded like Dick Sargeant and ran with it (unfortunately the game ended before I could suggest a foursome with the other Jack Nicholson, Nicole Kidman and Elizabeth Montgomery). I'll be doing some more shows with the OxyMorons, so watch this space for details.
The Feral Chihuahuas (new website coming soon!) are getting ready for a new summer season opening on the 4th of July Weekend! I'm writing away for this at the moment, we've got new writers, some great ideas and each show is going to be a spectacular. This year we're going to do the same show on Friday and Saturday nights, so there's no excuse for missing the best sketch comedy in Asheville. After the success of the April 1st extravaganza we're going to step up to the bigger venue - you'll be able to get tickets here soon.
Coming soon is the next Vortex Cabaret - sorry I missed the first one. This is going to be one cheap, weird and funny show.
Keep checking back to the Lack of Life for updates on local comedy and bastardry. It's good to be back.
At lunch yesterday I was asked that very odd question by my step-grandmother (let's call her step-nanabastard). Several good answers came to mind, but I settled on "a lot". However we were having this conversation as I was about to tuck into a pretty Australian, all things considered, lunch. Now in the US we have the Outbreak chain of restaurants who claim to be the custodians of Antipodean cuisine, but I'm not sure if they really come up to the bizarrity that is the Australian palate.
I chose the signature chicken dish for the place I was at yesterday, and it was grilled chicken with satay sauce, guacamole and sour cream. Kind of tex-mex-thai. The classic Australian dish is a meal in a single course, something very savoury, something meaty, and something sweety in the one dish.
So next time you're at home and thinking "I'll cook Australian" just add these three ingredients together and you've got the perfect Aussie dish.
Pork a la Bastard:
Grill a pork chop, top it with feta cheese and olives, and cover it in raspberry jam.
There are two things that just aren't a big deal in the US, but in Australia some people care and I can't really see why, but I'm suckered in anyway.
The Eurovision Song Contest, which has provided the world with ABBA, two or three one-hit wonders (Buck's Fizz anyone?) and a quarter century of nonentities is on TV running over three whole nights. The first night (a "semi" final where 18 countries started but only 10 got to move on) had a lot of time to fill, so they'd show the first song, then recap that song while getting the second song ready. Then you'd have a recap of the first two songs while the third song was prepared. The first song, which appeared to be performed by Belarusian pirate fetishists on stilts, made 18 appearances, but still didn't get to the second round. Apparently someone will win, and their CD will be prominent in the discount section of Serbian branches of Best Buy for the next three weeks.
Speaking of ABBA... we as a country have refused to let go. Yesterday, in honor of the Eurovision Song contest, I heard three ABBA songs on the radio (and the Australian in me came out, as I found myself subconsciously mumbling along with "I Had a Dream:"), and a few million mentions that the 295th re-run of "ABBA: The Movie" a concert film of ABBA in Australia in 1976 was going to be shown on Saturday prime time.
If you're thinking of bringing a country to its kness, kidnap ABBA and demand what you want from Australia, we'll give it to you.
The internet in Australia is expensive. I remember it being that way when I was a University student, and it's gotten even more so. You pay per megabyte, and it's funny to watch what my laptop, Pornputer, chews through while it's "idly" connected to the interweebs. Just signing in to the Lack of Life took up almost a megabyte, and therefore cost me 10 cents. I don't think it's worth that much.
In my apartment in Asheville, a check for wireless access points shows at least 20 of them, and five or so of them are "scab internets" where I can log in and steal someone else's connection. There's nothing like that around here. On the rare occasion I can find a wireless hotspot it's locked down! So I got a prepaid wireless broadband doohickey. It plugs into the back of pornputer and dials up a wireless connection. Pretty nifty stuff - once my $10 of internet has run out (hopefully not before the happy ending), I can call up the nice people in Bangmanilastan and either give them more money for more internet or order nasi goreng to go.
OK, well I'm in Australia, and I'll be here for a few weeks. Reliving a few Bastard roots, I'm sitting right now in the bedroom I inhabited as a little Bastard (now a computer den). I'm getting a kick out of printing things out on larger sheets of paper, and watching the water circle the other way as I expel the remnants of Qantas cuisine.
My flight out of Asheville was delayed by three beers, but I managed to make my connections in Charlotte and Los Angeles. Qantas have a camera on the tail of the airplane, so you can watch takeoff and landing from a little video screen in front of you. I'd put some sort of deliberate warp on it so it looks like you're coming in to the runway at a crazy angle. When we landed in Melbourne, people in surgical masks got on the plane to make sure nobody has the sniffles. Thus far swine flu has stayed out of Australia, and apparently they think the spread can be having incoming international flights met by people in surgical masks. We all had to stay in our seats as they scoured the plane. I thought about coughing out of principle.
The Lack of Life is saddened by the loss of The Computer In The Cow Box, who left this world in the fading days of April, aged 9.
The Computer In The Cow Box is preceded in death by most of Gateway Computers, the Zip Disk system, an external DVD burner, the internal modem, Windows XP and its original Epson printer. It is survived by a Motorola cable modem, an Epson 3-in-1, and an elderly 15-inch CRT monitor.
It's been a rough couple of weeks since the last Feral Chihuahuas show, but there's some excitement coming up soon.
It looks like the next Feral Chihuahuas show is going to be Independence Day weekend, with the working title of "After Birth Of A Nation, What Now?". I'm writing patriotic pieces, but also hoping to get a few of the usual Bastard things slipped through that don't necessarily match the theme. Time and ticket details will be available here as soon as I know.
In the interim we're working on some short films and the eagerly-anticipated URTV episodes. We're going to make some internet-only films and video pieces, I'll be trialling some of them here.
I missed the start of No Shame Theater last night, but it looked like it was going to be a great show. I figured I was going to fall asleep, so I ducked out.
Vortex Cabaret is coming soon... more details on that when I know them.
Things are heating up, I'm going to try to take some time to write more regular posts, so look back for more regular injections of the Bastard in your lives.
The show last week was so amazing that it broke my toe, gave me a horrible head cold and kept me away from the blog for a week. Now that's a good show!
Amazing - we had a turnaway crowd (usually we turn crowds away with some of the performances, but this time we had to actually say "there's no room for you at this show")! We could have managed a few things better, but the large crowd really took us aback, we went on late because we were trying to squeeze as many people in as possible.
Show was great - if you were in the audience and are reading, that was the best response I've had to a stand-up set in years. That reminder that I read made me laugh for hours and I'm glad I could share the supreme creepyness of it with the audience. I need to do some more stand-up, looks like there's a good chance for a lot more Asheville performances starting in May (I prefer to spread it around, but I'll work on some new material). I'm writing for the summer season of Feral Chihuahuas - if you were at the show you got a healthy dose of my material - and trying a few new twists on sketches. I've not been good at writing physical humor into sketches, but I've had a few ideas that involve movement and space.
This weekend we'll make the arrangements for the summer shows, so check back here to find out first. We're going to be doing each show more often, to give as many of you as possible a chance to see the Feral Chihuahuas in action.
I broke my toe the morning of the show (this is not my excuse for the terrible dancing), and came down with a cold over the weekend, so I've been out of action lately and missed a few shows and performances I really didn't want to miss. The Oxymorons are now performing weekly at Buddha Bagels, check them out on Tuesdays to keep your laughing gear in order for our upcoming season!
Feral Chihuahuas live at the Asheville Arts Center, 308 Merrimon Ave - tickets available at the door, $10 / $7 for students. Come see some original sketch comedy from Asheville's premier sketch comedy ensemble, original songs, stand up by George "the" Bastard and some surprises you are going to love!
In trying to get everything together last night I tore off a toenail so I haven't quite broken a leg for tonight but I've gotten close. I have a few small parts in sketches tonight but I get to wear two competely ridiculous costumes. This show is a sneak preview of what is to come in our sensational summer season.
In an effort to spread Bastardry one mountain at a time, I've just spent a week in Salt Lake City. Which is a story in itself, however I have to hand it to the Mormons - you have unintentionally created the PERFECT drinking city! The entire place is on a numbered grid pattern, so it's impossible to get lost unless you lose your powers of mathematical reasoning when hammered (I am at 300 west and 400 south, I need to get to 600 west and 100 south, so I have to go three blocks in this direction, and three blocks in this direction).
In trying to create a state where nobody drinks, they forgot to put a tax on alcohol, or a limit to the amount that can be served at one time. You want a $10 pitcher of microbrew all to yourself, there you go, how about a cheap chaser?
The downside is that you have to become a member at bars. And many bars now have my fingerprints, address, drivers licence number and toenail samples. So if you're a budding identity theftist, just steal the ledger from under the bar at any Salt Lake City drinking establishment.
But now to the present - some morons thought they could fly Delta from Salt Lake City in March and not get delayed. I was on a small shuttle plane to Denver, which was sitting on the tarmac waiting for its de-icing (plane bath!), which meant that we were 90 minutes late getting to Denver. I think most of my plane were transferring to Atlanta, which was meant to be leaving from the gate right next to where we pulled in. There's no plane there. I am on a plane of hysterical people screaming that they needed to get off because they had 15 minutes to make a connection to an invisible plane. Many of these people are approaching the desk (there's still no plane) every 10 minutes or so begging and pleading for the plane to come here faster. Did I add there's a snowstorm?
I'm thinking of borrowing a Delta uniform and opening up my own bastard information station for these delusional rabble-rousers.
"Will I make my connection?"
"No. I hope your jam-packed carry-on bag the size of a horse is comfortable because you'll be using it for a pillow for the next two nights"
---
"When will the incoming plane arrive?"
"I'll just call the pilot and ask them to hurry up for you. He's prone to doing cartwheels and flying irregular routes, and doing this annoying slowing down before hitting the runway. Can you sign this responsibility form in case the plane crashes trying to land in this snowstorm so you can get to Atlanta?"
---
"I demand recompensation for delay of my time"
"If you whine and bellyache like this at work, you probably cost your company money. They owe us for keeping your useless ass from the office."
Come see The Feral Chihuahuas on Wednesday for our pre-season opening extravaganza. If you're really lucky, I'll still be here! Link to buy tickets below.
I had a terrific bastard moment yesterday, I had a bunch of mailings to do that didn't get finished until around 4 yesterday, so at 4:10 pm I descended on the post office with 42 envelopes that had to be individually weighed and stamped. There were two people working, and I managed to hold up one of them for 30 minutes with the occasional wave and smile to the gathering crowd behind me. It's good to be a bastard!
If you have G4, and they are showing them in order, tomorrow night should be the episode of "The Chaser's War On Everything" when most of the cast get arrested for driving a car with the Osama Bin Laden lookalike into the APEC summit.
Humanitarian of the week: Morrissey - saving Asheville from having to hear what he's become. Maybe 311 will show the same consideration to people unfortunate enough to buy a ticket to their show.
Mario Miguel Molina Garcia, 35, of Bear Creek Lane, was charged with possession with intent to manufacture, sell and deliver 445 grams of marijuana; simple marijuana possession; cocaine trafficking; maintaining a dwelling to use, store drugs; possession of drug paraphernalia; and possession of 6 grams of cocaine, warrants show.
When you think of people who broke down the barriers, names like Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman and Andrew Dice Clay come to mind. But a true crusader for animal rights was Frisco Jackson Davis, the only animal to ever be allowed in the Bastard's car.
Wow, do we have some ghetto criminals in the mountains, but their nicknames are great. What I think the County is missing is the chance to shame them into getting caught with the wanted poster. These wanted posters make them look kind of... well... cool.
I know he's a "most wanted" but really? JT Money?
Dear Buncombe County - let George "the" Bastard do your wanted posters.
Haven't quite dropped off the face of the planet yet, sorry to tell you. Things have been rather interesting in the world of the Bastard in the last few days, the hammer finally came down on the only facebook profile picture I've ever had, opportunities have been ever so tantalisingly close and getting snatched away, and I'm looking at a few very very random trips.
However the weekend is coming up soon, and if you're looking for a laugh over the next couple of days, this town is a goldmine again!
Last weekend I went to see "The Little Dog Laughed" at Asheville Community Theatre's 35 Below (oftentime home to the Feral Chihuahuas). Great show, well-acted - Jamie Shell is great in it, and I hadn't seen Joan Atwood before but she is perfect in her part. There's some great laughs in this play, and an ending that I won't give away, but I did not pick, and I'm usually a great picker of endings.
Tom Stoppard has written some great bizarre pieces (when is someone in Asheville going to put on "The Dog It Was That Died"?), and the screenplay for "Brazil". But he's best known for an early work, "Rosencrantz And Guildenstern are Dead", which is being put on at NC Stage over the next few weeks. I'm hoping to get to it next week.
Saturday night (or indeed Sunday morning) is the next instalment of No Shame Theatre. Not sure if I'm going to make it there on Saturday but I'm going to try. There's been a change in time - it's 11 for scripts and midnight for the show. If you're lucky you'll be out for last call, but there'll be drinks in there, yip. No Shame is cheap ($5), exciting and always fun, and there's a chance you could end up acting in a George "the" Bastard original.
If you sleep all the way through the weekend and find that you've woken up on Tuesday, then you can see the OxyMorons.
I'm still working on scripts for the next Feral Chihuahuas show, an April Fool's extravaganza. There'll be a work in progress for that show if I make it to No Shame. It's going to be a great show, something a little different. Watch this space!
Some more video goodness for your enjoyment on Valentine's Day.
"Tom and Jeannie", featuring John Moore, another appearance of Andrew in a dress, and the Waffle House menu we originally swiped for the Time Capsule sketch of a few years ago.
"People you should never date: Dr. Seuss". This was the cap of a three-parter I wrote for a show I couldn't be at, so I was seeing it for the first time online. I like it when the title gets a laugh, I heard all three parts went down well.
I'm hoping to have more details tomorrow about the next Feral Chihuahuas show.
Vending Love was written by Drew McDermott and gave me the chance to play a randy random foreigner with one thing on his mind.
Men are from Bars, Women are from Penis was filmed live at the second-t0-last Feral Chihuahuas show of the summer season (a show I couldn't be at), so I hadn't seen it before. I think Andrew is meant to be playing an actual female character here.
A Valentines Day double feature from your friends at the Feral Chihuahuas
I don't have any shows coming up in the next few weeks and this joke will be old very soon, so it amused me to hear this morning that Kellogs have dropped Michael Phelps as a spokesperson for photos of him taking bong hits at the University of South Carolina (or as they call it at that USC, extra credit). Great move Kellogs, you make cereal - the last thing you need to be doing is pissing off potheads. Nascar don't distance themselves from rednecks, budwiser is all over drunken sports fans but dear old Kellogs don't want to be seen as the munchies cereal of choice.
In completely unrelated news, I saw this snowman and laughed yesterday. ooooh, oh oh oh oh oh oh oh katamari damacy
Filmed on location in Woodfin, with an extremely brief, well-hidden appearance by George "the" Bastard, and more obvious boxer shorts than a frat party, here's "Cops: Mount Olympus" by the Feral Chihuahuas.
And so disappears another of the genital/musical conditions. We are now down to...
Trombonists' Glans: when you masturbate in the long swooping strokes that you would usually use in a glissandi and squeeze far too much blood into the head of the penis.
French Horn Anus: when the extreme lip pressure on one end causes extreme sphincter loosening on the other end.
Tuba Taint: when attempting to become comfortable squatting holding a 45-pound instrument with no center of gravity results in you shifting uncomfortably so much you gain a characteristic rash
and that extremely unfortunate occurrance you can get when you hold the cymbals too close.
Had a planning meeting for the Feral Chihuahuas last night, first time that all of us had been in the one place since our last show. We settled on a few things that you should be looking out for soon.
Next show will most likely be an April Fools' Day show. Or a Palm Sunday show. Or an Administrative Professionals Day show. It will be linked to a nebulous occasion for joy around the end of March/Start of April time
New clips will be going up soon on the Feral Chihuahuas YouTube channel. My favorite musical piece from last season will be one of them, so if you missed it during the season or the finale, your chance to see CherDonna, the diva to end all divas is coming soon
This probably won't be a full-caster, but some of us will are working on a special show for Oscar Night, February 22.
I couldn't concentrate at the Oxymorons show last night. It wasn't a bad show (started off really really slowly, but picked up near the end). It wasn't a bad venue, there were sofas, and I snatched a table where I could drink coffee, eat stale pie (re-re-microwaved and lubricated with coffee it was edible), and sneak time on the crossword during the down periods in the show.
But there was a kid sitting right in front of me with a sword!
Buddha Bagels forgot to put the "No swords allowed" sign up next to the "No concealed weapons", "no fake ninjas", "no creative anachronists" and "did I forget to mention, this is a bagel place, you probably don't need a sword in here".
All through the show, this kid just kept playing with the sheath of the sword (or is it a scabbard?)... there's something Freudian there for all of us. An in a more Freudian sense, he managed to resist taking it out for the entire show.
Maybe this is the in thing with the kids these days, and to seem hip, I should bring a grenade to the Winter Beer Warmer this weekend?
I haven't yet been in town on a Tuesday night to catch the Oxymorons shows at their new venue, but tonight I should be able to make it. Their shows are now at Buddha Bagels (formerly New York Bagels, formerly some bloke's bagels), 333 Merrimon avenue. I don't know if there will be cream cheese available. 7:30 start, free show but I expect they'll pass the hat around.
Asheville Fringe Arts Festival is coming up from Thursday until Saturday. This is the first time in four years that I haven't been a part of the festival, so I'm looking forward to being an audience for a change. There's an insanely complicated pricing scheme for tickets - I can't wait for the full schedule, but I definielty want to see Rock Saber, since the fragments I've seen at No Shame have cracked me up.
The Feral Chihuahuas are trying to coordinate our busy schedules to get a show together. More details as soon as I know it - stay funny Asheville!
Made it to the Robot Johnson show last night - I'd seen their big show at the Blumenthal Center over summer, their winter home is the Charlotte Comedy Theatre. The Charlotte Comedy Theatre reminds me a lot of the Shed, looks like about a 35-seater, a room in the back hall of a bar (The Graduate). I'd been there before for an improv show, but this time the noise from the bar was a bit more intrusive into the show. To add to the distraction it was a bit of a cat-calling audience.
Overall I enjoyed this show more than the one at Blumenthal - the writing was very good, the acting for such a small place was excellent and it was funny as hell. A lot of short sketches flashing by, so the opportunity for hit-or-miss, but most of them were hits. Odd ending though, I thought the ender was a sketch about a North Carolina redneck pitching movie ideas, since it was about the only sketch that had all of the cast members on stage (I've liked the Feral Chihuahuas direction where we've been ending on a full-caster).
Check out Robot Johnson if you're in Charlotte - they're on at 10pm at the Carolina Comedy Theatre.
I saw an advertisement last night that G4 is going to air "Chaser's War On Everything", a really funny mostly political show from Australia.
The cast comes from the University of Sydney Revue - similar to the Cambridge Footlights or the Harvard Hasty Pudding (and my own very humble University of Tasmania Old Nick) college comedy tradition.
For a taste, here's the Eulogy song. I suspect G4 will bleep more than was bleeped on Australian television.
Things are all quietish on the Bastard front. I'm going to Charlotte on the weekend to catch the new Robot Johnson show and hopefully perform at the late show at the Charlotte Comedy Theatre.
I am Asheville's most offensive, least-funny stand-up comedian. Come see my shows with the Feral Chihuahuas and other projects. Also read about intractable crosswords and my frustration at being unable to solve them.
