workin' hard, or hardly workin'?

long week! lots of dumb shit happened this week, but let's focus on the positive.

a. lots of work;
b. my friends are fucking awesome!;
c. my bro-ham vince comes to town with his new g-fri gina at 8pm tonight, perf;
d. i got asked to sit in with BlueCo all of June - two of which are SC home shows on the mainstage... dream come true;
e. i just went to florida for a gig, stayed at the ritz-carlto, and semi skinny-dipped in a public pool;
f., dating blows my mind, and
g., i went blonde.

more on all these things, or most, later.

for anyone who's wondered what these corporate gigs look like, here's a tiny slice. two pics - one of us backstage to your left, waiting on cues. this is a pretty standard corporate set-up... a stage, tons of table rounds, and we're on i-mag (that means it's recorded and shown on a huge screen). i kind of wish this picture - the banquet one -was video. see how many people are in this room? 60 seconds prior, none of them were there. they ran in and turned over the room in like, 6 minutes. (this is a third of that room, about 400 people.) it was unbelievably fast. really neat to watch. it's very Annie "I Think I'm Gonna Like It Here", the scene where they just sort of whisk her about and she's amazed at everything being done so well and so quickly.

on the blonde thing - this isn't a bit. it's still brunette-y, but for instance, the guy who went to mic me last night put my lav on... as he walked away, he described me as the "strawberry blonde". i had no idea it was me, then laughed. only been a day.

i was such a stressed out mess this week that on my gig with SC BizCo last night, we all partied pretty hard. smoked cigars, high-fived, and did some hard drinkin' at an open bar. client took a few pics of these events on my phone, including left. it was a total sausage-fest of IT dudes. at one point i got out my razr, and some dude told me that all the guys there would get a bone-dog since i was text messaging. i laughed, then screamed "Nerd!" while i face-pushed him into my stogie-smoke. the show was awesome, the hotel was awesome, the company was awesome, and it was such a nice release to just take a load off for one night. even though it was work, it was hardly work. that's nice.

look at this view from my balc. pretty. 5am in orlando.

sometimes all the hard gigs make the easy ones feel like heav.

congratulations

...to my great pals eric lindberg and jen incorvaia, who just got married at city hall today around noon. the long held secret is out! love you guys.

smart women, bad choices

being on the road often equals unhealthy habits. as someone who's taken her health in her own paws as much as possible, i've tried to change some habits this year that are natural and hard to avoid (drinking too much, eating gross stuff on the road, smoking/being around smoke). my question is, how do you REALLY stay healthbot when the parameters aren't really within your control?

first off, drinking is fun sometimes. like, let's say your beer comes in a boot, like this. why would you not drink this? this is two liters of beer! and it's in a glass boot! that you keep! that is fun!

secondly, sometimes smoketown bar and grill is where you have to choose from, so you stay there. plus, smoketown is where people make bad decisions and you get to make fun of them for all the dumb things they do at and after smoketown. there's gotta be a way to make decent decisions at those places, but good god, how? am i really getting a salad at smoketown bar and grill, or waiting until i'm hammered and stumbling next door to pizzadreamz?

the trade off is that touring is fun.
just ask hasko. we got thrown out of pizzadreamz.

you can dish it, but you can't take it.

gigs-a-plenty this week... lots of normal shows coming over the weekend, and lots of corporate stuff the past few days. sorry i haven't been writing as much. currently doing this thing for DishTV. essentially, we've been hired by the company to corporate train, but with an added twist improvisers can think well on our feet, so we use that tool during the training. joey and i were lucky to get stuck together, so it's been nice to have someone to pal around with. otherwise, it's generally pretty boring, though there certainly have been gems.

as i've done this more than one day now, the second day the class had already heard i was a comedian. this lit them up a bit and they were way more open to chatting and laughing, all that. it became more fun. i wish i had a videocamera for the end of one of my sessions on tuesday... a woman, in front of the corporate client, stood up at the end of the session and essentially testified. girl, i been here 11 years - 11 years! - and i've never felt this motivated. thank you. wasn't this great? you couldn't really ask for more, but i'm still most certainly tired of hearing myself talk about 100% digital delivery.

best night of our lives, tm

the weekend ruled.
traveling with SC BlueCo was about the most fun that exists. first off, the company of people is so nice, and secondly, the part i was filling was full of satisfaction - lots of improv, singing, that sort of thing. i got to do this scene called CIA written by steven colbert, which is a scene with two film noir-style dudes that is half scripted and half improvised. it was a highlight for me - total fun. we had lots of hang time, too... lots of talks and fun van-time together. it felt close to a slumber party. in a drunken haze friday, i kept exclaiming the title of this post, and now it may be BlueCo's new theme for travel.

then i got back and pretty much directly went into rehearsal for ACE, the last before GUYS AND DOLLS premiered that night. i've got to say a huge thank you to everyone who is doing this thing, and to everyone that came last night - this is some of the most fun that i've had onstage in a long while. in life, in high school or whatever, i would've never been cast as the woman i'm playing- and it's so wonderfully fun. joey and i play nathan and adelaide, and have one song together that makes me laugh so hard it's tough to keep from losing it in the middle. the cast otherwise is SO talented and SO positive, it's just such fun to get up there and do something like this when you never do it anymore. please, if you're in chicago... please come and see it. we're doing G&D next week too, and it'd be awesome to have even more people around.

all in all, awesome times. lots of fun to be had this week, too, but also tons of corporate work to do. you take the good, you take the bad, and so on.

may showers may bring flowers

it's been raining here for at least 12 hours or so. i kind of like it. not all the time, but now.

i have a few friends that are flooded right now; too many projects, personal problems, confusion in relationships, emotional overloads, that sort of thing. self-included, as evidenced by a little stress-migraine last night. i'm hoping it washes away soon, and as bad as the metaphor is, the rain feels right to me right now. wash it!

a pal of mine was saying how much she likes a good cry (universal to people who have souls), because it's like cleaning out an infected wound. i like that, though it's sort of nast. i realized the other day that i hadn't cried in like, 4 months, and then everything started making me cry. list of cry-bot explosions: a friend's blog about their aging grandma, my cat being a dong, and 8 simple rules for dating my teenage daughter. it was just in me.

this too shall pass. i'm gonna go splash in some puddles. that was fun before you worried about getting wet. no more worries.

sidebar: friends, i have a free night and i'm making time for a tiny hang out before i leave for SC BlueCo tomorrow. let's go to dinner or something. want to? write or call or texxxt.

Ammo Daily & Salt-Water Streamin' = July and August, respectively

last night for a wee break from memorization, i met up with some SC gals to watch the time-honored classic Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. man, i forgot how funny this movie was, what horrible shots there are, how much of a lesbo helen hunt plays, and how hysterically bad the music is. dana loves this movie, and now i love her for making me watch it again.

in addition to getting themed shirts (the sure sign that s o m e o n e had an evening of inside jokes!), we also discussed how dana's apartment is perfect for a book club gathering. we were afraid that we wouldn't make deadlines, so then we jocularly mentioned a magazine club.

our first read is June '06 Cosmo. i think i'll learn a lot and feel even more.

You guyyyys, I love comedy.

"Tara DeFrancisco is a rare breed, one of those people doing exactly what she wants to do for a living, what she's always wanted to do. Usually, you want to hate people like her, the ones who constantly wear a smile on their way to work, but you can't in this case. Her energy is too genuine, her passion too real. And damn if she and her co-workers at ComedySportz aren't just too funny to stay angry with."

This is from a new magazine called The Real Chicago. A really fun guy who had never seen CSz interviewed us. I learned a lot about myself reading it, and thought- yeah, I DO think that. Comedy is awesome. Read the rest of the article here.

Risque Business

dear pal and pseudo-improv-crush billy phelan hung with the ladies of merman yesterday. it was a beautiful day, and our rehearsal got cut short because there was a mistake in space booking, so megan, kate, laura and i sat outside and some enjoyed bloody marys.

as things tend to when he's around, the convo took a sharp turn to titillating subject matter. billy told us stories of bachelor parties he used to bartend, and personally reeled from the things he'd seen. kate, pictured, also reeled. though billbone is the biggest hornbot of them all, he said that not even he was intruiged by the stripper house-party. what's good about a nasty girl with fakes and smoker's cough coming in and rubbing her snooch all over you?, he said.

other notable terms i learned besides "snooch":
*Drill-do
*Chew toy
*"The Football Trick"

gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooal.

Hangtown

This weekend - starting Thursday - has been filled with HANGTIME! That is amongst my favorite things, if not my #1 favorite thing in the world.

Thursday = friend Sara's work party, a play, dinner, more hangin' after.
Friday = my first show at Fizz (CSz), dinner with Simms after; Prouty came and picked us up and we took a night drive, only to find Bland. We pseudo-slumber partied back at Simms place and did imitations of everyone we know.
Saturday = 2 shows at Fizz, one exceptionally good, one exceptionally hard; and in the morning, the highlight of my weekend - MomBrunch.

It's hard to keep up with friends the way you want, isn't it? It is for me, especially when you have multiple projects at multiple places and just - well, real life. The girls of CSz have started going to brunch together once a month in order to gather us in. This month, it was themed: Deanna devised MomBrunch: in honor of Mother's Day, we would all dress like our Moms and dine together. Pretty great. First off, as an homage to my Mom, I went blonde, switched any silver for gold (she's allergic!), and probably generally looked much better than usual. My Mom is gorge-o! Others weren't as lucky - lots of housedresses, sweatpants, and elaborate t-shirts. Robyn rocked high-waisted jeans like nothing I've seen. Other than clothes, though, all in all, the girls were a lovely testament to what their Moms must be.

After 8 mimosas, it's safe to say that we were sufficiently in the bag at 1pm. Friend Simms was way beyond most, which made for some of the most fun I've ever had. Wolfson lobbied for more hanging, so we worked our way over to Southport for Mani-Pedis and DQ. I had to move my bike, so I did that slow-coast-everyone-else-is-walking thing, and Simms jumped me for my bike. Let me do iiiiit!, she begged, so I got off to let her ride. She went to throw her leg over the bike, and it was all over.

Imagine like, a cartoon sound of whoa-whoOOOOOaaaa!, and that's what this caption would be.

A wonderful day of hangtime, a 6 hour bout. There's nothing better. Way to go, friendship.

another opening, another show

Tonight is the premiere of a fun project tons of friends & I have been working on, called ace. This evening, our first show will be long-form improv, a montage based on a broadway showtune picked by the audience. Next week, we will be staging an all-improviser reading of Guys and Dolls. Really. No joke.

You should probably be our friend on MySpace. Will you?

It's all free if you're a performer/student, and only a dollar for general public. Please come by and support this ridiculous thing we're doing. Doors at 10pm, iO Chicago (3541 N. Clark), in the DCT.

BIKING RULES!

i went and filled the tires on ye bike, and have been riding it everywhere today. biking is fun and reminds me that spring has sprung. i like that.

something i don't love about bikes is my jock hurting.

MAH JOCK!

from tha cradle II the grave

comedysportz on halsted,
thanks for being the first real improv home i ever had.

goodbye, friend.

give-it-away now

i cannot express how much shit i've given away in the past month. i'm on a funny clean-out-our-apartment spree, as some of my original roommates have left fallen soldiers behind. much of this stuff is theirs, but this has also inspired me to do my own spring clean-out of sorts. i think, in life, i may be more of a minimalist that i thought i was. pack-rat gone minimalist. interesting.

i'm on bag 23.

poppin' and lockin'

got ye olde Lateral Thigh Trainer by post. my knee pops every time i do it. GAAH!
LTT = and ACL's worst nightmare.
i'm going to make it work.

baby, i still love you. baby. come here.

THIS WEEKEND WAS CRAZY!
CSz MOVE WAS AMAZING!
I CRIED LIKE A CRYBOT AND LAUGHED REALLY HARD!
STAYING UP LATE WAS FUN!
MOVING OUT THE NEXT DAY WAS LONG!
WE STARTED REHEARSALS FOR A NEW PROJECT AT IO!
I JUST RETURNED FROM A CORPORATE GIG IN HOTLANTA!
i didn't mean to forget you, love. i'll be back here soon and we'll get it on.