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Wake Me Up When October Ends

October 2nd: Returned from Maryland. Going to [the NYFF screening](http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff/films/ladyvengeance.htm) of Park Chanwook’s [Sympathy For Lady Vengence](http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0451094/).

October 8th: Taking Metro North to White Plains to connect with Neil and Rachel and then head to Boston for the wedding reception of Gillian & Josh.

October 9th: Return to Queens.

October 13th: My mom arrives on the campus-to-campus bus.

October 14th: Day off; Mom returns home in the evening.

October 17th: Start of a full week off. In the evening, a special invite-only seminar at Carnegie Hall, about artists and the music industry. Panel includes Natalie Merchant, RZA, and Lou Reed. There’s a reception after, where I will potentially be able to hobnob.

October 19th: Good friend Suw Charman arrives for a few days of lodging with us post-BlogOn.

October 22nd: Suw flies home.

October 23rd: In the evening, [a CD taping](http://upcoming.org/event/32001/) for Eugene Mirman’s new CD.

October 24th: One last day off work.

October 25th: Back to work.

That’s the month ahead. Toss into this a potential show or two of Crash Test while I’m on vacation, and the rapidly approaching NIN concert at the beginning of November, and it’s going to be a tiring month.

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Del Close Marathon Review: Saturday 2:30-7:00

Katie and I today sat through four and a half hours of the [Del Close Improv Marathon](http://www.delclosemarathon.com/dcm7/index.php?option=home) today. Before this week, I can’t actually recall ever going to a single improv event – but now I’ve had a lengthy taste, and I’ll admit that despite a few missteps, I’m hungry for more. Some quick reviews of the groups I saw today (with pictures that are horrible due to my lack of using flash):

### [Aphasia](http://www.torontoimprovfest.com/2005/performers/ensembles.php?ShowID=49)

Quite funny, plus a little creepy. Good thematic linking between scenes, good flow, all around enjoyable.

### [The Red Shirt Freshmen](http://www.iowest.com/shows/redshirt)

Funny guys. Had a wonderful bit about spending too much time at Best Buy which I’m going to nick a line from for my rotating byline thing.

### [Corporation, Inc.](http://humorsolutions.com/)

Killed me, absolutely killed me. *Corporation, Inc* is improv with a theme – it’s based at some nebulous workplace and all the roles and scenes are improved with that in mind. With a topic so easy to relate to, the scenes linked naturally and everything just clicked. Definitely my favorite out of those that we saw.

### [Chairs](http://www.carnikid.com/)

At first I was a little worried about Chairs, as they played a round of musical chairs and then just sat and improved some character descriptions about people in a high school – but once they got up and out of the chairs, and actually did some scenes, it clicked very well.

Worth noting: Both Corporation Inc. and Chairs featured Jen Malinsky, who in my eyes, stole the show – at least for the time I was there. She completely dove into her characters and really added even more life to a solid hour of improv. Jen, if you’re out there – you rock.

### Mission IMPROVable

> Dear Mission IMPROVable,
> You seem to be under the impression that, when you don’t have any ideas for a scene, you can all run around making strange noises for what seems like an eternity and this will satisfy the audience. I would beg to differ. You guys had something in those last two minutes, with the Vinny Barbarino thing, but the first twenty-eight minutes were lacking.
> Sincerely, Dan Dickinson

### [American Dream](http://www.americanimprov.com/)

I was shocked to hear that American Dream were going to be doing, of all bits, Party Quirks – I thought they were being ironic mentioning it, but no, they really went through with the *Who’s Line* standard. The three quirks tossed out by the audience were “guy who won’t stop talking about the weekend”, “girl who can’t stop doing the chicken dance”, and “guy who has a vagina grafted onto his hand”.

Somehow, it worked terribly well – it only took about twelve minutes to get all the quirks guessed, but then they kept going and made a whole complete scene out of it. It was a bit refreshing by this point to have a single scene long-form improv, and there were some really terrible (read: funny) lines in here.

### Delaney & Merritt’s Omlette Vision

Michael Delaney and Billy Merritt worked around some boxes and chairs that were randomly placed by the audience. I was about 50/50 on this one; some of the bits were good and some were just fair. Enjoyable, but compared to some of the other acts I saw, just not really up there.

### [Upright Citizens Bridgade](http://www.uprightcitizens.org/)

This is what we were holding out for – an hour of the original UCB cast, doing…whatever. Three major things stick out about their time on stage:

– The opening bits were entirely derailed by the cast noticing a girl in the front row was writing in a notebook. Confused, they asked her to hand over the notebook so they could see what she was writing – she refused. They tried to guess what she did for a living; they didn’t get it right. Finally, Matt Besser snuck up on her and stole the notebook – only to find she really wasn’t writing anything about the show.

– The stories they were trying to riff off of were strangely pained and overwrought – so much so that they ended up launching into scenes where they were having “UCB Meetings” to discuss how horrible they were. At least it was salvageable in a self-deprecating way.

– The set ended with them pleaing for someone to throw some pot on stage, as they were going to have an NYC vs. LA weed-off; they even shut the lights off to encourage anonymity. The only thing thrown on stage was a bottle of Ritalin. Looks like LA will win by default.

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Nathan’s Famous Aftermath

This is an attempt at a new way of annotating my photos. If you would rather just look at the photos, you can [view the set directly](http://www.flickr.com/photos/remydwd/sets/541846/).

Breakfast Of Champions

Today, the three of us – Katie, our good friend Thom, and I – trekked out from Astoria at an hour far too early for anyone’s good towards Coney Island, to observe the Nathan’s 2005 Hot Dog Eating Competition.