September? Already?

The reason you haven’t seen much from me is that there isn’t much to write about.

We’ve been extended at WellPoint through Oct. 9.  So I can’t blog about WellPoint until sometime after that.

And there really hasn’t been much else – like a lot of people, I didn’t hit the huge MegaMillions jackpot a week ago… so I’m still right where I was before.  *sigh*

So I’ll just mention my other favorite pastime – improv comedy – and the shows coming up in Richmond in the next few weeks…

Thurs. Sept. 10, 8pm at Art6 – Paradox Comedy’s “Town Hall Outrage” (no website that I know of… there’s going to be standup, sketch, and improv… something for everyone), $5

Thurs. Sept. 17, 8pm at Art6 – Richmond Comedy Coalition’s “EVERYBODY PANIC” (it has to be in all caps for the reference to make sense… http://www.rvacomedy.com for details), $5

Fri. Sept. 25 and Sat. Sept. 26, 7:30/9:00 at HATTheatre – Random Acts.  The first show is the Western parody “HI-larious NOON”, and the second show is the always adults-only (And always fun) Mainstage, $7 for one show, $10 for both.  http://www.randomactsimprovcomedy.com for details, including the half-price offer for “HI-larious NOON”.

Oh, one other thing… if you like your sanity, don’t even try to drive around Richmond on Saturday… with NASCAR at RIR, Journey at the Richmond Coliseum, and the grand opening of Centerstage, there’s going to be people everywhere.  I need to figure out if I can phone in my radio show…   EDIT 09.09.09 – There’s a story behind why I thought Tuesday’s Journey concert was on Saturday, but I’ll be damned if I know what it was.

Enjoy your Labor Day.

P.S. Man, Jerry Lewis hasn’t looked this healthy in years.  Watch the MDA Telethon tonight or tomorrow (through 6:30pm) on WRIC/8, or at http://www.mdausa.org.  And throw them a few bucks if you can.

GO SEE RANDOM ACTS!

Subtle much?

Random Acts is back this weekend at the HATTheatre in the far West End (Westbriar just off Patterson – near the Henrico/Goochland county line).

Shows are Friday and Saturday.

The first show both nights is AAARRR! Town – a pirate-themed long-form musical-improv event.  Bring some pirate booty (a “strange and unusual” prop for the show) and get in for half-price, and you get the booty back.  That’ll be at 7:30, and is appropriate for all ages.

The second show both nights is Random Acts Mainstage – a more… well… “traditional” (or as traditional as these guys get) short-form improv show.  That’s at 9:00, and is absolutely NOT appropriate for all ages.  There are nights I’m too young for the show.

It’s $7 for one show, $10 for both… unless you bring some booty, matey. 

See you there?

Richmond game show fans get it in the shorts

Now this might be a bit premature, but…

There are six game shows airing in first-run syndication this season. 

• Jeopardy!
• Wheel of Fortune
• Deal or No Deal
• Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
• Family Feud
• Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?

As best as I can tell right now, only two are airing on broadcast TV in Richmond.  Jeopardy! and Wheel are in their usual spots on WRIC.

WRIC is dropping Deal or No Deal from its 4pm weekday spot in favor of airing Oprah live at 4… as well as adding more news – with this move, WRIC, WTVR, and WWBT will all have news from 5:00-6:30pm.  Now really, Richmonders, is this area so exciting that we need 90 minutes of news from all three network affiliates every night?  Do I need to answer that?

WTVR dropped Millionaire before the 2008-09 season.

WRLH dropped Family Feud at some point during 2008-09 (perhaps when they flipped WRLH-DT2 to the ThisTV movie network?).

And nobody appears to have picked up Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader – although it will appear on CMT weeknights.

Well, WRLH-DT2 will carry two episodes each of Deal and 5th Grader on Tuesday nights (through MyNetworkTV).  That’s something, I guess.

But seriously… there’s room on Richmond TV for incessant courtroom shows, and every tacky 60-minute “talk” show programmers can find, but not for a few good game shows?

Bah.

If I find out that I missed a scheduling move, I’ll update. 

It’s quiet… too quiet…

Yeah, yeah, I haven’t blogged in a while.

My last day at WellPoint is this Friday… but that’s about all I can say until my severance runs out in December.  Believe me, I’m sure I’ll have a few things to say then.

I did have an interview for a software support position yesterday, I’ll find out early in the week if I get a second interview.  The job sounds interesting, so I’m intrigued to see if this works out.  If not… the serious job hunt begins now.

Things are what they are in the rest of my life.  Quiet… too quiet.

Random Acts performs this Friday/Saturday.  I’m sure I’ll blog about it.  See you then…

Quick note for Richmond “Millionaire” Fans

Due to Redskins football, WRIC is pre-empting the 5th night of Millionaire on Thursday night, 8/13.

The show will air Sunday, 8/16, at 2:00 PM.  Night 6 will then air 6 hours later.

Don’t worry, I’m sure it’ll be EASY to avoid spoilers for 2 1/2 days…

Funny?

Apparently, there are some really sore losers among the Republican Party… they’ve taken a fairly obvious prank/forgery of a “Kenyan” birth certificate for President Obama as “proof” that he’s not really an American citizen.

Let’s back them up for a second, shall we?

Have the lunatic birthers stopped to think what happens if, by some small (or large) miracle, they’re right?

There is no recourse in the Constitution that would re-run the election.  The only recourse would be impeachment…

This means that all of the following would have to happen:

• The Democratic-controlled Congress would have to hold impeachment hearings.  This, clearly, won’t happen.
• The House would have to impeach President Obama, after finding an actual High Crime or Misdemeanor to impeach him on.  This, clearly, won’t happen.
• The Senate would then have to convict the President of said high crime by a 2/3 majority.  This, clearly, won’t happen.

And the result of all these not-happening shockers? Hypothetically, of course, it’d be President Joe Biden.  Who, if he somehow left office, would be replaced by Nancy Pelosi (unless Biden named a Vice President and had him/her confirmed first).

Do the birthers think President Biden would be substantially different from President Obama – except that Biden is white and old, while Obama is mixed-race and middle-aged…?  And would they really want to risk President Pelosi?  Srsly?

The birthers are paranoid loons drifting off into low comedy.

Speaking of comedy, it looks like the folks at Art6 in Richmond have dedicated themselves to the art form of comedy, with shows running every Thursday night at 8.  This past Thursday was improv, with Paradox Comedy and Random Acts – and it was hysterically funny.  This coming Thursday, August 13, it’s the Richmond Comedy Coalition’s “Laugh Out Louder”, with stand-up from CSz alum Jesse P-S and improv from Also Fast & Also Furious and Downward Viral (the latter basing their improv scenes off YouTube videos picked at random during the show).  Oh, and there will be beer.  Art6 is at 6 East Broad in Richmond.

Finally, since I have blogged the last 2 seasons of American Idol, I should note the departure of Paula Abdul.  Idol just won’t be the same without recreationally-addled loopiness from the center chair.  So… what’s Britney Spears doing these days?   OK, seriously, they’re using guest judges for the callback auditions that started taping this week… and I think they are hoping that they can lure Paula back for the live shows this winter.  Actually, from reports about Victoria Beckham’s turn in the chair, they may need Paula back… she was reportedly “icy and wooden”.  BIIIIIG surprise there…

All errors great and small

Now I know the newspaper/magazine business is hurting… but this is ridiculous.

So I’m flipping through the July 28 issue of Style Weekly, one of those weekly free entertainment/news tabloids that every city has… out of curiosity, I was flipping through the “entertainment this week” listings and out of the corner of my eye, noticed a show for Random Acts on Friday.  This struck me as odd, because I’m a fan and I thought I’d have heard about a show this week (and, of course, so would you).  Looking more closely at the entry, though, revealed the truth.  Somehow, Style had put Random Acts’ name on the listing for the ComedySportz show at the Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen on Friday…

Of course, I can understand that Style may have missed that small error.  They were far too busy making a much, much larger error.

This issue featured the 2009 Power List, a list of 75 movers and shakers in the Richmond area.

Well… it was supposed to be 75.

It turned out to be just 69.

In an editing disaster that would have gotten me fired when I was editing my high-school newspaper 30 years ago… THEY LEFT A PAGE OUT!

Page 20: one-paragraph profiles of entries 13-19.
Page 21: advertisement
Page 22: advertisement
Page 23: one paragraph profiles of entries 26-31.

Somewhere in the hustle and bustle of editing a weekly tabloid, the (overworked?) editorial staff left a page out of one of the biggest issues of the year.  The capsule profiles of entries 20-25 can be found on the Style website, of course… and their names appear in the end-of-section list of the full Power List… but still… seriously?

A sad Idol footnote

A bit of sad news for American Idol fans this weekend: the twice-failed auditioner known as “Glitter Girl”, Alexis Cohen, was hit by a car and killed early Saturday.

Less-obsessive Idol fans still, no doubt, remember Alexis flipping the double-bird to Simon Cowell during the AI7 auditions, a scene that played out all over the Internet at the time.

She came back for AI8 auditions calmer, and more composed, but was talked into flipping the judges the bird again when she was sent home.

Condolences to her family and friends.

Catching up…

So how did that wild week go?

Due to a large-scale Conficker computer virus outbreak at work on Wednesday, which meant that we were slammed pretty much all week, I cut back a bit on the rather aggressive schedule noted in the last post.

So Yes/Asia and the Richmond Comedy Coalition were out, and I couldn’t balance the radio station and the Duck Race (again, this is 2 or 3 years now)…

So I pretty much focused on Random Acts.  Big surprise, considering I’m a serious improv comedy fan…

As always, they provided two enjoyable double-shots… the first show each night was “The Last Greatest Invention”.  Set at a school science fair, Random Acts improvisers had to “invent” something to solve problems provided by the audience.  Interestingly, on Friday, they “invented” marketing.  And discovered that marketing causes baldness.  On Saturday, they “invented” the gun.  And discovered that guns cause the shooter to become drowsy.   Trust me, hilarity ensued.

The late shows were the more traditional Mainstage show.  Friday’s was fun.  Saturday’s… was fun, and somewhat odd.  There was an audience member who clearly hadn’t been to an improv show before and somehow became convinced that she was part of the show.  The rest of the audience was too nice to go to her seat and strangle her.   Of course, the Random Actors did a good job working around her… it’s not the first time they’ve had to deal with a boisterous audience member, and it won’t be the last.

It should be noted that a few of the Richmond Comedy Coalition performers attended the Saturday Mainstage show – Random Acts went to the RCC show Thursday, so it was a return visit.  This, to be honest, worried me a bit.  The core of RCC were at ComedySportz Richmond when I was dismissed 4 years ago… and I hadn’t really seen any of them since then.  I didn’t want to dredge up the past, so my plan was creative avoidance.    I’m good at it.

Well, I thought I was.  But failing at creative avoidance was a good thing.  I wound up reconnecting with one of the RCC founders, someone whose friendship I was very disappointed to lose back then.  I’m going to leave it at that for now, other than to say that the conversation we had has helped remove my “personal obstacles” (mentioned in the last blog) to attending RCC shows… I’m looking forward to checking out the next Richmond Comedy Coalition show in August.  Gratuitous blog entry coming as we get closer.

And Random Acts is back in late August with the pirate-themed “Arr Town”.  Additional gratuitous blog entry when we get there.

Tomorrow, I get back to winding down 8 years with WellPoint.  There’s 2 weeks left.   In order to preserve my severance pay, I probably can’t say much more than that…

Interesting week ahead…

There’s a bit of a convergence of interesting events this weekend… starting as early as tomorrow night.   I think it’d be best if I just dive in…

Yes/Asia
Snagajob Pavilion at Innsbrook
Wednesday, July 22
I saw Asia last year at Innsbrook, so I’m kind of undecided about this.  I’m not a big fan of Innsbrook traffic… and I was never a big Yes fan (and it’s just not the same without Jon Anderson, anyway).  I don’t think I can justify $25 for one 45-minute Asia set.  But if you’re out there tomorrow night… look for me, as I’m liable to change my mind at the very last minute.

Gag Reflex (Richmond Comedy Coalition)
Art6
Thursday, July 23
This is an interesting concept, as it’s an attempt to bridge the different forms of comedy into one show.  It’s a little bit improv, a little bit sketch, and a little bit standup.  They’ve been at this for a couple of months, and I hope they do well, but for personal and logistical reasons, I may be rooting from afar.

Random Acts Improv Comedy
HATTheatre
Friday, July 24
Big surprise… I absolutely plan to be here.  You should, too.  There are two shows… at 7:30, it’s a new concept show called “The Last Greatest Invention”… which finds comedy in the process of finding, designing, and (of course) selling “inventions” based on audience suggestions.  Then at 9, the always-funny (and always not-for-kids) “Mainstage” show.  Suggestion: just do both shows and make a night of it.   Highly-recommended.

ComedySportz Richmond
Cultural Arts Center at Glen Allen
Friday, July 24
It’s their first show back after their theatre closed in March.  And, in an amazing coincidence, that first show is on the same night as Random Acts’ monthly appearance at HATTheatre.  I mean, that’s just incredible.  I’m stunned by the totally unexpected scheduling choice that Richmond’s small base of improv fans has to make.

Big Brothers Big Sisters Duck Race
Brown’s Island
Saturday, July 25
If you live in Richmond, and you haven’t seen the Duck Race once, you’ve missed out.  So go this weekend.  It’s an all-day festival on Brown’s Island, highlighted by the awesome sight of thousands of rubber ducks being dropped into the Canal at Brown’s Island.  You can buy ducks, of course, and the owner of the first-place duck wins a 2009 VW Rabbit.  Proceeds go to Richmond’s Big Brothers Big Sisters organization – http://www.bigbrobigsis.com.  I’ve helped raise money, off-and-on, for BBBS since  Bowl For Kids’ Sake events came to the Long Island bowling center I worked in back in 1981, so this event is one I’m always glad to see succeed.  I’m hoping to be able to voicetrack my show on 107.3BBT and get to Brown’s Island for the duck drop.  We shall see…

Random Acts Improv Comedy
HATTheatre
Saturday, July 25
On Saturday, this will be the only improv event in town (that I know of).  Same two formats as Friday, but two very different shows.  Why?  Because, like snowflakes, no two improv shows are exactly the same.  See you there?

And then there’s the stuff I know I won’t get to – the Richmond Kickers playing the Guatemalan champions, CSD Comunicaciones (Saturday night)… the 48-Hour Film Festival at the Byrd (the 48-hour production window was this past Friday-Sunday, the finished products premiere in three screenings Saturday)… Little River Band at Busch Gardens (Saturday/Sunday)… and some things I’m sure I’ve forgotten.

It had been such a quiet summer, and then all this piles on at once.  It’s times like this where that whole not-being-in-two-places-at-once thing sucks.

And whatever you’re up to this weekend, I will be on the radio Saturday 10-3 and Sunday 12-5.  107.3 in Richmond/100.3 in Petersburg.  Listen in if you get a chance.