On Saturday the 19th, we appeared at St. Olaf College after a long but beautiful drive through the Iowa/Minnesota countryside. There are a couple of things worth talking about at this school the first of which is the venue. It was a rock-and-roll club with a sunken dance pit, balcony, and unexpected light trusses. At the college! Complete with tech booth! It was by far the most rock n' roll venue we have ever performed!
The other thing I have to mention is the students, who were dressed in ridiculous costumes. Aparently the St. Olaf swim team is known for being a little wild, and this day was a shining example of that. Parading through campus were cereal boxes, cows, and other various food related items, because on this day the swim team was dressing as their favorite foods. One of the more subtle costumes was the group dressed up as members of their rival schools. St. Olaf is also home to a band of Live Action Role Playing gamers (aka LARPers). Not only do these kids run around school grounds attacking each other with padded sticks (swards), they dress in full geek costumes depicting characters reminiscent of Final Fantasy. Peering out the window of the dining hall, I saw members of both groups begin to face off in the school's quad, and for a second, it seemed as if they would re-enact a fight scene from West Side Story, but instead they all lined up for a group picture. I'm disappointed I didn't have my camera to catch the goings- on; maybe next time.
St. Olaf is a wild place: we loved it there!
Oh yeah-and they had a Ms. Pac Man arcade game in the lounge, which Jonathan loves with an unholy passion.
We made the drive down to Illinois, to Monmouth College for the beginning of parents' weekend. The show was great. One unique thing that happened was that when I made fun of Jonathan's mustache, one of the moms in the audience came up on stage to make sure it was there. Because from a distance of about eighteen inches, it's invisible.
Jonathan is taking this two-week stretch of our tour to grow a mustache, and the results are pretty comical. He's been writing about it along the way, and those writings will wind up here on the blog at some point, so stay tuned.
We had a hard time with the sound system at this show; apparently there are ghosts in the system that don't like the sound of Jonathan's voice through a microphone. You won't hear any of our technical difficulties in the slideshow, though. We sound fantastic, take my word for it.
Our show at Saint Mary's University on 9/17 went exceptionally well. We were told that the turnout probably would have been better if it weren't for the fact that the season premiere of "The Office" was airing later that night. This is frustrating to us due to the fact that you can easily watch the show online later, for free, with fewer commercials at the NBC website. Oh well, what can we do? Even so, we were really happy with the people who did come out to see the show, and we all had a really amazing time, so those "Office" geeks just missed out!
I want to talk about the rental vehicle that we will be driving for the next two weeks of our tour. It's the GMC Elephant (which is actually named 'Sienna' by the auto company), and it's HUGE. I have never been behind the wheel of a vehicle this big before in my entire life, and I have to say it's pretty amazing. With three rows of seating, you can comfortably fit one tabloid reality TV show family and still have room for an Iditarod team of sled dogs in the cargo hold. You might have to put the sled on the roof, but it had cupholders for a dozen or more Big Gulps. Getting in and out of parking spaces is a serious challenge in this clumsy beast, but once you're on the highway, this baby opens up whole new worlds of power and class because driving this monster feels like piloting a slick space ship. Sitting comfortably in the command chair of this class SUV starship you are no longer effected by the gusty winds of nearby cargo freighters or area storms. There is no need to swerve in efforts of avoiding running over the inevitable graveyard of highway road kill, just power through it. You may faintly hear carcass parts thump briefly in the wheel well before disintegration, but the glass of ice water that the onboard robot poured you won't even ripple on the surface because the ride quality is just that smooth. Dual zone cimate control gave Jonathan and me the ability to put the passenger into a cryogenic freeze while the driver basked in perfect tropical temperatures while receiving a relaxing massage from a tiny personal shiatsu therapist seat warmer in the back of the chair. I think there are even individual climate controls for the people in the back seats!
Anyway, the car's pretty comfortable. If you need to reach Jonathan or me, the butler will bring the phone to us in the hot tub. If we can get the sled dogs out of it.
Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College, and rental cars
The lunchtime show at WITC on 9/15 went amazingly well. After the show, the organizers made it sound as though we were the best event ever booked, which is always nice for the ego. After packing up, we ordered from the school's little cafe restaurant in which we had just performed, and received one of the best burgers I've had in a long time. Grass-fed organic beef with artisan cheese- from a college cafeteria! Oh, and the school gave us passes to the community rec center, where we could take yoga classes and exercise in a real gym rather than visit the typical treadmill and stationary bike in an empty hotel room "fitness center".
Let me back up a little to the previous day for a story involving picking up the rental car, (SUV in this case). We always reserve our rental cars ahead of time so that we don't get left high and dry at the airport with no way to get to our gig, and you would think that the reservation would make the process of picking the car up pretty quick. The rental agency already has all your personal information, including your credit card information; you would think you could just show them your driver's license and they would hand you your keys. Sadly, this is not the case. The rental car pickup experience tends to be at least 10 minutes of the counter clerk putting together some kind of logic puzzle on a computer screen while asking questions that you've already answered. It takes forever, and if there is a line, you might want to pull up a desk, because you're gonna have enough time to do your taxes. Can I hear an "Amen" from the frequent flyers out there?
Now there is relief, because Budget Rental Car has created a new program called "Fastbreak" that makes picking up your rental car as easy and quick as it should be anyway. Fewer than two minutes after you whip out that little plastic membership card, you are behind the wheel of a clean and shiny rental vehicle. No standing at the counter wondering if the agent typing rapidly into their computer is figuring out how many speeding and parking tickets you have across the world while they spit out small talk and pretend to care about why we are visiting their corner of the world.
So, Jonathan just got his brand new "Fastbreak" membership card and was looking forward to the fastest rental car pickup in history, but the world did not have that in mind for us on this particular day. This was the day when only one person showed up to work at Budget, and everyone renting a car ahead of us had the functional capacity of a hippie after a Phish concert.
There was the family covering three generations who had to have every car option described to them 4 times, the weird guy with the shoebox who was confused about where to leave his keys even after the key drop box was pointed out to him with clarity that required sunblock, and the angry businessman who thought he deserved to be in the front of the line, but the best story was the little old lady in the wheelchair who Jonathan let in front of us because he's too nice for his own good.
Now, this was a sweet old lady who was excited to be coming to town to visit her kids and grandkids for two weeks, and she was very proud to have gone onto the computer to make her rental car reservation (we suspect someone else did it for her and that she's never touched a computer in her life, but we didn't argue with her). When she got to the counter, the Budget clerk asked for her name and ID, and then had trouble finding her reservation. Old Lady explained that she made the reservations over email (evidence she had no idea), so the clerk asked if she had any confirmation papers. Old Lady proudly handed over the computer papers she had in her hand.
"These are football scores", responded the confused and exasperated clerk as she glanced at the line of customers, all of whom desperately wished to leave the airport.
"I know, I follow local high school football" responded old lady proudly.
"This doesn't help with your rental car".
It became apparent that we wouldn't be making it to the comedy club in time to sign up for the open mic that night.
It turned out that the rental car confirmation papers were a couple pages down after the football score printouts, and the reservation proceeded from there, slowly, but almost smoothly until it came time for payment details.
"Oh no, I already paid for the car, and the price is lower than what you just quoted me" insisted the little old lady.
The price that was in question was in the several hundreds of dollars, but the price difference in question was about fifty cents. It took about ten minutes to figure out what had happened, and how the car was getting paid for.
Our turn in line was as quick and painless as "Fastbreak" had promised, and we even got a big apology on presentation of the membership card for the long delay, but when it was all said and done, we had been in line for almost an hour.
So, Jonathan and I got a day off. I spent the day with my mom and visiting my home town of Columbia, MO. Jonathan went home to Lancaster, PA, to see his wife and to see Bill Cosby live in concert. Because he is still live, Bill Cosby, but won't be forever.
On Sunday, we converged in Providence, Road Island, to perform the orientation night entertainment at RISD, which is supposedly the best design school in the world, although you wouldn't know it from the remarkably boring school hat they gave me.
So, Phil, the director of Residents' Life at RISD, picked us up from the Providence airport and gave us a short tour of the city on the way to the college, complete with colorful insights like the story of their Russian sub, which they converted to a museum, where U571 was filmed, and which sank one particularly rainy night; the most haunted street in the world, which was built on a graveyard after all the graves had been moved; Brown University, and Market Square, where they used to sell real live slaves. Phil also took us to a famous local hot dog eatery, Spike's. We declined the house's 6-dog eating challenge that, if successfully completed, puts your picture on the wall of fame for infinity or whatever. 6 of these dogs is a tall order. Or maybe I mean long order.
Now, RISD is special for more than its top-notch reputation as a design school. The mascot is a giant penis named Scrotie. Scrotie came into being a decade or so after the school's notoriously horrible intramural hockey team, humorously named "the Nads". We even received t-shirts from the school with the proud slogan "GO NADS!" Members of the team are not even required to know how to skate, and the school loses almost every game by embarrassing numbers. RISD does have one other intramural sports team, a basketball team named "the Balls", which supposedly loses most of its games by about 70 points. Art students are not known for their athletic prowess. From a student on the school's lawn, I also bought a student made RISD t-shirt which features Scrotie in a moment of excellence (see pictures).
Naturally, the show was amazing, which was fortunate, because a couple of special friends of mine came down from Burlington, Vermont, to see it, and it would have been a major shame if we had bombed.
We got some pretty awesome pictures of this show thanks to Amanda Chang, a student at RISD. Thanks, Amanda!
On Friday the 11th, we performed for the University of Science and Technology in Rolla, MO, where men outnumber the women 3 to 1. The poor engineering students that attend this rigorous college live in a sausage fest world full-time! But whatever, we had a great time and so did they.
The milestone of this event was that it was the first time we've performed the entire show with projector and everything in an outdoor venue. Oh, and my mom came down to see the show (I grew up in Columbia MO, just two hours away!). She's a proud mom. Insert your own 'Your Mom" joke here.
After the show, we went out with some of the students to a restaurant where one of them ordered something called a 'Nate Johnson'. It was a lovely concoction of grenadine and Mountain Dew. The student's name?
Northcentral Wisconsin Technical College, and heavy travel woes
So, from South Dakota we drove through the night in shifts until we arrived at the school at 7am on Thursday the 10th. We would have arrived earlier, but part of one of our highways was randomly closed for ten miles and we had to drive down a dirt road for a detour. We didn't actually have to check in with the school until 9:30, so we parked the rental SUV in an empty area of the parking lot and passed out. When we woke up, we were no longer alone in the parking lot, but surrounded by trucks you could haul horses with (pretty typical of tech schools).
So, we did our show and rocked it (of course!), and then we were off to the airport to fly to Missouri, the location of our next show. One fun thing about the show at Wisconsin Tech was that a criminal justice class got to come see the show instead of going to class, and they all came in wearing police utility belts, leather holsters- and blue plastic pistols. They were just like Glocks, only blue plastic, with no place for bullets. One guy shot me with his finger. I thanked him. It was really, really safe.
So, I want to take this time to talk about what life is like on the road and how our job is in fact a job. Of course we love what we do; every day we get to discuss and write new material, and then show off our work to adoring audiences. It's extremely rewarding to see the results of our efforts continuously develop, and it's been keeping us in the modest middle class. But it's not all fun and games!
On a typical day we take a flight that's scheduled for the hairy butt crack of dawn, and it doesn't smell good. We've gotten pretty good at dealing with airports, but there is still the occasional frustration (see the Augustana College post). Then we rent a car and drive to a hotel (which could be as much as four hours away), then drive again to the school, then perform the teaser, then set up for the show- including sound check- and then perform the show. After the show, we pack up (another half-hour to an hour, depending on how fast we're moving at that point), and then we spend some time with the people who hired us. It's all awesome- well, okay, sound check isn't all that awesome- but it's long days of work that start at 5am and end past midnight. Occasionally WAY past midnight.
Some people think that they envy us our travel, but we usually only see the inside of the hotel, the school auditorium, and the airport. Which, except for Detroit airport, pretty much look all alike. And when we do have down time, we spend it working at our computers, making sure that our shows are properly "advanced" (which means that we call ahead to our venue to make sure everything is cool at their end), our travel plans are properly booked, our promotional materials are up-to-date and exciting, and our Facebook status is current. Even writing this blog is part of my work day. Then there's the fact that we spend a lot of time away from home, our loved ones, and our pets. I (Evan) sometimes go into "cat withdrawal" and have to go visit a house with a cat in it, whether I know anyone there or not.
So there it is: we love our job, but despite what a lot of people believe, it's no vacation.
Northern State University South Dakota, and Getting Pulled Over
We performed a great show at Northern State South Dakota University on September 9th.
After the show we had to make an overnight drive so that we could make it to our next next show 8 hours away in Wisconsin (ugh). Since Northern State is in a town that's hours away from the nearest interstate, we had to drive down two lane highways through small towns and corn fields for hours and hours. On our way out of one of these towns I picked up my speed a little too fast. Now, in South Dakota the interstate speed limit is 75mph, and 70mph on the back highways. So on our back highways I set the cruise control to 77mph, and got up to speed a little too quick coming out of one of the towns. It really was an honest mistake that I was doing 77 in a 60. A long story short, I was nice to the officer and he let me off with a warning. While I was sitting in his squad jeep, I noticed an awesome assault rifle locked into a rack in the vehicle along with the standard shot gun. I asked if he was a member of the local SWAT team, and he said no, it's just standard issue in South Dakota.... Amazing.
So I'll take a moment to talk about how to deal with getting pulled over by the police. First thing you need to do is slow down, put on your blinker on, and look for a good place to pull over. Try to find a spot where you can get off the road far enough so the officer is safe. Next, roll your window down, put your keys on the dashboard, and put your hands on the steering wheel as he walks up to the car. Police officers have dangerous jobs, and they have to protect themselves because they never know who they are really talking too, so be polite and make sure they don't think you're about to grab a gun out of your pocket. Be fairly honest, but don't admit you knew you were speeding. When they tell you how fast you were going, just say something like, "huh". Other than that, just try to be respectful and cooperative. These tips won't always keep you from getting tickets, and some cops are just jerks, but I do believe it is important to respect their position. Above all else, just drive safely!
The Church Jonathan attends in Lancaster PA has a sister church on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, and we volunteered to do a free show for their family night as a way of helping out.
Something I found interesting about the reservation church was how they incorporated Lakota culture, traditions, art and folklore into the decorations of the church. For example, paintings of Jesus and Mary depict them as Lakota tribes people, and the stations of the cross are mounted on round cuts of cedar wood, which is significant to Lakota traditions.
It was a fairly small audience at the show, but they laughed loud and hard, so it felt great to us! After the show we were each presented with gifts of beaded art from a local artist.
After the show, we acquired a taste for Lakota food with stew, fried Indian bread, and my new favorite food, Wojapi. Wojapi is basicly a pudding made with berries, and this one was made with buffalo berries, (a shrub grown berry that's bitter until there's been frost), the first in the season. It's served warm, and it's tart, and delicious!
The Great Plains, Badlands and Black Hills Tourism!
To me, driving across the great plains is a treat. You can stretch out your eyes over hundreds of miles of rolling hills, prairie grasslands, and crops. If you can get away from the interstate, you can listen to the sound of the wind blowing through the fields, which is a kind of silence that opens your mind to the vast space you are in for what feels like millions of miles around. Back on the highway, traffic is sparse, and speed limits are fast. Nobody is weaving through traffic, cutting you off, or flipping you off. When you stop for gas you stand in line at the cashier behind weathered old farmers and Indians who look like they are straight out the pictures from the Great Depression section of your American History textbooks. It's a dusty trip back in time, and it's there for anyone who is brave enough to take it.
Billboards for kitschy tourists traps like 1880 Town and Wall Drug pop up constantly, and you get the feeling you are taking the original American Family Road trip, like the one starring Chevy Chase.
Our first destination stop was the Badlands National Park, but on the way into the park we couldn't resist a photo opportunity in front of "the world's largest prairie dog". We laughed at how the real prairie dogs bark with their whole body, as if it were the biggest sneeze of their lives. Then on to a quick drive through of the Badlands, which is one of the most unique landscapes in the world, truly amazing.
After the badlands we got our fill of classic Western American kitsch at Wall Drug. Wondering what I'm talking about? Check out the pictures.
Then we moved on to Mount Rushmore, the iconic American monument carved out of a mountain. It's cooler than you'd expect, actually, but my favorite part was the family of mountain goats that showed up and boldly did some grazing about five feet from the crowds.
Next on the itinerary for the day was the Crazy Horse Monument, which is the Native American answer to Mount Rushmore. This monument is going to be massive and amazing when it's finally finished, dwarfing Mt. Rushmore on a ridiculous level. So far the only thing that's finished is Crazy Horse's face, but it's still pretty darn impressive. What's funny about the museum at the Crazy Horse monument is that it doesn't seem to have much focus to it. Exhibits are random bits of furniture from the artist's house, autographed sports memorabilia, and custom motorcycles. You kind of wonder why some of the stuff is on display. The laser show that we stuck around for after dark was equally as cheesy and unfocused, but in the end we think the Crazy Horse monument is a pretty darn amazing project!
The next morning we checked out the Mammoth site in Hot Springs. This place is a lot cooler than expected. You get a close up look at some real mammoth bones in the actual process of being dug out of solid rock in a real dig site. Amazing skeletons of several prehistoric animals are on display there, and it's well worth the visit if you ever get a chance, although we have to say that our tour guide was terrible at delivering jokes.
Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota brought us in for their freshman orientation show on September 6th for what would be a rocking fun show. The audience loved us, and the student activities board members took us out for a really fun supper before the show.
A notable event on this day that had nothing to do with the school or the show was a problem with our transportation, specifically the airline known as "Air-Tran". I have a big blue and red prop case. I tour with it, and keep it on stage during shows and balance it on my face. This case was custom made to my specifications, and I took airline maximum size measurements into consideration when designing it. Despite these precautions, the Air-Tran ticket agent at BWI found a way to measure the case that added two inches to the size of the case, thus tacking on a $40 oversize baggage fee. As we were paying the fee I asked how she had measured it, and her response was a very hostile "We can argue about this all day or you can just pay the fee and get on with it". Now, what had happened with the measurements was that she'd measured the wheels and rubber pads that stick out from the box, which I hadn't considered that in my measurements, and all I was doing by asking was trying to confirm this; I was not trying to fight her. In over a year of flying with the case, this was the first time it's been a problem, and all I needed was to confirm what the problem was. I must admit that in response to her attitude I let loose a stream of language that would make a sailor proud. Seriously folks, at 5:30am, I don't need to take crap like that from the people I'm handing money to.
That's right, two shows at two schools in one day! A noon show at Northeastern Wisconsin Technical College and a late show at Ripon College.
Now, in the world of college entertainment, noon shows in the cafeteria are famously bad experiences for comedy performers. You have to take hits to your ego as people walk through the room ignoring you, and students ignore you in favor of reading their school materials, and hear background chatter. We need focus! But schools with commuter student bodies pretty much have to put on noon shows due to the fact that the entire campus leaves after class is over, and we would be performing to an empty room. You know the old zen saying about the tree falling in the forrest? Well, the same goes for a comedy show. If you tell a joke and nobody is around to laugh at it, is it funny?
Anyway, Jonathan and I have a unique skill skill set and background for dealing with this kind of problem because we are variety performers who have done street shows. We don't do the normal show with slides, and weird theatrical moments like Jonathan knitting a sweater in a matter of minutes; we mostly do a series of tricks, but it still has the essence of the SHOWOFF Show, and it's darn funny. We even throw in a couple of skills that aren't normally in the full show. Anyway, it was a good show.
And then we were off to Ripon College, home of the "Red Hawks". The students told us that the mascot doesn't have a name, and we all decided that the name should be "Rip". This show was pretty straightforward, which is good. Totally solid group of kids at this small liberal arts school!
Concordia University had us perform at their school on September 2nd, and of course the show was awesome. A unique highlight of the show involved Jonathan trying to ride a hand cart dolly like it was a Segway on stage, but that's not what I want to talk about right now. I want to talk about how our GPS unit makes us totally ignorant about where we are and what's around us. On the day of this show we flew in to Milwaukee, rented a car, and plugged the address of the school into the GPS. The GPS tells us where to turn when we need to turn, and nothing else. Back in the days before the world of GPS, Mapquest and Google maps, we all had to look at the atlas to figure out our directions, and in doing so, we would learn a lot about where we were and what was around us. As it was, on Wednesday we arrived at Concordia University and noticed a large body of water next to us. "Is that the ocean?" "No, it's a great lake... what lake is it?" "Must be lake Michigan, but I'm not sure." If we had taken the time to look at the atlas we would have known exactly what lake it was before we ever got anyplace near it, but as it was, we were surprised to see a lake there at all. So, even though the SHOWOFF Show! is now traveling more than ever, our geography knowledge has remained stagnant and probably even diminished because of our wonderful world of fancy information gadgets. Anyway, here are some pics from the show, including some pics of us next to the lake.
On August 31st the SHOWOFF Show! appeared at Chestnut Hill College on the outskirts on Philadelphia. It was a rare local(ish) show, and we cherish those. We performed at this school last year, but it wasn't a "SHOWOFF Show!" show, it was a "Jonathan Burns" show, and I (Evan) happened to be traveling along with Jonathan that day, so I made a cameo appearance and did a short juggling segment. It was a pretty memorable bit for me that night because there was a stray walkie-talkie sitting on the stage that kept talking to me asking where it was. Apparently some maintenance guy had forgotten it on the stage in the on position and decided that the best way to find it was to "call it". I talked back to the guy for a while, and it turned out to be a pretty funny incident. This year, the school decided to book the duo show and it was awesome. No walkie-talkie incidents this year, but the room we played in was interesting. Our "stage" was right in front of a large fireplace, and off to the side of the audience area was a huge long banquet table, the kind that seats 20 people, with big heavy fancy wooden chairs. I took the opportunity to balance on of those chairs on my chin during the show.
Well, summer was great. The weather was perfect for performing outdoors and we had some really great times.... But now it's fall semester and time to buckle down for our busiest semester so far in the SHOWOFF Show's! history!
I'll go ahead and get us caught up to what we've done so far. First show of the semester was on August 15th at Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant, MI (which isn't a mountain at all, but it is fairly pleasant). The show was a double header with our best buddy Michael Kent topping the bill in front of an audience of 1,700 students! In fact, there were so many people at the show that they had video cameras running on the show, projecting the action up on big screens. One of the prop cases failed to arrive on time (thanks, Delta), so there was a scramble to drive around to Target and Home Depot buying things to replace the missing props in the show. In the end, it worked out pretty well!
Only a couple pictures from this one:
A week later on August 23rd we appeared at Done College in Crete, Nebraska. So many things to talk about from this one.
First off, this place felt like it was in the middle of nowhere; it didn't have cell phone reception, and there were only a couple places in town to get a bite to eat. We had lunch at a small but tasty Mexican eatery where nobody spoke English (authentic!), and none of the other patrons talked to each other (kinda weird).
Then, a couple blocks from our hotel, before the cornfields started, we noticed a lot of police activity. Turns out there was a hostage situation! We didn't find out how it ended.
The show at the school turned out to be awesome. The stage we got to perform on totally kicked butt and the kids at the school seemed to really enjoy our stuff.
Something we learned about Nebraska is their enthusiastic love of a local fast food chain called Runza, and specifically the namesake "delicacy", "a Runza". Nebraska, we don't want to judge, but you need to get out more.
Next on the Calendar was Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA. This was our third time performing at the school that looks like Hogwarts Acadamy, and we always love it there.
And finally (for this blog post) was our freshman orientation show at Norbert College in Green Bay, WI on August 27th. Obviously, the show rocked; but the real highlight for us was seeing George, the campus' own albino squirrel! Unfortunately, George didn't pose for a picture, but he does have a Facebook group page.
Well, we got pretty lazy in our blog posts at the end of our spring semester, but we had some great shows that we really need to blog about. So, better late than never, here it goes.
On April 14th we did a fun little lunch time "nooner" at OSU Mansfield. Here are some pictures.
On April 17th, we appeared at the College of New Jersey in a cafeteria. Despite the fact that only about 10 people managed to find the show, we had a really fun time. A highlight of the trip was watching local students swordfight with padded sticks.
On April 18th we did a cameo opener for our good friend Mark Derose at a theater in York PA. Check out Mark at http://markderosemusic.com
On April 19th, we appeared at Colby Sawyer College in New Hapshire. Not only was this one an amazing show, and one of our favorite audiences ever; we had a visit from a ghost! Check out the video!
Oh yeah, don't forget about our crazy russian volunteer!
And our final show of the Spring 2009 semester was an outdoor show at the University of New Haven, CT. We were happy to be performing the gig alongside one of our friends from Baltimore, Brian Rudo.
