Sending out an SOS!

Featured in Campus Activities Magazine

2010-03-25T21:14:00.000-07:00

We were featured in the February 2010 Campus Activities Magazine. Thanks for thinking we're pretty great, we think so too. When we start Showoff Show Magazine we'll be sure to feature "Campus Activities"!

Long Island Magic Arts Convention

2010-03-23T12:28:00.000-07:00

Live in New York? Well, we're LIVE in New York this Saturday!

Long Island Magic Arts Convention (LIMAC) March 27, 2010. The Show starts at 7pm.

Website: http://www.magicartsconvention.com/

Who else will be in the show? Who cares!? Oh you do... Also witness Daniel Garcia, Marc Mason, Jay Mattioli, Scott Francis, & John Ferrentino! It is sure to be a good time with this killer line-up. Hope to see you there!

Moraine Park Tech, and Madison Area Tech

2010-03-10T20:29:00.000-08:00

Ah, the good ol' lunch time cafeteria show. We don't do our normal show at these events, it's more similar to a street show, and we do enjoy mixing it up a little. So we had two of these in a row, and I figured I would combine them into one blog post. The shows were on 1/27 and 1/28.

I do want to take a minute to praise Madison Wisconsin for being a cool town! We had dinner at an amazing Jamaican restaurant and then went to the really nice comedy club to see Godfrey. The next day we had the most delicious burgers ever at Dotty Dumpling's Dowry. There are lots of other fun things to do there as well, but we had to move on to the next gig.

Morningside College

2010-03-10T19:47:00.000-08:00

Our show at Morningside College on 1/22 was a blowout success! It felt like the entire school was there, everyone had an amazing time, and we heard they might make us their new mascots!

Interesting side note about that ice storm... When the ice thaws and falls off the branches of the trees, it will try and hit your car as you drive under it, and it sounds like it might kill you!

Wayne State College

2010-02-07T23:25:00.000-08:00

After finishing up at Dakota Wesleyan University we retreated to our hotel, and woke up in the morning to discover that the entire world was covered in a thick layer of ice. We happened to have a day off before our next show, so we stayed put in our hotel despite the fact that not returning our rental car to Sioux City was going to cost us another $200 (the car we had reserved at the airport was only $36/day, and it was still waiting for us). So we spent a boring day in the hotel....

Back on the road the next day, and it was STILL cold, foggy, and incredibly miserable. We dropped off our rental at the Sioux City airport, picked up a new rental (which turned out to be the exact same kind of car), and continued on to Wayne Nebraska.

In case you are wondering, you can skip Wayne Nebraska on your travel plans this year, but we did have a good time with the students there. Our show went well, and we got to eat some tasty ice cream at a local joint afterwards.

Our good friend Adam Ace was on tour in the area and came to this show, and he gave us a lot of really great notes on how to continue to improve on the characters. If you don't know Adam Ace, check out www.adamace.com, he's really really funny.

Dakota Wesleyan University

2010-02-07T23:22:00.000-08:00

Our first full length show of the year has turned out to be one of the most challenging to get too in the SHOWOFF Show's history. Our flight plan started started in Harrisburg PA, connecting in Cincinnati to Minneapolis St, Paul, and then finishing in Sioux City, Iowa. That last leg of the trip is where our troubles began starting at take off, where the guy sitting directly across the isle of our cramped little plane started flipping out about the safety announcements, yelling something to the tune of "shut the **** up so we can take off"; which the flight attendant didn't seem to hear. Sporting a white bud light hat, and a t-shirt that probably said "she had it coming", this guy was a clear candidate for an anger management prison sentence. Jonathan and I started sizing the guy up assuming that we may have to take this gem of a humanity on in combat, and I didn't like our odds. Our potential opponent was sporting a short crew cut, and had the looks of a recent marine core combat vet. Sure he was starting to get a gut from his nightly case of cheap cold beer in a can, but he clearly knew how to fight. Put that up against a 120lbs contortionist who can hardly do a push up and a juggler who gets sore from 4 rounds of Wii boxing, and you have a winning bad guy. Luckily he fell asleep, phew, catastrophe avoided.

Flash forward two hours into the flight and we get a message over the intercom from the captain. Apparently Sioux City airport was living up to their airport code (SUX) and it was too foggy to land, so we were turning around and flying back to Minneapolis.

Angry guy was still sleeping, and I watched with anxious anticipation for the demon to wake and start killing things. He did eventually wake up, and the woman next to him explained the situation. I could see the anger well up inside him, and watched the woman recoil in uncomfortable apprehension. Landing announcements came over the intercom from the flight attendant, and more outbursts came from under the bud light cap, and this time she heard it. Questioning ensued, and he recoiled. The police were waiting for him at the gate, and Jonathan and I didn't have to get our asses kicked. I still want to know more about that guy, I'

m guessing he really was a marine combat vet and has some kind of PTSD.

Think the travel story is over? Not by a long shot. Our next task was to shore up in a hotel for the night and the airline was offering a distressed traveler discount at a Day's Inn nearby. Unfortunately the last shuttle to the hotel had left about 15 minuets before our arrival, so we had to take a cab. Guess what the 6 mile cab ride cost us..... $30! On checking in we discovered that the morning shuttle to the airport was all booked up already, so we were gonna have to take another $30 cab ride back. It was the most annoying set of circumstances ever, and it made me mad. I'm pretty sure I was one bud light hat away from talking to the police.

Back at the airport, guess what, still foggy. No planes are landing at Sioux City, and to cap it off, there was a disabled plane on the runway. We made the decision to abandon the flight and rent a car one way, otherwise there was a chance we would never make it to our show. Guess what a one way rental from MSP to SUX costs... $400/day! Lucky for us they had a car that needed to be returned to SUX and we got it for only $200/day... What a deal! Jonathan had some confusion at the rental counter as well. Our lovely agent Laura had found us this car and told us to talk to Mohammed at the Avis counter. So Jonathan went to the counter, and found Mohammed, who had no idea what we were talking about.... Apparently there were 5 guys named Mohammed at this place. It all got sorted out eventually.

The 5 hour drive to our show in Mitchell South Dakota was an eerie one. It seemed like the entire country was covered in fog and as the stretching great planes interstate disappeared into the mist, giant power line structures and windmills would emerge from it. The fog also crystalized on the trees in a thick frost, that was actually very beautiful.

Right before arriving at the school, we made a short detour to check out Mitchell South Dakota's main tourist attraction and claim to fame, the "Corn Palace". The Corn Palace is the only one in the world of it's kind (understandably), and it's basically an indoor sports arena. The corn comes into play on the outside, which is decorated entirely with corn parts, and sports a new motif every year. It's fun to make fun of, but honestly, it's pretty cool. Across the street we noticed that the doll museum had gone out of business, which made Jonathan sad.

Our show at Dakota Wesleyan University was a blast. They put us on an eclectic stage reminesiant of 60's or 70's style, with fake plants and fake marble pillars. The audience was packed in, and laughing hard, which was a nice way for us to start the year.

HAPPY GROUNDHOG DAY!

2010-02-01T22:58:00.000-08:00

from Jonathan, Evan, & Crouton
(Crouton is Evan's Hamster... I mean Groundhog.)

Autographs

2009-12-22T05:58:00.000-08:00

Every so often we are asked to sign autographs, sometimes we don't have anything to sign, so we sign whatever they have (Show Tickets, Posters, Body Parts, etc). We've never really thought about where they end up until we stumbled upon this photo...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/41197935@N08/3817014442/

Don't let the ball & bat-like things fool you.

We're glad you enjoyed the show!

A few other things we have signed...
- A Banana
- A Diaper
- A Tube of Neosporin®

Detroit International Comedy Festival THE MOVIE!

2009-11-25T16:36:00.000-08:00

We're in a movie! It opens in Michigan in January and then in select cities. Details below. Also, look for us to return to Detroit's Comedy Castle in June 2010.

Check out 1:30 "Nailed It."

The World Premiere is set for Jan. 5, 2010 at the Emagine Theatre in Novi, MI. The movie opens in theatres Jan. 8, 2010 in the Detroit area. The event took place March 16-21, 2009 at Mark Ridley's Comedy Castle. This Jim Dudek Film captures what it was all about not only for the audience but also for the comedians. For more Information or for tickets to attend the World Premiere Event, Visit: ArkDistribution.com

Lyndon State

2009-11-18T23:14:00.000-08:00

Our final college show of the semester was at Lyndon State in Lyndonville Vermont on 9/12/09. That makes 37 freaking shows in one semester: KAPOW!

For this show, we shared the bill with our best buddy Michael Kent, and even merged the two shows for the 'questions from the audience' segment. Both shows went great, and it couldn't have been a better way to finish the season.... Except I did injure myself.

I went up to Vermont a couple days before the show to visit a friend in Burlington, and while I was there I visited the Magic Hat Brewery, maker of fine craft beers. I made a little video about it- check it out.

I also made a video about my favorite part of the Detroit Airport.

University of Northern Iowa

2009-11-18T23:04:00.000-08:00

This was a really great show that we got to perform with comedian Rob O'Reilly! Make sure you check out his stuff; it's pretty funny.

Other highlight: they served snacks!

Also, Jonathan decided it was a good idea to rip a phone book in half.

I bought a Flip Camera right before the show, so it makes it easy to create fun little videos like this, so you can look forward to more of it in the future!

Mass. College of Liberal Arts

2009-11-18T22:59:00.000-08:00

10/28/09 was our third time performing at MCLA, and it's always a pleasure! The school's mascot is "the Trailblazers", which is basically a hiker.... Yep, a fearsome dude with a hiking stick and boots.... go team....

We love MCLA, those kids are the best and we hope they continue to bring us every year for forever!

Rose Hullman Institute of Technology

2009-11-18T22:52:00.000-08:00

RHIT is another engineering school with a grossly disproportionate ratio of guys to girls. Basically, they are the smartest geeks you've ever met, and they are a lot of fun to perform for. The highlight of this show was during the questions from the audience segment of our show, because they asked a really fun question, "Have you ever gotten hurt during a show?" I got to launch into all my stories of almost getting hurt, and Jonathan helped me act them out in slow motion 3D (sort of). I'm not going to tell you those stories here; you'll have to come to one of our shows and ask that question yourself during that segment.

Knox College

2009-11-18T22:39:00.000-08:00

Knox College is one of those schools that takes the "Liberal" in Liberal Arts College to heart. It's the kind of school that has a football team whose players can't remember the last time they won a game (yet somehow sponsored by Nike), but boasts an intramural frisbee team that will destroy you with amazing hippie athleticism the likes of which you didn't know existed.

The girls on the activities board had entertaining reactions to the stunts in our show. They were terrified of my juggling props, especially the knife. Pre-show, I was trying to demonstrate that it's not sharp or fearsome and held it up to my neck, at which point one of them about had a heart attack due to her complete phobia of anything having to do with necks... Even talking about something touching anyone's neck makes her squirm and go pale. I made a bunch of inside jokes during the show for these girls because I thought their reactions were funny.... Jonathan's contortion tricks made them cover their eyes... what can ya do?

Vincennes University

2009-11-18T22:32:00.000-08:00

The audiences at Vincennes have a reputation as being pretty raucous, and they didn't fail us when we did our show there on 10/22/09. We were a little worried that nobody would show up to the show because they were presenting us in a space that was brand-new to the campus, and none of the students seemed to know where it was, but we had a nice sized audience anyway.

For some reason there was a baby in pumpkin costume out in the audience... It wasn't weird that it was in a pumpkin costume (it was close to Halloween), it's just that we don't get many babies attending our college shows. Jonathan threatened to do juggling tricks with it. I was sort of disappointed that he didn't.

University of Evansville

2009-11-18T22:26:00.000-08:00

That's right, the University of EVANsville!

Freaking amazing show except for one thing: my shirt got stolen! Yeah, some girl stole my shirt! If you have seen either my solo show or The ShowOff Show, you know that the rules of my skateboard catapult trick are that every time I miss the trick I have to remove a piece of clothing. Most of the time, it takes me four attempts and I have to take off my long sleeved shirt, at which point I use the oportunity to wrap it around a spectator's neck, and then towel whip another guest, and ocassionaly I throw the shirt at a third audience member. I have ALWAYS gotten the shirt back... but this time the girl kept it. I didn't realize she had claimed it as a trophy until after she was long gone... Oh well, what can ya do?

Indiana University Southeast

2009-11-18T22:16:00.000-08:00

The show at IUS turned out to be an unexpectedly fun show where we made some great friends. We didn't expect much because the advisor of the activities board had told us she would be surprised if we had 10 people show up. There wasn't really a dinner hour at this school for some reason, so we couldn't do much of a teaser... In fact, I had to hunt around campus and do tricks for study groups tucked away in corners of hallways to drum up an audience for the show. But man, it turned out to be great! Although it was a modest sized audience, it filled the room with laughter and energy and made us feel great. It's shows like these where we feel like real professionals in our field of entertainment.

Jonathan Burns & Barbra Streisand

2009-10-24T08:50:00.000-07:00

Jonathan does his impression of Barbra Streisand at Lakeland College.
"Ji-ji-ji-jijiji-Jingle Bells, Ji-ji-ji-jijiji-Jangle Bells..."

Jonathan on Jay Leno

2009-10-20T21:17:00.000-07:00

I (Jonathan Burns) appeared on The Jay Leno Show on October 15, 2009 and performed my underwear trick (check out the video above). It was for a segment called Meal or No Meal, and the guest judges were Band Leader: Kevin Eubanks, Former Intern & TV Personality: Ross Mathews, and Comedian and Ventriloquist: Jeff Dunham & Walter. I had a blast and even won a free meal for 4 to Roy’s Hawaiian Fusion Cuisine.

A BIG Thanks to everyone who stayed up to watch!

Here's a little behind the scenes look at the segment with Jay's Backstage Blogger Bryan http://www.thejaylenoshow.com/backstage-with-bryan/meal-or-no-meal-returns/

Wartburg College

2009-10-19T22:29:00.000-07:00

Wartburg College brought us in for Family Weekend entertainment on 10/10, and the show was delightful! Before the show, the Activities Board (or whatever they're called at Wartburg) took us out to eat at the local pizza place, and I had the special Octoberfest Pizza, which had bratwurst and sauerkraut on it- which was amazing and delicious! We learned that Wartburg was a castle that Martin Luther holed up in after refusing to recant at "the diet of Worms", (which is not what you think).

In the morning, we drove our rental SUV back to the airport and headed off for some much needed time at home. The SUV we had rented all week is worth talking about: the Toyota Seqoia is even larger than our past behemouth GMC Sienna. We had dubbed the Sienna "the GMC Elephant", and we are dubbing the Seqoia "the Toyota Aircraft Carrier". We think that it actually had another car located inside rather than a spare tire. The thing had two cupholders in every door, and three more in the center console. Also in the center console was a compartment large enough to store a small child, or at least both of our laptop computers. There were literally 8 compartments in which to keep your sunglasses, and two glove boxes. At 16 miles per gallon, it was 20% less fuel efficient than the GMC, and didn't have as many nice luxury features, like heated seats, a gate that went up in the back... the Toyota just wasn't as nice.

Saint Catherine's University and Bed Bugs

2009-10-19T21:57:00.000-07:00

Saint Catherine's University, dubbed by the students "Saint Kate's", is an all girls' Catholic College in St. Paul, MN, complete with a convent! Saint Catherine is the patron saint of many things, including (my favorites): unwed girls, dying people, knife sharpeners, and lawyers.

When we arrived at the school, I broke out in hives and assumed I was having some kind of allergic reaction to something I had eaten earlier that day (I'm not allergic to anything, but who knows). The joke became that I must have developed an allergy to girls! A few days later, I learned that I had been bitten by bed bugs during my sleep at the hotel the night before. Ironically, someone had actually said to me "don't let the bed bugs bite" over Facebook Chat that very night. I had always thought that the whole bed bugs thing was just a saying, but it turns out they are incredibly tenacious little bugs that are a serious problem if you don't protect yourself from them. And it doesn't help to stay in high end hotels, they can and do infest even the best.

One interesting note: In our "balloon animals 101" segment, our recording says, "how about you sir, yes, you sir", which would have been awkward at the all girls school if it weren't for one young lady's fortunate boyfriend in attendance.

Lakeland College and a Day in Chigago

2009-10-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday the 7th, we had a day off, so we headed to Chicago. Our first stop was the famous Uno Pizzaria, (not to be confused with the national chain), for some real Chicago deep dish pizza. Uno is a small joint with writing on the wall, from presumably happy customers, and service that had the appropriate amount of sass to give the place real character. After lunch I left Jonathan exploring Chicago while I took the commuter rail up to the north shore suburb of Winetka for a visit with my grandparents.

Jonathan went to the top of the Sears Tower (now renamed after the company which owns it, but screw that). My grandparents raved about how proud they are of me and my career ambitions and successes (feels awesome to get an old banker to be impressed with a job like mine). Jonathan learned lots of cool information about Chicago history and walked out on the new glass floor skywalk of the Sears Tower (scary!).

At the end of the day we met up to see The Second City show at their home theater for two and a half hours of grade A comedy. The Second City is internationally known for its masterful mix of sketch and improv comedy, and they did not disappoint during our visit. The only thing that disappointed us was the food served at the theater- unbelievably bad.

Lakeland College booked us to emcee their annual Mr. Muskie competition on the 8th, which is basically a male beauty pageant night of hilarity. It was tremendous fun and there are some highlights I'm going to post in a video soon. We also got some great photos from this show.

Aurora University

2009-10-13T21:23:00.000-07:00

Our show at Aurora University in Aurora IL (home of Wayne's World) was quite possibly the best show we have ever put on. Everything just fell into place in the perfect way to make it truly amazing. First off, the room was the perfect size and had excellent acoustics. The audience was close enough for fast and personal interactions, and they were more than willing to interact with us boisterously. Our 'Questions From the Audience' segment of the show was especially memorable! (I'll post a video soon!). Apparently the window to the sound and lighting booth resembles that of the "the Banker" on "Deal or No Deal". I've never watched the show so I didn't know, but Jonathan made a joke about it and got a good laugh. I neglected to take a picture of it for your comparisons, sorry. This was definitely the longest show we've ever done, running at almost an hour and a half!

As you look through the pictures you will notice some Wizard of Oz costumes. We were at Aurora as part of homecoming week, which had a theme of "There's No Place Like A. U."

Radford University

2009-10-10T16:33:00.000-07:00

A couple of students at Radford University saw my solo street show at the Baltimore Inner Harbor and decided to bring the SHOWOFF Show! to their school for family weekend. We had a really nice time there.

Radford Virginia is known for its population of Scottish heritage , and the town was celebrating its annual Highlander Festival on campus grounds while we were there. We caught just the tail end of the goings-on when we arrived, but it seemed like a really great event. What's super cool about Scottish festivals is the Highland games, which are basically competitions in feats of strength. The most ridiculous game, in my opinion, is the caber toss, in which competitors try to throw a telephone pole as far as possible. It must go end over end to count. You can't just heave it. According to Wikipedia, there are also music and dance competitions at highland games, but that just seems a little too educational for me.

U of Wisconsin Stout

2009-10-09T14:14:00.000-07:00

The University of Wisconsin Stout actually used a circus theme for their homecoming in anticipation of our show on October 2nd. All of the homecoming court was dressed in some kind of circus themed costume (notice one of our volunteers in the pictures), and we were told that there had been stupid human trick competitions earlier in the week. We were really impressed with the posters they made, and the lighting on the stage was freaking amazing!

Wisconsin Stout is located in a town named "Menomonie" which made us laugh because it reminds us of the classic muppets song sketch.