Jonathan Burns & Barbra Streisand

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

College of Saint Scholastica

After a long drive through the Minnesota countryside, we arrived in the lakeside city of Duluth to perform at the College of Saint Scholastica. Saint Scholastica, the patron saint of education, was a woman! Fascinating. The show was poorly attended, but the people who were there were highly entertained, so we were happy.

After the show, the students took us to eat at a local bar/restaurant where we had good food, but lousy service. While we were waiting for the arrival of our meals, a busboy came by and tried to steal our flatware. We told him we hadn't eaten yet while he was in the middle of scooping up all the forks and spoons and knives, at which point he stopped dead in his tracks, slowly set the flatware down, and quietly slunk away from the table.

The next day, we took a few hours to check out Duluth and its charms. It gets so cold there in the winter that the entire downtown area is connected by skywalks so that you never have to go outside. So, from what I understand, it's not totally crazy for it to get as cold as -80°f, before wind chill, and I don't understand how that's not crazy.

Also crazy: some people move here ON PURPOSE.

Southwest MN State, MN Rennaissance Fest, and Mall of America!

With two days off and time to kill, Jonathan and I hit up the Minnesota Renaissance Festival to do some mustache interviews. Jonathan's going to post his blog thoughts about the mustache experience later on, so I won't get into that, but we did see some other cool stuff there as well. One of my favorite sights was a dog-sized live tortoise harnessed with a tip jar that wandered through the faire grounds attended by two human minders. He liked having his neck rubbed. There was a giant rocking horse, jousting, and plenty of shows to see. The show that most impressed us was the Danger Committee! These guys do a knife throwing act where one of them actually catches the knife out of the air!!! Holy cow! I also enjoyed checking out some of the artists booths at the faire, especially Josh Boock, who makes cookie jars and mugs with grotesque faces. Right before we left, I took the Jacob's rope ladder challenge because I have beaten them before, but not on this day.

This photo gallery has some of the mustaches from our interviews, which you'll probably see  again later.

On Monday we visited the Mall Of America for some retail shopping, and sight seeing. Other than the fact that this mall houses a small theme park, it's pretty much just a big mall. Jonathan bought a pretty slick jacket and some gifts for his wife, while I picked up a couple of pairs of new sneakers. I went to see the Bodies exhibit which was showing for a limited time in one of the exhibition halls on the top floor. I'm glad I went, but I'm not sure I liked it. When we were at the Renaissance Festival, we were given passes for a free roller coaster ride in the Mall of America theme park. It was a good coaster, and free!

The show at Southwest Minnesota State University on 9/22 was a blast, and dinner afterwards with the activities crew was equally fun. One really cool highlight of this school was our interview on the school radio station, which was the first time that had ever happened to us. 

Several girls at the college claimed to have camping gear and fishing tackle ready to go in their trucks, and the bait leeches are in their refrigerators. Minnesota girls, huh? Our new friend Candice filmed the show with her fancy video camera and promised to edit together some clips for us, so we're all looking forward to that.

Oh- I almost forgot to mention that at this show our front row was made up of bean bag chairs! It just seemed like a great idea that more college venues should use.

Rhode Island School of Design

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!