no joke

The bad news came via the Google Alert I have set up for comedy improv information. One of my favorite venues for improv, the Comedy Warehouse (and the other five nightclubs) at Walt Disney World's Pleasure Island will close in September.

A Virginia-based blogger had the official Disney press release and a theory that it was Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville at Universal City Walk that killed Pleasure Island. Another "Mouse expert" wrote that the Comedy Warehouse was sparsely attended on weeknights. He also says that some performers at the Adventurers Club were encouraged to audition for a job at the new American Idol Experience. Yet another Mouse blogger believes that Disney crippled Pleasure Island before killing it. Readers who posted comments on the Orlando Sentinel site aren't happy about the closures either.

When radio is done with me, I had thought I might move to Orlando and watch improv everyday, much like the people complaining on a Disney-themed message board. Some of them chose time shares based on their proximity to the Comedy Warehouse and the Adventurers Club.

I hope that the Comedy Warehouse cast members (especially Lisa) can get jobs doing improv in the theme parks, like the group I saw in March. At the very least, they should be able to perform with one of the talented Orlando troupes like SAK. The closing makes me especially blue that I was too tired to go to the Comedy Warehouse on my last visit to Walt Disney World. My one ticket might have kept them in business a little longer.

The name of the Comedy Warehouse makes me think of a quote from Adam Carolla that I read on his Wikipedia page. He describes himself as a comedy factory, not a comedy warehouse. Like Adam, improvisers are comedy factories, always making up new material. Stand-up comics are comedy warehouses, with a supply of well-rehearsed jokes that they reuse night after night. Ironically the Comedy Warehouse featured improv while the Laugh Factory showcases stand-ups.

Here in Knoxville, I have noticed an increase in attendance at our Tuesday night improv shows. Then I noticed that Patrick Sullivan's has started to occasionally mention Einstein Simplified in their weekly Metro Pulse ad. I'm no genius but I think there might be a correlation.

move 'em on, head 'em up

When there are changes to my blogroll or the sidebar, I try to make them on the first of the month. It's because I started my blog on the first of a month and somehow it makes sense in my mind.

I found Cupcakes Take the Cake when they posted entries about some local bakeries. They did it again today with a great story about a cupcake just like the one I tried last week except that it was mistaken for a bomb at the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge.

Slashfood is a site I've been visiting regularly for some time. Yesterday they showed us how to make cake-sicles, although they look more like cookie-sicles.

Amelia's Space often has a peek behind the scenes at WVLT. Today she posted about their coverage of the closure of I-40 through downtown. One day last month she took us to the farewell party for Jessa Goddard and Kim Bedford.

At last month's Blogfest gathering, I enjoyed visiting with Doug of Reality Me and his wife Cathy of Domestic Psychology. Her funny post about trying to find the bathroom that night made me want to check back periodically.

After the recent Papal visit, a friend reminded me to check Whispers in the Loggia for their intense coverage. When the Pope gets close to naming a new bishop for Knoxville, we will probably read about it first on their site.

Can anybody recommend a blog about improv? It would be great to find one that I like and to add it to the blogroll on June 1. That date has some improv significance to me.

two out of three ain't bad

An interesting email arrived in the main Einstein Simplified inbox today. Paul Simmons forwarded it to the rest of us in the group.

Jon Tanzman, a casting director for Mark Burnett Productions wanted to tip us off to the upcoming Nashville auditions for a new CBS show called "Jingles." They are inviting musicians and improv performers to try out. Jon specifically mentioned singing comedy duos and barbershop quartets. Once the show goes into production, teams of 2 to 8 members will write and perform jingles for real products. The casting call asks: "Do you think you could use your quick mind, great sense of humor and musical skills to impress Fortune 500 companies?"

Considering that "Bartender" is one of my weakest games, I will have to pass.

how 'bout a monster for breakfast

The rain today made it feel right to stay in my pajamas and plop down in front of the TV with a bowl of cereal. The only difference from childhood was that my bowl now contained exactly ¾ cup of Kashi GOLEAN instead of something with marbits. And that I was watching EWTN instead of Saturday morning cartoons. I had another childhood flashback last week when I saw a box of Quisp at Dollar General.

After finishing breakfast, I clicked around the Internet for a while. Coincidentally I found more cereal reminders. First I saw a funny movie poster that wonders what it would be like if they made a live-action film about Count Chocula. Then I saw an older Count at an imaginary cereal mascot reunion.

Last Halloween Jimmy Kimmel dressed as the Count while the rest of his on-camera staff dressed as other cereal icons. Together they looked like Chris Burney's arm. A couple of years earlier my friend Bean wore a Count Chocula costume to the KROQ Halloween party.

Before last Tuesday's Einstein Simplified show, Dave Snow and I thought of a new twist for the "Race for Coffee" game. Instead of sending someone across the street for coffee during a guessing game, we can send them to the Knoxville Pearl for a bowl of cereal and milk. I visited the place when it first opened and saw the images of the General Mills cereal monsters painted on the wall.

a life cut short

A news story from last week is still weighing on my mind. On Thursday, a complete loser was convicted of killing Christina Eubanks. At the time of the murder, I was shocked and saddened by the crime. Christina would often come to watch Einstein Simplified perform. I remember meeting her, as does my wife.

Reading about the trial, I was saddened again by the way the defendant besmirched the victim's reputation. I was especially galled by the murderer's claim that he used his stun gun in an effort to revive Christina after he smashed her head with a toilet tank lid. His story about a consensual affair didn't ring true with me either. The jurors didn't believe him either and sent him to prison presumably for the rest of his life.

have to make it up

Faced with the choice of using my Park Hopper pass to visit any of the Walt Disney World theme parks or going to a convention seminar with only a vague description in the brochure, the answer seemed simple, I was theme park bound. Then I bumped into Charna Halpern in the hallway. She said that her team would be running the 2:30 session. I knew that's where I had to be yesterday afternoon instead.

The highlight of last year's Children's Miracle Network convention was the workshop run by Charna and the group from improvOlympic. I remember being amazed at the difficulty some radio guys from other markets had with telling a story one word at a time. Joe Bill, who led our small group, arranged us in a circle and came up with a story title. We had to make up the story but we could each only say one word. The key is to listen to what's been said so far and when it gets to be your turn, the next word just comes to you. Sometimes the next word needs to be "the" or "and." Other times you get to use a more exciting noun, verb or adjective. That's where many of the deejays fell apart. They tried to overthink it, perhaps wanting to get a laugh with their word. They unsuccessfully tried to anticipate where the story was going and decided on their word before it was their turn. When their word didn't fit the story, they looked foolish and were frustrated by the game. In this exercise, the group is more important than the individual. Don't try to control it, let it control you.

This year's training session was completely different and just as worthwhile. There wasn't as much interaction on our part. Instead the actors from I.O. used improv games to show the important elements of telling a story. They told a Conducted Story that was heavy on facts and another that was nothing but descriptive details. Neither story was compelling. The third attempt was a nice balance of facts and details. Later they did a scene in two minutes and asked the audience to identify the essential and extraneous parts. They redid the scene in one minute and again in thirty seconds, each time paring the story down to its most important elements.

Because my appetite for watching improv is seemingly insatiable, my wife and I had planned to get over to the Comedy Warehouse at Pleasure Island tonight like we did last year and the year before. We ended up having too much fun at the Magic Kingdom and at the recently re-named Disney's Hollywood Studios. As a result we didn't make it back out to Downtown Disney. However I did get to see some unexpected improv by a group of street performers dressed up in old-fashioned Hollywood costumes. Their characters were trying to be named the funniest person in Hollywood. They did an improv game I know as "185" although the number they used was 99. A director got nouns from the surrounding crowd and the comedians had to complete the joke that goes "99 (nouns) walk into a bar. The bartender says we can't serve 99 (nouns) in here and the 99 (nouns) say (punchline)." I picked up a trick from them that I may have to use some Tuesday night at an Einstein Simplified show. A couple of the Disney improvisers added a line by having the nouns ask "Why not?" and then having the bartender deliver the punchline. If I ever can afford to retire, I'll have to move someplace where I can watch improv everyday.

brings all the boys to the yard

Pop culture obsessions, although fleeting, are fun while they last. My current PCO is the "I drink your milkshake" scene from "There Will Be Blood" even though I haven't seen the Oscar-nominated movie yet.

My enthusiasm was fueled when a guy named Brandon Hardesty did his reenactment of the scene on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" last week while wearing a Mr. Potato Head mustache. Then on Friday night, "Best Week Ever" had a segment on the catch phrase. I was sucked in, as if by a straw that reached across the room.

Hoping that others had seen Brandon's funny take, I referenced the scene during my opening remarks at last night's improv show (it was my turn to emcee). I quickly got the feeling that most of the people there had no idea what I was talking about. Oh well. Maybe I'll try again next week, after the Oscars.

lead us not into temptation

Only a week into Lent and I'm feeling the pressure. The culprit is cupcakes. They are everywhere lately. Last night some showed up at the Einstein Simplified show for Dave Snow's birthday. Although I didn't eat any myself because of Lent, I did persuade several of my fellow improvisers to twist the tops off to make cupcake sandwiches. Or icing sandwiches, if you prefer to call them that.

A few days back I spotted some turtle cupcakes at Food City. As a fan of both turtles and cupcakes, I had to take a picture. I saw a different take on turtle cupcakes at a store in Pigeon Forge recently. They sell a soft plastic mold for a pull apart cake, which is one step better than the cupcake cakes I saw at Wal-Mart last year.



While I was adding the links to Saturday's post, I saw a picture of a New York Giants cupcake on Slashfood.com. The accompanying story had a link to Clever Cupcakes, the Montreal bakery that made it. Slashfood gave us a homemade chocolate cupcake over the weekend too. Following a series of links that started on that site eventually brought me to a blog called Cupcake Project.

On top of all that, today's News Sentinel is all about the cupcake. The food section has a great picture that will make you hungry, which therefore qualifies the photo as "food porn," the snarky blogosphere term for glamour shots of anything edible. The pictured cupcakes are from VG's Bakery in Farragut.

The article also mentions MagPies Cakes in the Old City. Despite the pie in their name, they sell celebration cakes and cupcakes. The photos they posted on Picasa certainly could be called "food porn" too. As I looked at the pictures, I wondered why I've never succumbed to their enticement. After all, I've been going to the Old City on Tuesday nights for almost six years. I've also been in that part of town on several Sunday afternoons for practice sessions with people auditioning to join our improv group. MagPies' operating hours give me the answer. They're closed at 4:00 on Tuesdays and all day on Sundays, which means I've never seen them open.

too soon

Some audience members at the Einstein Simplified show tonight wanted us to joke about Heath Ledger's sad death. Fortunately we ignored their suggestions.

I heard the news about Heath from my daughter, who knew I would want to know as soon as she saw the breaking news on CNN and Fox News this afternoon. When she called, I was watching our local stations, which were reporting only on the winter weather.

By odd coincidence, my friend Bean posted a blog entry early this morning about the rash of celebrity deaths so far in 2008. My friend Lisa Burks has an entire blog about (mostly celebrity) deaths.

When I turned on my cell phone this morning, I had a voice mail from Terry Morrow. He said he wanted to ask me something about Brad Renfro. Terry wasn't there when I called back so I don't know for sure that he wanted to try and talk me into going to Brad's funeral, which was yesterday or his burial, which was today. But that's what I suspect.

The Associated Press made news with their decision to prepare an advance obituary for Britney Spears. The concept of updating the obit files was even the plot of a "Mary Tyler Moore Show" episode. Yet, the most recent deaths of the young and famous caught the wire services unprepared. Some writers feel they should only keep obituary files on older, more accomplished stars. With instant news on the Internet, readers now expect to see complete obituaries as soon as a celebrity dies. The news services will have a hard time keeping pace with Wikipedia.

jell-o shots and pillows

Tonight was the first Einstein Simplified show of the year. A larger-than-usual crowd showed up to watch us knock off the cobwebs after a month-long Christmas hiatus. We have to get the audience back in the habit of voting for us in the Improv Top 50. A high school group from Huntington Beach has been challenging our number one position lately.

One of the bigger tables at tonight's performance was occupied by a singles group who had organized their night out on Meetup.com. Two of the singles told me they would get the group to come to our show again.

When I'm downtown, I'm more likely to get recognized from the improv stage than from the radio. It happened about a month ago at Regas Restaurant when we had a waiter who used to work at Patrick Sullivan's. That's not to say I don't sometimes get recognized from being on the air. On the day after Christmas, a sales clerk at the Eddie Bauer outlet in Pigeon Forge told my wife that she knew it was me from my voice. She listens enough to know my wife's name too. My favorite story about being recognized happened the other day at Sam's Club. Neither my job nor my hobby meant anything to the lady who serves fresh fruit samples. She just knew that I was a regular shopper and sampler.

movers and shakers

The News Sentinel published a "40 Under 40" list of business and community leaders yesterday. Congratulations are certainly in order for all forty of them but especially for the following four. I didn't expect to recognize any of the names on the list and was pleasantly surprised to know ten percent of them.

Tasha Blakney is someone I would often see at Todd Covert's parties. She's a lawyer like Todd. These are the same parties where I used to see Jon Jefferson, co-author of the Body Farm books.

Jacene England is an architect who works for Mike Michael Brady, Inc. When Einstein Simplified participated in Canstruction to benefit Second Harvest Food Bank, Jacene figured out how to stack some canned food to look like SpongeBob SquarePants or a big nose with glasses. She's also the person who invited me to join LinkedIn and once sent me her Junior Brown photos.

Larsen Jay was working for RIVR Media when he scouted my house for an episode of "Ed the Plumber" on DIY. He also produced "Warehouse Warriors" and had me appear as a judge on one episode. He now has his own company.

Robin Wilhoit anchors the news on WBIR. Everybody knows her. I've been on enough telethons and other Channel 10 shows that she knows me too.

have yourself a meery little Christmas

How can you get a five dollar discount on a delicious sheet cake at the supermarket bakery? I found out tonight at the last Einstein Simplified show of the year (we're now off until January 15). Loyal audience member Tom brought the cake to share with us after the performance. He had inadvertently placed the order with an employee whose English wasn't quite as good as that of the rest of the staff. Or maybe she's just a huge fan of Meerkat Manor.



Joann Dunkle used to come to the Einstein Simplified shows and expressed an interest in joining the group before she moved to Chicago. Now that she's living in the improv Mecca, she's taking a class at ComedySportz. I got an email from her this morning with a link to a local news story about the class. She wrote that you can see her briefly near the end of the story playing two games with reporter Mark Saxenmeyer.

whose whine is it anyway?

Todd Covert was surprised to hear that he wouldn't be seeing me at the Colin Mochrie & Brad Sherwood show. The famous improvisers performed in Knoxville last night. Even with the five dollar online discount offered to Einstein Simplified fans, the tickets were too expensive for me. With service charges It would have been about $100 for a pair. Before you get mad, yes I know that I'm spoiled by the free concert tickets I sometimes get. I freely admit it.

I thought there might be a slim chance of getting two of those free tickets by doing a phone interview with one of the stars and posting it on my blog. I sent in a request to record a podcast with Brad last week but didn't hear back. The Daily Beacon talked with Colin while the News Sentinel interviewed Brad. I had to chuckle when Doug Mason misidentified Wayne Brady in the sixth paragraph. He called him Greg Brady.

After the high school swim meet yesterday, one of the other parents approached me. "I heard you'd like to go to the show tonight," she said. My wife was sitting next to me as I replied, "Are you asking me out on a date?" "No," said the other woman, "I'm trying to sell you my extra ticket!" She had purchased tickets to the show and then ended up getting another pair in a silent auction at the Turkey Trot 5K. I asked if the spare was a $45 or $55 ticket. She wanted to sell it for the $45 face value. I declined her kind offer. On the way home, I briefly considered driving down to the Tennessee Theatre at showtime to see if any scalpers were selling tickets for half price or less.

Since I was too cheap to go to the show, I looked online today for any reviews by bloggers who may have been there. The only thing I have found so far are the fan reactions posted on the Colin & Brad site. Apparently Ooltewah was one of the suggestions in a guessing game. If you did get to the show, please tell me about it in the comments.

whose lung is it anyway?

The building that houses Patrick Sullivan's Steakhouse and Saloon has stood on the corner of Central and Jackson since 1888. According to local legend, it used to be a brothel. I've been doing improv at Patrick Sullivan's almost every Tuesday night for the past five years or so. Every week I come home reeking of second-hand smoke thanks to the audience members who can't resist the addicting power of nicotine. The carpet on the stage is pockmarked with scores of cigarette burns from the butts dropped by the rock and country bands who play there on weekends.

I imagine that smokers made up the majority of the clientèle of all the various businesses to occupy the building since it first opened its doors 119 years ago. All that is supposed to change on Monday when the new anti-smoking law takes effect. I had assumed that Patrick Sullivan's would take advantage of the loophole that allows smoking in bars that deny admittance to people under 21. Tonight I was surprised to hear from Dave the bartender that Sullivan's doesn't want to shun underage customers. If they enforce the smoking ban like they're supposed to, that means tonight was the last night I had to suffer through the vile, fetid, putrid, poisonous, obnoxious fumes emanating from the audience (and from one of my improv brothers).

buy 'em before you can buy 'em

Not that you needed one but here's yet another reason to attend tonight's Einstein Simplified comedy improv show at Patrick Sullivan's in the Old City. Street team members from the Tennessee Theatre will be on hand to distribute invitations for you to buy pre-sale tickets to "An Evening with Colin Mochrie & Brad Sherwood." Their two man improv show was originally scheduled for October. The date has been changed to Sunday, December 2. Tickets go on sale this Friday at 10:00 a.m, unless you have the pre-sale invitation password. The pre-sale tickets will be sold Thursday but only through the Tennessee Theatre website. If you can wait until Friday, you can save some money on service charges by buying your tickets in person at the box office. The show description on the Colin & Brad website gives a good reason to buy seats near the stage:

The show is all about audience participation. Everything in the show is based on audience suggestions and many audience members are brought up on stage to be part of the craziness. The entire evening is completely improvised, and best of all, the show is never the same twice.

picky wiki

When the recap of last night's Einstein Simplified show gets posted on the bulletin board, it might make some people wish they had been there. Former members Bill, Todd, Wes and Brad came to watch the show. They were all persuaded to make guest appearances on stage too. Todd and Wes helped us with "Greatest Hits." Brad delivered the closing line in "Scenes from a Hat." The highlight for me was watching Bill and Todd play "Invader" just like they used to in the old days. They haven't lost a step at all.

Last week marked the thirteenth anniversary of the first performance of Einstein Simplified. The group has been performing regularly since August, 1994. As far as I'm concerned, we more than meet the requirements to be considered an "improvisational theatre company." We have a stage, an audience and a history of entertaining East Tennesseans. I have repeatedly attempted to add our name to a list of improvisational theatre companies on Wikipedia. Every time I add it, somebody else deletes it. I don't understand why. Could it be jealousy over our high ranking in the worldwide Improv Top 50? Could it be that we perform in Patrick Sullivan's and The Comedy Zone instead of fancy places like the Tennessee Theatre or the Bijou? C'mon Wikipedians, cut us a break!

the show must go on

The laughter at The Comedy Zone was interrupted tonight by a fire in a back building. According to WATE-TV, comic hypnotist Rich Guzzi (who looks nothing like the photos on his website) was on stage with ten audience members under his spell at the time. Once I heard that everyone was evacuated safely, I thought about our improv group's gig at the club on Saturday evening. They said on the news that The Comedy Zone will reopen tomorrow night for the hypnosis show. You are completely relaxed now. When I snap my fingers, you will awaken. When I snap my fingers, you will show up at The Comedy Zone on Saturday at 6pm. At least it'll be air-conditioned.

get'cha head in the game

The legendary Bob & Ray once used Herkimer as a comedy trigger word on an old Wally Ballou bit that I had on an LP. I was reminded of the recording when I saw the word on a sign at a travel plaza along the New York State Thruway recently. Sure enough, I was in Herkimer County. The rest stop had a Starbucks counter where my wife could get some caffeine. While I waited for her, another family came in. One of the teenagers in the group wore a t-shirt with the words Knoxville and Tennessee across the back. The shirt also said "Caught in a Brainstorm." It took me a couple of minutes to remember that I was in Herkimer, not Knoxville. The shirt was a souvenir from something called Destination ImagiNation. When I asked the family members about the shirt, the mom told me that the teenager had attended the Global Finals in Knoxville with his school's improv group.

Terry Morrow had an interview with Zac Efron in his column on Friday. It turns out that Zac too has traveled to Knoxville with his school's improv team. I assume he was here for a previous Destination ImagiNation. Thanks to the Internet, it only took me a second to verify my theory.

drop and give me twenty

Morning radio personalities from all over the United States (and often a few from England and Australia) will be traveling to Chicago tomorrow for the annual Morning Show Boot Camp convention. I was fortunate enough to be sent there by my various employers each year between 1999 and 2003. The last two of those years I had negotiated to have the registration fee and travel expenses included in my contract, a tactic I recommend to any deejays who might be reading this. Three of the five Boot Camps I attended were in New Orleans. The other two were in Las Vegas and Atlanta.

The New Orleans gatherings were a lot of fun. Obviously I was there pre-Katrina. I hope to return someday with my wife. I always felt a little guilty telling her about the delicious Bananas Foster I ate at Brennan's or the about time I went to an incredible six or seven course chef's choice dinner with Billy Bush at Emeril's. I remember that one of the courses was quail. Billy was still in radio at the time. The rest of the evening deserves its own chapter in my memoirs, if I ever write them.

In 2000, I spent a night on Bourbon Street with Kevin Ryder from KROQ, New Orleans-based comedian Tim Coston (who also acted as our Big Easy tour guide), Tim Harrod from The Onion and Aisha Tyler, who was not yet well known. They had all appeared on a convention panel about comedy earlier that day with my then-boss, Tamara Rawitt.

This year's Boot Camp attendees will be treated to a session called "Truth in Comedy," led by Charna Halpern. I wish I could be there for it but at least I got to participate in a very similar session Charna did at the Children Miracle Network convention in April. I'm happy for all the deejays who will be able to see the close connection between radio and improv.

getting ink

Sunday's paper has a nice little write up about Einstein Simplified, Knoxville's comedy improv troupe. Over the five years that I've been in the group, we've gotten lots of publicity, including an article in the Metro Pulse, one in CityView magazine and some great coverage on WBIR. As wonderful as all those are, it still feels good to be recognized in the Sunday paper.

never too late to have beautiful skin

Thanks to Frank Strovel for pointing out that Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood are bringing their two man improv show to the Tennessee Theatre on Sunday, October 21. Colin was a regular and Brad was a frequent guest star on the great show "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"

I am curious how the cities were chosen for the Colin & Brad tour. Did they look for college towns? Or is there a chance that they picked Knoxville because our local improv group is usually at the top of the worldwide Improvisation Top 50?

Speaking of local improv, the footage of Einstein Simplified that I mentioned a week ago was supposed to be on TV at 11:30 tonight and subsequent Mondays. Some unexpected production delays kept it from airing last week. If the Victoria Principal infomercial that's on right now is any indication, there must have been more unforeseen delays. At least now I know whatever happened to Jules Asner.

go broadcast yourself

An unusually large crowd filled the upper room at Patrick Sullivan's last Tuesday night. It was the night before a holiday and they were looking for a laugh. The audience had a lot of energy which resulted in plenty of good suggestions for my improv brothers and me to play with on stage. It was one of our better performances. I was using the restroom after the show when I heard a booming voice behind me calling my name. It was "Big Brother 2" contestant Kent Blackwelder. He said he enjoyed the show and invited me to visit his Eat N Run Deli in Powell.

Our last seven Einstein Simplified shows have been videotaped by a crew from Blue Diamond Media. The footage will turn up on their TV show "What's Really Good" and on another show that's still in the works. The owners of Blue Diamond's parent company, SCD Entertainment met with us after the improv show last Tuesday. They are starting to post some of our short form games on SCD's YouTube channel. The first three bits available online are from our June 5th show, which was, um, not as good as usual. As could be expected, I was my own toughest critic as I watched the segment that I'm in (some language is NSFW). It's a hybrid of "ABC" and "New Choice." I wasn't happy with my "space work." By kneeling or squatting, I could have better demonstrated that I was supposed to be swimming in muck, looking for goldfish. Fortunately I get a chance to try harder and perhaps do better every Tuesday night. See you there?

not live, not from New York

Tonight's Einstein Simplified improv show was videotaped by a crew from Blue Diamond Media. It must have come up quickly. The email notifying the group arrived during my nap. Fortunately for me, I turned on the computer to send an email to some co-workers before leaving the house tonight. If not for that, I would have arrived at Patrick Sullivan's and been surprised to see the lights and camera. The last time we posed for a group photo, the email notifying us also came during my nap and I showed up at the bar wearing a shirt that I didn't really like. I usually don't wear my good shirts to a smoke-filled bar unless there's a camera involved. Yeah, I'm vain.

The highlights of our performance tonight will be seen on a show called "What's Really Good." It is supposed to air Monday night at 11:30 on WVLT-2. It shows up in my TiVo listings as "Paid Programming."

avoid rubbing

Tonight was the first time I had to miss an Einstein Simplified performance due to illness. More on that later.

As an improv fan, I like the concept of "Thank God You're Here" but I didn't love the execution. The celebrity who walks into a scene had to completely improvise but the rest of the cast stubbornly stuck to their scripted outline even if it meant denying the improviser, a cardinal sin of the genre. I started liking the show a little better when I began to think of it as a fleshed out version of an improv game called "Every Other Line." A reviewer for TV Squad pointed out several specific examples of the denials that drove me crazy.

Since I was at home tonight, I watched "American Idol" and "Dancing with the Stars" in real time. That reminds me, what were Lance Bass and Alfonso Ribeiro doing together in the audience during Monday night's dancing show? Maybe they were doing some belated joint promotion for their 2005 made-for-TV movie "Lovewrecked." I did a Google Blog Search and found only one other person in the blogosphere who also noticed them. During tonight's Big & Rich performance (with special guest Drew Lachey), I called WATE to complain that the broadcast was not in HD. Like any red-blooded American male, I wanted to see Cheryl Burke fill the screen. A nice man in the control room told me it was not his fault, it was a network problem. Nobody else could see the show in HD either. While I had him on the phone, I got a chance to mention a pet peeve. I told him that I didn't like the way they always switch back to SD a couple of seconds too soon before airing local commercials during "Lost."

During the commercial breaks in tonight's shows, I sent invitations to join