Relief Rushed to Iran Quake Victims

Click here to see the American Red Cross page regarding the Iran Earthquake. Over 20,000 dead and so many more injured, homeless or missing. This would be the right time for the world to put aside all differences and take care of some people in need. You can donate to The Red Cross from the page I linked to above, or you can donate through British Red Cross, who seem more willing to take donation specifically for Iran. If anyone would like to send me information on other ways to help I will publish them as well.

Arts&culture - December 25, 2003
Click here to check out an article by our own Becca C telling of the new comedy club opening on Del Paso. Pretty exciting stuff. I can't wait for this fabulous new playground to be open.

It's Christmas Eve eve, that is to say tomorrow is Christmas eve. Will the ICBINCers be out caroling? Last minute shopping? Drinking Becca's vegan eggnog spikeked with lighter fluid? No! HA! They'll be rehearsing under the whip of their oh so evil director! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! I'm pure evil I tells ya. PURE EVIL.

What a glowing write up in Short Bus! I just read through the Blog before posting and caught it. Jeez, can we get Acosta a job at The Bee?

We had a cocktail party for Bryna's Birthdays last night. I say Birthday"s" because last year our shows went into early December and when her birthday rolled around we were all thrown into the holiday thing and so we gave her a raincheck on the celebration. Well, a couple of tours and another all original show later, it had been a year and we still hadn't cashed that rain check. Hence, last night we celebrated her 2002 Birthday from 8 p.m.-10 p.m. then her 2003 Birthday from 10:00 p.m. until the wee hours. Effecient aren't we?

Anway, the party was divoon. The theme was big clothes/tiny food (in other words dress cocktail and bring horse douvers). I think Keith wanted us all dressed up because that would put us on our best behavior and avoid such shenannigans as the "bring Mommy another cocktail" game.

The party went late into the night and we all sat and made the funny conversation and sipped a lovely assortment of beverages provided by our hosts mini-bar. Just when I thought we all seemed so grown up SACRAMENTO the renegade punk band showed up for an impromptu living room concert. These guys are great and if you ever have an encounter with them, you are one lucky kid! After the "show", I headed home. I fell asleep singing their finale number "The Dinosaurs died and we took over!"

Happy Birthday Bryna!

Oh, my goodness. We're rehearsing three different set lists right now. Our "It's Funny Because..." show to be done in SF, a 20 minute show for the SF Sketchfest and a best of set for our demo which we film in a couple of weeks. Lot's of work.
We're doing a cool new exercise though where we'll get in character for a skit and then the troupe members not in the skit will interview us and we have to answer in character. It's pretty fun and helpfull.

CLICK HERE TO READ SHORT BUS ARTICLE ON THE ICBINC!

So, you're a Koons fan, too, eh, Keith? Well, I say, Jesus, Michael Jackson--what's the diff? Actually, I was most impressed by the large scale sculptures he did of mylar balloon bunnies--some in excess of 20 or 30 feet--that I saw at the Museum of Mod art in LA. As for the history of the illustrious Eureka theatre, I'll just repeat my email that Tony and Pulitzer-winning playwright Tony Kushner has workshopped and premiered all of his plays, including Angels in America, at the esteemed Eureka, one of the most important theatres on the west coast...ICBINC in da house! BOO-YAH!!!

P.S.--Let go and let god, Amber.

One day at a time

Easy does it!

Keep coming back--it works!....if you work it.

I love Jeff Koons. I don't recall him doing any Jesus figurines though. Miles, why don't you blog about he wonderful credentials of the Eureka Theater. Apparently folks, we're playing at a very well known, well respected theater. Ah, another notch in the old bed post of ICBINC. Please be assured we will still respect them in the morning, in fact we'll share our Cap'n Crunch and everything.

I've got a "Secret Santa" story that just may top Becca's for humiliation value. For our work party/secret Santa blowout this year, I contributed some back issues of "Cat Fancy" (still trenchant reading, I assure you) which I was hard pressed to part with...actually, it was Amy's idea. Anyhoo, by the end of the gift exchanging frenzy, I had somehow received my heartfelt gifts BACK! Is this some kind of a first? Has anyone ever had a Christmas gift refused before? Is this worse than holding a garage sale where no one will stoop to buy the stuff you once bought (albeit for much more money)? Or is this merely karma for my "yard sale dirty sock" faux pas?

P.S.--Nix the porcelain figurines; Jeff Koons has already been there.

Hey KLJ thanks for the link to the lovely porcelain Jesus figurines. I was wondering what I was gonna get Miles for Christmas. The Ballerinas with Jesus will be perfect. Hope he doesn't already have one...

Hee hee. Check this out. http://www.catholicsupply.com/christmas/othersports.html
They have statues of Jesus playing baseball, skiing, rollerblading, doing Karate. It's great. And the best part is THEY'RE TOTALLY SINCERE!

Hey Amber, nice post, but what's it got to do with you're bootie. DID YA SEE THE NAME OF THE BLOG?

YAY, This is becoming the "Amber's Glorious Booty Blog." All Amber's booty all the time.

Amber, you just put that picture up cuz it's so flattering to your bootie.
But hey, if you want to use your bootie to sell tickets, by all means, be my guest.

Hey, click any where here to read a very funny Promise Keepers essay on bouncing your eyes off of them sexy joggers in the tight shorts or how 'bout them red hot underwear ads in the sunday paper! Oh, those ads do trouble me so. Woo Hoo!

I'm perty darn excited. My friend Kendall did a few cartoons for Spike and Mike's Festival of Animation, and he did the Pizza Guys commercial with the talking italian stereo type pizza slices. He is building a studio in his backyard and is interested in working with us to do some animated versions of some of our skits. I'm thinking an Unborn Billy commercial for starters, but we can do tons more. I'll have him check out our stuff and then we can see which ones he thinks will work best. Woo hoo.

I just got back from Monterey. My girlfriend and I, got in some early celebrating of our upcoming 10th anniversary. 10 years!!! Holy bat poop.
We had a great time. She shopped around all over until she found the perfect place for poor people like us. We were right on the beach. Fireplace in the room. Just gorgeous.
We spent a day at the Aquarium looking at Jelly fish and all kinds of incredible stuff. We had the best Thai food at Amarin Thai (no relation to Sacramento's Amarin Thai, which is also quite yummy). I bought some comedy records and we did a bit of relaxin'.
Next year we'll stay longer.

Mmmm Mmmm. Waffles from The True Love Coffehouse. I pretended they were vegan. I'm so bad. Amber and I went around midnight and we chatted with Kevin Seconds and Kepi from the Groovey Ghoulies for awhile so we got to feel like cool kids. Alison (Kevin's wife, co-owner of the True Love and band mate) really wants us to perform there which would be great. Hopefully that will happen.
I had breakfast with Amber and Miles and Amy (Mile's cute girlfriend, and my secret crush, don't tell.) And yesterday we all had breakfast with Amber's mom, and Wednesday we all met for coffee. We're seeing too much of each other. It's sickening I tell you. All the love. Yuck.
Not that there's not some horrible uncomfortableness sometimes from having to change gears between being friends and then being director and actors. I often think this would be a better blog if we let ourselves air all that dirty laundry, but who wants to share that crap with strangers. Not I. We love each other enough, I perfer our dirt to be private.

Anyway, I FINALLY updated our cast page so you that our adorable newest cast member is on it. You'll notice Ducky and Jonathon are gone, though I should have left Jonathon on. He did a film for our newest show which means that even though he officialy quit, we still haven't done a show without one of his films in it. He quit because he no longer has access to a DV camera and because he's working a-lot on his own projects, which he's shooting on film. Ducky is gone because the day job just wasn't leaving him time for our crazy schedule, but I'm sure we'll have him as a guest in the future.

I'm up late, very late for me, so now I've got my damned second wind and I don't want to go to bed. Goodnight.

Thanksgiving is over and I still got three more days of not having to work. Verry nice. How great to get the damn holiday out of the way first and then go enjoy the rest of the break.
I saw all my brother, their wives, the many nephews and nieces. We've gotten to be quite a big clan. Then I went to my girlfriend Bryna's family's thanksgiving dinner. Four sisters, one nephew, and uncle, a grandma and a ma. Them girls better start crankin' out the babies if they hope to catch up with my family.
We ended the evening by heading to our pals Johnny Ziptie (he worked lights at our last show) and Amalia's house. We watched Adaptation, more on that later. It was a nice way to end the evening. Now I'm gonna go crash. Happy Thanksgiving.

Nice Blog about the evils of Rock Stardom Amber. Hey, our friend Cheese, the stand up comedian who opened our show two Saturdays ago has his own online comic. Check it out. www.badlydrawnrobots.com!

Here's some samples of the fan mail we've gotten for the new show:

"We were quoting lines from your skits and laughing all the way home! I would love to come support you wherever you are playing - and if I can help in any way other than to sit in the audience and laugh my ass off, let me know!"

"Let me say how much I enjoyed your show at the Gallery Horse Cow! Fabulous! A few of the high points for me were the Jesus Christ CEO skit, the Happy Somethin or other Playhouse with the box and the hands, the Pizza Sluts porn skit, and of course Drag Man! Thanks again for the laughs!"

" Hey! Just wanted to drop you a line to tell you I had a blast enjoying the madcap weekend comedy production "I Can't Believe It's Not Comedy". Seriously, some of those skits were really hilarious. Onomatopoeia. I was sitting there thinking,"If these people were on TV doing this stuff, I would watch it." And I HATE TV! (Thank you for pointing that out, by the way)"

"i don't know where you guys come up with those sketches, but i've had a lot of experience with mind-expanding drugs in the past, but never could've come up with anything as imaginative. and you're like a female jim carey and i mean that as the highest of compliments. you [addressed to Amber] can make a million different faces and that's so awesome! so anyways, just wanted to let you know that i had a great time laughing until my mascara was smeared down to my knees."

"I liked the Pro Life/Pro Choice sketch, It's funny because, and the puppet show, and I couldn't stop saying, "Wake up James" all the way home last night."

That last quote there was from Brian, who produces The Free Hooch Comedy Troop. He's the fella opening the club on Del Paso where I'll be hosting a Thursday night comedy show starting in January. We have lots more mail. This show seemed to really affect people, which is encouraging because we took a-lot of risks on this one. Thanks to everyone who wrote.

Woooh, glad we survived that one. This was a rough show, mainly because we were just out of the habit of putting together new material, with new props and all the rest. It came off wonderfully though. I've been home sick ever since. Thanks Ben! Bastard. Actally, Ben is the champion of this show because he stuck it out and performed even though he was on death's door. The show must go on.

Tonight, as I went to get cough medicine I was recognized by the girl at the counter. She had come to the show and is now a fan.

Our next show will be a free show, that we are filming. YAY! It will be much fun. At The Crest no less! See you there.

Even though Keith has caught Ben's terrible cold and is surely near death's door, he still beat me to the blog. Yes, I am indeed the rotten egg and I say ROTTEN EGG'S OF THE WORLD UNITE. ROTTEN EGG'S HAVE RIGHTS, ROTTEN EGG'S HAVE RIGHTS!

I digress. This weekend's shows were like wild fire. We sold out Friday, had a standing room only crowd Saturday at 8 p.m. and Saturday at 10 p.m.'s sold out crowd awarded us with a standing ovation! The Puppet Show (also known as the Puppet Show that nearly killed Sid) rocked and rocked hard, UNBORN BILLY went over huge and all in all I've heard nothing but raves about the show (well except for those two ladies in the front row Saturday night who were clearly offended by our antics but hey you've got to step on a few toes on the way to the top. am I right, am I right?).

HA HA Sid, you're the rotten egg.

Holy crap, last night rocked it. I had a blast MC-ing, and the show went oh so well. Every skit hit it's mark. This show was ON ON ON!
I'm totally stoked and I feel like we could conquer the world.
Which, as you know, we fully intend to. Mwa ha ha ha! I am EVIL!

It sure pays to be mentioned in the paper. Tickets are selling like crazy. We're well on our way to selling out all three shows.
Our website is getting hit like crazy. It makes me sorry this blog doesn't have more drama. Unfortunately we all get along pretty good and none of us has a drug habit, or hooker habit or anything to keep the blog bumpin'. Miles' has a fair shair of drama in his life. We should get him to blog more. Yes we should.
Gonna tear it up tonigh, All right.

YAY Dorks! YAY Dylan!

HAHAHAHA We did it again. We're dorks

Ahh, that's so cute. Sid and I blogged at the same time. (scroll down).

Hey KLJ-It appears that our psychic link is strengthing-we blogged and posted at exactly the same time....Oooh someone tell Xenophilia...

I was on Dr. Andy's Poetry and Technology hour. I love Dr. Andy. He's the best. I used to work with him, years ago.

Hey, a big shout out to Dylan. He started the first ICBINC fan club. He came out to our dress rehearsal tonight and he'll be helping us gather addys for our mailing list. He's a great guy. Be sure to check out his site, www.geocities.com/notcomedy

I can't bitch that he hasn't updated his cast photo, since I haven't updated the Cast page on our website in AGES. Soon, I promise.

Okay, now I remember why we do this! Dress rehearsal tonight went EXTREMELY well. After the last few days of pure self inflicted torture, nervous stomach and other gastro-intestinal distress that shall remain un-named, it felt sooo good to be on stage and making people LAUGH! Our dress rehearsal audience of about 15 got a great show, we worked out the bugs and tomorrow night it's show time. YAY, I think I might actually sleep tonight. Ahhhhh.

The TV appearance was certainly weird. I thought we'd be interviewed and what not, but once the cameras came on it was "OKAY, You're on! Fill three minutes". We had no idea what to do for three minutes, so, we just acted looney.

Tonights the last dress rehearsal. Then tommorow the show. And Saturday it's all wrapped and maybe I can start sleeping regularly again.

Mmmmm, pulled pork.

I picked up the cool art done for one of our skits by the one and only Mr. Lobo and I Jonathan Morken delivered the finished edit of "Bible The Movie". Both look great. I can't wait to put them in front of our audience and hog all the glory for Lobo and Morken's hard work.

Wow! I just watched my friend Jeff on Ellen, which of course is Ellen Degeneres' talk show. Jeff is her personal assistant and is a writers assistant (which means writer but pays less). The segment on the show involves Ellen trying to hook Jeff up with a lady. Jeff cracks me up. The show opened with Ellen, Jeff and Karen Anderson (my comedy mentor) playing around on little bumper cars. Pretty funny. Damn famous bastards. We're next.


OKAY, THE TV IS STILL ON AND KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN IS SELLING ITSELF AS HEALTH FOOD. JEBUS!

Well The Sacramento Bee article came out today. You can read it HERE.
I'll put another version up after I get links to a version with photos. The paper has two pictures of us.
less than a week until showtime.

I got to do some actin' for Mr. Lobo today. I played the evil Cafe owner. Lobo is a Horror host (you know, like Elvira or Vampira). So he films funny bits to be placed around trashy movies. The movie that we were shooting bits for today was Roger Corman's cooky beatnik coffeeshop flick "Bucket Of Blood".
This is one of my favorite films, and I love Lobo's writing so it was fun to do. I played the mean Cafe owner, like I said, so I interrupted Lobo as he tried to introduce the flick and demanded payment for his many cappucinos. He has no money so I make him work and he has to host the show while slaving away for annoying beatnick customers.
I also got to play one of two Matrix- Agent Smith like agents of a Starbucks like coffee chain that is taking over the neighborhood. All in all I had a blast. Miles plays the other agent and Becca plays one of the customers I think. She filmed her parts yesterday.
Fun Fun Fun.
And speaking of Fun, Heidi Ho and Rob Cockerham have both confirmed that they will be attending our shows this weekend. We've also got some super surprise guests that we aint telling you about. HEE HEE HEEE HEEEEE!

"trying to hit KLJ on the head without actually hitting him on the head " wrote Becca.

That's the problem. You should ACTUALLY hit me. That's why I'm in this troupe. So I can get my masochist kicks. I always write skits where I get the smacks. Ask Tom Cox. He's beaten the crap out of me many times.

MMMMMMM, Short Skirt!!!!!

Hey, Robert just put the article that he'd written on ICBINC for Wirehed magazine up on the Retrocrush forum. The magazine folded before the article got to run but it's cool to see the flattering things he writes. I was pretty hopped up on sugar durring the interview. Robert always gives me cokes and cookies at his house and then I'm a spaz. Most of my friends hide the sugary sweets when I'm around and offer me valium as a snacking alternative.
Here's the Article:

If you’re one of those people who remember how good Saturday Night Live used to be, or fondly recall the initial 2 years of In Living Color, it’s probably been disappointing to find an alternative comedy source to fill the void. Luckily, a few hundred Sacramento residents, and soon most of California, have discovered that the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Comedy troupe’s live performances bring to mind the best of television’s greatest subversive comedy shows right in front of your face.

ICBINC was started by Keith Lowell Jensen, Sacramento’s resident writer and funnyman, who has performed numerous stand up comedy dates both as himself, and his sleazy alter-ego Francois Fly. While serving as the host of The Crest Theater’s infamous Trash Film Orgy series, Jensen has delighted thousands with skits featuring on stage eviscerations, live sex change operations, and giant size Godzilla style Monster Wrestling Match complete with the requisite scale model of downtown Tokyo to destroy.

Their shows mix traditional live sketch comedy with modern innovations like live video interludes taped by Sacramento filmmaker Jonathan Morken, and conspiracy laced music from the hilarious Xenophilia. Some of their more popular skits include a boy who confesses his horse-dressing fetish to his shocked parents, and a side-splitting tribute to Mexican Wrestling movies and giant cockroaches (don’t ask, you have to see it to believe it).

When asked why folks should come out and see one of their performances, Jensen replied, “Never mind the art and the comedy innovations. Ben Miller is scantily clad, and Amber Kloss is playing a HO, that’s why I would come and see it. That’s two things consistent in every show.”

They’ve been entertaining local audiences for 2 years now, but they’ll soon be playing dates in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Keith says they decided to take their show on the road, “because nobody seemed to like us in Sacramento.”

So far the audiences have been pretty responsive. When asked to comment on how much laughter they can generate in a night, Jensen replied, "we try to perform close to AA meetings.” When told that didn’t answer the question, he started laughing uncontrollably and wet himself.

Surprisingly, Sacramento is also home of a rival sketch group, The Free Hooch Comedy Troupe. When asked why someone should choose ICBINC over them, Jensen answered, “Shut up, we don’t want to give them any press!” Keith then held a knife to his neck and threatened to kill himself if we didn’t print his motto, “I’m not a playa hata, I’m a playa celebrata!”

You can find out more regarding ICBINC at www.notcomedy.com, to get their latest show dates.

This is the worst part of putting on a show. The week before. So stressfull. You question all your decisions, you worry about your gags working. It's tempting to tear everything down and re-write it, maybe I'll cancel the whole show and just hire some party clowns, hopefully with dancing poodles in tu-tus. HA HA HA HA, I love them poodles in Tu-Tus yes I do!

This is me on halloween. Aint I gorgeous. The next night I did a simmilar take on The Devil. Hopefull I'll get a pic of that soon.

Damn I'm busy. Rehearsal last night, then home to do some last minute re-writes and to put the show sequence together, comparing notes with Bryna so that nobody is given impossible costume changes. Then today I had to put together my wants and need for the Thursday Night slot that I'll be filling at The Sacramento Comedy Spot. I meet w/them tonight. In between I have to keep the day job going and tommorow I've got to rehearsal again.

Idle hands are the devils tool eh? The devil seems to be keeping mine pretty busy.

Wow what a weekend. Becca read poetry with Xeno supplying soundtrack, and Becca's buddy Frank did some realy cool poetry with a band called Dino Crowley. They played a montage of Kenneth Anger films and some crazy Picasso animation in the background. Great stuff. I was a drag queen devil. I'm really getting into drag. Emily Yay came up with a new term for us sissy straight boys; Faux-Mo. Tee hee.

The Press is realy responding well. Alive and Kicking put our picture in their calendar and Good Morning Sacramento is featuring us next Tuesday. News10 called but they haven't said if they'll do a story or not. The Sacramento Bee is indeed doing a story.

I feel like there's a good buzz going.

I had so much fun last night. I was a green drag queen for halloween. With purple wig and a shark skin suit. Amber "Cookie" Kloss in her girl scout outfit was my lackey. Bossing her around was great. The TFO was fun. I didn't stick around through the movie though. I headed over to Allen's party. Great times. Video cameras everywhere. My friend Kizzzy's band, "The Pleasure Seekers" were playing and they are fantastic. Allen was running around with his new super duper video camera. He's so mellow now at his partys. I remember the old days when Allen didn't even get to enjoy his parties as he'd run around stressing out. All in all it was a great night. Allen's party is still going. I'm heading over now to have some pancakes and then I'll be back there tonight.

This putting on a show stuff is a lot of work. We put out our press releases, hand delivering them. So far we've heard back from The Bee, they are going to run a story on us, and Jonathan Mum, the reporter who did a news story on us a while back for News10 called to say that he had recieved the press pack. He didn't say if he was going to do a story or not. I ran him a tape that Bob Moricz edited together hoping to show him just how great we are. Mark S. Allen from Good Day Sacramento has expressed interest in doing a story as well, but nothing is set in stone there. I think we'll send them another press release printed on a cake or something. Get their attention. I think the News and Review may be shy about doing a story because one of their own is in our cast now. We'll see.

I've got to be thinking of how I'm gonna get comedians and audiences interested in my show at The Sacramento Comedy Spot as well. I meat with Brian, the fella putting the club together, next wednesday to discuss advertising budgets and such. I've also given notice at my work. I'm gonna swap this day job for another one. I'll be going to work for my friend Allen, who owns the Gallery Horse Cow where we perform. That will happen in January.

Lots going on. And, it's Halloween. Woo Hoo.

The whole ICBINC gangs is hoppin' this week. Miles and Becca at Trash Film Orgy, Amber has her Short Bus show and ICBINC alumnus Emily Yay and I will be performing in San Francisco as part of Popcorn Anti Theater. WOO HOO.
I hope everyone promotes our new show heavily.

BEn and I wen to Jonathan's last night to record audio for the film that Jonathan's doing with us for the new show. Jonathan says you were really into the "Pencil-Dick" line. He said you'd pep up when that line came along. Is this true? Does sweet, hippy girl Becca like to call people Pencil-Dick Mother Fucker's?

It's become official. I will be hosting a comedy showcase at the Sacramento Comedy Spot which will open on Del Paso Blvd in the next month or so.
I'm very excited about this show. It will be a great mix of Featured Stand Up, Music, variety acts, and open mic comedy. I will MC and we'll be keeping it entertaining.
More details as they become available. Of course my ICBINC cronies will be involved. WOOO HOOO!

We're looking for some music for the upcoming show. We're without Xenophilia, and we're looking at working with the St. Simon 3, but they won't be available until our SF shows in February. I'm thinking Naked Nathan might do a fine job in the meanwhile. We'll have to wait and see if he's available.
It looks like half our cast will be in Jonathan Morken's next film, Nwar. Some idiot e-mailed a bunch of girls that had been invited to audition and warned them that it was a porn flick. You'd be surprised how many knee jerk idiots just cancelled their audition or no showed rather than ask to see the script, especialy since Jonathan has offered a copy of the script for anyone who wants it right from day one. The auditions are at the Crest Theatre. I don't think many porn film producers are getting to hold their auditions at The Crest. And most would require somewhere a little more tolerant considering what "Skills" they'd be auditioning. Showbiz is less competitive than people think, if you're not stupid I mean. Thank god for stupid people. Example; My friend Brett got a call from a casting agent asking if he knew how to do Three Card Rummy. Brett says "Yes, I do!" She's thrilled explaining to Brett that he's the 30th person she's called. Brett is amazed that 29 people before him said "No". He hangs up with her, calls me and says, "Hey Keith, I got 8 hours to learn how to do 3 card rummy." Brett got a few moves down, did the job, and got the paycheck. Brett's so thrilled about not being stupid.

this is our new poster. I'll put the flyers up soon too.

The garage sale went well. We sold a bunch of crap and handed out some flyers.
Miles contributed a big bag full of REALY dirty cloths, including dirty socks. Where did we find this guy? He's a nutcase.
Surprisingly enough, nobody bought Miles' dirty cloths.
The posters and flyers have been ordered and they're on the way. Woo Hoo. We should have the flyers by Tuesday or wednesday.

I saw Kill Bill. Great stuff. Some incredible cinematography, amazing fight scenes. Super duper japanese animation sequence. It's wonderfull.

Mmmmmm! Sexy Yoga teacher. Oops, I guess I didn't achieve Yoga. I achieved something though...tee hee hee.

Yahoo is the pits.
I am so sick of their inconsistent service. And I don't just mean their free service either. When I first started putting up web sites I registered my URLs through Yahoo and boy did I regret it. So, don't use Yahoo. Right now I can't get into my e-mail account. At least I can be glad that I didn't pay for that.
I reccommend www.powweb.com for hosting your website. If you use them be sure to tell them www.RockAss.net sent you, it helps me out.

Wow. Working out felt great. Did a little running, played with all the different machines, through the basketball at the hoops a bit. Bryna really liked the Tai Chi, I think I'll try it next time.
My friend Bryan of Free Hooch Comedy troupe is opening a club. They're doing a bit of construction at the moment, remodelling the building. The club will be out on Del Paso, the same part of town where our home The Gallery Horse Cow is located. I'm gonna meet with him on wednesday to see how I can help out with the club. He's a good guy. I look foward to working with him again. We did the 1st annual Sacramento Sketch Comedy Festival together a while back. Hmmm, I wonder if we should do that again. It was great fun.

I'm getting old. I joined the YMCA. I'm going to go work out tonight. Bryna's going to do some Tai-Chi or however you spell it. I don't dance often these days. I don't skate board. I don't do much. So, I joined the Y. I'm actualy excited to be making a move toward gettign back in shape and the Y is less than two blocks from my house, so, I'm gonna enjoy it. But of course I'm almost a yuppie. If I'd joined 24 hour fitness then I'd be a yuppie. The Y has basketball courts. Maybe I'll learn to play basket ball. And yoga. I'm gonna do a-lot of Yoga.
I wish they had Jui-jitzu. I want to do some sparring. I wrestled my friend Steve Thoreson. He's a comedian and he's very intellectual. I always interrupt his act though and make him do his impersonation of bacon. He has been threatening to kick my ass for this for years so Saturday at the Galley Horse Cow's Burning Man show we decided to go ahead and fight. I ended up choking him out, meaning that he tapped because I got him in a choke hold. I didn't actualy make him pass out. I can't be too proud of winning though as the fight started with me jumping on him when his back was turned. I'm a bad person. Yes I am. There will be a rematch I'm sure.
I love fighting. My brother's an ultimate fighter and I guess it's just in the blood. I don't like the anger, just the sport of it. I need more friends like Steve.
If anyone wants to wrassle let me know.

KLJ should have his own weekly comedy night at The True Love cafe. Yeah. That's what I'm thinking. I could feature all my funny pals. I've got contortionists, stand up comedians, Karaoke loving Mexican Wrestlers, and my ICBINC friends. Damn. It'd be the best show EVER! Check out www.Truelovesacto.com to see where it is I'm thinking I'm needed.

Jonathan and Ben came over. Jonathan's working on a short film with me and was doing the titles. It's just clips of The Last Supper painting with us doing audio over the top. You'd have to see. It's one of the funnier things we've done. Anyway Ben reminded me of something I just had to shair. Some Jehova's witnesses were canvasing my neighborhood and we're across the street from my house doing our photo shoot. The Jehova's see us and head over but the get halfway accross the street and notice that we're all covered in blood. The freeze. The don't say a word to each other or to us, they just turn, perfectly synchronized away, and move on to the next block.
FUNNY!
I'll have some of the picks up real soon.

Governor Arnold! Oh my god. We're so stupid. I just can't believe how stupid we are. He used the old "I'm gonna sweep California Clean" speach, with the Broom and everything! As Ben pointed out, that one was how they showed that the jackass politician was a jackass in O Brother Where Art Thou. The rest of us laughed at it, but Arnold said, "Oooh, I like that. Yeah, I'll sweep the state."
Why is our memory so short. I can't defend Gray Davis, he stinks, but have we forgotten Pete Wilson. The man whoes mess Davis inherited? And what about our crappy representatives who haven't gotten the budget done on time in YEARS!
The problem is much bigger than Davis and Arnold is know solution. I'm just glad that he ran on a platform of idealistic optimism. I'm hoping that means everyone will get sick of him real quick when he gets nothing done.

Okay, we're not a political troupe, I'll go back to talking about comedy and such. Good Day.

SO, we started getting the photos done and we're out in this parking lot across the street from my house splattering blood all over ourselves. I asked Irina who did our last flyer and poster to come supervise the shoot so that she got what she needed for the new flyer/poster. I'm too much of a control freak though and I ended up overriding her on several decisions. It hit me last night that what we end up with working this way is either Irina's vision watered down by me, or my vision watered down by Irina. I hate compromise in art. I took the disk of photos this morning, gave them to Irina and said "Here. Design the flyer your way. Do whatever you want. I don't care how you use the photos or if you use the photos at all." She seems excited to be free to do what she does, and I feel better too. I chose Irina for this project because she's such an awesome artist, I don't know why it took my so long to realize what I needed to do. I would like for us to create a whole scene around us the way the Buzzcocks did, the way Sigue Sigue Sputnik did the way Andy Warhol did. And that doesn't happen by having a bunch of artists all compromising themselves it happens by putting the right people together and letting everyone do what they do well.
So, anyway, I feel good. I feel like we're going to get great flyers and posters and like Irina's gonna be a lot happier being our graphics arts person. Hell, she's definately not doing it for the money.
Hmmm, I wonder what we will end up with?
This is an odd show. Probably our strangest combination of skits and anti-skits ever. AND...THE PUPPETS ARE BACK!

I'm feeling better. I hung out with Xeno and Becca last night. We saw Lost in Translation. What a great flick. After the movie we had some sushi and then the whole troupe met at my place this morning for a photo shoot. First Coffee and Oatmeal, then photos. The photos are crazy. Funny stuff. I can't wait to see the new posters and flyers. WOOO HOOO! Now if I can only get some work done between now and rehearsal on Tuesday.

Tonight I'm bummed. Xenopilia will be taking a leave from us. I'm not sure if it's permanent or temporary. I will miss them. They didn't join the cast until the Christmas show, meaning we've done three original shows without them and only one original show and the Best of shows with them, but durring that period of time they've really gotten to feel like a part of us. I definately want to continue using live music so I'm looking for someone to provide that. I've got a couple of leads but not a-lot of time and usual my day job suffers when I'm stressing on the troupe and the day job pays the bills so I'm stressed over all, and it sure feels like a big break is right around the corner, so we just got to hang on. We're getting so much positive attention. Ahhhhhhh!

We had a good rehearsal last night. A little bit of tension over a skit I wrote with a bit of absurdist gay smut shock value thrown in in the middle. No one was deeply offended but there's the question of Toilet Humor. We obviously don't want to go the shock value route, and oddly enough the skit in question starts with a statement about not doing this kind of humor. But we have our Team Urinals skit set in the a bathroom and it's FAR from toilet humor. So the question on this new one was, did it have some deeper meaning, some context, that made it more than the sum of it's parts, or was I just going out of my way to make the audience uncomfortable. We worked out a way to let me do my piece and to let the other person respond to it, which I think adds more of the troupes personality and is a good thing.
I know this must be strange to read without having the actual skit to refer to. Ha Ha. you'll just have to wait till our new show.
Now I get the stress of balancing what skits go in and trying to give everyone enough stage time. Fun.

FIRED? You was promoted woman!

I really must apologize for Amber's Foul mouthed ways. I don't know what gets into her sometimes. It's that evil punk rock she listens to.
I too am excited about the photos on Saturday. We're doing some cool creative stuff with the pics and with promotions this time around, including putting together a sort of Street Team (I hate that term) to help with getting the word out.
Drop us a line if you're interested.
And if you haven't yet, be sure to check out www.SactoFly.com. They do a great weekly list and have given us much props. Not that a couple of us are involved in the list or anything. Hush your mouth. They did just get a best of from the News and Review. Best Online Source for What's Happenin'.

WE WON A BEST OF. We got, "Best Urinal Sketch". Our skit Team Urinals, from our first show got the honors. We're quite happy.
I can't wait to get some photos from LA up here. We usualy crowd into Brett "Lizard Boy" Wilson's studio apt, but his apt building manager, our pal Mike (from Pygmy Love Circus) let us crash in an apt that had come up empty. I was giggling as I went to sleep on the floor, with nine other people all around me. It was pretty funny. Total Rock and Roll Lifestyle. Miles felt much better about it as he has problems sleeping in Lizard Boy's place with all the reptiles and bugs, including giant Madagascar hissing cockroaches, yum.



We ended up telling ghost stories till 3am or so on Saturday night (or technicaly sunday morning). This meant we didn't get on the road to head home until 1pm, after a late breakfast at The 101, our favorite LA restaraunt. Mmmmm, I can taste that No juevos rancheros now. And when the waitress brings it to the table and doesn't remember who ordered it I love to say, I have No Juevos! On the way home we had dinner at Pea Soup Anderson's and our waiter was realy cool. We gave him a t-shirt and a copy of Short Bus. The rest of the stretch home I made everyone listen to De La Soul's first album Three Feet High and Rising. Damn that's a good album. Well, now I must be off to the day job.

We had a great meeting tonight. We all talked again about where we're going, where we'd like to be in a year and how we plan to get there. We're going to do a show in Sac in November, like I said, and we're going all out with promotions, more than we ever have before. We're also going to focus on getting our demo shot. I'm meet with the film maker, Bob Moricz to discuss the filming. Click his name there to see his website. It's pretty funny that I'm on the front page holding an ax. Tee hee hee. I want to see more film. Not just the filming of our live shows but actual short films. That's where my main drive is.
The meeting was realy cool though because I get a reminder of just what a great group of people I'm working with. We all realy care about each other and about this artform and we're all realy driven to do the best we can and to find a way to do this full time, to make this our lively hood. I never worry that we're materialistic or overly focused on our careers. I know the art comes first, but we all know what we want to do with our lives and that's a beautiful thing.

We played The Derby! ! !
Sold out crowd! ! !
The new burlesque style stuff that we put together just for this show, including a sort of strip tease magic trick type thing went over well.
I'm looking foward to getting a new show of originals together, and performing in Sacramento again. It's been quite a-while since we've played for the ol' home town. So, that's what we're working on. We should have a new show ready to go by November and we'll do it in Sac, SF and LA. No scantily clad dancing ladies but we should be able to get Ben down to his shorts again.

So here we all are at Sid's waiting for Miles to show up so we can leave for LA. We spend a great deal of time waiting for Miles to show up. He's one of the more successfull of us, what with his fancy degree and high faluting career. I tell ya, if he got over his absent mindedness he'd be downright dangerous, he would. Amber, the sweetie she is, brought me some crazy coffee drink she makes with soymilk and LOTS of chocolate so I'm not too unhappy. This is the reason why we leave early, so that when we end up leaving late we're actualy just on time.

And I have to add, The Birthday Party (feat. Nick Cave) is one of the finest bands you'll ever want to hear. When Punk rock got boring Nick and Co came along and breathed some new filth into the scene. Quite nice.

TODAY WE LEAVE FOR LA! I have no idea how I'm supposed to keep my mind on work today when I will be freaking out about getting our show on the road. We're carpooling down, one van, one car. We're well rehearsed and I'm very excited to be taking this big step. Man this is gonna rock! We're booked for Halloween already and we're working on a booking for November as well. If we get November we'll be doing some of our infamous Holiday material. I want to get a December date in Sac so our traditional Holiday show can continue. WOOOOO HOOOOOO!

So, as Miles mentioned a few posts ago our beloved Emily is going to take a break from the troupe to decide if this is what she wants to do. The level of success we've reached means we're incredibly busy, but we're not yet busy enough to be making the kind of money that would allow us to leave the day jobs or even to cut back so we end up living with two careers and I can understand wanting to really be sure you want the pot of gold before climbing through any more barbed wire to get to the end of this particular rainbow. HA! I'm a freaking poet.
The GREAT news is Emily will be joining us for a special appearance at our show this Saturday at The Derby. I'm happy about that.
Hopefully Em will sit a show out and then realize she just can't live without ICBINC. Either way, she's so entangled with us since she's my best friends girlfriend now and also my girlfriends bestfriend and she's my former girlfriend and one of my bestfriends. We'll be seeing plenty of her.

I'm back from LA. The trip was a big waste of time and money, I got little done, but what the hell, I had a good time so I don't mind.
I'm anxious about the show. I feel we're totally ready, it's just such a big step with SOOO much possibility. The week of a big show is always hell for me. Headaches, trouble sleeping, that kind of thing.
can't wait to have to go out there and kick the booty.

I'm heading down to LA this week. We'll do a walk through of The Derby, solve any audio amplification problems and figure out the blocking. I imagine we'll do a helluva lot of flyering as well. I can't wait to be doing this show. Many of my comedy heroes did time performing at strip clubs but I figured with the modern day strip club being so lame I'd never get the chance. I do have a couple of friends that DJ at strip clubs, but "Hey guys, let's hear it for Harley and that hot little ass of hers! Does she know how to shake it or what? Alright, we got a great set of tits up next. Let's Make some noise for Summer Rain!" is not my idea of entertaining. That I will get to compete for an audiences attention in between buxum beauties performing real burlesque, why I dared not even dream it! My biography is realy shaping up now. Woo Hoo. It's nerve racking too. Skit comedy is not the usual thing when it comes to burlesque and my original idea was a small show with a bit of burlesque to spice things up. This has ballooned into a much bigger affair, and the skit portion is definately an experiment. I know we can figure out any crowd though, and we've certainly had the practice performing in so many different environments and for so many different crowds. I remember we struggled but then ultimately won over the Sac State Skit Comedy Festival crowd who were much younger than we're used too. I'm sure we'll get these hipsters eating out of our hands. I don't believe there are any troupes in LA playing in this size venue that aren't already doing TV so I'm hoping this will grab us some attention. Fame, here we come.
Why am I so obsessed with fame? Well, I just can't wait to have some creative freedom. To be free from the hours I spend every day working the day job. Fame can be abused in so many wild and creative ways. Give me some fame to futz with and I'll build you a masterpiece.

http://www.xenophilia.com/zb/zb0025.htm
Xeno's "Defense Against the Dark Arts" essay. Absolutely brilliant. I just skimmed but am already amazed.

http://christian.debtrelievers.org/
Christian Debt Consolidation. Oh my god, I've seen the light. Thank god the money changers are back in the temple at last.

Jebus, I blogged within' two hours of getting home and saw you, barked orders about flyers, and ran money to the Screaming Catfish kids within the first 20 hours I was home. Somewhere in there I also found time to post on Retrocrush.com, jerk off to internet porn and make cuddle with my girlfriend. What more do you want. A soufle and some ho-made beer perhaps. Get off my back Sudden Infant Death or I'll start telling people about you favorite film. You know the cheap Annie Hall rip off to which I refer!

Keith has been back for nearly 15 hours and I've received only one cell call from him and no e-mail! I'm concerned that strange things have happened to our boy wonder while he was out there on the playa and he's turned his back on technology for good. Perhaps all that bootleg Hootie and the Blowfish (and tent sharing with Miles) got to him afterall...

I'm back. I done burnt the man. He all burnt up. I think the event was called Burning Nazi this year because one of the arms didn't work leaving the man with one arm up ala Sig Heil. Pretty silly. Then we got busted for fire works and fined $600.00. Yeah!
I had a great time. Miles and I got to drive one of our friend Carl's Flying Saucer VW Bugs home. It was great having everybody honk and wave and take pictures.
I got to do some time on the megaphone, we started a feud with Dismal, our neighbors on the playa. We sent as many hippies to their camp as we could promising folks that they were gonna be bumpin' some rair Hootie and The Blowfish bootlegs. Dismal then made a stencil with the name of our camp "B-12" and tagged a bunch of shtuff hoping to get us in trouble. Pretty funny. They offered me a ride on their train, planning to drop me at the Trash Fence (verry far from camp) but they were impressed with my heckling so they kept me on the train. I'm all bruised from WRASSLIN'.
If I go back next year my whole purpoise in life will be prankin' on Dismal.
I'll post pictures as soon as I get access to some.
Good to be home. Sid sho nuff took car of business while I was away. Sid takes care of business when I'm here too, but I allways figured she'd fall apart without me calling her 8 times a day and e-mailing her every 15 minutes.
SO, our first LA gig the venue seated 40. Gig number two the venue seated 80-100. Now we're at the Derby and is seats 650. Wow. We're

Keith is out in the desert burning a man so I felt compelled to blog in his absence. I just watched the clip reel that Bob made for us from the first season's footage. It's really a great reel and it gave me new excitement about the troupe. We put on one hell of a show if I do say so myself! We some God damn funny folks. The reel really represents us well and it's great to see our "friends" Crazy Chicken Tony, Toad-ie, Drag Man, El Tigro Diablo, Naked Man and Jerrod again. Ah, memories... I sent the clip reel off to the Sketch Comedy Festival in SF along with a full packet of press clips.

Michelle, of Velvet Hammer fame, and I are working together to get the flyers ready for the Derby show, yes folks, that's the Brown Derby where the Velvet Hammer and ICBINC will grace the stage together! There'll be a show there with us monthly and the first one is September 20th if yer in that neck of the woods.

I wonder how Keith is fairing out there in the desert without e-mail and a cell phone. Now that's roughing it.

Generaly our writing process has involved one of us writing a skit and then durring rehearsal the other cast members may make some suggestions and the skit evoves. Occasionaly the person writing the skit may have gotten the idea from someone else in the troupe or from a bunch of sitting around yacking, many hours in the van going to LA and SF means much yacking. Last night we all got together and had a big brainstorming session. This was GREAT! I wish we'd done it sooner. So many great new ideas. I definately want to do more of this kind of writing. Now we will all divide up the skits and start doing rough drafts but we'll use e-mail and message boards to help each other flesh it all out. We've got some good stuff coming. We're so busy it's hard to say when we'll get a chance to stage another original show, but soon. Soon my little eskimos.

Damn Right, KLJ! The only underpaid employees who should get star profiles are the members of ICBINC!
I Can't Believe It's....nearly time for Burning Man! Thanks to "Keef" for encouraging me to go this year. Between Nate's (of Cheap Thrills, for you midtowners) camp, my friends (& Amy's roommates) Jacob & Stephanie's Love Shack, Allen & Co.'s pryotechnic wizardy, and Em's friends at the Love Posse and Blue Light District, this year promises to be one long performance-cum-ecstatic celebration....oh, yeah! and lots of gay sex in me & Keith's tent! Woo-hoo!

On a sadder note, Em's bombshell really caught me off guard last night--I literally didn't know what to say, which is rare for me. I fully understand her dilemma, though. I also really love my day job; hard as it is to believe, I actually have a lot of responsibility there, and as we saw in LA last time, balancing that with my commitment to the troupe can sometimes be very difficult, indeed. I only hope that Em decides it's something she can accomodate, because I'm going to miss here sorely--I agree that we should keep a spot open for her and that it should be right next to ME! I love you, Em Yay--hope you're reading this.

The future's so exciting, though--I know everyone's all kinds of stoked about the new skits, and on drawing on Becca & Xeno's talents, as well! And the Velvet Hammer awaits...y'know, chicks just can't resist a guy with a STEEL DRUM. Remember....Yes means Yes!

Celebrity!
I worked for corporate America and I wore a namebadge. I've always hated name badges. I hate when some cleanly scrubbed guy or girl says, with fully good intentions, "Hi Keith! How ya doing?" I give someone my name out of friendship, trust, it's a signifigant thing to me. I don't want it plastered on my chest for any jerk off to come pluck it off and use it. The worst is when they're unhappy and they use it. "You listen to me...(reading name tag) Keith!" I used my middle name when I was working which took some of the sting out of it. I've always wondered if this is what David Byrne was singing about in the Talking Heads' song "Give Me Back My Name".
So I've become obsessed with name tags. Durring my days with The Company there was a big revolutionary trend going on in corporate America. Starbucks opted to call their employees partners. Petco had associates. They all wanted this co-op type feel, like they were worker owned. At my job I changed my name tag to read Comrad. Nobody noticed.
I've noticed now that the trend has turned to celebrity. Jamba Juice has "Stars" making their smoothy. And the "Stars" each get a "Star Profile" that hangs in the store. The Old Spaghetti Factory, Rite Aid and even Taco Bell are following this trend. How Freaking humiliating for these employees. "High I'm a star. Would you like a free boost?" "Um, excuse me, the restrooms will be closed for a minute while I clean them. I'm a star."
Okay. I'm done.

So many shows! It's gonna be strange to not have a show next weekend. Of course I'll be heading off to Burning Man on Fridays so I'll have plenty of distraction. Miles is heading up with me and I expect to have a grand time. The Marsh Comedy Festival was fun. We had a lite audience on Friday but Saturday saw a nice packed house. We performed with Lee Levine out of LA, who is a FUNNY FUNNY man. He realy stole the show. Lee is a good friend of Sacramentan Jeff Cosgrave, a comedian buddy of mine from my Laughs Unlimited days.
We were very well recieved. Thanks to Tom Smith at The Mock Cafe for putting this gig together and for including us.
Next up we are putting together a demo concert film type thing and we are going to do monthly Cabaret shows in LA with The Velvet Hammer. I'm pretty stoked on that. We're going to be associated with one of LA's hottest acts and I couldn't ask for a better career boost then that.
Anyone interested in being in the audience when we shoot the demo should get a hold of us now or sign up for our mailing list.
This Tuesday we're going to have a round table writers meeting featuring the whole cast. This is an unusual approach for us but I think it will yield some very funny stuff.
I'll try writing from Burning Man, but that may or may not happen.

Yeah, if I'm gonna continue this steel drum schtick, I've gotta learn another song, I think.... hey, if I knew just two, that would double my repertoire of "funny" songs (the Velvets thing is funny, I guess, but it doesn't have a lot of name recognition, y'know?) Currently, I'm considering "Rock You Like a Hurricane," "Breakin' the Law," "Anarchy in the UK," and "the Immigrant Song," but I'm open to suggestions--any ideas about cheese-factor songs I can "steelify," ICBINCers?
Oh, and just to remind everyone, the steel drum is, in fact, a VERY serious instrument when used in my band, even if most of the originals we're working on now don't include it--but at future gigs (which we're already looking for--*hint, hint,* Amber and Xeno) you can look forward to SERIOUS steel drum covers of OMD and King Crimson.... Gee, those two go together like apples and cheese, don't ya think?

Miles (the birthday boy)

We performed tonight at Michael Yager's open Mic comedy show. We were the headliners. The acts were almost all realy good. There's too much angy toward women stuff. Sorry you don't get laid dude, but that probably says more about you than it does about 50% of the population. Other than the misogony thuogh this was probably the best open mic I've been to in years. There was a comedian named Cheese who was realy great. I look foward to seeing more of his comedy. Miles opened the show with his Steel Drum routine which is becoming a big run away smash hit. Then we closed the show with Pony. It's usualy not a good idea to do this kind of skit in a bar. We had planned to do D'Harlen which involve music and is paced a bit faster but Xeno and his guitar were not available. None the less the skit went well. The first three rows LOVED it. I can't wait to do the comedy festival tommorow. Woo Hoo!
I also talked with The Velvet Hammer s'more and it looks like I'm gonna be doing two shows a month with them. TWO SHOWS A MONTH. That means twice a month I'm in LA. Now that's exciting. THAT'S DARN EXCITING!

The audience in LA this time was small, but as Becca mentioned THEY WERE INTO IT! And the audience consisted of other comedians, a documentary filmmaker, a hot shot photographer, all people who will make a great base for building a regular LA audience. And they were enthusiastic as hell. We were having folks pushing their e-mail addresses on us and offering to work with us. I feel like the hype is flowing.
Pomona, well, it fell through the cracks. The show didn't get promoted, AT ALL and the club owner was very apologetic. We decided to just open the doors, not charge a cover and engage in some silliness. Xenophilia played music and discussed conspiracies, Miles did some stand up and then played some AC/DC on the steel drum. You aint heard Back In Black until you've heard done on the Steel Drum baby. Oh Yeah. The club owner, Marissa, wants to try again. She says this time wants to work together more instead of through a middle man (my brother) and get the club packed. She realy likes what she's seen of us.
The biggest news is that Michelle, the grand dame of The Velvet Hammer Burlesque show is into doing some caberet action with us. WOOO HOO!
So we'll probably be back there in October doing that. YIPPEE!
Well, I bought my Burning Man ticket today. Drop me a line if you're gonna be there and we can hook up. Peace.

I'm in Los Feliz at my buddy Brett's little tiny apartment. Six of us are staying here durring this little Southern CA tour. Oddly enough Brett is not staying here. He rented a room for Emily and himself. They've become quite the hot item. It's love, oh so romantic. Xeno and Becca got a room and Amy Anne and Jeremy got a room too. Bryna and I are the only couple that isn't getting any privacy in LA. We're having a good time with the troupe but having a room to ourselves would be cool, because, um, we could watch HBO. Yeah. Love that HBO.
Brett lives in Los Feliz which is the greatest neighborhood. The people here are SO friendly. When we're out flyering we get asked about the show and people tell us about their art and I love it. Lots of great record stores, book stores, coffee shops, centraly located. If I ever move to LA this is where I want to live.
I was thinking today this Blog would be more interesting if we had more drama in the troupe. us all getting along and being pals isn't as exciting for you the reader. Too bad I didn't have a blog back when we first started the troupe. Someday soon I'll have to drop some notes about the fighting that when on in the early days of ICBINC before certain folks parted ways with us, or more accurately with me. I'm such a dictator, it figures someone would have to fight with my Nazi ass. More later.

I'm showing Ben how to Blog.

Oh, by the way, I know quite a while back I mentioned that Miles, Ben and Xeno auditioned the troupe for participation in the SF Sketchfest. I never told you what the outh come was. Well, there's been no decisions made. The organizers of the Sketchfest will be at the March Comedy Festival that we're featured in next weekend and so that's too be a kind of second audition.
We'll let you know as soon as wee know something so cross your fingers, say a prayer, kill a goat, do whatever it is you do.

I"M SO SICK OF HAVING A DAY JOB! I have little room to complain. My day job is working with adults with developmentaly disabilities, which is rewarding, the schedule is super flexible and compared to every other job I've ever had it totally rocks, but I want so badly to be concentrating on writing and performing comedy full time. CALGON TAKE ME AWAY!

Well SF went well. We were competing with a version of Hedwig and The Angry Inch STARRING TOM WAITS (oh my GOD!) as well as a stage production of Dr. Strangelove, and plenty of other stuff. None the less we had a decent crowd and the show went great, and I MEAN GREAT! The thing that sucks about this BLOG is that there are things I'd love to write in here, new jokes and such, but in the off chance that anyones reading it, I don't want to blow the gag. I mean, you may be coming out to see us soon eh? So, I won't tell you about he hillarious new opener that Miles delivered last night. BWA HA H AHA HAHA! It's so funny.
Some San Francisco pals took us out for drinks afterwards and a grand time was had by all. Tonight is my last Trash Film Orgy, then we do LA, then we put together a Best of Show to make a demo out of and we tape it in the Crest Basement. Woo Hoo. See you soon.

So, on the day of our first ever show I was getting ready to get on the freeway when I saw a man on foot chasing a car toward the on ramp. I realized nobody was in the car. The car went up the on ramp and crossed over, it was now going the wrong way up the off ramp. The man was almost to the car when it went over the edge and nose dived about 15 feet to it's death.
I figured being in the right place to witness such a thing just hours before the comedy troupes debut must be a good omen. We sold out our show and we've been going nonstop since.
So, here we are. Show day, and another odd happening on the freeway.
I'm driving along and this fella's going 60mph in the fast lane. I'd like to go a bit faster, so, after it becomes clear he's not budging, I pass him on the right. As a pass I hear a god awfull noise, unlike any horn I've ever heard. The fella then gets behind me. I get back in the fast lane and so does he, now going the same speed I'm going, and tailgating. I don't like to play games on the freeway so I get over into the middle lane again planning to slow and let him pass. He follows. I get over to the right most lane and again he follows. I then exit on K st. So does he. I take K to Alhambra, go right, then right again on N st, going under the freeway and left onto 29th Street. He's still with me. I hop onto the Freeway and so does he. Okay, now I know he's following me. Nobody is gonna just conincidentaly take the same little zig zag as me through midtown just to hop back on the freeway. I look at him in the rearview. He's scary looking in that he shows no emotion at all. He doesn't look upset. He's just some stock broker looking guy in a nice car with a tie and sunglasses.
I get in the right lanes that go to 50 or continue on 80. He does but I only halfway get into the far right lane and when I realize he'll be stuck by the truck coming up fast behind me, I get back in the left lane and then I shoot over to the far left putting me back on 99, he's now stuck and there's a nice chasm between us. I look to my right and he's staring at me. I don't smile or wave, I just take in his face and wonder if I know him. I've been feeling paranoid all day since this happened.
So, is it a good omen? Or are we all gonna die?
Hmmmm.
I guess we'll find out tonight.

Late practice last night. It's our last rehearsal before the SF show this Friday. Bryna (my sweetie and our stage manager) and I went to SF yesterday to sign the contract and tour the venue. What a cool place. I'm really looking foward to the show. We ordered T-Shirts, they'll have the I Banana ICBINC logo that's on the front page of this website. We ordered shirts in Yellow, Gold, Burgundy and all kinds of colors, plus we finally ordered some girl shirts.
I don't know if we'll have them by Friday, but that's our hope.
I'd better go back to work.

One week to go before we return to SF, Then the week after that LA, Pomona and then right back to SF for the Marsh Comedy Festival. We're so busy. If feels good. It'll be nice to have time to work on new material again afterward.
The M Bar, where we're playing in LA, is such a cool place. And the guys from Mr. Show have donw shows there so it's got a decent reputation. I'd love to get written about in LA but it's not likely to happen until we do a longer engagement.
Speaking of longer engagements, we're talking about doing and EIGHT week run in Sac next year. All of May and June at the Geery Theatre. Such a big commitment.
Also, the Sacramento News and Review is getting their "Best Of" issue together. I hope they give some recognition to Comedy Troupes this year. Sac has three now that I know of. Maybe you could drop them a line and suggest they give us some love. Go to www.newsreview.com

Trash Film Orgy is big enough to attract some assholes. The fratboy type. Fratboys work so hard at looking mallternative these days, so they blend in a bit, but they reveal themselves when they fling beer bottles at movie screens in beautiful vintage theatres. The kind of theatres that you should feel damn lucky to get to watch Hong Kong trash films in. The audience did a univeral low groan and I think the bottle thrower got the hint real quick that this was most uncool. I am confident that the audience policing itself this way will keep things cool for a while. It's a sad cycle though. You created something cool and you get a fun audience built up and you have a good time. Word gets out and more and more people come have fun. Eventualy you hit critical mass and you the assholes come. The lame fucks that are never there in the early days because they don't do something that hasn't been branded cool. They show up, and the fun is gone. Your creation either becomes some lame sold out version of what it used to be getting uglier and uglier or you say, well screw it that was a fun run and then you shut it down.
Like I said, I think the TFO has quite a few qood years to go, but it sucks that you always know the moronic masses are out there lurking waiting to ruin your thing.

Holy crapola, The Trash Film Orgy was out of control. I took the week off thinking I was going to be out of town. I ended up stuck in Sac, so for the first time ever I went to the TFO as an audience member and just took in the show with lots of heckling, hooting, cheering and booing. Oh man, what a show. Meat wrestling madness, roller girls brawling in front of the theatre and then again in the theatre durring intermission, our Queen of Trash is JUST SO TRASHY. The movie was Faster Pussycat Kill Kill which is a great flick and the audience was the largest audience ever for a midnight film. I tell ya, it's just a matter of time before TFO sells The Crest out at midnight.
It gets weirder and weirder for me, leaving something that's such a success. I still feel that I'm doing the right thing and that I've got to put my energy into what I realy love and not just stick with something because it's a hit. And ICBINC is a hit as well, but Skit Comedy is gonna take much longer to build this kind of crowd. I'm proud of my role in getting The TFO going and in bringing Darin and Christy together with Sid, The Crest, DJ Junior and some of the others that I dragged into this thing.
Miles, Ben and Xeno went to SF Saturday Night to play in the SF Sketchfest showcase, which was also and audition for the Sketchfest, then they hauled booty back to Sac so they could be at TFO. We'll hear soon from the Sketchfest so keep your fingers crossed. We're now booked at the 848 club on August 1st and at the Marsh Comedy Festival in SF on August 15th and 16. The 8th we're in LA and the 9th we're in Pomona, so we're keeping pretty damn busy.

*WOW!* Sid called my new opening monologue "hilarious!" I still think I should introduce Prancer, as well, though! Consistency, folks, consistency! Am I right? Anyway, I'm not attempting to curry favor with my renewed spate of blogging--I am, however, doing it in exchange for this phantom "'10 bucks" Keith seems convinced I owe him...so, we're even-Steven, now, right, KLJ? Oh, and please, all ICBINCers, join Amber and I downstage left (hee-hee; that's theatre talk) in the Heckling Zone for "Faster Pussycat...." at TFO this Sat.! Ben, Xeno, and I will have just returned from our no doubt triumphant showing at the S.F. Sketchfest Showcase.... Represent!! See you all S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y...Night!

P.S.--It's true, Sid; there ARE relatively few of us Persian Jews!

In my endless quest to stay in Keith's good graces and to make sure that I'm his favorite ICBINC'er I am making an attempt at blogging more regularly (plus bribing him with lots of Vegan cookies and an occasional cheese free pizza). Keith's got us lined up for August 8 in LA, August 15 and 16 in SF and perhaps August 1. Where did my life go? Rehearsal was a hoot and Miles' opening monologue is hilarious. I never new he was persian...

YAY Rehearsal tonight! But for the Trash Film Orgy, I haven't been on stage since May and I'm gettin' itchy.
The break from Keiths grueling schedule was lovely but, after gettin' a little taste of stage time at the TFO, I'm ready for more, more, more!

WOO HOO, We're appearing in the SF Sketchfest Showcase THIS SATURDAY and doing well could get us into The SF Sketchfest.
Saturday July 12, 10pm, $5.00 at Spanganga! in San Francisco!

THIS JUST IN! It looks like we're also to be featured at The Marsh Theatre's SF Comedy Festival along with our friend Francois Fly. August 15th and 16th in San Francisco. Please check back soon for more details.

WOW, Miles is a steel drum player! There are no end of surprises with this guy. I knew he and his brother had a band but I figured a retro sorta guitar, bass, drums thing. But no, Miles, his brother shane and another fella put on this opium den showcase with Miles on steel drum, joined by a lute looking thing, a strange ethiopian banjo sounding jobbie, some talking drum. AND THEY COVERED "VENUS IN FURS" by the Velvet Underground!!! I have to say, they play the definitive steel drum version of "Venus in Furs".
Oh man it was great. The club was a bit loud for ther quieter instruments, I'd love to see them in a mellower room, sitting around on pillows, with some bally dancers, and a big hookah in front of me, oh wait I already said opium den.
Xenophilia was great as usual and the Gynas, who closed out the evening were wonderful. They were more rock than punk rock and they ended their set with some rush. They had a great mix of the absurd, the looney and they totally sincere.
The show was organized by our very own Amber Kloss for Short Bus Presents. This is the third show she's done for them and I think she's the only girl in town putting on shows with free cookies at midnight.
All in all a great night. Now I'll celebrate the birth of my country by going to see Acey Alone and Prince Paul at the Colonial. YAY!

WE GOT BELLY DANCERS! Those of your who have been with us from the beginning will remember that we kicked off show ONE with belly dancers giving the audience a belly dance lesson. Well we decided LA deserved a treat as well so we've line up not one, not two, not three but FOUR belly dancers, with real belly's, none of that imitation crap. This should be a real fun show. We're having a blast rehearsing it. We're also developing some funny shtuff for this here website so that it more accurately reflects our humor. That means check back often.

And hey, while you're here, go ahead and click on the Chicken. It's okay, no one will know. You know you want to. And why shouldn't you? It's perfectly natural. What happen's between you and the chicken is nobody's business but your own, and of course the chickens, but I assure you, he loves it. He does. He told me you click him the best. No, for reals. HE said he hates to go even a day without feeling that slinky white arrow slide over him as you finger lovely carrasses and then presses the left button on the mouse. Oh yeah, you know his magic spot. You're one sexy mother clucker, OH Yeah!

The Trash Film Orgy went great. Hey, do us a favor and click the Red Hot Sex link up at the top there. Yeah, click. Ooooh. Yeah, like that. Oh, I love the way you do that. click it again would ya? YES YES YES! YOU'RE SO GOOOOOOD!

Ok, now go check out www.RockAss.net. There's a contact button there so you can tell me what ya think of the new site design. I've done the front page, the resume and the Friends page. The free samples and press pages are gonna take a bit more time.

OK BYE.

Well tonight The Trash Film Orgy kicks off. Many ICBINC folks are involved. Sid as Evil Sid, Amber as the Nurse, Cheerleader or whatever roll requires her beautifulness, Ben will be a Zombie killer durring opening night, hopefully he will play the wolfman again at some point this year. He does a great wolf man.
Miles will get in there somewhere.
ICBINC alumnus Zach, Amy, and Darin are also involved. Christy is not officialy an ICBINC Alumni but she helped with the art and even did a little puppeteering for us in the beginning. She is becoming the main organizer of The TFO, a job I used to hold. I am now MC, and MC only as I hand over my production duties. It's unusual for me to be involved in a project I neither producer nor direct. Weirder still since TFO was my brain fart, having grown out of the Tuesday Night Grindhouse show I used to put on with Bryna (my sweetie) and DJ Junior (back then he was just Patrick).
I'm also a little weird about having to go be funny when I'm pretty down in the dumps today. I lost my pet bird. Me and my girlfriend are both pretty devastated. this bird was like our baby. We got him when he was so young that Bryna had to feed him with a syringe. I bought him from a woman who's pet birds had had babies and she was crying as she handed him over to me, but she knew she couldn't keep all the babies. I sure will miss him.
But, tonight I will put on my smile and go be funny and obnoxious. I remember nights at Spike and Mike's Animation Festival when my head would be pounding so bad that I'd be laying down in the lobby under a bench, but come show time I'd get up and intro the show, and crack jokes and shake hands and then I'd crawl back under the bench till the next show. I can't complain. My brothers have gone out and worked construction in over 100 degree heat. I guess I got it easy. The difference is they didn't have to pretend they were happy. Oh well, I wouldn't trade places if I could.
Here's a picture of my bird sitting on my girlfriends finger.

It was pretty great being on the set with Sean Penn and the world famous Amber Kloss. I'm kind of bugged that she names the stars as Sean Penn and Naomi Watts and doesn't mention me at all. She's rotten I tells ya.
I am a huge Sean Penn fan, and I wanted to tell him I appreciated his pro-peace stance that he's been very vocal about as of late. But I also didn't want to bug him. He was working hard and I would imagine, trying hard to stay in character. He sat right next to me at one point. Plus, as I mentioned in the last post he shoved me and shot the guy next to me. That was rad. While dressed as a cop I got to run across the tarmac at Sac international airport with a replica gun on my hip and everything. They had to have airport officials supervise and they warned us that stepping outside of the designated filming areas could shut the airport down for hours.
The director was Niels Mueller, who wrote Tadpole. I realy enjoyed Tadpole so it was cool working with him. The DP worked on Y Tu Mama Tambien, but I'm not sure in what capacity.
I'm looking foward to August when we'll be in SF again and then we'll be in LA. More details soon.
Until then well be involved in The Trash Film Orgy. See www.TrashFilmOrgy.com

Hello, This is Xeno. The screams from the other room are not real. They are from a TV. My eyes are red. There is no cure for hell. Except to turn off the tube. And glow by the sun instead. A cute girl is watching me type. She has eyes like the ocean and she smells like a sea flower. I think that's a good thing. Sea flowers are very rare. They happen in Hawaii when they fall in the water from trees that overhang blue lagoons. Lagooons. Say it with me Laaaa gooooon. You goons get outta here.

There, I've BLOGGED. Oh yeah, a girl here at this slumber party that I have crashed says you should feel jealous because Xeno is, once again, surrounded by scantily clad beautiful women with rasor sharp minds. But Xeno says, naw, he's already got one. :-) "Tell them we've already got one!" (Snickering)

IT WAS SO GREAT! I'LL WRITE THE WHOLE STORY UP LATER. OH MAN IT ROCKED! SEAN PENN SHOVES ME. I'M SO GONNA BE IN THE FILM. HE PUSHES ME AND THEN SHOOTS THE GUYS NEXT TO ME AND THEN CHARGES PAST ME. IT WAS FRIGGIN' GRRRREAT! I'M GOING BACK TOMMOROW AND I GET TO PLAY A COP.

I'm writing from the studios of NPR station KALW in San Francisco where I've been invited to retell my story of lying my way onto national television. This story has so far been published in Morbid Curistiy Magazine, at www.corporatemofo.com, and now the story will be on NPR. I've gotten as much exposure talking about being on TV as I got from being on TV. The studio is in a school building. I haven't figured out if the school is still in use or not. The place looks like it could be a set for an X-Files. Metal grates on all the windows. Evertything painted in the same shade of beige. The only variation being the faded grafiti scattered about. I'm early so I thought I'd kill a little time on the blog.
I promised awhile ago to put up the address for our Fan Site. The site is at www.geocities.com/notcomedy . Go check it out. Be a fan. Worship at our feet. C'mon, we deserve it. And we need to get you worshippin' soon. We're getting old. The expiration dates looming. First I got to old to be a rockstar. Soon I'll be too old to be a famous comedian. Then I'll have to become a humorist and if I don't catch on with that one before gaining still more forehead as my hair makes it's swift getaway, I'll become a spoken work/poet type.
It's not totally confirmed, BUT I'm 90% sure we'll be at The M Bar in LA on August 9th. We're looking into doing SF the week before, but that one's only 10% sure. And then we'll get ready to hit the Sacramento Stage after a too long break. Hope to see you soon.

I miss ICBINC. I got together with Jonathon Morken who produced the short films we've shown over the years, and Bob Moricz, who we'll probably be doing our next film with. We went over all the footage Jonathon has shot of ICBINC. Many hours of footage. We are putting together a short demo that we can put online. Seeing all the old footage sure makes me want to get back to work, and back on the stage. I look foward to heading to LA and performing again in August. In the meanwhile it'll be all about writing and marketing. I wish I didn't have to worry about marketing. There is an art and a science to it, and I would always want to be involved but I wish I had more time to spend and the writing, directing part of this. Eventualy we'll hand over the marketing reins to someone else. But for now, I'll keep selling with all my might. HEY YOU! BUY SOME ICBINC! IT CURES CANCER AND MAKES YOU LESS STUPID! DO IT! NOW! OR WE'LL IMPLY DOUBTS AS TO YOUR PARENTAGE! Man, I'm good.

I hadn't heard of that Cookie Mueller book. I'm gonna have to check that out. Speaking of the John Waters clan, I just picked up a copy of Divine's Hit single "You Think You're a Man". It was so stoked to find it. I also got a Don Adams record (he was the guy from Get Smart) and I picked up THREE Lilly Tomlin records, a Jose Jimenez record and a Freddy Prinze record. Freddy Prinze was the comedian who starred in Chico and The Man. He committed suicide unfortunately. He was one of the earliest latino comics to get big. His son Freddy Prinze Jr is now getting big as a pretty boy actor but I have no use for him. Jose Jimenez was a white guy acting hispanic. The same comedian that does Jose did a chinese character and a Swedish character. He'd be skinned alive today. Oooh, Oooh, I also got a Wally George record. Wally is Rebecca DeMornei (or however the hell you spell her name) 's dad. He had this arch conservative show where he'd invite liberal folks on and then call them names and throw 'em off the show. It was great. I could never figure out if he was for real or not, so over the top was he. He was on the same channel in Souther California that carried Roller Derby and Glorious Ladies of Wrestling. Pretty great stuff. Now I have a record of him rapping. Life is good.

YAAAY!!!! I HAVE A COMPUTER AGAIN!!!!
Amy Anne is back again
Ready start my blog-gin'.
If you don't like what I got to say,
Then move yo' ghetto ass away...
Cuz I'm bloggin'
Uh - Uh - yeah
I'm bloggin'

Comedy Reading
I'm a sucker for comedian bios and have read every one I've been able to get my hands on, whether I like the comedian on the cover or not. I also read everything I can find written by comedians and here's a list of a few favorites from both categories. I'll post some more of these later as well as a list of my favorite comedy recordings of all time.

Cruel Shoes by Steve Martin
This is a great collection of Steve's bizarre and hillarious short stories.

The Last Laugh by Phil Berger
From the last vaudvillians Milton Berle, Henny Youngman, up through Richard Pryor, this book tells the story of comedy in our era. With special attn devoted to woman in Comedy, the emergence of the black voice in underground and then in mainstream comedy and the important shift from the rim shot dandy- one liner style to the monologists (Lenny Bruce, Mort Saul). An exciting and heavily researched book with an affection for the stranger comedians, many of whom would be forgotten by most writers who would likely confuse financial success with comedic talent and influence.

Monkey Business by Simon Lovish
The story of the Marx Brothers, starting with their magician Grandfather in Germany. I know this makes me a sissy boy, but the book brought me to tears, so sorry was I to know that even marvelous creatures like Harpo, Chico and Groucho are required to die. It doesn't seem right. The boys childhood on vaudeville stages is depicted wonderfully, and shows just how diverse their talents were, as many of us are able to witness only their movie, TV and radio performances. The book is so heavily researched that it can be dry in place for any but the most hard cores Marx obsessor, and several Marx myths are debunked, myths that I'd just as soon have hung onto, but still a great read.

Harpo Speaks by Harpo Marx
Harpo enlisted a co-writer, but the book leaves you convinced that you've heared the honest and sweet voice of the silent Marx. He's an anti-prohibitionist, who admits to having slept with prostitutes, dropping out of second grade, gambling away much of his childhood and yet he still gets across the innocence of it all. He would seem to be the only Marx who managed to be happy, in fact one of the only comedians who achieved this distinction.

Groucho and Me by Groucho Marx
Groucho leaves out the ghost writer, and doesn't bother with any mushy stuff no matter how badly inquiring minds may want to know. He tells the clever storys and rapid fires his infamous word play so fast that you have to read many sentences twice. You won't know any more about the man when you finish than you did when you started but he'll have cracked you up like Humpty Dumpty.

Lost in The Fun House by Bill Zehme
Bill Zehme interviews members of Andy's family, childhood friends, teachers, and comes up with an in depth look at a complex man. Andy's father has said publicly that Bill Zehme's version of the Andy Kaufman story is the difinitive one, and that Andy's one time best pal and collaborator Bob Zmuda's glory hogging tale is way off. I've read both and I had an easier time believing Zehme. Andy was obsessed with shock and disgust while also working to maintain his innocence. He felt the secret to comedy was in maintaining innocence and he made a strong argument for this through his routines. He had a superhuman memory, an ability to get so lost in the characters he portrayed that he could change his sexual habits accordingly, an obsession with failure that led him to constantly gamble with his success, an appetite for sex almost as strong as his desire for enlightenment. Andy toward the end of his life started researching how to fake his own death. He was very intent on this, and even contacted prankster that had pulled this off. It leaves one to wonder.....
Zehme himself is convinced that Andy is gone forever. I'm not so sure....

I dunno Becca. I think he's the kind of prankster that likes to let the archeologists try and find the truths. We'll have to wait and see.

Andy Kaufman is not dead.
Andy is pulling the greatest celebrity prank in history.
Andy Kaufman is Charles Kaufman. Andy wrote Being John Malkovich, Alias, the screenplay for Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Human Nature. Charles Kaufman may or may not be a real person, but he is merely pretending to write these works. He is the Front for Andy.
Andy has been playing the game expertly, but when his old best friend Bob Zamuda helped make Man On The Moon Andy had his father publish a Letter claiming his dead son had dictated the letter from beyond the grave. He just couldn't keep quiet when Zamuda was being so verry lame.
Unless, Zamuda was in on the act too. Either way, Andy faked his death and became the film maker he always wanted to be, while being the prankster he'd always wanted to be.
Tis true. I swear it.
You read it here first.

I don't know if those other ICBINCers will ever post to this thing. It's become my own personal journal. Those damn losers, why aren't they as big of geeks as I?
Working on some new material.
A husband present his new casterated self to his wife?
We'll see how it comes out.
Later.

I GOT IT! You should now see a Past Blogs link up above here, the chattering teeth, yeah, that's the one. and that will let you read every blog we've done from day one on.

I'm messing with this blogger page. If you scroll down you'll see you can read much further back now, but this also means the page loads slower. I'm trying to get the archives working. I've gotten all the archives saved from day one but I can't figure out how to let you access them from this page. I'll keep working on it.
In the meanwhile we just did a cable access show in Roseville as the guests of Xenophilia. It was weird. The studio we performed at is the cable access station that I used when I was 15. I produced a show called Local Trash and then another show called Underground Sounds. Mostly me with big hair introducing footage of punk and metal bands from Roseville and Rocklin. It was so strange to be back there after all these years. I've just kind of forgotten the Roseville part of my life. There's Corona (So Cal) where I had most of my childhood and then Downtown Sac where I tried to become an adult. In between were just those awkward confusing years in Roseville. I have some sweet memories though. I had a great girlfriend name Nicole and we were part of an interesting geek click. We had some realy good times. Our friend Monica had these really great dress up Christmas parties that I remember very fondly. And Nicole's Mom was kinda looney and she always treated me like she realy thought I was destined to do something important with my life. I believed her of course. She passed away a few months ago and Nicole and I had coffee together. It was the first time I'd seen her in years. It was nice remeniscing and of course we made plans to get together again that we never kept. Maybe we will.
I am trying to be very strategic in what to do next with the Comedy troupe. Should we keep barrelling ahead with live shows or should we get the Audio and film thing rolling at a more intense pace. The audio and Film thing is the way to get recognition far and wide but the live shows hone the skills and that's ultimately where you become a better and funnier troupe. We have so much material now, much of it HEAVILY road tested after repeat shows in Sac and then our recent shows elsewhere. I'd love to get some of that material out there. Jonothan Morken won't be working with us on films for a while as he is getting pretty busy making his sick horror flicks. He dropped all of the raw footage off today with Bob Moricz and Bob and I will be doing some editing and hopefully getting some clips online soon.
Look for that. Thanks for reading. I'll keep working on the archives. Hit www.SactoFly.com to check out a cool project I'm helping with. Peace,

Wow, someone actually reads the Blog. At the SF shows a friend of Amber's, who was her co-star in Vanities, referenced this journal. So, I now know at least one person is actaly reading. Kinda puts the pressure on.
We're done and I've got the next 6 weeks or so to do nothing. Before our show on Saturday I did a reading for the premiere of this Annual called Morbid Curiosity that I had submitted a story to. The reading went very well and a producer from an SF Public Radio station wants me to do a reading of my story for use on the air. The reading itself was taped so I'll see if I can get an mp3 up of that.
Michael Vaverichek, our SF publicist, taped our show Saturday and so we may have some ICBINC mp3s up on this site soon. He was particularly interested in She, A Fish Story, which he wants to put on a compilation CD that SoundOfMind.net is working on.
The new Trash Film Orgy website is up. For those not in the know, I started a Trash film festival a few years back with some friends. The festival's gotten bigger and bigger and as ICBINC has done the same, I had to make a choice. SO, I passed on my share of the TFO to Sid, ICBINC's co-producer who is also the manager of The Crest and the TFO will go on. It's strange to see Trash Film Orgy have this life of it's own without me. Christy and Darin are workin' hard on it, along with Sid the Evil Crest Manager and Zach and Amy (ICBINC alumni). I go to their brainstorming meetings, but I have no responsibility. I just throw out an idea or two, they get used or they don't. It's quite nice. Francois Fly will be host this year, but this is the last year. Then a new host will be found to spread the love.
Francois Fly will be performing with the Velvet Hammer this summer. There will be a tour but I'm not sure of all the dates and locations yet.
Miles is in a play coming up soon. I'll bug him for details of that.
Peace,

LAST NIGHT WAS GREAT! We continue to draw a good crowd in SF. I was worried that we used up all our friends durring the first weekend and that now we were out of friends, but alas, we have new friends, and we're actualy drawing in strangers, and of course friends of friends. The show went great. We did The Talk which is a scene depicting a single father struggling to tell his daughter about the facts of life and it got a great response. A realy great response. We did some ad libbing durring the skit, which only tends to happen when the energy between the stage and audience is realy high! I had a blast. I am ready for a break though. Tonight we'll pull out all the stops, say goodnight to this tour with a bang and then I will have only the day job to keep me busy for a month or so. That's about as close to a vacation as I'm getting. Thanks to everyone who came to the shows in LA, SAC and SF.

Well here we are. Tonights the first of the last two shows of our first tour. We've started building a fan base in LA and in SF and I'm sure we'll hit more cities next time. We're going back to LA in August and we've decided that next year we'll perform at The Crest which seats 1,000 and in New York.
We'll start putting together the CD and I hope to have it complete within 6 months. Then shopping it around to labels begins.
I'm readin a Bowie biography and thinking a-lot about image. I love comedians with creative image making. Bobcat Goldthwait, Emo Philips, Eddy Izzard, and that ultimate rockstar Lenny Bruce. I wonder what our image is. It's strange because we have to put on a character for each skit. I guess our image forms out of the kind of characters we do, and which we choose to lampoon vs which we choose to sympathise with. I'd like to sympathise with everyone. I'd love to do comedy that was about humans being more the same than different. Most comedy seeems to play on this camp vs that camp. And the members of the camp the comedians belong to love it.
I think many different camps are represented by ICBINC. Hmmm?

SAN FRANCISCO Rocked! Friday night went well. A fair sized crowd, who by the third skit were having a good time. SATURDAY WAS THE BEST! Maybe the best show we've done. The audience was having a blast from the opening monologue on. Every skit getting every laugh it deserved. The troupe was energetic, the audience was upbeat and energetic, and we improv-ed so many hillarious new lines on stage. An audience member, who is a promoter himself, liked us so much he got flyers and posters from us so he can promote our events while out promoting his. Great stuff. I can't wait to to go back next weekend.
Ducky made it home from SF in 45 minutes. Hmmmm? Sid made it home only through the assistance of a tow truck. Her truck, affectionately known as "Stinky Truck" may be no more.
Our favorite Poetess, Becca, really stepped up to the plate. She worked our lights and sound, never having had a chance to rehearse such, just jumping in because we didn't have anyone else. She did a great job. She also had to friends from Seattle at the show, and we had one friend from Massecheusettes (sp?) at the show. The gospel of ICBINC must be spread far and wide.
Michael Vavericheck, our SF publicists did a good job. We had plenty of folk at the show and a few newspaper people as well. Thanks Mike.
I got an e-mail from two kids who are starting an ICBINC fan club. Pretty funny. I don't think I'll be able to sell my autograph on E-bay anytime soon but it's flattering none the less. If they go as far as getting their website up, which they've said they're doing, I'll link it from here.

It feels like we're gonna do pretty well in SF. I've heard back from lots o' folks who are planning to come to the show, and for the first time we're using a promotions person instead of doing it all ourselves. Michael Vavere-ah hell I can't spell his name. Anyway he's a good friend of ours from Popcorn AntiTheatre and we figure he knows his way around a press release. Him and, it would seem, just about everyone else in San Francisco have gone to New York. There's a huge Laughing Squid show there featuring the Bicycle Rodeo and Chicken John and other good folks. I would have loved to have gone, but alas my fate was to stay here and play super promoter.
My lovely girlfriend and stage manager Bryna is away on a cruise. A friend of her's one a contest for selling the most furniture at the store where she works so she got a cruise around Van Couver and invited Bryna along. I'm being a good little man and cleaning the house so she can come home to something other than the retched mess our house becomes when we're doing shows.
Now that I've begun rambling about nothing this page feels much more like a blog.
It's funny, my life is tamer than it's ever been. I thought being in two troupes in two cities would mean lots of debauchery, but I just aint got the time. I don't know how folks do both. I'm so domestic. I go make funny, then I go home and get some sleep so I can go to work the next day. If the day job ever leaves the picture though, why I tell ya, I'm gonna consume granulated sugar! And that's not idle threat. I'M WILD! WILD I TELL YA!
If ya wann have some fun check the Message Boards at WWW.RetroCrush.com. Fun little online community they've got going there.

Click here for taco pic. Too big to post on blog, and I'm too lazy to resize it right now.
Mmmmmm Tacos!
Thanks for the kind words Amber. (see last entry) You're a sweetie.
This Velvet Hammer thing is pretty damn exciting. Francois Fly and I will be working with them, though I may be more behind the scenes in the beginning while Francois hogs the spotlight. I'll be working with The Millionaire from Combustible Edison! Pretty damn exciting. Plus I'll be sharing the stage with talented comedians and ALL THESE BEAUTIFUL GIRLS! Don't be shy, have a peek.
We will definately be returning to LA soon.