Time for not sleeping well

It's that point in the process of rehearsing a new show when I have dreams about being on stage almost every night, I wake up too early, my stomach feels awful. Why do I put myself through it. I keep telling myself that eventually I'll learn not to stress. That I'll just accept that we put it out there and do our best, and regardless of what happens we learn and we move on. For the most part our experiences have been overwhelmingly positive. Sure we've had a rough night here and there, but our shows have been huge successes, and yet still I stress.
So we continue to rehearse, to build props and set pieces, to promote and on January 6th we premier the new show as we prepare for a six week run.
TV advertising, flyers, newspaper ads, overall the largest promotions campaign we've done. I hope it pays off.
See you there.

Rehearsal at The Crest.

We rehearsed at The Crest tonight. It was a fun rehearsal. Ben was home sick so we took turns playing his parts. Becca and Sid had a-lot of fun being Ben for a night. There's a yawning skit and Becca, as Sid pointed out, looks like a little kitten when she yawns. So cute.
Wednesday we'll practice at the geery on the stage where the six week ordeal will be endured. It'll be cool to work in the venue and to start getting a real feel for the blocking and what not.
Peace,
KLJ

New Show in January

Sorry I've been posting so little. I've been working on www.RockAss.net and I've done a-lot of cool things with it. I combined all my blogs so my work stories, my panhandling blog, my fiction, etc. are all through www.rockass.net now. I also broke my collar bone skate boarding. Yep. I guess I haven't grown up enough to quit skating and my bones haven't stayed young enough to keep from breaking.

We do have six weeks of shows coming up. SIX WEEKS! I don't know how we'll survive it, but it'll be the last shows we do for a while. We're working on some films and I'm producing a musical for next Christmas. Click on our shows page to see the new flyer art by Qwert and to check out the dates and such. The shows are downtown which is nice.

Come to opening weekend and see Daisy Spot open the show. And every show will have Broken Home as our musical guests! Nobody rocks a kazoo like Broken Home. Should be great fun.

I'm undead Lenny Bruce

This weekend I put on The Dead Comedian's Special at Luna's. What a blast. I played zombie Lenny Bruce and I played the ghost of Mitch Hedberg. I wrote some original material for both pieces and combined it with material of their's that I altered to fit the undead theme.

My pal Cheese, who the News and Review just called Sacramento's best Up and Coming Comedian played Bill Hick's. My boss showed up with his girlfriend and some other friends right before Cheese went on. None of us could get my bosses girlfriend to shut up. She was AWFUL! It worked well for Cheese though, as Bill Hicks was known for shredding such audience members.

I hope I still have a job.

Steve Ferris did an original song he wrote called Dancing In My Whities and he did it, while dancing in his whities, stripping down to the underpants and nothing else. The sincerety that this guy exudes is awesome and his bit was SOOO much fun.

The St Simon 2 (what's left of the St. Simon 3) did a great set, playing good songs by dead guys, or by guys who they could claim were dead and none of knew for sure. And they had me onstage to sing some Allen Sherman with them, which rules as I am a big fan.

My pals in Gas Food Theatre did a lesson on how not to die on stage which was a riot. These guys play every role they play with complete conviction. Verry good stuff.

Quite a night. Now we get back to preparing for our six week January run at The Geery Theatre.

Back from Seattle

What a great weekend. We saw some more great sketch including The Cody Rivers Show, Flaming Box of Stuff and Troop. I was bummed that we missed Fresh Meat, but we did get to hang out with them at the after party, which was about as much fun as I've ever had.
Click the links, check out the websites, get to know some of the countries best sketch troupes.
I'm sooooo glad to be home. I will sleep in my own bed, with my own fiance tonight. The fiance at the Hostel was nice and all, but mine just fits me better ya know what I mean?

Yes, we rocked Seattle, we did

The show last night went great. We did a dozen very short form sketches in ten minutes. There were one or two that would have gotten better laughs if we had time for the slow burn (I know because they were adapted from long form skits that we've done) and there one or two that got a BETTER response in this short frantic version. Then we came back and did a second skit, Pinata, which went over well.
My Aunt Marie and Uncle Ted, my cousins Isa, Tim and TC all came, as did our friend's Natalie and Bill and some friends of Amber's and Becca's that I don't know as well. We got some great props from people.
Earlier in the night I saw Hypnagogia who did the best sketch performance I've seen live, EVER! They were up there with the best of Kids In The Hall, but they knew they were live and really worked with the audience, creating a creepy vibe one minute and then tearing it appart and cracking us up with silliness the next. I loved it.
Tonight I'll see Flaming Box of Stuff, featuring some members of Hypnagogia. I'll write more tommorow. and I'll bug Amber for some photos. She's out jogging right now, and I imagine Becca's sleeping as we were out until the wee hours of the morning.

At a Hostel in Seattle

Got into Seattle last night. Worked a volunteeer shift at the sketchfest, saw some sketch, and then checked into the youth hostel. What a nice hostel! I'm sitting at the free breakfast now, using their free wi-fi.
Amber and I are sharing a bunk bed in a room with an australian couple. They're hillarious. We can't get our key card to work, and the woman keeps showing us how to do it but it still doesn't work for us. I told her it must be some aboriginal trick and I think she was offended.
I've got to go move the car. We perform tonight at midnight. Our ten minutes of glory.
We'll try to find someplace to rehearse today.

Leaving for Seattle

We leave for Seattle in a couple of hours. I'm stoked, and nervous, as I always am before a show. This one is extra difficult though because we really want to impress and we've got only ten minutes to do it. TEN MINUTES!
We've put together a fast paced bizarred ten minutes that jumps from skit to skit like a hyper ten year old has posession of the remote control. Woo hoo.
Horrah. Um, yeah, wish us luck.

Seattle or bust

Not sure what I've got to do to get these other kid's blogging.
We've been invited to perform at Push, which is part of the Seattle Sketch Fest. So this takes us to Seattle for the first time and maybe we'll hit Oregon on the way up. That should be the weekend of September 15th. More details as they become available.
My last Funny Peculiar show sold out and was a big hit. I was VERY happy with how it went down. The next one is September 9th, and will be a celebraton of Tapan Trivedi's birthday. Woo hoo. Broken Home will be the musical guest. It will be a rockin' good time, this much is true.

Performing in SD

Wow, what a whirwind 24 hours. I performed as Francois Fly in San Diego. It was a burlesque show put on by my pal Augusta of It's A Chick productions, and I shared a dressing room with all these gorgeous women. That seems to be the standard for these shows. ICBINC shared a dressing room with the Velvet Hammer when we performed with them too.
I pulled out my lap top not wanting to oggle the girls innapropriately. My friend Don saw this and thought it was the perfect image of a geek, sitting amongst beautiful naked dancers and working on his laptop. So Don took a picture. He had Kitten Deville and one of the other girl's stand behind me AND KITTEN DEVILLE CHEWED ON MY EAR! ! ! Wow. I'll post this picture soon.
The event was associated with Comic Con so the house was chock full of the geekiest geeks of all time. I fit right in. We saw a bit of the Comic Con and I finally got to meet Jeffrey Brown who I've exchanged e-mails with but never met in person. I got two of his smaller books, Be a Man and I Am Going To Be Small and I bought a Clumsy T-shirt. He's the best.
At midnight we drove back to Lizard Boy's place in LA and got in around 2am. I got up in the morning and had Breakfast with Sue Nice and Emily Wilson-Wilson (Mrs. Lizard Boy). Then a bit of pan handling in the banana suit and off to be interviewed on CBS news radio about my pan handling adventures. Tommorow more panhandling and eating at Planet Raw then Sunday morning I go home.
Fun, Fun, Fun. But I miss my girl.

Fireworks

Oh my gawd I'm tired. Thankfully I have a sitting down job, I don't think I can stand. Was I out dancing all night? Was I drinking away the hours? No, I was just hanging out on a friend's lawn watching them light firworks 'til midnight. How did I become such an old man? I did play some Jr. Pacman. They had an actual, stand up Jr. Pacman arcade game that they bought years ago for $200. I'm oh so envious. Fireworks, of the safe and sane variety, are great fodder for heckling. My buddy was announcing the price of each one before he lit it and I've come to the concusiong that five five dollar fireworks taped together and fused to go off in sequence cost $50.00. Pyro-economics. Buy yourself some fuse and you can save big!

I'm working on bringing the blog back. It was offline for a bit there. We want to use it more since our touring, as inviduals and as a troupe, has made us more long distance friends who can only enjoy the mad cap that is icbinc via the internet.
Ben will be leaving audio blogs weekly and god only knows what the rest of us will cook up.
Amber and Becca just got back from China!!!! I'm sure they'll write more on that.
I've taken up panhandling. See www.whylieineedadrink.blogspot.com for more on that.
Check out our links page, I updated it to include more of our pals in the comedy and entertaining game, and will expand it even more in the next month.
Check back, thanks,
KLJ

So, we haven't posted here in a while. The new show is great. We played Sacramento with it, and this weekend we're in SF. Then a couple of weeks later on May 6th we're in LA. May 7th Arizona and I'm working on what to do after that.
I think I want to do a demo version of our next CD and then work with a label to fine tune it, produce it and get it out.
I love the first CD. The second CD will have more short skits involving music. This will make it more usefull to radio DJs. The shorter skits seems to be the direction we're heading anyway so this isn't too much of a stretch.
I'm working on a radio show with the guys from Gas, Food, Theatre called The Mustaches, or it might be called somthing else. It's a radio sitcom of sorts about four guys who escape prison together, grow mustaches and do their best to have a normal life on the lam. We should have some shows ready by next fall. I'm stoked to be working with these guys. They're so damn funny.
And I have my stand up comedy show at Luna's, "Funny Peculiar", still going strong. Check out www.indycomedy.com for that.

http://www.kdhx.org/ Click to visit KDHX in St. Louis. The show "Slip of The Disc" has been giving our CD some good rotation. Listen online and request more ICBINC.
http://boogiepopwcsb.blogspot.com/ Another Fella's spinning us alongside Strongbad In Cleveland. Oh, an dyou can buy our CD HERE

The New Year is off and running. The last two Funny Peculiar shows have totally sold out, standing room only.
We're working on our next scetch show. Rehearsals are going well and it's turning out to be quite a different show from anything else we've done. I'm liking it a---lot. Lots of shorter skits in this one.

PRESS

"I felt tense while I was listening to this piece.
I loved it, but I felt tense,"
Jeffrey Callison on NPR
Reviewing the skit "She" from our CD

"The group brings its warped humor to San Francisco for two nights with skits like "Satan's Receptionist," in which a self-pitying nobody seeks advice from a hellish secretary, as well as a hilarious think piece that skewers a vegan public service announcement."
Jane Tunks, SF Weekly 4/13/2005

"A mix of old time radio style and irreverent (but surprisingly non-profane) humor, the crew brings to mind some of the funnier bits of Monty Python and vintage Saturday Night Live. These guys could easily be the next SCTV."
Robert Berry, Retocrush.com

"'Yuppie Birth Scene,' got laughs in the right places; and the timing was perfect throughout the 'Team Urinals' sketch, in which three men bond over a shared affliction: shy-bladder syndrome."
Jim Carnes Sac Bee Ticket, Cover Story!

"Weird and Wonderful"
The Sacramento News and Review

"Sacramento's Premier Original Comedy Troupe"
The Sacramento Bee

"As the crowd at the onstage toilets grows, the laughs also geometrically progress until both actors and audience are busting their guts for very different reasons."
Sac News and Review "Best Of" Issue
Awarding ICBINC a "Best Of Sacramento" Award

"In case of accidental ingestion, contact a poison control center immediately." Chris Acosta, Short Bus Magazine

"Hilariously Offbeat" Sac News & Review Winter Guide 2002

"Surprisingly entertaining. These people can make serial killers funny! (In an unsettling, will-I-go-to-hell-for-laughing-at-this? way.)" Sacramento News and Review

"Thanks for the Laughs...They're terrific!" Dale Schornack News10

"Dale Shornack likes them!" Nick Toma Good Day Sacramento!

"A single father awkwardly giving his teenage daughter “the talk,” a childbirth gone horribly (and hilariously) wrong, and a trio of “pee shy” men caught cock-in-hand at a public urinal all are topics ICBINC's players mine for their comedic potential." Christian Kiefer SN&R

"Thrilling 3-D Action!" -Sac N & R Pick of the week!

"Sacramento's Hilarious New Comedy Troupe!" -The Comic Press News!

"Knocking everyone's socks off with their original sketches" -StreetMail.com

"It's hard not to like a comedy troupe who's program guide boasts 'More fun than a gorilla with a martini!'" Elaine Hess KXJZ, Sac's NPR station

"Sophomoric" Jackson Griffith, Sacramento News and Review