The Alex Duffy Show

Back in 2003, I teamed up with my friend Alex to create a live webcast called The Alex Duffy Show. The show's format was simple - Alex interviewed guests and I was the off-camera Paul Shaffer-esque sidekick. Alex's guests were up and coming standup comedians from the Los Angeles area, and the show was served up live(!) on the internet with an archive posted afterward.

We had a pretty good formula down by the time we got to our 100th show... which was our last. Our audience was growing at the end - only 5-8 people would tune into the live show (Wednesdays at 8!), but some of the archives would get 200+ viewers in the week after the live airing. And we were just starting to get good guests, too - comics who were on Comedy Central, a woman who did a few episodes of Seinfeld, a member of the MadTV cast, you get the idea.

Anyway, I'm really proud of the work Alex and I put into the show, so I'm starting to put the old archives up on YouTube - starting with show #100. I'll work backwards from there and skip the shows that sucked - we had a bunch of those.

http://youtube.com/alexduffyshow

Check it out, let me know what you think.

I'm a curse.

I've decided that I am a curse on the Twins. Every game I've attended this year has either been a loss, or they were losing when I left the game. Melba and I went to last night's game and tonight's game, only to see them lose both to the goddamn Royals. I just don't get it - they can take 3 of 4 from the Tigers, but can't seem to mount any sort of meaningful offense against the Royals.

Melba and I have tickets to next Thursday's game against Detroit. If the Twins really NEED to win that game, and they're losing in the 8th, I'll leave early so they can come back in the 9th to win it.

Good old stuff

I recently spent a few days scanning some of the old photos I have stored away, and posted some of the more interesting ones on my Flickr account. If you're curious to see just how dorky I have looked in years past, check out the album I created here.

Weekend hyjinks

The Stanley brothers have a yearly tradition of inviting a pile of friends up to their family's cabin for a weekend of fun every summer. The cabin is on Belle Taine Lake, near the town of Nevis in north central Minnesota.

From the time Melba and I arrived Friday evening until we left late Sunday morning, the weekend was filled with almost non-stop activity. Tim Stanley* grilled each evening, and Puffy Stanley** provided much nautical entertainment with his pontoon boat. The group was too big for one pontoon, so another was rented for the occasion and the two were tied together out on the lake.

BBQ:
Pontoons:
BluBlockers:
Early in the weekend's festivities, I was introduced to an outdoor game called Sack. Sack is pretty simple - similar to horseshoes, but you toss small cloth sacks filled with sand, and instead of metal stakes, your target is a wooden platform with a small hole cut in it. This picture gives you some idea of how it works:You and your opponent each toss 4 sacks in each turn. Each sack that ends up on the wooden platform earns one point, each sack that penetrates the hole (heh) earns 3 points. I was horrible at this game at first, but got pretty good at it later on - especially after a few rounds of Aiming Juice(tm).

Evening entertainment was centered around the campfire, and the weather was perfect for it - warm enough for t-shirts, but cool enough that the fire felt nice. And the bugs were mercifully absent. I didn't get one mosquito bite all weekend.

Saturday night the group made a brief trip into Nevis to check out the festivities that are Uff Da Day. I shit you not, the town actually celebrates Uff Da. The evening Uff Da entertainment was a beer garden set up in the liquor store parking lot, with karaoke set up on one of the closed streets. Not long before heading back to the cabin for the evening, Melba and Belle Stanley (Tim's wife) won $100(!) playing pull tabs in the bar that hosted the beer garden. I didn't win money, but I was fortunate enough to notice this funeral home on our way back to the cabin:So aptly named.

All in all, it was an excellent weekend. Good food, good fun, and great company. I wasn't invited this time (technically, I was Melba's guest), but I hope to be invited next year.
See my Flickr link for more photos from the weekend.

* Names changed to protect the innocent.
** Names changed to stupid names when your actual name doesn't rhyme with anything.

Geek Humor

Here at Machinery, Inc., we have color copiers that also function as network printers. The print function is provided by a computer (called a RIP) that is attached to the copier. As a tech support geek, I can connect to the RIP from my computer when there are problems and troubleshoot.

The RIPs are set up so that when the copier runs out of paper on a job, any print jobs sent after that are saved in the RIP's queue. I connected to a RIP earlier today - check out the second file waiting in the queue for paper to be added:
(The Onion article is HERE)

MOTD

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain

Minneapolis, City of Lakes

I dare say there are very few cities in the world, much less in the US where you can hop in a canoe and paddle out onto a lake, in city limits and within sight of downtown.Melba and I biked over to Lake Calhoun today and rented a canoe, and while I'm not sure my soul feels better, my upper arms definitely got a good workout.
That's Melba, with the lovely Minneapolis skyline in the background. Sadly, the building Machinery, Inc. uses to steal my soul little by little every day is also visible in the shot.

After the canoe rental, we biked over to The Herkimer, a bar that is near our home and serves reliably good microbrews. For a day like today, I prefer the "Daily Pils", a light pilsner that's delightfully refreshing on a warm day.

Until I Find You

I just finished reading John Irving's latest novel Until I Find You. I'd read two of Irving's books before this (A Prayer for Owen Meany and The World According to Garp) and have become a fan, thanks to the recommendation of a good friend. While not quite as good as Owen Meany and Garp, Until I Find You did not disappoint. Some reviews I've seen are all over the map for this book, with the worst digs aimed at it's length - 848 pages - while other reviews praise it for the intense character development. I think that if you can make it past the slow construction of the foundation in the first 200 pages, the characters in this story really shine.

The book starts with 4 year old Jack Burns, following him through school, college, and into adulthood as a successful Hollywood actor. I'm grossly oversimplifying the story by saying it's just about Jack and how he grew up, but I'm not going to write a full blown review here. All of Irving's stories have deep, troubled, and sometimes twisted characters that are complex and fascinating - if you are a patient reader, Until I Find You is very much worth the wait.

Dreaming.

I rarely remember my dreams, but every so often I get some good ones between slaps of the snooze bar. Saturday morning, I had a good one:

I had just purchased a cube truck - a vehicle similar to the ones that FedEx delivery drivers use, and I was dropping it off at a custom shop to get some work done to it. The custom work was to make the right side of the truck into an old-school ice cream truck - and the left side into a rolling Starbucks.

Treats for the kids on the right side, treats for the adults on the left side.

Ok, so I wasn't falling or being chased or suddenly naked in public, but hey... it isn't often I get entrepreneurial ideas in my dreams. I liked it.

The End?

Tonight was the last performance of Normal-C. Seems like we just started, but that's how it goes - the festival is over, Courtney has to get back home to NYC and back to work. I really dug working on the show (thanks, Courtney!), and one unexpected side-effect of hanging around the theater the last couple of weeks is the re-emergence of my creative itch. I miss that little itch - I last exercised it when doing the Alex Duffy Show way back when, so I am definitely in need of some practice.

Now I just need to figure out what to do...

Minneapolis or LA - which is safer?

From the local newspaper:

"I saw one guy coming downstairs with what looked like a pistol. He was totally covered in blood. Then another guy came down and helped the first guy go faster," said Telfair, 25. "Another guy came after those guys with a Ninja sword in his hand and another guy behind him."

When I lived in LA, I never heard of ANY crazy shit like this happening in my neighborhood. Sure, people get drunk and I saw a few weird car accidents, but people didn't get shot in front of their mother (happened near home a few months ago) and I sure as hell never heard of people having to fight off burglars with swords. And I even had Johnny Rotten in my neighborhood.

Auto Polo!

While scanning some old family pictures, I found a brochure for an auto polo event. This has got to be one of the coolest things I've seen in my family history - and I even have a photo of my grandfather behind the wheel of an auto polo car.Is that not extremely cool?

Mexican Coke

Not the white powdery party substance - I'm talking regular 'ol Coca Cola. My good friend J-Dog got me a 4 pack of genuine bottled-in-Mexico Coke for my birthday. I'd been wanting to try it for awhile, after reading an online article somewhere that sang the praises of Coke from Mexico and Kosher Coke.

What's the difference, you may ask? Coke made in Mexico and Kosher Coke use plain old sugar for the sweetener. Coke bottled in the US uses High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) instead. A quick perusal of the content labels of each reveals no other differences, but a few minor nutrition label differences:

Mexican Coke (hereafter referred to as MC):
150 calories
85mg sodium
39g carbs
39g sugars

American Coke (hereafter referred to as AC):
140 calories
50mg sodium
39g carbs
39g sugars

One other difference that's a throwback to the good old days: Mexican Coke comes in the kickass glass bottle that requires an opener.

And the best for last, the most important difference: TASTE. When it first hits your tongue, MC tastes very similar to AC - but wait - soon MC tastes different than AC. The best way I can describe the difference is MC is less tacky on your tongue than AC, and doesn't leave that weird feeling in your mouth (or the sweaters on your teeth) the way AC does. MC has a nicer, cleaner finish than AC.

Normal C!

Back in May, I was perusing the "Crew Gigs" section of Craigslist, and spotted a post looking for a tech geek helper for a Fringe Festival show called Normal C. I was intrigued, and decided to volunteer, even though the show was a little more than two months off and I wasn't sure what my work situation would be (this was before Machinery, Inc. entered my life).

Yesterday, I finally got to meet the Star, Writer, Producer, and Lighting Designer of Normal C, Courtney McLean. We had a rehearsal at the U of M Rarig Experimental Theater yesterday, and I gotta admit - the show is even cooler than I had expected.

If you are in the Minneapolis area the 5th, 6th, 9th, 10th, or 13th, you need to go see her show (I'll be in the booth in the back running the slides - wave to me and I'll show you some love). See Courtney's site for all the pertinent info and a link to buy tickets.

File under Small World:
Back when I first signed on to help Courtney with the show, I checked out her resume on her website and noticed a happy little independent production called "Safe House", with "Bradley/Mauch Prods." Yeah, THAT Bradley and Mauch.

So technically, this is the second time Courtney and I have worked together, although her part in Safe House was complete long before I came along. Cool, eh?

More driving school pics

The club website had a few good pictures of me and der wigglewagon from Sunday:

Driving skills

I haven't posted in a week, mainly because it's been ricockulously hot here, sapping my creative energy.

However, I braved the heat Sunday morning and drove der wigglewagon......to a Car Control Clinic, put on by the local BMW club (Northstar chapter). The venue was the Dakota County Technical College's driver training course, which is a lot more fun than it sounds. To get an idea of the track layout, check out the aerial photo here.

The large black square in the center is a wet skidpad, where they have huge sprinklers pumping water onto a slick surface - but unfortunately for us, the pad had just been resurfaced and was far too grippy. The rest of the track was surprisingly fun - I was expecting something like a road course you'd find at the DMV, but this was a lot more like a racetrack. And a lot more fun.

My instructor for the day was Chris Koehler who races a Porsche 944 Turbo - he was there with his wife who owns a 2004 BMW M3. Chris' instruction was stellar - I could see improvement in my driving technique right away, especially after watching from the passenger seat as Chris drove my car. I'm a visual learner, so all the driving theory only gets me so far - seeing someone else drive the right way was exactly what I needed to learn.

This was my second time attending a CCC, and I can honestly say that I've learned an awful lot each time. Before my first class, I used to think I was a pretty good driver - I was wrong. I'm a lot more aware and in control of my car, and much more confident of my accident avoidance skills after having taken these courses.

Everyone thinks they're a good driver. I highly recommend a class like this for anyone who can admit that they have room to learn. You'll be surprised at how much better you can be.

A few more pics from the event:
The coolest car in attendance.