Jimmy Penn

Almost every Sunday for the past year I've met Jimmy for coffee, cigarettes, and conversation. We met when we were put on a team together, 1941 at CIC, almost three years ago. After that we become fast friends and have grown a lot closer in the past year. We talk a lot about personal ups and downs, call each other out on our bullshit, and talk a lot of shop. He's been a great barometer for me and has turned me around on some of my more judgemental habits.

Me:  It sure is hot out here. Nice tank top!
Jimmy: Come on man! I'm self conscious enough as it is.
Me: No. It looks good, you look good man. Tough. Super tough.
Jimmy: Stop. It's hot out! You got me all in my head about it.
Me: In all honesty you look good.
Jimmy: It's too late dude. You ruined it.

Going Blue 2

When I first started doing improv and sketch I never went blue. I never used sexually explicit language or situations and I tried to keep my swearing down to a bare minimum. Initially I did it because I knew it could be a crutch, something new performers use because they don't know what else to do. After a while it was a badge of pride that I never went blue. I looked down on people that did, I thought it was cheap.

Over the past year playing with Timmy and Stoltenberg on Schwa and seeing Holy Fuck consistently my thoughts on the subject have changed. And from time to time I find myself gleefully engaging in the grossest/sexually offensive content I can. Sometimes it feels like the five years I spent holding myself back from that kind of subject matter built up a lot of sophomoric creative steam which bursts out every once in a while. Coincidentally most of those outbursts occur during Night Shift shows and tonight we were in rare form.

We've been doing a mono-scene for the past couple months, meaning our 20-30 minute set is just one continuous scene. Tonight our show was six girlfriends on spring break in Cabo in their hotel room. It started off relatively innocent each of us establishing who we were- the religious one, the prude etc. We started off talking about hooking up with boys at the "Blue Men At The Beach" performance and making innuendos which became progressively less innuendo and more straight forward. The show took a hard right turn when Damian told us about the local "pussy ghost" which carries a lantern and hunts down other pussies. From there we shot into the inappropriate stratosphere. Afterwards I really wished we counted how many times "pussy" was said. I estimated around 200.

It was a real fun show and we were all possessed with this manic giddiness which can come with playing fast and loose with things taboo.

Going blue can be fun for the people doing it and can be really funny for the audience. The trick is not to do it too often, be original with it, and to throw yourself into it so hard you surpass surprise, hurdle past shock, and land on something totally new and titillating.

'I'm So Excited!' & 'Pacific Rim' Reviews

I'm So Excited! is the latest film, this time a surreal comedy, from Pedro Almodovar. After the atrocious and cloying The Skin I Live In this is a breath of fresh air from the Spanish auteur. The film takes place mostly on a plane which circles the air space above Toledo, Spain waiting for a place to make an emergency landing due to defective landing gear.

For the first 15 minutes or so of the film I hated it. Not because of the film itself, which takes some adjusting to, but because of the packed audience in the theater laughing uproariously at every little thing, every innuendo, every flamboyant flourish from the three homosexual stewards. I felt like I was missing something, not getting the joke, or I was in a room full of people who were uncomfortable with the subject matter.

The film jostles and jerks from genre to genre- slapstick to soap opera to porn to thriller to romance. There is no coherent narrative or arc. All the characters are complex and confident and fun and we never find too much about any one of them. Sex, drugs, and drinking are discussed and explored with an inherent casualness and lack of judgement which is refreshing.

The film isn't deep but it is layered. It's not a laugh-out-loud comedy like the audience I went with seemed to think- laughing at perceived homosexual stereotypes. But it is goofy and odd and playful. There are no real stakes but there is no need for them. The film constantly has you guessing what is or will happen but nothing ever does. And that is fun. Your constantly engaged and guessing and new kinks and secrets are revealed and tricks and games are played.

See It.

Pacific Rim is Guillermo Del Toro's robot apocalypse movie. The movie gets into the action fast and spends just enough time on minimal explanation to set up the entire movie for us- Alien creatures are coming through a portal on the ocean floor to take over Earth, we created huge robots to fight them.

The ensemble cast is varied, committed, and obviously having fun through out. What their is of a plot is pretty much what you'd expect from the trailers and exceeds expectation with efficient story tellng as well as personal character touches coupled with the huge CGI action sequences.

The best summer blockbuster I've seen in years. The only action movie I've seen recently that had a justified running time over two hours.

See It.

Street Talk 14

I'm riding my bike on the sidewalk the one block from house to Montrose where I'll get on the street. Up ahead is a woman with a 2 year old boy. He's weaving all around the sidewalk awkwardly walking and delighting in it. I smile and hop over to the grass to ride past them and give them the whole sidewalk to maneuver on. The kid stumbles and sits down when I'm about 10 feet away, it's clear he has not seen me or processed my presence, he stumbled over his own feet. As I pass.

Woman: Gee onm thhh fffeeerr rrrrraaa. diii ssss a chiiiii.

She's not mumbling she's just not talking loudly, I thinking she's talking to the kid and I smile at them. It takes me about 10 seconds and 50 feet to process that she actually said "Get on the fucking road. This is a child." At first I'm hit with a cold bucket of shame. I should have stopped and walked the bike. I didn't mean to frighten her and I clearly didn't frighten the kid. Wish she would have known that I was in total control and I thought I was more than far enough away. I think of going back to apologize.

Then I'm hit with a wave of rage. Who the fuck does this lady think she is? I was six feet away from her and her kid. Does she think she owns the sidewalk? Where does she think she's living? This is Chicago, the big fucking City, if you want your kid to have a bubble of safety around him move out to fucking Winnetka. Not only that, this is Uptown off the Wilson Redline stop, not a consummate neighborhood for safety. I think of going back and asking her to repeat herself, think of intimidating her, telling her to move, asking her if she's got a problem and then letting her know I'm her fucking problem.

Needless to say I don't do either. I realize, while she was saying it, all I did was pleasantly smile at her. That's the appropriate reaction, most likely her overprotective mothering instincts just flared up or she had a bad day or she's going through a divorce or break up or she's hungry or she's tired. Whatever it is it's not me and I have no control over it. I look at the shame and the rage and the different hypotheticals, I realize their utter uselessness, take a deep breath and let them go out into the ether.

I continue riding my bike to meet Tisher where we will in the near future share a small plate of extremely sloppy yet delicious lobster stuffed deviled eggs.

'The Way Way Back' A Review

The Way Way Back is a coming of age movie set in some nameless New England beach town. The framework of the story is conventional but this trope plot is invigorated with some great acting and realistic slants on stereotypical characters.

A dorky 14 year old boy is forced to spend the summer in his mother's antagonistic boyfriend's beach house is the basic premise. Liam James plays the boy Duncan and either in life or in his performance he is especially nervous, gangly, and awkward which brings a substantial amount of authenticity to the film. Veteran actors play the adults that populate the film and for the most part are unlikable, distant, mean or sad. In his first successful attempt at playing a bad guy Steve Carell plays the asshole boyfriend- self-centered, deceptive, edgy, and ultimately pathetic. Not a likable character but a real character. Toni Collette plays Duncan's mom who seems lost throughout the film, on the rebound from her divorce, looking to have fun, and more focused on her burgeoning relationship with Carell as opposed to her son. Allison Janney plays the drunk next door neighbor who some critics have called a comedic caricature but what strikes me as something familiar and uncomfortable, a performance played not for laughs but to convey a certain type of desperation.

Duncan is ostracized by the popular hot beach crowd and finds himself drawn to the water park across town. He is befriended and mentored by Owen played by Sam Rockwell who delivers a vibrant, fast talking, joy filled, high octane performance which absolutely steals the film. Duncan get's some confidence and some friends and has a good summer. No surprise there.

The film is populated by an extensive excellent supporting cast that brings laughs as well as reality. The plot is very conventional there is no doubt. But the thing that makes the film so unique with in the genre and so engaging is its fresh take on the characters involved. Duncan has a "love interest" but the relationship is more in his head then on the screen, its a crush. Susanna played by AnnaSophia Robb seems to be only interested in being Duncan's friend because she recognized a similar listlessness in him. Rockwell's Owen doesn't give Duncan life lessons, doesn't protect him, doesn't beat up Carell for him, he simply befriends him and cracks jokes with him. The adults are kind of shitty to the kids, not in a funny way, but in a neglectful way.

There is no great resolution, nothing really happens or is accomplished. But you get the feeling Duncan, and you by extension, have grown.

Don't Miss It.

Graffiti 104

"Always knew I would clock G's but welcome to McDonald's may I take your order please? Gotta Serve you food that might give you cancer, cause my son doesn't take no for an answer..."

I found a series of these in Logan Square. It feels like some kind of comment on baby boomers and the ungrateful GenX crowd. Although I don't know what the comment could be. But I think we can all agree that fast food is shitty and bad for you.

"Meat consumption is just as dangerous to public health as tobacco use... It's time we looked into holding the meat producers and fast-food outlets legally accountable." -Neal Barnard

"The boomers' biggest impact will be on eliminating the term 'retirement' and inventing a new stage of life... the new career arc." -Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Experimentation vs. Perfection

I imagine there's a plane that describes artists much the same as the plane that describes someones political ideologies.

Experimentation---------------------------------------------------Perfectionism
(Left/Liberal)                                                        (Right/Conservative)

I think you can apply the idea across the board- music, visual art, performance, poetry etc. Some musicians study as many instruments as they can, others focus on one instrument, one genre of music, one composer. Some visual artists paint only landscapes or versions of the same landscape, some change their style yearly, monthly or weekly. You get the idea.

I've been thinking about this idea the past couple of days. When I first started performing in Chicago I just wanted to do improv as much as I could. I wanted to just be the best improviser I could be and master any form I was doing. Eventually I got burned out, spread myself too thin, and tapered down my commitments. The past year or so I've been fortunate to have been a part of some sketch shows and podcasts, broadening my creative output. Those different forms of performance, with tangible repeatable results are, in some ways, more satisfying. After being able to do some different stuff and having some interesting opportunities my interests have started to shift.

Now I'm no longer really concerned with doing things right or often but doing things differently. When I perform I want to surprise myself, my cast mates, and the audience. I want to experiment and challenge myself and I think I'm good enough to have the result be just as, if not more, entertaining. I'd rather go into a show with no idea or no form or with something I'm not comfortable with. Or just to have fun with friends and what can hinder that sometimes is feeling like the form or the energy is stale.

I'm trying to be a little more judicious with my time and my commitments because I'm not interested in doing the same old thing. I want to do something different. not different in that performance-artist-make-the-audience-feel-weird kind of a way but different for me.

I don't want to try to refine and perfect the things that I already know how to do, that's just not where I'm at and maybe never will be. I've always had a desire to constantly push and learn the next thing and push and try the next thing.

There's nothing wrong with being an artist content with the mediums in which you operate, I understand that, I get trying again and again to make the perfect guitar riff in D minor or to paint the perfect sunset over The Badlands or to do a perfect Harold. I get it. But I don't want that. I don't have enough time to devote to just one thing.

I want to taste the fruit on all the trees.