Ao2 has a live show coming up!

We'll be playing at the PIT as part of their first annual Sketchprov Festival which kicks off this weekend. The theater has gotten a ton of great comedians together from all over NYC and beyond. It's a big experiment for the theater, and we'd love to help make it a success. Here's the full announcement from artistic director Kevin Allison (of The State fame):

Main man Keith Huang has some photos of the SketchProv Festival kickoff party that was held at the PIT on Saturday.

Don't forget to come see Ao2 at the festival tonight at 11:00!

Maybe I'll have shaved by then.

From the biopic Control, about the dude from Joy Division:

Ian: Don't divorce me.
Deborah: You're in love with another woman.
Ian: What does that have to do with us?

From the program notes to Flav's stunning concert, Cycles of Remembrance.  Required viewing for anybody who's in the Philadelphia area two weekends from now.

"Written in military terms, a standard history of classical music might go something like this: King Beethoven defeated all his enemies, thereby securing the Realm of Music for the noble House of Bach, Haydn, and Mozart.  After the King's passing, his kingdom was divided between Prince Wagner and Prince Brahms, and it shall remain with the heirs of German musicians unto all eternity."

I've been kind of a non-presence on the ol' 2log lately. The holidays were nuts, and since they've been over, I've been channeling most of my writing impulses towards some non- Ao2 projects I've wanted to work on for a while.

Also, as Sam mentioned in the last nooze post, I spent all last weekend auditioning to be be a member of a house team at the PIT.

I've been spending more and more time at that theater over the past year, meeting fantastic people, learning from an incredibly talented  faculty of performers, and discovering one of the warmest, most supportive communities I've ever been a part of. Pitizens are a rare breed in a business and a city that can be pretty sharky.

Auditions are a nerve-wracking process, and the PIT did everything possible to make everyone feel as relaxed and welcome during the process as possible. When callbacks begin with a spontaneous twenty-minute dance party, you know you're part of something special. There was never any sense of competition--just a room packed to the rafters with comedy geeks having a great time watching each other play.

Anyway, I got the call Sunday night that I had been picked for a team. You'll be able to see me (and my new teammates) doing regular shows at the PIT very soon-- once the theater figures out how to work the two new teams they made this weekend into the schedule, and once we know what the hell we're calling ourselves. I'll post details here as soon as I have 'em, which oughta be by the end of this week.

Thanks to the PIT, and to everybody I played with Saturday and Sunday. It was the best time I've ever had performing in this city.

I'll get back to posting my usual horseshit here soon.

Quick plug, to be followed by an actual post later today:

Looks like my first show at the PIT with my new teammates will be WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16th at 7:00 PM.

All the teams at theater will be playing that night. It's gonna be a big ol' party.  Plus, as with every wednesday at the PIT, all shows are free! Hot shit!  You can come for the early show and stay all night. If you're here in NYC, come on down!

No, we don't have a name yet.

Just a quick reminder to any NYC-based 2log readers that you can see me and the rest of the newly christened PIT house team, "Vacation Island," Tonight at 7:00 and every wednesday from here on out.

Stick around the rest of the night for performances by folks who have performed and written for SNL, 30 Rock, Flight of the Conchords and more.

And it's all free! Free I tells ya!

Details on The PIT website.

Grace and Michelle are two of the funniest ladies in New York. I've been meaning to plug their awesome vlog for weeks, but never got around to it until I saw they recently linked us. So go watch them! They're hilarious and adorable! Here's some favorites of mine:

And in the shameless plug department, don't forget you can see Grace, me and a bunch of other nifty folks at Vacation Island's show at the PIT every Wednesday night at 7:00.

(As always, thanks to K. Huang for the pics.)

Recently, big box stores have figured out how to stay in business by playing their customers for fools.  If you go to Circuit City or Best Buy to buy an HDMI cable for a sweet HDTV on which to play GTA (ATTACK OF THE ACRONYMS!), here's what you'll get:

Price: $99.99

A hundred dollars for a cable?  As somebody savvy enough (though not cool enough) to join the A/V club, I was able to identify this as extortion.  There's no reason to charge a hundred bucks for a basic cable.

Cables were traditionally cheap because they're a basic commodity.  As long as the pins don't corrode and the wires aren't frayed, all they do is carry the signal.  But the big box stores realized they can dupe suckers who just bought an HDTV into purchasing these basic cables marked up to over a hundred dollars.  Now, you can't find a reasonably priced cable at a retail store.

Enter the greatest website I've found of late... monoprice.com.

Price: $4.05

The ant is even more like humans than I previously thought... it can't resist the shiny allure of electronics.

A few weeks ago, I moved an orange electrical plug, and found an entire army of ants rush to take cover inside the socket.  Immediately upon tunneling inside, a series of sparks popped as most of the colony presumably got itself an explosion.  Weird, I thought.

It's worse than you could imagine.  The ant community has apparently launched a coordinated terrorist attack against our electrical grid.  Houston is nearly being shut down by the critters,  Their hunger for electricity is known but not understood.  No doubt, this infusion of energy will give at least one of them superpowers, and in the likely event that she is an evil ant, she will user her newfound powers to eviscerate picnickers worldwide.

What can we do?  I'd recommend purchasing the brilliant and hilarious "Ant Farm," by the ant-sized Simon Rich.  It may not teach you how to defend against our insect masters, but it'll at least keep you entertained through the revolution.

Congrats to Audience of Two!  Sam + Ben won big at the PIT's sketchprov festival this weekend.  But don't just take my word for it... I'm biased.  Here's AM New York's review:

Audience of Two was deliciously weird. They had a great give and take between the two performers, and made good use of the wacky guy vs. straight man dynamic. And one of their sketches included a song which used the lyric "principal of awesome school," which, you can't beat that. Their other sketch featured the two players reciting a litany of health-related complaints that was approached Beckett in terms of absurdity.

Holla!