Week 3: eventually, I'll catch up

Welcome to life on my boat. It’s time to tell you about week 2 now (I promise, I’ll catch up to real-time soon). The end of our first cruise (or “run”, in the biz) saw the departure of Matt, our director. Here we are, taking the requisite “goofy” picture on his last night:


Man, I'm really givin' it to Marco in this picture...

We went out to eat that night, to celebrate. Some of the restaurants on board are free (or rather, included in the cost of the cruise), whereas some cost extra. We went to the Asian one (“Shogun”) which is pretty good, though I’m pretty stoked to try the $15 all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant (umm... also called “Shogun”).

(side note: They have screens all over the ship which show how busy each restaurant is at any given time. For example, the steakhouse, “Cagney’s” seems to be very popular with the American tourist crowd. The sushi restaurant is always, without fail, completely empty).

So the next day we said goodbye to Matt, and set out for our first afternoon of adventure in New York City!


Marco and Amanda went to visit an old friend (Marco used to live in New York), whereas Derek wanted to find a Best Buy (bit of a DVD-buying nut). The girls went with him, and I set off by myself to explore before meeting with my buddy Robert. We met up at a brunch place he recommended at 9th and 56th St., called Route 66. They had a Sicilian Omelet (full of mozzarella, onions, and sausage), which is officially the best omelet I’ve ever eaten. Here’s Robert:


And here’s Robert in Times Square:


We spent most of the rest of the afternoon bumming around, taking in the sights in mid-town. I got lots of pictures of Times Square, including this one of me grooving to some salsa band that was playing on a street corner:


Downtown was pretty crazy that day, since it was Puerto Rican Day. We couldn’t quite get over to see the parade, but people were everywhere. Now that I think about it, it’s kind of weird calling one part of Manhattan “downtown”, since the whole thing is effectively downtown. I just love walking around and staring up at the buildings for miles. I really can’t wait to do the tour on the Empire State Building, and check out the Village. For the time being, I settled for going to Mid-Town comics and stocking up for the week. If anyone’s interested, I picked up issue 4 of Joss Whedon’s new “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” series, and a book called “Y the Last Man” and another called “Pride of Baghdad”, both by Brian K. Vaughan (all 3 of which I highly recommend). After that I headed back to the ship, signed back in, called my folks, and got ready to do the whole thing all over again.

Monday saw our first day on our own as a cast, and our first day to really relax on our own. And my first day to go to the gym since... ever. They have a pretty good gym on board (as far as I know) and I’ve been hitting it every day since then. Almost. In that time I have learned one thing: I am terribly, terribly out of shape.

Our next stop on our exotic whirlwind adventure to far-off lands brought us all the way to... Port Canaveral, Florida. Woo. Actually, we were all pretty stoked to get there. Among the few things to check out, like Disneyworld or the Kennedy Space Center was a sight that we were all thankful to see: a mall. A Wal-Mart, to be specific. Most of the crew heads in to the mall during these 6 day trips, and we took the opportunity to go in to town and stock up on all the stuff we forgot to pack. I’ll spare you having to look through pictures of our Wal-Mart excursion (here’s a hint: it looks a lot like the Wal-Mart near your house). But I did get this picture of my “Big Bacon Bison Burger” I had at Ruby Tuesday’s. These Americans know how to cook their bison!


Once I picked up all the sun screen and coca-cola I could carry (along with a DVD copy of the 1987 John Candy/ Dan Aykroyd vehicle “The Great Outdoors”, which I hadn’t seen in about 13 years) we shipped out to sea again. That night we had another “Best Of Second City” show, and it went well. We only did one show this week as opposed to two, which kind of sucked, but I can think of worse things than only having to do half as much work in a week for the same amount of pay.

The next morning we woke up in Nassau, in the Bahamas. After mistakenly attending a crew-only boat drill and then going to a crew meeting, we set off to explore a bit of our surroundings.


This pretty much included a small row of tourist stalls, and a Starbucks. We went to the Starbucks, which kind of sucked. It took 15 minutes to get our drinks, the wireless internet they had wouldn’t work with macs, and Katy was quite creeped out by all the cockroaches running around our feet. So the Nassau Starbucks gets zero stars in the “Ian Travel Guide”. I did see a guy selling nifty conk shells though:


For fifteen bucks, I dunno. I can always buy one on a later trip. On the way back to the boat (we grew tired of the Bahamas quite quickly) I took some pictures of the Atlantis resort hotel.


Luxury suites go for $25,000/ night, and you can see the building in “Casino Royale”, when James Bond lands there in a helicopter.

Speaking of “Casino Royale”, they have been playing an ‘edited-for-content’ version of it repeatedly on the ship’s TV. Each cabin has a TV set, and gets about 6 channels: ESPN, Cartoon Network, TNT, CNN, and two channels of recent-run movies that the boat airs ad naseum. Over the past few weeks we’ve seen various lengths of Pursuit of Happyness, MI:3, the Da Vinci Code, Failure to Launch, Superman Returns, Erin Brockovich, and (shudder) Because I Said So. Thank God we collectively packed about 70 movies as a group.

That night we took a short jaunt to and island called Grand Stirrup Kay, which is a private island owned by Norwegian Cruise Lines. Warning: this is a lot less cool than it sounds. The island basically contains one beach, with a few little drink huts, some beach volleyball nets, and a tourist shop. Oh, and according to several sources, a shitload of sand fleas. It isn’t large enough for the cruise ship to dock on, so we have to take smaller “tender boats” to get to the beach.


Once there, I hung out, grabbed a drink, and chilled out in a hammock. It was nice and relaxing, in spite of the mob of drunk partying tourists on the beach. Ooh, and I think I saw a monkey! But it was pretty dark, and I’m not quite sure what ran across the path in front of me. After my near-primate encounter, I did the only other thing to do on the island: take pictures of American tourists dancing the Electric Slide:


The rest of the week went pretty quickly. We did two more “Scriptless” shows, which the crowd really enjoyed. Another night was Hazel’s birthday (one of the singers from the Broadway show). It was a good time, though I learned that you can’t set beer down unattended on this boat for more than a second. Ever.


The boat also celebrated Philippine Independence Day, which was awesome. Over 40% of the ship’s crew is from the Philippines, so they put on an enormously elaborate pageant, complete with dancing, songs, and free beer! There were candle dances, as well as lots of history (did you know that the Philippines gained their independence from Spain? I didn’t either). I can honestly say, that show was the coolest thing I’ve seen on this boat thus far. I wish I'd gotten some pictures, but I left my camera in my room. Hopefully I'll come across ome later.

So that’s it for this week. Next week, I’ll try to bring things up to date. Till then, keep writing and telling me about what’s been going on back home. Later!

Week Two Continued... the Rest of Week Two

Avast! Ian here, continuing the story of my sea-based adventures. I’m kind of behind in my recounting, so I’m going to pick up the pace this week, and tell you all about our first week at sea. Don't forget, you can click on all these pictures to see larger versions).

I told you all about the ship, and our first night. Well, after leaving New York we set sail south, towards the Caribbean. Except we didn’t really take much in, given that we had two shows to rehearse for in a matter of days. By the time we got on the ship we were looking pretty good, given that most of us (myself included) had shown up in Chicago with our lines memorized and ready to go. We each only had two scripted scenes to get down, with a handful of short blackouts as well. Our first rehearsal on the ship was in the large Stardust Theatre, and we worked for a bout 6 hours straight. After rehearsal we had a nice 5-course dinner at one of the shipboard restaurants, Windows. It has enormous 2-storey windows that look out the aft of the ship.


The crazy part about this cruise is that it’s all-inclusive (minus booze), so you don’t actually pay to eat in these restaurants. There are several others onboard, a steakhouse, a sushi bar, a French bistro and such. After that we explored around some more, and Derek and I discovered the decorative captain’s wheel that they have set up (presumably, so that tourists like us can take pictures like this).




Our first stop on the cruise was in King’s Warf, Bermuda. As you can see, it’s quite the beautiful port with a rich, British military history.




And I celebrated by... staying on board the ship all day. Our crazy schedule up to that point had finally caught up to me, so while everyone else was exploring off-ship, I slept in, swa and the largely tourist-free pool, and relaxed in the hot tub. Meh, we’ll be back. That afternoon though, our travels took us straight into the mysterious Bermuda Triangle. The sea was clear when we left port, but literally as soon as we got out to sea we encountered this fog:


No ghost pirates though. Sorry Kris.

The first show that we checked out on the cruise was “Standing Room Only”, a Broadway Musical Revue show put on by the Spirit’s resident dance company. The show was very well done, though there’s only so much old-timey Broadway and Andrew Lloyd Webber that I can take. The night after that though... wow. Has anyone reading this ever heard of Jeff Trachta? He was billed as a “celebrity entertainer” on the ship, and was flown in all the way from Las Vegas. He did a one-man show, and we caught the late one. The show opened with a video montage of various TV personalities, all talking about Jeff Trachta. Except all the TV clips were from about 1991. The job of the video was basically to remind people, “hey, even though you don’t remember him, this guy used to be kind of famous”. Apparently he was on the soap opera “Bold and the Beautiful” playing a character named “Thorne”. After the video montage, Trachta’s live show began. In it he sang, danced, and did random impressions, all while being accompanied by a video screen where he would play different characters singing backup for himself (all pre-recorded). I will say this, he did one of the best Archie and Edith Bunker impersonations I’ve ever heard. Other than that, his show as one of the cheesiest, silliest, cruise-shippiest things I’ve ever witnessed in my life. But the closer...

Earlier in the week, Derek was joking about how we should end our Second City show with a rousing rendition of Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American”, in an effort to appeal to a more “American Tourist friendly” cruise ship market. His version would be complete with waving flags, shotgun blasts, and a laser bald-eagle which would screech over our heads. We joked about this for a while, and forgot about it. But lo and behold... Jeff Trachta’s show ended with that exact song. We nearly all burst out laughing in the middle of the theater. But Derek had skipped the show to do laundry. Here’s a picture of us, all crowded into mine and Derek’s room, excitedly telling him about what he had missed:


The next day was spent at sea, but more importantly was spent in our final rehearsals for our show. We worked on a new bit for the show that we all contributed to, based on Amanda’s prior experience working on cruise ships. Amanda played an overly cheerful cruise ship staffer, and she led our tourists in the “electric slide”, and various other dances. Go satire! The bit fit nicely in the show, and we went into our first two shows feeling well-prepared. Here’s a picture of us backstage, about to go on:


Damn, I look good in a suit. I mean, we all look good. But mostly me.

I won’t bore you all with the details, but the first show went well and the second show went great. We had huge crowds for both shows, and got some really good notes from Matt between sets. After the show we all got changed, and headed upstairs for a crew party that was going on. At first I thought it was a nice gesture for them to have a party on our opening night, but then I found out it was completely unrelated. Ah well, free booze is free booze. We also met some of the dancers and singers.


The girl on the left is Hazel, a really sweet girl from London, England who has absolutely no attention span. She will literally approach you to talk, and then zone out and walk away when you are mid-sentence (as Derek and I have repeatedly experienced). The girl on the right is Dayna, a really cool and friendly chick from the mid-west. Her and I chatted about theatre schools for a while, but we were all eventually drowned out by the unbelievably loud music that was playing. Nice folks though.

The next day we docked in Tortola (one of the British Virgin Islands), and all set out on a post-opening beach trip. We grabbed a cab in the town, and were driven across the island (only about 15 minutes, but over an entire mountain). This is the town we docked in (you can see that we’re heading up the mountain in the picture):


And this is a shot of the beach were taken to:


We hung out for a while, and were eventually joined by Matt:


This is my sexy beach picture. I’m thinking of writing a series of Harlequin Romance novels, and using this as the first cover:


The beach was absolutely the most beautiful one I had ever been to in my life. The water was crystal clear, as warm as bathwater, and the beach wasn’t at all crowded. We ended up chatting with a 2 couples from the boat who were part of a Long Island firefighter’s group trip. They really enjoyed the show the night before, and were quite friendly. And had cool, “Loong Ih-lund” accents.

Here’s a picture I took of Derek, where you can’t see any houses and it looks like he’s on “LOST”:


We’re both fans. Soon we left the beach, and got another ride back. This one though was more of a truck with benches in the back, so we drove all the way up a hill with no seatbealts, practically hanging out the back of the jeep. Later, I wrote some e-mails on the top deck and watched a beautiful Tortola sunset.


The next morning, we woke up in beautiful St. Thomas, one of the US Virgin Islands. I know I sound like a braggy-asshole, but this is the view I had while I ate my breakfast waffles that morning:


(Don’t worry, karma bit me in the ass by giving me a massive sunburn from the beach. Its 11 days later and my shoulders are STILL peeling.)

Here are some pictures of the town we landed in. We had all gotten our fill of sun the previous day, so we took in some shops instead:




Here are some really cool birds that we saw. In the upper left corner you can see one dive-bombing into the water to catch fish:


We were also quite impressed by the St. Thomas Wendy’s. We didn’t go that day – don’t want to burn out all the tourist attractions at once:


Another cool thing we saw was a cute girl standing on the sidewalk, handing out free rum-based ice drinks. After that I went to apply for citizenship.


We also went into a cool pirate museum, where they had a bunch of old authentic sword and marine stuff. Except it wasn’t a museum and was actually a store. So they kicked me out for taking pictures.




After walking the town for a while and buying very little, we took a cab back to the ship. This is a weird picture of Michelle and Katy from that trip. I’m not sure why I’m including it.



That night we all took it easy, and had a cast night in. Luckily the previous Second City cast aboard the Norwegian Spirit (including Carly Jones and Darryl Hinds, two very cool people from Toronto, and Homer Marrs, an absolute prince of a man) had left behind several board games. Including Trivial Pursuit, 80’s Edition.


The game started well. Except for two facts that we had not counted on. A) Marco was a teenager during the 80’s, and thusly remembers the 80's, and b) the game is rigged. Seriously, Matt and I were on a team, and kept getting incredibly hard questions about forgotten TV series and the inner workings of the Iran-Contra scandal. Team Amanda and Derek would get questions like “Name this Michael Jackson song title: Billie Jean is ___ my Lover”.


(okay, maybe their questions weren’t that easy. But as Matt’s picture can attest, it felt that way)

After that night we spent another day at sea, and did our first two “Scriptless” improv shows, which went great. The crowds loved them, and we were quite pleased with ourselves. And that brings me to the end of this blog entry. Holy shit, that was a long entry. I’ll try to cover less ground next time. Until then, have fun on the mainland.



ps. Go back to my previous posts to see new pictures that I added. Cheers!

Week Two: The Big Apple

When last we left our hero, he was winging away from the beautiful town of Chicago. Our time rehearsing at the Second City had come to a close, and it was time to fly to New York City and find our boat. Our flight out of Chicago was at 6:45 in the morning, which was kind of ass. But we got up and made our way out to the airport, thanks to the good people at the Airport Hilton shuttle service (“herding groggy travelers, no matter how ungodly the hour”). In spite of me not realizing that I was trying to check into the wrong airline, I soon made my flight and was off to New York. I was booked into a different airline than the rest of our cast (my ticket was evidently booked last) so I spent the flight listening to the new Wilco album (“Sky Blue Sky”) and dozing. Both activities which were highly enjoyable. We all touched down in LaGuardia airport, got ourselves together, and hopped another van to downtown Manhattan, where waited the docks, the ship, and our destinies. Mostly just the ship.

The entire time driving through Manhattan, I had a huge stupid grin on my face. It is no stretch to say that I’ve wanted to visit New York ever since I was a small child, and this was the first time I’d ever been there. I kept staring up at buildings for miles and miles, and wished I could just tuck-and-roll out of the van and live there (my plan was later revealed to be deeply flawed).



There’s a spot in downtown Toronto, near Bay and Front St, where if you look up at a certain angle, the buildings block out all the sky around the area, and it looks like you could be in downtown New York. That experience in Toronto is now ruined for me.

We drove for about 30 minutes (NYC isn’t the greatest driving town, as I’m sure you’re aware). And then, we saw it: our floating home away from home for the next few months. The ship is called the Norwegian Spirit, part of the Norwegian Cruise Lines fleet. The thing is, to say it plainly, stupidly large. Like, hilariously large.



The first thing I did once we were out of the cab was get a picture taken with some genuine New York Police Officers. I am an enormous dork. The cops both had these awesome, thick, “extras from Spider-Man 3” accents, and it wasn’t until I was halfway done talking to them that I realized I was subconsciously imitating them. It’s a weird (and potentially dangerous) habit that I have.



The next few hours were taken up with us getting on the ship, getting our key cards, dropping our luggage off, all that usual stuff. I’m currently sharing a cabin with Derek, which is pretty alright since we brought about 50 DVD’s between us. The room is nice, but pretty tiny (considering that there’s 2 dudes in it). We also don’t have a window, since we’re on the inside of the ship. It’s completely pitch-dark when the lights are out, which will be great for sleeping off hangovers, but bad for waking up before noon.



We were some of the first people on the ship, so we took advantage and went to the buffet before anyone else. The main buffet is a restaurant called Raffles (dunno why), and the food was pretty good. Lots of fresh Caesar Salad, Chicken Masala, and some kind of delicious chilled banana soup. And all of it free! FREE! Being free made it taste like, 10 times better. After that, the ship set sail out of the harbour, past the Statue of Liberty. So I made like a good tourist and took a bunch of pictures.







Later that day we attended a mandatory safety lecture down in the crew section. We had to wait about half an hour for it to start, and I kind of fell asleep and drooled on my desk. But they showed us around the ship, demonstrating the water-tight flood doors, the free condoms in the doctor’s office, and the water cannon which has supposedly been used to repel Asian pirates. I’ll believe that when we’re boarded. And now the spiffy part: we got to leave the safety lecture early. See, the weird part of being on this ship as Second City cast is we’re not really crew, but not really passengers. We exist in this weird grey area in the middle, where we get almost all the privileges of passengers PLUS all the extra perks of being crew, with almost none of the drawbacks (not unlike Wesley Snipes’ half-human/ half-vampire character in “Blade”). As a result I’m told that many of the crew and other performers resent us, but I can honestly say I haven’t experienced any of that thus far (though for the record, I am also incredibly naïve).

The next thing on our exploration was to check out the theatres we’ll be performing in. There are two: The Stardust Theatre (where we do our 50 minute “Best Of” scripted show), and the Galaxy of the Stars (where we do our 30 minute “Scriptless” improv show). Yes, I am aware that those names are pretty ridiculous. The Stardust is apparently a 100-seat theatre, where we have to wear wireless headset mikes in order to be heard at all. The stage is ENOURMOUS, and we barely use any of it. The Improvised show we do is in more of a bar/ lounge, and we use handheld mikes, which is pretty lame, but better than nothing.



So the first night and next day were pretty uneventful. We ate more free food, the coffee onboard is terrible, we rehearsed for 6 hours the next day, and we had a nice sit down dinner the next night in one of the ship’s nicer restaurants, Windows. It’s at the back of the ship (or “stern”, in nautical terms), and has enormous 2-storey windows that look out on the ocean. This was one of our first meals where we weren’t on a time schedule, so we took this time to get to know each other. I mentioned in my last entry that I would talk about our director, Matt Hovde. He is the director of the current Mainstage revue at the Second City Chicago, “Between Barack and a Hard Place”. We saw it in Chicago, and I think it’s an excellent show. Really smart, topical material, with some great human scenes. So we knew we were in good hands. Matt is from... somewhere American... and went to College at a Christian School in Texas (in spite of his not being particularly religious). At dinner he told us the story about his first day in Chicago. It’s a long and nifty story, but it pretty much involves Matt coming to Chicago knowing nobody, and (through a series of flukes) by the end of his first day having drinks with the entire Second City Mainstage cast (including director Mick Napier, Rachel Dratch, and Tina Fey). Some more fun facts about Matt:

- Another big video game fan.
- Has (supposedly) never drank or smoked anything in his life.
- Has a black belt in karate.
- In high school, he compiled an inventoried video-tape collection of every episode of the British “Whose Line Is It Anyway”.
- Apparently drunk American tourists think he and I look interchangeable.
- Enjoys ice cream.
- He’s a funny, really nice cat.



So as you’ve probably noticed, I’m kind of pacing myself on this blog. This entry only takes us up to June 3rd, in spite of the fact that I’m writing it 6 days later. I figure if I write everything all at once, I’ll have nothing to talk about once we’re hitting the same ports every week. So stay tuned friends and Mom: next week, I shall regale you with sea-tales of our first shows, our first port stops, and my massive, massive sunburn. G’night!

Back in Business, Baby!

Hey everybody! Long time no see. I figure the easiest way to keep in contact with everyone while I've shipped off to sea is to start the blog back up. Yup, for the next 2 months, this will be the best place for Ian-related information. As you may know, I just accepted a job with the Second City, performing for 2 months aboard a 'Norwegian Cruise Lines' cruise ship. This past Tuesday, I left town, but not before I had a late breakfast with some friends at Fran's 24-hour diner.


As usual, I showed up about an hour late. Brandy, JimKim, PK, and Kyra were there, to enjoy pancakes and good times. Good relaxing quiet times. Namely since the night before was spent at the Willow bar, drinking our faces off after a Bad Dog show. I have cool friends (especially considering how JimKim burned the entire 1st season of "Heroes" for me to watch on the boat).

So the first part of my fantastic voyage brought me to Pearson Airport, where I met up with Marco Timpano and Amanda Barker, my fellow Canadian shipmates.


Fun facts about Amanda and Marco:

- The three of us worked together several years ago in the improvised dinner-theatre show ‘Tony ‘n Tina’s Wedding’.
- Amanda is a fellow East-Coaster (kind of) from New Brunswick.
- I went to Dalhousie and was friends with her brother Garrett Barker (we discovered this years later).
- Amanda is also in the Second City Toronto Touring Company.
- Marco is a very cool guy who has been improvising for years in Toronto; we’ve also taken classes together in the past.
- Marco and Amanda are dating. Awwww...

I immediately marveled at how much luggage Marco and Amanda packed. Granted, they’ll be on the boat for 4 months (whereas I’m only doing 2). But seriously, they packed like 3 big bags each. I immediately began to assume that I had forgotten to pack important things (turns out I did). We got our stuff together, and went through immigration without a hitch. Upon arriving in the terminal, one of the ladies who drives the motorized carts must not have been very busy, because she offered to drive us to our gate. Her name was Sumira, and she was very nice. We got her to drive us a bit farther, to Tim Hortons. Our flight was delayed an hour, so we hung out, got coffee (Amanda and Marco got their last Tim Hortons for 4 months), ran lines, and gossiped about Second City (which is the main Second City performer pastime).

A couple of hours later, we were in the air on our way to the Windy City. We arrived about 9:30, got into the city, and took a work-subsidized taxi to our hotel. It was a fairly nice Best Western, but it was paid for by work, so I was ecstatic (frankly, I would have been satisfied with a teepee in the middle of the park). We looked around for some authentic Chicago cuisine, but then just gave up and ate McDonald’s (it was getting late). The next morning we got a cab to Second City, and were brought into the Mainstage theatre. For the following 3 days, we would get to rehearse on the Mainstage. Needless to say, I was pretty stoked about this. While poking around backstage we soon met our fellow performers. The first was Michelle Miracle, who flew out from Los Angeles. Some fun facts about Michelle:

- That is her real last name.
- She also does stand-up.
- She was an understudy for the short-lived Denver Second City, which was apparently quite the hotbed of talent.
- She does not eat pork.

The next fellow we met was Derek Shipman, from Tennessee (by way of the Las Vegas Second City “Scriptless” improv show). More fun facts:

- Derek is very funny.
- He has a cool, but subtle, Southern Accent.
- He really digs pirate movies, and pirates in general.
- He is about as big a Buffy nerd as I am.
- He doesn’t drink.


This is Derek and Michelle.

And last but not least, we met our musical director, Katy Marquardt:

- Katy is from Indiana, but now lives in Chicago.
- She enjoys musical theater.
- Apparently, her high school had the kick-assest drama program ever.
- She enjoys video games.
- She is a vegetarian, but doesn’t like to bother people about it.


So that’s our cast. We all met up in the theatre, and were quickly introduced to our director, Matt Hovde. Some fun... ah, I’m tired of this joke for now. I’ll tell you more about Matt later (though I will say that he’s a pretty cool guy). We began rehearsals right away, since we had a lot to get through (a whole 55-minute show to rehearse, and lots of improv games to get on the same page with). Matt gave us our full scripts (we only received part of them ahead of time, which I actually had memorized. Go Ian!). We had about 5 scenes, some short “blackout” scenes, and a few improv games (4-Square, Conducted Story, and Debate, for those in the know). The next few days of rehearsal FLEW by, and were honestly some of the most fun I’ve ever had working and performing. The whole experience was like a compressed Second City experience – kind of a “Second City Fantasy Camp”.

But that wasn’t all! We also had some cool side adventures in Chicago. Wednesday night, Michelle and I took a cab up to the Annoyance Theater, and very cool little improv/ comedy theatre in Chicago. It’s kind of like the Bad Dog Theatre in Toronto, except a bit bigger, and with booze. Very cool vibe, though.


It was started by (among other people) a very cool improviser and director named Mick Napier. I recently spent some time hanging out with Mick in Toronto for, uh... reasons I’m not really allowed to discuss yet. But I ran into him there, which was cool. Michelle and I saw a sketch show called “Competing Elderly British Detectives” which kicked ass. Very nerdy, reference-heavy, and tight comedy. Peters, you guys would have LOVED this show. One of the performers in the show (Brendan) was a friend of Michelle’s from Denver who is currently understudying for the Chicago Mainstage, so we hung out with him and his wife Beth (also a Second City performer). They recently returned from working on one of these cruises, so they gave us lots of advice. And a ride back to the hotel. Nicest people ever.
The next night Michelle, Marco, Amanda, and our stage manager Kyle (who was only with us in Chicago) went to see the Second City Mainstage Show, “Between Barack and a Hard Place”. Incidentally our director, Matt Hovde, also directed the Mainstage show. “Barack” was excellent, definitely one of the better SC shows I’ve ever seen. Obviously the show contains a lot of material about Barack Obama, and that night there were over 200 staffers from Obama’s campaign headquarters in the audience. Anytime someone mentioned Barack, they went ape-shit (it felt like a BizCo show, for those who know what I’m talking about). But the coolest part was yet to come... After the Mainstage show, one of the actors, Amber Ruffin, came out to our table and, knowing Michelle from Denver and knowing that we were Second City performers, invited us to do the improv set with them. I can honestly say, without hyperbole, that this was (thus far) one of the highpoints of my year. Maybe more. Who knows? We did a “Commando” set (lots of short scenes), and I ended up in a few scenes that I liked. It definitely wasn’t my finest work, but I had a blast, and got to share a stage with Brian Gallivan, which was really a treat (Mom, you may remember him as the guy from the ‘Gay Shakespeare’ scenes in the “Red Scare” show we saw a few years back). Marco, Amanda, and Michelle were equally as stoked, and we basically talked about it for days. So that was the high point thus far.



This is us backstage. Also pictured hanging out and drinking: Mick Napier. Again.

That seems like as good a point as any to finish off for now. In the next blog, I’ll tell you all about flying to New York, getting on the ship, and my epic battle with pirates! Cheers all.

(note: This blog will have more pictures later. The ship's satellite is being weird. Stupid Bermuda Triangle...)