Thursday, February 22, 2007

Brrrr

Canada is cold, and far away. I've realized it's just like America, but everyone's nicer on the whole. Even the plane was nicer aesthetically. Weird. I spent a nice couple days in NY with Karen, and left far too soon for me. But, it's back to work, the show must go on, whatever other cliches you can think of. Tomorrow, I'm supposed to go to the Edmonton Mall, supposedly the 2nd biggest mall in North America. I've heard rumors of a water park, sea lion show, rollercoaster, flamingos, and an Urban Outfitters. Should be fun. Pics as they become available...

Monday, February 19, 2007

Some quick pictures...

My nephew Colin, playing the drums in Akron, OH like his big uncle...

Me outside during our snow day in Springfield Il. Aaron (2nd Tpt player) got a new pocket trumpet with LSU colors. It should be noted that this was after 5 beers or so. It should also be noted that this was taken by my new LGenV cell phone.
Back in NY

Well, for a day. I'm in Queens in Karen's apartment for the day, let me explain. Our Sunday evening show was canceled and we don't have a show till Wednesday night in Edmonton, AB. (Canada) So I decided to come back and hang out for a day and then fly to Canada tomorrow night to get in just after 1am on Wed. morning. We had a good weekend in Aurora, didn't see Wayne and Garth though, sadly. I also found out that Will and Erin will be coming to see me in Vancouver next weekend which is pretty exciting. Maybe he can smuggle a copy of Windows Vista over the border for me.

Karen came and visited this weekend, which she had quite a terrible travel day. She usually travels standby on Delta but because of the weather delays it didn't look good to travel without a ticket. She ended up buying an expensive one way ticket that connected through DC, then Detroit before landing in Chicago. It turns out that she would have gotten 1st class on the standby flight, and EVERY one of her flights were delayed, resulting in her getting to Chicago at 2am. Oh, and they lost her luggage. It was a disaster of a day, but it didn't ruin our weekend.

Well, I'm off to run out and get some lunch with my brother, then get some pizza tonight and watch some 24. I won't be using my phone for 3 weeks after tomorrow, because of the Canada ripoff plan. So, see ya on MySpace!

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Ok, This Is Ridiculous

So, I started this blog thing to keep people updated on my life, but now never update it. Granted, my worst trait is maybe my procrastination, but I'm about to make a change on blogging. We'll see if anyone still reads it, but it'll give me something to do when I'm bored.

The main inspiration for my resurgence to the blogosphere would be Jovan's blog about his new experience on the "Spamalot" tour. Im genuinely excited about reading about a bigger tour than mine and hearing other stories from the road. Definitely check it out if you like theater talk.

Ok, let's talk TV. Lost started again thank god, and 24 had a sweet 2 hour episode this past week. The Office is consistently the funniest show on TV, even though I wanted to hate it, loving the BBC original and all. But my new fix has been, oddly enough, a poker show.

Poker After Dark on NBC is right up there with High Stakes Poker as being the best show on television in that field. HSP lets you in to how a cash game is played, for the first time on TV, so now people can see how to play before they make that trip to their local casino. The problem with poker shows in the past is that a) they're all tournaments, and b) they don't give you a good sense of how the action is going, because they're editing down a 7+ hour tournament to 2 hours. High Stakes Poker is a great example of how cash games are different from tournaments, and should be played just as such.

With Poker After Dark, they take 5 days to show what is essentially a 6 handed deep stack sit-n-go. I find it very informative as they show 85% of the hands and you see the natural ebb and flow of the tournament. You see the setups for the hands that they would just show the result of on something else. Another key thing for me is that they turn the player mics all the way up, and there's one announcer who you never meet. His comments are 99% awful and stupid, but thankfully he doesn't talk all that much, they just let the players play.

They also skip back story stuff and just introduce the players for 15 seconds and play. They don't make a "story" of the tournament, they just play poker. It's a great show for people who have a knowledge of the game already and want to study the game more indepth. I can't recommend in enough, TIVO it or Bittorrent it, which i do.

As for the show, we're in Springfield, Il and we got snowed in last night, thanks to this beautiful midwest weather! We found out we were canceled around 3PM and decided to just lounge around all day. I spent the day watch aforementioned poker shows and The Apprentice alone in the hot tub, ate some dinner and drank a few beers watching more poker shows. I'm pretty addicted to these.

It's Valentine's day today and I'll be seeing Karen late tomorrow night in Aurora, Il, home of Wayne and Garth. There's a casino nearby too, I wonder if we'll go? It's about 12:30 right now, so I'm gonna hit the gym, hot tub, lunch and do a show I guess. I'm goin to Canada soon so I won't have my phone. In the words of Jack Bauer, "Dammit!"