Tag Archives: Theater

December 28, 2012 · 3:41 pm

What did you do, Joseph, what did you do?

I suspect I am not alone in feeling as though I am never really getting enough done. While I try not to procrastinate too much, I do make jokes about procrastinating a lot. When I realize I’m procrastinating, I have a lot of little motivational phrases I say out loud to myself. One of them is this:

“Get back to work, you idiot.”

And if I don’t get back to work, I sometimes follow up with:

“You are a bad and stupid person.”

Then I feel guilty that I’m being so mean to myself and I try to make it up to me by allowing myself to make a joke on Twitter about procrastinating. And the cycle continues.

This year, I decided to actually review my calendar and make a list of (almost) everything I did. Please enjoy procrastinating from your work to read about mine!

January

I worked with John Kovalic on some spec scripts and started writing daily tweets for @DrBlinkShrink.

I did two shows at The San Francisco SketchFest. CineMadness with Bill Corbett and a short version of my geek stand-up/storytelling show, Comedy of Doom.

I performed the role of “Balthazar, D & D Champion” in promotional videos for a company called Awesome Dice.

I co-wrote an internal awards show for General Mills.

I made jokes on Twitter about procrastinating.

February

I launched the Obsessed podcast as both a live show in Minneapolis and released the first episode online. There have been 10 live shows that have generated 16 podcast episodes.

I wrote a sketch for a magician.

I wrote and performed (with Shanan Custer) a commentary about smartphones for Minnesota Public Radio.

I did a story with the spoken word collective The Rockstar Storytellers.

I was one of the entertainers on JoCoCruiseCrazy II. I performed a full length version of Comedy of Doom. I was thrilled to get a surprise volunteer named Wil Wheaton for my Star Trek bit. I also played the role of “Ed McMahon” on Paul & Storm’s podcast with Paul F. Tompkins.

I gave a talk in a bar about zombies and Minnesota geek culture for the Minnesota Historical Society.

I made jokes on Facebook about procrastinating.

March

I performed at the Twin Cities convention Mars Con.

I started working as an occasional writer and performer on Wits. Since March, I’ve written for and/or performed with Tim Meadows, Rhett Miller, Andy Richter, Reggie Watts, Fred Willard, Paul F. Tompkins, Wyatt Cenac, Bobcat Goldthwait, Amy Sedaris, Dave Foley, Mike Doughty, Maria Bamford, and Brandi Carlile. And of course host John Moe, John Munson and The Witnesses, and other frequent Wits performers Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy, and Neil Gaiman.

I went out to eat with my wife on her birthday. She mentioned maybe I should write a book.

I made jokes on Google+ about procrastinating.

April

I did another story with the Rockstar Storytellers.

I wrote and did eight performances of a one person stand-up show about vampires, stand-up, and vampires doing stand-up called The Sad Vampire Comedy Hour.

I wrote and performed a short story as part of a Minnesota Public Radio showcase led by Kevin Kling.

I did three performances and presentations about using comedy to discuss history for the American Alliance of Museums convention.

I did not get around to making any jokes on social media about procrastinating.

May

I launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the book version of Comedy of Doom.

I wrote a lot of new material for the book. I edited the material from the stage version. I took photos for the cover and organized all the illustrations for the book. I hit refresh on the Kickstarter page roughly 700 times a day.

My odd little rock band called Math Emergency (composed of a math professor, a public radio producer, a public radio host, and me) played a gig. I played the drums and made jokes into a microphone.

I appeared on the AON podcast.

I made jokes on Twitter about spending too much time on Twitter.

June

I went on my friends’ annual bar crawl. I only note this because, while fun, going to 13 bars in 12 hours does feel a bit like work.

I appeared on the Vilification Tennis podcast where I cemented my reputation as an Axl Rose apologist.

I did another story with the Rockstar Storytellers.

I did multiple rounds of proofing and editing on the book and we sent it off to be printed. Comedy of Doom was officially published on June 20, 2012.

I wrote the pilot for an animated series version of the web comic Least I Could Do.

I made mean jokes about Google+ on Twitter.

July

We sent out all the copies of Comedy of Doom to the kind Kickstarter backers.

I attended the big Twin Cities convention CONvergence. I wrote and performed a one person storytelling and stand-up show about romantic advice for geeks called Verbing The Noun. We’ll be releasing a CD and digital download of the show in time for Valentine’s Day 2013. I did a live Obsessed show with Paul Cornell and Bonnie Burton. I did 10 other comedy panels and a signing for Comedy of Doom.

I went to San Diego Comic-Con. I performed at w00tstock. I had fun meetings, fancy parties, and saw a lot of men dressed as Jedi having a hard time at urinals.

I did another story with the Rockstar Storytellers.

I co-wrote and performed a comedy show called Comedy: The Show with Four Humors Theater on the Centennial Showboat in St. Paul, Minnesota.

I made a quick trip to Los Angeles for a friend’s birthday party. I even wrote something for that.

I made mean jokes about Google+ on Facebook.

August

I wrote, produced, and performed in an hour long one act play called Nightmare Without Pants for the Minnesota Fringe Festival. Here is a three minute live video preview of the show, in which I perform an accidental magic trick with a pair of rip-away pants.

Due to the stubborn forward movement of time I became a year older on August 17th.

I performed and did some comedy panels at Dragon*Con in Atlanta.

I made jokes about Google+ on Google+.

September

I was still at Dragon*Con. For one panel, I was challenged to sing “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.” I attempted to do it in the style of Nine Inch Nails. It’s a better song that way.

I did a performance at Space Camp with Marian Call, Molly Lewis, Ken Plume, Phil Plait, and more.

Obsessed was featured on iTunes as “New & Noteworthy” and a “Staff Favorite.”

I co-wrote, helped to organize, and performed in a large awards show for the Minnesota theater community called The Iveys.

I did a podcast with the awesome Len Peralta and became a trading card for his Geek-A-Week series.

I hosted and performed at a viewing of the Doctor Who episode “The Angels Take Manhattan” at The Parkway Theater.

I tried to treat Google+ with a little more respect.

October

I co-produced, directed, and wrote a piece for a theater event called Thirst. It’s a series of short one-act plays performed in a bar. The show had three performances and it was a benefit to fight for Marriage Equality in Minnesota. Here’s the monologue I wrote about Harry Potter and kindness.

I joined The Ladies of Ragnarok (Molly Lewis, The Doubleclicks, and tour manager Dammit Liz) for a leg of their tour. I performed in Chicago, Minneapolis, and Madison. The Ladies also appeared on Obsessed.

I recorded the audiobook version of Comedy of Doom. We’re still working on editing and mastering the hours of audio.

I did another show with the Rockstar Storytellers.

I wrote and performed a ghost story for Torch Theater in Minneapolis.

I played another gig with Math Emergency.

I started a Tumblr account and wrote a thing about Halloween.

November

I used National Novel Writing Month as a motivation to work on some screenplays. I finished plotting and scripting the first drafts of two feature length films. Now working on second drafts.

My wife and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary. The traditional gift is iron. The contemporary gift is candy. We gave one another Iron Man Pez dispensers.

I tried to make fun of Google+ on Tumblr, but I felt like I was kicking a puppy.

December

I wrote and performed the short story Adult Santa for The New Standards holiday show at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota.

I did another story with the Rockstar Storytellers.

We (and by “we” I really mean my wife Sara and my graphic designer, Matthew Foster) made Comedy of Doom available on Kindle, Nook, iBooks, Kobo, and many stores in the Twin Cities.

I wrote a story about the grim superhero The Leaping Lord for Paul Cornell’s 12 Blogs of Christmas.

I started writing a new stand-up/storytelling show that I’ll be performing on JoCoCruiseCrazy III.

I started writing another stand-up/storytelling show that I’ll be performing at the Bryant-Lake Bowl in Minneapolis in March of 2013.

I booked guests for Obsessed through March of 2013.

I wrote some stuff that I’ll perform for my annual New Year’s Eve show at the Bryant Lake Bowl.

I made fun of LinkedIn on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Tumblr.

I debated whether or not I should write this. I stared off into space and screwed around on social media. I beat myself up about procrastinating. I forced myself to write this. I read it. I thought about all the amazing creative people I got to meet and work with this year. I ran the post by my wife and business partner without whom none of the above would be remotely possible.

Later tonight, I’ll watch some TV, drink a martini, and think about ways to get even more done in 2013.

I’m going to start by coming up with some new motivational phrases.

I think I’ll try:

“Come on, you idiot, get stuff done so you have something to blog about next year.”

and

“Stop calling yourself an idiot, you jackass.”

And then I’ll hug myself and move on.

Happy New Year’s,

Joseph

3 Comments

Filed under Comedy Real Life

Tagged as 2012, Axl Rose, Bonnie Burton, Bryant Lake Bowl, Comedy, Comedy of Doom, Comic-Con, Convergence, Cruise, Doctor Who, Dragon-Con, Halloween, Harry Potter, JoCoCruiseCrazy, Joseph Scrimshaw, Kickstarter, Molly Lewis, OBSESSED, Paul and Storm, Paul Cornell, Paul F Tompkins, podcast, Procrastination, Rockstar Storytellers, Santa Claus, Swearing, Theater, Twitter, Writing, Year in review, Zombies

August 7, 2012 · 1:30 pm

All You Can Feel Buffet

For many years, I’ve been involved in a performing arts festival called The Minnesota Fringe Festival. There are many Fringe Festivals across the globe and while my plays have been produced at other festivals many times, I’ve never personally experienced another festival.

On twitter, I recently described the Minnesota Fringe Festival as a mash-up of vaudeville and an all you can eat buffet, but better.

The vaudeville aspect is easy to define. There’s comedy, dance, music, drama, storytelling, stand-up, and strange hybrids. Some year, I will attempt to combine every possible style of performing arts with a show called Mein Kampf: The Musical. It will have singing, dancing, storytelling, probably some mime, and it will be a comedy with moments of dramatic relief.*

The all you can eat buffet is a more bizarre comparison, but more accurate. The festival embodies all that I think is good, and a few necessary evils, in live performing arts.

There are something like 800 performances of over 100 shows. It’s impossible to devour it all. But that whole buffet is spread out in front of you, so you feel like you should keep loading up your plate. Some of the shows will be the best thing you ever tasted, others will be amazing delicacies that are not for you, and just a few will be food poisoning covered in a light Hollandaise sauce.

The sickness inducing plays are one of the absolute best things about the festival. Because the festival is non-juried, anyone can put up a show. A lot of the shows that are difficult to sit through are by young, inexperienced performers. The Fringe offers them a place to learn so the world can later have more awesome, experienced performers.

The first show I did at the festival was far from polished. I got cut in the face with a plastic battle axe while wearing a propeller beanie. I got blood on my hand and when I went to toss a fellow performer a rubber chicken, it stuck to my hand because of the band-aid I had sloppily slapped on my fingers backstage. It was not as entertaining as that makes it sound.

Early on, it was also not the most organized festival. One year, I got my cut of the box office directly from the festival producer. He handed me cash in Loring Park. If you are not from Minnesota know this: At the time, it was not unusual for an older man to hand a younger man cash in Loring Park. It was just not usually for doing a comedy show.

The festival is a well organized buffet now. Audiences stand in line for the beef stroganoff, passionately debating whether or not the macaroni n’ cheese needed sausage or if the meat just made the dish too flamboyant.

The performers and the audiences mingle as they rush from show to show and hang out at bars and restaurants. There is a sense of community, energy, and even urgency. After most theater performances, audiences shuffle quickly out of the theater to go hug their televisions and tell them they were missed. The direct connection between artist and audience at the festival is a powerful experience of the “live” part of “live performance.”

The festival has also had great success getting audience members to write online reviews. The vast majority of them are full of passion and excitement to share new discoveries and old favorites. Some are bitter debates. “It’s called MACARONI N’ CHEESE why is there f**king SAUSAGE in it?” A few are posted by straight-up internet trolls. Artists will find themselves chastised by people who don’t use their real names. We thank you for your incredibly strong, often factually inaccurate, and safely anonymous opinions, Butthead 27 and Theatre Luber.**

Again, the reviews are like a buffet. Some of them are delicious. Others are hard to digest but there’s no way for an artist to learn to stomach a coleslaw stuffed turkey dog without the practice.

The festival has been a big part of my life as a writer, performer, and comedian. It’s given me a place to experiment, succeed, fail, and succeed again. I’ve had a chance to interact directly with the audience, both onstage and off. I’ve met hundreds of other artists. I’ve drank thousands of beers with them. And a huge amount of my name recognition and success in Minnesota (and nationally as a playwright) is because of my performances at the Fringe Festival.

My show this year is a comedy about fear called Nightmare Without Pants. Over the years of doing the festival, I’ve learned what dishes I like to create as a writer and performer. It’s a comedy, but there is meat to it. It’s chocolate with chunks of bacon in it.

If you live in or near Minnesota, and that sounds intriguing to your palate, come check it out. And see as many shows as you can before the festival ends on Sunday, August 12th.

Gorge yourself until you are stuffed full of art, entertainment, and opinions about all of it.

Stay out so late drinking beer and/or pepto-bismol that your television starts to wonder where the hell you are.

Thanks.

*This is a joke. I will never do this. Hitler doesn’t deserve the press.

**These are not, to my knowledge, real reviewer names. I changed the fake names of people to other fake names to protect the probably not very innocent.

2 Comments

Filed under Comedy Trip, Uncategorized

Tagged as art, buffet, Chocolate with bacon in it, Comedy, entertainment, Fringe Festival, Joseph Scrimshaw, Minnesota Fringe Festival, Nightmare Without Pants, online reviews, Theater, Twitter, Writing

November 9, 2011 · 11:03 am

Bullshit Time

There’s a theater event in the Twin Cities called THIRST. It’s an evening of four short one-act plays performed in a bar. The only writing guideline is this: the scene has to be set in a bar. Audience members eat and drink and every ten minutes or so a little bit of theater suddenly starts happening at a nearby table. It’s not nearly as frightening as it sounds. This is a monologue I wrote for THIRST a few years back. Have a drink, enjoy, and try not to be frightened by BULLSHIT TIME.

Excuse me! Excuse me! May I have everyone’s attention for just a moment?

Hi. My name is Evelyn and I am a single woman. I’ve been coming to this bar every night for the last week trying to meet that special someone. I’ve had dozens of blow-my-brains-out-boring conversations with individual men. And I just don’t have time for it tonight. I still have to go to the gym, grab a burrito at Chipotle, and watch at least four hours of television so I’ll have something interesting to dream about when I get my four hours of actual REM sleep before I get up and go back to work.

So basically, I need to save time by hitting on every man in this bar at once. And the ladies who are open to experimenting. I just want a life partner—I’m not picky. As far as I’m concerned a spouse is like a library card or a liberal arts degree–probably wouldn’t actually use one much but I’d be embarrassed if I didn’t have one.

Sooo, about me. I’m adventurous. Obviously. I am an excellent multi-tasker. I can do almost anything I set my mind to and bitch about it at the exact same time. I don’t cook. I’d throw my refrigerator out but that would just be another part of the kitchen floor I’d have to clean. I like to laugh. Sometimes I feed my cat a saucer full of milk and Jameson and then film her trying to play bat the string. I’m not a bitch about it. I don’t post it on YouTube or anything.

What else? I work for an office furniture company. I’m in charge of designing office clocks. I like to think that’s my contribution to bringing the different demographics of the USA together: no matter who you are, how you vote, or where you live—chances are you’ve stared at a clock I’ve made and cursed it for not moving faster.

It’s fair to say I have some issues with the concept of time. I call bullshit on time. Not even time itself, really, but all our bullshit rationalizations.

Time isn’t a friend that accompanies us on our journey. Time is an annoying little jerk poking you in the back. Time is that cliché where you’re driving a car and there’s an obnoxious kid in the back going, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” That’s what time feels like until you turn thirty or forty and suddenly that little shit in the back seat isn’t saying, “Are we there yet?” She’s saying, “You passed it! You passed it! You passed it!”

And there’s no turning around. You can’t whip a shitty on the highway of life. You miss the exit and you’re screwed. You will never use the bathroom at that particular McDonald’s. You just have to wait for the next one. Even though all the McDonald’s kind of look the same, you’ll never know if that was THE ONE.

Not that I’m comparing men to McDonald’s. Sure, men can make you happy and fat and take years off your life, but they are inferior to McDonald’s in one significant way: they do not change their menu or policies based on social or economic pressures. I’m not sure if that made sense.

I don’t mean to be maudlin. I don’t care about getting old. Crow’s feet, love handles, cankles, turkey neck, the golden arches–you name the insulting term for the natural progression of the female body–and I couldn’t care less if it’s happening to me. I just don’t want to get old without having all the stuff I want.

Which leads to the obvious question of what I want.

I want companionship. I want to have sex with a man, then wake up and be happy he’s there instead of wishing I had an ejector button for the right side of my mattress. I want someone who won’t be offended if I accidentally drop the f-bomb during our wedding vows. I want someone to come with me to the emergency vet when my cat’s liver inevitably fails. I want someone who will lie to me and tell me it had nothing to do with the Jameson. And then laugh at his own bullshit.

I want a man who will give me a baby. Literally. Like he’d step out for a pack of smokes and he’d come back and say, “Honey, I decided to pick up some pizza rolls for dinner and I adopted this baby so you don’t have to deal with all that pregnancy crap.”

I want a man who understands that I want the destination without all the damn travel.

Sooo, that’s me. I guess if you could make it through my little presentation and you still want to date me, I’d probably say yes. I’d take you back to my place to meet the cat. I’d tell you to pick out the best of the James Bond films to watch on Blu-Ray and see if you get it right. We’d make sure we can order a pizza without debating the toppings like it was a nuclear disarmament treaty.

There would be no sex that first night. At least not with you.

If everything went really well, I’d pick a fight with you over money just to make sure that’s not going to be a problem. And after that, a hug. A nice warm make-up hug. Because no one ever got gonorrhea from a hug.

So, in closing, thanks for your time. Best of luck with your journeys and if you think I might be the right destination for you, just do what the television tells you to when you’re drunk at 3 AM. Don’t wait! Call now! Supplies are limited and time is running out.