Will Hines Dot Net

My iTunes will occasionally pull up an embarassing song from my library to remind me of how terrible my taste can truly be.

Currently: “Annie’s Song” by John Denver.

Shivers!

What is unemployment? It is a lifestyle in which getting out of bed at 8:30am makes you feel like you deserve a huge, gold-plated trophy.

I’m learning stuff in Flash.

The cats’ favorite toys: pens, which they bat around the floor joyfully.
Their favorite sleeping place: inside my bed’s box spring, which they have torn their way into.

My iPod is fixed. It was an amazing six-day turnaround from Apple. I filed a support request online on last Wedesday. The next day, DHL delivered a cardboard mailer to my door. I opened it, plopped my iPod in and taped with the enclosed tape. Then I removed the mailing label (revealing a new label addressed to Apple’s headquarters in California) and dropped the box in a nearby DHL drop-box. Today a brand-new iPod arrived at 9am, and it seems to work without a hitch. It loaded 4400 songs in about 10 minutes. Nice!

The Project re-launched at The Magnet Theater this past Saturday. Twelve improv teams performed — roughly 15 minutes each. That’s a ton of improv. But it was a very friendly room with a high concentration of friends in the audience — so it was a fun, forgiving, positive show. Every team had great performances. I was especially glad to see “Fat Kitchen” so I could see Ptolemy, Terry, Jane, Fountain and Chris Himes improvise.

Is it good to have audiences like that, or does it encourage bad habits? I think The Project is actually a good balance of both. It’s forgiving enough to encourage gutsy moves, but still lets you know if you’re really delivering something fun or not. Frankly, it reminds me of the UCBT shows at Solo Arts with its combination of “insidey audience” with “cool secret thing.”

Primal Bias performed (Kevin, Cragg, Lombard, Gavin, Tanouye and me — though Tanouye was absent this time). I love every single show we do and I loved this one. It was silly, even for us, I think. But the audience was eating everything up all night, and I think we indulged that tolerance with some fun, silly stuff.

Oddly, I was very nervous before we went up. I say “odd” because with all the friends in the audience, and with such a short set planned — the stakes were frighteningly low. But I could feel myself becoming very self-conscious while we were being introduced so I forced Kevin to reassure me. “I’m nervous,” I told him. He gave me a “You’re crazy” look. Then I said “Do you like me?” and he closed his eyes in a classic Charlie Brown “Good Grief” expression. Funny. I felt better. I am 34 years old. I was going to take this paragraph out, but it’s these moments of insecurity that are as much a part of an improv show as anything that happens on stage.

I’m very lucky to genuinely like every member of my different comedy projects: Monkeydick, Gameface, Primal Bias and even the intermittent TJ Monkeys. I mean, all the members of those teams make me laugh. I was watching Team Roo Roo (Saturday had Gemberling, Curtis, Wengert and Gelman) and thinking “Man, it’d be fun to perform with those guys.” And then realizing “Oh yeah. I do.” So it’s good.

But do I give off a “I hate women” vibe? A surprisingly high percentage of all my comedy ventures are all-guy lineups, and I swear that is not something that I plan.

Not to get too “movie of the week,” but on days like Saturday I do try to think what it will be like to remember those days when I’m 85 years old. To think that in my life my weekend can consist of getting into a room full of people I like and watch as we perform comedy for each other — even sometimes GOOD comedy? How could it really get better? To be paid for it? That would likely be worse, since I’d be beholden to someone.

Then you throw in how I made a short film with funny people the next day, and how I had performed another improv show on Friday night at the UCBT, which as far as I’m concerned is probably the coolest comedy theater in the world (and just saying that makes it sound un-cool, but I don’t have energy time to frame it in the properly hip and detatched language — it just IS — it is and has been over the past 5 years, for all its ups and downs, the most exciting entity to be a part of) — well, it’s important to value these moments as they’re happening.

When I was 23 I was resigned to the idea that I would never have a life that I would truly want — I would have to settle in some regard. And that’s not as tragic as it sounds, but it was still a bitter pill to swallow. But really, I wouldn’t trade anything right now. The Red Sox are even the World Champions. I’m not sure if I just got so good at “settling” that I don’t even notice, or if things really are that good.

Dear lord, what a saccharine post! What if I say now that I’m going to go screw my cats in their tiny little pussies? Ah yes. That brings up the horribleness level nicely.

Fun Squad Episode 4 — and you can view the first three Fun Squad episodes if you’d like — has been shot. My apartment is covered with scraps of construction paper, scotch tape and alumnium foil. I’m exhausted. You wouldn’t think that answering questions like “Should Rob kick Matt square in the nuts BEFORE the ukelele song or AFTER?’ would be a mentally tiring puzzler, but judging from my current lethargic mental state, it is.

The main problem I have with Fun Squad is that even though I’m the creator — or really, co-creator with Rob, Matt, Jinn and Cragg — I don’t really know what it’s about. It was originally just a lo-fi kids show. Not a parody of a kids’ show, just a kids show — the best one we could pull off given the restriction that we had to film it in 5 hours and couldn’t leave my apartment.

Now we’re making episode 4 and from episode to episode, I still can’t decide whether we should tell a story or just do kids show things. THIS one is designed to win over new fans at the next screening. We’ll see. Perhaps we’ll alienate the establish fan base of Fun Squad fans. But since that mostly constitutes people I know on a first name basis, I feel we could win them back if need be.

It’s ridiculous we’re doing a fourth episode anyway. More people should jump on the Channel 102 train and force Fun Squad out of town on a rail, before we realize whatever it is our show is about and really become unstoppable.

Hopey enjoys sitting on people’s laps when they are at the computer.

More cats in the next day or so.

Paying my taxes. I realize now, that while being unemployed since November 1 has been a joy, that I must indeed get a job.

Here’s my skills, blog readers: PHP, Perl, Cold Fusion, ASP, Javascript, CSS — I know that stuff cold. Also most database programming, especially: MySQL, SQL Server, and Sybase, Microsoft Access. Very solid knowledge of mail servers, spam filters and web servers. A healthy smattering of experience in Java. I’m excellent at cobbling squabbling systems together and figuring out code left behind by curmudgeonly programmers.

I can’t really design pages, though I know HTML so I can figure out why something isn’t appearing the way you’d expect it.

I’m in Manhattan, sitting at a “web2zone” cafe, waiting for mechanics at a nearby garage to finish putting new brakes on my car. I have a garage that I love, which reminds of a list I once tried to make of essential services to know of in order to feel in control of your life:

• good auto mechanic
• good doctor, dentist
• good video store
• good music store
• good coffee place

And, until I buy a laptop with a wi-fi card, a good web cafe. I realize that I typed “good” before each item in that list, and that it’s probably understood that I want a “good” one of each of them. But it felt necessary each time. I don’t just need a video store, I need a “good” video store — so good that you can’t even refer to it without saying the word good immediately before.

Anyway, dropping off my car for repairs is stressful for me because I never want to look weak and unknowledgeable in front of the mechanic. I’m a guy, and I’m supposed to understand cars, right? Cars and sports and maybe professional wrestling. Sadly, I do not really know cars, outside of the specific failures my car has experienced before — which is many, but since my car is a genius and is always finding new and never-before-discovered ways to break (alternator, radiator, transmission fluid leak, controller arm, fuel injectors, caliper pins and wires chewed away by rats) — my past knowledge is rarely helpful.

So my brakes need replacing, and I wanted these guys to install the new headlight that I’d bought.

I ask him “Can you guys replace my headlight? I’ve got a new one.”
And he says “You mean, you got a bulb?”

And I stood there for probably 25 seconds, trying to decide in my head if a “bulb” is the same thing as a “headlight.” The thing I bought was a whole headlight — a glass front, with a bulb presumedly inside, all housed in a plastic box. But maybe that’s all just considered the bulb, right? To distinguish it from the metal housing of the car’s frame? OR, maybe the bulb is just the bulb INSIDE the headlight, and maybe I was supposed to just buy that, and I’ve bought too much. That would be like me, to buy unnecessary parts. Still, it seems like what I bought is what’s necessary. But when my rear brake lights went out, I only had to buy a tiny light bulb, not the plastic cover. I’m thinking about it too much, I tell myself. Who thinks about these things so much? This mechanic never would think about this to this degree. He’d know for sure if it was a headlight or a bulb, and he’d be busy planning his next trip to a strip club, or to a Jets game or something.

In the middle of this reverie, the mechanic interrupts me:

“Hey. Hello? DID YOU BUY A BULB?”
“Um. No. I got a whole headlight.”
He blinks at me. “What do you mean, a ‘whole headlight’?”
“You know, I got — the whole thing — the thing with the glass front.”
Long pause from the mechanic. “That’s the bulb.”
“Oh. Oh, okay, yeah. I got a bulb. A headlight. Bulb. I got it.”
“It’s not a glass front. It’s plastic.”
“Yeah. Is it? Okay, yeah.”
“You were really in space there.”
“Yeah.”

The I walk awkwardly away, wishing I could quickly find some wood to split or a baseball trivia test to fill out in order to confirm my manhood.

I have conversations like that with people. And then sometime later they find out something about me like that I program computers for a living and they say “I never knew you were smart.” Maybe I’m not!

Why don’t I own The Incredibles on DVD yet? Shouldn’t that have happened by now?

I say, “I gotta drink more water.”
You say, “What’s the big deal about that?”
I say, “I’m feeling run down. Water’s good for you. I should drink more. It makes everything in your body RUN better.”
You say, “Maybe you should worry more about going to bed before 3am instead of staying up all night putting inane entries in your blog.”
I say, “Just pass the water.”

“You” in this entry is played by Dennis Quaid.

There have been some requests for more cat pictures. I’ll get on it.

You’re not supposed to talk about the weather. That’s too cliche. And if you do talk about it, complaining is even more cliche. But I’m going to talk about it, and I’m going to complain. If it makes you feel any better, I promise to spend only one sentence doing it. And here we go: I’m sick of the rain.

In other, unrelated news: One of my improv teams, Primal Bias (myself, Kevin, Lombard, Cragg, Gavin, Tanouye), did a very fun improv set tonight and then went to Two Boots pizza. I ate so much of the pizza I started wondering if I was mad at it.

I went to tell someone they were acting “bananas” today, but decided that I’ve been saying “bananas” too often, so right before I said it I tried to switch to saying “nuts” and instead said “bnuts,” which somehow sounded racist. Don’t look for a logical reason as to why it sounded racist — it doesn’t sound like another racist term. The word “bnuts” just sounds like it SHOULD be a racist term, somehow. There’s hate about it.

I’m looking for free-lance computer work, blog readers. If you know anyone who wants a web programmer who knows PHP, Perl and a bunch of databases including MySQL and Sybase, then drop me a line.

I’m reading Supreme, a comic by Alan Moore. I’m just going to give in and read every comic he’s written. I think I’m fairly close anyway.

For those of you still reading, hello there. It’s late.