Will Hines Dot Net

The Hines Bros went to Gosport, Indiana this weekend (population 700) to witness the high school graduation of our cousin Paul Craig. Above is a picture of Kevin standing outside the Gosport Tavern, which was as small and divey as central casting would wish. I would say this trip was a rousing success. Family events ebb and flow with the Hineses. We’ve gone five years without seeing anyone outside of us and our father, and then — boom — suddenly we’re seeing the extendeds three times a year.

I like my family’s reunions. Constant, low-key sarcasm is essential currency. I think it’s a midwest/Canadian thing — the need to take nothing seriously, to make fun of yourself and everyone, warmly, at every turn. It’s not just a cooler full of soda and beer, it’s the Beverage Center. It’s not just a round of Taboo, it’s the Game Night Portion of the Evening — referred to thusly by everyone, with a smile and eyes rolling. This is the land where David Letterman was born.

As always, there were silly door prizes given out via a semi-elaborate series of rules. A lovingly done but somehow hilarious pencil etching of Uncle Harry, done by one of his archaeology students at IU, was the most sought-after prize. Brother Brian won it, but cousin-in-law Bridgette spent the rest of the night stealing it back in mock-fury.

Maybe these examples sound boring to the outside world. But to me, it’s a good, reassuring time.

Good brother bonding, as far as that goes. The Hines Bros. flew out from NYC Friday and back again Sunday afternoon. We plowed through my Aunt Sue’s photo albums to view our own dorkiness rise and subside (relatively speaking) over the years.

Highlight of the trip: Saturday night, after the graduation there was a party at Aunt Sue’s (mother of the graduating senior). Myself, my post-21 cousins and my Aunt Carol decided, in a city snobby sort of way, that it would be “fun” to go to the Gosport Tavern for a round, since it was only one block away and looked from the outside like — well, you can see it in that photo — the kind of place where twelve milquetoasty Ohioans would never decend (my family is originally from Ohio).

Anyway, we go to the tavern for a round. Then my Aunt Sue, who discovered that we had left, burst into the doors very much like a cowboy slamming open saloon doors. “Where in the hell is my family?” The five non-relatives in the place look up, surprised. “You get youselves back to the house! We’ve got DOOR PRIZES to give away!” She walked, intentionally bow legged a la Gary Cooper, over to her sister and warmly yelled “Get your no-cartiledge knees BACK TO THE HOUSE!” It was really funny. I wish I took a picture but I was too busy making fun of how much Van Halen was available in the jukebox.

I liked seeing Paul especially. For a long time, he was the member of my mom’s extended family that I knew the least. But now I’ve seen him four or five times over the past three years, and I’m glad he’s become a familiar face. He was born in March 1987, three weeks after my mother died. I vaguely remember talking with my mom about her being excited to see him — her baby sister’s child — and she didn’t make it. That was such a sad time. Paul’s birth was a needed happy event for the family. So here we are 18 years later. I’m glad to have seen him graduate, and to see a great portion of the rest of my family while I was at it.

Click on the picture above to see a few other photos.

I played a two-second part on Late Night with Conan O’Brien yesterday. Am I bringing this up to show off? Yes. Yes, I am.

Although “bit” or “extra” parts are glamorous in only a shallow way. You’re AROUND famous people, but you’re not doing anything that couldn’t be done by… kind of anyone. Still, just by association, you feel oddly successful. And people get excited by seeing their friends on television. Two years ago, Jeff Blackman let me be “Scientist #2″ in a Comedy Central promotional spot (that was advertising their new deal to broadcast, fittingly, new Conan O’Brien episodes). I simply stood in the background as a chimpanzee demanded to see more Conan, but I got phone calls from a good ten or eleven people for that flash of fame.

Last night I had the honor of holding out a Bible as a miniature Jay Leno drove by in a minature car and “reinacted” Jay’s testimony at the Michael Jackson trial. This is my third time on Conan and my total screen time on that show is now up to about eleven seconds. It brings my total comedy and writing earnings, lifetime, up to about $800. $250 of that was a bad check I got to be a slimy real estate agent (http://www.theplug.org/dave.html — see the Marci Homes commercial at the bottom), but I’m counting it.

One of the benefits of having super-low expectations for your life is that you’re thrilled by the smallest triumph. For example, as my self-deprecating presentation will tell you, I’m fully aware of how truly small and unimportant it is to strut around the backstage of Conan O’Brien in a baliff’s uniform, waiting for a little person version of Jay to drive by. But on the other hand, it’s fun to see the inner workings of a show which you truly think is hilarious. I sit in the back hallway trying hard to not just grin like an idiot for the whole afternoon.

The real thrill is that by being there, you feel like you’re just one small step from WRITING for the show, which would be amazing. In a very reassuring way, it doesn’t really feel that different from being backstage at UCBT. People walk around making jokes, pouring over scripts and tweaking lines. The main difference: 1) the product is on national television and 2) the props and costumes are far superior. My baliff’s costume was somehow hilarious all by itself — I felt like a living parody of Walking Tall. So you have the illusion of fitting in perfectly even though you’re only there for the sake of a 2 second bit after the monologue.

When I tell these stories to my youngest brother over IM, he has a one-word response: “Famous.” For a long time I would insist that I was not famous. Then, at a Pixies concert last December, as I was in the middle of insisting I was not famous, someone walked up and said he recognized me from performing at UCBT. It was the one and only time this has happened to me, but it has taken away all credibility from me resisting my brother’s claim. So yes, I’m totally famous.

A side note: Billy Idol was the musical guest on Conan last night. I learned that women LOVE Billy Idol. When he was in his dressing room, women would walk back and forth repeatedly in front of his door, I assume hoping to catch a glimpse. During his sound check, I heard two different women comment “Wow, he looks great.” while watching him on the monitors. When he wasn’t in his dressing room, the hallway seemed empty. Chris Rock was in the other dressing room and only the comedy geeks seemed to give a crap.

A few days ago I bought raw almond butter to substitue for my peanut butter, thinking it would be healthier. I know it should be healthier because:

a) It tastes like crap.
b) It cost a lot ($9 for a jar).
c) All this weird liquid floats to the top of the jar after it’s been sitting. Weird food = healthy, yes?
d) It has no added sugar. It’s just the pure, unadulterated taste of very bland almonds ground into a syrupy paste.

Then I finally checked the ingredients. Turns out it’s still got tons of fat in it. Less sugar, sure, but it’s still just a jar of fat cream — this time without the taste or inexpensive price.

Tune in tomorrow for more of Bridget Hines’ Diary.

I also want to add that today I put my new Ben Folds CD into my iMac. Apparently, it has a DVD recorded on one side, because when I accidentally put that side into my iMac, it played the contained videos in full-screen, vividly-colored glory. I was so flabbergasted that you can both put a DVD on the same piece of plastic as a CD and also expect an iMac to handle it with no problem that I simply stared at the screen for three minutes without really comprehending what was going on. The technology, which I am intellectually aware is very simple, was so astounding to me that I could feel my grey matter folding in on itself in amazement. I felt like my grandfather used to look when he’d watch me play Defender on my Atari 2600.

I had an audition yesterday. You might ask youself “Hey, are you just going out of your way to mention that you’re the kind of guy who gets auditions as a plan to sound really cool to people who are not trying to act for a living?” Yes. Yes I am. I’ll say it again: I had an audition yesterday.

I audition about once a month. Usually for commercials, and occasionally for something more. I have friends who audition all the time, like every day and for them it’s perhaps routine. But I am always disproportionately excited and nervous for an audition as if it might perhaps TOTALLY TRANSFORM MY LIFE INTO ONE OF WEALTH AND POWER. When really the most it could likely do is transform my life into one where I am the voice you hear when watching a deodarant commercial. Still.

I’ve had two callbacks for commericals, was cast for one very small-time commercial, and also cast in a short film. Despite that modicum of success, at each audition I still feel like I’m faking it, and that at any moment a giant cubicle is going to pounce on me to return me to my natural habitat of corporate computer programming. It took me 10,000 improv shows before I had the confidence to describe myself as someone who “does improv” so with merely 20 or so auditions under my belt, I certainly have trouble considering myself someone who is trying to be an actor.

Regardless of experience, I enter auditions with a mix of confidence and dread. On the plus side, I’ve done enough improv that I believe I can be funny and act a little, and I feel like I have a sense of what I’m like on camera and on stage. On the other hand, I usually get called into auditions as a “comedic improviser” which I THINK to most people means “makes up silly songs that rhyme, ” and “does totally hilarious celebrity impersonations like that guy on SNL who does totally hilarious impersonations.” And then I proceed to underpower the room with low-energy stammering that makes Bob Newhart look like Freddie Mercury.

Yesterday, I auditioned to be a sketch performer on a VH-1 type of “list” program. They wanted, I think, bits and sketches riffing on celebrities. The auditioners were nice people, open to a variety of ideas, of which I had none. Nonetheless, I would love to see a sketch group comprised of eight or nine Will Hineses riffing on various celebrities. Since they wouldn’t be able to do any impersonations, it would just be a group of balding men complaining and worrying about whether people like them. But I bet I’d laugh!

I mostly enjoy these auditions. I don’t mind if I can tell I’m not right for it. I pretty much just try to enjoy myself as much as possible, and let them decide if I’m right or not.

But I used to suffer. My first audition, a few years ago, was for some prank show. I loathe those shows, and would be unable to have any fun pulling any kind of prank on anyone. Yet there I was, with four other people, all of whom were screaming loudly for attention, as we pretended to be a group of unattractive strippers crashing a frat party or something. The casting directory stopped us, and gave these notes: “Okay, every one give me a little less, except you ” she said, pointing at me. “You, give me more. A lot more. 1000 times more. Really open up your face. Open it way up. Really open it up and give me 1000 times more. Okay? Way more. Open it up.” For a moment, I thought she wanted me to open my mouth for the whole take.

So I tried to be what I thought they wanted and gave it a lot of energy, except that I kept laughing in the middle of it with a combination of embarrassment and genuine amusement of how terrible we all seemed to be. That seemed pointless and by the end I felt oddly humiliated, as if someone had ripped my skin off and laughed at my intestines.

So now I have fun. Yesterday was fun, even though I knew from second number two that I wasn’t the laugh-a-minute explosion of energy they probably needed. I still get to tell people “Hey, I had an audition yesterday.”

A sign that I am listening to my iPod too much: Today I became enormously frustrated in my apartment trying to find where I had put my iPod until I realized I was at that very moment listening to it.

Volume 3 of The Complete Peanuts came out recently. I bought it this weekend and am currently devouring it visually. It makes me so happy that I wish you all would read it. Peanuts gets a bad name among those only casually acquainted with comic strips because a) it was so over-merchanidized that even Garfield’s Jim Davis would be appalled and b) it wasn’t really funny after the mid-80s (with some exceptions, as John Reynolds will tell you).

But from 1950 until somewhere around 1985, Peanuts was pretty consistently hilarious. Not in a “you have to remember being a little kid” hilarious. Not in a “hip to things that smart people tell me are cool” hilarious. Like primally, in-your-gut FUNNY. On top of that, it was economically and elegantly drawn.

I myself underrated Peanuts for years until Kevin insisted that I was not giving it its due, so I bought a few old paperbacks (those old “You’re A Complete Loser, Charlie Brown!” or whatever). And Kevin, as is usually true when it comes to matters of comics books was 1000% correct. It was great. I’m surprised how much physical comedy there is in these strips. Compare it with the crap that’s in the comics pages today. Peanuts had rhythm, and got as many jokes out of Linus angrily shaking his tiny fist as today’s Daily Craptastic gets out of 500 words.

Also, this “Complete” series is one of those rarely well-packaged reissues. It looks good sitting on your shelf. It was done by people who loved the content, just like Rhino records’ awesome re-releases of Elvis Costello CDs or the nice “Complete Monty Python’s Flying Circus” DVD set. Also The Complete Peanuts will satisfy the obsessive collector because it is, well, COMPLETE. Schulz apparently held back many strips from being reprinted becuase he didn’t think they were good. He was probably right, but it’s still satisfying to know you’re getting EVERYTHING. It’s also amazing to see the sheer volume of jokes this man came up with over his life.

How often does someone give a crap about their work for so long? The amount of love Schulz poured into these strips is staggering. One strip at a time for 50 years, this guy built an empire! An adorable one!

Thank you Fantagraphics for making this happen.

I’ve got this thing about food, which is that I don’t care about it. Despite having pretty elaborate opinions on popular music, movies, books, television shows, coffee mug humor, quality of life in various cities — I have never developed an appreciate for food in almost any sense.

Last night I had dinner with Mitch Magee and his gal Kaveri Nair at a great Chinese restaurant on Ninth Avenue. I know it’s great because I’ve heard other people tell me it’s great. As far as I’m concerned they could bring out the food in tubes of paste, because my main concern about food is how fast it arrives. Also, perhaps partly because I have little opinion on food — I eat it faster than anyone I know. It’s probably disgusting. The only person I know who eats even remotely close to as quickly as I do is Tony Carnevale. Thank God for Tony.

The only advantage to having no opinion is that in most cases, I’ll just as happily eat healthy stuff as I will unhealthy. A plate of barely-cooked broccoli without butter isn’t much less satisfying than a dripping tuna melt to me. As long as it’s fast.

Anyway, I hear this place is great. Mitch likes food, and takes a long time to order. He reads the whole menu, considers out loud his various options, likes to ask the waitress various questions, consults the people he’s eating with — and then places an order, even then with a furrowed brow as if he’s still thinking about the Family Style Bean Curd he almost went with.

On one hand it drives me crazy, since I’m ready to order upon being handed the menu. But on the other hand, I admire Mitch, since I know he has this whole world of enjoyment that I miss out on. I think of how I have friends who don’t really have advanced opinions on music, and how they’re missing out on The Pixies, Joanne Newsome, old Bruce Springsteen, The Postal Service and even The Beatles, for heaven’s sake! How can these people just reject the happiness that I have every day from listening to my iPod? And yet, there I am, ordering chicken with broccoli in every Asian food restaurant I have ever been in.

So meals with Mitch are a learning experience. Same thing when I eat with Ptolemy. Ptolemy likes to deliberately order as well. He also likes to ask the waiter/waitress for his/her opinion on the best meal available. He asks the guys behind the counter of 6th avenue pizza joints what they think the best slice is. I can see the logic of this approach, even as I wolf down my second slice of plain cheese pizza while he does it.

So I’m trying to learn. I do this occasionally — trying to consciously correct my natural habits. They say to “be yourself.” But what if “yourself” has a bunch of sucky tendencies? It’s a judgment call when you should try to override your natural inclinations and force yourself out of your comfort zone. But I do it fairly often. When I was 22 I realized I had never really had any Indian food, or sushi or Thai or even any fish besides salmon — and I asked a seemingly more cultured friend of mine to take me to different places in the great melting pot of Danbury, CT so I could see what they were like. It was work for me, but I hated feeling left out.

Two days ago, I bought the Slow Food Guide to New York. I’m trying to eat more slowly. I broke open my old copy of Andrew Weil’s “Natural Health, Natural Medicine” in which he advises “Eat slowly and with gusto.”

See, I agree intellectually with the idea of enjoying food. But I get a special joy when I sit down with a group of people who all order burgers and fries right away, don’t even think about asking anyone to split their dishes with anyone else and then eat everything in 15 seconds. I know it’s “wrong” but it’s also oddly reassuring.

I’ve taken improv classes and practice improv comedy on and off since (gasp) 1996, and with great intensity since the fall of 1999. So you think I’d have it figured out by now, as much as anyone ever does have it figured it out, and of course, I don’t.

But I do have one thing figured out. And that is the answer to this question: what does it take to feel good about an improv show? See, before most shows, I come up with a goal or a focus for that show. Like “Today, I’m going to focus on starting with strong energy.” or “Today, I’m going to be mindful to end scenes when they should be ended.” Or something. Like Monkeydick performed Friday night, and my goal was to “Be Lively” which is to say I didn’t want to think too much, I just wanted to BE. And for the Primal Bias show on Saturday, I wanted to bring more of myself onstage, as opposed to forcing myself into a character that I didn’t want to do.

And my feelings after each show had nothing to do with how well I accomplished either of those tasks. My feelings after each show are related to one thing and one thing only: how much the audience LAUGHS at me.

I want them, in every show that I do, to fall out of their chairs bellowing, holding their sides with one hand to relieve the pain their great laughter is causing them, and pointing at me with the other to make clear that it is indeed me who is causing such a reaction. I want them to talk about me and the amazing things I did for years afterwards. I want to be something that an audience member reminisces about when he or she is 120 years old. “Remember that thing that guy did on stage where he obtusely referred to Rushmore? That was hilarious.” I want the mothers in the audience to begin rearing their children to be tiny models of me. I want the mayor of New York, every girlfriend I’ve had, my entire fifth grade gym class and every past generation of my family to be sitting in the audience and declare me the funniest, smartest most creative person they have ever imagined. And not my team, either. Fuck my team. I mean ME. ME. I want them to laugh at ME. CONSTANTLY. I want a relentless non-stop cacophony of roars and admiration from everyone in the audience from the moment I step out on stage until the show ends and I step out of the building into my diamond-studded helicar limousine to go home and bathe in a tub of liquid praise.

I want this even though never since 1996 have I garnered even a degree of that reaction from anyone, in any context. I’m not really sure of the biggest laugh I’ve ever gotten really. And now that I think about it, I’m not really sure where I developed the idea that I’m funny at all. I know I’ve had that perception of myself to various degrees my whole life, that I can remember. But I’m not sure anyone has ever laughed even 1/100 as much as I truly desire. I bet if I could see a tape of the biggest laugh that I have ever received it would involve me being drunk and trying to put my coat on, or maybe me letting go an enormous fart when I was eight months old or something.

Regardless, that’s what I want. And I measure the success of each show based on how close I get to it. In the end, I couldn’t care less at how “good” an improviser I am. If the audience laughs, I feel good. And if they don’t, then I feel like crap. If my team walks out on stage and takes a big dump on every improv practice we’ve ever sworn to, but the audience is crying laughing, or even moderatly laughing, I walk off smiling. And if we hold ourselves to the ideals that we have practiced and studied for years, but the audience sits there bored, I want to break up with my team and never talk to them or anyone in the comedy community ever again. And that is the truth, and it’s not artistically sound, nor is it necessarily productive, but it’s the way it works.

I’m not saying it’s GOOD or anything.

In an effort to keep the Hines coffers flush with cash, I’ve picked up a bunch of computer programming free-lance work lately, and contrary to my work habits sometimes — I’ve been plugging away at it. I’m trying to decrease turnaround time and crank through as much stuff as I can. But that means I’m sitting in front of my computer for fairly long days, most days. And, as always happens when I adopt such a lifestyle — I have become a robot. My nervous system has merged with my computer and I am now, as they say in the William Gibson novel Neuromancer, “jacked in” to the internet and can no longer remember what my physical body feels like.

I have two computers. My personal worst moments are when I check my email on one, then walk across the apartment to go to the bathroom and stop at the second computer to check my email again.

I’m categorizing this one under books because I mentioned a book. I have only one previous entry there and I’m embarrassed by that.

I’m currently reading Fever Pitch and a collection of Supreme comics by Alan Moore. There, that’s two more books. Now I can categorize this there without guilt.

Compared to a PC, typing on a Mac is like typing underwater. There’s a slight delay, it seems, before any letters show up on the screen.

I spent most of yesterday writing a PHP script which could report how many hits and unique hits a series of web sites received. Then I went to UCBT and was in a Gameface sketch in which Mitch was a shirtless Abe Lincoln. That’s a good day.

Through an email glitch, every email I’ve sent this year to promote Monkeydick shows — there’s been about seven — were sent yesterday afternoon. None of them had gone out when I actually typed them, dating back to January. But they all went yesterday. I got about 12 or 13 emails from irritated people, who all assumed we had intenionally sent them. Although I can understand where doing so would be rude, I am irritated right back at these people because a) it wasn’t intentional — it’s pretty obvious that there’s some sort of error or freaky behavior going on and b) it’s just 7 emails. Deleting 7 isn’t really THAT much harder than deleting 1, you know? People have gotten used to receiving their spam on mortgage quotes 10 times a day, but there’s a really low tolerance for emails promoting improv shows.

The cats are getting fat fast now.