Will Hines Dot Net

I don’t remember seeing this since I’ve started improvising. Hamlet’s advice to actors. Here’s his comments for comedians (I believe saying to avoid laughing at yourself on stage):

And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them, for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the meantime some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That’s villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.

VILLANOUS! Also, the opening comments speak against over-acting, methinks:

It offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant — it out-Herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.

So bad acting out-Herods Herod? It’s worse than the man who asked for the head of Jesus? Hyperbole much, son? This guy sounds like Delaney!

Fun, though.

Erik and I made this today based on a sketch I wrote some time ago. The back light is just a tad harsh.

Two Guys Who Reasonably Disarm Farcical Situations

Check out that bad ass photo of my favorite comic artists Los Bros Hernandez from 1982, getting ready to sign copies of their then-new series “Love and Rockets” (before the band named themselves after it).

And check out this even more bad-ass photo of my brother Kevin and I, also from 1982:

I am showing my brother some serious Applesoft in that photo! Eagle-eyed fans can spot the column of stickers of Star Wars figures names on the corkboard in the background — leftover from a second Darth Vader figure case.

Anyway, Kevin and I have two shows!
1) Tonight we are performing Wednesdays with Harold at the Creek at 8pm! Two man pattern game!

2) Tomorrow we are competing in Cagematch at UCBT-NY at 11pm against the very tall Classic Masculinity! We will win because they are all tall whereas Kevin and I are both tall and short! HEIGHT VARIETY WINS CAGEMATCHES!

As long as I’m posting about American books or whatever it is that I’m doing, I take this moment to remind you that Jerry Siegel, the guy who created Superman along with his artist partner Joe Shuster — his birthday is October 17. He wrote Action Comics #1 when he was 24, thus creating one of the most successful and famous stories of all time. Celebrate accordingly.

CONS: It makes you look like a pretentious douche. Or maybe like a tiny-dicked angry person reading Nietzche prominently like Kevin Kline’s character in A Fish Called Wanda. It’s heavy. It’s dense and rambly with lots of big words hanging off of run-on sentences and therefore takes mental energy.

PROS: It’s more fun than you’d think. There’s more funny parts than I remember. The dramatic parts are very cool. Melville seems crazy but he seems to know it. You feel like a smart person. You feel like an American.

If nothing else, you should read the first paragraph if you’re a New Yorker. Ishmael is explaining why he feels the need to go to sea, and the way he describes himself feeling depressed in NYC (wanting to knock people’s hats off of their head, stopping in front of coffin stores) feels accurate to me!

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off — then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

Whole book here.

What are the most American books? I was catching up on Mad Men episodes, and got to the point where one of the British managers of Don Draper’s ad firm says “I have been reading some of your American literature” and I knew that it’d be Mark Twain because whenever someone says they are reading American literature it’s Mark Twain. I remember an Atlantic Monthly profile on Saddam Hussein years and years ago which said “He even reads American literature — the complete Mark Twain sits on his bookshelf” (the profile was not complimentary, despite what that sentence implies).

Separate from that, on the documentary shoot we were watching an episode of Jeopardy while waiting for some lights to be set up and Moby Dick was one of the categories. I was surprised that most people in the room knew the answers to most of the questions even though few had read the book. But maybe that’s because Moby Dick is one of the Great American novels so we all hold onto whatever knowledge we glean because we know it’s “important?”

I certainly don’t mind Mark Twain being the first guy people think of when trying to think of an American author. But what others do people think of? What are the most American books? Or authors?

I’ve been posting a lot of photos of myself and Ben Rameaka and other UCBTers in weird costumes to my Facebook account. People ask me: what’s with the photos? Answer: we are performing in a documentary about the origins of fantasy/rotisserie baseball which some people are making for ESPN.

We are recreating moments in the story — each one as a different genre. So the first ever draft is shown as the founding fathers, and another moment is a 80s cop interrogation scene, and a lot of scenes took place on an actual baseball field. The result is that we get to wear a lot of ridiculous costumes and that we have been on set all day for six or so long days scattered across the last week and are all a bit crazy. Meeting a lot of fun people. There’s a generous smattering of UCBT actors in this mess: Nate Dern, Jonathan Fernandez, Davram Stiefler, Justin Tyler. We all sit around and alienate the other people with Maude / Harold night analysis.

I believe it is scheduled to broadcast early next year. Let us all get together and watch it, okay?

One of the locations was the grave / memorial of Henry Chadwick, the grandfather of baseball statistics. His grave (actually it’s his wife’s grave, but it doubles as memorial for him — wonder how she feels about that) — is surrounded by a mini-baseball diamond. There’s an old timey glove, ball and catcher’s mask on his stone. It’s crazy, but I guess if you’re the first guy to document RBIs and stolen bases for the New York Knickerbockers in 1860 that’s what you get.

When I am buried, will they put two chairs on my grave and a notebook that has things scrawled like “Commit! Find the game!” and a fake mustache? I could think of worse things.

Two plugs, friends.

1) TONIGHT at 10:30pm the Brothers Hines will perform at Friday 1030pm, Sparks Cafe, 121 W.22nd. Kevin and I will be adorable.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=141559797615

2) Saturday night at midnight at the UCBT THE END OF THE WORLD will improvise an apocalypse for you.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=3067476&op=1&o=global&view=global&subj=564729303&id=676227260#/event.php?eid=152951246504

I got to be in an episode of Mitch Magee’s brilliant The Bartender series. Thank you Mitch! I play the cop. Mitch is the bartender.