I recently tossed some of my old history lectures up on YouTube. Be sure to watch it two or three hundred times, and tell all of your friends. I already have one subscriber. This means that my claims of being slightly famous on the Internet now carry some weight.

I recently was amusing at a party. We thought it was going to be an improv show, but it all went horribly wrong when we realised that the hostess had not hired us to perform structured short form improv games to entertain her guests, but had rather hired us to mingle with her guests, trying to liven up the party simply by making it seem she had more interesting friends. Heather blogged thereapon.

Later that very same night, Steve and I did the Bovine Bleu Cow Five show contest. We were performing as the Denver based improv comedy group known as the Denver Wigs, and we performed improvisational comedic theater games. We got second place, and won a video tape of the blue collar comedy tour. Yes, an actual tape, in VHS glory. Trevor/Robert took it home. He was there, too. We lost to a standup who was well prepared enough that she was basically reading her whole routine off the notes in her hand. But, she brought more friends than anybody else. Apparently, she considers Whole Foods to be the best icon of Colorado culture, and a source for comedy. Because, you know, grocery stores that have an organic section don’t exist anywhere else in the world. Outsider perspective comedy can be entertaining, but it can also be a dismal failure… She proved the latter with her bit on whole foods. The premise was that everybody in the audience was an asshat just because Whole Foods exists.

The Adventures of SkullFucker is coming along. A second episode is nearing completion. And, it’s way too fucking long, so it may be a two parter. The core outline for the first ten episodes exists. Expect episode one to be live in February.

Marilyn called me a few weeks ago and asked me to do a show for her. The past few weeks have just been spent leaving each other messages. Honestly, I was rather amazed when I realized I was actually talking to her. In the end it boiled down to a conversation that lasted about two minutes. The show is at 8:00.

I’ll post more as I have more. My dinner theatre show for the 24th is now up in the air, and may not happen. Flaky client. There is also a possibility of an Enterfornment Late Night show through August at the Bug.

It wasn’t exactly a comedy show. When you talk about Osama bin Laden, and our support of the repressive Diem regime in Vietnam, the whole show can’t be 100% funny. It did have some funny parts. The audience did laugh a lot, and they got a lot of the jokes. I think one of the best laughs was showing a picture of Eric Estrada when talking about a Mr. Estrada who was important in central American politics around the start of the 20th century. Go figure, eh? A similar joke about Mr. Diaz with a picture of Cameron Diaz was found to be more confusing. Mostly because I botched the delivery.

The first act had First Barbary War, War of 1812, Opening of Japan, Spanish American War, and the Philippine American War. It ended right before the start of the 20th Century. The band, “The Moment” played in the middle of the act to break things up, right after Opening of Japan.

The second act featured American meddling in Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, a note about Sayid Qutb and his role in creating the ideology that inspired Bin Laden while he lived in Colorado, Iran, Nicaragua some more, Panama some more, our role in the 1980′s Iran (again) – Iraq war, and Iraq again ( in Operation Desert Storm aka “The second first Gulf War” ). The overall theme was the importance of understanding our enemies, and how it can save us money, time, and lives. Almost every war, revolution, and overthrow included a line about how “it was then that we as a nation finally came to understand the vital importance of understanding our enemies.”

So, since the show ended with a brief mention of the Iraq-America war in 1991, the closer was a note about how thankfully, we finally acted according to the one lesson that was learned so many times over. We finally understood our enemy and acted accordingly (at least for a while). And, we closed with the infamous clip of Cheney talking about what the results of invading Iraq would have been. It would have been a Quagmire, because Iraq isn’t a unified country, but a collection of chunks which could not all simultaneously be controlled by us, and chucks would have fallen out of our control. It seemed a fitting and poignant end. The audience seemed to appreciate the irony.

So, I never adressed the current Iraq war directly, but in a sense, the whole show (and basically all of American history) were basically a setup for it. The show had enough historical examples to allow the audience to understand the current war in a different context, even though there wasn’t much discussion of Iraq. (Except for a few pictures from modern times used as an ironic means of explaining past events. Like how the water torture in the phillipines over a century ago was just the work of “a few isolated individuals,” in almost the same way that things like water torture and psychological torture is officially the work of a few isolated individuals in our current global war on terror.)

So, all in all. The audience says they liked it. They laughed during the show, and the vibe felt good. There is plenty of room for improvement, but it went well enough that I am planning to do more educational shows when I get a chance.

As for upcoming stuff, the 24 hour film contest is in a few months. Dunno if I’ll participate. I am doing some private dinner theater in July. Iraq War: The Musical is coming to town, and I missed my chance to audition. And, the Regional Championships for competetive air guitar will be taking place in Denver. I certainly won’t be competing as I have no musical inclination, but I will probably be a supporting member of the Rock a Feller entourage. (Who I insist ought to dress up as John D. Rockefeller.) No word if Bjorne Turoque will be there.

I think this lolcatz picture is funny, and makes me want to do an economics show