Taking a Breather

What the fuck happened to my blog?
I go to work for two weeks and everything just stops moving. It's almost like I'm the only one doing anything around here.

Anyway, I haven't gotten to sleep in forever and it's starting to take its toll (I have no idea what happened in my class this morning. I think it had something to do with theater though), so now, I'm gonna take my only chance and run with it. And by "run" I mean "lie down motionless for at least three hours".

Sometime this weekend I plan on actually writing some stuff on here (maybe even getting up this month's playlist since the one currently on here is two months old). Until then, enjoy this great clip from the late night Comedy Central show I don't currently work for:

Deplorable Bathroom Habits

A while ago at work I got up from my desk to go to the bathroom (which is, of course, the single most promising way to start a story).
When I got down the hall, I saw the door closing in front of me and instantly let out a long sigh of anguish when I realized someone had just entered.
As anyone who has ever worked a day in their life knows, one needs a kind of getaway spot where you can go and just do...nothing. Everyone also knows, I'm sure, that the bathroom is the most obvious example of said oasis.
For me, it's perfect. I can just sit in there for 10 minutes staring blankly at the wall. It's much more relaxing than the other seven hours and 50 minutes of the day which I spend doing the exhausting task of staring blankly at a computer screen. However, all of this is ruined if there's someone else in the room as well. When I'm alone, the bathroom is an idyllic escape consisting of pristine white marble and flowing water. When there's someone else, it's just a room where I have to listen to other people urinate.
This is why I sighed in anguish.
So, I already had some feelings of animosity towards the intruder but this guy just went out of his way to ruin my prescious bathroom paradise.

First off, the guy was in the middle of three stalls. That's unnecessary off the bat.
The other two were empty, dude. I don't want to be right next to you if I don't have to.

Second, he was peeing in the stall. Like just peeing. Like standing up peeing.
Whoa, what's with that, man? The only dudes who pee in the stall are weirdos and guys with freak dicks.

And finally, the biggest dick move of all, this slimy skunk was peeing, standing up, with his legs spread akimbo so that his feet stuck into both of the other stalls. And he was wearing motherfucking flip flops!
Okay, buddy, that's too far. Now, not only was I stuck next to this douchebag, but I had to stare at his dirty fucking toes.

Some of you are probably wondering why I care so much. Some of you are probably wondering why I wrote a whole post about this. And some of you are probably angry that I put the image of a dirty men's toilet in your minds. Well, the thing is, I want to change the world for the better and my hope is that this bathroom misuser, whoever he is (he was new and I didn't know him) will someday read this blog.
So, to the future iteration of that jackass, I say to you this:
FOR SHAME. FOR SHAME.

America 20XX Preview on NYTheatre.com

Just what the title says. The website, dedicated to all things, well, involving theater in New York, has posted previews of all the shows from this year's Fringe Festival including our very own America 20XX!
Check it out here and remember, you know the site is prestigious because they spell it "theatre".*

And now, because we have the word "America" in the title, here are some one-day-late Fourth of July multimedia goodies:







* In my first week of working at McCarter, I asked if there was a rule for when they use "theater" and "theatre" since they had literature using both. I was told that the general McCarter rule involved using the "re" whenever dealing with a proper noun like the name of a specific building. So, in theory, I could have a sentence saying, "I went to the Jon Bershad Theatre and performed some theater."
Fascinating? I thought so.

I Know All

You know what's one of my favorite things in the world? I love to impart obscure knowledge. And I'm not talking random obscure knowledge, the kind that makes you sound like some Rain Man-esque weirdo listing irrelevent facts. I mean obscure knowledge that fits into a conversation. The kind where, after you say it, people are like, "Dude, how the hell did he know that?".

Today at work I walked into an office to drop off some papers and caught the tail end of a conversation. All I heard was this one guy saying, "...but Rutgers has dissappointed me."
I assumed he was talking about our football team or something, so I asked him what's up. The conversation went something like this (and keep in mind I had just wandered into this office at that moment):

"How has Rutgers dissappointed you?"
"They don't have any cooking classes?"
"They don't? Well, they have Food Science classes."
"Right, but I'm looking for just a simple cooking class."
"Ah. Well, there is a cooking school in New Brunswick."
"There is?"
"Yeah. It's on top of the soup kitchen. I believe they
sometimes prepare food for the soup kitchen."
"Cool."
"Yep. The soup kitchen's called Elijah's Promise. Well, see
ya'."

It's not that anything I was saying was particularly awesome. It's just that these are incredibly obscure facts that the average person walking into the office wouldn't know. Of course, I only knew them because

1. I go to Rutgers.
2. A family friend was a food science major at Rutgers.
3. I did community service at the soup kitchen.
4. I saw the chefs in training while there.

Still, the only thing that would have made me feel better would have been if there were a couple mega hot girls in the office and, when I left, I did so by jumping on a motorcycle, donning my hot shades, and riding off into the sunset.

Putting the "Music" in "Zipperface!!?!: The Hobo Musical" (plus a rather exciting announcement)

A month or so ago I went to New York to interview for an internship with the Colbert Report in the fall. It's was an absolutely massive long shot. Like Eugene O'Neill stage directions long. So I decided not to write anything about it here since I didn't want to jinx myself and I also didn't want to spend months telling everyone who had read the post that I eventually didn't get it.
But I got it.

Yay, hooray for me. I'm awesome, I know. But, yeah, this fall I will be spending three days a week trying to bring Stephen Colbert coffee without accidentally making direct eye contact. It's easily the coolest thing that's happened to me in years. However, I'm going to my best not to get too excited about it since the amount of joy and excitement I feel about something is directly related to the amount of ways it will fall apart right in front of my eyes.

So, to keep from thinking about it, I've been thinking about other cool things Like the fact that the music from Zipperface, the musical I co-wrote, is online! That's right, Brent, resident CAP documenter has uploaded a bunch of songs and soundbites from the show and they're absolutely great.
Of course, let me do my paranoid creater thing and point out the deficiencies right off the bat. Unfortunately, these were taken from the worst performance so I can hear all kinds of problems. Most obviously, this was the night that the guitar was knocked over back stage and was then out of tune for Terry's song (one of my favorites in the show, dammit) so that Dave had to stop playing. Also, you can hear people stumble over lyrics and pacing a few times and somehow we lost the recording of the title song.

Oh, I'm gonna shut up. The songs sound great and it's fantastic to finally get to hear them again. Dave, Andy, and I (and I hope Zach, as well) will be giving them and the eventual video (when it's edited) our undying attention as we try to rewrite the script and bring Zipperface to the next stage. Until then, you can enjoy these as they are and you people who missed the show can kind of see what I've been talking about for the past few months (and be really fucking confused by the references to robots and dinosaurs).

So, here are a few samples.


First off, is the opening tune by a couple members of the Hobo Band:

I can't say enough about how much these guys added to the show. They were made up by members of the New Brunswick band, the Seal Club and were led by Zach Wiseley. Zach is an absolute genius. He also arranged the songs and was able to make them sound like actual musical tunes. I would ask him to do ridiculous stuff like, "Hey, Zach, could you arrange a mixture of all the songs in the first act into one tune to play at the beginning of the second act?" and he'd just do it. Absolutely amazing.

Next we have Morese singing one of the best songs in the show:

Again, this is the night with the shitty guitar. You can hear it right at the beginning. It's so depressing because I absolutely love this song. Fortunately, Morese sells the rest of it and the band sounds great otherwise so it still works. Brent included some dialogue at the end with the punchline of the song. It's a visual joke, so you people who missed the show are gonna be lost, but the rest of us can have fun reminiscing.

Unsurprisingly, I also am posting the Cuban Robot Wars medley, which Brent kept in its entirety. It may be seven and a half minutes long and utterly nonsensical to anyone who didn't see the show (and some who did) but it includes my cameo so, whatever. Plus, it's pretty damn rocking:

For you people who are really confused, here's a brief explanation. I'll try my best to make it simple. The play Zipperface is narrated by a hobo. In the beginning he states that the reason he is able to create the show is because he has software implanted in his head from something he calls "the Cuban Robot Wars". The audience usually shrugs this off as just silly dialogue from a crazy character, however, in act two, the play is interrupted by the narrator having a seizure. Another hobo takes over, however, he doesn't actually know the plot of Zipperface so, when the show starts up again, the audience gets treated to an entirely different musical set during the fabled wars and starring all robots. I played the lead robot.
Understand? Eh. I tried.
In the things that go wrong category, this was the night that I started to laugh and then said "robat" instead of "robot" during my first line. Pretty embarassing to fuck up one of lines when you only have about eight. Especially if you wrote it.

And finally, the best song in the show, the Finale Song:

Nothing went wrong here. This song rules and it will always rule. Plus, this was the night Izzy came to see the show and she was nice enough to hoot when I came onstage to deliver my line. This makes it sound to the untrained ears like I'm some kind of super stud. If only.

If you want to listen to the rest of the songs, you can download them here:
Download: Zipperface!!?!: The Hobo Musical - Music and Soundbites
Again, it's missing the title song but there are a few well-chosen soundbites to make up for it. Like this one:


God, I love this show.

And, hey, I'm interning at the Colbert Report!

Yay for Lupus! (and other internship fun)

I've mentioned my job a few times in recent blogs, so I suppose it's about time that I actually write about what it is. I mean, I guess I could just leave it vague allowing all my readers who haven't spoken to me recently to just imagine what it is I could be doing. Or hell, I could lie and pretend that my position as intern actually involves fighting crime. But...meh. I don't feel like having to come up with new theater-themed supervillains every week. I mean, God, this isn't some offshoot of Getting Super.

Anywho, I am an intern in the marketing department at McCarter Theatre in Princeton. I originally applied to intern in the artistic department but I fucked up my interview. How did I do this? Well, they asked me what I had been working on recently and I attempted to describe the plot of the musical I had co-written. For those of you that don't know, that musical was entitled Zipperface!!?!: the Hobo Musical and is absolutely impossible to describe without sounding like you've just dropped a couple tabs. Here's a paraphrase of the conversation:

Woman: So what's it about?
Me: Well, it's actually based on this really bad horror movie called Zipperface about a serial killer in a leather gimp costume who kills hookers with a machete.
Woman: Uh huh...
Me: But you see, it's a parody of all these musicals based on movies because we decided to make a musical based on a movie no one's seen.
Woman: Right...
Me: So really it's about these hobos that find the script for the musical and decide to perform it using technology that has been implanted in their brains by the Soviets. Which is something they discuss in the beginning of the musical.
Woman: Ok...so did you perform in it?
Me: Yeah. I played a robot.
Woman: ...

This conversation went on for about 10 minutes. I felt like George Lucas trying to tell movie executives that he wanted his sci-fi action film to open with 30 minute of two gay androids wandering a desert.

So, the people I had my interview with clearly thought I was crazy. I could tell as they led me out that they had no intention of ever hiring me. Fortunately, one of the heads of the marketing department (Who does, in fact, read this blog occasionally. Hi, John!) was an old friend of mine and offered me the internship there when his dropped out.

What do I do? Well, most of the time I just stuff envelopes. You see, McCarter gets tons of requests to donate tickets to charity auctions and it is my job to go through these and file and fill them. This would seem boring but I entertain myself by laughing at the people I'm mailing that have funny names. Or the organizations that do. My favorite was this one:


That's right, there is a charity event called the Fun Day for Lupus. It's organized by the New Jersey chapter of the Lupus Foundation of America and you can read about it on their website here.

I'm sorry, but does anyone else think "Fun Day for Lupus" sounds more like a children's book than a charity event for a terrible, terrible disease. Instead of thinking about "thick, red scaly patches on the skin" or "vaginal ulcers" that title makes me think of a happy dog named Lupus who goes to the carnival and, I dunno, learns about sharing. Probably something like this:


So, that's what I do for a large part of my day. Now you know. I do other stuff too, but those things don't lend itself as easily to snarky discussions of possibly fatal diseases.


PS. Hello to anyone who linked over here from the Grindhouse Blog. Once filming gets under way, you can come here to read a discussion from the point of view of one of the dudes in a muddy hospital gown chasing down pretty ladies as opposed to the director who gets to wear actual clothes the whole time.

PPS. Here's the entire new Sigur Ros album, streaming from their website. It's just as good as one would expect. I love this band.

Ivy League Degrees are for Pussies

Today at work (I have an internship at McCarter Theatre blah blah blah I'll write about it at some point) some of us went Dumpster Diving on the Princeton University campus.
Y'know, it's when you go through all the furniture that the college kids left lying on the lawn when they moved out and see if there's anything worth keeping. We have the same thing at Rutgers only it goes by a slightly more...racist name.

Anyway, I was looking for a love seat to put in my room so people don't have to all cram onto my bed like some kind of orgy just to watch an episode of 12 Oz. Mouse. However, as we made our way around the school, I started to feel really pathetic about the whole idea. I kept imagining running into someone I used to know and what the conversation would go like.

Them: Hey, Jon!
Me: Oh. Hey, Person I Used To Know. What have you been up to?
Them: Me? I go to Princeton University now. How about you?
Me: I went to Rutgers. Now I'm going through your trash.

The worst part of it was we weren't even finding anything. Turns out the university, probably in a bid to discourage this kind of thing, had set up tents where students could drop off unwanted items to be sold for charity. Sanctimonious assholes!
So I was just walking around getting more and more depressed until we came across a sign that had been put up to direct crowds during this past weekend's graduation ceremony. It said this:

"NO NOT ENTER"

Suddenly I got all happy again. These Ivy League douche bags weren't so great! They had typos just like the rest of us! And they even printed them out and put them on signs!

This euphoria lasted for a brief moment until I began second-guessing myself. Perhaps Princeton students were in face so smart that they used double negatives in their directions just to fuck with stupid state school students like me. Soon I was all depressed again. And I never even got a love seat.

Fuck Princeton.