My July Playlist

Hey, it's a new month. Look at that. Stupid quickly advancing time. Now I'm stuck contemplating my mortality. Eh...I guess I'll put up a new playlist instead.



Some Highlights

• There are a bunch of great songs here. The freshness of the list has a lot to do with that great A.V. Club list I linked to a while back of the best songs of the year (so far).
• Track 13 is off Sigur Rós' (great) new album. Although everyone's written about how it's all a departure for the band, here's a nine minute track that sounds like their classic stuff from the slow build to the magical climax.
• I did the fun "local band" thing again and added a track from another Rutgers band. This time the band is the Seal Club who, if you've been paying attention, you'll recognise as the guys who made up most of the house band for Zipperface. It's a great song and you can find it at track 7.
• "Smell yo dick"? Hilarious.

Enjoy it everyone. I've gotta run because I'm doing some more Sorrow Hill filming tonight. Expect a write up on that...eventually.

ps. In case anyone hasn't noticed, you can listen to all of the old Playlists of the Month by clicking the "Playlists" link in the label column to the right of this page.

A Few Quick Notes

• The new Sigur Rós album is absolutely amazing.
• Mansour Pourmand, the director and producer behind the original film, Zipperface, has written Dave, Andy, and I an e-mail giving us his blessing to bring Zipperface!!?!: The Hobo Musical to the next step.
• Did you read that second bullet point?! That's fucking crazy!

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.

Well, I Guess That Wraps Everything Up

Or does it...?

A couple of weeks ago when I wrote my Zipperface!!?! promo piece, I sounded pretty cheery and optimistic, didn't I? The truth of it is, I wasn't. I was absolutely terrified.

From the instant Dave first told me about the project, I was a little hesitant. I thought it was funny, but I just wasn't confident that any of us could pull off an original musical with the limited time and resources at our disposal. It was when Dave did his presentation to the CAP Executive Board that I started to turn. Everyone (especially Dave) was so excited about this that I began to see that it might work. But I still wasn't sure that I really wanted to be involved.

I was auditioning for Hair and considering directing Pillowman and I had so much else on my plate that writing a full length play seemed way too daunting. I initially planned on just being a consultant type. I typed up a version of an early scene (more on this later) and I sent it to Dave. It wasn't until the morning after Dave, Andy, and I had had our first writing session that I began to really fall in love with Zipperface. I remember sitting in the diner reading over what we had so far and just repeating, "Damn, this is actually good. This might really work." After that, all of my thoughts for the rest of the break revolved around that script.

Cut to a couple of months later and I saw the poster and my excitement just dropped. I'm not saying that Andy's poster design wasn't good (on the contrary, I absolutely love it and think the logo at the top should be the set design for the title in any future iterations). It was just that I saw my name up there in the credits and I started to get really, really nervous.

When I act in a play, I really don't get nervous (unless I'm singing or something). I can tell if the play's good or not by the time we open and I know how my performance personally looks. However, when I write something and it comes close to opening, I go absolutely insane worrying about it. With each further rehearsal and as the actual performance draws near, I start to hate everything I wrote more and more.

I would sit there in tech rehearsals waiting for the my one scene and have miniature panic attacks over the most miniscule things going wrong. If a joke fell flat or a scene change took too long, I would barely be able to stop myself from running from the theater, changing my name, and moving to Canada. Sure, I only wrote a third of this play, but I was that invested in it being good.

Sam probably got the worst of it. She spent plenty of time over those few weeks trying to comfort me and keep me from going insane. I feel really bad about it. I feel even worse because once Zipperface closed, she had to deal with me stressing over my stand-up routine for tonight and Hijinks opening in a week. God, I need to stop writing stuff. It's giving me a hernia.

So, what happened?

Well, Zipperface!!?!: The Hobo Musical opened two weeks ago and the instant the band began to play, I finally started to watch it like an audience member and not a co-writer. And I loved it. And the audience loved it. And it was amazing.

Seriously, I have to apologise to everyone in the cast and crew for being so stressed out. They were all absolutely amazing. The show went better than I could have possibly imagined and it's all thanks to them.

In fact, the show went so well that it might not be completely over. Dave, Andy, and I need to talk about it (especially Dave as it is his baby) but the idea right now is that this might not be the last we see of good ol' Zipperface.

Not too bad for a musical narrated by hobos.

Special Zipperface Treats!
For all you fans out there, here are some special gifts. First, here are the lyrics for a song I wrote for the show that didn't make it in. It was in my initial submission I gave to Dave for how I thought the play should sound (the rest of the submission, the first scene with the mayor, ended up in the final script fairly close to how I initially wrote it). The song was a way to set up Lisa but was cut because Dave thought it was too musical-y.
Here it is with a little dialogue that sets it up:

REPORTER #1
Lisa Rider! Lisa Rider! How’d you do it?

REPORTER #2
How do you feel?

REPORTER #3
How do you spell “Rider”?

LISA RIDER
(nervously)
I...uh...I...

MAYOR HARRIS
Don’t worry, honey. Just be strong and show them that a woman can do anything if she sets her mind to it.

LISA RIDER
Oh, I will, Mayor! I will!

REPORTER #1
Tell us where you came from!

REPORTER #2
Tell us where you’re going!

REPORTER #3
Tell us in song!

SONG: “LISA RIDER”

LISA RIDER
LISA RIDER
LISA RIDER
THAT’S LISA RIDER SPELLED WITH AN “I”

REPORTER #1
Where are ya’ from?

LISA RIDER
I CAME FROM CLEVELAND, OHIO
GREW UP READY AND REARING TO GO
I WANTED TO GO OUT AND MAKE MY WAY IN THE WORLD
SHOW THEM ALL I’M NOT JUST A LITTLE GIRL

I’M LISA RIDER
LISA RIDER
THAT’S LISA RIDER SPELLED WITH AN “I”

REPORTER #2
What got ya’ going?

LISA RIDER
IN SCHOOL I WANTED TO PLAY FOOTBALL AND ALL THE REST
BUT THEY SAID I COULDN’T ‘CAUSE I HAD BREASTS
AND THEY WOULDN’T FIT IN THE SHOULDER PADS
BUT I’LL SHOW THEM ALL, ALL THOSE CADS

SCALIA
WHO DOES THAT BITCH THINK SHE IS?
COPPIN’ IS A MAN’S BUSINESS

HARRY
CALM DOWN, SCALIA. YOU’LL HAVE YOUR DAY

SCALIA
SHUT UP, HARRY. I’M GONNA MAKE HER PAY
FUCK THAT-

LISA RIDER AND THE REPORTERS
LISA RIDER
LISA RIDER

LISA RIDER
THAT’S LISA RIDER SPELLED WITH AN “I”

I’M GONNA SHOW YOU THAT WOMEN CAN DO IT ALL
SOLVE A CRIME, RUN A TOWN, OR CATCH A BALL
GIRLS ARE MUCH BETTER THAN BOYS WITH GUNS
‘CAUSE THE BOYS ARE PLAYING WITH THEIR OTHER ONE

LISA RIDER AND THE REPORTERS
LISA RIDER
LISA RIDER

LISA RIDER
ALL THE ADAMS BETTER STEP ASIDE TODAY
‘CAUSE EVE’S GOT A GUN AND SHE’S ON HER WAY
YOU SAY YOU WANT THE BEST MAN FOR THE JOB
AND NOT JUST SOME DIRTY, HAIRY, SLOB
THEN LISA RIDER, HELL, IS YOUR GUY

Fun stuff. Now, here's a video compilation of stuff filmed by Josh Kane during the dress rehearsals. It was edited by Erika Basedow, Dave's co-director. Just like the play, I have a small cameo at the end.

And now, for even more fun, here's a collection of absolutely amazing pictures that Kyle Barker took during one of the performances. He took the ones throughout this blog as well. You can see all his pictures at his website.

He's Got a Big Ass Machete and Baby, He's Readyyyyy!

Tonight marks an absolutely momentous occasion. Tonight is the night that Zipperface finally arrives!

Rutgers students might have noticed those ubiquitous "Who is Zipperface?" slogans written all over College Avenue. Well, in only a few short hours, that immortal question will be answered. You see, they actually refer to Zipperface!!?!: the Hobo Musical, an original play written by Dave Rothstadt, Andy Wolf, and myself and being put on the next two weekends by the College Avenue Players.

The story of Zipperface (the musical, at least) began in 2006, when Dave found a DVD in the CAP prop room. It was one of those dollar DVDs that they sell at the discount store on George Street and it was called Zipperface. The plot involved a man in a gimp costume killing hookers. Or at least part of the plot did. To be honest, most of the movie is actually some fairly boring nonsense about a woman trying to make her way in a police department filled with hostile men.

After watching the movie (I'm not sure how, I've never been able to sit through the whole thing) Dave decided it would be hilarious to turn the movie into a musical and it soon became clear that this would be a great way to comment on the current state of musical theater where every single popular movie gets plopped on stage with songs shoved in whether it makes sense or not. What would happen if you made a musical of a terrible movie that no one's even seen?

Zipperface would happen.

Dave's original plan was to literally transcribe the entire movie (which Julia Hebner did while bored at work, God bless her) and then just insert songs into random scenes. This would have made a clear satirical point, yes, but it also would have been nigh unwatchable and I, as CAP's Artistic Director, told Dave I couldn't in good conscience put that on stage. So Dave went back and wrote a first draft of Act One and it became clear that he was really on to something.

So, during Winter Break, Andy and I came on board to help Dave structure his play and write the second half. After a few grueling writing sessions, we had a script. Now, a few months later, thanks to Dave and Erika Basedow's direction and a fantastic cast, we have a play.

And it opens tonight.

To whet your theatrical whistle, I'll leave you with the chorus to the opening song:

So lets put on a terrible play

Based on a terrible movie

It'll be the best show ever made

And it's called

Zipperface!

Zipperface!

Zipperface?

Zipperface!

Zipperface!!?!: The Hobo Musical

April 4th, 5th, 11th & 12th

Scott 135

8:00PM

$5 with Student ID

$8 General Admittance

A Jumble of Thoughts

With a couple of days off from Hair, I feel like I'm swimming in free time. It's not true, but it feels like I am. That being the case and, having written mostly posts about other things recently, here's a random list of things going on with me:

At Cabaret Theatre, Word of Mouth is Our Best Advertisement and Use of Mouth is Our Best Entertainment: a Hair opening weekend round-up

• The shows went really well. The midnight show was actually the best, which is weird considering it was the performance we were the least sober at.
• Saturday afternoon I got a call asking if one of my housemates was a drummer. This is not something you want to hear a couple of hours before a musical. Fortunately, we got someone to fill in last minute for the one show we were missing a drummer and she was excellent.
• I spilled bong water on my lap onstage during the second performance. Very unfortunate.
• Text message from my brother during intermission opening night: "U made bershads everywhere proud in that nude scene" Touching.
• And my favorite story of the weekend: During the course of the play, there are two scenes where I get simulated blow jobs (a number I will spend the rest of my theatrical career attempting to surpass). The first one takes place during the song "Sodomy" and involves Danielle, an actress in the show, literally pushing me into the lap of an audience member in the first row and then pretending to go down on me. At the end of the song, the music reaches a climax and I, ahem, pretend to follow suit. To make this clearer (and basically to fuck with the audience even more) I usually grab someone in the first row's knee and squeeze. During the intermission of the first performance I asked Danielle if she saw whose knee I grabbed. She said yes. It was her boyfriend.

Things I'm Doing Post-Haircut
I agreed to take a small role in Zipperface??!?, the musical I wrote over winter break with Dave and Andy. Also I've got Hijinks right after that and once school ends I'm heading to South Jersey to film an independent horror movie called Sorrow Hill. All of these things things deserve their own blog entries, so basically I'm just writing this to remind myself that my current free time will be short lived even after Hair's over.

I'm Almost a Good Student
I had a very nice conversation with one of my professor's today after class where she asked about my future plans and told me I made large contributions to the class. You're all probably thinking that that's not very interesting, but it was really cool for me. The last time a teacher seemed genuinely pleases with my in-class performance was in first grade when I was the only student in Mrs. Powell's class who wrote a Season poem that rhymed.

Grown Up Food
Since I'm partly writing this blog to be read by a hypothetical future Me, I think it's important to note that I made big steps to becoming an adult type person today. I went to the grocery store (all by myself) and got some real meals for myself. Sure there was nothing that required anything more complicated than a microwave, however, any night without RU Grill or takeout Chinese is still a whole night without RU Grill or takeout Chinese.

Grown Up Food for Thought
Last week, during tech for Hair, I had next to no time to sleep. And when I did sleep, it was fitful and brief. During times like that, I tend to have really strange dreams (or perhaps I'm just able to remember them more). One night in particular, I had a whole string of absolute whoppers. It began with me being a mafia hit man and later developed into a look at some extremely dramatic Bizarro World cast party for Hair. However, the most interesting part of the dream (and the part I remember the clearest) came later.
It was incredibly vivid and took place at some kind of seaside resort town (think LBI). It was the future and I was sitting in a lawn chair, having a conversation with my parents. After a couple minutes, three young children ran up, one of whom was my son. He had bright blond hair, which I suppose he got from his mother's side (she didn't appear in the dream. He was really happy and asked me if he could go play with his two friends whom I remember quite clearly being a young Asian boy and a cute, little girl. I said yes and they all ran off. As they were leaving, I pointed to the little girl and joked to my parents that in a few more years, my son would start spending all his time trying to bang her.
Then we all laughed.
It was very odd.