Critical Mass Chicago - Friday Night

Friday night was the 10th anniversary of Critical Mass in Chicago. 3000 of us rode for about 5 hours. It was such great fun, I'm doing it again next month. It'll be Halloween, too, so weird costumes are in order.

There were some flaring tempers (bikers, motorists, and pedestrians included) and a cop bumped into my bike at one point (he was splitting to make an emergency run). Me, I just like to bike ride. The longer, the better. 5 hours hit the spot very nicely. Plus, with all that caloric output - two dinners!!

Highlights of the ride: the happy baby (captured clapping on film), the pissed off pedestrian who stood on the street corner yelling "F*cking attention-needing motherf*kers!", the cheers and honks and thumbs up, little kids in Cabrini Green giving us high-fives, the rich dude in the Jaguar smoking a cigarette in a very "yeah, okay, I'll just chill here for awhile" sort of way, the cop who bumped into my tire while speeding off to a call (I hurt my knee trying to get out of his way), the random bumping into friends, and yes, two dinners. Vietnamese food AND greasy diner grilled cheese and fries. Mmmm.

EDIT: My video got posted in Metroblogging Chicago. Also, here are some Critical Mass events in other cities.

San Francisco:



Gandia, Spain:



Budapest:

Extra! Extra! (See? There's a Pun There.)

K-Rock e-mailed me last night as I was wrapping up work: "I'm going to be right near your hood in about an hour, can you meet me?" Who needs more information than that? When K-Rock tells you to be somewhere, you go.

I said "Sure!" and left the house all scrubby after a day of solitary writing, with no makeup and a greasy sunscreen face. Before I knew it I was having a great dinner at Alice and Friends, and slapping on some emergency makeup so I could get dragged into a short comedy film Paul Thomas was shooting at a funeral home right near my house.

It was a demanding role. I had to both walk, sit, pretend to be sad, and flip off a casket. The final product will accompany things like "Being Civil," Paul's reality series set in the post-war years. The below clip features the always awesome Allison Bills (Second City goddess who did the "Chocolate Covered Cherries" video with TJ Miller), and a shirtless, hatchet-wielding Brady Novak.



After ChUC Tuesday night I also got pulled into a shoot Jim Fath and James Asmus were doing for PhatPhree. If things go well, you'll see me as "disgruntled comedy audience member #6." Jim and James are in "Hey You Millionaires," who kicked ass at ChUC week before last, and do stuff like this:

Cute Puppy Feeds Self from Fridge

Recent Videos of Comedy Pals

Feel like avoiding work and having some fun? Enjoy this special edition of Bella Video: Comedy Friends I'm Lucky To Know.

Kyle Kinane on Carson Daly's show last week. He packed the house with Chicago friends (including TJ Miller, whose show debuts on ABC next week!) and they all hooted and screamed from the audience. He did almost the exact same set at my show the week before, and the crowd loved him. He looks like such a crochety old man with the beard and the hat, but like every other Chicago comic I know, he's a big ol' pussycat:



Hannibal Burress, who was on the Craig Ferguson Show last night, in a zippy little promo for the Lakeshore Theater. Seeing him at the Globe open mic the night of the Ferguson show made me realize that, since I always have my tiny Olympus digital recorder in my bag all the time anyway, I should start doing on-the-scene audio interviews with people. Stay tuned for that.



A promo video for Kumail's one-man show, "Unpronounceable," at the Lakeshore Theater, soon to hit the stages of NYC. Yes, he and our beloved Emily have sold off their excess furniture and are taking off within the week. After his going-away show at ChUC last week, I prudently had one drink and left on my bike at 12, because I was taping my Chicago Public Radio bit early the next morning, but the next day I heard stories about rounds of shots and partying until puking. I always miss all the fun!



And my favorite of his Blerds videos, "He-Man," featuring the greatly-missed Pat Brice:



And while we're on the subject of Blerds ("...comics who'd rather see last call than their checking balance; who think Dave & Busters is a law firm; and learned the hard way that your grandma can only die once a semester"), a few other favorites. Here's Matt Braunger's "Unattractive Man" video. For what it's worth, lots of chicks (including me) think he's adorable.



Robert Buscemi's "Russell Stover." Buscemi calls me McQuern, which I'm cool with, just because I like it anytime someone pronounces my name right, plus he got me the gig with Chicago Magazine. He is a ridiculous brilliant weirdo. K-Rock knows how to pick 'em.



Jared Logan's "Complete Breakfast." I got Jared and Buscemi into an argument last night over whether it's a good idea, creatively, to tell jokes offstage or not. You'd think I'd said "Religion or science: pick one!" I'm still not sure what the right answer is. I also told them a charming anecdote about my great-grandma's pet monkey that totally grossed them out. (And they're comedians, people.) Just ask Buscemi sometime what Chico will do for a peanut. He might curl up into a ball and cry.



And CJ Sullivan's "Business Papers." CJ patted me on the back after my set at Sunday night's open mic, so I love him now. He popped into ChUC last night and I made fun of him for wearing a suit jacket like some kind of respectable grown-up.



Renee Gauthier, who, in what I like to call "reality," is tiny and adorable, was used as a bizarro-world "chubby friend" contrast to Victoria Beckham, (yeah, Posh Spice), for whom she unfortunately served as personal assistant. Renee was nice enough to give me this interview about her experiences with that gig. Posh Spice can bite it, as far as I'm concerned. Renee is foxy, sweet, and hilarious.

Assorted Observations, and...Such As

#1. My new dentist and his receptionist/assistant are really nice. My dentist told me that I have "tiny" teeth. He also has a really cool fake swimming fishies thing up against the window in his office, which are pleasantly mesmerizing. They also have a little lollipop tree, but even after 18 mouth x-rays, didn't offer me one, which makes me pout. I am immature.

#2. Now that Becky and Fay are moving, I'm the shortest person in Chicago comedy, except for that 12 year old Dave Odd put up a few weeks ago. (I'm assuming. He might be a tall 12 year old.)

#3. I was looking at Blewt! footage of Impress These Apes shows, and I realized that in the beginning of Brady Novak's "Fattest Man in the World," you can see me in a Cubs hat running in front of the camera after a potty break. This was before I learned how to run backstage at iO when I need to use the can. (Thanks to TimeOut Chicago comedy editor Steve Heisler for that tip.)

#4. When I'm transcribing interviews for work, and I'm playing back at half-speed, I sound drunk and stupid, and my interviewees sound condescending and annoyed.

#5. I have these things on the valves on my bike tires called Tireflys. They blink and flicker as you ride to let CTA buses know you're there, so they don't kill and splatten you. (Shut up, spellcheck, I know splatten isn't a word, but I like it.) It actually says on the package "Not legal for street use in some states," like I've pimped up a Camaro with illegal red lights or something. It also says "Never look directly at Tireflys," which is ridiculous and impossible. Every night when I get home from an after dark ride, I have little patterns of blinking blue stuff in my field of vision for several hours. I'm probably going blind, one little Tirefly-enhanced bike ride at a time.

Shut Up, Ethan Hawke, and Not Just Because I'm Tired

Ethan Hawke: "To use cinema for self-expression in an age when everything is supposed to be a commodity for sale, I felt so privileged, and all of that was such a luxury. People who don't like my film don't like it passionately because they get this idea that self-reflective art is an act of egregious narcissism. And if that is true, what do we say to Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, to Proust to Whitman?"

Given that you are saying this in relation to your steaming pile of crap book, turned into a steaming pile of crap movie, to that we say, Ethan Hawke, you reveal yourself to be a bigger and bigger douchebag every time you open your mouth. Please, please don't refer to "The Hottest State" as "cinema" or "film" when we can all plainly see it is actually a "shitty" "movie." And, extra please, do not hold yourself up for comparison to Dickenson, Austen, Proust, Whitman, or, for that matter, Jacqueline Susann. Your words were printed on paper, true. You were writing about yourself, true. But there's a difference between self-reflective art and insanely stupid self-centered tripe.

Okay, fine, I have made the choice to spend all day drying out my eyeballs writing and transcribing various things, and denting my soppy brain by chasing elusive interview subjects through different time zones all day (please call me, nice designer lady in Texas, and nice architect man in Utah!), and choosing to live yet another day in a largely text-based existence.

I stayed out late last night after a really great open mic for some very important comedy conversations and the initiation of some new friendships, and I didn't get much sleep, so maybe I'm a little crankier than usual. I promise, tomorrow I will blog about all the super great stuff that's been happening in my life. There's a lot. A whole lot. More than I feel worthy of, some days.

But for now, my carpal tunnel syndrome is paining me, my head is thick and dumb, I feel unaccomplished and awfully struggl-y and flail-y for all the hard work I've been doing lately, and I've worked so late that I have to go straight from the office to tonight's open mic, which means no makeup, sweaty fried bike hair, stinky tennies, worrying about lugging my laptop around on my squeaking and creaking bike on darkened Chicago streets, and feeling a little less than hilarious and sparkling. Oh, and Ethan Hawke is a douchebag.*

Just so you don't think I'm the only one, check this out: Googling "'Ethan Hawke' douchebag" gives you over 12,000 hits, including cartoons, a bit from the Portland Mercury, and, this, and shoot, there was another link that insisted that the camera should be forcibly removed from his hand. Can't find it right now. Doesn't matter.

Monkeylicious? Say It Ain't So!

I love coconut cake as much as anyone, and you don't ever want to stand between me and a box of Chessmen cookies, but I don't know if I can stay on board the Pepperidge Farm love train in light of this purported "flavor feature" that I noticed on the company's website.

"Harvest helpers: In Thailand, specially-trained macaque monkeys pick coconuts from trees."

Is this a charming anecdote, or are the purveyors of my beloved Mint Milanos admitting to profiting from forced monkey labor? And if this is their acknowledgment of putting our simian cousins (for whom I have, admittedly, a well-documented fondness) to work in their deliciousness factories, can they assure us that coconut picking is the extent of what's expected of our little not-quite-uprightly-bipedal friends? Don't make me imagine little cotton-topped tamarins sweating over ovens and sprinkling coconut shavings on cakes under the stern gaze of cruel, whip-cracking human masters -- I mean managers.

Seriously, Pepperidge Farm. What's going on here? If I flip over the coconut cake box and the nutritional information includes a little asterisk that says something like "product may contain mixed monkey parts," my love for you is dead.

Chicago's Olympic Dreams

There was a big ceremony and unveiling this week involving Chicago's redesigned Olympic logo. My brother, who has provided creative direction for several special events on behalf of Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid, sent me an e-mail saying "Shhh...come to an event on Wednesday...but I can't tell you any details." As it happens, I was taping my bit for Chicago Public Radio at that time and I couldn't make it. As some of you may know, they needed to redesign from the original logo, which (oopsie!) used an Olympic torch, apparently a big no-no.

From a press release Andrew forwarded to me: "We wanted to keep the soaring colors we had established previously. The reds, oranges and yellows rise like our skyline toward the sun. The greens, emeralds and blues reflect our parks and lakes. This logo speaks of our past, but also looks to the future. We envisioned it as a symbol that would help us tell the story of our city, while being inspired by the Olympic Ideals."

Me on "Hello Beautiful"

My bit on Chicago Public Radio is up! Here's the link to the edited six minute version that features just my segment.

Here is the link to the longer segment on the WBEZ site, where the full program can be heard.

As I mentioned before, this is a zippy little interview all about the beginning of my stand-up adventure, starting with the eBay auction of my stage fright and my first open mic.

Dear Readers, Where Did You Come From, and Where Did You Go?

For some reason, I have a lot of fans in Italy and France who read me frequently. Hi, Europe!

People at NASA, The Smithsonian, American Airlines, and the US Navy also check in with me regularly, as well as someone from the Information Services Division in Alabama. Shame on you! You should all be working, instead of spending time here! Of course, so should I. But seriously, spaceships and submarines are so much more important than me and my blatherings. Get back to work.

Today I nabbed a reader from "National Geographic Society, Room 272." That's cool. But it makes me wonder, what do the jerks in Rooms 1-271 have against me?

Someone at Tulane University in New Orleans used to read me nearly every day, and then, after Katrina, never came back. I sometimes wonder what happened to that person and what the storm did to their life. I hope it was a student who graduated and went on to start a happy adult life.

Here's my favorite. Playboy Enterprises in Chicago checks me out from time to time. Maybe they're scoping for a "Naked Women of Comedy" pictorial. You will never see my boobs! Never! Well, unless you get me really drunk and giggly. Anything could happen then.

Take That, Bullies!

Some utterly awesome high school kids fought back against bullying after a new freshman student wore a pink t-shirt to school, was called a "faggot" and was threatened with a beating.

The next day, two seniors, David Shepherd and Travis Price, bought a ton of pink t-shirts and arm bands, and 850 kids showed up wearing pink. The bullies wigged out, threw chairs, and got even more angry.

"Our intention was to stand up for this kid so he doesn’t get picked on," David explained. "It’s my last year. I’ve stood around too long and I wanted to do something."

I love this story. I love these kids. What a couple of kick ass teenage boys.

"Hello Beautiful" On Line One

It looks like I'm going to be a guest on Chicago Public Radio WBEZ/NPR's "Hello Beautiful," the Sunday morning arts show, next week, talking about my entrée into stand-up comedy. If I'm not mistaken, it will be a 20 minute segment.

They're interested in the fact that I kicked things off by selling my stage fright on eBay, among other things. Good thing I'm outgrowing this shy thing.

Heh...heh? Gulp. Why is my mouth so dry all of the sudden?

I'm going to do my best to pump up the Chicago scene as much as possible, plug the names of as many friends as I can, and make sure they know that the coolest place in town to catch stand-up these days is Chicago Underground Comedy, damnit.

Things Don't Go As Planned, But Still Are Pretty Awesome

Sam and Morgan (Tony and Nick, that is) canceled their show tonight. I rode my bike from work all the way down Lincoln to the Apollo Theater and ended up drinking a beer, chatting with Sean Flannery, and sneaking upstairs with Tony and Noah and assorted others to see Wonder Woman take the mic and do her cabaret act. (Seriously. Lynda Carter was playing a concert, backed up by a jazz combo.) Well, I watched for a few minutes and then went back downstairs to the studio space where the guys were sitting in the audience, clicking through the Powerpoint presentation of their show and half-assedly running through their dialogue. It was pretty fun, actually. Steve and Nate, AKA Team Submarine, were also there, and Adam Burke showed up as well.

On the plus side, I rode the crap out of my bike today. Yes, those are my actual legs at left. Pasty, and short, but damned strong. I rode for almost three hours, all told. Biking so much lets me get away with an awesome amount of eating. (Why have I not photoblogged my famous McDonald's-cheeseburger-layered-with-Lay's-potato-chips yet? That stuff is like ambrosia. Manna. Heaven on a starchy, nutritionally pointless bun.) Before the almost-show I had a solitary tuna melt and giant steak fries at Clarke's and worked on some new material for my Underground debut, which is in a few weeks. Things are coming together. Things are happening very fast, but things are definitely coming together. Sorry about the lack of blogging, the three of you who still regularly read me. There's so much going on that needs day-to-day attention. But it will be worth the wait.

In the meantime, one of my childhood idols (yeah, I was Wonder Woman for three Halloweens in a row back in the day), who attracted a very unusual and appreciative demographic at her show tonight:

The Girl Who Runs With Squirrels

This post on Cute Overload has prompted me to write about an urban nature experience I had last Friday. (That's a baby squirrel licking someone's fingers, by the way. A baby flipping squirrel.)

I met Tony and Dan for our weekly lunchtime Chicago Underground Comedy pow-wow near Tony's work. We had a lovely outdoor chit-chat, stuffed our faces with burgers and ice cream, and then parted.

I headed back north, impulsively stopping at Lincoln Park (the actual park area, not the neighborhood) for a few moments of reflection. It was a gorgeous sunny day. I felt like sitting in the cool share under a tree, feeling the breeze across my face, and letting all of life's recent changes wash over me. So I did. I sat down and leaned up against a huge tree that canopied over my head and overlapped with other trees. I closed my eyes. I breathed deeply. I tried not to think.

Through all my years of caring for cats, dogs, birds, mice, horses, and every other kind of domestic animal you can think of (for those of you who didn't know me in my former life, I was a quiet small-town Indiana pet-sitter for many years), I've guess I've developed a way of being very quiet and small and nonthreatening when needed, to inspire comfort and trust in even the most skittish of creatures.

That's part of why, a few moments into my bucolic interlude, my peace was interrupted by the skitching of little mammal feet on dry bark. Many, many little mammal feet. From the tree I was leaning against and several others, a small army of squirrels slowly ran down the tree trunk and skipped across the grass. Some simply ran up other trees. Several traipsed around on the ground, looking and listening. But three of them inched, tiny step by tiny step, toward me.

Early on after moving to the city I realized that the urban squirrels and raccoons are a different breed from the suburban ones I knew back home. Suburban squirrels are like little furry ninjas. They sense your presence, and they disappear. Not urban squirrels. These little guys are boldly inquisitive.

I made little friendly clicking noises at the squirrels, and sat very still, trying hard not to giggle with surprise as three of them came closer and closer and closer to me, like my cats do when they're hoping for treats, and then they touched my legs. They touched their dinky little paws on my bare skin, and then, at the sound of a sneeze from an old woman on a bench nearby, ricocheted off me and back up the tree.

Thank you, nature. Thank you for demonstrating to me again the amazing power of adaptation. And thank you for my dose of cute.

I'm Sorry, Do I Know You? Photos You Get When You Google "Elizabeth McQuern"

Because I am associated in the public sphere with comedy more than anything else, a lot of image searches for "Elizabeth McQuern" reflect this. Then, of course, there are always the random "huh?" ones that pop up. Here's a sampling of the photos that show up when you google my name, and a brief explanation of whatever connection I might actually have to the people in the photos.

Aziz Ansari. I talked to him on the phone for about a half an hour once, resulting in this interview. He is an amazing comedian and writer who did "Human Giant" on MTV recently, and agrees with me that Bobb'e J Thompson is a genius beyond even grownup comedians.




Demetri Martin. Like Aziz, Demetri is also adorable and hilarious. I've seen a little of his comedy, and he's clearly a very special talent. But I've never chatted with him.






Charna Halpern, iO theater owner, is someone I know. She was my first big interview at the Bastion. She's teeny tiny in person and very nice but somehow still intimidating. Then again, I'm a dork.





Yanni. What? I've never met this guy. I think he dated Joan Collins or Bo Derek -- no, it was Linda Evans for awhile. But he's never been one of my MySpace friends.








Ew! Who is that ghostly, fug, ginger...oh, wait, that's me. I guess this one popping up when you google my name is the one that makes the most sense.






Jason Bateman*. Never met him. Not to say that I didn't go through a fervent fan letter writing phase when I was young, plying NBC with schmoopy fangirl letters until I received autographed glossies of Bateman and Ricky Schroeder. Ahem. Also, he did great work on the late, great "Arrested Development."





Fred Armisen performed at a People Under the Stares show the Bastion wrote about once. Like everyone else my age, I had a crush on River Phoenix from the time I was about 13, but I never met his ex-girfriend Martha Plimpton.






"Guy on the left"and John Mulaney, who grew up with several people I know here in Chicago. I saw him open for Mike Birbiglia at the Lakeshore, and he was wonderful. He's still quite young but is very talented and moved to New York early. He does stuff on tv, and other stuff.




TJ Miller. Super nice kid. Our first Bastion interview, and Chicago comedy's "most likely to succeed" since well before I came on the scene. He's already jumped the shark, having moved to L.A. to star in ABC's "Carpoolers," and is starring in J.J. Abrams mega budget monster movie"Cloverfield." You'll be seeing more of him.




Mike Burns. Comedian. Clothing designer. Chicagoan turned New Yorker (perhaps soon to turn Angeleno?). I met him at a party once or twice. K-Rock vouches for him. Our big brother the Apiary took our word for his coolness and interviewed him. I hope he'll pop into my show whenever he's in town.



Eugene Mirman and Bobby Tisdale. They run "Invite Them Up" in New York. I interviewed Eugene for the Bastion. He is a total goofball and totally brilliant.






Matt Besser. I mentioned a funny project he did on Bella Rossa right about the time the Apiary's Nate was (unbeknownst to me) reading along and thinking about offering me editorship of the Bastion. Besser cut his teeth on improv here in Chicago and, along with the rest of the UCB, is about to bring some of the best live comedy from both coasts right here to Chicago's Lakeshore Theater, so I'm a big fan.

*EDIT: Not Jason Bateman. Michael Delaney, of the UCB's Swarm. I need new eyeballs. Whatever.