Doris Lessing Does Not Have Time For These Nobel Prize Shenanigans

The first stand-up joke I ever did (nine months ago, thank you very much!) was about how old ladies can get away with such delightfully cranky behavior. Check out Doris Lessing reacting to news that she'd won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I Wish I Could Afford Therapy Right Now

Comedy is great therapy, and working out is great therapy, but therapy is also great therapy.

Does it sound weird when you say "therapy" four times in one sentence?

I need a nap.

Blog Praise For Friends

My friend Jenni Prokopy, who runs the delightful Chronic Babe, for "people who are living well in spite of illness," has won a 2007 Medical Weblog award!

Jenni also runs Orange Grove Media, writes for Gapers Block, and is the linchpin of a networking group for Chicago communications professionals, ideaXchange. I've only been able to attend one ideaXchange meeting in person so far, but the daily e-mail contact with folks in the group has been an invaluable resource for my professional development. Jenni manages to attract a vivacious, generous, bright bunch of folks to the group, and she does it all as a labor of love.

Go Jenni!

Coming Soon...

Super busy. The other two Buckets and I wrote and shot our first sketch on Sunday. It was amazing. I love them. I'm editing it. I'm exhausted.

Chicago Comedy Pals On Letterman!

The Chicago comedy scene is all a-twitter this week because our friend TJ Miller's super mega blockbuster Cloverfield has opened (he's Hud, the guy behind the camera), and the other night he was on the Letterman show!!



TJ just moved to LA a few months ago, when he landed the sitcom "Carpoolers" on ABC. He worked onstage at Second City and busted his ass doing stand-up all over the city, sometimes several shows a night.

TJ was there the night of my first open mic nine months ago (thank god he walked in after I finished, because having him in the room would have totally unnerved me). He walked in wearing full werewolf makeup and prosthetics for a Jose Cuervo commercial he'd been shooting all day. Kristy said "Elizabeth just did her first stand-up set!" and TJ hugged me so hard I wheezed. He said "That's great! Good for you! How did it go?" And I answered honestly. "I can't remember a thing," I said.

Here's TJ in one of my favorite Blerds videos, also starring Chicago-turned-LA comedy pals Lauren Bishop and Mike Bridenstine:

Shut Up, Subconscious!

Recently, in my dream life:

I was Bjork.

I was running through a rainbow-colored airport to meet Sloan, talking on my cell phone (which was actually just my hand) with my friend Samantha. Every time I realized I was on an escalator, I would get scared, and the escalator would turn vertical, so I was hanging on to the rubber handrail for dear life. I was kicking people in the head, and they were strangely nonchalant.

My mom and I were Julie and Mamie Eisenhower, but we looked like Lady Bird and Linda Bird Johnson. Imagine the confusion.

I moved to California for six weeks to punch up a movie script. This might be because Sloan and I bumped into Buscemi and his wife yesterday, and she's going to LA for six weeks to do photography for Time Out LA.

I read a magazine interview with the fake fiancée of Benicio Del Toro, who said "Both of us loved living life just looking at the ocean, and then one day we decided to meet."

Teresa was sleeping on my pillow next to my cat Flora, and both of them were sending loving, soothing, reassuring thoughts into my head. I think this is because Teresa, like Flora, is very a warm and positive presence in my life, and not because she licks her own butt and then throws up on my pillow.

I had a one inch Weimaraner dog I kept in a ziploc bag with holes in it. It was adorable but I was worried about losing it.

Bryan was a little boy playing football, and I was his English tutor. Maybe this is because I did "I'm dating a younger guy" jokes at the Lodge night before last. Hopefully it's not because I secretly want to date elementary school boys.

What?

Chicago Magazine Likes Me

Click on the picture for the full sized. Chicago Magazine's February issue has named my comedy site The Bastion one of Chicago's best web sites, and describes this very blog, Bella Rossa, as "engagingly bloggy musings about life."

I love you, Chicago!

More Fun With Editing

This is as exciting as when I figured out how to download free loops for Garage Band.

Check out the Moving Image Archive, which is like heaven for film geeks.

It's a library of free movies, films, and videos, ranging from full-length classic films to archival footage of street scenes in American cities through the centuries, public service announcements to art and music, cultural and academic films - and almost all of it is free to download, so you can use these moving images to make your own films!

I have already downloaded little weird movie commercials for pizza and candy and spliced them into a disjointed music video. This stuff is so fun.

"Things Aren't What They Seemed" by Elizabeth McQuern

Click to listen:

Sometimes when I can't sleep, I make music to soothe myself. I have a lot of big, overwhelming things on my mind right now, and last night I grabbed my Mac and zoned out for awhile.

I pulled bits from a conversation Bryan and I had about music the day before and put it together in a loose but more complex structure than I've never attempted. I have no idea what sort of classification it would fall under: outsider music? Found music? Weird crap? I had actually forgotten that I'd made this until I opened up iTunes just now and found it at the top of my playlist.

I don't know what's up with me and music lately, except that I can't stop thinking about it and composing it, and I think all of these creative expressions are going to come together in one big project very soon. I'm at the muse's whim right now, and she knows it.

Rockin' The Mic!

So much for retiring from stand-up comedy. Tomorrow night I will be doing stand-up at the Lincoln Lodge's 9:00 PM Comcast comedy show taping - mostly because it's going to get me on television, and because 5 or 6 of my friends will be there to boost my confidence with their drunken laughter.

If things go the way I want them to, it'll be the last time I get onstage, so don't miss your chance to see me spaz my way through what will surely someday be considered a legendary evening of comedic mishaps.

I must be especially mediagenic these days. Chicago Magazine named me as the editor of one of Chicago's best web sites, my comedy blog The Bastion. They also plugged my personal blog, Bella Rossa.

In other fun media news, Nellie and Sloan are now both posting on Chicago Metroblog, along with Bryan and Fuzzy and Dan. Bryan used Metroblog to post some cool photos he took from my place (like the one at left; more on a flickr set here), where I have a tiny amount of living space but a beautiful view of Lake Michigan, which is truly otherworldly and breathtaking when frozen.

And They Call It Puppy Love...

I am embarrassed to admit I decided it was important to change my relationship status on Facebook. Is this the grown-up, internet version of the note-passing "if you like me, check the box" stuff?

Speaking of teenybopper note passing, here's an excerpt from a note Bryan intercepted between two of his eighth-grade students this week, which once again proves that abstinence education is ridiculous and should be taught by actual clowns:

"Shid I'm is too u not the only boy/man that want to f*ck me/eat my p*ssy

I do want to f*ck you but that eatin p*ssy part aint sounding to good.

Shid u don't got too, but let my check my schedual and I'll tell wat day I free

Stop fontin Im dead f*cking serious

Wat the F*ck I need to Front 4 I'm Serious and wen we F*ck who gonna bring the condom

me. you is frontin"

Isn't that just adorable? And to think when I their age, I still felt twinges of good-girl Catholic guilt for just thinking about kissing boys.

Also this week, Bryan took a trash can to the head while two of his students assaulted each other in the classroom, and he also watched a student's mother punch the kid when the three met to discuss the boy's poor academic performance. I cannot say it enough: Bryan, and teachers like him, are amazing people with incredible patience and a superhuman work ethic, and they deserve a hell of a lot more support and compensation than they get.

Brantastic

Brandi continues to be an utterly magical human being. She took the amazing photo at left -- just one of countless truly beautiful photos on her flick account -- and recently wrote another new song: "This Christmas Day." Check it. It's so sweet and real and true (and I've known her during the year span that the song covers) that it makes me cry with a mixture of awe, and admiration, and just squishy girl emotion. And I'm not a big cry-er.

We Have Sprinkles, Repeat, SPRINKLES

Favorite recent news story sentence:

"The altercation happened in front of the gelato booth Paciugo."

The story involves tasers, handcuffs, and a case of mistaken identity. Sounds like a hilarious crime comedy starring Kevin Spacey and Tom Hanks.

1-13-08 - Bucket of Nerds - 10 Minute Podcast

Okay, I'm cross-posting this (it's also on the Buckets blog). After Bucket of Nerds produced our first podcast, a mere five minutes, we decided we had at least enough chutzpah and hilarious moxie to ask people to listen to us for a full ten minutes. So here's a longer clip, with more weird jokes and girls snurfling waffles while laughing.A summary of select highlights:

• Can you speak in internet emoticons?
• Celebrity crushes.
  
• Does Oprah have a spaceship?
• Funniest thing heard all day: "Which one of you slammable dick caves wants to go home with me tonight?" (Courtesy of Mike Burns.)
• Ryan Reynolds is very good-looking.
• Elizabeth's bad waffle tastes like cats.
• Nobody cares Elizabeth is from Indiana.
• Teresa and Nellie taste the bad waffle, agree it's like tongue-bathing a litter of calicos.
• Teresa uses a Southern accent to ask, "will dipping the waffle in ranch make it not horrible?"
• No.
• Nellie is accused of being a Second City hipster.
• David Letterman is our favorite funny uncle who's busy to hang with us, but he was not Sesame Street's "Letter Man."
• Nellie's morning yawn sounds like a baby pterodactyl, which is almost a tribute to another of our favorite comedians, Maria Bamford.
• Elizabeth mocks her own poor navigational skills in character as an old, angry, vaguely Eastern European man.
• Nellie wonders about the real meaning of "doesn't know their ass from hole in the ground."
• Elizabeth suggests flashcards to acquaint oneself with the difference between the two.
  
• Why are loud annoying televisions being shoved down our throats at gas stations and grocery stores these days?
• An impromptu rendition of the Beach Boys' "In My Room."

"Unix Based Mallet" - the Video

I prefer to yield my creativity like a blunt instrument. What's better than a horrible one-minute song? A horrible one-minute video, of course! (Based on the CD cover meme, brought to you by Fuzzy Gerdes.) You're welcome.

More Terrible Music!!

Bryan and I were goofing around online last night. Our friend Fuzzy Gerdes blogged about a game in which random Wiki and Flickr entries determine the name of your band, and the title of your album, and that album's cover image.

We decided to play, too, and take it one step further...read more about it and listen to the song over on the Nerds blog. WOO!

Beans and Wireless Routers

Would you believe that every time I eat a bowl of edamame, I have to spend half an hour on the phone with tech support in India to get back on the internet?

I love edamame, and since I'm functionally a non-cook, I have to heat it up in my microwave. The problem is, the wiring in my apartment is so bad, every time I microwave something for more than a few minutes, I have to also turn off almost every lamp and appliance, or the power goes out in my living space.

And every time the power goes off on my wireless internet router, I have to reset it through a set of steps just complex enough for me to forget between each reset. Hence, a 30 minute call to Netgear's tech support center, and a nice chat with someone with a thick Indian accent, improbably named "Jason" or "Becky."

Wouldn't it be weird if every time I reset my router, I had to download a bowl of beans?

Blogging on the CTA

This is a test post. As if I weren't latched to the digital teat enough throughout the day, now I'm set up to blog from my phone from anywhere. (If only I'd gotten the BlackBerry with a camera!)

The Buckets are Born

Bucket of Nerds -- It's Already So Much Fun

...and we haven't even really started yet. Stay tuned!

Nerd Yourself

Just a gentle reminder that things are cooking over at the Bucket of Nerds blog, where we're all getting crazy excited about tomorrow's photo shoot and the beginning of our comedy film making project.

Sloan is the person most to blame for the Rick Astley "Never Gonna Give You Up" shot-by-shot remake that we did for our Christmas party invite. (Photos at left of Sloan as Rick -- with bright orange construction paper hair, of course -- and me as the slutty blonde dancer.) But apparently that foray into bad '80's music wasn't enough, and last night she cut this sexy little montage of gerbil antics.


And one more picture, just so you will remember that Sloan is, in fact, a very cute girl, and not a faded '80's icon of limp-wristed blue-eyed soul.

And on to the video! Don't be ashamed to shake your booty with the beat. I certainly couldn't help myself.

A Very Krauty New Year's Eve

How was your New Year's Eve? Mine was great fun. This year marks only the second time that I've been out in public celebrating the birth of a new year, because my quiet and dutiful streak landed me lots of babysitting gigs when I lived back home in Indiana. But Chicago is molding me into a whole new person, and this year I wanted to get my party on.





December 31 was a very cold and snowy night in Chicago, but the German American Cultural Center (AKA Dank Haus) beckoned, with a siren call tinged with a Teutonic lilt. We'd heard that the party, in the Marunde Grand Ballroom, was a mere $5, and it was only a short walk from our point of origin. Some in our party had already fortified themselves with Irish whiskey, while others preferred to steel ourselves against the bitter cold with multiple scarves and megamittens.




German beer was flowing freely, at an affordable six tickets per glass. Hey, wait, is one ticket one dollar? What's the conversion rate? Are we getting a great deal or grossly overextending our beer budget? At any rate, boys and girls of German extraction cheerfully toasted the New Year. (Okay, sure, we're also part Irish, French, and a bunch of other stuff, and one of us is a straight up Scotsman, but we were very German that night.) Unexpectedly, we bumped into friends. Expectedly, we blogged about the whole thing. (Photos by this guy.)



The Polkaholics rocked so hard, their sign fell down, and dervish-like partygoers, with Polkaholics bumper stickers firmly affixed to their bums, flailed with uncontrollable polka tics. Yours truly, the biggest self-conscious non-dancer that ever lived, was lured out on the dance floor with the promise of a midnight smooch under a poetic balloon drop, only to find myself (somewhat uninhibited by the 2.5 beers I'd quaffed) coerced into dancing. In public. Not a polka, per se, and certainly nothing Gelsey Kirkland would describe as graceful, but dancing nonetheless.

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!

The Polkaholics, in all their punk-a-polkic glory: