Fowler Family Radio Hour @ Spoleto!

Hey there cats and kittens.

My blog has lain fallow for long enough. I've been swamped with all sorts of work and play, but it's time to get back on the pony.

How better to do that then through shameless self promotion?!?!?!

A show that I, along with five other native-Southern Chicago transplants, wrote and perform is coming to the Piccolo Spoleto Fringe Festival next week! The show is May 26-29 at Theatre 99 (280 Meeting Street, 2nd level.) Tickets are 15 bucks, and can be purchased through Ticketmaster (though we all know how much TM loves their fees...) or by going to the Piccolo Spoleto Box office at the Gailliard Auditorium. More details on that here.

The show is a good time. We've performed it at several theatres in Chicago, and it has always been well received.

Find us online at www.myspace.com/fowlerfamilyradiohour.

Also, if you aren't sure what I'm getting you into, there's a preview on youtube. Find that here.

From now until the show, I'll be in France for work, but feel free to email me or leave comments here if you have questions.

I hope to see you there!

-Tim

Back to it.

In case you didn't notice... and I am sure you did, but were too polite to mention it.... I had a long lapse in posting, and just played catch-up to get posts about the trip home up and running.

After the trip, I was pretty much toast.

Too much food. Too much beer. Too many nice people. Too much nice weather.

It was a great break. So great that it was tough to face the absolute madness that I encountered upon my return. Deadlines. Class wrap-ups. Show openings. General insanity.

I'll post on all of that later. For now, I need to prepare for more daily grind nonsense.

The Wedding.

Bruce's Wedding was some of this:

A bit of this:

And a lot of this:

Food.

When you've been away from the south and you come back to visit, you are barraged with an incredible bounty of delicious food. Food you can't find in Chicago.

Before the wedding, we were going to hit up Mac's Drive Thru, a Clemson institution. Gorgeous greasy heart-stoppers. Delicious.

It was packed. Therefore, we went here:

What are the odds?

Good food. Not Chicago-style.

Which is fine. For the record.

Bachelor Party

In lieu of the standard ridiculous bachelor party debauchery, Bruce, Ray, Jason, and I went up to the mountains and had a few days of giant steaks, good beer, stogies, xbox, chicken wings, table shuffleboard, and good old fashioned Boone relaxation.

It was pretty fun.

Easter Egg Hunt

Cuter than a basket full of kittens and puppies floating in a magical pool filled with lollipops, candy canes, and baby mermaids.

Spongebob Addiction

My niece Bailey is 19 months old and precocious. (I guess. What do I know about early childhood development? She seems a lot less lame than most sub-2 kids. )

She likes to eat ice. She presses her forehead against stuff. She really likes being thrown in the air and jumping off of stuff. She can differentiate between drinks, and will often ask for water, milk, juice, and tea all in the same sitting. If you give her the wrong drink, she doesn't pout, but she does look disappointed. She quotes Spongebob Squarepants incessantly.

If you've ever seen "Wonderpets", "Doodlebops", or any other program targeted at toddlers and preschoolers, you'd know that a Spongebob obsession is a wonderful thing for a child to have. Those other shows? Terrible. Spongebob? Hilarious.

Still, it's somehow troublesome to see a tiny kid toddling around yelling "Go Gary Go!" or "I'm ready! I'm ready! etc..." or any other common Spongebobism. Does a show about a sponge who lives in a Pineapple who works for a crab and has adventures with his best friend (a starfish) warp a kid's worldview?

I guess no more than a show about a magical street inhabited by a giant flightless bird, a trash monster, and a hairy elephant.

Or, for that matter, a dude who plays with puppets and can't walk in the door without changing his shoes and outerwear...

I miss those shows.

Trip Home

So, I'm down in South Carolina for a bit. I left around 8 on Thursday night and drove through the night. Maybe that sounds like crazy-talk, but here's what it 13 hrs in a car got me:

Chicago:

Sumter, SC:

Not a bad trade.

Strange.

I wish I lived in this house. I'd wear a threadbare smoking jacket all the time.

I saw this on the Reagan Expressway.

Makes sense, I guess. How else would you carry a turn-of-the-century 'high wheel' bicycle on the back of your sensible late-model Honda?

Hockey.

So the Blackhawks are really doing badly this season. Bad news for them. Good news for me. I really like going to hockey games. Watching them on TV isn't the same, and isn't something I really enjoy, but being there is a blast.

So why are bad Blackhawks good news? Because Chicago is pretty apathetic towards them right now, and in order to fill the house, tickets are available for 75 cents.

Seriously. I went with my friend Shelby, and I bought two tickets in advance on ticketmaster, and including all taxes, charges, and fees, it was $6.12 for two tickets. Way cheaper than a movie, plus there's beer and fighting. I'm in.

Blackhawks 3. Columbus 1. We're good luck charms.

Cowlick Musical

We open April 20th. Get excited.

MacGyver

Things I have:

A bottle of wine.
The desire to drink a bottle of wine.
A never-used doorstop with a nice coarsely-threaded head.

Things I don't have:

A corkscrew.


Genius.

Teaching

I've been teaching a lot lately. While some of those classes have been in a traditional classroom in high school, a lot of those have been in a sort of conference room setting. That's a strange sort of dynamic. Ah well. Free coffee.

Weekend

My weekend.
Friday- Straight from working at the bank to working box office at The Playground. From there to home, where I worked on some writing and editing stuff until lateish.
Saturday- Up around 5 to do some more of the editing stuff that I couldn't finish the night before. In Naperville by 8:30. Taught a class from 9-1:30 and another one from2-5. Back to Chicago. Quick trip to the grocery store, at The Playground by 7:15 for a Cowlick show. After that, beers and Balderdash at BJs place. Home by 1.
Sunday- Up by 8. In Naperville around 9:45. Class till 1. Back in Chicago for Hogwash rehearsal at 2. Departed from Hogwash at 4 to head home to do more stuff for the magazine. Involuntary nap... (Not a lot of sleep this weekend), and a late arrival to a Fowler meeting at Shelby's. Back home by 9. Work on writing/editing stuff until 3. Awake around 7 to finish up. Phone interview at 9.

And now? The relaxation of the 'work week.'

Stupid quasibohemian, non-9-to-5, maintain multiple job lifestyle. It's pretty great... most of the time. Still, weekends like this make me long for the relaxation of a cubicle, benefits, and a single w2.

Good day, Sunshine

Record high temperature today. 73 Degrees. March 13. Not bad, Chicago. Not bad at all.

Hooray!

Improvised Shakespeare at i.O. What a blast. One of the funniest shows I have seen in a very long time. It's been a while since I've gotten really excited about an improv show, but this one did it for me. Hilarious.

Citius, Altius, Fortius

Chicago's courtship of the US Olympic committee is in full swing. They really want the games here in 2016, and I think that's a great idea. The only other US contender is LA, and they had the games in 1984 and 1932. Give someone else a chance, LA. Plus, the plans for the games here are really cool. You can see them at www.chicago2016.org. Most of the games would take place on the South Side, and the area could use the attention.

I'm sure I won't be around Chicago in 2016, but I think it would be cool to bring my kids and show them around my old neighborhood, have crazy Chicago pizza and hot dogs (and my future kids will likely take off the pickle and eat it seperately, like their old man), and take in the city's revitalization.

So yeah. Members of the olympic committee who regularly read my blog: How about hook that up?

Fun night.

I've been staying pretty close to home as I got over this stomach bug, so tonight was a good time. I had a show with Cowlick at the Playground, where I snapped this lovely suprise photo of MB. The show was a lot of fun, and the crowd was small, but seemed to have a good time.


Afterwards, I went over to Zoran's to do a read-through of a radio play. That was a lot of fun, too. Nothing like a little funny to help out after a few days of wrecked insides.