Theatre of Note marathon!!!

Wow, this blogging with a glass of milk is becoming a thing that I do! I love it! So, this is my last night here in LA and what a better way to spend it by going to a theatre marathon right?

Ella and I were originally planning to hit up Edison in downtown LA and then I saw Kirsten Vangsness tweet about the Theatre Of Note (TON) marathon they were having and the Edison plan was never made. It was TON all the way!!!

It started at 3pm, but I could only go by about 6:30pm because I had to check into my flight, get some last minute packing done, etc. We started off with Stacy McQueen hosting the segment and it was hilarious!!! She had a Pomeranian, that she found on the street today and was adopting (she wins all the way through for this) and a crafts basket filled with cards, books on Alfred Hitchcock - An in depth analysis of only 5 pages! Or that is how small the book looked! She also had some things Gweneth Paltrow and some other books!

We started off the act with Vinyl Candy, which is a Modern Rock band. They had pretty good music and I found myself catching the chorus and singing along! It was not a bad way to start the evening! Each act was about 7-9 minutes long, so the band played about three songs. They handed out some free CDs and Ella scored one and gave it to me (I love being the foreign visitor! Whaaat??). After that, it was Bill Brochtrup, who was an essayist and read out his essay. It may sound boring, but it made me laugh, even though it wasn't as out there as the rest of the comedy. Betsy Salkind came on and she was a funny stand-up. It was a nice act and it was clean, which I applaud her for!!!

Then the most memorable act was Hiwa Bourne!!! She blew me away!!! She is a lovely hula dancer! The way she danced!! It was amazing, and it made me feel incredibly awkward, because the only dancing I do is bobbing and shifting from one foot to another. I have actually become quite adept at it! She talked about going to Tahiti and performing there. She loved the culture and they gave each of the American dancers a black pearl necklace, which she wore tonight. She then danced to a Tahitian song which was beautiful. The surprise of the night was when she invited her friends to come and dance and Kirsten Vangsness came out with some other people and they all did a group dance for us!!!! It was so awesome!

The other amazing performance of the act were the fire-eaters!!!! Oh my word! We all had to go outside, where they offered us glasses of wine and we had to witness a wedding!! Well, two of them in any case. This was a whole act of fire-eating and it was fantastic, how they did that! Ella and I got good seats, kneeling right up front!

We then had a fifteen minute break, before the next act which was hosted by the delightful Kirsten Vangsness!! She was super funny and so sweet! She started out by handing out candy, always a win, and then introduced Lemon Road, which is an acoustic rock group. They were awesome and had some really nice songs! After their performance, Kirsten came back. She started hosting and then went to the performance gear, because she was the next act! her act was delightful. It was faction piece called Mess. I related to this piece SO much, it was like she was performing my life out there! She started off by telling us what the piece was about where the first bit was a piece of fiction that she had written and the next was a little bit of reading from her one of her diaries that she keeps.

The fun part about her act is that the description of her piece was done to the tune of Poker Face!!! And she was spot on! I love that she keeps her diaries and read a piece of her fiction because I write fiction and keep diaries!!! I felt all "I do that too!" there. It was a cool feeling! I am cool now!

After her performance, it was the comedy duo Ten West! They were simply outstanding!!! I love them! They started off with walking onto the stage with a coffin and walked off it, into the loo! Then they made "No, no" faces and brought it back. They set it down to sad funeral music playing and then one of them went to the mic at the back, turned around and started "We are all gathered here today to remember the diseased.." and the other member ran to him and whispered something and he started again "the beseeched" and went on, till it even became "split peas" till he finally got it "the deceased" and then the show went on about how no one would say something about the deceased and they collected donations, which ranged from actual money to the candy that Kirsten passed out, to candy wrappers, to jewellery and then to purses, that were not willingly donated!

After that, they made all the single women stand up and handed us their businedd cards, miming "call me" which was hilarious! After that act was the awesome Tom Lenk!!! If you are not a Buffy fan, shame on you! He was insanely funny, and talked about Nerdgasm, a play he did in London and Rock of the Ages, which he did in NYC. He also talked about some of his childhood, being a drama nerd and Shemar Moore's hot abs. Yeah. You read it right!!! Can this night get any better???

After Tom Lenk, Kirsten's hostessing duties came to an end. It was Alex Boling's turn!! He was super funny and some of the cool acts that performed in his act were Amy Stiller, from Meet the Fockers, and was funny. She did stand-up and most of her material was about her being an actor in LA (duh! Cause that's what she is!). I really fell in love with the folk band Ampersand. The singer was fantastic and so talented and the guitarist was really good too! She had such an amazing voice! The next act was Jimmy H, who is a magician. He did some cool tricks like mind reading, like he guessed cards that some members of the audience got and then got us to guess a card that an audience member had, which was awesome!!!

The sour note of the evening was Karl Herlinger, who is a ventriloquist. Oh my God, his act was so not to my taste and something that I would have gladly skipped!!! It was dirty, disgusting and vulgar to the extreme! I do not want to describe what it was on my blog because it is bad enough that it's burned in my brain, it does not need to be in yours! Oh well, I covered my eyes for the most part of it. Let's just say that.

To end on a good note, meeting Kirsten was lovely! She is such a sweet person and so freaking friendly!!! Loved it and she wore the cutest outfits on the show!!! Here is a picture of us!

The Thrilling Adventure and Supernatural Suspense Hour!

I'm sitting in front of the laptop, drinking a glass of milk and I really want to write this post, but I don't even know where to begin, the night was so epic! I'm usually not one who's at a loss for words, and those who know me will attest to that, but Oh My God!!!

Ella and I reached Largo at 6:30pm and waited in line, hoping for good seats. It was kind of cold, but under my oh-so-stylish sweater and jeans, I had thermals on, so I didn't feel the bite. Such a good thing. We got our seats (row E, because even though we were early, there were about 30 odd people ahead of us) and then wandered a bit and then went in. I said hello to Michael, who is the stage manager at Largo and was very kind to me and it was only because of him, that I got to hang with Paget backstage in July! I then got something to drink at the cafe and we (Ella and me) sat at a table and chatted.



Ella, who was facing the courtyard saw Jonathan Reilly, who is the official TTAASSH photographer. He and I were Twitter buddies so I went up to say hello. He was very sweet and it was lovely meeting him. He even scored some of Nathan Fillion's cookies from backstage for us :) That was cool!



Then I met Busy Philipps from Cougar Town! She is absolutely lovely in person and so sweet. She signed my card and took a picture with me. She was so funny on stage and I really do not understand how she is able to keep a straight face.



It was incredible to meet the Ben Acker and Ben Blacker, because they are show, all said and done. I got them to sign my poster and they are such an inspiration for comedic writers. I hope, that at some point in time, I will have an iota of their talent. They are both very nice and took time out to talk to me, even though they were so busy.

We also got to say hello to Hal Lublin, who is an brilliant voice actor. If he has done audio books, I want to know!!! He has that voice that is so freaking smooth! I feel like he should move to Bangalore and get on Radio Indigo there!!! Pronto!


(Hal, Ella and me)



I got to say hello to Samm Levine, whose work on Freaks and Geeks I have admired for a long time. He is such a great actor and was awesome on stage. Just before we went in, Paul F. Tompkins came out to say hello!! It was surprising, because I didn't know that he was going to be there! I was glad to see him in person there finally after all the tweeting and the video chat on Yowie.

We went inside for the show. The show itself was hysterically funny, with the usual bit with Sparks Nevada: Marshal On Mars and some other stuff including Captain Laser Beam (the funniest bit in my opinion - Captain Laserrrr Beammmm) and Jefferson Reid: Ace American. Since Paget Brewsterwas working and couldn't make it to the show, the Beyond Belief segment had to be dropped.

I don't know how much I can really say about the show because I don't have permission to review the actual show. What I can say is that, if you cannot go to the actual show in LA, listen to the podcast (itunes and non-itunes), because it is the best thing ever!

I got permission to tell you guys what the play is all about, kind of. Aaron Ginsburg, the director, basically told me that I didn't need permission :P So here gos my review!!

The show started off with Sparks Nevada: Marshal on Mars! It stars Marc Evan Jackson, Mark Gagliardi and Busy Philipps. This was so funny and it had Yvette Nicole Brown as the "troubleshooter". The episode was where Red, Busy's character, had broken up with Sparks Nevada (MEJ's character) and chose Croach instead. It seemed as if Sparks had created a simulation of the two of them, where Red told Croach that she had chosen wrong. Then, the simulations needed an upgrade, where they developed minds of their own after Sparks approved the upgrade. To shut them down, The Troubleshooter had to be called. After trading multiple jibes, they were finally shut down.

The next act was in my opinion, the funniest thing ever! This was the Adventures of Captain LaserBeam! This brought out the talent of John Ennis and Hal Lublin. Hal was hysterically funny with his drawl of "Captain LaserBeammm" and "Richarrrddd" (who was played by Matt Braugner). I laughed so much at this bit that I actually got a cramp in my tummy!

In this episode, Captain Laserbeam had to face-off with his third worst enemy King Mammalwith the spirit of the Adventurekateers egging him on and eventually saving him! This was when the King Mammal (played by Nick Kroll) stole the Platypus and another animal that I cannot remember from the zoo. The episode was brilliantly enacted and written!

The third and final act was Jefferson Reid: Ace American - starring Nathan Fillion as Jefferson Reid, Annie Savage as Agent Abby Adams and Samm Levine as Brownie Finn. In this episode, Brownie was kidnapped and changed into a monster by the evil, dirty Krauts. Then Jefferson Reid was called in, to save Brownie and Agent Adams. The best part about this act was the way Annie Savage said "Dirty Kraut" in this voice. It was laugh-out-loud funny. The other things were the expressions on Samm's face whenever they were talking about Brownie. Nathan Fillion pulled off a cool superhero expression, but it was somewhat reminiscent of Castle's expressions. I guess, it's more a Nathan thing, but he did look adorable!

The entire show had advertisements from the sponsors - WorkJuice Coffee and Patriot Brand Ciggarettes. These were little snippets and jingles. The show ended with the cast singing the WorkJuice Anthem, which I've had stuck in my head for the last three days. (I'm editing this on January 11th).

There is a segment with two cops that I cannot remember right now, but when I do, I will put it in!

After the show, we came out and stood near the stage door, waiting patiently for Nathan Fillion, like good little children. He came out and then ran upstairs, just smiling at us. It was like all the people collectively went "Whaaaa?" until we heard that he went up for an interview and would be back for pictures. Phew, right?

He came back after his interview and we took a picture and he signed my card for me. He was so sweet and stayed for quite a while signing things and taking pictures with various people. He's one of those people who you just know you're going to like and have fun hanging out with. He actually is a LOT like Rick Castle.



We said a quick hello to Yvette Nicole Brown from Community, who was sweet enough to take a quick picture with us. She also had such a fabulous hair-do and was awesome on stage! She told me she did it herself!



We also got to hang out with the very cool Annie Savage. She has an incredible voice and is just so lively that you feel so excited being around her!!! I also found a lucky penny (you all know how I am about those) while I was chatting with her which just ups her cool factor! She also had the cutest little hat on!




(Marc Evan Jackson and me)

Then we went to The Little Room where we hung out with the funny and talented Mark Gagliardi, Marc Evan Jackson (who IS Sparks Nevada) and Andy Paley who's orchestra does the music for the show. It was incredible getting to know these insanely talented people and truly humbling that they took the time to chat with me.

All in all, it was an amazing show and evening!! Now all I need is for them to bring the show to Bangalore! We have a really cool theatre culture if anyone who can make this happen is reading this! Until then, I shall blog about Thrilling podcasts! HA!

Meeting Mesha

While hanging out in LA, I've met some really cool people, who I hope to keep in touch with when I get back to Bangalore. One of them is Ella's neighbour Mesha. I had heard of Mesha for a while and how she liked shiny, glittery things and she made art out of them. Me, being me, who LOVES shiny, glittery things, couldn't wait to meet a fellow magpie.

The minute I met her, I instantly liked her. You know how you meet some people and you just click? Well this was one of them. All I had to go by was that she like shiny things. I got to hang out with her yesterday and Ella, Mesha and I sat for hours making her art boxes. The process that goes into these is insane and she is so dedicated to her work.

She takes the time to go through yard sales and take little toys or trinkets that no one may want and make something arty and meaningful from them. She takes the time to find messages that makes a person think. She gets inspiration from Buddhist philosophy, which I found interesting, because most of the Buddhist messages are universal.

She makes her boxes for adults, people who are just starting out in life (like me) and for kids, who just like fun things! It does take a lot of time and energy because she has to find the right background, the right pieces and the right amount of things to fill the box. She also takes custom orders and will make the boxes specially.

This is one that I absolutely love. I love the simplicity and the message with it.



This one is something that simply stands out. I can't really explain why, but I am attracted to this piece. Say hello to Buddha :)




This one is the Unicorn Disco, which is just so cute and fun.



I think Mesha's work describes her personality and her depth. I think it's amazing what she's doing and how she goes about it. Here she is in the process of making a pre-historic box.



It is fun watching her work and helping her, because it inspires me to get on it with my craft. I may not make pretty boxes or paint pictures, but my craft is writing and I haven't been doing enough of that lately, so this actually inspired me to write my stories and poems! So, thank you Mesha. If you ant to see some of her work, she also has a blog.