Economic Report: Week 3

I'm starting to think that my metrics are kinda screwy, that p/P numbers aren't terribly valid, reliable or meaningful, given the extensive extenuating circumstances surrounding any given show. Sometimes we're splitting the door with other acts or with the venue, sometimes the money is collected at the door, sometimes after the show, sometimes the turn out is low, different shows are promoted in different ways. We'll never have a big enough sample size or sophisticated enough statistical analysis to isolate, control for, and find correlations between these variables. In the meantime we'll have to rely on gut feelings, guestimates, and instinct.

Also, attempting to do anything with this data is time consuming and eminently not-fun. I realize I promised a more thorough last time, and now I'm failing to keep that promise. As recompense I offer this picture of Kate victorizing some public art in Ann Arbor, where we spent our day off today.

Of course, we're still keeping track of things, and you can still check out the data for yourself. If anyone is really missing my vague attempts to make this data mean anything other than, the car has put us in a serious hole, which we are slowly but steadily digging our way out of, thanks to many shovels small and large offered by many wonderful people across the country to whom we are very grateful, then please complain and i'll strive to do better.

Show 19: Yipsilanti, MI

Turnout: 11

Door: 21, Merch: 10

Personal Injury Report: Unscathed!

Show Description: We played at Dreamland Theater, a place stocked with puppets and marionettes. Here's one of them, the hairy frog. And another, a robotized baby.

The show felt a bit routine, which was unfortunate. And Kate's pre-show introduction thing sucked by her own admission. But besides that, overall, it went well.

Dreamland seems to house some pretty cool events. The music before us was great, the people from the collective were very, very nice and we stayed at a house with a squash the size of an elephant tumor on the counter and chickens roaming the front yard.

There were two downer things revolving around this show. 1) We were held up in dead stopped traffic for an hour due to a bad, bad, bad motorcycle accident.

2) We mistakenly left the gun inside the venue and then went to the squash-chicken house to sleep without a thought about it. Kate had taken it off at the end, which usually doesn't happen. Wonderfully, by a stroke of amazing luck, we were caught just in the nick of time to go and pick it up at the venue. Thank you, thank you.

This is not the most professional behavior we've exhibited, but at least the motorcycle accident wasn't our fault.

Did you see this show? If you did, write a review, comment on it, or ask us some questions. We'd like to hear it because we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 18: Toledo, OH

Turnout: 15

Cut of Door: 40, Merch: 10

Personal Injury Report: Kate pulled a muscle or tendon in the collar bone area pretty badly. Shoulder movement impaired for the moment.

Show Description: Our original set up of playing at Gabe's house was combined with another show and moved to an anarchist space called the Black Cherry. This venue is three things: a large cafe slash infoshop on the ground floor, a show space in the basement and soon to be apartments, ten of them, on the second floor. All this is in the more or less construction phase. It could turn out to be a very prosperous space considering the city of Toledo seems to be in need of pretty much any kind of business.

We played with eight other acts. This was quite a night. One of the guys who saw Paint the Town said it was the show he'd been waiting for all summer. Lots of people, possibly fifty, were there.

It went late into the night, and as any feisty party should, it got a little rowdy. We were interrupted twice by a couple of noise guys due to their apparently vibrant and dog-in-heat style love of theater. Surprising, I know. Their lack of inclusion in our set obviously causing quite a bit of devastation, they decided to fuck up our intro by telling us how to do it, and also delay and fuck up the beginning of the play by improving a Power Electronics set right as we started.

Now, I can't speak for everyone, but I tend to think of guys, especially noise guys, that get excited about theater as, how shall we say... "lesser men." I mean, I don't want to have to be cruel, but come on. Really.

I tend to stick with the volume knob as my measure of truth.

You all can think what you want, but let me tell you, a guy that will go as far as attempting to prove himself by saving the play from his assumption of the performer's own mistakes, yelling, "don't explain it, don't!" during the introduction is in need of being saved himself, lest he fall into the depths of the ever-present emasculating theatrical tights.

And save him we did.

I really couldn't help myself. Seeing someone on the precipice of such disaster made me shoot into action running over to him like a god-fearing evangelical to her coming-out son, slamming the top of his suitcase down on his hands, getting the power cut, and after his nick-of-time salvation, demanding he explain himself, since he better know the reason for his action so as to avoid future repetition of this pitiful display.

Obviously too embarrassed directly afterwards to give any good explanation, he just mumbled, incapable of handling audible language for the time being. And who could blame him really, I wouldn't want to admit that kind of theatrical love either. Ruin a guy's career.

That episode behind us, and the adrenaline happily still pumping, the performance kicked ass and the audience fucking ate it up.

We met some great people before and after the show and got to see some who'd been there for Paint the Town last time we came through. This show was, performance-wise, probably the best yet.

Staying at Gabe's was great, as always. He makes Toledo really worthwhile and an extra enjoyable time.

Did you see this show? If you did, write a review, comment, or ask us some questions. We'd like to hear it because we believe in artistic transparency.

Show 17: Buffalo, NY

Turnout: 27 ish

Our Cut of Door Donation: 40.60, Merch: 20

Personal Injury Report: Our bodies and minds remained intact.

Show Description: Nobody's turned out to be a great show despite various, what should we call them... screwinesses?

Everybody seemed to be in a great mood, we definitely were; things were giddy and Buffalo is a surprisingly enjoyable city. It seems oldish, or maybe just small in that there are two main streets populated by a surprising mix of businesses one wouldn't expect to see next to each other.

For example, Nobody's, an anarchist punk space, is in a house on the corner of one of the main streets that also sports an "I have muscles and wish I had the nerve to pop my collar like those guys I see in GQ do; oh well, that new hair gel I got does pop me up a notch style-wise, I suppose that makes up for it," kind of restaurant.

It's like a family reunion where you can find your biker aunt sitting next to your business school cousin who's explaining collateralized debt obligations to your punk nephew's harmonica playing girlfriend.

On that same street there is also a great European Cafe, a convenience store largely labeled "WE NEVER CLOSE" along with various boutiques, overnight printing shops and tattoo parlors all located inside old Victorian houses. Not to mention, on the other main street, there are goth bars merging with well lit modern minimalist cocktail places that always freak me out, next to worn wood New Orleans style whiskey parlors.

Nice.

Anyway, the screwiness mentioned earlier can be divided into two categories, one being, good screwinesses and two, bad screwinesses. The bad of the two was that the radio decided to sound like a recording of an already talkative hamster now on coke. This threw things off a bit as one might expect. This is a good reason not to own a hamster, always brining things closer to disaster, bastards.

So, in lieu of not having a working recording on the radio, I attempted to tune in actual static instead. And as the part about the character's Mother in the Land of the Dead begins, Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody picks up on the radio, perfect timing, singing in exact harmony with where the play is going, "Mamma, I've just killed a man..."

This was amazing. And awkward. It kind of made us look like haphazardly bad magicians, and threw me off performance-wise.

The good screwinesses were that people were much more enthusiastic than usual. Everyone hated Ben, quite a bit, and did so obviously. They actually rooted, loudly, for his demise. Also, people participated eagerly in the parts where there were suggestions to. Ah, goodness.

There was some great discussion afterwards too with everyone.

Did you see this show? If you did, comment on it, write a review, or ask us some questions. We'd like to hear it because we believe in artistic artistic transparency.

Vehicle Report 3: Don't ask, don't tell...

It's Monday, which means I should've written this vehicle report two days ago. Forgive me, we had some long drives and good times, see Kate's show reports for details on that.

The odometer says 113145, which means we've traveled 3025 miles. Mary is getting 27.56 mpg, which is quite good. We spent quite a while city-driving in Toledo, the land of closed businesses, in search for something that wasn't boarded up or overpriced ($13.50 for a buffet-style brunch, really?)

We got a new AC/DC adapter, twice the watts and 3/4 of the price. Hopefully this one won't spontaneously deconstruct.

Ever since Mary's CHECK ENGINE light went off on its own just outside Philly we've been in a sort of "don't ask, don't tell" arrangement. Mary still smells funny (like melting plastic) when she starts up, and makes a lot of noise, but as long as that light stays off, we're comfortable pretending nothing's wrong. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, since this 'don't ask don't tell policy' is pretty stupid) it's about time for an oil change, and the friendly 15 point inspection is sure to pick up some kind of disaster in need of our attention. If it doesn't, the emissions test we'll have to do when we get back to Wisconsin probably will. At least then we'll have a few days off in a row.

SANDWICHES! Kate : 6.5 Ben 6.

Show 16: Providence, RI

Turnout: 10

Monetary Votes of Support: 35, Merch: 6

Personal Injury Report: Unscathed.

Show Description: Providence!

We got a lesser dose of what we were dealt last time in this artsy city. Although there were no coon skin caps or tin foil patched clothing, the ironic art school style and attitude prevailed.

People sat in the bar. The guy we were kindly offered to stay with didn't see the play.

There was a man there filming it for, at first what was described as an Anti-war documentary, but then, after a bit more detail was an anti-war documentary, with zombies.

There were two great guys from Salt Lake City who saw the play and found it interesting. I liked talking to them.

There was also one woman who got in a sort of mild humorous argument with Kate that started out with her talking about her MFA and deconstructionism lectures and then evolved into her telling another MFA (who was running the door) to "suck it" when she mentioned another perspective on deconstructionism.

Suck it indeed.

Did you see this show? If you did, comment on it, write a review, or ask us some questions. We'd like to hear it because we believe in artistic transparency. And sucking it.

Show 15: Storrs, MA

Turnout: 80

Door Donation: 61, Merch: 55

Personal Injury Report: Ben's jacket split right up the middle.

Show Description: Tom from Blunt Objects did a great job of promoting this show.

Before we started there was a puppetry version of Antonin Artaud's Spurt of Blood, a poetry reading, folk punk, and a puppet piece from Tom himself.

We were pretty excited about this show and it turned out very well. Just having that number of people in the room gives more energy to the performance. Though, there were a couple noteworthy things we learned set-up wise. One, being that with that number of people, it matters even more where you're sitting. The farther back the worse for sight and audibility. Next time we'll have people scoot in closer.

That night there was conversation over clay work and Food Network, and the next day Mandy interviewed both of us for the college radio station, which was enjoyable.

Did you see this show? Comment on it, write a review, or ask us some questions. We'd like to hear it because we believe in artistic transparency.