Adventures Of Atom Smith

Ahoy hoy!

I recently tossed some of my old history lectures up on YouTube. Be sure to watch it two or three hundred times, and tell all of your friends. I already have one subscriber. This means that my claims of being slightly famous on the Internet now carry some weight.

I recently was amusing at a party. We thought it was going to be an improv show, but it all went horribly wrong when we realised that the hostess had not hired us to perform structured short form improv games to entertain her guests, but had rather hired us to mingle with her guests, trying to liven up the party simply by making it seem she had more interesting friends. Heather blogged thereapon.

Later that very same night, Steve and I did the Bovine Bleu Cow Five show contest. We were performing as the Denver based improv comedy group known as the Denver Wigs, and we performed improvisational comedic theater games. We got second place, and won a video tape of the blue collar comedy tour. Yes, an actual tape, in VHS glory. Trevor/Robert took it home. He was there, too. We lost to a standup who was well prepared enough that she was basically reading her whole routine off the notes in her hand. But, she brought more friends than anybody else. Apparently, she considers Whole Foods to be the best icon of Colorado culture, and a source for comedy. Because, you know, grocery stores that have an organic section don’t exist anywhere else in the world. Outsider perspective comedy can be entertaining, but it can also be a dismal failure… She proved the latter with her bit on whole foods. The premise was that everybody in the audience was an asshat just because Whole Foods exists.

The Adventures of SkullFucker is coming along. A second episode is nearing completion. And, it’s way too fucking long, so it may be a two parter. The core outline for the first ten episodes exists. Expect episode one to be live in February.

After playing phone tag with the owner of the Mercury Cafe for the past seven zillion ages, we finally had a conversation. I’m doing a show on July 19th. It’s free, and the Cafe is a great place. You should come, and make a zillion of your friends come.

Marilyn called me a few weeks ago and asked me to do a show for her. The past few weeks have just been spent leaving each other messages. Honestly, I was rather amazed when I realized I was actually talking to her. In the end it boiled down to a conversation that lasted about two minutes. The show is at 8:00.

I’ll post more as I have more. My dinner theatre show for the 24th is now up in the air, and may not happen. Flaky client. There is also a possibility of an Enterfornment Late Night show through August at the Bug.

Enterfornment was a success. I hadn’t slept the night before, the game show didn’t work, I expected I was going to fall asleep, and was basically fueled only by panic and caffeiny energy drinks. Some segments got cut at the last minute because it was decided they “weren’t ready.” (Like the complete history of the split between Sunni and Shi’a Islam in 60 seconds or less, and the overthrow of Hawaii.) I didn’t have anywhere near enough memorized, and I didn’t even have all of my notes at the podium to read. And, all in all it was a success. Sure, it wasn’t perfect, but the show certainly proved the baseline concept that it is possible to pull off an entertaining, funny educational show for adults. Even if you use a subject which is assumed to be extremely dry.

It wasn’t exactly a comedy show. When you talk about Osama bin Laden, and our support of the repressive Diem regime in Vietnam, the whole show can’t be 100% funny. It did have some funny parts. The audience did laugh a lot, and they got a lot of the jokes. I think one of the best laughs was showing a picture of Eric Estrada when talking about a Mr. Estrada who was important in central American politics around the start of the 20th century. Go figure, eh? A similar joke about Mr. Diaz with a picture of Cameron Diaz was found to be more confusing. Mostly because I botched the delivery.

The first act had First Barbary War, War of 1812, Opening of Japan, Spanish American War, and the Philippine American War. It ended right before the start of the 20th Century. The band, “The Moment” played in the middle of the act to break things up, right after Opening of Japan.

The second act featured American meddling in Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, a note about Sayid Qutb and his role in creating the ideology that inspired Bin Laden while he lived in Colorado, Iran, Nicaragua some more, Panama some more, our role in the 1980′s Iran (again) – Iraq war, and Iraq again ( in Operation Desert Storm aka “The second first Gulf War” ). The overall theme was the importance of understanding our enemies, and how it can save us money, time, and lives. Almost every war, revolution, and overthrow included a line about how “it was then that we as a nation finally came to understand the vital importance of understanding our enemies.”

So, since the show ended with a brief mention of the Iraq-America war in 1991, the closer was a note about how thankfully, we finally acted according to the one lesson that was learned so many times over. We finally understood our enemy and acted accordingly (at least for a while). And, we closed with the infamous clip of Cheney talking about what the results of invading Iraq would have been. It would have been a Quagmire, because Iraq isn’t a unified country, but a collection of chunks which could not all simultaneously be controlled by us, and chucks would have fallen out of our control. It seemed a fitting and poignant end. The audience seemed to appreciate the irony.

So, I never adressed the current Iraq war directly, but in a sense, the whole show (and basically all of American history) were basically a setup for it. The show had enough historical examples to allow the audience to understand the current war in a different context, even though there wasn’t much discussion of Iraq. (Except for a few pictures from modern times used as an ironic means of explaining past events. Like how the water torture in the phillipines over a century ago was just the work of “a few isolated individuals,” in almost the same way that things like water torture and psychological torture is officially the work of a few isolated individuals in our current global war on terror.)

So, all in all. The audience says they liked it. They laughed during the show, and the vibe felt good. There is plenty of room for improvement, but it went well enough that I am planning to do more educational shows when I get a chance.

As for upcoming stuff, the 24 hour film contest is in a few months. Dunno if I’ll participate. I am doing some private dinner theater in July. Iraq War: The Musical is coming to town, and I missed my chance to audition. And, the Regional Championships for competetive air guitar will be taking place in Denver. I certainly won’t be competing as I have no musical inclination, but I will probably be a supporting member of the Rock a Feller entourage. (Who I insist ought to dress up as John D. Rockefeller.) No word if Bjorne Turoque will be there.

I think this lolcatz picture is funny, and makes me want to do an economics show

Well, preproduction for the Enterfornment Extravaganza at the Bug is well in swing. I have a booth operator lined up who will be in town for the show, I have multimedia bells and whistles well started, and I spent last night at the Bug Theatre talking to them about some of the particulars for setting up the show. Did you know that the Bug Theatre has a liquor license? It’s an arts license, which means you can’t advertise the fact that they will be able to sell beer during the show. (Politicians were obviously drunk when they came up with that rule…) So, I’m not advertising that fact, but as a comment between myself, and those of you who are my close friends, it sure is an interesting thing, ain’t it… I have also been giving out some of my cool new flyers, and gave away a few freebie comp tickets at Freak Train.

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US History In The Middle East may be coming to a theater near Denver in the near future as a long form lecture. I did Freak Train last night, talking more about the 1953 Iranian coup. People are starting to seem ever more interested, and several have been asking where they can see me do a longer history talk. So, having been effectively drafted, I intend to start figuring out where I can do it. It’ll probably be a month or two. One guy even called me the “Carl Sagan of History.”

Always on the verge of losing all faith in Humanity, I am slowly being forced to admit that people really will pay attention if you put something in front of them, and keep it lively. This is a good thing. It took a few months, and thus a few five minute talks – out 20 minutes in total – to move the audience from not caring to having a bunch of people come up to me afterwards asking for more.

Rodents of Unusual Size (local improv group) have asked me about the possibility of opening for them in a few months as well. I have a dinner theater gig in Rui Doso, New Mexico this weekend. I need to learn my lines today.

Dangerous Theater now has a weekly improv competition on Sundays that is just starting out, but could be amazingly cool if it gets going. I went last week, but it was just me and another guy. And, our audience locked her keys in her car, so she spent half the show outside waiting for AAA to come and unlock the car. It was a short show, and then we all went out drinking and did a round of pub trivia. Their trivia was all fucked up, did you know that Crash Bandicoot was a Genesis game? Of course not, because it actually wasn’t! But, that was still the right answer. I lost my shirt. Not as part of the trivia competition – just in general.

Jon Stevenson, of “Intercourse, PA” directoring fame is premiering Kung Foo Kops at the “1st Annual Super-Amazing-Awesome-Happy-Funtime Film Festival”
Hosted by: Jon Stevenson and John Schmidt
Type: Party – Movie/TV Night
Where: Dave & Busters
When: Sunday, March 9 from 7:00 pm to 11:00 pm

Be there, or be a stupid square jackass. Oh, and dress “70′s.”

I think that covers it for the moment.

So, I was selecting a halloweeny themed costume for Freak Train last night. I had a Sheiky getup for a dinner theater gig this week, and leftovers from Talk Like A Pirate Day. So, naturally, I decided to go as an Islamic Pirate. I figured it’d be fun to use that comic costume mish-mash as a justification for talking about the first Barbary war. Unfortunately, I wound up running late, and didn’t manage to get a slot.

So, you should all spend a great deal of time researching the novelty of this little war. It was our first time dealing with radical Islamists backed by rouge states who were operating outside the scope of agreed international law. We handled it by paying them off and supporting them, right up until we turned around and had an undeclared war with them which was all the bloodier because they funded their side of the war using the money we had been giving them. (Sound familiar?)

The war even started when Islamists brought down a tall American structure. When his demands for ransom and tribute were denied, the Pasha of Tripoli “declared war” by walking down to the U.S. consulate and chopping down the flag pole out front.

Our conflicts with the Barbary Coast states even gave us one of the earliest documents explaining whether or not the American government is founded in Christianity. Modern politicians refer to us as One Nation Under God and insist that we have always been a Christian nation. The early leaders of our nation saw things a bit differently: “…the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion;…” according to the 1797 Treaty With Tripoli. The treaty had unanimous support from the Senate, and was published in newspapers at the time. There is no record of contemporary complaints or public outcry. It was a hundred years after the start of the Revolutionary war before God started to gain any foothold in the government.

Occasionally, people ask me what I do. One of the answers is “compositing.” This usually results in the response, “Oh, I had no idea you wrote music.” In order to clear up some of the confusion, I have created a short explanation video showing a composite, and some of the elements that went into making it.

Read more to see it, and get an explanation. (edited Friday, Oct 12th — see the bottom)

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