The New Museum is hosting a discussion about Improv Everywhere tonight (Friday) at 7:30.  I’m one of the panelists, along with Charlie Todd and Chad Nicholson. Scott Brown moderates.

More info at IE’s site or the New Museum’s site.

Tonight we challenge a giant.

Cagematch is a weekly improv competition at the UCB theater. Fiefdom, my improv group, is the challenger tonight. Our opponent is Omelette Vision, a dream team of 3 of the city’s best improvisors. They’re hugely popular. And they are the men who taught us improv.

It’s been a difficult haul. We lost two team members the week we were invited to challenge. We’ve had only a month to find and rehearse the new team amongst schedule complications, vacations, and our coach quitting. We’ve only performed together with the new lineup once.

But I’m excited. We have a great group, much stronger than before, and I’m glad we’re going up against the big boys. So come out tonight and vote for Fiefdom. Thursday, June 21st, 11:00 pm at the UCB theater. Details and reservations here.

Got a show tonight.

Fiefdom
8pm Wednesday, August 23rd
Under St. Mark’s
94 St. Marks Place (twixt 1st and A)

Appearing with Queefer Sutherland, Creak Weasel, and Chantico Warfare. I think tickets are $5.
The photo above is from our show last Saturday, which I completely failed to mention on this blog. (Photo courtesy of the the inimitable Ari Scott).

A short I just produced for the comedy group Hot Sauce will screen this Wednesday night as part of their industry showcase. These guys are great.

Hot Sauce Sells Out
8pm, Wednesday August 16th.
UCB Theater
302 W 26th (between 8th and 9th)

My improv group, Fiefdom, has a show tonight at Variety Underground. Details:

Thursday August 3
7-9 PM
The Parkside Lounge
VARIETY UNDERGROUND
317 East Houston between Avenue B & Avenue C (F Train to 2nd Ave)
www.varietyunderground.com 

The House of Uster, my Warcraft guild, performed “Warcraft Prov” at the Del Close Marathon last weekend. Some photos here.

It was pretty poor improv, frankly. We never rehearsed and were still discussing the form up until the minute we went on stage. Basically, we just stood on stage in bizarre costumes and declared details about Warcraft. Our audience was surprisingly gaming-literate: the warcraft-specific jokes got a lot of laughs. It’s also possible the audience was just really drunk.

The guy in the skull mask is legendary rapper MC Chris. And that’s an actual girl next to him.

The weekend was crazy. I was hired at 1pm on Friday to produce a segment on the marathon for Current TV. The kick-off event was later that day at 4:30 pm, so there wasn’t much time to prepare.

It looks like we'll be pre-recording the Michael Smerconish Morning Show segment to air tomorrow (Thursday).

Update May 4th: It aired this morning. It's up as a podcast on WPHT's site, or you might get a faster download here. I think it's a decent interview, but what do I know? I credit Anton Chekhov with writing a play called "The Cherry Tree."

I'll be live on The Michael Smerconish Morning Show tomorrow discussing the IE Best Buy event. It should happen just after 8:30 AM Eastern. If you're not in Philly or near one of their many affiliates, you can listen online from WPHT's website ("Listen Live," upper right-hand corner). There's an irritating but quick and painless mandatory sign-up (for which you can supply false info if you wish) before the audio starts.

Michael Smerconish is an accomplished neo-conservative author and radio personality who occasionally fills in for Bill O'Reilly and whose recent book "Muzzled" is currently #34 on the NY Times best seller list. More details at his personal site.

If you listen, please drop me a line or post a comment here and let me know how it went.

“Sexual Intercourse, American Style,” a short film I directed (and shot and edited,as these things go), premieres at the Channel 102 film festival tonight. There are two screenings at The Magnet, 8:00 and 9:30. I’ll be at both. It’ll sell out quick, so if you’re coming, please make reservations. More details.

The film was written by Mitch Magee and stars Will Hines, Eliza Skinner, Julie Klausner, and Matthew Cornillon. You can see stills on our mypace page.

Audience votes determine which films come back as a “Prime Time Series,” so feel free to bring friends.

Channel 102 is a short film fesitval modeled on Channel101.com. Filmakers submit a 5 minute “pilot” which is reviewed by a panel of past festival winners. If the pilot is screened, audience votes determine if it returns the following month as a “prime time series.” I directed a previous 102 series, The Widower, which ran for 3 episodes.