I made it out to as many Fringe shows as a could this week and decided to review them in case anyone is thinking of catching them at the Best of the Fringe or at another festival:

Duel of Ages
I went to see this set of six short plays because I like watching fights. I also know one of the performers but mostly it was my enjoyment of fake violence. I was not disappointed. All six dished up tasty sword on sword, sword on dude, and flying-slow-motion-kick on dude action. The happy surprise was that most of plays sported, in addition to excellent choreography, equally excellent writing and acting. The comic pistol duel and the wordless dance/fight combination were my favorites but I would happily watch any of these plays again.
Tied with The Welcome to the Show Show for best time I had at a play this year.

The Fugue Code
I know nothing about Baroque music and have never read any novels with ‘code’ in the name. Despite these handicaps I enjoyed this comedic mystery immensely from start to finish.
Unlike some other reviewers I had no difficulty in differentiating between the characters (the use of props and minimal costumes for minor and single appearance characters really helps). Alex’s quick delivery is amusing in itself at times but also allows him to work in interesting and funny background and exposition without derailing the plot.
The only sour note in the production was a small sound error near the end. Judging by the laughter and applause I think the rest of the almost full audience I saw it with enjoyed it as much as I did.
Recommended.

Geek-Gasm
I did not see the end of this play because I walked out a little over half way through when it became clear that the flood of references wasn’t building up to anything. Unfortunately saying Kerby, purple pants, and nanu nanu in quick succession is not actually a joke. Not even for those of us who knew what Daredevil #131 was without being told.
The actors try hard but it’s an obvious sort of straining for laughs that aren’t there in the material.
Honorable mention goes to the unnamed supporting character who constantly describes what is happening around him in florid fantasy prose. His bit got a couple of chuckles out of me but not enough to keep me there.
Skip it.

I'm too lazy to write up the rest in full right now so I will fall back on the crutch of lazy reviewers everywhere and rate them each with a number of @s out of five @s:

First Heist Club - @@@

Show Stopping Number! The Improvised Musical - @@@@

The Welcome to the Show Show - @@@@@

Worst. Show. Ever - @@@@

A day I have long waited for has arrived. The market half a block from my work was closed for renovation for a good part of last month, which was inconvenient, but when they reopened what should I find in their fridge? Caffeinated juice by the can! Rockstar Juiced has a good bit of caffeine and is 70% apple, pear, mango, orange, and passion fruit juice. Strangely the company website says it's only 50% juice in contradiction of every other source of information including the can itself. In any case, it's a tasty way to ingest drugs if you don't like over-sweetened stuff and find the weather too warm for a black coffee. Good for my early morning new comic day work alertness. Bad for my wallet and blood pressure. Fortunately I've been known to black out after yawning and it's only when I'm extremely stressed that my blood pressure rises to "low normal". As for the cash flow...

I may be moving into a slightly different, more long term, and better compensated role at the Beguiling soon. Nothing firm yet but I'm hopeful that it may also give me more time for freelance and other fun projects.

Thursday I finally got to see Giant Killer Shark the Musical after listening to the soundtrack for a year. It was excellent. I tried not to sing along but occasionally failed. Afterward I met Sam Sutherland (writer, actor) who offered to fight me in the parking lot after I made a jest at the expense of his boat.

Saturday was free comic book day with all the madness that entails and as if that wasn't enough, I also saw Evil Dead the Musical again. I only found out that a ticket was available half an hour before the doors and did some impressively illegal biking to get there on time but, it was worth it. Nadine and I had "seats one and two", which turned out to be little wooden chairs crammed in front of a railing at the extreme edge of the stage. Our heads were a good two feet lower than anyone else there, which meant a few lights directly in cornea and an eyeful of undergarment when a character in a short skirt died at that corner of the stage. Still preferable to anything outside the blood splatter zone and it meant we could see feet under the curtain during intermission and make up stories about behind the scenes drama.

I attended Scott McCloud's talk at UofT's OISE Theatre on Sunday. It was great, and afterward I went with the McCloud family and two car loads of Toronto comics people to Dutch Dreams for ice cream. The McClouds are really fun people, but hopefully they won't remember me as I accidentally banged Ivy in the head with a piece of trim that fell off the wall. If any of my American friends are reading this and have an upcoming Making Comics Tour stop in your area you should totally catch it. Comics and charts together again as they always should be!

Hey Next Week, do you think you can be this action packed? Do you? I dare you.

I have two free tickets to a hotdocs show:

The Dark One. 11:30 tonight at the Bloor.
First commenter who wants 'em gets 'em.

Review:
A drug-addicted poet searches for spiritual redemption as he cooks up morphine at the kitchen table with his Auschwitz survivor mother and pet bird. This brilliant, hallucinatory immersion into the psyche of Dan Biholar, a soul spiralling into oblivion, pushes the medium of the moving image about as far as it can go. Biholar vacillates between moments of acute self-awareness, disturbing darkness, tender sentiment, lyrical inspiration and delusions of grandeur. Award-winning experimental filmmaker and sound designer Darryl Miller was once in Biholar's shoes.

http://hotdocs.bside.com/?_view=_filmdetails&filmId=15410845

This is a last minute thing for anyone who hasn't been checking their email or whose address I couldn't find so if you already RSVPed there is nothing new here for you. Move along.

Paul and I will be celebrating our ability to not die for another year
this weekend.

On Saturday the 21st we'll be having dinner at Butler's Pantry at 7:30 pm. After
dinner we'll be dancing and carrying on at Neutral or someplace.

On Sunday the 22nd there will be boardgames, ice cream and other stuff
at our house starting at 2pm and ending whenever the last people
decide to leave.

There are reservation and room capacities to be figured out so please
reply promptly and let us know if you are coming to one thing, the other, or
both and also if you have any questions.

"Atheism is a religion in the same way not collecting stamps is a hobby"

- Anonymous (upon being told 'atheism is just another religion')

Over the last couple of days I have:
1. Written a story outline / book design document
2. Finished one of my two art courses (decided not to take it for a second term)
3. Finally got my eBay account set up to sell as well as buy
4. Drawn up plans for the new shelves I'm building this weekend
5. Overslept and missed the first couple of hours of work
6. Started reading the second adult novel I've read this year (have been rocking the young adult fiction)
7. Rejoiced that my grocery store has started selling cartons of eggnog.

Right now I am:
1. Full of eggnog
2. Excited because my sexy new toy (aka kick ass laptop) is at the mail depot ready to be picked up!

nyahnyahnyah came to visit and we did fun things including visiting the ROM where there is a special exhibit on Italian design. we learned many interesting facts.

I really want to post an entry about interesting things but unfortunately I don't have time so here is the picture that has been cheering me up for the past week:


thanks redknotallenec!

Anyone interested in coming to see Harsh Times with me this Thrusday (Nov 9th) at 9:30pm? I have free passes.

Staring Federico from Six Feet Under (Freddy Rodriguez) and the American Psycho (Christian Bale).

Not sure about a lot of the details but it should be GRITTY, VIOLENT, and FREE!

Paul and I are advertising for a new housemate so I thought I would run this by you all livejournalers. If you were looking for a room in Toronto for four to six hundred dollars would you consider this? Is there anyway we can say to make the place sound more awesome without resorting to filthy lies?

A room in this prestigious house at Bloor and Shaw two blocks from the Ossington Subway can be yours!

The rent is either $400 or $550 (depending on whether you would like the large or small bedroom) plus one third of utilities.

The house has central heat, air conditioning, a back yard, and sunny, high ceilinged common rooms. The living room is stocked with: a 47inch television, a wide variety of movie players, board games, and video game systems. The kitchen is spacious, filled with convenient flat surfaces and also with a staggering assortment of different kinds of tea.

Your housemates are two friendly, quiet, late twenties nerds who work full time, have a number of creative hobbies, and occasionally have groups of other nerds over for brunch and movies and such.

There are Laundromats at both ends of the block and two 24hour grocery stores within walking distance.

If you would like to share in our phone and high speed Internet rather than getting your own they are:

High speed: $11 /month
Phone: $12 /month

If you're interested you can email us or call 416-531-0206.