Some Holiday Cheer from Rainbow Annie

January 4, 5 & 6 at The Warehouse Theatre

I love the end of the year when every publication, media outlet and "professional blogger" (What is up with that, anyway? How do I sign up for "professional blogger" status?) tries to sum up the year in some clever way. Some are delightful… some are painful… but they’re all pretty darn amusing.

• Regret the Error’s top media errors of 2007
• Merriam Webster’s Word of the Year
• Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year
• Webster’s New World College Dictionary’s Word of the Year
• Dave Barry’s Annual sum-up (always one of my personal favorites)
• Book Sense Bestsellers of the Year
• 101 Dumbest Business Moments
• Best Ad Songs
• Time’s List of Top 10 Lists (gotta love that!)

Those of us in The Globe have been discussing how to sum up the year in Upstate theatre.  Sure, we have the "Best of the Beat" vote… but that really only scratches the surface.  What about the best wig?  Or the coolest prop?  Or the ugliest costume?  Or Mr/Ms Ego 2007?  Or if we learn anything from all the mass media lists, no one loves a sum-up the way they love a sum-up of gaffes (No… techies, I’m not talking gaff tape… but Most Artful Glow Tape would be a great category, wouldn’t it?).  Maybe, if we manage to get our act together by next year, you’ll have a whole new set of things to vote on!

Anyway… Happy New Year!  And I hope we’ll see you this weekend for Rainbow Annie! 

Okay… I know I’m a little old for this… and I know I’ve been a little (a lot) Scrooge-ly this year… but I’ve been terribly amused by this website this year.  There have always been news stories tracking Santa on satellite… I’ve even flown on Christmas Eve when the pilots make comments about having spotted the fat man himself.  But now, it seems that Norad has put the tracking capability online.  As I type, he is in Porto Amboin, Angola.  There’s even a phone number you can call if you want your kids to be able to talk to an honest-to-goodness government employee who has no plans on Christmas Eve but to track a Saint in a sleigh and tell your kid about it.

Of course, there are also all these amusing articles about the physics of Santa.  This one seems to forgive the improbability of the whole thing in favor of the "well, he’s a saint" explanation, while this one suggests that he would probably be vaporized.

Either way… it really amuses me how much time science and military and government people spend on Santa.  I’d say they have better things to do… but I think that they prove pretty regularly that they don’t… so go ahead gang! 

From our little piece of The Globe to yours… Happy Festivus (yesterday… for the rest of us) and Merry Christmas (tomorrow).

By the way… now he’s in Chardaia, Algeria. 

20

You’ve gotta love this.

You know… I really like Christmas in concept, but I hate the whole present pressure thing.  You know?  I really prefer the "I’m in the store, I see something that makes me think of someone, I buy it and give it to that person and make that person unexpectedly happy" style of gift giving.   Not the "we’re on a deadline, here, people!" style of gift-giving.

But that’s Christmas for you.  If you’re not finished by Thanksgiving, you’re already late.  And there’s all this pressure to get the right gift or be subjected to the dreaded courtesy smile and obligatory thanks… and by the way did you happen to get a gift receipt?  And don’t even TRY going near the shops at Greenridge!  It becomes an all day endeavor just to get the hell out of the parking lot!

Anyway… that’s my little rant for you.  I hope you all shop managed to finish your shopping and your wrapping… and that you don’t have to give or receive any courtesy thanks this holiday season.  And if you want to hear more about the holidays, visit our good friend Rainbow Annie.  She has a lot to say here, here and here.  And she’ll be here live on January 4, 5 & 6 at The Warehouse… so… there!

Hey, all. Thank you to all of you who came out to support the Globe this weekend — we had some raucous holiday fun. Special thanks to Filthy Santa, and to those who were immortalized on film with him…nothing says the holidays like a Sain Nick who looks like he’s been sleeping in a cardboard box filled with canned chicken soup…

Thanks also to our friends from Laughing Stock - Reed, Bryan, and Jason — for joining us. "And to you your wassail too!"

Hey — while we’re on the subject of holiday giving, I heard about a cool website on NPR this morning. Its www.freerice.com If you go to this site, you can work on building your vocabulary - it asks you to choose definitions of words from the list provided, and increases in difficulty when you answer correctly. So it’s great for anyone who is preparing for the SAT, GRE, LSAT, or just wants to be able to keep up with Jen and me when we play ABC… But the great thing is, each time you get a correct answer, the website’s advertisers donate 20 grains of rice through the United Nations to feed people in need. Painless, and instructive online giving…

Happy Holidays! - join us in January for Rainbow Annie is the Angel of Death!

Okay… I know this has nothing to do with The Distracted Globe in any way, shape or form… except for the fact that all of us have cats.  So I guess it fits.  Anyway, those crazy scientists are up to their old tricks again… and this time it’s just really weird.

They have clones cats who glow in the dark.

I’m sorry for lacking vision or whatever, but I must admit that I’m having a hard time with this particular "side effect."  My cat does enough to keep me awake already!

So come see our shows this weekend!

There… that was relevant…

Just the other night, as we sat around Casa Tromsni remembering how frickin’ hysterical this sketch was!

That is all.

It occurred to us last night as we were reading through Rainbow Annie is the Angel of Death, that we’re all pretty interesting people.  Or at least… we think we are.  We have bizarre lives that we find highly amusing.  And we’ve decided that everyone else would find them amusing as well.  So we think that we should develop a series of short stories, or perhaps sketch comedy, that follows our everyday adventures.  Whether it’s a long stretch of serious bad luck (really… it was almost cartoony!) or Cinderella tearing off her wig to yell at the guy who just rear-ended her, ex-boyfriends’ tattoos or roommates who sit around making up epic stories to go along with Ween albums.  There is a never a dull moment with The Distracted Globe… and the amount of laughing that we do when we’re all together is a good testament to that.  Oh boy… and when you start incorporating our associate artists into the mix… well… we’re just downright fascinating!

Nevertheless, we’re all keeping super extra busy right now, getting ready for Rainbow Annie.  Make sure to check out The Rainbow Annie Blog and our YouTube channel to get the chance to meet Annie and Willy Nilly in advance.  They’re worth meeting, believe me!

And, we’ve announced our dates for our upcoming improv workshops: they’ll start Sunday January 27th at 6:00 at The Warehouse and they’ll go for the next 8 weeks until March 16th.  Visit our website for more info! 

And make sure to see us this weekend… we’ve got more fun with buttons and Christmas and Filthy Santa this Friday and Saturday.  Your holidays will never be the same again.