Friday, June 30, 2006

Do The Math

Sportswriter Greg Cote of the Miami Herald was, I’m sure, just trying to be funny when he made a comment about the possibility of increasing the NCAA basketball tournament from 64 teams to 128. Cote wrote “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to March April and May Madness!”

Because you don't have to be all that good at math to understand that doubling the number of teams would lengthen the tournament by a mere one week. Quadrupling the number of teams would only make it two weeks longer, and so on and so on.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Return of the Rat Race Choir

I’ve actually posted in the Runes three times this month, so I thought it was time to bring the Choir up to date.

When last I wrote, the Patsies were going to Chicago to perform in the nation’s largest sketch comedy festival. And we did. Two nights, Thursday and Friday, with a decent crowd of 40-50 people coming out to see the visiting Iowans each night. We got some laughs, but there was a lot of ball-dropping, line-flubbing, and cue-missing--and while none of that made me wish we weren’t there, it did put a bit of a damper on what was otherwise a fun-filled trip to Chicago.

It was, however, the last hurrah for the Patsies. The group itself was going in a couple of different comedic directions and there was a considerable amount of drama and conflict that eventually began to affect certain friendships within the group. So, after 16 shows in 11 months, the Patsies just sort of disintegrated.

The good news (and one thing that prompted the rebirth of the Choir) is that some of us are coming back in a new group, tentatively called The Comedy Cooperative and scheduled to perform at the Des Moines Civic Center’s Stoner Theater in August. It might be a one-off or it might be a semi-permanent thing, but it should be a pleasant diversion for everyone.

Random Thoughts

+ I was listening to Yahoo LaunchCast today and a Sandy Denny song came on: “Been On the Road So Long.” It made me realize that if time travel were possible, I think my first destination would be to go back to the early 1970s and sit at her feet listening to her sing. Her voice just reaches inside me.

+ Today I happened to see a TV spot for some sort of funeral insurance (something I’m quite familiar with from my days working on the Brintlinger Funeral Home account back in Decatur), and the spokesman said this: “These days the cost of a typical funeral can be up to $10,000--or more!” But see, you can’t do that. You can’t say “up to...or more” because it’s a contradiction. If it’s up to $10,000, it can’t be more than $10,000, too.

+ I’m just pointing that out for future reference. Tell ‘em where you got it.

+ Look for more posts here at the Choir in the next few weeks. I’m between novels right now.