This is my very last post on LiveJournal...

...because I'm over HERE now!

See you on www.steev.org!

We now have 45 tickets reserved for tomorrow's Don't Spit the Water! The theater seats 50, or 60 if we add a row of seats behind the back row.

This is incredibly exciting! It's difficult to think of much else, especially work, when there's such a fun show in just over 24 hours. I have Pastor of Muppets rehearsal tonight, but my mind will most definitely be elsewhere.

That said, if you're planning on catching Don't Spit the Water tomorrow, and haven't made a reservation, you really, really should. We're also taking reservations for next week's show, our grand finale, which is expected to sell out very quickly.

Email your seat reservations to dontspit@gmail.com.

Beans.

http://www.tvbgone.com/

Of course, when I read about this in WIRED magazine, I sped to their web site and purchased one immediately. It arrived in the mail a few days ago.

I'm not as mischievous as I'd like to be with this thing. I'm actually pretty chicken when it comes to whipping it out and disrupting public TV viewing. The device actually turns TVs ON a lot quicker than it turns them OFF, which is a fun little irony.

I was able to shut off a TV at the bar in the Ogilvie Center Metra station yesterday. I was pretty far away from it, too, which was impressive. I pressed the button, the TV clicked off, and I casually walked away from the bar. When I was very far away, I turned around to look, and the TV was still off.

It's not as easy as they make it seem to be coy about it. Sure, the device is small... but it does look like a small TV remote control. If a TV shuts off, and people see some bozo standing there with a tiny TV remote control, he will undoubtedly be fingered as a suspect.

I have plans to take this little gem to Best Buy to see what kind of frenzy I can whip their employees into as I roam the TV aisles laying waste to rows full of high definition insanity.

So Becky and I bought a car last week... a Honda CR-V. It's a fitting replacement for the crunchable Beetle, and makes us both feel a little safer on the road. It's a compact SUV, and gets decent mileage, so I don't feel TOO bad about the purchase. It's amazing how fast my steadfast refusal to ever own an SUV disappeared. I bet it had something to do with almost being flattened by an SUV.

I know nothing about wheeling and dealing for the best price on a car. Since it was a 2005 model, we had little room to negotiate. We did get them to knock the price down a bit, and they threw in the subwoofer and cargo cover for good measure. Kinda sorta. I don't know. There were a lot of numbers on that page, I don't remember which ones corresponded to things I need to worry about.

We wanted to drive the car off the lot, so Becky brought it back in on Monday to have the subwoofer installed. Another thing I know nothing about is a car stereo, and what a subwoofer does. I just kind of assumed having the subwoofer would make the stereo sound more awesome than it already sounded, and since the Beetle's crummy sound, I had always promised myself my next car stereo would be primo.

Becky picked the car up last night, popped in one of her Britney CDs, and near-pooped the seat from the throbbing, soul-bumping bass. "Holy McCows," she thought, and immediately called me to laugh at me. My brilliant dealmaking had turned my nice safe family car into a pimped out ghetto-blaster with wheels.

When I got home, I tried it out for myself. Becky was right. Even with the bass turned down to -6, all music was completely unlistenable. Tom Waits was actually painful. Even Gordon Gano hurt my sternum a little bit. I was heartbroken. I was depressed. I was destroyed. Until we found... the manual! Right there on the passenger seat! The subwoofer had a manual of operations! And controls! Dials!

So all is good. I just need to find time to hit that subwoofer with a flashlight and a screwdriver. I can adjust the bass, I can adjust its volume. I can hook up my compact SUV with some mad, mad soundwavez. Boi-oi-oing.

Week 3 of DSTW is shaping up to be spectacular. We already have 32 ticket reservations, and it's still only Wednesday. For week 1 we had about 13 audience members. We had about 30 for week 2. I anticipate a complete sell-out for the next two weeks, which is super exciting.

Week 1 of the show was lots of fun. It was nice to test the show out in front of a live audience. Week 2 was so unexpectedly super. Playing for a packed house added so much to the show. I really do feel like we're sitting on something great here, with lots of great potential. The cast is just superb. Everybody brings such great surprises to the table, and I can't wait to see them rock out next week.

I was about $100 down after week 1, then broke even after week 2. If we really do sell out these next two shows, I'll actually make some money on this thing. Crazy.

Coming up... a silly story about a subwoofer.

Week #2 of Don't Spit the Water was phenomenal. We had a tiny crowd for week 1, due to Halloween and all... but we had a full house this last Friday.

The show plays amazingly to a full house. What a freakin' rush. I hope we have full houses for the remainder of the run.

Beans, beans.

In an epilogue to this story, I might have mused, "we were on our way to the gym, so we expected to be a little sore the next day anyway." I'll blow that zinger in the intro, though, and skip straight to the story.

So we're heading southwest on my favorite slanty street, Gross Point Road. At the same time, a 17-year old unlicensed driver, Jazmin O., is heading northeast on Gross Point Road. When we come to the intersection of Gross Point and Skokie Boulevard, Becky and I continue going straight, on account of our shiny green light. Jazmin, however, wants to head due north on Skokie Boulevard. So she does. For about a millisecond. Then her Geo Tracker stops moving. On account of ka-blammo.

The actual "accident" part of an accident lasts a few milliseconds. The reason people say, "I only remember the moments before and after," is that there really isn't much else.

The "before" moments were pretty scant. We knew we would hit for about one or two seconds. I slammed the brakes and swerved to my right, assuming the other driver would do the same. The most traumatic part of this all was that moment we both realized the girl wasn't stopping, and that we were about to slam into her head-on. In fact, every time I re-tell it, I re-live it a bit, and my whole body stiffens up. I know that's cheesy, and I know I'll get over it. So we screamed. I think I hollered something like, "we're going to hit!" Or something dorky. I don't remember.

The "after" moments were pretty surreal and wicked. The airbags deployed. The car filled up with white dust from the airbags, which Becky and I both thought was smoke. Becky and I both screamed a bit more, and assured each other that we were breathing and conscious. That part was great. Becky got out of the car and shouted for people to call 911. I was frozen behind the wheel, my legs locked on the brake and the clutch, my arms outstretched at the wheel. I couldn't really turn my head one way or the other, and I couldn't release the brake or clutch. My right wrist looked really bad, and I was sure I had broken some bones.

A nice lady came over to the car and talked to me a bit, asked me some questions about my neck and back. She reassured me that the "smoke" was really airbag powder, and that my car wasn't about to explode. I heard sirens, answered some questions for a medic, and was hustled over to an ambulance. Minutes later, the girl that hit me was wheeled in the same ambulance, her head directly at my feet. She had burns on her neck from the seatbelt, so they were treating her as if she had broken her neck. She hadn't. She was fine. Hysterical, but fine.

It was an incredibly surreal moment to be staring at this girl, her head at my feet, so soon after she had almost killed me.

Anyway. Blah blah blah. The wrist was only a sprain. I missed a week of work, Becky missed a couple o' days. Aside from my sprained wrist, we both had some pretty wicked neck and back pain for a few days.

The girl's parents' insurance company agreed to cover everything. We got a check for our totaled car very quickly, and are already driving new wheels. A Honda CR-V.

Too much to write about. Too much has happened since I started this entry to really hit all of the details. I've learned much about car accidents, insurance companies, and buying a car... each of which deserves about 10 silly entries in this silly blog.

Long story short: Becky and I were in a car accident. We're fine. And now, regular stuff again.

My Beetle is totaled.

Also, a funny story about Becky leaping onto a couch, a breaking a speaker stand.

These stories, and some incredibly disarming insight, tomorrow, when I feel like typing.

Too much to write about. I was in a car accident today, a head on collision. Becky and I are ok, my right wrist is badly sprained, we both have bad necks. Everyone says we'll feel worse tomorrow.

The driver of the other car was at fault, was 17, had no license, no insurance.

Our car is pretty badly busted up, hers is fine.

This is all incredibly surreal. I'll write more about it later. We were lucky as heck to walk away from this as okay as we are.

I'll be happy with this turnout:

Week 1 - 20 people

Week 2 - 30 people

Week 3 - 40 people

Week 4 - 50 people

If that's the case, then I'll still make some money on this show. Which would be cool beans.

People from work will eventually be catching this show, which is absolutely petrifying. All they know me as is the quiet web programmer who hangs out in his cube. At least, though, they'll be seeing in in the controlled chaos of DSTW. I KNOW this show will be funny. I'd be more worried if they were coming to see me play with Pastor of Muppets, when those other three groups they'd sit through would be a complete wild card. Plus, those long 4-team improv shows are long, painful things to sit through.

Aaghaglh!@# We open tonight!@#