Hump Day

Finally got my tax things straightened out. Apparently, this year I earned $120 in Delaware so I had to file taxes in Delaware for $3. The whole screw up was that I was looking at my Delaware W-2 for my PA taxes and not the PA W-2.

It doesn't really make a whole lota sense to me, but hey..whatever. As long as it is done. All in all I had to pay $20 for PA because of my dividends and capital gains and got $5 back for my federal. PA doesn't let you deduct capital gains loss. Hmph.

In other news, my friend Haley who lives in Arizona is going to be having a baby soon! They wanted to have it last week, but this week everything is finally ready. I don't exactly get all of the stuff that has to be right... as I am not a doctor, but apparently.. pretty soon.. she'll be having a baby! I'm pretty excited, as she is my best friend.





In Improv News, tomorrow night we will be having Without A Net with us as our special guests. It should be a great night. So I hope we get alot of people there.

And then... We got a show here in Pottstown! I am pretty excited for that show too because I'm going to have alot of friends and family there. I am sure I'll be posting more about that show this weekend.

Pissed, Pissed, Pissed

As the title can probably indicate, I am a little pissed right now. I am doing my taxes and I've discovered one of my w-2 have been misprinted. Now I have to have a second set of w-2 sent to me before I can send my taxes in.

Grrrr..... I am really irritated. The people at the w-2 center have one job. To print w-2's and keep accurate records.

I am going to all them up on Monday and bitch them out. It is a good thing that they are closed on Saturday, because I'll obviously be much more calm on Monday then I am now. This has pretty much ruined my entire day.

Maybe I'll go and see a movie later.

hmph.

Case of the... Fridays...

A busy week this has not been.

Of the 5 days, I only subbed one day out of the week. All this week all school districts were doing PSSA testing. And because of that testing, most teachers, even if they were sick, would not call out. The only day I did sub this week was in a 1st grade. And that day was oh so nice because I had a student teacher who taught the entire day. All I did was... heh... watch and point at kids who were out of their seats. It was a very relaxing day.

This week at the N Crowd show we had two special guests. We had Don Montrey of Bad Hair and Hypnotoad. They both had strong sets. The N Crowd show was a bit different, as we were seriously depleted in terms of manpower. Akshay, Brandon, Mike, and Ray were all out sick or otherwise unable to come. Ray hosted, but couldn't talk all that well. So that left me with the four ladies to do the show. Jess, Kristen, Natalie, and Kennedy did a great job. I wasn't all that pleased with most of my work. I felt I brought nothing to the show. I only had one scene that I was rather pleased with. Everything else I did felt... well... flat. Alexis as well as the other N Crowders said that I did great, so I guess I was being too hard on myself.

Meh. Then again, I took on more of a straight man role last night. So that could explain why the show felt different.

Other than that, nothing all that interesting going on in the world of Beej...

But if there is, you'd better be damn sure it will appear on The Beej Report

A Case Of The Mondays

Actually I had a pretty good Monday.

I didn't do a whole lot, which is nice because I've been busy the last few days. I'm not expecting a whole lot of work this week because most schools are doing Standardized Testing. So teachers don't exactly want to take off on those days. Today I worked on my resume a bit and came up with a N Crowd program that hopefully we can get some sponsors and earn a few bucks.

Agent Count

27 out of 67

40% through the list.

In Other News

I saw V is for Vendetta last night. It was a great movie! Hugo Weaving's voice in the movie was fantastic. Natalie Portman was extremely good as well. I'll probably go back and see the movie once again. I really enjoyed it. I recommend it to anyone. They should certainly see it.

I also got this website from my friend Haley! It is her BABY WEBSITE!

Haley's Baby

Other Stories From Thursday

More Special Guests

So yesterday, I was kind of busy so I didn't really get the proper chance to write about how awesome the show was on Thursday.

To recap:

So the show on Thursday was great because so many unexpected guests showed up.

First there was Billy Dale and Emily, who came from Harrisburg to see the show

Jackie Danziger, a former N Crowd member showed up out of the blue to see us.

And a 15 person group from Tennessee came to see the show after searching online through Philly to see what great improv shows there were.

Plus we had a special improv guest, The Rare Bird Show who put on a great set. I hope we can have them back again over the summer.... Assuming we are back there after April. But if we continue to have good shows, I think we will be.

Our set was awesome. We were a little short on manpower Thursday as we were missing Brandon, Akshay, and Mike... but everyone took it up a notch and did a great job. Usually we don't have all girl scenes and not too many all guy scenes. But because we had 5 girls and 2 guys there, it was a heavy girl scene night. And the girls did great. I think we might have the funniest ensemble of ladies in the entire city. At least thats my opinion.

After The Show

After the show I met up with Renee and her, I, Billy Dale, and Emily went to Manny Browns for a drink and a bite to eat. We were there for about 40 minutes talking about old times, new times, and everything else inbetween. I was really glad to see Billy Dale and Emily, as I wasn't sure when the next time I would see them again. They were both really impressed with the show and really enjoyed themselves. In Edinboro, when I was hosting Deviant Behavior, they rarely saw me perform. I only performed once a year on Halloween and spent the rest of my time hosting the show from my podium. So when they saw me do 4 games in 60 minutes, they were very impressed. I also told them about my books and how you can get your hands on them and plenty of other things.

When that was over, I all of us went to look for Renee's friend's car. It had to be moved because there was street cleaning going on the next day and the car would have been towed if it hadn't been moved. However.... Renee couldn't find the car. We spent 50 minutes walking around 4 square blocks of Philadelphia looking for this car and could not find it. Finally at midnight, I had to call it a night and head home. I figured the car had been towed.... however... the next morning... Renee e-mailed me and had told me that she had found it.

Whew.

crisis... adverted.


Agent Count Update

22 out of 67

1/3 of the way through the list

Agent Update

Heard back from some more agents today, no luck as of yet.

Current Agent Count

18 out of 67

But... two agents did send me back personal letters, as opposed to copied responses. So I will probably right them back again when I have something new to say.

So... no getting any book deals yet, but getting some slightly better responses.

Last Night's Show

So we had an N Crowd show last night with the Rare Bird Show. It was great! Even though Akshay, Mike, and Brandon were not there, we had a very tight set. I was really proud of our new people and the N Crowd ladies. There is a bias in the Improv world that girls can't be as funny as guys, well last night that was not true!

And... I had a great show last night too. I thought I was pretty gosh darn funny. And... my friends Billy and Emily came.

I have a story for after the show... but I'll tell it later tonight.

Hmph....

Well heard back from more Agents today.

And honestly... a little irritated.

I heard from:

Robin Straus
Robin Straus Agency, Inc.
229 East 79th Street
New York, NY 10021

Miriam Kriss
Irene Goodman Literary Agency
80 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1101
New York, NY 10011

Marcia Amsterdam
Marcia Amsterdam Agency
41 West 82nd Street, Suite 9A
New York, NY 10024

Kristin Lindstrom
Lindstrom Literary Group
871 N. Greenbrier Street
Arlington, VA 22205

Now I list these people specifically... because on their websites they ask for a query letter and then like 3 chapters. Not exactly cheap. Those letters cost like $3 or $4 to send. I sent them out the 8th... which means they got there on Friday, the 10th. The letters are postdated the 13th, which is a Monday.

Sure... they could have read everything over the weekend... but somehow I just don't think they did. I think they opened it on Friday, stuffed a letter in, and then sent it back out on Monday.

I know it's a very tight business... but don't ask for 50 pages of materials if you aren't going to read them. I much rather send a letter and a sypnopsis and a SASE then a whole package of stuff.

So I guess I'm just disappointed more than irritated. Feels like I wasted my money on someone who didn't really take the time to read anything. ::Shrug:: But then again, they might have taken it home and actually read it. At least with the E-mails they personally write ya something back, as opposed to stock letters. (Some of which are poorly copied.)

Current Count

10 out of 67

4 out of 22 that wanted a few chapters.

Heh.

Book Agent Update

6 out of 67

Heard from the Fletcher & Parry LLC Literary Agency today. Strangely, they e-mailed me and didn't use the SASE I sent them. I could have saved myself 78 cents if I would have known that.

Oh well.

Oh yeah... it's snowing right now.

Yahoo for March.

Ho Hum Day

You know... it's nice to spend a nice warm day not working. Heh. Shame I couldn't get paid for that. Come on Match 6!

Heh. Nothing all that exciting going on today. I put 30 press releases in the mail today about our 1-year anniversary show. It be great if someone came out and did a story about us. But short of burning the place down the week before, I'm not so sure the $11 in stamps is worth it. It's not exactly like we have alota of money to work with.

Tonight hopefully I'll be heading over to Chester's to study. It's been 2 weeks since I last went over. He was on vacation for a week and then last week he was busy with work.

In other news... my best friend Haley way out in Arizona is having her baby soon. I can't wait to be the favorite uncle that she isn't actually related to.

And finally....

Current Agent Count As Of 3/13

5 out of 67

The Marcia Amsterdam Agency wrote back today... they didn't send a stock "No Thanks" letter...rather a stock "No Thanks" 1 inch by 3 inch piece of paper they stuffed into my SASE. But they didn't send back the actual Query letter. So... at least someone read it.

Slacker

That is what I have been as of late. I usually try to update this thing 3 times a week or sometimes every other day. But it's been over a week since I've written anything. It has been a pretty busy week. So... for all 3 people that read this..... here is what's been going on this week in no order what so ever.

Drama in Edinboro

So I found out last weekend that my so called Alpha Psi Omega brothers are not inviting any of the alumni this year to the banquet. Now for those who don't know, APO is a national theater fraternity I joined when I attended college. Every year they have a banquet to honor those who have done plays that year and they invite alumni and past profs to come and meet new people.

However, those in charge this year decided not to invite us this year because:

• The Alumni did not come and see productions this year
• The Alumni have been criticizing what the current members do
• The current members just don't feel comfortable around the alumni.

Now personally I find fault with these reasons because:

• The alumni didn't come because well... all of us are trying to get our lives together
• Several alumni have gotten married this year
• Alumni have been asking why things have changed with little in the way of answers

There are also some issues with professors who didn't like us when we went there. Now that they are in charge they are putting the squeeze on current members not to invite us.

So needless to say, this issues has exploded among the alumni on our message board. Already people have withdrawn donations. I think the squeeze is being put on them.

I guess what I am most disappointed about this situation is how poorly handled it was by the current members of APO. The arrogance and "well we are better than you" attitude shown by them is very insulting. I can't remember the last time I was this insulted. Plus I'm disappointed with how this got out. When I ran things, I kept a tight lid on information. Evil plans were carried out perfectly... not leaked out over the internet.

Kids these days.

Improv!

This week's show went much better then last week's show.... in terms of audience at least. We had 16 instead of zero. However, I've heard that AGAIN people have been turned away from the door. This is really unacceptable. We are already having issues with paying the bills... if people are not being let in to see our show I don't know how we are going to keep the group together.

Well... plus there's a whole range of other issues... but... I don't feel like getting into that.

The Thomas Chronicles

Spurred on by the good review by Mr. Nelson, I've decided to send out some query letters to a variety of literary agents to see if I can get representation for my book. How many did I sent out? The answer: 67. Although I would love to hear back from them next week... the more likelihood of a positive response if it takes them 4 weeks. Some of the agents on the list only except e-mail requests so there is a faster turnaround with them. So here is the current count of responses:

As of 3/11: 4 out of 67

Disappointment

That would be the world that summed up Thursday.

That night we had the worst N Crowd show ever. At least in my opinion. I'm not talking about the actual show itself. We, as performers were on that night, it's just that there wasn't anyone there to see it. Yeah. Zero audience. No people. The only people to entertain were ourselves.

Very... demoralizing, I guess you could say. I wouldn't care so much if our future shows didn't depend so much actual audience size.

And that's the basic reason why I haven't posted in the last few day. I just really haven't been all that motivated to do anything. But today is a new week and our fantastic bus shelter goes up today! I'm pretty excited.

We shall see!

Condition: Icy!

Today I was scheduled to sub in the 4th grade.

However. . . . . we had an ice storm today. Everything is covered in 6 feet of ice! People are frozen to the ground. It is complete horror outside.

At least that is apparently what the local school districts thought. At 6 a.m. today they all canceled school. Right now, at 11 a.m. I have to tell you, only a slight glaze of ice.... on cars. I'm not sure why they decided to cancel school today. I think they could have gotten it in. Although I'm not exactly complaining because I'm still a little sick and don't mind staying home today.

I just hope the weather doesn't affect the show tonight.

I hope that we get alot of people. 15 would be nice.

But we shall see.

Ugh. Sick Again

I've been pretty busy the last few days. Although today, productivity came to a screaming halt because I am sick again. Stupid kids. They are cute, but they are germ banks.

So I have been busy because of IMPROV! We are gearing up for an exciting month. We've got lots of special guests this month plus we are doing a show in Ye Old Pottstown on April 1st.

Information can be found at www.villageproductions.org


Yeah... not a whole lot going on with me that is worth writing about. But might as well give a summary.

Monday

Taught 4th grade. It was a very nice. The class didn't give me any problems and there enough work to keep them occupied the entire day. Monday night I spent most of the day starting to get sick. And I watched WWE RAW. It was sweet.

Tuesday

I taught gym! It was fun because I got to hit kids with foam balls. Although on the downside, everyone is really sick in that school which I think only added to me being sick today. I went into rehearsal on Tuesday in Philly and showed the new N Crowd trailer.