Take 'n Bake!!!! And I helped! Not because I wanted to, but because I had to bake it myself

So, you would think if you went to a pizza place and ordered a pizza, you should be able to, you know, get a ready-to-eat pizza, right? Well, yesterday, I found out that this notion is apparently... wrong!

So, yesterday evening whilst spending the night in Wisconsin, Josh knocked on our hotel door after going out to pick up some dinner. I opened the door and found him with a sad face and a saran wrapped uncooked pizza. He had gone to a place called Papa Murphy's, a pizza place where they assemble a pizza for you, and then you are suppose to take it home to bake yourself. Josh, unfamiliar with the 'take-n-bake' philosophy, paid the $12 for the pizza up front, and once he received the raw product was embarrassed to return it. Also, there was another customer in the store who had engaged in conversation with Josh about staying at the 'Super 8,' which isn't known for their in-room ovens, and they guy didn't even mention that self baking of the pizzas was required.

I'm sure people who are familiar with the 'take-n-bake' phenomenon don't find it weird at all, and honestly, I can see it being a little fun. Sure, it's custom assembled, and you can bake it at home and claim you did it all by yourself. But I'm just like... c'mon, it's fast food! It should be completely made for you! You don't go to McDonald's to pick up bread buns and a frozen patty. There shouldn't be any effort put into fast food other than the eating part.

Anyway, after I laid eyes on this pizza with it's doughy crust and after we had a huge laugh, I was determined to find a way to make this meal work for Josh. We contemplated using the microwave for a hot second, but the pizza was too big to fit inside and, oh yeah, it's not an oven. I called down to the lobby in search of an oven in maybe a kitchen facility in the building. The front desk laughed at me. I even called Papa Murphy's posing as a prospective customer asking if I were to order something, was there an oven I could possibly use? Well, turns out that they do have ovens, but they don't cook pizzas in them.

After that, we gave up. And Josh called up another fast food chain, Pizza Hut, which delivered a cooked pizza, plus cinnamon bread sticks. I tired to make a calzone with the huge raw pizza by ripping a chunk it and rolling up all the toppings into a dough ball. I actually got the crust to harden, but the inside was nasty, so I threw it out.

Lesson learned: Whenever you go to a pizza place, before you order, ask if they cook it there for you.

A Lion King Neighbor or... Welcome back to the blogging world, Brian...

Well, after my hiatus/days of non-blogging laziness, I am back with 3 weeks remaining on this tour.

Anywho, we are currently finishing up a 4 day sit down in Lansing, Michigan. Yes.... 4 days!!!! What a friggin' luxury! We've been able to call the Wharton Center at Michigan State University our home for the last 3 days. We got to leave the set up for so many days!

At this theatre, we got to perform on our very first thrust stage, which has made things super interesting... For one thing, since the audience can see us from the side instead of just from the front, we've had to keep acting even when we went behind things. When I've had to go behind the fence to hide the froggie in my pockets, I've had to give the side audience the 'shhh, don't tell anybody' face so they wouldn't scream "He's putting the froggie in his pockets" to the rest of the house.

Also, the sister and significantly larger theatre in the same complex was housing the touring production of the "The Lion King." Backstage, we got to walk past Hyena puppets and heard 'Circle of Life' pumping in over the monitors. We joked about joining the opening animal procession as our 'Max and Ruby' animal characters. Picture us following the giant Julie Taymor elephant in our Bunny Scout, Cowboy Lobster, and Alien Green Gorilla outfits. We would have fit in perfectly!

So, the little Simbas and Nalas and crew members caught our show, so in exchange they snuck us into the show between our two shows today. And it was so much fun! When the giant elephant skeleton set piece spun, I turned to Lauren and said "It's like our spinning house!" I have to say, that stampede scene never ceases to dumbfound me. Right when their intermission started, we had to head back to prep for our show, but on the way we met up with little Simba and little Nala, and chatted with them about both our shows and exchanged compliments. Man, I want to be in Lion King!

Anyway, we are off to Wisconsin tomorrow!

Froggie's Foto Shoot!

So this is "Froggie," the friendly frog of our show! This is what happens when we are away...

"Hmm... I'm sooo bored... I don't have to be on for another 20 min... hmm... I'm thirsty."



"What do we have here in the fridge?"



"Eureka! Mountain Dew!"



"Now, if I could... only... open... this bottle..."


"Zoinks!"



"Ouch! Wow that hurts!"



"FROGGIE!!! SHAME ON YOU!!!


"Oh man! It's time out for me again!"

Things I Shout Out... In My Sleep

Well, it's been a while since I've actually had an "in the same room" room mate, but now I do, I have been told about how I sleep. It has been brought to my attention that I talk... well not just talk... yell in my sleep. Below I have listed a couple of choice phrases I have blurted out...

-"Mom and Dad! Wait!"

-"It's soooo hoooot in here!"

-"Oh my god! My Arm!"

I only wish I could remember what I was dreaming about...

Care to Share?

So, I'm on my Itunes right now at the Best Western in Sayre, PA, and I'm picking up on someone elses Limewire files folder under my Shared folder and me being the curious (nosey?) person I am, I have open that person's folder. And this person has only two files, and they are listed as:

Harold And Kumar Go To White Castle Dvd Rip.mp4

Rape Fantasy - Mother & daughter gangraped by 4 guys - (French) (forced sex, fuck, blow).mpg

Man, if I only could have two video files, you know those would be my picks....

My new favorite game...

After our show yesterday in the gymatorium of Reynolds School in Upper Saddle River, NJ, as we were packing up the set, kids were having P.E. on the basketball court in front of us and were playing the most awesome game called "Builders and Bulldozers." In this game, the kids were broken up into two teams, boys and girls, and the two teams took turns being 'builders' and 'bulldozers'. The object of each round for the builders was to pick up as many plastic cones possible on the court and stand them up, and the object for the bulldozers was to demolish by knocking down all the standing cones with their hands. At the end, if there were more cones down than up, then the bulldozers had won, and if more cones were left standing, the builders had won. At the blow of the P.E. teacher's whistle, the children went mad! A boy builder would try to protect his three newly standing cones, but a girl builder would come in for the kill and knock them all over in one fell swoop! INTENSE! A boy bulldozer would hawk a girl builder, following her as she rapidly tried to stand up cone after cone, but in less than a second of a cone standing upright, the boy would slap it back down. BOOM! And, oh man, who can forget the boy how sat for a good few seconds, zoned out, after whistle had blown, not realizing the game had started, until the teacher told him to "Go!" HILARIOUS! We also had some little cheats, who continued to bulldoze cones even when the whistle had been blown at the end of the round, when the teacher wasn't looking! SCANDALOUS

Man, I really wish I had play this game in elementary school, it almost like a kid war! Also, it's like they were tricked into exercising! You teachers. You sooo sneaky.

On a side note, whenever we pack up the set in front of kids, they instantly recognise us and start calling our character names or start talking to us. Yesterday, my favorite thing a kid said was: "How's it acting with Ruby, duuuude?"

Gambling...

Note to reader: I'm currently living like a poor person, so $20+ is a lot of money to me.

I've never really been a gambling man, and when I do gamble... I am pretty conservative about how much money I am willing to dish out. (Even when I play Facebook Poker... with fake money, I play it safe.) But now that I'm on tour, I've been playing riskily with what little money I have with per diem.

A few weeks back, when we were staying at the Isle of Capri in Biloxi, Mississippi, I tried to limit myself on how much I spent in the casinos, capping myself off at $20 dollars at the slots. But after I had gone through that much and left the casino, I found out that Mara had won about $70 at the Ebay slot machine (A machine I dabbled with a little earlier on in the day). So naturally I thought, if Mara can win big, I too can win big. So, here's the deal with the Ebay machine: it had 5 individual slots machines which were connected to a giant screen slot machine. Occasionally, there would be a bonus round in which the giant slot spins 10 times, and everyone playing benefited from whatever points came from those spins. So I kept playing hoping for a bonus round, trying to figure out what triggered the bonus games, while putting in more and more dollar bills. Anyway, long story short, I eventually got a bonus round, but it didn't help me much, and I ended up being down $55, a whole days worth in per diem. And then I said to myself, next time if I'm losing money early on... I need to just walk away.

Well, today in Nashville... I had a little bit of issue doing that.

Today, Josh and I, after dropping off Virginia and Colleen at the Country Hall of Fame, made our way to the glorious Gaylord Opryland Resort and Convention Center. It was glorious hotel with a bio dome like world inside with shops and boats on a mini river. Here are some pictures to help describe what I mean.

Well, Josh and I discovered the Arcade, an arcade with huge prizes. (Gambling for Kids.) There was a grab claw machine that gave you a shot at winning a... Sony PSP! (Whaaaaaa?!?) I didn't even want to try that one, cuz I never get anything with those games. But then we found other machines. There was the stacking machine, in which you had to stack, row by row, electronic blocks which were moving back and forth horizontally very quickly on a screen by pressing a button to stop them. You had to press the button in time so that the blocks stopped on top of another set of blocks or else it was game over. (Think Tetris, but the object of game is to get your blocks to hit the top of the screen). If you made it to the very top, you got a choice of taking home an IPOD or a Nintendo DS! (The stakes man!)

But this here is the machine that hooked me:

So, this game had a small plastic box (containing a key) standing on a rotating turn table. The object of the game was to try to knock the box off the turntable and into a hole using a thin metal rod which was triggered by a button. If you got the key, you be able to open the case on top of the machine which contained... a Nintendo Wii!!!! So it was all a timing thing. And I got close... too close... too many times. I actually got the rod to touch the little key box, and even got it to push the box up against the walls right next to the hole, but never into the hole. I started by getting $2.50 in game tokens to play with, which was all I was I was willing to waste at first. Then it was another $5 in coins. Then another $2. I still hadn't won, but I thought if I could only just play a little more, I would get it. Josh allowed me to use another $5 dollars, and held my wallet, so I wouldn't be tempted to spend more. So I played some more, and nothing. So at that point I walked away having spent $14.50 (That could have two meals!)

I think I need to stop gambling with money, because if my total losses at the end of this tour amount to the value of a Wii, I will slap myself.

Josh... keeping me from my wallet.