mikefotis.com

Baseball Caps and Punch Out

Friday, May 9th, 2008 | Plugs, Site News, Sports | 7 Comments

Happy Friday!

Baseball Caps

Yesterday I took in my first St. Paul Saints game with my friend Peggy. You’ve got to love Independent League baseball. These guys aren’t affiliated with any Major League club. They are in a very loose sense, a step below the minors. Players in this league may be grasping to the hopes of making it big, but they are for the most part, playing because they love it. Got to admire that.

Field of Dreams-like nostalgia aside, the game was ok. Actually, I was thrilled to learn that both teams playing were actually worse defensively than the Skirt Turtles.

Skirt Turtle daydreams aside, I bought yet another baseball cap to add to my collection. I now have somewhere around 30. Well, 20. I’m missing about ten of them, including my prized and beloved Yomiuri Giants cap. I feel lost without her. If I ever came over to your house with a box of hats and forgot them, please mail them back to me. I will pay the shipping. Anyhoo, I am now the proud owner of a St. Paul Saints home baseball cap. It’s a real beaut, but the cap needed some work to reach full awesome-tude. Pay attention kids. If you want a truly awesome worn in look to a cap, without actually having to wear it everyday for a year, follow these steps:

1. Beat it against something. Anything. Beat the shit out of it. Especially the front of the cap, which has the hard backing. Hard backing is your enemy. Beat the fuck out of it.

2. Take a shower wearing the cap. Just do it. Soaking the cap and then wearing it on your head until it is dry, is the only way to assure a worn in look.

3. Dump a bunch of dirt on it. This is optional, but necessary if you want your hat to look like it has had a bunch of dirt dumped on it.

Punch Out

HUGE (Me, Joe, Jill, Butch BUT NOT NELS) VS. 123 Improv. 11pm. BNW. Tonight. Be there so that you can one day tell your grandchildren about the massacre you witnessed. Your story will start something along the lines of, “Truth be told, 123 Improv never had a chance…”

I’m off to record the first episode of Dinner With Fotis. It should be ready sometime early next week! Woo hoo!

Mike

Nerves, Trivia and Dinner

Monday, May 5th, 2008 | Plugs, Site News | 5 Comments

Happy Monday!

Nerves 

Tonight, the Brave New Workshop will be participating in a benefit for The Minnesota Fringe Festival. Every year the festival picks one classic play, divides it into chunks and gives those chunks to five different theater companies for them to interpret in any way they choose. This year’s play is Romeo and Juliet, which is an obscure play written by some guy. The Brave New was given the final act to re-interpret(slaughter).

I am really nervous. For one thing, I love the Fringe. It has been very good to me and I want to do right by them.  On top of that, I also want to do right by the Workshop, which I also love. As it turns out, too much love can be stressful. Look to be straight,  Joe and I were given this responsibility and I really hope we don’t screw the pooch. If this goes well, Joe and I will be given other neat challenges. But if this goes bad? Well, he and I will probably be selling apples on the side of some road near some town that doesn’t matter.  I think what we wrote is funny, our cast  is comprised of some of the funniest, smartest people I know, and we are pretty prepared.  But it’s no secret that Ferrari’s (Joe and I) sense of humor can be an acquired taste.  Anyhoo, we will see how it goes over with the fundraiser crowd.

Trivia

I am bad at trivia. Not only am I unable to come up with the correct answer to a question, but I also talk teammates out of the writing down the correct answer. I am a double threat in the most dubious sense of the phrase.  The 331 Club has a pretty cool trivia night. It’s laid back, and the hipster overload is nicely balanced with specials on PBR and Polish sausages.

Dinner With Fotis

Look for the first episode of DWF by the end of this week or early next. I am so excited. I think this is going to be a great experiment.

Mike

Dinner With Fotis Is Ever So Close To Being Reality!

Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 | Site News | 3 Comments

Happy Wednesday!

Dinner With Destiny

Big news on the mikefotis.com front. Dinner With Fotis, my monthly* radio podcast featuring interviews with the fine people of Minneapolis, is so close to happening that I’m actually getting excited. You know your podcast is official when it has theme music, and courtesy of James Rone, mine does! That’s right, mutha fucka’s! Dinner With Fotis done got it some tunes to go with the words! Woo hoo! I’m tempted to let you take a listen right now, but I think I’ll keep it a surprise.

Look for the first episode next week. Hopefully. It all depends on how quickly I learn how to edit.

Whip Fotis Into Shape 08′ Update! 

All I did yesterday was stretch. My body hurt so much that I might rename Tuesday,”Tuespainday”. Today I jog. Tomorrow I’ll complain about it. Excited? I’m sure you are.

Mike

*Maybe twice monthly. Maybe.

Gardening, Plugs And Driving The Ladies Wild

Sunday, April 20th, 2008 | Plugs, Site News, Uncategorized | 10 Comments

Happy Monday!

Gardening

I’ve been thinking about a certain term lately. It’s called “life balance” and it seems really intriguing. Apparently, if you have it, your life feels balanced.   After checking the inter-web for a quick definition just to make sure I wasn’t confusing “life balance” with “valium addiction”,  I decided to try it out. My Sunday was spent wandering around Home Depot, picking out flowers, buying fertilizer, soil and wood chips. It was followed by several hours potting, planting, trimming and pulling weeds. I have no idea if the plants I planted will even be alive in two days, and I have no idea what to do with the part of my yard I weeded, but I feel very satisfied with myself. In fact, gardening is one of the most enjoyable non theater activities I have ever partaken in.   I really enjoyed myself and found the whole thing to be a real calming affair.  Fuck, I even hung up a wind chime. In fact, I was so calm that I was hardly fazed while a watched a cop arrest a drag racer who had been tearing up and down my street thirty feet from me, my neighbor(I talked to one of my neighbors!) and my mums. All in all it was a delightful day.

Plugs

I won’t be there (maybe. I said I wouldn’t, but maybe I will. I don’t know. I doubt it.) , but you guys should totally go check out True Stories Of Total Bullshit at the Monday Night Comedy Show tonight. It starts at 8pm. It will be really funny.

Driving The Ladies Wild

My NAPA car commercial is now uploaded and ready for viewing! Just click here. It’s hard to believe just how handsome I appear on film/tape/not live.  Ladies, please. View this commercial with care.

Mike

Stress, Anxiety, Fishing Commercials and Plugs

Thursday, April 17th, 2008 | Plugs, Site News, Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Happy Thursday!

1. So stress and anxiety continue to plague me. I’m wound tighter than the inside of a golf ball. I really have no idea what’s going on. I feel incredible pressure to do everything, even little things that really don’t fall into “pressure” categories. Like taking a shower. Or eating lunch. And then when I do them, I feel like I haven’t done them right, which makes me feel more pressure. How can I eat lunch incorrectly? The food’s going in my mouth. I’m chewing. It gets digested. I’m taking all the right steps but somehow I fucked up. I feel like I’m racing against a clock that I know isn’t real but where I can still feel the seconds ticking away and I feel like I’m falling further and further behind. In a nutshell, I’m OBVIOUSLY losing my mind. I’ll keep you updated.

2. In other less crazy losing my mind kind of news, I updated my video page! It’s my fishing commercial! Take note of the fleece I’m wearing. To this day, it’s still the most comfortable thing I’ve ever worn.

3. And finally, don’t forget about the newest and hippest improv show to hit the TC. Improv Punch Out continues this Friday at 11pm at the BNW. This week, the powerhouse trio Adorable squares up against the single minded fury of Drum Machine in what promises to be a battle of improv wills that will have to be seen to be believed.

Talk to you tomorrow.

mike

2 Things! 1st Blog Of A New Era!

Monday, April 14th, 2008 | Site News | 8 Comments

Happy Monday!

1. Day 1 of the “now I have my own website” has begun. It’s scary and exciting like scuba diving. It’s exciting because it just is, and it’s scary because I have no idea if anyone is reading this. You see, I have no idea how to read the stats meter on my server. It has words like “hits” and “visits” and “robots” and “tacos” that I understand in their normal contexts, but when used in the world of “inter-netting”, they seem strange and uninviting. Anyhoo, if you’ve made a stop to this site during your trip through cyberspace, I humbly thank you. Humbly. I refuse to thank you with arrogance, because that would be rude. I guess what I’m asking in a round about way, and I mean round about in that I haven’t asked anything as of yet, is that if you like this blog please recommend it to a friend or two. If you do, I’ll somehow sense it and buy you a soda at a future date.

2. So, I’ve been reading lots of articles with titles like “Making Your Blog Successful” and “The Winner’s Blog” or “Why People Who Blog Are So Awesome Yet So Misunderstood” and they all seem piss on all of the things I do in my blog. For starters, my idea to title all of my blogs with a generic, “- Things” is apparently the worst idea in the history of mankind. Seriously. Worse than genocide*. Apparently, such vague titles test the patience of the blog reader. To me, such a vague title screams MYSTERY!!! And you could argue that “- Things” is a branding tool, in that it provides some consistency to what I do. But, point taken. I apologize to all of you (if you’re even there) for toying with your time.

Secondly, the articles pish poshed the idea of a blog that covers lots of different things. Apparently the smart thing to do is to focus on just a couple of things, like airplanes and hot dogs. The theory goes (assuming the title mentions both airplanes and hot dogs) that people into A’s and HD’S will start coming to your blog for the latest dirt on A’s and HD’s and will also pass your info onto other A and HD enthusiasts and soon enough, you will be the king of your pointless empire. This makes a lot of sense. It really does. The only problem? I don’t know enough about anything to devote an entire blog to it.

What was the point of all of this? Nothing. I’m just trying to let you know that I’m probably not going to change how I’ve been doing things.

Mike

*Whomever thought of genocide was a real jerk.

3 Things 4/7/2008

Monday, April 7th, 2008 | Oleo, Plugs, Site News | 3 Comments

Happy Monday!

1. Let’s begin this blog by wishing the lovely Lauren Anderson a happy birthday! She’s a delightful woman and someone whom I’m honored to call a friend. Seriously, she’s the bees knees wrapped in honey. She knows everyone in the Twin Cities which is a feat in and of itself, but the fact that all of the people she knows love her unconditionally is even more impressive. Admit it, if you’re friends with Lauren, you’re a better person because of it. Happy B-day, young lady.

2. Well, mikefotis.com is finally where I want it to be. You may not know this about me, but I can be a bit of a stubborn mule. Because of this lovely/annoying trait of mine, I spent hours and hours and hours and hours learning about code and screaming and berating myself and threatening my cat* until I finally arrived at something I liked. No fooling, when images finally started appearing where I wanted them to appear, I nearly started to cry. Oh who am I trying to impress, I totally started sobbing. I blame the tears on it being 430 in the morning and on my being a vagina disguised as a man. Anyhoo, enjoy.

3. Last night, The Moustache Rangers performed the best improv set that I have seen anyone do this year. It wasn’t line for line the funniest set I’ve seen, but the sheer number of levels that they were playing on made the whole thing an absolute sight to see. In short, they managed to shit on improv, celebrate improv, shit on the teaching of improv, celebrate the teaching of improv, delight veteran cranky improvisers with their “meta-ness” and still wholly include the entire audience in their fun all while each only playing one character throughout. Seriously. It was fantastic. Check out their website if you so desire.

Well, that’s all for today. Tomorrow we will discuss solo show stuff and maybe Dinner With Fotis. And probably the Cubs, but in a way that non sports fans will sort of (maybe) like.

Mike

* This may very well have been a hallucination, but at one point I swear my cat called me retarded in a very menacing tone. Hence, my idle and shameful threats of food deprivation. For all those concerned, he is sitting next to me as I write this. Apparently, we are back to being the best of friends.

3 Things…(one being a move)

Tuesday, April 1st, 2008 | Movie Reviews, Site News, Sports | 2 Comments

Happy Tuesday!

1. Big news! Mikefotis.com is open and ready for business! On this hip and dandy lil’ site you will be able to find my blog, show info, audio clips-including DINNER WITH MIKE, which will happen-video, pictures and a whole bunch more. Let’s face it, if I’m going to seriously try to become a web sensation then I need my own website. It just makes sense. For those of you who have grown accustomed to reading my blogs on MySpace, have no fears. The blog will still be here. For a while. Then I will probably do the switch. Maybe. I have no idea. I do know that I hope you visit mikefotis.com often. It will make me happy.

2. Saw Gone Baby Gone last night. I liked it a lot. Although I agreed with other people who would have also preferred that the movie ended a half hour before it did. The idea that good people are forced to live in an evil world and have to cope with it as best they can really hit home with me. It’s not that the ending was bad. Not at all, it was really good. It just felt like a different movie in a weird way. Whatevs. FOTI.

3. The Cubs lost their opener. Sports Illustrated has them picked to win the NL Central. So does ESPN, which are both bad signs, if you ask me. Why? Because. That’s why. Fucking because. On top of that, my mlb.com radio package doesn’t work. It says it’s working, but trust me, it’s not. This season’s gonna suck. The tea poop at the bottom of my tea cup says so…

Mike