Category: True Life Adventures
Puppet Up Down Under 2014 – April 24, 2014 – Powerhouse
This morning, for some odd reason, I was up at 6:30. Luckily I was able to drift back off to sleep until my alarm went off at 10:00 AM. Then, not having anywhere to be until 12:30 PM, I set the alarm for 11:00 AM and slept even longer.
Once I did get up, I went down to the gym and ran on the treadmill a bit. The. I showered and got ready to leave at 12:30 PM. We are in a new theatre tonight for the last of our Australian shows, so we have to tech everything. Our crew is great though and they had us up and running. The tricky thing is that there’s an act right after us tonight in the same stage so we had a tight time limit to get everything organized and ready to go. As I said though, our crew is great so they made things run smoothly.
The venue, The Brisbane Powerhouse, is pretty great. It’s actually an old power station that they’ve turned into a pretty fun performing space. The theatre is just the right size for us and the venue sort of fits the style of the show. When they build the theatre they left up the graffiti that was painted back when the building was abandoned, so that’s pretty neat. After a quick dinner break, we finished up Tech rehearsal and then it was time to prepare for the show.
And what a show it was. The crowd was packed and their suggestions were so fantastic. All our shows here in Australia have been really great, but there was something about tonight’s show that was a notch above. Patrick had mixed up the casting and the order a bit so it was fun to come in and play in different scenes. Brian and I had a great scene for new choice. The talent show had a hilarious tap dancing act with the bunnies. We learned the dangers of being a jungle doctor. The Hot Dogs discussed what happens to bodily fluids Zero gravity and, the Alien Barbershop tonight was on the subject of pirates.
People love pirates
For them they always cheer
And when pirates buy corn
It’s a buck an ear.
Yes, a cheap joke, but I had to go for it. I had to. It made me laugh too much to not go for it. My ‘jamboree’ song was okay. Still not finding the success I want with it but I made a good rhyme or two in tonight’s version. Still a work in progress, but at least I’ve settled in a bit to it and know where I can take my time to come up with the rhymes. There’s two sets of four rhymes and then the bridge has three. Why did I do this to myself?! Anyway, fun show.
After the show, some cast went to see the show that was in after us. The rest of us sat out in the deck of the Powerhouse and ate dinner. The Powerhouse really has a swell setup. The space is nice, it overlooks the river and there’s free wifi!! Win-win! After some socializing, Ted, Allan and I took the ferry back to the hotel. I have to say I quite enjoyed it and will probably take it home every night. It was peaceful, quiet and we sailed right under the Story Bridge. Very cool.
Puppet Up Down Under 2014 – April 23, 2014 – Day Off
I was up at 10:00 AM this morning. I had grand plans to head to the gym but wound up checking email and writing until about 11:30 AM. I had planned on getting out to Warner Brothers Movie World today, but there was some press that needed to be done. I will never gripe or try to get out of press, even on a day off. I’m grateful for this show and will do anything to promote it.
At noon I met Julianna and the photographer in the lobby and we walked to take some photos with a puppet. Our hotel is right by the Story Bridge in Brisbane and that’s where we decided to take the pictures. I tried to convince them to take the picture next to one of the suicide prevention phones next to the bridge but I was down voted. The pictures were taken and I popped back up to the room to change.
After changing, I went for a long walk along the river and through the botanical gardens. Brisbane is nice, but I’m really missing Melbourne. I loved being able to head out of the hotel and instantly find food or entertainment. Here in Brisbane, there’s not much around. We are near a ton of fancy restaurants along the river but they either don’t open until around 5:00 PM or are super expensive. So I just had a Subway sandwich. I find it funny that the Subways here don’t sell chips. Just sandwiches, drinks and cookies. That’s it. Also they don’t have any mustard outside of honey mustard. Other than that it’s just the same as we have in the states.
After my walk I went back to the hotel to chill out. Only leaving in the afternoon when they came in to service my room. While I the lobby I looked up to see if there were any theaters nearby and found one just over a mile away that was playing Amazing Spider-Man 2. I decided to hoof it across town, I had about a half hour before the show was to have started, and I made it before the previews started. This is a tour diary so I’m not going to review Spider-Man here in detail but I will saw it was pretty bad. And I have a high tolerance for bad films being such a fan of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. To illustrate how bad it was, halfway through the film I realized there were quotes from movies along the wall of the theatre and I took to reading them instead of watching the film. Disney needs to get those rights back however they are able to.
Anyway, after that depressing 140 minutes wasted, I walked back across the city to a place I’d past earlier called SSS BBQ Barn for dinner. Though giving the impression of a barbecue joint that we all know I love, this was more of a steakhouse. The food was decent though I would not classify it as barbecue.
After dinner, I walked along the river for a bit and then back home to answer email and do some writing.
That’s about it for my exciting day off. No pictures today because there really wasn’t much picture worthy.
Puppet Up Down Under 2014 – April 22, 2014 – Brisbane
Woke up around 8:00 AM, and begin the process of making sure I have everything out of the hotel room in Melbourne. Yes, today, I would have to leave what has become one of my most favorite cities in the world. It was time PuppetUp train to move on towards Brisbane, Australia.
It was raining this morning in Melbourne as though the city was sad to see us leave. Soon, though, we were at the airport, boarding the plane, and heading off to Brisbane. The flight to Brisbane took just under two hours.
While I was in the airport, I found a store selling these little notebooks that I had seen around Australia. They are made in France but I have never seen them in the United States. I picked one up, a small one, and I tasked myself with writing a short story that would completely fill all the pages of the notebook by the time we landed. I did, and it was a fun little creative exercise. I was almost very tempted to leave the notebook on the seats for the next passenger to read. But, I kept. I did however leave some googly eyes when we landed. When we arrived in Brisbane, we immediately felt the tropical weather that we hear is the norm in this town.
After a misguided taxi ride from the airport, we arrived at our hotel in Brisbane. This one was a bit different than the others we have stayed in because instead of sharing an apartment-like, two bedroom space, we have individual rooms. They are pretty great.
Shortly after arriving, Brian and I walked around a little bit to find someplace to eat. Neither of us had eaten anything during the day. We wound up at a kebab restaurant and had a nice kebab wrap each, then we walked around town a little bit more until we found a grocery store. After some shopping, we headed back to the hotel. Some of the other folks were just leaving to go get dinner on their own, so Brian and I decided to join them as they walked along the river to find a place to eat. It was a nice walk, and Brisbane looks pretty beautiful. It’s no Melbourne now. Soon I headed back to the apartment, on my own, and I did some laundry, answered some emails, and watched a little bit of the WWE Network.
Other than that, it was a relaxing day. Sad that there is less than a week left of the tour. But I am excited that there are three more performances left.
It will be great to get back home as I have a couple projects I need to dive into upon my return. Some big news coming for Uncle Interloper and a new partnership that is on the horizon for him. Good thing I filmed all those Uncle Interloper interested shorts while we were here in Australia.
As always, very grateful that I get to do this job.
Puppet Up Down Under 2014 – April 21, 2014 – Goodbye Melbourne
A day off.
Today we have a day off and it is our final day in Melbourne. I started the day by sleeping in pretty late. Later than I have in past days. I then got up and went down to the gym and ran on the treadmill and lifted weights. Afterwords, I went back up to my room to shower and get ready to go look for some food with Dan. Brian woke up and decided to join us so we went and had some lunch. After lunch I struck out in the city on my own. I walked around a bit, filmed a Vine or two with Uncle Interloper, and then went and picked up a few props I needed for an Uncle Interloper idea I’ve had for a while. Then I headed back to the hotel room for a bit.
Once I got back to our hotel, I decided to film the Uncle Interloper Vine that I had bought props for. Brian was on a phone call in his room, so I was glad that no one was around to see me film is Vine. Partly because of the position I had to get into to film it, and partly because whenever I film something like this I do a million takes. Take 2 was probably perfect, but I need to do a million of them because on little thing will be wrong in the shot. I’d be a horrible movie director. I’d be over budget the first day. At any rate, I am now one of those people who have spent way too much money on a six second Vine.
Finally getting the take right, I just spent some time in my room doing some writing and answering some email.
There was sort of an unofficial plan that everybody would go out to dinner around 5:30 PM, I had a Vine idea and I needed Brian’s help with it so we planned on leaving the hotel a little early to go film it. There is a street near our hotel called Hoiser Lane. It’s really neat and that all the walls of this, basically, alleyway, are covered with really impressive works of graffiti. So Brian and I went down there and we filmed an Uncle Interloper Vine in that alleyway. It was cool saying all the different kinds of graffiti all over the place. The alley was filled with a ton of other tourists who were all there taking pictures of all the different graffiti designs.
After filming the Vine and walking around for a bit, we went over to the restaurant. I was immediately not enamored with the restaurant. The maître d’ at the front door was extremely rude to me when I went up to put our name in for a table. . I brushed it off, but then when we went to be seated the maître d’ had told us he would get two booths instead we said nine people around one tiny booth. When I said that the maître d’ had told us we could get to booths the server said that was impossible. So then we sat down in this tiny little booth and looked over the menu.
This is a very, very hip restaurant. There’s lines out the door. But it’s one of those places where you don’t get a lot of food but you pay over $30 for the food that you do get. I can usually hang at places like that but this was one of those restaurants where there would be one ingredient that would throw the whole dish off. This is not an example from the restaurant but it’s the same idea: grilled chicken, with mashed potatoes, and squid sauce poured all over it. That’s kind of thing. So there was nothing really enticing to me on the menu. Patrick had to leave the meal early because he was meeting another performer from the comedy Festival, so I decided I would leave with him and find my own food.
I walked around a bit and then went to an Indian restaurant that I had gone to the first week we had gotten here. I had a great dinner on my own and just kind of enjoyed my last night in Melbourne. After that I just headed back to the hotel and started to organize my stuff for our departure tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow we had the Brisbane!
I’m going to miss Melbourne a lot.
