The Official Salvage Vanguard Theater Blog

Derek, the most awesome graphic designer in the weeeeeerld, read the post below, saw my dilemma of not being able to post Hilary’s awesome pictures and had a bright idea: Why not just link to her Flickr account?

Damn, Derek. You’re friggin brilliant. FRIGGIN.

Here’s a link to all 240+ photos that Hilary took: Flickr; Hilary Style.

She’s got some other photos up there, too. I guess she was trying to sell a mattress or there’s a mattress in her life that’s very important to her that she wants to document. Don’t judge.

Ah man. It’s taken me so long to put the pictures up. I think it’s because deep down in my heart I truly miss being in California. I mean, there’s the ocean on one side of you and mountains on the other. Wow. Truly beautiful, especially if you’ve never been to that side of the country.

All of the images found on this entry were taken by the one and only sweet Buzz Moran. Seen here:

Hilary also took some awesome pictures, but I can’t figure out how to take them off her Flickr account. This mystery will soon be solved and I’ll post even more evidence of debauchery.

One thing that was special about this trip was that Brent was finally able to join us. He missed out on the Illinois leg of our tour because he was getting his SITI company tour on out in Vermont and NYC. Yeah. Brenty is a seasoned touring actor now. It’s written all over his face and lives in the tilt of his hat.

Also, the food. Holy cripes, the mother effing food! We ate so well on this stint. No more cheese squares shoved in grits for us! No sireebob. We ate like kings and queens. Here’s some photographic evidence of the things some of us put in our stomachs.

This hummus was the best hummus ever made. It tasted like grounded up baby angel teeth, if you can imagine how heavenly that tastes. We were starving after our plane ride and Mike D’ recommended that we go to this Etheopian place. The moment we walked in, I wanted to eat. I’ve never had Etheopian food before, but after this meal I want to make a duvet cover out of flat bread and wrap myself in it. Tasty!

Look at that steak. LOOK AT IT. This is the best tasting steak ever. It was marinated in butter and then cooked on a grill made out of hot butter rods and flipped with a spatula also made out of butter. This was eaten at a faaaaaaaaantastic restaurant called Big Sky Cafe. Holy crap. Get on a plane, fly to San Luis Obispo, go to Big Sky Cafe and order yourself a fucking steak. A glass of red on the side isn’t so bad either. Make sure to keep your steak knife near by as you will need it to fend off hungry Foley Artists.

Oh Jesus. I wasn’t around when Buzz ate this. I’m glad I wasn’t. I mean, it doesn’t look like the tastiest thing in the world, but I bet after you’ve had a couple of beers and a couple of whiskeys, this thing feels so good to eat. The day after, though… yeah. I don’t wanna go there.

Besides eating great, we also did some performances. Our main show took place at Cal Poly Tech and the show went over incredibly well. Those Cal Poly Peeps had their techinical act together. Sound check took like twenty minutes and they were so fucking professional and nice and we had like four dressing rooms to spread out in. They even fulfilled our tech rider request for beef jerky with class and style.

The Moday after the show, we went out and gave the future of America a little Nemesis action. Then they were kind enough to show us a skit about recycling, hosted by news anchors all named Tom. It was Hillllllarious.

Tom: Back to you Tom.
Tom: Thank you, Tom.
Tom: You’re welcome, Tom.
Tom: He was talking to me, Tom.
Tom: I believe that you are incorrect, Tom.

I’m not doing it justice. It was funny. Believe me. They were awesome. And they didn’t demand beef jerky or anything.

We had a day off and some of us went straight to the ocean.

Others took a bus and went to see a castle owned by William Randolph Hearst, the inspiration for William Randolph Sloan. I wasn’t part of that crew as I was busy getting my communion on with the ocean… but apparently the castle was incredible. More incredible, I thought, was the story of Shannon buying a large ice cream cone before boardning the bus to Hearst Castle. Apparently, you’re not allowed to bring giant ice cream cones on a bus to Hearst Castle, so Shannon ate the entire damn thing in under two minutes. When he boarded the bus, all the passengers cheered. Damn. He’s such a bad ass, that Shannon. Speaking of bad asses, here’s a picture of Graham riding a bus:

And, just like last time, many a crazy antics occurred. Look at how happy Higgins looks posing next to a boob cake.

The cake next to the boob cake made me feel uncomfortable because when you walked by it, the guy’s eyes would follow you. I don’t know if it’s because he wasn’t wearing a shirt or if it’s because he had eyes made of cake, but it was a little weird.

Just like last time, a couple of drinks were had.

There was this one place we went to that was AMAZING. It was called The Madonna Inn. My. God. This place was like going on a visit to Barberella’s Aunt’s House. It was so tacky that it was classy. We had drinks in the red pleathered bar and explored and explored. I think the best discovery was the urinal. Check out this video. Just stick with it and tilt your head if you need to, because this urinal was incredible.
BEHOLD! The most amazing urinal at The Madonna Inn.

Our last night in town we stayed at this place.

Which was a block or so down from this place.

I don’t know. It felt a little sketchy to me. The buffet they had available ended with this cake.
Mind you, there was no party to be seen and the part that had been cut out was all dried up, like it’d been there for a while. They had $1 beers and margaritas though, which was cool… but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there were crack deals going on in the room above us and that some of the ladies in the lounge weren’t really looking for a room. To escape the adventures at the TravelLodge Inn, we went to this place called the Tattle Tale Room.

We sang our asses off at karaoke. We also discovered that we had some karaoke gods among us. Hilary our intrepid Foley Artist and Tour Manager sang the shit out of some Journey. We were all just blown away:

Duecker popped her karaoke cherry with a Shania Twain number. Derek got schnockered enough to sing “Summer Breeze.” David and myself got all “Barbie Girl” up in that mug and Shannon…. Shannon sang the Humpty Dance that shut down the bar.
Check it:
Shannon Vs. The Humpty Dance. You should know that while he was singing, our group was the last in the bar, along with the bartender, two older African-American ladies who thought Shannon was the bombdiggity and this dude who was completely passed out and oblivious to all around him. Jesus, it was great.

NEXT UP: TEXARKANA. YIP YIP YIP!!!

So today I got the coolest email and I’m just going to paste it below. Graham and I talked about this quite a bit last year when we were writing the opera Genghis Khan. Check this out…

Mr. Neulander

Dawadash Sambuu
Second Secretary
Embassy of Mongolia

So, there you have it. Genghis Khan in Mongolia? I’ll keep y’all posted.

Okay, so in the past three weeks we held the Salvage Vanguard Labor Party, raising more than $20,000 (thank you to everyone who came!); opened Thrush, a play with songs (and got a kick-ass review in The Austinist); fundraised a whole bunch for the capital campaign for our new home; launched new segments of the SVT web site, including audience comments for Thrush; published the script for Thrush; released the CD for Thrush; held a board meeting; set up The Planet Zygon, LLC, for the NY production of The Intergalactic Nemesis; and performed the California leg of our tour (okay that actually starts tomorrow). Oh yeah, and my wife and I have a three-week-old baby. Sheesh.

So, I want to hear comments back from anyone who thinks they’re busier or more burnt out than we are! I dare you!

We want to hear what you thought about our production THRUSH, a play with songs. Leave a comment about your viewing experience for other potential audience members to read. Just click on the little comment button below and let ‘er rip.

This will be interesting, no?