Comedy Livestream on 1/24/15 at 9:00pm EST

Starting tomorrow night at 9pm EST, we will be Live Streaming AN EVENING OF COMEDY at MAHOGANY'S BAR hosted by Vince Vlaisavich. Additonally, we will be recording the entire show, as well and interviews with comedians to put up as a podcast at a later date.
This will be our first venture into livestreaming, and if you folks like it, we'll try to do more of it in the future. To hear tomorrow's show, be sure to be on our website, on this very page, and click on the LIVE AUDIO player above ^^^  You should be able to listen from your mobile devices as well!
Big thanks to http://mixlr.com for providing the means to livestream this event!

Writing at the Table

I suppose I'm not really a fan of celebrating a lot of greeting card holidays and Thanksgiving definitely falls under those parameters. A whole day dedicated to eating just blows my mind. Always has. When I was seven years old, my family used to gather for what seemed to me to be TWO Thanksgivings: one at home, eating Turkey, watching some parade stuff, trying to not get in the way of adults running trays of food back and forth from the kitchen to our modest dinning room table; and another gathering at either an Aunt or Grandparent's house with more adults, loud football games and a variety of pie. Despite so many people around, family, friends of family, all manners of animals, I always found myself off in a corner with a clipboard or pad of paper writing or drawing or just generally trying to put some distance between myself and the rest of the household. When dinner or dessert was called to be served, that pad of paper would come with me, and I would sit at the table with it in my lap and if no one was demanding my attention, I'd prop it up against the table and keep working on whatever I was doing. By the end of the evening, I'd have at least a few sheets of doodles, some perhaps with food stains, but always something to mark the my time spent. Even if the food was terrible, or dinner was awkward, I'd still have those drawings.

I find myself thinking a lot about those times today. Since leaving for college, I've spent a few years where I wouldn't really have a Thanksgiving, or spend it with friends, or just sit in my apartment and watch a Mystery Science Theater 3000 streaming marathon. These past two years, it's been more of the latter. I'm not necessarily complaining about the solitude, but I have noticed these past two years in particular, I haven't been making the most of my time as I did when I was younger. The notebook stays on the shelf, I don't make an effort to draw or paint. Seasonal laziness has seemingly creeped into my Thanksgiving traditions.

With that in mind, I call on you, dear Workshoppers: make the most of this holiday. Have a good time with friends, family, or a MST3K marathon, eat, drink and be merry, but be sure to take a moment an seize the creative potential of today. No matter your circumstance, whether you're knee-deep in family and friends, or having a solitary day, make something of it. Draw, write, create. Mark the occasion.

You've made it another year, and that's something to be thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving

- Ryan
The Write Idea Workshop