Latest ‘Craigy Who’ Comic Released
The RSA’s @IKnowJoJo has been hard at work putting together the latest installment of her Doctor Who-themed comic featuring Peter Capaldi as the Doctor and Craig Ferguson as his companion. She’s also working on creating a printed copy of the comic featuring all of the installments she’s released so far and two more, as a complete story. We’ll have more details as that project moves closer to completion.

Austin Adventure
The RSA’s @CoffeeScribble attended Craig’s stand up performance in Austin, Texas on Valentine’s Day, but not without a bit of adventure to get there. She tells us her story (click on the plus to read):
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“Did the car just die?”

This Valentines Day my very beloved friend Kendall and I put boyfriend and husband aside and bought Craig Ferguson tickets, I think it’s always been a dream of ours to spend our Valentines Day with a 52 year old, dirty, Scotsman. Particularly this one because, well, he is the best. Antonio lucked out and was out of town and my English husband couldn’t piece together why we were spending so much money to see said dirty, old Scotsman but it was Valentines Day and he admitted he did find his stand-up “not bad” so he tagged along on Kendall and I’s date.

Everything was off to a great start, the night before Valentines I got home and was pleasantly surprised to find this on my coffee table:

My pretty husband made all these pretty book page flowers just for me and left me a beautiful letter that made me cry. As you’ve read in my other posts we are crazy about each and we are each others world (for those of you who follow my blog for all the artsy/projects soon I promise I have several I’ve been working on and will post them soon).

Now to the fun part of our Valentines….if you have ever sat in traffic, you know how excruciating it can be. If you have ever been in 5 O’clock traffic in Austin, Texas on 35 you know what it’s like to promise God that you’ll stop doing x,y and z and become a monk if he’ll just magically beam you to where you are trying to go. The lower deck of 35 is can be particularly brutal…so naturally, God saw an opportunity. Only 20 minutes from the Paramount Theater, our car died. Just died. I won’t lie, my first reaction was “Soooo we’re getting out and making a run for it…right?”

The dealer from whom we bought the car had left a nice little packet of absolutely useless information in the glovebox, we called the only number for the dealer they had left us with which was our rep’s cellphone number….who apparently doesn’t work there anymore, I figured out, after probably ruining whatever Valentines dinner she was enjoying.(“Hi, this is the Burton’s, please help us get off of 35…what? Oops…sorry…”). I called Kendall who was wonderful and started making her way to us from the opposite side of town, though neither of us were entirely sure what we were going to do.

Shawn called the police (by the way being stranded with a non-American is fun, I have never been stranded like that before and didn’t know what to do and my husband sat there and was all “Do you call the police for this kind thing? What’s the number, is it 911?”) and I found and called a Mazda help line. Both yielded good results, a nice police officer came and pushed our car onto the shoulder so we weren’t in the middle of traffic anymore (I feel somewhat vindicated for all the times I have had to sit in excruciating traffic because of all the “foreigners” that have taken up residence in what used to be a wonderful small town in a big city…take that everyone who’s moved to Austin in the last seven years) and Mazda said they were sending us a tow truck. Awesome.

Kendall and I got in touch again to figure out what we were going to do, mind you, we were cutting it close. It was then that Kendall said what I had not wanted to be the first person voice..”So if the tow truck isn’t there by the time I get there, we can just ditch Shawn right? I mean, it’s Craig Ferguson….” And this is why Kendall and I are friends. Good friends know when the situation is dire enough to suggest abandoning your spouse on the side of the road. My response was, “Yes, yes we can.”

I know, I know I can feel your judgement already before I have even published this. But I don’t think you know just what Craig Ferguson means to me, really, you don’t. To alleviate some of the judgement, I shall tell you. A little over ten years ago Craig Ferguson took over for the Late Late Show, I remember periodically being unable to sleep and watching his very first show and intermittently catching shows from time to time, but hadn’t thought too much of it. Shortly after he started, my older brother committed suicide and it will forever remain the time in my life I point to and say “That was the worst thing I’ve ever been through.” But I won’t get too much into that. Sleep during that time became non existent, as did almost any reason to laugh or smile. I remember being 13 years old and hearing my mom downstairs in our living room falling asleep to Letterman. Being 13 I still had a strict curfew, obviously, but once I heard her fall asleep I would sneak downstairs and curl up on the couch with some massive pillows and watch The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson….and he made me laugh. He kept me laughing through the worst time in my life. Since then I still watch his show, I still see all of his specials and I’ve been waiting for the chance to see him in person for roughly 10 years.

Judge me now. Just kidding…my husband understood this and didn’t mind so much, he was more worried about the car. He was also more concerned about this conversation we had:

Shawn: “So how is she picking you up?”

Me: “I dunno, she’ll probably just pull along the access road.”

Shawn: “Um how are you going to get over there…”

Me: “I think she’ll slow down and I’ll hop over the concrete median and across the exit lane ..”

Shawn: “No you will not.”

Me:”Well I’m sure she’ll just stop and put on her hazards…then I’ll hop over the concrete median-”

Shawn: “I’m not liking any of these ideas!!”

I laughed, Shawn did not. In the end, the tow truck and Kendall arrived at the same time and I did end up hopping across the concrete median and running across the exit lane and access road in a tea length dress. You’re welcome 5 O’clock traffic 2/14/14 Austin, Texas on the lower deck. The tow guy was able to get the car on his truck in time for Shawn to join us, though as Shawn was leaving the tow guy might have said something to the effect of “Yeah if there’s any paper work at the dealership I’ll just forge it for you.” Peachy. I comforted my husband by saying, “Meh, we insured the crap out of that thing if he steals it I’m sure we’re covered.” (which is apparently not the right thing to say in these situations…)

Beating traffic, doing circles around the theater because valet’s are silly and kept redirecting us, we eventually made it….with time for Kendall to be an amazing friend and get me a drink from the bar.

Craig was wonderful, I was incredibly happy we had all managed to get there and enjoy it. Apart from a few cracks at the English, Shawn enjoyed it too. We enjoyed when they poked fun at Austin hipsters and liberals, and especially loved the reminiscing of the punk rock days. (Not that Shawn and I were there at the same time he was…but we were both still there. I’ll never forget making fun of Shawn one time for having blue hair and listening to punk rock when my little sister piped up and said “Hey remember when you died your hair orange and listened to The Sex Pistols?”).

All this to say, it was the Valentines Day Kendall and I had always been dreaming about, we got to spend it with Craig Ferguson.

After the show Kendall offered to drive us home, but as we live on opposite sides of the city and I wanted to try and make the night a little better for Shawn so I, not knowing that along with my dead, dead, dead cell phone, Shawn’s cell phone was also dead, dead, said “Nah, you’ve been wonderful but we’ll hangout and call a cab.” (If you haven’t pieced it together, it’s difficult to call a cab when you have no device on which to make that call). But we’ll get to that later.

Downtown on a Friday night is a mad house, and both being unsociable people, we decided to walk 12 streets north to The Dog and Duck Pub. Along the way we got lost which is when we discovered that neither of us had phones…Shawn’s was at least turning on, but the little battery icon had a red exclamation point in it so we decided we’d wait to use it. About an hour of walking around and we found the pub. Appropriately enough we ate fish n’ chips, drank some beer and listened the same Sex Pistols “Anarchy In The UK” that had been playing at the theater and that Shawn and I had grown up on…I told Shawn to stop pouting it was a sign we were supposed to be there.

A few beers later, we decided to gamble and call a cab. The little red exclamation point kept blinking at us as three different cab companies refused to answer, and as we sat, huddled over the phone praying there was enough battery to download the “Hail A Cab” app and to actually locate one…somebody in Heaven loves us because we did.

$47.70 later, we made it home. Needless to say, it was a very memorable Valentines Day and one that my husband hopes that we never repeat.
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Thank you Hannah, for letting us share your story with the rest of the robot skeleton army. Remember, all of you hobos out there, if you attend one of Craig’s stand up shows or visit the studio to see a taping of The Late Late Show, we want to hear your stories. Just send them our way and we’d be happy to share them with the RSA!

Half a Dozen Pieces
In this two-part monologue from 2006, Craig talks about lies.

Video courtesy: FrankGerbertson

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