[wpvoting] I’ve tried to tell this story much in the same way one tells a story to a friend. It’s something that has occurred, you think about it, turn it over in your head and then tell it. I don’t know if it works or it doesn’t. Don’t know if this is what is expected …
Permanent link to this article: https://storyluck.org/ive-always-digged-jack-london/
Jul 31 2013
The Best Elevator in My World
This is my middle school.
It has a chapel. Amelia, the girl I used to have a crush on, told me she wants to get married in here.
I believed her. I still do.
It has a grotto. It was a decrepit pool of stagnant water until Andrew cleaned it out.
Now it’s beautiful.
Speaking of pools…
The school’s pool isn’t big, but not many schools have a pool in the basement.
Most other schools most certainly do not have as many statues of the Virgin Mary. You’ve seen three so far.
Here’s a fourth.
We walked by this one four times a week on the way to drive our art and music teachers crazy.
None of the things above was the reason I went back, however.
I went back for the elevator.
It’s the best elevator in my world.
Permanent link to this article: https://storyluck.org/the-best-elevator-in-my-world/
Jul 28 2013
Cory’s Elevator Task: It’s Raining Men, and Those Men Are All George Washington
Pursuant to the assigned directive, my associates and I induced fiduciary precipitation in a dumbwaiter. In other words, me and my homies brought a stack of bills into an elevator and made it fuckin’ rain.
I’m not sure how we originally arrived at the idea (we being me and Miss Polly “The Uke-meister” Yukevich), but it appealed to us on a number of levels. One, it would definitely be unexpected. Two, a rain of dollar bills has the potential to really brighten someone’s day. Three, we really wanted to treat a bunch of business professionals like strippers.
PREPARATION:
We figured we should make it rain on a weekday, since that’s when most elevators in the Loop get the heaviest traffic. Ideally we were looking for a building tall enough and busy enough to have an express elevator, so that the skipped floors would give us more time to do our thing. We figured fifty dollars would be enough to achieve the desired effect. Aside from that, we needed business clothes (for disguise) and a portable speaker (for blasting dance music in the elevator). During our practice runs in Polly’s apartment, we also determined that it’s hard to make it rain effectively unless you are standing on some kind of elevated structure, such as a bar at a strip club or – in our case – a plastic crate.
Highly practical in a variety of situations.
Permanent link to this article: https://storyluck.org/corys-elevator-task-its-raining-men-and-those-men-are-all-george-washington/
Jul 11 2013
A Month Of… Next Stop Unexpected!
The audience has chosen!
Our five hosts will be doing this:
1. Next Stop: Unexpected
Walk into an elevator filled with people and do something unexpected.
If you do the task, post it in the comments below and you’ll get into the August 14th show for free!
Permanent link to this article: https://storyluck.org/a-month-of-next-stop-unexpected/
Jun 26 2013
Lit Fest Memories
On the weekend of June 8 and June 9, 2013, Printer’s Row Lit Fest was held on a block of Dearborn where printing and publishing houses were located. In previous years, I have only ever attended Lit Fest as a casual observer of the beautifully bound vintage books, the old movie posters, the speakers, panels, and cooking demonstrations. This year, working with Here’s the Story, I helped man the table where we sold t-shirts, talked about our organization, and my gumball machine poem dispenser made its debut.
My overall experience of Printer’s Row Lit Fest was a warm one. In addition to the heat pounding on the tops of our heads, we were met by the warm words of countless people who stopped by at the Here’s the Story table. Setting up a gumball machine dispensing poems printed on brightly colored paper meant that people stopped to buy poems, take pictures, or talk to the poet and the organization that supported her.
With the exception of one vocal person.
“No, those aren’t candy, those are poems, you don’t want those,” a man said as he tugged on the hand of his son who was maybe eight years old tops.
I don’t know if he knew that I had heard him, but my outward reaction was a theatrical one for the benefit of the group that had stopped to buy poems.
“Ouch,” I said, clutching at my heart as if I had been mortally wounded by the unintentionally barbed words. “Happy Lit Fest!”
Permanent link to this article: https://storyluck.org/lit-fest-memories/
Jun 19 2013
July 7th Show!
Happy summer, everybody! We hope you are enjoying the blooming irises, twirling helicopter seeds and puffs of cottonwood fluff snow-globing it through air. We live in such a ridiculously gorgeous city in this season. Even as she sprinkles us with some cool June days, Mama Chicago still loves her children in the summer time.
A good friend of mine began her job on a sailboat this summer, and in between multiple rainbow-sightings and flocks of yellow birds landing on the crew’s shoulders in the middle of Lake Michigan, her days have been filled with magic. Another friend took a train across the country to have the chance to see 2,000 miles pass by, and another got to watch last Thursday’s lightning storm from the Sears Tower. A friend and I found a white lilac tree blooming the other night, and we made wishes for our friends when we picked its flowers. I hope that for whatever joys or sorrows that may approach you this month, the beauty of natural world provides you with a constant source of wonder, comfort and love.
We have some fantastic featured storytellers joining us in July. Amazing writers, performers and yarn-spinners. And as always, we have five open slots for you to fill with your own stories. If you have one you’d like to tell– about anything!– just practice it out loud until it feels good and comfortable, and make sure it comes in at 5-7 minutes. Then come sign up between 7:30 and 8pm at Stage 773 on July 7th. It will help if you bring us a few written sentences about yourself, and your story (nothing longer than 3 or 4 sentences).
We look forward to seeing you in July, and we encourage you to buy tickets online. Our shows have been selling out, and so this is a way to make sure folks don’t get turned away. There is a free potluck ticket option online as well.
July 7th
7:30 potluck / 8pm show
Stage 773
1225 W. Belmont
$8 at the door, or free with a dish to share
brown paper tickets
Permanent link to this article: https://storyluck.org/heres-the-story-july-7th-show/
Jun 03 2013
Congratulations Stephanie Douglass
Here’s the Story has been a blessing.
For those that didn’t make it, this is going to be a podcast worth waiting for.
For now, take a quick look at some of the great pictures taken by Matt Szalinski and wish you were there live.
Permanent link to this article: https://storyluck.org/congradulations-stephanie-douglass/
May 15 2013
Here’s the Story on June 2nd!
Join Here’s the Story on June 2nd for some of the greatest people and best storytellers we know. Features Samantha Irby, Ray Teresi, Cory O’Brien, Angelina Pizzi and Polly Yukevich will be on hand to expand your horizons, crack you up, strum your pain with their fingers, and sing your life with their words. For just this month’s show, we will be just next door to Stage 773, at Theater Wit, enjoying their pretty exposed brick walls and abundant air conditioning… sweet.
Click here to know more about June’s fabulous features!
Here’s the Story June 2nd
7:30 potluck/ 8pm show
Theater Wit,1229 W. Belmont
$9 at the door, FREE if you bring a dish for the potluck
to avoid being turned away, please purchase advance tickets online here!
Permanent link to this article: https://storyluck.org/heres-the-story-on-june-2nd/
May 15 2013
Auditions for A Month Of . . .
Our not-for-profit organization will be building a new monthly show called A Month Of . . .
We want to shake things up a bit by encouraging tellers to live story. Spring-boarding from that idea, A Month Of . . . is a task-based show. The audience will vote on the theme for the upcoming month, and attached to that theme will be a task which our hosts will complete during the course of the month. The hosts will post evidence of their accomplishment on our website via photo, blog post, vlog, short story, or personal essay. Website visitors/audience members will vote on which host-completed task is the most epic!
Right now we’re looking for at least five dynamic and adventurous people with strong storytelling ability to be hosts for the show. (Confidence with improv is a huge plus!) Hosts must be comfortable on stage moderating the monthly show and also bold enough to complete tasks of varying ridiculousness in public and brag about their deeds online.
The initial time commitment is through December 2013. In addition to the monthly show, there will be one mandatory rehearsal each month where we help each other complete the tasks. The show will take place the second Wednesday of the month from 7:30 PM to 10 PM. All tasks will be complete-able within the time frame of the rehearsal, but we encourage extended hardcore approaches as well.
Auditions will take place on Friday, June 7th, 2013 at Here’s the Story Headquarters in Rogers Park.
If you’re interested in auditioning, please creatively complete this example task for the audition:
Dinner Stories – Sit with a stranger for lunch.
Complete this task prior to audition day. Then please e-mail CV/resume, evidence of completion, and availability to: Contact@heresthestory.org. Accepted evidence of completion: photo, blog post, vlog, short story, or personal essay, etc. If you have any questions, just let us know via email!
Edit by Dan
We’ve gotten some great responses, and we’ve gotten some great questions.
If you can’t make it out Friday June 7th, we will hold an audition for you by appointment.
If you’re shy, you should still sign up, this show is particularly for shy people. You will not have to perform at the shows, we are hoping to have thoughtful and contemplative taskers as well as some of the boisterous type. This show will be a team effort through and through. You’ll be able to build it in the direction you want to take it.
Finally some people have asked for ideas on what they could do. While we are looking for imagination, we also know that the greatest imaginations out there feed off of other people’s ideas. Here are some ideas we’ve thought of.
Sit with a good friend for lunch and pretend they are a stranger.
Bring twenty friends with you to sit with a stranger for lunch.
Make the stranger imaginary.
Go to a fancy restaurant and try to sneak in on a couple’s table.
As to how you document it, that’s completely up to you. We’ve already seen some cool ideas come in. Audio, video, photo, written, and one person asked if they could bring in a signed menu.
If the question is, can I do..? The answer is yes.
Permanent link to this article: https://storyluck.org/auditions-for-a-month-of/
May 15 2013
April 7th Podcast!
Miss the April 7th show? Want to relive all its glory? Mosey on down and listen to the podcast!
Click for a list of all our podcasts.
Permanent link to this article: https://storyluck.org/april-7th-podcast-2/
Location
I Have Anger Management Issues.
Bullies hate bullies.
I am in the Jewel picking up lunch for my nephew. I’m listening to the book, “Maybe You Should Talk to Someone,” by therapist, Lori Gottlieb. I’m at the part where the jerk therapy client breaks down and reveals the
When you ask if you're hungry, I have a friend who says, "I can always eat or not eat."
My quip is, "You can always live on less than you think you can."
If you run across this tweet and feel up for it, tell me a story of surviving on less than you ever thought possible.
When I was a little boy, my mother would take me to the Carmelite Nuns in Michigan and they’d tell me about how they were praying for me. My mother would say, “Pray that he becomes a priest. I’ve always thought, one of my boys was meant to be a priest.”
Now that she’s gone… I…
