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London Town!

Added 2025-07-20 10:03:35 +0000 UTC

Hey friends, a good old-fashioned blog for you today as I didn't pack my nice fancy microphone into my carry-on luggage. Sunday morning here in London... Islington to be specific... what a whirlwind week it's been. On Tuesday morning I wrapped my Josh Trank movie at around 6 AM. Got a few hours of sleep back at the hotel drove myself to the Bentonville airport where I found my plane which was originally set to fly to Phoenix where I would depart and head onto Burbank had been rerouted and now I'd be going through Dallas with an extra hour and a half added to my layover time. I eventually got home by 9:30. Got a nice little hang with the wife and kids crashed hard woke up the next morning and packed for London. JP picked me up at noon and off we went.

I'm not much of a sleeper on planes. I just can't get comfortable, especially sitting upright back in economy, which I sadly had to do. As you know my line of work give me the opportunity to fly business class thanks to my strong SAG union, but this one's all coming out of our pockets so I'm back in steerage. No matter, I don't mind, but I just didn't sleep, save for an hour or so when I dozed off during the RONALD REAGAN biopic which was pure shit - just total SLOP!

Anyway, we got into Heathrow around 10 am, breezed through customs and a car took us to Islington where we found our hotel wouldn't have rooms for us until 3pm! ugh. A pro tip I must remember for traveling internationally, is pay for the room the night before so you can cruise on in in the morning. Gregg had been in town for a few days acclimating and met us in the lobby and we all walked to get something to eat. JP and I, in a full daze were led sevefal blocks then down onto the tube to some burger place Gregg had a hankering for (veggie burgers of course) We then walked to this very clever and strange coin operated novelty machine museum... a place called Novelty Automation. I dazed around there and finally killed enough time to walk back to the hotel and attempt to get a room.

We got a room, after arguing with the front desk clerk for several minutes as he tried to have us sign up to become a member of the hotel which was confusing and wasn't working and he kept insisting we try again and was putting on the hard sell, and JP was like "dude, we just want to get into our room, we can do this later..." "no, it's easy... we just have to enter this information..." It got dicy for a moment but eventually we cracked him and we both took long naps.

We woke up several hours later to head with Gregg to ABBA VOYAGE! an Abba hologram show. I like ABBA a lot, fucking killer songs, one after the other, but i didn't expect to really love this hologram business. But i was curious enough to tag along. Boy, I was seriously BLOWN away. It was just about one of the greatest "live" experiences I've ever had. It was totally absurd but also spectacular and quite moving at times. The music as loud and sounded so great. They had a live band accompanying the tracks - some of the CGI of the ABBA folks were a little uncanny valley strange, but overall it was very convincing, with incredible attention to detail. The lights and general theatrics of it were top level. 10/10 experience. FERNANDO!

On Cinema shows went of beautifully! we hadn't had much time to prepare for them in person, so Friday was a big run through of all the cues. I had been building my Keynote address over the past few weeks, and Gregg was working on his stuff, but we knew that hte middle of the show was sort of left to be improvised and we just had to rely on our instincts. The end of the show felt flat to me so Gregg and I stepped away for some lunch across the street and talked it out and figured out a nice way to wrap things up, which worked really well and felt like a bit of closure on the night. After the first show, friday night we darted across the street to a very charming pub for a pint or two - a smattering of fans from the show were there and I enjoyed talking to them - some I knew from Office Hours calling in (Molly McGuinness everyone! ) as well as some folks from Baby Cow (Coogan's prod co, who make the Partridge stuff etc)

Day 2 with 2 shows was a little bit of a test to the system but it was quite easy for me. Most of the show is me sitting down and enjoying Gregg's mind in real time. It's loose, improvisational and full of little surprises that keep me on my toes. Ant Man director Peyton Reed was at the matinee and we had a nice chat after - the evening show had Eric Notarnicola in the audience and we got to give him a big shout out as the 3rd (silent) member of the On Cinema world. My only friend, Robert Popper was there and I had a nice hang with him as well.

3 fully packed shows in a simply gorgeous theater... and everyone just right on top of every joke, every awkward exchange or misspelling on the screen... just locked in and sharing our brain - it was truly as good as it gets and Gregg, JP and I were just filled with a total sense of satisfaction and relief... and pride in how great our audiences were.

Today, I'm popping down south, in Richmond to have an afternoon visit with mister michael cera who is now living over here apparently! I envy him and will probably envy him even more after spending the day.

London, you are truly one of my favorite places - and full of my favorite people and I could talk to you all well into the night.