The Mark Weber Show Hosted By Stephanie and Starring Other People: A Look into Mark Weber

For July I have been hosting this show with the above silly and long title. It is at 8pm at The Upstairs Gallery in Andersonville. The Mark Weber Show has, for me, been an experiment in extreme fun. Each week a special guest displays their talent and me and my favorite people to play with improvise scenes inspired by their performance. It's been a big success!

However, people have consistently asked me: "Who is Mark Weber?" Very good question.

He is my brother. Two years younger than me, but very close to me. Growing up I really don't remember us fighting. Especially as teenagers. Probably when I was about fourteen and he was twelve, we truly became best pals. My brother was always one of my favorite people to hang out with. He's easy-going, smart, hilarious. The kind of person that thinks almost everything is funny and will laugh for hours about it. I've always loved how something silly might happen and we will look at each other and wordlessly know exactly what we both are thinking. We did almost everything together. We both did martial arts and when I broke my hip and couldn't do it anymore, Mark stopped also. When I joined choir, Mark joined choir. We both began taking an interest in theatre. We made movies with our cousins and the two of us even wrote our zombie films together and only last summer Mark and I wrote a terrible one-act play together (Nightmare Thunder still has yet to debut). When he lived here he gladly auditioned for my sketch show (using a copy of Vin Deisel's resume handwritten on notebook paper as his own resume). Mark is the best and so he deserves to have a show named after him. Mostly because I knew he would think it was funny.

Do you think he sounds cool? He is and you can find out for yourself this coming Wednesday at 8pm! Mark Weber will be attending The Mark Weber Show! Dreams do come true!

There's Always Ice Cream

Remember when Cold Stone Creamery was everywhere? Maybe you don't because you don't care about ice cream. Or you are lactose intolerant. Or you hate things that are delicious. I care because I love ice cream and this is my blog so I will freely talk about ice cream (if either ice cream or my I-don't-give-a-fuckness offend you, then please stop reading now). They have all but disappeared and I blame it on one terrible new trend: frozen yogurt (if you dare say fro-yo with sincerity, I will put you in a room of hungry toddlers who will cry until you give them a snack). 

Whenever anything would go wrong as teenagers, me and my closest group of friends - who admittedly were pretty much all related -  would comfort each other by putting a firm hand on the shoulder and saying "Well, there's always ice cream."

 Believe it or not, that meant everything. Maybe because we didn't quite know how to talk about our hormonally Xtreme feelings - maybe because most of my friends were guys who had a masculine way of expressing themselves - or maybe it was out of respect for each other's privacy. Whatever the reason, that sentence meant so much. It continues to mean so much. To this day if my cousins tell me bad news, I will reassure them that there is always ice cream, When I went through a terrible heartbreak, my brother not only confirmed that there is ice cream, but he also suggested I try the new Oh Fudge shake at Coldstone.

Call me old-fashioned, but "there's always fro-yo" does not have the same creamy reassurance to it. It doesn't sound sweet or comforting or even sexy. It sounds goofy. It even tastes a little goofy. There's not always frozen yogurt. There is, however, always ice cream and I will always find it.