Showing some Downey love

Nice mention of me in Suzanne Marques' blog about the day she was inducted into (onto?) the Downey High School Wall of Fame.

"I grew up with @ChrisAlvarado too. I remember when he was a short & chubby boy when we were kids!! Now he's a tall, dark & handsome actor. Future DHS Wall of Famer."

Vote for Lauren!

From Lauren: "i entered this silly contest and made a very half-assed video but i got into the finalists, and if you vote for me i could win $500!!
please go to www.codenamejoke.com and scroll to the bottom and click LAUREN LAPKUS. you can only vote once (somehow it knows) so vote on every computer you have!
 voting ends july 15- please do it! i would really love $500.
 xo
lauren"
It just takes one click. No signing up necessary! 

Smoooth

Then there's this

Breaking Away the movie

Breaking Away is one of my favorite movies. It was made in 1979 but I didn't discover it until just a few years ago. Every time I watch it I want to go for a bike ride.

     

Jackie Earl Haley, Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern,
and Dennis Christopher

Go Cutters!

                         

I mean, really?

"What's better than a juicy hamburger? How about a hamburger stuffed between two grilled cheese sandwiches? Friendly's boasts that its new Grilled Cheese BurgerMelt features a "thick and juicy 100% Black Angus Big Beef Burger between two whole grilled cheese sandwiches, complete with lettuce, tomato and mayo." The sandwich also comes complete with 1,500 calories, 97 grams of fat and 2,090 milligrams of sodium. (Courtesy Friendly Ice Cream Corporation)" -abcnews.go.com

Food and friends

Cute girls.
Natalie is one of Lauren's bestest all-time friends. The night before we left Chicago we met up with Natalie and our buddy Elliot for a nice Thai dinner (very spicy!) and fun conversation (very spicy!).

No joke, these water bottles were displayed just like this at a Bed, Bath, and Beyond.

Julian and Jessica's wedding pt.1 Milwaukee

Julian and Jessica got married in Milwaukee on Saturday June 19th. 

Lauren, her parents, and I drove to Milwaukee from Evanston Friday morning. The drive was pleasant and not too long. We stayed at the Residence Inn and had awesome rooms! Once we checked in we headed to the wedding location for the rehearsal.

Our room! Loved it.

Our view!

Jessica and Julian got married at the beautiful

Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum.

Just hanging.

Julian and Jessica's wedding pt.2 Bowling

After the rehearsal we all headed over to a cool little bowling alley where Julius and Trish had rented out the majority of the lanes. They also supplied us with all of the beer and pizza we could devour! 

Fun fact: We ate ALL of the food the bowling alley had to offer. This includes pizza (cheese, pepperoni, and sausage), jalapeno poppers, cheese sticks, and chicken wings!

Pretty Lauren about to start off the bowling.

Jules and I. Jules and me? Me and Jules? Us.

Bro and sis. 

A great night!!

Julian and Jessica's wedding pt.3 The Wedding

The wedding! I'm not terribly articulate nor do I have an extensive vocabulary so what I have to say about the wedding ceremony was that it was beautiful. Really. Everything went well and everyone was happy. I don't have any pics of the actual ceremony, I was too busy being IN the ceremony! 

Gangsta groom.

Julian and Jessica with Julian's grandparents, Trish, and all of her sisters. 

We sat at a very important table...

Their table!

Trish, Lauren, and Jules.

One of my favorite moments of the reception. 

The DJ asked for all of the couples to come out to the dance floor and dance. While we were dancing he said that we were going to play a little game. So he started calling off lengths of time that couples had been together. Like, 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, etc... Once a length of time was called that was longer than the couple had been together, they had to leave the dance floor. Couple by couple the floor started to clear until there was just one couple remaning. Here, you'll see that Julian's grandparents were the winners. They were the last couple. They've been together for 67 years! Amazing!

  

The After Party

Julian and his buddies rented an awesome upstairs lounge in downtown Milwaukee called 

The Buddha Lounge. There was incredible live music and fresh sushi!

The man.

The Buddha Lounge.

So happy for Julian and Jessica! 

Funny how things happen

Last week my buddy, Derek Miller, sent out a message on Facebook asking people if they could give a few hours of their day to do some background work on a project he was working on. Derek is one of the nicest guys in this industry and has helped me more than once, so it was my pleasure to help him out. Lauren and I could only give him two hours of our time because of a gig that Lauren had at Jimmy Kimmel Live that afternoon. The shoot took place in a cute coffee shop and we had fun pretending to be patrons in conversation. About an hour into us being there, Derek came up to me and said that they were having a hard time contacting one of their leads and that they may need me to step up. Well, it happened. Lauren took my car and left me in a trailer changing into my wardrobe and trying to learn my lines as quickly as possible! It was crazy. We shot three episodes of this web production and I got to play an awesome role all because I was at the right place at the right time. Once again it ends up being Derek helping me out. During a slight break in the shooting, the 2nd A.D. walked up to me and said, "Funny how things happen."

Derek and I (I'm in wardrobe. I don't own anything like this.)

Fun working with Kimberly Irion and Henry Dittman!

Pete Carboni was in this thing!

Had some fun dialogue with Retta from Parks And Rec!

Afternoon at Rigo's

The other day my dad and I went to my uncle Rigo's house for an interesting seafood lunch. My uncle has this "griddle" that is made from an old tractor part. Well he poured oil into it and fried up some tasty fish and squid. It was an awesome day and I got to hang out with all of my cousins too!

Mmm! Looks tasty right?

My uncle's badass 69' Chevy Malibu.

KDD 3!

We did it!! Kick Drum Decade won the L.A. Improv Festival Cagematch Championship for the 3rd year in a row. No other team has done this. We are so lucky to have such supportive family, friends, and fans. I mean, we had a show Monday the 7th at midnight, Wednesday the 9th at 11:30pm, and then the finals were last night, Thursday the 10th at midnight. That's a lot of late nights in Hollywood! Last night was particularly awesome because we played against our good friends, Orpheus Roy. What a ride!


The moment we found out we were the champs.

Tweeting to the top!

Lauren had a meeting with big shot commercial agent, Mark Measures, of Abrams Artist Agency today. How she got this meeting is incredible. Last month on his birthday, Mark Measures sent out a tweet saying that the first 5 people to send him a tweet will get a meeting with him. Lauren replied with a Happy Birthday tweet and was one of the first five! She said he was awesome and answered all of her biz questions.

Mark Measures tweeting about his meeting with Lauren.

Where to shoot

"Paramount Studio map of California’s geographical facsimiles,

from The Motion Picture Industry as a Basis for Bond Financing, 1927."

Lauren's Daily Affirmation

So "Jessica's Daily Affirmation" is the popular video seen below.




Lauren and I made a spoof video of the Jessica video (see below) and just today the real Jessica's dad contacted Lauren about seeing her in the L.A. Times the other day. What a trip right? Lauren asked him to post our spoof as a "Response 
video" to his hugely popular video and he agreed! (I think Lauren owes him
couple of Story Pirate's tickets but it'll be worth it.) We're excited to see if the
viewing numbers go up. Right now we are at 3,099. We'll see!

L.A. Times Lauren

Lauren's picture was in the L.A. Times Calendar section yesterday (6-2-10)!!

Kick Drum Decaaaaaade!

Kick Drum Decade goes for our third straight L.A. Improv Festival Cagematch Championship. There are some teams competing this year that are doing extremely well in their current cagematch run. This should be fun.

First show is Monday June 7th at midnight.

Check out our promo video:

I'm back (in 5 pictures)

The first entry is always the hardest. I've been wanting to start up blogging again but didn't know where to start. So here I am. Starting.

A lot has happened since I left Hawaii. Lauren and I drove (with all of her stuff in her Jeep) from Chicago to L.A. We moved in together. We live in North Hollywood and we love it. Lauren got on a UCB Harold team Bangarang! and we both got on an iO West Harold team BANDIT. My best friend Brett got married to the beautiful Dayna Heyer. I was the best man. I booked a small role on General Hospital. Lauren signed with a commercial agent (BBA).

We are busy busy with our performances and careers and we honestly couldn't be happier. We love walking to the grocery store together.

2,146 Miles of fun!

NoHo- Lauren thinks our place looks very Californian.

Rehearsal for the wedding.

2 glorious lines.

BANDIT Wednesdays at 8pm- iO West

Here I go...again...