Smelling roses while you sleep improves your memory.

While tofu has shown to decrease memory in the elderly, tempeh consumption can help memory function.

Anne Hathaway was 8 years older and 3 months pregnant when she and Shakespeare got hitched.

The full title of "Romeo and Juliet" is actually "The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet."

Goldfish have a memory-span of at least three months

If someone gave you a quiz right now, what are you the chances you'd know the actual story of Romeo and Juliet, most of the details, or, at the very least, who was the Montague and who was the Capulet? Or would you beg for at least a few minutes of time with Wikipedia and/or a trip to the local bookstore to hurriedly read the back cover before you had to take this quiz? Would you worry that you were suffering acute memory loss, or consider starting to do crossword puzzles to improve your memory?

Nature Theater of Oklahoma takes the momentary panic/embarrassment/general cluelessness you are feeling as you think about this quiz and make it an entire, hilarious production. A Philadelphia premiere, Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Romeo and Juliet is a conglomeration of the fleeting fragments of memories and conversations of the details that comprise and orbit the epic, often-referenced, tragic love story.

Taking the stage at this year's Festival. Don't forget.

Have you seen how much comedy is part of Philly Fringe this year? It's crazy! I like that I can steer this blog from an interview about Dada to a video about either the worst or best club ever, depending on your perspective, I guess. Meg, from Sketch and Improv Comedy Spectacular with Meg and Rob and BWP (which may have the longest show title in the Festival) sends in this video. They open tonight on the Mainstage at the Adrienne (2030 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, ten bucks), and also are up September 11, 15, and 19. As with most comic videos, maybe NSFW.

--Nicholas Gilewicz

Public Eye is hosting their second cabaret as a part of this year's Philly Fringe. Will the show put a stop to the rumor that vegetarians and vegans are humorless? You can only find out by going. In the meantime, a limerick from Public Eye to whet your appetite:

There was a young Willie from Philly
Who forgot the Veg Cabaret--t'was silly,
It caused him great sorrow
To miss Dan Piraro
So don't be a meathead like Billy!

One night only! Veggie Cabaret II on Saturday, September 5 at The Rotunda, 4014 Walnut Street, Philadelphia.

Do you have a limerick or haiku about your Fringe show? Send it my way – nicholas[at]pafringe[dot]com.

--Nicholas Gilewicz

Photo by Gary Reed.

In a struggling economy, what do our best and brightest recent grads produce? Comedy! And limericks! GNP is going up up up!

Alumni of Swarthmore's Boy Meets Tractor, This Thing of Ours is going to present Where Do We Go From Here? as part of the extensive comedy lineup at this year's Philly Fringe. Without further ado, their limericks, rhymed with their name:

Our fringe show was lacking in puns
So we chose to start limericking ones
And though some have contentions
With limerick conventions
We found jokes on our name were quite fun.

My florist is named Steven Bowers
Sells bouquets for all parties and showers
But roses he scorns
'Cause he can't stand the thorns -
He'll cry out, "Ah! The sting of flowers."

The gov ran for veep of the nation
Then returned and gave her resignation
Her reasons confused
"Has she got loose screws?"
People asked, and thus, then-gov glowers.

After the jump: the stink of food and the stink of scandal!

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I never went to Helium until last night. After I grabbed a seat in the showroom and ordered a beer, I realized they were playing the Counting Crowes' "Mr. Jones." I thought of this guy in New York I knew, who lived five floors down from Adam Duritz. Apparently, Duritz totally stole said guy's date after she had already come back to his place. In 2004. Hilarious! And ultimately very, very sad.

Anyway, I was there to check out The Sixth Borough in advance of their fundraiser this Friday night at Connie's Ric Rac. They successfully distracted me from my contemplation of the ripple effects of middlebrow singers with comedy sketches. Some topics include: laser dicks, astronaut penises, destructive sex rays emanating from filthy hipsters, a Canadian monkey reading Ishmael ("It's not a Jewish book, eh! It's about the arrogance and stupidity of humanity, eh!"), how a Scientologist uses cocaine (hint: in the opposite direction of the excretory process), and waiting for your last kid to die on your way out West in the frontier days so you can be free.

All this and more won The Sixth Borough the Audience and Judge's Awards at Chicago's Snubfest last month, which, in turn, got them invitations to the 2009 Milwaukee Comedy Festival and 2010 Montreal Sketch Comedy Festival. After the show, Tabitha Vidaurri and Corey Cohen from The Sixth Borough told me this was their road set, so very soon, the Sixth Borough camper (that's the travel plan) will roll up to Milwaukee to deliver their satirical takes on arrogance, cults, and sex to beefy Midwesterners.

Their past two Philly Fringe productions looked at adulthood in 2007 and world crisis in 2008. This fall, in their third Fringe show, they'll take on time. In Timejawn, Tabitha said, "We'll cover ancient Rome to a Bladerunner-type future. It's tied together at the beginning and the end by a four-person time-travel squad."

Despite taking on some larger themes, Corey said that they still stay grounded in South Philly, where all members of the group currently live. "I don't want to give too much away, but there's an Italian cyborg. It's like a Terminator-style movie preview: he travels through time to keep a guy from fucking his sister."

Tabitha said that in the past few years, Philadelphia comics have been able to establish themselves a little more. And like members of the theater and dance communities, there's a lot of cross-pollination, with people appearing in each other's shows and working together to help each other out.

Indeed, a few comedians - Joey Dougherty, Doogie Horner, and Dave Walk - are lending their support to The Sixth Borough on Friday, when they're raising money to rent that Winnebago for the Milwaukee trip. $10 at Connie's Ric Rac, BYOB, auctions - details in the flyer above.

--Nicholas Gilewicz

Kind words from Andy's friends:



Choice (and NSFW) words from Andy's enemies:



You can see these and more at Bacivo Nuggets YouTube channel, and you can catch Andy and his cohorts interweaving short comic films and live sketches in their Philly Fringe show Take Us To The Comedy Scene in September.

--Nicholas Gilewicz

Eric Balchunas's schedule called for him to die on September 11, 2001.

"I was supposed to be at Windows on the World [the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center] that morning for a media and finance technology conference. At 9:00 pm the night before, my company redirected me to a different assignment. When I arrived that morning, I saw that the guy who invited me [to the conference] died, two colleagues died. I was kind of tired of New York City anyway, and thought it was time to come home."

Eric, a financial analyst, moved back to Philadelphia. Despite a brush with death, and despite being born in South Jersey: "The culture here was a little bit of a shock."

Eric took note of road rage, Eagles obsessives, and the impossibility of customer service at Philadelphia's Kmarts. And he began to take notes, filling pages with observations about Philadelphia's peculiarities. After sharing his stories with friends, a show began to emerge: Wawapalooza.

"When I moved back, we had a party called Wawapalooza where we got a bunch of hoagies and a bathtub full of beer. I put that title on the Evite, and later, writing the show, that name popped out."

The Wawapaloozas are humorous but loving takes on the things that make Philadelphia a deeply weird place to live. Eric and I'd Rather Be Here, his production company, launched the show in 2007 at Philly Fringe. 2008 gave us Wawapalooza 2: Get Shorti. Its third iteration, Wawapalooza 3: The Dark Roast, is moving to the main stage at Society Hill Playhouse for this year's Philly Fringe. Eric is a little nervous.

"Our last two runs had a total of 300 seats. The scale is so much greater this year [nearly 1,000 seats]. For a second I hesitated because I'd rather have a full black box rather than a three-quarters empty large room, [but] when opportunities come you have to take them."

After the jump: details on the new show, Whole Foods vs. Superfresh, and a video of Eric's trip to the ancestral home of Wawa.

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