FUNNY BUSINESS

Greetings from beautiful terminal 76D!

Yes, its been a busy two weeks and I’ve finally found some time to type away since my flight home’s been delayed, not because of snow or terrorist threat, but by “Air Traffic Control”. I’d really like one of my pilot buddies to shine some insight as to what that means, because right now I’m assuming it’s the airports way of saying “the boys in the tower had a little too much fun at LAXXX last night”.

In addition to being delayed, I’m also typing along with glittery fingers. My hands were feeling a little dry after getting through security and I decided to swing into the BodyWorks and steal a little moisturizer…it was only after I’d applied two generous amounts from the in-store sampler that I discovered I had used the “shimmering” coconut cream. So now my hands look like I spent all night making a glitter-covered birdfeeder out of popsicle sticks. Or it looks like I had too much fun at LAXXX last night.

Anyway: last two weeks = busy. The past two weekends I was knee-deep in shooting, as I was producing a friend’s short film for our Directing Intensive class (aka 533). We’re pulling a little quid pro quo, as he’ll be producing my 533 short film in a few weeks. Just a little scheme we cooked up in Sundance: no big deal.

Besides that, though, one of the more interesting things to go down in this past fortnight was my appearing on stage at Upright Citizens Brigade Theater for a little improvised comedy.

You see for the last couple of weeks I’ve been taking improv classes through UCB’s training center my class is IMPROV 101, to be exact). At UCB, when a class finishes an 8-week run of classes the “graduation” is a live comedy show for anyone who cares to watch (and pay $5).

The show went really well. I was really impressed with my classmates and even my own performance was a bit better than I thought it’d be (though I did have a bit of a rocky start). Our show was supposed to start with a suggestion from the audience, which spurns a “monologue” from one of the improvisers. The rest of the show is then the improvisers devising scenes from the funnier parts of the monologue. Okay, so our suggestion was “family meat”.

What the f***?

I’m not very good at monologues and didn’t want to kick things off, but a suggestion like that kind of threw everyone, but I had one idea pop into my head and ran with it, because I happen to know a FAMILY that sells MEAT.

So I told a little story about my favorite neighbors who own a farm and chatted a bit about some other goings on of certain cul-de-sac in good ole’ GE. It wasn’t the most coherent story, but I put out enough material to get the show going.

Like I said, the whole show ended up going pretty well AND was pretty well attended – which was a real nice surprise since our show started at 4:30pm last Sunday…when usually there’d be nothing else happening except that LAST Sunday there was a tiny event going on at 5 o’clock in Hollywood…some kind of 82nd Academy Awards or something. Whatever.

Yeah, our tiny little improv show had to go up against arguably the biggest entertainment event of the year. But we still had a great showing, and I was especially touched that a big group of my film school buddies, to whom the Oscars are essentially the Superbowl, attended.

So, yeah, the whole UCB experience was really good and I think I’m going to continue it to level 201, 301 and beyond. I must I am proud also because with my UCB class I have now been schooled in the three great comedy/improv institutions: Upright Citizens Brigade, iO (aka improvOlympic), and The Second City.

Ever since my amazing summer 2005 internship at Second City, I have been a devout follower of the United Church of Improv and Satire (if there actually was such an institution....of cours it would probably have to ridicule itself).

There are few things that I take absolutely seriously, but comedy is one of them. And these venerable institutions have been serving up comedy for twenty, thirty, and sixty years (UCB, iO, and Second City, respectively). Of course, it should come as no surprise (to those that don't already know) that all these places come from Chicago. [Second City and iO are still based there, and UCB in New York came out of improvisers from iO]

I could drone on and on about the whole history of improv and its many amazing techniques and games and legends and rising stars but I'm getting increasingly more miserable as this f***ing plane to Chicago gets increasingly delayed....why didn't I fly out yesterday to get back to CHI in time for kegs and eggs?

I can't sit here contently anymore. Its the Saturday before St. Patrick's, I've got my green shirt on, I need a goddamned drink!

(which, ironically, is the loose basis for a feature script I'm working on. life imitating art I suppose)

Anyway, that's it. See you all in Chicago, hopefully with a drunken smile, double fisting green beers.