Thursday, September 1, 2011

Beautiful Excuses

Nuts are addicting.  It's hard to stop eating them once you start.  They're so small and seem so harmless, but they'll bust your gut every time.  I have to count them out and then lock the drawer to keep from eating the whole container of nuts.

I'll have to mark my calendar for next year's Brewers' Fest.  It doesn't surprise me that the fest is mostly dudes.  Dudes love beer.  Chicks don't love beer as much.  I will teach my daughter to love beer but not until she's reached the arbitrary drinking age chosen buy our government.

Also, you are beautiful.  You don't need fratty dudes and chubby couples to realize that.  Though, fratty dudes and chubby couples will make it seem more acute.  You know, like a disease.

I think the tendency for improv to frequently suck is more due to the low barriers to entry than it is to the nature of improv.  Sure, a group of great improvisers will do a crappy show once every ten or fifteen shows but I think most shows suck because the improvisers suck or because the improvisers suck at working together.  When I was on Space Robbers at the Playground, we sucked at the very beginning but we quickly got much better once the worst of us quit.  Once the team was whittled down we almost never had a crappy show.  Some were better than others, but rarely did we have a show that was flat out bad.  I think it was partially because we really figured out how to work with each other and partially because the people on that team were awesome.  We had Nick Johne, Chris Alvarado, Sean Kelley, Kieran Sullivan, Ross Bryant, Barry Hite, and Jim Fath.  All of those people are either teaching, touring or doing well for themselves in other ways in the entertainment industry.  I can mention any of those names in a group of improvisers and people will be all, "You know that guy?"  Anyway, the point is that improvisers use the "sometimes improv just sucks" excuse way too often.

I hate pHlip Cup mostly because we are working towards that finite end and that finite end is a fucking game of Flip Cup.  It probably doesn't help that the two teams I'm on are a team of frat boys (how did this gray-haired dude end up on that team?) and a team of former contestants from a Bachelor-type show so there's not a whole lot of range there.  Every time I've done the show it's felt forced and awkward.  Plus, it's hard for me to get over the fact that we're admitting that our comedy is not why people are coming to see the show by promising a round of Flip Cup at the end of the show.

I love that Bernie just got a big stack of cash.  That's fantastic.  I also love that he's named Bernie.  Guys that work at companies for 30+ years who everyone love are always named Bernie or Ernie or Wilbur or something slightly hilarious like that.

I'm almost never funny at work.  In fact, people are shocked when they find out I'm a comedian.  (Even though I've been doing this for over 10 years, I still have a hard time calling myself a comedian.)  The only people that have seen me be funny are the guy I share an office with and my boss.  Actually, that's not entirely true.  When I first started working there, the CIO made (she literally backed me into a corner and implied that not performing might effect my job) me get up and do solo improv in front of the whole department.  I was actually pretty funny.  That is the one and only time I've done solo improv.  Anyway, I'm not the funny guy at work.  It's probably good that I don't try to be because my sense of humor is probably a little too dark for the workplace.  Plus, I always hate the dude that tries to be funny at work.

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