It's the bee's knees

Change is in the air. I think the show is going to evolve quite a bit in the upcoming week. On Friday we put in 3 substantial scenes and 4 shorter monologues. Tonight we met just before the show and changed the order of those new scenes a bit, including using one of them as our new opener. We also added another blackout and took out some old scenes, since the shows Friday night ran long. In between shows tonight we tightened up a couple of things, but the running order remained the same, as it will for Sunday night. It was a lot of fun not only to have new scenes in but also to just have the order of things mixed up a bit. Keep us on our toes and all that.

At this point I'd estimate that we have a list of about 75 scenes that we've improvised and/or pitched, but as of now we only have 2 scenes with actual scripts. Kat, the assistant to the director, will sometimes transcribe scenes from videotapes of the improv sets, and we have about 5 or 6 of those transcriptions. So a lot of what we're working on is just sort of floating in the ether right now, hopefully in addition to being scribbled in notebooks here and there.

In response to Tara's comment/inquiry about whether I would recommend seeing this show as a final product or during the process...I can go either way on that. For several years I waited to see all Second City shows until they opened, so everything would be new. Last year, I saw both the mainstage and ETC shows a few weeks before opening, and then again on opening, and I have to say that I enjoyed that. I think for people in the improv world, and even for those who aren't, it's pretty fascinating to see what makes it all the way through and what doesn't. It's amazing the changes that can happen in the last week or two, even if it seems like the show had been in pretty good shape. So maybe I would lean towards taking a peak a few weeks away from opening, and then coming back to see the final result.

On Thursday night before our set, Ron (our director) came back to the green room with the business card of a guy, Mike Foley, who I went to college with. He was in the audience that night, having no idea I performed there. He was one of the tech guys in our drama department, and he had even done some tech for our improv shows back then, so it was pretty neat to know he had seen the show. That's right, I said it was neat. It's late.

It begins...

My posts may be fairly brief for a bit, at least until we get a little more settled in the new place. But I wanted to report that last night (Weds), we put our first official new scene in the show. It lasted exactly one night, not because it didn't go well (it did), but because Harriet Miers withdrew from her Supreme Court nomination. Stupid topical comedy.

So tonight (Thurs), we took that scene out and put in another new scene, which went extremely well. The scene involves a preacher and choir...and that's all I'll say for now. But it got a huge response and really seemed to increase the energy of the act afterwards (it comes about 1/3 of the way through act I). It looks like we'll be adding a couple more new scenes for the weekend. So the ball is rolling.

The hunt is over

Where have I been? Is anyone still reading this? Well, here's a short catch-up on the past week, which was fairly eventful.

On Tuesday we began mainstage rehearsals. Our process for the week was to improvise in rehearsal, discuss some scene ideas from the improv or elsewhere, and then improvise those ideas in the set that night. There are some pretty good scenes being formed, and I'm going to guess that by Thursday we might have a new scene or two in the show. Just a guess though.

On Wednesday, Rich and I closed on our new condo. I realize I have said nothing about our 2-month search for a place or anything having to do with this process, and my only excuse is that I didn't want to jinx anything. A few years ago, we bought a place only to have it fall through weeks before we were supposed to move in, so I decided to just keep my mouth shut about it this time. It seems to have worked out ok, as right now I am sitting on the couch in my new living room, amid dozens of boxes, wheezing from days of exposure to dust and cleaning products. But it feels great.

So this past week involved two highly anticipated events, and I found that the best way to stay calm when I started to freak out about one was to focus on the other.

Right now I'm listening to the radio, and Aerosmith's "What it Takes" is playing. This song reminds me of a very specific moment during my last year of summer camp, when a guys named Craig from our brother cabin was standing in the middle of our cabin singing that song. I'm going back on forth on whether the actual song was playing and he was singing along with it, or he was performing solo. I think it was all him. The other thing I remember about this guy Craig is that, despite my upbringing in Texas, he was the first person I met who uttered the phrase to me "I'm going hunting this weekend."

Improv Bookends

It's an eventful time here at Erdmania headquarters. I just got back from a weekend in Boston where I attended the Cheap Sox 20th anniversary show. In case it's not etched in your memory, Cheap Sox is Tufts' improv group, which I was a member of for 4 years. Rich and I headed to Boston on Friday and took in some sights in Cambridge, and then on Saturday met up with former Sox and dear friends Heidi & David, as well as their 20-month-old son Oliver. We had brunch and paid the Gap outlet in Watertown a visit, and then we were put down for our afternoon nap. We met back up again in the afternoon and headed to the Tufts campus, met up with another former Sock and pal Newf, and then headed to our rehearsal/mixer with the current troupe and other alums.

There are six current Cheap Sox members, and there were roughly 18 alums in attendance. Most had graduated in the past 4 years; the oldest alum graduated in 1991. We all introduced ourselves and then discussed games we wanted to play, and we ate chips and apple pies supplied by Alumni Relations (specifically, Jonathan Kaplan, who was a classmate of mine). We played a round of freeze and then broke for dinner.

The show was in Goddard Chapel, which is a less imposing performance space than it may sound. We never did a show there in my time, but apparently Sox does one show a year there now. The current group started with 5 or 6 games, and then the alums took the stage. I played a game I'd never played before called Schizo, where 2 people play but both play multiple characters. Then Heidi, David, Newf, and I played Superheroes (see top photo), a game we sort of invented during our time (Whose Line is it Anyway had a similar game, but we weren't satisfied with it, so we tweaked it to serve our needs). It went really well, and it was a lot of fun to play with them again. It was also nice to see that the current group and the other alums were all very strong, funny performers; it makes me proud to wear my bowling shirt (see photos).

One of the best moments of the whole reunion came during our rehearsal, when the current guys were going over the games they were going to be playing. They read the list and mentioned the game "Nell," and Heidi, David, Newf, and I cheered the fact that the game still existed under that name. That was another game we had come up with during our reign; it's a story told by 5 or so people, and each person has their own style of telling the story (anything from a style of literature to a store in the mall). We were trying to come up with a name for it and, for lack of anything better, called it Nell Carter. We quickly added that we called it that because Nell Carter is the queen of style. Anyway, it was nice to pass that bit of folklore on to the newer generations.

So all in all it was a great weekend and I'm really glad I got to go. We got back into town Sunday and I had what could technically be called my last Red Scare show at Second City. We go into rehearals Tuesday, so new things could start appearing in the show any time now. My guess is that Tuesday's show will be the same, but I wouldn't be suprised if some new material started creeping in shortly thereafter. In honor of the end of this run, Brian made a red velvet cake that said "Goodbye Red Scare" in red gel icing, making it kind of look like a threat to the cast. But it was delicious. I encourage people to bring in baked goods, for any reason.

Also, Rich and I are moving next week. More on that later.

Bananas Foster

My dad and step-mom came to town this weekend for a nice little visit. It was kicked off by them seeing the mainstage show...in a crowd consisting only of Xavier University freshman (and about 4 chaperones). The college kids didn't go for a lot of the political humor, which was disappointing, because when I started college I would have laughed at the political stuff to at least look like I got it and/or cared. Kids today.

I worried that my dad and Helen weren't going to have a good time because they weren't experiencing a typical Second City crowd. But I think all performers have a tendency to underestimate audiences - what they'll get, what they'll find funny, how they're influenced by the rest of the crowd, etc. But my folks loved the show and understood that they were seeing it in a slightly different context, so all is well. They also enjoyed my between-show food staple, the brownie sundae.

Today is Monday, and I decided last night to make my day off a real day off. So I'm not doing Armando or Match Game tonight; just hanging out at home like normal people sometimes do. It's nice. I also saw "Flightplan" today with my friend Nicky. It was wonderfully bad. You know, Jodie Foster seems to only do a movie once every 4 years or so, so you'd think the ones she did would be worth her time. This one certainly wasn't, but it was probably her best comedic work to date. Our movie experience was given the perfect ending while Nicky and I were standing outside the theatre. An older woman came up to us and asked if we'd seen "this movie," pointing to a "History of Violence" poster. We said no, we'd seen "that movie," indicating the "Flightplan" poster. She asked us if it was good, and I said it was awful, not realizing she had seen the movie too. She explained how it started slow, but the ending was wonderful because Jodie Foster won in the end after being made a fool of for the entire movie. I'm assuming she meant Jodie Foster's character, because while Jodie Foster the actress was indeed made a fool of for the entire movie, she did not win in the end.

Life lessons

Thanks to all who have inquired about my health. I'm feeling loads better; I think taking Saturday night off was a huge help. I did suffer one coughing fit in Sunday night's show, but luckily it was at a point where I was able to sneak offstage, hack with abandon, and enter in the next scene. Convenient!

Monday was my birthday. Rich took me to Fogo de Chao, which is Spanish for "unlimited meat on skewers." For those of you unfamiliar with this restaurant, waiters roam around with skewers of various cuts of various meats. You're given a card with a red circle on one side and a green circle on the other. Flipping it to the green side means "I would like some more meat, please, " and red means "Please, please stop with the meat. Just the smell of it is making me sick, and if you come near me I will have no choice but to kick you in the shin."

Then that night I went to IO to play in Armando and Match Game, and afterwards we had a nice little birthday gathering. Tonight I had a birthday dinner with my friend Allie, and then yet another birthday celebration after the show. This brings my birthday to a close...at least until this weekend, when my dad and step-mom come to town. I have been given the assignment of coming up with a good birthday restaurant to go to this weekend; any recommendations are welcome. Please keep in mind that if it's for dinner, it has to be kind of early. Brunch/lunch suggestions are also welcome.

Two weeks from today we go into rehearsals and start writing a new show. There's a certain energy among the cast right now, I think partially for that reason and partially because all six of us are here and healthy for the first time in over a week. Maribeth will be gone this weekend and I'll be gone the next, so there really aren't too many shows left with all of us there; not that we're going to magically have a new show on October 18th, but theoretically changes could start happening anytime after that.

As I embark upon my 32nd year of life, I offer this bit of wisdom: Costco makes a surprisingly good cake.

I'm a hacker

It's Saturday night at 9:30, and I'm home experiencing my first mainstage sick day. Our backstage area has been a veritable petri dish this past week, with 4 of us getting sick (at last count). Yesterday I added sudden and seemingly interminable coughing to my list of symptoms, and after suffering through many fits in the past 36 hours, I thought it best to spare the audience and my fellow cast members. So here I sit, Saturday night, alone at home, not knowing what to do with my time. I should get more sleep, but I woke up from a 2-hour nap at 6pm, so sleeping may not be in the cards right now.

This is my second night off in a row, since yesterday I went to the wedding of my castmate Matt and ETC cast member Rebecca. The wedding was outside of Philadelphia, and it was lovely and a lot of fun. I got to see a lot of people I hadn't seen in awhile, including Paul, Sue, and Brendan who took a couple days off the ship and flew in from Nassau. Despite being sick, I was really happy that Rich and I got to go. It's fun to stay in hotels. Usually.

I just caught up on Survivor (**spoiler alert**), and, with apologies to Beth Melewski to whom I promised updates, I have nothing much to say about it. I love the show, but really, it's always going to be the same type of stuff, just varying by who the people are. Still no cracking Gary on his athletic past, and a fairly bland cosmetics saleswoman was voted off. After she left, Probst said something to the effect of "People always vote off the least athletic people first, but not all the challenges are physical." Ok, first of all, 98% of all Survivor challenges are physical, even when they at first appear to be intellect-based. Like putting together a puzzle based on an symbol of (insert expoiled island)'s culture...but you have to swim through a line of tires with spears taped to your arms to get the puzzle pieces. Second...I hope next week's challenge is make-up application. Boy will they be sorry!

I also watched the first two episodes of My Name is Earl, with Jason Lee, who I think is great. The show is good - solid premise, fun characters, clever but not too clever. I'll recommend it.

Here are the shows I'm currently tivo-ing:

Arrested Development (please watch this show if you don't already)
Survivor
My Name is Earl
Everybody Hates Chris (haven't watched any yet)
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Extras (the new Ricky Gervais show on HBO, not to be confused with Extra - the show or the gum)
The Soup (E!'s weekly tv recap show, slightly reminiscent of Talk Soup)
Reunion (but its days may be numbered)

I hate to admit it, and I won't tivo it, but I've been watching My Fair Brady whenever I catch it on. And sometimes Breaking Bonaduce. I hate myself. But I love tv.