The Improv Olympic

--that I entered what seemed to be a different time, a different place.  Sure it was almost a new year, but it still felt...different.  I walked to Pauley Pavilion on the UCLA campus and reported for work.  The temp agency sent me there to sell hot-dogs in a tent during the basketball game against Washington.  It smelt like fall, the leaves were wet with the scent of New England.  As I got there, I smelled the summer of grilled meat.

 

It was a piece of cake, I've had many jobs like it before.  The registers were the kind my parents had when they had the Great Wall restaurant in West Springfield, MA.  So they were probably at least ten years old.  I went home and decided to see if I could see some Eastern Time Zone celebrations by nine.

 

I couldn't.  In fact I fell asleep for the Pacific Time Zone New Year.  I woke up in 2007 and decided to get some pancakes.  So I went to Ralph's and picked up a frying pan.

 

The next day, stuff worth writing about happened.

 

I continued my job scanning documents and knew that the whole week would be busy.  It was Tuesday and that night, Wednesday, and Thursday I'd have to head straight for Hollywood.  Tuesday and Wednesday it would be for my internship at IO West, and Thursday it would be to perform about a block away, on a show called Organic Comedy at Karma Cafe hosted by Rich Kuras.

 

I was wondering what I'd do for dinner each night.  I knew I wouldn't have time to go back to the apartment for some leftovers, and I didn't want to eat out every night that week.  Luckily I got some free food from the game, oh yeah, and UCLA beat Washington.  They're doing really well this season, I guess.

 

Tuesday night was a slow one.  It was my first Tuesday night as an intern but it was also January 2nd.  Everyone was still home from LA.  So there was only one show where three troupes in a row each did a half-hour Harold.  I had the luxury of killing time with another person who'd just started an internship.

 

When I did get to the booth, I felt like I started to get the hang of it.  I started cross-fading CD tracks and sliding the faders on the light board with ease; I even felt I got better at calling the show.  I noticed something of a formula: when I've seen other people call shows, usually they'll let a scene towards the end play out and another one begin, but that scene only gets about one joke in.  So that's what I mimicked then.  The rhythm was correct, it's just the joke I used was one in which they were not projecting as well.

 

The next night a new troupe came in and didn't have a sign for the schedule board that sits next to the box office.  So I cut one for them out of one of their posters.  The other interns seemed to like it.

 

In one of the shows, I switched from full lighting to a center spotlight whenever someone went into a monologue.  At the end of that show the whole cast gathered in the center for a musical number and so I slid one of the master faders in between the settings for full lighting and the center spot.  This time, they acknowledged the fading light, "Oh!  There it goes!  Good-bye sun!  Good night!  Good night!..."  Neat.

 

Thursday, I was starting to get tired.  I was told that I wouldn't need to come in on Friday, but to come in on Monday and Tuesday.  I left work tired from the week.  When I left work the sky was pea soup when I left work so I got some chicken soup at an Italian place next door.  Then I took a nap at Karma Cafe, not entirely sure there would be a show.

 

There was and it was pretty good.  There was a guy that mentioned being a "Star Trek" fan and also being forty.  "You're as old as 'Star Trek'!"

 

"Actually I was born the day after it premiered," he said.

 

"Oh you mean Friday, September 9th, 1966?" This means, of course, that "Star Trek" premiered on Thursday September 8th, on NBC, the same night "The Monkees" premiered on the same network.  Must See TV, eh?

 

"Yeah, what episode aired?" he dared.

 

Almost to the point of interrupting him I said, "The Man Trap."  I think I was starting to scare him.

 

I had an only okay set from my point of view, but I got almost universal praise after the show.  Such is my lot in life.  Ah well.

 

Speaking of "after the show" I went with some comic friends to Big Wang's a bar on the same block that reminded me very much of a bar in Boston called Sweetwater's.  I had a blast, but I was hesitant to go because I wanted cake.  So I walked back to Karma and picked up a slice.

 

That combined with pizza fries and a Coca-Cola had me wired and firing witticisms.  I didn't go to sleep until about three, but that was more because I was watching YouTube.

 

But today (Saturday), I went to IO West for an internship meeting and my first class.

 

I learned that free pizza night was moving and other nifty things like who the other fellow new interns were.  Then I went to class.

 

It seemed to be a combination of the stuff I learned at an Improv Olympic workshop I took in the fall and the Meisner class I took last spring.  There were warm-up exercises and games that trained us to agree.  The famous phrase in improv is "Yes and" to illustrate the necessity in agreement to establish the reality of a scene.

 

Everyone of us got a book too.  Four years ago, when I was at Emerson, a friend of mine, Ryan Corsaro, suggested I read a book called Truth in Comedy, so I went to the library and picked it up.  In it I learned about the Harold, the long-form improv exercise in which there are three scenes that cycle a few times and hopefully come together in intertwining plots.  I liked it at the time and was now glad I got a copy to own.

 

On the way back to my apartment I went to Borders to see Stan Winston speak about his new book, The Winston Effect, so he was basically answering some questions about Jurassic Park and Aliens and the Terminator movies.

 

"Is your name Eric?"  I turned around and saw a kid I recognized from Emerson named Dan.  He was wearing the accoutrements that told me he was a Borders employee.  He told me he'd been in LA for about three years and was booking bands in addition to the bookstore gig.  We caught up for a minute or two and it reminded me of what happened exactly a week ago.

 

A couple of hours after I'd written my year-end issue, one of my best friends growing up, Nathan, IMed me.  It was 1am Pacific.  He lives in Connecticut.  I asked him what he was doing up so late and we caught up.

 

I remembered the people I left behind but was excited for the year to come.

 

Thank you, I'm Eric Cheung.  I'm on MySpace and Live Journal.

 

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