The Unearned Sympathy

Last week I was accused of spinning the issue to make myself seem more lonely than I was on New Year's when I did, in fact, call home and so forth.  I guess it may have gotten me some unearned sympathy.

 

I went back to the IO West on a Sunday night, the first time I'd been there for the Sunday mainstage open mic when there wasn't pizza.  That had moved, with the Improv Jam, to Wednesday nights.  But I went anyway, I suppose out of habit.

 

It was pretty tame for once.  Absent was the complete run of basket-cases in the show.  I supposed you could say it was relatively quiet.  There weren't that many people there, but it wasn't as few as you would expect, say for a show during the holidays.

 

My mind's been off of stand-up lately and I've been focused more on improv, temp jobs, and my relationship with the IO West.  But I since I threw my name in the hat I had to think of what I was going to do if I got on stage.  Usually I just sort of think of a way to mix some stuff that I was working on, or is relatively unknown to the audience of comics, with material of mine that would place it in some kind of context, sometimes even within the larger context of the show itself.

 

But it didn't matter, I wouldn't get up that night.

 

So I went home in the cold.  Yeah, the cold.  And from what I hear it's actually warm back in New England.  I think this is some sort of plan by nature to make everywhere on Earth the exact same temperature.

 

I would only have two more days scanning documents for the distribution company.  They said that even if I didn't quite finish, they'd still consider it close enough.  The guy I worked for liked me pretty well, but was a little shy about asking for approval for more time.  Besides, it wouldn't have taken another full shift to finish the job anyway.  So starting Wednesday I'd start a new job making spreadsheets out of the teacher evaluation forms for some medical instructors at UCLA.  The hours would be from 8am-5pm and be a little further down the street from where I had been working.  That means I'd have to get up around 6 or 6:30.  Is this what regular people do?  That's madness!

 

But after my last day at the distribution company I went straight to IO West to serve as lighting intern.  I was excited as it would be the first time I'd call the lights for the improv show performed by cast members from MADtv.

 

I like it when I call all the other shows too.  Apparently most people are intimidated by that responsibility, but I love it because it's such an educational lesson on comedic timing and showmanship and leaving the audience wanting more.  So when a coach, or someone else says that they're calling the lights for the next show, the child in me gets a little internally cranky.

 

Oh look, there's my own horn.  Let me pick it up and see what noise I can get out of it:

 

I wasn't given hardly any information for the MADtv show, so I just assumed that I'd call it about forty or fifty minutes into the show.  So I was watching it and I saw some great stuff including a recurring scene in which a cop, played by Jordan Peele, kept on pulling the same people over, getting off his motorcycle to give them a ticket and getting chewed out by his boss for harassment and abuse of power (there was even a British variant on this scene in which he pulled them over on the other side of the car, so I was pleased).  There was also a scene in which they parodied the movie "Ghost" so at about 9:47 I saw a brilliant line that tied several threads together and missed my opportunity to pull the lights.  Fortunately, the very next joke was just about as priceless, so I slammed the lights.  When I brought them back up I saw Keegan Michael Key pointing up the stairs, it seemed like a good thing.

 

I little nervous that I called the show too early, I went downstairs.  When I ran into the night's house manager he smiled.  "They were thanking me for calling the show at precisely the right moment.  I told them it wasn't me," he said.  Okay, cool.

 

After I was done for the night I started talking to someone I thought looked familiar and then we realized we had talked four years ago.  Before I did a set at the Comedy Studio, I started hanging out there for about a month.  There was one show that canceled that January, so Rick Jenkins took us all to Grafton Street, not a street but a bar next door, and we all chatted about comedy for a while.

 

The next night I only called the lights on two of the half-a-dozen shows, which was okay, but the shows were called late and we were behind schedule.  At this point I was told to call the next show at 11:05 no matter when it started so we could get the Jam going.  A coach told me he was calling it instead and called it about ten minutes earlier than I was supposed to, so I was quite fine with that.

 

I decided to take Thursday night and go straight home after work because I was tired and longed for sleep.

 

Even the next night, I sort of took my time going to IO West for Troy Conrad's open mic in the same room I had my class.  So, I got there a little late and signed up for a late spot in the show.

 

As was the case earlier in the week, I wracked my brain for something meaningful and funny to say when I saw a friend from Boston come in for a while, Cesar Cervantes.  I considered giving my spot to him as it would be more useful in his hands, but he left without going on.  There was a comic that joked about a handmade sign for the improv troupe The Jungle and that this particular person said it surprised me.  I've seen him a lot at IO West and Upright Citizen's Brigade, so I wasn't sure why he was as critical of improv.  It's something I'm warming to anyway.  It can be good if done right, but if it's not than it's painful.

 

For example: I had my second class in the Black Box at noon and I think I'm gaining this reputation as "The Clever One."  That's not necessarily a compliment, but I suppose it's not exactly a criticism either.  It's more of a neutral comment on where I tend to go in scenes.  That "where" I suppose is "the joke."  Improv is hard to do well, but I think that I will get better at it.  This class was actually harder than the last one, but that's a good thing.  We'll see where this goes.

 

Oh, if you're reading this because you're on the mailing list I posted some more photos on the Yahoo!group.  Some of which I was cold from waiting for the bus so I buttoned up my blazer, and popped up the collar of my blue shirt as if it was the 19th century.  Others are of my new shirt for the internship at IO West (Interns have to buy and $8 shirt, but I get a lot of free food, soda, and classes, so it's worth it.  Plus it's a neat shirt).

 

And the third group are pictures of a former building I nicknamed "The Tarp Building" because it used to be this 30 story structure covered in white tarp.  They had it up there for so long that it was used as a giant billboard.  Now most of the tarp is gone and, like the invisible man after pulling off his face coverings, you can see right through it.  It's nothing but a metal framework.

   

I took those pictures after class.  Then I returned some books that were overdue because I work when the library's open and bought some shoe shine because I slipped and fell a week ago.

 

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

 

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