The Longwell Gambit

There's a comic I knew from Boston, Brian Longwell, performs with an overhead projector as a non-motivational speaker.  He usually presents a piece called "Why Work" which not only analyzes office seminars, but presents such a seminar himself.

 

He talks about the waxing and waning attention spans of the employees, and I could relate in a big way this Monday.

 

It was my orientation for my new job.

 

But what was probably more annoying was the apologetic jokes about it being boring.  I enjoyed a presentation on blood donation incentive programs, especially since that incentive was time off.  Perhaps I could come home slightly more often or for longer.  I haven't donated blood since I was back in Boston, so it had been a very long time, I used to do it about every two or three months.

 

Luckily, the orientation ended at 4:30, so I had time to go to Mongol King BBQ on the way to my first Level 3 class in the new session.

 

When I got into Hollywood, I decided to look for the library.  I'd always seen signs pointing to one near Ivar and Sunset, but had never been in it.  I could have sworn I'd even seen it before, but was frustrated enough to go into Borders and ask them where the library was, perhaps some of them read books.

 

Eventually I found it, it was rather hidden, and ordered some books I've been meaning to pick up.  As a result of finding this library, I picked up The Bible According to Mark Twain, an anthology of fiction reinterpreting passages from the Bible.  Those that know me would think this would be an unusual choice for me, but I like Mark Twain, I find him quite funny, but I picked up a book about the Bible precisely because it's something that I know little about, and more importantly, challenges it.  It offers up Samuel Clemens' own philosophy on things like the afterlife.  Needless to say, it was writing that was considered so controversial at the time, that Mr. Clemens willed much of it to be published after his death.

 

It starts off with extracts from Adam and Eve's diaries, and I was charmed by the language that seems current, not only to Twain, but to me.  How could one not be with such an extract as the following:

 

This new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way.  It is always hanging around and following me about.  I don't like this...I wish it would stay with the other animals...Cloudy today, wind in the east; think we shall have rain....We?  Where did I get that word?...I remember now--the new creature uses it.

 

That new creature, Eve, seemed to be the brighter of the two; the diaries seemed to be Twain's meditation on the sexes, and he cast Eve as the first scientist, namer of things and curious to a fault.  But wouldn't she be, as she's the one who suggested the apple to Adam.  Both seem childish to Satan who tries to explain to them abstract concepts they have not yet experienced, namely death.

 

I went to class, this time held in the Andy Dick Theater, my last two sessions were in Studio Two, and Level 1 was upstairs in the Black Box Theater.  I remembered my teacher from a class I took to make up for my Level 2 teacher's absence one week and enjoyed his style.  That week he had the class split into two groups and do full Harolds.  I was impressed with his thoughtfulness, and that he talked to each person on their level.  "I hope I take a full session with you at some point," I said, not knowing how prescient I was.

 

"It was a pleasure meeting you," he said.

 

Here, I felt ahead of my classmates.  "And why shouldn't I have?"  I posed to myself.  It was logical, for I had gone through an entire session of Level 3 already, but it seemed to be more than that.  I shall see.  For the time being, it gave me some confidence that I was doing pretty well, and making my scene partners look good.

 

The next night, I ate some leftover spaghetti and it did not sit well.  I would not be going into work on Wednesday.

 

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Wednesday

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On Thursday the bus never came.  I took the long way home from work.

 

Friday at work I got to talk to my co-workers more and understand why things were as they were over there, I opened up a bit.

 

But on Friday and Saturday, I had genuinely interesting shifts as intern for IO.

 

On Friday I don't think I saw more than two Harolds.  It is, after all, Friday Night Frankenstein.

 

The second show in the first hour featured the usual host for Friday Night Frankenstein, Jeff Hawkins, and his improv partner in something called a Deconstruction.  It was the best work I'd seen him do.  It really was quite good.  The opening was like two loose monologues from which a series of scenes developed culminating in a dramatic scene, then the scenes repeat quickly afterwords.  At least that's how it was when I saw this one.  I loved the surprise and power of that dramatic scene, an intervention for a cocaine addict.

 

The second half of the second hour had Jeff's partner perform a solo Bat.  A Bat is a Harold performed in the dark.  Of course he played all parts by himself, distinguishing them all by voice only, and transitioning with beat-boxing.  He spent a lot of time on the first beat, so he only got to the second beat, but it was fun to watch--listen to.

 

During the third hour I saw a comedy friend I knew from Emerson, Asterios Kokkinos.  When he was there he was a busy fellow, he started a couple of comedy troupes and the second comedy magazine.  In addition to his improv stuff this night, he has a sketch duo called "Overtime."  He's known for high doses of pop-culture references in

 

Here he was no less busy performing in both improv troupes.  For the first one, I provided the first suggestion, "bocce court," since they asked for a location, and they thought that was "gay."  I thought to myself, "It's not gay, it's what old people do," but instead I saw a show about a outed homosexual's new experiences out of the closet.  It was an exercise in absurdity akin to Abbott and Costello rather than a piece of social commentary.

 

In the second half of the hour was a show that really was appropriately placed last, "Bits a Flyin' Intense."  They had a special CD for their sound cues.  When they came on I was to play Neil Diamond's "America" as Asterios and his improv partner stormed the stage wearing pants and capes made of the American flag.  Explosion sound effects started to interrupt the song and then they introduced themselves.  They said they were going to do the most intense Harold ever and if anyone would get offended to "leave now."

 

That's actually not a bad strategy since one should heighten as much as possible, and over-committing is usually funnier than not committing at all.  At every opportunity they shouted "Bits a Flyin'!  Intense!"  It actually reminded me of Homestar Runner.  Instead of games in between beats they commented on what happened and asked the audience for input.  They used the whole stage, the balcony, and the alley outside as their playing area.  They also used party poppers, threw off their shoes and threw various other flotsam on the stage and into the crowd.

 

I got a ride home from Jeff and chatted about improv and stuff.  Cool.

 

Saturday I got a call that the intern filling in for Sean Cowhig, couldn't, so could I fill in for the intern filling in?  "Sure," so I decided to go and do lights for the first full night at the main stage in a couple of months.

 

It was good to be back.  Although, when I got there, the projector wouldn't turn on.  It appeared that I wasn't turning it on right, but it was actually broken, so I just put in some music.  There would be no ads for upcoming shows on the main stage that night.

 

For music I regretted that there was no longer the three-hundred disc changer.  I could not shuffle between discs.  So instead I put in five discs and played one disc between each show.

 

Before the first I played Smash Mouth's "Astro Lounge" again.  Then the 313 played.  It was a long-form montage show not unlike The Cast of MADtv, in part because it included Keegan Michael-Key.  I called the lights and they pointed up to me as a thank you.

 

Then I popped in Modest Mouse's "Good News for People Who Like Bad News."  Goal played and I called the lights.

 

After that it was a mix-tape I found in the CD wallet that I used to play for house music all the time.  The show that followed was K.O.A.L.A., a show that featured a different improviser from Emerson, so that was cool.  Singing was part of the show, so I put on a spotlight, but the audience seemed confused so the performers just said the lights had dimmed.  It was dimmer than I'd have liked as I didn't have time before the first show to adjust that setting since I was worried about the projector.

 

I then popped in "Best of British" another compilation album I used to play, then were the last two shows.

 

Before them though, one of the members of the last show of the night asked me to give me more time than they got last time.  Last time they performed something happened and they only got seventeen minutes, so this time they wanted a full half-hour.  Even if running on schedule, the show starts a little after the hour, so with two teams, each one gets twenty-five minutes.  Also, the rest of the team didn't show up until minutes before they were to go on, and finally they planned on doing a song at the beginning, middle, and end of their show.

 

At twenty-six minutes in they still hadn't started their second song and were having trouble throughout, so I cut them on their next laugh a few minutes before midnight.

 

Monday, I was back with my new class of students.  As a warm-up game, we formed an ellipse and were told to use a big word and pass it to the person next to us and the next person would say another big word that sounded like, or meant something similar, and pass it to the person next to them and so forth.  This intimidated everyone else and excited me.  I suppose it's because I'm a pretentiously verbose wordsmith.  To set the parameters I posed the question "How close in meaning should these words be?  Could it be something only roughly analogous?"  One half-jokingly asked if they had to be next to me.

 

Though the rules called for real words, even if they were proper nouns, I suspect they took regular words and just added prefixes and suffixes at their leisure.  Eventually our teacher would buzz people out, so eventually I was of course the last one standing.

 

We performed Harolds at the end of class and our opening involved monsters, so from that I initiated a scene wherein I exclaimed, "I want to believe you!" straight off of Mulder's poster, I made my partner a conspiracy theorist.  "I mean you're conspiracy theories on Mister Rogers and JFK are fascinating but I'm a bit skeptical," I continued.  For some reason some improvisers don't like what I give them, they reject it as uncool, so they flip it and make me the one obsessed with whatever I gave them, even though the opposite is established.  It's basically denying the reality of the scene, but I went with it and became the disciple to his theories as he became disenfranchised and into girls.

 

I will admit that for some reason I think if I could point to one thing I did wrong in class on Monday it was to pimp my partner (in which you ask your partner to do something, putting them on the spot), but this wasn't really one of those times.  Here I was giving them a gift (information that the scene partner can exploit to further their character and scene).

 

In the second beat I made the connection between my scene and the first scene in the beat by saying, "Check out this article!  'Coach and Kid New Bonnie and Clyde'!"  I suggested we, as conspiracy theorists, join them.  "Try some Jamba Juice, they're laced," he replied, "Hey!  Check that girl out!"

 

So, in the third beat I joined them, alone.  I got coached from off-stage that it was a good instinct, if heavy-handed, so he suggested I stand off to the side and then approach.  I did.  It worked.

 

I try not to do a walk-on if it doesn't help the scene, but I saw an opportunity in the second scene in the third beat so I took it as the same character.  I think it worked pretty well, and hopefully not to the impression that I over-exposed myself in the Harold.

 

Then we got to my scene in the beat, which wouldn't have been necessary, but we needed closure for my scene partner, so we did.  And it was good.

 

Next week I'll write about what I did today on Independence Day.

 

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