The Jet Lag

On September 12th, I looked into the trunk of MB's car as I threw my stuff in there and I noticed a novel that must have been there for some time.  It was a copy of the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine book, A Stitch in Time.  This was a book about one of the characters on the space station, Garak an exiled Cardassian, a former spy, and someone who only was returned to his home planet once it was ravaged by an insidious alliance of species called "The Dominion" in a brutal war.  All I knew about it was that it was written in the first person by the person who played that character for seven years, Andrew J. Robinson (whose first break was as the Scorpio Killer in the first Dirty Harry movie.  DS9 seemed to cast critically acclaimed actors who played villains in famous movies from the 70s such as Louise Fletcher, Oscar-winning actress best known as Nurse Ratched in "One Flew Over the Cukoo's Nest).  It was based on the notes and memoirs Robinson wrote over his time on the show to develop his character, so it always fascinated me for that reason.  It was a novel, but also an actor's handbook on developing backstory.

 

MB let me take it because I'd never read it.  I figured I'd be able to start reading it on the flight back to California.  Interestingly, on the flight back I didn't get much sleep and only finished a few chapters.  Being someone who needs his share of sleep, I didn't know how that would affect me for the week.

 

Another book I had been toting with me was my new agent directory.  In addition to a listing for professional contacts, it has valuable articles on the industry, including advice for people at all levels.  Another resource I'd been using lately was just listening to the "Barely Legal Radio Show" Friday mornings at work on Indie 103.1.  It's hosted by Vandals  band member Joe Escalante, who is also a licensed lawyer.  Each week he fields entertainment law questions from callers.

 

That night, I missed my first performance class for Level 4 (which is why the 16th was never listed on the schedule below). 

 

The next day I went straight to work, so for the remainder of the week I was suffering from jet lag.  In addition to that, it was also rather rainy, and there was construction in Santa Monica, so my mood was not great.  I needed to make up class on Thursday for the one I missed while I was home in Massachusetts.  I got there just barely on time, having bypassed my usual fast food place for Jack in the Box since it was closer.

 

Class started with a discussion of Saturday's performance.  Apparently, I missed quite a show.  There was a situation in which one of the Harold's had a scene in the first beat with a two people in an alley.  The female character in the scene had her "purse" taken by a walk-on performer.  The others decided to heighten this by causing more and more extreme harm to her, crossing the line into inappropriateness.  Her character was raped.  It was clear to the coach that the performer felt extremely uncomfortable, even unsafe.  Even in scenes I've been in where racial stereotypes were played up in a way I didn't like, I don't think I felt as horrible as she must have felt.

 

In first beats the usual tactic is to let the relationship between two characters grow, then let throw everything at the wall in the second beat, and in the final beat attempt closure for most of the characters.  But besides that, the elephant in the room is of course the disturbingly unsafe environment for the performer in that scene.  I don't think there was any malice intended, but it speaks to the first instincts of many of the improvisers I see perform.  It reminds me of the kids who did sketch at Emerson when I was there.  So, maybe it's a life experience thing?  That young men still look to old television sitcoms to learn about the opposite sex.

 

I try to believe that each person is a person before they're a category.  And a person has motivations and wants and beautiful complexity in their character.  Everyone is a wonderful multi-dimensional character, and I try to put myself in their shoes when possible.  I know I fail a lot of the time, but I'm also of the belief that being conscious of a problem is almost as good as consciously working to solve it.  Hopefully that consciousness at least makes one less likely to make things worse at least.

 

As far as class itself went, our warm up exercise was Hot Spot, in which a performer walks up to center stage, and starts singing until someone pushes you out and starts singing something else.  I usually hate this game because I'm not a confident singer and I have a poor capacity for remembering lyrics to songs I only vaguely know.  But this time I jumped in fairly often, I even started people on round of songs based on one I sang.  Sometimes it helps to have both a song from "Les Miserables," that I needed to sing for a sketch once, stuck in my head and a bunch of fellow players that are way more into musical theatre than I'll ever be.

 

When it came time for me to do a Harold, I felt off.  I don't know why, but it was the same room I had my Level 1 class in, a class sort of struggled with.  I tend to alternate between having trouble for one session and doing well in the next.

 

The weather was miserable the next day on the way to the internship.  Not even my Star Trek book could keep me company as I noticed how the weather mirrored my mood.  It wasn't because of improv, even I don't usually get that down on myself about that.

 

On Saturday, in class, we talked some more about the incident at the previous class show.  But this time the conversation seemed focused more on why a move like that was a disservice to the Harold and less on the psychological effects on the people involved.  I asked why this tends to happen in improv more than anywhere else.  I'm not sure I buy that it's because it would normally get edited in another venue because I don't know why it would be someone's first thought.  I do still like improv.  When it's good, and performed by talented performers, people don't get put in those situations.

 

Afterwards, we did a warm-up exercise that also happened to serve as a trust exercise.  It was a game called "Scorpion" in which everyone closed their eyes and the teacher chose one of the students to be the "scorpion," the hunter.  People could remain quiet, they could hide, they could actively try to get caught, but once they were, they guarded the perimeter of the playing area and watched the scene unfold, their eyes now open.

 

In the rain on the way back, the bus took a detour down Larchmont between 3rd Street and Beverly.  It was an intriguing stretch that I never really noticed before.  I suppose the closest thing I could compare it to, for Boston readers, is Charles Street--minus the proximity to a body of water (although on this day, one could be fashioned easily enough).  The next day I needed to clear my head.  I had a stressful week, even outside of improv, so I went out.  The weather was beautiful and I got out of the apartment at a pretty early hour.

 

But instead of exploring that area I went to a different Beverly--the Beverly Center.  It was a mall I had passed many times before, but had never been to.  Since it was so famous, and I wanted to do something relatively mindless, I decided to check it out.  When I arrived the mall hadn't opened yet.  In the morning, when sunlight shines through an empty mall, it looks peaceful, but it also looks like the set for a music video or something, especially this mall.  This mall was mostly a bunch of high fashion clothing stores.  After walking through it pretty quickly, I decided to go for a walk outside until it was open.

 

Outside, I saw someone I didn't recognize at first, but then, he appeared to be panhandling.  He was someone that was a fellow passenger on my old bus route when I was working in the Westwood campus at UCLA.  I didn't know much about him, other than that he was a British man with a mustache and usually said "Hi" to me after one trip when we commiserated over the lateness of the bus one morning.  He usually got off around the spot I saw him to go to work, but I wasn't sure he even had a job since he looked a bit disheveled.

 

So, on this day he offered to sell me some tokens for the Santa Monica bus.  The thought had already passed through my head that I would give him some money anyway, this just gave me an excuse to do it and preserve some dignity on his part.

 

I walked to Border's and browsed the psychology and bargain sections before heading back to the mall, which was now open.  Before perusing stores for clothing I wouldn't afford any time soon, I grabbed some lunch from Sbarro and walked out to an outdoor, rooftop, eating area.  It had a a brilliant view looking from North East where the Hollywood Hills were to East where I could see tall buildings faintly poking through the smog to South East towards the Crenshaw District and LAX.

 

I decided I would continue my tourism by going into Hollywood to the Hollywood Forever Cemetary.  At first I almost felt like I was trespassing, but I saw some other tourists and began to wander through the maze of strangers' gravestones and buildings of tombs.  I saw Mel Blanc's famous stone that said "That's All Folks!" and the tomb that held the Talmadges.  Inside one of the buildings was a video kiosk so, I watched the thing on Mel Blanc and left for home.

 

There was no show that week, but the next three weeks would have shows each Sunday.  In order to pass the class, one would need to be at three of the four, so I needed to perform in all three if I had any hope of passing.

 

That was not as easy a prospect as I thought it would be.  I don't know if it was the weather of the previous week, but going into work on Monday, I felt phlegmmy.  That night, I layed low and caught the premiere of "Chuck" the show I auditioned for (I would have been the best friend).  It wasn't bad.  I got worse on Tuesday and on Wednesday morning I just didn't feel well enough even to get ready for the day.  So at about the time I would normally board the bus for work, I called in sick.

 

Sometimes it feels good to take a day and do absolutely nothing of note.  This was one of them.  And therefore, I probably won't waste too much typing on it except to say that the only problem with sick days are that, very often, one is actually sick.

 

That week at the internship, I had a pair of guest hosts, that I, at first, thought were only one of the teams performing that night.  In the audience were an older couple who were important figures in the LA improv scene, people I knew vaguely by reputation.  I chatted with them for a bit and even gave them a card, with the increasingly inaccurate trio of titles: Stand Up, Writer, GOD OF HUMILITY.  Well, two of the three are probably true.  I mean you're reading this, and I really am awesome at being humble.

 

That Saturday would be my last internship meeting.  I was due to finish my internship on Friday, October 12th.  So, I met with my replacement and offered to train him, and the new Saturday person, who would happen to be filling in for the floater the Friday I'd finish.  So I could train them on the eccentricities of each other's nights.

 

Class felt good, and my first improv performance for an audience felt pretty good too.  A friend of mine, Bob Hagearty, had recently moved back to LA.  He was someone I knew, first, from his contributions to various sketch shows in Cambridge my first summer as a stand-up.  Secondly, a couple of years later, when I started working at the Museum of Science, I learned that he worked there on Sundays and taught middle school math during the week.  I invited him to this first performance of mine as an improviser.

 

During this Harold, I played a character who believed he was terminal, but was going for his driver's license test.  I stayed pretty consistent with the hypochondriacal aspects of the character, felt good with my contribution, and I closed one of the group games with a pretty solid laugh, but felt like maybe I had neglected others.

 

After the performances we got notes on all three shows and I met Bob at the bar.  We caught up for some time.  An experienced improviser, he gave me his own notes, and a ride home.  I caught him up on some stuff that's been going on in LA since I got here a year ago.  It really was good to see him.  It was good to see a friend.

 

It was within a couple of days I began reading Funky Winkerbean (You can read archived strips at: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/fun/funky.asp?date=yyyymmdd but replace the "yyyymmdd" with the year/month/day).  I had heard about the impending death of one of the characters, Lisa Moore, from a recurrence of breast cancer.

 

I remembered reading Funky Winkerbean in the Sunday paper growing up.  I think I even remember when they all made the time jump which made them all four years older and Les Moore was an English teacher at the high school and Funky would co-own the local pizza place.  I don't think I was ready for the strip at the time because I liked the lighter, if more wistful, Crankshaft, without realizing at first that they were created by the same cartoonist (though I thought they looked and read similarly).

 

To me, comic strips that weren't gag-a-days were either the daily Spider-man strip or strips that were old holdovers from the days of soapy melodramatic strips still drawn in their original 1950s style.  I was aware that For Better or For Worse and Doonesbury aged their characters, but there was just something darker about the Funkyverse that grated me a the time.

 

Scrubs is my favorite sitcom right now because I feel like it has a near-perfect blend of pathos and absurdity.  The message of the show seems to be that life sucks but there's a always a way to deal with it.  I feel like Funky Winkerbean has been walking that fine line as well.  But the thing about setting it in a town populated by the former students of Westview is that it opens things wide open for characters that offer a diverse point of view, leading different lives, fulfilling different functions in the community.  It seems less tied to its original context and, for that reason, more capable or growing in unexpected, but fully satisfying ways.

 

Occasionally he employs the help of comic book artists adding to its already graphic novel sensibility.  But the characters that Tom Batiuk writes are all characters he has great empathy for.  I say "empathy" because he makes a great effort to understand what their going through and live and breath through their points-of-view.  The recent storylines felt especially cathartic to me because of what has happened in the past few years.  Stories about which I've written in a relatively private forum that I may publish in some way in the future.

 

His work feels like more than the inevitable sympathy that would result from exhaustive research because he catches people in the subtle in-between moments that real people live in.  It's interesting, to me anyway, to note that in his strip the female alumni of Westview have more global and ambitious careers than their male counterparts who are content to work in the town they grew up in.  This stands in stark contrast with the lack of empathy that frustrated me about some improv scenes (mind you I'm including myself as an instigator of this frustration).

 

Late in the next week, I got my evaluation by email for class.  Because we hadn't received one for the middle of the session, this one would have to suffice.  The suggestion was that I go back to Level 2 to work on scene work.  It was mostly because of the eye-contact issue.  Those of you that know me personally probably are aware that I have always had that as a problem.  I know that when I do make eye-contact my work is generally better.  So, at this point I think my problem is more psychological than something I could tackle through classes alone.  It was a surprise to hear that I should go back as far as my teacher said, but as I always try to be, I was open to talking about it during the next class.

 

I didn't feel like writing my blog.

 

On Friday, October, 5th I went to what would be my last internship shift with Jeff Hawkins as the next week he would have a guest host again.  As I said the next week would be the end of my internship and also the week my Level 4 class would end...for the first time.

 

And so I went to class again and spoke about my options.  I'm convinced that my problem, as he said, is one involving eye-contact.  This means it's something I don't think I can solve with more classes.  That said, even if I'm not going to progress in the program, there's no reason for me to stop it at this time.  I need to do something to stay active in this field that's chosen me.

 

Another factor in my not progressing further was no doubt the fact that I hadn't been watching shows as much as I usually did.  Sure, I watched half a dozen shows each week as an intern, but I probably should have been watching Harold shows or shows with more seasoned players too.  So, on this particular Saturday I planned on checking out "Beer Shark Mice" and "The Lampshades."  I had seen both before, but it had been a while since I'd seen either.  In the end I only saw "The Lampshades" as the second show was sold out.  So, including that, I had seen only a couple shows for which my card was punched this session.  One of the others was a showcase where writers performed their personal essays.

 

The next night was my second improv performance in front of an audience.  I felt much weaker as a performer.  They say that when you feel good about an improv performance it's probably the same instance as when an audience likes it.  Such was not the case this time around.  Generally speaking, everyone felt better about this round of Harolds but I felt dumb in my scenes.  For one thing, the opening we chose was Invocation, which meant that we were to describe and object, and eventually personify it.  I asked the audience for a suggestion.  Since the groups were divided by where we grew up this week, I asked the audience for a stereotype of the East Coast.  Someone shouted, "Cousins!" and we performed an Invocation of the idea of "Cousins."  Then something happened towards the end of the Harold and I figured out how to tie some of the threads together.  Like Stryker in "Airplane!" I stuck a passable, if ugly landing.

 

That week I began a search for a therapist.  It's kind of strange thing to think of, but then I've always been strange.  I think there's a misconception that therapy is a luxury, but for years I've felt like I should seek it.  I've always felt outside of this world, disconnected from it, primarily on a social level, but I like to think of myself as a problem solver, so it makes sense for me to try and do something about it.

 

What's stopped me in the past is that I've always felt like I was in transition.  I'd either be in a job that didn't have health insurance or I'd be positive I wouldn't be "living in this town much longer" and therapy requires consistent care with the same person.  But perhaps those were excuses.  I felt like I didn't need it.  Though my summer was depressing, there was a month in there that was utterly blissful.  From the moment MB came here and we were off on our adventures on the road in California, to the end of my trip home, where I could see my family, I was happy.  I imagine as I anticipate a trip home for late December, I'll be even more excited because I'll be more likely to make a trip into Boston.

 

But, when I went for my physical earlier this year, I pitched the idea with my new doctor and he supported the decision, "A friend of mine once said, 'You don't go on vacation when you're burnt out, you go soon before you're burnt out.'"  The point was well taken.  The time for procrastination was over.

 

At first, my search started by looking at the doctors available through my HMO.  Then I decided upon a simpler method.  I work in a medical building, so I decided to walk upstairs to the psychology suite.  It was lunch, so when I walked in the staff was out of the office.  The only person available was a psychologist who gladly advised me on picking one who clicked with me and offered me cards of the others in the office.  I called and emailed those I could and one of them kept up communications with me to help me in my search based on the requirements I stated.

 

Having finished my Deep Space Nine book a week earlier, I cracked open another book.  This time it was another gift from my aunt.  When I was home, I grabbed a bunch of classics to stuff in my suitcase.  Among them was the Jules Verne book Around the World in Eighty Days.

 

Right from the first two chapters, I knew I'd like this book.  It's obviously a children's book, but it's written in a sly, almost sarcastic, manner.  It was kind of hip.  But it also was extremely dated.

 

Though it didn't intend to be, it's a piece of delightfully politically incorrect sampling of British imperialism circa 1872.  The narrator almost seems to be smugly superior to his characters, even including Phileas Fogg, the hero.  And this hero, though a cucumber cool eccentric and rich traveler, he is also arrogant enough to presume what is good for the alien countries he visits.  Passepartout is portrayed as a lovable fool, perhaps, to Jules Verne, because he's a Frenchman.  It is also presented like a sitcom with Fawlty Towers or Frasier-like misunderstandings.  Once everything was straightened out, the characters all seemed to get along well enough.  I had seen an animated version of the story and remembered the ending which involved a clever, and educational, deus ex machina.

 

On what was to be my last internship shift, I was supposed to train my replacement.  I was passing the torch, while I assumed I would find another way to make up my shifts to pay for the extra sessions I would now be attending.  But my replacement didn't show up.  I was puzzled, but briefly trained the other Andy Dick Theater intern who had started doing Saturdays a few weeks earlier.  I figured it'd be good for him to know what Fridays were like in case his counterpart needed coverage.

 

The ten o'clock hour that night was free of shows, so I chatted with some of the improvisers that were there and let slip my stand-up days.  This lead to me performing stand-up once again on that stage, doing about ten minutes or so.  After, several other improvisers decided to give it a go.  It was a nice try on their part.

 

My last class with this session felt good, I felt like I was getting back in the groove with my work.  It would be my second of four consecutive days at IO West.  I actually felt pretty good about this past session.  I felt like I was clicking with some of these performers.  They would move on and I was move backwards.  Perhaps I would see them again, as peers.

 

After class I took a walk down near Paramount Pictures and noticed a bunch of people entering the place.  Apparently, it was a party put on by Vans for a skateboarding competition that went on inside.  Outside the studio were several skaters trying to get in.  I struck up a conversation with one of them.  He was a kid who was born a crack baby in Las Vegas and came out here because he found God and wanted to start life over.  He was about 20 years old and talked to me about Jesus.  I told him that whatever it took for someone to get better and be happy was alright by me.  Someone who had left the party had given him a ticket so he said "Goodbye" to me and headed in.  Someone else started talking to me and a few minutes later, one of his party came out with some extra tickets.  I figured it'd be fun to hang out there.

 

The party was held on the New York Street outdoor set.  I stuck out like a sore thumb in my corduroy blazer and light grey mock turtleneck, but there were plenty of corporate sponsors, free stuff, and free food.  I wandered around and hung out for a few hours before going home.

 

Sunday the 14th was my last performance night for the session and I think it was my best.  We were the last Harold team, and we called ourselves "The Trespassers."  To me, this sounded like a band name, so again, I was the one to ask the audience for a suggestion and I asked for something you might find at a concert.  Since we were again doing Invocation, I learned my lesson from the previous week.  "Bong!" shouted one of my classmates sitting in the audience.  No one really rolled their eyes because we put on an intelligent show that happened to feature marijuana.

 

In my scene, I played the leader of three kids in between high school and college doing some research by watching "Reefer Madness."  I took my two friends to the library to teach them how to do research as those characters were supposed to be cartoonishly stupid.  There was another scene where a character was going on a trip and happened to get a brick of drugs, and a third scene where a character lost his muse.  In the final beat, I dragged the character to lost his muse into the scene with the drug smuggler.  I don't endorse using drugs as a muse but my character did.  I think that's why this performance was particularly successful, I was playing outside my typical range.

 

While I was there, I decided to ask about what happened to the guy I was supposed to train the previous Friday.  Apparently, since I was repeating levels now, he was transferred to a different night so I could do my additional shifts.

 

But then the next night was something completely different.  Not unlike the first couple of weeks after I got back, the weather was bleak and I felt physically sick.  But I got into Hollywood early, so I popped into Borders to see if I could find the new Funky Winkerbean book, Lisa's Story: The Other Shoe, but it wasn't available.  The weird thing was that I couldn't even order it.  The only copies that showed up were expensive used copies--for a book that came out this month!

 

In class, I was in a crabby mood, I was physically sick, and during the break the button popped on my pants.  This always happens on the one day in a month I decide not to wear a belt.  When we got back from break the teacher surprised the brand new Level 3 students by telling them they'd be performing their very first Harold.  I had other things on my mind as I walked around the stage trying to keep my pants up.  I made stupid rookie mistakes like asking questions that could have easily been statements.  As soon as class ended, I just wanted to go home.

 

Wednesday, I went to my first appointment with a therapist.  It was almost more like I was interviewing her for a job.  I didn't really feel a connection to this particular therapist, but as Edison said about inventing, "I didn't fail a thousand times, I learned a thousand ways not to make a light bulb."

 

After the session, I walked down the block to the Westwood Borders to try again there.  It was an even longer and more convoluted search.  I wanted to flip through and compare the hardcover and paperback editions (unusual for most books, this book's two versions were released simultaneously), but I think I'm just going to buy the book online.  It's cheaper anyway.

 

Friday, I started the first shift of the rest of my internship.  It felt like old times in a way.  It felt pretty good.  But I signed up for the next night as well.  Sean Cowhig had somewhere else to be for the second half of the shift, so he needed someone to cover for him.  It was also an opportunity to see four hours of mainstage shows.

 

I walked in after picking up a lasagna from down the street when I saw the Red Sox up 10-1 over the Indians in the third inning.  It was Game 6 in the ALCS and it looked like they were going to force a Game 7 for the next night.

 

Sean trained me on some of the quirks of some of the Saturday night shows.  Most of them had specific intro and outro music they wanted played and "Sunset Heights" was a relatively complicated hour-long improvised spoof of high school dramas (Yep, that's the one I auditioned for a week before I left for Massachusetts.

 

In between "313" and "Beer Shark Mice" I realized that I had to rid myself of the lasagna I had recently eaten.  Fortunately, Sean was still there, so he could cover me during the beginning of "Beer Shark Mice" while I ran to the bathroom.  But that was minor in comparison to the next major problem.

 

During the ten o'clock hour were two shows.  Unbeknownst to me, the second show was formerly an hour-long show.  I pulled the lights on the first show at 10:33, so I figured the second show would be done, at the latest, at 10:58.  They're a team that calls their own show.  At 11:08, the show went on, so finally, I got word from the House Manager that I could call the show at the next opportunity.  Excellent.  Just because it's Saturday night doesn't mean I don't want to go home and get some sleep.

 

Of course, there was the last show: "Sunset Heights."  At the beginning of the show I was to announce from the booth, "Previously on 'Sunset Heights'..." and pull the lights up and down in between reenactments of last week's scenes, then play the title video.  But because I was dealing with the aftermath of the show that ran the light, a number of people were parading in and out of the sound booth.  So, I missed my broadcasting opportunity and the lighting cues for the first in the series of flashbacks.

 

To add to the general frustration of the night, one of the people that ran into the booth was the keyboardist.  Unfortunately, the sound board had some problems on this particular night.  Even Sean had some trouble fixing it.  In this case, the keyboardist needed his equipment hooked up to the board and it just wasn't happening, so he used his on-board speaker.

 

At 12:10, I called the lights on the show with The Buzzcocks "Everybody's Happy Nowadays" and collapsed onto my chair.

 

The Red Sox are going to the World Series, Southern California is burning (I am safe), and the world continues to spin.  I hope my update hasn't worried you (I assume if you're a regular reader you invest something, at least in the character that lives in this blog, if not the real Eric Cheung).  But in explaining my absence from this page I demonstrate my inability to lie.  I will figure out what I need to work on and how to fix it.  Sometimes I blame myself for a lot of the problems I encounter because I feel like then it's something I can control, it's a problem I can fix.  That's obviously not a great way to deal with things, but perhaps some of these issues aren't my fault, so I'll either have to live with them or approach them differently.

 

Just as Funky Winkerbean evolved from a gag-a-day strip to a complex portrait of a small Midwestern town, so to may this blog evolve.  At the beginning of this year, I stopped doing stand-up on a regular basis.  Even before that, I stopped doing booked shows.  So there was little reason for this to be used a promotional tool anymore.  It didn't need to be a weekly journal, it could be a more personal blog on my thoughts.  In the past month I've considered discontinuing this blog and transferring it to a more personal journal I would write on my own, perhaps to be published later.  I may do that anyway, as a supplement to this blog.  But at the very least, I wanted to let the people who do read this know what the score is now.

 

The search for therapy continues...

 

The last chapter title in Around the World in Eighty Days is "In Which It Is Proved That Phileas Fogg Gained Nothing By Making This Tour Of The World, Unless It Be Happiness."  I believe that my move out here was a step in that direction.  Even if I never end up having a career in television, moving out here revealed things about myself to me that will forever change my life, probably for the better.

 

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