The odd-ition

Hello and good morning, everyone. I hope the weekend treated you all well. As I've mentioned over the past couple of weeks, I'm running out of some things to write about. That's led me to finally write about some things that have been waiting in the wings for months. I hope you enjoy today's offering.

I've written about it here before, but I'm not loathe to repeat myself from time to time. My second half of high school, I participated in school plays and the improvisational comedy team. I enjoyed them thoroughly, but at the same time, I knew for absolute certain that I didn't want to continue in that field in college. I wanted something a little more stable as a major and possible career, so my eventual choice of English didn't make much sense at all.

In any case, my friends Jon and Margot were both very talented and continued their drama studies in college. I got to live vicariously through them by attending their scenes and plays throughout the quarters. One afternoon in the Spring of our freshman year, Margot had news for us. There was a sheet up on the audition board saying that someone was starting a new show and was looking for actors. It was going to be "a sketch comedy show in the mold of Monty Python and Saturday Night Live." She and Jon were definitely going, and after going back and forth in my head for a while, I decided to join them.

The sheet of paper told us when and where to meet. In addition to the address, it said to look for "an Ecolab van." We thought that was a strange landmark, but this was going to be awesome so it didn't matter. The day came, and I was pretty excited to see what it was going to hold. I'd decided that even if nothing personally came from this, it would be cool to see a show in this stage of development and be able to tell people that I auditioned for it.

We hopped into Margot's car and headed off to the audition. We followed the directions, but the last couple of steps were very vague. It was somewhere around where we were, but which building in particular was up in the air. We parked and got out, hoping to see a crowd of other actors showing us the way. Some conversation off in the distance reached our ears, so we set off to find the bodies that the voices belonged to. After entering a nearby set of double doors, we were greeted by a woman. "Hi, is this where the audition is taking place?" "Yes," she said, "Oh wait, audition you said? No, bar mitzvah. It's a bar mitzvah. Are you with the band?"

As we walked out of the wrong place, I was starting to get nervous. I may have a couple of time issues, so seeing that the audition was starting in one minute and we had no idea where didn't sit too well with me. I was all set to resign myself to the fact that we weren't going to find the right place, and I could sense that the others were almost to that point as well. Before we made it back to the car, we stopped to let a speeding vehicle zoom past us. On its side in big letters, it read "ECOLAB." "Follow that van!" we yelled.

We sped after it for just a minute before it quickly pulled into a parking spot nowhere near the main entrances to any of the buildings. A man stepped out and said, "Sorry I'm late." He walked to a door in the middle of the back wall of building, took out his keys, and opened it. My first impression of the room was that it held either youth groups or group therapy sessions, possibly both. The man introduced himself, but I don't remember his name. I'll call him Jerry unless anyone objects. Going once...going twice...Jerry it is.

Jerry asked us all to have a seat, and then he said, "Welcome to the Reality Room." At first I thought that was going to be the name of the show, but then I saw the word "Reality" painted on one of the walls in five-foot high letters. I looked around and noticed that there were only about a dozen of us there, which surprised me. Jerry continued: "You're here because you saw my ad, but I want to tell you a little more about my idea for the show."

"Part of the process will be coming up with the scenes together, but there are a couple that I've already written." He then switched to full pitch mode. "First, there's a couple sitting on a park bench and they start kissing. Quickly, it flashes to that same woman pregnant and looking frazzled. Then it flashed back to the bench, and they start getting more into it. Then - bam! - it shows the same woman trying to cope while taking care of a baby alone. Back to the park bench, and they're really getting it on, you know? Bam - it flashes to the woman looking like she's at the end of her rope and considering suicide. And then on the screen, instead of Nike's 'Just Do It,' it says... 'Just Think About it First.' So that's one of my ideas."

We all sat there, smiling and nodding, doing our best acting jobs to make it seem like we were picking up what he was putting down. I distinctly remember thinking to myself, "Well that's neither a sketch nor comedy; this isn't quite what I was expecting." I suppose it actually was a sketch, but one that would be impossible to do live without twins playing the same woman.

But Jerry wasn't done yet. Still in pitch mode, he said. "Then I have another idea. There's this guy, right, and another guy walks up to him and gives him these two huge suitcases and walks away." He raised his eyebrows at us and nodded inquisitively, as if to ask if we understood the concept so far. We nodded back, admitting to having the capacity to picture both people and suitcases at the same time. "So the first guy tries walking through a doorway but, but, he can't fit through," he said, smiling and clearly pleased to share this idea with us. "And then someone else come over and piles more baggage on him. He tries to go through the doorway again but just can't manage. Then a THIRD person comes over and stacks MORE baggage on him. Now he can't even come close to fitting through the door!" He gave us the look again, and we acted enthusiastic to hear what could possibly happen to this man and his baggage. Jerry paused dramatically. "And then," he said with a serious tone, "A man walks up to him and takes the baggage away one by one. He turns to the first man and says, 'I'll show you the way to the Lord, my son.' And they walk through together. So that's the other idea I've been kicking around. Any questions so far?"

Let me assure you, gentle readers, that it's quite hard to simultaneously smile and think, "Oh boy, what the hell have we gotten ourselves into?" And with that, I think I'll stop here and conclude the story tomorrow. Please remember to write to ptklein@gmail.com with anything about anything, and hopefully I can keep this blogging thing going a little longer. Enjoy your Monday, folks.