Might I suggest

Happy Friday and good morning to one and all. I hope the week has treated you well. I heard on Tuesday that it was the birthdays of both Stephen Hawking and R&B singer R. Kelly, and I just couldn't let that pass without comment. It's very difficult to come up with two greater extremes sharing a birthday, although they're both geniuses in their own ways. Ya know, if self-indulgent, repetitive songs about everyone shooting at/cheating on each other coupled with videos of urinating on underage girls makes someone a genius. That crazy physicist.

I've written several times in this tiny corner of the internets about my travails in improvisational comedy from back in my last two high school years. Being the typical self-centered artist type, I've left out a very important component of those times: the audience. (Here's a random side note: since our British and Canadian friends spell center as "centre" - including a kick-ass song by Sloan called "Left of Centre" - how do they spell "centered" or "centering'? Are pompous Canadians "self-centred"? That's a trick question of course, because all Canadians are cool. And that's not a jab at their weather. Zing! I'm sure this comes up, because I think hockey players "centre the puck" in the course of their national pastime. "In that Penguins game, eh, Lemieux centred it to Roenick for the shot, eh?" for example. We need to find a reliable Canuck to help us out. Maybe we could start an "Ask a Canadian" segment of UOPTA just for occasions like this. I should probably get back to the story now.)

Now where was I? The audience! Yes, those improv games are all a hell of a lot more difficult without a willing and participatory crowd. Nothing illustrates this more clearly than the time that we tried bringing our improv group to different classrooms at our school to give them a taste of what they could come and see (and pay for) later that week. Most of the students didn't give a shit and would've rather chat amongst themselves than watch us play our little games. I don't remember the exact circumstances, but for some reason, I only went to one or two classrooms while Dusty and Jon went to a bunch each. There was a fantastic phenomenon that each group came across in every classroom, and I don't know what's taken me so long to share it with you.

"Ok," one of us would say after introducing a game, "can we get a relationship between two people that-" "GAY LOVERS!" someone would yell, much to the delight of everyone else in the class. "No, um, I was going to say, a relationship between two people that doesn't involve kissing please." "GAY LOVERS!" "I'm pretty sure they kiss. Anyone else? What's that? Doctor and patient? Thank you very much. Ok, can I get an object now that-" "A BURRITO!" "Fine, a burrito." I can't explain it, and I'm not sure I'd even want to if I could, but every single class suggested "gay lovers" and "a burrito." It's like they all got together one day and decided that, should anyone ever ask them for a relationship between two people, they had to yell "gay lovers" under penalty of death. I don't know what they had in mind when combining those two suggestions, but I'm glad to report that we always took the high ground and refrained from giving the audience what they wanted. Wait, that didn't sound right. In any case, I never thought I'd have to say to a group, "Can I have an object please that isn't a burrito?" High school was very educational indeed.

My friends and I were somewhat drama-geeky for a little while, but at least we had a lot of fun. For example, we went to the Los Angeles Comedy Sportz' performances almost every weekend for a little while. They were brilliant, and it was a great way for us to continue striving to get better at making shit up. There was one aspect of going to the shows that combined almost everything that makes me tick: at the end of the show, they selected the best suggestion of the night and gave that person a free ticket to come back. Therefore, I could potentially say something funny in a crowd, be publicly acknowledged as a winner, and then get something free. It was like a perfect storm of Peterkleinicity. I think that's an album by the Police, by the way.

As luck (or immensely potent skill) would have it, I won the free ticket a few times. I can remember one quite clearly: It was a game in which one actor (or "laughlete," if I recall) would go into a back room, and then the referee would get five or six funny sentences from the audience. The actor would come back, and they'd all do a scene. The others would have to work those lines in, and the one who had left would have to guess which lines were from the audience and which were his/her fellow actors just messing around trying to elicit a wrong guess. If that doesn't make any sense to you, it's ok, this is a judge-free zone here and everyone is special in his or her own way. Unless they're complete fucking morons, then we mock the hell out of them. In any case, the ref had gotten a few lines from the audience but needed some more. "Let's see, how about something your mother always told you?" "You're not my son!" I yelled from the back. Big laughs, my friends, big laughs. An hour later, the golden ticket was mine! Bwa ha ha.

Another memorable suggestion story requires quite a bit of backstory, but you guys have some time, right? Sweet. One of my friends was in an awkward stage back in his teen years. Jon, I mean, "this friend" had learned that the Persian/Farsi word for whore is "gendeh." I just looked it up too; it's scary easy to learn things nowadays. So Jon started saying "gendeh" (which we pronounced as 'jen-day,' in case you want to use it at home) all the time. His mom would ask when he'd be home, and he'd say, "In an hour or two...gendeh." We thought that was really funny, but then again, we didn't have the most refined tastes back then.

One day, Jon called out to his mom. "Gendeh!" he yelled. His dad turned to him and said, "You know, I know why you say that." We both were silent for a second, waiting for his dad to keep speaking so that we didn't have to. "It's for Captain Genda, right?" "Wha, what?" Jon asked. "Yeah, Captain Genda was second in command to Admiral Yamamoto and was the mastermind behind the whole Pearl Harbor attack," he said extremely matter-of-factly. (He was right with the history lesson, of course: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoru_Genda.) We were dumbfounded. How could that be true without us knowing for so long? At the very least, we could've called each other "Captain Gendeh" and giggled like the schoolboys we were.

Well, you can probably guess what happened. Fast-forward to our next Comedy Sportz show, and there was a beat of silence after the ref asked for a historical situation. "Captain Genda planning the attack on Pearl Harbor," Jon said. The ref looked around for a second to see if anyone else would say anything - anything! - that he could use instead of that, but everyone was too busy looking over at the giggling schoolboys. "Captain...who?" the ref asked tentatively. "Genda," Jon said. "He was second in command to Yamamoto," I added. "Ok...Captain Genda and Pearl Harbor." I don't remember much about the scene, but I feel ok about that.

I have two more improv suggestion stories, if you'll permit me. First off, we would travel to different schools to have improv competitions against their teams. One guy, "Mike from El Dorado" was fucking hilarious. We always liked watching him perform whenever he was a part of that event, and he always killed up there. I wish I knew his last name so I could see if he got rich and famous for being such a funny f'er. Anyway, one night my group of friends and I went to Comedy Sportz for a special musical version, and lo and behold, Mike from El Dorado was in the crowd with us. At the beginning of the show, they asked for five suggestions of titles for the full-length musical. They would then choose one of them and immediately start. The ref took a few suggestions from the crowd, and then he pointed to Mike from El Dorado. Mike stood up to say his suggestion, and I was giddy with anticipation. I had enough time to think, "Oh my god, this is going to be the funniest thing anyone's ever said, and then they'll do a whole musical based on that funniest thing." Dusty was actually thinking the same thing too, I later learned. So MfED stood, and with a half-smile said, "The Airy Foot-Race!" "Excuse me? The what foot-race?" the ref asked. "The Airy Foot-Race!" he repeated in a grand tone. "A-i-r-y." "Ok, The Airy - Airy? - ok, Airy Foot-Race." I didn't know what to make of it, but he was so funny that I felt like it was probably my fault for not getting his supreme humor.

Apparently the actors didn't either, and they chose "Tigers and Toddlers" instead, which proved to be pretty funny. I still bring up "The Airy Foot-Race" to Dusty from time to time, and we shake our heads and wonder what the hell he was talking about. In something that I will dare to call irony, Mike from El Dorado's least funny comment ended up being his most memorable one.

The final story of this topic involves me going to the Groundlings Theater with my friend Alissa for a night of improv. One of the main performers was some guy named Will Ferrell, but I had no idea that one day in the future, my entire vocabulary would be based solely on quotes from his movies. For their first game, their equivalent of a referee said, "Ok, I need an object please." "Silly putty!" I yelled out loudly and proudly. "Uh, no, we need an actual object to use as a prop," he said, and everyone turned and looked at me like the obvious first-timer I was. Yeah, I didn't exactly bring home any kind of golden ticket that night :(

I'm pretty sure that's my first sad face in over a year of this blog. I just thought it was particular fitting. You know what else is fitting? This week's installment of the kickasstastic Car Watch!

First off, my lovely wife saw a plate and texted it to me before she forgot: "XQZAMOI." It took me a second, but maybe that's just because I'm not used to people being polite in their cars...or pseudo French. Definitely not both at the same time.

She also saw a candidate for the top five of all "Blanks do it Blank" bumper stickers. Are you ready for this? "Ultrasound techs do it with frequency." Nice, nice. I gotta say that it's right behind "Makeup artists do it on your face" on my list o' favorites.

My homey Rockabye saw a plate that I almost passed on, but then decided to share it with you all at the last minute. It read, "MANPIG." Let's see, what's the best comment I can anticipate from my heavily-female readership? Either "I don't know why he had to specify - of course the pig is a man" or "It was only a matter of time before those two species merged completely." Got better ones? Comment away and show me how it's done.

Dusty wrote me with a sticker he saw. "Draft SUV drivers first." Normally, I'd just kinda nod and accept that as an interesting way for one to disapprove of larger vehicles. It's not often that we recommend that our enemies serve our country. Here's the weird part though (in case it wasn't weird yet): It was on an SUV. Now what the fuck is that all about? My mom thinks that the driver might have meant to draft them first in sports leagues, but I think, as bizarre as this sentence sounds, that it's more likely that it was just a self-loathing SUV owner. I never expected that to be more likely that anything really.

I saw a plate that told me, "U L(Heart)VE ME." No, no I don't. I don't just rush to love like that, weirdo. I don't even greatly esteem that car's driver, mainly because it's a stranger. How ballsy is that to tell everyone who looks at you that they love you. Something like "PLS (Heart) ME" would be pretty pathetic, but at least it wouldn't be overly presumptuous. What's the purpose of the plate - to further piss people off after swerving in front of them? I don't even like you, let alone like-like you.

On the freeway yesterday morning, there was a guy in a Lexus convertible with the top down who passed me on the left. I glanced over, and I saw that he had neon yellow earplugs in. First of all, I think that might be illegal, but I'm not doing the research to find out. (Oh sure, I only post once a week now, but that doesn't mean I'm going to start supporting my claims. I had a month to do some papers in college, and if I didn't bother doing research for those, I'm probably not going to change my tune too much now.) Secondly, and more important to me than the possible illegality of his actions: what the hell, man? Is the sound of driving too loud for you? If so, here's a tip: don't get a fucking convertible. Seriously, either keep the top up or learn to accept the decibel level that accompanies your choice of (expensive) car. Earplugs. Asshole.

Last but not least, I saw a plate that asked me a very deep question: "R YU MI." Oh wait, did I say "deep question?" I meant "stupid question." Of course I'm not you, moron. That's so retardiculous that I hope I'm reading it wrong and that it has some point besides angering me. "Are you MI" doesn't make any sense to me with any already-established M.I. abbreviations. I'm not Mission Impossible, for example. Nor am I 1001, come to think of it. Hold on a sec; if someone chose that plate, does that mean that the other - more normal - spellings of those words were all already taken? "ARE U ME," "R YOU ME," and several others that make more sense were either already selected or just passed over in favor of this version. I don't even know which one I hope is the answer. One thing's clear, Mr. or Ms. Driver: I'm not you, and I'm feeling pretty happy about that fact right now.

Wow, I really ended angrily with those last three. I need to lighten up a little, eh? Here, this'll help: My boss took the office and plus-ones out to a nice dinner on Monday night. For dessert, my lovely wife got a delicious pear sorbet. I tried it and said it was good, then without being able to stop myself, told the table, "You can't spell 'pear sorbet' without 'Peter.'" My boss looked at me strangely (and rightfully), then said, "Wait, what about the T?" I made a gesture that signified the end of something, and he said, "Oh yeah. Wow. You're weird." Everyone agreed.

Ok, I feel better now. Have a wonderful week, my friends and friends of friends. I'm still not exactly overflowing with emails and comments, so please don't hesitate to drop me a line with anything at all that you feel like sharing. In case you forgot how, it's ptklein@gmail.com. Take care, and I'll see you again next Friday.