Super troop-er, part II

Hey there, gentle readers. I said I'd be back here today, and I made good on that promise. Oh sure, it helps that most of this post was already written since I didn't know it would be a two-parter when I started, but it's still a kept promise nonetheless. You can't spell "kept promise" without Peter, after all. The moral of this paragraph: hello.

When I left you mid-story yesterday, Dusty and I had just finished working with our groups of Girl Scouts on particular improv games that we learned from Comedy Sportz. The girls were all ready to show off their stuff and play those games in front of the adoring crowd. I wasn't though. Dusty and I didn't realize until right then that not only were we there to teach the games and prepare them for the mini show, but we were also to be the emcees of the event. I thought to myself, "Well hell, if I can't wing this part of it, then I'm really not fit to be an Improv Expert, now am I?" We gave ourselves a two-second pep talk and walked out on stage. (And no, you can't spell expert without Peter.)

We started by welcoming the family members and the group of girls sitting and waiting for their turn. After a brief rundown of what they were about to see (in grandiose terms, naturally), we called the first group up. Dusty introduced the game and off they went. The audience seemed to be enjoying it so far, so I wasn't too worried. Then it was my turn with my Scantron group. I called up the girls, and asked for some suggestions from the audience. I then took my time explaining the rules of the game while the girls huddled and came up with their plan. The scene began, and I froze it at the most appropriate times to maximize the funny. The first stoppage had something to do with condiments, and the girls' answers were as follows: "Ketchup," "Mustard," "Ketchup and mustard," and "Monkeys flying out of kitchen cabinets." It was hilarious, because as the girl said that suggestion, she made brief eye contact with me in a way that acknowledged that she was already playing her wild card. I smiled back, and it was clear by the level of applause that crowd chose that last option. The girls had a great time up there, and even though the scene went nowhere and they were all talking all over one another, it was fun and the crowd enjoyed it. That's what really matters, right?

Some time passed, and I welcomed the Dr. Knowitall group up. I thought it would be funny to give this "doctor" one hell of an introduction, so I just started going. "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages except ages that don't exist, we have a very special guest indeed for you this fine sunny afternoon; a guest with credentials so impressive that people have been known to get light-headed just from thinking about the years of schooling they required. Get your cameras ready, take mental notes so you can wow your friends tomorrow, and hang onto your hats and glasses, because we have the most famous and well-known doctor to ever grace this stage. He is an expert in-" I heard someone shout something. Was I being heckled? "She!" the voice repeated. "Excuse me?" "SHE is an expert." Oh yeah, that. Fuck. Then I got a little rattled, and therefore started doing the Rattled Peter form of talking. "Yes, SHE is an expert, for she is female and why wouldn't she be able to be a doctor especially a famous one because women and girls can do anything they want when they grow up or even before they grow up, right?" It was brutal for a few seconds, but I finally shut up and took questions for the audience. The scene went ok, but their answers stayed pretty ordinary. Boys probably would've done a better job. I kid, I kid.

When the event was over, Dusty and I got a round of applause, and everyone but me seemed to be over my gender slip-up. I really did beat myself up for that for a few hours, even though I know it was not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. It's just that I had spent so much time being ridiculously inclusive in my language while working at the university that this was almost as bad as accidentally referring to the residence halls as "dorms." Not quite as bad, but up there. We said goodbye to the kids and parents, and a few gave me some heartfelt thanks that truly felt wonderful. Even better than Thin Mints (I know, blasphemy). The event was a lot of fun, and The Mills did a great job preparing everyone and trusting that Dusty and I would just figure it out along the way. Ah, life imitating art.

So that was my one and only official experience with the Girl Scouts to date. I recently told my lovely wife that if we have a daughter in the future, she may need to join just so I can say, "You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie" at some point. She thinks that's a long way to go for a joke, but I'm willing to sacrifice for my craft. Have a great day, gentle readers, and I'll see you back here tomorrow. Please remember to write to ptklein@gmail.com with whatever you feel like. Shaloha.

Remotely interesting

Top of the mornin' to ya, gentle readers. And how is everyone doing today? Good, I'm really glad to hear that. I know you were having a bit of a rough patch there, but I'm happy that's behind you now. (I'm stopping myself here before I turn this whole thing into a strange and ill-conceived one-sided conversation. Trust me, I'm making the right decision here.)

So check it out, yo. I've spent some time in this space talking about the way boredom led me and my friends to play little games in high school. I'm feeling comfortable in that category right now, so I'm going to continue unless there are any objections. Anyone? Sweet.

My junior year of high school, I took an Advanced Placement course in American History. For those of you not familiar with AP courses, they're designed to help the students take and pass the AP exam at the end of the year to earn college credits. Makes sense, right? Well, it makes sense if everyone understands that goal. We had a teacher who was a very nice man and was very likeable but had zero idea how to teach the class. It was his first AP experience after teaching the, uh, 'lower-level' courses in previous years, and he didn't really change his lesson plans at all. Other teachers in his position would have had us taking old versions of the test and using those as a basis of what to cover, but he stuck with his game plan. Sadly, I really mean "game plan." Let me explain:

One lesson plan involved us getting into groups and choosing if we wanted to invest fake money into wheat, corn, rice, barley, or a combination of those. He gave us five minutes to decide when we only needed about five seconds. Then, in Seacrest-like tones, he announced that...the price of corn's stock...has gone up! Rice...has fallen drastically! We then had five more minutes to discuss in our groups if we wanted to move our money or keep it where it was. This lasted a whole class period and taught us...nothing!

Another class began with him calling me and a few others up to the front of the room. I was a little scared at first since I had no idea what was going on. "These students, as you know, are a part of an improv group called Comedy Sportz," he said. "Today, though, they're going to be doing...History Sportz!" He was thoroughly pleased with himself, and that in itself was worth the price of admission. We spent the class period doing scenes that started off loosely based on American History but gradually moved into whatever we wanted them to be about. Some of the class paid attention while the others just talked to each other.

At the end of the year, the 80 students in the two AP classes took the test, and a whopping 8 passed. Dusty was one of them because he read the text book cover to cover the night before. I certainly wasn't one of them, but I knew that as soon as I opened the text booklet and realized that I didn't have a frickin' clue about anything on the first page.

As you might imagine, during the class periods in which we weren't playing the teacher's games, we were busy playing our own. The teacher's easy-going nature, the stupid lessons, and general hopelessness of actually learning something made us do it; it was a virtual perfect storm of fooling around and we needed to do it to survive.

During one particularly boring lesson, Dusty and I couldn't stand it any longer. What did we do? Why, play cards in class, naturally. I guess you could call it either "Extreme Card-Playing" or "High Degree of Difficulty Gaming" because there were certainly obstacles. Here were the main ones: we couldn't be seen playing cards for the obvious reasons, we couldn't talk loudly, our gestures had to be small and smooth to avoid drawing attention to ourselves, and - oh yeah - there was someone sitting in between us.

Our friend Margot, realizing that she really didn't have any choice but to play along, reluctantly agreed to be our intermediary. Here's how the game went:

Peter: Hey, ask Dusty if he has any fours.

Margot: Dusty, Peter wants to know if you have any fours.

Dusty: Tell him to go fish.

Margot: He said to go fish.

Peter: Damn, ok. Can you hand me a card?

Good times, good times. The greatest move in the history of our History antics came later though. Dusty, who had the power to become invisible to teachers, "permanently borrowed" the vcr remote control from the teacher's desk. The next time we watched a video, the highest of high comedy ensued. The teacher bent down and pushed play, and Dusty immediately hit the fast forward button on the remote hidden in his jacket sleeve. The teacher looked up at the screen, and confused, hit play again. Dusty hit pause. The teacher hit play. Dusty hit pause. He hit play again, then stood up, only to have Dusty fast forward again. The teacher pressed stop, and Dusty pressed the power button. This went on for a while until Dusty let it play correctly for several minutes. At the end of class, just as the teacher started to bend down to press stop, Dusty turned the vcr off right before he could get there. That confused the hell out of him, but he never put two and two together. It seriously may have been the highlight of my high school career.

Man, that was fun. Thank you all for letting me relive that moment. I will never forget the look on the teacher's face as he tried to figure out what the hell was going on with the vcr. Ok, gentle readers, I'm stopping now with this good feeling I've got going on. Have a great day, and shoot me an email at ptklein@gmail.com if you think of anything I might want to think about.

Comedic detour

I was all set to write about something else this morning, but two things happened on the drive into work that changed my plan. Come to think of it, that happened yesterday also. Maybe the secret to comedy isn't timing after all, but traffic. I'll look into this.

First, the shorter story. A little over a year ago, we were living in an apartment complex with one parking spot for both of us. My wife had recently purchased a new car, so I had no problem letting her have that spot while I usually just found one on a side street nearby. One day, I got a good spot on the main street. When I went out to my car later, there was a note on my windshield: "Dickhead - next time pull all the way up!" I looked, and sure enough there was a foot or two of curb before it turned red and an extra car (or at least a third of one) may have been able to park there as well. I was a little taken aback that my first offense angered this person enough to start the note off with "Dickhead," but that's not what stuck from this encounter. You see, the stem on the 'h' in "Dickhead" was shorter than it should've been, making it look like I was being addressed as "Dicknead." (We pronounced it like dick-need to accentuate the error rather than dick-ned, by the way.)

It didn't take long for "Dicknead" to work its way into my vocabulary. I've found that I only use it in very specific situations, such as someone staying in a faster lane and then cutting over to where they need to be at the very last second, thereby causing more of the traffic that they were avoiding with their frustrating move. It happened this morning in fact. I was slowly moving along in an exit only lane, and someone forced his way in at the last second and caused me to brake pretty hard. "Watch it, Dicknead," I said aloud in my car. And like that, a post was born.

Well, half a post at least. (As a side note, my wireless keyboard just ran out of batteries in the middle of the word "post" in the last sentence, so I stole a co-worker's keyboard for the time being. Don't tell.) Here, as promised, is story number two:

On the radio this morning, the guys on KROQ were playing messages that people left for them saying weird things. One guy half-heartedly made a bad joke, then quarter-heartedly laughed afterwards. Ralph on the show then said, "No, that didn't work. When you have weak material, you need to bring it!" I know exactly what he's talking about. Committing to a joke in comedy is probably one of the top three keys to success (after timing and traffic, of course). No matter how good the idea or line is, if it’s weakly delivered or the speaker lacks confidence in the line’s ability to get a laugh, it will fail.

Take Robin Williams for example. Most of the time, nobody knows what the guy is saying. He’s jumping around, doing different accents, and making the most obscure references known to man. However, we laugh. We laugh a lot. Why is this? It’s because he knows that he’s funny, and we therefore expect whatever comes out of his mouth to be funny. The same thing is true with Dennis Miller; it comes across in his delivery that what he’s saying is, by definition, funny. Therefore, we laugh even if we don’t know how he just compared Boris Yeltsin and Florence Henderson.

Another way commitment comes into play is that it can turn something that isn’t funny into a big laugh from the audience. Comedy Sportz, and improvisational comedy company, performs weekly all over the country. I was at a performance by the Los Angeles team in the late 90s, and I saw such an amazing display of commitment that I’ve carried it with me as an example ever since. The audience was shouting out actions for the actors to perform one by one. When it got to an actor named Frank Maciel’s turn, an audience member shouted, “Put a book on the table!” That has to be one of the inherently least-funny suggestions ever thrown out at a night of improv. Frank, however, as in-the-moment as I’ve ever seen anyone, magnificently strutted up the table, slammed his imaginary book down, then gave the table a look of defiance as if to say, “That’s right. I’ll put this book anywhere I damn please. If you’ve got a problem with that, maybe we should step outside and settle things.” The crowd erupted in laughter and applause. From "Put a book on the table" to laughter - that's a tough road. Frank took a non-funny thing and by means of totally committing to it, made it hilarious, unique, and something I’ve remembered for years.

Another actor in that position only would have mocked the person who shouted out that suggestion by walking normally to the table and saying something like, “Ooh, I’m putting a book on the table.” Kinda funny, would elicit some chuckles, but nowhere near what Frank turned it into.

Ok, I have to end now and search for batteries before the rightful owner of this keyboard arrives. I wouldn't want to return from the bathroom to find a note taped to my monitor calling me an "Assnole."