After the show...

I'm sitting in the dark, typing on my laptop, listening to the clickity clack of the keys being punched up and down. Though the familiar noise fills my ears, there is also a deafening silence. I performed in an improv show tonight with a group of students from American Stage in St. Pete. It was fun, tense, filled with laughs, and.....and over before it began. Its a strange thing getting on stage to make people laugh. If you've never done it before, let me tell you, it is one of the greatest adrenaline rushes of all time. The anticipation before the show is almost unbearable. I tossed and turned for hours last night and all day before the show I was pacing the room. I was stuck somewhere between exhausted and exhilarated  Then the show came. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, it was over. Now, make no mistake, I have no illusions of making it to SNL or becoming the next George Carlin. But I do love to perform. I love to do a good show for people and to hear them laugh. When it works, when the show is hot, there is no feeling on earth that can compare with that feeling. But when the show is over.....its over. And you are left by yourself wanting more when the audience has long since moved on with their lives. I imagine them all sleeping in bed, or watching tv, or doing chores. Thinking their own thoughts and dreaming their own dreams. And here I am, lying in bed, typing in the darkness. With dreams of Chicago and improv greatness. Still wishing I had dropped one more line that would have had them rolling in the aisles. I did not do a great show today. There were no home runs. If it were a baseball game, I would have had two singles, a triple, and one rbi. Not too shabby, but definitely not a home run. Oh well, sleepy time.....

Caloric Intake

I went to Chicago last weekend to check out the improv scene. As I walked around the city, bundled up like an eskimo, I took a good long look at the younger people that lived there. They are all thin, incredibly thin, perfectly groomed, well dressed, and they all have this air of unreality about them. Its almost as if they were all cast from a plastic mold in some human factory. I can imagine the label above the mold..."perfect humans". I'll be honest, they frighten me. Like everything in this world, they seem to have been boiled down to perfection. They seem to have been categorized and boxed and polished. Here we are! Youth of the future! Slender, wealthy, perfect! Hitler youth anyone? I know that every generation has probably felt this way to some extent, but when I grew up there was serious diversity in the shapes and sizes of people. I'm not talking about fat vs skinny, I'm talking about VARIETY. As I walked through the streets of downtown chicago, I was seriously wondering if I was visiting a city where the vanguard of an alien invasion was happening. Like 'invasion of the body snatchers' style.
When I went to see the improv shows, my fears were confirmed. On each stage was a ridiculously skinny well groomed kid spouting polished and perfect humor that had been packaged and refined to the point of...well....perfection. I wondered what John Belushi, that unshaven chubby funny man who blew mashed potatoes out of his mouth, would say if he could see what his improv mecca had become. Don't get me wrong, the players were extremely talented. The shows were funny. But everything was so.......skinny. Was there a memo that went out over the internet that anyone under the age of 30 is not allowed to eat anymore???
Bah. I'm just pissed cuz I'm fat.