11.20.09OK- 11.05.09Nostalgia is one hell of a drug. I have been putting together an I Pod playlist called “High School”, and have been trying to remember all of the albums that were important to me during those 4 years. Why did I think that the world would be clearer to me when I was older? So, on my bus ride home from St. Paul to So. Mpls tonight the digital display on the bus said: Regret is the needle . . . I assume I have more regret than most So many regrets Also this morning I woke up wishing I could step into another’s skin for 24 hours. I am not the first to have this thought. But it started innocuously enough – “what if I could have an insanely thick mustache for 24 hours” and spun into the obvious categories from there. So many regrets So much I would do differently I would learn how to be funnier Regret is the needle... Nostalgia is the drug . . . 10.18.09“Splendid Things is Awesome!!! Why? Because of our Awesomeness!!!” Needless to say, self-promotion has never been my forte, I’m much better at silence and self-deprecation. This is why publicity sucks. I have been trying to write a little something about who we are and why we’re good and why people (specifically college students) should come see our show. “Because we are awesome!!!” Christ… I feel like a terrier trying to perform neurosurgery. I like that image. Tiny blue mask, scrubs with a hole for the tail, a nurse reflexively going in to wipe the surgeon’s forehead then feeling like an idiot because dogs don’t sweat. Did dinosaurs sweat? Probably not, because reptiles and birds don’t. I don’t think. I mean I’ve never seen a sweaty bird, but I can’t say that I was looking. Horses sweat. Pigs don’t – that’s what the mud is about. OK, hold on… According to a 2005 article by Francis Edathrakary of Bharata Mata College, and Deepu Mathew of Defence Research and Development Organisation (sic) in “The Hindu,” most mammals have sweat glands, though some have too few to be effective as a means of temperature regulation, so they pant, wallow, or lick their fur so it can cool in the wind. Also, dig this: “In cats, rats and mice (sweat glands) are confined to the soles of the feet. In rabbits, they are around the lips; in bats on the sides of the head; in cattle on the muzzle; in hippo on the pinnae. Hippos and giant kangaroos have red sweat. Birds resort to panting, losing water from air sacs” (ibid). So, to sum up, 1) I guess I haven’t seen a sweaty bird, 2) rabbits have sweaty lips, and 3) if Dr. Mathew’s place of employment is any indication, somehow this information may be of value to the Armed Forces of the Republic of India. Dear Pakistan, if your nation’s bats begin sweating from somewhere other than the sides of their heads, I know who you should contact. “We are Awesome!!!”
09.21.09I would like to thank Eric and Hannah for their patience with me as a travel companion in Austin. I am one of those people who travels on his stomach (like a snake?). My week in Helsinki: those amazing meatballs in the brandy cream sauce. Savannah: lunch at Mrs. Wilkes. New York: duck & noodles. Etc. Also, obviously, OUR WEEKLY SHOW has started up again. The first week was great, and thanks to Five Man Job for making it happen. XXOO, 08.17.09Last night the improvisational comedy troupe “Splendid Things” performed a twenty-minute set at the weekly Minneapolis laugh-tacular, “Improv a Go Go”. Joyous merriment ensued as the three, cap-and-bell-less, latter-day court jesters performed entertainments extempore. Hannah Kuhlman, the jolly band’s lovely performatrix, offered one witty bon mot after another, like so many pieces of confectionary. “Oh, Lord Haversham, this is a deliriously delicate doily,” alliterated Kuhlmann (American born, but of Teutonic ancestry) to the delight of all in attendance. 08.12.09Remember the “Day Without a Mexican”, and the various “Turn Off Your TV Night”s? Without sounding too Andy Rooney-esque I am hereby calling for a “Month Without an Internet” wherein if you want to talk to someone you will be forced to call them on the phone and hear their voices, and for more formal correspondence you will have to handwrite them a lovely letter, possibly in verse, and mail it in a scented envelope, or send it by courier, preferably on horseback, or clutched in the foot of somekind of trained bird. 07.23.09Inspiration- I’m not writing this to sound all pompous and superior (ever notice that 90% of improv books, even some of the good ones, read like pointless, masturbatory manifestos? (like this blog entry?)) but rather I’m writing it in a desperate ploy to help myself. I’ve been feeling tapped out and unoriginal for a couple of months now and I hate it, so this writing is helping me puzzle it out. Bearing that in mind, you may want to stop reading now. Probably my favorite part of the TJ & Dave movie (other than the scene with the duct tape) was just watching them walk around the city finding inspiration in both the unusual and mundane. In this vein, I am desperately looking around for inspiration to help snap me out of this head space. Here are some of the things I have found artistically inspiring of late: I went to the Minnesota Zoo last weekend for the first time in years and it was awesome. Great animal watching, and equally good people watching, which I guess is the same thing, isn’t it? It was a lovely day, and most every animal was full of beans, especially those on the Minnesota Trail. The wolverines were playing and chasing each other, as were the coyotes, the lynx, the river otters, while the martin was just laying on its back chewing on a stick in an adorable way that belied its deep genetic bloodlust for porcupine flesh. Two of my favorite overheard exchanges at the zoo: As I was entranced with the capering of the sea otters, a woman tried to get her roughly 4 year-old daughter to move on to another animal habitat, the kid then pointed to the otter tank and said, “But I want to go in there!”. Amen, sister. At the moose habitat a four line exchange between 30-something dad and 6 year-old daughter went from the objective, to the existential, to the heartbreaking standard anti-inquisitive dogmatic slapdown, to the adorably corporeal: (Family approaches moose habitat, wherein the moose is lying down curled up in the shade directly below the observers) 30-something Dad: “That is a moose.” 6 year-old Daughter: “Why is it a moose?” 30-something Dad: “Because that’s how God made it.” 6 year-old Daughter: “Oh. Can I sit on it?” Lesson to dad – if you destroy the inquisitiveness of your child with simple answers she will inevitably turn to more earthly pleasures. I too wanted to sit on the moose. Why is it a moose? That kid was awesome. Finally, here is a great quote from David Lynch’s NPR interview a couple of weeks ago: Here’s the whole piece if you are so inclined.
Why is it a moose? 05.26.09I’m doing research on the RMS Titanic for an upcoming job at the Science Museum of Minnesota, so I thought it couldn’t hurt to watch James Cameron’s 1997 film “Titanic”. I was wrong. It hurt. A lot. When it broke the box office records and won all of those Oscars we should have seen it as a preview of the Bush presidency. DiCaprio’s character spends the whole movie shouting orders at Winslet’s character. “Follow me!” “Take my hand!” “Hold your breath!”. How romantic. Her one command to him? “Touch my body”. Perhaps it was the topsy turvy feminism of the 90’s that made the nation crave the “tradition” of misogyny. In 1912 the suffragists were using bombs, hunger strikes, and arson in their fight for the vote. Grr… I’m losing the ability to form a cohesive argument. And I blame James Cameron. The movies two saving graces were the performances of Billy Zane and David Warner. I guess they were the only ones that read the script and adjusted their performances to match the melodrama of the prose. At least Cameron made two fun sequels, “Aliens” (not nearly as well made or as frightening as Ridley Scott’s “Alien”, but still fun), and “Piranha 2: The Spawning” (this time, the piranha grow wings, and the characters were more believable than in “Titanic”). 05.03.09So, while reviewing a video of a Splendid Things set the other day, I was once again trying to find a through line in our particular sense of humor. What I found was that we often return to either A) Existentialistic, Samuel Beckett-esque nightmarescapes, or B) scenes that derive humor from a hyperbolic level of high-stakes situational drama. Now, there is a school of thought in improv today that everything should be “kept real”. When this refers to bodies honestly communicating on stage I am in complete agreement; however, the darker, destructive, bourgeois bullshit-laden wing of this school secretly says “only emulate situations the average American would conceivably, believably undergo, like they do in ‘The Office’ or a Judd Apatow film”. Bearing this in mind, I would like to tell everyone that the world is a weirder place than we often give it credit for. Case in point: last week a friend of mine was accused of performing witchcraft at of a gas station outside of Rochester, MN. This accusation was leveled at her by a woman with all of the trappings of white, upper-middleclass privilege. The accuser said that Satan was in my friend, and had told her that she had used a spell to lock the woman’s SUV. She then told my friend that she would be dead soon. So, my fellow improvisors, the next time you want to make sure that your scenework is “kept real”, think of my friend and her wealthy accuser, for reality extends beyond the expected. Thus endeth the lesson. Love, Michael Ritchie 04.12.09Gentle reader, I will return to the story of Rebecca soon. I’m writing this episodic chapbook because my own life’s minutia bores the living hell out of me (and I’m the one it’s happening to) but something slightly odd happened to me last night after a show, and Hannah said “you should blog about it”. Being a willfully ignorant technophobe with a second-hand laptop so old it doesn’t recognize the word “blog” in spell-check, I will take your advice Sister Kuhlmann. Here goes: So, Splendid Things did “Mix Tape” at CSz-TC last night, then handed out postcards for our BLB run to the audience as they left the theatre. As the last few trickled out, a lovely young woman came up and gave me a big hug. I then offered her a postcard and asked her to come and see our show at the BLB on Monday. The only thing I am worse at remembering than names are faces. Perhaps it is my socially awkward core, maybe I am a hideous misanthropic egomaniac so firmly lost in Michael Ritchie land (my skull is large, and without a map it’s sometimes hard to find the exit) that I don’t think it’s worth the effort, and then again, maybe I just don’t wear my glasses often enough. But I feel horrible that I didn’t recognize her and therefore just smiled as best I could and talked up the show. If she was a stranger, I doubt she would hug. People like Jen Scott and Brian Kelly give off a huggy vibe, but it’s safe to say that I don’t. So, either she was someone I should have remembered but didn’t because I am awkward and self-centered, or else she was an extraordinary stranger. In either case, if you read this, I apologize for not being friendlier. Wow, blogging makes me feel like Ted Kaczynski. Outward focused introspection. Hannah, I still don’t get it. 03.11.09So, But as was previously stated, She looked at her trembling hand And through the clingwrap on the roll of paper towels she held There was a printed pattern, meant to look like a Mennonite cross-stitch, that read “HOME SWEET HOME” When Rebecca saw those three words Well, only two words, to be accurate, as HOME was a repeat, She bawled like the confused girl she was roughly 37 years ago on the bimah - When the reading was too much for her – When the shaking heads of well-meaning relatives and But that was As was previously stated Roughly 37 years ago So now she smelled the baby wipes And cried Weeping like a Sicilian widow Or how she assumed a Sicilian widow would weep When it came to white ethnic groups in America, Jews, the Irish, and Italians were always told that they were emotional But her background had a little of all 3 of those groups and she felt incredibly repressed. She was cradling her shopping cart for comfort 50 |