The improv wedding season begins. Tonight was the wedding of Shad and Hawley.

The guest list was a who's who of improvisers I like and respect. Sitting in the church, looking around, it was nice to see so many familiar faces in an unfamiliar context. Many of them I'd never seen outside of a theater or bar... or in sunlight. I felt a warm sense of community, a feeling I've rarely felt in churches, and don't always feel in theaters if I'm being honest.

The reception was at the Swedish American Museum, a place, like KunkleCo, where many improvisers have worked part-time over the years.

Shad: [giving a speech at the reception] I remember the first time I met Hawley. It was at iO, before a James Jackson show, and she was talking to someone at the back wall by the bar... a spot, I've read, we're not allowed to congregate around anymore because we distract the patrons. [pause for laughs] I introduced myself and we talked a bit. Then James Jackson was introduced by the host, and she said, "I have to go," and ran on stage. But as she ran on stage she looked back at me. People always tell stories about when they knew. Now, I didn't KNOW then... [more laughs] but I did know that she looked back at me.

Sometimes I feel compelled to try to better explain what long form improv is in this blog. Or how it works. Or what it's like. But it would probably just start to sound boring and technical, and even then, it's hard to get a sense of it without seeing it.

I remember being in grad school and my sketch group, Comedy Corner, tried to figure out how to do a Harold ('the signature form of the Improv Olympic theater") by reading iO's offiical book, 'Truth in Comedy.'

Here's how the book explains performing a Harold. "Teams begin by asking for a suggestion form the audience. They then personalize the suggestion and develop an attitude, which is expressed through the opening game (which can take many different forms). After the opening, the players begin the first round by improvising scenes (three seems to be the standard number). These are followed by a game, and then the scenes return for further development. Another game follows, and the scenes are brought back for a third time, though not all scenes will return. The Harold can end with any one of the scenes, or with another game."

The book goes into more detail, but I remember being in Arizona, reading these passages, knowing there was something there, but also feeling like I wasn't entirely getting it. "Games? What kind of games? So, we do a couple scenes and then start a game of Party Quirks?" As confused as it made me, it also got me excited. "I think this is what I'm looking for."

And it's hard to beat that title. 'Truth in Comedy.' Even with the cringe-inducingly wacky comedy font that title is great.

Diplomat Motel show. One of the other teams performing tonight was Hot Pocket, which includes several people who I used to be on Otis with (Marc, Joe, Gandy).

Meador: Why is Otis here?
Me: They're on Hot Pocket.
Meador: Oh.
Young: What if it was just everyone on Otis deciding to start a new team without Arnie? They'd be called Post-is.

With each new theater schedule, teams get new performer IDs, colored cards with Del Close's face on the front. A new color for each schedule.

Marc was handing new IDs out to everyone on Hot Pocket. I asked him and Joe to pose for a picture with their IDs.

Marc: Down here? You want 'em down here?
Me: No...
Joe: By our dicks? You want 'em down by our dicks?
Me: No... hold them up... never mind.

I have a bad habit of coming up with elaborate (and technical) projects and then abandoning them, unfinished, when a new idea plops into my brain.

My sketch comedy podcast, Premisey, has pretty much fallen by the wayside, but now I'm experimenting with doing some straight forward conversational podcasting. Just gathering funny friends together and recording a conversation. Probably a bad idea.

Meador and Hansen came over tonight to record a test run. If I ever get around to editing it down (as funny as parts of it are, it definitely needs editing down) and posting it on the internet, you'll be able to hear Meador talk about nursing school and having to talk a patient into letting him bathe them, and Hansen talk about the time he made up a fake life for himself so he could work at a Babbages software store.

The Daily Dis or Dats for the You Don't Know Jack site usually have a photo joke at the beginning. So, most days we have a photo joke brainstorm in the afternoon.

Recently I wrote a Dis or Dat about William Shatner's new autobiography (the game was Star Trek movie, Journey album or Both). During the brainstorm we quickly came up with the idea that we wanted the picture to be of a funny fake title for the book. But we spent a long time debating what the best title would be.

"Shat on Shat"

"I, Shat, Myself"

We finally settled on "I, Shat: On Myself"

So... that's what I do for a living.

Fart.

I've lost sleep over the last few years, staring at the ceiling, constructing cruelly concise things I'd like to say to my Uncle Kenny. But when I saw him, briefly, this weekend, I chose to mostly say nothing.

He went largely unseen during the day, finally creeping out of the barn with a case of MGD.

Kenny: Beer?
Arnie: No thanks. It's a little early for me.
Kenny: Early? It must be five o'clock somewhere.

In truth, it wasn't unreasonably early for a beer but I went inside.

I think my mom was nervous about dealing with Kenny the Bully, but I didn't want to see Kenny the Glad Hander. I would have rather seen the Bully. I had things to say to the Bully.

I watched out the window as he showed a chicken to my nephews. I remembered being a kid and how he would butcher rabbits in front of us and laugh at how unsettled it made us. Normal farm stuff, I guess, but even as a kid, it seemed to me like a show of superiority.

A while back, Mom told Sherry and I that she remembered once when she was little, Kenny cut a live bird's chest open so he could see its heart beat.

Me: Yikes. That's something a serial killer would do.
Sherry: That's the first sign.
Mom: Don't say that. Now I'll have nightmares of Kenny as a serial killer.

I took this picture out the farmhouse window of Kenny and the chicken and a manure spattered dog.

Mom: Kenny tried talking to me. Tried to act all buddy buddy. He told me he'd named the chicken Doris. Real funny.
Me: Maybe it's not meant to be named after you. Maybe it's named after his wife.
Mom: I just came inside. I don't have to stand around and pretend his jokes are funny.

Despite the fact that we weren't sure there was much we genuinely wanted, the idea of going back into the farmhouse for the first time in years was kind of exciting. During the drive there we kept saying things like, "remember this" and "remember that." The Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books in bookshelf upstairs. The giant 'Helen of Troy' hairdryer. An ancient exercise belt massager.

Julie: As a kid it was so fun to sneak through the house and see what was in all the drawers. I think I know where everything in that place is.

But when we got there everything was already packed up. Kenny's daughter, anxious to start moving in, had boxed "everything" up and moved all the dressers into one room. There was no way to know what was where, and more importantly... what was there at all.

Well... many things were obviously gone. Grandma's newest microwave was replaced with her older microwave. The beds were gone. A giant framed picture was gone.

Julie: Where are the TVs?
Kenny's Daughter: Oh... the one in the kitchen broke and the one in the living room they brought to Grandma in the nursing home.
Julie: She has a small TV in the nursing home. We just saw it. The one in the living room was big.
Kenny's Daughter: I don't know.

Most importantly, the little treasures, tiny things of no value that we may want for sentimental reasons would prove nearly impossible to find without digging through each and every box. A glow-in-the-dark Jesus on a cross. Two plush monkeys, that I used to play with when visiting my great grandfather in his nursing home, making them hug and unhug each other with their velcro arms. Were they still there at all?

Me: Uh... were there... in Grandma's dresser... she said there were a bunch of my old... things I'd written. Do you know where those are?
Kenny's Daughter: Not really.
Me: She said they were in the bottom drawer of her dresser. In her bedroom.
Kenny's Daughter: Didn't see them.
Me: There weren't any... papers in there?
Kenny's Daughter: Tissues, maybe.

The rooms looked empty and sad.

There was a pile of empty lock boxes and filing cabinets sitting on the basement floor.

Most of the boxes were in the front room but the fancy china was boxed up and placed way up in the attic. "I thought I was being helpful by boxing all this stuff up," my cousin said, "but maybe not."

Julie: I decided not to respond to that one.

Traveled to the nursing home to visit Grandma Anne along with Sherry, Julie, Matt (Julie's husband) and Ty and Will.

Grandma: Julie, you look like you've lost some weight.
Julie: [laughing] I don't think so.
Me: Every time I visit someone tells me I look like I've lost weight. I think we all just keep telling each other we've lost weight but none of us are.
Sherry: Matt lost a lot of weight.

Matt has been doing Weight Watchers, and supposedly most of the women in his program dislike him because he's losing weight so easily.

Grandma: I put on weight. It's all in my butt.
Matt: Like J-Lo?
Grandma: What?
Sherry: That's in style now. Big butts are in style now.
Grandma: Not for me.

We talked a little about our upcoming visit to the farmhouse. Grandma was adamant that we should take everything we should. "Everything in that house is supposed to go to your mother." We weren't sure there was much in that house any of us wanted, but we said we'd do our best.

For the last decade, nearly ever time I visit Grandma Anne she would mention that she has a dresser drawer full of my old stories and poems. "I've kept it all. In the bedroom. In the bottom drawer. You make sure to get that stuff. Those are your stories."

(Later, Julie laughed and said, "Of all the stuff in that house she was adamant about three things. Her jewlery. A painting of the last supper. And all those stories of yours. You can sure tell what's on the front of her mind. You can tell what she holds sacred.")

As usual, it was sad when we left. We walked to the front door past an old woman in a bedazzled jacket riding a motorized scooter, talking to a delivery man. "I've been here four years," she was saying. "Too long. My son's selling my house in Dayton. Breaks my heart. Breaks my heart."

Julie: Come on Will and Ty. Pretty soon we're going to go to Grandma's farmhouse. She has another house. I bet you always thought this was grandma's house.
Grandma: [to the boys] Grandma doesn't like this house.

We took turns hugging Grandma goodbye, as Ty spun in circles singing, "This is grandma's house. This is grandma's house. This is grandma's house."

Dinner at Applebees in Hometown, Ohio.

Mom would rather not have her picture taken and Dad makes his comedy face. I guess that's where I get it.