Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Sunday when The Gryphon and I went out for brunch, we discovered my right front tire was low. When we got to the pump at the grocery store, we found we couldn't fill it. This was the same problem I'd had months ago when I took it to a garage who did a quickie repair on it. Apparently, the sealant they'd used to fix the problem had worn off.

We had no choice but to change the tire and put the donut spare on. The plan was for me to take it to the garage on Monday.

Since the donut spare is smaller and more delicate than the regular tire, I didn't want to drive into Center City for my improv class with ComedySportz.

This meant I had to take the train, but the timing would make me several minutes late for class. Since I had Carol's business card, I called her and told her about the situation.

I guess I walked in about five to ten minutes late, and they were downstairs listening to our substitute instructor for the day, Bobbi. Both our regular instructor, Dave, and his assistant, Jessie, were out of town.

As I entered, Carol and Geoff saw me and called out, "Captain, my captain." I saluted them but had no idea what they were up to.

"I'm not their captain," I said.

"Oh, yes you are," Bobbi told me. Dave had selected teams, making me captain of the red team, with team mates Carol and Geoff. Colleen is heading the blue team, with Tim, J.T. and Jen.

They were just about ready to start with a mock run-through of the show, so Bobbi explained how we were supposed to enter the stage. I'm sure this is stuff we'll review next week before the show. We ran in and took seats on the stage.

As all Comedy Sportz matches begin, we started with What Are You Doing? As the team captain, I got to select the order for my team. I think I made a good choice in this game, having Geoff go first, then Carol, then me and finally Geoff again. Although I might change the order slightly next week and go second, instead.

This is elimination style. Since we only had three people, we got to have someone twice. Geoff has always been really strong at this game. He doesn't get easily tripped up, which was why he was a good person to go twice.

I'm not sure exactly what went next. I know we did a group round of Blind Freeze, but I don't remember when it came in the rundown. We played it without any suggestions, which is more difficult than you might think, especially when you can't watch the action to see how people are positioning themselves. We've done it before with suggestions to begin each new scene, as well as World's Worst Blind Freeze, where every suggestion will be, for example, "World's worst dentist."

Actually, I think we did fairly well. Not too many people got out there and got frozen. We had a lot of energy, and there was dancing and wackiness.

Then we did challenges, where each team challenged the other to a certain game, pre-chosen by Dave based on how we'd done on games in class. The blue team "challenged" us to Arms Expert. Carol was the interviewer, I did the talking and Geoff did the arms. Our topic was taffy.

We got a few tips from Bobbi, where she urged Geoff to make even bigger arm movements and lead me more. As soon as he started doing that, the other team loved it. For example, Carol had asked us about a new kind of taffy, and Geoff touched my face, so I said it was for removing blemishes.

Since Carol called me "Mrs. Sticky", I thought that person would sound like she had stuff in her mouth, so I talked in a very nasally, nerdy voice, which seemed to get a good response. I'll have to remember to use a strong character for this game.

We challenged the blue team to Spelling Bee, which they could do because they've got four players. We couldn't do that with only three. They did an excellent job: they had great enthusiasm and stayed in character as an overly confident kid.

Since we were behind, Bobbi gave the red team the opportunity to make up some points by playing Three Things. Normally, when they do it in the show, they do five things, but we're new to this, so we only did three. Carol left the room to be the guesser, and we collected suggestions for three activities with something strange about them.

First was bungee jumping with spaghetti for a bungee cord and Oprah Winfrey for the bridge. I spent a lot of time trying to describe bungee jumping to her, including the fact that she'd be springing back up with a springy cord attached to her back, and she eventually gave me a thumbs up that she got it. Geoff relayed spaghetti to her, and I tried for Oprah Winfrey, which is a tough one. I acted like an interviewer, interviewing her and then turned to the studio audience and told them in gibberish that they had a big prize under their seats. Yay!

Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to help Carol. She guessed that she'd been parachuting with noodles and was also no where close to Oprah Winfrey. So we got half a point for that.

The second activity was soccer, and Geoff's job was to convey that to her. I forget what I had to convey to her, but Geoff had to convey that instead of a field, it was in the White House. He sat down at a desk and talked from behind it, while I hummed "Hail to the Chief." This time, though, we didn't get any points, because Carol guessed football instead of soccer and got the others wrong, too.

The third activity was checkers. I set up the board, put down the pieces, and she didn't grasp it. One of the problems is that you can't actually do the activity; you have to get them to do it. So you can give them all the tools they need to do the activity, but you can't actually do it for them. Bobbi suggested I show her what type of person might do this activity. I bent myself over and hobbled up with a cane, talking in gibberish with a whispery, old sounding voice, and then falling asleep in front of the board. Got a big laugh but didn't help Carol out.

So if we do this game in the show, we'll go with a different guesser, because Carol is much better at giving clues. One of the benefits of the mock run-through was figuring out people's strengths so we can put on the best show possible.

Of course, Bobbi assured us that getting it wrong is very entertaining and that, ultimately, the goal is to entertain. So she told us we'd done well.

Then we all got up and did Story. The title was Suzy and the Plum Tree, and it was one of our best yet. Suzy picked plums from a plum tree but competed with a snake for the plums. It actually bit her, but she had some antidote on her. Later, her mom made a pie for a competition where the secret ingredient was snake poison and Suzy had to trick the snake into providing the special ingredient.

Next, we had another head to head. My team did Countdown, starting with Carol and me on-stage. The suggestion was husband and wife. I acted like a bratty teenager and started the scene, "You can't marry him." I complained about his awful records and played them on a turntable. Geoff came in as the boyfriend and greeted me. I said, "We're not at all breaking your records." I also threw his record player out the window.

Geoff came over to me, and I stood between him and Carol, saying, "You can't have her." Carol separated us, and then the stress got to her and she had a heart attack. So I ran to the phone to call 911 while Geoff did a halfhearted CPR, reluctant to put his mouth on her mouth.

I ran up to him, "Haven't you even kissed yet?"

"None of your beeswax!" he shouted. End scene.

We had a little trouble getting through it at 45 seconds, which is not the first time that's happened. But we got it in 20 and then in 10. We actually had time left over that Bobbi told us we could use to keep going and discover something new.

The blue team did Blind Line, using lines that we, the red team, wrote out for them and sprinkled over the stage. The suggestion was bowling alley. J.T. and Colleen started on-stage. J.T. was engaging in stealth bowling, and Colleen was his significant other, trying to convince him it was OK to make noise in a bowling alley.

One of my favorite moments was when he read one of my silliest lines, "Oh, my God! It's a squid! Run!" It actually worked, since he was playing a character that clearly had trouble with reality. The other two got up and said, "Meanwhile, in another alley." There, first-time bowler Jen was getting instruction from Tim on how to bowl. When she tried to bowl the ball she threw it behind her instead. Cut back to the other alley, where J.T. is hopping around, holding his foot, as if he'd just been hit by a ball. They went back and forth between the two scenes, getting wackier as they went, and working in the lines.

The last thing we did was the joke telling game 185, with everyone jumping up when they had a joke. I played up the so-called Alyce Dangerfield character I'd developed the week before.

When the scores were tallied, the blue team won by four points. Then Bobbi taught us how to end the match, where we all slap hands and then do slow motion fighting.

We had some time left, so we took a brief break and then worked on some other stuff. Bobbi had the blue team do Chain Death Murder. I was out of the room when they got the first clue, which I think was the place, a theater. The occupation was a brain surgeon, and the object was a bell.

They had trouble with theater, although they got close. They also had trouble with brain surgeon, though they did realize it was in the medical field, and Tim actually got surgeon. They did get bell, though.

Then Bobbi taught us a new game, Echo. This is where the two teams take turns, sending out two players to act out a short scene. When the referee blows the whistle, two people from the other team take their place, starting a new scene with the last line said.

We had a lot of fun with that. Bobbi gave us some tips, like the fact that after you set up your scene, you should use general lines which can be used by others. Because our team only had three people, I went out every other time with Carol or Geoff. We didn't establish that; it just worked out that way.

Once, Carol started out with a line about how she was proud of herself, proud to be in the army. I showed her how to march and then paused and said, "In the real army they probably don't prance like that."

In another scene, Geoff and I were kids on a playground and he was teasing me, saying that he got me good. I said, "Yeah, I'm not that smart." Then I ran to get on the swing and missed.

The most fun was when we had one line that we kept going back and forth with, really fast. That would be a real crowd pleaser.

Bobbi said she'd tell Dave to consider having us do that game in the show, maybe in place of one of the other games. We'll see what he decides.

At the close of class, Bobbi gave us more notes. She told us she really liked our enthusiasm and that we were ready to go. I agree. In fact, after class, people hung around a little, sharing thoughts about how to do better and giving each other support. So I have confidence we'll have a great time and put on a great show!

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Copyright 2006 by Alyce Wilson

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