On Monday night, I stayed out way too late at the ImprovBoston Fun(d)raiser at the Estate in downtown Boston. Rather than narrate a party you didn’t attend in droning detail, I’ll call out some of the local and rising comics who performed. Keep an eye out for these names.

MC Mr Napkins, a/k/a Zach Sherwin: hilarious, Jew-froed indie-rap backpacker / comedian / anagrammatist from the Boston area. I’ve heard that he’s moving to the West Coast soon to try and Break In, which would be awesome.

“Street Cred” was one of the two songs he performed last night.

Tony V: legendary local on the Boston scene. A foul-mouthed but friendly old man.

The following video’s old material, but it’s indicative.

Myq Kaplan: really clever local comedian with a quick delivery. He’s going to be on the Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien tonight (Wednesday the 16th). But I already saw his material. Except for the swearing.

Shane Mauss: if memory serves, he did a bit for The Waste Land Comedy Hour Starring T.S. Elliot that went over like a Stratus off a cliff. But the material in this show was all fresh and he delivered it pretty well. Shane has already been on Conan; he is supposedly coming out with a comedy album soon.

The Power of Positive Thinking
I dropped my camera on a kitchen floor on Friday night, taking it out to show to Lisa F. It slid a short distance, popping the battery compartment open and sending the battery flying. I reassembled it and turned it back on: worked fine! Still snapped pictures and everything.

Only later did I find that, when I switched from Take Pictures to Review Pictures mode, the camera would now wait about ten seconds before retracting the lens. This is a minor annoyance but, on the grand scale of Things That Could Happen When I Drop My Camera On Linoleum, is relatively minor. Fortune smiles upon my amateurish, grainy Facebook pics.

Spatula, Proctologist, Space Station, Etc.
Why did I have my camera with me this entire weekend? For ImprovBoston’s first annual Boston Improv Festival, which I went to most of the parties for despite only seeing one show. Will Luera, Dan Binderman, Becky Pineo and Kate Garvey^* did one hell of a job putting this together, and the results kept shocking us. I had never seen the theater so packed on Saturday, not just from the out-of-towners (troupes from as far as Canada or Mexico) but from locals new to the theater. This weekend made me proud to be associated with ImprovBoston, however tangentially. I hope the theater made a truckload of cash.

I first hit up the Wednesday BIF afterparty at Asgard, snacking on comped quesadillas and watching the Mexican improv troupe lead the entire bar in a rousing chorus of “El Rey.” Misch texted me for Friday’s afterparty at Becky’s house, though she neglected to provide me directions (Lisa F. came through). I stayed there until at least 3:30, wandering the mansion Becky lives in and catching up with improv people from all over. Saturday I wanted to leave early, but then I ran into Dr. Grace at Tavern on the Square, followed shortly thereafter by the rest of ImprovBoston. So what could I do?

I only saw one show, so I made it count: Spinning Hardcore, Anna W. and Kristen A’s world-famous air-guitar punk-rock ensemble. They reduced an audience to helpless, disbelieving giggles, including several people who’d never seen them before (jaded New Yorkers, even). Following them: Focus, a four-woman improv show that delivered a note-perfect satire of The View. There was the elderly retired lawyer, the saucy comedienne, the Ivy League lawyer and the Christian mom: each fully realized and often hilarious. They discussed DJ AM’s death, historical trivia about Boston and President Obama’s speech to school children, telling them that they each had something to contribute (“well, that’s ridiculous“).

______________
^* I’m doubtless forgetting someone important.

Games People Play
I hadn’t seen Melissa and John in too long, so they obliged me for a drink at Drink, where Aaron served us a variety of historical cocktails. Mine were all whiskey-based; Melissa and John’s were primarily gin-oriented, if I’m not mistaken. We talked about Chicago and reminisced on the virtues of Boston. We also spent a lot of time talking about WoWcraft (their obsession, not mine) and tabletop gaming ( … okay, that one’s mine).

Despite the lateness of the hour, I stopped off at The Cellar for the vestiges of Sara F’s goodbye party. Only the hardcore drinkers had remained: Lisa C., Meghan O., Robert W., Taylor, Rachel R. And of course, me, who didn’t even have cab fare home.

The conversation turned to the games men and women play when courting each other. “Say you give a guy your number,” Robert posed. “And he doesn’t call you back for six, seven days. Would you still pick up?” Which is a valid question, of course, but exactly the wrong way to phrase it. If you asked a guy, “Say a girl is really hard to pin down and flirts with you but is never available; would you still be interested?”, he’ll answer no. When in fact the accurate answer is yes. Guys respond to that behavior like catnip. We just don’t like to think we do.

I wished Sara F. nothing but success in San Francisco^*. She mentioned – completely unprompted – that she reads this weblog. And she makes a living writing blogs! This makes Sara Faith Alterman the Greatest American Hero.

Roll The Dice, Man; Roll The Dice
I had some folks over to roll dice on Labor Day. Auston, David F. and David M., Pete and Christine indulged my first halting steps with 4th edition. Despite nearly killing everyone in the second go-round, everyone had a blast.

Only this morning did I realize I had an entire fridge of Diet Coke left. I bought a twelve-pack of the stuff – typical gaming fuel – but forgot to offer it to anybody. People went in and out of the fridge all day, but were either too health-conscious or too waist-conscious to tap into the soda. And I almost never drink the stuff. Long story short: could anyone use some Diet Coke? I have some.

That evening I went to jiu-jitsu for some actual melee. Despite the soreness of not having really worked out for over a week – and taking several breakfalls from the head sensei – I enjoyed the exercise. One of the reasons I agonized for so long about moving to Chicago was due to feeling in a rut here in Boston. An easy way to change that up is to shake up my schedule, which is hardly fixed. So I’m going to be teaching jiu-jitsu on Sundays and studying on Mondays now. That, plus the move to the downtown office, should spark some interesting developments.

Put Your Picture On A Stamp
Here’s a brief glimpse into how my mind works:

Because I regularly send a modest check to the Institute for Justice^** every Christmas, I get on a wide variety of conservative mailing lists. Yesterday’s came from the Law and Economics Center, urging me to write a check to help their efforts at “educating judges in sound economics, science and constitutional principles.”

From the letter:

For a small organization, they’ve attracted a good deal of attention. They’re often criticized in the New York Times. Al Gore attacked them in his latest book. Senators John Kerry and Russ Feingold tried four times to cripple the Law & Economics Center and failed every time. [...] The New York Times, Al Gore, John Kerry, Russ Feingold. I suspect you’re thinking that the Law & Economics Center must be doing something right!

I have no love for the Times, but I dislike the presumption that the enemy of my enemy is my frenemy. So into the trash it went. Except for the enclosed Self-Addressed, Stamped Envelope. I feel it’s a shame to waste the stamp. It already has my return address typed on it, so I could just get a blank label and use this for something else. But how often do I mail something? There’s the rent check, of course, but oh fuck what’s today’s date.

And that’s what found me scrambling for my checkbook on a Tuesday evening to mail a rent check eight days late. I would have used the SASE, but I didn’t have any sticky labels.

________________
* Which I knew you couldn’t call “Frisco,” but apparently you can’t call “San Fran” either? “SF” is okay.
** Which has the coolest name of any think tank in DC. I expect to see Batman’s name on the letterhead. I challenge you to find a better one.

Papers, Please
Neither of the last two times that I’ve been in a liquor store have I been carded. The law, as explained in the little plastic inserts over the “Take A Penny / Leave A Penny” trays, says that anyone under thirty could get carded. So I either look thirty, or look enough over twenty-one that the liquor store owners don’t care. And I know that’s not really a law; it’s just there to give the proprietors a gauzy veil of protection in case someone gets huffy over being checked. “I don’t look twenty-one to you?”

Straight Outta Second City
I recounted this to Erik V. at Serpico’s housewarming on Saturday. Talking about the flexibility of entry barriers, he mentioned a time that he and his improv troupe got turned away from a club. “No Identical Outfits,” the sign out front said. But someone talked to the bouncer and convinced them that an improv troupe would not be rolling with the nilly^*, and in any case had the troupe name on their shirt for easy identification.

“I can see that causing trouble for naive college clubs,” I speculated. ” ‘We’re the Latin Kings! Gallia est omnia divisa in tres partis!’ “

Serpico and Kim’s new place is awesome, by the way – a two bedroom in a building we looked at before moving into Union Square. They’ve done a lot with the space they have, setting aside the larger room for an office and guest BR and turning the smaller into a cozy master BR. One sectional couch and one three-seater frame the coffee table (perfect for gaming) and TV, and massive DVD shelves flank the opposite corner. Serpico showed off the kitchen island, which he’d bought and assembled the day before, with fatherly pride.

Tell Me A Story
As threatened, I told a story for Jess Sutich’s recurring ImprovBoston show, “A Night of Oral (Tradition).” Four other ImprovBoston regulars and I told stories to a house of … ten people? Maybe a dozen.

Everyone else told stories ranging from knowing chuckles to laugh-out-loud hilarity, ranging from David Mogolov’s improbable howler regarding impromptu bathroom breaks on road trips to Christina S.’s touching story of feuding cousins. My story – involving South Philadelphia strip clubs and family – did not get quite as many laughs. Well, the first part of the story did. But I played to a silent house for the last four to six minutes or so. Then again, the story didn’t really have a punchy ending or a lot of hilarious twists to it. And two people independently came up and said my story was “well told” or “well structured.” So format I have. I’m going to pick a funnier one for next month (a story where I nearly died) and see if that makes a difference. You should come see it; it’s cheap.

_________________
* By which I mean the nine-milly.

Hey fans:

• My next entry in Overthinking It’s Cargo Cult series reviews Streets of Fire, Walter Hill’s campy 1983 rock musical starring Diane Lane, Rick Moranis and Willem Dafoe. I post YouTube clips in the article containing every good song in the movie, so you’ll want to check it out.
  

• People who’ve been asking when I’m going to perform next: tonight! 10:00, ImprovBoston, for A Night of Oral (Tradition). Tickets are cheap. Chris Cuddy, myself and other fine performers will tell some entertaining anecdotes that will enrich us all.

Saturday, after shooting under hot lights for eight hours, I did not trust myself behind the wheel of a car. As such, I couldn’t make it to Melissa and Fraley’s farewell party for Jon Walton. I did stumble to the end of my block and into the basement of Redbones, to say goodbye to ImprovBoston’s own Paul K. and Melissa H.

Paul and Melissa are moving out west, so they’re driving across the country and seeing a wide range of tourist sites: the Grand Tetons; Mt. Rushmore; Casper. Wyoming. They couldn’t work their schedule to include the world’s largest ball of twine (the Kansas one), and this filled them with regret.

“How do you decide to make the world’s largest ball of twine?” Melissa asked.

“You commit to the bit,” I explained, “a staple of improv. Once you collect enough twine to make a four-foot ball, why stop there?”

I’ve worked with Paul before in Neutrino and always found him a talented, responsive partner on stage. But he’s also a genuinely good human being – kind and fun to be around. I told him and Melissa I’d miss them as I said my goodbyes.

“We’ll miss you too,” Melissa said. “But I still read your blog.”

“You read my blog?” I asked, mouth open.

“All the time,” she said. “I think it’s the only blog I read.”

This makes Melissa Holman the greatest American hero.

# # #

The short girl in the black coat darted past me almost before I could react. “Emily!” I yelled. She stopped, and a three-year online friendship culminated in its first face-to-face meeting.

I introduced Emily to Victoria while we waited in line for our tickets. Vickie talked about living in Davis Square. Emily reminisced about her high school prom – right here, on Rowes Wharf on the Boston waterfront. Though the weather threatened rain tomorrow and had been muggy all weekend, Monday evening greeted us with cool water breezes.

“This is awesome!” Emily squealed, sipping at her complimentary Maker’s Mark mojito.

“This is Yelp,” I told her.

The Odyssey disembarked at 7:00, taking us out past the Harborwalk and the Korean War Memorial. We drank cocktails and ate peppercorn sirloin, talking about:

• contemporary music: Emily: “I can’t handle any musician who was born after 1990″;
  
• work: Vickie: “I’ve seen The Thighs, and yes – they’re real and their spectacular”;
  
• And the best way to kill a mouse: Me: “Any sharp trauma to the crown of the head should do it.”

“Thank you so much for inviting me to this,” Vickie said, moments after embracing Emily and sending her to the Ashmont line.

I shrugged. “That’s what friends do.”

You know you’ve been working too hard when you get more excited about the errands you’ll run on your day off than the parties you’ll attend. Which is how Friday started: running to the bank for quarters, starting a load of laundry, picking up fifty dollars in dry cleaning (one suit, three pants, two button shirts, three polo shirts), swapping a load of laundry, going to the library, whoops!, strike that, library’s closed on the 3rd of July, mailed a package at the post office, got my laundry. Made a very light lunch.

Then I went to Joanna’s annual Independence Day barbecue – a day early, but we all had the day off, or took it – just ahead of some rain clouds. They followed me all the way to Porter Square, no matter how fast I walked. I came in on a foursquare game that was just wrapping up and Joanna’s roommate Matt stringing an impromptu tarp over the grill, lashed between the fire escape and one of the fences. Some of us hung out inside and drank, listening to Serpico talk about parties in Jersey, until the rain let up. I had a few hot dogs, Katie S’s brother (never did catch his first name) confused me with Robert Parish (“CHIEEEF” he yelled, once or twice), Sylvia stole my camera and we ran out of peanut butter cups but hey, it’s okay with me.

Ended up at 90s Night, as always. I picked Meghan O’ up from the bar at ImprovBoston, having a beer and chatting up the night staff. The Harold show let out a little after 10:30, so I said hi to cast and audience. As such, we got to Allston later than I might have liked and ended up waiting in line. DJ Phatmike couldn’t do anything for us – the cops were out in force for the long weekend, and headcount was tight – but the queue moved at a reasonable clip. I met Flannery’s mythical husband Nate and her friend Martha, and I didn’t miss “Flagpole Sitta,” and I never have a bad time there anyway.

And that’s just Friday. Did I mention the weather was gorgeous?

I like ImprovBoston’s new space partly because of its key location (right in Central Square) and partly because of its awesome size. But I love it because of the bar. On any given Saturday when I have nothing else to do, I can show up at the IB bar and see at least three people I know.

Take this past Saturday, for instance: coming back from Brighton, I ran into Will, Dave S., Kevin H. and Lindsay W. at the IB bar. I had a drink and chatted with them about the expansion of search technology. Eventually, though, the Cambridge liquor license required that IB close.

So Will offered a suggestion: “Let’s go to the Tavern at the End of the World.”

While it’s not at the actual end of the world, it’s on the border of Somerville and Everett, so you’re forgiven the mistake. The tiny front room has a smattering of cheap tables, plywood walls like you’d find in finished basements, and a collection of odd movie posters. I ordered a cheap domestic draft and sat down with my chair flipped backward.

The back room had a DJ.

This townie bar, in the most industrial part of Boston short of the Big Dig, had a DJ with a full-on Akai sampler, mixing some of the most staccato electronic beats I’ve ever heard. Pure static and rhythm. A dozen hipsters pulsed to the music – the usual baby-fat girls with mod haircuts and skinny boys in thrift store hoodies.

We finished our beers, talking about our history with the theater. Half past one in the morning.

“Let’s get some roast beef,” Dave suggested.

Back into the cars we piled, across the Everett border to Mike’s Roast Beef. Mike’s is a staple of late night debauches. It stays open until 2:00 AM on weekends – later than most places in Boston – and sometimes later than that, thanks to the patronage of every cop between Revere and Winthrop. I got a junior roast beef with mayo and onions, which instantly became one of my top 5 sandwiches in Boston.

We split some crab rangoons and talked about corruption. “Providence just closed this thirty-year-old loophole in their prostitution laws,” Kevin mentioned. “Until May, it was illegal to sell sex on the street. But the cops wouldn’t bother you if you worked indoors.”

“That’s because the 1980 law wasn’t meant to shut down prostitution,” I explained. “It was meant to shut down the independent operators. This is Providence we’re talking about.”

“Speaking of,” Will said, “who wants to go to a strip club?”

When Will said that King Arthur’s was in an industrial park in Chelsea, I thought he meant near an industrial park. Across the street from a block of warehouses. But no: King Arthur’s abuts the same unpaved road that services a long row of jacked trailers and distribution centers. There are no streetlights to speak of – only the cheery neon glow of Arthur, rex quondam rexque futurus, telling you where the poon at.

I had my phone out to text a message to several friends:going to chelsea strip club with will and dave. if you don't hear from me in 12 hours call cops.… but the club was closed. We must have arrived pretty late, too, as not even the usual crowd of after-hours loiterers, completing various exchanges for various commodities, could be seen out back. Circling our cars, we headed home.

You never know where an evening in Boston will end, if you just let it go.

I took part in the 48 Hour Film Project this weekend, this year for Red Light District Attorneys.

The 48 Hour Film Project always begins, for me, with a beer- and soda-fueled writer’s meeting at someone’s apartment that lasts until two in the morning. Fortunately I wasn’t writing this year, so I let Greg, Christine and Sean argue over script details. I didn’t know what I was there for until Marcelo said, “I’m figuring you as the camera operator for most of this project.” Apparently the promotion track from “some volunteer” to Cinematographer only has one step.

Fortunately, Nick (our on-site director) packed a Panasonic PV-GS320, a camera with which Neutrino had made me intimately familiar. So at 8:30 on Saturday morning, I was rolling footage in Quincy Center, shooting breakfast footage at Kim’s apartment.

Playing the camera operator gave me the opportunity to do three things I’ve always wanted to do:

Use meaningless jargon. “I’d like to film Greg seeing this list from the edge of the table,” I said, “though I don’t want to go all Dutch angle on him.” I also confused panning (sweeping the camera while the operator stays stationary) and tracking (holding the camera forward while the operator moves) at least once. Also, I used the term “gracing the lens,” which Google has informed me does not mean anything, and probably entered my glossary as a misheard lyric from a Postal Service song. Fortunately, no one was paying attention to me at that point.

Indulge my desire to experiment. As the only camera operator, and the only person in the crew who had more than 6 hours sleep the night before, my whims got a level of legitimacy they should probably never receive. “I want to track along the banister here,” I said, getting the pan/track distinction right for once, “end facing down the length of the banister as Christine finishes wrapping the Christmas lights, then hit it here as she plugs them in.” Nick stared at me for a moment, then nodded. I didn’t do this too often, and never at the expense of essential filming, but expect some crazy camerawork!

Take Clint Eastwood’s directing advice. Clint Eastwood imported a lot of his experience as a veteran actor of TV and film into his directing career. For instance, he noticed when filming TV westerns how hard it was to get four horses to walk abreast down a street – they’re skittish creatures who don’t like to stand very near each other. And then when someone would yell, “ACTION!” the horses would all jump again, and it’d be another five minutes getting them together. “Actors are not unlike horses,” he observed on Inside the Actors Studio, so he makes a practice of keeping a quiet set and telling his actors to begin by softly saying, “Whenever you’re ready.”

We wrapped principal photography, after a complicated shot that involved sprinting through a science lab and swiveling the camera on an office chair, at about 5:30 on Saturday. In my (limited) history of 48 hour shoots, that ain’t bad. I’ll post the finished product as soon as it’s available; anyone in Boston can come watch it at the Kendall Square Cinema at 9:30 this Wednesday.

Muse and the Marketplace isn’t all I did this weekend, though.

On Saturday, I saw Flat Earth Theatre put up 12 Angry Jurors at the Arsenal Center for the Arts. Afterward, Rachel V., Orit, Rachel’s MOSAIC co-star Josh and I had appetizers and beers at Donohue’s.

Orit: I’m trying to think of a way to work a jury trial into my [3rd and 4th grade] class now.
Professor: Just wait until one of your kids does something wrong – which has already happened – and voila!
Josh: Or you could just accuse one of doing something. They’ll know what they did.
Rachel: Ooh, ooh. You could torture one of them until they confess. Because that always works.

Donohue’s keeps one big-screen set tuned to IAmTV at all times. IAmTV shows an award-winning lineup of wakeboarders, BASE jumpers and girls in bikinis around the clock. Finally, television for audiences that find Two and a Half Men too hard to follow.

On Sunday, after writing, eating dinner and recording an Overthinking It podcast, I stopped by ImprovBoston for some beers and pizza. Harry G., Ryan the Intern, Kevin H. and I spent several minutes idling in the hallway, shooting nonsense at each other.

Harry: Anyone want to buy some heroin? I’ve got six bags of it.
Ryan: Yes, please.
Professor: Yeah, because heroin’s sold by the bag. A giant trash bag of heroin, just sloshing around.
Kevin: That’s our new improv troupe name: ‘Sloshing Bags of Heroin.’
Harry: Our first show’s nothing but West Roxbury junkies and undercover cops.
Professor: (Boston accent, into collar mic) Yeah, 10-22, guys, it’s just a feckin’ improv troupe.

I don’t see Harry as often as I should. Somebody fix that.