Meow House Theatre

Tuesday, July 31

More class today. Really fun although it’s a little hard being in a class this large (15 people). I am used to classes of 10-12, or even less. I think this is just a tad too large for comfort. Actually we had 16 originally but someone who was there yesterday never came back today and either dropped out or perhaps switched to a weekly class instead of the Intensive version. It is quite a lot of class time; by 4:30 I was getting tired. Improv is a fairly physical activity. You don’t just sit there doing reads. I mean, it’s not a marathon or anything but there are a lot of warm-up games where you’re either running around, literally, or singing in a somewhat frenetic manner, so sometimes you actually get out of breath. It’s like walking a few miles during the course of each half of the class. And there is a LOT of mental gymnastics and that takes the pep out of you after a while. Coffee was my very best friend this entire week.

As part of our class, we have to see at least two improv shows at UCB. I ended up going to one on Tuesday, “Harold Night.” They do Harolds all the time but Tuesdays are a whole night of nothing but Harold. Often times they mix Harold performances in with sketch or other types of improv; I’ve been to UCB before this trip and all I’ve ever seen there are Harolds although I know they do quite a lot of other comedy also. It was pretty good and we had front-row seats, which is always nice. UCB is a typical black-box theatre: it looks like someone’s basement, only bigger. So front row means you are really close. I liked the first group, “Beverly Hills,” the best. It’s clear that Harold Night is popular: it was very crowded; all the seats were filled and there were a lot of people standing or sitting on the floor. We stayed through four or five groups and then hit the road. It’s tiring acting all day and all the walking around you do, plus it was roasting hot in NYC that week. It’s hard to stay perky in the humidity.

Wednesday, August 1

We didn’t have class on Wed. so it’s basically a free day to do whatever you want in NYC. Sharilyn and I went to The Paley Center for Media, formerly known as The Museum of Television & Radio. Yes, I did feel weird being in NYC and going to a museum to watch TV, but MTR (it will always be “MTR” to me) has an enormous repository of tape that is either rarely or never broadcast: TV shows that were never syndicated or panels the MTR puts on with the casts/crew of different shows and movies, which I’ve never seen shown on TV. These panels are the best thing they do, in my opinion. Naturally, given both Sharilyn’s and my interest in The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, we wanted to watch a couple of old episodes of TDS–ones that are not available via The Mysterious Underground of online trading. (Nor which are ever re-broadcast by Comedy Central for some unfathomable reason. When either TDS or TCR take a break, CC only shows episodes from the previous week. Never anything older. It’s really baffling not to mention way fucking annoying.)

Anyway, we watched a Daily Show panel from 2001 with Jon Stewart, Madeleine Smithberg, Ben Karlin (former exec. producer), Paul Mercurio (former writer and desk correspondent, currently a standup comic in NYC and the warmup comic at TDS tapings), and Stephen Colbert (no explanation needed–I hope). It was really really interesting. This was long before any concept of TCR had ever been developed, of course, and only a couple of years after Jon took over TDS from Craig Kilborn, and under whose leadership it completely changed from being a rather “fluffy” parody of an early-evening infotainment show to the politically oriented smart funny biting satire that it is today. (All the best to Craig, but thank god he left.) There was one hilarious part where Jon goes over to Stephen and gives him a big kiss and you can hear him whisper into his mic “You’re SO sexy!” I’m not sure if he realized how well that would get picked up! Then Stephen expressed dismay by saying, “Jon, you never go far enough! You always stop before the tongue!” Oh I love it how those two boys love each other. I am so happy for the success of Stephen’s show but those two had the most fantastic chemistry and it would be wonderful to see them working together now in some public capacity.

Even older than the TDS panel was a Jon Stewart Show panel from (I think) 1994. Sharilyn is the resident expert on The JSS. I bet not even Jon knows as much about it as she does. This wealth of knowledge about a show that went off the air 12 years ago will figure into one of our “escapades” later in the week, which is doubly ironic after watching this particular panel. Jon looked so adorable, so young, so sweet. He was just a kid (even though he was, what, 33 at the time? Such a babyface. And no pudge yet.

We also watched Jon’s very first episode hosting TDS (January 11, 1999, I believe) with Michael J. Fox as the guest; and another one also from I think 1999 with Mike Myers. This was apparently the second time that week that Myers had appeared but I didn’t know that until they started referring to his just-prior appearance. It’s really a damn shame that Comedy Central cannot see the value in releasing these old episodes, or can’t work out whatever residuals deal they need to work out. From what I’ve heard, they give great creative control to their producers and “charge” for it with really shitty (relatively) salaries and revenue packages. Jon and Stephen make by far the least of any late-night talk show host. But they get a lot of artistic freedom from CC to do what they want, how they want, without a ton of bothersome interference from the suits. I guess to a large extent that makes the crappy (again, relatively) pay worth it.

After MTR, we parted ways and I went back to my hotel to get dressed and ready to go visit a friend at her job. Sharilyn was going to attend TDS, having just gotten the ticket on line that morning. Unfortunately she got there a little too late and couldn’t get in and they told her to try Colbert, but since she had just attended a taping there a week or two earlier and they have gotten very strict about their “6-month rule” [you can only attend a taping once every 6 months], it was a no-go. Even though they needed people to fill the audience! I have heard there has been some noticing on the set of repeat faces and certain persons were getting annoyed by that, so they really cracked down on it recently. (They didn’t used to be so strict although the 6-month rule has technically been in effect for a long time, but it was never really enforced.) Anyway, she was too late for TDS and TCR wouldn’t let her in, so she just went on to her next activity, which was doing open mic at The Comedy Cellar, a well-known club in New York where all the big names have performed, both when they were nobodies and after they became super-famous. It’s kind of like “home” to a lot of them, and for a standup comic it’s a big deal to perform there, and especially to perform there for the first time. There is a lot of sentimentality attached to that back brick wall. My plan was to get over there after visiting my friend so that I could watch her set and take pictures but due to unforeseen circumstances I totally missed it and barely even made it to the Cellar in time for the regular show at 9:00. We saw several different comedians, including Darryl Hammond of Saturday Night Live. He was good but seemed a little three sheets to the wind. All I kept thinking of while he was up there was Bill Clinton after a six-pack. Anyway, we watched the show and then went home. Well I’m pretty sure we did; I have to check Sharilyn’s blog to make sure I’m not missing anything! She had the right idea by making an entry every day; much smarter than the way I’m doing it all after-the-fact. Part of my excuse is that I had an extremely crappy wireless connection all week and could barely check my email, let alone make changes to my Web site.

More later!

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