Why am I so obsessed with giving other people notes?

It comes out in obvious and less obvious ways.

In my improv classes or in film school or even high school, when I knew the answer to the question I would say it, I would raise my hand high up in high school, yearning, aching to answer the question, my one chance to talk and be right in a world where for all other intents and purposes I was wrong or othered. In improv classes and rehearsals I struggle not to note or give advice to my teammates, my classmates, others barreling past my own gentle reminders that not only is it a huge blow to one’s ego to receive an “I’m better than you”-style note from a peer, but that I also supremely do not know what I am doing.

In film school I had no such qualms, acting like an expert and even going to classes to give speeches on the silliest things: what to get out of film school, the importance of script supervisors, the screenwriting process and of course, snarkily talking about who was good or not.

Obviously, engaging in these stupid conversations in film school, I found myself barely involved with the film industry on my way out, because when I found myself rejected from 50 film festivals with my thesis, out of a job and working at a movie theater after a 300,000 dollar education, I realized that the confidence I had formed was some sort of monstrous inverted pyramid, based only on the spark of “voice” I had mistaken for virtuosity, destined unto its own collapse.

You’d think I had learned my lesson out of film school, going into the improv community that had taken me in, like it takes in so many other broken, insecure people. But of course, as humans, we are universally slow to see our own folly and slower still to change. Such is the stuff of Kurosawa and Shakespeare.

But giving notes with conviction and some amount of eloquence (the fruit of my writing) is a powerful position to put yourself in and one that people respect especially if those notes are not delivered with the condescension or silliness of a taunt or even any heavy emotion and are placed instead into an article of faith. In fact, people sometimes desire that because they struggle and are insecure and desperately want help. After all, what they are doing is impossible and demanding and silly. It’s hard to be a clown.

When I have given notes to people either in improv or film school, it is with that scary conviction of that I know what’s right (even though I most certain do not) but also always as an article of faith. In the logic part of my mind, there is never any reason to give a note to someone about their performance or film or writing if they do not show obvious promise or talent. It is only when I think I see that splinter in their foot, that thorn in their side that they cannot see that I attempt to alert them, even if I don’t have the skill to remove it, even if I don’t even know I don’t know whether it actually is a thorn or splinter.

So why do I do this?

When I was a film student I was not an expert on making films. Now that I am an improviser, I am, as my friend Austin Kuras said, “in the high school part of improv, where your friends now might not be your friends later until things settle down”.

Two explanations are forthcoming, both rooted in my psychology.

The first would be the desire to change myself that I so desperately want, a vestigial notion left over from my youth. When I wanted to yell out the answer in high school, it is because I wanted to be acknowledged. I wanted in this one area to be cool, to be big, to make myself as such. When I gave notes to my classmates then or later or later, it could because I didn’t like who I was, where I was and so instead of changing or having the strength to address myself, it was easier to see your own faults projected in others, to see that hurdle you thought someone else could cross, et cetera and gain some comfort and strength that at least you could change them.

Similarly, this frequently leads to frustration when people don’t change or refuse to take notes, mine or others, because I see in their intransigence my own inability to conquer the flaws in myself.

Note: this is the same low-self-esteem/victimhood philosophy that lead me to date girls with low self-esteem, because I thought I would show them how great they were and they would in return love the un-loveable: me.

The other, more altruistic reason (if not similarly misguided) is the attempt to correct the past in myself.

The same reason I was once a summer camp councilor for adolescents (a mixed experience in its own right) was because I wanted to tell 14, 15, 16-year olds that life wasn’t so goddam terrible even if it seemed like it now. I remember so vividly in the terrible parts of high school or film school or now comedy the huge mistakes I made, the horrific lows that I could not (and maybe even should not) have avoided but which I wish someone with some sort of authority could have been there effectively to tell me: “I’ve been there, quite recently. And it’s alright.” This is a very juvenile philosophy, a sort of “Catcher in the Rye”-style notion, but that sort of thought process isn’t past me entirely yet.

Having lacked a superhero or a cool magic-user to pop out of my Young Adult Sci-Fi/Fantasy novels of my youth, I wanted to be the one that popped into these peoples’ lives.

Maybe that is part of the impulse still. Just wanting to be there to let them know that someone sees what they are going through and sympathises. To congratulate them earnestly, without the sugariness of sentimentality, at their successes in their failures. To remind them knowingly of the failures in success. When I do give notes well or am proud of myself, it is in these moments, where it looks like someone could use support, just like in an improv group scene, knowing when to make the move in life.

What do I make of all this?

As I said I know nothing, or know little. I am still vulnerable to those looooooo-ong conversations about comedy or film where I sound like an expert or argue like one. Often I enjoy them. But I am not a fool and in the moment I am trying to attune myself to when I have enough experience to talk about things and when I don’t, looking in to my nice coach Sean Taylor’s eyes and listening to his tone, trying to figure out when I’ve said too much, though I’m still not there yet (Sorry, Sean).

In a way, doing yoga has humbled me more than most things because I am so incredibly, intransigently untalented at it.

Knowing you can’t even do a halfway decent downward-dog is a good reminder of shutting up and just working hard.

Maybe I’ll thank myself for the shutting-up and enjoying myself, working and learning.

That’s good practice, too.

***

There’s something cathartic in being about the nerds.

It is important to define some levels here in what I am talking about before I continue.

Many things I do are defined as nerdy. Improv (as exemplified by this excellent video) is a pretty nerdy thing. Film nerdiness, like seeing a lot of indies and foreign films can be too (which I was reminded of when I met two Arizonans in France whose last movie they saw was The Notebook on DVD). Magic: The Gathering cards are still really nerdy in a way that is socially isolating and the subject of many jokes, but since I still sometimes find myself around them (like any addiction, you never really quit) I won’t cast judgement entirely right now.

But sometimes you head into a movie theater and see a combination of goth/punk overweight late-teenagers of all ethnic varieties at 3pm on a Wednesday and you know you’re going to see some Anime.

Anime was a phase I passed through (and am mostly out of) in the early parts of middle and high school exemplified by that weird gap in time where the internet existed but wasn’t fast enough that anyone could download things instantly. So, my best friend Frank and I would trudge down to Chinatown every weekend or every other weekend into the back of a knickknack store and buy VHS of anime episodes ripped off of non-region DVDs (which were expensive!) or subtitled amateur-ly by fans of the series we were trying to watch.

This was also a little after the time Pokemon (sort-of) and Dragon Ball Z (particularly) had gotten us into these Japanese animated shows with their promise of cool action, people always talking about the “awesome power of friendship” and often weird sexual undertones present in Japanese culture. Adult Swim on Cartoon Network had not yet turned totally into a bastian of college-age haute-comedy and still showed some cool anime shows as a stepping stone forward for us like Cowboy Bebop, which allowed us to continue growing on it as we began to realize how many episodes of our favorite shows were literally just people talking about the big fight that was going to happen stretched over a 9-26 episode arc.

When the internet sped up and Ricky somehow mysteriously disappeared, Frank and I would download the episodes off the internet of our favorite shows and go over to each others houses (mostly me to Frank’s) to watch them on our crappy monitors, hoping this wouldn’t be another episode where everyone was just intimidating each other and hopefully at least a couple people would throw a punch. But we were mostly disappointed, but somehow still hooked enough. We watched shows like Scryed, Yu Yu Hakusho, Bleach, Naruto, One Piece together while Frank delved even nerdier with the DSL connection at his house as we scoured the IRC (Internet Relay Chatrooms) for episodes in those early BitTorrent days, watching GTO (a show about a perv who becomes a teacher to sleep with 17 year-olds), Hajime No Ippo (an infinitely-long boxing anime) and Hikaru No Go (which is literally about people playing fucking checkers. No joke. Look it up.)

But a show we both watched was Fullmetal Alchemist, a silly steam-punk-style show about “alchemists” who have what is essentially a more science-y kind of magic powers. The show is about a big brother who always complains about being short and a little brother who is an animated suit of armor. Silliness ensues as well as some musing on life and death and humanity’s ability to affect those things.

Time has passed since those days.

First Frank became the skinny kid from his fat-bowl-cut-Korean-kid days, working out in college and then improbably becoming a personal trainer talking about being too shy to hit on his clients at the gym. I became chubby, got into movies and faded away from anime (though I still read some manga) since there were so many films to watch that didn’t involve waiting around 26 excruciating weeks to see what happens.

But now I do improv and work as an assistant and Frank trains people at the gym. I’m out late nights doing shows at weird places, Frank is training 6:30am clients. It’s hard to see each other.

So when I saw that the Cinema Village had, for some goddam reason, one of the several released-only-in-Japan Fullmetal Alchemist movies playing there, I knew to invite Frank.

We got some lunch. I joked about how I weigh less than him now (not at all salient, he is ONE-MILLION TIMES more fit than me), we walked around as I tried to decide on a dessert for an hour as I had to answer upset texts from a girl on my improv team. We talked about life and ended up splitting a cupcake.

We sat down in the aforementioned theater for the movie, which was silly with a Face-Off style-twist, though decently-animated. The last line of the film was: “Oh look, we’re leaving the valley.” which was really stupid and self-aware.

But we both for that time were back staring at a big suit of armor and a blond-short-guy fighting a wolf-man on top of a train.

And in the end, isn’t that what life’s all about?

Oh look, we’re leaving the blog post.

***

I had a freakout over squash. That is who I am now.

I haven’t been able to go to Birdbath Bakery around the corner from me for a while now, because the sandwich that I used to get from them, the Chicken Cilantro, was on a white bread that I had sworn off.

But one day, passing by, I decided to just investigate what they had I could eat and found that they had a smoked chicken sandwich on some sort of whole grain sourdough that seemed appetizing.

They had also seemed to have upped their lunch game, importing the famous Macaroni and Cheese from their parent store City Bakery in a hottray, along with another item I didn’t recognize.

“Spaghetti Squash cooked with homemade tomato sauce, parmesan cheese, a bit of cilantro, topped with toasted pumpkin seeds.”

“A taste.” I requested.

Yum.

I got the smoked chicken sandwich (which was yummy enough) with the squash that was like crack.

Now, I didn’t know if this was kosher for me to have (not in a kosher sense) in terms of keeping my weight, but when I got upstairs I just ate half of everything, felt great and took a walk with my new couch-crasher New Jersey-an/Southerner Teddy Shivers to show him places to eat in the neighborhood.

Unfortunately, when I got back upstairs from the hour-point-five -long tour, that delicious-ass food was still there and I took a bite of the squash.

And then another.

And then the barrier broke and I ate the whole thing.

Guilt flooded my squash-ridden body.

I ate something light later, but when I got home that night, my weight (on the scale my bos bought me for the new year) had gone up 5 pounds instead of the usual three (how much my weight fluctuates day-to-night).

I hyper-ventillated in my therapist’s office, I wondered if this grand ruse was coming to an end, if chubby Nick was returning, so soon.

She looked at me calmly and we continued our session.

“I figure if this has been working for you.” She said. “Trust it and it will.”

I did and I ate some salads the next day and was fine.

My freak-out, silly.

It was just squash.

And I haven’t had it since.

Because I’ll eat french fries, cupcakes, crepe nutellas, pain au chocolats, shots of Jameson and risotto balls.

But I’m scared as fuck of that yummy squash.

***

BIRDBATH BAKERY

Side of Spaghetti Squash w/Parmesan, Homemade Tomato Sauce and Toasted Pumpkin Seeds- $5.00

Prince St. bet. Thompson St. and W. Broadway.

CE to Spring St. NR to Prince St. BDFM to Broadway-Lafayette.

This last class was actually subbed by Will Hines, as Neil booked a commercial (I may post the notes from my final show if applicable, which I have heard he will be at).

However, as I have mentioned several times before on this blog, I have very high-esteem for Will as a teacher who taught my first level 4 class at UCB. He is also an excellently regarded performer whose classes are filled up near instantly. His philosophy on improv (centered around agreement) is also very interesting to me. It is egalitarian and thus applicable to any style of improv, I believe.

On a personal note, I look up to Will and his style of play so while I was somewhat nervous in the class with him, I was happy he got to see how I’ve changed from Spring 2011, to whatever degree that might be.

Anyway, no one cares about that.

Here are the notes, enjoy!

***

Being around the community, constantly I see people go from doing improv baby talk to being my best friend, on teams, to being jaded and then gone. The turnover rate is very rapid here. Jaded is too negative, but whatever that process is where you are over it happens quickly. I would say a year and a half.

The main difference between a 201 grad show and a seasoned improv show is that when people step out their eyes are locked on each other. People are so worried about putting out their initiations that they don’t see the choices they’ve already made.

Especially when there is no opening, make sure that we are working our good scenework muscles, agreeing with each other, getting out the who/what/where, checking in.

You don’t always need to have characters who are saying yes, but you do have to have characters who move the scene forward. If someone says “have you ever been to Iceland?”maybe you haven’t but if you say no it’s a dead-end, but of you say “no, but I always wanted to” there is something there. No doesn’t have to mean a denial if it’s coupled with an offer.

Improvisers do tend to go through a phase of arms folded and saying no, also in your body language.

If somebody else is initiating, I form my emotion based on the initiation. Simple emotional choices can work too, but I think you have a higher-shot percentage if you do.

At the point you’re at, it’s more like art though. There’s not one right answer, but your training should be reacting.

I think of scenes like pyramids, on the bottom we are listening to each other and agreeing, above that we are playing realistically and intelligently, above that making them important and reacting emotionally and above that game.

A teacher I had named Kevin Mullaney used to tell me if you don’t find a game don’t try to play it; it’s real easy to go from playing it real to finding a game, more difficult the other way around.

You’ve got to let each other know that you’re finding the game in a way that’s not obvious. I find that players often try to invite each other to find things weird.

Don’t undervalue scene-work and agreeing and liking each other. Those are difficult things to have especially after an opening.

Make sure to have initiation etiquette. Let people introduce themselves, just like in a radio show. You wouldn’t tell people what they want to say if they called into your radio show.

I don’t like the phrase “calling out” but I do like speaking to the obvious truth. In improv we should be thinking out loud for the audience to watch. Not being coy, being explicit is helpful. Not helpful is “you’re doing/not doing this because you are stupid”. Surprise/a reaction could be good.

You know when you start watching a sketch in Saturday Night Live, every line that passes you’re looking for the funny thing until you see it. If you step out with a part of a funny idea we’re on board.

Starting with irony or a twist on reality is good, but never at the expense of reality. I’d rather have someone come out and say “I like painting”.

Some advice: a very common thing that happens is: “You did this, explain it.” and the human response is to explain it away, but it’s a gift and the quickest way to a good scene is saying yes and accepting the idea. I think 90-percent of the time it’s done well. It makes clear what the truth is, because everything is a lie, so lying about a lie is a difficult thing.

If you must argue, argue sympathetically, because if you keep saying you’re attacking the other player. Be able to articulate the other side of the argument all the time.

All accusations, criticism and insults are always gifts. Remember that.

There’s a way of “comedically yes and-ing” something just to firm it up, keeping your ears open for things and then restating what’s funny.

It’s always better to yes and with a philosophy than a plot.

Make sure to initiate with the simplest most direct thing possible.

If you listened and you don’t know where they’re coming from, react as you will and support. If you just answer confidently with something it will be just as good if not better than the scene they wanted.

I think what we are still learning is how to be clear on that first line, it’s why we learn how to say yes so we can roll with it. I wish I knew how to teach that perfectly but I still do it wrong half the time.

It’s so tempting to focus on the initiation because it’s the nut of the scene, but knowing the basics of improvisation is the best. If I have a show and one writer and a group of improvisers I only need one funny line. If I have a bunch of writers and no improvisers I need a hundred. It’s five percent of the scene.

Sympathetic arguing exercise: someone comes in with a crazy accusation and you don’t deflect it, accept it and give a reason and then the other person sympathetically argues and you respond in turn, both acknowledging the other’s POV. Make it your own choice when someone accuses you.

It’s a frequent thing that someone accuses you of something, calls you something weird if you deflect it or make it make too much sense the gift goes away. If someone goes and says you could work harder and you say yes I can and they react sympathetically you probably have a game. It’s very satisfying to see.

Thinking about heightening early gums up the work. Don’t even worry about heightening, just hits what funny a few times and see where it brings you.

When things are funny in the pattern game, think why you think it’s funny. That will help you in that scene, that little thought.

Saying a suggestion in a Harold is usually really lame. It’s like if Darth Vader were to say “I declare Star Wars”.

Use them for what they are worth.

On a personal note, this one was a fun class for me.

Enjoy!

***

Meta moves tend to suck when they acknowledge the audience, and they can be fun and a jam, but you’ll never reach the heights you can get from the seriousness of a Harold. Generally, though Meta moves suck and cause your show to go out of control.

If you come in and initiate something that’s really funny and it can’t get any funnier it’s fine to have a 30-second scene. If you find yourself doing a lot of that, adjust, but those are fine.

You can’t be worried about whether someone has a good idea. If you’re standing there on the backline, it might as well you. If you are coming out cold even with nothing or a half-idea, that’s great. Step out with something more than “here you are on stage”.

A lot of time the reason that something is happening is why it’s funny, justifying behavior/the reasoning makes things on stage funny.

I maintain that there is nothing an improv scene that is said that cannot be made true to the logic of the scene, even if it’s inelegant.

From a stand-up, Chris Murphy, in my class: Never try to get laughs, try to give laughs. If you go up Trying to give the audience a good show, you’ll never feel bad coming off the stage.

Keep the pattern game precise, it helps to set the pace of the show.

Make sure you show your moves, people don’t want “instant” move any more than they want instant coffee. When they first cane out with instant cake mix, just add water, no ons bought it, because people want to feel like they’re baking. When they changed it to “add milk and eggs” it sold like crazy. Show your work in the scene for your game or else it won’t be rewarding.

I’ve said this a million times in this class, you’ve got to assume that people are stupid, we’re stupid, assume that we have limited bandwidth of understanding. The contract we make on stage with each other that whatever idea we establish on stage is the one we play. Everyone should be making strong choices but yielding to each other strong choices or finding ways of incorporating them.

Don’t load up the things you are going to say. Make sure you let your scene partner have their move and then fully have their reaction.

Watch out for group games that are self-aware: “Are we ready to do this?” I’d rather have you take big risks than be tepid. I want your group games to be really fucking giant failures rather than being 6 people in a line.

***

Bonus Note:

I have an improv class with Alex Marino, a great performer and teacher at the Magnet who does do both often, so you can take classes with him. I asked him a question about making wacky moves in improv, which can be alternately rewarding and alienating. This is what he said (as always, roughly):

“When you go to crazy-town in a scene, it’s important to take steps to there, showing a progression leading there naturally from the character. Think about Zombie movies. There might be one attack early on to tell us we are in a zombie movie, but the next half-hour is just character development, so we care about these people when they’re attacked. Otherwise, they’re just meat. So spend time making these people real for us before the Zombies come.”

Word.

“You look beautiful, you lost all this weight, how did you do it?”

These were the comments not of a lovely blond aspiring improviser/actress at the improv theater I attend but the octogenarian Italian woman who grunts up and down my staircase frequently at 9am on Sundays screaming “MARIE!” over and over again.

Typically late-morning around 11, she would be either sitting on the stoop, on the stairs or pre-laid cardboard box. She used to wait at the coffee shop across the street, hanging, her voice creaking, holding parlor about the world it’s issues (and surely Marie, whoever that is) until the coffee shop across the street closed at the New Year to everyone’s sad surprise.

She wasn’t the only one to notice.

If you were wondering why I’m making silly poses in the picture above, it is actually an approximation of the drunken mirror dance I did Saturday night after my improv team had a good show.

It went something like this.

Enter the door. Pivot. Urinate. Zip. Pivot Again. Turn To The Mirror. Notice Yourself.

Start a sing-song chant.

“Oh you. You’re there. You’re skinny. Oh wow. Good job. Good job, good job, good job. Good job. Good job. Alright!”

Fist bump up and then down into the chest.

“Peace out.”

Exit.

I relayed this information to funny effect to my teammates and friends Sebastian and Phoebe and our teacher Alan, whose tolerance for alcohol seemed to exceed particularly ours as he observed us post-several shots of Jameson and assorted drinks do our rounds.

I was of course recounting and making funny incomprehensible jokes to the room. Phoebe, who somehow was both drunker than us while drinking radically less refused to take a shot because she loudly claimed that someone came in it (I volunteered Sebastian as the culprit), while Sebastian, big goofy guy he is, just talked about how good he was at improv while wringing his head in his hands at the rest of us and doing his big Sebastian sigh.

When I informed everyone of the dance, Alan replied sort of neutrally, I guess happy for the show, while Sebastian just laughed quietly.

“What, is that really dumb?” I asked him.

“Yes.” Sebastian repeated. “Yes. You doing a dance in the mirror? Bro, I can safely say that’s pretty dumb.”

“Well I think you look great Nick!” Phoebe said. “I think your sex life is about to improve dramatically.”

“I hope.” I replied wondering somewhere how she knew about the state of my sex life, or whether it was still apparent just looking at me.

Is there some pheromone guys emit when they haven’t been dating in a while?

I thought I must have lost it when I lost the pounds but maybe not.

A girl did hit on me though, for the first time in a while, which felt pretty great and FOR ONCE, FOR ONCE, she was not married or with child.

I was just sitting in an Argo Tea Cafe while my friend Ben tried to convince me about meditation as it relates to improv (I must be this way about yoga, sadly) when a young lady just came up and thought I was a CEO, but I told her she probably recognized me from TV and this time I was right.

She dropped hints about going to try an Indian place with her, turned out we knew some of the same people and gave me her number.

It was more disconcerting than anything to be hit on, kind of like someone handing you 5 bucks on the street. You’d be happy but you’d also be like “OK, why? Thanks, oh wait, thank you!”

Like many things in my life, when personal revelations sweep me up, I may feel the need to share the discovery despite it not being new to everyone (sic).

For instance, Phoebe at the bar told me a story that one of our other teammates tried to pick her up the other night.

A tense glance was thrown around the room, even in our drunken, silly state.

“Uh, what did you do, Pheebs?” I asked, uncomfortably casually.

“I just told him not to lift me up that I didn’t like it.”

A sigh of relief.

“Oh, you mean he literally tried to pick you up.” Sebastian clarified. “Okay.”

“Yeah, I mean I thought you meant that he was flirting with you or something.” I said.

“Probably.” She said, blasé. “I assume you’ll all try to fuck me at some point.”

And then she laughed and knocked down the long-percolating shot, the replacement for the one she thought was dirty.

(As a side note: this sort of behavior makes Phoebe an excellent improviser. When you have a bunch of awkward guys up on stage making stuff up and few women, any attempt at sexual referencing can put women and the audience in a super-bad place super-fast. When Phoebe plays, she loves making fuck-jokes and anytime someone talks all sexy, she’ll go even dirtier than them, or take off her improv pants and say “What are you waiting for?” It’s a very impressive move that both makes us male improvisers look like doofuses in a good way and is refreshing and funny to see on stage.)

The point is that other people have to deal with this stuff too, sometimes more so than not. I probably won’t be hit on all the time, with my psoriasis and my lanky nerdiness now taking over where the chubbiness left off, but when I do I should try to feel it, feel the power of it and give as good as I get.

Just like in improv (sorry Rob), commitment and confidence are cool and important.

After all, I can try to hit on people to.

Instead of just creepily stare at them and kind of try to engage them in conversation, just wondering on and off if they’re interested in me.

Or just be there friend for 6 months (old model of behavior) and try to find some random moment to make out with them.

Skinny Nick doesn’t do those things.

Or if he does he does them skinnier.

And hopefully, with more dancing.

***

A recent obsession of mine has become talking to my phone.

Silly, I know, but I work hard at it.

Part of what got me my current job was my obsession with the minor user-end hacking of iPhones and iPads and how I enjoyed reading about it and customizing it myself.

When I heard it was theoretically possible to put Siri (the voice-assistant service that defines the iPhone 4S) on the iPhone 4, I went through a 30-day quest to find a way, navigating around Paypal scams, free sites and other craziness in pursuit of trying to find something functional.

When I went to France (which I miss more and more now that I am not there) my passion for trying to figure out how to explain a carrier unlock and how it would work never escaped me even as the fervor of it died down as I acceot my iPhone’s limited capacities there.

When I was preparing for my sketch show last night (my sketch was, unsurprisingly, about a man obsessed with Siri), I took time out from a tech-through rehearsal to jailbreak a girl on my team’s iPad 2, just because I could and wanted to. I installed Siri on there, even though it was complicated and unnecessary, just because I wanted to know I could.

Tinkering with these small Apple-locked devices makes me feel like a golden god, even if I don’t know fucking thing one about programming.

There’s only so much to judge here.

Deconstructing my own behavior, my excitement is both natural (I’ve always loved technology and forming a “Power-Rangers Megazord”-style fusion of things) and, like it used to be in mthe last two years of my life, certainly about trying to attain some sort of control, of my life, of something?

Going back into therapy, I recently started talking about film school in my attempt to disarm the psychological bombs I don’t want to deal with inside my head. And looking back on the progress I’ve made in my life since film school, since starting therapy, my life has calmed down a lot, I’ve become a more graceful person, more accepting of the lack of control one has over one’s life and more able to adapt (again, thank you improv and some age/experience).

But I also wonder what in me is “real” in terms of things that I am going through (the desperate-angst of post-collegia I’ve mostly escaped, the brooding-ness of my teens) and what’s there to stay.

Even without the word association of my ex’s name with my own weaknesses, I still miss her sometimes on the other side of my bed when I go to sleep. I still feel that loneliness or need for connection that, while it has lost its desperate edge (I’ve been off OKCupid for a while now) still persists. What is the “human” reaction that one has and what is something psychological that needs to be addressed.

The bas part of self-analysis is the potential for everything to become a complex.

I had a dream four days ago about a Google App called “Appellage” with a little Siri icon in the logo that let you travel in time. It was a confabulation, which is a dream full of things you see every day stitched together. I stare at my phone, talking to Siri. I use a advanced internet browser and look up “apps” for it. Someone in my sketch group had written a time-machine sketch. It was easy to analyze.

I dreamed I took it back in time to see my ex. She was in a diner, but somehow it was after the break-up, we knew what we know now. And she just kept asking me, slightly annoyed: “What do you want to say to me? What do you want to say?” and I didn’t know.

And I woke up.

And I tried saying hello to the Siri on my phone but it was buggy that day.

So I emailed the person who owned the server.

And at 11:35, it was back up.

Like that.

***

When I had a day free, I had lunch with my mother.

This may seem strange to y’all and it still seems strange to me.

I live in proximity of my parents as I have all my life, unlike my college friends, whose move to New York was part-crafty escape, or even my high-school friends who entertained a four-year or so reprieve.

Which is not to say I don’t love my parents, I do very much so and what’s more, enjoy their company.

Is the weir inter-dependence of me conversing with them and them wanting to see me natural, or weird? It’s hard to tell, particularly in New York City.

But it does work out well for lunch dates.

My mother picked on short notice on an off-day from work a place called Buvette which recently opened in the old “Pink Tea Cup” spot on Grove St in the West Village.

Inexpensive and well-reviewed, I quickly agreed, which gives you a sense where I got my restaurant sense from.

We showed up and raced for tables in the cramped Parisian-style bistro (though much nicer really) as the walls closed around us with people trying to sit down for “vienoisseries”.

We managed to grab a seat and I grabbed a cappuccino for recent-times’ sake and a salad full of potatoes and roasted chicken and haricots verts in a mustard dressing.

It was as delicious as it sounded, simple and buttery, with uncomplicated (but present!) spicing and the type of home-made feeling accomplished by your parents digging out the roast chicken from last night and tossing it with some really nice greens and last night’s veggies.

Which makes me remember that I can always go to my parents’ house a couple blocks away and get exactly that.

But maybe it’s nice to engage in false nostalgia sometimes.

And pretend that this is just a lunch date where my mom is in town.

Normal.

***

BUVETTE

Le Salade Poulet (w/haricots verts, pommes de terres)- $14

Grove St. bet Bleecker and Hudson Sts.

1 to Christopher St. PATH to Christopher St.

It really made me remind me coming back to this class how lucky I was.

Now a moment: the teacher last week is by no means a terrible teacher. He gave some great notes and was excellent at the top about emphasizing with the plight of UCB 401 students seeing hard work for limited results and he was good at bringing notice to those limited results.

But Neil today did more than that.

He did not just take us to our problems, he made us fix them.

When we all heard we would be getting our midway notes not in email form but said in front of everyone while we faced the class before immediately afterwards performing a Harold, everyone fucking froze.

But Neil was there, quick, supportive and direct, like a surgeon.

He gave us our notes, our positive stuff and what we needed to work on directly in the next Harold. One girl had to initiate 3 scenes, one guy had to justify everything he said, I had to “act more like a pirate”.

And somehow, instead of being in our heads, we all took the notes as a challenge and somehow, post-possible public shaming, we all had undoubtedly our best sets of the whole class.

Even when the one girl who was challenged to be less shy still struggled, Neil side-coached her into it to hilarious effect. He continued to give her the chance to allow herself not to fail.

This was the difference between my sub and Neil.

The sub was merciless in noting our scenes and I left, with good things to work on, but feeling awful and defensive.

Neil was merciless not just in noting us, but in making sure we’d take the note and succeed.

Everyone left that dreaded class where they had just had their weaknesses exposed to everyone feeling better about themselves and their improv than ever before.

After all, a good laugh is a great way to remember a moment.

So here are the notes, as always somewhat inaccurate, or incomplete. But what I have down is worth it.

It’s my pleasure to take this class and to share these with you, for what it’s worth.

-Nick

***

Literally, my favorite thing about seeing your teachers perform is that they’ve done it 10, 100 times as much as you have and you still see them get on stage and sigh saying, “How do I get out of this one?”

The difference between the man and the boys is that when the scene surprises the men they take it as a gift as opposed to freezing up and thinking what am I doing.

When you are on stage, it’s very easy to be a distraction, nobody likes to hear about it, but you’ve got to put it in check because it will distract from the scene on stage.

Anything that you laugh at, you can break down in terms of game. When there’s other schools of thought that says lets no more about these people rather than playing what’s fun, that’s to be avoided.

If we’re doing a scene where it’s a mother or daughter are estranged again and again, it may distract from the scene or the funny thing.

I’ve had a scene that didn’t go anywhere that was defended by facts or the information, and that’s fair but it still doesn’t in itself mean the scene is good. Who, what, where we are: Clearing the bar set by the rules, doesn’t make it funny.

Think about for tag-outs, think about making sure you show/enable the funny thing. Lets make sure we don’t miss the funny moment for our clever line.

In any pattern games, you might get 10 things you might get none, go back to the suggestion if you don’t have an idea.

Template for a good group game, one little move or reaction at a time.

Structure is the last thing I worry about in a Harold, we could do a Harold of all group games. Learn it then depart from it.

If you’re tempted to take it too big and too goofy, don’t heighten it beyond recognition. Underline the simple thing that is funny that is there.

Don’t let this be another scene of people of sub-optimal intelligence arguing about something stupid.

Adults playing kids is really obnoxious so if you find yourself doing so, maybe some have some innocence or naïveté but don’t use a stupid voice, know things and react

When you’re on a team with people, everyone should be aware of what everyone else on the team is working on, so when I give you notes, they’ll be in front of everyone and then you’ll do a Harold where you work on it and support each other.

Playing to the top of our intelligence is related to realism in that we are always trying to be as intelligent as we can be in our lives, but always try to justify things in improv when they come up.

If you are naturally funny, your natural state will serve you well and it’s great to play straight, but if you’re going to continue to take classes, play around and do something else so you can grow.

Making sense of what your partner is saying, a logic or philosophy, will take us closer to game, rather than cool, isolated moments.

Remember that it can be fun NOT to have control every time. Take risks, we’re improvising because the sky’s the limit, we want to do scenes we’ve never done before.

Even great ideas, hilarious ideas should be thrown out the window in exchange for what’s going on in the moment.

Neil’s Notes for me:

I’d like to see you play against type, you play characters who are smartest guy in the room, play a big character and let someone else figure it out, take a big swing. Billy Meritt says all improvisers are game robots, stealthy ninjas working from the shadows or pirates who are swinging on to other ships waiting to die. Id like to see a little more pirate and a little less robot.

This class we had a sub who I don’t agree with and who teaches frequently so I didn’t take notes.

A moment first to say how incredibly stupid this is.

When one takes an improv class, they are paying to get a trained professional’s opinion. Notes should be like magic candy falling down from the sky, great gifts that when ingested make you better, stronger, quicken the pace of your learning and experience. Especially hard notes or major ones, since they can help protect you from major flaws that you might experience for the rest of your career. They are all gifts and to take them as otherwise is incredibly stupid, since the alternative is just to pay to not listen to something which, while that might resemble many of our college experiences, is not a productive use of time or money.

The self-seriousness that I’ve brought to Neil’s class is admirable and has gotten me comments from people I don’t know and people I respect alike for paying attention and sharing what I learned.

Now to argue the irrational other-half:

This is an art form where you are acting like a jackass in front of other people hoping you might find some validation or laughter. It is painful and often difficult, which can make taking notes hard, since failing hard in a scene is a big blow to the ego, even as I’ve gradually become a more adjusted person. It took me a month to realize the validity of the notes from a Curtis Gwinn workshop because of how I received them (even though they were right!), a couple weeks to grasp the truth of at least some of my second 401 notes and a couple months to grasp the notes from my first, if I even have fully yet. The ego is difficult to protect, especially for people struggling with insecurity, read: all comedians/performers.

So, when I found myself in a class with a teacher who had previously thrown his pad in disgust at a move I made on stage and then continued to note me hard in this class, I just felt like fuck it. I don’t like this guy. This isn’t fun. I’m not taking notes. I’m just going to play with as much confidence as I can, try to make moves and support things even if I don’t know how, just try to have a fun improv class for myself and, if possible lastly, listen to what he had to say.

So I am sorry, community, that I do not have notes to offer for this class, where Neil was not there. I am not perfect, nor a perfect improviser, or anywhere near such.

I am instead an epicly insecure person without a friend in a judgement situation where the goal is to look specific kinds of dumb.

Instead, I will steal another person’s hard work and share with you the extremely valuable notes that Will Hines wrote from an interview with Chris Gethard, who also rarely teaches class nowadays. It even has some parts about what I talk about here.

If anyone cares about what I think (and few people do in these posts), I will say only that I don’t agree about Chris’s comment regarding relationships, his last note. I believe that everything including games, location, what have you is present in the way these characters on stage feel about each other, their relationship. If we move to the unusual, it is from the usual. And there is no better way to ground ourselves, in the usual, in reality, than to think about the relationships that we have with other people. Those dynamics are among the truest things we have to build on. It’s one of the reasons why I love and prefer the Magnet so much, because it is much easier and richer for me to play game when dealing with real people and relationships, much easier to work with a person as opposed to a cardboard cut-out with a game-title on it.

But Chris is much better and more experienced than me. The divide is incredibly stark and wide.

And everything else he says I get 100% behind.

Again, all thanks goes to Will Hines, who is himself, certainly one of the best teachers I have ever had.

Here are the links:

Teaching Interviews: Chris Gethard, Part 1 of 2

Teaching Interviews: Chris Gethard, Part 2 of 2

As always, enjoy and thoughts are welcome.

I’ll leave the depressing girl stuff, for our regular programming.

Like most things, in my life, it started with me looking at my phone.

It was a long day.

Even though I had decided before my trip to France that I would let things crescendo at the holidays before picking up at a more serene pace upon my return, I found myself swept into more and more action upon my return to New York City.

It was good, as my father would have noted to me. I like that, the sweep of activity, finding myself thrown between class and performance and work and friends, finding myself exhausted at the end of the night to wake up early with a purpose.

But I guess it all felt both welcome and sudden and sometimes I just found myself tired.

This was one of those times.

It was 7pm, heading uptown after a twice-a-week midday class. I had to drop off some DVDs in my most despised of neighborhoods: the Upper West Side, a bastion of snotty, self-righteous families and terrible, over-priced food. Needless to say, after a day of already working and a class where (as evident here) I put a lot of attention in to, I was exhausted and ready just to see shows.

Looking back on it, wondering why I was looking at my phone, I would point to the reason I used to give for looking at my phone in classes and inappropriate situations; that is, looking at my phone is a way to separate myself from the present, to detach, to not be there, or to avoid pain.

Such things can be deleterious, but they’re also human. It was late, I was tired, I was carrying my overly-heavy backpack going on a task I didn’t want to do at a time I didn’t want to do it.

So, when I went to cross Amsterdam Avenue looking up only from my phone to see the light had changed. I was surprised when instead of moving out of my way or brushing past, the man who walked near me in the crosswalk decided to push me so hard with his shoulder that what with my big backpack and my lack of attention, I fell on to the asphalt stunned.

A moment. And my brain vanished.

And I pushed myself up and turned around, catching up, to the man who pushed me over who kept on walking. The 65 year-old man in the cap.

“What the fuck is wrong with you man? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

He turned around.

“No. Stop, what the fuck is wrong with you? You pushed me into the crosswalk!”

“I wasn’t the one who wasn’t looking where he was going!” He replied.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” I replied, drooling at the mouth, spit flying. “THIS ISNT A FUCKING MORALITY LESSON YOU PUSHED ME INTO THE CROSSWALK, I COULD HAVE FUCKING DIED YOU PIECE–OF SHIT!”

All the time I was waving and gesticulating my bag of DVDs I had to deliver as I raised my arms in anger.

By the time I noticed it, the energy had shifted. People were gathered round. I was just holding myself back thinking how easy it would be to slam Mad Men Seasons 1 and 2 into this old asshole’s face as I saw the fear on it, as I felt my outrage, as I saw the fear of the people around me.

“GET THE FUCK. OUT OF MY FACE.” I said and turned around and walked into the crosswalk to wait for the light, which had decided in its unassuming way, to trap me there for a time.

“This man is obviously sick.” The 65 year-old man said, before probably walking off himself. I didn’t turn back.

As I walked down 79th Street, I delivered my DVDs on the next block.

“Who is this for?” The doorman asked and I replied. “What’s in here?”

“DVDs.” I told him, adding. “They might be a little wet, I just got knocked into the crosswalk over on Amsterdam.”

But he didn’t reply.

Walking down the street, down 79th, then Columbus, adrenaline raged through me and it was difficult to think, thoughts washed over my head, with meaning and intention, the looks on the onlookers’ faces, thinking I was assaulting this man, knowing that I nearly did, that no one helped me out of the crosswalk that, serious, fuck the Upper West Side.

I didn’t know what to do, I paced and walked and didn’t get on the train.

I phoned my parents and was brusque and upset as I can be when I don’t know what to do.

I stopped at Shake Shack and got a Black and White milkshake which was delicious and drank most of it in an act of self-reward and self-destruction, knowing both that I needed it and I would feel bad about it later.

It was delicious though and maybe all that hot fudge calmed me down.

All this past week, I’ve been talking to my friends about grace and how I admire it, the quality I most desire and what I struggle with. I find out I didn’t get into a class that I wanted and how do I find a way to see it as a gift? How do I forgive my family members when I fight with them? How do I live with life, in short?

I’ve been reading Chris Gethard’s book, which I bought on Tuesday, on a whim looking for time to kill between therapy and lunch and started reading it on the train and in Indian restaurants and in down time, quick drinking like soup.

And the book, which is full of anecdotes from Chris’s life (called “A Bad Idea I’m About To Do”) is all about that, the strange stories from Chris’s life of mental illness, dumps and rejections, near-brawls and intense embarrassment, but simultaneously, it’s also about the way that the worst moments in the moments, become stories to share and to learn from, moments of reflection, now or later.

For instance, as Chris described in his story “Nemesis”, syndicated on a past episode of This American Life, an asshole roommate of his who bullied him, stole gifts from his family and turned his other roommates against him in a whole year of college, revealed only much later that he was jealous of Chris because even though he was doing a ridiculous and mediocre college short-form group he had auditioned for 3 times unsuccessfully, he was pursuing comedy and the roommate never had the balls.

“I’ve become better about forgiving people.” Chris says. “Because I realize I don’t really have enemies in my life. I just have people who are somehow more miserable than me.”

All of the things in my life point to this. My trip to Paris, taking everything as a  gift. Realizing I have a wonderful life, full of friends and opportunities, the same one that leads me to be tired and upset some times.

Still I dwell on those moments, the class I didn’t get into, where I felt betrayed by friends or colleagues. Why is it so easy to dwell in self-pity or anger, I wondered, as I went upstairs to write this post.

The only thing I can come to is that self-pity or anger both involve not reckoning with the responsibility to be open and to be changed. They’re passive ways that degrade you more subtly than the “burden” of trying to deal with what is and move on, or better yet, learn and make it empowering.

As I go on today, as I tell that story, feel bad for myself or good, it’s at least something to remember that I can take from Paris, meandering, that the turn you’re forced to take can be a path of great discovery, in life, in improv, in anything. As long as you see it as a gift, or see that enemy, more miserable than you.

I bombed one show last night that “mattered”, had a great show that “didn’t” and felt great after both of them.

Why?

Because my life is silly and strange. Last week, I got heckled at an ASSSSCAT show, played ping-pong with my buddies and some comedy legends and somehow won a Mercedes-Benz bling medallion and then got to watch or do comedy all the rest of the week.

If something bad happens, maybe I’ll feel bad, but what a chance to see my life for what it is.

So fuck you, 65-year-old man.

But also, you know, fuck me. Or life’s good.

Or whatever.

***

SHAKE SHACK

Black-and-white Milkshake (the best)- $5.44

NE Corner of 77th St and Columbus Av.

1 to 79th St, BC to 81st-Natural History Museum

For those just joining us, these are my hastily written notes from my UCB 401 class with Neil Casey. As always, there are typos, much may not be pertinent, or downright incomprehensible to a lot of people.

But for those of you who’ve been tuning in, here it is:

***

If you are in a scene and you’re trying to get an edit, it’s never going to be pretty/it’s hard to teach damage control.

A lot of times the funniest thing in the scene is when you are able to make sense of disparate things, which is always why being disappointed by a choice is dumb, because the scene you find 99-percent of the time is going to be better than that scene off a premise.

You end up going for a shock laugh or a dirty thing and then you get in a trap where the only thing we have going for us is try to be more shocking. That’s why it’s a bad idea, because audiences are not very shockable.

It’s always annoying when someone tries to make you laugh and fail, but even worse when it’s with something that’s an insult to your intelligence.

If you label me grandma, no matter what I’m going to do I am not gong to be a great grandma, but there’s going to be a big difference between playing my best experience of that or a cartoony grandma. If my whole way of playing it calls attention to it, then that’s what the scene is about, which we don’t want necessarily.

When someone is doing a panic or a panic character, just calm then down.

All things bring equal, your default should always be to play reality, your everyday life as close as you know. Because by your training being grounded, you bring that to even the silliest of characters which makes them believable and palletable. It’s only because you know how to play “you” believably that you earn the right to play in different realities.

Believe me when I tell you if you start your scenes as yourself having a conversation, you will succeed. Just keep the attitude that you’ll tell the truth and you’ll be interested. If its true you can do park bench, you can do a kitchen, start anywhere.

Playing me? Pretending I’m older, younger, slightly different character trait. The people who are the best are the people who can just be themselves at the tops of scenes and it’s easy, because then you can devote yourself to listening to the funny thing or what the audience responds to.

What doing good improv generally is for me is a progression from “Oh, ok.” to “Oh we’re talking about this” to “Oh, this is funny.” and then do more of that. Muddling through, figuring it out, but you can’t force it.

I would rather smack the bullshit out of you guys than have you guys make me laugh every day.

Always play drugs, sex real. Don’t be the corny version. Michael Caine- “Always remember that the drunk is trying not to be drunk.” The drunk/high is rarely spazzing its more distorted normal behavior.

What’s the nature of the relationship between these two people? Pick a situation that make sense and it will inform the scene.

Don’t start scenes where you are nitpicking or that you’re correcting them on something. They’re just going to say “I’m sorry”. Scene over.

You’re never going to help someone’s support moves by judging it being like “I guess” or bailing. It’s not that the fact that it doesn’t make sense, it’s that we let it sit there or all point at it and judge.

It is a perfectly valid approach in improv to open your mouth, say what comes out and deal with it.

The scene that starts with “Yeah, you did something stupid and bad” and someone replying “So what?” We’ve seen that scene a million times, it usually doesn’t end well, do let’s avoid it or find a way out.

There’s no defensive improv, even if I think that isn’t the best move, it doesn’t mean the improvisers on stage weren’t right to support it.

Can we just be conversant in our first beats, play real and then take sharply what was fun about the first beat into a second one when doing Harolds?

As always, these notes are rushed, done as possible with gasps, sometimes relating to specific scenes you don’t know about and maybe highly inaccurate. I’ve talked to Neil though and he seemed fine with the attempt and I hope he’ll let me know in the future if anything is flat-out wrong.

As always share your thoughts if you’d like.

-N

***

Cut-to’s are brutal because there’s no responsibility, just saying “you do it”. It’s jarring for the audience only to be used if necessary.

Sometimes you can get to the fun just by mirroring, filling out the reality rather than inventing or adding.

Group games are all about making small moves following the patterns listening to what everyone’s doing.

Terrible group game is character a and 7 character b. bad is joke a person in a line. Not terrible but we can do that. Third bad one everyone talking over each other.

Fine if you come out one at a time, all at once, mix of the 2 is fine

A group game is not just a scene it can be but a good group game is when the intellect and ability of ability of 8 improvisers following a simple pattern. A lot more ouija board than video game

Everyone’s tempted to take control but you’ll find something much more interesting if you’re just reacting, just like follow the follower: you did something and I’m going to do something like it not the same because I’m me

Don’t label or take control since that’s fear working on you. The smaller the idea to start the group game the better. In a two person scene, we have to get things rolling quickly in a group game each person has a lot less to contribute. It’s pure group mind.

Go drink together after your class, like your teammates. It will keep you from being as stand-offish /conflicting in scenes.

If you’re coming in with a premise, hit that premise hard so it’s not open to interpretation and if it doesn’t stick be okay with that. At that point you’re doing an organic scene even if you don’t need to. Don’t be so passive that you are sticking with your premise without hitting us with it. Ideas are cheap, they can be discarded immediately if they’re not useful.

In any human affairs when you start saying “you do it”, you’re kind of sunk. It’s not good teamwork.

Make your move, don’t play tug-of-war. If they don’t get your move, make it harder. Don’t just stare at each other as improvisers and have a pissing contest.

If you think you’re playing a woman and you’re referred to ad a buddy but he takes her to a dirty movie and called a buddy that can be the game. Just figure it out. One of you is right, but just make the decision.

The fact that I come and see improvisers getting annoyed for another improviser for making a move is mind-blowing. This isn’t rehearsed and even a “bad” move is a gift, there is no script for this. The best improvisers are always generous and say let’s make this work, they’re never pouting on stage saying “what are you doing in my scene?”

For those improvisers, I still just hope it’s interesting (it is to me) and I’d love to hear your thoughts.

-Nick

***

Find a way to avoid stalemates, find ways to affect each other because the person who has a reaction, even when we’re disagreeing, bicker in a way that I know these people care.

Take pride in your job, in sex, whatever. Always care. If we catch ourselves playing characters who don’t care about each other find a way to care

If someone is being terrible to her and “drops a bomb” it’s either the other character being terrible or that this is the family/place/people who don’t like them/are terrible.

Who cares is just as important as who what and where. What are the stakes in this scene and why are we seeing it?

Don’t clever your way into two robots talking until the end. Part of what matters is the relationship between this two people and heightening that intensity.

What’s funny is the revelation, not game necessarily but the characters realizing their own situation, since it’s true to realize your own behavior and find ways that’s heightened.

If you’re not doing an opening, don’t start scenes with premises off one-word suggestions. It’s better to find something than a half-baked premise. I want to see you yes-and your way into finding the scene instead of ruminating on the back line to come up with a sketch idea.

A half-idea is great, a comedic premise is harder. “Sweetie we’re out of Chex” is fine.” “Sweetie were out of Chex because you always throw out our cereal” not so much.

What game idea did you get from “pineapple”? Just discover.

Openings are our way of creating special books in the library were making of comedic ideas. Great to draw a premise from it. But totally fine to come out with a half-idea or just a suggestion.

Corny is lazy, make full characters.

Never leave anyone hanging. Edit or come in even if you don’t know how to support.

It’s always better to edit sooner than later, but there is a difference between a laugh of completion and a laugh of a scene just starting. Know the difference between both and a pity laugh which requires the edit. (After a minute or two have these people earned the extension?)

Premise makes us feel like we can be goofy.

It’s really awful to watch people act like “look at me on stage, look how funny I am” because you’re pushing 30, I payed 5 dollars for this.

Don’t let the fact that you have a funny premise lower your level of acting. You’re always going to fuck up, but commit to try to honor it or else you’re disrespecting your audience because you’re not honoring the funny idea.

When someone’s acting is sitcomy when it betrays the premise, they don’t need to be there. When you see people play it real, the funny hits harder.