Worshops!

I just lead the adult workshop. Frequently we have to co-lead them, or one person leads and another is the silent peon. It is hard to be the silent peon, but you just astral project yourself and think about how you are a beautiful martyr. It is not hard to lead them. Turns out I enjoy it immensely, although I may describe them as “a mess” when I am in charge. Insofar as I’m like “why are you acting weird” to my silent partner peon and then realize what I’ve said is “clear as mud!” as a passenger told me, which was accurate. They got the general idea and I had fun time 6000, which is important because they are going to ask these questions, which they did ask: “so what’s next for you” “how do you support yourself” “do you have a significant other or do you just kinda do whatever on the ship.”

We do a warm-up exercise where you stand in a circle and throw imaginary balls to people in the circle. The first ball is a red ball. You make eye contact with person, say “red ball.” Throw ball to person. Person catches it, says “thank you red ball” then does the whole sequence with someone else. Then we add another ball. What color is it? Blue. Hahaha. I am holding 2 balls in my hand. Hahaha. I know where your minds are. Hahaha. Blue balls blue balls blue balls blue balls blue balls blue balls blue balls, hahahahaha, I’m dead inside. I am currently resisting going on a 6,000 word diatribe about balls and people saying “balls” and intrinisic humor about balls and whether or not our civilization is broken at the foundation. ANYWAY. Normally we add another color, and then add a “monkey ball” and then have to laugh until we explode because the inherent humor of balls is exponentially improved with the addition of a monkey. However, we made it instead throwing a live monkey. Then we added another thing, which was pushing a large column. So people were saying “red ball,” “thank you red ball,” “blue ball,” “thank you blue ball,” “monkey ball,” “thank you monkey ball,” “column,” “thank you column.” The column made everyone confused because “where’s the column!” “did you push the column at me?” “I have the column and a ball I think.” I have a very vivid imagination, so I saw a 50’s-ish friendly African-American lady with a giant white column in front of her saying “how did this get here?”

My months of keeping my silence also meant I insisted on playing something called “documentary” (I think), where people sit in a line and you interview them. My roommate said “don’t you think that’s a little advanced?” and I informed her she didn’t know anything. My silent peon partner doubted me as well, to which I gently informed him he didn’t know anything either. I figured maybe 6 would want to participate. Instead, there were about 12. My silence and positive faith in the success of the exercise meant that I just said “so just like, pick a character and if you can’t think of anything, do your mom, hahaha” to a bunch of people who probably work construction or are retirees. This translated into the following characters: Scarlett O’Hara, Brittany Spears, Jimmy Conner, Carl Sagan, two guys swapping identities (“I’m Seth” “I’m Bryan Sanderson”) and others. The second to the last guy was in a wheelchair in real life and clearly had something wrong with his legs. Another person in the line chose the character of Dr. Bob Richards. The gentleman in the wheelchair said he was Scarlett O’Hara’s gardener until Dr. Bob Richards threw him from his tractor and ran it over his legs and “now look at me! Look at these legs! They’re useless!” which I would call Very Uncomfortable for everyone but the guy talking who was having a great time.  Also, being Carl Sagan and just saying “billions and billions of stars” is technically wrong™ but thank God he did it, because otherwise it was Crick Ets.

After the workshop, a guy came up to Nate and his first words were “am I stupid?” because he didn’t get things from the show and wanted to find out why someone ate a brain and why people found that funny because “I thought it was a comedy show and that was…” He actually thought we made sense when he was just noticing the things we did that made no sense. And it turns out he’s from Hershey and will be delivering donuts to my mom’s college.

Then a hilarious woman insisted I go to Tampa Bay because she took a great improv class there and there is a really great gay, lesbian, transgendered community there with things like poetry readings. So.