I’m at the MIT reunion — the 25th year reunion for the Class of 1988 — and I’m staying in a graduate student dorm. Yesterday poured rain for most of my drive here, and this morning started gray and damp.

But this afternoon is the kind of afternoon that makes one want never to leave.

Here’s an early interview with the Beastie Boys from 1985, when they were on tour opening for Madonna (a double-bill that I would have boggled at at the time but now would give all my teeth to have seen).

Other interviews I’ve found so far include David Foster Wallace and James Brown. I’m watching Jim Morrison next. Do check it out

There are lots of things that interest me about doing improv, but one of the top is that there’s no time when you’re performing improv that you can perfect anything. The scene you are making exists, and then it’s gone — it exists perhaps vaguely in your memory, and maybe a bit more clearly in the memory of the audience, but there’s nothing else to show it ever even happened. And what this means is that you can’t worry about polishing or revising or rethinking. Whatever you were able to do was as good as it could be.

This though is also frustrating, because it doesn’t allow for the kind of practice that you can work on in, for example, sports or playing an instrument or even acting. You can’t repeat things until you get them right. The only way to practice is to perform or rehearse, and rehearsals are really just performances without an audience. Every scene is different from every other scene you’ve done before, and for me this means it’s hard to learn from what I’ve done before. The combination of what my scene partner or partners have said and done, any contributions from the people on the back line, the input and reaction of the audience, my own mindset: It’s different every time, and what “worked” or didn’t previously doesn’t help me a lot in choosing what to do now.

Even programming isn’t as variable as this. Computers are very complex, but the ways we interact with them and what we can do with them is structured, so it’s finite.

All of this is a long way of saying that I’m extremely frustrated at what feels to me to be the very slow pace at which I’m learning to do improv. Like, glacially slow. Sure, I’ve been at this for not yet three months, but I can’t help but want to be getting better at it faster.

In the charmingly animated interview I posted above, David Foster Wallace talks about how he discovered the limit to how far he could go in competitive tennis, about being impatient with teachers he had in school, and about how differently he viewed things once he himself began to teach. None of this is exactly the same as what I’m felling about learning improv, but all of it is sort of resonant: creating without worry about perfection, learning as a practice, accepting that others with more experience have useful information to share, trusting that learning is a journey that never ends, being humble.

It’s still maddening though.

I am not a great singer, but it was a great moment. It was the end of a scene I was improvising with my buddy Chelsea for our Improv Level 1 Class Show. I needed to sing something, and that was the first song that came to mind. I think is was kind of the perfect song for the moment.

If you are sad you missed last Saturday’s show, do not despair. I’ll be performing again this Thursday, along with several of the quick-witted and fun people from my class plus a few more experienced improv-ers. And it’s not just a regular improv performance: It’s a competition, a battle for the hearts and minds (and votes) of the audience. It is THE CAGE MATCH.

THE CAGE MATCH
April 4, 2013
9:00PM - 10:00PM

Two teams each get 20 minutes to do their improv set, then you the audience vote on who comes back the next week to defend the belt. Two teams enter, one team leaves.

Toros! vs Le Master

$5 for the whole night. Come early and see ruckus. Stay late to get up at the Jam Session
Scit students get in free.

At the Steel City Improv Theater.

Here’s the thing: I need for you to come to this show — partly to make me feel loved and appreciated, partly so my team and I can bring you joy and chaos and laughter, and mostly so you can vote for us, so we win Cage Match and can go on to compete again the next week.

(Our team is currently called Le Master, but I expect the name will change by show time.)

It’s just $5 for the show — for that admission fee you can see the shows before and after Cage Match too, for three hours of uproariousness. And you’ll have my undying appreciation. Plus, I’ll buy you a drink afterwards, even if you vote for the other team. 

Information and directions, including very important information about constructions closings for Highland Avenue and Ellsworth, are waiting for you at the Steel City Improv website.

You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Won’t you please come have fun with us?

Amanda Palmer gives a TED talk: The art of asking.

Don’t make people pay for music, says Amanda Palmer: Let them. In a passionate talk that begins in her days as a street performer (drop a dollar in the hat for the Eight-Foot Bride!), she examines the new relationship between artist and fan.

Alt-rock icon Amanda Fucking Palmer believes digital content should be free, and that artists can and should be directly supported by fans via a “patronage” model.

Via the QI Elves.

You can get a sense of the energy and flair of the show from this trailer as well, narrated by Ted Pappas. 

Watch “Ted Pappas declares this video to be self-evident” on YouTube.

The founding of our nation comes to star-spangled life in this grand Tony Award-winning Best Musical. In 1776 you’ll see the heroes of the American Revolution like you’ve never seen them before – in rousing songs and dances, comic encounters, and impassioned politics. The stakes have never been higher as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin wrangle to get everyone of the same page – namely, the Declaration of Independence. Directed by Ted Pappas, theatrical fireworks will fill the O’Reilly Theater in this thrilling story of how we went from 13 colonies, to the United States of America. 

1776 – the Musical
O’Reilly Theater, Pittsburgh Public Theater 
January 24, 2013 – February 24, 2013
Find tickets and more info on the Pittsburgh Public Theater website.