Sticks Author: Steve

You can ask anybody and they’ll tell you that I’m terrifically heroic.

It comes first probably from my physical gifts.  I basically feel obligated to save people and animals and to do what’s right and aggressive and patriotic for my country.  When you are blessed with a 40-inch waist and hidden cheekbones, you either pose for the NBA logo or you live out your life as a comic book legend.

So it’s the life that chose me really.  I didn’t choose it, but I do what I must since the Spiderman movies taught me about great power coming with great responsibility and movie reboots after broadway debacles.

So this weekend I am heroically going to our nation’s Capital to ensure that the food and booze there is free from toxins and global warming and mistreated livestock.  I’ve got a great way to do this.  I’ve done it before.  I know what I’m doing.  Rest easy America.

The rest of The Sticks, who could maybe shoulder some of the heroic burden every freaking once in a while, are performing here in Connecticut.

Performing!

Prancing around on the stage PRETENDING.  Yucking it up to feel better about themselves while I am off protecting our civil disobedience liberties and lecheries.  By the time I’m on my 21st selfless act of bingeness or maybe brushing up on the latest techniques at the International Spy Museum, they’ll be basking in the glow of their impact on an audience.  Cowards.

Anyway, heroism is lonely work and only the most humble can do it as awesomely as I do.  No need to worry about me.  My wife will be witness to my spectacle and it will reinforce all of the reasons she’s chosen to settle.

If you’re able, go give The Sticks a piece of my patriotic mind.  They’ll be the guest performers at Sea Tea Improv’s long form showcase tonight 3/16.  7:30, Studio At Billings Forge in Hartford right next to Firebox restaurant (one of the best places to eat in the state).

Watch for me on CNN!

Sticks Author: Steve

Let me tell you about my friend Chris M.  After that, I’ll tell you why his intro to our performance last Friday at Playhouse On Park in West Hartford mattered.

Chris is a bit older than most of us.  Older enough than me that I can remember my impressions about him from when I was as young as 11 or 12 and he was just hitting his 20s.  Chris was the artistic and intellectual center for most of us and honestly probably still is.  I know that I looked up to him during some crucial youth theater years.  He was a performer.  A magician who even as a young kid worked the craft, a clown, an actor and a director.  He would teach us prat falls and stage direction.  He directed me in my first and most significant role as a 7th grader when I got to be a noir detective with a rubber chicken billy club.  A funny role.  One that I’m sure is still talked about amongst the crowd of parents who got to see it. Remember the kid with the rubber chicken?!!! HE USED IT LIKE NUNCHUKS! 

All of us in The Sticks grew up like that, doing theater every summer for 4 weeks, 5 weeks, 10 weeks.  I’d do shows with Chris, now on his staff, and I felt important.  He was making a living directing, doing magic – he is still a name in the better magic circles.  All because he honestly worked the craft, over and over, again and again, not because he needed to, but because he had to.  “You don’t choose your art, it chooses you,” he’d say and I’d feel unartistic because even though I liked to write, it didn’t hold me down and force me to type or think or imagine.  I didn’t do it at all hours of the day and night.  I didn’t force myself to relearn it all after an accident set me back.  He did.

Chris always did these things because it was in him and it would poke out of him until he worked it, shaved it down, smoothed it.

So when Chris started talking about improv, I listened.  Improv was always my favorite part of the theater experience.  I loved the games and had been playing them since his father taught them to me in sixth grade.  We all did.  Over and over.  Change a scene, add a scene.  When Whose Line Is It Anyway came out on the BBC, we felt nerdily superior because WE KNEW ALL OF IT!

But two years ago when he brought it up, Chris was talking about something called The Harold.  I barely knew what it was.  He went off to New York a few times and learned, I read a bunch of books.

So The Sticks, we are all Chris.

Which is why his introduction to our show in West Hartford was for us as much as anything.  It wasn’t an apology about our origins, our amateurishness, our approach.

It was a YAWP!

A burly, barbaric yawp 30 years building in our gullet.

He talked about how audacious it was to imagine teaching this thing to ourselves, but indicated that we had no choice!  There are 12 people in The Sticks and 14 children spread among us.  There are 4 married couples in The Sticks, 2 people dating and two people with husbands/wives not in the group.   We can barely get enough babysitting from the town we live in to cover us to rehearse!  And when we do get out, we bring lots of booze because it’s a night out no matter what is happening.

But we did it and it’s hard and The Harold makes us all its bitches, but we did it.  My favorite part about it is working it over and over, turning each moment around, overanalyzing, trying again.  He’s got us all in the mode of working it to be better.

I’ve known him now a long, long time and had so so so much fun and gin with him.  I wasn’t sure where he was going with that intro, but I got it by the end.  Yawp to you Chris!

Sticks Author: Steve

This barely counts as a blog entry, but this stuff makes me laugh.

Here are some actual, weird search terms people have used to find this little blog:

1. “She out wrestled me and tickled me silly.” I don’t know the context for this search nor do I know why it pointed to this blog.  But I do know that anybody who uses the phrase “tickled me silly” is likely to get out wrestled under most circumstances.
2. “How is pig turned into toothpaste.”    Crest with “pork the other white meat” whitening power.
3. “Peeing on beer bottle.”  I’m ashamed to say that I find this arousing.
4. “Ladies group games.” I’m completely unashamed to say that I find this arousing.
5. “Sexy baba yaga.” Is there any other kind?
6. “Wander of allah in super outer space.”  This is really just a series of safe words I think.
7. “How long does improv on ice w/ stix last.”  Just long enough to get to Mr. Roboto.
8. “Diaper wedgie.”

Sticks Author: Steve

No seriously.  I just ate dinner and it’s probably my last one.  It was pork that I grilled for my wife and kids and I think I undercooked it.  So, it’s obvious that I’m going to die probably right after rehearsal tonight.

What does this mean?

First, it means that I’ll probably have really bad diarrhea.  I think that’s what happens when you get Porcine Poisoning.  And then it means that my fellow Sticks will have a really tough decision to make because we are supposed to perform for the first time this Friday night.

Here’s how I think the discussion will go:

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Chris M: Okay guys <wipes tears> Steve is… <severe lip tremble> gone.

Allison: Whatever.  Screw that guy anyway!

Rachel: Hey! <drops to knees> No!!! No!!!!!!!! Don’t speak of him that way! <makes imploring gestures to the heavens>

Chris M: <comforts Rachel> It’s okay.  It’s okay.