SUNDAY
I drove up to the Canadian border, and I accidentally ended up in the “Nexus” lane, which is basically Frequent Flyer club for border crossers. I am not a frequent flyer. So I was questioned intensely- why was I in that lane? (NB: “Siri told me to” is not a valid excuse). I only lied to the border guard twice, and was admitted to Canada.
I got to perform with an improv group in Vancouver, British Columbia (that means they’re Canadian, so they like hockey and they’re always sorry about shit). They’ve been performing their show for 11 years, and they do it at a very cool space called the Fox Cabaret. I’m never at my most comfortable when meeting new people (I suppose I could have stopped at “never at my most comfortable,”) but they could not have been more friendly and welcoming. Caitlin (sp?), Ryan, Kevin, and Martin were a lot of fun, and the show was a joy. We “warmed up” before the show (not my bag, man! We’ve never “warmed up” before an ASSSSCAT show, and for The SWARM we huddle up right before we go on and all say in unison “Nooooo Doubt!”, only because I saw a documentary once about No Doubt and that’s what they would do before shows and I thought it was hilarious) with a very intimate, physical warmup that involved deep, meaningful eye contact and cheek-touching and stuff with everybody in the group, then did a first half of short form stuff and a second half of longform stuff. It was a lot of fun, and Kevin’s obscene swarm of bees is something I’ll never forget.
In between, Evany Rosen (who also performed with us and was very funny) read from her hilarious book, What I Think Happened. You can get a copy here. Or here. Or here.
The house was packed, and people seemed to enjoy it (even the guy who sat in the front row, and immediately plunked his feet up on the stage as if he were a bored small-town sheriff). I feel like people only ever do that at improv shows (Word keeps autocorrecting “improv” to “improve”- a message from the Universe?). If you’re at a show, don’t put your feet on the stage. My old friend John Cameron Telfer used to do a thing where he would come out and go right up to somebody who had their feet on the stage, and he would look at them in a curious and friendly manner, and say cheerfully, “Hi! Are you in show business?” And when the person invariably said no, Telfer would scream, “THEN GET YOUR FUCKING FEET OFF THE STAGE!” And it was hilarious. Every time.