benzado

nicolemarietherese: I…don’t follow what you’re saying at all. But maybe I am bad at...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:42:16 -0500

I…don’t follow what you’re saying at all. But maybe I am bad at metaphors.

So…because people are having trouble finding…rain…they should create a system whereby they … INTERVIEW other people to see if they want to let … those people …into their rain with them?

I wasn’t lucky. Ben. I organized 80% of the practice sessions I went to. And I kept them open sessions because I understood that my desire to find a place and to find opportunities within the community was probably shared by others.

Yeah. I’m saying it. When I was in 201 - I MADE IT RAIN.

I have no idea why I’m still talking about this. I DON’T EVEN LIKE TWITTER.

I have lost my mind.

Usually the fault for a bad metaphor lies with the writer.

Anyway, the point is that Caitlin posted something interesting which a lot of people reacted to, but Twitter didn’t have the space to give it the discussion the depth it deserves. So I did some copy and pasting and here we are.

Thanks, everybody!

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:59:19 -0500

nicolemarietherese:

But something about the instinct to formalize this crazy, organic process makes me really sad. And some of my favorite people (well, Miles) are people I never would have met if it wasn’t for being randomly invited to groups without previous knowledge. I discovered Kat T. because somebody from my 201 told me I would love the girl who looked a little like Helena Bonham Carter and organized everything. I miss thirteen person practice groups with Hiller because no one knew how to say no. The heartbreaking decisions come later. This is the easiest time. I hate to hear that people are so overcomplicating it.

My point was that some people aren’t as lucky as you were. Rather than being swept up into a wonderful hurricane of activity, some people are standing outside with a closed umbrella and a hand out waiting for it to rain. You’re telling them they should run around without an umbrella and just enjoy the excitement of getting wet. But for them, it’s not even raining, and they don’t know how to make it rain.

They aren’t overcomplicating it. They are looking for water.

bransonreese: I’ve been in New York for over a year now and probably as a result of my shyness and...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:03:00 -0500

bransonreese:

I’ve been in New York for over a year now and probably as a result of my shyness and two inconveniently timed vacations I have had horrible luck forming and getting onto practice teams. I’m on a team now, mostly as a result of the heroic efforts of Chris McKeever. I’ve got to say, if this interview team was accepting applications a few months ago, I’d have written up a resume so fast my fingers would’ve gotten blood all over them. That’s how quickly I would’ve typed.

Does that make me some sort of scab? I certainly hope not. Maybe I’m projecting, but socially interacting with people can be terrifying for me. Maybe by making it into an interview, they were trying to eliminate that stress and turn it into an environment we’ve all experienced. I’m not sure what was going through that team’s collective minds, and I’m not sure I care. I just hope that the improv people of new york don’t turn their back on whoever did apply for that team. I imagine that they’re just trying to be accepted into this awesome but very intimidating community.

That being said, I laughed at most of those tweets when I read your post, Ben.

Oh, I didn’t say they weren’t funny. Just unfair.

ninakix: Designer Tan Weihao Rios has created this incredibly...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:53:59 -0500

ninakix:

Designer Tan Weihao Rios has created this incredibly cute-looking alarm clock, which will allow you to wake up or catch a bit more sleep. DOoP will help you figure out how many hours you’ve slept and how much sleep you’re getting, and how much you actually need. This sleep deficit is problematic for most people, as they become really inefficient due to lack of sleep. The red and green dials on the face will remind you where you are at. They will tell you how much sleep you need. There is also a countdown timer and a night light. DOoP will wake you up with sound and light, engaging more of your senses. (via Apartment Therapy Unplugged)

I tried to find out more information about this clock and discovered it doesn’t exist. Tan Weihao Rios is a fourth year design student, and as far as I can tell he didn’t even build a prototype, just designed a 3D model in a computer. I’m not even sure how much beyond the appearance he has designed, because all of the articles about it cite as their source a blogspot post which doesn’t describe how the clock works at all.

So, what actually does the clock do, and how much of the feature descriptions are projected desires? The idea of tracking your sleep debt, so that you can pay it off in the future, is attractive. For it to work, you would have to be pretty diligent about hitting a button before you go to sleep and after you wake up, and handle cases like forgetting to hit the button, or spending a night away from home. Or what do you do when you get in bed, hit the button, then two hours later find yourself awake and unable to fall asleep? Should there be another button for, “Nevermind, I haven’t actually been sleeping?” Now it’s starting to sound like, in practice, the thing would be too complicated to be useful.

For a product, all of those considerations are part of the design, and whether they have been addressed separates a great product from a mediocre piece of junk. Too many people with Great Ideas haven’t considered all the unpleasant edge cases that a product will have to deal with in the real world. The worst is when those issues are brushed aside as mere details that somebody else will deal with.

But in the details is where the devil hides.

Vacation.

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:02:44 -0500

melissagomez:

I plan on going to Ohio next week and I just noticed that every single show in the history of man-kind that I would’ve loved to see is happening those six days I’m gone.

[List of Shows Removed]

This is why nobody takes a vacation in our little comedy sub-culture. Part of my brain knows this is ridiculous, but the other part is just so upset and loves to indulge. I figure this will be my short detox - an introduction to what my two-month Colombian adventure will be like in December.

I’ve learned that every epic, must-see, you-had-to-be-there show/party/fight is talked about for at most 4 days after the fact. Then something else comes along, and nothing before it matters.

Plus, if it’s really a big deal, your friends will talk about it so much that you’ll have false memories of being there. So it’s a win-win.

Enjoy your vacation.

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:42:45 -0500

So, this happened on Twitter yesterday:

caitorade At the UCB Training center right now, an improviser is interviewing to become part of a practice group. Let’s push back against this, agree?

benzado If that group wants to do it that way, it’s up to them. And if it catches on, that probably means it works. But I doubt it will.

katespencer Interviewing?!

WinstonNoel Listen, I wrote that guy’s rec letter. Back off.

timothydunn Hey listen. My improv might not be very strong, but I’m very proficient in Excel.

jpurnell wow, that’s what it’s come to?

patbaer I dislike it when half a practice group no shows because they’re not committed, but this seems extreme.

adambozarth This makes me really sad. Unless this practice group offers 40k/year with health and dental insurance.

mikescollins What ever happened to the improv days of just making prospects strip naked and circling whats wrong with their bodies in marker?!

ruby_sneakers unbelievable.

DStoley are they still accepting applications?

I think those of us who are already “plugged in” take for granted how hard it is for someone new to the scene to get a group together. If I want to, I’m spoiled for choice, but it took some time to get here. Most of the people I started practicing with were not classmates. You would likely never have heard of me if I hadn’t been a regular at Improdome. I never would have been a regular if I didn’t used to live so close to the PIT; I had a day job.

If “interviewing” isn’t acceptable, what’s the right way to do it? Sitting in for a practice is great, if you can afford to spend the time and money. What’s wrong with wanting to talk to the person first, to get an idea if you get along or not?

I know it’s just Twitter, where the goal is to fit as much snark as you can in 140 characters or fewer. But it’s unfair pass judgment on interviewing, or any idea, if you don’t have a better idea to offer.

"I just want somebody to see me cry."

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:21:56 -0500

“I just want somebody to see me cry.”

- M.H.

awkward

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:12:14 -0500

chelc:

there was a doorbell ring, I suspected it might be con ed, i didn’t answer it, someone else in the building did. when he came to the door I was already at the peep hole peeping.

He stopped and knocked.

Man: Con Edison

rang the doorbell.

Man: Here to read your meter.

Man: I can see you looking at me.

Chelsea: Can you come back another time!

UGH!!! I ALWAYS SPY OUT OF THAT PEEPHOLE!! SINCE FOREVER!!! YOU CAN SEE MY SPYING EYE?!?!?!!?!?!!!! This is a blow.

You can see a small amount of light through the hole, so that when somebody puts their eye to it, it goes dark. That’s why some peepholes have a cover: from the outside they always look dark.

Of course, he probably just said, “I can see you looking at me” to the door, not sure if anybody was on the other side, but hoping you would give yourself away. Like a magician announcing that he will pull a rabbit out of every hat he reaches into, eventually he’ll be right.

Next time: call his bluff, and don’t answer.

So, I’m trying to get some non-improv-geeks to come to our...

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:11:06 -0500

So, I’m trying to get some non-improv-geeks to come to our shows.

My review of the pilot episode of "V"

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:14:43 -0500

It felt a little careless and rushed, as though the writers wanted to get all the boring (to them) exposition out of the way in one episode (yeah yeah first contact blah blah big deal) so they can get to the good (to them) stuff (fuck yeah alien human war). We’ll see.

"When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker..."

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:50:48 -0500

“When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ”Where do we go from here?” August 16, 1967.

"There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born..."

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:43:23 -0500

“There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter—the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last—the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.”

- Here is New York, E.B. White (via chrysilla) Of all the poetry and literature quotations posted in subway cars, this one (in abridged one) is my favorite.

rubysneakers: This is sounding more and more like Amy Poehler’s quote about how she treats...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:48:18 -0500

rubysneakers:

This is sounding more and more like Amy Poehler’s quote about how she treats improv as her sacred space - as her church. I believe that so much right now. I want to stop judging and just treat that stage and that rehearsal space with that level of commitment. It’s also just a really useful metaphor. Even if you don’t view the improv stage as your personal sacred space (although if you’ve been doing this for more than a couple years and you still don’t think of it that way… not quite sure why you are doing it), you would still respect it as such right? I am not a Christian, but I still respect cathedrals as spaces.

All the good Christians I have ever known have said that a church is not a space, it is the congregation. I always interpreted Amy Poehler’s comment in the same light.

There have been two different churches in my life. My Egyptian relatives would drive over an hour every Sunday, from several different directions, to attend Saint Mary Coptic Orthodox Church in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. My family would make the trip only occasionally. After services everybody would gather downstairs to eat and socialize. Everybody was friendly, but almost every interaction was embarrassing for me because they all knew my name but I didn’t remember anybody else’s. I was young, shy, and saw them less than once a month.

At some point my family started attending Grace United Methodist Church in Natrona Heights, very close to our home. Here we attended regularly, and my brother and I joined the youth group and even went to a national convention in, strangely enough, Salt Lake City, Utah. It seemed like I should have an easier time fitting in, except for the fact that the rest of the youth went to one of two schools in the area, while I went to a prep school miles away. So even though I was more involved, everybody else still saw each other more frequently than I did.

In both cases, I was insanely jealous that everybody else was a part of a community and, for whatever reason, I didn’t fit into it. And I wanted it, so badly.

When I started taking improv classes, I seriously had no idea what I was getting into. Betsy Stover literally instructed us to go out and drink together after our 101 classes, because classes that socialize do better. Perhaps if she hadn’t said that, the past three years of my life would have turned out very differently.

I know now, the feeling I get when I step into the theatre and see my friends, is the feeling that I grew up watching other people have at church. It has only a little to do with the physical space, only a little to do with improv as a spiritual cult sort of thing, but everything to do with the people. Everything to do with the community. That is what makes it sacred to me.

P.S. I only quoted a small portion above. If you haven’t read the entirety of Katey’s manifesto, do it now.

bridgecomedy: kateoplis: Space hotel says it’s on schedule to...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:32:43 -0500

bridgecomedy:

kateoplis:

Space hotel says it’s on schedule to open in 2012. The Barcelona-based architects of The Galactic Suite Space Resort say it will cost $4.4 million for a three-night stay at the hotel, with this price including an eight-week training course on a tropical island. (via MSNBC)

Please let me magically have $4.4 million by 2012 for this express purpose.

This makes me wonder if history will repeat itself and, in the future, those of us without the means to afford private space travel will still be able to see the universe by joining some kind of galactic navy. I’m not really a military man, but a slogan like “Join Starfleet, See the Galaxy” would be enough to convince me to enlist.

Also, I’d much rather fly around in a cool-looking starship than spend three nights in a orbiting wad of cigarette butts.

Geocities Saved!

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:43:59 -0500

Geocities Saved!

"Adding the random element to collection quests, no matter how illogical it might be, turns an..."

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:04:23 -0500

“Adding the random element to collection quests, no matter how illogical it might be, turns an otherwise flat “Kill ‘x’ creatures” quest into a dopamine roller-coaster of failures and successes. You feel satisfaction when that quest item drops. You also feel frustration when it doesn’t drop, but at least you feel something more than counting kills.”

- CQPR - Questing for Dopamine - World Of Warcraft

rubysneakers: chrisreblogs: I have never really been a fan of Stargate. Mostly I have found the...

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:54:30 -0500

rubysneakers:

chrisreblogs:

I have never really been a fan of Stargate. Mostly I have found the show campy and silly. A few interesting ideas but it always felt like Sliders meets Xena with some military crap on top of it.

But I’ve been watching Stargate Universe and digging it. Clearly influenced by BSG, in a good way. Sure, the set up is pure Voyager which would turn off most TV sci-fi fans. But I love the idea of being on an alien ship, trying to figure stuff out, struggling for resources, incredibly far from home.

Worth a look.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE AWESOME MOVIE THAT WAS AWESOOOOOME?!?

Ancient Egyptian space travel, FTW!

"What I keep hearing from Washington is one of two arguments: either (1) the stimulus has failed,..."

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:14:35 -0500

“What I keep hearing from Washington is one of two arguments: either (1) the stimulus has failed, unemployment is still rising, so we shouldn’t do any more, or (2) the stimulus has succeeded, G.D.P. is growing, so we don’t need to do any more. The truth, which is that the stimulus was too little of a good thing — that it helped, but it wasn’t big enough — seems to be too complicated for an era of sound-bite politics.”

- Paul Krugman, Too Little of a Good Thing

NaNoWriMo: A Pep Talk and a Warning | 43 Folders

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:13:43 -0500

NaNoWriMo: A Pep Talk and a Warning | 43 Folders:

Are you writing a novel this year?

"Even when they take a biohazard on board, they contain it exclusively with a forcefield, which means..."

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:57:21 -0500

“Even when they take a biohazard on board, they contain it exclusively with a forcefield, which means that the lives of the entire crew are dependent on the continued operation, millisecond by millisecond, of some forcefield generator. I know that bottles and walls may seem “primitive” to the pinheads who write the show, but they work. And in engineering, you use what works.”

- Engineering and Star Trek. For Brett, who was interested in hearing about how the Enterprise was less than perfect.