Schadenfreude Meeting 3/3/05 Minute-By-Minute

Okay, haven't been blogging enough so I'm going to do a little experiment and blog during the Schadenfreude rehearsal tonight. Tonight is not picked for any special reason

5:45 - 7:00- Claire Zulkey and John Green of Funny Ha Ha (a staged reading event put on at the Hideout from time to time) stop by, they are putting on a show with us on April 27th at the Double Door, you can get your tickets on ticketmaster. We are deciding what acts to pursue, a combination of monologuists, stand-ups, two-man acts, eccentric music.

7:15 - After a little chatter the topic turns to the business at hand. We have a show in two days at Macalestar College in Minnesota, we're very underprepared and we have a lot to do.

So we avoid it.

7:30 - Sandy and Justin jam out on the drums and guitar working on their version of "Semiturn Kind of Life." Last year are the after-party after the show Justin and sandy found a drum and guitar set up in the basement of the party house and spent much of the night entertaining the crowd with the two songs they knew. "Semiturn" and "So Lonely" by the Police. They plan a triumphant return and have prepared heavily by memorizing the second verse.

8:00 - Working on the sketch called "Patriot Act" It's about a folksinger in a hippy coffeeshop who, it turns out is a republican and starts singing a song about how great the patriot act is. We frist performed this last fall during an four week run at the Lakeshore Theatre. This is actually why

8:09 - Oops, blogging, missed my line. I play a hippy who protests the turn from Liberal to Conservative.

8:15 - Struggling with the number of local references that were in the original sketch, changing them as we go. Judy Barr-Topinka is out as Kat's old singing partner, she now used to play with Anne Colter.

8:19 - "You convinced me to have a key party on President's Day and I still can't poop right." - funny improv line by Sandy. Not going in the show, just this blog.

8:20 - "Hey, this room is signed out for the Tsunami Relief Blog-Athon, so you guys are going to have to go."

8:27 - Working on ending to the show, it's coming slowly. Trying to tie the whole show together with a character from the beginning who interrupts the end. It's the "RA" sketch from a show called "Hey Can I Crash Here?" that hasn't aired yet. We want Rasinen (the RA) to enter in the end.

8:38 - We're Off-track and stalling. Telling a couple stories from last week. But we'll get back to the sketch in 3...2...1...-1...-2...-3...-4..., okay, never mind. Still not getting back to the sk Okay, Justin just called out that we're stalling. back to it.

8:40 - Now we're bitching. We've got to worry about costumes and blocking after doing months and months of radio where these things don't matter. Different rules.

8:44 - Working on a little surprise for the end of the show, thinking about getting a special guest appearance at the end of the show. Someone that the Macalestar kids will know. Boy the logistics of this ending are a bitch, figuring out where the five of us are and which characters we need to turn into and when. This is why Justin is pissing about costume changes and blocking, we have to be in the back of the auditorium and then onstage and then make an entrance and quick changes and play two different characters. It sounds exhausting, but we've done it too many times to really be worried about it, it's just that we haven't done THIS one.

8:48 - How to sneak the spurprise guest backstage in a very open auditorium with very non-black blackouts. He goes to the bathroom before the last sketch, hangs out, then whips around to our backstage when we get the audiences attention at the back.

8:52 - Sandy produces an RA "Student week" shirt out of a prop bin, he is remarkably close in nature to the characters he plays.

9:06 - RO Problems. Trying to get Kate in first part of show and figuring out whether she should be in Giggle Girls or not. Giggle Girls makes fun of the male fantasy of what nubile college girls do, make out with each other, play games naked, pillow fight. Is it funnier with three guys? Or Kate and two guys? We settled on just guys. Kate can't play naked "I Never" as absurdly as three guys in bra's.

9:11 - Now the concern is that the show has too much Justin/Sandy, Sandy/Justin at the top. So I will be taking over Carl Buddig in the RA sketch, just some tool who asks weirdly sexual questions "How do Girls pee?". More RO problems, now Hippies and Giggle Girls are too similar in tone and are back to back (listen to this Saturdays Kasmir Pulaski live show to hear Hippies)

9:16 - Now the issue is that Kate isn't in the first sketch if the giggle girls are all male so we're adding Zoe Dunkle as a distraction for the RA in the opeing sketch, the sketch is just a series of interruptions in his world, why not add one more? Perfect, we just tied Zoe into the ending. Zoe is doing a Straight-edge-Club sponsored movon dot org party (which the show ends with).

9:18 - No drugs at Zoe dunkle's party, pop rocks and peanut butter cups. Sandy: "Could you image just a bowl full of pop rocks?" Justin mocks Sandy's exaggeration : "No I totally couldn't, gosh how could they get them in a bowl?"

9:20 - expanding on the joke of how big a drag Zoe is to the dorm, "Guys, I can hear your music." I came to school to get good grades and gets a good job like Kofi Annen. Becuase I'm a superachiever I need you to keep your Postal Service and Kanye West down to a dull roar between 9pm and 7am, but if you're into music...and then sets up the last sketch of the show.

9:23 - Justin: Fuck it, let's just to Dumb Play. This gets a laugh because it's the easiest sketch in our arsenal, it requires no blocking (three people sit in chairs) and no improv or memorization (it's read from playbooks). Zero effort, which we could use, we've been working straight since January 8th.

9:25 - The real Chris Rasden the RA's Colon has distracted us. What foods he can eat and cannot eat. Boy do we not want to work tonight.

9:26 - Back to Zoe. She's the doogie howser, the wormser of Macalestar.

9:36 - The entire fourth floor of women are synced up.

9:45 - Back to working on the opening sketch with me as carl, jr.

9:51 - Rasden the RA is bragging about his sexual exploits, he's bought condoms at Walgreens,

9:53 - Derailed again, went into dirty sexual exploits, things that would never make it on stage, just to make ourselves laugh, Kate got pissed.

9:56 - Justin decries that we've devolved into doing Town Forum (one of the oldest saws you can be taught at Second city), he liked it more when we were music video with crazy chest signs.

9:57 - Onto Danny/Kris Date (can also be heard in this Saturday's Pulaski show) which we'll be performing onstage with a new beginning that we came up with last night. Danny feine is an Actor and Kristopher Kriss is an Artistic Director and Theatre director who has the hots for Danny who isn't gay but Kris doesn't know that. kris is the most pretentious man in the history of theatre and danny is a really awful and not-so-smart actor. In D/K Date Danny brings his fiance to rehearsal.

10:00 - Danny & Kris Date, we added a new beginning to this one last night because it begins cold on the radio show. Now Danny and Kris have a brief rehearsal to begin the scene, we can see how perverse Kris is, including Polaroid "Headshots" Tonight It took five seconds for Sandy (Kris) to inject a new double entendre into the sketch calling rehearsal "lubing up." Jesus. We're awful.

10:02 - Danny & Kris playing zip, zap, zop the stupid improv warmup game. You send the energy back and forth with zips and zaps. Dumb fucking game, glad we're making fun of this.

10:04 - Every opportunity to make a dirty joke is being taken, evidently I'm the one who was the most out of line a second ago. Justin has just called me out on this.

10:09 - Polaroid joke. Justin spreads his legs, we're ashamed at ourselves. This show is so dirty and it keeps getting worse. Now we're building a warning into the show, that we've been censored on the radio and this will be a dirty show.

10: 20 - The line"It's either Bush or Tush" has been cut. Repeat: "It's either Bush or Tush" has been cut.

10:35 - On to Werewolf, damn Justin has the whole thing memorized. Werewolf is a sketch where a guy robs someone's house and claims that he turns into a werewolf and instead of killing people, robs houses (listen to ep. 39).

11:00 - 15 minute derailment Argument that only comedians could have over Werewolf or Wolverine. This is my fault, I broached the topic but I can't grasp this one. The werewolf in the sketch (who isn't a werewolf, he's just a robber with an absurd excuse) gives his origin, he was studying Wolverines at UofC and decided to test if the legend is true that a Wolverine will eat a marshmallow out of someone's mouth. The Joke being - dumbass, of course you got bit. Okay, so originally the chracter was studying WEREWOLVES and got bit, thus turning him into a WEREWOLF. It's been in 100 movies, certainly you can follow. But everybody but me said that we can't have him studying WEREWOLVES because they don't exist. So it was changed to WOLVERINES because WOLVERINES are real animals and can be studied. The only problem is that nobody turns into a WEREWOLF by being bitten by a WOLVERINE, regardless, so nobody gets confused it has remained a WOLVERINE. It hurts my brain to think aobut it. See arent' you glad you're not a comedian, these are the arguements you get in. Oh, and Justin rubbed salt into my wound by saying that if you get turned into a WEREWOLF by being bitten by a WEREWOLF then how was the first one created. Couldn't answer that, so again, for the sanity of our audience it will remain a WOLVERINE.

11:12 - Kate makes a vein attempt at taking dirty joke out Werewolf to make it the one clean sketch of the show the reference is changed from "I have this great video of two girls jacking off a homeless guy in a bus depot" to "I have this great video with 80 guys and a girl wearing a diving mask." So Kate won, but kinda lost. Who am I kidding, mankind is losing!

11:15 - Giggle girls.

11:20 - Stuffed bra's or non-stuffed bra's? Just one set of stuffed bra's - me, I get big tits. I suggest that Sandy just have one big tit like he got a Mastectomy. He laughs really hard.

11:25 - We're cracking up at Sandy saying "sometimes when I'm kissing a guy it's so rough, I need something soft, smooth, familiar..." Kate challenges that we're not going to get through this one when performed live.

11:26 - Sandy has found a way to make this scene dirtier.

11:28 - Breaking point. Stir crazy, Justin is writihng on the floor, Kate's motto has become "LET'S GO!!!!!" Everytime we imrpovise too much or get distracted.

11:40 - Do we do Dumb Play? Shit, we're seriously considering it.

11:43 - Now there's too much Danny & Kris? (who star in Dumb Play, are in the earlier sketch and one other sketch in the show) Are we just making this decision because it's an easier sketch? Tested material vs. New Material? Crisis of faith?

11:45 - we did just as much Danny/Kris last Friday during the live Pulaski show. was that too much Danny/Kris?

11: 47 - Cut Danny/Kris letter. But now how do the reconcile? (they split up at the end of Date).

11:50 - Exhaustion, too many changes at the last minute, too much reconciliation on a Thrusday night, 42 hours before the show.

11:52 - Insipiration strikes. We'll grab an audience member out of the audience and have Kris audition them for Danny's part, but he rejects them and Danny comes in thin the middle of this.

11:55 - Well now what the fuck? We can't put Patriot Act AFTER Dumb play, but we've built out entire ending on Patriot Act, and we spent this entire night working on.

11:56 - Resolution, slightly change ending of Dumb Play so it doesn't feel like end of show and leave Patriot act as the end. May be weak solution, but we're out of time and options.

12:00 - Justin rounds out the night by giving Sandy shit for fucking up his arm in a skiiing accident two weeks ago.

12:03 - Sandy: "Guys this is going to be so much fun...I hope nothing fucks it up." Kate: "Sandy, why would you say that?" Justin: "I felt more unprepared for The Pulaski Day Show and that was for our radio future and 35,000 people. So we should be fine."

So that was the meeting. I'll let you know how the show went. I'm positive we'll be absolutely fine. Everyone just gets a little itchy making so many changes this close to the show. The problem with rehearsals like this is that you don't have 200 people agreeing with each choice. Saturday night we will. As long as we HIT THE JOKES. Get your swagger, take the stage, and hit the jokes.