February 19, 2008
This weekend was the fuckin' truth. As previously mentioned, Derrick played Skidmore College's National College Comedy Festival. When I e-mailed the festival organizer Cara back in like October to make awful damn sure she remembered us when it came to booking time, I told her it was always our favorite weekend of the year, and it was no exaggeration. And this past weekend will be tough for 2008 to beat.
We got in super-late on Friday and crashed at our hotel. (The best part of being a "professional group" at the fest is rather than putting you up in some poor kid's campus-housing living room, which may very well be the living room of the house where the after-show party is being held meaning you have to wait for everybody to quit hitting on each other and leave before you can grab whatever drunk sleep there is to be had, and when they leave they'll leave the door open so it will get immensely drafty and your coat will prove an insufficient blanket, they put you up in a hotel! A NICE hotel, at that!)
Saturday we had to wake up early and teach improv workshops. I have to admit I was dreading this, but it was actually really fun. When Hammerkatz first went to the festival in 2004, almost all the improv groups were short-form. Often, they would perform in matching bowling shirts. Now short-form seems to have died off almost completely, replaced by long-form. Yay, long-form! Yay, improvisers in the same ensemble wearing different clothes from one another and not breaking their shows into four-minute chunks punctuated by schtick-y two-minute game explanations!
(Short-form is kinda like REALLY old-school hip hop. Corny as fuck but we have to give it credit, because almost all of it came from there. Long-form is like modern hip-hop: more mature, terrible a lot of the time just like anything but often transcendent. And just like a lot of the world still thinks of hip hop in terms of dudes wearing enormous clocks, a lot of the world still thinks of improv as Ryan Stiles and Colin Mochrie overdubbing movie dialogue in silly voices while Drew Carey looks on.)
Anyway, the workshops breezed on by, an hour seeming like barely enough with each group. Then we went to Friendly's, the greatest restaurant and probably man's greatest achievement, period, where we go every year and then have to remind ourselves not to swear so loudly because it is full of easily scandalized old people and families. We had eaten salads for lunch, like adults. Friendly's was our chance to undo all the good we had done. I got something that was like chicken wings on a sandwich with melted cheese and barbeque sauce all over it, followed by some ice cream that promised peanut butter and fudge and delivered. Big time.
Hearts zinging with fat, we went back to the venue and watched the second night of college shows. We were super-duper impressed by GWU's Recess, a bunch of great writers and nice guys. NYU's Dangerbox, of which Dom, Donald, and myself are alums, fucking brought the house down. They got a standing ovation! You try getting a standing ovation with fifteen minutes of long-form. And it started with the paying audience, not the other performers! Damn. They blew peoples' balls off. All three of us have at one time or another coached this group of kids and we knew how killer they are and they showed everyone in the Northeast what's up and we were glowing with pride.
Then it was time for us to do our show. The space is so fucking killer: you could really not ask for a cooler venue or a more receptive audience. About a third of the crowd is comedy kids from all over the Northeast, and the rest is Skidmore students and a smattering of older people. Drunken smart kids love improv, and improv loves them! It was a really fun show. Came off-stage feeling ten thousand varieties of awesome, and immediately started drinking thanks to whiskey bottles secreted away in paper bags and jacket pockets.
Party! A lot of the official after-parties at Skidmore are house parties which are always packed to the gills and fun as fuck until they are inevitably broken up by campus (or real no-foolin') police after twenty minutes to an hour. But wisely, the Saturday night party was held in big ol' on-campus building, which seemed like by day it might be a student lounge or cafeteria, but everything had been pushed to the side, leaving only some big fuck-off speakers, a DJ set-up, and lots of room for dancing. Despite the no-drinking policy and the presence of school security, everyone was adequately pre-gamed an hour and a half after the show had let out and all the grown-and-sexy comedy kids and drunk smart Skidmore students were dancing their fucking asses off.
Donald commandeered the DJ booth for a while with my iPod. Then I commandeered the DJ booth for a while with my iPod. Loud rap songs about ass were played, indie music being for your bedroom, not for the packed dancehall. I drunkenly obnoxiously pontificated about comedy to some kids, like I will do if you let me. We met Will, a kid who runs his own clothing label and gave us bandanas. (Good stuff! Thanks Will!) It was so much fun! I left the booth for a while then came back, and was ten seconds into a song when a campus security guard got right in my face and screamed "SHUT IT DOWN! NOW!" So I did. But the whole room kept dancing and singing the song that wasn't playing anymore. The song was "Take On Me" by A-Ha, because it was getting to be about that time. We left. I lost a hat and a hoodie.
We went to a smaller party. It turned out to be at the house where Dangerbox was staying, so we got to jaw with them for a while, and commiserated about being the unfortunate group to be sleeping right where the party is.
Then we went back to the hotel and slept for two hours and woke up early as balls and drove home because people had noon commitments.
Dudes, it was a blast. Thanks to Cara the head organizing producing person and Allie (sp?) the stage manager and all the groups and everyone who came to the show.
(Photo credit to Jane, who is organizing the festival next year. Don't forget about us, Jane!)
Shows this week:
Harold @ Harold Night @ UCBT tonight with DeCoster
Cagematch w/ Derrick on Thursday vs. Broad Shoulders, UCBT
Derrick at Johns Hopkins University this Saturday night (more details TK)
Derrick at Rutgers University this Sunday night (more details TK)