short-form adventures

this one day
i was invited to play a 'short form show' with t futch and his company laughing matters. he tells me that, i think , so it's clear there's no need for d e e p talk about the 'prov. it's for a multi-national corporation, after all, and they get what every multi-national corporation deserves. a few grown men tapping on audience members, filling in ____s and generally having a wingding of a time.
laughing matters is atlanta's longest running improv. we used to kid around how dad's garage would become atlanta's longest running joke. so far, so good, dad's garage.
the company we did the short-form for was siemens. from their website:
Do you know how, where and when Siemens crosses your path? You may be surprised!
they crossed my path outside the walnut room. i was surprised. so surprised only a scotch on the rocks from their open bar could still my astonishment.
they were a funny group, from all over the world. what they shared was a love of sex. almost all their suggestions were typical innuendo. we made a few. but neither of us made a semen joke. it's no laughing matter.
yet another short-form improv show i was invited to occured in the north georgia mountains for a jewish kids camp. s coulter, cruchic and i drove up, coulter uttering benign phrases in a german accent. it was funny. even funnier? the first person we met at the camp was german. like, uber deutsch. the thickest german accent i ever heard. it was dripping with tomatensaft. coulter was außer sich vor ironie.
we workshopped through the day and into a crisp evening. we performed in their synagogue (temple for you reform types). no open bar.
on the one hundred-mile drive home through the foothills of the appalachians, cruchic pulled off the highway to a hidden dairy queen. she claims these small town DQ's are a cut above. we all got ice cream. i got a butterscotch sundae, for which the mentally handicapped man at the register charged me eight dollars US. the manager, a sixteen-year-old, remedied this with a roll of the eyes. "it's been a loo-o-ng day," he said. as an after thought, cruchic added a hot dog to her order. it came wrapped in foil. it came teeming with flies. and not just regular houseflies. but big green-eyed, freshly maggot-hatched horseflies.
she returned it for another one. i know. i'm as surprised as you are right now. scotch on the rocks...
the manager yelled through the window "hey, man! this has flies in it." the cook quickly served up a basket of french fries. "not fries, man. flies!"
at this point, cruchic wisely got her money back. none of us questioned the integrity of the desserts. we didn't wanna know.