{"id":5077,"date":"2022-04-08T11:58:56","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T10:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edgeverse.org\/?p=5077"},"modified":"2022-06-30T06:23:52","modified_gmt":"2022-06-30T05:23:52","slug":"the-evils-of-improv-comedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/edgeverse.org\/?p=5077","title":{"rendered":"The Evils of Improv Comedy"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Here you can read an entire shorty story, completely free. Blips are strictly less than two thousand words, or maybe more, and typically have a surprise twist in the tail. \nThese stories are free for you to download and share but please link back to us so we can build our site and create more free content. \nThanks very much for visiting. Please enjoy the story. <\/h6>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Everybody enjoys engaging in a little improv comedy over a cup of tea with their failed actor friends at their Tuesday night meetings where they only refer to each other by their first names, but I think we can all agree it’s absolutely awful to watch\u2014at least when not viewed through the scope of a sniper rifle.\u00a0<\/h6>
It very much reminds me of karaoke in that regard. Here in Japan, if you want to do karaoke, you get a private room so you don\u2019t disturb anybody else. That means I can pay to sing away my stress, and my lovely wife and daughter have to sit there and endure it, and there is not a god damned thing they can do about it. Overall. it\u2019s a win-win.<\/h6>
But what is it about improv comedy that makes it tick? (I was going to say, \u2018work,\u2019 but clearly that word doesn\u2019t apply here\u2026) The easiest explanation is the \u201cYes, and\u2026\u201d principle where each actor in an exchange takes whatever the other person has said, runs with it, and adds something new in a perpetually evolving direction.<\/h6>
I pitched it to Jack: wouldn\u2019t it be fun to try something like that, but also to contrast it with a \u201cNo, but\u2026\u201d approach?\u00a0<\/h6>
\u201cNot in the slightest,\u201d was his grumpy (from not enough sleep and approximately twice as many children to look after as me) response, but that\u2019s what we did anyway. You\u2019re welcome!\u00a0<\/h6>
We each gave ourselves 20 minutes to write a sketch with nothing more than \u201cExcuse me, do you have a pen?\u201d to work from, and this travesty of entertainment is what we came up with.<\/h6>
For bonus points, we won\u2019t even tell you which of us wrote which. Such is the allure of the improv comedy scene.<\/h6>
So how about you? Which of our two takes did you not utterly despise to the smallest extent?<\/h6>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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The Evils of Improv Comedy<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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By Jath and Seck - Comedy geniuses<\/h5>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Nobody Wants Green Socks<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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By One of Them<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\u201cExcuse me, do you have a pen?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cSure, here you are. I\u2019ll want it back though.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cWow, I can see why. It really is the mother of all pens. This goes beyond writing!\u201d<\/p>

\u201cThanks. It\u2019s an heirloom. It belonged to my great-grandfather, Augustas.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cIt was nice of him to engrave your initials on it in anticipation of you one day owning it. Tell me, what does the \u2018X\u2019 stand for?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cXylophone. I come from a long line.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cOf Xylophones?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cMusicians.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cMy name is Uuuuugh! I don\u2019t know how to spell it though, because my parents never bothered registering my birth. That\u2019s how disappointed they were when they first saw me.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cParents are a bit weird at the best of times. As are husbands.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cAnd wives. Mine wants kids. \u2018Oo, let\u2019s invest our entire future and everything we\u2019ve worked for on a genetic lottery that could, and probably will, go terrifyingly wrong.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI love being a parent. It always makes my day when I come home from the music place thing and find all manner of shit and puke over everything.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cIt must be really hard to keep the place clean. Do you hire a professional cleaner?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cYes I do. It\u2019s a guy named Larry. He\u2019s a failed improv comedy actor. Those guys will do anything for money and have no shame in doing so. If I asked him to shove this pen up his butthole, he\u2019d say \u2018How much you pay?\u2019\u201d<\/p>

\u201cShouldn\u2019t that be \u2018How much are you going to pay me?\u2019 Is English not his first language?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cIt isn\u2019t. He\u2019s Mexican. But he\u2019s also really, really stupid.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cMy housekeeper is Romanian. If I wanted her to stick a pen up her butthole, she would tell me I have to buy her coffee first.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cAnd did you?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cThe last one from Bulgaria I did, but now I don\u2019t need to. I have one of those coffee machines, you know, the ones that take those pre-sealed capsules that ensure you have to pay full price for second rate coffee shop coffee but with the added inconvenience of having to make it yourself.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI have a sausage machine like that. It costs you five times the price in ingredients and takes all day to make a single batch, and they\u2019re never as good as what you buy in the supermarket.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cIt\u2019s like they\u2019re charging you for the inconvenience. Damned capitalists.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cYeah, viva the revelation!\u201d<\/p>

\u201cMy friend used to run an inconvenience store. It was in the middle of nowhere, only open from 11 to 11:30 on a Sunday night, everything was on the highest shelf, and they only sold pink socks.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI used to work at a Siberian camel de-shooer. Huge business. There\u2019s a niche for everyone. How long did your friend stay in business?\u201d<\/p>

\u201cOnly the one night. He got robbed at gunpoint, and all his stock was stolen.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI remember seeing that on the news. The pink sock bandit they called him. He\u2019d committed a chain of similar robberies, all focussing on late sunday night businesses specialising exclusively in pink socks.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI did suggest he instead sell green socks. He gave me a very dirty look.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cYeah, nobody wants green socks.\u201d<\/p>

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You Simply Never Know What's Coming<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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By The Other One of Them<\/h4>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\u201cExcuse me, do you have a Pen?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cNo, but\u2026\u201d he said, narrowing his eyes furtively. A look of consternation settled onto his careworn features and his knuckles clenched around his plastic writing implement. \u201cI mean, I do, but no.\u201d<\/p>

The person asking, a woman in her mid-thirties with an unremarkable face framed by even less remarkable hair, cocked her head very slightly to one side as if curious to see where this was going.\u00a0<\/p>

He gazed at his pen and said, \u201cNo!\u201d He then looked straight at her, a look somewhere between confusion and bewilderment had quite remarkably settled on her face. \u201cI have a pen, but it\u2019s my pen. You understand that this pen was a gift to my mother. I cannot lend it to just anyone who asks, even if that person promised to return it and was to leave their expensive cellular phone as a deposit.\u201d<\/p>

She opened her mouth to speak but no sound was forthcoming.\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cDo you have an expensive cellular phone?\u201d he asserted, gazing at her in a way that was becoming increasingly threatening.\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cNo, but\u2026\u201d she said, rummaging through the pockets in the side of her jacket that wasn\u2019t remarkable enough to warrant further description. She held up a bunch of things. \u201cI have a half-eaten bar of chocolate I found on the train. It has quite a lot of lipstick on it. There\u2019s also three and a half inches of string, two coins from completely different countries and what might be the head of a sparrow. It\u2019s too small to be the head of a penguin. You don\u2019t get many penguins in here.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

The man frowned and took a deep breath. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t even make a cellular phone out of that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cPerhaps you just don\u2019t know how?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cNo!\u201d he said with the firmness of a poorly-cooked salad. \u201cThis pen has remarkable sentimental value. Perhaps the head of your sparrow has enough seepage to leave an effective mark on paper? It must be worth a try?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

She gazed into the handful of odd junk. \u201cI wasn\u2019t intending to use the pen as a writing implement. That is an excellent idea though.\u201d She made an attempt at smiling and then looked suddenly serious. \u201cI have a personal problem and have found from various experiments that only a pen will do!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cNot my pen!\u201d he assured her. \u201cMy pen was a gift to my mother and she is now deader than last year\u2019s fashions. The pen is all I have to remember her by. Think how such cherished memories will be damaged by the stink of your bodily orifices.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cIt is not a nice pen!\u201d she commented dryly. \u201cIn fact, it looks like the ones the librarian has in that little box on her desk. It looked exactly like those in fact, the ones you can get a hundred of for less than the price of a chicken sandwich.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cMy mother and I weren\u2019t close,\u201d the man grunted. \u201cDo you have a chicken sandwich? I like chicken sandwiches, even though I always thought they\u2019d be far better with the bread on the inside.\u201d<\/p>

The woman nodded thoughtfully. \u201cI think a lot of things would be better with bread on the inside,\u201d she said with a thoughtful frown. \u201cBut not pens.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cI don\u2019t have a pen!\u201d the man said, tucking what simply couldn\u2019t be a pen into the cuff of his blue shirt. \u201cI don\u2019t have a pen any more than you have a chicken sandwich.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cI have part of a dead sparrow and almost half a chocolate bar. I could improvise something for you using those things, if you like. I think it would be worth writing about\u2014if you could.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cWell I can\u2019t write because I don\u2019t have a pen, as previously discussed,\u201d he told her, sniffing to himself and looking away. \u201cNow if you don\u2019t mind, I was doing this crossword.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cDo you have a balloon?\u201d she asked.\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cWhat?\u201d he said, his eyes widening. \u201cNo, I don’t have a balloon! This is a library, madam. What on Earth would I be doing with a balloon in here?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cWell you are doing a crossword without a pen so I assumed a balloon would be equally logical,\u201d she said with fairly solid reasoning, under the circumstances. \u201cYou would be surprised what people have when you ask. That\u2019s how I have three and a half inches of string and a piece of a dead sparrow. Mind you, once you get those kinds of things, you kind of stop wanting to ask any more questions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cPerfect!\u201d he said, rummaging through his pockets and gasping in pain as he jabbed himself in the testicles with what certainly felt very much like a cheap biro. \u201cHere!\u201d he handed her a scented eraser that looked like a strawberry but smelled like a man who needed a shower.\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cThat won\u2019t fix my personal issue!\u201d she told him, snatching it up. \u201cBut I\u2019ll hold onto it because I\u2019ve found that human bodies generate a wide variety of issues over the course of a lifetime. You simply never know what\u2019s coming.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cNow go away!\u201d he told her.\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cGo where?\u201d she shrugged, looking around at the endless rows of books.\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cI come here to get away from you,\u201d he grumbled. \u201cCan\u2019t a man get five minutes away from his wife?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

She rubbed her chin thoughtfully.\u00a0<\/p>

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