Angry Tunes

By definition, one word to describe the Angry White Loner is angry. Without that particular adjective, or the words white or loner, you've got no Angry White Loner. And that would certainly be a doggone shame.

Those who know me, however, know that the term Angry White Loner is something of a misnomer. Unless I'm stuck in traffic and I'm late for a very important date. Or I'm playing Halo with friends and I'm on what you might call a "dying spree." Or I'm mailing my tax payment in to the federal government (which is actually only a few days away now).

But no, not Bruce Banner/Hulk angry. Or Michael Douglas in the movie Falling Down angry. Or Katie Kaboom angry. (Anybody out there remember Katie from "Animaniacs"?)

Other than those instances, though, the phrase, as I originally mentioned in my very first post over a year ago, is actually based on a character I am wont to play in an improv game we call "Press Conference."

Speaking of improv, I really enjoyed tonight's troupe workshop. I always enjoy our troupe workshops, though tonight's was especially fun, because it was a music-centric workshop. Performing improvised music is both one of the most challenging and the most rewarding parts of performing live improv. If you've been to one of our performances, then you know from firsthand experience what I mean. If you haven't been to one of our performances—I've been appearing with this group for six years now, for heaven's sake—well, why are we still friends?

Just kidding about that last part. Only partly.

I was given the emotion "anger" in a new singing game that we learned. When it was my turn to sing, this came out:

"Sitting in my room alone, I'm listening to Evanescence;
My woman's left me, yeah, she's the queen of putrescence!"

Sometimes, you surprise even yourself!

Dave Barry refers to heavy metal music as "music to slaughter cattle by." All of the bands/songs in "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Angry White Boy Polka" also fit in the category. Even one of my favorite classical music pieces, Edvard Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King," I would say, fits the bill.

Basically, anything you could punch-dance to, like Andy Samberg in Hot Rod or Kevin Bacon in Footloose, might very well be "angry" music.

What's your favorite piece of angry music? Post them in the comments section. Or don't. Whatever floats your boat.

Be nice about it! Not angry.

*Do* Be Ridiculous!

Lately, I have finally been "getting with the times" and have slowly been coming into the 21st century. That's right, folks! I have jumped onto the "Downton Abbey" bandwagon and have been watching episodes of everyone's favorite TV show.

Because, you know, you never know when "Downton" will come up in a conversation with the cool kids. And you've gotta be prepared for when that happens.

Okay, so, if you hang out with some of the same people I hang out with, you know that's not really a necessity. At any rate, I have found "Downton Abbey" to be a decent show, as long as it's not featuring storylines involving such silly things as Ouija boards.

In an episode I watched last night, I found a line uttered by Violet Crawley (Maggie Smith), who is basically the comic relief in almost every scene in which she appears, to be particularly insightful. Her granddaughter having been called "ridiculous" by a detractor, she replies, "Life is a game in which the player must appear ridiculous."

I like this comment because I feel that being ridiculous is one of the things I do best---or, at least, it is when I am most comfortable being me.

Appearing ridiculous is certainly an important part of performing improv, something that I have been doing semiprofessionally for the past nine years now. It is not uncommon for me to have a conversation with friends who, according to their reckoning of time, have literally not had one free night to come and see perform in a show during that nine-year period and who have no idea what an improv show is like. Also, these people tend to believe that I have just made up the word improv (which is funny, because improv is all about making up things on the spot!).

"I basically make a nincompoop out of myself on stage," I tell them. To tell the truth, that may very well be the most accurate way to describe an Improvables show. There's really no other way to explain what we do each week.

Indeed, one of the ground rules of comedy is making the ridiculous to seem normal and the normal to seem ridiculous.

Off stage, however, it is also comforting to have family members and good friends with whom I can feel comfortable by being my ridiculous self. In dating, I have found that I have enjoyed myself most when I have found others who can be their silly selves along with me.

At their house, my parents have a collection of home video tapes of my siblings and me acting silly in our younger years. Even though my initial attempts at both acting and filmmaking are a somewhat of a mixed bag as I look back on them today with some degree of embarrassment, there are many good memories associated with those movies, as well.

Don't ask me if you can watch them, though. They're just one accidental arson incident away from being destroyed and lost to the world forever.

Karaoke Nerds Unite

As I discussed in a recent post, I am white and nerdy about a lot of things. One of the things I'm especially nerdy about is karaoke.

I have been hooked on karaoke from the first time I tried it. Years ago at a singles activity, there was a room with a karaoke machine in it, and out of sheer curiosity, I signed up to sing Hanson's immortal hit from 1997, "MMMBop." I began singing the song in a lovely falsetto, designed to match that of lead singer Zac Hanson. By the time the song was over, though, my throat began to get tired from that, so I switched my voice to an octave lower.

Afterward, friend of mine approached me to tell me that it sounded like Hanson going through puberty.

At any rate, I had lately been feeling what my friend the Awkward Mormon Girl calls "The Neediness" (assuming I have correctly understood what "The Neediness" is, AMG) and decided to begin organizing monthly karaoke nights at the Karaoke Café in Murray for myself and my friends as a way of reaching my required karaoke quota. There were seven of us in June and four of us in July. This past Tuesday night, I was joined by only two friends out of the dozens who were invited.

Sure, it's the Law of Diminishing Returns in action, but all you really need is at least one good friend with you in order to enjoy an evening of karaoke, so two is an added bonus. In addition to being a fantastic place to work on such theatrical techniques as performing solo songs in front of crowds and stage presence (all three of us are, after all, members of the Improvables), the Karaoke Café is also a great place to people-watch.

There are the showtunes geeks, usually singing selections from Wicked, Les Misérables, or Disney's many animated films. No fewer than five women ever take the stage together to sing and/or shout "Girls Just Want to Have Fun," "I Will Survive," or "Dancing Queen." There are older couples reliving happy memories from their long-ago days of courtship, and there are young adults, teens, and kids. There are often as many tone-deaf people as there are those who can genuinely sing well, but, truth be told, nobody cares if you can sing well or not. In karaoke, it's a win-win deal, as everyone listening cheers on every singer who takes the stage, which is really what it's all about.

On this particular Tuesday, there was even a group of what I can only surmise were either special-education students or a special-needs Primary, many of whom were brought in in wheelchairs. A handful who sang could barely make coherent sentences, but even so, we clapped to the beat along with them and applauded them wildly when they finished, which I am sure only made them feel good about themselves.

It's certainly 10 times better than watching "American Idol," which is basically a national karaoke contest but with far-less interesting people. Especially that Seacrest guy.

It's about Love . . . and Courage

On Saturday evening, members of the Improvables, myself included, were invited to perform for Common Bonds, a local group sponsored and supported by LDS Family Services in Centerville. Though we are frequently hired to do improv shows away from our home turf, we soon found out that it would be no ordinary performance.

Common Bonds, as it turns out, is a group of mothers who, at one point or another in their lives, gave up a child or children for adoption. On the Saturday before Mothers' Day each year, they meet together as a show of support for one another and the difficult but important choices they have each made: to give these children a better life than they could have ever done at the time the children were placed for adoption.

Many of the mothers were unmarried when they made this difficult decision. A few were married but were in abusive relationships and preferred not to bring children into that sort of environment. There was even one expectant mother several months pregnant, and she planned to place her child for adoption. Each had an amazing story to tell, and it was clear that they were all motivated by a great deal of love, as well as a significant amount of prayer and thought, in their actions.

I gained a great deal of respect for these women as they shared their stories. It was a privilege to perform for them, and my co-actors and I had a great time in doing so.

Afterward, I had the chance to speak with a gentleman who was there as an adviser to the group, and I thanked him for the invitation for us to be there. He reminded me of another important quality that each of these women possesses: courage.

It certainly took courage for them to love their babies enough to let them go so that they could have better lives. It took courage for them to deal with an unplanned and an embarrassing situation and to make the very best of things. It also takes courage for them to meet together now and to stand for a very important cause.

I should also be sure to point out that those mothers who make the very difficult decision to keep and raise their children are no less loving or courageous.

For many of the mothers who were at Saturday's event, fortunately, there is a happy ending. Many of them were there with their fiancés and/or spouses and have gone on to have other children that they've been able to raise. There was also a mother who has adopted three children of her own.

It was one Mothers' Day holiday that I won't soon forget. Happy (belated) Mothers' Day to my own "angel mother" and to all of the great moms out there.

Hopes and Dreams

In improv, we play a game called "Musical" in which we create - you guessed it - a musical. However, instead of having the three hours' length of a Les Misérables or a My Fair Lady with which to make Broadway magic happen live, one of the challenges of this game is to condense (cram?) the plot and songs for a musical into an eight- or 10-minute short-form delivery.

Impossible? You might think so. But somehow, we make it happen time and again.

Anyway, one of the key elements of putting together this kind of "Musical" is the inclusion of a protagonist, who sings what we call a "Hopes and Dreams" song to state what he/she wants out of life. Lo and behold, we spend the next seven minutes or so making those hopes and dreams become a reality.

Real life, unfortunately, does not always turn out this way. What we hope, dream, and, quite often, yearn and pray for does not come to pass, or at least it does not transpire in the way we expect it would.

One of the best examples of someone's expectations not being fulfilled, at least in my mind, is illustrated by a rather poignant - and heartbreaking - scene in the movie (500) Days of Summer. The protagonist, Tom, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is desperately in love with Summer, played by Zooey Deschanel. In the scene I refer to, the screen shows a side-by-side comparison of Tom's expectations - I daresay his hopes and dreams - of an encounter with Summer, with the other half of the screen showing what really takes place. The problem is that the "Principle of Least Interest" (something I actually remember from college; you can Google it if you want), which states that the person who cares the least about a relationship has all of the power, is at work here. Summer is not as interested in Tom as Tom is interested in Summer, and, in the side of the scene depicting reality, he is disappointed time and again as his expectations of her loving him back are unmet.

I identify with this scene because the same sort of "great expecations" (if I can borrow a phrase from Dickens) scenarios have played out in my head multiple times only to be crushed and destroyed by reality. I'm sure that many of you could say the same of some of your own experiences. The Principle of Least Interest can be a harsh teacher but a teacher nonetheless.

However, I don't think the answer is to stop hoping and dreaming, for, as Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest, "we are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep." To also borrow a line from Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband: "When you dream, dream big; as big as the ocean blue. 'Cause when you dream, it might come true." Anyone who ever accomplished anything worthwhile has followed this train of thought and see it to its fruition.

Something Tom learns at the end of (500) Days of Summer - and this is a SPOILER ALERT for those who still want to see the film - is that summer is followed by autumn. In Tom's case, his relationship with Summer is very literally followed by meeting a girl named Autumn.

The application, as I take it, is that one unmet expectation does not necessarily mean another unmet expectation. In other words, it's still good and worthwhile to hope and dream, even though some people come into our lives to wake us from those dreams or even serve as nightmares of a sort. Granted, we have to wake up from those dreams and go to work and be patient as we try and try again, but there is a happy song waiting at the end of your show. Or my next improv show.

Happy Accidents

It was about eleven years ago when I got bit by the acting bug. I had done some theater in the past, including a handful of plays, and I had even taken an Acting 1010 class as part of my studies at the University of Utah. But I had never really got into the theater until I was cast alongisde my brother Ben in My Fair Lady at Rodgers Memorial Theatre in Centerville.

Being in a musical was an all-new experience for me, and not just because I played four different roles in the show. It quickly became my favorite acting experience up to that point. I relished the opportunity to act, sing, and dance all in the same production for three nights a week, and I made some great friendships in the process.

As the musical was wrapping up, I had fully been bitten by the bug, and I eagerly looked forward to participating in another show. I learned of tryouts for the theater's next production, Brigadoon, and I attended my tryout with great enthusiasm. To my surprise - and, I'm sure, to the surprise of many of those who knew me - I was cast in one of the lead roles.

However, over the course of the next week, a strange kind of pain gradually developed in my chest. A few more weeks passed, and the ache got worse and worse. I learned that I had torn my right pectoral muscle on one of the last nights of performing in My Fair Lady, and, after about a month of rehearsing for my new role in Brigadoon, I was forced to drop out of the musical so that someone else could fill the part.

I was upset, I cursed my rotten luck and the timing of it all, and I was in a great deal of pain, to boot. Fortunately, physical therapy and time helped my body to heal, though I watched the run of my missed musical opportunity come and go with envy and bitterness.

It was at this same time that a friend of mine took a beginning improv skills class and invited me to attend a performance put on by him and the other members of his class. I had seen a little bit of "Whose Line Is It, Anyway?" on TV, but I had never previously been to a live improv show. It was amazing.

I soon learned that this theater was offering Improv-oke - a combination of improv and karaoke - nights, during which attendees could volunteer to come up on stage and perform along with the actors. I went to one of these and was called up to participate in a game of "Da Doo Ron Ron," and somehow I was the last person standing for this game for three weeks in a row.

Once I had been given the opportunity to perform improv myself, I was hooked. I was not great at it at first, and I made several mistakes (I still do), but I kept coming back to it. I took a class with some of my friends and learned the ropes, putting on a few performances with the Village Idiots in Bountiful. A couple of years later, I tried out for and was accepted into ComedySportz in Sugar House and Provo, which gave me the chance to perform in a semiprofessional environment for the first time and to learn from some of the best actors in the state. In 2008, I learned that a Davis County-based troupe was being formed at a familiar location: Rodgers Memorial Theatre.

In the six years since I had had to drop my role in Brigadoon, I had not tried out for anything else with this theater, and, in the back of my mind, memories of my earlier injury and the accompanying fallout still lingered. Nevertheless, I took a chance and returned to my former stage in a different capacity. I found a home with this new troupe, which was named the Improvables, and I have been with them ever since, including a move over to CenterPoint Legacy Theatre in 2011 and an expansion to Playbills' Theater in 2013.

One of my friends recently blogged: When one door closes, another door opens. As far as musical theater and improv goes, that had certainly been the case for me. Through a happy accident, I discovered improv 11 years ago when I had nothing left to lose, and because I took a chance on myself and on it, my life has been the better for it. In fact, I don't think I could ever go back to musical theater - at least not permanently - knowing what I know now and having had the experiences I have had with improv.

This very thought occurred to me just the other night when my Improvables colleagues and I put on a memorable show that included a broken vase (my fault), mouths full of Peeps candy that had three of us nearly tossing our cookies, and water all over the stage and mostly all over me through a game of "Spit Take." And those were just three of our games for the evening's performance.

Why do we do it? you ask? It's hard to explain in a few words, but improv is never the same, and that fact alone keeps me coming back again and again. As the song goes, there's also "no people like showpeople," and my fellow improvisers are among my very best friends today.

Whether or not I excel at what I do is debatable, I suppose, but I try my best at it and give it my all. It's not often for me to toot my own horn, but (honk! honk!) I have been humbled over the years to have had a handful of audience members approach me to say that I was their "favorite" performer. I continue to look forward to each new opportunity to make a nincompoop out of myself in public, and I hope that it is something I can continue to do for years to come.