Tuesday

[magid]

It turned out to be a much more interesting evening than I'd anticipated (well-rested will be my goal for another evening, instead).

Yesterday after work, before stopping in at the Diesel, I got to see a few of the artists' work in the windows of stores around Davis Square (WAP, Windows Art Project, just sounds like a month to swat people...). I saw cthulhia's pysanky, beautiful as always, and nicely displayed, too, on artfully arranged cloths. I think the store should've given her more of the window, though, especially since the space she has is so far below the average pedestrian's eye level (a space on the other side of the street would've had less sunlight to fade the colors...). Farther along, there were some lovely stained glass pieces, odes to soup. Also a mosaic of candy, and a huge piece by Hilary Scott, feeding oversized hamburgers to huge heads. Unfortunately for me, pheromone's photos weren't yet up. However, I plan to go back when I have more time and look at all the art... I hadn't realized just how many artists & stores participate...

Hanging out at the Diesel was fun, as usual. Perhaps inevitably, with queue, treacle_well, and zzbottom there, Boggle broke out (that sounds just like some of those news reports: "Jim, we're seeing more instances of Boggle breaking out around the country."). There were breaks, however, including one to appreciate a (live) parrot someone brought (until he was asked to leave; health code issues, don'tcha know). The bird had some interesting sounds I don't think I've heard before, plus one that sounded just like a smoke detector... Later, some guy in a suit meandered by and gave us his card, another Boggle addict finding a community (of whom, exactly, I am sure he doesn't know...).

I headed home, a boring-but-useful evening of cooking and laundry and whatnot around the apartment. But when I checked email, I found that a potluck friend was having her improv class graduation at the Cambridge Center for Adult Ed, and it was open. I couldn't resist, made it there just as things were starting.

There were ~20 different skits/pieces, and I was impressed with how good people were. I laughed a lot (and we all know how hard that can be, making me laugh ;-). 2 highlights first: in the Jeopardy game, one category was "funny-sounding words," the answers supplied by the audience. I managed to get "gazebo" as one of the answers (I suppose this will not sound as interesting if one has not heard the piece cthulhia has on funny words, the title of which I always blank on.). Another skit had the whole class being a "machine" that gave answers to questions one word at a time. Their answer to "what is a vegan?" was "a boring date." (*many giggles*. Apologies to pheromone...)

So, the other pieces I really liked:

Objects: the teacher put out an object, and the students would use it as a prop for a couple of sentences. There were 4 props used: a Jacob's ladder (a book with tiny print; a pharaoh's beard; a flattened pet snake; a bunch of plastic fig newtons...), then a phone cord, a dark brown curly wig, then a paper plate (which had lots of people being haloed, attempting to be the real Saint Ignatius...)

2 Walk into a Bar: the audience named an item, and the class made up all sorts of bad pun sorts of jokes about them. So we had two french fries walking into a bar repeatedly (bad spuds, couch potatoes, ketchup puns), then two livers walking into a bar (thanks to Seb), two hedgehogs walking into a bar, and finally two baseballs walking into a bar.

Party Quirks included the poker player who could not say "C" (though she could say "K" or "S"...), the superhero afraid of spider, and a dermatologist with psoriasis (sp?).

The Amnesia Cafe had three patrons trying to figure out from their orders who they were (Sonny Bono, Napoleon, and Isaac Newton).

Shopkeeper had a store-owner getting her customer to buy things that led her to the [adjective adjective noun] decided on by the audience, this time it was: fluffy toasted crocodile.

The Wide World of Sports featured two commentators (one an expert in the field) on the performance of one athlete in the challenging sport of "waking up." Points off from the German judge for smashing the alarm clock, points added from the French judge for the graceful turn of leg. Aesthetic points for the teddy bear appreciation. And extra points from the Russian judge for wearing sneakers in bed, ready to start the day running, as it were.

The other pieces that were pretty good but not so memorable for me:
news blues,
world's worst [occupation],
60-30-15-5 (bookstore, this time),
ding (fist aid, this time),
jump emotions (a token seller in a subway),
talk show (zoologist/orthodontist),
instant replay (a botched operation, then done in reverse, in Hemingway style, in Sesame Street style, and as a lifetime romance),
cliffhangers (this time, a pageant, with quotes from movies the audience had written down worked into the conversation),
musical (about a speech pathologist who stutters finding true love with the ex-wife of a stuttering Godfather), and
a final story in film noir style about Biff Shush, a firefighting haridresser who makes spam on the side.