Self Improvment By Anthony LaFauci
SELF IMPROVMENT SOUND: SHUFFLING HANDS, MICROPHONES JOSTLED INTO PLACE, MUFFLED VOICES Holy shit. What happened? Nothing. Sorry. Are we recording? Yeah. And holy shit was our intro? Yes, and-- Do you want to start over? God no. (LAUGHING) Okay, then... This episode of the Self IMPROVment podcast is brought to you by the Holy Shit Boutique. Do you like ripped jeans, Swiss cheese, and or fishing nets? (SNICKERS) We know you do, so come on down to the Holy Shit Boutique, where you can buy all your colanders, cheese graters, and other porous kitchen supplies Wholesale! (LAUGHING) We definitely plugged the crap out of that holy shit. Nicely done.
2. Anyhoo... (JUMPS INTO CHARACTER TO INTRODUCE THE PODCAST) Hello! (SAME) Hi! I m Anthony And, I m Crystal And this is-- AND The Self IMPROVment podcast. We invade your ear space every single Wednesday-- Every single Wednesday? Every Wednesday we can... With important tips, tricks... Tools, rules, and other advice to make it through life the best way we know how. How is that? With improv, of course. Obviously. So, yeah, we re going to continue to take you through the basics of improv and try to improve a little as we go. But, mostly we re here to make up crap and laugh at ourselves.
3. That pretty much sums it up. In our last episode we talked about finding the game of the scene. We learned to play off of one another while following the patterns that emerge naturally and not so naturally while exploring the relationship between characters. That was a good one. It seems like forever ago though. Can we just do that again? It was only two weeks ago. But, funny you should say that because this week we re going to be talking about-- I can t do this. What? Are we doing a scene? I don t want to do this again. (SHE ASSUMES HE IS JUMPING INTO AN IMPROV BIT, SO SHE PLAYS ALONG, YES-ANDING HIM) Yes... This is definitely the last time we re ever coming to this restaurant. We should have known an apocalypse themed diner would steal our wallets and give us radiation poisoning. (SLIGHTLY EXASPERATED) No, that s not what I meant. For those of you keeping score, what Anthony just did is called denial. You re right. You re right. Yes and... if there are any hard and fast rules of what not to do when improvising, denying your fellow improvisers would be pretty close to the top of the list.
4. I m stuck. We should probably introduce the topic of this week s episode before we do another scene-- No, I m... We ve already tried this. Podcasting? Working it out through scenes. It s kind of the whole point of our podcast. No, I mean-- Denial. Dammit. Anger. That s more of a stages of death thing than an improv thing, but either way, (sarcastic) it s super great for our listeners. This is serious. What s going on? Did I do something? Should we just start over? No! I can t. What? ( A BEAT) I m reliving the same day over and over again....yes and, I see my shadow, which means four more weeks of an overused premise.
5. For those of you keeping score, what Crystal just did was called blocking. On the list of what not to do when improvising-- Okay, fine. We re stuck in a loop. I m stuck in a loop. Blocking. Look, every single day is exactly the same. It has been for a long, long time. Is this... What are you doing? Are we still recording? I don t know how to... Every time I try to talk about it we end up fighting. Is this because I was late? I was stuck in dish. I had a cook walk out on me, and-- No, I just... It keeps happening. I used to be able to just-- I could do things. I could just wake up and actually do things. Now, I m... It s just always the same. I m stuck. I don t know what I m supposed to do about it, but I m stuck. Do you really want to do this, right now? No, I don t want to do this, right now. Who would want to do this? It s not like I have a choice. I m reliving-- You knew that if I took this job, I d be gone a lot. We talked about this. What?
6. I know it can be monotonous. You don t think I get it? It s not like my days are spent gallivanting across the globe. I m not out in the world having adventures. I work in a kitchen. That s not fair. You don t understand, it s not the-- The same? It s not the same? You re right. You get to love the person you re around all day. No, I just-- I m reliving-- (INTERRUPT) You get to watch that adorable little boy that we made together grow, and learn, and change, and evolve, and your only job is to try to make sure he doesn t die. I spend every day yelling at people that I would love to murder. I know it s hard, but, I m-- (INTERRUPT) You re a stay at home parent, so yeah, sometimes you kind of have to stay at home and be a parent. Of course, it s gonna suck sometimes, and yeah, it isn t always easy, but that s just part of the job. We can t end up here every time you have a hard week. It isn t-- What am I supposed to do with this? I m sorry, but I m stuck-- (STARTING TO GET REALLY EMOTIONAL) STOP! If you think I don t feel stuck... If you don t see how much I miss that boy. How much I miss us sometimes. It s not-- I can t... No, Crystal, please. You know that I know how hard you work. You know I appreciate all that you do, and the sacrifices you make every single day. I am nothing without you. You re right, I know you re right, I do nothing here but watch our son, that little adorable boy, grow every single day, and all I can do is hope that the half of him that comes from me is swallowed by (MORE)
7. (cont d) the half of him that comes from you, because I know he d be better for it. The world would be better for it. You are an incredible person, the best person I ve ever known. You are my light, my truth, my map through the monster-riddled seas of this insane world. I will always do everything humanly possible to ensure that you know how truly, truly thankful I am to have you in my life. But, I am reliving the same day over and over again, like for reals. I m super duper serious. AND Holy crap I... This is ridiculous, we just-- Yeah, I ve already had this conversation. AND That s not-- It s easy to-- And that one. Whoa. Yeah. So, you ve already done this? Kind of. How many times? I don t know. A lot. AND This can t be happening. Whoa. So, wait, so, you re saying that you ve had this exact conversation? Yes! I mean, it changes. Sometimes you don t believe me. You storm out, or yell, or, you know, we fight. But, yeah, for the most part, I ve done this a lot.
8. And that was the best you could do? What? The nice things you said about me... Oh, well, I ve said a lot of-- You ve said those things before, right? I mean, it s not like-- Wow. It took me months to figure out the right thing to say. It s-- Took you months? Yes! Past tense. As in, you re done working on it? No, I meant... What else have you been doing? What do you mean? You ve been repeating the same day over and over for what, weeks? Months? Years? Yes and-- Have you learned any languages? Read any books? Perfected the art of ice sculpting?
9. Not exactly. So, then what? What? What have you been doing!? Just this. Come on. Every time? You have an entire day to do whatever you want and you-- Not an entire day. What do you mean? It starts when I hit record. When you hit-- Record. Yeah. The loop starts when our podcast starts. When does it end? Apparently, never. But when do you restart? When the podcast is over. So, if I hit stop right now-- Please don t.
10. Have I before? So many times. And, you restart every time? Right. What if we left it running? We ve tried that a few times. The program just freezes after a couple of hours, and I wake up in the chair again. AND You need a new computer. Is there anything that we haven t said to each other? Have you done all of this before? So far, yeah. AND Jingoism Soda shower Sarah Mclaughlin s elbow juice Holy shit. That s one of my favorites. AND Fraggle Rock. Hm. AND David has a yellow banana and it s yellow, like really yellow. COME ON.
11. I m sorry. Wait... Do you tell me every time? Not every time. What happens when you don t? You ask fewer questions. AND Hilarious. Stop doing that. Sorry. Seriously, what happens? Do we just finish the podcast and walk around the house like nothing s happening? Sometimes! We watch Parks and Rec and you talk about work, but eventually the computer freezes and I m back here. Why don t you just tell me right away? I need to know these things. It s exhausting. I know you ve had a long shift, and the fact that you re willing to do the podcast at all is a miracle. You can t just hide something like this. I need to know when you re going through something. You need to tell me so I can help do something about it. Like what? AND I don t know but it s obviously not going to fix itself.
12. I said stop it! I m trying. What can I do? Just this. This is what we do. There has to be something we haven t tried. Something we haven t said to each other that will just, I don t know-- We ve talked about everything. Not everything. Everything. What is my favorite Jelly Bean? Trick question, the answer is Gummy Bears. Lucky guess. I know everything about you. How old was I when I had my first kiss? Mouth closed or open? Really? 10 and 14, respectively. There has to be something...
13. I know you like to say that your favorite song is Mint Car by The Cure but it s really Chiquitita by Abba. I know that when you were in High School you wore Navy style bell bottoms every single day. I know you like to sprinkle red pepper flakes on literally everything you eat, and you don t like John Hughes movies despite the fact that it destroys part of my soul to hear you say that. SOUND: LAUGHS. I know I d rather be hearing the same stories and making the same jokes right here with you for the rest of my life than doing anything anywhere with anyone else. I m pregnant. What? I m pregnant. (cont d) Are you sure? Yes, I m sure, you goon. How did you do that? You were there, stupid. No, how did you know what I would say? You don t need to be stuck in an infinite Murray-loop to know someone. This is-- New?
14. Different... Good different? Amazing different. I was going to tell you on our anniversary, but I guess breaking you out of a supernatural time loop prison is a pretty memorable event too. Which reminds me of the topic of this week s discussion. AND Change. Throughout a scene it s important to have characters go through some sort of change, no matter how small. Or world shattering. If it s the same forever it can get stale, and although your characters might be happy twiddling their thumbs and staring at a wall together-- The audience would probably appreciate some character development and maybe a little novelty. This has been another installment of... AND The Self Improvment Podcast! Join us next week for a new topic and some new ridiculous scenes... Unless this didn t work and I m somehow still trapped in an infinite loop, in which case, I ll see you in a few minutes! Are you ready?
15. No, but I m going to do it anyway. Thank you for listening, we ll see you soon. Thank you.