“Gay Gadgets for Guys is now following you on Twitter!”
That was the first email I got when I woke up this morning. I don’t usually get accosted by such things before 8am.
I’ve got this Twitter account as an extension of my life as a professional sports writer and as an unofficial extension of my newspaper column. Just about every journalist has one except perhaps for that quintessential complainer Andy Rooney. And I'm glad Andy Rooney doesn’t have a Twitter account, because he’d only go onto to 60 Minutes and say “Ya know, maybe it’s just me…” and then bitch and moan about his Twitter fix.
Technically speaking, the account by which I am known as @TuggTweets is mine and only mine. But even though it is not affiliated with the Philadelphia Globe, I do have to watch what I say, not only keeping it clean (for the most part) but also keeping what I put out there strictly about today’s game or tomorrow’s sports world, in line with what’s happening in sports. Not my haughty opinions or flippant hourly obsessions.
Sure, social media had changed the way we interact with each other, and it has probably even pushed the boundaries of what we’re comfortable saying. Much of the feedback or “tweets” as they call them come in the form of fan responses; some who agree, some who think my daily diatribes are full of it, and some who just want to shout out as loud as they can digitally about the Phils, Giants, Cliff Lee, LeBron, Tiger Woods or whatever else. Likewise, every time a new user or fan decides to follow me I get an email informing me of it.
This morning’s blurb on my BlackBerry was a special one though, because it’s not every day that I get notification that gay men with toys are “following” me, albeit following me on Twitter, not literally following me, but virtually following me. Hey, I’m all for gay rights and for the community, so that’s no issue. I just think that there’s a chock full of comic value laden in almost every little thing that comes your way. Later, when I took the time to read the email, I found the email’s corporate disclaimer about my right to report Gay Gadgets for "abusive behavior" or “spam” a bit hilarious too. I guess if I am afraid that Gay Gadgets is spamming my account then I can just go ahead and block them. I suspect though that in some quarters that could be considered digital cock blocking.
But it made a little more sense when I read the info within, which took a second to tell me where this came from.
“@GayGadgetsXO follows a user who follows you:
* Tess Morgenstern - http://twitter.com/TessSaysF_Alot”
It makes a lot of sense that this early morning charm came directly by way of my stand up comic friend, the potty-mouthed Tess, as her online moniker, @TessSaysF_Alot, aptly describes her humor and the potency that goes with it. The link to, or the “follow” by the gadgets guys probably isn’t an intentional joke, nor do I think she put them up to it. But it just demonstrates the odd way by which we all cross-pollinate in the digital age. I tweet the same way I write, about the same old things. About sports, day in and day out. Every once in a while like today, the boomerang comes back to me with a big dildo attached to it. Such is the life of a full time writer and semi-professional smart ass.
But the mention of Tess, serendipitously name-dropped by my new friends in the gadget business, brought to mind a funny episode that happened the same day I saw her last, a week ago. My cell went off and I heard what sounded very clearly like a kid’s voice, and then it went like this…
“Hello, this is Tugg.”
“Hello,” says the little voice.
“Yeah?”
“Who’s this?”
“Tugg.”
“Doug? Who…Who’s this?”
“No. It’s Tugg.”
“Who’s Doug?”
“I think you got the wrong number, kid.”
“What?”
“Who are you trying to call?”
< Click. >
Then a minute later the phone rang again. I ignored it and then it rang another time, and I ignored that too. Because I was eating lunch and reading up on what the sports page over at the Inquirer had to say today, I had my attentions occupied. I didn’t feel like answering and I wouldn’t have answered again no matter what, not right now, even if it was my editor, a friend or god forbid, my mother. Later, after finishing my Thai, I checked my voice mail to find the sounds of the same anonymous kid.
“Hey you! I’m gonna kick your butt!” < Click. >
For a minute I felt my wise guy inside jump up, ready to spew a comeback comment. Either that or it was just the 14 year old I used to be, who occasionally rears his ugly, petulant head that awoke me from my grown-up workday grumble. I wanted to say “bring it on” to this kid since, you know, I could totally take him and probably kick his dad’s ass too.
It is the little comic moments like these that, at least in my days, make the stale air fresh again, and this was one of those privately side-splitting things that you want to tell somebody about back at work, like, “Guess what… I just got threatened by an 8 year old.” This little kid who should have been at school or daycamp just called to tell me, some stranger, that he was gonna kick my ass. And in a way he did kick my ass or at least knock me off my serious grown-up perch. Oh, if I only coulda thanked him.
But I was in for more as the day moved along. Tess and I have this ritual about once every other month, and once a month in the summertime, of blowing off our respective work to cut out early and grab some margaritas at, say 2 or 3pm in the afternoon. Much of her gig, besides the drama teaching, is at night and mine is whenever, so mid day on a Tuesday or Wednesday just makes sense for alcohol as long as there’s nothing pressing to do. And when you get to make your own schedule, as I do and she does, then you take it as one of the best perks of the job and use it wisely. I figured it was time for us to catch up; me on her latest life antics, and her getting into my business and the details she loved about the women I'm chasing.
But better yet, this day I got to drop in early on her, to check out her improvisational comedy classes at the mini mecca of comedy on the East Coast known as The Tableau Theatre. Tableau is housed in a majestic old bank building, one of the kinds you often see in Philly that I love, bearing the name of an old and now defunct financial institution up on the frieze above the doorways. I think Tess teaches the class because she loves it and it is some nice extra pay. It probably keeps her fresh in between the local shows she does and her cross-country stints that happen twice a year, when she hits the big clubs like Zanies in Chicago and Mitzy’s in LA. But behind the stoic marble doorways was a boiling comic cauldron, one that looked as though it was a nutty gameshow shot out of the bowels of hell onto a stage. As a spectator I’d get a closer glimpse of what makes a comic mind work, and maybe what Dante was onto.
“Okay. Sandy. Mitch. Mike. You're up. And…and you're at work along the shore on the dock, bitches. Go”.
That’s what I hear as I peer in and plop down in a seat in the back row, as I let myself in, acknowledged by a winky smile and a Marine Corps salute from Tess. But before letting the three players get on with it, Tess interrupts the moment with some coaching about commitment, going into the scene.
“Remember guys: whatever is happening, commit to your character, the character you're choosing. And remember, it only sucks if you don’t commit and decide it sucks.” They nod. “So don’t let it suck. Have fun with it.”
Tess doesn’t really know anything about sports, and she’d tell you herself that she doesn’t care about sports. Or as she put it to me once, “I don’t give a camel’s cock about sports, my friend”. I don’t know what makes her comic mouth so rough, or rough to some people that is, yet I'm just as humored by every word that comes out of her mouth as I think she is. In truth, she’s really a nice person and someone who can disarm you. But she likes to put you on the spot –you, me and everybody—and that’s part of the fun of it. But like the most committed and intense athletes I’ve known --both pro and everyday amateur-- she’s got a thing, a hang-up maybe, that demands performance. And she’s got an energy that brings it out of you. It makes me think Tess instructs these up-and-coming actors because it gives her a chance, just a little bit once in a while, to mess with people but make them witness, maybe force-feed themselves the comedy in life in the same way that little kid made me feel it on the phone that day. What Tess was instructing was something pretty simple. That is, when you get an idea to stick with it, push it and make it work. If you're on stage and your character is sweeping then floor then sweep with enthusiasm. In improv, it turns out, if you stick to what you’re doing you’ll find the scene and so will the others in the scene with you. Otherwise, if you drop your initiation in lieu of something else, then you're confused and confusing the audience, looking like an asshole.
The scene, as it turned out, was pretty entertaining. Somehow, from that simple instruction that “you're at work at a dock”, the mini-show that morphed out of it was a silent one in which one longshoreman yanked a rope and the other two bounced, back and forth, totally silent. And for about four minutes I was entertained by a silent tug-of-war that could have been crafted by classic Buster Keaton or the Keystone Cops, but with a script. After the skit, a few more words about commitment came out.
“If you don’t like something at first, what you discover in the scene, then take your face and rub it into that bitch, until you love that shit. Whatever happened up there you guys found what was going on and worked with it. Nice one.”
And I agreed to, nice job. But that was honestly the first time I had ever heard the topic of commitment described that way: as something you'd enjoy if only you’d rub your face in it more.
For a moment it sounded like words an angry Vince Lombardi would have rambled to his Packers on a lazy day of bad practice. Or something that your wrestling coach says when you're puking after the day’s block of sprinting, conditioning, jumping rope, and rolling around on a mat with other sweaty wrestlers, only to be told you need to step it up. Then again, this sentiment --if you don’t like something in life, rub your face in that shit-- is kind of a statement you’d find in a manic, over-caffeinated version of a Deepak Chopra day calendar. Still it makes sense.
The best stand up greats like Tess, and others like Eddy Izzard, Patton Oswalt, Bruce, Belzer, and Wright, and even less blue-humored types like Bill Cosby and the great Robert Klein can pull off a great comic masterpiece on their own, on stage for a good hour or so, creating their own space and filling it solely from their own mania and the creativity inside that drives them. But the comedy, the best comedy I think comes out of great group sketches I’ve seen --and that we’ve all seen-- in movies, Saturday Night Live, etc. Maybe that’s why I came today. Nothing against solo stand-up, but I think sketch comedy is such a feast, and when it really works that’s when it resembles a family style meal. It’s like everyone takes a slice of this, a scoop of that and everyone passes it around until we’re all served, making a mess together. Meanwhile, someone else breaks bread while someone else pours wine, another spills the wine, heightening the experience. The kids jump out of their chairs, peas hit the floor, and grandpa’s dentures slip out and get stuck in a corn cob. All of this makes it an enjoyable and laughable meal together. And comedy, like eating together, is real life.
In another sketch scene, four of them went up on stage standing tall, arms out, acting like trees. The fifth player, catching onto this scenery, picked apples one tree at a time, breaking into monologue, talking about his trees, naming them one by one. The first tree he called a “Japanese Maple” keeled over and committed a hari kari ritual suicide, and then when he plucked the fruit from a “Palestinian Delicious” as he called it, the tree, in politically incorrect fashion just blew up.
Suddenly we had a scene about trees killing themselves. Could have been just in my mind, but it dawned on me that same week the news reported the poisoned oak trees at Auburn, and someone blamed Alabama football fans. So it looked like I just got an unscripted version of the day’s news and social commentary, just for stopping in. Rather, these open eared, witty comics just switched their brains on the high notch and took each others subtle cues, rolling with it, producing something impromptu that at least I thought was funny.
There was no script, and with improv there never is a script, yet it all worked, just like much of what happens in the moment of the day, day in, day out. I get that improvisational comedy is about taking an idea, agreeing to it, heightening it, and even making a repetitive game out of it. The question that always comes up is about what creates comedy. What makes funny funny?
There isn’t an easy answer, or at least not an answer that is easily articulated. I know when something is obviously funny, we all do. Maybe some people have it and others just don’t, which would suggest that funny is a personality trait, but I don’t think that it is. But I’d just observe.
In another scene, a lanky, perky redhead was on stage with a grey and tubby, unshaven middle aged buy bearing his ubiquitous smartass smirk. I forget what the Tess’s suggestion was, but suddenly we were at a singles bar. I was not surprised that the talk converted its idle chatter into a commentary about sexuality.
“We have a lot in common you and me,” the guy said, like he was hitting on the girl at a snazzy nightclub. He goes on to stammer on about how much he loves Italian girls, and that his mother is a lesbian. The quippy redhead responded, “As an ethnic half-Italian I find it so sexy that you're ethnically half lesbian.”
I laughed as did the rest of the small crowd. Ethnically half lesbian? I don’t quite understand the mechanics of what made that comment funny. But it is funny, when you think about it, that someone, somewhere out there might actually describe himself as being ethnically half lesbian. Hell, I wish I was at least half lesbian
“Allright. Scene.” Tess called, ending it on a high note. “Nice work. See what happens when you let it flow and just enjoy the fucking ride?”
I think for one that Tess had a way of pumping us up with her off beat instructional style and her cussing encouragement. I had a gym teacher in high school who once told me to “get my shit together”, but had never had a professor to tell me to enjoy the ride or to “get off hard” in Journalism 101 the way Tess advocated her students to get off on stage. That freedom and encouragement to say “yes” to the idea that comes up first, is what I heard Tess call the “Yes And” concept. And it seems to be what makes it work every time. Whatever you’re given you say “yes” to, and then add something else. Yes and.
Though I’d never taken an acting class or a comedy workshop in my life, and I probably wouldn’t make time to, I thought for a minute that maybe “Yes And” was something I needed a little bit more of in my life, here in the grind.
Comic class cleared out, and Tess gave me the usual hug hello and a kiss on the cheek, stating “See, people who get high can get things accomplished.” I never doubted her will to get things accomplished. And high or not I wouldn’t think her weed is what makes Tess and everything around her funny.
Like the end note at the end of that email said, “You do not follow Gay Products Gadgets. What's Next?” I wasn’t sure what was next to follow, but I’d be ready.
Andy Frye writes about sports and life here and tweets throughout the day on Twitter at @MySportsComplex, trying to keep up with Andy Rooney.
Written words © 2010 Pics courtesy of Kaleidoscope Isle of Wight.
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