I coach two high school Improv Teams down here in Sugar Land, Texas. We only go to one tournament—MIST at the University of Houston, which occurs in the Spring. Well, we’ve had a bit of a winning streak. This marks the third year in a row the boy’s have won first place. Girl’s won first last year. This year there was some infighting and drama, and we lost a few members, but the girl’s pulled through and won 2nd. I’m proud as a parent.
Transcript:
How to be a Man: Splitting Firewood with your Face and Other Manly Skills
Say manly things. In fact, insert man into everything you say. It’s not that hard, man. There are plenty of manly words to diversify your manabulary. For example, mancore. It’s like a manticore, but manlier. Try shouting mancore after every manly thing you do, which should be all the time, and then some. DoMANate conversations with words like mandaculous, mandate, mandible, mandetta, mandlebars, comMANdo, mand.
Don’t get confused if people shit their pants. Real men have that effect.
Brag. Brag about everything. Even if it’s not true. No shame. I’ve never cock slapped a shark. I am not facebook friends with the Dalai Llama. I don’t even know how you’d arm wrestle a volcano but I brag about it all the time. And I’m so manificent that the world changes to fit my point of view. So brag, and if anybody calls you out on it, mount their genitals on a spear as a warning to others. Then brag about it.
I’ve actually concocted a few phrases to get your ginormous braggart balls rolling. “You know my girlfriend was complaining about her ex the other day so I threw him off a mountain.” “I’m sorry teach I’m late for class but you know I was too busy clubbing a bear to death with my schlong.”
Hit something. Be it a man, a woman, a child, then throw it. Ever seen judo? They throw stuff all the time. Don’t want to get up? Throw verbal abuse. “Your never going to amount to anything, son.”
Which brings me to my next point: pee on everything. Pee on the ground, pee on pee, pee on the audience, pee in space, pee on pandas, especially if they’re cock blocking you. Peeing is like marking your territory; it tells people where you’ve been and what you’ve been up to. It’s like Facebook. Where you’re going to pee next should be a constant discussion between you and your other men.
Finally, facial hair. It isn’t fashion, it’s life. It’s not accessory, it’s necessity. Mustachery is mandatory in the mantheon of manly men. Just look at the muschateers. Grow a mustache. No, two mustaches. Doublestache. Use the extra mustache as a boomerang to destroy your enemies. Can’t grow a stache, mortal? Staple a moose to your face.
So, if you’ve been listening to my mantra, you should be a man by now. Your balls should be dragging two feet behind you. You should have the ability to stare the sun to death. You should be like “yeah, sucka, you go down. You go down. Rematch!” Your very scent should cause women to keel over pregnant, but that’s okay, babies are great, they’re more people to fight!
So be a man, unless of course, you find a woMAN.
Performed spoken word, this time with Right Side Up Poets and this time at SOHO, a fancy schmancy pyromancy restaurant-slash-club.
1 – The peeps (I’m the tall one)
2 – The peeps (all chalked up)
3 – The brochure for our show
Lip Bomb is an outrageous group of spoken word-a-holics who mostly met in Kip Fulbeck’s spoken word course Art 137, with a few stragglers (like myself) added later. These seriously attractive people decided to continue performing and writing and freaking out beyond the occasional classroom gig, leading to the bombastic foundation of the group. I’m consistently stoked by Lip Bomb’s bad ass bravado, affable antics, and meticulous humor (although my excitement might be reticent at times since, if anything, I’m the Pierce Hawthorne of the group – older, cynical, less wise). Now as I retire (err, well, graduate) I have an obligation to pay Lip Bomb some lip service: keep it up, youngsters! You’re walking, talking, definitely-not-balking balmshells and you do beautiful things.
Ben Shukman, a few others, and myself have been working on this project for the past couple months: KINOTEK, an alternative movie venue in Isla Vista. The Bottomline reported on our first event which had a 160 person turn-out.
Somewhere over the rainballs…
I’ve been asked to revive my one-hit wonder “How to be a Man: Splitting Firewood with my Face and other Manly Skills” for Wizard of Balls: A Night of Spoken Words. The show is being put on by Lip Bomb, a spoken word group on campus. The show’s TONIGHT, as in Friday, March 9th, 2012, at 7:30 PM sharp in the Theater & Dance Room 1701. Here’s a blurb about the show:
Lions and Tigers and Balls, OH MY!
We’ve all been scared before, worried, wondering, “Where are my balls?” Well, we were thinking the exact same thing. Come along on our journey down the yellow brick road in search of our courage fruit.
[A Spoken Word piece I improvised on-the-spot when somebody (as prank vengeance for doing the same to her) signed me up for Bean Night.]
These were my brothers.
The oldest breathed water and wouldn’t stay in the sea. Sprinting across the crags, he lived puddle to puddle. Why not just stay in the ocean? But I think he was broken.
The second found cadavers that walked and talked and kissed but were dead. Second would give them pieces of his soul so they could glow, but soul isn’t sunlight.
Third lived in a cloud fishing for people. When he caught them he would reel them up and eat them. Little stink pieces of heart and blood dripped from the vapor. I would have liked Third, maybe. At least he knew there were worse things than being lonely.
Fourth lived by an ugly statue, a humpty dumpty god. At night he burned his hands in fireplaces, and in the morning he pieced the monument together with Third-World tools. Noon, he would write poetry on its corpse.
When the Fourth died, there were no children to complete his work. But dying isn’t disappearing.
These were my brothers. They speak to me and make me want to do terrible things.
Michael Morgan, a UCSB theater professor with the voice of a lion, hosted this “unique inter-disciplinary theatrical production” over the Summer of 2011. What really set us apart from other stage adaptations of The Odyssey was the inclusion of teenage juvenille delinquents from Los Prietos Boys Camp and Academy in our main cast. For an entire Summer we worked with Los Boys on a primal, abstract, and ultimately personal rendition of The Illiad’s ubiquitous sequel. There was a lot of soul-searching, a lot of tears, one kid got busted with a baggie of pot, that sort of thing. The end result was a blackbox godspell.
For my part (because, as usual, this blog is all about me!), I played one of the cyclops who admonish Polyphemos, as well as a (hopefully) sexy Odysseus during his sexy stay on Circe’s island. Kalila Griffith played Circe and we had a Tango dance number. It was fun!
Desmond, Write 