London: [people] * places * things

One of the best parts of traveling is the meeting of new people.

Here are just three examples from this trip to London:

When I asked Sam if I was in the right place he put his arms on my shoulders and called me "love," which confirmed my suspicion that all British people speak like my friend Sally Hull. 

Sam, of course, was the gregarious guide of the walking tour we took on Wednesday night. 

The event was touted as a ghost tour, and was free with our Big Bus tickets.*  The tour actually had very little to do with ghosts and a lot more to do with drinking and shmoozing at the Sherlocke Holmes Pub. After we pounded our ales, Sam led us about casually "I hate big groups of people," he said with a straight face, "so try not to stand like we're a big group of people." At every monument or "haunted" establishment that we hit Sam demonstrated his ability to tie sex into almost anything. He was hilarious and high energy, often having to pause and draw a deep breath after spouting off paragraphs of information. His guidance was spiked equally with jokes at the expense of British history and fond memories of his own grandmother. I was sad to leave him.

Alison Wilkie is a ferociously hip screenwriter who I met in the staff room at St. Mungos. When she isn't writing  scripts she is running a  creative writing group for homeless people. She is also both an actress and an established stand up comedian. When she found out that I also split my time between comedy and working for the homeless, she put her arms around me and we both laughed like children. 

Alison's story is crazy, she's done everything from working as a chicken keeper in Bethlehem to performing as a dancing girl in Milan.  She has also been street-homeless in London. Now she uses both her understanding of homeless life and her artistic talents to help others unlock their own experiences. 

The 62 year old man from forty minutes outside of London who was my seat mate on the plane ride home is named John. He has a sister who lives in Massachusetts, and he has only recently begun flying internationally to see her. He's been all over New England. "Naught teew diffehrent, then." His accent was so foreign to me that sometimes I had to ask him to repeat things, and sometimes I just nodded and smiled and he would laugh, knowing I hadn't understood him through his countryside dialect.

He was wearing bright socks  that didn't match his shirt or shorts, the way my grandpa Ben does. 

His were lime green and lemon.

 "I have 20 more pairs in my suitcase," he explained. "People say I'm too old and I think, 'too old for what? For fun?'" 

 He'd been trying to find a pair of American flag socks, but couldn't.

 "I wanted to wear one American and one British one for the fourth of July!" he smiled. "One year we went out, and we were in Maine and I put up the American flag on one side and the British flag on the other. People looked, but they know it's a laugh. It's all just a laugh."

Then we traded trivia about wars. You know, like people do.

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*The only reason, I believe, John agreed to accompany me on something called "Ghosts By Gaslight"**
**Despite the distinct lack of ghosts there WAS a gaslight on this tour.

how to get to London

As the plane touched down on one of Heathrow's runways I was fairly vibrating with anticipation.  John, my friend and traveling companion, grabbed our luggage from the overhead compartment. Minutes later I stepped foot, for the very first time,  in the airport featured so prominently as a place of true joy and happy reunion in that classic Everyman movie, Love Actually.

It was everything I wanted it to be. Although no one was there to great us personally, I felt as though England and I would become quite good friends. Thus, we began the second leg of our journey - waiting in queue for approximately a kabillion hours in customs.*

By the time we arrived at Victoria Station  (rail to Paddington, one wrong train, and then the Circle Line to Victoria) we were both exhausted. My inner excitement hadn't waned, but I needed a caffeine fix to make up for the sleep stolen by the Time Zone Bandit.  John doesn't drink coffee, but the traveling had zapped his energy as well. So we checked into the hotel, located an appropriate nourishment vendor, in this case a Costa, and noshed. Coffee for me, tea for John and we were on our way.

Before we bought tickets for a Big Bus,*  and sunscreen (so responsible!) we decided to arm ourselves with Underground Passes for the week.

"Do you mind if I ask you some questions, then?" the man behind the counter asked.
 I had asked his advice: Oyster Card for the week? Or daily passes?

"Where do you think you'll be visiting the most of?" he smiled. His English accent was so thick I could have hidden four of Fagen's boys inside.***  I rattled off a list of places, including my intention to visit St. Mungo's.
I told him, "I'm a nurse."

"A nurse!" he exclaimed. Then he lowered his voice conspiratorially.
 "I have kidney stones," he said. "I mean, I'm passing one right now.. hopefully today. But you probably don't want to hear all that."

"I've heard worse," I laughed, "go on."
So he did.

Overhearing this conversation, John approached the counter. The man initially mistook him for a doctor,  ("you medical folk will have a splendid time!" ) but was just as pleased to find out John is a writer.

Not in the country even four hours and we made a friend. Not too shabby, London.
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* Ah, the romance of the road!
** More on that later...
*** Oliver! jokes!

London, so far

First off, I emailed my Mom to tell her I got here alright and she never wrote back. So I wrote to my brother, who seems to be updating his status without trouble, but has also not gotten back to me.
 I know they're alright (thanks Facebook), but will someone nudge them into letting me know they've gotten my messages?

Fantastic.

 I thought I'd get in a quick note or two about the trip so far before I set out on today's adventures.

The window of our hotel room overlooks chimneys and rooftops, and off in the distance we have a great view of Big Ben framed by the London Eye.

As I write it is 10am here, and below me the city is well into her day, double decker buses cruising here and there, and the funny little taxis darting around like bugs. The bell tower is striking, and it reminds me of  the Mary Martin version of  Peter Pan which I watched about once a week as a child. Seriously.

After two days of exploring the city together (and a night of crazy fun dancing)*, John and I decided to take this day apart.

I have a list of things to do, so I'll be heading out soon. After a day of wandering around one of the Royal Parks I plan to meet up with a staff member at Florence Nightingale House, which is something like our Barbara McInnis House. There I will tour the facilities, and hopefully sit in on The Great Escape, which is one of their most well known homeless rehabilitation programs. I'm hoping to learn a thing or two.

My day after that involves a lot of meandering near the Thames, perhaps revisiting Tate Modern (since I only saw part of it yesterday) grabbing a Crabbies in a local pub (my new favorite drink) and then meeting John at 6pm to go see The Lion King.

I am feeling very, very blessed.

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* More about all that, later on when I'm feeling more narrative.

Happy Father's Day from Improv Asylum

Fathers Day from Improv Asylum on Vimeo.


Writer /Director: Evan Kaufman

Director of Production, Editor, Composer: Chris Loughran

Produced by Improv Asylum

Featuring: Kirstin Opstad, Evan Kaufman, Matt Catanzano, Kiley Fitzgerald, Dan Faneuf, Misch Whitaker and Richie Moriarty

Behind the Clouds

I crammed myself into the back of the Number One today, and checked my watch without much hope of good news. Just as I suspected time had not, in fact, started running backwards and I was going to be late to my CPR recertification class.

I reached into my bag to pull out my ipod and found that I had left it along with my cell phone on my bedside table. Sighing, I continued rummaging and came up with some reading material at the bottom of the bag: a folded up bulletin from the 8pm Mass at St. Clem's last night. Father Peter is usually a pretty engaging story teller, so I dug in, searching for his column.

"I know you," the man jammed into the seat next to me said. "You work at McInnis House."

I recognized his face, but not the name he gave me, and we chatted a bit as we rode.
 He's doing well, he reported, still in a treatment program, and still sober as a result.  "I gained some weight," he pointed out, "but it's better than the lifestyle I was living."  He  really feels like he's been successful in restarting his life. He asked me to say hello to "everyone over there" from him.

We fell into a comfortable silence. I finished reading Father Peter's column. I looked up and saw that we had a bunch of Mass Ave left to cover.

"I wish it were more sunny out," I remarked.

In the interest of full disclosure, I don't know why I said it. I actually don't mind cloudy days at all. In retrospect, had it been any more sunny out I also would have been upset about leaving my sunglasses on the kitchen counter.

He responded sincerely, "The sun is out, you know." And he smiled.

I know it looks like some Chicken Soup for the Sick Sad Soul written out here, but there was nothing trite about the way he said it. Instead, it was the truest thing I had heard all day.
Why had my go - to space filler in conversation been a complaint anyway?
A soft complaint, but a complaint nonetheless. How often do I do that and not even notice?

"You know the serenity prayer, right?" he asked me.  I said I did, but when he paused and I didn't recite it, he recited it instead. We both smiled.  He told me to take that thought with me for when my day wasn't going the way I wanted.

"You can restart your day whenever you want," he pointed out.

And I guess, of all people I ran into today, he would know.

Updates on Writing

I owe you an update. I haven't been writing anything here. But I've been writing nonetheless.

Improv Asylum's newest Main Stage revue opens July 3rd weekend.
We've been jam packing our weeknights with rehearsals so that we can bring you a show that will make you laugh and cry and yell and want to be our friends on facebook. The period of time for sketch submissions ended this past week. Now we have several hours' worth of material to sift through and create a show out of. Throughout June, on Thursday nights at 10pm you (yes! you!) can come watch us try new things out. That means new sketches as well as new improv structures. And because we're not sure how well it works yet... it's all free!

Meanwhile, on the Gorefest: 8 end of things, Mr. Brooks and I finished our very first completed draft of the script on May 28th. On May 30th I met with Steve Gilbane (composer) and Don Schuerman  (director) to discuss their suggestions for revisions, and was pleased as punch to find there were not many rewrites needed.

However, our conversation did generate a ton of fun new ideas I wanted to fit into the show.
Since then I have been working to revise the script into what it is now.

While Brooks and I continue fine tuning, Steve has been writing music, Don has been researching plans for guillotine construction (go ahead, you can read that sentence again if you need to), and the lyricists have been coming up with witty rhymes and clever phrasing to fill in all the most dramatic moments in the plot.

If you ever wondered what we writers talk about in our secret meetings, here is an all encompassing snippet:

Me: I don't know how to fix this line about typewriters!!!
Brooks: I'm not sure if it really matters...
Don:  It definitely doesn't.
Steve: What if we make it a song?

The second draft is slated to be completed by June 20th.

Pain Scale

This morning Nurse Sassy Lionheart introduced our unit to a new pain scale.

Depending on what your job it, it's work safe but not very relevant.

But if you work somewhere that it's relevant, it's probably not appropriate.

#10 is my favorite.