Everyday

Long have I held the belief that a packed audience for any show, including a graduation show, is the key to a great performance. Today the New York times in an article What’s So Funny? Well, Maybe Nothing cites a study which further proves that having familiar people (in your social circle) in the audience, will lead to easy laughs for you.

Laughter can be used cruelly to reinforce a group’s solidarity and pride by mocking deviants and insulting outsiders, but mainly it’s a subtle social lubricant. It’s a way to make friends and also make clear who belongs where in the status hierarchy.

The study showed that people put in a situation where they needed support, or felt at a disadvantage, were far more likely to laugh at even the lamest of jokes. This might also be an explanation why some improvisers find themselves laughing on the first day of classes out of nervousness of not being accepted.

Primal laughter evolved as a signaling device to highlight readiness for friendly interaction, sophisticated social animals such as mammals need an emotionally positive mechanism to help create social brains and to weave organisms effectively into the social fabric.

While there still is no magical formula for creating the perfect joke and getting an easy laugh, this is interesting news for performers seeking laughter. Although my favorite joke still remains this one.

I really have to hand it to the inventors of the OhMiBod. It’s an iPod compatible vibrator. An ViBrator if you will. Even though it’s a little naughty, I am totally loving the concept of a sexual aid that is iPod compatible.

I had to post a picture of it, only because I couldn’t believe it until I saw it.

Now to bring it back to improv… um… this is a clear example of designers playing a game to the fullest.

Sorry, that was incredibly weak segue.

Yeah, yeah, we know. It seems like some piece of fantastic code I hacked way back in the day does not like the the upgrade I just performed. So, you get this very exciting, white page layout until we figure out what went wrong.

Welcome to the future. I hope you brought your flashlight.

Okay, I think I’ve figured it out — As such, I’de like to introduce you to our new site design. I’d been meaning to fix a few problems that didn’t play well with IE, but hopefully they are all fixed… If you’re having any troubles, please feel free to drop me a line… or look at it in Firefox. I’ve still got a lot of work to do, so please be careful of sharp corners.

The lovely ladies who star in Head In The Oven, hosted Harold Night last night at UCB. They debuted their first episode, which I have to say was pretty funny even for my snobby “nothing compares to Python” tastes. Plus, I have the exact same outfit as the blonde.

Talk about embarrassing.