Earlier tonight, I’d written that I wasn’t feeling into going to ComedySportz tonight, but as soon as we were in the car, I found myself excited. I knew, going in, that I wasn’t scheduled to play, but I also knew that our sound guy and his wife, another player, had a medical issue, and had to miss the show. When I got there, I found out that another player had also called in sick. One of the guys scheduled to play already was pulled to do sound, and I was put into the liners.

Instead of having teams of three with a DJ (designated jokester – a player who floats between teams), we had teams of two with a DJ. This meant everyone had to work a little harder.

We began with the shortest game of Doo Rap EVER. I don’t think we made it to the three-rhyme more than twice, and the second time was the last round. My team captain had said backstage that if we were going to be rapping, I’d be on my own, but I’d thought he was kidding. He wasn’t. He was out in the first round. Nevertheless, our team managed to win.

We (Red) played Stunt Double, but our choices weren’t high percentage. Too much dead time, not enough big actions.

Blue played Dinner at Joe’s. The Volunteer had no attention span and we had to keep telling her “buzz or ding.”

Blue played Moving Bodies. It was hilarious.

We played Audience SFX. Our Volunteer was asked, during practice to open a window (his sound effect “woosh”), and then close it. (He said, “shut.”) Open a door (“woosh” just like the window.) And close it (slam). As we went on, his effects got softer and softer, and he kept apologizing. But he was a good sport.

I thought the Blue Team had won both rounds, but we got to play Five Things, and it was the most bizarre Five Things ever.

Here are the Improv Encyclopedia rules for Five Things:

One player leaves the stage while the Host asks for an everyday activity. Then, audience and host will change 5 things about that activity. Example: suggestion is feeding the cat. One might change the following:

* change the cat into something else, say a tiger
* change the verb into some other verb, say deep frying
* change the location from where one might feed the cat. Say the Vatican.
* change the character. Say character changes from cat-owner to postman
* add interaction with a famous person, say Elvis.

After that the 1st player is brought back in and a scene is played in Gibberish . The other players have exactly 5 minutes to make the first player guess each of the five things.

Depending on the original suggestion, feel free to change whatever.

We play it differently, with five different activities and changes of 2 or 3 things for each. Tonight’s suggestions were weirder than usual. Oh, the activities were fairly normal, Mowing the Lawn, Sky Diving, Sword Fighting, Rock Climbing, and Monopoly. But the suggestions were…well…I’m fairly certain I’m misremembering some of these…but for Mowing the Lawn, the mower was ear wax, the lawn was a cat, and we were with John Denver; for Sky Diving, the chute was a rock, the plane was a black hole, and the pilot was Gumby. For Sword Fighting, the swords were wrenches, and the armor was saran wrap. For Rock Climbing, the rock wall was whipped cream, the rope was a wooly mammoth, and we were with Chevy Chase, and for Monopoly, the board was a car, and there was a turtle, but I don’t remember the rest. We WAH’d on the Gumby One, since after the first guess our guesser was still not even close, and only had 20 seconds for Monopoly. Our ref gave us four points instead of three, though.

Halftime was Halftime.

Blue’s catch-up round was Blind Line.

For the ref’s challenge we played our new favorite game, “My Movie.”

Here are the guidelines for that:

All players start in a line “My Movie, My Movie, My Movie” is repeated by all then the ref points at a player and they give a title of a movie. He continues to point at players until he finds a title he likes. Then he asks (with fingers “creating” it) for a subtitle [tag-line]. If he’s satisfied then the “movie” plays out (often as a quick scene). Ref blows whistle to stop the movie and everyone comes back together to start over with the chanting and all repeats itself. Except different movie titles are given, of course.

And we wrapped up with 185.

I was surprised when E, on sound, announced that Red had won. Yay winning!

Seriously, though, it was a good match and we, and the audience, had fun.

(Afterwards, Fuzzy and I went to IHOP where I had some orange juice and half of a black bean chili omelet.)