Thanks to We Killed: The Rise of Women in American Comedy, a Very Oral History, I have at least a beginning inkling of the contribution of the amazing Joan Rivers. Today, at age 81, Joan passed from this life. Joan, we love you. We miss you!
Tag Archives: comedy
Southern inspired eats above the Mason-Dixon Line
In August I traveled to Chicago for a week long intensive stand-up comedy class at Second City. I might have been living in Chicago when Second City opened its doors in December 1959 if Mom had agreed to Daddy’s plan to retire from the military to Chicago in his home state the previous year. Instead, I was 8-years-old and in Mrs. Blackwood’s second grade class at Oaklawn Elementary School in Hot Springs, Arkansas. I was back in Hot Springs, a recent graduate of the University of Arkansas and mourning the recent loss of my father to cancer, when SNL was birthed in October 1975 with Second City alums John Belishi, Dan Ackroyd, and Gilda Radner.
While in Chicago, I stayed down the street at the Hotel Lincoln, home of the Perennial Virant. My second day there, I sampled a delightful brunch dish at Paul Virant’s “farm-to-table restaurant.”
What could be better for a southern girl than “grilled cornbread.” Virant starts with braised greens, in this case collards,
tops them with roasted summer beans, pickled grilled leek relish,
corn bread and a sunnyside up egg.
Chicago clearly was a comedy and culinary delight for this Southern gal. No joke.
The September Methuselism Award goes to
Lynn Ruth Miller. According to Growing Bolder, Lynn Ruth published her first book, Starving Hearts, at age 67. Her website says it has sold 6,200 copies! At 70 she reinvented herself and began doing standup comedy in a one-person show entitled Aging is Amazing.
Obviously Lynn Ruth doesn’t stand still long enough for moss to grow on her. At 80 she is still going strong. The active octogenarian proves, beyond any doubt, that aging is amazing. Discover where you will be able to see Lynn Ruth and other things she has added to her list of accomplishments, like this YouTube video, on her website.
Improv
Do you dream of telling stories as funny as those told by Bill Cosby, Ron White, Margaret Cho, or Chelsea Handler?
A brighter bulb. ©iStockphoto/choness
Improv can up your laughter factor easily and quickly. And it doesn’t have to break the budget. Whether built on “yes and,” observing patterns, or the use of games, improv teaches tools so powerful they can help the least funny of us grow our funny quotient exponentially. In 2010, I took Intensive Improv 101 at the Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles. By the end of the week, our class was able to build improv scenes based on an audience suggestion that prompted one-minute monologues in a class show. I was hooked. That class led to two other UCB improv classes, one on the Harold, and two more intensives at Second City Hollywood where I actually discovered I have a couple of characters lurking inside me.
Can’t make it to LA, Chicago, or New York? Both the UCB and Second City have books that can be your guide: The Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual, The Second City Almanac of Improvisation, or Truth in Comedy: The Manual for Improvisation.
Get a book, gather some friends, and before you know it you’re as funny as a monkey’s uncle!