Okay, when I left you, we had just left Santa Monica and were headed to Hollywood for our big L.A. debut. Mere was meeting a friend at 4:30, our show was at 10:30. So we had time to still explore and do what we wanted to do before we had to really be anywhere. When we got to the DickBox, we took some pics, met Mere’s friend and made our way to a local tavern for a quick bite. My iPhone was drained and not working, so I tried to charge it up at the bar, but it didn’t work.
As it turns out, this was a huge problem for me the entire time in L.A. Since I spent half my time using my GPS to figure out where we were, not because Steve was lost, but because I wanted to know where we were and in what direction we were travelling, I used my battery up quick. I also used my internet to look things up like old landmarks and information on the places we were at. Oh, and I took pictures, lots and lots of pictures. I took pics of the Walk of Fame, which was pretty cool, but NOT of Grumman’s Chinese Theater. I also didn’t take pics of the Kodak theater, which was just a couple of blocks down from IO West. But it was cool to look at nonetheless. We DID manage to drive all the way down Hollywood Blvd. as well as Sunset Blvd., and wound our way through Beverly Hills. I managed to take a picture of the Beverly Hills sign. Not original, but I did take it with a bunch of Japanese tourists hanging all over it, which made me laugh.
I wanted to go up to the Hollywood sign, but we didn’t get to it on Wednesday as we were running out of time. Steve wanted to go see a musical group perform at Second City before our show. It made sense, since the accompanist for that group was going to play for us later that night. Mere and Natasha went to see a friend of Natasha’s play in a group at IO, while Steve and I went to Second City a few blocks away. Steve thought the show started at 8:30, but it started at 8pm. So we missed the musical group, which sucks. What I heard sounded really good. We had comp tickets and the doorman said he shouldn’t let us in since the show had started, but he did anyway. Along the way, we ran into a guy that Steve knows who literally wrote the book about musical improv. Mike something or other. He seemed nice. I didn’t really talk to him, but Steve chatted him up for a bit before were rushed into the theater.
The second group we saw did a harold, which for non-improvisers means nothing. Let’s just say that they were pretty funny. They had really natural transitions and never stopped the action at all, going from one scene to the next in a kind of morphing fashion. They played slow, they played smart and they made me laugh. I have to admit, though, that while I thought they did some things that were really, REALLY interesting, I didn’t think they did anything vastly different or better than some of the better groups I’ve seen in Denver. I think the overall talent pool in L.A. is just much bigger than we have in Denver, but I think our top groups are just as good as the groups I saw in L.A.
After the Second City show, Steve, the accompanist Scott and myself walked back to IO West to start preparing for our show. We were supposed to play with a man named Mark, who was one of the original cast members of Hit n Run in L.A. when Steve was out there. I was excited to play with the new folks, but I still wasn’t nervous and we, as a group, still really hadn’t talked about the show at all.
Each of us in the group had friends we had invited to see us play in the festival. I had a friend, Angela, Mere and I had mutual friends, Michelle and Jarrod and Galloway (yes, that’s his real name), Don, etc. Steve had friends coming as did Natasha. We put some comp tickets at the front and greeted our friends as they showed up. We had to change and, of course, warm up. We wanted to do our best, we wanted to in good voice for the show, we didn’t want to give a bad show.
As good as it was to see our old friends, it was tough to stay focused on the show and what we needed to do. We wanted to catch up with our friends, to say hello, to meet the new players and chat with the accompanist. We wanted to warm up and prepare mentally and physically. But it was hard to do with all of the distractions. Plus it was late. We weren’t scheduled to go on until 10:30, later than we’ve ever played before and we were tired from all the driving and eating and sightseeing and meeting new people.
But, we finally got our friends into the line, got the keyboard into the theater, grabbed some water, met Mark and prepared to warm up. Thank goodness we had snagged a cherry parking spot right outside the theater. Earlier, when we had parked, we all took a pic of us in front of the theater. There was no one else around, the sun was out and it was quiet. But now, just thirty minutes before our show, it was a mass of bodies and noise and laughter and talking and confusion. Natasha had been doing some vocal warm ups in the car by herself, but we needed to warm up as a group. So we found a nearby dead end alley, ducked behind a dumpster and started warming up.
We managed to get mostly through our warm ups before the smell of urine hit us like a ton of bricks. So we just moved out onto the street about 75 yards away from the crowd huddled outside the theater. As we were starting to wind up our vocal warm ups, a yellow car drove by very slowly with a short, thin man dressed in black walking beside it. As I looked, the guy gave us a thumbs up and yelled out, “Good job”. Steve and I noticed almost immediately that it was Andy Dick. Mere and Natasha missed him. We continued our warm ups and a few minutes later, Mr. Dick walked by again, giving us encouragement, telling us to have a good show. We thanked him for letting us use his theater and he replied, “That’s why it’s there, for you to use. Have a great show!”
He was the only “celebrity” we saw, and it was cool. Not so much because he was a celeb. But because he took the time to chat briefly while he passed by. It was nice. But in the darkness of the street, with everything that was going on around us, it happened so fast, it was hard to take in at the time.
We went upstairs and then waited to go on. It was probably only about ten minutes, but it felt like forever. I just wanted to sit down and relax and take a few moments to be alone with my thoughts. The entire time I hadn’t been nervous, but I was starting to get a few butterflies. Not many, just a few. I trust everyone in the cast, and I knew Scott and Mark would be great. I just didn’t want to put on a bad performance. I didn’t think we would, but I didn’t want to suck and drag everyone else down. The green room was packed. It was hot and there was nowhere to sit down. I grabbed a water and found a chair just outside the entrance and sat down. I just wanted to prepare mentally for the show, go through my checks and remind myself of the things I need to do to be on point.
I managed to do that a little, but again, there was so much going on, there was no moment of quiet, no real relaxation, just sitting. And then it was time to go on. The little theater had a lot of bodies in it, it was warm, and there was some confusion as to how we would enter the stage. Fortunately we had talked to the lighting and sound guy the day before, so we didn’t have to go through that. In the end, we fought our way through the people coming out of the theater and went up onstage, waited for folks to file back in and then went to the back of the house where we would run through the aisle as our entrance.
It was exciting, and though there were a lot of friendly faces in the crowd, there were also a lot of faces we didn’t recognize who I just KNEW were judging us. You can see the full video of the show on our Facebook page. It went fast. It was pretty good. Our suggestion was dinosaur jelly, if I remember correctly, which I’m probably not. I came out as a dinosaur, as an homage to a friend who was in the audience. Sadly, it was out of place. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that the other four were doing this great opening number, singing and dancing and mirroring each other while I managed to wander all over the place pretending to be a velociraptor. Stupid. I stayed with it because I felt it would have looked worse to just give up on my choice, but if I had to do it again, I just would have come out and sang and danced like everyone else.
Natasha was the hero, I played her love interest, Steve and Mere played kind of a dual bad guy and poor Mark played a cat. I felt bad for him because the show went so fast that he never really got a chance to do anything or sing. Hopefully he comes out to Colorado and gets to play with us in the future. As I said, the show went fast. Our music was really solid, Scott was great, Natasha was in great voice, Steve and Mere had a fun duet and Natasha and I sang a love song. We ended the show abruptly with what we call pastiche, where all of us come out to sing together. About halfway through the song, and knowing that we had about four minutes left in our time, I realized that the lighting guy probably thought it was a closing number. In reality, we needed one more number to wrap it up nicely. But he pulled lights on us and it was over.
The crowd seemed to like it a lot, we were a little disappointed, I think (I can’t speak for everyone) that we didn’t get to finish the story, but we felt good about the music and at least the story made sense, even if it ended with Natasha apparently killing herself with a butter knife. Musically we rocked, as a show, it was good, but again, not great. We couldn’t be too disappointed, though. We impressed some folks and, given everything that was swirling around us, did a pretty good job.
Afterwards, it was a whirl of action again as we greeted our friends outside, and took time to take some photos. We never had a chance to really decompress. It was all light and noise and crowds. We were tired, and we had all spent a lot of time together over the previous 48 hours. We all decided to go back to the bar we had eaten at earlier. It took me a while to get there since I was waiting for my friend Julie to move her car and get her ID. Once we got there, we had taken over a side of the upper floor. There were so many people, I never really got to talk to everyone. I missed chatting with Tara and with Jarrod and his wife. But I did get to talk to Angela about some business things (we’re in business together doing PR and she lined up an L.A. client we had to discuss). I also got to chat with Galloway and Michelle, had a beer and tried to relax some more.
In what seemed like an instant it was 1:30 and we were being booted out onto the street. We lingered in front of the bar, took some more pics, said our goodbyes and made our way back to the cars where Steven wanted to take another picture and we had to make plans to get to our place of rest for the night, Don’s loft in downtown L.A.
Tempers flared a little as Mere and I had a brief spat. Mere is one of my closes friends, and, as Natasha said, friends bicker sometimes. I knew we were tired, and I knew she was annoyed at me, I was tired as well. Literally, the exchange lasted a minute. Then we didn’t talk for a few more minutes and as we all made our way back to the cars to go to Don’s place, we hugged it out and we were fine. Amazingly, that was the ONLY time anyone got short with anyone really. You spend that kind of time with people, in stressfull situations, where you’re all tired and there’s a lot going on, things get testy. But that was it for us, and we didn’t even yell at each other really, it was more like a “F” you…”F” you! And we were done.
I rode with Julie to Don’s place, following Steve and Don and Mere and Natasha the entire way. Downtown L.A. was deserted, as it always is, according to Don, unless they’re shooting a film there, then it’s all lit up and full of crews. We made our way into Don’s loft, got our sleeping arrangements set up and then it was up to the roof for some wine.
Earlier, between the trip to Santa Monica and the meeting with Mere’s friend, we drove all over L.A. looking for a Trader Joe’s. Everyone kept telling me about this cheap wine they have called “Two Buck Chuck”. I kept calling it “Upchuck Chuck” which they found amusing. Upchuck just comes off the tongue better than Two buck, I guess. Anyway, while we were there, Natasha and Mere bought some snacks, some raisins for a friend who wanted a pack and I got two bottles of the cheap wine.
When we got to the roof, we had a great view of downtown L.A. and there were some folks already partying it up. Julie, Don, Mere and I settled into the big couches and started going at the wine. Our fellow partiers were two women, who looked like they were in their mid-20′s, and two men they had just met earlier that night. We were shocked to find out that the women were in their mid-30′s actually and each had teenage kids. Really, it was shocking. Natasha and Steve had to get up early to take some workshops, so we let them sleep in peace.
Julie, Don, Mere and I stayed up there for a bit, but by now it was after 3am and it was chilly again. We killed the bottles, I caught up with Don and I finally had a moment to relax. Everything up to that point had seemed like such a rush of activity; from landing at LAX, to sushi, to Santa Monica, to the shows, to performing, it was the first time I felt like I could really relax and take everything in. I liken it to covering a breaking news story. When it’s happening, you try to take it in, but you’re so focused on things that you really don’t have a chance to really absorb it all. It’s only afterwards when you sit down and have some distance from everything that you can put everything into perspective. It felt like that. I was finally able to start putting everything into perspective.
Unlike Colorado Springs, where you were able to see all the different groups and felt like you were part of a gang coming together in some kind of gang peace summit, or Albuquerque where we were the only ones playing and kind of felt like stars, L.A. was a little overwhelming. You didn’t really see the individual groups in the green room. Everyone mingled with everyone else, which was cool. But it was also a little overwhelming because there were so many people and they all seemed to know each other, it was hard to get into a conversation. So I just kind of sat back and tried to listen as much as possible. I felt very much like just another performer in a big pond. Everyone was very nice and it was fun, but it had a completely different feeling from the other festivals. It felt a little like hitting the big time.
I compared it to a team going to a Superbowl. Sure, you’re a good team, but this is the SUPERBOWL, man! All the bright lights, the people, the pressure to do well. You don’t realize how much you come to depend on a routine until that routine is thrown all out of whack.
Our final day in L.A. started off uneventfully. Don, Mere, Julie and I wandered downtown looking for a quick bite to eat, which we found at a local bagel place. Then Jules had to head back down to San Diego and Don and Mere caught a quick nap while I amused myself by watching the local news again. Once Steve and Natasha were done with their workshops, we bid Don a sad farewell and it was off to do our final activities in L.A. before heading to the airport. Mere wanted to hit an In n Out Burger and I was all on board with that. We used my iPhone to find the nearest one and pigged out on In n Out.
I know that they are legendary, and they WERE good burgers. But frankly, if I had to choose between a Smashburger and an In n Out, I’ll take Smashburger any day of the week. The best part about In n Out is that thy’re really cheap, which was good for me at that point in the trip. It’s funny, all these things that I relate to L.A., like In n Out Burgers, or Trader Joe’s, or The Coffee Bean (okay, Natasha really wanted a Coffee Bean stop and Steve and Mere wanted a Trader Joe’s stop) you would think they’d be everywhere. But they’re not. It was actually kind of hard to find an In n Out and a Coffee Bean and a Trader Joe’s. On Wednesday, as we were driving all over Hollywood, we were looking for both a Coffee Bean and Trader Joe’s. We ended up driving for miles before we finally found a Trader Joe’s and we also eventually found a Coffee Bean. Ironically, on Wednesday night, as Mere was riding with Galloway, I think, she found both a Trader Joe’s AND a Coffee Bean not two blocks away from IO West. Oh well. Meanwhile, I was trying to keep my phone from dying half the time by plugging it in wherever we stopped for food or coffee.
after In n Out, I really wanted to hike up to the Hollywood sign. We knew we didn’t have time for that, but we did at least drive up some long, winding roads until we ended up about a hundred yards directly below the sign. It was cool and we took some pics, of course, and now I know where the trail to the sign is next time I’m out there.
We managed to wind our way back down from the sign, stopping once to take pics above the L.A. Reservoir. It was pretty and you could see the valley below through the haze. Natasha was unnerved by the roads, but we managed to make it down alive.
Up to this point, Steve hadn’t really had his “thing” yet. He DID take us into a shabby alleyway in Pasadena to show us a garage where he and his wife lived for a while when they were in L.A. But I don’t think he wanted that to be his “thing”. So, as we left the Hollywood sign, Steve decided to take us to one of L.A.’s hidden gems apparenty. He drove us through Griffin Park to the old, deserted L.A. Zoo, right around the corner of the current L.A. Zoo. We busted his chops pretty good for taking us out of our way to see a deserted zoo, but once we got there, it was actually pretty cool. Sadly, Natasha was allergic to some of the plants in the park and she and Mere went back to the car while Steve and I climbed up and through and around the old cages and buildings. Like little boys who can’t avoid getting dirty, we crawled into spaces where we shouldn’t have been and wandered around poking our heads into spots where no person has any business being.
A few more pics and a lengthy hike and we were all back in the car. Next stop, LAX and then home.
Of course, our luck couldn’t hold out and with three and a half hours to go, we found ourselves stuck in massive traffic jams on the 405. We might have been fine but we also needed to get gas, which isn’t a surprise given the amount of distance we drove in the previous two days. We got off on Wilshire and had to drive a couple of miles before we finally found a gas station. This is when the final adventure began. It was rush hour and Wilshire was a parking lot. We managed to get off of Wilshire after 20 minutes and two blocks, only to find ourselves in more traffic regardless of what street we took.
After about 90 minutes sitting in traffic on the surface streets, we finally found our way back onto the freeway. More traffic, more delays and more frustration followed. First, my iPhone died, then steve’s died, then Natasha’s phone died. Mere’s phone was on its last bar. No communication, no idea of how far away we were, no way to contact anyone. As time ticked away, we grew increasingly concerned that we were going to miss our flight.
As the sun started to set on L.A., we pulled into the rental car parking lot at around 7:10 pm. We had been in the car for over three hours making our way to the airport. Frustration levels were high, and we were tired. Natasha was stressed because she had a paper due the next day for her MBA class. Steve had to get home to do some work and Mere and I were just tired. As it turns out, the flight was delayed about 15 minutes, so we were at the gate with about 45 minutes to spare. All that rushing and waiting and driving and stress and we ended up having plenty of time, still it was a high stress situation.
We boarded the flight (again, I’m not a good flyer and I was completely sober), the plane pulled out of the gate, moved about 100 yards and then stopped. We had a problem with a fuel filter in engine number one. We waited on the plane for about 20 minutes before the pilot informed us that the plane had to undergo a major fix, it would be a couple of hours, he said, so we disembarked from the plane and started playing the waiting game.
The Lakers/Celtics game was on TV, but I had no interest. We found a spot in a nearby gate that was empty, Natasha and Steve pulled out their computers to do some work, I plugged in my phone to recharge and Mere and I went out to have a smoke. At LAX, you can’t smoke inside the terminal at all. Plus, if your ticket has been ripped, you hae to get the airline to reprint a new boarding pass or else you can’t get back in through security. Fortunately, we checked, made our way back to the gate where people were gathered around the poor lady at the desk yelling at her. Given that all we wanted was a new boarding pass, she was more than happy to give us, an four other folks, new ones.
One guy was complaining that he was delayed four hours in Denver, four hours in San Francisco and now was facing another delay. We decided that the delay of our flight was his fault. Mere joined me as I smoked outside, but then we had to get back into the terminal. Oddly, at 10pm, the security line was full and we had to wait about 15 minutes as we wound our way through the ropes to get back to the gate.
The rest of the stay was just a lot of waiting and waiting and more waiting until we finally boarded the plane around midnight, L.A. time. The flight was turbulent, again but we made it home safely, if not more than a little tired. It felt good to be back home, and getting out of DIA was a breeze. We all finally got home and in bed around 4:30 Friday morning.
In retrospect, it was a fantastic trip. Sadly, only four of us could make it, but the rest of the cast, Shannon, Anne and Mark (Anne was touring Ireland with another group at the time) were with us in spirit. The experience was incredible. Like those Superbowl teams I mentioned earlier, I think this experience will only help us in future festivals. Now we know what to expect. We know about the distractions, we know about the exhaustion, the mental and physical preparation that is needed to be at the top of our game for big festivals like L.A.
I think we’re better for having gone through the experience. We proved to ourselves and to others that we could do it and that we were good enough to be there. I’m very proud of what we did in L.A., not only with the show, which I’m proud of, but as a group. As anyone knows, trips like these can either bring a group closer together, or tear it apart. We bonded and we got through adversity and we performed well. And we did it knowing that we’re better when we’re all together, when all the pieces are in place. At no time did we think, “wow, so glad it’s just the four of us.” It was always, “Man, wish they could be here with us!”
Our next festival is Austin in September and I have a feeling that it will be an easier experience. We won’t have all the distractions and we’ll be prepared for those that do come up. If you want to see the photos we took while we were out in L.A. check out our Facebook page, HitnRunImprov on facebook. I know these were long entries and I thank you for taking the time to read them. And thank you so much for continuing to support Hit n Run Musical Improv. We’ll be starting our Jazz @ Jacks shows on July 4th, so come on down and check us out. Plus we’ll probably be holding a fundraiser at Armida’s later this summer, so keep an eye out for that as well.
The L.A. trip is over, but there are more festivals and shows to follow. Check back here for updates on all of our shows and more insight to the best damn musical improv group in the Rocky Mountains!
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