Awkward Compliment: Year 5

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll know that I performed with an improv group called Awkward Compliment.  It started in 2008 and has now been around for six years, which is nuts.  Today is the five-year anniversary of our weekly show and I am blown away. 

The show still goes on (with two of the original members running it and a bunch of people joining them every week).  I got the chance to do it earlier this month when I went home to visit and even though I had to stop doing the weekly shows when I got on the mainstage at IA, it’s still one of my favorite shows to do.  Because it’s ours.  We run it.  We show up and the theater knows us and lets us in for free and gives us a free beer and lets us do whatever the F we want down in that small basement theater. 

Four of us live in Los Angeles now and three still live in Boston (the ones in the picture above!) but I’m glad that we’re all still pretty close friends.  We still talk in a group text that’s been going on for years.  We still make it a priority to see each other when we’re home.  It’s the one group of people where I actually believe we’ll always pick up where we left off.  We’re a family.  They're my brothers. 

Damn.  Five years.  Thursday nights used to be my absolute favorite nights.  I’d go to work and get excited all day that I had AC that night.  I’d go home, get ready and DiBello would pick me up (blasting the song “Ignition”) and then we’d drive over to Somerville.  We’d set up for the show, sell tickets, do our show and then hang out for hours at Mike’s across the street while drinking giant beers and eating jalapeno poppers.  When I went home in the beginning of May, it was really awesome to just go back and do that again!  Five years of the same great Thursday night.   

Five years of the greatest friends, the weirdest shows, the stupidest bits and a lot of alcohol.  In fact, Awkward Compliment is one of my favorite results of taking improv classes and pursuing comedy.  I performed professionally - for huge audiences and large corporations and universities - but some of those AC shows were the best shows of my life.  Even if we were performing for five people, we had the most fun.  There were some fights, resentment, anger, bitterness, weirdness, EVERYTHING. But that comes with the territory of performing with your friends.  That group of guys is still my favorite group to hang out with.  We've always had each other's backs and we still do.  

Now it's time to get all of their names tattooed on my lower back!   

Damn.  I love improv.  And I love these guys.  Long live AC!