Mother to son: Be more funny!

I told my mom that next week I'm starting improv classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. She was very excited for me. Let me paraphrase what she said:

"I remember how you used to entertain everyone at the dinner table. We'd all be in hysterics! And you haven't been like that in a while. This will be good for you."

I think that's a form of encouragement. It's also kind of an insult, or maybe a lie. I can't think of a time I had a table full of family members in hysterics, unless it was 25 years ago and I was having one of those "Kids say the darndest things" moments. (To paraphrase Eugene Mirman: You'd say the darndest things too if you had no education.)

Conversations at the dinner table with my family resemble that scene in The Karate Kid where Mr. Miyagi has Daniel stand waist-deep in the surf, and Daniel keeps getting knocked down by waves. That scene didn't have the cultural staying power of "wax on, wax off" because it sucked. I think they only left it in because they had to pad the movie to get to 126 minutes. Seriously, have you watched The Karate Kid lately? It's fucking long, and I say that despite the Elisabeth Shue 20-minute shower scene that exists only in my mind.

Sorry, I got sidetracked thinking about The Karate Kid. Oh, Ralph Macchio. Whatever happened to you? (I don't care.) So yeah, conversations at the dinner table are like standing against the tide, where I'm the guy standing against the tide, and the tide is my mom steering the conversation toward all the fun parts of Ukrainian culture of the 20th Century: starvation, deprivation, oppression ... you name it. I think I gave up sometime in my mid-20s and let her have at it. I'm already making travel plans for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is so far away. I'm trying to imagine the weather. It will be cool. It had better be cool. It will be cool. Is that how The Secret works? Oh god I want it to be cool. This heat wave (a/k/a "summer") might be the death of me. And it's not just the heat; it's the perspiration that dries on your body and makes your skin sticky for hours after the heat has subsided. The UCB improv classroom had better be air conditioned, lest I make all my scenes about Ukrainians boiling shoe leather to make sandwiches.