mudmonster on shore leave
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I would love to do that if the U.S. tour isn't too disillusioning. I will say I'm much more afraid of performing in foreign cities; in the states, there's an entrenched hierarchy of performer-over-audience that I have the luxury of "subverting" by working with people. I've heard that in some countries, there seems to be an understanding that it's the audience's job to help you by shouting things at you. I'm not an insult comic, I'm not a road comic, I'm not even a comic. I'm a fat guy talking off the top of his head. I tend to heckle myself. I'm worried enough about how that's going to fare outside Los Angeles, let alone Edinburgh. But if we come off the U.S. tour on a huge high, it would be a natural instinct to say "let's do this around the world."
My friend Emily Gordon, who works at the Nerdmelt theatre in the back of Meltdown Comics, told me I should do a podcast out of Meltdown. I wanted to do a live show and keep it "private" so that I could talk about whatever came to mind. I knew from talking to audiences freely in the past that I tend to ramble and lose my place, so I asked Jeff if he would help me and bail me out of jams, and we decided he'd be the town's "comptroller." We did the show monthly for almost a year and recorded several of them that have never podcast. It was shortly after the Chevy Chase voicemail debacle, in which someone in the audience "leaked" a recording of me playing Chevy's voicemail at the Harmontown show, that we decided we may as well "leak" the shows ourselves. We brought on podcast producer Dustin Marshall, and he recommended we do the show weekly instead of monthly, rather than be lost in a sea of weekly podcasts.
I wouldn't have done much different than I would have done had we gotten a full 4th season. The goal of the first half of season 4 would have been to bring Greendale's story to a satisfying conclusion in relation to Jeff. Then I would have spent the second half of season 4 "proving" that Jeff didn't have to be a full time student at Greendale for the series to function. So, the 13 episodes I would have done in season 4 would have made a fine enough ending for the series if that's how it shook out.
Jeff and I met in Kansas City during a "tournament" between all the cities in a nationally franchised improv show called ComedySportz when we were younger. I was part of the Milwaukee team, Jeff was on the Los Angeles team. When I moved to L.A., we kept running into each other at bars until we surrendered to fate and became friends.