Let's Get Intense

Craig began class in a state of attrition. He seemed to have spent the previous evening hating himself for the way that he came off on Wednesday and operated with a tenderness that bordered on the unnatural (for him).

“You guys are all poets, artists and geniuses,” he said. “I have full confidence in you tonight and I love you as a group together. Whatever you do it will fucking rule.”

We played around with some ideas and experienced some other forms and settled on an interesting little piece Craig called the Typewriter. It starts with an organic opening and the cast splits to one side. As each scene is played out and edited, the people who participate in the scene (characters, scene support, tag outs, walk-ons, etc.) run to the other side of the stage and “sit out” until everyone has been in a scene. After the last people finish their scene a group game is initiated and everybody resets for the next round. It was simple and fun and it assured that everybody got at least one scene in where they were contributing. It seemed the fairest thing for an intensive performance.

Kevin showed up wearing a nicely rounded-off mustache. He’d initiated an idea that all the men were to grow mustaches for the performance and ended up being the only one who did it. I’d planned to shave as well but hadn’t showered yet. Everybody else backed out on the idea, though, so Kevin decided to keep the ‘stache for the show and be the only one doing it so I kept my beard intact.

People seemed preoccupied all day long with the idea of the show that night but I couldn’t bear to really think of the concept. I just continued to recite to myself to have fun. Just have fun. I had a grilled cheese and fries at Salt and Pepper for lunch and just kept myself in a Zen zone. I went back to Eric’s after class and turned on Buxton while I showered and jammed my favorite songs. There was no way that I was going to let this night become anything but a blast.

Through some weird scheduling mishaps our performance time was changed to first, which meant that Eric and Lauren and Aaron could no longer come see it. The only people in the crowd were intensive students and strangers. I think I preferred that.

“It’s awesome that we’re going first,” Craig said. “We won’t get self-conscious after seeing other people’s shows and we’ll be able to start partying first.”

I showed up to the theater at 6:30 and waved at the cute bartender I talked to at the Cabaret the week before. She smiled back and that released any lingering tension about the energy in the room. My mind was calmer than it had been in a long time. It was the kind of calm you realize might be a defense mechanism against an uncontrollable losing of your cool, but I’d take it. The moment of truth was fast approaching.

We warmed up in the green room and began the waiting game. People filed in, bustling and conversing. I went pee to relieve any lingering nervous stress and started a chain of last-minute bathroom usage. I found myself thinking back to the first time I got on stage to do improv, (almost exactly) a year and nine months ago, and how I kept shaking my hands and singing songs to warm up with. I’d been gripped pretty hard with fear at the time and I didn’t yet remember what to do with it.

I think back a lot to when I competed in UIL One-Act my senior year of high school. It was my first starring role and it was in competition against other schools. As we placed ourselves and before the curtain rose I had a handkerchief covering my face and I could see it shake with the beating of my heart. I remember in that moment being alive. I’d never felt like that ever again on stage or screen. When I improvised I felt that way a few times, or so I thought. Considering what I’ve learned now about fear and how I was circumventing it, I understand what Kurosawa truly meant when he said, “To be an artist means never to avert your eyes.”

Charna took the stage and quieted the audience. Her introduction was appropriately flattering.
“The basic thing about improvisation is to be a risk taker,” she said. “We have a program that lasts for a year and then people get on stage to perform. These kids came from all over the world and in five weeks they are putting themselves out in front of you. I think that’s really being a risk taker.”
Behind the stage we stood, spread out in a line due to the cramped quarters. We looked each other in the eyes and connected, nodded. I took a deep breath and smiled.
“Without further ado, let’s get to the first of (I think) eight troupes tonight. I present you now with POUND TOWN!”

The first thing I saw when I hit the stage was one of Charna’s dogs, the black one that always sat outside the 3rd Beat Room, scooting across the audience to be with her master. Ten jokes about the dog ran through my head but instead I looked out and really took the audience in. The place was packed. Caitlin was sitting in the front row already laughing. Chris was behind me to the right repeating “YEAH!” as loudly as possible. Kevin clasped his hands and stepped forward.

“Can we please get a one word suggestion of anything at all?”
“Pheasant!”
“I heard pheasant, thank you.”

We all took to holding rifles aimed at the air and firing them indiscriminately.

KEVIN: It’s pheasant season in Oregon!
CRIS: Here we come to mimic what we used to do in the wild, but we’re civilized now.
DAVE: This is how we express how civilized we are.
ALICE: At one point we used to have to do this to survive, but now it is merely fun.
JAVIER: It’s a LOT of fun!
KEVIN: We have a license to do this, so…
CHRIS: We can!
CHARIS: It’s okay.
ROB: The government say it’s fine.
MATT: Governments regulate our fun.
CRIS: And governments are right for doing it!
CHARIS: Yeah, we tell the government what to do, so…
JAVIER: The government’s us, so it’s kind of like us telling us what to do.
JANIE: That’s why everyone should vote!
DAVE: I vote for us!
ALL: YEAH! FOR US! FOR US! FOR US! *firing off rifles in salute*

We broke to stage right to general applause and we were off. We had our themes firmly in place. Government control, being forced to do things for survival, sport, competition, oppression, rebellion. Everything worked its way in. We had a spelling bee coach haunted by the ghost of his old coach who then died and haunted his student. Dan made a bomb to blow up the government. Dave and Charis derailed my presentation at work by preparing me a salad that I couldn’t resist. Deborah tried to force Javier to kill his pet duck Mr. Quackers (Rob). Ken was a chili cook-off champion that gloated over his trophy case. One by one we attacked every theme and everyone got to play one or two extremely meaty characters. Our games were playful. We missed edit points a few times and there were some scenes that definitely hit sour notes, but in general we rocked it. I wasn’t sure that it showcased five weeks of intense study, but I had fun. Realistically, that’s all I needed.

The lights faded away as all 14 of us stood on stage humming the American national anthem and when they came back on I suddenly realized I’d done the thing I came to do. Five weeks of training and it just culminated. As we took our bow and I thought about that, I felt my face grin almost as wide as the night I graduated from the New Movement when I got a room of 150 Austinites to chant “Houston.”

We went out back and I ran into Aaron’s group standing with Miles Stroth preparing for their show. Craig gave us some simple notes and congratulated us on a job well done. We put our hands in the middle one final time and screamed our name to the heavens in victory. We knew then that we’d probably never exist again as a whole but that didn’t matter. Tonight we were Pound Town and we were legendary.

I walked back in and settled next to Jet Eveleth to watch Marissa’s group go up. I relaxed fairly quickly when I deduced that they weren’t doing as well as we did. At one point it got super weird when they threw a darkly comical jab at the Aurora shooting and tensed up the audience. It created a strange recurring character of a scary hitman played by the scariest-looking guy in the troupe. It didn’t go somewhere good, for sure.

Aaron’s group went up next so I took the front row to watch them pull off the Deconstruction as taught by Miles. It was interesting to be sure but the root scene (involving Australians Tane and Kimberly) was a clinic in shitty scene work. They argued about films and never built a real relationship. The rest of the crew pulled out what they could and earned some good responses. Aaron ended up hardly playing and I felt kind of bad for him as he tried his best to work through the piece while struggling not to judge it.

I watched the next group (Senja the Finnish girl was in it) and then walked over to Salt and Pepper for some dinner. Chris, Javier and Janie were there with Janie’s roommates and her brother so we all talked in a daze of just-completedness. After the food I went back over to catch the last few groups. I’m biased of course, but from what I saw I think we ended up being the ones that had the best-received show. I wasn’t interested in thinking about that, though, so I did my best to relax as the last group, Nick and Karen’s, finished up their set.

A party then broke loose that ripped apart much of my final night expectations. We danced and drank and talked and smiled. I was looking at this wall next to the bar that had a lot of pictures and articles of Del Close and someone came up and told me his ashes were sitting inside the book on the shelf above them. I stood and contemplated the idea that I’d spent the past five weeks and performed in the same room as the burned corpse of the father of modern improvisation, then the idea got too strange and I walked back to some other mad revelry.

I saw Miles standing on the sides talking to Jason so I joined the discussion. It’s weird to find myself a fanboy. I didn’t want to be but I had this impending sense that I would never see this guy again who had so much to say about improv and no problem saying it to anyone who’d listen. I showed a little too much eagerness to learn, though, and he pinned me to the wall for it.

“Fuck you! You’re trying to rape me!” he accused. “I believe this guy’s sincere but you just want to rape me!”

I was thrown and tried to recover but I realized he was a bit right so I just said a dumb quip and left the conversation. Aaron later told me that he took them all out to eat and took stabs at every one of them in similar fashion. I guess you don’t become one of the world’s best improvisers by not being observant.

We closed out the night in the Del Close Theater, talking about plans to come to everyone’s cities for festivals and other great ideas. I guess I should’ve felt some sense of weight lifted off my shoulders, of being done with my hard labors and now truly capable of some rest, but I didn’t. I felt more weighted, in fact, like this was the start of something even bigger and more unknown that I may or may not be prepared for. For that night, though, I just tried to drink and have fun. I have all of next week to think about how to change the world.

After 2am we walked out to a cold hard rain that was beating us down in noir fashion. We played in the streets like mad improvisers do, running from awning to awning. Jason and some people started out to Pick Me Up so I tagged along and ate breakfast enthusiastically. We spoke stupidly to crack ourselves up and existed at the height of dumb drowned drunken wit. When I received pancakes Jason was confused because I “didn’t order any,” to which I replied that the “pancakes were implied.”

We paid our tabs and said our goodbyes and I walked home smiling. The weight never left me but it seemed a friend now, a strangely fitting shirt I might get used to wearing and might become my favorite. Again, I thought, all of those thoughts were for the following week when I found myself in Houston wondering what comes next. I slipped up the stairs and peeled off my soaked clothing and climbed under my sleeping bag and dozed off to drunken dream.

“This class takes scene work to the next level by addressing the problems that plague most improvisers. With an acute focus on point of view as well as getting out of your head, this intensive will get you to the next level improvisationally.”

The things you get to read in an improv theater as you take a piss.

I contemplated the image of a lost Level 1 student dumping 100 bucks into that workshop as I got settled in to start the last day of the fourth week. It’s weird having come this far and still a week and a half away from home. I think back to 4th of July playing dominos on Oddo’s bass case in my front yard and that night in Austin with Hubbell talking out my fear of this great unknown adventure that awaited me. A couple of times over the past few weeks Dave related his view on death in the middle of scenes, comparing it to going on a vacation. “When the moment comes you never want to leave because it’s the unknown, but once you’re there you’re having a blast. I’ve never been on a holiday I didn’t have a great time on, so I imagine death to be the same way.”

Today was a series of back-to-back Harolds. I was in two of them. The second time I had a lot more fun, but I didn’t feel the greatest about my scene work. Jeff really liked the scenes, though, and commended me on having the attitude of trying something risky or different when I executed a poorly-conceived tap out that failed spectacularly. I’m sure he wasn’t patronizing me, that’s not his style (if he was I’d be pissed because that’s not what I’m here for), but it’s not the kind of work I want to do yet.

In general, it was a relaxing final day of Level 4. After the lunch break I just committed to having fun and being myself and being natural. I trust everyone in my section implicitly. Ken, Deborah, Janie, Dan, Dave, Rob, Charis, Stephen, Alice, Chris, Javier, Kevin, Matt and I have formed the bond of common experience and we now exist with the luxury to relax into each other’s personalities and blend effortlessly.

As it turns out, Jeff wrote a book called Guru that chronicled the last two years of Del’s life. Jeff was assigned by Charna to help Del run errands since by that time he had been quite impaired by his health issues and rampant insanity. I’d vaguely heard of the book but Jeff brought some to sell if we wanted a copy. Intrigued (and feeling a little bad about my initial negative opinion of him), I decided to pick one up. He signed it, “To Chris, So great having you in class. Keep on improvising. It’ll make you rich! Jeff Griggs” I handed him a 20 and that was it.

After class, backpacks and book in tow, we all went out as a full group for the first time ever. We went across the street to Vines for some food and beer and discussed everything under the sun. We played a few hilarious rounds of “Fuck/Marry/Kill” and “Never Have I Ever” and traded crazy life experience stories. Then, as the sun set, we walked down to Trader Todd’s for karaoke. In the window of a book store a block down from iO I saw gleaming copies of Guru in the window identical to mine with a big sign that said “Del Close: Guru $6.” Motherfu…oh well, it was still cool to get the book directly from the author and even cooler that he taught me for a week and that I got it signed. Rob wasn’t particularly happy, though. “That fucking bastard.”

We got to the karaoke place, a tropical themed bar that smelled like coconut and Jimmy Buffet rejects. The MC of karaoke looked like Michael Domangue’s crazy uncle with huge crazy hair and a giant Lincoln beard. We ended up closing that place down in style. Janie had this huge 18-dollar margarita that she kept refilling that we were all sipping on and I was hammering back pina coladas and beer. I sang “Say It Ain’t So,” “Sweet Caroline,” and a duet with a stranger on Tenacious D’s “Fuck Her Gently.” The whole time Del’s face sat impishly grinning on the cover of Jeff’s book in the center of our table and I imagined him the spiritual guide on this bonding experience, blessing it like he did in his SNL days as House Metaphysician or his times with the Merry Pranksters or those crazy early weird days with The Compass Players, a whole life of creating and sculpting the structures of our art form ahead of him. We weren’t the first group of wayward improvisers being shepherded by him, we won’t be the last, but we exist like those before in a state of limitless potential energy. Somewhere out there, in the future, we exist at the height of our improvisational ability. We 14 may never be in the same room again after next Thursday, but this was the moment when our roads converged. This was the early times. This was the 2012 iO Summer Intensive.

We ended the night with a member of our party scoring the waitress’ number and I stumbled my way toward Deena’s. As I got to walking it suddenly popped in my mind that I’d yet to have a Wiener’s Circle chardog and get yelled at by the servers there so I wandered down and got that taken care of. I was patiently waiting for my two dogs and fries when one of the servers (I thought) asked me a question, to which he quickly said, “Shut the fuck up!” I was really excited to receive this abuse and didn’t have anything to come back with so I just threw my hands up and went, “HAHALL RIGHT!” and stepped to the side. The server standing next to my abuser smiled warmly at me, amused.

I sat out front wolfing down my chardogs and fries and a girl started coming on to me when I heard a lot of commotion at the register.
“Oh, someone ordered a chocolate milkshake,” the girl informed me.
“What’s that?” I asked. I remembered Jeff telling me to order one and see what happens but it had completely escaped my drunken mind.
“You go up to the counter and order a chocolate milkshake, then they flash the lights on and off and make a lot of noise and the girl at the counter shows you her breasts and they tack five dollars on your bill.”
Seriously?

I finished up my meal and started to wander home when the girl ran after me to give me her number. Without thinking, I drunkenly turned around and kissed her, told her to have a nice night, then walked the rest of the way into the night. On the way home, a rabbit hopped out in front of me and I wasted a couple of minutes trying to chase him. Unfortunately, rabbits are Chicago’s answer to squirrels so he wasn’t interested in getting picked up. Oh well.

Week four. In the bag. Let’s hope I’m not too drunk for the rest of Susan Messing’s workshop tomorrow.

As my Chicago world took a turn for the weird it put me in a strange headspace as I walked into the downstairs Cabaret Theater for week three with Colleen Doyle. We did a quick warm-up and before I could even settle in we were doing three-line scenes. I found myself at the front of the line and was immediately called out on my bullshit before I finished my reaction to Stephen’s initiation of, “You picked a wonderful place to live.”

“Who is this guy to you?” she asked.
“Uh…my best friend who I’m now rooming with?” I replied tentatively.
“Ooh, your best friend! This is your ultimate, bestest best friend. His opinion means more to you than any other person’s. Get excited when he tells you that. It is the BEST PLACE IN THE WORLD and it’s the place you two have together.”

In another scene I shrugged in reaction to an initiation and Colleen stopped me again. “I’m going to say this a lot when I see you do this,” she said. “I don’t want to see ShrugProv. Shrugging means you don’t care. When I decided to eliminate shrugging from my improv, I became so much more committed and engaged.”

“I feel like we just started today,” Rob said later in the evening as we prepared to watch the Armando show.

I felt the same way and it scared me. The next time I went up and gave an initiation and she stopped me again.
“Did you know that your tendency is to come out pointed and with the hint of a problem?” she asked. “I just wanted to make you aware of that.”

I spent the majority of the rest of the day having my ass handed to me in one way or another. Colleen was uncompromising. Nobody slid past her and we were working our asses off to come through. Every scene we pushed emotions more into our bodies, to let it feel and happen. If we didn’t, we’d get called out on it. By the end of the day I wasn’t sure that I’d ever been truly improvising. What the hell have I been doing for the past two years?

I walked in a daze with Kevin, Matt, Dan, Chris, Javier and Ken to Rebel Bar and Grille for a 1/2 off food special and we hung out and drank until it was Armando time. There was a Q&A with the cast after so I figured they’d have some pretty rocking people playing in it like the first week I saw it. It didn’t seem to be the case, though. Everyone on stage was a great improviser but none of them were Zen Lunatics. The Armando they did was atrocious and they allowed it to affect their attitude toward question answering. Out of politeness I asked a few good questions but in general I had nothing to learn from anybody on that stage that I didn’t already know for myself. Still, though, it was improv to see and advice to get and the person with the least experience had been doing improv for 10 years (the most experience was 26 years) so there were some nuggets of glory.

The amount of Dimo’s I’m eating is beginning to reach the inordinate. Last night’s drunken escapades featured as its closing act Scott Lowe, Kevin and I talking improv through the chomp chomp chomp of teeth meeting dough inside a cacophony of Wrigleyville partiers. This time I got a Southwest Eggroll slice (amazing with a nice burn) and one covered in peppers. Hell yeah Thursday.

Week one culminated in a stumble through our first Harolds after covering a couple of more popular openings. The awesome and also bummer thing about them was that they were about as good as the typical Rogue Harold; awesome because of how much better I’m definitely going to get and bummer because it showed me that the work my friends and I are currently doing is consistently on par with Level 1 students in Chicago. I’m buoyed by the knowledge that the greatest Harolds the world has ever seen lie inside the hearts and minds of the people in Rogue because I’ve already participated in one, but our goal of making consistently brilliant work seems a little far off right now.

I realized, through doing/seeing multiple openings with scenes in a row, the narrow way in which I’ve been pulling inspiration. I’m not sure why this was the case as it seems so simple as to be embarrassing to admit now, but I’m thankful for the mind expansion nonetheless. We did an invocation opening on “dildo” as a suggestion (as a way of experiencing what it was like to get great things out of shit suggestions) and one of the statements was “You are my best friend in between relationships.” I initiated to Dave with the excited phrase, “HEY, best friend!” Dave, looking shocked and worried to see me, said, “Steve, I didn’t think you were coming to the work party?” He was going off of another invocation statement, “You are the thing that I can never live up to,” and we had a scene about how we were good work friends but I always got the girls when we hung out together. It was beautiful. Not only did I learn that doing a scene inspired by more than one part of the opening was possible (and worked in a kickass way), I realized the beauty of personifying the relationship or opinion of a suggestion in my or my scene partner’s character.

Steve’s birthday was on Tuesday, so at the end of class we presented him with a party hat and a candle sticking out of a glazed honey bun. After this week, I want to continue being friends with this guy. He has to be one of the more insightful and genuinely caring people I’ve ever met. He’s in the Second City main stage show right now; I’m going to have to check it out before this month is over.

One thing that I forgot to mention about Steve that I think may be the most valuable lesson he had to give. On Wednesday, in the middle of class, he stopped everything and asked us something that we were doing or experiencing outside of improv. Rob talked about a meditation he went to underneath where he was staying that was in the style of Osho’s active meditations. Chris brought up this guy that he saw on the internet called Braco the Gazer who goes from city to city charging people money to stare at them, after which these people go through extreme emotional moments and claim to be healed of physical ailments. People began talking about books they were reading and I shared the recent Kerouac rabbit hole that I’d fallen down and my failure to concentrate well enough on Proust during this trip. Steve advised me to not worry about following Proust’s plot so much as there hardly is one in Remembrance of Things Past, but to focus on the thoughts which are the things that make the work as important as it is.

Of course he’s read Proust.

“I did this to illustrate to you how important it is to keep outside interests that don’t pertain to improv,” Steve said. “If you’re a painter and the only thing you do when you’re not painting is look at paintings in museums and galleries, then the only thing you have to inspire you is other paintings. You want to be inspired by real life and the real world, so make sure you still live it.”

I grabbed drinks and some disgusting hummus at Goose Island next door and talked with Charis about our backgrounds and lives. Charis is a terrible confluence of events. She’s wildly intelligent, down to earth, hilarious, tattooed, British, and beautiful. I came to the city to train in a Buddha-like state, taking in the environment and downloading improv knowledge like there was a plug in my cortex. I hadn’t planned on women that light the imagination on fire.

The class had planned to meet at iO at 9 to celebrate week one ending. I wasn’t actually intending to see any improv but we had time to kill and ended up seeing a short series of one-person character sketches at the upstairs theater. It reminded me a lot of Block Party back home and gave me a few more ideas for things I’d like to do there when I get back. Aaron was there as well and as we were comparing class notes (he felt similar things when going through his Harolds today) and giving each other directions to places we’d eaten I was bowled over by an excited and frightening realization.

“Aaron, do you not freaking love this city?” I asked.
“Definitely,” he replied. “Once you get yourself oriented here, it’s so easy and fun to navigate. I rode my bike all the way downtown in about 30 minutes the other day.”
“Is this going to be one of those things that when we’re done with these five weeks you and I move up here and get an apartment together and keep on going?” I asked, trepidatiously.
He looked at me with a little shock, but it was the kind of shock that let me know that he had been thinking along similar lines.
“It’s possible,” he said, a sort of cheshire grin slowly breaking across his face. “If I could get a job here… I don’t know yet.”

Afterwards, the class met up outside and we were led by Janie to the Red Line which we took to Jarvis. We then walked for about 20 minutes through some really sketchy suburbs to a neighborhood dive on the closed Morse stop called Red Line Tap. It was everything someone would want out of an American dive bar. The scent of decades-old smoke lingered on the walls and salty old men plucked out blues and country in an open mic MC’ed by a large, tattooed, shit-talking, ass-kicking lady. Charis’ friend Libby forgot her passport and they headed home, leaving Matt, Kevin, Deborah, Janie and I to take whiskey shots and drink 312 beer. When that finally got old, we took the Red Line back to Wrigleyville and Rebel Bar & Grille where they had 1/2 off draft night. I got drunk on three-dollar Magic Hat #9 and shouted improv philosophy over thumping dance music. Scott Lowe, Friendswood lunatic and Dallas Comedy House badass that provided me a crash pad in March and who is currently going through the Second City conservatory, joined us at the tail end of the evening for the previously-mentioned Dimo’s overdose.

As sad as I am to be done with Steve as a teacher, I can’t wait for the rest of this crazy adventure I’m on. As I look over the posts from this week and think about how far I’ve already come, I’m blown away by just how much more I have the potential to learn in the next four weeks.

Well, there’s week one. Time flies, but really it doesn’t because I can’t believe this has only been a week.

July 4th filled with a lot of Lone Star, hot dogs and friends. As I went to bed drunk and tired after playing a game of dominos on a table constructed with ingenuity by placing Chris Oddo’s bass case on top of the ice chest, I texted Aaron to let him know that I planned to be in Austin around 10 or 11am to depart with him for Chicago. He texted back pretty immediately, a surprise since it was 3am and I assumed he was smart and rested up for the 19-hour road trip unlike myself, telling me he had to work until 4:30 but that Hubbell would be there.

Well damn. Guess I’m sleeping in.

8am, bleary-eyed, feeling dumb. I’ve yet to pack a thing. I take one of the longer pees in my life and check the requisite social networks and try to see if Buxton’s “Down in the Valley” has a sweet video of it somewhere on YouTube so I can post it on my wall (it doesn’t) and set to figuring out just how the hell you pack for five weeks in a city. I keep forgetting that I still need to get a haircut. I shaved my beard off the day before yesterday after getting into an argument with my dad about it. Here’s some logic: Dad tells you that your beard is scraggly and gross and how are you ever going to get a girl like that and you get so incensed that you shave to spite him. Sure showed him, didn’t I? It’s not too bad, though. I was getting a little tired of it and it’d been a year since I grew the first one so there was a modicum of verisimilitude. Plus, as Mills so kindly enlightened me, it’s routine to change some manner of something about the way you are before embarking on a journey as some sort of ritualistic symbol of the start of said journey.

I think I’m going to get a new toothbrush. This one’s looking a little scummy. I need to remember to get pomade when I go to the barber shop also. Sweet Georgia Brown, y’all. Maybe I can get a sponsorship. I guess I’ll just take all of my socks and underwear. How many t-shirts is enough to hit that sweet spot between looking fashionable and having way too many clothes? I’ll need to take my Astros shirt for the principle of the matter. I doubt I’ll be brave enough to wear it into Wrigley Field when I go, but I could rep some of the time. Let’s settle on 15, plus three pearl-snaps, the black button-up and that white linen button-up. I could probably do with three pairs of jeans and three pairs of shorts and a bathing suit. I don’t know how fashionable jorts are up there, but it seems like some hipster shit to me so hopefully it’ll be okay. For footwear I’ll wear my vans and pack my Chucks and flip flops. When I get the toothbrush I should get some Dr. Scholl’s for the Vans. Walking home from Summerfest that one time wore an uncomfortable hole through the ball of the right one.

I could probably be in Austin by 3, and assuming we leave at 5 or 6 and don’t stop then we could be in Chicago by 1pm tomorrow. I’d prefer to stop halfway through, though, but it might be a fun thing to just get there as fast as possible. I have been reading an inordinate amount of Kerouac, though, so maybe we could stretch out the journey into a three or four-day excursion in Middle America. Speaking of Kerouac, I have to pack up my laptop bag and all the various items that go in it. Pen, pencil, highlighter, sharpener, iPhone charger, earbuds, college-ruled notebook (I’m not hip enough to have a moleskine), laptop and charger (naturally), and books. I don’t think I’ll go for the cliché jugular and pack The Prince, though I’d really like to have it since I just bought it. I guess it can be my reward for coming home in five weeks. I’ll take Dharma Bums since I’m in the middle of it, Swann’s Way, the Wallace Stevens collection and the Book of Tea. I wonder if that list makes me look like one of those pseudointellectual douches.

Well damn. Guess let’s go to Chicago and take the iO Summer Intensive.