The other night I was complimented on my skills in being able to react with everything that happens during a show so quickly.  That night a lot of things happened during the show.  On one side of me I had a neat, but crazy old coot who dressed like he could’ve been Weird Al’s dad.  On the other side of me I had a 24 year old girl admitting proudly that her Beiber Fever ran so deep that she liked to pick up on underage boys on Myspace…because apparently only adults are on Facebook.  I worked with it. 

The reason I am able to work with it so well is because I have an improv background.  When I started stand up I took classes at Second City in Detroit when it was still there…and certain powers that be cared more about the arts and less about baseball…or however the story goes as to why Second City Detroit is no longer.  My teacher there was PJ Jacokes. 

PJ now operates Go Comedy in Ferndale.  In addition to being one of the best improvisers I’ve ever seen…he did a long form show one night that ran the gambit of emotions…simply amazing…he’s also an incredibly nice guy.  He hooked me up with my acting agent, which is a bigger deal than you may think.  PJ and I are both stocky, nerdy white guys.  So the roles I’m going out for are a lot of the same roles he’s going out for.  That’s pretty awesome when you think about it.  He opened the door for someone to be his direct competition!

I sat down with PJ a long time ago, but in the months since got overwhelmed by how long it takes me to transcribe an interview.  This coincidentally, is how he and I started our talk.

It takes me an hour to transcribe ten minutes of audio.

Do you have Dragon Dictation?  It’s an app on the iphone that takes audio and translates it.  It’s 70% accurate.

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