Reminiscin' to Zyxx

Hello, Zix fans.

It is us, the cast of Mission to Zix.

Hello, hello.

Hello.

Heard of it?

And we are here with our monthly episode On Time as always.

Here in the month of September, the first episode we've released in this month.

All of them have been on time and will be.

And with these episodes, we take ideas from fans over on our Discord.

And the subject of this episode is Improv.

Hooray!

Heard of it?

Are we calling this

Mission to Bits?

Does that look like it?

Mission to Bits.

What would this be?

Mission.

I was thinking

reminiscent to Zix.

So in this episode, we're going to tell stories about improv and improv shows, things we love, things we hate, things that we are proud of, and things we're ashamed of, a lot of which orbited around the UCB Theater in New York.

This is sort of our life in the theater parentheses, basement.

Yeah, exactly.

This is inside the improv studio.

Under the improv studio.

Under the improv studio.

Well, you know, I think the show, Mission to Zix, that we all know and love, came together because we are all improvisers.

That's how we met each other.

And it's something that we all, as much as we may not want to admit it, really care about.

Unfortunately, it's something we pray.

Hey, we should be.

Why are we so sad?

We should be proud of the fact that we spend most of our 20s in a basement.

I

cleaned toilets on Saturday nights so I could do improv.

Me too.

UCB.

My fondest memory of UCB, I was so obsessed in the beginning, as one always is.

And I would go to DCM, which is a 72-hour 24-7 improv.

Festival.

And I did the last intern slot.

This is my first year living in New York.

First, I immediately joined UCB, and I did the last slot to clean up the theater just so I could like go to the party afterwards.

And it's like the, it was bubble, the toilets were bubbling.

Yes, oh my gosh,

the bubbling toilets because it was so hot in there.

The toilets at Chelsea used to get so hot that they would steam up.

Yeah,

yes, but we were so happy to clean because we were so excited to be there.

I

begged to intern at the theater for almost two years so that I could do the whole curriculum free.

But also that meant every Saturday I showed up at 5 and left at like

2 in the morning.

Yeah, 5 p.m.

to 2 in the morning.

So I could clean the toilets and recycle all the bottles that people left between the seats.

I once found a four loco, a can of four loco with former interns Maggie Spellman, Catherine Monn, and Alex French.

And then we split it outside of the theater.

Whoa!

You split a 4 loco?

Yep.

Four ways?

Yeah, and this is before everyone got one loco.

Pre-banned 4Loco?

Yeah, this is a pre-banned Follow.

Wait, Allie!

Allie, Allie, question.

Was this an already open For Loco?

No, no, no.

It was a.

That's gross.

Okay, I was

an unopened for Loco.

But we were

all.

for loco filled with cigarettes and we split it.

Yeah,

we did, we were like, oh my god, this contraband.

And so we had to try it.

Also, at this time, I was living in Stanford, Connecticut, and I would miss the last train usually back to Connecticut.

So I would then stay at a friend's house and I would take the subway all the way out to the last stop in Astoria and then walk another 15 minutes.

I don't know why my friend Meg never gave me a key.

So I would ring the doorbell almost close to four in the morning.

That's awesome.

Wow.

That's something you can only do when you are 22 years old.

Yeah, I think it was such a community.

It was such a constant obligation for all of us.

Most of us spent years attending the theater or performing at the theater three, four, five nights a week.

100%.

And

for me, I moved to New York with the idea that I would be a theater actor.

And when I started doing comedy

after about a year of not doing a whole lot of theater or doing a theater that wasn't very fulfilling and didn't pay anything and wasn't very good, the idea of, hey, you could be performing live in front of an audience and doing stuff that was really fun and new and good in a community that was very active and very cool.

And when you weren't doing that, you could go see that same exact level of good, interesting live theater.

For me, as a theater kid, I was like, oh, well, it's a no-brainer.

I'll do that for years on end.

And as long as it pays the same amount as the non-paying work I was doing that I didn't enjoy before that, I'm happy.

So we all did that.

And in a post-COVID, post-previous UCB world, that community is not really there anymore.

So that's sort of another thing that makes it all feel like a weird fever dream.

Fever dream.

Yeah.

We all came about at the UCB theater in New York at a time when

it was not like celebrity quite yet, but it was headed there.

There was like such an upswing there.

So it felt so awesome to be there.

Like being able to take a class, do your class show, you meet a bunch of people, you get up on the stage, you try to figure it out, you get better.

Meanwhile, you're getting into the free ASCAT show on Sunday nights where you wait in line and then you get in there, you sit on the floor and you see things that you're like, how are these people this funny right in front of my eyes?

I want to do that.

It's my version.

Like, I can't do music.

I can't even know what music is, but this is like my version of that.

Yeah.

And it just was from the jump.

Wait, how did, like, I loved hearing how Alden came by improv.

How did everybody else, like, come

to be an improviser at the UCB?

So I knew about the UCB.

When I first got to New York, a friend of mine from college took me to see a show.

And I think I went to go see Ruru.

Oh, boy.

Yeah.

And they were legit bad.

Because it was only like three of them and they were just not having a good night.

And I was like, okay, like, I guess I don't need to do this.

Because I did sketch in college and that was kind of my interest for a long time

and i was like i guess i'll take one of these improv classes uh because i was like i don't need to take a sketch class i was in a college sketch group i know how to write a sketch i'm a professional yeah

i was a little bit like i don't know if i need sketch 101 but something every single person said when they got true

um

but i uh i took improv 101 because i was like well let me see what it's about assuming it was going to be like what I knew improv to be, which was like short form improv.

And then literally 30 minutes into my first class, I was like, oh, this is not what I thought it was at all.

And Will Hines taught my first class and I just had a really, really good time.

And so I kept taking classes.

And in 301, I met Seth.

Yep.

We got along really well.

We were having a lot of fun.

I got invited to join a practice group.

We did two shows.

And then one one guy in the group was like, This is too much time commitment, which is fair.

We were kind of psychos about it.

And so I was like, We should ask Seth because he's really good.

And everyone's like, Yeah, yeah, Seth would be great.

And so Seth joined, and that group became Thank You Robot.

And we literally did a show three months ago in New York when we were all there for Tribeca.

Prolific.

I mean, all of those forming.

One of probably, I mean, no joke, maybe one of the top five longest-lived active improv groups in New York.

How many years has it been now?

18.

That's crazy.

The email

inviting me to join Thank You Robot was like truly one of the most exciting

emails I ever got.

It was like being cast on a TV show at that age, and just to have like your peers be like, we think you're good.

We would like you to join this thing.

It was,

yeah, it's like, I feel like there aren't that many.

It's like somebody being like, Will you go out with me?

I mean, that lineup stayed together for a long time.

Yeah, yeah.

Wait, hearing that made me emotional.

And I also really, because I need to bring up this moment that Jeremy did ages ago.

When did they host that like Olympics indie

Team Olympics?

God, that was like,

that wasn't us.

That was.

No, somebody else hosted because you competed.

Thinking Robot was a competitor.

I was on a team that was competing as well.

Yeah, I think that was Tesla put that together.

Yes, yes, they did.

But Nicole Bayer was one of the judges.

Which is one of the judges.

And so was Dave Bloveband.

I forget who the third person was.

I don't remember.

This is just like, to me, one of the most perfect moments in improv because Nicole Bayer, true to form, was asked, like, oh, throw out like a suggestion suggestion of a phrase.

And Nicole Bayer goes,

she goes, show me that dick.

And of course, we see the first scene is like a true, true to term, like, all right, show me that dick.

And then the second one is another like improviser requesting that the other improviser show them their penis.

And then

Jeremy goes up there.

And he does this amazing,

show me that dick game show.

And he just like, he like off the top of the dome was like inventing

these

questions, but the one that you asked was about a dickie, the like the neck guard.

Yeah,

it was I was just

scouring my mind to like any answer for like a 70s type game show that could have the word dick in it.

And I would just be like,

like this is commonly used as a costume element to prevent soiling a shirt beneath.

Now, contestants, show me that dick.

It was.

People were losing their minds.

It was, because it was so, because we had just seen like two awful scenes, and I think we were all dreading.

We were all dreading having to see another scene about like two non-consensual improvised, like, you know, like something like that.

And it was just so inspired.

And then also, frankly, leading into the strength of your transatlantic accent, just like, indeed, it was perfect.

Wow.

Yeah.

Oh, that's nice.

Seth, how did you you get into UCB stuff?

So my, I didn't, I never performed comedy in college or anything.

I moved to New York after college in 2001.

And the job I found was as a writing tutor at John Jay College.

And

it was just kind of this room full of like people waiting for students to come in and ask for help.

And one of the other tutors was Naguin Farsad.

And she was like, hey, like, we just like love joking around.

And she just said, like, you should take classes at UCB.

And I feel like I was always someone who liked, loved comedy, but wasn't really a performer.

Like, I was a stage crew kid in high school.

And,

and so I took a class in 2002.

And I was bad, but I liked it, but I couldn't really do it.

And I knew like, I'm not really confident enough for this, but it's a very cool form.

And then I just started going to ASCAT every week.

Yeah.

Which was just like, wait, you can just sit on the sidewalk for three hours and then you get to go for free and see people from Saturday Night Live performing.

Improv, like if it just felt like some sort of like cracked code of like, like, we have no money, but I got nothing but time, baby.

And, um, and so just going to ASCAT every week and, and seeing the magic of that, people who are like really, really good at it.

And then a few years later, I was like, I think I want to take another class and then i jumped back in to 201 and kind of went like straight through at that point and then yeah met jeremy and the thank you robot crew and that's how i got so rich you know

with friendship rich with

rich with george

yeah uh you know it's funny because i think that if you are listening to this and you're a person who is cursorily familiar with the idea of or the community of like improv comedy in New York or LA.

I think it's hard to it's even hard for me to remember this which is that like there was no

you know the the internet for example was not a place like you weren't watching improv on on YouTube or anything like

when I moved to New York in 2004 like I had done

short form improv in college and when a friend of mine was like you need to take you should take classes at UCB because you did improv in college and I was like yeah but I sort of did that.

It's like an a cappella group.

It's like it's something you do for a couple years in college and then you never think about it again.

And I liked it, but it wasn't really, I didn't know that it was a thing that people actually cared about in a way that was sustainable.

And you go and then you're like, oh, this is, like you said, Seth, it's like, this is like a this secret that like these several hundred people all know about and we all get together a couple times a week and see this crazy shit that you never see anybody anywhere else.

Like there was no, this was before that proliferated into smaller towns that now have improv groups and like colleges everywhere.

My college was still doing short form.

Justin and I brought long form to my college and

were like, and they were, they were like, what?

I told my improv group, I was like, you could be doing this stuff.

This is what you should be doing.

And now they still do it.

20 years later.

Whoa.

And that's how you got rich, the royalties.

That's how I got rich.

My college paid me back for all that money.

But it does.

Pay for every initiation.

I guess what I mean is, like, when I think about even the stories you guys are telling, I was like, yeah, this was like a thing where it felt like a secret society.

Now it's so funny because it's not like that at all.

It's like a thing.

It's a thing tourists do, and it's a thing that like college kids do to pat out their theater resumes or whatever, you know, and like not to.

shit on it because it's you know it's fine but it wasn't like that for a really long time and it's it's crazy how what a magical little slice of time that was for us and I think it explains why we all you know people ask us all the time like where did you meet and we're like you see me and it's like oh were you guys like on a team together or whatever and I literally cannot remember meeting any of you like I just I just knew you after a while you know

yeah yeah it really was like well you would see people around

yeah because we were all around

there was like three four venues where it was like yeah you'd be there and then eventually you'd be there at the same time as someone.

I probably couldn't tell you exactly when I met each of you, but I have a distinct memory, I think, for all of you.

I remember seeing Seth at Under St.

Mark's and talking to you.

Under St.

Mark's is like a theater that I thought was awesome, was like this badass, like cool theater.

I was there like a couple years ago.

It's an literal shitbox.

It's so disgusting.

There are live rats in the room.

Oh, it was famous for like a two-year period for if you went into the green room, it smelled powerfully powerfully of dead animals because clearly a rat had died in the wall.

Oh my god, there was one show where they had, remember when they had to shut down for a while because the rat problem got so bad, and then

we had a show there with I'm sure everybody on this Zoom, uh, like two weeks after it, or like it reopened, it was the first show, and the

stench was so awful.

We ended the show early

In the summer, it got wild.

Clearly, they killed all of the rats, but they had all died in the walls.

Yeah.

Yeah, they poisoned them in the navy.

I mean,

I will stand by saying Under St.

Mark's is the best theater in the city, despite all those.

Love performing there.

It's performed there for literally a decade.

It's like a five-seat black box that's crumbling.

It's perfect for a comedy.

It's been a performance space since the 40s.

Yeah.

And they would rent it out to us.

Yeah, you could just do a show.

Yeah.

To literally anyone.

They let me host a storytelling show there.

I hosted it for four years.

For the first year, it was free.

It's just like,

go for it, man.

You might sell some beers.

Yeah, it was like,

so anyway, but that, and thank you, Robot had a, had a, you know, monthly show.

We did a bi-weekly show there for a few years.

Yeah, can't remember that.

But show there for what, five years or something?

I never, I wasn't really part of,

I always feel like an outlier because I wasn't really part of the indie scene.

Oh, wow.

House Team's only

glam.

All commercial glam.

You sold out immediately.

Lujan, where did you come from?

I feel like.

Where did I come from?

Yeah.

Where did you go?

Yeah, my origin story is, it dates back.

It was like 2002 or 2003.

My brother had an internship here in New York and I just, this is wrong, but in my head, I recall looking at a newspaper and like circling in a red pen, like, oh, there's an there's a show with SNL people.

And it ended up being, and we went to like an ASCAT and we saw the swarm.

And that like changed the trajectory of my life.

And then I started to college and I was like, sure, all this is fine, but I want to go back.

I want to go back to that stage.

And so I taught my college group.

My friend and I brought long form also to our college, to UC Berkeley.

And it still remains Jericho Improv, I believe.

Hopefully it still remains.

And we taught ourselves long form from Truth and Comedy.

It was named after my friend.

We had a fun friend named Jericho.

Cool name.

And then every year, and S of Sketchfest, which was so cool that we got to perform, was like the only time like improv and long form and like alt comedy that was not just stand-up came to San Francisco.

And I used to intern every single year.

And then I told my parents I go to grad school, but instead I went to New York for

real grad school.

Oh, for many years, still doing it.

And I think you'd be grad school, right?

That's right.

Yeah.

I mean, I got in and I then rescinded it.

Wait,

what was the graduate program going to be?

I got into three programs in three different years.

I broke my mom's heart three times.

We don't need to talk about it.

We can move on.

But I'm so curious, what were you going to study?

Sure.

Well,

in undergrad, I actually enjoyed these topics.

There are many different versions of me.

I'm a complicated person, but I studied economics, like political economics.

And the first school I got into, London School of Economics, I got into

the School Policy Global Population Program.

You should have done that.

I know.

I know.

It was a year-long thing.

Yeah, but like, I wouldn't have, you know.

Yeah, I regret everything.

But

you're

talking on this microphone over Zoom to us about the internet.

It's not steaming toilets.

No, and then.

And

you could run the UN's improv group.

Diplomats.

Share about that.

Sure.

Sure.

No, my mom brings this up a lot.

And then I got into two other programs as well.

We don't need to talk about it.

We can move on.

But then I knew that.

Yeah, exactly.

But it was all because, you know, I'm an Iranian.

I don't come from like a background of entertainment or comedy.

It's just not a thing you do.

So I just assumed I would go to grad school.

I would like do college.

And then, but I kept being in New York and doing improv and realizing, shit, this is what I want to do.

And then it led to me in finally being when I was like 30, being like, oh, I'm a writer.

Oh, I'm a performer.

Like, it took me a long time to accept that.

But

I immediately moved to New York.

I immediately moved to New York after college, like a year after college, and immediately signed up for UCD classes.

And I was fortunate in like my, I did like back-to-back-to-back classes.

And in my first 501, I got into a Herald team.

So I never did, I never did the indie teams.

I immediately got

rocket to the top.

Yeah.

My recording stopped.

When?

Eight minutes in.

I'll start a new one.

What's it?

The Zoom is gone.

Well, you got, like, Alden and Justin, you guys hosted Gentrify for yeah, that's how I knew both of you.

That's how I got to know you guys, too.

Well, let me take it back.

Well, let me take it back.

Wow.

Run it back.

I met Alden.

We were both doing a Shakespeare tour.

It was a first folio Shakespeare tour where you you don't rehearse and you like have your lines on your roll.

And

I had done it the year before where I was an intern, that I was in the main cast, and Alden was an intern.

And he was like, Yeah, I'm thinking of taking class at UCB.

And I was like, I just got put on a house team there.

And he was like, What?

Why are you here?

I was like, I don't know.

This is a paid gig.

And I thought a Herald team paid and it doesn't.

So I took this paid job.

It does the opposite of paid.

I got back and they were like, hey, we're cutting you from the team.

You were gone for two months.

I was like, we're paid the job.

So I was confused when I first got into the

I was on a team called Havana Clam Bank that lasted one cycle.

Fair.

Classic.

And out.

Yeah, classic.

Good team.

Good team.

A couple good shows.

And then Alden and I took a class together somewhere with Armando.

And then we started a three-person improv team that became a sketch team that became like how we got an agent and manager.

Truly, I owe UCB for my the house that's around me right now.

Wow.

Because it put me and Alden together in a, in a place.

Our group is called Sidecar.

That would eventually become a show called Gentrify that ran for like 15 years in the city.

And like, we had every stand-up coming through our players.

Truly, any stand-up that came up in New York between like 2008 and COVID did our show.

Hit our board.

This is why you both were like celebrities to me.

I feel like also, because also, didn't you, your show used to be at the Brooklyn Lyceum?

Yes.

A giant bathhouse.

Those shows were wild.

Those were fun.

So we started that show.

It was the two of us and

Matt Fisher, Aubra Tabak, Darcy Carden, now famous, and Mackenzie Condon, a power agent and manager in Hollywood.

And then eventually Brandon Scott Jones joined the cast.

Also famous now.

Emily Axford.

Also famous now.

Yes.

But that show was in a giant bathhouse that we, I met this guy randomly.

So we had this weird deal with him where we split the bar and

he made half the door, some crazy thing, and we could do whatever we wanted.

And it was like performing in a warehouse and we would have a party after every show for like three hours into the show.

I remember doing Gentrify in the bathhouse with a group called Daddy that came out of a really crazy UCB class.

And the space was so big.

One of the guys on our teams who was very physically fit, this guy, Matt Mayer, just started doing laps of the space while we were doing improv.

And like, these are, these were like full, probably eighth of a mile laps he was doing.

And he did it for like 10 minutes.

It was a giant curtain.

We hosted the UCB New Year's Eve party two years ago.

Yeah, I went to a couple of those.

There were scarfs stolen at one of them.

My bad.

That's a good thing.

There were probably like 500 people in the space.

I remember buying like 40 bottles of champagne and just handing them out on my

fingers to people.

It felt like being, it was the closest to like Studio 54 energy.

Yeah.

I remember you guys had like a camp night maybe for

Herald Group?

Yeah, the opera.

Camp Herald.

Camp Herald.

All the Herald teams come out and perform.

Because the whole reason, Gentrify, not the coolest name for a comedy show.

But the whole point of it was there wasn't any like UCB or comedy in Brooklyn.

So it was like that was the joke.

Sort of once we moved the show into the city, it sort of was like a little funny.

We eventually changed the name to Beast.

But the story I'll tell about Sidecar last thing is so we did a impromptu sketch and I was I worked on a show called Deezus and Merrow and I was at the opening party for this season the first season and I'm with this writer Claire Friedman talking to her and her husband looks looks at me and then he goes off.

And she runs back up to me.

She's like, Were you in a group named called Sidecar?

I was like, Yes, but it's been over for years now.

And she goes, My husband moved to New York to do comedy.

He came and saw your best of sketch show,

thought it was so amazing that he gave up on comedy and went to law school.

Wow!

Oh,

and he.

Yes, he's like, He's told me about this show for our entire relationship and You're one of the people who made the show.

Thank you.

You made my life way easier because we have money

I was like I was like that's the biggest compliment and sort of a high tragedy that you could have said to me I do feel like there are people especially back in the crazy Chicago days of Delclos that were told very explicitly by an authority figure, you're bad at comedy, don't do comedy anymore.

There are a lot of famous stories about Delclos telling students that.

So it's one thing to be told by someone you're not good enough.

It is another thing to go to a show that is so good that you think, I am so bad, I need to leave right now.

You're so self-reflective that you're like...

Nobody told you that.

Nobody puts you in that position.

It's the kind of thing where it's like, that is it.

I will never understand that thought process because I'm the opposite because I'm a delusional person.

I will go and watch a show like that and be like, let me try.

I want to bring your shit.

You're just as good as that show.

Yeah.

Which is just crazy.

So hats off to him.

He probably.

I mean, Alden, what you were just saying is why I do improv because I went to college thinking, I'm going to be, I'm going to do musical theater.

I like, I crushed musical theater in middle school and high school.

I'm going to be, you know, I'm going to be on Broadway one day.

Freshman year audition, head of the musical department, says, no, I'd never cast you.

Woof, that's so nasty.

Crushed.

Were you ever brutal?

Crushed.

And so then I did improv instead in college.

Wow.

You know, that man who I won't first name, last name, he deserves no press,

changed the trajectory of my life and made me clean toilets and do comedy for the rest of my days.

Yeah.

Wow.

Wild.

That is wild.

I remember thinking in...

in classes and performances just like, oh, all the stupid shit I think about all the time is suddenly valuable.

Like,

oh, I just had a funny, I had a random funny idea and you're walking on the street and there's nowhere to put it.

There's no point for it.

And suddenly, like, you can do that on stage and there's a crowd of people and there's a structure to it that you can learn to actually become better at it.

It felt like so, it felt magical and it felt like just so exciting.

that it was something you could not only do and have people value, but that you could learn to be better at.

Like, felt crazy that you could learn it.

Yeah.

And, like, when we were doing it in our 20s, and like, you know, for however long we were doing it, our 30s, I, we did so many shows, so many shows in the basement, so many shows, like, in a bar.

Like, you did, we were allowed to fail, which felt really good and safe, like, especially improv, and no one was recording it, which was lovely.

Oh, my God!

Thank goodness.

There were no live streams happening.

No, so we were allowed to just like get better by being bad and like getting, you know, practicing and practicing and practicing.

Except I allowed the version of myself in my 20s to be so affected by a bad show.

I would, I would, of course, oh,

the way I, the way I would carry that around, like a bad taste on my tongue for like a week.

Yeah.

Yeah, of course.

I know.

Yeah.

I get that.

Did it, was anyone else a teacher or was it just me?

I taught character classes.

Oh, that's right.

I was almost a sketch teacher.

A coach.

Because I, one thing that really was interesting for me was becoming a teacher.

And like, by the time I became a teacher, I was, I think my group Bucky was already on the weekend.

So I was like, hey, I'm like, I know how to improvise.

Like, I'm, I've been doing this for years.

Teaching taught me so much more about improv than I ever thought it would.

Really?

Yeah.

Because I

like I'm coaching out here in LA now.

People don't know who I am, but I have like a profile on improvcoaches.com, which is how I used to find coaches back in the day.

And so I'll get a random email and then I'll work with groups.

And the first couple of times I coached out here, I was like, man, I haven't done this in a long time.

And then I coached and they were like, wow, this was really helpful.

And I was like, oh, right.

I did this for like a decade.

And like,

no shade on any teachers in LA, but it's like,

I do have a lot of experience doing this.

And so I'm working with this group that I've been working with all summer.

And they're like, oh, it's really interesting to hear you describe it that way.

And I'm like, oh, I guess they don't teach that anymore.

And so now I'm giving them perspectives that they literally don't get at

the theater anymore.

And I went on sort of a rant the last time I coached with them where, because LA has like, you know, they've got groundlings.

There's other, there's,

I think IO shut down out here, but, but some people are from Chicago, so they have trained at different different theaters and stuff.

And I was like,

all that stuff is great.

And like, yeah, take classes at our theaters.

But I was sort of like, when you see shows of house teams at different theaters, the styles are a little different.

But really, I think high-level improvisers are all doing the same thing.

They're thinking about it in a different way, but what they're actually doing is the same thing.

And what the thing is, is pattern recognition.

And I went on this big rant where it's like, it's all improv is is like a set of patterns, but that's also all that music is.

And like when you can you hear that in the background, there's like dogs going crazy.

All right, good.

Oh man, I thought you were about to cue music.

You have a live musician, Jimmy.

But like classical music is the same thing where it's like, here's the motif and then we replay the motif slower.

We replay it faster.

We layer it on top of itself.

We invert it.

We reverse it.

And it's like, it's the same same thing.

It's the same thing with jazz where it's like, oh, we play the head melody and then someone does a solo on it.

Then someone else does a solo on it.

Then we go back to the head, right?

And it's the same thing with improv, where it's like, what's the game?

Here it is.

We'll play it in a different way, a different way.

Back to the same, right?

And so I'm very, it's hard to learn that, but I am like, once you learn that, you cannot be shaken out of a scene.

You know what I mean?

Like, there's no reason to panic ever.

Well, I'd say once you you learn that, you can't not do it in almost any aspect.

Yes.

Yeah.

Perhaps a bad thing.

Maybe in a broken brain way, but yeah.

Yeah.

But like character behavior is pattern recognition.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Like playing games and then repeating games is pattern recognition.

It's like that's and sketch is pattern recognition.

It's all the same thing.

But that's that's something teaching really proved for me.

It's like, oh, okay.

I see what's happening.

Was it that you started seeing your students recognize patterns or you started recognizing that they needed pattern?

Um,

both.

And also, I noticed that when I was struggling in improv scenes, I wasn't doing it.

I was like, oh man, I'm not doing what I teach my students how to do.

And I...

I had sort of a reputation for being a good teacher of the pattern game, which is an opening in improv and is famously sort of abstract and a little difficult to learn.

And I literally, I got sort of well known for teaching it in 301.

And part of, I think, why that was is because I would do it as slowly as I possibly could.

And I would stress that you will not be an expert by this by the time you leave this class.

You will hopefully understand how it works, but it will take you many, many, many repetitions of this to become what you consider good at it.

Yeah.

I guess true, just a good thought for anyone who's like wanting to improvise or do anything it's like you're never you and some people are immediately great sure but like it this is something that takes practice like we literally have herald practices yeah like well and it's always a surprise to me because the barrier to entry for most people on improv is how do you get up there not know what you're going to say

and once you like do it for like practice for a while that's never the issue at least for me it's never like

yeah i have plenty to say

it's initiating it seems the easy part.

It just doesn't make sense unless you get good at it through practice, like Jeremy's saying, by the pattern.

So, like, it's just funny what a misunderstanding most people who don't on the outside have about improv.

When the inside, it's all about, like, ah, I was a little bit off on the word choice I made there, and I should have initiated this way rather than that way.

Like, it's all technicalities and not at all fear or emotion-based.

But on the click, when the improv clicked in, and this is like a sort of a woo-woo answer to that story, but I was doing an improv scene in college.

And

I remember I went to Hamilton College in like the barn space.

It was like just random on a stage.

There were like 15 people in the crowd.

And I remember this moment where like I was up there and it was like some like very short formy type scene.

And I remember.

Feeling the time slowed down moment, feeling the audience getting ready to laugh at what I was going to say next, but me not knowing exactly what I i was going to say but knowing like sort of like you're saying jeremy the pattern or the the peg it had to hit and the feeling of knowing it was going to hit before i say it and then saying it and it hitting i was like that's a high i'll never stop chasing

yeah yeah

yeah the laugh before a line where like you know like it's just a look like everyone feels it and then you yeah just the energy where you see that like the audience like leaning

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, and it's crazy.

There's no other

I mean like you said Jeremy besides you know jazz or you know anything else that is also improv related There's no other thing like that in art where you where you get to create it with an audience who's hoping you'll do the thing that makes it all make sense and then you do and everybody's like you're fucking amazing and like that's something that you can't it's hard to do even in like stand-up or something where you can build to a great punchline

situations most of those other art forms are sort of about keeping something from the audience before you know whenever i see death of a salesman and willie lowman kills himself i'm always like yes

exactly thank you i remember so jeremy and i for a while performed two-person shows and uh which is very fun bent lynd yep there was a there was a there was a run of bentland some of the the shows as ourselves and some as our washed up vegas lounge entertainer uncles yeah um but i remember we did we did a show it was like a loft apartment show oh and

there's jeremy where yeah this guy came up to us afterwards and was like so how much of that did you write

which is a really which is a which is a nice compliment it was one of the better shows that we did he he was incredulous like he would not believe that it was improvised yeah he really wouldn't back down yeah And we were just like, none.

And it's like we made it all up.

I wanted to be like, you know how much harder, like that, it's so much less work to not write this and memorize.

All we had to do was show up.

And like this one worked out.

And it's nice of you that you don't believe it's possible to have been made up on the spot, but also shut up.

The truth is, all we had to do was show up and also practice for four years.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

That's true.

That's true.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But yeah, once you've done that, these shows probably are going to be good.

But yeah, that can be an experience of the first time you see it as an audience member, especially if you haven't, you don't know any of the apparatus of how it's done.

It's just like, wait, how does this happen?

People are like, what?

How can this possibly work when no one knows what they're going to say?

Well, but the other thing is, I mean, Seth, like, that's why we kept going to shows three or four times a week for years, is that...

It's almost more enriching when you know more about it.

Like, watching

as a veteran improviser, watching great improv is still really exciting because you're like these guys get it yeah

so my dad uh my dad sells new and used industrial warehouse equipment but he also teaches meditation okay yes this is a known quantity about my dad uh but my dad also teaches meditation and has been for at this point

probably 15 years maybe closer to 20.

um

And he has a meditation group that he runs out of the church I went to growing up.

And he writes a little email to them each week to like give them something to focus on with their meditation.

And he sent it to me after he sent it to his group where, because he's seen me do improv, and he wrote a whole essay about like, I'm a Buddhist, my son's an improviser.

And he's like, what they're doing what we're doing.

Wow.

Wait, that's so cool.

Yeah.

And it was, I'll, we can put the link in the show notes

because he has a website now where he publishes all these.

But like,

the idea is that like, as an improviser, you're reacting to direct, directly to what's in front of you emotionally and logically.

And ideally, if you're if you are focused and you are present in the art of meditation, it's like, that's what you are also doing with your life.

Have an honest reaction to it.

Have it like you have control over your own life.

The same way improvisers, it's like, have the reaction and then like decide what you want to do going forward.

Was this your dad's like first time seeing you do improv that like sparked this connection for him?

No, he had seen me do improv before, but I think he and my mom took an improv class in Rhode Island.

Oh, because you did improv?

That's so,

maybe, yeah, but I think like

you think they accidentally took it, or we're like, oh, this is what our son does.

You're probably right.

But like, yeah, my mom was like, your dad is so good.

And I was like, my dad, the reason I do comedy is like,

my dad has a pretty good sense of humor.

And so I think that's probably a big part of it.

Bent, great name.

Can we also put the link in for the new and used industrial equipment?

Or

we should.

We should, definitely.

Cool.

Seth, you talking about Tuprov made me want to just say how much I love Tuprov.

And I feel like the thing that really clicked for me, aside from this show that Jeremy did that I think about all the time,

is this show because I lived out in LA for a year and I did,

I took 301, 401, and 501 out in L.A.

And

I was an acolyte because I had no friends.

I didn't know anybody in Los Angeles.

I was there for a job and I would do improv classes.

on the weekends, but I would go to see any show that I could go see at the Franklin Theater.

And I used to go see this group, Shitty Jobs, like every week.

Oh, sure.

And they would perform, they were like on a Cage Match run, and they were performing Sundays at like 11 o'clock at night.

And I would go to every show.

And this one night, I think it might have been Cage Match, nobody showed up except for Charlie Sanders and Eric Apple.

And

they were going to do a two-prop set.

And they did an entirely silent

for a cage match.

And it was

amazing.

And it was Jeremy all pattern.

And just like repeating patterns.

It was just like, it was, there was so much rhythm.

Why don't you make it difficult for yourself?

There's such a rhythm to it.

But really, the thing that really resonated with me and still does is just like this radical support.

Like you just,

it's so hard, especially when you're like starting improv, like on a team and you don't know your teammates and like, especially because early UCB felt so competitive, so ego would really get get involved.

But like

when you just

like free fall into the other person's arms, it is so cool to see people just be like

respect and fully trust each other.

It's amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've shared the link

to my dad's post and also his

high-end modular cabinet business.

Matt Denny and Josh Sharp used to host Cool Shit Weird Shit.

Cool shit, weird shit.

Which I

loved.

And I once got my mom to do a set with me on stage.

That's where

I asked, it was very easy.

She was so nervous.

This is like to your point, too, of like, I don't want to get on stage and say the wrong thing.

So I was like, don't worry.

All you have to, I'm going to just ask you questions.

You can take your time responding.

And I just asked her questions about personal questions about me that were like,

at what age do I need to give up trying to become a professional actor?

And

my mom killed, like, and you know, like the first response that she had, I think, just got her the biggest laugh.

And then she was just having the time of her

life.

She like sent, then there was like a video of it, and she sent it to like all of her friends.

Of course, why not?

Of course, got to.

Oh, yeah.

It was very funny.

Amazing.

That's great.

I love that story.

That's so sweet.

Alden, do you remember doing improv at Lydia Hensler's parents' anniversary?

Oh.

This was not a positive memory for Alden.

I do remember that we did it.

I don't remember anything about the set.

So, Lydia Hensler, who fans may remember as Squirrelt in season one, the photographer.

Wow, Jeremy.

Yeah.

She had a bunch of us come out, including me, I think Alden,

and definitely Josh Patton, aka Maganak from season one,

to and I think maybe Morgan Jarrett, a.k.a.

Sounds right.

Jan with the Van.

Jan with the Van to perform for her parents' wedding anniversary at her grandparents' like senior center.

Yep.

Wow.

And so we interviewed.

Oh, it was her dad's birthday is what it it was.

His dad was turning like 60 or something.

And he interviewed her dad and we did an imprev show about it.

And literally all we did was scenes where like things he had talked about in the interview, we would do them.

And people were like,

like laughing

so hard.

And after the show, Josh Patton.

just kind of turned to balls where they gave there were they had this absurd spread of food because it's a senior center and so we were like eating like meatballs out of like a you know catered trigger

hey this is pretty good and josh patton turned to all of us.

He goes, we've practiced for years to be two seconds faster than regular people.

And literally, that's what it was.

We were doing the thing that they had just heard, but they hadn't thought of the little twist that we were going to put on it.

But they probably would have if you gave them a minute.

But we did it fast enough where they're like, how are they doing this?

These are wizards.

You know, it was great.

It was a fantastic time.

That's so funny.

Yeah.

There were a couple years in there where people would ask you to do stuff like that.

Like you'd perform at somebody's wedding.

Well, I'm just recalling, I probably repressed this memory, but what was the strangest Thank You Robot kick, which was...

I think I know what Seth's going to talk about.

Which was

the male members of Thank You Robot

performed as surprise strippers at a

lesbian bachelorette party.

Wow.

And we were like Heidi Fleist by my now wife who was like, hey, boys, you want to be strippers?

And we were, I feel like we were all like, We can't say no to this.

Yeah, I think I sent an email, and it was one of those emails where you get, like, you see the replies come in, like, dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk.

It was like, yes, yes, yes, yes.

But I think I remember being so nervous.

Like, we were kind of like giggling, but it was the kind of thing where we showed up pretending we were like there to pick up boxes of stuff.

And us being us,

it was truly a surprise that we were strippers because

we had prepped a lot of bits, is what I remember.

We had prepped enough bits.

Also, we went to a Mexican place and all drank two margaritas before we did this because we were like slightly terrified.

Oh, my God.

We did crowd work.

We did crowd work.

Yeah, there was.

Somebody did a bit where they were wearing like five pairs of underwear and they just kept taking them off.

Yeah.

I think that was JR.

Yeah.

AK, the grower mind.

It was good.

It was truly, I'm like glad I had that experience once, and I'm like, I don't know that I could ever do that.

You don't want to be a stripper.

The siren call of stripping is missing.

No, it didn't get me.

Yeah.

Not like improv.

One of the strangest shows that I ever did was with Alden.

We were doing a tour of Alaska with a sketch show that we wrote about the history of Alaska, because Alden's from Alaska.

And we got invited to do a portion of it at a Russian old believer outpost

that we had to drive a long ways to, to, and then, do we take 18?

Take a four-wheeler

down a switchback road to a

little village that looked more like the lost others outpost than anything I've ever seen before.

Everyone's in tunics and like derndled-style dresses, and a bunch of kids are like the entire town is there watching us.

And we're like, this is not going to be good.

We do some of the sketches about the history of Alaska, very safe versions of them.

And then we're like, and now we're going to do some improv.

What's a suggestion from you guys?

And the one kid goes, or they all talk for a minute, right, Alden?

And they come back and they're like,

where do the animals go to the bathroom in New York because there's no tall grass?

That was a suggestion.

And then you're like, man, great.

One of the, I do, the suggestion I remember that they gave us, because we did a couple of those, where they gave us a suggestion of taxi.

Yeah.

And so we did this like

a classic like improvised taxi scene where a guy is getting in a cab and talking about something.

And halfway through the scene, I realized I was like, these kids don't, these kids were hoping we would teach them what a taxi is.

Like what exactly a taxi is or does.

They were like, why is this guy robbed?

Why did this guy just rob a bank?

Like that's not what a taxi is.

That's not what I thought a taxi was for.

In Alaska, people don't know that improv sets are usually about a half hour long.

And they wanted it to be 90 minutes long, which is too long for an improv show.

Boy, but we did it.

We did double header some days.

We were doing three hours.

Three hours?

It was just

all to myself and Matt Fisher, just the three of us, three persons.

Wow.

Bless your hearts.

Yeah.

It was actually great.

Yeah.

I feel like with Zix, like we

not particularly on purpose, but I feel like we were able to capture some of the best things about improv.

And the reason we don't write the show is that it's funnier if it's improvised.

It's funnier if it's surprising to us in addition to the audience.

But then, of course, we edit it and sound design it and put it out in a fashion that like,

you know, tens of thousands of people can hear it as opposed to having to cram in a rat-smelling basement in New York.

People can just stay in their rat-smelling homes if they want.

And when it's at its best, it's just like when a scene is going in a way that no one predicted.

Maybe often because Mujan said that there's shaving elves or something such as that.

And it changes the whole direction of the episode.

Well, I have to note that sometimes making those sort of choices in my life has made if I like join like a jam or like a show with new performers I haven't performed before, sometimes if I do uh make a play like that, it isn't, you know, we're so lucky to be so supported by each other.

Well,

you do your stathem, right?

And everyone jumps on board.

Yeah, you sure should.

Sometimes you can do that, and people will be like, why did I don't understand?

And then you're just like, okay.

So sometimes it's good to start with.

Yeah.

When you do improv with people, it's like creating a basketball team.

It's like people who have different

skills, skill sets.

And that's how

you get together.

That's true.

Well, I think, you know,

thank you, Robot and Gentrify aside, I think the crew of Mission is Zix has now been working together for longer than most of our projects.

Yeah, that's true.

Yeah.

Very true.

We first met up in late 2016 to start talking.

Yeah.

And

when we set out to do the show, I think the idea, besides

copying uh Magic Tavern, which we did um happily

but uh besides you know improvising something with continuity and editing it, I think one of the things we wanted to do was, like you said, kind of capture that magic of improv in a way that felt

to people listening to a recorded version of it the way that we all feel when we watch good improv.

And I think we we were able to crack that code a little bit.

But I think what we also did, we managed to do sort of on accident, is like we made a cast of characters who are similar enough to ourselves that

our characters support each other in the same way we do as performers supporting each other on stage.

So a lot of those games are inherent in who we are.

If I'm in a scene with Jeremy that is not a zick scene, I lean on him the way that Pleck leans on C53 to be like, what's going on?

Or like, explain this, or like, or like, organize this for me.

You know, like, so I'm an idiot and you're not.

Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

Jeremy will explain.

Yeah.

But it is a role I played frequently in groups outside of Mission Disaster.

Yeah, exactly.

And I mean, it's fun to, you know, I think we all like playing all different kinds of roles, but I think that that was something that was kind of a happy accident, I think.

I don't think it was something we thought about when we were putting the show together was like...

How can we make improvising easier for us?

Like, how can we make making this show feel more natural?

Because I think it was just something we lucked into.

But I think what ended up happening was that it made improvising as them and supporting each other as them feel more natural and easier, which I think was really, really nice.

I mean,

it's just so effortless to get into those scenes where Pleck is being hassled by Derf.

And it's like, well, that's our relationship.

Like, that's just how we are.

You know, I don't know, sometimes.

It makes you think.

It really makes you think.

But But yeah, it's, I don't know.

We got lucky, I think.

I was like, so what do you want to play?

I don't know.

I'd play like a

middle manager?

Yeah, I'd play like a know-it-all asshole.

Yeah, I'll do that.

And I remember Winston was like, I don't even need to play anything.

Yeah, Winston's like, I'll play side characters.

Nobody.

Yeah, like, I don't know if I like you guys.

I don't need to be in every episode.

Crazy choice.

In season three, I'll come out hot, though, with a new character.

Yeah.

That's the podcast version of lurking on the back line for all the first beats.

Exactly.

Instead of coming in and crushing it in the third half.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I do feel like my

continuation

of improv classes has just been performing with you guys because I feel like I've learned so much.

Like we've done so many hours of improv together to just pick up moves.

And I feel like that was like one exciting thing about watching shows is you just like learn more vocabulary of like types of moves that you can make and just be like, oh, you can respond that way.

That's like another way of saying yes.

Like screaming no can be a yes if it's like agreeing with the overall premise of the scene or something.

In later seasons, I feel like I can, when editing episodes, I can hear myself.

I'm like, oh, I'm trying to like pull an alley move in that line or something.

There's like a poor man's version of it that may work.

You are my teachers.

Wow, cool.

How do we want to wrap this up?

What a good question.

I feel like, in the spirit of what this episode is, we should improvise the end.

Wow, okay, cool.

Well, yeah, we should do a sentence, one word each, so it'll be a final six-word sentence.

Okay, Seth, you start.

Therefore,

our

little

spirits

have

grown

really good, really good.

Wow, perfect.

And that's the episode title.

That actually was a very sweet way to wrap up the thing.

Therefore,

thank you, listeners, for listening through to this uh trip down memory lane.

We will see you next month.

Happy September.

Bye bye.

Bye.

Bye y'all.

Bye bye.

Wait, wait, we're we shouldn't what's

what's this like the episode's over.