Music by Joseph Phillips and Chorus, via archive.org

I remember being in 5th grade and for some reason my teacher got our whole class in a big circle and started a message like: “My dog likes to drool”  By the time it went around the whole class, it turned into: “My pogs are so cool” (pogs were in, ok? Cut me some slack.).

Original song by Kenny McNett and Zach Pond. Download the MP3 here!

When I drive home late at night, I pass a lone security guard in front of  shipping depot. That guard sits on a chair, in a shallow alcove, in front of a closed door. But in front of that worker is a double-wide sidewalk, a row of street parking, and a lightly used side road–a perfect performance venue. So, after countless late night pangs of empathy as I saw the brown-clad security guard sitting blankly in a chair, the idea for Late Night Worker was born: a full song and dance number with live band and dancers, performing for graveyard shift workers. I loved the image in my head of a troupe of performers giving it their all for a single worker, tucked into the corner of some building, with the worker clapping and smiling at the end of it, knowing the performance was just for him or her. A parking structure attendant, a shipping depot security guard, a drive-thru food vendor.

Every year, I make a short film for my church’s local film festival. This year, the festival was fast-approaching and I needed to kick something into gear. I wrote the lyrics and melody for Late Night Worker and set to task our resident musicians, Zach and Jonathan. I called up my choreographer from Danger Dancer and tossed up a casting call web page for dancers. I contacted personally most of the dancers to invite them, but I wanted the option for anyone to invite their friends, so I distributed the web page fairly openly. I also threw a bone over to GuerilLa to see if anyone wanted to join up (I heard from one member, but she couldn’t make it that night).

Zach (guitar), Jonathan (ukelele), Stephen (djembe), and I came together to write the music. In my atonal way, I sung the melody I’d written, then Zach lead the boys into making it a real song. It was a catchy little tune and we were all excited about the way it looked on paper with guitar chords and all. We printed it out and held it in the air, “It’s a real song now!” We had the choreographer over a little later to perfect the dance break in the middle and sent her home with a rough recording so she could plan the dance.

Performance night came. Our team of fun-loving and veteran dancers came from as far as two hours away. We set up a mini recording studio on my balcony and cleared my living room for dance practice. We’re on the fourth floor and it wasn’t long until our neighbor from below knocked on our door to request we stop thudding on her ceiling. We invited her in to see what we were up to. She smiled and said something like, “That’s nice of you to do for the workers. But, why don’t you just mark your jumps instead of actually making them so it’s not so loud for me?” I found out later that she was on the original Broadway cast of A Chorus Line. I love living in LA.

We recorded the master track of the music and vocals out on my deck, then we headed down to the street for our final run-throughs. A parking attendant showed up to ticket a car right next to our impromptu sidewalk rehearsal space, so we tried to do our number for him. He could have been more interested in a clump of dirt.

Not discouraged by Mr. Parking, we tried to head to our first stop, the shipping depot. Sadly, the guard was not in the normal position and we weren’t able to perform for him! Ironic that the entire impetus for the evening devoted to lonely workers was off talking to a friend. Defeat #2, but the plan was to visit multiple spots and cut the video together for the video. So off to the drive-thru. We finagled with hiding the cameras for a bit, then it was fun time. It went really well and the whole crew was totally pumped after our first performance.

As a director in my other shorts, I’ve had to face changes to schedule and deal with things as they come. But never have I faced the entire cast and crew wanting to get doughnuts in the middle of our shooting schedule. I’m sure I had a moment when my face was utter confusion, but I realized I had better ride the wave and let everyone get sugared up. We poured into the doughnut shop and I put on my patient face, smiling congenially, all the while the clock in my head ticking away. Then the idea popped out of the mass of doughnut eaters: “Hey, why don’t we do the song for the doughnut guy? He’s a late night worker….and how about that 24-hour restaurant at the other end of the parking lot?”

Serendipity! Pure, delicious, deep-fried and sugar-glazed serendipity.

Here are some photos from the rehearsal and master recording:

Shout-out to Gurustump for the production pics!

(Thanks to Toyoda over at Archive.org for the music remix.)

I saw John Krasinski (Jim from The Office) doing an interview on Conan O’brien, and in his interview he talked about the jokes they play on set in between takes. One of his jokes was he would act out different scenarios as if he were a marionette. I thought that was hilarious and started doing my own marionette impressions. It quickly became one of my staple dance moves and it was a crowd pleaser. The human marionette idea made its way to Street Smart Comedy and it was a hit. I now brush my teeth as a marionette every morning.

We nailed some 2×4′s together and tied ropes on them and draped them over the 2nd floor railing at Yogurtland on Sawtelle. Then one of us (on the street) tied the ropes to our hands and ankles and were controlled by the puppetmaster up top. We got a few people to come play puppetmaster. I learned that, as the marionette, I can’t put too much weight on the ropes or it will pull the rig out of the puppetmaster’s hands. We’re always learning here at Street Smart Comedy.

The best part about this was being the puppet and watching the smiles on the faces of people driving into the parking lot. Mission accomplished, good work team!

Our biggest hurdle was helping people understand that they didn’t need to actually read one of their tweets or status updates, but that they were participating in a live update to the world. Once they understood that and conquered any megaphone stage fright, everyone had a blast. #SocialMedia #Megaphones #UpdatesAboutUpdates

It was St. Patrick’s Day and Wednesday (our regular street comedy night), so we pretty much knew what we had to do: make a phone call.

Ringggg…ring…. “Hey Dave, do you still have that leprechaun costume?”

Dave: “Sorta…why?”

Me: “Because I’m building a giant butterfly net and I want to let strangers chase you with it on a public thoroughfare.”

Dave: “Oh, okay. Weeeeell, why didn’t ya say so laddy??”

I had an old sheer curtain I bought from Ikea hoping to make my living room more interesting (it didn’t work), but it slipped perfectly around the broken hula hoop I bought at the local party supply store (I bartered down the price with the manager; it was missing the sand, after all.). After stitching up the curtain to close it off, I shoved the broken hula hoop into the tip of a hollow black pole and BAM!, a leprechaun net.

The rest was simple entertainment. We converged on Santa Monica’s 3rd Street Promenade and began our hunt, shaking a half-full box of Lucky Charms to lure our prey out of hiding. At first, when people caught Dave the Leprechaun in the net, we’d ask them what wish they’d like granted, then act it out improv style.  After two separate wishes for ponies, Jeff got tired of prancing on all fours. We switched over to making the leprechaun dance a jig when he got caught. People seemed to love that even more than the wishes. One guy loved jigging so much, I swear it was his only motivation for chasing the leprechaun. And good for him; I can’t recall anyone I’ve met saying they’ve danced a jig with a leprechaun. Cue the speed dating ice breaker for that guy.

The official Promenade patrol/safari guides (what’s with the hats?) love our shenanigans. This night, one patrolwoman’s safari instincts kicked into high gear and she gave us all a master class in urban leprechaun hunting. We learned that it’s always a good idea to have proper training, equipment, and the endorsement of the authorities when you’re hunting fantastical creatures in the middle of a busy city street. I just wish we had a friend that looked like a minotaur.

Everybody loves Battleship!  There is something about waging imaginary naval warfare by way of white and red pins on strategically placed plastic ships…it’s brilliant.

I must admit though, this game is a lot more fun when you have informants working for you along the way to help you win.  The object of this smart?  Get pedestrians (err…civilians) to destroy the opponent’s ships by carrying missiles across the street.  It was a Hit!  People loved it, some going as far as making rocket noises while running along the crosswalk to deliver the missile.

My favorite part was when I convinced my civilian informants to yell the coordinates of my attack (eg. “B3!!”) to Jeff, the other player.  This smart was a ton of fun, but unfortunately the rain got the best of us and we were forced to end the evening a little early.  I’ll tell ya what though, it was fine by me because even though I got wet and my game board got soaked, Jeff was the real victim that night…I sank his battleship!

The first week, I called Katie for a brainstorm before we were set to meet up. We were flying duo and needed an idea. We piled out some ideas and I mentioned that I’d seen some huge cardboard boxes on the side of road on my drive home from work. I mean, enormous boxes. Katie had the killer idea to make a freestanding door and we figured to add interchangeable signs to explain where the door led. Perfect? Perfect. See you there? Yeah. *hang up*

We met up at the boxes with a box knife, some black spray paint, duct tape and a magic marker. It turns out a hotel had purchased some new sofas and left the boxes out for the city to pick up. After some digging and checking dimensions, we were giddy to find two flat sides already connected with big cardboard blocks around the edges, between the two sheets. In other words, we cut off the back panel and sliced into the front panel and BAM!, a door with a sturdy frame.

We tried to invent support stands so we could leave the door on its own in the middle of an open public area and spectate, but we started running out of time and decided we’d just hold the frame up ourselves. This turned out to be one of our best decisions since it gave us the chance to invite people to use the door and help them pull instead of push (a design flaw with the way we cut the cardboard–apparently writing “Pull” didn’t help either). We sprayed the door frame black to give it some definition and legitimacy (so it didn’t look entirely like we’d just pulled it out of a dumpster) and cut some squares for the door sign. A slit in the door and an uncut bit of cardboard on the top of the door signs meant we could hang the signs, no problemo.

We tried a few different signs and even took requests from passers-by. By far, the hit was “The Future,” though “England” gets the honorable mention (we switched to British accents after they’d walked through the door–Enjoy your stay, gov’nah!). Surprisingly, nobody wanted to go to “Tom Cruise’s Closet.”

Through it all, we had a steady stream of door users. A few skeptics and a few repeat users gave some balance to the night, but nearly every person smiled.  One of my favorite moments was when two friends wanted to see what would happen if they both went through the door at the same time in opposite directions. Fortunately, we didn’t trigger any time vortexes or alternate realities (or did we???).

Just imagine you’re taking an evening out and decide to go to the Santa Monica pier. You see a couple of friendly hooligans doing something interesting there. You have no choice but to smile and appreciate the shenanigans of this wonderful city.

This was our effort to emulate the popular arcade game “Street Fighter II,” but in the street comedy world, it became “Pier Fighter II.” We dressed up like Guile and Ryu and tried to get people to yell commands like “kick” and “punch” at the fighters, then the fighters would do what the audience tells them. It got pretty fun when people were shouting “do the thriller dance, then kick him!” and “breakdance punch!” As the fight went on, some of the pier visitors joined in the fight to do a tag-team fight. Great success!

Street comedy is quickly becoming valid and recognized in the comedy community. One day it will overtake stand-up comedy as the poster boy for comedy.

We did this a few times and it never got old. A full circle of spectators gathered each time. The guy in rolled up jeans and no shoes wanted to jump in, so we gave him a runner number and went another round. We liked him so much, we invited him to join Street Smart for future shenanigans. Turns out, his name is Jonathan.

This was our first night of pure success. People actually came up to us and asked what we were going to do before we even started. We learned the important lesson of instant recognition: the easier it is for a stranger to quickly understand the story of what’s going on, the more likely they are to interact. Runners and a finish line–story accomplished.

Hopefully, we’ll be organizing a full slow-motion marathon…an entire city block! It’ll be our first mass invite event, getting tons of strangers to show up and become runners. Sort of like the LA Marathon, but much, much slower.