Girl Walks Into a Bar Read Online Free PDF

thinking, “What if I had tried to become an actor?” I decided I atleast wanted to give it a shot. I had no idea how to go about giving acting a shot, though. There was no set plan like it seemed all my classmates had who were applying to med school or law school or going into the corporate world. My improv group had done an exploratory trip to Chicago over the summer to check it out, and I decided to move there after graduating to try to get into the improv comedy mecca of the country, the Second City.
    I remember sitting in my packed car, about to leave my parents’ house, thinking, “I’ll be back in a year and then I can go to grad school and become a therapist.” I drove out with Sonja, a girl from my improv group. Sonja was a bit of an eccentric and would be one of the two people I knew in Chicago, in addition to being my roommate. Just to give you a little snapshot of Sonja: One time, a friend was sitting next to her in class, where she observed Sonja feel something that was stuck in her tights. Sonja, thinking no one was watching, worked the object up her leg and somehow retrieved it out of the waistband of her tights, whereupon she discovered the object was a raisin. She then ate it.
    Back in Massachusetts, as we packed up my car to set off on our journey, one of the items Sonja loaded into my Honda was a bag of flour. I mean, what if they didn’t have flour in Chicago? It lasted the whole trip, until we pulled up in Chicago, she opened the door to get out, and it exploded all over my car. She would go on to eventually become a professor of theater at the University of Minnesota.
    I began my professional comedy career with an instant bomb to the ego, when Sonja and I both auditioned for classes at Second City, and Sonja got in and I did not. We had heard that getting into the classes was a mere formality. Anyone with any improv experience gets into the classes. That’s what we had heard. I had been in Chicago for two weeks and wondered if I should get back into my flour-covered car and drive home to Massachusetts.
    Needless to say, I didn’t. I stayed. I did some plays. I took some classes elsewhere and got into the Second City classes later that year. I also started at Improvolympic, where I “studied” under the esteemed improv guru, Del Close. I would go watch the house team, Blue Velveeta, perform every single weekend, which was a good way to learn by osmosis. After two years in Chicago, I auditioned for the Second City touring company and … I had instant success and was off on my path to the top like the rising star that I was? No. I did not get into the touring company on my first try. I did get in the following year, on the second try. This became my pattern—again and again. Ol’ Two-Time Dratch, they used to call me. No, they didn’t.
    The touring company of Second City was certainly not a glamorous gig, but everyone in it was excited because it was the first step to getting onto the mainstage someday. Well, I shouldn’t say everyone was excited, because there was always someone in the tourco who’d been touring for several years and was waiting for their break and was embittered and had had it with the road. Eventually, that could be you. But for now, freshly hired, you are excited. Occasionally, you would get to go somewhere really desirable: Alaska, New Orleans, and the coveted “ski tour,” on which you perform in all these ski resort towns in Colorado and Utah. More often, though, the tour entailed a seven-hour drive in a van to go to Upper Michiganor Lower Bumdiddle, Indiana. We’d perform at colleges (fun), town events (could be fun), and corporate gigs, where we’d change the lines of the scenes to accommodate the company: “Why, that’s almost as funny as Jerry Harrison’s golf game !” (Thunderous inside-joke-recognition applause.) We got paid sixty-five bucks a show back then. I ended up touring for two and a half years. Finally, after being passed over the first time to