Hey, Kids! SciFi Comedy Improv!
Posted on July 5, 2013 Posted by John Scalzi 16 Comments
So, about two and a half years ago, Mary Robinette Kowal and I did a show at Borderlands Books in San Francisco called “John and Mary Show You Their Shorts,” in which she and I presented a bunch of short humorous pieces that we wrote — some with her by herself, some with me by myself, and a couple with the both of us. I’ve put up audio files of the evening before, but now someone with the YouTube handle of “Zombie High Fives” has posted video of most of the entire show (minus the q&a periods). To which I say: Sweet!
Here’s the entire set (seven videos, about an hour’s worth), but I’m going to embed on of the video here, the one called “The Petmaster 2000,” which Mary and I did as an improv bit, i.e., we were totally making it up as we went along. I think it ended up being pretty good. You tell me.
If you enjoyed that then go check out the rest of the evening. It was a lot of fun, at least on our end.
Salsa.
Thanks for finding that, by the way, Dave.
Cerveza
For some reason, the main page still links to the Erie, PA video, while the link on the comments page is to you and Mary.
That is the funniest thing I have watched in the longest time. I need to share this with my tiny corner of the world.
John, have you and Mary considered co-hosting SNL? ;)
Carpe cerveza!
Mary’s got quite the scream.
There once was a lady who swallowed a fly.
I can only assume that one of your secret new projects is the bildungsroman of Lubricant Girl from humble goatherd to time-traveling astronaut.
Bildungsroman.
Oh, hey, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsroman gave me a “[We need money, got any to spare, please?]” yellow thing on the top that I can’t get back, not in FF or any other currently installed browser. So awesome that they asked me once and went away. So skeeved that they can do that in all of my browsers. Well, they have a donate button.
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What I like about here is, uhm, I’m about half way between typsy and drunk so I’m going to phrase this badly.
This test I took when I didn’t mind the hail hitting the top of my head (Such thick hair) but? OW! My shoulders! (Did happen, did hurt, did use some of the hail to chill my Kool-Aid) showed me as doing better than 91 percent of all those others who took the test.
You lot, here. You make me have to search and even _Ask_ for info.
So, you suck, and thank you.
I had not forgotten how hysterically funny that evening was — I had merely shelved those memories in a nearby container. Denise Jones, Superbooker had me (back then) nearly autostrangling meself to keep it in… and then the post-performance remarks (glad to see those were preserved!) did for me.
I am rolling on the floor and kicking my sore legs in the air at MRK’s remark that she cracked you up on your own material. I refrained from doing the same back then — but that was public behaviour. Here, it’s just me and an empty office.
= PRICELESS.
Rembrant (no dee): Most emphatically YES SHE HAS. The chap who recorded this had some amazing mikes, given that they did NOT clip at that moment. (During the signing I asked JS whether he had known of the powers Mary could unleash, and if so, why he had not warned the faint-hearted among us in advance… .)
Todd wrote:
I will bet a new good shirt you’re viewing with Firefox.
Don’t ask me why that is; I just open the topic-specific thread in a new tab and there is the correct video.
@ Christopher Hawley
I’m using FF 22.0 and had no probs.
Meh, time passes, and Time never shouts out “Oy! You’ll need your Umbrella!”
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My current favorite shirt: http://www.amazon.com/Dr-Horrible-Captain-Hammer-T-Shirt/dp/B007GF1E0M/ref=sr_1_9?s=apparel&ie=UTF8&qid=1369786494&sr=1-9&keywords=captain+hammer+t-shirt has a problem with it: No pocket.
Wow, blogged by Scalzi. I guess I can check that off the bucket list. I still can’t believe I sat on this footage for so long, but very glad I finally got around to posting them.
The excellent audio was courtesy of http://ljsummit.com/, which was posted here shortly after the event. This gentleman used a really nice handheld recorder, placed on the table where John and Mary were reading. It obviously had some clip-protection built in, as evidenced by the fact that it didn’t explode when Mary screamed. Since my camcorder had fairly lousy audio of the event, I used the http://ljsummit.com/ audio instead. Best of both worlds!
Anyways, glad you all enjoyed it. I’m gonna go root around and see if I still have the Q&A portion. John kept hiding behind a woman’s head in the crowd, so it probably isn’t terribly exciting even if I have it. Regardless, I’ll post it if it’s even mildly worth doing so.
Q&A uploaded! You can find it here: http://youtu.be/DD7SR521r7E