This is going to be a short review because - and I assume the more we perform, the shorter these pieces of shit will get, which, if we don't wuss out and do indeed move to New York in four months, should be often, right? I mean that's the whole point of moving there, to become one with the network of comedians, to glow with the manifold of humor, etc. - (to finish the sentence started before the aside) it went ok and the origins of the show itself aren't so incredibly dazzling that I HAVE TO TELL YOU ABOUT IT. I assume most of these reviews are for nostalgia's sake for Mark and myself, but I suppose, on the off chance that we are able to actually navigate the failure-strewn highway of Professional Comedy, that perhaps this will one day be important to one of those Whatever Happened to Them shows.

Interestingly - or not - enough, although Mark and I have been a duo for a little over four years at this point, for three of them I've lived in Philadelphia, which has meant that we get to perform rarely, a few times a year at best, and mostly when I have a break from school/teaching as my job is less location-dependent (i.e., I only have to be in a classroom 12 hours a week or so and can grade papers anywhere) and I get more time off. Although, I'll tell you what, train tickets out to Pittsburgh aren't that inexpensive, and ok, I know, I don't have to take the train, but it affords me the time to watch 8 or nine episodes of a TV show on DVD - like over the summer when I got acquainted with Friday Night Lights, which even with this season's unfortunate storylines is still one of the best shows on TV. Here's the thing, I finally just watched the movie the show was based on, and it reminded me what was so good about the first season: the town itself is a character that is palpable and real, and in the second season everything got too dissociated and insular, that something really was missing.

Anyway, we only get to perform a few times a year, usually around the holidays because that's when I have the most time off. So, when the wind starts to bluster and the plutocrats grow gravid with million dollar babies from the influx of cash, we start to look around for where we can perform, and lo and behold, we didn't have to look far, as Wrestling Team friend Darcy Trunzo was putting together a group to perform some tropicalia numbers and wanted to make a night of it, you know, an old-school variety type show. So, she asked if we would host, I figured out if I had enough money to make it out to Pittsburgh, and we agreed. Not much of a story, although I embellished it a bit with my pleonastic shittiness.

Mark's been busy with work lately, so I wrote up a few ideas that had been kicking around in my head lately. Since we were hosts, we were just doing short interstitial material, so I wrote up four short concepts: one dealing with the writer's strike, one about...riddles, I guess. I mean, I can explain the concept behind the sketches, but most of them are just based on wordplay and on turning the sketch in on itself. Anyway, the third one had to do with cuckold fetishists, and the fourth turned on A MAN WITH AN IMAGINATION BOMB. I'll leave the night itself to Mark, since I don't want to be a wordpig and snout up the entire uninteresting narrative in my review. At the very least, what you just read was more entertaining than Live Free or Die Hard. Except that harrier jet scene, man, that fucking had me on the end of my seat. Like, did you think he was going to get out of that unscathed? I wasn't sure since, well, this could be the last in the series, and what if he did die and the kid from Ed had to save the day? That would have been totally sweet.

As with pretty much every Wrestling Team performance, in the hours leading up to it, Andy and I were half-jokingly entertaining the notion of canceling. Even though we almost always enjoy ourselves on stage, Andy's nervousness and my toxic antisocial streak wage last-minute campaigns to gank us in the nards. In the same vein as Andy saying these reviews will probably get shorter the more we perform, I assume this pre-show ritual of ours will soon go the way of New Coke (Attn: VH1, we can make pithy comments about pop culture ephemera, please hire us when we move to NY).

This was our fourth and final performance of 2007 (a symptom of our peculiar arrangement on opposite sides of the state), but at this point it's like riding a bike. I think we hit our stride somewhere around our first Rose's Turn show, falling into a groove where we are able to bend the ridiculous wordplay of the scripts into some kind of natural back and forth. As to whether or not this rapport will hold up to performing hopefully a few times a week in New York Fucking City, after three years of performing an average of 3.3333333333333333333333333333333 times a year, I can't say. But that's the kind of jolt that we probably need to really get our shit together as a duo. I know that, regardless of the outcome of our grand plans, 2008 must be the year that I destroy the hideous creative block that ganked me in the nards for the better part of '07. I got some dialogue into Wrestling Team Episode 3 that I was proud of, but for the most part, I feel like my contributions have been lackluster, especially as Andy has been so prolific. Granted, I do have a 40-hour-a-week job that has been systematically sapping me of my dignity and vitality for two years. Andy doesn't have that pleasure. Anyway, '08 is the year of the concerted effort to not be a piece of shit.

I don't like the BBT. It's a bar. There are people eating dinner there. It's not a comedy environment. If there's a band playing, fine, you can eat your pierogies and you don't have to pay attention to each note in order to appreciate the performance. It can be a backdrop. Not to suck our own dicks, but for better or worse, you have to be able to understand what we're saying and concentrate on it in order for our dense bits to have any effect. As the night went on, the crowd was turning further away from what was happening on stage, and for our fourth bit, we were talking over 50 or 60 separate conversations, in a repeat of our Sprout Fund show (also in suits, though less ill-fitting. '08 is also the year to stop being a fat, pathetic asshole that looks like this:

)

What can I say? Watch the video by clicking on the thumbnail above. It'll give you all you need to know. Watch for the difference in the crowd when it cuts from the first to the second bit. After I saw the finished version, I suggested that Andy should have put in a title card that said "Five Hours Later." Anyway, we were comfortable enough on stage that we were able to keep going with minimal interruption when I completely blanked on one of my lines. You know, instead of just starting to scream and assuming an attack stance? If that's not progress, what is?

Next level, please, whether we're ready or not.