Sunday, October 29, 2006

The Insane Simians...

...or something like that. Yup you guessed it! It's tomorrow! So I'm writing about what was today, but is now yesterday, per the plan laid out yesterday. Yeah.
So Saturday I went to see the Crazy Monkeys for the first time in my long and eventful life. Up to this point they'd always had their shows on a Friday night, and anybody with two brain cells to rub together should know that there is no way on the bosom of the good Mother Earth that I'd play traitor to the Fools to see the Monkeys in action. There's just no way. None.
But this week they had a show on a Saturday. So I went. And now I shall try to report on it, in as honest and unbiased way as possible. Stop that snorting! It's not polite.
So anyway, the C. Monkeys, I was disappointed to find out, went more for the short form genre (though their short form games are longer then ours, but I'm getting ahead of myself).
The games they played were:
~Evil Twin (good game, one we don't do)
~Chain Murder Mystery (which looking back on I really should have volunteered for!)
~World's Worst
~Vacation (same as our slide show, except they had two people telling about the trip and the other members weren't necessarily all in all the slides all the time),
~Slo-Mo Sports (another one we don't do, quite entertaining)
~Nightmare Day-in-the-Life-Of
~Do Rap
~Head-in-a-Bucket (or Oxygen Deprivation) (which I had read of and was happy to see performed, though they didn't justify being wet as was set out in the instructions I read. Difference of preference I imagine. Any game that requires 6 beach towels and a mop to clean up after should be funny.)
~And finally Anti-Freeze (like freeze, but the scenes have to all be related, backwards in time. Complicated, hard to do I've no doubt)

And now the Compare N' Contrast!

Monkey Pros:
~Jane Goodall
Bwhahahahahaha! No but seriously folks. She's a chimp expert.
~Great character potential! They had six members and all of them seemed extremely versatile and creative.
~Good shirts, with their names.
~Great teamwork/communication. They all seemed comfortable going into a scene where they had to completely depend on the other person not to drop the proverbial ball.

Monkey Cons:
~King Kong
Bwhahahahhaha! Oh come on, like you didn't see that one coming!
~I think the group would be brilliant in long form. Character development is crucial to short form, but you can't spend to much time on it.
~They have names. We have nicknames!
~They're games seemed a bit loose round the edges. I have come to learn that timing is all important, especially knowing when to end a scene. End while the audience is laughing and before they get tired of the game. Our games (even the identical ones such as CMM) seemed much more fast paced and hard hitting. (case in point, they had 9 games for a set that was about 75-80 minutes. We plan 12-14 games for a 45 minute set.) With theirs, it was harder to follow because you weren't necessarily on the edge of your seat.
True, I laughed aloud at the Monkeys. False, it was not uncontrollable laughter, as is usually the case with the SoF. With them, I found that I was laughing more at the various character developments that they were incorporating. Again, I'd still like to see them in long form. Or longer form I guess. I'd like to reiterate, I am frankly jealous of some of their members ability to completely embody a character.
But the Fools still win.

So there ya have it! My contributions to the show?
~CMM location: In the dimple on a golf ball.
~Vacation destination: The Moscow Kremlin
~Do Rap name: Jill
With great regret and sadness I must report that I was not able to use the suggestion "zompocalypse" for Benji, who was with me in spirit, but actually being productive in body.

To end with an all too applicable quote:

Kyle: "It kind of looks like Curious George."
Benji: "It looks like curious something!"

~Annual SoF Halloween Show, 2006

Join us again tomorrow when we'll learn all about the Annual SoF Halloween Show and the party thereafter!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We have similar games to the slo-mo game and the anti-freeze. I am not sure why we don't play them more often but we don't.

Moreover, it's ok that zompocalypse wasn't accepted as I experienced one myself.