Today was our last class with Bill. In the morning we warmed up and then did mini-Harolds only through the second game. We took Bill out for lunch and then ran Harolds all afternoon. This is so much fun now, not because we’re always good but because we’re all enough on the same page, more or less, that we can all agree on what happened afterward and how we could have improved it. We have yet to run one that just craters into everyone saying, “What the hell happened?” Bill also asked us to start examining the ways in which the structure of the Harold (or lack thereof) could be directly related to the suggestion, and started throwing us suggestions like “deja vu,” “time machine,” and “bulletin board.” In each of these, we incorporated the suggestion into the structure in various ways that you can probably figure out, but it was less that any of them were great than that everyone was coming up with great ideas and we were all on board.

Last night I saw Virgin Daiquiri, an all-female supergroup with Dina Facklis, Holly Laurent, the two women from Johnny Roast Beef, and another woman; Johnny Roast Beef; and Carl and the Passions (starring, in my mind anyway, Jenny Hagel). All three were great, but one thing I’ve started realizing from talking to other people is how useless it is to try to describe what happened in an improv show. It’s bad enough when recounting a movie, but this is more like recounting a dream: you literally cannot convey what it was like, and it almost always sounds lame or tedious in the retelling.

The late show was Deathstorm, which was a long two-man scene with Pat O’Brien and Brad Morris, and then Weaselicious, which was those two plus Bob Kulhan, Joe Bill, and another guy I haven’t seen yet. Arnett later explained to us that Weaselicious is an intentional attempt to break the rules of improv, which I sort of intuited while watching the show. Put it this way: In the hands of worse improvisers, it would have been intolerable. (It was in fact intolerable to my friend Sue, who’s the only other forty-something in the intensive.) But I found myself laughing really hard in spite of myself, even while thinking that beginning improvisers should not be permitted to see this show, lest they attempt to recreate it. It was instructive in that it seemed like the reasons it worked when it should have stunk was the quality of the acting and the commitment of the players.

People are going out and doing interesting things: going to the Art Institute, seeing the Tracy Letts production at Steppenwolf or the mainstage show at Second City, watching a Cubs game, playing in the improv free-for-all down the street at the Playhouse. And yet I find myself back here almost every night I go out, in some cases seeing the same players over and over again. I sort of assigned myself the role of improv warrior monk when I got here, and I’m glad I did, but as my time to leave draws near I’m really starting to more acutely notice all the things I’m not doing more of.