JAY OLSON

“My posse’s in effect and we’re doin’ the do
And we got more rhymes than your damn crew” - Beastie Boys, Posse in Effect

I have a posse. Why is everyone snickering? For the purposes of this entry, “posse” isn’t my friends. It’s the people I interact with frequently. More specifically, the ones that enable me to do what I do; my drycleaner, my bartender, my hairstylist (hate that word, but trust me – she ain’t no barber. Haircutress?), etc. So, my posse is…people I’m paying for goods and services? Well, yeah. At first glance. But the difference is in my attitude toward them. I’ve made them an important part of what I do. They are my posse. My business partners. My Team.

Figo owns three Devrim Cleaners locations. He keeps my shirts crisp, my suits sharp, and he’s fun to chat with. I’m sure he and his family provide personalized service to all of their customers. But when Figo is tailoring my suit, it’s not just A suit. He’s tailoring JAY’S suit. That’s an important difference.

Joe mixes some amazing cocktails. He makes me a cherry coke (cherrys + grenadine + whatever high fructose Coca-Cola approximate they sell) to get me fired up at the start of a long night of comedy. Joe makes devastatingly good margaritas to mellow me out at the end of a long day of #Hustle. I tip well, he pours heavily, and we both benefit.

Stevie has been cutting my hair for ten years. She’s had to listen to stories about every single time I have vomited in public, yet she still takes personal pride in sending me out into the greater world looking my best.

“Got my hand in my pocket and my finger’s on the trigger
My posse’s gettin’ big and my posse’s gettin’ bigger” – Beastie Boys, The New Style

With the birth of our son 6 months ago, my posse has exploded. We have a peditrician, nanny, and a cabal of ultra-capable babysitters. All people that I trust fully (or, at least, mostly) with my son’s health and well being. Without them I couldn’t leave the house to make the funny without worrying about the little guy. And trust me, my son is always on my mind – so my posse allows me to leave with secure, happy thoughts.

In comedy improvisation, we put a very strong emphasis on creating realtionships on stage. A scene in which two strangers meet and haggle over the price of a taco can be the most excrutiatingly unfunny thing in the world. But two characters who know each other, sharing their lives and opinions and philosophies while *not* discussing that taco? That will be at least interesting, with strong potential for hilarious.

Because I’ve made these people an important part of my ability to create comedy professionally, I’m interacting with members of my team; my co-conspirators in world domination. Because of them, I can be in front of an audience or workshop and feel confident about looking competent. That makes my job a lot easier. And all I had to do was focus a little time and energy on creating basic relationships with my goods and services providers. My POSSE.

- Jay

“All great deeds and thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.”

-Albert Camus

“I will never forget my humble beginnings as a Laker Girl. It was probably one of the most fun jobs I ever had.”

- Paula Abdul

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I loves me some rap music! I was a suburban break-dancer back in ’84 (pronounced: “eddy-fow”). J.P. Bonnett Junior High, y’all! My boy Damen and I had a crew called ‘Zip-Lock.’ We practiced on his back patio with a giant sheet of linoleum we stole from a home being constructed in the neighborhood. We choreographed awesome routines and had dance battles in the school cafetorium. We devoured all the rap music we could find…Siberian Nights, Siberian Nights…

The best thing about rap music is the unwavering love of self:

“Lyrically handsome, come collect the King’s ransom
Jams I write soon become the ghetto anthem
Way out like Bruce Wayne’s mansion, I move like a phantom” – Mos Def

It is also the most absurd thing about rap music:

“Young, black, and famous, with money hangin’ out the anus.” – Mase

Uhhhhh…what? Bravado. Confidence. Swagger. Even with dollar bills shoved up your butt. Every rapper from Fab Five Freddy to Lupe Fiasco (Yes, even cuckoo bird pretty-boy Kanye West) knows you do not get ahead in The Game with quiet introspection and self-doubt. You may have doubts, but you never, ever spit rhymes about them. As much as we all deplore narcissism and braggadocio in real life, rappers are on to something – Sell Yo’self! Hard work, humility, and perseverance are wonderful, even preferred, attributes. But they’ve been bred into us as such absolutes we’re afraid to speak out and declare ourselves for fear of looking like a…place where Mase keeps his cash.

We’ve all got a Game. Maybe not THE Game, like Ice Cube and Dr. Dre are playing, but something; business, career, family. And we’ve got to learn that no matter how great you are - the person that declares what they want is more likely to get it. It’s not brash or egotistical to say it. I WANT IT. And I’m GOOD, DAMMIT! Pick your battles, for sure, but when the opportunity comes be ready to pull the trigger. RAP METAPHOR!!!

So what’s the improv connection? Throw on a character. “Jay, I do a great old lady with a limp and a lisp. She’s British!” <record scratch>..okay. How about just a real person with a strong point of view? So it can easily be just…you. If declaring yourself at the appropriate time and place is not in your nature, practice being you plus some. Business is not in my nature. I’ve had to learn it. And often that has meant throwing on a version of me, we’ll call him Jay², to get things done. It gets a little easier every time, until eventually You+Some  is just another side of your personality. At your disposal when needed.

And, hell yes that’s me in the picture up top. At a rap battle in Toronto, no less. I declared myself good enough and came in second. ;o)

- Jay

jayolsonimprov.com

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“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth”

- Albert Einstein

“If you’re going to kick authority in the teeth, you may as well use two feet”

- Keith Richards

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“In a business world that’s more uncertain than ever it pays to be able to think on your feet…accepting any idea that’s brought to the table and then taking that idea further.” - CNN.com

Ignoring the terrible and ill-informed use of Robin Williams as an improv poster boy, this is from an otherwise astute article about Improvisation in the workplace. There are many articles from varying publications, all reputable, about the power of Improvisation to transform how businesses operate. About how more and more companies, and even university MBA programs (Yes, real ones), are teaching their employees/students to employ the same skills I and my peers use on stage nightly. All of these articles, however, lean heavily toward what improv can do for the mechanical functions of any given job.

What they all ignore (or, more fairly, cannot comprehend with only cursory examination) is the ability of Improvisation (yes, capital I. What?) to change your life – from the inside. I’m guilty, too. I did the same thing in a previous blog post HERE. As you jump down the rabbit-hole of Improvisation you discover the joy of treating people with assumed competence. I recently rocked a Two-Quote Tuesday about that HERE. Imagine going into each new project knowing everyone is great at what they do! Rather than…the opposite. Suddenly, even negative interactions become the by-product of two people passionately pursing what they want - instead of assumed malice. And mistakes?! Joyous, wonderful mistakes! Manna from heaven. Gobble them up, because your genius co-workers are functioning at high, rather than safe, levels.

These examples all lean toward Biz. But you’re smart; you can easily apply this to your friends, family, etc. Right?

Improvisation, the capital I kind, isn’t just a hammer in your tool belt. It is a BLUEPRINT, too.

 I’ll close with a Tweet (those are legit sources now, right?) that gives me a lot of hope. From Nation Public Radio darling, and all-around raconteur, @petersagal, “9 yr old arguing with 6 yr old: ‘We’re doing improv. You have to say yes.’”

Awesome!

- Jay

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“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.”

- C. S. Lewis

“The merit of originality is not novelty; it is sincerity.”

- Thomas Carlyle

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I’m not sure why I was staring. Big, dumb, racist motherfuckers aren’t exactly rare in Texas. Especially in the nowhere parts. And they all look the same, like a sheet of construction paper that’s been folded and unfolded, India ink running all over, pooling into homemade skulls, vague biblical notions, and delightfully misspelled racial epithets. It couldn’t have been the trappings that got me gawking, because I’d seen these goofs up close often enough. Our circles overlapped on occasion back in Houston. Rock shows, mostly. A menacing row of shaved heads, flak jackets, and ox-blood Doc Martens at the Social Distortion show. Never really there for the music, even on their very best behavior (never) making the one black guy I knew uncomfortable. Actually the one black guy I knew was a skinhead, too. S.H.A.R.P. Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice. Yes, that was a real thing. Maybe still is? I’m not Googling it in case my computer is ever seized in a federal investigation.

So, in one of the innumerable gas stations that light up I-35 between Austin and Dallas, I’m staring at this walking crevasse as he waits in line to pay for his Bud tallboy (Miller Lite is for Mexicans). And he’s staring, too. Not back at me, thankfully. But something had his attention and I didn’t need to ask because he let me know. He let the whole dozen or so of his fellow travelers know, “Whoa! That van is on fire!” It’s not often you get to use the word pandemonium in everyday conversation, so I need to take advantage. Pande-fucking-monium! At the absolute nearest gas pump is a white passenger van (propers to church youth groups everywhere), gas pump still in it, and flames are pouring out. No, flames are shooting out, like, even they don’t want to be around for the explosion that’s about to happen. And everyone in that gas station fast-forwards a hundred million years on the evolutionary timeline and teleports the fuck out of there. BAMF! Gone. Except one dumbass. You guessed it - Me. Skinhead is gone. My ride split so fast he left his wallet spinning, cartoon-style, on the counter. And there I stood, fogging up the window twelve feet away from a white, ten-passenger bomb. And the only thought running through my head was “Whoa that van is on fire!” A smart dumbass would have been stuffing cans of Dr. Pepper down his pants before he shot out the back door.

Profound moments of enlightenment are difficult to find and even more difficult to face. Kernels of truth can be tough to swallow, especially when my particular truth is - I am too fucking stupid to save my own life. Or worse, I’m just not that interested. It really shreds one’s hard-fought self esteem to realize that in a disaster situation you’ll - just go with the flow. “FIRE!” “Yeah, it’s beautiful isn’t it?”

- Jay

FYI, Part 1 can be found HERE. Enjoy!

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“Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being.”

- Goethe

“If we treat each other as if we are geniuses, poets, and artists, we have a better chance of becoming that on-stage.”

- Del Close

Weird, y’all. Not terrible, because there have definitely been worse. Just…weird.

5. Forgetting a prop during a rehearsal and being accused by the director of “Intentionally sabotaging the show.” I…forgot? The prop?

4. Rehearsing an entire production of William Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor outdoors. By the swimming pool at the director’s apartment complex. With her son, in desperate need of attention, walking in and out of scenes.

3. Watching a mother/daughter director/stage manager team have loud, awkward personal arguments in front of the entire cast and crew.

2. Performing that same production of The Merry Wives of Windsor indoors. At a bar. In front of the pool table. With the director’s son, still in desperate need of attention, walking in and out of scenes.

1. A director making a solemn opening night curtain speech about her daughter who had recently passed away. And then introducing our musical comedy. “Hello, Dolly! Well Hellooooooooooo Dolly…!!!”

Relatively speaking, these aren’t even that weird. I mean, I once “improvised” as a head on a platter in a buffet line at a party. Read that sentence again. Hell yes. 

Inspirational speeches always point out the tough times you can expect in carving out your own path in life - the hurdles you’ll have to clear on the rocky road to success. What’s often missing in soaring “Follow Your Dreams” rhetoric is that, sometimes, following your dreams does not look like following your dreams. At all. Rocky roads are easier to travel when you know it’s the correct rocky road. But my 5-Year plan never included “Portray talking appetizer” or “Shakespeare with neglected toddler.”

“I have had to fight like Hell and fighting like Hell has made me what I am.” - John Arbuthnot Fisher

If your path is and always has been a clear, straight line - Rock On! But for the rest (and I’m willing to bet, most) of us there are obstacles, detours, and red rooms with backward-talking little people. So what you’re left with is simply - yourself. You can’t trust the road. Trust you. That gum you like will come back in style. Hell. Yes.

“Why, then the world’s my oyster which I with sword will open” - William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor

- Jay

Propers to @melissacathcart for a little help with this one. Propers to me for introducing her to Twin Peaks. ;o)