Austin Improv

We tried to rename the troupe late Thursday night, but Val wouldn't let us. So then we briefly disbanded and tried to reform under a new name, but we wound up being Parallelogramophonograph again. I guess we're stuck with it.

Here's a bunch of teams I've been a part of:

Tight: This was the name of the team when i got here. I have no idea.

Johnny Roast Beef: This was the name of the team I was on at IO in Chicago -- they're still together, having passed the 4 year mark in March. The name refers to a minor character in Scorsese's Goodfellas movie. Original member George had been wanting to call a team that name for awhile and suggested it when we got together. Our coach basicallt strong-armed us into choosing that name. We did, and then George was moved to another team within 6 months. Ah well...

Spongecake: This was a team of a bunch of us in classes, performing at various places around Chicago. I think the name came from the "soaking up" nature of sponge cake.

Kilgore Trout: This is the name Spongecake adopted when we were pulled onto the IO schedule and had two more members added. This name comes from the fictional Kurt Vonngut character, who is described as "unappreciated science fiction writer whose works are used only as filler material in pornographic magazines." (from Wikipedia.)

McNichol & May: This has such a convoluted evolution that I won't bore you with the details.

Cats 2: We performed only once and the name came from Eric Rutherford's brain, referring, I believe, to us as a sequel to the highly successful musical "Cats." This is one of my favorite team names ever.

Cornelia: We got this name from the name of street which housed the rehearsal space in which we originally practiced.

there's more, with even more boring names...

Here are some teams I played with:

Mute - This was a long form silent improv team. We never had a show. The name is fitting.

Sandbox Democracy - Basically everyone submitted names in a hat, we read them and voted. We eventuall voted memebers off the team, also a fitting name.

Bevy - Well, this was the same deal, we voted. It was an all girl team and our MAIN goal was to be sure the team name had nothing to do with women, we had seen so many teams do this, personally I voted to name the team Fabula.

Obsessed - This was a fun group of friends, we loved to say that we were obsessed with different things, so hence the name.

Pacotomo - My 5B team/show. We ha a guy in the group who always played a cuban character named Paco, we also had a 4'0 asian girl named Lisa Nagatomo and we loved calling her by her last name. We combined them !

Deuce - Mine and Erin's two-person show we performed while living in Dallas and once or twice at Waffle Fest a long long time ago.

Tight - This was another voting situation.

Girls, Girls, Girls - see Mo's post

Wooden Nickel - One of our members was interviewed by the Texan, he mentioed that he did improv, the interviewed asked what the name of the team was (we didn't have one then) and he exclaimed, Wooden Nickel.

I always wanted to be on a team named Diahrrea Robot, and now I am ![/u]

I once had an improv troupe named One Man Thor. Because it was a one man show. And my name is Thor. And these are my pants.

Thor wrote:I once had an improv troupe named One Man Thor. Because it was a one man show. And my name is Thor. And these are my pants.

the lord works in mysterious ways.

very mysterious.


also a good name for a group. it's kind of trendy for bands to have stupidly long names, so how about "The Lord Works in Mysterious Ways?"

That wouldn't work. It's a complete sentence. To be trendy, it's gotta be just a phrase or sentence fragment.

"...so the lord works in mysterious ways..."

NEVER FORGET THE ELIPSES. THIS MAKES YOU HIP!

Well Hung Jury: well, in the beginning, we all had massive shlongs and were in law school, so it just seemed to fit. then we got into theatre and it just seemed to stick...the name, not the shlongs. those faded with time, i'm sad to say. we really should've been more specific with the genie about that wish. (i don't know where these silly lies Jeremy's telling about economics class are coming from...i mean, how far fetched is that?)

Freefalling Malfactors: Um, Jon and Ben come up with lame names. End of story.

Wormwood Productions: a theatre company more than an improv troupe. our first show was Hamlet on the steps of the UT tower and everyone for some reason became fascinated with Hamlet's line, "Wormwood, wormwood!" so that wound up being the name. ta-dah!

The Sicks: when we decided to form our own sketch troupe, we had the hardest time nailing down the right name. we had at least two or three meetings where we were throwing out names and shooting them down. one half of the troupe would LOVE a name, the other half would hate it. we all had such different temperments. my personal favorites that i threw into the mix were Carnie Knowledge and Ramadan Knotts. but nothing seemed to have everyone in agreement. and then apparently a few of the troupe members were talking to someone else (i can't remember who) and they were asking questions about the troupe. Someone mentioned that there were six of us, and she said "Why not call it the Sicks?" a day or two later, i heard this from Jon and fell in love with the name. it was a fun little pun (when there were six of us), it had a nice punk rock superhero attitude to it. and everyone else, for whatever reasons they had, loved it as well. ba da bing, ba da BLAM!

Start Trekkin': Um, the troupe was named before i got there. and it's a Star Trek troupe. guess someone thought it fit. I've never gotten it myself...

The Great Mundane: Jay approached me with this idea and told me the idea of calling it the Mundane. i liked the idea behind it, because i love etymology and the twin meanings of mundane, but not everyone is aware of the second one so i saw some problems with being able to market the troupe. I mean...the Mundane. Doesn't exactly inspire much confidence in the quality of what you're seeing. so i asked if i could toy around with the word and find a way to make it work. the two things that came to me were the Beautiful Mundane (don't ask me why, it just sounded cool to me)...and the Great Mundane. Which is fun because of the contradiction of the two words in their popular meanings, and because it sounds like great dane. I mentioned it at a meeting and everyone was on board. sweetness.

Paul Bunyan: Um...we were tall. And stuff.

I was thinking the other day how funny it would be if people named babies the way most improv troupes seemed to be named: Each parent makes long lists of acceptable names, negottiations go on for several months, it's narrowed down to the top three fro boy or girl, the baby comes out, parents get drunk to celebrate, and decide to name their child Parallelogramophonograph.

My goal is to adopt a kid just to name them that.

In fact, I want to adopt 300 to name them every one of the names on our potential troupe names list.

"Vorpal Slapstick! Cracker by a Lakeside! Get down here, dinner's ready! You, improv~1.bat, go set the table!"

Wesley wrote: improv~1.bat

Now that one, I really like!

I guess now that we've had a show we can post this.

We started of as the "Austin Patato Famine." Something Matt came up with at the Old Years Party.

Andy has repeatedly told us that we should not use our powers for evil.

Then, one day, some of us were sitting at Mother Egan's. And Marc and I were teasing Andy, and making him believe that the two of us were both born in the same hospital in Buffalo, New York.

Someone mentioned: "Improv for evil."

We tossed that around, and it had such a good ring to it, that "Austin Patato Famine" didn't last. The funny thing was, I was in Chicago, and some dude there, Don Hall, was like.. I know you.... and realized that I was from improv for evil, because he visited the website earlier.

as for
We Could Be Heroes
Catch 24
Heroes of Comedy
Gravy

See Bearded lamb above.. as for my others...
One Night Band: Our improvised VH1 Storytellers was gonna be "Rhyme and Reason" cause that was it was, as well as homage to Dave Matthews, but it all sounded to poetry slam... Then the mythical Sean Hill suggested "One Night Band"... wowser, perfect... cause thats what it really was...

The Knuckleball Now: we went through names and nothing stuck, we too had a long list... but strangely enough the troupes first meeting happened at Cueros on congress, and instead of talking prov and ideas, we watched the Boston Redsox magical comeback against the Yankees.. I few weeks later we dicided to each send 10 names via email.. strangely enough without either knowing, Mikey D and I each had "Knuckleball". We played with "Knuckleball" similar to Austin band "Fastball", but Modig wanted something Zen in there.. he suggested adding "Now".. It grew. I am Paul Harvey and thats the rest of the story.

Always like "Hugh Downs Syndrome"