Stroogie: the Next Generation

I’ve been watching a lot of Star Trek lately. No, really, I haven’t watched any in years, aside from the J.J. Abrams movie. Seriously, I haven’t, I swear.

Recently, thanks to a really interesting writer at The A.V. Club, and a Roku box that lets me instant-watch Netflix on my TV, I’ve hopped aboard Star Trek: Deep Space Nine for a re-watch starting from the beginning.

And a few months ago, I visited the Star Trek exhibit at the St. Louis Science Center. I used to work at the Science Center, so my old co-workers sneaked me and a geek buddy in for free. Thus, I had money left over to spend on buying the pictures that I eventually manipulated to form the above image, possibly one of the proudest moments of my life.

Shut up. It was awesome. You don’t even know.

As Star Trek is all about exploring and discovering, I’ve been feeling especially bold lately.

 

A Picture and a Thousand (Gibberish) Words

ANDREW JANSEN / JOURNAL David Strugar, Affton, and Heather Cooper, Dogtown, of The Improv Trick, perform a skit during the Cheers to the Troops event to benefit the USO at the South Broadway Athletic Club, Saturday, July 30, 2011.

It’s funny the moments that get remembered.

In the dashing photograph above, Heather and I are playing a game called “Foreign Film,” which I hate and suck at. It’s a gibberish game where two players speak to each other in gibberish, while two others “translate.” The gibberish is supposed to represent a language that we get as a suggestion from the audience—that night it was Bosnian. Since I’m half Serb, I threw in the three or four Serbo-Croat phrases I know to get things going. After that, it was all…well, gibberish.

Gibberish games require a certain freedom of mind, to just open your mouth and let whatever syllables are inside come spilling out. Unfortunately, when I play, my brain keeps rebelling and wanting to make some sense. Either that, or I just spit out the same couple of syllables over and over: “mooma da gooma” somewhat approximates it, I think.

Obviously, the joke is that nothing you say makes any sense anyway, and it can be even funnier when your gibberish sounds nothing like the language you’re supposed to be imitating. I have, however, heard improvisers who make gibberish sound like poetry. Sometimes they even find a certain mash-up of syllables that sounds like a real word, and it becomes part of their temporary, made-up language. Great stuff.

As luck would have it that night, we didn’t have enough microphones to cover everyone. Heather and I performed without so that our translators could use them and be heard. So in the end, we could have been speaking perfect English, insulting each other’s mothers, for all anyone knew.

And we got our picture in the paper for it! And they didn’t use the moment where I was admiring Heather’s armpit hair. Not a bad night.

(Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/suburban-journals/photos/image_190a08e9-9dff-537d-a973-1f3995284603.html#ixzz1UBoFuHYc)

 

Make David Run

UPDATE: I did it! 40 flights of stairs in 9m:55s! I’m waiting to post more when I get pictures. Thanks to everyone for your support!

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Nothing helps you appreciate having healthy lungs like climbing 42 flights of stairs.

When our manager Jeremy flew the idea of us honoring the mother of another store manager who’s fighting lung cancer, we all jumped on the idea. So on March 19th, 2011, our baristas will climb St. Louis’ tallest building, One Metropolitan Square, in the American Lung Association’s Fight For Air Climb, aka: “Master the Met.”

But we need your help to get there.

 

Stroogie in the Study with the Screenplay

I entered the Cyberspace Open scene-writing competition again, and with some creative shift-switching, ended up with the whole weekend off. Then the competition was delayed till next month, so I had three-and-a-half days off looming in front of me. Head spinning a little, I finally got to work and got some things done.

Task 1: Bring the desk from upstairs into the spare room downstairs to create a study.

Check. My brother came over and helped me out, and now I have a peaceful space to write in without television, laundry, or dirty dishes beckoning for my attention.

Task 2: Finish Act One of the speed draft of my current screenplay.

Check. I still have to transcribe my notebook into the computer, but it’s done. I’m going to take a short break now to work on some spec scripts for The Nickelodeon Fellowship.

Task 3: Take a ton of pictures at The Improv Trick’s free Intro to Improv class.

Check. Double and Triple Check. Since our founder Bill Chott won’t be back in town for a long time, this was my last chance to get some pictures of him teaching. We had record attendance at both the Wednesday and Sunday classes (50+ including my brother, who showed up with his girlfriend on Sunday). Now when I send out PR for our classes, I don’t have to recycle the same two old pictures.

NOT the same old two pictures, thank you.

If you’re so inclined, you can check out the whole album on Facebook here:

Intro to Improv, Jan. 9th

Now the snow is coming down upon St. Louis, and I need to finish my last task for this extended weekend—make a batch of beef stew.

 

We’ll Have a Grandel Time!

The Improv Tricksters being the life of the party at First Night celebrations in St. Louis’ Grand Center Arts district.

Two entries into rebooting my blog, my computer crashed. I had a friend look at it, but after two weeks, he could still not bring it back to life. So I had to restart from the factory settings and slowly put everything back together.

Fortunately, I had backed up my stuff recently, so I didn’t lose much. There were a lot of settings and bookmarks and passwords to re-establish, though, and old files to find (my folders aren’t as organized as I thought they were, apparently). So between the crash and the holidays, I couldn’t get back to the blog. And so much has happened!

Without Celtx at my fingertips, I had to work on the script longhand in a notebook, so the going has been slower. Writing by hand is good for building character, however, (in the personal sense and the storytelling sense), and I’m almost through act one. Even now that I have the computer back, I still find myself picking up the pencil whenever it’s time to write the next scene.

The Improv Trick performed at the First Night celebrations in the Grand Center Arts district, and we packed the house for two out of our three shows at the Grandel Theatre! That’s over 1,000 people enjoying improv in St. Louis for New Year’s Eve (two of those people happened to be my parents, who came to see me perform for the first time). Afterwards, we hit the streets for the countdown, where I ran into my old friend Jeff the Juggler. It was the most fun I’ve had for New Year’s in a long time.

Bill Chott (center), founder of the Improv Trick, told us that performing on New Year’s Eve is good luck—it means you’ll be performing all year.

Now I’m looking at the year ahead. The plan to move to L.A. is evolving in the face of my financial shortcomings. It may happen, but not as soon as I’d like. Meanwhile, I find myself surrounded by creative people here in St. Louis, both in the Improv Trick, and in Fusion—my artists’ group at church—and I’m hankering to make some short films with them.

Here’s to a year filled with lots of cool projects—and lots of backing up to make sure I don’t lose them!

 

The Blog is Back in Town

© Vangelis Thomaidis – Fotolia.com

In the middle of this summer, I hit a goal—50 posts on my blog. Ever since I’d started in the spring, that particular finish line had been waiting in the back of my mind, with the yellow tape strung across the race track, waiting for me to break it. And once I was through, I thought I’d keep blogging.

Seems though that subconsciously, all I’d been trying to do was hit that milestone. Maybe to prove something to myself. Once I made it, I realized that was all I had in me for the time being, at least in this particular medium. I turned back to improv and screenwriting and got busy with other pursuits. I’m okay with that.

However, recently I’ve realized that I need to keep this sucker going. I’ve commented on other blogs and kept my URL in the signature of my emails, and having no new posts when people link back to StroogieWorks makes me look a little lame. So I’m carefully turning the key in the old ignition and getting the engine warmed up again.

 

PitchFest by Text, Day 3

(I’m on Twitter and Facebook, but not from my phone. So instead, to tell the tale of my L.A. adventure, I have here assembled the texts I sent to my sister and friends during the weekend of the PitchFest.)

“Hi, I’m David, and I’m here to tell you a ghost story.”

My opening line came to me about two minutes before my first pitch. You’d think I’d have had that scripted out a long time before. It wasn’t that I was unprepared, but sometimes the stress of the moment produces unexpected inspiration.

Over one-hundred companies had come to the Great American PitchFest this year. Representatives from agents, managers, and studios big and small filled the ballroom at the Marriott Burbank Hotel and Convention Center, each with a big printed number standing over their table. Outside the ballroom, some 500 writers stood in line behind their chosen numbers, waiting their turn to pitch their stories.

 

PitchFest by Text, Day 2

(I’m on Twitter and Facebook, but not from my phone. So instead, to tell the tale of my L.A. adventure, I have here assembled the texts I sent to my sister and friends during the weekend of the PitchFest.)

June 26, 1:10am

from: Brynne

I set my alarm for 7:45 so we can leave a little after 8 to be there a little before 9. See you in the morning.

Brynne was clever enough to text me while I was asleep so that I’d get her message once I woke up. Fortunately, she’d guessed right about the time, so by 8 o’clock or so, she and Richard and I were in the car headed for Burbank. This time we got to see another cool landmark—the tunnel they used in Who Framed Roger Rabbit as the entrance to Toon Town.

No cheery animated critters greeted our passage, though, so we continued on to Burbank.

Today was the day I’d meet a couple of my screenwriting mentors, Pilar Alessandra and Karl Iglesias. I’d ponied up an extra fee to take their Master Classes, and was looking forward to them almost more than the PitchFest itself.

 

PitchFest by Text, Day 1

(I’m on Twitter and Facebook, but not from my phone. So instead, to tell the tale of my L.A. adventure, I have here assembled the texts I sent to my sister and friends during the weekend of the PitchFest.)

June 25, 12:10am

to: Johanna

I definitely name-dropped Darrin already. I’ll have to throw in that I was an intern. I’m screwed on the microbrew.

I never sleep the night before I travel. Even if everything’s packed, I’m usually all wound up. In this case, I was still binding copies of my writing samples, and wondering if I was going to spend the weekend in L.A. homeless.

I’d lost contact with my friend Brynne and wasn’t sure if she knew I was coming. While my roommate Adam generously donated his points to get me a hotel room for Saturday and Sunday, I had, as of the night before my departure, no place to stay for Friday night.

Johanna, my friend and former fellow intern from my church, was helping me track down a sister church in L.A. that might be able to help. She was mocking my lack of taste for beer, since microbrews and other trendy stuff are popular amongst the guys in our church network (called Acts 29).

Mentioning Darrin, our pastor, seemed like a good idea, but if I didn’t smoke cigars and enjoy Death Cab For Cutie, I could be in trouble (check out fellow WordPress blog Stuff Reformers Like for more on that inside joke).

12:16am

from: Johanna

Then ur Xianity may b n question ;) Or maybe just ur Acts29-ity. Hope u find a great host and good luck pitching the s.p.!