What a time! (Now). What a month (January). And what a year (2018). So far, so good.
We spent our New Year's Eve in Valencia with friends who also have a young daughter. We counted down to midnight from 12 seconds to by popping a single grape in our mouth every second. By the time we rang in midnight I had a huge mouthful of grapes. Will not celebrate this way again.
On the plus side, we were all in bed by ten minutes after midnight. Just enough time to spit out all that grape mush and brush our teeth. The thing is: early to bed on New Year's Eve felt like a good way to start the year.
May this year be filled with sensible bedtimes and a moderate amount of grapes.
Enjoy this email, it's got some YouTube stuff, IMPRO Amsterdam highlights, and some thoughts on Habits & Sprints.
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IMPRO AMSTERDAM
IMPRO Amsterdam, the city's festival of improvisation, is coming up next week already! I'm happy to be teaching my Take it easy workshop there on Wednesday (why yes it is based on the book of the same name).
If you're coming to the festival, or live in Amsterdam, sign yourself up. I've just checked and there are a couple of slots left. There's also a bunch of other great workshops (and shows) - take advantage.
In addition to teaching that workshop, I'm excited about NYC's fabulous North Coast will be here, and I'm taking the opportunity to attend a workshop on freestyle rapping and one on beatboxing. Like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, beatboxing and rapping are two of my favorite things.
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CANADA TRIP
In mid-December I flew out to Vancouver and Vancouver Island for a sneaky week. It was all cloak-and-dagger subterfuge and secrecy (which is why I hadn't talked about it before).
The purpose of the trip was to surprise my good friend Geordie and spend a couple days with him around his 40th birthday, during which we could tackle some grand questions about life and purpose. Which we did brilliantly, by the way.
I also shot over to Vancouver Island to spend the weekend with my parents and brother and sister and niece and nephews. My brother was the only one who knew I was coming and had arranged to get the family together for the weekend. When I popped my head out there was some 'shock and awe', followed by a weekend full of general family good times.
It was wonderful. I mean, it's hard to overstate the feelings of warmth and general cheer that comes with beating your 11-year-old nephew at basketball*.
Back in Vancouver I snuck in a quick improv show and some lunch dates before reboarding the aeronautic slingshot for the journey home. Tired but thoroughly satisfied (and happy to be reunited with my lilttle family in Amsterdam).
* He actually beat me, but it was really close.
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TAKE IT EASY UPDATE
Something else I did in Canada was trying to solve the TAKE IT EASY 7-page conundrum, which was an issue I had with some blank but fully usable pages in my book. I think I figured out something which will both look cool and catch the eye of any page-flipper.
On the production side, my contact at the printer has recently returned from honeymoon and hopefully will get cracking on this project as soon as he climbs out from under a mountain of email. So we shall be hitting "PRINT!" imminently.
Also of note: the cover is all ready and it looks fantastic!
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YOUTUBE
Over the last half year or so I've been adding more and more videos to my youtube channel. Some hip-hop stuff, some improv bits, some improvised cop sketches, and some street talks (me talking about a thing I'm interested in on camera).
If you check it out (and subscribe) now, you'll also see that it's all pretty well-organized, and entertaining. So go ahead.
Everybody loves video content!
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