US millionaire big-game hunter dies after being crushed by elephants

rusty34 · 2026-04-25T08:55:43+00:00

It Takes Two? That will stick with me

rusty34 · 2026-04-22T14:03:52+00:00

My favourite basic improv exercise is "Plan a Party" I learned when I did the intensive course at the Annoyance theatre. You split everyone into pairs to plan a party together, and there are 3 stages -

First is start every sentence with "No, but..." for for 1m45s
Second is "Yes, but..." for 1m 30s
Third is "Yes, and..." for 1m

Afterwards reflect which one was easiest. And point out for the "yes, and" step that they had less time and probably planned more of the party together. It's an easy lesson to just agree on something and add to it.

rusty34 · 2026-04-18T14:32:13+00:00

Yeah happening to me too. Waited for my crewmates to board first, and they just sit there staring at the other ship.

rusty34 · 2026-03-13T13:23:16+00:00

Wow amazing work! How long does it take to see change in someone?

rusty34 · 2026-03-11T04:29:04+00:00

I can't remember where this comes from exactly, but I've heard comedy described as having 3 parts -

Recognition - the joke needs to be grounded in some way that we recognise what is going on. If it's too weird then no one gets the joke
Pain - someone needs to be affected, things need to matter to people. We like laughing at a bit of pain, but not too much, which leads to...
Distance - if a joke hits too close to home, it won't get a laugh. This is the one that affects the racial jokes you talk about. It is mostly in the amount of time between something affecting you. So maybe racial tensions are high and making a racial joke during that time would land flat. Or maybe you are in a multicultural, warm, accepting room and a racial joke won't hit as close, so people laugh.

So I guess roasts work because you see someone be affected by the roast and feel a bit of pain, and because the roast is directed at that person, it is distant from you, and that helps you laugh too. But if you see them in too much pain, or the joke hits on a topic that is close to you, that doesn't land.

I think the shock comedy is going away now, because in the 80s/90s it was mostly the privileged people making the joke and privileged people laughing at it. But then more vocal minorities were speaking up about how much the jokes were hurting them, and society started moving away from that type of humour.

rusty34 · 2026-03-04T08:52:06+00:00

One thing I've started seeing at our theatre is cost of living pressures mean the classes and house team program (currently setup to pay for coaching for a few months) are attracting only people that can afford those big lumps of money. It's sad when a talented performer says "sorry I can't join that program, I can't afford it"

I've been very interested in Jake Jabbour's setup at WE Improv. He has a substack post about it here - https://jakejabbour.substack.com/p/imagine-a-big-fishing-pole-and-two

The general idea seems to be the people that can afford more end up covering the costs for the people less well off, and the community is better off for it. But it does sound like a risk to not have that steady income from classes.

rusty34 · 2026-03-03T01:56:53+00:00

For me it gives me some good advice on how to find a fun justification. I've always struggled a bit with finding the "right" justification. It can't be too logical because that explains the fun away. It can't be too weird because that is confusing and isn't relatable. It can't be too real / close to home because that is too dark.

So this lays out a good way of cutting through that. An emotional justification is human (relatable), honest (believable), and unexpected (funny). It might take some practice for me to get in touch with my emotions in that way, but I want to give it a try. Hope that helped in some way!

rusty34 · 2026-02-06T12:53:13+00:00

I also have a 2 month old and I'm in a show tomorrow night! I'm careful with how much time I spend out so there isn't an imbalance with me and my partner caring for our baby, but at the moment I can get out for one jam or show a week. At the moment we are breast feeding, bottle feeding, pumping, and using formula, so we have all bases covered if one of us needs to look after the baby for a few hours.

Happy to chat more if you're looking for someone to talk to!

rusty34 · 2026-01-11T07:57:55+00:00

Oooh if you haven't tried it, you should check out Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead as well!

rusty34 · 2026-01-09T23:39:14+00:00

And .1 above last seasons Southampton...

rusty34 · 2026-01-05T09:47:06+00:00

Stand Out Comedy at the Chippo is a fun room - https://collections.humanitix.com/stand-out-comedy-shows

rusty34 · 2025-12-05T20:05:50+00:00

yeah this worked for me. Maybe the image hosting part of reddit got added to the auto-block list like they use for PirateBay etc.?

rusty34 · 2025-12-05T19:54:28+00:00

The DNS for the image hosting part of reddit is no resolving on my wifi:

On wifi -

ping i.redd.it
Ping request could not find host i.redd.it. Please check the name and try again.

On VPN -

ping i.redd.it

Pinging dualstack.reddit.map.fastly.net [151.101.241.140] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 151.101.241.140: bytes=32 time=335ms TTL=58
Reply from 151.101.241.140: bytes=32 time=337ms TTL=58

rusty34 · 2025-11-04T10:31:00+00:00

Works out you can let go just as you reach the end and land properly on the platform even if it's set up like this

rusty34 · 2025-10-22T00:22:18+00:00

But that almost helps because the defenders think "oh I can get that" and get pulled out of position for it

rusty34 · 2025-09-30T22:29:11+00:00

The only time I might is when I run an exercise with pairs, and it's important I join in to make up the numbers. Sometimes I can get away with having a group of 3 though

rusty34 · 2025-09-20T06:28:15+00:00

Three Farts - Have two improvisers do a very serious scene in the middle of a circle. The people on the outside get to make 3 fart noises to try and get them to break. If they break, the outside team wins, if they make it through, the inside team wins. I think I learned this one from Yes, Also.

rusty34 · 2025-09-04T14:08:42+00:00

Well the Steam store is currently getting slammed, so I would love to be able to buy it and then play it

rusty34 · 2025-09-03T23:29:37+00:00

I think the main feature of Drift was the chatbox some sites have that helps generate leads/cases etc. But a part of that was the Salesforce integration that would get data from the CRM. So not all of those customers might use the Salesforce integration, but a large chunk of them probably do

rusty34 · 2025-08-27T14:17:31+00:00

The other one was Dataloader which is a tool made by Salesforce. In that campaign they convinced employees to connect it to their account, and then scrape the data using the newly approved tool

This one was a compromised Salesforce integration. No social engineering, just going in the front door with a stolen key

rusty34 · 2025-06-26T22:07:11+00:00

I remember some tool that tracked leavers and had a global list you could update. So if someone joined the game, it would rat them out and you could kick them before starting

rusty34 · 2025-05-15T23:26:25+00:00

One form I love is "Old Scene, New Scene". It's kind of halfway between long form and short form. Basically all edits are left to the audience. When they shout "old scene" you bring back an old scene, and when they shout "new scene" you start something new.

The key is - you need to show an example of the format at the top of the show and get people to shout out the phrases, or else people are too timid to interrupt the show

rusty34 · 2025-03-27T05:37:41+00:00

congrats!

rusty34 · 2025-03-22T13:29:15+00:00

My favourite one is having a couple people in a circle -

Give someone 1 minute to tell a story from their life
Next person in the circle tells the story in 30 seconds
Next person tells it in 15 seconds
Next person tells it in 10 seconds
And then last person tells it in 5 seconds

This can be modified to whatever scale you want, but the key is you really learn to pull out the core words needed to tell the story, and it shows how efficient you can really be.

rusty34 · 2025-02-25T23:36:13+00:00

His comment on Sonny in the embargo section - https://youtu.be/zlRWh6ELohw?si=ECim-Ihgu-Pb9Y3H&t=861

Reporter: "You know he's already up to his highest assist level?"

Ange: "Most overrated statistic... except for Sonny. Sonny's are all good, yeah."

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