Hillary's in da house

"Why do you always attract SO! MUCH! freakin' action???"

That was the question my dad laughingly asked me, as we settled into our thrones after being crowned king and queen at the improv last night.

'At's right. Someone FINALLY recognized my true royalty. (HA!)

Let me back up, shall I? For father's day, I told my dad that I would take him to go see the improv - a daddy-daughter date. So last night was the night. We went out for dinner first (trying not to totally melt in the heat) and then headed down to Granville Island to see the improv show down there. The theme was "The Improvised Works of Bill Shakespeare."

The theatre is wide and shallow, and across the front there are tables and chairs like in a lounge or something, and then an aisle, then theatre-type seats. I suggested a place in the front row of the theatre seats, in part cause they're good seats, in part cause it would give my 6'4'' dad some good leg room. We settled into our seats, and unbeknownst to me, my dad was kind of hoping that we could blend in a little more. He didn't want to be picked on by the actors or anything like that - he just wanted to sit back and enjoy the show, somewhat invisible.

Well.

As soon as we had sat down, like a tractor beam - *bthzzzzzzt!* - somebody honed in on us - she introduced herself as the stage manager. "I'm wondering if you two would like to be our king and queen for the improv show tonight."

Uhhh.... (OK, well, my dad was like, "uhhh..." and inside I was like "Woohoo! Sweet! Yeah!" Heh. I'm such a wack-job!)

She told us what would be required of us, and basically convinced us (ok, my dad. I needed no convincing) to take on the roles. She brought out our robes - red for me, deep purple for my dad, both trimmed in white - and our crowns - lovely gold plastic with not-so-sparkly jewels - and showed us our thrones. All my dad could do at that point was shake his head and laugh, roll his eyes and make the best of it.

The premise of the show was the the king and queen (hello!) had commissioned a play, but poor Bill had been out carousing and didn't get it done, so now it all had to be improvised, and if the show doth pleaseth not the king and queen, ol' Bill mayeth thus be beheaded. Or something like that.

So we got introduced at the beginning of the show, and for one of the games had to call out "rewrite" for the actors to change the last line uttered, and a few other perks and benefits. But yeah, the spotlight turned on us three or four times during the show for us to do some royal duty or another. We both had fun playing it up.

Like when the group of high schoolers from New York started calling out "rewrite" instead of us, my dad bellowed out, "SILENCE!" and the improv host totally played it up by cowering in fear and telling them, "Thou has aaaangered thy king! [turning to us and bowing low, with the hand rolling wave of a faithful servant] I'm sorry, your majesty. Please take this next scene as my humble apologies..." and on and on. I just about fell out of my chair laughing. (hi Sarah!)

It was definitely a night to remember.

And??? There were prizes, folks! Prizes! At the end of the show, we got two tickets to return to the improv and FOUR tickets to go see a Canadians baseball game at Nat Bailey stadium. SCORE!

The moral of this story is: beware if you're hanging out with me. Life will never be dull! *grin*

Now, knowing that, who wants to go see them some baseball? Or improv? Heh. heh. heh.