Month: March 2010

comedy

Step 62: A Night at The Colbert Report

Christa Avampato

My friend, Rob, and I were in need of a good belly laugh and where better to get a healthy dose of humor served up with a side of news than at The Colbert Report. During the years of the Bush administration I relied on Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart for much of my news coverage. The actual political news was just too depressing to take in on a daily basis. When watching Comedy Central, I wondered if the Stephen Colbert we’ve all come to know and love is an entirely fictional character. And if his character is manufactured, what’s the real Stephen Colbert like?

He does an out-of-character Q&A with the audience for about 10 minutes before the taping begins. Almost any subject is free game in the Q&A. He night just be the single nicest, most genuine, humble guy in television. He plays with his staff and his audience. We could easily see the sense of camaraderie, even family, among everyone on the set. The guy is having a blast, and so is everyone alongside him. The dance of his show is complicated and quick-moving, and even with that pressure, he sees and communicates the comedy in every moment without ever appearing flustered.

“Off camera, I’m just a guy who says sh*t,” he said to us during a commercial break. While that may be true, he’s much more that. He’s a an incredible role model for us: someone who’s doing exactly what he loves with people he cares about that’s actually making a difference in our world. He gives us another viewing lens for our news and the society we’ve created in this country. He has an opinion about everything and rather than beating us over the head with it, he took the other side and made it entertaining. And both in and out of character, he’s one seriously hilarious, intensely intelligent, thoroughly likable guy.

change, decision-making

Step 61: Valiant Struggles

Christa Avampato

“You, too, God willing, will be 65 some day–and when you look back it’s never the easy times that pop up in the viewfinders; it’s the valiant struggles and adversities suffered and occasionally overcome that fill the highlights tape.” ~ Tom Peters

Memory is a funny thing. It’s amazing what will surface at specific times, without us even actively asking it to make an appearance in our minds:
– This morning I woke up thinking of our family dog who we had to put down in September. I thought about how hard that day was and also how grateful it made me we for his love all those years.
– For a few weeks I’ve had dozens of conversations about relationships – the good, the bad, and the ugly. After a string of recent ones that didn’t end so well, I realized that finally I think I’m ready to find one that really works for me and becomes a blessing in my life.
– Occasionally, I will be walking around my neighborhood and still imagine the event that would have unfolded if I hadn’t gotten out of my burning apartment building exactly at the moment when I did.
– September of 2009 will forever be a month that I remember as one long struggle that I survived.

Struggles and their after-effects can play out in two ways: they can be things that send us spiraling down into misery or they can become the hour of our greatest teaching. It’s a choice. Our choice. Yes there’s a grieving period and it may be far longer and more filled with despair than we’d like it be. Eventually we have to decide to stay down or stand up and start over. Pain can be a powerful motivator to transform our lives in ways that we wouldn’t without its prompting. Struggles can be valiant.

dreams, movie

Step 60: Alice in Wonderland

Christa Avampato

“Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” ~ Alice in Wonderland

“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” ~ Saint Francis of Assisi

Tonight my friend, Dan, took me to see a screening of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, the journey that Alice takes on her second fall down the rabbit hole. In Tim Burton’s colorful, magical style, he re-creates a Wonderland transformed into a wasteland by the Queens of Hearts. The story unfolds as good battles evil, as a young girls grows into a woman, and as the repressed gain the confidence and courage to fight for freedom. It’s a story as old as time, and yet it’s something more, too. That’s why it’s my favorite book.

My favorite quote from Alice is the one about imagining impossible things. So often we spend our days saying why something can’t / won’t / shouldn’t work. We make excuses and justify inaction. How much of our time do we imagine impossible things, and then take them a step further as Saint Francis counseled us to do. Impossibility is an alluring things to strive for.

In Tim Burton’s re-telling, Alice is fighting the jabberwocky and to strengthen her own resolve, she begins to recite six impossible things. So I’m testing myself a bit tonight, imagining my own list of six impossible things:

1.) To ride the subway on a weekday morning with a car full of people excited for the day ahead
2.) A world where everyone has just enough of everything they need, and they’re content with that
3.) An education system that bases every ounce of learning on creativity
4.) Me doing advanced arm balance poses in yoga class
5.) A world that fully appreciates the wisdom of the aged, children, and animals
6.) A year full of days that feel like that first day of spring after a long, hard winter