Oh, Amsterdam, we missed you.
Time in Amsterdam was outstanding, we had a fine apartment with a mini dvd player to enjoy cinema classics such as Groundhog Day, Roman Holiday, and the Three Amigos. We also went out. Including back-to-back-to-back nights at Boom Chicago. It was even better than I had expected. Firstly, there were plenty of familiar friendly faces, secondly, not much had changed (or the more they changed, the more they stayed the same), also the comedy calibre was still whipcrackingly good. But it was nice to go back to Amsterdam over a year after my international exchange, and still feel like everybody knows your name (or at least kinda recognizes your face)
Also, I got back on the Boom Chicago stage.
First on Thursday for the Improv Jam, when any old person can get up and do a make-em-up for their equally drunk friends. It’s not a great Boom! show, but good improv fun for whomever wants to play.
I played a few games and it felt good, to feel the cold comforting steel of improv comedy in my hand once again. And wield it like a weapon. Unfortunately everything was upstaged by a woman we shall call Raffaella. This deeply disturbed young woman suffering from severe dissociation from reality plus Tourette’s plus general craziness came on for a couple games and really tilted all our heads sideways. Of course it took a while to realize she was crazy, at first she just seems like a bad improviser, or maybe nervous, or just has a bad perverted sense of humour. But by the time she snuck up on stage for the second time, the starkness of her madness was apparent to all. Probably coinciding with the time she announced “I want the ugly nigger!” or maybe it only hit home with the “I had an abortion” line, apropros of nothing.
Yes actually, it was awkward. Quite.
But it also gave us all something to talk about after.
In other news the rest of Amsterdam was all-star awesome. We had good times with some school-like chums from years past: Creaseless Ben, Ria, Silvia, Jesse, Jackie Treehorn and the like.
All in all it was an excellent reunion of Chiara and I with that fair city and erstwhile home. It reassured us as well that if we made our way back to Amsterdam for some living, we could still enjoy that towns total radness. From old friends to boat rides, improv to joint smoking, a possible masters degree, plus the lekkerness of their fritjes, we could certainly do worse.
