The World of Stuff .com

Hey now, they’re All-Stars

Like I said, last night we went to Sarasota to see Drew Carey’s Improv All-Stars, featuring Drew Carey, Greg Proops, Chip Esten, Jeff Davis, Jonathan Mangum, and Sean Masterson. All of them appeared on “The Drew Carey Show” and all but the last two were on “Whose Line Is It Anyway?.” (Also scheduled to appear was Kathy Kinney, best known for her role as bitter, gaudily-clad Mimi on “The Drew Carey Show,” but she had to cancel.) The tour was intended to promote “Drew Carey’s Green Screen Show,” so all of them have also appeared on that show, but I didn’t really know that because I’ve never watched it.

When we had gone to see Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood in February, we left the show satisfied. But then my sister saw that someone by the screen name of anaerosmithchick waited by the stage door after the show and got to meet Colin and Brad. So this time we did our research, looking at floor plans and satellite photos of the theater, so that we could meet the performers at the stage door. However, our research indicated that because the All-Stars were playing two shows, they would only step outside after the second show. We were going to the first show.

We left a little after 1 P.M. and made it into Sarasota in maybe three and a half hours. So we got our tickets and sort of hung out. The venue was really fancy and purple. In the lobby they were selling T-shirts (which had pictures only of Drew Carey) and posters. My sister and I bought posters. We wandered around the place looking for where the stage door might be. By chance I saw a large sign that said “Stage Door” and had an arrow pointing down a long, winding high-walled ramp that led down to a door. I was confused because it was exactly the opposite of where I thought it was going to be, but we had found it.

Eventually they opened the doors and we found our seats. We were in row number 4 (actually the 7th) at the end, where one could easily get picked to go up on stage. I had said that I was going to hide my camera in my sock. I ended up doing no such thing; my mom put it in her purse. We were also really close to the ushers, so covertly taking pictures during the show seemed to be out of the question. Nevertheless, when the show started and Drew Carey did a little bit of stand-up, I tried to take some pictures. They were horrible and I deleted them.

Overall, the show was very good. They played some singing games that would have been impossible without Laura Hall, best known as the resident keyboardist from Whose Line. They ended the show with the same game that Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood used when we saw them. Drew and Sean acted out a game while walking on 100 mousetraps barefoot and blindfolded. (Greg joined in the fun by throwing some mousetraps at Drew.) Sean seemed to be having a good time, but Drew seemed genuinely hurt. It was all the funnier.

After leaving, we went over to the stage door. Several people were in the general area, including a woman and a small boy (the latter of whom was sporting a homemade Whose Line t-shirt). My sister thought it might be the ever-lucky anaerosmithchick and her son whom she had mentioned on the various Whose Line-related forums that my sister reads. But we didn’t really want to ask, because that would have been awkward. Eventually we converged by the wall beside the ramp to the stage door. We started striking up some conversation. She was a die-hard Whose Line fan, and she showed us a picture on her cell phone: it was Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood, the same picture my sister had fretted over because it could have been her waiting there also.

We waited for a while, and somebody stepped outside the door. It was Jonathan Mangum, who I knew because he was on a commercial that you might have seen. It was the Frosted Flakes commercial where he’s sitting outside a cafe or something, and he eats a spoonful of the cereal and then gets drenched in a wave of milk. Alas, he was only talking on his cell phone and went back inside shortly thereafter. After more waiting, someone went down to the stage door to ask the security guard if they could go in. Of course, the person got snubbed.

Our efforts paid off. Anaerosmithchick sighted Greg Proops coming out and called to him. He came up to do the photo and autograph thang. He autographed my poster, asking me what my name was. I shook his hand and told him he was awesome and that I loved his show (even though Whose Line wasn’t really his show). “Thanks, Jordon,” he said. He was very soft-spoken, kind, and maybe even a bit shy. As I marvelled at the photo my sister and I got with him, anaerosmithchick was pointing out to her son that Greg did a voice in Star Wars: Episode I (he was one of the podracing announcers). Greg then retreated back by the stage door and called his wife on his cell phone — not that I was listening, but that’s what the others told me they heard.

Even though my parents were hungry and tired and quite frankly, my dear, didn’t give a damn about meeting the performers, they let us stay a little while longer. When no one else came out, we left in search of a restaurant, all the while trying to convince them to let us stay in town a little longer so we could meet the performers after the second show. We found a Tijuana Flats, a Mexican restaurant known for its hot sauces, and ate there, making it the fourth Tijuana Flats I’ve eaten in. After a megajuana-sized chimichanga and a soda too large (I was done in by the old trick question, “Do you want a large?”), my parents talked to each other a bit. I knew that that was good, because by default they weren’t going to let us stay. They were taking time to discuss it.

When we got back into the car, my dad took it in the direction of the theater, and we pulled in. Yesss! While waiting for the second show to end, we admired the bayside scenery and the rats, crickets, and cockroaches that populated it. At a certain spot outside the stage door area we could hear the show very well. I felt kind of bad because I was sort of enjoying this show I hadn’t paid for, but the security guards didn’t make any effort to remove us. In fact, they quite informatively told us that the performers had cut the mousetrap game due to timing reasons. I’m sure Drew Carey wasn’t disappointed.

A stampede of people came out the doors, and two of them were anaerosmithchick and her son, who had gone to see the second show (after all, it’s improvised; no two shows are the same). So we waited. We were also told that there was a meet and greet inside after the show, so they wouldn’t be out immediately. We were afraid that they would just dash into their two black SUVs, which were already waiting. So, I had my pen, poster, and camera ready in case I only had about four seconds or something.

Jeff Davis came out first. Even though he only appeared in 8 episodes, he his remembered by Whose Line fans for being a talented singer and for having a good Christopher Walken impression. He was inclined to chat with anaerosmithchick, who complimented him on his Christopher Walken, which he had also done during the second show. Everyone else came out afterward, so the performers did their duties of meeting fans, signing autographs and posing for pictures.

Sean Masterson was an enigma to me; I had never heard of him. According to the poster, he was on “The Drew Carey Show,” but his IMDb page says he was only in one episode. Nevertheless, I told him that I enjoyed his performance (he was funny) and that we had actually gone to the first show, not the second. “That’s dedication,” he said. It might have been around this time that I noticed that Greg was sulking around away from everyone else. We were lucky to have met him beforehand.

Laura Hall passed by and anaerosmithchick got her autograph. I wanted to say something to her, but I didn’t. I mouthed to my sister, “Laura Hall is standing right next to you,” but she didn’t get it. She blames it on Laura’s different hairstyle. She can’t recognize her anymore! My sister approached Jonathan Mangum and told her that she liked the cereal commercial. We each got his autograph. Poor him; we didn’t realize it, but the poster misspelled his name as “Magnum,” and we had been pronouncing it that way. Luckily we didn’t say it to his face, though.

Next we approached the one person I wanted to see the most: the venerable king of comedy, Drew Carey. My sister told him that our dad’s from Cleveland (Carey of course being a Clevelandite also; in fact, “The Drew Carey Show” was set in Cleveland). I had worked up what I wanted to say, and it was this: “Hi, I love your shows. Every day when I get home from school, I watch ‘The Drew Carey Show’ on TBS.” He replied, “Thanks for the money,” and I said, “I’ll buy from their advertisers.” Okay, so it might not have been the best thing to say, but it’s what I said. He was a nice guy.

Finally I sought Chip Esten, another singer from Whose Line. When signing autographs outside this theater, flat surfaces were lacking, and others had sought creative solutions. Jeff Davis had signed for me on a wall, Jonathan Mangum on his leg, and Sean Masterson on the back door of one of the SUVs. Chip, seeing nothing else, signed on my back. My pen kind of ran out of ink right there, so he borrowed anaerosmithchick’s marker, and so his signature is bold while the others are kind of weak and lacking ink.

With that, we left. I tried to sleep in the car, but I’m not very good at it. Call me crazy, but when I go to sleep I like it to be quiet and I like to be lying down comfortably. So I didn’t get any sleep at all, but I did rest my eyes, and that sort of counted as sleep to my body. We got home just after 3 A.M., and I slept for less than 5 hours. Now I have a couple of essays to do that are due tomorrow. But I don’t really care. I met the Improv All-Stars! All in all, it was a very cool experience and I’m glad I didn’t miss it.

And now, the obligatory photos.

Greg Proops:

Jeff Davis:

Drew Carey:

Chip Esten:

If you read all the way down to here, way to go.