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November 11, 2021
Teaching My Daughter About Anger

I just wanted to let everyone know how good I am getting at being a dad. The other day, I had gone to the store and bought birthday cards for Lauren’s mom and my mom and these mini unicorn cupcakes for Betsy. I put them all on the kitchen table and got a pen so we all could […]

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October 13, 2021
How Improv Helps You Take Risks

My daughter Betsy is having a hard time making friends in Kindergarten. At recess on the playground, she gets scared and shuts down, and instead of talking to the other kids, she just follows them around like a lost puppy. What happens is they either ignore her completely or they get annoyed. As a dad, my heart breaks for […]

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August 25, 2021
First Day of Kindergarten

I am back writing this blog after a very busy and unusual summer and will return to talking about improv in the future. I need to ease myself back into writing, and since the summer is coming to a close, I thought this would be a good place to pick back up. Today was Betsy's […]

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May 27, 2020
Cinderella's Funeral

My almost four-year-old daughter, Betsy, was playing with her two-inch tall plastic Disney princess dolls, when Cinderella’s head fell off and rolled under the couch. She looked and looked and couldn’t find it. So she decided to have a funeral for Cinderella. She lined up all the other Disney princesses on the coffee table and […]

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May 6, 2020
Taking In the Love On My Birthday

May 5th was my birthday. I turned 56. It's been a tradition of mine, a week or so before my actual birthday, to get more depressed than normal, followed by a wave of self-pity. Thank God, with everything that has been going on in the world and that fact I have not left my house […]

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May 16, 2019
Announcing My New One-Person Show, 'World's Greatest Dad(?)'

I have big news to share with you today. I am really excited to announce that my new autobiographical one-person show, World’s Greatest Dad(?), is going to be opening at Second City’s Judy’s Beat Lounge next month. The show will run on Saturdays at 6 p.m. from June 15 through July 20. If you’ve been […]

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November 15, 2018
Being Grateful for Where I Am

Next week is Thanksgiving, and I think the older I get the more I am starting to understand gratitude. When I started out doing improv in my 20s, I was so obsessed about becoming famous. So much so that it took all the fun out of it and affected my relationships. Fame was my higher […]

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July 11, 2018
What a Toddler Taught Me About Rejection

As actors and improvisers, we deal with rejection on a regular basis. And even though I’ve been improvising and auditioning for a really long time, it’s still hard to not to take rejection personally, because I am still looking for outside things to put a big stamp of approval on my forehead. When I audition […]

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September 27, 2017
Learning How to Have Joy

The irony is not lost on me that I am an improv teacher, which is about teaching people how to play and have fun, which is what I have the hardest time doing in my own life. (This is a classic case where the teacher teaches what he most needs to learn himself). Since I […]

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May 4, 2017
My greatest birthday gift

Friday is my birthday. I will be 53 years old. In improv, that makes me ancient. Each year I have the same birthday ritual: I go into a major depression. It usually stems from thinking about how I wish I was more successful, more famous, and have more money — like my friends that I started […]

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