A few weeks back, M. picked us up a couple of tickets for a political satire, Second City improv, political cartooning event sponsored by The Economist. How many women can say that about the men with whom they live.

I was in a foul mood, because for two and a half weeks approximately, I’ve spent all of my work days helping other folks, training other folks, talking with other folks and doing the work of other folks. As a consequence I have a teetering mass of a metaphorical stool-like substance on my desk that is my own freaking work. The work I haven’t gotten done on account of the other folks.

Compounding and really kicking into high gear my work funk is the current architectural wonderment in our beautiful building. The workplace was designed for aesthetics, form, function, sunlight and green and all sorts of good wholesome shit. But such a look is almost spoiled by the presence of people–Let alone a continuously growing mass of workers who are massing beyond the hive. The answer is more honeycombs, of course, and my cube sits at a nexus of building. Fucking cube farming, even Architectural Digest style, blows.

The point is, M. got us cool tickets for a night out in the big city, the streets of San Francisco. Sadly, all the streets leading to those streets after work on a Thursday evening are clogged with cars and trucks and people in your fucking way.

We were late. The show had started, and given that the locale was a swanky, real theater they had filled our orchestra-section, eighth-row seats with someone else’s butts. We were flashlighted over to a pair of seats in the balcony with a bird’s eye view of what might have been.

But, what we saw was pretty good. More a mix of a sketch than straight-up improv with accomplished performers not horrible actor’s workshop wannabees. That caliber helps in general, but in political stuff, which can slide right out of funny, interesting, into painful, it’s fabulous.

Best quick line that won’t be done justice, performed in a series of blackout scenes: husband and wife over the morning newspaper, “Honey, what do you think of the Abortion Bill?” “We should pay it.” I admit, I’m a sucker for an abortion joke.

After, we got some food at my favorite spot in almost any eating place, the bar. Very tasty Southeast Asian, and while I was using the plumbing fixtures M. ordered me up a Lychee-tini. Lychees sure can soak up the gin. Maybe it was the lychee, the satay or the company in M., or maybe just the 100 proof lychee in the bottom of the glass, but I felt much better after night fall.

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