But Will I Still Be Funny???

July 2nd, 2010

Day 1- Okay, we’ve got a serious wakeup call over here. Today is July 2nd 2010 and I weight 311.5lbs. Yikes, does not even begin to describe how frightening this is for me. My weight has always been a rollercoaster ride for me. In middle school my friends all called me Farley… they didn’t mean John. Thanks to playing three sports I was in great shape for most of high school until I was introduced to the delicious nectar of the god’s known as Genny Light. “But Tommy,” you may ask, “Isn’t light beer better for you??” Great question imaginary reader! Light Beer is better for you but it starts to lose nutritional value when you drink 18 of them a night.

Let's hope there aren't as many looks of concern at next year's Festival

So here we are. 311.5lbs. I am scared for a lot of reasons. Mostly health related but there are some other concerns. How close am I to needing to buy two airline tickets,? Can I fit on the rides at Six Flags? …AM I TOO FAT TO HANG GLIDE?!!??

I have told a few close friends lately that I want to lose some weight. Well actually a lot of weight. I’m talking Oprah weight. I don’t want to look like Christain Bale in The Machinist (Side note: If he was a dick while being well fed on Terminator: Salvation, how much of unbearable cocksucker must he have been whilst starving himself for The Machinist?) but I would like to get back to buying pants that can’t be converted into shelter during heavy rains.

I love my friends. I know it sounds cliché but I really feel like I have the best friends in the world. Unfortunately living in LA means that even my well intentioned friends may be a bit misguided. When I told my friends that I’m going to start making healthy changes in my life to lose weight many of them asked, I believe in all honesty, “Will you still be funny?” To me that is hilarious. I may be wrong but I like to assume that at least a little of my humor is derived from my brain and mouth, not my stomach. However I am curious so thus begins the journey that I hope some of you will follow along with. Will I still be funny when I’m not (as) fat, will I even dedicate myself enough to lose weight?. I hope the answer to both questions is yes!

This whole thing will be a journey and I would love the support of my friends. If you have any work out tips, recipes, advice or encouragement please email me at tommybechtold@gmail.com.

Posted by: Tommy

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Extra-Strength Represents!

June 7th, 2010

Extra-Strength has been selected to represent our home theatre (iO West in Hollywood) during the Harold Competition at the 8th annual Los Angeles Improv Comedy Festival.

“But wait,” you ask, much like we did. “Since when is Extra-Strength a Harold Team?” Well, we’re not. Sure the Harold is 1 of the 3 Mad Rituals we do in our show, but it’s not “what we do.” Which is, we suspect, one of the reasons we were chosen. Harold is the lingua franca of long-form improv comedy and the foundation of Extra-Strength. And we are super excited to have this opportunity.

Our first-round show is Monday night June 7th at 8:30 in the Andy Dick Theatre at iO West – 6366 Hollywood Blvd. Tickets are $5.

Come by to root us on to victory!

Posted by: Conroy

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Day Job/Night Job: How I learned to stop worrying and love drugging rats

May 12th, 2010

I’m convinced that there are hundreds, even thousands of you out there who read my intro entry and found it hard to believe that I used to work in a research laboratory. No Gullible Gus you! You’re simply a product of 20th century skepticism. You want some sweet, sweet  evidence that I actually used to work in a drug addiction research lab. Well internet, here it is:

Yup!  That’s me in the small animal surgery facility of my old lab, dressed in my finest Personal Protective Equipment (I think Minty Dental Green is my color!). The adorable little beastie on my chest is a prime specimen of the Long-Evans strain of Rattus norvegicus.  Cute, isn’t he? Kind of like a tiny, milkless cow.  Now is a good time for any vegan, vegetarian, or just plain squeamish readers to to turn their attention to something more palatable.

Are the softies gone? Ok, cause I just wanted to clear you out so I could safely give this picture context. Right after I took this picture, I anesthetized Lil’ Subject 310 with a common veterinary cocktail, catheterized his right jugular vein with a piece of silicone elastomer tubing, and bilaterally implanted two 16-wire microarrays into is nucleus accumbens. After about two weeks of recuperation, the little guy began training on a operant task in which he learned that every time he pressed a small lever, he’d get a shot of cocaine hydrochloride directly into his bloodstream.

To be exact, it’s not that he realized that he got an injection of a highly addictive, but more that he realizes that every time he presses the lever he SUDDENLY FEELS FUCKING AWESOME. Rats are like people, man: they like to feel awesome.

SO… you are probably wondering why the hell I did all of that. How did I know what you were thinking? Well, everybody I’ve ever talked about my job with has reacted in one of 2 highly predictable ways.
ONE: “Oh ha ha hey maaaan, ha ha, can u like, share some of those drugs, heh heh?”  Ha ha ha! Comedy jokes, ha ha! I LOVE ‘EM AND IT IS JUST AS FUNNY EVERY TIME!
TWO: “Uh, why? Don’t we already know that when you give people drugs, they get high?”

On rare occasions I’ll get a third reaction, some shit like “Oh really? What lab? I did my postdoc with Patricio O’Donnell; were you guys recording in prefrontal cortical structures or just accumbens?” That’s pretty refreshing; feel free to leave responses like that in the comments or on my voicemail.

But yeah, number Two, we do already know that people get high on drugs. That’s not the question we’re asking. We’re trying to figure out why it is that some people can take or leave drugs, and why some people CAN’T FUCKING STOP no matter how much they want to. My lab was specifically interested in investigating the neural process underlying addiction – what is actually happening to populations of neurons in the portion of the brain that regulate motivation and behavior. We worked from the general assumption that addiction is a subversion of the normal mammalian learning process.  In other words: rats are mammals, we are mammals, so some of the underlying mechanisms are going to translate. Hence the use of Lil’ Subject 310 in our operant conditioning model of human behavior.

I think I could probably say more about my time at the lab, but I just looked at the clock and it is officially Get A Burrito PM. One more thing before I eat: Number One, I am not even dignifying that with a response or a link to the DEA’s strict enforcement policies. Shouldn’t you  get back to bumming your roommates’ debit card to renew you subscription to High Times?

Later skaters!

Posted by: Alexis

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Day Job/Night Job: An introduction

May 6th, 2010

Hey internet! It’s EXTRA STRENGTH cast member Alexis Simpson.  I’m sure you’ll find this difficult to believe, but the fact is that EXTRA STRENGTH isn’t the only thing I do with my time. Like many members of the iO West family and greater improv community, I live a double life. I have an agent, I audition, I do shows — but in between, I look for any reasonable paid work such that I can afford to eat.

But unlike most of the actors I know, I have a bachelor’s in psychology with a concentration in neural and behavioral sciences. Oh, and I spent several post-grad years working full-time in a drug addiction research lab. The lab investigated the neural basis of psychostimulant addiction in the mammalian limbic system using a rodent self-administration model. So, in layman’s terms: I GOT RATS HIGH ON COCAINE, FOR SCIENCE.

Prior, during, and since my glory days as a “lab rat coke dealer,” I’ve held a number of interesting jobs and a number of boring jobs that resulted in interesting stories. To that end, I thought you might enjoy hearing some of these stories, and thought I would gather them under the header “Day Job/Night Job.” You can look forward to hearing about the time I got hit on while cleaning a hamster cage! Or the time my Egyptian Jon Lovitz-look-alike boss sent me home with 4 whole chickens!! Or the day I discovered that Megan Fox fans are dumber than Adriana Lima fans!!!! Hey, that was today!

But I won’t do it now. I have to leave for my shift at the iO West Box Office and then I’m off to the Ladies Are Funny Festival in Austin, Texas with The Real Housewives of Philadelphia. So for now, consider yourself teased.

Happy weekend!

Posted by: Alexis

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Festival of Books Short #10

April 18th, 2010

Finally we have “THE MAN IN THE PARK.”

The Man in the Park

Check it out on our Video page or on our YouTube channel:

The Man in the Park (XStrength FOB10 #10 of 10)

Posted by: Conroy

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Festival of Books Short #9

April 16th, 2010

Next we have “THE MATCHMAKER.”

The Matchmaker

Check it out on our Video page or on our YouTube channel:

The Matchmaker (XStrength FOB10 #9 of 10)

Posted by: Conroy

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Festival of Books Short #8

April 13th, 2010

Number 8 is “THE NEIGHBOR.”

The Neighbor

Check it out on our Video page or on our YouTube channel:

The Neighbor (XStrength FOB10 #8 of 10)

Posted by: Conroy

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Festival of Books Short #7

April 9th, 2010

Up next we have “THE HOMEOWNER.”

The Homeowner

Check it out on our Video page or on our YouTube channel:

The Homeowner (XStrength FOB10 #7 of 10)

Posted by: Conroy

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Festival of Books Short #6

April 8th, 2010

The sixth video is “THE PAINTER.”

The Painter

Check it out on our Video page or on our YouTube channel:

The Painter (XStrength FOB10 #6 of 10)

Posted by: Conroy

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Festival of Books Short #5

April 5th, 2010

The latest video is “THE BOYFRIEND.”

The Boyfriend

Check it out on our Video page or on our YouTube channel:

The Boyfriend (XStrength FOB10 #5 of 10)

Posted by: Conroy

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