BLOG #1
2/28/06
By: Josh Gad
On the evening of January 31st 2006, the members of a lost tribe of comedians found their way onto the world wide web, where they have since wandered aimlessly, searching for purpose in a world devoid of…what was I saying…I think I just found my iPod…I thought it was stolen by African Americans on the subway two weeks ago, which made me particularly bitter during Black history month, but now that I found it, I think I have some apologizing to do to the black community, so I’m sorry for scape goating, when I, as a Jew, have lived under that kind of scrutiny for my entire life, passing by Christians who think I want their money, or Islamic fundamentalists who think I want to die violently, which I am truly averse to…got sidetracked…sorry…anyways, this is their story: the story of “The Lost Nomads,” and how they lost their way…
In the bitter winter solstice of 2004, my hot little girlfriend Ida, saw that I was growing tired of paying money to comedy collection agencies like “The Groundlings” and “Second City,” which have become industrialized rape centers for out of work actors. So, she suggested that the two of us put together a troupe of performers made up of some of the more talented people we knew and some who were just really sexy that we wanted to threesome down the road. And so, after months of hard work, hours of rehearsal, rewrite upon rewrite, a group of sixteen troupe members, known as “Option C” Comedy put on a show. And in the words of the great sadist Jackson Pollack, “what a f**u*cking mess. Sixteen of the sweatiest, filthiest actors I’ve ever met all up on each other like a ritualistic orgy without the reward of orgasm; a theater meant to accommodate fifty people packed in with something like one hundred and twenty souls, as if to say “fuck you Fire Marshal, today we die for a $10.00 sketch show; and of course the show itself which offered fifty minutes of under reheased, underwritten, and underwhelming comedy sketches, which seemed funny on the page, but died faster than a French coquette with dysentery stabbing herself in an aorta while being hung by King Blah du Blah Blah of the Toga Dynasty.
So, we went back to the drawing board and this time assembled a themed show that featured sketches involving “Traveling Through Time.” Yes, in hindsight it was an atrocious idea, that was better suited for a Bar Mitzvah theme than a sketch show, but we were nevertheless amped up to perform again. This time, the show featured one of Ida and my good friends, Tyler Moore, who brought to the table a more refined sketch writing approach and taught all of us a thing or three about putting a comedy show together. For the first time, “Option C” felt like it had some cohesion to it…a sense of purpose in the sea of pointless sketch groups that litter the streets of LA. And so, in the fall of 2005, we put on our second show, which much to our surprise got rave responses, but left all of us extremely disappointed that for all the work we had put in, the only reward was two back to back shows on a Saturday night.
It was too much for too little. In the course of a year, we had worked something like sixty hours for three full performances. Ida and I were tired of it. The organization, the time commitment, the in-fighting, the creative battles, the one night shows. For all intents and purposes, “Option C,” as far as I was concerned, was dead. We had lost our way.
But like all Nomads, wander far enough and you are bound to bump into something that could knock you on your ass. A friend of Ida’s and mine, (Ty Clancey), asked the two of us to film a short for him that was part of a reel he was putting together to showcase his directorial work. And so we spent 8 hours on a cold night, pouring beer all over ourselves and running around naked while performing choreography set to Tango Music. The two of us left discussing how much fun we had and how incredible the footage we saw was. Then after the throes of passion and heat, I turned to Ida and said, “that is what I want Option C to be,” which threw her off because the sex wasn’t all that great. But, when she realized I was referring to the short we had filmed, she knew that she had found brilliance in the form of a Jew with one of the tiniest cocks you’ve ever seen. And so the next day we contacted Ty Clancey and his creative partner Mac Hedges, and said “hey, we have no money, very few ideas, time restraints, and huge egos,” and they said “let’s do it!”
The next step was finding out what “it” was. We had all of these ideas, but no real purpose or drive. What the hell were we going to do with a bunch of comedy shorts? Play them for each other over and over again and say “remember when we did that?” And then, just like that, everything fell into place. Ida and I received a phone call from Tyler Moore saying that a friend of his was producing a Public Access television show and wanted us to put together 30 minutes of material for it. We now had purpose and drive…and a deadline. So the stage was set for a major transformation. “Option C” was now in the comedy short business. But Public Access Television? We knew it was a great opportunity because it would force us to complete our goals, but public Access really isn’t what you dream of when you want your work to be seen by the masses. But how can we truly reach the audiences that we want to without the resources of a major network/studio behind us? It’s the 21st Century man! That’s how!
The net gives us all of the creative freedom and exposure that we could have ever asked for. Over the next few months/years, this nascent little troupe is, by all expectations, going to explode all over the comedy scene, and for those of you who are just joining us now at the beginning of the journey, we welcome you. The future is very exciting and we look forward to our growing fan base and our expanding content. You will be seeing a lot of new material from “The Lost Nomads” every week, so please continue to check in. We have finally found a temporary home, and we are thrilled to make the most of it, while we’ve got it.
And finally there’s the name: “The Lost Nomads.” I knew “Option C” was too sterile to be memorable, so it was only a matter of time for it to go. But when it came time to picking a new moniker, we had trouble latching onto anything, because we still didn’t know exactly what we were and what we wanted to be. And then we realized, that from the beginning that has been our journey. In the world of comedy identities, ours continues to change and that is what people love about us. We have little direction that guides our choices. We sometimes embrace the charismatic, sometimes the dangerous, often the cheap, and occasionally the obvious. We look to never repeat ourselves unless it is choice and never become tied down to one type of comedy, unless that’s what we decide to do. We are a group defined by its decisive indecisiveness. A troupe that has traveled from place to place, only to happily get lost again. We are “The Lost Nomads.” Welcome to our “home.”
