Goodbye Ted

Today there was a going away BBQ for Ted, he leaves this week for LA. We went through classes together at Second City and I initially really hated him. He introduced himself to me ten times. By the tenth time I just said "yeah, we've met" in a real condescending way, I don't think he noticed. He was(and still is in some ways) the type of person who deliberately or instinctually talks to the most important person in the room. I also resented his talent, he was obviously ahead of myself and our other classmates as far as creative output and vision.

Ted and I finally became friends about two years later when we were on HouseCo together at Second City. I found a great collaborator in Ted, we had similar comedic tastes and instincts. With him I figured out what it looked like to pitch effectively, to write-on-your-feet and find traction within a premise, how to refine a raw idea. I wrote one of my best sketches specifically for Ted, he was a gay Drill Sargent after the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell.  Our creative partnership naturally became a friendship. We were both going through some personal stuff when we were writing and putting up the show and leaned on each other.

Afterwards we decided we wanted to keep working together. We wrote a two-man sketch show called "A Year Of Saturdays". We gigged around for two months months, putting up ten or fifteen minute sets honing the material. Ted set up all that and he taught me a lot about discipline and doing the work. We were both really happy with the show, it was personal and had some edge, it was the first time I felt 100% ownership over and satisfaction with the material I was doing.

After that I didn't see much of Ted, I think we both would have liked to have kept working together but Ted had other projects with more ambition. He was trying to sell Shrink in LA and he went to Switzerland to film a version of his web series Break Ups. We grew apart.

I'll always be proud of those things we wrote together and I know Ted will land on his feet out in lala land. He's a networker of the first order.

Good luck, Goodbye.