Friday, Nov. 07, 2003 | 3:03 PM

I made up a new survey about Mr. Show. Take it. Wow me with your knowledge of minutia.

Here�s #307 on my list of reasons I feel so lucky to have grown up with the family I had. My Dad, besides introducing me to great literature (he read me Hemingway short stories when I was 10), great music (steady diet of Beatles, Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Mozart, Mahler, Billie Holiday, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Laura Nyro, The Carpenters (shut up), Miles Davis, West Side Story, Aretha Franklin, Schostokovitch, and Michael Jackson when he was actually good.), and great film (I saw Sophie�s Choice, Tender Mercies, and Amadeus all in the theatre very very early on, not to mention Superman II), my father was fucking FUNNY as hell and he really loved comedy.

From a very early age I was indoctrinated with Jonathon Winters, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, early Saturday Night Live sketches, and Monty Python. My dad and I frequently collaborated on writing comedic scenes and plays. God I wish I had that stuff right now. I wonder what happened to it? One sketch I remember in particular was about Mohammad Ali being the spokesperson for a Cornflakes like cereal and it was very sick and not in good taste. My dad and I used to break each other up all the time.

In that way my relationship with Angus is very similar. Sometimes, entire conversations between Angus and I are just improvised scenes and we always catch on to what the other person is doing. We�ll be waiting for a bus and one of us will just make up a character and run with it and the other person will play along, and we�ve created some decent shit�not great but definitely OK. We improvised an entire scene about bible characters attempting to come up with the 7 deadly sins in a boardroom type meeting where one of the characters keeps suggesting all these very specific sins that fall under the umbrella of a sin that�s already been decided upon. We couldn�t come up with an ending for it so it�s basically just a premise but it was fun as fuck to riff on.

And it�s great because it�s not like one of us will say Hey I�ve got this idea for a skit�. We�ll just be on a topic�like we had just happened to be discussing the 7 deadly sins and the sketch evolved from that without one person even saying what the premise was. There�s no effort. It�s just part of our natural conversation. We float in and out of it.

You know, it�s so important to me in any romantic connection I have with anyone that I have some kind of creative partnership with that person�however loose it is. It�s such a big part of who I am and I simply can�t be involved with anyone who won�t share in the creative process with me.

Alright so I�ll shut up soon but I just am feeling really gushy and romantic in that dumb bunny sense and I never feel this way anymore without an accompanying dose of fear and cynicism (is my heart beginning to thaw? It�s possible�) but I gotta talk a little more about Angus.

We went to karaoke last night (where I was miraculously moderate in my consumption of alcohol.) And me and Angus and choreographer were sitting at a table and choreographer complimented my haircut. Angus put his arm around me and said,

Isn�t she beautiful? I get to live with her.

And then he kissed my cheek.

It was beyond sweet.

My mother loves him. My sisters love him. My brother doesn�t know him but I think they would get along.

Stage Manager says Angus is doing an awesome job in the play and I�m not surprised. That seems to have made a huge difference for him. He just needed some confidence and a glimpse of what�s possible. He practices all the time and he seems so happy and committed to it and I am sooooooo glad that I convinced him to audition. And I�m also really glad I�m not doing the play, as odd as that seems. It�s great for him to be able to do this alone, and I of course have the greatest acting class in the world. Someday I hope we get to work together because I have a sense we�d play off each other beautifully on stage.

I feel really lucky that I have a best friend whom I love so deeply. It�s just the most wonderful thing in the world.