In the fourth grade our teacher, Mrs. Fisher--with her flaming orange hair and clown red lipstick applied liberally outside the lines of her lips would say things like "whatever rattles your cage" and warned a dim classmate to stop pulling out his own hair otherwise he'd be "bald as a billiard ball." (Like any of us knew what billiards were.) She was like a small town version of Lucille Ball--but scarier. My best friend Carol and I were having an imaginary pie throwing fight

It's difficult to believe that sixteen years ago today, with a stomach full of butterflies I reported to 1616 N. Wells with my bestie Kathy for our first class at the venerable Second City's improv comedy program. Aside from attempting to learn the "rules of improv," the longest lasting gift it gave me was a new dimension of my friendship with Kathy, as well as shiny new, yet-slightly-wrong-in-the-rightest-way friendship with Alan, Retta and Tina. The A-List. I've written ab

It's not often I'm able to get together with four of my closest friends--at the same time. The last time all five us were together was at my birthday a couple of years ago, where Ken orchestrated two of them who came the furthest (St. Louis and Los Angeles) as surprises. Alan, Kathy, Retta, Tina and I comprised "the A-List"--what we named ourselves when we met while studying at Second City--and they have been constants in my life ever since. We share the "wrongest" pleasure i