I actually have no knowledge of sailing terms save the ones Wikipedia share with me. According to its “Glossary of nautical terms” entry, “above board” refers to things being in plain view, to things unhidden, to things so in front of your face you would trip over them if you were Dick Van Dyke.
It’s also, to me, a fitting way to describe the hilarity of the New York based sketch comedy group Harvard Sailing Team. Theirs is the kind of funny I want to memorize and repeat later, possibly around friends who’ll look back at me in their usual what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about yet loving way. I’ll have to explain myself, who Harvard Sailing Team is, the sketch I’m referring to, then repeat the line to their placating laughter.
Oh yeah–I’m one of those. But if it will pique their curiosity about HST, then the initial awkward is worth it as I’m sure I’ll eventually be rewarded with a, “I saw that sketch you were talking about. Did you see the one they did about….”
Some of my favorite lines from their sketch, “Boys Will Be Girls: Bixby The Cat,” include:
- Sara to Rebecca, after knocking away a pass to Rebecca during a game of touch football: “Yo, I’m gonna make you my daughter! Take you to school, put you on the bus?!”
- Billy, regarding Clayton’s dead cat, Poops, which had a MySpace page when it was alive: “You know, I’m sure that God takes pictures of Poops and puts them on His Facebook page for angels to see.”
Clayton: “Can’t wait to get to heaven to see that page.”
And don’t get me started on the “give a mouse a cookie” conversation towards the end of the sketch.
Here’s the Boys Will Be Girls sketch that precedes the one about Bixby. If we were face to face, I’d dare you not to laugh out loud and I’d totally win that dare. But it would be an empty dare because I’d forget to say what you would need to do if you did laugh because I’d be too excited to show you the sketch before sealing the dare deal. So, yeah, here it is:
YouTube video posted by HSTSketchComedy. Photo of HST by Eric Michael Pearson as posted on HST’s tumblr site.
[Thanks to my cousin, Patrick, for first introducing me to HST on Facebook!]
May 28, 2011
Right on!