IJ Vin

He's a troper from Massachusetts.

-

Tropes in his life

 * Brilliant but Lazy
 * Catch Phrase / Phrase Catcher: Often says, "Shut up, IJ Vin" to himself when he rambles on and on.
 * Deadpan Snarker: In real life.
 * Famous Ancestor: Charlemagne is his great (x36) grandfather.
 * James Fenimore Cooper is the second cousin four times removed of the wife of his great-great-uncle.
 * Forehead of Doom
 * Freudian Trio: KB (the ultra-fangirl) is the id and IJ Vin and RM trade off being the ego and the superego.
 * Full-Name Basis: His stepmother has been married three times. Two of the husbands have the same first name, one of whom is IJ Vin's dad, so when referring to the other, the family uses his full name.
 * Large Ham: Onstage.
 * Mistaken for Gay: He was at a restaurant on New Year's Eve when a good, close friend walked in. They were comfortable enough with each other that they ran into a hug shouting each other's names. Turns out IJ Vin's gay neighbor was in the restaurant, too. He introduced his friend and the neighbor introduced the guy who was probably his date. Then he asked IJ Vin and his friend, "So, where did you two meet?"
 * Oblivious to Love: He definitely took one instance where he probably would have been very happy and screwed it up by not paying any attention to her "in that way."
 * Overly Long Gag: In junior high, he had the joke "Does this make you mad?" from Wonder Showzen. It did make them mad.
 * At an open-mic night, he read the entire text of Green Eggs and Ham.
 * Pet Peeve Trope: The Pornomancer, though The Unfair Sex is angering.
 * Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: His dad and stepmom, to an extent.
 * The Stoic: When getting a cavity filled, the anesthetic wore off only slightly. He kept a straight face and the dentists said they never noticed any discomfort.
 * Throw It In: (First person from here on.)
 * High school:
 * At one point during Beauty and The Beast, we had to close the mid-stage traveler in order to change the set. During one rehearsal, Lumiere and Cogsworth went onstage and improvised a routine about Lumiere accidentally setting numerous things on fire. We kept it in the show.
 * Later, Belle took a while changing into one of her dresses. Lumiere alerted the Beast to something hanging from his nose and then asked if he was nervous. "You know, cold paws?"
 * The Man Who Came to Dinner. For those uninitated with the show: Sheridan Whiteside, a radio star of the 1930s, is making a nationwide tour. Two weeks before Christmas, he has a publicity stunt dinner at the Stanley household in a small town in Ohio. As he's leaving the house, he slips and breaks his hip. Now he must stay in the house while he heals, taking it over in the process. All of his Hollywood friends either send gifts or show up in person. Hilarity Ensues. Firstly, the last night of rehearsals for each week was known as "improv night." The cast would run the scene normally at first. Then, they'd run it again with the director shouting out characterizations. Besides the funnier things which did not make it into the show, two actors added the new characterizations to their respective characters.
 * In that same show, our Whiteside added many lines on opening night (mostly from the Nathan Lane version of the show).
 * In the third act, the Khedive of Egypt sends Whiteside a sarcophagus. I discussed with our Whiteside the fact that the doctor character enters after the sarcophagus, which is fine, but what if he entered in the sarcophagus? Why? Who cares why? We brought it to the director. He presented it to the entire cast. We all worked out the logistics of when it would be opened and who would open it and we threw it in on closing night. The audience cheered. It. Was. Awesome.
 * During the rehearsal period for Thoroughly Modern Millie, one of the Chinese henchmen had broken his ankle and needed crutches. For the show, he used a cane. It created a backstory for the character that we never found out about, which made him more realistic.
 * Similar to above, our Roger in Rent: School Edition had a bum knee and wore a knee brace on the outside of his costume for nearly the entire show.
 * In the same show, during "Over the Moon," Maureen hit her sound board prop to cue the pianist to stop playing. He didn't see the cue and kept going, so Maureen started hitting the prop over and over again. The pianist did the same thing for the rest of the show's run.
 * When I played Flastaff in The Merry Wives of Windsor, I had rehearsed with the beard and wig and with the hat, but never both at once. When the show came, the hat wouldn't stay on the wig/my head. For the first few scenes, I decided this would be a Running Gag, until finally I (Falstaff, that is) got fed up and threw it offstage.
 * College:
 * Evil Dead: The Musical veritably ran on this, for better or for worse. Mostly, the cast made jokes about how cheap the set was.
 * When we produced a student-written play called The Playwright, I was given pants that were far too large for me. I suggested that I keep the pants and make it a joke. The director and costume designer went along with it and my pants fell throughout the show on purpose.
 * For You Can't Take It With You, we added two more police officers to the arrest of the family. As the police chief, I was to tell Mac and one of the other cops to go downstairs to investigate. Since the other cop isn't in the script, he had no canonical name, so every night, I called him by the last name of a different cast member or friend who was in the audience that night.
 * Typecasting: In high school drama club, he often played fathers.
 * Younger Than They Look: Apparently.