I’ve talked before about Harry Mack, who’s this rapper I love.

He does freestyle raps about any topics or words people give him, and he very, very frequently has one thing that’s super rehearsed, or super stuck in his head, and he’ll say to somebody he’s talking to online, or somebody he’s talking to in person, I’m going to improvise off the top of the dome.

That’s always how he says it.

I’m going to improvise off the top of the dome, and I just find that such a funny expression, because nobody would ever really, I think, say that in normal human conversation, but it’s what he says when he’s going to do his improv raps.

I love improv, and almost all episodes of Your Daily Lex are done off the top of the dome, if you will, and today is going to be off the top of the dome about doing stuff off the top of the dome.

Your Daily Lex.

So I’ve talked on this show plenty of times about how I do improv, and how I love improv.

I’m a big fan, whatever.

Not having to learn stuff from a script, wonderful, but I do a lot of improv recently with comedy sports over the past, somewhere between one and two years.

I can’t really keep track of time in a post-pandemic, or late-pandemic world, let’s say, but so I do a lot of stuff with comedy sports, which is comedy played as a sport.

It’s a whole lot like Who’s Line.

Two teams are competing against each other for comedy points scored by the referee and by the audience, and there is a referee, and comedy sports loves branding, right?

So you’re not on the stage, you’re on the field.

It’s not an audience, it’s loyal fans, and you’re competing for points, and there’s typically two teams of three, maybe two teams of four, a red team and a blue team, and then there is always this referee, and I recently had my ref debut at comedy sports, and I was excited to do it.

I thought I had the right personality for it, and I still think so, and there’s some stuff to rehearse, ironically enough, given it’s improv, but every comedy sports match opens with an intro where you kind of explain the rules of what people are going to see.

There’s a couple fouls that you typically go over, the two key comedy sports fouls, in case you are curious, are the groaner foul, a flag is thrown if somebody makes a joke that’s too dad-jokey or punny or something else.

That one pains me, it pains me as a performer, it pained me to call as a ref, and there’s also the out-of-bounds foul, because comedy sports is rated E for everyone, like ice cream is for everyone.

It doesn’t make it a thing that’s for kids, but it’s enjoyable by kids, enjoyed by kids, and everything else, and so anyway, comedy sports is the same way.

So when people give suggestions, or when the performers are on stage, we keep things pretty clean, pretty PG, maybe PG-13, I don’t know, but so that’s part of the ref spiel.

When you first open up a match, you talk about, this is how comedy sports goes, this is what to expect tonight, but you also keep things moving.

You score the games, you call different violations, you make sure that people know what’s up, and you are responsible for keeping the match moving, but I keep, I’m working hard as I describe it, not to say the word MC, because you’re not really MCing.

An MC in some ways is the star, right there, they’re taking a leadership position.

The ref is taking a leadership position, but is not the star of the show, right?

The players who are competing in that comedy sports match are the stars of the show.

So my big thing as I thought about reffing for the first time was, I didn’t want to over-explain, because refs will also introduce each game, and this is going to be the game of, I don’t know, let’s think of one.

This is going to be the game of forward-reverse, and in the game of forward-reverse, just so you know, dear listener, a scene starts, and whenever the ref blows their whistle, they can call forward or reverse and make the scene go in that direction, and they can do this as many times as they want.

You can explain that game in one sentence.

This is the game of forward-reverse, where whenever I blow my whistle, I can make them go forward or backward in time.

That’s it.

You don’t have to go crazy on explaining.

It’s easy to fall, I think, to a habit of over-explaining.

So I knew when I was a ref, I didn’t want to over-explain.

And the other thing is, like, the ref is not a stand-up comic, right?

Even if you happen to be a stand-up comic, it’s not a time to do your type 5.

And I put a lot of thought into the idea that I wanted to be a ref who wasn’t out there trying to be funny.

If I had the opportunity to be funny, I of course would be.

It’s a comedy show.

But that I didn’t need to be funny, because the point was to get laughs for the folks on stage.

Refs can be funny.

Refs can get laughs.

But the number one thing they have to do is just keep the match moving and make sure that everybody knows that they’re in control of what’s happening on stage.

So I was excited to do it.

What’s interesting is, you know, there’s things that make me nervous.

I know multiple refs who’ve had ref debuts over the past, call it, six months with Comedy Sports.

And a lot of them get pretty nervous about it, right, because they’ve seen greats do it.

They’ve maybe gone through other Comedy Sports cities where it’s really tricky or difficult to become a ref.

But for whatever reason, I wasn’t nervous about it.

And sometimes when we have a rehearsal prior to a Comedy Sports match with a brand new ref, we’ll say, hey, ref, what games do you want to play?

Or what games do you not want us to play tonight that you’re not comfortable reffing?

And I was, like, very clear.

Hey, play whatever you want.

My job is to ref them.

So you tell me what games you want to do, and I’ll ref them, because that’s my job.

I’m not scared of any of it.

And I went in with minimal nerves, and it went great.

I was proud of what I did, and I’m excited to do it again.

Listen, overall, if I could pick today, I’d still pick playing more, because you get more opportunities to be funny.

But I found some opportunities to be funny.

I got some laughs.

I wasn’t fishing for them.

I definitely don’t think I pulled focus from the players, but it was a thing.

So it was kind of fun.

And plus, it’s insane how just having a ref jersey, you know, just buying one of those jerseys with the stripes on there, suddenly you’re a ref, because you put on the jersey.

You have the jersey, you’re a ref.

Crazy.

There need to be more things where I can just put on the clothes, and then I’m that thing.

Oh, I’m wearing a medical lab coat.

I’m a doctor.

Trust me.

Lex.