It’s been a pretty heavy week here, for reasons I’ll get into later. There were definite highlights though: I ate some apple with a little blob of honey on it to celebrate Rosh Hashanah. Performing on the super fun Late Stage Live and Friends standup show was a bright spot during the week for sure. Late Stage Live is a late night-style show that airs on public access and then YouTube. It’s made by a group of young queer Gen Z comedians and is very cool. On the most recent episode, host Ella Yurman interviewed NYC city councilperson Chi Ossé! I am always delighted to get to do shows with young hip comedians, like I am the (or, a) fun uncle of Brooklyn standup.
Also delightful: Maris and I saw our friend Jennifer Mills’s Tiny Play Festival, in which actors (mostly first-time performers) put on a series of very, very short plays that Mills herself wrote. Then I hung out at a live Hey Riddle Riddle podcast show. HRR is a podcast about…solving riddles (as one might expect from the name), and I was on an episode early this year! It was one of the most fun podcasts I’ve ever been a part of and the live show made me laugh a ton.
On Saturday night, we wanted to watch something stupid that would not make us feel any feelings (for reasons I promise I will reveal), so we threw on The Beekeeper, Jason Statham’s recent morality play (action movie) about the evils of defrauding the elderly. The film contains, as my dad would say, “a lot of good beating up” and it doesn’t make a ton of sense, but it doesn’t feel like the movie is calling the audience stupid; it’s more like the movie invites us to be stupid.
When I was a kid, there was a robust tradition of mid-premise movies that were mostly setups for the aforementioned style of beating up. The mob comes to town to turn the recycling plant into a casino, but SORRY, DICKWEEDS, the town’s recycleman is Steven Seagal, and he’s going to beat the shit out of you all one at a time. Or, like, Nicolas Cage in a tank top plays a haberdasher in a remote Polish village whose training as a Navy WALRUS (bigger, more dangerous version of a Navy SEAL) kicks in after a warlord tries to enslave the local elementary school children at his heroin factory. Now we get a bunch of superhero movies, the occasional Fast v. Furious sequel, and the even more occasional movie that WOULD be fun if there wasn’t such a lengthy digression to explore childhood trauma. Statham is all we have left of this tradition. Thank you for your service, you classic bald angel of death.
Also, I think I have the newsletter’s first ad today? I am saying that in case the good people of give me money for this, but my cool basketball magazine friends are throwing a Finals Watch Party this Sunday (10/13) afternoon in Brooklyn!
Which Finals? Legally I’m not sure I’m allowed to say. But use your noodle, folks! It’s a free, all-ages event, and you can RSVP right here!!! (I, a Beekeeper-watching doofus have theater tickets and won’t be able to make it, which is BREAKING MY HEART!) Even if YOU can’t make it, you should subscribe to the Substack and buy their print issues and merch and listen to their podcast!!! That part is NOT a paid ad. It’s just something I believe deep down!!!
Tonight I’ll be kicking around at the second ever Frankenstein’s Baby show at Union Hall! And tomorrow Emmy Blotnick and I are co-hosting Trivia For Cheaters at Brooklyn Brewery to benefit 826 Brooklyn!
Sorry to be so New York-centric with these events, but it is where I live! (Go Liberty!)
A FEW WORDS ABOUT BIZZY, OUR BELOVED PUG
Content warning: I am so sad!
R.I.P. Bizzy the Pug (2007-2024)
Here’s the bad news I alluded to earlier.
This afternoon, Maris and I will say goodbye to Bizzy, our pug. She lived a long and wonderful life (she was born during the Bush administration, mere months after top college basketball prospect Cooper Flagg, who is now 6’9”). She was already eight years old when she came to live with us, though the other biographical details from that era of her life are murky on account of the person who gave her to us being a compulsive liar. (I wrote about this in my book.) She’s become increasingly eccentric in her habits and infant-like in her old age, which I wrote about in Luke O’Neil’s excellent newsletter.
Maris and I adopted Bizzy almost immediately after moving in together. It’s been nearly a decade since I’ve slept at home without her snores and mururs firmly within earshot, if not in bed with us. Her regular walks and irregular digestive system dictated the rhythms of our days. Bizzy’s increasing neediness (3am walks, being spoon-fed her wet food) made me love her more with time, not less. We accepted her into our lives, an anxious senior dog. It felt beautiful, just even, to care for her in her even older age. Maris (an angel!) bore more of Bizzy’s wriggly, unwieldy weight than I did, tending to her solo while I traveled a ton for work the past couple of years. We gave Bizzy the best life we could until the vet, not-as-gently-as-I-might-have-preferred, told us a few days ago that there wasn’t really a best life for her anymore.
In her nearly two decades on Earth, Bizzy shared so many apples with Maris and devoured enough slices of deli turkey to comprise dozens of Thanksgiving meals. She received so many compliments from strangers. She accepted so many hugs and squeezes and scratches behind the ears. We saw her learn to deal with the clatter and buzz of living in an apartment building with neighbors she could hear coming and going. She outlasted the set of couches Maris and I had in our first apartment together. She trotted countless times to be barber shop down the block, where her presence delighted the employees (who lavished her with treats) and inconvenienced the patrons. She got up early to keep Maris company while she wrote. She stayed up late to watch basketball with me when I got home from shows. She was a sweet little bunny and a wild little goblin. She was a joyful companion and a perfect little pain in the ass.
Bizzy rarely accepted the obligations of a lap dog. She never kissed or licked people (unless she noticed peanut butter on their fingers). She used to snuggle with us in the morning, and would occasionally hump Maris’s leg after dinner. But those habits faded away years ago. The customary canine affections were replaced by new tendencies. The way she allowed me to scoop her up and carry her outside when her legs were too frail to clamber up and down the steps to and from our second floor apartment. The way she dozed beside Maris after they shared a piece of fruit. Her contented grunfs and grumbles. Her demands for me to hang out NEAR her on the couch in the middle of the night even when she refused to sleep in bed with us. I will miss her anxious specificities despite how many times they left me bleary-eyed in the morning, and how many dog sitters she went through on account of her being an absolute maniac. What shape will my days and nights have without her weirdness filling every empty moment?
She physically fills the place too. Pug-related ephemera juts out of every corner of our apartment. Art bearing Bizzy’s image. The slippers in her likeness that I got Maris as a gift. So many pug oven mitts and dish towels and pairs of socks we’ve received from friends and family. Without the fuzzy little goblin around, it will feel bizarre to have these artifacts on display. But I can’t imagine getting rid of them.
Even when we do, when the potholders get too grimy to keep and the prints we ordered from Etsy are displaced by other art, we will never forget Bizzy. No one who has met her could ever do that. She’s too cute and weird and stubborn and funny.
Over the past few days, a handful of friends have popped in to say goodbye, and Bizzy submitted to pats and squeezes and doting. We visited the barber shop for the last time this morning, Bizzy in her stroller, her legs can’t carry her anymore.
I’ve been crying a lot thinking about all these last times. But then I remember the thousands of walks, the hundreds of naps, the millions of moments of quiet company (and loud frantic company too). How sad it is to lose a tiny old friend. How beautiful it is to carry so much of her with us still.
Okay thanks for indulging me. Back to our regular newsletter format.
PEP TALK FOR A READER
I’ve done just a little futzing around with this request! And I added the nickname!
I work in animal rescue, a field I love but that is incredibly taxing both physically and mentally. I’m in a very “what’s my purpose?” or rather “is there a purpose?” type of spiral even in the midst of working with vulnerable dog populations everyday. I left the film industry after feeling disillusioned and a need to do something that felt more personal and immediately rewarding but now I feel I’ve come to a dead end due to burn out. In the midst of this I’ve also lost touch with all the things I once enjoyed (crocheting, movies, reading, record collecting, etc.). So the entirety of my life is split between work 6 and often 7 days a week and then catching up on Bravo shows. I feel selfish but I’m tired. - Must I Love Dogs (This Much)?
Hello, MILD (TM). You’ve been really burning the candle, well…not at both ends, exactly, but at one end all the time. That doesn’t seem sustainable! You’re going to run out of candle at some point even if you are burning it on someone else’s behalf and for a very good reason.
I get that you left your previous professional field in search of something that felt impactful, and it seems like the problem isn’t that you’re still searching for a way to make a difference; it’s that doing only that is nearly as stressful as working in an industry that doesn’t offer the same satisfaction at all. Anything’s going to burn you out if you do it 6-7 days a week for years. Rescuing vulnerable dogs. Jumping off a trampoline and dunking basketballs. Hot dog eating contests. It’s good to be mindful of not living a selfish life, but your self deserves a little ish. It’s the only self you have!
Maybe it’s because we’re right in the midst of the High Holidays, or maybe it’s just the symmetry of your questions, but this quote from Rabbi Hillel (the only quote from any rabbi I know by heart, as far as I know) comes to mind: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?” (The third part of the quote “And if not now, when?” is also a classic, but in this case “a little later” can be the answer too.) Obviously there’s a bigger “how to be a person in the world” thrust to these rhetorical questions. But their magnitude seems to match the immensity of the way you posed your concerns about life and work. If you’d said “should I quit my job?” or “is any job going to feel fulfilling?” I probably would have quoted Office Space or The Big Lebowski and left it at that.
A job will never give you a holistic sense of meaning, even when you’re doing good and important work. And you won’t find out what else is important to you while you are All Job All The Time, like you’re Charli XCX but for going to work instead of dancing and singing about nose drugs. (Not that I recommend a 365 Party Girl lifestyle as an antidote for professional burnout.) But I don’t think cutting out your hobbies and restorative practices will help you find a purpose and especially not your purpose. No offense to Bravo, but there’s only so long you can sustain yourself on Real Housewives franchises alone. You can get back to being the whole you! And maybe even find new you deep down inside!
To paraphrase Rabbi Hillel: “You do so much for those dogs. But what are you doing for you, dog?”
PICK-ME-UP THING OF THE WEEK: Welcome To Talk Town (which is a podcast!!!)
My friends Alison, Anthony, and Greg started a new podcast. It is fully deranged. The idea is that every episode they talk about some features of a hypothetical town (the titular Talk Town) that would correct the problems with modern society. Sometimes they come up with great ideas (Expert Lines, Erotic Duels) and other times they argue about whether the question Anthony asked was actually a ripoff of a game Greg had made up but hadn’t told anyone about yet.
It is…so stupid, which I mean as a compliment but also an accurate description. I laugh a LOT listening to this goofy show. It’s nonsense. I love it. Check it out!
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’ve got a bunch of NYC dates coming up, and then a few back on the road! See you there?!?!
This might be a rambly one! (Welcome new readers who heard me on Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! last weekend! Usually I’m not quite so longwinded.)
Last week I struck a pretty terrific balance between hanging out and doing work, which is honestly my biggest goal of late. Maris and I had brunch with our friends Jason and Emily and their itty bitty baby who is so cute. I enjoyed Mad Men Lunch Pt. II (which is just drinking on a weekday) with my friend Tanya. Did some fun standup sets. Had offee with my friend Caroline. Participated in New York Climate Summit comedy panel show. Reached out to one of my favorite musicians about licensing one of their songs for the opening/closing of my standup special. Ate dinner with Dionne Warwick (more on that below!?!!?!?). One drink at my friend Merritt’s birthday, and another at my friend Meredith’s birthday party, while sadly missing Dave’s birthday party. A little call about future work projects. Two podcasts. Saw Bad Moves play live. Met Joel McHale (super nice!) at the Comedy Cellar. A great talk after the show with my friend Matt Koff about comedy and They Might Be Giants (Are they a top ten all time American rock band? Sound off in the comments!) That was most of it I think.
My great friend Sarah was in town from London, and I hadn’t seen her in five or six years, so we had breakfast on Wednesday morning and then went to this immersive art installation in the financial district (she works in that field and has a google alert set for such things). We spent an hour meandering through fourteen of the fifteen exhibits (one was closed) and talking about them. At their best, they were technically impeccable and visually engrossing. Lots of mirrors (“This is the Instagram room,” Sarah quipped, not knowing there would be several more similar Instagram rooms to come.). At worst, I would describe the aesthetic of a few pieces as “NFT-core.” A few of the exhibits seemed like the work of someone who’d heard of Banksy and just kind of ran with that idea.
Sarah is so smart about considering intentionality in art, and considering what things could mean, and how they could be executed more successfully. And those qualities make her extremely fun to talk trash with. She basically has a post-graduate degree in it (as well as teasing out and explaining what’s interesting about art). So even though the thing itself was hit or miss, the conversation had no skips.
Thursday I flew to Kansas City for the aforementioned Wait Wait taping with the also aforementioned Dionne Warwick. The actual music legend and her very friendly associate came and ate dinner with me and Paula Poundstone and Shantira Jackson, and even Peter Sagal, esteemed host of the program decided to be a fan and ask for a picture, which gave the rest of us the green light to do the same. We mostly talked about astronauts and outer space at dinner. Ms. Warwick said she plans to stay on earth rather than ever going to Mars, and she chuckled politely when I said that the food there seems terrible. A huge win for me!
On Saturday I ran into my friend Shaina who literally moved to New York this week and doesn’t live anywhere near me! And then when I got home from that walk I had received an email from someone I’d never met but who I’d been corresponding with about a work thing, and he’d driven past me on the street around the same time. I was really struck by how beautiful small moments of synchronicity can be. I was recently talking to a friend who’s also not super spiritual, but who finds meaning in unexpected connection. I don’t mind the smallness of being one person out of eight billion on one planet out of ??? planets. But when the world feels small too, it’s a little bit of a comfort. Not only are we not alone, we’re all neighbors.
Rosh Hashanah starts on Wednesday night, and I’m (I think!) slightly more religious (a little) than I am spiritual (again, not really at all). What can I say, I like a once-a-year ceremony-adjacent snack and a feeling of being rooted in history. Plus I appreciate the concepts of renewal and forgiveness that the High Holidays bring into focus. I’ve been feeling a lot of closeness with a Jewish community lately attached to the ideas of protest and compassion. And I’ve been feeling kind of estranged from Jewish institutions that have taken up the cause of mercilessness. I imagine this next week will be full of heaviness and mourning, which is understandable. I also hope that as people grieve the losses of October 7th, they allow their grief to also encompass the tens of thousands of Palestinian lives (and now hundreds in Lebanon) that were taken in the wake of that tragedy.
I talked a little about these things on Francesca Fiorentini’s show last week. We also had a great chat about climate science with extremely smart journalist Kate Aronoff! And, in other news, I talked about very silly and frivolous stories on the great Alice Fraser’s show The Gargle.
It was a real week of a week. And I haven’t even touched the big local news yet, so…let’s get to it!
PEP TALK FOR ERIC ADAMS
Last summer, Mayor Eric Adams showed up on the WGA/SAG-AFTRA picket line (several months into the strikes, but who’s counting) and I was pulled into some photos with him. Knowing in advance this might happen, and being a naturally smiley person, I practiced several dead-behind-the-eyes expressions before leaving my apartment in the morning so as not to seem happy to be standing next to our mayor. No pictures of me have ever aged better. (Other people redacted because I didn’t ask their permission to post these.)
Mayor (still???) Adams, it has not been your best week in office. Last Wednesday you were indicted on several counts of fraud and bribery and lots of other things that mayors should not be caught doing. The (alleged) pattern of behavior dates back long before your tenure as mayor began, because you play like you practice and practice how you play. The full indictment includes a whole bunch of text messages between you and your staff that say things like “Please delete this text message because it was super illegal of me to send!” and “It’s crime time, big man! And I’ve got a passion for graftin’.” (I’m paraphrasing, but barely.)
Some of the smaller, more hilarious (alleged, but…) crimes include taking consistently discounted travel on Turkish Airlines in exchange for doing favors for the nation of Turkey, which raised red flags in your personal life because your routing always took you through Istanbul when you left the country. Look, I will sometimes go a little out of my way to earn points on my preferred airline but not fly-to-a-country-with-an-authoritarian-leader out of the way. I’m talking a layover in Atlanta, here. You allegedly tried to fly go Chile via Istanbul, starting out in New York, which is an act of cartographical malpractice that can only be described as Columbian.
The less hilarious, more infuriating allegations include falsifying campaign records to access New York City’s matching funds, which both boosted your campaign and siphoned away $10 million of the public’s money. Many have already pointed out the absolute gall to steal millions of dollars from the city and the slash budgets for local services like the library. Not to mention positioning yourself a a “law and order” mayor when you were more like a Law and Order: Criminal Intent mayor.
On Twitter I expressed some embarrassment that our city’s mayor was getting indicted like we live in Providence or something. And several people from Providence responded that the difference is that they actually LOVED their corrupt mayor, who did many good things for the city. (R.I.P. Buddy Cianci.) Fair point, Rhode Islanders!
Mayor (still?!!?!?!) Adams, you have to this point refused to resign, like a captain going down the the ship that he intentionally drove into a rock formation near the Turkish port city of Antalya (which was nowhere NEAR your ultimate destination, and not on the way either). As more and more of your political employees and appointees resign in disgrace, you persevere (also in disgrace). You are (politically) like Tony Montana going down in a hail of (metaphorical) gunfire, if Tony Montana had pretended to be a vegan for some reason. (“Where'd you get the beauty scar, tough guy? Eating tempeh?”)
So congratulations to do what even (walking criminal confession, recently disbarred in Washington D.C.) Rudy Giuliani couldn’t do: Getting indicted as a sitting New York City mayor. You will (fortunately for you) be remembered more for your brazen (ALLEGED lol) criminality than for your cruelty to migrants, lethal increases of police presence in our subways, and almost definite actual home address in New Jersey. And thank you for committing scams so flamboyant they basically assure that you will not be elected again. (Although if disgraced governor Andrew Cuomo ends up as our next mayor, I will get a membership to Zero Bond to yell at you in person when you get out of jail.)
You vowed to bring the swagger back to New York City, but you swaggered too close to the sun. And while I don’t quite respect that about you, I am grateful that your unflappable cop confidence led to your own political implosion.
You truly were here for a good time, and hopefully not a much longer time.
(Also, if you live in New York and are looking for incisive and entertaining coverage of the ongoing Eric Adams saga and other local news, I cannot recommend subscribing to Hell Gate highly enough!!!)
A READER’S PEP TALK FOR HERSELF
I recently (well, a few weeks ago) received a pep talk request from a reader, who before I could respond, had a big shift in attitude following a small shift in material circumstances. This reader has given me permission to publish their messages to me as a little extra pep talk this week!
I’d love a pep talk on getting back into dating. The last time I was actively dating was 2016, then broke up with my boyfriend in late 2019. Since then I haven’t been interested in romantic relationships at all, but at the beginning of the year I started to feel ready - and put the work in on myself. Went back to therapy, started journaling again, quit smoking weed…good things! So I’ve been on Hinge for almost a month now, and while I’ve gotten lots of interest and had some good chats, I’m nervous about committing to actual dates. The process of getting to know someone and letting someone get to know me feels exhausting - and doing it again and again until I find the right person? Yikes. I’m also a very different person than I was eight years ago, and I don’t want to date the same way I did back then, so I feel like I can’t fall back on experience for fear of repeating old bad patterns. At the same time, I’m excited to finally feel ready to open myself up to romantic connection again, and I’ve never felt more on top of my shit. Can you help get me pumped up enough to finally let someone take me out - even if I don’t find the right person right away? - (Re)new Romantic
That was an extremely thoughtful message to receive, and one that I bet a lot of people can related to in part or in full! But, before I could respond, I received this message from the same person!
Hi Josh - no longer in need of a pep talk. Went on a singular Hinge date and met an amazing person and things are going great. It only takes one, I guess!! Just want to add that I’m dating differently than I ever have before - taking it slow and really getting to know him at a measured pace and vice versa, with the aim of building something meaningful and long-lasting. And I think laying out that I wanted to do things differently in my note to you really helped me recognize that and build on it. So your pep talk system absolutely did help in its own way - (Re)new Romantic
I felt so good reading this message, not just because the Gondelman Pep Talk Method (tm) was given credit, maybe more than it/I deserve. But it just felt so nice to see the general premise of the newsletter (Things can be okay! Often you’re in a temporary funk that you can fix or ride out!) in effect in the real world! So, let that be a lesson to you readers…just because I am absolutely not on top of my emails (or more accurately I really only respond per week) doesn’t mean things in your life won’t improve!
Congratulations on your excellent news, (Re)new!
PEP TALK FOR A READER
I might be a little late with this pep talk too! If so, I apologize!
Hi Josh, I could use a pep talk. I'm (41F) headed on vacation with my parents (77M/77F) to San Francisco for a week soon. And while I'm blessed and happy to spend time with them like this, after a few days together, it's hard not to revert to kid attitudes when I'm in their company for this long. I'm a functional, grown adult and yet I can feel teenage me taking over by day three. What do I do? How do I fight this? - All Play And No Work Makes Jack A Dull Girl
Okay, Jack (sorry to start this off sounding so much like Joe Biden), I know that you know that I know that you’re in a pretty swell position. There’s no need for me to stress to you the joy of getting to spend time with older relatives in a vacational context. You said it yourself! This is not a you-should-be-grateful pep talk. You seem to be tapped into the concept of gratitude enough that we can deal with the other part of this situation: Petty annoyances (which are really my wheelhouse here anyway)!
I, too, find myself becoming Teenage Me when I visit my folks. My mom (a wonderful person whom I love, and famously a reader of this newsletter) will offer me yogurt, and I will politely decline, knowing that she doesn’t know I have not eaten yogurt under any circumstances in like…ten years. And yet, there is still an adolescent twinge of Come on, MOM! that is not her fault at all. She’s being nice! And I never communicated to her that I don’t even think about yogurt at any point in my adult life. I just moved out of my parents’ house 17ish years ago (and then again 15ish years ago after a brief moving-back-in period) and developed a bunch of new habits that I didn’t tell my parents about. Anyway! Enough about me and my nonsense…
As usual, I will try to avoid giving advice here even in defiance of your specific request, but I will say this: You are allowed to return to Adult You at any moment, like a werewolf when the sun comes up, but if the werewolf could cause the sun to rise simply by taking a deep breath and saying: “Hey, I’m going to take a little walk and get a coffee? Do you two want anything?” As long as you are otherwise a good faith vacation participant (showing up for the tentpole events, hanging out with your parents in between when not otherwise occupied), you can even take a nap or read a book or meet up with a friend for a stroll (in my San Francisco experience, you will end up way more winded than expected at the end of that stroll because the terrain is like if SimCity and Rollercoaster Tycoon merged into one game and that game was a real life topographical map). You’ve got a week to spend with them, and I bet most weeks of your life are not spent in immediate proximity to the same two people 24/7. Even Run-D.M.C. probably planned a few solo hours when they were on tour (do not forget to include the late Jam Master Jay when you picture Run-D.M.C. in your mind). Even the most romantically invested throuples probably de-throup to go to work or Pilates or book club from time to time. You are allowed to introduce a little of your normal solitude/socializing rhythm into that half-fortnight (septnight?) with your folks.
Despite your Paul Rudd in Wet Hot American Summer-stylesighing, you’ll probably have a very nice time and wind up thinking fondly this trip with your parents, especially if you are able to intersperse your time together with a little time apart.
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Dionne Warwick - “I Say A Little Prayer”
On my trip to Kansas City last week, I listened to the Apple Music “Dionne Warwick Essentials,” which made for a great flight. There were so many classic hits, and then deeper cuts (or big hits that had maybe just faded out of rotation before my time) and then other songs that I’d heard more frequently as covers. (I really wanted to ask Dionne Warwick what she thought of the White Stripes version of “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself” but I did not have the opportunity or moxie to do so.) I probably heard an a cappella group on campus cover “I Say A Little Prayer” a zillion times while I was at Brandeis, and no offense to (I think) Company B, but this version is superior. It’s not my place to pass judgement on the relative merits of the Aretha Franklin take on the tune.
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’ve got a bunch of NYC dates coming up, and then a few back on the road! See you there?!?!
10/2: Sleepwalk and then also Rodeo (Both Brooklyn)
10/4: Late Stage Live and Friends at Union Hall (Brooklyn)
10/7: Hanging out at Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)
10/8: Co-hosting Trivia For Cheaters 826 Fundraiser at Brooklyn Brewery
10/18: The Muslims are Coming: Swing State Invasion (Reading, PA)
10/21: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)
I am…so sleepy after an excellent weekend in Denver (more on that later), but I’m back at sea level and breathing air that feels as thick as clam chowder.
Two weeks ago, I threw my body into the wood chipper of three concerts in six nights. Last week I did the same thing, but for comedy. I regret nothing!!!! Well, nothing about the last two weeks. Going back further, in the words of noted drama queen Frank Sinatra, regrets…I have a few. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about!
Monday night was the first ever Frankenstein’s Baby show at Union Hall! It was great! A woman in the crowd called out to ask where my sweater was from (Mifland) and it turned out she was…Stacy London of What Not To Wear?!?!?! Anything is possible! Our next two shows are 10/7 (I’ll be there hanging out) and 10/21 (I’ll be co-hosting)!
Joyelle Alison Jordan Me Tyrone and Donwill // Photo: Sam Brooks
On Tuesday I got to do a show on Long Island with friend and J.D. Vance impression-master Dan Wilbur! On Wednesday, I opened for Aparna Nancherla whose new hour really shot me into space! On Thursday evening (flight timing on account of recording a new episode of Normal Gossip in the afternoon…but you didn’t hear it from me), I flew to Denver for the High Plains Comedy Festival, landing just in time to make it to my first show!
High Plains was an ideal comedy festival experience. The volunteers and staff members were so helpful and kind. The crowds were warm and enthusiastic. I got to hang out with a million old friends (Rob Haze! The All Fantasy Everything guys! Hannah Jones! Grawlix!) and see them crush shows! I met a few people (Chris Estrada! Laura Peek!) whose work I love but who I’d never encountered in person before! It’s just wild to see how many different ways there are to be good at standup comedy, even in front of the same audience! (Shouts out also to Rory Scovel, Kyle Kinane, Jaye McBride, Milly Tamarez, and Django Gold!) It’s been a weird time in the industry/country/world, but at least in terms of professional optimism, very little is more restorative to me than seeing how many people are working so hard on creating art that is special and personal and weird and serious and silly!!!
I had an especially fun time on The Grawlix Saves the World podcast with the aforementioned Grawlix and Laura Peek. It is a competitive advice show judged by a live audience, and it was total chaos. Several times during the recording, the entire audience chanted “Evil Josh! Evil Josh!” at me, which warmed my heart.
I think in terms of vegetables, I ate…a few jalapeños, so I’m planning on a week straight of intravenous salad consumption to get my efforts to continue being alive back on track. Thanks so much to festival founder Adam Cayton-Holland for inviting me out, and to Karen and the whole staff for running such an incredible weekend! I was so glad to finally make it to Denver! (Reminder: If you subscribe to this newsletter you’ll always be on top of my tour schedule so you can come see me or stay away from me according to your preference!)
Speaking of not dying (sort of) I’ve been trying to make the use of New York City’s few perfect weeks of cool morning/hot afternoon/cool evening weather to get out of my apartment early to shoot some jump shots at my local court. It’s the perfect time of year both weather-wise and in terms of teenagers being back at school and unable to remark on my technique or (even worse) invite me to play with/against them.
I am trying to break the vicious cycle of being out of practice, so I don’t play pickup, so my skills continue to erode, making me even more avoidant of letting other people see me shoot a basketball. I’m like the phantom of the three point line. Speaking of the three point line, the one at my court is NBA-distance, and I’m finding myself coming up short on my jumper. So I downloaded my brilliant pal Casey Johnston aka ’s beginner weight lifting program to build strength and take my rightful place as Brooklyn’s male Sabrina Ionescu. Let’s see if I follow through on this (both the training program and the release on my jumper).
Also, speaking of basketball (again, 1:1 here), let’s go Liberty! I’d love to see them complete feat of both the NBA and WNBA teams I root for reigning as league champions!!!
Oh and!!! I’ve been sitting on this news until the official announcement, but just after Thanksgiving, I’m doing a bunch of shows around the northeast as part of Aimee Mann and Ted Leo’s Christmas Show! I am part of a little touring company (also including Nelly McKay and Paul F. Tompkins!!!) doing a bunch of dates in New York, Virginia, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut as part of their semi-regular variety show, and I can’t wait! Please do not blow up my spot by telling them I said this, but Ted and Aimee and Paul are so cool, and I’m extremely thrilled and intimidated to get to be a part of these shows!!! (Nelly I’m sure is also cool but I don’t know her as well yet!)
Ted and Aimee *clap clap clapclapclap*
PEP TALK FOR MARK ROBINSON
Smiling through it all, can’t believe this is his life, presumably. (Gerry Broome/AP)
For readers who don’t know, Mark Robinson is the Lieutenant Governor of North Carolina as well as the Republican candidate for Governor in the upcoming election. His continued rise to power would be bad for the people of North Carolina. Which is important, but not the issue at hand. Robinson was also, several years ago, allegedly, a prolific commenter on a porn site called Nude Africa, a name I will refrain from mocking because I do not know if it’s an important fixture in the Black community. This is what we’re here to discuss. The comments in question were made through a username that Robinson employs across several other websites, and the account was linked to his email address (as was a recently-uncovered Ashley Madison account). So far this is weird, but it is not a crime to be horny while holding or aspiring to political office. At least two of our last four presidents would easily have qualified as criminally horny, for sure, if that was the case.
The problem with LieuGo (short for Lieutenant Governor, probably) Robinson is the specific nature of his libidinous comments. Some of them (referring to himself as a “black NAZI!” for example) were off-putting, if not disqualifying to his base of people who think the first word of that descriptor is more problematic than the second one. (And when I say “he,” I know this isn’t proven; I simply mean the commenter who uses Mark Robinson’s email address and social media handle. It could be anyone.) He (whoever he may be) also expressed his enthusiasm for pornography featuring transgender performers, which seems to contradict his bigoted position on which bathrooms transgender people should be forced to use. And, he (Who could it have been? But to clarify it’s the Nude Africa message board poster who uses Mark Robinson’s email address) said he doesn’t care whether a celebrity gets an abortion as long as he can see their sex tape. As you might imagine, Robinson is not nearly that pro-choice when he is flaccid and making statements under his own name.
Look, Mark Robinson, we all say things during sex that aren’t our actual opinions, and sometimes that’s a good thing. If our sexual utterances had to be 1:1 with reality, a disturbing amount of brains would wind up…out, through a process that it is not family-friendly to mention. Although it is a process that can be friendly to expanding families. On the other hand, I don’t think you get the same leeway with stuff you type with one hand while embarking on a sensual tour through Nude Africa with the other.
But, for your sake, at least you only contradicted a few of your (horrific and dangerous) conservative principles in your porn comments. You never commented something like: “Wow that guy has more than enough meat to satisfy everyone, if you know what I’m saying, and by that I mean America’s 1% has hoarded too much wealth, and they should be taxed at a sufficiently high rate to fund social programs that ensure no one goes hungry at night.” Or: “Look at how many people are inside her…it’s so beautiful, which makes me think that maybe our immigration system should be less focused on keeping people out at all costs.” That would really have torpedoed your support among conservatives. (Sorry this is a little explicit! Sometimes, in a newsletter, you’ve gotta play the news you’re dealt!)
Sure, you have so many bad opinions. But at least your insatiable appetite for pornography and shoddy understanding of anonymity only showed you to be a hypocrite regarding a few of them (allegedly). And yes, your top aides quit when this initial report came out. But you want a staff who knows and respects the real you. Even if the real you is someone whose horniness supersedes all his other values, which, I should reiterate, are bad.
PEP TALK FOR A READER
I made a teensy tweak to this pep talk for the sake of anonymizing the writer!
May I please have a pep talk? I’m moving tomorrow, I just started school, I’m going through a messy breakup and I just met someone new! My world is changing so much! - Scare Change
Wow you really are in the middle of a ton of huge life changes, which can be challenging but also very rewarding. The trouble is, that situation stands in contrast to stasis, which is easy and can also be rewarding.
But it certainly doesn’t sound like you wanted the easy, breezy (Am I the first person to rhyme those two words? Probably!) pleasures of continuity. You were ready for some dynamism. You were ready for the status quo to be, well, quover. You didn’t accidentally apply to school, select courses, and begin to attend them in a fugue state. You chose this for reasons, which you didn’t mention, so I will assume they are none of my business!
And sometimes breakups happen against your will, but certainly finding a new partner isn’t something that was foisted upon you as you kicked and screamed. I mean, maybe kicking and screaming is part of it! I don’t know your life. But if it was, it sounds like consensual kicking and screaming between grownups.
That’s not to say there aren’t issues even when you’re forging your own path forward with intent. But these are growth problem (like needing new pants or boredom with defeating your smaller peers at sports) rather than inertia problems (feet falling asleep, inability to experience new things unless someone brings them to you or drags you towards them).
Ultimately, you’re in a position of experiencing joys and struggles of your own choosing. Which in this world is a beautiful privilege to get to experience, even for a short time. And if it’s great, you can go back to gliding for a while. And if it doesn’t stay satisfying, you can shuffle the deck again and deal with the new deal.
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: St. Vincent - “New York”
It was more relevant to my life two weeks ago when I saw St. Vincent live, but this song has been bubbling up in my head for a little bit now. It’s not really peppy, but it’s propulsive and wistful, which qualifies it for this section of the newsletter. I think it’s sweet to refer to someone as “the only motherfucker in the city who can handle me.” Who wouldn’t want to be a singularly qualified motherfucker? Full disclosure: Maris and I left the St. Vincent show before she performed this song, but we did see Lorde play a cover of it a few years ago, and that was good too!
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’ve got a bunch of NYC dates coming up, and then a few back on the road! See you there?!?!
I’m going to TRY to be brief this week because I’m kind of in the thick of a bunch of little professional things converging, and also admittedly a couple of lunch dates with friends that I don’t want to cancel. So newsletter, you’re getting squeezed this week.
I had a terrific and always-too-brief trip to Boston last weekend for the live This Week In Esoteric Political History live podcast, which will be released online in October. It was a blast being onstage with the show’s brilliant hosts! Plus I had an incredible speed run of fortuitous Bostonian experiences: A visit with my family, a cannoli from Mike’s Pastry, an incredible parking spot, and a WILDLY botched Dunkin’ order. As often, I felt emotionally overwhelmed by personal history while zipping down Storrow Drive in my mom’s Prius by myself late at night.
I also successfully saw St. Vincent, the Old 97s (at long last!), and Charly Bliss play live, which I mentioned last week, but was not 100% confident I’d be up for. All the shows were very good, but it was especially wonderful seeing my pals in Charly Bliss tear through their new songs live. There’s a texture and dimension to their recent album that’s even more vibrant in person. And the band members’ love for each other is so evident onstage. I got to talk to them all a little bit about it when I was writing the bio for Forever, but their mutual affection radiates through the room and makes their shows feel so joyful. I especially loved seeing singer/guitarist Eva Hendricks and guitar player Spencer Fox playfully head butt each other during instrumental sequences in a way that I’m not sure baby rhinos actually do, but you can picture it, right? I think Eva’s mom might read this newsletter, and if so: Hi, Eva’s mom! It was so nice to see you there!
On Sunday I hosted a panel for this big day of conversations and performances put on by lefty magazine Jewish Currents. I felt lucky to sit onstage and talk with a group of people who work so hard at living their principles despite working in entertainment.
While I was at the event, a bunch of friends AND SEVERAL ENEMIES (jkjkjkjk) and many strangers won Emmy Awards! And many friends (and strangers) lost their categories too. Speaking from experience: It is an honor just to be nominated, but it’s more fun to win. (This year I did neither, which was also fun but not particularly notable!)
Tonight at Union Hall (in Brooklyn) is the first ever Frankenstein’s Baby live show! It’s a great and bimonthly standup show hosted by me, Alison Leiby, Joyelle Nicole Johnson, and Tyrone Thornhill in rotating combinations. Donwill is going to DJ the show (thank goodness) and the wonderful Jordan Ashleigh is producing it!! Tonight the lineup includes Sabrina Wu, Shalewa Sharpe, and Alex English! Ridiculous!
On Wednesday I’m opening for my friend (who is a genius) at the Bell House! I think a few of my new jokes are finally shaping up to the point where I can trot them out at a show like this. Get ready to hear about my parents’ email address (singular), audience!!!
I’m so psyched to go to Denver this weekend for the High Plains festival! Here are the shows I’m doing, if you’re curious. And I’m going to try and hang out and see a bunch of pals do their shows as well (hi, All Fantasy Everything)! See you there, Denver?
PEP TALK FOR INDOOR VAPERS
No one notices you’re holding one of these at all!
Cigarette smoking has been on the decline for years, which is great for public health but difficult for people who want to leave their job for fifteen minutes every two hours. Maybe we’ll see “having IBS” take over as a new trend, but I’m not holding my breath. Speaking of breathing out…
The dip in people ripping butts (what they actually call it where I’m from) has occurred hand in hand with a rise in vaping. I’m not breaking any news here; by now we’re all familiar with the sweaty little computers that people suck nicotine mist out of. Maybe it’s a healthier habit than inhaling a campfire every day, or maybe sucking up a cloud of chemicals the likes of which you normally see billowing out of an operational paper mill isn’t great either. Who can say?
What I do know is that while vaping has exploded in popularity, it’s still outlawed in many places, especially indoors. And yet, for reasons that are probably totally healthy and not at all signs of a problem, people continue vaping indoors in a way that they might describe as “surreptitious” but in reality is extremely obvious.
We’ve all seen these undercover vapers, cupping their devices in one hand, the way you’d hold a twenty-dollar bill you’re about to slip to a maitre d in hopes of jumping the line. They lean downwards, hand to face, like they’re whispering a secret to their fingers. Then, a few seconds later, they exhale a sweet vapor, as if announcing that they’ve just chosen a new Pope of Candyland.
Indoor vapers, relax. You are fooling literally no one. It is outrageously difficult to hide the fact that you’re emitting steam. That is the whole premise of teapots. It’s not, like, courteous to commit this act of attempted obfuscation the way it’s polite to sneeze into your elbow. So what’s the benefit of this performance?
Stop gaslight (vaporlighting?) us! Just do your thing. No one will be mad at you except flight attendants and waiters, who are already actively ignoring your rule-breaking because conflict is hard and they don’t want the (fake) smoke.
Or simply go outside, the way smokers have for years, since people realized they could avoid their own hair and clothing reeking for days if they just asked people to keep their open flames outdoors.
I didn’t edit this request at all. JUST SO YOU KNOW.
Hi Josh! I would love a pep talk. I just had to defer my entry to my first marathon after months and months of training. I strained a calf muscle and the race date was too soon to heal and continue training in order to run. - Half Calf
Ahh shoot noooo! What a drag! It sounds like you were really excited to run this first marathon, and you aren’t doing it because someone is chasing you 26.2 miles while wielding a chainsaw, which is what it would take for me to participate in this kind of athletic event. (I would be chainsawed to pulp and splinters before I hit mile five.) If I were giving this pep talk to me, it would go: Hey, at least now you don’t have to run a marathon, which I assume you’re doing because you lost some kind of high-stakes bet, me. But I’m not writing to me. That’s a gimmick I try not to go back to all that often. I’m writing to you. So to you I say…
You got so close this time!!! And it sounds like you will recover and be able to run again, even if it won’t be in time to compete in this particular marathon. That’s already a lucky break on the scale of injuries that can happen to human legs. Honestly, I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but that’s so much more important than running a specific marathon. My grandmother used to always say “Wear it in good health!” when she gave me or my sister a garment, and I never understood it when I was a kid (who had the good luck to be in good health most of the time). But as an adult I’m like…yeah, the good health part is probably a bigger deal than the sweater. If you could give someone good health itself as a birthday present, they’d take it every time.
There will be other marathons, and you’ll get back into fighting shape. (I know you are running, not fighting, but I still imagine you have to fight the urge to just…stop running.) People love running marathons. They hate when I point out that for a group of people obsessed with athletic achievement, it is the ultimate participation trophy culture. I know dozens of people who have run marathons, not a soul who’s won the fuckin’ thing. You don’t wear a medal for finishing a pickup basketball game or a flag football tournament.
Still, I understand the celebration (and am pro-trophy in general). Completing a marathon is a triumph of a human being over their own body, which even though I’m not a runner, I understand as someone who routinely does things that make me feel horrible, seemingly to spite my own corporeal form. And so, with that in mind, finishing the marathon you sign up for when you’re finally recovered and ready will be an even more wonderful victory. You will have overcome MORE adversity and persevered through even FORMIDABLE-ER conditions. Your body doesn’t want you to do this AT ALL, but your brain is like “fuck you, body” and I think that’s beautiful, and it’s going to feel (emotionally) amazing (AND physically horrendous). You can do this, for some reason, or for no reason at all!
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: The Old 97s - “Rollerskate Skinny”
The Old 97s are maaaaybe Maris and my #1 car trip listening band. They have so many perfect songs. The records contain so much specificity, but they never sacrifice emotional impact or sonic impact. He sings bridge at the end (“I believe in love/But it don’t believe in me”) with such wistfulness that it’s impossible to doubt that someday love will find him. It reminds me of the line from the (roughly contemporary) movie Adaptation about how it’s more important to focus on what you love than what loves you! I think that’s so beautiful and heartbreaking, to believe that putting love into the world is more important than having it reflected back at you in a specific way. I listened to this song five times in a row on repeat on the Amtrak on Saturday. Now you try!
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’ve got a bunch of NYC dates coming up, and then a few back on the road! See you there?!?!
The post-August return to action, both personal and cultural, seems to be in full swing. However, while everyone else was getting back into the regular rhythm of their lives after Labor Day, Maris and I got the heck out of town and spent two days in Miami sitting by a pool in celebration of her birthday! Happy birthday, Maris! You are perfect! I am so glad we got to spend a couple of days drinking iced coffee and going swimming together now that you are done writing your book! Out of respect for you, I even watched a crow steal half of my croissant off of a table without saying: “I guess that’s why they call it a crowssant.” AN ENORMOUS SACRIFICE! FOR LOVE!
Miami is full of equal measures of vibrant culture and also guys driving Teslas who seem like they’d give you a million dollars if you wrote “BITCOIN” on a piece of printer paper in some kind of industrial font. It’s a perfect place to visit before we see whether the energy saved by those guys driving electric cars is outweighed by the energy it takes for them to power the blockchain and the whole city ends up underwater.
While we were away, I read Steven Wright’s novel Harold. Steven Wright is one of my favorite comedians, and his wry, poetic insights are strewn throughout the book in the same way that a jazz quintet playing very free and loose occasionally locks into a beautiful groove for a few seconds at a time. There was a lot to like in it, but there was also a lot that was not quite as impeccably crafted as his standup. I wonder if I’d prefer a poetry collection if he ever wanted to write one!
Thanks to the village of Bizzy-sitters required to make a quick jaunt out of town possible. You are all heroes, and I owe each of you my life, which isn’t really feasible, so…whoever claims it first…I guess it’s yours?
Maris flew home from Ft. Lauderdale on Friday, and I continued to zip around Florida and then up to Atlanta on the Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me Standup Tour. We did four theaters in four nights, and it was a blast. I drove all around Florida with Negin Farsad and had great shows with her and Alonzo Bodden and Dulcé Sloan. I started the weekend a little exhausted by my own thoughts since I’ve been telling these jokes for a little bit now (and I’ve watched them a zillion times as I work on editing my special), and the new ones aren’t quite road-ready yet. But it turns out the antidote to being sick of yourself is sharing your thoughts with theaters full of enthusiastic people who have never heard them before.
We didn’t think to take the picture until the audience was already leaving.
I had a lot of fun telling jokes and goofing around backstage with the other comics, plus I saw my cousins John and Frankie, and my friend Kayla, and my former high school Spanish teacher who I managed to call by her first name and not be weird about it. I missed seeing my friend Josie because she had to hustle home to relieve a babysitter so: Hi, Josie!
I’m still a little bedraggled from going out after the show last night in Atlanta, but also because on Friday in Orlando my hotel neighbors engaged in a series of brief but enthusiastic romantic interludes where they seemed to…how to say this delicately…take turns enjoying themselves. I couldn’t quite get a read on whether this was an agreed-upon arrangement where they alternated which one of them was having more fun while the other one toughed it out, or if they just did not communicate well. Obviously I was not in a position to ask them, but I had lots of time to consider the issue while I was not sleeping from 1-2 in the morning and then again from 5-6. (Good for them! Working both of those shifts in bed on the same night is a young person’s game, in my humble, aging opinion.)
Hopefully I’ll sneak in a little nap this week because on account of my not knowing how to use a calendar, I’m going to see three bands play this week? Tonight Maris and I are going to see our buddies in Charly Bliss rip it up at the Music Hall of Williamsburg! Then on Wednesday we’re going to see St. Vincent, purely based on the great review Maddie Connors wrote about her recent LA show. Then on Saturday night it’s the Old 97s, who have been on my Bands To See list for quite some time! Like I said up top: summer is (culturally) OVER! It’s time to DO THINGS INDOORS! (But feel free to enjoy the apocalyptically warm weather to spend a little more time at the beach if that’s your thing. Especially Miami residents. Who knows how long you have left above sea level?)
Otherwise, I’ll be doing a couple of spots this week in New York hashing out some choppy new jokes, which is the best part of telling jokes for comedians, and hopefully audiences like it too! Then I’m up in Boston for a live podcast taping (more info below) and back home hopefully for the Jewish Currents event I mentioned last week. They’re looking for a new location though! Fingers crossed! I really want to talk to Emma Seligman and Tavi Gevinson and James Schamus!
And! After a delightful run co-hosting the last days of Butterboy at Littlefield, Alison Leiby and I are part of a superteam (including the terrific comedians/pals Joyelle Nicole Johnson and Tyron Thornhill, DJ Donwill, and producer Jordan Ashleigh) bringing you the new biweekly show Frankenstein’s Baby!!! It’s going to be every 1st and 3rd Monday of the month at Union Hall in Brooklyn, and we’ll be co-hosting in various fun combinations. The first show will be next Monday (9/16), and the lineup is ridiculous!!! Grab! Those! Tickets!
“Does God have a Plan B?” Photo: Prince Williams/WireImage
When you’re possibly the biggest (solo male) artist of a generation, there’s nowhere to go but down. But wow, nobody expected you to fall so far so fast. Kendrick Lamar, your nemesis, was just announced as the headliner for next year’s Super Bowl halftime show, and normally I’d say that someone else’s success is not a referendum on you. In this case, though, it absolutely is. K.Dot has long been a major artist, but last summer he ascended to dizzying new heights with a suite of songs about how much you, Drake, suck shit. And he’s probably going to perform at least one of those songs in the middle of the most-watched television event of the year. (This thought led me to question whether it would have been possible for 2Pac to have rapped “Hit ‘em Up” amidst an ad break during the Seinfeld finale and the answer is no, the timelines don’t work out.)
You have been beset by (rhyming) allegations of cultural appropriation, inadequate parenting, and sexual misconduct. In May and June, a DJ or even a venue’s pre-show playlist dropping the beat for “Not Like Us” would cause basically any crowd to turn up, from Kamala Harris rallies to sports stadiums to (one must assume) bat mitzvahs. It’s been a complicated year for Jewish people navigating historically Jewish institutions with problematic legacies, but my people have had no problem divesting from Drake in droves. Dude, you are taking more Ls in rapid succession than the word “parallelogram.”
Fortunately for you, while many people have been put off of your music by a J.D. Vance-like barrage of public humiliations, you have ascended to such heights over the past decade and a half that there are still many people in your corner. You have probably maintained a Canadian fan base out of national loyalty. But even if not, you’re definitely still a favored rapper amongst guys who call women “females” and use their Instagram accounts to post pictures of The Joker with captions like: “People say that I am crazy but that is only because a lion’s success cannot be recognized by a cockroach.” I imagine a number of non-English-speaking rap fans who enjoy your music on a rhythmic and/or phonetic basis have remained loyal to you. And for sure no one who pronounces the word “vodka” as if it’s spelled “v-o-k-k-a” has turned on you. So, congratulations on hanging onto the guys who have Entourage quotes in their Hinge profiles.
I don’t know that you’re a good person, Drake. But take comfort in this: There are lots of bad people out there, and they definitely have Spotify accounts.
I’m a little late replying to this request, but hopefully either it’s no longer necessary, but in case it is, here we go!
Hi Josh, I had a (benign!!!) brain tumor removed last month and am in recovery. It has been a lot harder than I thought it would be. But I struggle since I think I should be grateful it was benign and also grateful to the people who are helping me recover. It’s harder and harder the more I “wake up” and get further out from surgery. I almost wish something would happen so I could go back to zombie mode of early post surgery. - In My Head, In My Head (Zombie)
To an extent, we’re all kind of held captive by the narrative that when something dangerous and/or scary happens to us, we come out the other side changed in a good way. We end up with a fresh perspective, a new lease on life, a second chance. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and all of that horseshit. (It is interesting that there are certain animals whose shit we use as a pejorative. Horse. Bull. Dog. But other animals’ shit gets a pass. I’ve never heard anyone say: “What were you looking at, ref? That call was hipposhit!”)
But a lot of the time, tragedies (or even fortunate aversions of tragedy) have long-term negative consequences. This is no secret. Every tv show lately has to take an entire episode to be like: “This person doing bad stuff? It’s because of trauma! And the person who is maniacally driven to stop them? That’s also from trauma. PUT THAT IN YOUR PIPE AND GET OVER IT!”
I imagine receiving treatment for a benign brain tumor is like surviving a plane crash. It’s the luckiest result in a deeply unlucky situation. And more likely than coming out of it going “I should devote my life to a higher cause!” is the aftermath feeling like “Everything is hard and terrifying now!” It makes a lot of sense to me that you feel bad. A bad thing happened to you recently and you haven’t recovered. AND, recovering is its own rigorous process!!! So why would your response be: “Wow I’m on cloud nine! I’ve got to do more volunteer work!”
But! While those feelings are REAL and VALID, they are not like…long-term productive. Especially since you’re in (arguably) the hardest part. You evaded the worst possible outcome, but you haven’t bounced back from it yet. And I think you know this, but regressing can’t really be the answer either. Which sucks! You already “the only way out is through-ed” and now there’s more through to get through before you’re the rest of the way out? Sounds like a load of gecko shit to me.
There is something on the other side of this that’s better than what you’re feeling now. And it’s probably better than being a zombie too. You may not be stronger than before, but at least you’ll be un-undead.
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: André 3000 (feat. Kelis) - “Dracula’s Wedding”
As has been mentioned above, the new show I’m co-hosting is called Frankenstein’s Baby, and I can’t stop singing it to the tune of “Dracula’s Wedding” off of the André 3000 half of Outkast’s 2003 double album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, which I listened to this weekend as I bopped around Atlanta waiting for my hotel room to be ready to nap in. (I got into town early; I don’t employ some kind of nap-prep staff on the road to get my rooms optimally sleepy.)
The album overall is a little sprawling and stylistically chaotic in the way that things can get when duos are on the verge of a breakup not that I’d professionally know anything about that! But both André (first name basis presumed) and Big Boi (should I have said “Big”?) stuffed a ton of great music onto their respective CDs.
The album came out just as I started college, and “Hey Ya” in many ways is the first hit song of my adult life. I remember hearing it every time I stepped into a retail store or turned on a car radio or attended a social event from the time I graduated high school through my entire freshman year at Brandeis. It’s kind of fun to hear and feel a new song immediately become canonized as an all-time wedding reception classic in real time.
Anyway, “Dracula’s Wedding” rules and brings me back to a very specific time in my life when songs went from CD to computer hard drive to iPod and Outkast still seemed like they might make it in the long run.
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’ve got a bunch of NYC dates coming up, and then a few back on the road! See you there?!?!
I hope you’re having a relaxing Labor Day Weekend! Shout out, as always, to labor unions.
Until my little trip out of town last week, I’d been wandering around to the gentle beat of a light late August (dol)drum. But the past ten days have been full of all sorts of fun stuff. Pals visiting from out of town! Seeing live music! Fun gigs! Karaoke!
My capacity to make it through the week relatively awake and alert despite several latte-ish nights was drastically aided by a slight miscommunication. On Tuesday night, Maris and I (and a clown car’s worth of friends) went to see Pup and Jeff Rosenstock play a show at Warsaw, which long time readers will recognize as the best music venue in New York City because they have good sight lines and sell pierogi from a window next to the merch table. Maris snuck out a few minutes early because she had an early morning appointment to rest up for. However, when she got home, she realized she hadn’t brought keys with her. So I rushed home to her (okay, I had one more drink and said goodnight to our friends while she waited at a bar near our apartment, but she said I could do that!) and we went to bed at the respectable hour of midnight. The next morning I texted our friend Mattie to apologize for running off into the night, and they said they didn’t get home until three a.m. I think had it not been for the key situation, I too would have been in it to win it (punk show going up…on a Tuesday) and torpedoed my consciousness for days to come. I am NOT being passive aggressive here. I am knowing my limits (after the fact, as long as they are imposed upon me by an external source)!!!
Also, on Friday night, Maris and I watched the movie Trap, the newest M. Night Shyamalan film, and we had a very good time. It is, in its conceit, one of the least believable cinematic works I’ve ever seen, but it compensates by being fun as hell. I think there are probably ways that this movie can be exciting and delightful because it doesn’t make any sense, but it maintains a style and tone throughout that splashes around in the pool of unreality. It’s not a “so bad it’s good” movie, but it’s a movie where the bad and the good exist hand in hand. It kind of operates on the latter day Fast and also Furious logic of: “What’s the next awesome thing that could happen?” It’s not even really gory or especially violent. It’s tense and kind of silly. I recommend it despite (because of?) its numerous obvious flaws.
THIS WEEK I’ll be on the Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me standup tour with Alonzo Bodden, Dulcé Sloan, and Negin Farsad! We’re going to be in Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, Tampa, and Atlanta in that order between Thursday and Sunday! Grab your tickets if you’re nearby!!! I’d love to see you there!
Joyelle and I couldn’t stop talking about Nate’s piercing eye contact!
In loosely related news, I’m on the most recent episode of Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me, which we recorded live in Minneapolis. The guest was interior design mogul Nate Berkus, who was outrageously charming and funny. I was on with Joyelle Nicole Johnson (a crusher!) and Bobcat Goldthwait, who is so funny and so full of wild stories. He had just driven cross-country with his wife and their pet ducks, and at the beginning of the show he shared his connection to the Twin Cities, which is that he was once brought to hang out with Prince as a gift to Prince, who was a fan of his standup. That’s a tough story to top in that venue unless you are literally Maya Moore and have led the Minnesota Lynx to a WNBA championship.
Then, completing my speed run of the biased left-wing media (what I call it any time I do any media appearance), I made my return to Ayman on MSNBC to talk election stuff. I wore a button-down shirt and tie, because I feel like if I am going to be the stupidest person in the room, I might as well look like I belong at least. (This is a close cousin to my principle of dressing up when hungover to fool people.) Ayman himself is always extremely indulgent of me goofing around on his otherwise informative show, and I’m very grateful!
My episode of The Spiel(a Steven Spielberg podcast) where we talk about the movie Men in Black is out now! I realized after it went live that it was my last out-loud conversation with the late, great Scott Wampler. It knocked me a little off-kilter to consider that, not because it’s a frivolous conversation, but because I know that we won’t get to have more frivolous conversations like it in the future. I hope you enjoy me, Scott, and the excellent Eric Vespe talking about a fun movie!
Plus I wrote about a little splurge for the Marketplace newsletter thanks to my friend Alice Wilder.
And I attempted vulnerability in my return to my friend Mike’s podcast Detoxicity!
Oh, and I’m in a new music video!!! (More on that below!) And I will be in Boston on 9/13 as a guest on the This Day in Esoteric Political History podcast live show!
Thanks for letting me ramble! Now…it’s pep time!
PEP TALK FOR MERCURY
If it isn’t the son of a gun who made me drop my coffee and twist my ankle stepping off the curb and catch pneumonia. (Image from Wikipedia)
Of all the planets, Mercury, you’re the only one I see routinely being blamed for people’s problems on Earth. Even Earth, where people are stressed out or unlucky or unhappy doesn’t take the same amount of heat (figurative heat, because obviously you are literally hotter on account of of your proximity to the sun).
Obviously, I am referring to the astrological phenomenon of Mercury Retrograde, which I have heard about for years but didn’t actually look up until just this instant. If you are also recently curious but averse to link-clicking—and goodness knows I often resist being shuttled off to a second digital location—it’s when Mercury passes Earth in its orbit and appears to be going backwards, which astrologically messes up all sorts of stuff (travel and communication especially, which are like…two of the biggies).
I am not here to speak ill of astrology. I don’t understand how it works, but that’s also true of string theory and air fryers. What I am here to do is say that Mercury cannot be the ONLY planet that’s fucking up people’s shit. How come we never hear about what happens when Jupiter is Ascending anymore??? Even though it turned Channing Tatum into a dog person that one time!!! (My understanding of the movie Jupiter Ascending comes almost entirely from my friend Mara describing the plot to me.) You’re telling me Venus is never Regurgitating or some shit? We’re talking about planets getting backed up…what about Uranus? *polishes the two Peabody Awards on top of the dresser in our guest bedroom slash office*
Not everything bad can be Mercury’s fault! It’s just a teensy little guy, planetarily! Even when it’s moonwalking (planetwalking?) across the sky flipping us humans the double birds, we can’t pin ALL of our woes on it. Maybe it’s unrelated bad luck. If you feel sick after eating shrimp it’s not always the shrimp’s fault. Maybe it’s YOU. Maybe you’ve made an enemy? Maybe you screwed up and simply forgot to book your flight to Des Moines? Maybe space didn’t cause your problems with the more nearby sky at all? Ever think of that? Before you go besmirching Mercury’s good name?
Mercury, I don’t know how much bullshit you’re responsible for. Maybe a lot. Possibly none at all. As someone who is neither especially religious nor especially spiritual, I’ll offer the compromise position: Roughly the same amount as God. But you deserve better than to serve as the scapegoat for all of our problems for weeks at a time.
Pluto’s getting off awfully easy here if you ask me. I know it’s not a planet, but it’s still out there making trouble.
PEP TALK FOR TWO READERS
I’m doing two reader pep talks in one, shampoo/conditioner style, because the requests were similar. SO SUE ME WHY DON’T YA??!?!
I would love a pep talk!! I’m leaving my job in September with severance and instead of looking for a new corporate gig right away I’m gonna try my hand at selling my art. Shit is scary!! And fun! - Out Of Office
I’m a lawyer (not well established or anything!! Just been working for about a year) and the hours and pressure are killing me and I’m gonna quit my job soon anyway to pursue a master’s degree, but it’s all just getting super stressful. A little reassurance would be amazing bc I don’t exactly have the most supportive family haha. - (Bob Loblaw’s) Law Blah
Forgive me, but I’m going to address you like one person because you’re in more or less the same position pep-talk wise. Yeah, going to grad school is different than becoming an independent artist, but for the purposes of our conversation…is it? You’re making a financially dubious decision in hopes that it pays off enough to be worth the psychological/spiritual/satisfactional(?) improvements.
This is a thrilling and good gamble if you can afford it! Most gambling is only good if you win, which is rare, so it’s usually bad. I mean, like, gamble on sports or dice or horses (who are kind of doing sports but don’t realize it so it’s maybe worse and I don’t count it) if you want! But the more you like it, the worse it probably is. Most stuff isn’t like that! You can like sleeping or reading or lifting weights a little more than average and be fine. Probably even some drugs are like that. But enjoying games of chance more than “somewhat” is probably a bad sign. (As always, almost nothing I say applies to the independently wealthy, who are free to do whatever and don’t need a lot of encouragement.)
The thing about betting on your own new career (again, as long as you are not putting yourself or more importantly other people around you under undue strain to do it) is that even if it doesn’t pan out, you win. That is not true of roulette where people rarely leave the table thinking: “Well, we played hard out there and we can be proud of that at least.” When you lose at roulette you think FUUUUUCK! In fact, again, the more you feel exhilarated by losing money at roulette, the more quickly you should call one of those 600 gambling addiction hotlines at the end of every podcast ad for FanDuel or SavingsDrain or whichever one is your app of choice. (I will delete this if DraftKings starts its own streaming service and hires me to write a sitcom for them. That’s a PROMISE.)
Taking some time to try and merge into a more fulfilling career lane will pay off even if you don’t accomplish all of your dreams. You’ll learn new skills and probably meet a bunch of interesting people. You’ll drive a stake through the heart of the “what if?” vampire that’s been lurking in the dark corners of your mind. The very worst thing that will happen is eventually you may end up falling back on your old career. So? In between you’ll have done a bunch of cool, stimulating thinking and creating and interacting that etched some new wrinkles into your brain. And yes maybe your friends will tease you if you go back to your old work life. Imagine how you’d treat your friend Stephanie if she told everyone to call her Lady Gaga but didn’t become LADY GAGA. “Should we pregame for the party at your palace, m’lady????” But that gentle roasting is a small price to pay for having grabbed the reins of your own career and guided it into uncharted territories…before eventually guiding it back because charts, it turns out, are important sometimes.
It’s your life, shouldn’t you be enjoying it and doing work that you care about, as much as is possible? You’re going to have to have a job of some kind for quite a while. Unless you strike it rich on classic gambling, in which case congratulations…this newsletter is no longer for you, as we established earlier.
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Bad Moves - “Outta My Head”
The kind folks in the terrific band Bad Moves asked me to be in their new music video, pretending to be angry at them. It’s a VERY catchy song, and fun to sing along with especially if there are not sensitive ears around. I had such a good time getting fake-furious in the park with Kate Sweeney who directed my segment. It’s cool to be in this video with Margaret Cho and Chris Gethard even though we filmed in separate places on different days. :)
But also there’s lots of good new music that does NOT feature me in a video, which is hard to believe but true.
The new Illuminati Hotties record is very good, and this song scratches a Tegan and Sara itch that I hadn’t realized was there, right behind my knees!
I finally met Elise from Oceanator the other night at the Pup/Jeff show. Elise rules. Oceanator rules. This whole record is heavy and propulsive and thoughtful and great.
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’m back on the road this week! See you there?!?! (I promise I will have some new NYC shows on my calendar soon!)
As you may have noticed, I’m running a little behind on today’s newsletter because I had a very nice weekend away from my computer, and I spent this morning driving back to Brooklyn from the wilds of Long Island. Maris and I went to a lovely party out that way with lots of friends (and way more very nice strangers) and then stuck around to go to the beach and generally spend a night or two away from our very demanding dog. Bizzy the Pug was home with a generous and capable sitter to whom we owe our lives for stepping up last minute!
Everything about the trip was a blast, but I want to highlight two especially nice little moments…
For some reason, my phone’s GPS voice (which is probably the same as many of yours; I don’t have some kind of hip indie cell phone or navigation app) emphasizes the “TURN” in “U-TURN” (instead of the customary emphasis on the “U”), so when it says “Make a U-Turn!” it sounds like someone with an Italian accent saying “Make-a you turn!” So we had a lot of fun with that.
Just before we left the party on Saturday night, Maris and I got to catch up with our friend Alanna who lives very close to us, but for some reason we had an easier time meeting up with nearly 100 miles from home. Alanna is in the midst of an exciting career change, and she talked about it with so much enthusiasm that our conversation stuck in my brain and crowded out a little of the crusty industry pessimism that had taken hold. It is good to remember that our professional futures are our own, and if we don’t like what’s going on, we can shake things up without anyone’s permission! (I’ve gotten to do SO many fun things this year, but I’ve also felt a little creeping pessimism about the state of tv and comedy that maybe I’ll write more about in the future.)
On Sunday night, or as you may call it “last night,” Maris and I sat on our hotel’s little patio and had a drink and enjoyed the mostly-deserted ambiance of a vacation destination after the bulk of visitors had scuttled back to their real lives. Then this morning we enjoyed a low-traffic drive back home, as two people who do not have rigidly structured professional obligations at this moment.
Oh and! Last Thursday I got to see my friend record his new standup special, which was really lovely. So many comedians came to see the show, which is the mark of a beloved member of the community imo, and Myq’s new show, which he co-wrote with his girlfriend Rini, is so warm and sweet and generous and funny and WILDLY intricate in its construction! I’m excited for people to see it when it’s available to be seen! After the show, a very nice newsletter-reader came up to me and my friend Gary and said some nice things, which I will NOT be passing along, but I wanted to say here that it was nice of her to do so!
I’ve got a bunch of standup in Florida and also Atlanta coming up in a couple of weeks on the Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me standup tour! And I’m also doing live radio tapings for Wait Wait THIS THURSDAY in Minneapolis (which might be sold out) and 9/26 in Kansas City, which probably isn’t yet!
I’ve got some fun New York shows percolating that I’ll hopefully be able to say more about next week as well! And I’m realllly psyched to be in Denver 9/19-9/21 for the High Plains Comedy Festival. Oh plus a few dates after Thanksgiving that I’m very excited for but can’t say much about yet where I’ll get to work with very cool people!!! How’s that for a teaser?
If you don’t know who Chappell Roan is, I imagine you don’t know any people under thirty, or lesbians, (or of course lesbians under thirty). Over the past year she has rapidly ascended to the stratosphere of a group I don’t know if I can pull off calling “the pop girlies,” thanks to opening spots on Olivia Rodrigo’s tour, festival bookings, and a very fun album! Taylor Swift is rumored to be on the verge of releasing a collection of audio recordings of times she’s called to order pizza in hopes of bumping …Midwest Princess down the Billboard charts. (Just kidding, Swifties! Taylor doesn’t do things like that, and by that I mean order her own pizza by phone!)
Recently, Ms. Roan (if you’re nasty? does that work?) posted two videos and some text calling out fans for invasive behavior like stalking her family and touching her in public. My friend Kelsey McKinney wrote very thoughtfully about this already!
I am just chiming in to say: Chappell Roan, you are right! Being famous seems bad, and thanks to modern technology, it’s become bad in new and annoying (or evolved and annoying) ways! This is different from being rich, which seems fun as hell and has mostly (as far as I can tell) remained pretty enjoyable continuously throughout history with brief downturns for scattered beheadings or attempts to become culturally beloved and, say, host Saturday Night Live or be the president. (But the second thing is more about fame being bad than about money being not fun to have.)
Granted, fame, at least in terms of lots of people being willing to pay money for your art, gives you the ability to make more art, often in the way you want to make it. But if you don’t need a following to make a lot of money, the dream would be to be wealthy for doing something so boring no one ever wants to talk publicly about it or you. I imagine whoever owns the underground parking structures in New York City rakes in so much cash they could topple the federal reserve on a whim. But I don’t know who those people are. Because they are smart. Or at least lucky enough to have inherited valuable real estate beneath the earth’s surface, and savvy enough to not jeopardize that by letting us know who they are.
Being rich, while not a moral good, is more enjoyable than being broke. But being famous is not necessarily better than only being known by the people who you know back.
All that is to say, Chappell Roan, you make cool art. And people are willing to pay money to hear you perform it. But that doesn’t entitle them to grab you in public or go to your sister’s job and take pictures of her. Anyone who thinks it does has probably never stopped to consider that other people, even famous ones, are people. And they definitely have not had anyone grab them by surprise in an airport.
One spring while I was in high school, Sherman Hemsley and Pat Morita were starring in The Odd Couple at a small theater in my hometown. One of my teachers ran into one of the stars out and about in town and exclaimed: “George Jefferson!” Sherman Hemsley frowned and said: “Right now, I’m Sherman.”
It’s beautiful to connect with art. It’s nice to appreciate the people who make it. But outside of that context, it’s good to let them just be Sherman.
(Importantly, this pep talk is not my sneaky way to complain about being recognized in public, which happens on occasion, but almost never in the kind of scary and stressful way that Chappell Roan talks about. In part because I am, and this is true, not famous.)
PEP TALK FOR A READER
This request has been edited slightly for anonymity and to remove a nice compliment about me that I feel weird sharing as part of it!
My wife could use a pep talk as she heads back to school. This will be her 13th kindergarten class at an East African charter school in Minneapolis. She still loves teaching, and has become close with a lot of the families, but the administrative side of the position has become cumbersome and induces anxiety.
Still can't believe my governor has been Wilson from Home Improvement this whole time.
- Class Ack!
I’m not sure how many readers know this about me, or how many will just say “That makes sense!” when I divulge this piece of information, but I used to teach Pre-K for several years. It was a great job, and I only quit because I moved from Boston to New York to try and do full-time comedy type things! (Spoiler alert: It worked!) I really really appreciate and admire people who are career teachers. It’s such an important thing to do, which I mean in the least self-serving way possible given the previous few sentences, especially given how poorly we fund schools and how many absolute clowns are constantly trying to stop teachers from telling children anything about how the world actually is, and forcing them to pretend it’s the same world their parents pretended to live in 50-100 years ago.
I don’t know how helpful this pep talk will be, because it sounds like the non-classroom side of your wife’s job is a real hike up a muddy mountain, but her work is super, super important. And the fact that she likes half(ish) of the job is a true opportunity to exercise glass-being-roughly-fifty-percent-full optimism. Her job allows her (sometimes) to make meaningful connections and improve people’s lives. Some people never get that! They spend their entire professional existence denying people healthcare or telling kids where not to skateboard.
When I was teaching, our program was year-round, so the fall didn’t QUITE feel like a new beginning, and I did have a little bit of “here we go again” malaise every year, the same as when I was a student. But that feeling always dissipated once I met the new class of kids and got into a groove. Or as much of a groove as you can get into when the kids are still young enough that someone might still poop in the middle of the floor from time to time. There’s a good chance that at least SOME of the administrative stress will burn off when it’s just WORK and isn’t DREAD.
It is a shame that good teachers often get assigned more out-of-classroom work because they’re good with kids. It’s very much like the old Mitch Hedberg joke about “you’re a great cook…but can you farm?” And I don’t want to discount the fact that maybe a change of scenery would be helpful, but it’s not my job to suggest that kind of thing, and you didn’t ask for it! So, just know that I know that other jobs may exist. Cool?
Hopefully your wife’s school year will be more in balance than her work life has felt lately. But MORE than that, I hope that she’s able to cordon off the annoying parts of her work the way you set up a paper towel barrier on the table when there’s a spilled pitcher of juice. Even if the figurative glass is only 40% full (possibly because of some kind of metaphorical spill), that’s better than an Arnold Palmer of lemonade and rat poison, you know? Like, the good parts are good, and maybe she can skate by without the bad parts infecting them with their badness. What you’re she’s is good and important, except the parts that are annoying and important. And she deserves to feel good about it!
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Stevie Wonder - “Superstition”
A classic, obviously, but last weekend this came on at a party and my friend declared it her favorite song ever, and I thought why not show respect to an all-time groove in this week’s newsletter? So here it is!
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’ve got a bunch of NYC dates coming up, and then a few back on the road! See you there?!?!
So nice to see you here! I had a reasonably productive week, which made me feel satisfied and at ease for reasons I don’t love about myself, but what are you gonna do, you know?
I’m in “Sunrise, Sunset” mode with standup, meaning I'm almost done with an edit of my upcoming special (more news on that hopefully soon, but I’m really psyched about how it’s shaping up!!!) and I’ve been writing some new jokes that have started to click recently. That, to me, is the most fun part of the whole enterprise. Figuring out how to take an idea and squish it into the shape of a joke is such a fun creative challenge that’s different every time. And, in standup, a joke can take any form, which makes the whole project so open-ended and exhilarating (or if you catch me on a different week, lightly demoralizing).
I ended up doing a really fun mix of shows this week between a Saturday night spot at the Comedy Cellar, a set on my friends’ show A Place Upstate that they host in character as “The Cozy Brothers” and give advice about tick safety, and opening for my friend Natasha Vaynblat’s work in progress solo show “Childless Freak.” Oh! Right! I also read a great new short story that my friend Amy Silverberg published, and I took Maris to see (Bridget Everett’s Somebody Somewhere co-star) Jeff Hiller do a solo show at Joe’s Pub, and it was delightful. Speaking to the previously mentioned open-endedness of comedy, I go to see people work in so many different styles and perspectives, and it lit up my brain. (My friend Rose Kelso did an elaborate musical sketch that made me be like…I should try more new things!) Maybe I’ll have new and exciting ideas myself or maybe I’ll just enjoy the bright brain feeling and let that buoy the Regular Me Stuff that I’m doing. (With so many friends taking hour-long shows to the Fringe festival in Edinburgh this month, I did have an idea for something like that. Let’s see if I have the follow-through…or time…to do it!)
On Friday night I got to attend the album release party for my pals in the band Charly Bliss who put out their new record Forever on Friday day. They are such a great band and such sweet, generous people!!! I wrote the press bio for the record, and to get started I had an hour-long Zoom call with the group to talk about their process and what it meant to them to be recording and releasing a new album for the first time since before the pandemic. They talked so much about how special their relationships as bandmates are, and how free and thrilling this creative process was. They wrote the album across the world from each other (Eva, the lead singer, lives mostly in Australia now), and they really took their time to get the songs exactly how they want them. That’s a lesson I’m always trying to teach myself (not about songs, I don’t do those, but about other stuff). The album is full of perfect pop songs (I have described the sound of the record overall as Charly Rae Jepsen, if that means anything to you), and they’re going out on tour this September, so go see them if they’re in your area!!!
“I’ve never done that before and I don’t think I’ll ever do it again!” - Eva
On Sunday, Maris and I went to the Not Another Bomb rally at Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn, and it was heartening to see so many people come together to call for peace. Polling suggests that a Democratic candidate who supports an embargo on sending arms to Israel would do better in several swing states than one who doesn’t, so it’s both a moral and a political good! Just something to think about!
Also this week, I was on several more very fun podcasts!!
I’m on Lady Journey with Sarah Tollemache and Katie Hannigan just goofin’ around.
I return to The Gargle with Alice Fraser and Athena Kugblenu talking about non-election news.
I get into it on Aminatou Sow’s Pop Culture Debate Club, arguing with Maris whether audiobooks or hard copy books are better.
PEP TALK FOR TOMATOES
The devil’s cherries, as I call them.
Tomatoes, it’s your season. You’re ripe, and you’re in demand, like a bunch of little red Glen Powells. That means people are pulling you off of your vines, slicing you into thick, slimy slabs, and eating you on white bread with mayo. I mean, I’m not. I am a lifelong tomato hater. No offense, tomatoes. I love your work in salsa and ketchup and pizza sauce, but I’m just not a fan of your solo stuff. Too raw for me, I guess? Or maybe it’s the fact that at best you taste like someone made a hamburger patty out of a hundred slugs they just pulled out of the ocean. And at worst you taste like an apple that someone dunked in a bucket of poison.
Soon it will no longer be your best time of year. But get this: People will continue slicing you up and putting you on roast beef sandwiches and tuna sandwiches and turkey sandwiches and hamburgers and salads despite there being no good reason for it. Why are tomatoes so frequently mandatory? How are they not an opt-in ingredient more often? You should have to ask for them the way you ask for guacamole. And the server should warn you against your decision, not because tomatoes cost extra, just because they’re bad for so much of the year (including, in my opinion, even when they’re good).
Such is your (inexplicable) allure, tomatoes. People will consume you en masse year round, despite your being extra inedible for 3/4 of the year. That’s not bad.
Despite my constant protestations and complaints, you’re doing great. Congratulations, slug burgers.
I did just a little tweaking of this request for brevity!
Next year I will be marrying the love of my life (no pep-talk required there) but also moving from the US to his home in the UK. It’s all a bit overwhelming with trying to work out getting a visa and moving all my stuff overseas but also just the reality of living in a country where lots of things are just a little bit different. I need some encouragement that I can get all the logistics done and that it will be worth it. - Making A Brentrance
Congratulations on marrying the love of your life! In my experience, that’s the exact right person to marry! (I haven’t tried doing it another way, but I can’t imagine it coming out better.)
Moving is always such a hassle, even when you’re relocating to a place with largely similar customs, like going from Boston (American League Philadelphia) to Philadelphia (National League Boston). But moving across the sea? Oof. Not me. Not after what they did to my boy, The Titanic. Making that move to be with the love of your life, though? That sounds like quite an adventure…or as they spell it over there: adventoure.
You said you’re looking for encouragement about getting logistics done, which I can offer. Encouragement. I am not good at offering practical help with logistics. The last time I traveled out of town on my own, I waited until my opening act was onstage during our 10pm show to book myself a hotel that I checked into at 12am. I do a slightly better job planning ahead when Maris and I travel together, mostly because I do not want to come back from a trip with my wife as a newly single person.
That may seem beside the point, but it actually IS the point. These kinds of big picture plans can be challenging and expensive and frankly annoying to figure out. But figure it out you will. The love of your life will be across the Atlantic Ocean. And while you can no longer run through an airport to catch him before he leaves, you are going to also go to the airport and get on a plane and move into your new home in a new countryside (although I think over there they say cuntry and it’s not a big deal).
You can do it the easy way (working hard to get it done smoothly) or the hard way (taking it easy and doing a sloppy, stressful job). But either way you’re not not going to do it. You’ll make it to your new home whether your belongings arrive neatly packed in shipping containers, or crammed into a trash bag that you gate check at the airport while wearing nine sweaters in order to avoid paying an overweight bag fee.
I can’t say whether this will be “worth it,” but I can say that being with someone you love, even under strange new conditions (like living in a “flat”), is the kind of thing that can be worth it. I don’t really buy into the maxim of “relationships are hard,” but I do think that moving is hard and sometimes moving is relationships, you know? But if you’re talking about this relationship specifically, I can’t speak to it except for how excited you are (hooray!!) about the person if not the place (or the process of getting there).
I believe in your ability to make this as orderly and efficient a process as possible (even as I, myself, generally lack that skill). But the worst case scenario is that you do a terrible job of it, and what they don’t tell you about a terrible job is: It is still a job that you can do.
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Charly Bliss - “Last First Kiss” (Hey that rhymes!)
“It hurts to try, but it kills to miss/I want you to be my last first kiss” what’s sweeter than that!!! (Also I love the Moonstruck-ass lyric “Let’s fight like Italians.”) This song should be on the radio 100 times an hour! My nice pals! Listen to this song and all of Forever, which isn’t that long, ironically.
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’ve got a bunch of NYC dates coming up, and then a few back on the road! See you there?!?!
Not to brag, but we are currently experiencing one of the 25 days a year when the weather in New York City is beautiful. One week ago it was so hot and humid outside that I rented a Zipcar for two hours just to drive to the beach in the air conditioning and turn around immediately, because that was the only way I could make leaving the house feel bearable. Sorry, the environment. At least it was a Prius.
As many of you know, my wife and I have an extremely cute and elderly pug named Bizzy who dictates our schedules with an iron paw. Last month Bizzy celebrated her 17th birthday, and this week she’s been showing some signs of her age. We think/hope her recent creakiness is just a UTI (yes we have reminded her that she should pee after sex, but no we have not filled her water bowl with cranberry juice), so she’s on some meds now, but she’s been a much pickier eater than usual.
No one is having a brattier brat summer than this brat (who I would die for).
Because she has a (cute but not especially functional) flat face, she sometimes mushes her food against the walls of her bowl by accident. So a couple of nights ago I scooped the (gross, tbh) wallpaper paste she’d made out of her prescription wet food (okay, diva) from around the dish and offered it to her. Big mistake on my behalf because now she basically expects me to sit beside her and spoon-feed her at mealtimes. Our dog has gotten so old she is becoming a human infant. Unclear how we’ll handle it when she regresses further towards needing to be breastfed. Formula I guess?
I also watched both the men’s and women’s Olympic basketball gold medal games (USA vs. France in both instances), and it was pretty extraordinary to see so many legendary talents team up for the sake of such thrilling and benign nationalism. I got to cheer for Steph Curry and A’ja Wilson in championship games when they weren’t tearing my teams’ (2022 Celtics and 2023 Liberty respectively) souls from their bodies.
Maris and I also watched the medal rounds of men’s break(dance)ing, which was a lot of fun, and we guessed the wrong winner basically in basically every match, even after watching their routines. Breakdancing announcers, step your game up and give us some more technical info! I don’t have that much to say about the Australian breaker/professor Raygun, except that for the past three days I’ve been trying to make a joke about how they should call her Ronald Raygun because of the way her breaks turned half of America against her. I wasn’t able to make it clear enough that it was a play on Ronald Reagan’s tax breaks for the wealthy, so I didn’t ever make the joke…until now. That’s right, newsletter readers: You get to read the nearly-formed joke that I never really figured out. You’re welcome!
Last night, Maris and I saw newsletter favorites and pals Rainbow Girls play at City Winery. Their folky Americana-y harmonies sound so good live (which I knew from working on last year’s JoCo Cruise with them, but it’s good to know it translates to the land as well). See them if they’re in your town!!!
Also…I’ve been surprisingly busy with writing and talking recently, and here are some places I’ve been doing that (I’m behind on sharing a couple of these because of general forgetfulness and the relentless pace of the news):
Last Friday, I went onAll Of It on WNYC to give pep talks to the guest host and also several listeners. It was fun and unexpectedly intimate! I got some new subscribers after that, so hello new subscribers! I hope you like me written down as much as out loud!
I returned to the incredibly fun Hello From the Magic Tavernpodcast where I play a socially maladaptive squirrel named Fluff.
I was on the Low Culture Boil podcast with my friends Rax and Amber talking about Ben Affleck. We recorded before his latest round of forlorn looking pictures were released. All I have to say about those is that it’s deeply troubling to me that he’s embraced California culture by wearing a Red Hot Chili Peppers t-shirt. What’s next? A Dodgers hat? JOINING SUBLIME?
I talked about my elderly pug Bizzy’s daily routines (hopefully) in a soothing way for Jon Moe’s Sleeping With Celebritiespodcast.
I did a brief interview about the idea of “attitude” for the newsletter !
COMPLIMENT HALL OF FAME PT. II
Almost exactly a year ago back in That's Marvelous #41, I created the Compliment Hall of Fame, a repository of the greatest compliments that readers had ever received. Last week, I received a couple of unexpected and fortifying compliments from friends, and it sparked the idea to add another wing to the CHoF, so I put out a call for compliments on social media, and now here we are. The hope is that some people will feel seen by these kind words, or add them to their own repertoire of things to appreciate in friends, family, colleagues, lovers, and maybe even rivals. If you have a favorite compliment you’ve received in the past that you’d like to add to the Hall of Fame but didn’t get a chance to, just leave it in the comments!
I’ve tried to leave the compliments formatted as close to the the way I received them as I could, but a few emojis got lost in the transfer from social media to newsletter. I included most but not all of the compliments that I received. It’s still so many, but there were so many good ones!
Okay, let’s do this!!!
COMPLIMENTS ABOUT CHARACTER
“you have a beautiful sense of justice”
In college, a friend of mine told one of our other friends (who was going through a difficult time) "Kelli is the best person to be around when you're feeling unstable" and it made me feel so valuable
A new friend years ago realized I was single at the time and blurted out, "That has to be a mistake! Somebody like you, alone??? Whatever's in charge of the universe forgot to wind someone up."
A sailor I was dating in Japan emailed my mom and told her I "walk into every room with maximum aplomb" we're still friends 20 years later.
Once I was eating lunch outside at a restaurant alone on the upper East side. An older woman walked by, stopped and said “I love a woman who can enjoy a meal by herself. It’s fabulous, good for you!” It made me feel like such a badass lol
Someone - who didn’t even really like me, lol - once said of me, “Miranda’s laughter ignites a room. She isn’t the flame. She is the start of the fire.” One of my favorite compliments I’ve gotten.
My therapist once told me I was a great conversationalist!
I once heard a friend in high school tell other friends about me: "it's a pleasure to talk to him - he knows a lot, is generous with his time and he listens." As I was deep in late-teenager depression at the time, I still carry it with me and try to be the same as then.
A very nice, wonderful woman I once worked with told me that I was a mensch. And then she was thoughtful enough, knowing that I'm not Jewish, to ask "You know what a 'mensch' is, right?" I said that I had a good idea of it and that she flattered me and she said "That's what a mensch would say."
After our TIFF Q&A for LIVING, Aimee Lou Wood -- who is basically human sunshine as well as a brilliant actor -- said I was the nicest person she met in all of Canada. I'll take that to my grave.
My 2nd grade teacher gave me a little award for “generosity of spirit” and I think about it often, I want to always be that way!
One thing that struck me about these recollections is how many of them came from so long ago. Our culture focuses a lot on how past trauma informs the way people think of themselves, but it’s cool to be reminded that the opposite thing can happen as well. You can hear something good about yourself or have a positive interaction that informs the way you think of yourself. It doesn’t fit the narrative structure quite if Don Draper grows up into a capable ad exec because he has parents who praise his persuasive writing and authoritative charisma from a young age, but that kind of thing is (I have to imagine) a lot of how people find out what they’re skilled at end enjoy doing. It’s also the basis of one of my favorite Instagram accounts.
I love seeing all the different things people can appreciate about one another and what sticks with different people. Maximum aplomb? That’s a lot of aplomb. (Technically, it’s the most aplomb possible.) My eyebrows shot up reading that because it’s not something I’ve ever thought to say about someone. Or maybe I’ve never met anyone with quite so much aplomb. But even so, someone reaching the penultimate heights of aplomb would certainly stick out, no? I should really be more vigilant about these things.
I fill in as an interim executive director at senior living communities around the country until a permanent one is hired. At my last place I sent an email out letting the residents know that an ED had been hired. One of the residents I’d formed a friendly relationship with emailed to say that he was sorry they’d be losing me and then told me how I’d helped the community. It meant a lot.
My last day at work a couple of jobs ago, one of my co-workers (nice, but I didn't know particularly well) looked and me and said they'd miss me, because I made every day feel like I was hosting a dinner party and made everyone feel like an honoured guest.
A previous job terminated people immediately if they put in their two weeks’ notice and said they were going to a competitor. When I did that, they had me work the full two weeks because “well, we trust *you*” I really could have used a two week break, even if it was unpaid! (Josh’s note: BOOOO this employer!)
I once told my boss I wasn't sure if I was ready for the promotion I was up for and they said "I mean, you're smart and a good writer, you'll be fine" and I think about that almost every day.
I was DJing at a music festival recently and an older woman came up to tell me “Thank you for giving me something I didn’t know I needed” and that felt awfully special
As a manager, my favorite compliment is closing shift coming in and being visibly disappointed that I’m not closing with them
I have been a teacher, mostly at the university level, for many years. A student in one of my classes wrote this (anonymously) in my teaching evaluation: “Dr. Kimmerer can explain anything about anything to anyone.” I have tried to live up to that.
Someone I admire took time to write me after I facilitated a two-day, 35 person meeting that I epitomized “servant leadership.” That went right on the resume!
Been a hairstylist for 17 years. A client I'd known since he was a child came out to me as trans when he was ~15. He trusted me with this information before many of his own family members, because he felt safe. I have never felt better about my career than at that moment.
It’s lovely how many of these work compliments aren’t just about technical skill and how many of them encompass essential human qualities like trustworthiness and warmth and generosity. Not that everyone has to be a life coach or a therapist or a party planner at every moment at work. Just that it’s nice to know that people are noticing your excellent qualities whenever they’re on display. But also: You are good at your job is good for supervisors to recognize. As long as they’re not leveraging that to make you pick up the slack for everyone else. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, BOSSES MENTIONED IN ONE OF THESE COMPLIMENTS!
I read a long time ago that the doctors who receive the most malpractice complaints aren’t the ones who mess up the most; they’re the ones with the worst bedside manner. That really stuck with me, the realization that if someone likes you enough they won’t even be that mad if you sew up their chest cavity with a latex glove still inside them. More people take this fact (or fake fact I’m misremembering) into account in their day to day lives. Just be cool and most of the time people will be cool with you. A similar professional principle I exploited when I was a preschool teacher many years ago is that on the days I was the most tired, I dressed the nicest, so people would notice my tie and not the equally dangly bags under my eyes.
COMPLIMENTS ABOUT KIDS
Years ago the lady at the ice cream shop told me my kids had very good manners and I've been feeding off that emotion ever since.
At the ER with my croupy kid and the nurses asked me if I was also a nurse (I am not)
“You guys are like a gentle parenting podcast,” from our nanny who used to do early intervention programs helping other families of autistic kids. I cried.
When my kid was 6, their first grade teacher took me aside and said, "your child is the one that makes sure to be friends with the kids that the other kids don't want to be friends with." Best compliment I've ever heard.
I was out walking w/a smart and accomplished neighbor, with our dogs and my kid in a stroller, and a super fit woman jogged by. I lamented that I couldn't ever be like that; she responded, simply, "you are a mother and an intellectual." And yeah, that has low-key sustained me ever since.
I don’t have any children, but I imagine if I did I would be extremely moved by anyone saying anything nice about them or my parenting. After all, parenting is a difficult skill and kids are like a sequel to your genes. So it’s like people saying: You’re so good at being you, I’m glad you made another you. I already take any compliment about how cute my dog is as absolute validation of something I did right, even though I’m not her biological father, and her appearance has nothing to do with my genetics.
COMPLIMENTS FROM KIDS
When I was a teacher, a little girl in another class came up to me and asked me if I was Ms. Frizzle. I was so flattered!
When I worked in daycare and helped a 4yo after he used the toilet, he told me I was really good at wiping butts.
Got fresh highlights and poofy hairstyle. Group of 4 teen boys. 1 said I looked “like a beautiful blonde Sonic the Hedgehog”
My 5 yr old nephew once told me “you’re not a real adult” and that’s the highest compliment I’ve ever received
I had a very stylish teen (who I didn't know) tell me once that my pants were "stunnnninnnnng" and whenever I need a pick-me-up I think of it
The best compliment I ever got was my middle school class getting on their feet and cheering when I came back after a sick day. You want ME, over a sub you can mess with all day?? Huge.
A compliment from a kid isn’t always as sophisticated as one from an adult, but usually comes right from the heart. Little kids are too young to understand the utility of flattery, and teenagers don’t care about adults’ opinions enough to lie.
COMEDIC COMPLIMENTS
a comedian told me I had a great joke and currently uses it in his set, which feels very similar to a lot of the responses here so far but the difference is that I’m not a comedian! so it was a big day for me
I took an improv class in college (I went to theater school). The teacher, Martin deMaat, who had helped start the Second City training center, told me I had a knack for making a dying scene funny again.
A comedy friend told me he did a bit of mine in a convenience store. One of the clerks was drinking a soda, and when she heard the joke, she did an actual spit take.
As a (let’s say) professionally funny person, I think it’s important to give credit to people who are getting laughs for the love of the game, and not to share later on Instagram or TikTok. Getting laughs at the store is also every dad’s aspiration so congratulations on becoming an Apex Dad whether or not you have children!
EXTREMELY SPECIFIC COMPLIMENTS
Was wearing a piece of jewelry (costume, my grandmother’s) and my friend admired it and I said “it’s costume!” and she looked into my soul and said, contemplatively, “fake stuff looks real on you.”
My high school guidance counselor told me I reminded him of Gracie Allen. I don’t know if it was supposed to be a compliment, but I took it as one, as she’s my comedic hero (along with Jack Benny - I’m an old soul).
About 25 yrs ago one of my best friends wrote in an email “you are always impressing me” and it absolutely made me feel like I could walk on water then and still does
"I bet when you were in school, recess was your least favorite class. Because you don't play, man."
A friend once told me I have "such a finely honed sense of the absurd" and I don't think anyone has ever described my brain better.
In line at the grocery store, the couple behind me complimented my shirt. I said "thanks my girlfriend made it", which was true. They said, "you seem like you’re smart enough to appreciate how lucky you are".
Someone just told me they think I swim beautifully.
“I really like learning things with you”
Excuse me, are you Brazilian?
hi josh, i spent a semester studying in puebla, mexico & had apparently picked up the local accent. one night i was talking w/ my host sister's boyfriend & he said (in spanish) "you sound like a poblana!" that was one of the best compliments i ever got
Today my friend told me i’m “really good at going to the zoo”
I had blood drawn recently, and when the phlebotomist started, she yelled “You’ve got those ideal veins!” Then as she was finishing the blood draw: “That’s some BEAUTIFUL blood, baby!”
Years ago good pal Jake Weisman told me I wore flowers in my hair really well and I think about it still!
Decades ago on LiveJournal, users could have multiple avatars (“icons”) and pick which to use for each post based on mood, topic, etc. Someone told me I had the funniest icon keywords they’d ever seen and I never forgot it. You don’t expect to be appreciated for the lil jokes in your icon keywords!
I was told I was the « cleanest person at burning man » (I didn’t want to be there but this kept me going)
I once got mentioned in the "I Spy" section of the local alt weekly (our town’s version of missed connections kind of thing) by a gal who noticed me at a show, and called me a "Furtive glance magnet" and I will ride high on that compliment to my grave.
We’ve got some great off-menu compliments going on here. It’s always, in my experience at least, a thrill to realize you’re great at something you hadn’t even intended to master, or something you’re proud of but you didn’t know that anyone else was tracking. Like, I know I’m pretty decent at the stuff I work hard at and talk about all the time (although I will still accept praise for that, OBVIOUSLY) but receiving credit for a less obvious skill or trait is like the onion ring in your french fries of the human experience. I guess finding an onion ring in your french fries is also a human experience, but it’s more human-on-carb rather than human-on-human.
I will never forget the time a drag queen told me, “You are so fucking pretty.”
I was at a happy hour for a young professional event (circa 2007) where Toms founder Blake Mycoskie was speaking. I happened to chat with him a bit and he told me I looked like Anne Hathaway and had similar mannerisms. My 26-year old self died a bit inside
I was the first female geek squad agent at the best buy I worked at and one of the customers told me I was too pretty to be a geek. Boy, was she wrong.
someone called me “pretty” this past week, and I realized that was the first time I’ve ever been called pretty. It meant the world to me.
'You look so beautiful' because I've only been told that once, 20 years ago & I still think about it from time to time
My friend in high school went to a wizard rock show and her mom said “your eye shadow is way too well blended for this crap”
this isn’t the best compliment but definitely one of the most unique: at a plastic surgeons office (i was getting botox) a woman asked me if my nose was “real” because it suited my face so well?? if anyone knew a good nose, it was someone who worked in a plastic surgeons office!
"If you liked guys, you'd be the perfect bear."
Was joking with a girl I'd just met about dating her brother and she said, with great sincerity, "You're so beautiful! I can't wait for you to date my brother!"
an old lady i was briefly caring for in a friend’s absence said, when i first opened the door, “i’m staring into the face of god” i identified as an atheist and she was in full dotage, but still!
Someone once told me I was the spitting image of a young James Spader while I was tending bar at a hotel
Someone pointed at a screen on which Aishwarya Rai was appearing in the 1990s bollywood film Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and said "oh, she looks like you". this was probably 13 years ago but you bet your ass I remember it
"Wow, you look like Sandra Bullock in Miss Congeniality!"
I have dark auburn hair and used to wear Betty page bangs and once some redneck in the city with his fam looked at me with disgust and said “hello ELVIRA” while steering his baby’s stroller away from me like I would infect it with glamour I was sooo honored. Like my hair isn’t black and I’m not goth but!! She’s a queen so I’ll take it!!
35 years ago, while I was wearing my Navy-issued winter dress coat over my dress uniform, someone told me I looked like Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. Pretty much best compliment ever!
My ex is a Lord of the Rings fan and she said that my “elegant” features and pixie cut made me look like an “elf, but gay.” Queer Cate Blanchett! I treasure it!
There are so many ways to look good, and I think we hit many of the big ones: gay elf, drag queen-approved, big guy, congruous nose, brother-appropriate, celebrity lookalike, hot nerd. We’ve covered many, if not all, of the bases, some of which I didn’t realize were bases at all until this morning.
MORE SPECIFIC COMEDY COMPLIMENTS
Todd Barry told Greg Johnson I was funny while I was on stage at Rififi.
“You gotta see Anthony Atamanuik on Colbert; he talks about how he developed the impersonation of Trump, and it’s really good. It’s like a trailer from a master class on how to impersonate someone.” Catherine O’Hara said this in an interview and I love SCTV more than life itself. [Josh’s note: For context, this came from Anthony Atamanuik.]
One time at work Anthony Atamanuik casually mentioned my “elite Soviet face” then just moved on like it was a normal thing we all already had discussed
Some extremely inside baseball (or otherwise Atamanuik-intensive) comedy compliments here, so I thought they deserved their own little section. A Catherine O’Hara compliment is so legendary, as is a secondhand compliment from Todd Barry, a great comedian with high standards.
POTENTIALLY BACKHANDED COMPLIMENTS (I DUNNO, YOU DECIDE)
A guest at my wedding was impressed that the event was “financially responsible”
My dentist told me I was too young to be losing my molars.
The best compliment I’ve ever received was in high school where someone said “you’re too damn nice to hate and I hate you for it”…. However, I’ve also been told “Brendan, I don’t think you’ll ever be a good person”, so I’ve got my bases covered
“When it comes to movies and books, I never know what you’re going to like.”
Once had a coworker tell me I dressed “like a celebrity who’s trying to dress like a normal person” and I definitely took that as a compliment
A posh, elderly lady told me, "You have the posture of someone much better dressed."
In college a Lithuanian dude at a party told me I looked like "long-haired bad guy from American high school movie"
was told I was "like the male ms.frizzle" and i think it was meant disparagingly ab my appearance, but the group i was with all started agreeing & adding bits of context on my love of learning & cosmic garb & supportive nature & i felt so celebrated & uplifted, totally backfired
I was once told I was “annoyingly likable” by a friend, which I took as a compliment at the time. Honestly, it’s pretty on the nose.
“You are Valium in human form”
"You're stronger than you look."
My wife once told me that I'd ruined her for all normal human men.
my best friend once told me "for someone as smart as you are, you have the worst sense of direction of anyone i've ever met" and I just thought it was nice to have my intellect recognized while also being number one at something
Wow these really ride the line between beautiful and brutal. It’s a truly incredible feat of optimism by this newsletter’s readers to interpret some of these statements as compliments at all. “You have the posture of someone much better dressed,” in particular would make me throw out my entire wardrobe while still standing up a little bit straighter (if that’s even possible given my already impeccable posture in this scenario). I have nothing but respect for the level of self-esteem that makes a generous takeaway from that utterance possible.
A COMPLIMENT I’M NOT POSITIVE IS REAL, BUT SURE WHY NOT?
I work in a medical examiner’s office. a mother showed up looking for her deceased son’s cock ring (we didn’t have it). she told me her son would’ve loved my hair color and my kindness towards her. she called later to say she found his ring in a drawer
I have no idea if this is a real story or a prank or the plot of a Six Feet Under episode, but I am absolutely not going to google “dead guy cock ring mother” to find out. I love that in this story the grieving mother had the presence of mind to be kind to the people in the medical examiner’s office and to follow up so they wouldn’t waste time looking for an already-recovered piece of intimate jewelry.
Two Tree Hill is a super funny musical comedy group. I recently got to perform at their show Don’t Stop I’m About To Jazz (co-hosted by hilarious pal Rose Kelso) where comedians perform over a jazz accompaniment, and I had a GREAT time and couldn’t recommend seeing it more. “Awesome School” is a very catchy and funny comedy-ska song that will get stuck in your head and destroy your brain from the inside, but in a good way. I can’t recall hearing too many comedy songs that are ska, which I think is a mistake because the trombone is one of the funniest musical instruments on its own.
Oh one more little recommendation: My friend Adam Pally has a new tv show on Peacock that co-stars the aforementioned Steph Curry (who very graciously raised awareness of the show by playing out of his mind in the Olympic medal round) as well as Ego Nwodim and Ayden Mayeri! It’s called Mr. Throwback and I’m enjoying it a lot!
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’ve got a bunch of NYC dates coming up, and then a few back on the road! See you there?!?!
It’s been quite an eventful week! Not for me personally, but more people than usual seem to be winning Olympic medals lately. (Has anybody looked into that?) Maris and I got immersed in Saturday’s coverage (rowing, another dominant Katie Ledecky victory, men’s gymnastics) and realized that not only are we not qualified to compete in the games, for some of the more technical events we’re not even qualified to watch them. Is a twist worth more points than a flip? How much run of the mill horse stuff does a dressage horse get to do before it gets penalized?
Last week, social media was full of talk about which Olympic sport people thought they could give the most credible performance at. (For my part, I say vault! I wouldn’t do anything impressive, but I think I could make it over cleanly and maybe do like one somersault or something and people would be like “oh maybe he pulled his hamstring on the way over but he still gave a valiant effort because he has the heart of a champion.” Or maybe something slightly less grandiose.) But while we were watching over the weekend, Maris and I became curious about which competition we’d give the most dreadful showing in.
I would break the embarrassing possibilities into three categories…
Things you just physically can’t do. This to me might be the most purely humiliating category for me. Just the idea of struggling to mount a horse or pull myself up on a set of rings as my allotted time bleeds out makes me want to burrow into the earth like a prairie dog.
Events where you’d visibly get your ass handed to you by the other competitors. Races, tennis (both table and land). Enormous potential here to be memorialized in a truly demoralizing photograph or video clip.
Competitions that actively endanger your life. I’d say this is less embarrassing and more terrifying. Sure, you’d earn ridicule for life by shooting a quiver full of arrows* wide of your target. But flying off a ski jump and coming apart like a rock ‘em sock ‘em robot is inarguably a worse outcome. Boxing and bobsled are other entrants into this category (as members of my childhood friend group chat have pointed out). *Maris says (and I agree) that the gun shooting events are maybe the least upsetting to completely biff because it’s like bang bang bang done, and it all looks the same except there are no holes in the paper at the end.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Maris said she’d most fear the humiliation of having to skateboard, and that makes a lot of sense. Anything with specialized equipment and all the attention on you is a recipe for disaster. But I think my most dreaded event would be a gymnastics floor routine. You’re just out there for SO long by yourself, and I have NO skills. Fifteen seconds in, I’d be resorting to the Macarena and/or failing to do The Worm.
Maris also brought up any race where there would be a picture of you several meters behind the rest of the field as a terrible option. And that sounds bad for sure. But imo in a short enough race (100 meter dash for example) even if you set an all-time low mark for the Olympics, you’re still only a few seconds behind everyone else. It’s not like a marathon, where they’re taking down the mile markers and cleaning up at the finish line, while you’re still running through the city for an hour and a half.
What do you think? Which Olympic event would you most fear being compelled to compete in?
Also last week I went to see The Mountain Goats with my friend Robert, and we had a great time. I had never seen them live before, despite (as someone on Twitter or Bluesky pointed out) I look like my whole deal is always going to see The Mountain Goats when they are in town. This is maybe the longest time I’ve spent being a fan of a band before seeing them in person. I got into the group the summer after my sophomore year in college when I was living on campus and didn’t have a lot of friends around, but I became acquaintances with a young woman who worked at the cafe in the student center and had a show on the school’s radio station. One day she played “This Year” off of the newly-released Sunset Tree album, and I was like…oh hell yeah what is this it really captures my vibe these days. It was like a scene from a movie. I think I went out and found the album on CD after that. So thanks, Jess, who I think I am still Facebook friends with maybe?
The next night (after last Wednesday, not after that summer day in 2005), Maris and I attended a performance that included a magician with strong Christian Rock energy. It’s weird to do motivational speaking and magic at the same time, because one of those things is always going to be a lie, so why would I trust the other one? I was recognized several times at the Mountain Goats show but not at all at the other show, which involved standup comedy as well as inspirational magic. This means (I think) that my demographic is “guys who like the same bands as I do” more than it is “comedy fans” which honestly sounds about right.
On Saturday we went to a little party (Happy birthday to Elphie, a perfect dog!), and Alison Leiby and I hosted an incredibly fun Sup, Bro? show at Union Hall. Thanks to everyone who came and to Adam Conover, Brittany Carney, Shalewa Sharpe, and Emmy Blotnick for crushing. Maybe we will be doing these more regularly in the future? STAY TUNED!
One last description of a day: On Friday I was supposed to perform in Jamestown, NY at part of the Lucille Ball Comedy Festival. As you can tell by the “supposed to” … I did not make it to Western NY. (I was a last-minute fill-in, and an even last-er minute cancellation due to weather.) I woke up at 6am to see that my flight had been delayed by two hours. Then, on my way to JFK (the airport, not the dead guy), I got a follow-up notification that said PSYCH! WE’RE ACTUALLY LEAVING 70 MINUTES EARLIER THAN WE TOLD YOU! So I missed that flight, and transferred to a later one, which was delayed by 90 minutes and then cancelled. In the interim I went to the Palm restaurant which from the outside seems wildly decadent, and on the inside does feature the airport’s most comfortable chairs, which is the nicest thing I can say about the food. After my flight got cancelled I walked all the way across the terminal to the help desk where I was told that no flights leaving that day would get me to my destination in time. The very lovely festival organizers asked me if I could make it from JFK to LaGuardia to catch a later, last ditch effort flight, which I did! I took a cab from airport to airport and got on a plane which sat on the tarmac for over two hours because of nearby storms and then returned to the gate. At that point, I’d missed my show, and I got in a cab home. While I was on the way to my apartment, my friend Neena called me, which was very nice and cheered me up as I concluded my 11-hour travel day that took me roughly 25 miles from home in total. Hopefully I’ll see you soon, Buffalo area!!! Sorry I didn’t make it out your way last weekend.
One place I WILL be going soon (weather permitting) is Denver, Colorado! I’m performing in this year’s High Plains Comedy Festival this September alongside a TON of my favorite comedians! I’ve never performed in Denver before, and I can’t wait! There are still some festival passes for sale if you want to see a bunch of shows, which why wouldn’t you?
If a storm stops me from getting to these shows I will forever forsake the sky!
Okay that’s enough out of me for now! On to the rest of the newsletter…which, yes, I also wrote. It’s a different thing though. I will not be explaining how.
PEP TALK FOR A FALLEN POLE VAULTER
Anthony Ammirati faced an impeendiment to success.
With all the disgusting, transphobic talk about people’s genitalia and what that means for their athletic performance at these Olympics, one athlete did actually have the results of their competition influenced by their sexual organs. A French pole vaulter named Anthony Ammirati seemed poised to clear the bar until—and let me try to put this as politely as I can—his big floppy dick knocked the fucking thing over.
This isn’t the first instance of a guy’s penis ruining his life; I know several men who have accomplished that feat. But it is the most notable instance of someone’s Olympic performance being derailed by a length of pipe since Nancy Kerrigan was assaulted in 1994. (Shout out to hometown hero Nancy Kerrigan. Out of loyalty to her, my parents refused to watch the movie I, Tonya, and I think that’s beautiful.)
Look, Anthony (or as I now call you: “Tone the Bone”), you’ve probably been training your whole life for this moment, and to have your vault ruined by your own pole must be painful, both emotionally and physically. But instead of achieving your dream of becoming an Olympic medalist in the pole vault whose name nobody knows, you have accidentally become the most famous active pole vaulter on the planet. And the way you went out has got to open up some new possibilities for your career. Maybe you could appear in an ad for baguettes. Or at the very least, you could learn a better tucking strategy on a very special episode of Ru Pole’s Drag Race.
Congratulations on your future of living high off falling low off the hog.
I’ve done a little condensing of this request for brevity and such!
Hi Josh,
Things have been tough since my partner and I got married. It's only been two months, but it feels like so much longer because of everything that's been happening. We moved to a new area last year, and we hardly know anyone here. Plus, my partner didn't have a job lined up and still hasn't found one. The financial stress is really getting to us, and we fight about money a lot. Our rent is way too high, and it feels like everything is just piling up.
On top of that, we don't really have a community here. We feel so isolated, and it's been hard to find our place. I can't help but feel sad and wonder if we made a mistake. But at the same time, I know we left the big city for good reasons; it was so stressful. I just need some words of encouragement or advice.
- F
F is right, as in “F this.” Two good months in a marriage pass by like a single sweet gust of a cool spring breeze. Two bad relationship months can make it feel like a rhinoceros has been standing on your head since the day you were born. (I think that’s what e = mc squared means.) But! It’s only been two months so far, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the commitment you just made to be together until at least one of you dies, an option I do not recommend for fixing this current situation. It’s probably also a relatively short stretch compared to the balance of how long you’ve been together, which counts for something too. I’m sorry you’ve hit the “richer or poorer” part of the vows so early, but here you are! Maybe it’s good to get it out of the way right up front?
Money stress is so acute, and what makes it trickier than other kinds of relationship issues, is that the real solution is often just having more money, which you can’t decide to do without someone…paying you money or giving it to you. I guess you could find some kind of mythically accurate treasure map that you’re able to follow as a couple, but that doesn’t happen so much these days (is anyone looking into this?).
It sounds like you and your partner get along much better when you are both employed, which is understandable. And that situation will come to pass again. Most of the time most people who need jobs have jobs. Chances are, at some point, your partner will find a job and the not-enough-money issues you’re having now will turn into (at worst) we-could-still-use-a-little-more-money-but-we’re-making-it-work problems. Not ideal, but a massive upgrade, in my opinion.
In terms of craving community, that’s something you can start working on…whenever. And you may have to do some work. Here’s the problem with looking for community in a place you just moved: The people you live near have it already. They don’t need new friends because all their friends are right there. You happened to set up your brand new friendship shop on a block where everybody gets their friendship from the local mom and pop on the corner. That’s not to say you won’t be welcomed and given the opportunity to sew yourself tightly into the fabric of your new home in the long run. But you will for sure have a better time cultivating the kinds of relationships you’re looking for if you are proactive.
You left the big city because it was stressful, but you’ve leapt from one stressful situation into another because without the aforementioned treasure chest full of money, life is full of stressors and complications and setbacks. But you and your partner are teammates in this struggle to achieve just a shot glass full of lukewarm American Dream. You’ve got each other, and you can build outward from there!
Also, obviously, you can break up if you want. I’m not a never break up guy. But two months of money trouble and moving to a new place all at once seems like the call is coming from outside the house, and you can figure this out. But what the hell do I know? Not even you or your partner’s full name!
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Snail Mail - “Tonight, Tonight”
The great D.C. Pierson alerted me (via an Instagram story) to this excellent cover of the Smashing Pumpkins classic, which I think legitimately qualifies as “classic rock” at this point. (Sorry, people my age! We’re old now!) It’s a song that I have loved for years, even though every time I hear the lyric “we’ll crucify the insincere” I chuckle to myself and think: “Okay, that’s a bit much isn’t it Billy?”
Another great new thing is that my friend David Gborie of the All Fantasy Everything and My Momma Told Me podcasts has put out his first hour-long special which you can purchase on his Patreon. David is so loose and present in the room with the audience, and the way it’s shot in a small room in the round, with the whole crowd right up on David gives the whole piece a fight club level of intensity. The cutaway shots from directly above his head showing him surrounded by the audience are really cool and striking! I recommend it!
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’ve got a bunch of NYC dates coming up, and then a few back on the road! See you there?!?!
Since testing negative for covid, my week practically crackled with possibility and adventure. I did an extremely fun bit with my friend Demi Adejuyigbe at his sold out show warming up for the Edinburgh Fringe festival. If you happen to be in Scotland next month, check out Demi’s show! Or my friend Andrew Mayer’s show! Or my buddies in Ladies Who Ranch! Or the great Cat Cohen! (There are a zillion great shows happening! I don’t have the time or knowledge recommend them all!) Demi’s show is incredibly inventive, and he’s so wildly talented at so many facets of writing and performance! I was really inspired watching him, and I had so much fun goofing around with the little improvised bit we did. Thanks, Demi!
On Wednesday I got to tell some jokes on my friend Gary Gulman’s sold out show at Union Hall! Gary also blows me away with his writing and performance. In all honesty, I sometimes worry that people will catch on to the fact that 50% of what I’m doing onstage is just ripping off Gary, but lazy (the other 50% is ripping off Mike Birbiglia, but boring). Longtime newsletter readers may be familiar with this late night set of Gary’s that I’ve shared before. Master class shit!
I came away from those shows positively exhausted by my old thoughts, and ready to dig in and start working on new standup! AND I have a new cut of my special to watch. I’m really psyched about how it’s coming together! Woo!
Maris and I also had some great meals out for various celebrations. Our friend Jesse had a birthday party at the new (temporary?) Mission Chinese popup in Chinatown, and then our friends Jason and Emily curated a New England vs. Chicago (classic rivals) menu for a Shabbat(ish) Dinner at Gertie’s in Williamsburg, which included, among other dishes, Chicago-style latkes!
Jeremy Allen White would go insane trying to replicate these bad boys.
The event was largely secular, but I was sitting next to a cool young rabbi, and when someone described Shabbat as less about religion and mostly about togetherness, she did go: “Hmm!” which made me laugh. More importantly, though…everything was VERY tasty.
On Saturday my friends Maggie and Michael picked me up in a car, and we drove to Western Massachusetts for a private gig. We learned when we arrived that the woman who booked us had done so as a surprise for this party of friends who meet up once a year in the Berkshires (and would not tell us how they knew each other). So we were performing a full standup show to an audience who did not know a standup show was about to happen. This is, to use a little insider term, not ideal.
Comedy is like a massage. If someone asks you for it, it can be an extremely enjoyable experience. But it is not something you should inflict upon them without their explicit consent (although unlike recording a Major League Baseball game you don’t need express written consent). The crowd ended up being very polite and ultimately appreciative, but the best part of the gig was the road trip up and back, and how good the pizza at the venue was. (The staff was also extraordinarily kind and helpful.)
And Sunday I had another super fun show and drinks with my friend Max who lives nearby. Plus I did some podcasts and other lightly professional things that don’t make for great newsletter fodder yet. Now I am tired on a Monday morning, but in a good did-a-lot-of-stuff way instead of a sloggy illness way, and that’s a huge turnaround.
ANYWAY, Alison Leiby and I just added the great Adam Conover to our show at Union Hall in Brooklyn this Saturday at 10pm. It’s going to be so much fun! Emmy Blotnick, Shalewa Sharpe, and Brittany Carney will be telling jokes too!
See you there, bros!
Grab a ticket! Hear some new jokes from me and Alison, and some great pre-existing jokes from the other comics!
PEP TALK FOR J.D. VANCE
The loser energy radiates from this guy like heat waves. Bill Pugliano/Getty Images
Look at how far you’ve come. You started off fake poor, and now you’re one of America’s premiere fake populists. With your recent addition to the Trump presidential ticket, the whole country knows you, and they fuckin’ hate you, dude. According to a recent CNN/SSRS poll, you have a 28% favorability rating, which is basically the Rotten Tomatoes score for one of Tyler Perry’s non-Madea movies where the point is that getting divorced gives you hepatitis or something.
You could have simply been a rich twerp who went to law school at Yale and never stops talking about it. You could have settled for selling your family out in your best-selling memoir (Dipshit Sonata, I think it was called). You could have said dayenu (Jewish for, “knock it off, already”) when you became a U.S. Senator. Sadly, you did what we encouraged all children to do, and really shot for the moon. You did not land among the stars, however; you found yourself wedged penis-first in a piece of furniture.
You’ve landed directly in the field of vision of the public eye, and the public does not like what it sees. Last week a rumor that your book included a passage about having sex with a couch became so prevalent that the Associated Press had to run an article stating that you did NOT actually make love to a loveseat, which they had to walk back because no one could effectively prove that you didn’t, at some point, engage in the act of sexual intercouch. Whether or not it’s true, it doesn’t speak highly of your public image that people heard this rumor, saw your face, and thought…I know the book was loosely and offensively about the struggle many people face with opioid addiction, but now my dominant impression is that this creep is positively hooked on cushion pushin’. Do they have rehab for that?
I want you to think back three weeks, J.D. Return in your mind’s eye to a time when people vaguely knew your name and face and reputation. But they hadn’t heard you say that your political opponents are lonely miserable cat ladies. They maybe didn’t know you were an anti-choice zealot in a way that is out of step with both public opinion and medical good. Or that you think people should get to cast proxy ballots in national elections based on how many children they have. Before even Donald Trump who just selected you as his running mate was rumored to be looking for ways to get rid of you like a high school senior figuring out how to dump her boyfriend before leaving for college.
Think back to those heady times, back in early July, when most people didn’t know what a creepy sexist weirdo you are. It must have felt like the sun’s warmth shining down on Icarus, just before the first bead of wax melted away from his wings, alerting the people below about his impending plummet from the sky.
Obviously no result in November’s election or beyond is even close to assured. But you are effectively running as the giant dead bird on a Mariner/Albatross 2024 ticket. You’d come so far without your horrible personality and opinions being a hindrance to you. That’s a real success story. You had everything but this, but you wanted everything. But with any luck (for all of us) you’ll recede gently from the public eye the way you allegedly removed yourself, flacidly from a sofa.
PEP TALK FOR READERS
Hey at least no matter how badly your last week went, there was no nation-wide rumor about you, a couch, and one unforgettable night. You’ve got that going for you!
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Kanye West - “Gone” (But just the Cam’ron verse!)
Kanye West’s legacy has unravelled fairly thoroughly over the past few years, but I will not deny myself the joy of Cam’ron’s verse (starting at 1:28) over those strings. Sorry! You can’t take that away from me, pro-Hitler Kanye!
Also: My buddy Shonali has a new album out. It’s very good, and it sounds like this!
UPCOMING SHOWS
I really need to update my full calendar on my website, but here’s some stuff I’ve got going on in the very near future!
My week was, as you may have surmised from last week’s newsletter, dominated by recovering from covid. Fortunately the worst of my symptoms abated by last Monday afternoon, and my focus shifted towards tending to Maris, whose worst symptoms hit a few days behind mine after we unsuccessfully attempted to isolate from each other, and coming slowly unglued from staying inside (with the exception of brief Bizzy walks). We are now both testing negative and feeling strong enough to fight god or an ox, whichever we see first walking around in Brooklyn.
The other time I was personally struck down by the novelty of the novel coronavirus, it took me a few days just to feel up to watching movies or reading. This time, my brain shaped up more quickly. After watching Miami Vice holed up in our home office, I emerged to watch Heathers (which I loved) and Fall Guy (which I liked a lot), and Blood Simple (which, look at me, obviously I loved) with Maris. I also finished reading Dan Ozzi’s book Sellout, which is really awesome. It tracks punk and pop-punk bands like Green Day, Jawbreaker, and Against Me! through their jumps from indie to major labels. There are a million great band stories, plus a lot of thoughtful reflection on what it means to do creative work in a sustainable and principled way. I could not recommend it more for anyone who knows anyone who learned how to play “Dammit” by Blink-182 on the guitar.
I’m now about halfway through (reading, not writing) Charles Yu’s novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe which is really beautiful and thoroughly conceived, but also maybe a little smarter than my normie mind can handle. It’s extremely philosophical and poetic and not super plotty, and every few pages I’ll feel an “Oh, shit!” insight wallop me in the face, and that feels very worthwhile, even though sometimes I sit there feeling like damn I bet if I knew more about physics or fake physics I’d really be cooking right now.
My big takeaway from the past week is this: I am never as ambitious with my schedule as when I’m hypothesizing what I would have done over the weekend had I not been sick. Apparently sick me thinks that healthy me has a reservoir of energy and enthusiasm that I have never possessed. Last Saturday I sent my regrets to friends having gatherings in several different U.S. states, despite knowing for months that I wasn’t going to make it to some of them. I got FOMO seeing pictures from concerts of bands I’ve never heard of. I saw pictures of friends participating in activities I’ve not once enjoyed (or even attempted) and thought: “Maybe this weekend would have been different! I could have gotten a tattoo while skydiving! But I missed my one chance to turn over a new leaf! C’est la vie (sadly all the French I’ll ever know, having missed the boat on becoming a Duolinguo guy by being sick).”
ALSO! Alison Leiby and I are hosting another Sup, Bro? show at Union Hall on August 3rd at 10pm. Alison and I are going to goof around and riff on a bunch of new ideas, and then some of our friends will go up and destroy! We’ve got Emmy Blotnick, Shalewa Sharpe, and Brittany Carney, plus maybe a surprise guest or two on the lineup! It’s going to be a great show! You should be there if you can!
This will be a good time, and that’s a threat.
My calendar for the rest of the year is filling in (tour dates below!), but I’m also doing a little fundraiser for Cori Bush this Thursday (7/25) at Eastville Comedy Club in New York, a festival in Denver coming up in a couple of months (more details soon), and a bunch of standup shows in the southeast with the Wait Wait folks!
Wow, I’m much chattier when my brain isn’t just a beehive for viral particulate just buzzing around in there. It’s nice for me at least!
PEP TALK FOR CROWDSTRIKE
The blue screen of death, which is also what fish call the sky I bet.
Seven days ago, I had no idea what CrowdStrike was. With a gun to my head (which, why do you think that would help me do my best thinking?) I’d have guessed it was a Call of Duty knockoff exclusive to Android phones, advertised with deceptive videos on Twitter. Or maybe a description of Billy Joel’s driving style in the 80s. But now I (sort of) understand that CrowdStrike is a massive cybersecurity firm that, in conjunction with Microsoft, temporarily made a vast swath of the world’s…cyber less…secure.
Over on his newsletter, Ed Zitron explains the whole situation more clearly than I can (or would even want to know how to, frankly). But basically, some garbled code in a new CrowdStrike update caused computers in sectors from finance to medicine to aviation to refuse to boot up. I’m no cybersecurity expert. I admittedly lag behind my own father’s security protocols (painter’s tape over the computer’s built-in webcam). But even I know enough to describe this situation as: bad. This wasn’t a security breach; it was more like CrowdStrike and Microsoft dropping the keys to everyone’s house in the ocean. If anything, the world’s computers became so secure that even their owners couldn’t use them.
It is, we can all agree, not optimal for your brand awareness to explode because millions (est.) of people are finding out you are who ruined their day. But think of it this way: News reports are blaming CrowdStrike (you) and Microsoft for this issue in the same breath. That must feel nice to hear, right? To truly screw over so much of the earth’s population in one fell swoop, you must possess an unfathomable amount of global influence. Microsoft is so massive that people accused its founder of putting computer hardware into people with needles without telling them. And to be co-headlining this technological catastrophe? You must be the them of…whatever it is that you do. Congratulations! (?)
People often cite the idea of an institution being “too big to fail,” occupying a space of such big importance that it can’t be allowed to collapse because of the attendant collateral damage. CrowdStrike, you’ve achieved a kindred status; you’ve become big enough to fail. You’re such a massive virtual gear in the global tech sector that you can shower chaos upwards against the sky like a minor deity, and the rest of us have to sit there and think: “Well fuck me, I guess!”
You (and Microsoft) seem to have biffed it in the kind of major league way that most people couldn’t if they tried. If I, one human dude, tried to disrupt thousands of flights, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. And if I did somehow succeed in creating so much failure, the reprecussions would surely ruin my life. But you did it in the blink of an eye, and I have no idea if you’ll face any consequences. Who else would I go to for international cybersecurity? You’re the only company I know of who does that. (Because the other companies haven’t messed up the way you have, but still.)
So, nice (terrible) work with that! You’re doing so badly it only reifies your greatness!
PEP TALK FOR A READER
I’ve made some little tweaks to the reader message here and there for clarity/brevity/house style. These things happen!
Man do I ever need a pep talk. As I sit here in massive back and sciatica pain, preparing for a revision of a procedure I’ve had done previously to allow blood to flow through my liver and realizing that cap on my tooth that I out off replacing has something stuck in it, I can’t help but focus on something other than my health. I know you can’t help me with my health and I’m hopeful that my conditions will all improve - you know, the “this too shall pass” advice. But everything I’m reading is about the debate and all these pundits are saying the older guy fumbled the bag- stolen from my 18 yo son & very relevant during the Euro Cup & Copa América. No one is calling in the criminal and rapist to drop out of the Republican Party nomination sweepstakes.
So, what do you suggest I read to take my mind off my health & politics?
In health, Me
This is maybe the most jam-packed pep talk request I’ve ever received! Health complications. Electoral politics. Big picture despair. It’s very of-the-moment! I am…so sorry that your life feels so of-the-moment. It’s not a great moment!
First, a pep talk about the election now that there have been new developments: To me there’s always been a little asymmetry between calling on Biden to step down and asking for people to call on Trump to step down. Many people on the left, Democrats and further, didn’t believe in Biden’s ability to govern well for four more years. The call for him to recuse himself as the presumptive nominee was more or less coming from inside the house. Those same people (who would like America to trend in a relatively just and progressive direction) have no sway over what Donald Trump decides to do. He doesn’t care what people on the left think, or at least he doesn’t care to appease them/us. And his backers actively like that he is a giant piece of shit who is unfit for office.
The New York Times calling on Trump to step down would be like me putting out a press release demanding that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson carry me around piggy-back style for the month of August. Why would he do that? I have no authority or leverage over him. And maybe he’d go the other way (dropping me on the ground?) out of spite. I think that Biden stepping down (and endorsing Kamala Harris) in the face of this kind of swirling chaos is turbulent but not necessarily negative! Hopefully this at least calms the maelstrom of the past few weeks and we get fewer moments like Aaron Sorkin writing an op-ed to say that the Democrats should nominate Mitt Romney, which is truly one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read. It made me regret literacy, not just my own, but the whole concept. A compromise candidate is a doomed proposition. The Democrats could nominate a gun, and Republicans would say because that gun has a safety on it, it’s un-American. Sorkin has since recanted the op-ed, which means his thought process was: “The Democrats should do basically the stupidest possible thing…unless anyone has any better ideas. But I’m going to suggest the stupid idea to the NYT without checking in on those other ideas first.”
In terms of what to watch/read/listen to! I will treat this not as advice (which I try to avoid giving) but rather a recommendation (which I am okay tossing around). I would propose, gently, not searching for media that will blot out our present reality. Instead, I’d suggest looking for the kinds of things that make you feel hopeful and energized about building the kind of world you’d like to see. This is about news and politics stuff, not your health. I cannot in good conscience insist you remain constantly vigilant about your tooth and liver (Tooth and Liver being the Yale’s gnarliest secret society, I have to imagine). That sounds like hell, and I don’t have a fancy enough degree to prescribe you hell.
On my old podcast, the great writer Jia Tolentino recommended the book The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson as a radical work of climate optimism, and a vision for how that might be made into a reality. In accordance with Jia’s recommendation, I bought the book. In accordance with my own laziness, I have not read it (sorry, Jia)!
I super recommend and ’s newsletter for regular writing that makes me feel sane (things are bad!) and hopeful (but we could make them better!). I also think the way writes about books is a great map towards both living mindfully and finding new entertaining/engaging things to read. Similarly, and write about abortion and the Supreme Court in ways that can be upsetting but also clarifying in a way that an endless drip of social media and cable news are often…the opposite of. Honestly, I think my old boss John Oliver and the wonderful team at Last Week Tonight does a great job making the horrors of the world feel comprehensible too!
But! You can’t look into the teeth of the world 24/7! Who wants to stare at teeth that long? Not me. Not even dentists, and they are fiends for teeth.
We also have the Olympics coming up, which I think is a great way to balance a desire for things in America (and the world) to be good with watching our nation’s gymnasts and basketball players kick other countries’ asses.
But also you need something to fill a few hours a week when you want the thinking parts of your brain to go to sleep even if you still need the eating dinner and walking the dog parts awake. I’ve been watching a lot of standup comedy. Maris and I just finished a three-season (no comment) rewatch of Arrested Development (perfect for this task) and have started Veep (perfect, but not for this purpose).
What’s everyone watching/reading/listening to to help them feel plugged into the world in a productive way OR to turn on Dumbass Mode for the night? I’ve heard Love Island is good for that kind of thing!
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Great Grandpa - “Kid”
I didn’t know about Great Grandpa at all until other bands I follow (Camp Trash, Charly Bliss who also have an excellent new song out) on social media started posting about their new song last week. It’s not an upbeat tune, but it has a cozy, dreamy quality to it that feels comforting to me. It sounds like a bunch of people singing and playing instruments together in a way that lots of artists these days don’t, and I miss! You can hear the component parts of the song (the strings! the vocals! the different movements!) in a way that doesn’t feel like it was pushed out of a Play-Doh fun factory as one contiguous blob in the shape of SONG. Does that make sense? I love a good Play-Doh song, but I miss when a band could write a little more sprawling a ballad, and it would still have a chance to make it into rotation on the speakers at CVS.
OH ALSO! I can’t believe I haven’t given a plug to my buddy Allie Goertz’s Nine Inch Nails cover album, Peeled Back! I’m not a huge NIN person, but I love Allie’s takes on the source material! It’s exactly what you want from covers, a fresh perspective and sound! Here’s her version of my favorite Nine Inch Nails song!
There’s a new Japandroids song out too, which sounds like the old Japandroids songs, putting it in a firm “your milage may vary” place for a lot of people. But I do love the refrain “sorry baby, we call it like we see it in Chicago” which reminds me of my friend !
Lots of songs this week! Can you tell I’ve been mostly sitting around listening to/looking at stuff within my apartment?
UPCOMING SHOWS
I really need to update my full calendar on my website, but here’s some stuff I’ve got going on in the very near future!
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