I’m sure many things happened this week, but I sincerely cannot remember most of them because on Saturday, Maris and I ADOPTED A NEW DOG!!!!
“You didn’t tell me we were doing a fun one!”
Well, she is a four-year-old dog, but she is new to us. Please join me in gazing upon Maggie aka Mags aka Magoo aka Magpie aka Princess Margaret aka Small Marge aka Dame Maggie Squish aka (via my friend Alex, based on her innate sense of curiosity) Maggie PI and also Maggatha Christie for the same reason.
“Hey what’s going on up there? Are you lounging on the couch without me?”
Maggie is four years old and was staying with a lovely foster family in Worcester, MA (that’s right, a Wusstah Fostah) before she came to live with us. On our ride home, we listened to “Maggie May” by Rod Stewart and then just kept his music on, causing me to dub our journey the IditaRod. We’re still getting to know each other, but so far her favorite activities include snuggling, long walks where she scrambles up one stair of every stoop we pass and then back down, making friends with everyone she meets, tug of war with one of her Lamb Chop toys, and doing this extremely cute thing where she gets up from a nap, lunges one step forward, and then flops immediately back down onto her tummy to sleep more. Once she starts peeing/pooping outside, we’re going to be on easy street.
Maggie’s very nice foster mom told us about the 3:3:3 rule (which sounds like an incredible sale at Papa John’s), meaning that it takes a new dog three days to calm down in a new home, three weeks to get used to the new routine, and three months to feel really at home. Fortunately, our new friend seemed very relaxed right away and has already found many excellent surfaces on which to nap! She’s practically a prodigy!
Thanks so much to the Pug Rescue of New England for helping us find such a perfect little gremlin!
(Oh I remember what else I did! I recorded podcasts with some of my favorite people…more news on that soon! And I went back on All Of It with Alison Stewart to talk with listeners about positive ways they’ve changed their lives since the start of the pandemic.)
Coming up! Tonight’s Frankenstein’s Baby show is an absolute scorcher, and I’m co-hosting it with Tyrone Thornhill! Joe Pera will be there! Skyler Higley is visiting from LA! Asha Ward and Kenice Mobley are on the lineup! Let’s do this! If you can’t make it tonight I’m opening for my friend Adam Cayton-Holland, who is outstanding, in the same room at the same time on Wednesday!
This lineup is legitimately outrageous.
4/4-4/5 I’m headlining the Comedy Attic in Bloomington, Indiana for four shows! Extremely excited to share a bunch of new jokes at one of the best clubs in the country!
On 4/14, I’ll be in Boston for a fundraiser at Laugh Boston for my old friend Mike Dorval’s cancer treatment. Gary Gulman and Brian Kiley and Tony V and Tooky Kavanagh are on that show too! Come to the seaport! You won’t be disappointed!
Okay twist my arm here’s one more picture of Maggie.
You are so cute and sweet. Everybody in the neighborhood is excited to meet you. One person almost cried. Maris is so happy that you live with us; she said if the news was going to stay this bad, she needed something soft to pet and worry about. So far you are two for two.
I anything bad ever happens to you, I will turn into Liam Neeson from Taken on whoever harmed you, even if it’s like…heat or the concept of time.
You’ve lived in our apartment for slightly less than forty-eight hours, and you weigh sixteen pounds, but we love you already.
We also believe very much in your ability to start peeing outside, and we would love for that to happen. I know I said that already, but it really does feel worth repeating.
(Sorry this is such a short one. We have been pretty tied up with New Dog Things over here, which has been really nice.)
PEP TALK FOR A READER
I kept this request mostly intact, just so you all know.
Help! I'm a Gen X'er who mainly listens to music beloved by young millennials/Gen Z'ers. I just bought a single ticket to see one of my favorite bands, Car Seat Headrest, and I'm already dreading feeling like a grandma. The only time I can find a friend willing to attend a show with me is if I'm going to see an "oldies" act, like the Pavement reunion tour or Frank Black of the Pixies. (Both of those shows were great, but I want to see more new music!) Should I just resign myself to the fact that I'm older than dirt and skip seeing Momma in favor of the latest "I Love the 90s" package tour? - Grandma! At the Rock Show
A rock and roll concert is not like a playground. It is not weird to be a lone adult there. My best guess is that if anyone notices you at all, they think it’s cool that you showed up. When an older person is into new music, it speaks highly of their open-mindedness. And unless you are dressing in a comically Gen Z style (giant cargo pants, crop top, “my other hat is ketamine” baseball cap) most people barely clock you at all, even if you’re solo. It’s much easier to notice people who are spiritually alone. By that I mean, the one guy dancing with an intensity that no one else is even approaching. And if that’s you, as long as you’re careful where you flail, you’re probably too engrossed in the rhythm for you to register them registering you (to paraphrase Neil Diamond).
Will Toledo from Car Seat Headrest is 32 years old (I did have to look that up). His fans are probably largely adults too. This isn’t a Sabrina Carpenter show that’s (to a significant degree) full of teenagers and parents whose kids aren’t old enough to drop them off and leave. But, on second thought, you’d probably be fine there too. My presence might raise some eyebrows, which is not my fault, but I think I profile less as a Sabrina Carpenter fan and more like a Sabrina Carpenter fan fan. :(
A show provides the exact right context for hanging out with younger people and having it not be weird. It’s exactly the opposite of the context provided by, let’s say, being the 72-year-old former head coach of the New England Patriots and dating a woman literally 1/3 your age in a pairing that is so visually incongruous it seems designed to drive the corner of the internet obsessed with “age gap” discourse into babbling madness. Maybe you’ll share a few hours among people with dissimilar tenures on this planet but common musical interests. Maybe you’ll make some new friends who will want to join you and the rest of your cohort for Geriatric Cool shows.
Even when you’re alone at a concert, you’re never really alone. You’re always close by people who care about art the way you do. Unless your cargo pants are really big, in which case the other people are several feet away.
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Lane Moore & It Was Romance - “Playing Records”
Lane Moore is a comedy person and also a music person, which frankly is too much talent and should be outlawed, but that’s not what we’re here for. “Playing Records” is in the lineage of “Dancing on My Own” in that it’s about listening to music in an energetic way that is also sad.
I don’t listen to a lot of electronic music, in part because I’m not much of a dancer. But I do like dance-y songs that are also a little more song-y. I like that Rihanna song about finding love in a hopeless place. And I like the one about there not being any place that one lady would rather be. I love “Heartbreak Dream” by Betty Who and “Show Me Love” by Robin S. not to be confused with “Show Me Love” by Robyn (also good though). I do not dance when I listen to these songs, but they are also good for listening to while you ride the subway or go to the post office. Nobody tells you that but it’s true.
This song is good like that too!
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’m out and about in NYC a whole bunch coming up, plus a few shows on the road!
The Celtics beat the Lakers on Saturday night, and I am still in a good mood from that. My brain is such a simple machine.
Last week comprised a lot of socializing, even by what Maris calls my “ultimate extrovert” standards. We saw our friend at our other friend ’s charity guest bartending stint. It was the day Scaachi’s new book came out, and I unexpectedly got to buy her a celebratory martini. (She is one of my favorite essayists! This was true even before we were friends! I bought four copies of her book, which is about divorce, and I joked on Instagram that I was going to give copies to friends I think should split up, but for real I just think people will like it!)
We also went to a party/reading for our friend Jeremy’s first novel, which was a ton of fun even though I snuck out early to go to a college friend’s birthday party (hi, Jenna)! Plus there were somehow two double-dates (well, one was a 2.5 date) and a friendship coffee or two in the mix.
Right in the middle of the week, I got to perform on one of Padma Lakshmi’s annual-ish “Padma Puts on a Comedy Show” comedy shows to benefit the New York Abortion Access Fund. The shows took place at the Bell House where I filmed my (still upcoming) standup special last summer, and the lineups were pretty outrageous. Padma co-hosted both with Jay Jurden, and the late show (which I performed on) featured Hasan Minhaj, Larry Owens, Marie Faustin, and Sydnee Washington.
After the show, Padma invited all the comedians over and cooked pasta for everyone at like 1am, which was a pretty magical turn for the night to take. Most nights I am not clamoring for fresh carbonara at 1:30 in the morning (in part because I’m usually asleep), but when the host emeritus of Top Chef is offering it to you, you say yes. The post-show hangout was both a lot of fun in the moment and something that the comics kept murmuring about how ridiculous it all was. We really stuck the Kurt Vonnegut “if this isn’t nice I don’t know what is” landing on Wednesday.
I’ve got quite a bit of fun stuff coming up! Tonight (3/10) I’m performing on a Purim-adjacent show with a bunch of funny Jewish comics/pals. On Thursday, I’m back on All Of It with Allison Stewart on WNYC (and later as a podcast) talking about the five-year anniversary of the pandemic shutdowns.
Outside of NYC, I’m going to be in Ridgefield, CT tomorrow (3/11) headlining a fun show! Tickets are almost gone! Then on 3/27 I’m doing my friend Chris Duffy’s comedy/science show Wrong Answers Only in Mobile, AL which may or may not be open to the public. I’ll be back in Chicago for a Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me taping on 4/3 and off to the Comedy Attic in Bloomington, IN on 4/4-4/5! It’s one of the best clubs in the country and I’m SO psyched to be there while I’m building this new hour up! Tickets are on sale NOW!!!
PEP TALK FOR JEAN JACKETS
This is the photo from the Wikipedia article for “jean jacket.” It rules.
Your time is drawing near, denim stalwarts. Where I live, at least. You’ve been hung up, packed away, or cast aside for months. Now, as the first breaths of spring drift through the air, many of us find ourselves asking the same question: “Do I kind of give off a Bruce Springsteen vibe in this jacket?” And though the answer is almost uniformly “no,” that is our fault not yours.
As the temperature approaches sixty degrees Fahrenheit (or forty-five degrees if you’re from New England), closets and Rubbermaid containers will be rummaged through, and you will be brought out into the increasingly bright sunlight. Eat shit, winter coats. It’s time for you to be tucked away unceremoniously and maybe dry cleaned but probably not dry cleaned. Because you are not going to be broken out again until it’s suddenly too cold to wait for the cleaners to do their thing. Well, okay, you’ll be back in two weeks when it’s cold again, but THEN you’ll be banished for several months.
But this isn’t about you, winter coats. This is about jean jackets. Jean jackets! It is (nearly) your moment! You’re going to make us all look cool, or as cool as possible given our general resting states. Who cares if you’re a little wrinkly from the months in storage? The wear makes you look rugged, lived in. And who cares that our active trade war with our neighbors to the north will likely result in the phrase “Canadian Tuxedo” being forbidden in America despite the first amendment implications? You’d look just as good as a “Buffalo Suit.” And yes, I know that means a denim jacket with denim pants as well, but what other pants are you going to wear a denim jacket with? Khakis? I’m not trying to scream MIDLIFE CRISIS with my clothes, here.
Jean jackets, despite all the bad news in the world, your reemergence signifies the continued predictability of our natural order. You are a harbinger of optimism. Things can get better. Happier times can return. You’re back. And we’re so glad.
That is…until it becomes too hot for long sleeves in a month and a half, and we toss you aside again.
PEP TALK FOR A READER
I did a little cleaning up of this request’s punctuation, but the words are basically the same!!!
I am the mother of a 16-year-old who wants to start having sex. I am okay with it —in theory, informing her, supporting, getting her BC, etc. But also this is Scary AF. Parenting a teen in this day and age is hard (I sound 200 years old). - M.I.L.F. (Mom Is Letting Fornicationhappenbutisuneasyaboutit)
The idea of anything bad ever happening to someone I love is a source of true dread. I can only imagine the volume on that terror turning up 1,000,000% when it involves the wellbeing of someone I’m legally in charge of. Having kids in 2025 sounds so hard! Even harder than a hundred and twenty years ago when you’d just send your offspring off to a mill in the morning and hope they came back with a number of fingers somewhere in the ballpark of the number they left with.
Honestly, it sounds like you are doing tremendous work. Your anxiety is reasonable, but so is your sense that your behavior should not cave in to your worst fears. We let teenagers start driving at around age sixteen, and that’s way more dangerous than having consensual sex with careful precautions in place. There’s no way your kid is going to look down to answer a text and cause a twenty-fuck pileup.
I feel a little weird ruminating on the sex lives of high school students, so I will focus on you. It is a very beautiful impulse to want your child to have healthy and fulfilling relationships. It is good parenting to give them the resources to be as safe as possible, especially during an era when Republican politicians would travel house to house, inseminating anyone of ovulating ability with a Visine bottle full of their own sperm.
And it’s not like these issues were easier to navigate back when the standard position was just “no daughter of mine…” Sure, some kids would probably subdue their hormones out of sheer fear. But the rest of them were scrambling down trellises after arranging a wad of poodle skirts or bellbottom jeans into the shape of a person under their covers. I mean, 50% of the time “I married my high school sweetheart” has got to be code for “I got (or got someone else) pregnant on prom night” right?
You’d be less of a good mom if you didn’t worry about your child’s health (physical and emotional) but you’d also be less of a good mom if you kept her up in a tower until her hair got long enough for a lover to climb up it (or she went off to college).
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Daisy the Great - “Ballerina”
This new song by Daisy the Great reminds me so much of my friends Speedy Ortiz. (But I don’t know these folks, although they are friends of friends.) “Ballerina” has a catchy melody that’s always kind of wrestling with the insistent sound of the guitars. It’s both vulnerable and venomous (V&V Music Factory?). I bet this band rips it up live; I should go see them next time they’re playing in town!
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’m out and about in NYC a whole bunch coming up, plus a few shows on the road!
The theme of my week was gossip. On some level that was expected. I traveled to Philadelphia to interview my friend Kelsey McKinney about You Didn’t Hear This From Me her (delightful!) book on the topic. YDHTFM is so thoughtful and full of insights and juicy details. Kelsey writes nonfiction in such a breezy, engaging way that every chapter whizzes by. We (or at least I, speaking for myself) had the best time onstage and also offstage. Kelsey’s fans are big time sweethearts, and I got to hang out with a little cluster of Philly friends afterwards too. Maris came with me, and when we got to our hotel, I took one of the five best naps of my life. Perfect duration, woke up energized and refreshed. An unqualified success.
Onstage, I also got to tell a recent almost-gossip story from earlier in the week. On Tuesday night, I was extremely lucky to attend TheNew Yorker magazine’s 100th anniversary party. It was at Jean (which I’ve been to twice, and still can’t tell if it’s pronounced like the pants or like ____ Luc Picard, captain of the Starship Enterprise), and even my friends who are on staff there didn’t get to bring a +1. Because the space was so packed (even with the -1s), I ended up chatting/hiding with a friend in a stairwell for about half an hour. While we were kibitzing/stowing away, a very friendly and stylish woman came up the stairs. She and my friend obviously knew each other, and he asked her about the SNL 50th celebration, which (I ascertained from context clues like a detective) she had attended.
“Okay but what’s going on with Meryl Streep and Martin Short?” my friend asked. “Are they dating?”
“I know nothing. They aren’t saying anything one way or the other,” she replied, and then disappeared into the party.
“She must know something,” my friend whispered to me.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Because she’s married to Steve Martin.”
Bombshell revelation! I was floored! We marveled for a moment at her secrecy; she truly gave us zero insight. I only feel comfortable sharing this story because she was so discreet that there’s no privileged information one way or the other. But the reveal of who had just stonewalled us still made my jaw drop.
The other theme of my week (grow up, weeks can have two themes) that Maris and I are in the process of trying to adopt a new dog. We recently attended a dog adoption fair where all the dogs we hoped to meet got scooped up before we even got to rub their tummies to see if we had chemistry. Adopting a dog, at least the way we’ve tried it, entails a significant amount of luck or heartbreak. It’s not like dating, where you can go out once and then in the common occurrence that it’s not a forever thing, you lost a couple of hours and maybe a few bucks and that’s that. But you really have to imagine, before you meet a specific dog, what your life would look like with that particular fluffy little pal near the center of it. How would you adjust your schedule? How would your physical space need to be altered to accommodate their needs? Can I see us together long term? And then you cross your fingers and hope you’re the one of (often) dozens or even hundreds of applications chosen to be this dog’s new companion. Sadly, the answer is usually “no.”
This week we have a home visit scheduled with a pug rescue organization. (I do think we deserve bonus points for keeping an already-old pug happy and relatively healthy for nearly a decade. I am going to try and bring that up in a way that doesn’t sound too pushy.) Wish us luck! Or, I guess, give us a dog? (Jkjkjkjk…unless?)
Also, just while we’re here. Readers: Do you think that “Burps” is…
a. A good name for a dog. Or… b. A bad name for a dog.
Yesterday I had lunch with my friend Sean Sullivan who writes a really fun newsletter about music! I recommend it! We ate at a place that his daughter picked because of the cheese pull videos she’d seen on TikTok, and honestly…it was good! They were playing pulsing EDM at 11:30 in the morning though, which is not necessarily the experience I’m looking for with an egg sandwich.
The Oscars were last night too, but I don’t have much to say about them! Congratulations to all the nice people involved, and a big thumbs down to any jerks.
Tonight (Monday 3/3) I’m doing a 10-15 minute set at the Comedy Cellar’s Village Underground room at 9:30, which I mostly mention to say that the whole show is also livestreamed via Mint Comedy, and if you’re interested in checking it out, please use the promo code GONDELMAN.
On Wednesday I’m performing at the Bell House on the second of two Padma (Lakshmi) Puts on a Comedy Show comedy shows. It’s all to benefit the National Network of Abortion Funds. It’s already sold out, but if you snagged a ticket, I’ll see you there!
PEP TALK FOR NERVOUS FLYERS
Lately it seems like United we ALSO fall (out of the sky).
As a concept, it’s extremely reasonable to be afraid of air travel. It certainly violates the spirit of the laws of nature, if not the letter of those laws. We as humans aren’t supposed to be up there where thunder lives. Dozens if not hundreds of times in my life, I’ve taken a nap while hurtling through the sky. Birds don’t even do that. In the event that God exists, I imagine they take this as a personal affront.
Statistically speaking, flying is still way, way safer than driving. But you can’t math away adrenaline. Public speaking tops lists of fears year after year, and nobody has ever died from it. Some people have died while doing it, but there’s almost always a complicating factor at play. Discussion of what is statistically safe always makes me think about these lyrics from Warren Zevon’s “Porcelain Monkey”:
He was an accident waiting to happen Most accidents happen at home Maybe he should've gone out more often Maybe he should've answered the phone
Sure, most accidents happen at home. But if we spent more time other places, we’d fall off of more stuff or drop more things on ourselves in those locales as well. Warren Zevon knows this. He’s very sarcastic, which is sometimes a hard tone to get across in song, but he nails it with shocking frequency. It’s not that helpful to hear that flying is safer than driving. Honestly it mostly makes me more afraid to commute (which is maybe a rational thing to consider, but it’s no fun at all).
What the recent spate of airplanes flipping over, bumping into each other, exploding a little, landing in inopportune places, and otherwise misbehaving, we’re all more on edge about human flight. It does not feel good to get on a plane under these conditions. You, nervous flyers, aren’t exactly right to stress out about taking to the sky, but it’s hard to deny that your anxiety feels wrong. I get it now. At least, I get it now more than I used to. Congratulations on your horrible vindication!
If it helps, I fly way, way more than the average person, and I have never died. Extrapolating outwards from there, it’s possible that I never will die, although I wouldn’t bet on it. Statistically, it’s pretty unlikely. I’m home a lot.
PEP TALK FOR A READER
I did a little grammatical smoothing-out of this request to fit the house style. Nothing major. Don’t worry about it.
On top of *waves at everything,* my landlord just told me she's selling the apartment I've rented for the past 16 years. I’m trying to figure out if I can afford to buy it and if that's even the right thing to do. - Rent-To-Oh No
A formative media experience from my childhood was seeing tv commercials for the movie Threesome, which included the quote: “Sex is kinda like pizza; even when it’s bad, it’s pretty good.” Apparently this character had never had pizza, or sex I guess, at an airport food court. In any case, moving is the opposite of this premise. Even when it’s fine, it’s pretty bad. It’s time-consuming and expensive. You have to find a bunch of cardboard boxes, which is always harder than it sounds. Then you need to get used to a totally new shower’s water pressure. No thanks.
Prying yourself out of your home of sixteen years seems like, at best, a hassle. The kind of hassle you’re considering paying (let’s estimate) tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid. I get it. I’ve lived in the same (rented) place for almost eight years, and there are piles of unopened mail that I couldn’t stand to part with if I had to move. (Sorry to my wife for being a semi-slob!) The idea of finding a new place to live makes me understand hoarders a little better. In my defense, I don’t think I am one; I’m just lazy. Still a bad quality when you’ve got to pack up everything you own and then find a place for it in a new apartment or house.
It sounds to me like you have found yourself in the first half of the “even when it’s fine, it’s kind of bad” formulation. Your situation is, ultimately, fine. For now at least, which is when we’re corresponding. Yes, it is bad! And you have every right to complain about it! Complaining is so important, and I would never take that away from you. But think of it this way: At the very least, you have almost enough money to buy your apartment. That’s so far ahead of where you could be in this situation. You could find yourself already certain you couldn’t afford the place. Or you could be in a position where even paying rent was hard to accomplish. Getting booted from your home is bad. Having to pay a LOT more money than expected to stay in your home is bad. Having a little financial cushion knocks my overall evaluation of this situation down from “wicked bad” to “kind of bad.”
You don’t have to feel psyched about this, of course. It’s still upsetting! The expectation, fortunately, is not that you’ll end up unhoused. And there’s only so much gratitude most people with homes can actively feel on a day to day basis. It’s like trying to muster joy that you aren’t currently being eaten by sharks. I mean…thank goodness, but I hadn’t considered that was even on the table most days.
You are in a stressful place, and no one who currently has a roof over their head at night would begrudge your complaints. This change in circumstances is annoying. And sometimes life is annoying. But ultimately you’re in a place where even if money can’t buy happiness, it can still help you rent contentment somewhere else.
Or maybe you can rent Threesome and tell me if it’s a good movie or just had a memorable commercial for someone who was nine years old in 1994. You’ve got the cash for that!
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Wyclef Jean - “We Trying to Stay Alive”
My friends Zach and Dom were giving Wyclef Jean’s 1997 album The Carnival a re-listen, so I gave it a re-listen too. “We Trying to Stay Alive” is just “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees but with rapping, which is (controversial to say?) an improvement. I probably feel that way simply because I first heard this version as a tween and thought: This is what a cool song for cool people sounds like.
Meanwhile, I heard the original as a younger child and thought: This song sounds like it would be a lot of fun if I was old.
Hearing the song pop up during its natural place in The Carnival’s track listing felt like running into a group of old friends (albeit a group including one member who was convicted of all sorts of financial crimes several years ago…sorry, Pras), and it brought a little pizzazz to my Saturday night dinner preparations, which isn’t what Wyclef and the team likely intended, but it’s where I’m at right now.
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’m out and about in NYC a whole bunch coming up, plus a few shows on the road!
3/3: Comedy Cellar Village Underground (NYC and Livestream)
3/5: Padma Puts on a Comedy Show at the Bell House (Late Show)
Almost exactly a year ago, on the way to see Oh, Mary OFF-Broadway (brag!), a friend said to me: “[My wife] is always begging me to make more money, but I just want to support her endeavors!” (Hi, friends who I did not name! I know you are here sometimes!) I thought that was such a beautiful show of devotion! Like obviously making money is one way to support a partner’s endeavors. But it is such a generous feeling to wish you had more time and resources to dedicate towards that goal.
One of the best things about being married is having someone you love and admire to cheer for up close all the time. This idea has been top of mind for me, seeing the lead-up to Maris’s book launch (I Want To Burn This Place Down, available for pre-order now). I know what it’s like to write a book (brag?) but it’s felt extra-special to watch someone I love work so hard on a project of this magnitude and personal significance, and then see how wonderfully the book itself turned out (obviously) and then to track friends and strangers receiving and reading and loving this book. People ask me about Maris and her book all the time, and I’m always abuzz with excitement over how much effort she put into it and how it’s paid off. If you aren’t effervescent with joy for your partner’s accomplishments, you’re leaving feelings on the table, tbh. That’s your excitement too! Feel it for them when they can’t! Feel it with them when they can!
In other Josh Gondelman (that’s me!) news: I was on the most recent episode of The Buglelast Tuesday making jokes about our horrible reality with Andy Zaltzman and Alice Fraser. ALSO on Tuesday, the second episode of Circle Round that I recorded at Symphony Hall in Boston aired, and you can listen to it as a podcast now. It’s called “The Salmon Famine” and I play a big hairy giantess.
Were the giant sisters outfoxed by a coyote? Tune in to find out!
AND FINALLY on Tuesday I returned to All Of It with Alison Stewart to field listener calls about the subway as part of their “Small Stakes, Big Opinions” segment. I am always delighted (and occasionally horrified) by the breadth and depth of the comments from New York City’s public radio listeners, and this visit was no exception. One guy told a story about sitting down in an empty train car in the 80s and realizing his feet were in a puddle of blood. New York City!
Thursday night I’ll be in Philadelphia talking to Kelsey McKinney about her wonderful new book You Didn’t Hear This From Me which is a New York Times bestseller! Congratulations to Kelsey, a genius who deserves the world! See some of you there, maybe!!! (This came after FINALLY because in my head it’s a different type of thing.)
A MOMENT OF BUSINESS
Thanks to everyone who answered my question about paid newsletter features last week! I will likely move this newsletter to a different platform (which I’m told requires no work from readers and will be seamless for you all) with new a paid tier that will make it financially feasible. More on that in the future, I think!
I have one more little question for you all, regarding a different project I’m scheming on: What is something from school that you either wish you’d learned or did learn and have forgotten the details of? I’m especially interested in stuff that you vaguely know, but you don’t have access to the specifics off the top of your head. How does photosynthesis work? Why is the periodic table of elements…like that? What was King Lear’s deal? Which amendments are in the Bill of Rights? When did Alexander the Great…do his Great-ing? That kind of stuff!
I’d love to hear if you have specific thoughts on this! Thanks so much in advance!
PEP TALK FOR PEOPLE CALLING THEIR REPS
I imagine most people calling their reps do it from this phone.
In last week’s newsletter, I mentioned 5 Calls, a tool for getting in touch with your government representatives about fascism (derogatory) and other issues. And I wanted to offer a little pep for people who feel a little trepidation about making such calls!
I know there are many people my age and younger who hate making phone calls in general. That’s because a phone call has become primarily an avenue for learning that someone died or spending three hours listening to gentle music before being told that no your insurance doesn’t actually cover that procedure. These calls are not like that! They are quick, and no one will yell at you, and you will not learn that someone from your hometown is terminally ill. Probably.
From everything I’ve heard, it doesn’t take a staggering number of phone calls to nudge most local reps one way or another. You don’t even need to be that persuasive. You don’t need to make a 12 Angry Men type of impassioned speech. Just call, state your opinion firmly when they ask, and then hang up and go back to work or eat a sandwich or play some video games. You can be one of the most influential two dozen people in your zip code, depending on whether Ezra Klein or Roxane Gay also lives in your zip code.
It feels weird that people we’ve voted for need this kind of push to do the right thing. If I had a job, and it took a bunch of strangers (but not strangers from too far away) calling my office to tell me how to do it, I would widely be considered bad at that job. Many elected officials are not like this. They look for either the popular cover to make good choices, or the threat of losing votes if they don’t. For better and worse, democracy asks this participation of us. It shouldn’t be discounted that much like every profession from cardiologist to barista to skydiving instructor, some politicians are not very good at their jobs. Unlike with those other occupations, it is our civic duty to call our representatives on the phone and give them the democratic equivalent of Yelp reviews. (Arguably it is a public service to let people know about a subpar cardiologist or skydiving instructor as well. If you have a complaint about someone making minimum wage though, generally keep it to yourself unless they have put you in a place of bad-cardiologist level danger or racist-skydiving-instructor level discomfort.)
I did just a little tweaking to this request. Mostly comma-related stuff. You get it. (I also added the nickname myself.)
Work is unsettled, and there are pending layoffs. My kids barely listen to me and frustrate me beyond end. I'm just trying to keep my family happy and carve out some time to work out for my physical and more importantly, mental health. - It’s All Bad (Baby, Baby)
Every so often I find myself getting a little advicey in the newsletter. Longtime readers, of course, know that this is not my intention. I’m just here to hype my readers up, to offer a little enthusiasm and encouragement. That has been a tricky proposition lately, as the world seems to be getting bad in new and terrifying ways (in addition to classic, 1930s ways). It’s so tempting to respond to reader messages like a twerpy little know-it-all, when in reality I do not know very much at all. Or to say: You know what? That does sound awful. End of reply.
It comes as a relief to receive a request this week about which I feel no sense of authority, earned or not. I feel no expertise regarding this reader’s problems. I don’t have kids. I haven’t had a full-time job in a couple of years. My mental health is comically dependent on the ups and downs of the Boston Celtics. I can be of no material help. This uncertainty, paradoxically, is where I thrive. The realm of pure, untethered vibes.
You, IAB(BB), aren’t quite in a nowhere-to-go-but-up place. But your situation certainly seems to have, as I used to euphemistically say in my teaching days, room for improvement. This doesn’t have to be it for you. Things can be better. The turbulence at your job can ease up, or more likely you’ll leave and end up somewhere less volatile. You can find a rhythm for some sort of movement and/or additional vegetable intake that makes you feel a little healthier in your body. You can figure out a way to keep your brain as healthy as possible. That can look a lot of different ways. Yoga. Medication. Therapy. Howling at the moon. The less-frequently-practiced but probably-equally-effective howling at the sun. Whatever works for you!
Your kids will get cooler too. No matter how many Ramones onesies you buy for a baby, it’s still going to be a baby. It will be years before that baby can buy you a beer or even a slice of pizza. Kids, even ones you love, are still kids. It takes a little while for them to grow up. That’s why we have the expression: “Grow up!!!” All you can do is your best to be there for them and keep lots of ass ice on hand for when they’re a pain in your ass. But won’t always be this way! Your kids will gain new skills and perspective! They won’t even be this same height for long!
We are encouraged to live in the moment, but this moment seems stressful on a lot of levels. I’m not suggesting full delusion or dissociation, although those do seem like fun indulgences and honestly recent history has shown that the sky’s the limit in terms of how far they can take you. What I mean is, this moment isn’t the only moment you’ll ever live in. There will be other, future moments where things will be different. You kids will have new hobbies. You’ll have passed through this excruciating work purgatory (workatory). You’ll figure out how to be okay. Things can always be worse of course, but they don’t have to be.
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Julia Jacklin - “Someday” (yes, it’s a Strokes cover)
On Friday morning I was sitting in a coffee shop, and I heard a song that was familiar and also not familiar. The words and tune, for sure, belonged to the song “Someday” off of the Strokes’ debut album, but I didn’t recognize the singer. I clumsily googled “someday the strokes cover female vocalist” and quickly pinpointed this version as Julia Jacklin’s cover from (as far as I can tell) 2017.
Lately I have felt awash in coffee shop-style acoustic covers of popular songs, because Maris and I have been watching the Hulu series Paradise starring Sterling K. Brown. A significant plot point in the show is that the president (played by James Marsden) maintains his corny taste in anthemic 1980s music despite [PREMISE OF SHOW REDACTED BECAUSE IT’S A SECRET FOR SOME REASON], and many episodes conclude with the action set to lightly mournful covers of these songs. (Is anyone else watching this show? A couple of friends (as well as my mother-in-law) put me onto it and it’s an extremely good time.)
These takes on the 80s hits don’t do a ton for me, maybe because the source material (“We Built This City,” “I Think We’re Alone Now” which I know is already a cover) isn’t something I’m usually craving to begin with. But there’s also this sense that the reimaginings on the soundtrack are more about “Check THIS out! Isn’t this something????” than it is about a real connection to the song. Julia Jacklin’s someday features kind of a swinging cymbal beat (maybe I’m not describing that right) and a mellow but sincere-sounding take on the lyrics.
I played “Someday” (Julia’s version) for Maris on Saturday morning, and she agreed that it was a good one, and then afterwards “Sofia” by Clairo came up on Apple Music and honestly that’s a very nice song too, so why not link to it here as well?
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’m out and about in NYC a whole bunch coming up, plus a few shows on the road!
Happy(?) Presidents’ Day? Is this supposed to be a happy holiday? And if it is, are we supposed to be happy about presidents this year?
Things (in general) remain bad, but at the same time things (specific) can be pretty nice nice. Maris and I celebrated Valentine’s Day a night late because I was in Buffalo for standup on the 14th. (Maris preferred the restaurant’s normal menu over their Valentine-specific tasting menu, so maybe not being in town for the holiday was simply my way of being a good husband.) We hit a huge relationship milestone on Saturday; we ordered only stuff we wanted to split (non-tapas division). Maris is historically reluctant to go 50/50 on to entrees so this felt like eleven years in, our relationship is still growing. I am not being even a little sarcastic.
Helium Comedy Club in Buffalo was great! I hadn’t been to the club since I opened for Judah Friedlander there in 2014, and I was very happy to return. Thanks to everyone who came out, to Clayton Williams and Katie June for being so funny opening the shows, and to the warm and capable staff!
In retrospect this was less sanitary than running a standard merch table. (Kidding! It was just there for photos!)
I’ve been working on building a new hour of jokes (the previous hour I recorded will be coming out soon as a special and an album soon I swear!!!), and I hadn’t performed a full headline set in quite a while. I’m only about halfway (or a little less even?) to having the new hour figured out, so the 50-ish minutes I did was cobbled together and filled in with some old stuff and a little more riffing than I usually do. But I felt immense relief that the new stuff stood up okay alongside the old tried-and-true bits.
I don’t know if people who work in other disciplines feel this way, but I love the generative period when new ideas start to click with audiences, but the wording and structure isn’t quite settled yet. I imagine it’s what it feels like to get a shade of paint mixed just right or to have a specific section of a lesson plan you want to communicate to students. What I love the most is the comfort of a strong set of foundational elements, and the freedom to reconfigure or expand on them in new ways while everything feels fresh and full of potential.
Maybe you’ve heard of the idea of a “heat check” before. If you haven’t, it’s an expression that people use to describe a shot that a basketball player takes when they’re on a roll and went to test the boundaries of how dialed in they are. A heat check could be a shot taken from especially far away, or while off-balance. But the premise is: Things are going well, so let’s see just how well they can go. The crowd can usually feel it too. There’s a tension in the air when a player who is, in the parlance of NBA Jam “on fire” attempts an escalatingly audacious maneuver.
Live comedy at its best has some of that heat check feel. Sometimes it’s about pushing improvisation past a sensible limit. Other times it’s reworking prepared material to bring the crowd farther down whatever path you’ve decided to take them on. Or even just trying something that’s more vulnerable or obscure or bracing than you have before. To me, that’s the most fun part, the experimenting and growing and (very light) risk-taking. I’m very glad to be there for the moment at least!
TONIGHT! I’m co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall in Brooklyn! Plus on the 27th I’m going to be in Philadelphia for Kelsey McKinney’s book launch! And then also on the 28th I’m taping an episode of the very fun show Abolish Everything at Caveat in Manhattan!
ONE OTHER THING
The group Rabbis for Ceasefire put together a full-page ad in the New York Times in opposition to Donald Trump’s suggestion that all Palestinians should leave Gaza and that the United States should be in charge. I was honored to be asked to sign on to this message (I swear my name is on there) and devastated that this is still something that needs to be said.
Somewhat relatedly to the above, I’m considering moving my newsletter to another platform for political-ish reasons. This is a little more in the weeds than usual, but: Moving That’s Marvelous somewhere else would probably end up costing a few bucks to maintain an email list of this size. As happy as I’ve been for the newsletter to be free, I would consider adding a paid tier to keep things running.
So, I put it to you: What kinds of things would you, the readers, be looking for out of a paid version of That’s Marvelous? Enhanced pep talk request access? Additional newsletters? A more active community chat? Other things?
Let me know! Thanks!
PEP TALK FOR PEOPLE WHOSE PARTNERS TAKE BAD PICTURES
“No, honey! I think you look great!”
Let me start by saying: I don’t mean people whose partners do not have a natural picture smile. I mean people who are dating or married to someone who is incapable of wielding a camera effectively. Someone who somehow, despite our near-infinite capacity for photo taking and storage, captures you exclusively in moments in which you are wincing or slouching. Someone who freezes you in time while you are making an expression you didn’t even know the muscles in your face could muster.
That is not a failure of love! It is a symptom of an affection that overrides the principles of lighting and composition. It is the result of a heart that feels so deeply it does not care in what direction you are looking or how open your mouth is. One way of showing someone you care is knowing how they think of themselves at their best, and reflecting their image back at them in that way like a gift. Another way is to adore someone so thoroughly that they always look perfect to you. It’s not ideal for the Instagram grid, but it is philosophically beautiful, in my opinion.
There are lots of memes that imply boyfriends are the worst at taking pictures. But if you want to be real, forget about boyfriends. Let’s talk about parents over sixty-five. They don’t care that you’re backlit or that your shirt is bunched up all weird. They’re just happy you came to visit. And that’s sweet. (No offense to my parents who read this newsletter but rarely take family pictures, which is in itself an act of love as well.)
PEP TALK FOR TWO READERS
I got two pep talk requests that feel very similar in spirit, so I’m going to reply to both!
I feel guilty for barely engaging with the news of the collapse of our nation, but it is so overwhelming that it ruins my life when I do. I know that mutual aid empowers me in these times, but I have limited time and energy right now. I’m scared, I guess. - Despair Parts
Can we get a pep talk for every person with a shred of decency and empathy still left in this country? Speaking for the millions of Americans feeling hopeless right now. - Civically Enraged
It’s almost impossible to pick the worst news from the last week or two. Is it that transgender people are being erased from government communications, like a J.K. Rowling fever dream? Or that a bunch of wealthy racists are moonwalking the country backwards towards re-segregation a 100 mph? Or the fact that the people in charge of maintaining the U.S.’s nuclear weapons (which, why do we still have so many of those???) were fired and maybe can’t be re-hired because nobody has their phone numbers? Or that the new head of the department of Health and Human Services has a medieval-era understanding of the human body? Honestly, dealer’s choice!
Every day brings a Dave Matthews Band’s Bus On A Bridge In Chicago-level torrent of feces, in terms of the news. However, unlike bus dumps, there’s some amount of information that we probably should allow to land with a splat on our heads. Certainly we can’t watch the news all day. Even if there were a 24-hour news network that played important and relevant information without taking breaks from accuracy for hours at a time to let bad faith actors make disingenuous arguments, that would be too much news. You wouldn’t get anything else done if you watched it all. On the other end of the spectrum, if you spent one minute a day catching up on the news (skimming twelve headlines and then hitting the streets) and then twenty-three hours and fifty-nine minutes Doing Things, you probably wouldn’t know enough to be especially helpful, and you’d certainly die of exhaustion within the week. My friend Dan reads a newspaper in the morning and then goes news-free for the rest of the day, which is almost comically healthy and sensible compared to basically everyone else I know.
There might not be a universally perfect ratio of News:Doing Stuff:Not Doing Much At All. But probably by playing with those dials a little bit in your own life, you can find the best combination of Surfing The Internet In Mumbling Horror:Volunteering:Watching Traitorsor Listening To A Political Podcast While Imagining Tipping Over a Parked Cybertruck:Making Donations To Mutual Aid Groups:Actually Going To The Gym As Long As You’re Paying For The Membership Anyway.
I don’t know if it’s possible, or useful, to feel Consistently Terrific these days unless you are a historic monster or have a bunch of soap suds where your brain should be. But it’s possible to be doing As Well As You Can, All Things Considered by balancing the humours (tempers, to Severance-heads) of Taking Care Of Yourself, Taking Care of Other People, and Figuring Out What The Hell Is Going On.
I am going to re-post this doc by writer/educator/activist Mariame Kaba that’s full of specific and general places to funnel any efforts and resources that you have. I know I shared it a couple of weeks ago, but it feels, let’s say, still relevant. And 5 Calls is a tool for contacting your representatives that makes things smooth and easy if that is your type of thing! There are lots of ways to feel a little less bad by doing a little more good. (And there are plenty of ways to have a nice hour or two without engaging with the nastiest shower clogs of humanity, but I don’t have to remind you of those I bet.)
I’m not sure how much people even want to read about this stuff (meaning, I guess, the world), and even here, I’m trying to balance what is helpful to people and what is wallowing and what is not doing or saying enough! Thanks for sticking with me as we feel it all out together!
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: PUP - “Hallways”
Okay now THIS song by PUP is still a little harrowing (as they tend to be) but it rocks very much, and the video is so fun and good! Plus, PUP has new album coming out on 5/2 called Who Will Care For the Dogs? (heartbreaking!!!) and I’m so excited to hear it. But also it’s worth a click-through just to see the album art.
Also, The Ophelias have a very good new song. It’s also not exactly cheerful, but it does also sound great and have a great video!
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’m out and about in NYC a whole bunch coming up, plus a few shows on the road!
Congratulations to the city of Philadelphia on your big football victory last night, and apologies to Paul Rudd, America’s Kansas City fan! (Caleb Hearon too!) Also thanks to everyone who came out to last night’s What’s New? show at Union Hall! And thanks to the other comedians Myq Kaplan, Hoodo Hersi, and Carson Olshansky! It was a really fun time and I’m excited to keep working out these new jokes!
Before all that, it had been a weird week for me! I missed a funeral because of train delays, which was stressful. I made it to the shiva just a few minutes late, but I hadn’t really spoken to anyone before I got there, and you can’t exactly show up at an occasion like that and start complaining about your travel hiccups. There are more important matters to attend to. You’ve gotta keep your eye on the ball and save your Amtrak gripes for later.
It was very moving to see so much family and hear my cousins’ beautiful remembrances. It’s weird how being sad in a room together feels better than being sad in a room alone. There’s so much more total sadness in the space, but maybe many hearts make light work, to adapt an old saying.
Because of a previous commitment, I had to be in town on Saturday morning anyway. So I stuck around in Massachusetts for a few days hanging out with my parents and getting a little work done (and making a first trip to the new Anna’s Taqueria location in Woburn, which is an incredible development for Middlesex County and honestly the whole North Shore).
On Saturday I recorded two episodes of the Circle Round radio show/podcast live at Symphony Hall in Boston along with a cast of pals (Faith Salie, Bethany Van Delft, Hari Kondabolu). I played a donkey in one story and a hairy giantess in another. (I think these two should air over the next couple of weeks.) The live Circle Round performances always feature accompaniment by an incredible set of symphony musicians. Host/writer Rebecca Sheir and composer/conductor Eric Shimelonis have created a really amazing show and it’s always a thrill to be a part of.
Afterwards, there was a meet and greet where an endless (as far as I could see) line of kids and their parents waited to meet Rebecca, the Taylor Swift of children’s public radio hosts (in all the good ways and none of the less good ways). Lots of kids wanted autographs, which made me feel like Mickey Mouse. Some of the kids made donkey noises at me, which was also very charming. I think the rabbi from my cousin’s funeral was there, although I didn’t see him!
We didn’t quite get all the way into a circle here.
On account of the snow, Hari and I tried to get an early start on heading back to New York. The trip immediately became an arduous but fairly dull saga involving a Lyft to a commuter rail to an Amtrak to the A train which stopped running as soon as it got to Brooklyn leaving me and another friend who I realized was on the same train to split another Lyft home. There was also a cameo from a nice young woman named Paulina who I will probably never see again. That’s all you need to know about that, and probably more.
When I got home, Maris was already asleep, which was also not an ideal set of circumstances for complaining about travel delays. But I got to watch the Celtics complete their smushing of the Knicks, which always does my heart good, and makes me wish Desus & Mero was still on the air so I could gloat about it to my old bosses, possibly on television.
SOME BUSINESS: I forgot to mention this last week, but I did a really fun podcast talking about Sideways Stories From Wayside School, a book that meant a lot to me as a kid!
AND: This Friday (Valentine’s Day) I’ll be doing two shows at Helium Comedy Club in Buffalo! I haven’t been to Buffalo in 11 years, and who knows when I’ll be invited back after this trip, so come out and celebrate this holiday whether you are a couple, a throuple, or one person who thinks kissing is weird and gross.
This is the last time you’ll have to see this I swear.
Back on topic: I need a haircut, which doesn’t really make sense if you’ve seen my head in the last several years. But hopefully this week will be a lot about settling back into a rhythm and doing regular maintenance stuff after a couple of kind of off-kilter weeks! Okay time for the pep talks…
PEP TALK FOR CONVERSATION HEARTS
Romantic AND delicious.
Conversation hearts, you must know by now that you are one of the worst-tasting candies on the market. While some strong flavors like black licorice possess the dubious distinction of “acquired taste,” you remain anomalous in that you have barely any taste at all, and are often acquired purely by accident. I do not know of a single person who has ever purchased conversation hearts for the purpose of eating them. They are always for giving away. On the list of things that nobody wants for themselves, but they do occasionally disseminate amongst their lovers, conversation hearts rank juuuuust above gonorrhea.
And yet, somehow, you appear in our lives at regular intervals (so I guess maybe I should have said you’re like herpes?). You have found a niche in the candy world as a confection made primarily to be looked at and passed around as a token of affection. You are less a treat and more of a technically-edible greeting card. Is that something anyone needs? No. But we have accepted you into our lives year after year. And I think that’s as beautiful as your rainbow of pastel hues, and as sweet as…any candy that isn’t you, basically.
You are full of simple sentiments that range from the tender to the slightly outdated. But you do help teach us how to communicate directly. There is no beating around the bush with you, conversation hearts. Although, if someone was hiding in a shrub on a hunting expedition, I do think a conversation heart could serve as an ersatz shotgun shell in a pinch, just based on the fact that they’re two equally difficult-to-ingest items. A conversation heart is a reminder that sometimes it truly is the thought that counts. Because it sure isn’t the taste, texture, smell, nutritional quality, or general ability to be bitten into that’s keeping you around.
It’s nice to remember that you can be kind without being sweet. And that’s a conversation everyone should be ready for.
PEP TALK FOR A READER
This is a heavy one, and I didn’t edit it much!
My wife and I are foster parents for two older teenagers. One, a disabled black non-binary kid with autism and the other a white trans kid, both with tons of past trauma.
When the presidential election was decided, I tried to calm them both with "let's not panic, let's wait and see how this impacts us specifically and do our best to live happily despite the ominous gloom." With the recent EOs targeting gender-affirming care, our trans kid is panicking and our NB kid has sympathy panic. We try to do things like go out to eat, and joke about idiots who decide this BS. We are lucky to live in a Blue state and have a city near us that just declared itself as a safe place for LGBTQIA+ people, rejecting the EO. But with TikTok urgency and a whole lot of "Musk-iness" in the news/gov I worry about funding for these kids and their futures in general.
Can I get a refill of my own energy to pass that along? I'm starting to sound fake and hollow when I try to encourage them that *we* are here for them and that all hope isn't lost yet. These kids are great! And they will be an amazing addition to our society if they are empowered to thrive! - Fostering Hope
Hi FH,
I’m so sorry that the (horrible) news has you and your family feeling (understandably) stressed out. Sometimes we feel bad when things aren’t actually that bad, which isn’t an ideal situation. But in this case things feel bad because they are bad, which means the strain you all are experiencing is aligned with reality, but unfortunately that’s even worse than freaking out over nothing.
Many of the cruelest dipshits in America have conspired to try and make life worse for our most vulnerable populations. Many of them could better use their time and energy trying to get their own kids to talk to them again, or learning what the Rage Against the Machine songs they like are actually about, but they have chosen to fill their days with hatred instead. I get so scared for my friends and family members being put at risk. And then I get so mad that these chumps with brains made of wet lint get to terrorize people for sport. It makes me want to grow out a big twirly mustache and tie someone to the train tracks EXCEPT that the same bigots who are endangering LGBTQ+ people are also trying to claw away at our infrastructure, so there’s a huge possibility that the trains will be too delayed to squish them like a penny on any kind of helpful timeline anyway.
It’s important to acknowledge how horrible things are and how scary they can still get. (By the way: Who was the asshole that saw “bad,” thought it wasn’t enough, and decided to invent “worse?”) But I think it’s also worthwhile to consider how many people are fighting back. Over the weekend, thousands of people rallied across the country in support of gender-affirming care. Attorneys general and state officials in many places have reaffirmed their protections for transgender people. And, in less policy-related news, Andrea Long Chu diced Pamela Paul into small cubes and fed her to sharks (rhetorically). That last one doesn’t offer any legal protection but it is immensely satisfying to read.
I can imagine it seem to your kids that the whole world is against them. Offering your household’s support is so beautiful and righteous, but I get how you can feel outnumbered. It’s not just you against the universe though. A few powerful creeps with hearts as disgusting as the floor of an airport bathroom are hell(where they would go when they eventually die if it were a real place)-bent on ruining lives. But there is a whole movement behind keeping people safe as well. And even (especially?) in scary times there’s great power in the solidarity of people standing together and telling the fuckers to get fucked.
(Also: For anyone looking to chip in a little bit towards this cause, there are lots of ways to do it, but this morning I made a little donation to The Trevor Project in accordance with the #AGoodGame initiative that Emma Sandoe and I started a few years back. Just one place to direct a buck or two!)
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: MJ Lenderman - “Wristwatch”
I’m really on a run with indie songwriter type guys. And this song is not super upbeat, but I haven’t been able to shake the lyric “I’ve got a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome.” Yes, I know this album was huge last year, but *Jim Gaffigan voice* I wanna talk about it now.
Also, look, I’m not going to do the work of the Totino’s Pizza Roll Corporation for them, but the extended version of the ad that they did with Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson is very funny.
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’m out and about in NYC a whole bunch coming up, plus a few shows on the road!
2/12: Funhouse at Pete’s Candy Store (Brooklyn)
2/13: Commune and Wild East Brewing (Both in Brooklyn)
Sorry again for another few-hours-late newsletter! I’m still on west coast time, and I was visiting family all weekend. So my free newsletter that I write out of…a fear of disappearing entirely I guess…is a little behind schedule. But now here we go!
On Saturday morning I was sitting on a restaurant patio in Los Angeles with Maris and our friend Emily when a little girl, maybe two years old, walked over and offered me a packet of Stevia. “Thank you,” I said. “That’s very generous of you, and I appreciate your kindness.” She smiled and toddled (age appropriate method of conveyance) away.
Obviously her gift was not super helpful. I didn’t need a small amount of sweetener, especially not one a little kid had germ-fingered all over. But her enthusiasm for sharing was so charming to witness, and I wanted to encourage it. Two days later, I found the little paper tube in my shirt pocket and it made me laugh. What a wholesome interaction to have with a stranger’s kid. It reminded me of how I love road trips but don’t have a car.
We lucked out arriving in LA just as the rain was extinguishing some of the wildfires and (in my crude understanding of science) knocking most of the smoke out of the sky. It felt safe to sit outside with friends and drink coffee and to walk around as much as the city’s infrastructure accommodates and to do a bunch of shows. It was a super pleasant visit, and I hope to come back soon and see more friends and do more shows and record a bunch of podcasts.
Now I’m out in the desert with Maris’s parents who are lovely, but I’ve been away from home for a week and my back is getting a little gnarled up from sleeping on a hotel bed and an Airbnb bed in sequence. It seems like I’m going to fly home to New York briefly and then scoot up to Boston to see family and do the live Circle Round children’s radio taping at Symphony Hall (ticket link below). I hope lots of kids try to give me sugar packets afterwards, and I’m excited to finally get home for real on Sunday too.
And very quickly!
My next “What’s New?” show will be this Sunday at 5pm at Union Hall in Brooklyn! I’ve got a whole bunch of new jokes to tell, and I’ve got special guests Myq Kaplan, Carson Olshansky, and Hoodo Hersi coming by to tell jokes too! You’ll miss the kickoff of the Super Bowl if you come, but you’ll make it home in plenty of time to witness Kendrick Lamar perform an encore of Drake’s funeral dirge in front of essentially the whole world.
BUT WAIT THERE’S ANOTHER THING!
I’m coming to BUFFALO!!! People occasionally ask when I will be in Buffalo, NY, and the answer is VALENTINE’S DAY! I’m doing two shows at Helium Comedy Club, and I would love for newsletter readers to buy tickets if you’re in the area to dilute the percentage of the room that’s mad I’m not actively asking each couple how long they’ve been together and then making fun of that number of years or months.
This is what I look like now!
PEP TALK FOR ANTHONY DAVIS
I bet he also made this face when he found out he was traded. //Stephen Lew-Imagn Images
I don’t want to go on too long here, because I know not every reader is a big NBA fan, but I do want to offer a few words of encouragement to The Brow, a nickname whose provenance even basketball novices can glean from the above photograph.
Anthony Davis! People are really talking a lot of shit about your basketball skills because you, the tenth or fifteenth best player in the NBA, were traded by the Lakers for Luka Doncic, the third or fourth best player in the NBA. They are saying it was a bad deal for the Dallas Mavericks because you are a geriatric 31 years old in contrast to Luka’s youthful-if-occasionally-sluggish 25 years of age.
Look, big guy (an objectively accurate monicker). Tune out the noise. You are still near the top of your, and consequently the, game. You’ve made so much money. You’ve won a championship that I’d rather not talk about unless I’m besmirching it with insults that are, if I’m being honest, dubious at best. I will not light a rhetorical torch and take my readers deep into the archives of NBA rivalry lore to explain what these insults are or why they are specious. They literally did not sign up for that. But just know that I resent you for that championship, and I will make up excuses to diminish its significance.
There is literally no shame in being the twelfth best at something rather than the fourth best at that thing. There’s less glory in it, sure. But there’s no reason to feel bad about being near the top of the mountain instead of finding yourself slightly nearer to the summit. Discussions of legacy are for other people to fill time with on their podcasts, not your own satisfaction. When you do the best you can, and that best is close to the best that’s possible, you deserve to feel proud, not insufficient. The greatness of great is not diminished by the existence of greater or greatest.
If it helps, I’m personally rooting for you much more now now. As a Boston Celtics maniac, this trade condenses my birthright hatred of the Los Angeles Lakers with my recent spiteful feelings towards Luka Doncic stemming from last year’s NBA Finals matchup between the Celtics and the Mavericks. This is not “being mad.” It is actually an efficient streamlining of my emotional energy. I am excited to (as I said to a friend) turn into the Joker in a relatively benign way that takes a little of the sting out of the ongoing political Darth Vaderization I’ve been feeling. So thank you for that as well.
PEP TALK FOR ALL READERS
It appears that, heading into the weekend, before the seismic NBA trade discussed above and the honestly-pretty-good Grammy Awards, the world’s richest man (presumably by…asking the president nicely or waiting for him to doze off?) was (apparently) given access to all of America’s personal information and control over several government agencies. Some people are calling this a coup, and I’m too dumb and have been spending too much time watching Ally McBeal with my in-laws to have figured out whether I think that word applies. I’m not sure if it’s a coup when the leader of a nation is too lazy to drive a country into the ground on his own and decides to privatize that function to keep his most annoying friend busy. It is, however…bad.
If you’d like to stop here for a moment and imagine some kind of tragedy befalling Elon Musk, I welcome it. For legal reasons, let’s stick to stuff that is not a threat and maybe can’t even actually happen. Close your eyes and picture a dragon crushing him to bits with her (going by Shrek’s dragon gender science here) big old teeth and then swallowing him in little chunks. Or envision him stranded alone on Mars as a pinhole-sized leak in the oxygenated biosphere slowly allows the breathable air to escape.
That feels good, right? It doesn’t help anything, but it definitely takes a little of the edge off of the realization that all the safeguards build into American government are so many crispy dead pine needles scattered before the leaf blower of late capitalism.
It’s easy (and comfy!) to get discouraged and unplug. And, honestly, there’s only so much news even the most informed U.S. resident can consume before they’ve scratched that particular bug bite raw. It can seem really hopeless, knowing we (most people) are up against a few wealthy monsters and the folks who are lining up to gobble their boots raw and unseasoned like high-quality sashimi.
While we’ve seen some big picture pushback from Democratic governors and attorneys general (I love that pluralization, and I’m trying to be grateful for small things), it’s certainly not enough to stem the bullshit tide (nautical term) considering the proliferation of ostensibly left-leaning politicians like, I don’t know let’s pick one at random, NYC Mayor Eric Adams who seems entirely interested in stopping by the Corruption Store that is our executive branch to ease his own legal troubles.
The silver lining (which, when you think of it, is not even that great a thing) is that we don’t have to wait around for some kind of legislative solution. There are people who need help now, and we can help them any time we want. I recommend…now?
Here’s a doc of ways to be helpful and politically engaged that writer and activist Mariame Kaba put together! Not everybody has the same capacity for all forms of engagement, so it can be beneficial for both you (whoever you are) and your community to review what’s on the menu. Maybe you’re not a “call your reps” person, but you have time to volunteer at a food bank. Or maybe you are busy but have a couple of bucks to direct towards a nearby mutual aid organization. Perhaps you can learn how to use Narcan and carry some in your bag when you’re out and about.
I don’t mean to be too sincere here, but it’s a real mitzvah to do good where and when you can. And doing that helps to relieve a little of the stress over how much you can’t change even with a lot of effort and stress snacking.
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: ”Severance Opening Titles (Maris’s Version)”
Last week, our friend Bex asked my wife Maris what she thinks the words to the Severance opening titles would be, and she replied with these kind of beautiful impressionistic lyrics. (Inspired by the fact that it always seems to be snowing near Lumon hq, and some of the show is shot in the Garden State.)
Snow in New Jersey… Snow in New Jersey… Bitter winds Icy storms Bitter winds/Bitter winds Icy storms/Icy storms
Anyway! Try not to think those words next time you hear that tinkling piano music and try to decipher what the images of the show’s opening sequence mean.
Similarly stuck in my head is this week’s bonus song “California Stars” by Billy Bragg and Wilco. One of the great pleasures of living in a big bright city is how beautiful the night sky looks when you’re anywhere else. I don’t think if I lived out in the California desert, I’d be able to maintain a nightly wonderment for the constellations (which between me and Maris we can recognize exactly one of), but for three nights a year, it’s a marvel to consider the vastness of the universe. For most of the rest of the time, I don’t need to feel so cosmically puny. Sorry, the cosmos!
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’m out and about in NYC a whole bunch coming up, plus a few shows on the road!
America had a bad week, but in the small picture I had kind of a nice one, which I hope is not some kind of Dorian Gray type of trend. It would be pretty unreasonable of me to be (accidentally!!!) frittering away the civil rights of people in the United States just so I can have a fun time having brunch with my friends on a weekday morning or riff a few new lines to a new standup bit in a bar backroom.
I spent the weekend in San Francisco for Sketchfest which is always a blast. The 2020 festival was my last out-of-town gig before everything stopped for a while (sorry to bring that up), so I remember it with both great fondness and apocalyptic fear. But this year was just lovely. I did guest monologues for an improv show Workjuice with an absolutely stacked cast of performers, and I got to do my favorite thing which was stand over on the side of the stage and mostly just watch an excellent show happen. I told a bunch of stories about how embarrassing I was at age 20 (Hi, Sarah!) and also at age 29 (I love you, Maris!). Improv, to me, is like sushi: When it’s great, it’s basically magic. And when it’s bad, I want to be sick.
On Saturday, I competed in Comedian Clash (for legal reasons, I will not say which other alliterative game show it is based on) which was also so much fun. Although, our team did have a quiz show ringer in the person of forty-time Jeopardy champion Amy Schneider, so it would have felt a little rough if we’d lost. I am secretly so competitive when it comes to leisure games despite doing nothing to be good at them, which is itself a rocky combination of traits. That night, Alison Leiby and I hosted our Sup, Bro? show at Cobb’s Comedy Club, a room I’ve performed in a whole bunch of times and always love. The crowd was really, really great, and all the comics (Paul F. Tompkins, Dave Mizzoni, Dulcé Sloan, Aparna Nancherla) killed. Thanks to the festival for bringing us out, and to everyone who came to and performed on the show! What a blast!
Also, Alison and I have a recurring bit where we ask people to voice petty concerns and complaints that persist in spite of much greater horrors. We then have the whole audience shout out their validation of those petty complaints. So, in that spirit, if you’ve got something small that’s been a figurative pebble in your figurative shoe lately, feel free to leave a comment for validation! (And feel free to validate, as a reader as well!)
Yesterday Maris and I met up in Los Angeles, where we will be for the week. We were a little shoddy about planning things to do and people to see because we kept teetering on the brink of cancelling the trip altogether. We didn’t know if it would feel tactless to visit in the wake of the fires, honestly. But we are here now! I’m doing a short standup spot tonight and then a few on Wednesday, which is extraordinarily New Yorky of me to attempt. Let’s see if I make it to all of them! (Info is below.)
Oh also, before I left New York, I got to host the premiere of the upcoming season of Taskmaster. I’d done a similar event last spring with Greg Davies and Alex Horne in a teeny comedy club that waaaaaay oversold tickets. It was a ton of fun (for at least most of the people who made it in) but also a little hectic. This time the premiere was in Town Hall which is a big beautiful theater, and it was an even better experience. Alex and Greg are so funny and so nice. Plus, doing this made a lot of my close friends extremely jealous, which is of course why I got into comedy in the first place. Jkjkjkjk, it’s just a fringe perk.
Photo by Helen Rosner. Sweater a birthday present from my parents.
After two days of catching up with old friends and staying up late (and my time-zone frazzled body feeling like it’s even later) I’m glad to be in a city where people think a lot about vitamins and the bars close early. Next week I’ll be back to my regularly scheduled grinding of my body to dust on the east coast as God (the Jewish one) intended me to do.
ALSO: I was on the most recent episode of Another Daywith Ana Marie Cox as well as The Catered Quiz. (On the quiz show I was VERY on edge to seem smart! I hope it comes off as funny and not aggressive!)
PEP TALK FOR COFFEE DRINKERS
Honestly, the city of Boston should start claiming that “Beantown” is a coffee thing. These are definitely the coolest beans.
On Sunday, our new old president became furious (his resting state, to be fair) at the nation of Colombia for not accepting two planes full of migrants that the U.S. government had turned away. He declared that the United States would levy a 25% tariff on goods imported from Colombia, which would be increased to 50% in a week. Ultimately, the trade war did not come to pass. But, it’s worth noting that a downstream effect of a massive tariff on Colombian goods would (likely) have been elevated prices for U.S. coffee drinkers.
Putting aside for a moment that Donald Trump often cries “Tariff!” the way guys in the street shout “Go fuck yourself!” (not as a literal threat…who wants to see that act of anatomical dexterity?…but as a general expression of menace), let’s talk about the underlying issue here, which is, to me, this: The Trump administration is willing to risk inconveniencing (or more substantially financially weakening) U.S. citizens to preserve his ability to treat the many groups of people they hate (non-citizens, people of color, LGBTQIA people, women in general) more cruelly.
If you’ll permit me an overwrought analogy (which, at this point in the newsletter, I don’t know why you wouldn’t) the whole thing feels like stealing someone’s bowling ball, just to drop it out the window onto the head of a pedestrian. Sure, it’s bad to steal a bowling ball, but what’s worse is that it’s in service of a much more vicious goal.
We are in for four years of both stolen bowling balls and also bowling balls falling from the sky. (It’s kind of the whole premise of DOGE. Funneling public funding away from essential uses and deploying it for anti-social, inequitable goals.) It’s going to feel bad, and it’ll hurt some people way worse than others. It’s going to be imperative to take care of our heavy sporting apparatus, both for the purposes of retaining what’s ours and protecting people from its misuse.
(Inserting a “keep your eye on your balls” joke here, just so nobody makes it in the comments.)
In short, it seems like coffee is going to stay the same financial price, but at a much greater human cost. It’s not a trade-off we need to celebrate, nor is it one that was necessary to make. That doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy our coffee! It simply means we should should think broadly about who’s being put at risk to keep us (whoever us is in a given situation) “safe”.
PEP TALK FOR A READER
I edited this request a bunch, but the thrust of it is the same!
I am in love with my dearest friend.
She is one of the best people the planet has ever had. She is whip smart, funny, energetic, up for any activity and just so friggin beautiful.
Also, she has been an emotional rock for me after my brain injury.
I told her how I feel about her years ago, when I had a girlfriend (judge me). She does not reciprocate. I accept that. We have become the closest friends can be.
Sometimes, I have this strong urge to just either kiss her or ask her why she won’t date me. Of course, I respect her boundaries and would never break them. I want her in my life however I can have her.
How can I help myself to carry this burden and not let it get me down?
- Friend Without Benefits (Except For Friendship)
Hello, FWB(EFF) [note: nickname chosen by me]. It may feel like you’re between a rock (carrying your feelings around with you in secret) and a hard place (pursuing a romantic relationship with your friend who has told you she’s not interested in that dynamic). In reality, you are in a much better position: You have a friend! That’s terrific! It is special any time you have someone in your life you care about a lot and who cares about you! This is not glass-half-full “wish you would step back from that ledge, my friend” comfort. It is real!
Your current situation may feel like a conflict, but it’s not! It’s just good! Most people don’t want to date most people, and that’s fine. You will not date (conservative estimate) 7.5 billion of the people on the planet. There are so many not-fish in the sea. The number of people you will fall in love with is a single bead of sweat in a rainstorm compared to the number of people you will not kiss, even if you are one of those people for whom sex seems like their only hobby. (Unlike me, a guy who…uhhh..watches basketball. Is that a hobby?) Many of these non-lovers are strangers. Some of them are friends. It rarely helps to learn why they’re not into you, in my experience. It’s basically never something like: “You haven’t answered my riddles three!” Usually it’s something you can’t change or don’t want to. Again, that’s okay!
It can be stressful to not get what you want, but viewing your amorous feelings towards your friend as a burden is a little like resenting your car for not having helicopter blades. A friendship is a friendship! One of the best things there is!
I don’t want to give advice (because I’m a dummy and I’d prefer not to ruin your life with my unhelpful thoughts) but I do feel confident that finding a partner who reciprocates your feelings will alleviate some of the strain you’ve been feeling. Maybe that requires a step back from your best friend (a smart idea that my wife had), or maybe it just means opening yourself up to more and different possibilities. If you allow yourself to receive the gift of this friendship for what it is, it might help you find someone to share the gift of romantic love with too (to be clear: a different person).
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Craig Finn - “People of Substance”
Oh hell yeah there’s a new Craig Finn solo track produced by Adam Granduciel from The War On Drugs? Say less, as they say more and more.
It’s about wanting to feel better but not feeling better enough yet! Relatable! It sounds great! Craig is such an evocative lyricist! There’s maybe no current songwriter who deploys irony so gently to undermine the narrators of his own songs. I love it!
I’ve been on kind of a run of classic rock/indie rock guys, but if I can’t be honest about what I’ve been listening to in this newsletter, where can I be honest?
Can’t wait for the whole album, obviously.
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’m currently popping around Los Angeles, but I’ve also got a whole bunch of shows back home in NYC coming up, plus a few fun things on the road!
What an intense week! David Lynch* died!Football playoffs continued! Ceasefire deal??? TikTok ban went into effect! The Unrivaled woman’s basketball league tipped off! Ongoing fires in Los Angeles. The inauguration later today?!?!?! People yelling at me online for saying it’s a big corporation’s job to provide value to its customers. Severance is back! It’s been a true “We Didn’t Start the Fire” type of seven-day span.
(Okay for real what did people think about the Severance premiere?)
Also I turned 40 on Wednesday! I was a little flustered by the competing goals of: - Throwing a party! - Not forgetting to invite anyone! (I think I did the worst at this one!) - Making it feel like it’s totally okay if people were unavailable to be there! - Still having a bunch of people show up!
Photo by Arin Sang-urai. Sweater a birthday gift from Maris.
Overall I think I did okay! (Although, I am extremely sorry to anyone who slipped through the invitation cracks!) Lots of pals showed up. My somewhat-chaotic playlist (sorry for the Spotify link; it’s what the venue requested) set a fun tone. All the pizza got eaten. The photos (taken by Arin Sang-urai) came out great too. And, many different people came up to me to say that they had met cool and interesting people they didn’t already know, which is such a nice party compliment.
I don’t have a ton to say about hitting a big milestone birthday other than to say it feels really gratifying to hit this big round number and feel so grateful for all the love and support in my life from family and friends. And to feel more capable and accomplished professionally than I was the last time I hit one of these decade markers. Looking back in the medium-view, I had a pretty excellent ten years, despite everything. And a good ten years is made up of a bunch of good individual days, which can occur through engineering or by surprise basically any time, weather permitting.
So, thanks to everyone who came out! And everyone who sent a happy birthday message over the internet! I wasn’t able to reply to all of them, which of course makes me deeply uncomfortable! Just know that, okay?
Last night, Maris and I went to opening night of Gary Gulman’s off-Broadway solo show Grandiloquent. We’d seen it in previews a couple of weeks back, but we were invited back to the official premiere, and it is even better now! Plus, the people-watching was out of control. Maris and I were seated in a row with a bunch of friends, but also we were directly behind OLIVIA RODRIGO???? So I also kind of watched one of the world’s biggest pop stars enjoy Gary’s show.
I hope on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day/Trump Inauguration Day Pt. 2 we are all able to think about how we can do our part to help build a fairer and kinder world and undo cruel and racist systems. Especially because there are so many people who seem to love racist/sexist/homophobic/transphobic policies and want to hug and kiss them. And that’s all I’ve got to say about that for today!
I know I put my all of my show dates at the bottom of the newsletter, but here are a few upcoming shows that will be really fun!
*I have a possibly dubious memory of my parents recording the original run of Twin Peaks off of the tv onto VHS tapes but not letting me watch it because it was too scary. But also Twin Peaks seems way too scary for my mom to enjoy. Mom, I know you’re reading this. Text me to clarify please!
PEP TALK FOR TIKTOK USERS
America’s…greatest…adversary?
It seems like, for the time being, you’re back in the game. After a brief interlude Saturday night through Sunday morning, which gave Big Shortform Video a chance to kiss Donald Trump’s weird butt. So, you’re back in action for now, at least, whether you’re an aspiring dancer or a famous chinchilla or a political commentator or someone who just performs other people’s jokes without giving them credit or a standup comedian who’s extremely curious about how long the two people in the front row have been dating or a “wellness professional” who’s rebranding eating disorders as biohacking or a guy and his twin son (?) who got famous (?) for reviewing Costco’s food or “coaches” who aren’t legally allowed to call themselves therapists but who use the exact cadence of therapists they’ve seen on television. All of you, plus your fans, you’re back!
I am, sincerely, sorry for any professional instability and stress the actions of our government have caused you. Many of you are extremely talented and hardworking and spent a lot of time building a career tied to this specific platform, and now it’s in jeopardy for reasons I can’t quite pinpoint. I honestly had to google “why are they banning tiktok, again?” and the reasoning still feels slightly clunky to me. I guess because TikTok’s parent company is based in China, the data harvesting they do is bad and should be illegal. As opposed to the data being harvested by American tech companies which is business as usual, play on player.
I don’t even really like or care about TikTok (besides the fact that it’s been helpful to the careers of many people I like and respect, and the fact that it serves unlimited cute dog videos to my wife). But it does feel strange that this is the app that has to go. Personally, I am way less worried about Chinese companies than American ones because the Chinese government isn’t the boss of me. I don’t (as far as I know) present a national security risk by occasionally uploading standup clips when I remember to do that. Or by watching half of a video of someone making the worst-looking recipe I’ve ever seen and then logging out of the app for a week and a half. I would rather have tabs kept on my by a government that isn’t allowed to do anything with that information than one who can show up at my apartment whenever they want.
Like, am I supposed to feel like China, the country, is my enemy? I don’t love everything their government does, but also I don’t love everything our government does. And who gives a shit what country is #1 in the world at various industrial metrics? What’s the reward for being #1? Do they hang a big gold medal on the White House? Do we get holiday bonuses? How is letting tweens lip sync to Taylor Swift songs standing in the way of that regardless?
I don’t love the algorithmically-driven self-censorship on TikTok. If I were personally choosing a reason to ban the app it would be the way the algorithm-avoiding euphemisms have escaped containment and are being spoken out loud not even for videos. Hearing someone say “unalive” to mean die or kill makes me want to commit vehicular buttpepper (my cute new TikTok-style alternative term for “assault”). But it’s not technically unconstitutional to trick people into sounding ridiculous.
I hope that you get to keep making your videos about amateur botany experiments or gentle parenting or “reactions” to other popular videos where you just make a befuddled face or theories about relationships you learned from a 22-year-old who’s never been on a third date. And I’m sorry that, between this and our increasingly-cruel immigration policy, Congress’s biggest issue of bipartisan consensus seems to be xenophobia in one form or another.
Anyway, the decision to ban TikTok seemed legally workable but philosophically unnecessary. And now it’s potentially here to stay thanks in part to our incoming president who hates China but loves any outlet to sell cheap garbage to gullible fans.
You’re welcome? I’m sorry?
PEP TALK FOR A READER
This request is near and dear to my heart, so I didn’t edit much!
My wife is estranged from a longtime friend of hers, who's a mutual friend of mine, which means (thanks to our wedding vows which clearly state "your enemies will be my enemies") I'm estranged from him too. But I have a long-term project I'm working on where this guy would make for an ideal contributor. I feel like I have to pass over him because he didn't do right by my wife. But I keep thinking of how good it'd be to collaborate with him on this. I know I can't ask him — I don't need advice to make that call — but how can I get over it and renew my vicarious enmity at my former good friend? - Enemy For Wife
Right out of the gate, I want to commend you on staying strong on your wedding vows and not caving to the pressures of professional success in direct contradiction to your wife’s enduring personal acrimony. I myself took a vow of spite when I got married, so I understand your predicament well.
There are lots of things that make a good collaborator. “Gets the job done well” is one positive quality. “Does not cause tension in my marriage” is another. Obviously these factors are not mutually exclusive. The best version of this is like: “My wife’s favorite of my coworkers is also the one whose collaboration yields the best results.” The worst outcome is something like: “The person I had a relationship-jeopardizing affair with is the only one who can help me accomplish this goal.” Or, conversely: “My partner’s best friend is an untalented chump who ruins every day at the office we share by being agonizingly incompetent.” The outcome matters, but so does the process, as does the experience of doing the work.
It’s not all about raw productivity and wife compatibility. There are obviously lots of other good and bad qualities for a colleague to have.
Some good ones: Fun lunchtime gossip, thoughtful communicator, occasionally brings snacks to the office, good taste in art, possesses skills you lack, cares about the outcome of your shared endeavor, not a snitch, cool sweaters, a perspective that is unique but not too unique.
Some bad ones: Shirks responsibilities, bad listener and/or talker, withholds compliments to feel powerful, too-intense aroma, prone to disappearances during work hours, big into harassment (sexual or other).
What I’m driving at here is that the ultimate outcome of a project is only one factor in the decision-making around that project. You’ve got to decide how fast you need it done, how much work you’re willing to take on, whether you’d rather deal with the precise but prickly coworker or the delightful but slightly more spacey colleague. (Obviously sloppy and prickly is the worst option here, and precise and delightful is the dream when possible.) You’re allowed to prioritize whichever factors you want, within the boundaries of what your employers/clients will tolerate.
And, if the best revenge is living well (which I can’t say for sure, but it is the most powerful form of revenge I’ve had the pleasure of attempting, and it’s not bad), then getting this job done capably without involving your enemy-once-removed will fulfill your professional obligation, please your wife, and spite your enemy in one fell swoop.
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Talking Heads - “And She Was”
Surprisingly, David Lynch dying made me want to listen to a bunch of Talking Heads songs. We must appreciate our old weird Davids while they are still here! (This for some reason was also the second song I put on my birthday party playlist, so I guess I was in a David Byrne mood even before we lost David Lynch.) Another possibly-invented childhood memory I have is my mom having this song on a cassette in her car stereo along with “Money For Nothing” by Dire Straits and a few other tunes I can’t recall. But maybe those songs were both on the radio a lot while my mom was driving places when I was a kid.
Here’s a bonus song that I also put on my party playlist (I told you it was a little chaotic). I listened to D’Angelo’s Black Messiah album twice in a row the night it came out (nearly 11 years ago????). If we’re going on his normal release schedule, we’re only three years away from a new D’Angelo album, so that’s something nice.
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’m out and about in NYC a whole bunch coming up, plus a few shows on the road!
I wanted to start off by saying how heartbreaking the Los Angeles wildfire situation is. I am not a big prayers person, but my heart goes out to anyone affected by the fires. I’ve got a little more to say about that later, but it’s been top of mind for me over the last several days, so I wanted it to be top of newsletter as well.
Here in New York City, my sister came to town, and we saw Gary Gulman’s new solo show Grandiloquent, which was really excellent. Gary is my friend, but I’ve been a huge fan of his for even longer than I’ve known him. He is, as he explores in this show, one of the most thoughtful and meticulous comedians working today. It’s rare and special to see someone put so much work into every word of their set. Watching Gary makes me want to be more precise and intentional about my language, and he also inspires me to be more sincere and vulnerable onstage about real opinions and feelings. I’ve never really seen someone talk about feeling intellectually insecure in such a fascinating and open way! I think there are certain topics we think about as being ripe for vulnerability, but it’s fascinating to see someone explore a different kind of terrain. (It’s also a fun counterpoint to Nate Bargatze’s new hour in which he is totally secure, and hilarious, about knowing…nothing.) The show is running for another four weeks, and if you’re in town you should check it out!
Our Wednesday matinee of the Death Becomes Her musical was cancelled as we were on our way to see it, so instead we just had lunch with my sister as we’d planned, and turned back around towards Brooklyn. I’ve heard the show is great and still want to see it, but a sibling visit alone is enough to bring me into midtown Manhattan on a week day for fun. That’s love!
Last Thursday I was in Chicago for a taping of Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! which was a blast as always. Rachel Coster (of Boy Room fame) killed as a first-time panelist! And it is always so much fun to work with Negin Farsad as well as Peter, Bill, and the whole WWDTM team! Josh Gad was the celebrity guest, and my ears kept perking up every time someone said “Josh G—” but that’s my problem and not yours.
(Side note: If you’re a Bugler, I’ll be on this week’s episode of The Bugle which I think will be out on Tuesday or Wednesday.)
I know how to find my light (I’m a goblin person, so this was a success).
I also appeared on the podcast Guys to talk about Morning Radio Guys! It was really fun (Brian and Chris are hilarious hosts), and we got into my experience with Scorch, if that name means anything to you, but most likely it doesn’t!
Coming up: I’ve got a ton of standup spots around New York City to work out a bunch of new jokes! A highlight: On 1/20, Alison Leiby and I are co-hosting the next Frankenstein’s Baby show at Union Hall! We are also co-hosting a Sup, Bro? show at Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Francisco on 1/25 as part of SF Sketchfest!
I love this group! I love Frankenstein’s Baby!!!
Plus, I’m doing my first installment of my What’s New? show in almost a year! I’ve finally got enough new jokes to ramble through that it was worth booking a night at Union Hall and a few guests (including, so far, my very funny pal Carson Olshansky) to join. The show is on 2/9, which is Super Bowl Sunday, but it’s at 5pm and will be over by 6:30, so you’ll probably miss the kick-off but get home in time to see Kendrick Lamar throw dirt on Drake’s reputation in front of a billion people.
I’ve also got some fun stuff coming up in Boston (Circle Round live show) and Philadelphia (Kelsey McKinney’s book launch event) coming up! 2025! Let’s go!
(I have a couple of shows in LA booked for later this month, but that trip is in flux for obvious reasons. I will have more info next week!)
PEP TALK FOR LOS ANGELES
This guy gets it!
Sorry for the grainy screenshot, but Twitter’s search function is so busted that I had to go back and find my re-post of a meme account’s Instagram re-post of my friend Cullen’s tweet.
Some institutions, obviously, are working really hard to keep people safe. I imagine 98% of Angelenos would push Tom Holland into a ditch for a chance to smooch a firefighter on the cheek out of gratitude after this week. We also owe a literal debt to the incarcerated people who are fighting fires for below minimum wage, which seems wrong to have them do.
But! Cullen’s tweet reallllly resonated with people; I saw it shared by numerous friends who don’t know each other, and those shares seemed to come from various disparate aggregators. And I imagine it’s because there’s the feeling that so many of our social services have been hollowed out and inhabited by people who explicitly don’t want to do any good for anyone. “The economy” is ostensibly booming and yet we’re not investing in sufficient climate solutions, and the costs of housing and medical care and education and groceries spiral out of control because we’ve allowed “the market” to self-regulate, which is kind of like trusting a toddler to know how many handfuls of Reese’s Pieces to eat without getting sick. And the whole situation is going to get worse under Trump 2, with Elon Musk being empowered to print out lists of public benefits and shoot those printouts execution style with a gun.
ON THE OTHER HAND, which is important to acknowledge in two-hand situations, so many people are working so hard to keep their communities safe. There has been so much loss over the past week, and people have shown up over and over again for their neighbors. Organizing networks have set up (or shared existing) fundraising efforts and on-the-ground assistance for immigrant laborers and protective mask distribution and Black families in Altadena and meals for evacuees and shelter for unhoused people. Sure, there are probably a few people who have holed up in their relatively smoke-free homes clutching machetes like it’s day two of a zombie apocalypse. But far more prevalent are stories of people who have opened their doors to people who were displaced from their homes, or contributed funds to those who have lost everything. (Over the last year and a half, I think I’ve read the words “lost everything” more than I had in my entire life up to that point.)
My brilliant and kind friend listed a bunch of places to donate funds or time or supplies in his most recent newsletter (which is a treat to read every week!), and I’m going to add a little shout out to my friend Eva Woods who has a team that consistently offers food and other services to unhoused neighbors who are always even more at risk than folks who have houses to return to. You can send contributions via Venmo to @catherine-schetina to support their efforts. Every little bit helps. And of course if you don’t have a ton of spare cash, but you have the time and energy to offer help to people in your own community, that’s meaningful too.
The other night while I was walking in Brooklyn, an older man tripped and fell. The people he was walking with made sure he was not badly injured, but they didn’t seem able to help him back to his feet on their own. I lurked nearby waiting to see if there was an opportune time to offer assistance, but before I could, someone else walked over and made the offer out loud. I approached as auxiliary (and ultimately unnecessary) hands on deck, and a driver in a nearby parked truck (helpfully?) shouted: “Pick him up!!!” The assembled party hoisted the man to his feet, largely unscathed once he was vertical. It was helpful to see how little time it can take to make a concrete difference to someone in need. Not to mention how waiting around to be asked for help is not always the most effective course of action…JOSH. (But then again, neither is yelling DO SOMETHING from your warm truck…TRUCK GUY.)
The worst slugs in society have been racking up wins lately, but despite their frequent public successes being thrown in our faces, there’s so much power we have to make life better for people without waiting for institutional assistance or permission.
LOW STAKES PEP TALK SPEED ROUND
Because of the heaviness of the previous section, I wanted to give pep talks to some readers with an especially frivolous problem this week, so here we go!
One of my wife's friends accidentally took our sauce ladle home and then lost it. The ladle is from a set and it's just pricey enough to make it annoying to buy a new set (it's almost as much from a replacement site). I'm not allowed to ask them to buy a new one. This is turning me into Larry David.
By purchasing a replacement ladle (matching or otherwise) and forgiving your wife’s friend, you are basically mastering the tenets of buddhism. You will achieve enlightenment beyond your wildest dreams. It is difficult to let go of a well-earned resentment, but the rewards of making peace are much greater than the benefits of feeling furious and smug and wounded forever. Unless you prefer to quietly hold it over her head forever in which case that option is figuratively on the table (as opposed to literally putting a new ladle on the actual table).
A mom on my block completely monopolizes the Q&A at our monthly PTA/principal meeting.
You and the other moms (and dads) have the power to defeat her!!! Her stranglehold on public resources must be broken!!! Sic semper tyrannis (but peacefully)!!!
I believe all television has become inaudible. I have a problem with programmers who opt for white subtitles without a black border for outdoor scenes. (This mostly seems to be a problem with old X-Files Episodes.)
User interface seems to have been tossed into a bog and left for dead by so many tv-related apps and features!!! We deserve better! YOU deserve better!
I'm having an outsized physical reaction to someone watching video on their phone without earbuds in at the airport!
That’s because what this person is doing is mortifying and their inability to feel shame over it is a moral failing, and you are definitively a better person than they are (at least in this specific respect, but maybe also in others).
Our new neighbors seem to believe in free ranging their kids (justifiable) and dog (less so). The dog aggros the other neighborhood dogs on their walks, I've already found a stray softball dangerously close to our window, and I feel like I'm living in a bad 80s comic strip.
I'm being slowly driven mad by the noise pollution in my suburban neighborhood (constant city noise is one thing, hours of pesticide truck pumping, neighbors' children intermittently hitting their tree with hammers???, loud engine revving for no reason, etc. is different).
Okay some of this stuff sounds a little reckless and dangerous, which is no good at all, and maybe worth a difficult conversation. Other of these things sound annoying. And it’s no fun to be annoyed. But the price we pay for living in society is other people. You can try to appreciate the joy of a child hitting a tree with a hammer, which is like…industrial grade empathy and optimism. Or you can acknowledge that many facets of life can feel like stepping in a puddle of shower water after putting on fresh socks. And that’s not great, but it’s okay for things to not be great sometimes.
You could also live deeper in the woods where there are fewer kids or hammers, or out into a desert where there are fewer trees, but I can’t recommend taking on a project with those kind of expenses attached cavalierly.
The neighbor brings their dog down to my end of the complex to poop so it looks like I'm not picking it up.
This neighbor is, of course, going to hell. But with tenacity and thoughtfulness, you can live a life of kindness and generosity that will make your other neighbors certain that it is not you who is perpetrating this crime on the neighborhood.
Occasionally, people out walking their dogs drop their poop bags in my garbage bin, so whenever I open it I’m greeted by a rather disagreeable odor. I have learned to hold my breath when opening the bin.
This sounds unpleasant, but you are providing a valuable service for the community and it’s okay for trash to smell bad. That’s what trash does! (Also those people could leave the poop on the ground in front of your house like the above writer’s enemies, so there are levels to this type of annoyance, and you are somewhere in the middle.)
I bought new wiper blades for my minivan like three weeks ago and my girlfriend is about to discover they are still in the packaging on the passenger seat.
My wife does chores around the house before I get around to them, and she holds it against me. I was going to get around to it!
These problems are beautiful in their simplicity and the straightforwardness to their solutions. This is going to sound like advice, but it’s not really advice, it’s just a reminder. You can completely eliminate these issues with a single decision: Just do the thing already. Believe me, it brings me no to pleasure to say it, as a card-forgetting-to-carry do-it-laterer myself. But if you do the thing, the thing will get done (one benefit) and no one will be mad at you for not having done it yet (second benefit). You have the potential to kill infinite birds (ruthless, intimidating) with the solitary stone of preemptive action (annoying, true).
When do I take down my fake Christmas tree. Pro: It's January. Con: I like the pretty lights, especially when everything is [wave hands].
You are allowed to have pretty lights in your home any time you want. If you choose to have them attached to a synthetic pine tree year-round, that’s weird, but ultimately okay if it makes you happy. You are also free to consider other configurations of pretty lights that will bring you joy amidst the ongoing horrors of existence.
My standing desk needs to be about 2 inches taller or I need to be about 2 inches shorter.
All the erasers on my wood pencils have dried out and gotten hard. Wood pencils were supposed to reduce administrative waste, but now I need to buy erasers. F'n capitalism.
I hate having the slightly wrong tool for the task at hand. It always feels like trying to cut a baguette with a plastic knife. But these problems are solvable, probably within a day or two, and possibly with equipment from your own home (you must own something two inches high you don’t use very often). And, while I too oppose the excesses of late capitalism, I think you are off the hook its worst impact for the crime of buying new erasers to replace the stale ones. (Note: Please do not attempt to make yourself two inches shorter with any kind of amateur surgery.)
I need to clean some of the junk photos and memes off of my phone, but it's so time-consuming and boring.
Once you do it, it will be done! Plus this is a perfect second-screen activity for zoning out in front of a reality competition show or sporting event you don’t care that much about. A win for you and for Netflix’s business model of producing entertainment people aren’t supposed to watch all that closely (shivers).
I’m genuinely grieving the very likely loss of TikTok.
This whole ban seems so arbitrary and like a real case of government overreach. That said, your life will probably be full of wonderful experiences and connections and entertainment with or without TikTok.
Navigating family differences in determining the ideal time to arrive at an airport before flight?
You will never come to a consensus on this. People’s opinions on when to leave for the airport are more closely held than their political beliefs or their own genetic code. You just have to remember that they love and care about you and you care about them whether they are the kind of anxious weirdo who shows up at security four hours before their flight or the kind of careless maniac who tries to arrive at the gate forty-five seconds before the boarding door closes.
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Ben Kweller - “Optimystic”
Ben Kweller’s debut solo album came out twenty-five years ago and was huge for me at the time. It’s also a road trip staple on the few occasions every year when Maris and I drive somewhere. On Friday night we doing a semi-regular thing we call “cocktail hour” which is really just having one drink in our apartment while playing music off of our Apple TV device. We stumbled across a reissue of 2000’s Sha Sha with a bunch of demos and bonus tracks (a solid Smashing Pumpkins cover among them) and then saw that he’d put out a new single in December.
I wish I had a less hackneyed touchstone for this sound, but it reminds me of old Weezer, and I can always do with new music that sounds like old Weezer. I feel like “man of a certain age” implies an older age than I am, but I do feel like a man of a different certain age because of how much I love the way this song jumps and stomps around. I think it’s going to be in pretty heavy headphone rotation. And yes, I know the lyrics are downers, but That’s Marvelous regulars know that a pick-me-up song of the week can feature depressing words if the tune is catchy enough. This song even has some whistling and some Ooooos going on.
(Also, Friends of the Newsletter PUP put out a great new single and video this week. I love PUP and cannot wait for more new music from them, but this is a real feel-bad tune, which I say with nothing but affection and admiration! So that’s why it’s not the lead single in the newsletter.)
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’m out and about in NYC a whole bunch coming up, plus a few shows on the road!
Happy (???) new year! I know how calendars work, but I also think that today is officially the beginning of 2025. I’d really been enjoying this liminal period between “the holidays” and “the year.” It’s been nice to not have too many firm plans during the time when it wasn’t quite a holiday, but no one was going to ask me to do anything annoying. Maris and I watched Thelma (loved it!!!) and rewatched the whole first season of Severance (loving it again!!!) before the new season starts. (If you’re a Severance fan…or a Party Down fan…or a Parks and Recreation fan, you should read Rachel Syme’s New Yorker profile of Adam Scott, which is great!)
We also went to two parties extremely close to our home (incredibly fortuitous) and had a great New Year’s Eve. We stopped by Alison Roman’s famous ham party for a bit. The ham was amazing. We talked for a long time with a woman we’d never met before about the various reasons to fear the ocean. Then our friend Nick graciously hosted a small group of great friends at his bar (El Pingüino in Greenpoint, which rules), and it was such a fun time. SCORCHING hot take: Has New Year’s Eve become underrated? (Sorry to sound like Bill Simmons coming up with a theory about Kevin Durant in real time on a podcast.) But seriously, I think I like New Year’s Eve more now than I have since I was a teenager. I love being (verrrrrrry nearly) 40 and not placing pressure on any social gathering.
It is nearly inconceivable that with all the technology at my fingertips, I could create a photograph this unpleasant! Truly an achievement!
I am not a #hustle #grindset #newyearnewme person, but I have had fun doing a bunch of creative work while the other parts of having a career are briefly suspended in Jell-O. It’s been a slow time for emails and phone calls and Zoom meetings and podcast recordings and assignments and submissions for new jobs, so I finished a project with a friend, half-finished a sloppy draft of a solo thing, and noodled around with some ideas for bigger long-term projects this year.
Plus with a little unstructured time, I dug in and worked on some new standup jokes for the first time in a minute, and I booked a bunch of shows around New York City to work them out! I’ve spent a couple of years working a lot on the road and largely performing at clubs when I am back home, and I’d gotten out of the groove of doing lots of independent shows where I can experiment a little more, so I’m very excited for that over the next couple of months.
I’m also going to be in LA for a few days after Sketchfest, and I should have some shows there to announce by next week! No big headlining set (I don’t have enough new jokes ready for that) but a few spots around town for sure!
And! I’ll be up in Boston on the afternoon of 2/8 for a recording of Circle Round, the wonderful children’s radio show! We’ll be recording two new stories live at Symphony Hall with music from Boston Symphony Orchestra musicians. I always love getting to record with the Circle Round folks! Come! Bring your kids! It’s a family friendly thing!
I’ll also be on the first new Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! of the year this coming weekend! So…keep your ears out (???) for that!
NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION SPEED ROUND
Come on, we’re not even trying anymore.
This week, I’m doing a rapid fire round of pep talks for people’s new year’s resolutions! Not that you have to have a resolution! Or that January is the only time you can make changes in your life! But you all know that already! So let’s goooo!
(For the record, my new year’s resolution this year—as it is every year—is to be a more thoughtful, available friend as well as a more looming, intimidating enemy. But I’ve added the resolution to focus more on creative projects I can make without permission and less on stuff that requires someone else’s sign-off.)
My resolution is to find love in 2025.
Here’s something I just came up with off the dome: Love, actually, is all around us.
*touches earpiece* Oh I’m hearing there was an entire movie about that concept that’s like 2/9ths good. They should make a version of Love Actually where you get to only watch the couple of interesting and fun stories and don’t have to see the other ones. Step up, science!!!
For real, though, there are so many ways to find love! You can love your family. I mean, maybe that’s not true for every “you” but it’s a place to start. You can love your friends. You can fall in romantic love. You can make a big thing of pasta “with love.” You can scream “I love this song!” when you hear a song you like, even if you were the one who put that song on the playlist.
Looking for love when you’re dating is so hard! Because it often involves meeting a stranger and being like: “Okay…should we hang out with each other’s parents in six months? We’re really vibing, but will we want to eventually combine bookshelves???” (NOTE: My wife and I have lived together for nearly a decade and have never combined bookshelves.)
Even if you don’t find a soul mate this year, there are a zillion ways that you can add love to your life, and you deserve to enjoy them all!!!
I would like to finish a first draft of my novel by spring but have been stuck and procrastinating since basically mid December!
You can barf out a first draft!!! It is within your grasp!!! It doesn’t even have to be good!!! No one ever has to see it!!! You can write the easy parts first if you are finding yourself stuck with something complicated!!! No one has to know!!! Making it readable is future-you’s problem!!! Right now your job is to spill your brain out into a document and trust that you’ll mop it up later!!!
One of my resolutions is to try more drugs.
I am famously not an expert on this topic; even my modest effort to occasionally smoke a little semi-legal weed last year was not especially successful. But I think you can find a safe and comfortable way to expand your comfort zone around people you trust! Although for legal reasons, you did not hear that from me. Legally, I think you should do FEWER drugs. Cut out caffeine, even. I am unclear about what my liability is here, so I’m kind of throwing stuff at the wall.
I'm resolved to sincere post this year into oblivion. I see a post about a sweater, great sweater! Something silly makes me giggle, tell the silly goose themselves. I rarely engage on social media. Not anymore mofos! I'm coming in complimenting.
I'm trying to outwardly express my appreciation and gratitude for things more often! Check in with friends more, tell people when their outfit is cute, write reviews of small businesses I enjoy, etc. As an introvert it doesn't come naturally but it's the 2025 energy I need to cultivate!
Obviously, these two resolutions are right up my alley! The writer podcaster John Moe recently mentioned on BlueSky how nice it is when people reach out to an artist to say they enjoy their work! I would even go as far as to say those interactions (especially if you’re not, say, interrupting someone in public eating dinner with their family or secret family) almost always go pleasantly (and usually it’s neutral at worst).
This for sure extends to the people in your life. Maybe your friend got a nice new sweater! Let ‘em know! Perhaps a co-worker’s homemade lunches always look and small great! Tell ‘em! Did the cashier at CVS make your day by applying a customer cares code even though you didn’t bring your card? Appreciate them!!! So much of the time, we’re all shuffling around, unsure if we are pulling off this new haircut or should start taking piano lessons. It’s a true kindness to offer enthusiasm and reassurance to the people around you (without being a creep)!
I refer to the online practice of this as Uncle Posting or Aunt Posting. I honestly aspire to the digital life of someone who logs on with no self-consciousness, who just wants to tell their nieces and nephews that they’re doing great, and has no inkling that strangers will see these comments. I will leave the comment “You two!!!” on the anniversary picture of people I’ve met one time. I’ll throw down some flame emojis on a photo of a friend wearing a suit to the theater. Why hold back? Who are you trying to look cool in front of? Leave the sincere comment that your heart years to share!
I’m working to get my dumb ass to read a book a month. It shouldn’t be hard, but there’s so much tv and things to look at on my phone instead.
Oh yell yeah. As someone with a similarly dumb ass, who is also prone to scrolling, I believe in you (and me) here! There are so many great books, and so many of them are fun to read. And guess what? The fun ones count as books too! A.B.A.B. (All Books Are Books). You don’t have to read War and Peace to consider yourself a reader. You don’t have to swim against the tide of Moby Dick’s page count to prove your literacy! I am POSITIVE that you can find a book or two that fires up the little pinball machine lights in your brain and makes you want to leave your phone across the room for an hour or two.
Extremely biased recommendation: Nobody talks about books and suggests good books to read like over at her newsletter The Maris Review!
I would like to watch more movies, especially older ones, and spend less time brainlessly poking around the streaming platforms looking for I-don't-know-what.
We’ve all heard the jokes about someone’s favorite movie being the Netflix home screen. Or how we have access to a nearly infinite deluge of entertainment but somehow, just like when we had three channels beamed into our home via a big metal antenna, there’s nothing on. What the hell?
This conundrum is wildly relatable! To slip into the dreaded “advice” mode, I find keeping a list of things I want to watch is super helpful. That way when it gets to be 8pm, I don’t have to try and discover something that fits my mood. I keep a little running tally in my phone of things I’ve heard are good so that when the time comes I can snap into (in)action and enjoy a movie. This method also helps stave off the feeling of not being in the mood that sets in when I scroll. There are so many great movies that I stumble across and think not tonight. If you keep a log of everything you want to watch, there’s a much better chance of having something temperament-appropriate at your fingertips when you want it.
Also, they don’t tell you this, but you don’t have to watch the whole thing at once! Watch half, go to be, watch the other half the next day. The Brutalist has an intermission, but when you’re at home, you can put a break in any movie you want.
I'm resolved to floss every day. It's the only resolution I make, because I've yet to complete a full 365 days of flossing.
Made a bunch of micro goals for better health.
Trying to be patient with myself and regulate when I’m overstimulated. (With ptsd, adhd, and a toddler it is a LOT!!)
These are some great goals! One beautiful thing about setting long-term intentions like these is that you can give yourself credit every time you do something resolution-compliant instead of kicking yourself in the butt (or punching yourself in the butt if you’re more of an upper-body type) every time you feel like you’re falling short.
I am a total (platonic) freak about flossing. People say that flossers live longer than non-flossers, and I’ve taken that to heart. It’s basically the only good habit I have, and I fully pat myself on the back every time I do it (which is every day, sometimes twice).
Wayne Gretzky (allegedly) said that you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. But it’s important to remember that you might also miss most of the shots you DO take, and that’s just part of it. I’ve probably said this before in the newsletter, but I’m just obsessed with poking holes in Gretzky’s logic. That smug son of a gun.
An imperfect attempt at achieving a goal isn’t always a failure; most of the time it’s the process working as processes do. You rarely hit every green light (or every zero-wait subway transfer) on the way home from work. You rarely hit every note when you’re singing along to the radio. You deserve the same gentleness from yourself with resolutions you’ve explicitly set as you do with less formal aims.
Give yourself credit when credit’s due, and don’t—I don’t know—send yourself to detention every time you slip up.
I’d like to be a better friend this year. While my favorite plans are canceled ones, so much of relationships are showing up. I’d like to do that more. The depression be on my head, though. - Out On Bail
Yes yes yes! You can do this! One thing I started doing a few years ago that might be helpful is making the kinds of plans I’m likely to keep. Maybe you’re not always going to be up for a sunrise bike ride across a mountain ridge. But chances are it’s a little easier to keep plans like “hey why don’t you come over here and we’ll watch the game” or “let’s grab coffee and sit in the park”. Let people know where your head is at, and I bet they’ll show you the same consideration and care you’d show them under similar circumstances. When you’re not at your best, it’s okay to let people show up for YOU, and maybe that will help you cultivate the skills at showing up for them too.
I’m trying to *operate from a place of confidence* this year, Josh!! and it ain’t gonna be easy!!
I love this goal because confidence is an attribute that you can benefit from nearly as much by pretending to have it as you do by actually having it. That’s not true of, like, a medical degree. You need to actually know the stuff you’re claiming to in order to perform an appendectomy. But with self-esteem, you can kind of fake it ‘til you make it, and really you never even have to make it. You can fake it forever, and that usually does the trick.
I feel like every wildly arrogant jerk I’ve ever met has someone trailing behind them, whispering to the people in their wake: “Actually, they’re really insecure.” And in my head, my response is always: “Then they should fuckin’ act insecure so we know their deal.” But you don’t have to be a monster to enjoy this loophole. Just…ask yourself what a confident person would do…and then do it, and reap the rewards. There’s no way for impostor syndrome to set in when you are intentionally being an impostor. Go wild with it. No one will know the difference. It’s the perfect crime.
I need to spend this year trying to create a life in which it is possible for me to thrive.
Here’s the best part about this resolution: It doesn’t even require you to thrive. You just have to set up the preconditions for thriving and then que será será! That’s such solid, process over results shit. I hope that in this coming year, we all create lives in which it is possible for us to thrive! And then whether we do or not is kind of up in the air, but hey we did what we could, and if things end up falling short of great, that’s probably fine too. Unless you’re Shaq, you’re probably going to miss at least 50% of the shots you take, after all.
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Redman ft. Method Man - “Lalala”
For over a quarter of a century, Redman and Method Man have reliably released rap songs about smoking weed, and I think that’s beautiful. Both rappers are in their (let’s say) mid-50s now, but they still sound like they’re having a lot of fun hanging out and making songs (primarily about smoking weed) together. Redman’s new album Muddy Waters Too can get a little too backwards-looking at times, as you night anticipate from the fact that it’s a sequel to his 1996 album Muddy Waters. And sometimes Redman’s lyrics are a little *cough* from another time, but he has a Don Rickles-y charm that makes it mostly feel warm or at least benign.But there’s something comforting about knowing that Red and Meth are still out there, doing their thing. It’s not quite like meeting up with an old friend, but it’s definitely like seeing old friends meet up with each other.
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’ve got a bunch of NYC dates coming up, and then a bunch back on the road! I’ll probably have some LA spots locked in by net week! See you there?!?!
This is kind of a long one! I’m sorry. Or…you know what? You’re welcome! Yeah, let’s go with you’re welcome.
Happy (Almost) New Year! (Also) Happy Kwanzaa! And Happy Hanukkah (Still)! I’ve been lighting candles and saying the blessings every night at (or around) sundown, which I’d been sloppy about for a few years. But for the last two Hanukkahs I’ve been more attentive in part because it feels cozy to participate in tradition even when I’m not doing it with my whole family, and in part out of defiance of everyone who’s said I’m a bad Jew or a self-hating Jew or not a Jew at all for asserting that the United States should stop financing Israel’s assault on the people of Gaza (and Lebanon etc.).
Seeing friends’ year-in-review recaps has made me reflect on my year as well. I haven’t felt especially accomplished this year, which is okay (he says but has not internalized yet). But I have done a lot of STUFF. It’s harder to remember what I’ve done this year because we’re aware of so many things now. It used to be that occasionally you’d get a letter telling you about the ailments of a faraway cousin, and your harvest would be bountiful or…unbountiful. Now you have to know about Madame Web and a presidential election and a thousand other events that cast a shadow on your day-to-day life without your being able to do much of anything about them. (If you’re in line for Madame Web…get OUT of line! It’s not in theaters anymore and hasn’t been for months!)
So, in an effort to take stock of my own year, here’s a quick list of some things I’ve done that feel significant in terms of my own life (sorry you have to see them; I should really just have a journal). This year I: Crushed a seafood tower on my birthday, watched bootleg fireworks from a friend’s roof on July 4th, met Dionne Warwick, hosted the Writers Guild of America awards (New York ceremony), celebrated Maris’s birthday in Miami, drove all over Florida for gigs with my friend Negin (and also Dulcé and Alonzo were on the gigs but not in the car!), read a bunch of books, failed to read a bunch of other books, spent a weekend with my family on Cape Cod, saw Oh, Mary! off-Broadway and felt very smug about it, ate several bagels with my parents, worked very closely with a good friend on a short-term job, worked on a project that never quite went anywhere with a couple of other friends, worked on a project that hopefully will become something next year with a friend, recorded a new standup special with a team of friends as producers, made a big thing of soup, drank several awful Dunkin’ alcoholic beverages with my sister, watched the Celtics win an NBA championship (good), saw a bunch of great concerts, rode around in a van on tour with some of my favorite artists, said goodbye to our beloved elderly dog, celebrated lots of friends’ victories, bought some new sneakers, drank a million gallons of iced coffee, ate lots of good meals with Maris, complained, listened to friends complain, caught up with people I hadn’t seen in decades, made new friends, performed on the JoCo Cruise again, won a couple of Wait Wait episodes, closed down the bar a few nights, went home at a sensible hour many times, showed up in kind of a staggering “special thanks,” told jokes in two dozen or so cities, missed a gig because of weather, started a bi-weekly show at one of my favorite venues, got covid (probably) in Asbury Park, surprised an old buddy for his 40th birthday, did a big gig because a way more famous comedian couldn’t make it after all, attended Kristen and Kayla’s wedding and Mattie and Jaya’s anniversary party and Isaac and Kel’s “not wedding,” met several friends’ new babies, met the hosts of Taskmaster.
This picture again? Yes! Me and the Taskmaster guys!
That’s a year’s worth of stuff, I’d say!
Over the holiday week(s) Maris and I have been tearing through our DVR (okay, mostly via Hulu not actual DVR) and screeners, and here’s some stuff we’ve been enjoying:
Bad Sisters Season 2 (Apple+): We loooooved Season 1 of Bad Sisters and were extremely psyched for the Season 2 premiere. I thought this season meandered a little bit in the middle but was overall really good too! I’ve never written this kind of tv, but it seems hard to pivot from a thrilling mystery/caper in a show’s first season to a second season that’s in large part about Dealing With Consequences. (I felt this way about Search Party as well, which is one of my all time favorite shows, Seasons 1 & 3 especially!)
Interior Chinatown (Hulu): We just finished this last night. It’s formally inventive in ways that enhance the storytelling instead of feeling like bells and whistles. The themes are compelling, and the plotty mystery stuff is legitimately mysterious! Every performance is great; Ronny Chieng and Jimmy O. Yang especially are tremendous. There’s a touch too much voiceover in the pilot, imo, but I only even mention it to assure you that it eases back in subsequent episodes. This is truly a more people should be talking about this show type of show, and (as someone said to me on BlueSky) it really would have benefitted from a week-over-week release model where people could have caught on in the middle of the season.
Speaking of Ronny: Standup specials by Ronny Chieng (Netflix), Nate Bargatze (Netflix), and Ilana Glazer (Hulu), James Acaster (Max), Jim Gaffigan (Hulu). There’s so much good standup happening!!! Maybe I’ll do some specific standup recommendations on social media or here if people have requests/tastes that they want catered to. I’m also excited to watch Rose Matafeo’s special on Max and Michelle Buteau’s upcoming Netflix special, but I haven’t gotten around to one and the other isn’t available yet.
Anora: I really liked this movie! Probably don’t watch it with your parents like did though!!! Midway through, Maris declared it to be Home Alone + Pretty Woman and then there’s a healthy dose of After Hours thrown in too. It’s full of one of my favorite movie things: Big ol’ goons getting in way over their heads. If you like overwhelmed goons, Anora is up there with The Beekeeper for me in terms of this year’s releases.
Hundreds of Beavers(free to watch on YouTube with ads!!!) is totally bonkers. People have described it as a live action Looney Tunes short stretched out to feature length. It’s visually spectacular in a way that is entirely out of step with the kinds of things being made right now (more on that in a sec). It’s much more like a classic film comedy (down to some gags that are clearly homages to that era). It slows down in the middle where you might go “Okay, I get it!” but the third act is spectacular. My eyes were wide the whole time. Watch the trailer below, and if you are at all intrigued, I think you’ll be dazzled by this silly-ass movie.
Not to be too ~inside baseball~ but I read this great reported piece in n+1 about how Netflix’s explicit mandate for its programming is to make and distribute series and feature films that are so accessible, they’re basically made to be watched while doing other things. The responses on social media were full of writers/producers/directors affirming that Netflix had told them in some form: “We don’t want to make stuff you have to pay attention to!”
This, in my humble opinion, stinks. Not that everything needs to be challenging to viewers, but it should at least strive for engaging. Between this and Liz Pelly’s excellent-slash-demoralizing exploration of the fake(ish) artists that Spotify has invented to populate their playlists, it is both stabilizing and devastating to receive confirmation that giant, zillion dollar corporations are lowering the bar for all sorts of art forms. There’s no problem with wanting background music (or even background tv on occasion) but starting from the premise of: “Make this mediocre because we don’t want people to focus on it!” lowers the ceiling on some of this work to crawl space heights. I don’t want to sound like I’m looking down my nose (or roiling with jealousy) at the artists who make these deals. Goodness knows I’ve done some weird gigs for money. But the “aim low” mantra from the biggest names (and bank accounts) in the industry really makes me queasy.
This all feels related to how every app and website offers AI assistance that takes slightly less time than a human could complete that task and returns worse results. Oh, Coca-Cola’s Christmas ad was generated by AI? Cool! I could tell by the way it’s a slurry of its previous Christmas ads (not exactly the apex of creativity to begin with) that looks bad and adds nothing new to the canon. I don’t mean to discount there ever being any useful implementation for this kind of computing technology (I think it came through for me while changing a flight in January), I’m just deeply skeptical of how quickly and forcefully it’s being shoved in front of us half-baked as a solution to the problems of “having to write a three-sentence email” and “people wanting to be paid for their work.” Even the Coke commercial works more as a signifier of “this is basically what you expect from a Coca-Cola Christmas ad” if you’re not paying attention. Nobody wants that! Nobody wants a half-assed product delivered under the assumption that nobody cares whether anything is good.
The thing about Hundreds of Beavers that I didn’t mention earlier is that it’s basically impossible to “second-screen” because there’s so little dialogue. You really have to keep your eyes on the action and follow along at a truly madcap pace. On one hand, it was annoying to not be able to send a text mid-movie without losing my place, but on the other hand, fuck me for expecting to be able to zone out! So many people worked hard on this film! The least I can do is hit PAUSE for nine seconds to reply “lol” to a friend’s message. So, on top of everything else, Hundreds of Beavers demands presence and mindfulness from the viewer in a way that felt very special and necessary.
I am hoping for more weird, trend-averse art in 2025, both from others and from myself!
(If you’re looking for something affirmative and big-hearted to read, I strongly recommend Blythe Roberson’s essay about going hunting as a vegan.)
What have you all been enjoying lately that feels made by humans for humans?
Most people don’t know this, but the Times Square ball used to be made of covid.
Come on, Auld Acquaintance. No one is saying that you should be forgot. The song is just asking questions. Which, yes, is often cover for stating an opinion but lilting your voice at the end so you retain plausible deniability. But that’s not what’s going on here! You’re brought to mind, like, all the time! Just the other day I was thinking about back in the day when we were hanging out and you said that funny thing. Everybody was dying at how funny it was. I was so happy you were brought to mind when I remembered. So you definitely haven’t been forgot.
No, I don’t know why they wrote a song about the possibility of forgetting you. Maybe whoever wrote it was just going through some shit of their own and it’s about them more than it’s about you. Okay I looked it up and the lyrics to “Auld Lang Syne” are by Robert Burns, who I believe is Robert Frost’s Chris Gaines. Maybe he (Robert Burns) was worried about being forgotten himself. And he wrote this defensively like: “Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? lol I don’t know but wouldn’t it be weird if we kissed?” Stop hiding your true feelings, Burns! Just say what you mean!
Okay, you’re right. I can’t guarantee you’ll e’er (annoying poet speak for “ever”) be brought to mind. What I can can promise is that I’ll make a good faith effort to stay in touch. And if you do the same, we will figure out a way to be in each other’s lives. Or we won’t, but it won’t be for lack of effort. People fade away from each other with time. And it’s nobody’s fault. Or it’s somebody’s fault. But these things happen. Or they don’t.
Anyway, let’s totally grab coffee in the new year. It’s been auld lang syne.
PEP TALK FOR A READER
I’ve edited this request just a bit for length AS IS MY CUSTOM!
I’m a paramedic in a really, really, rural area with sketchy terrain and weather. There are not nearly enough medical professionals; it’s 45 min to the closest ambulance station and almost 2 hours by car to a trauma center. I’m 41, my health concerns are under control, I don’t have a legitimate reason to not do [this job] except that I’m burnt out. But, if I quit, or even cut back, there literally are not enough medics. Either even more people will go unhelped or my co-workers (the 3 of them) will all have to pick up more work than any of them can reasonably do. The community doesn’t have enough money to offer enough to bring outside people in and no one is local is interested in going through the training. I’m afraid it might not get better and while it would definitely be better for me to quit, is my little bit better worth the little bit worse for everyone else? Also, would the guilt eat me alive? Or should I just get a 3rd dog and put all of my emotional well being into that? - Medic Alert
As usual, I do not have the answer to this question! But I do have some encouragement for you in what is clearly an intense and draining situation!
In most cases, it’s helpful to remind people that it’s not their job to worry about the lives of everyone around them. What makes this situation tricky is that it literally is your job to save their lives, which is the whole problem, right? Someone’s got to do it. And right now that someone is you, and so far no one else has reached out to grab that baton and run with it. So you’re stuck running and running, and because you’re a human being, you’re tired.
To reduce this to the level of children’s literature (I used to be a preschool teacher after all), it might help to ask yourself…are you being a Lorax here, or are you acting like a Giving Tree. The Lorax famously “spoke for the trees” like a pro bono attorney or a very confident boyfriend ordering for his girlfriend at a restaurant for some reason. The Giving Tree spent her life going straight Papa Roach (“CUT MY LIFE INTO PIECES!”) until all that was left of her was a stump. Honestly, the Giving Tree could have used a Lorax of her own to tell that kid to stop lopping off her branches. Nice work chopping up your best friend, idiot. And Giving Tree, set some boundaries!
What I mean to say is, there are many ways to offer care to others and to care for yourself. I don’t know what the Lorax did to unwind. Maybe he had an extensive hair-and-mustache-care regimen that helped him decompress while keeping his fur(?) lustrous. Maybe he did hot yoga. Maybe he had a drum kit in a cave somewhere that he could just fuckin’ go berserk on for an hour every night. I don’t know. Dr. Seuss didn’t cover it. He had other allegories to get to.
Regardless of whether The Lorax was a gamer or studied Brazilian jujitsu or practiced transcendental meditation, he’s a helpful model to keep in mind. Were his results perfect? No. But he was up against a problem that was bigger than his Danny DeVito-sized ass could handle. And so are you!
I don’t know whether the answer to your problem is leaving the job entirely, or taking a sabbatical, or scaling back your hours, or forming a union with your coworkers so the conditions are more sustainable, or merely grinding yourself down into a fine powder and blowing away in a breeze (hopefully not that one). But if you stick with a Giving Tree mindset, you’ll end up with an old man sitting on your stump, and by then it’s too late. You’ve been cut down, which is like being burnt out, but with an ax instead of a candle.
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: The Mountain Goats - “This Year”
This year and every year. A That’s Marvelous tradition like no other: Listening to this Mountain Goats song on New Year’s Day (which isn’t until Wednesday, so you can get a jump on it by listening now, or hold off until then, or both).
I hope you’re all getting a little rest in towards the end of the year, even amidst various excitements and obligations. My wife (Maris, who new readers may not know by name, but now you do) and I have a pretty cozy week of hanging out with friends and watching movies and eating Chinese food lined up, so we are celebrating both an observant Jewish Christmas and lighting Hanukkah candles all at once. (Movie-wise so far we have watched Juror #2 which came highly recommended, but I couldn’t get over the COME ON!!!! SERIOUSLY???? sensation I felt basically the whole time.)
Over the weekend our neighborhood took on the quiet holiday tone that sets in when residents scatter across the country (globe?) to visit family. But, since we’re Jews who just saw both of our families, we are putting “plant” in “transplant” and staying put in Brooklyn through New Year’s Eve. I was supposed to meet a friend for lunch today, but that got moved around a little so I am homebodying pretty hard.
As I mentioned last week, I sometimes tend to look THROUGH a period of time when I know I’ll be busy. In those moments, I fully forget that I’ll experience all the things that happen during that time. My eyes slide across my calendar like it’s a Chutes and Ladders board, and I imagine myself deposited on the other side of the busy period. I can feel a little overwhelmed looking at two full calendar weeks and imagining all the appointments and obligations hitting me at once like a truck. And then I realize that I’m very lucky in that it’s (almost all) stuff I like to do that (almost always) comes up one thing at a time.
I’d been looking at the back half of December as “the end of the year” in one capsule, and it wasn’t until early last week that I realized I have a bunch of fun events planned, and I get to enjoy them individually in succession, and sleep in between some of them too. Over the weekend I had a little extra downtime because I forgot to consider Saturday and Sunday exist, and I started having New Creative Ideas for the first time in a while, which felt terrific.
It was a slightly hectic pre-holiday week though, but in a very fun way! I was asked to hop on the podcast, where I talked (possibly too much) about slam dunks. The whole Flagrant Mag team is brilliant, and I am always so flattered and delighted to get to collaborate with them on anything! Then I went on back on WNYC to give pep talks to listeners! Thanks so much to Kate Hind who invited me back on the show and was such a gracious host! Also thanks to the listeners for being so open and sincere with their pep talk requests!
I also wrote a little guest post about NY Governor Kathy Hochul for my friend ’s always-excellent newsletter! Embedded in it is this silly video I made about Gov. Hochul’s proposed hotline for CEO’s to call in when they fail threatened. I’ll also embed it here for ease of viewership! (Also hi! Welcome, everyone who came here from and WNYC!)
If you don’t like it, take it up with Santa Claus.
P-Stick! Sticky P! Pep Cream! (Wow those ALL sound gross!) It’s time for a little Pep for Pepp! Because frankly, you deserve it!
It is, for so many reasons, ridiculous that peppermint ice cream is a seasonal food. First of all: WHY DO WE HAVE A WINTER-ONLY ICE CREAM FLAVOR? WHAT THE HELL IS THAT ABOUT? Mint ice cream served exclusively in the winter makes about as much sense as a piping hot mug of egg nog at a Fourth of July BBQ. It’s the most dissociative seasonal food our culture has. There’s no way you (peppermint ice cream) are going to catch on in any kind of broader sense while you’re being served in a such a bizarre context.
As I’ve said before in this newsletter (briefly, and two years ago) peppermint stick ice cream should be a year-round treat. Why would it not be? What other ice cream flavors go out of fashion when the weather changes? And yes, we have another mint flavor that perseveres in the warmer months, but if butter pecan and maple walnut and pistachio can endure throughout the full calendar, we can have two different mints!!!
Haters will (and do) say that mint ice cream tastes like toothpaste. Good point. NOT. Every person in America uses toothpaste two to three times a day without complaint! It is one of the most successful and widely-enjoyed flavors in the world. “Mint ice cream tastes like toothpaste?” No, you fools! We are lucky to live in an era when we have an oral hygiene product THAT TASTES LIKE ICE CREAM. (Note: I do not want to erase the small but significant minority of people who use Tom’s of Maine toothpaste, a product that is created, as far as I can tell, by mixing strawberry jam with sand.)
A few brave ice cream brands sell their peppermint stick varietal all year long. And yes, that is heroic. But we can’t stop there! Any company that makes stick cream (eww!) in the winter should make it all four seasons. THERE ARE HUNDREDS IF NOT…A FEW MORE HUNDREDS OF US WHO FEEL THIS WAY.
Peppermint stick ice cream, you are underrated. And in time, you will be vindicated.
PEP TALK FOR A READER
I did just a little tweaking of this pep talk request. Don’t worry about it.
Hi!! I would love a pep talk! I got laid off the week before Thanksgiving (media) and feel like I was the person cut on my team because the big boss didn’t like me. I haven’t even had time to start seriously looking for something new yet because I’ve had a lot going on (Thanksgiving cooking, destination wedding, MOVING) and am worried that there won’t even be anything to apply for over the holidays. Basically I’m overwhelmed and even though I’m incredibly privileged and can look for a job I actually want, I’m scared no one will want me back! THANKS! - Looking Towards a Hire Power
Let’s start here, and it’s going to sound a little flippant, but: Imagine doing all this BIGS LIFE STUFF while also having a job!!! That sounds way worse than your current situation! Obviously you’re going to need some money coming in eventually, but you sound financially stable in this moment, and most employers don’t let you take a ton of time off to smush your belongings into cardboard boxes or brine a turkey, especially if you are also planning to take a few vacation days for a honeymoon coming up. So, while the holidays and a wedding are stressful occasions to go through without income, they are positively delightful times to not have to go to work.
I will for sure grant you that it’s a rough time to be looking for work, especially in media. The people in charge of most outlets seem to have published their “Best of the Year” coverage the first week in December, laid off a chunk of their staff, and then thrown up a couple of middle fingers to the world until at least New Year’s Day. I have a few of things I’m working on (ideally) for television, and I was told the week of Thanksgiving that nobody on the network/platform/studio side of things was going to do any work until mid-January. So I guess in that sense it’s a great time to have one of the seven or eight (rough estimate) remaining jobs in media, because you don’t actually have to do anything for the final 10% of the year. I’m all for work/life balance, but I would love if the people with the money would show up for work so the rest of us could get on with our lives!
Across industries, it seems like working people are employed by fewer and fewer (bigger and bigger) companies who give less and less of a shit about both the products they sell and the people who create and distribute them. And the bigger the company, the harder every boss’s nipples seem to be at the prospect of replacing their workforce with computer programs that haven’t even proven they can do the jobs yet. Merry Christmas!
Wait! Please do not delete this newsletter yet! I wasn’t finished! I have more pep to offer!
While the richest people on earth are using their literal and political capital to try to burn holes in the social safety net, way, way more people are working collectively to secure sustainable and dignified working conditions. Last week, the Writers Guild of America called on television and film studios to take up the fight against generative AI and its theft of intellectual property. Even more encouragingly, unionized Amazon and Starbucks workers are on strike leading up to Christmas. (Two nice things you can do during that time are avoiding going to Starbucks while the strike is in effect, and donating to the unions’ strike funds if you have a couple of bucks to spare. Here’s Amazon’s! Here’s the one for Starbucks employees in the Pacific Northwest!)
This information probably isn’t of any material help to you in this moment, reader. But seeing how many working people across the country have begun to seize the power of collective action has been really encouraging to me. I know a lot of recent events suggest otherwise, but we can make things better with effort and solidarity. But in this moment, as you said, you have the privilege to look for work you want. Exercise it! That’s what it’s there for! Happy holidays!
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Julien Baker & Torres - “Sugar in the Tank”
As long-time newsletter readers know, my favorite Christmas song is this one by Charly Bliss and Pup (with an honorable mention for this Sufjan Stevens classic that feels about as much about Jesus as his non-Christmas music is). And we’re still in kind of a Hanukkah song dry spell since Adam Sandler dropped our last holiday classic THIRTY YEARS AGO(??!?!?!?). Since getting back from Aimee and Ted’s holiday tour, I haven’t been listening to any seasonal music. And ever since I saw They Might Be Giants live a week and a half ago, my headphones have been a lot of TMBG (and a lot of podcasts, so I guess I could recommend the Here episode of Blank Check or the Trap episode of The Flop House)!
But as counterprogramming to the current barrage of holiday (we know which one) music on the radio and in stores and scoring commercials…I offer you a sweet gay country song. It’s new and it’s good! I’ve missed Julien Baker (my favorite of the boygeniuses) and Torres individually the last few times they’ve come through town, and last week I couldn’t make it to the little pop-up show they did as a duo, but hopefully they’ll be back soon and I can hear them play songs together! Until then, let’s enjoy this one!
UPCOMING SHOWS
It’s a slow time of the year, but I’ve got some more shows to announce soon!
Materially, I have had a totally fine and good week. AND YET, I was in an intensely foul mood for several days, just stomping around, grumbling to myself (and others), and being a general pain in the ass. Nothing catastrophic happened, even though I missed a standup show because the train stopped working (not ideal), and I had trouble focusing on a little work I had to do (got it done eventually, though). But that did not stop me from temporarily ruining my own life with bad vibes!
The dust cloud lifted several times (the Writers Guild holiday party, getting to chat and take pictures with my friend Mindy Tucker…even though I did a bad job preparing for the photos, seeing They Might Be Giants with Maris, eating part of a big sandwich my friend won in a raffle), but as soon as I was done having fun, I hurled myself right back into this little rut. My brain is largely back on its feet now, but yikes I am not used to being so grumpy for such a sustained period, and I’m not good at it!
I’m feel so jealous when I see people who are skilled at being mad, whether they channel it into working out or getting revenge. When I’m in a bad mood I just want to like…flop around until I exhaust myself from flailing and pass out. Do you all have any better ways of handling anger? I would love to hear them!
Circling back (to myself) for just a moment, I want to say how great They Might Be Giants are as a live band. I first knew them from their animated shorts on Tiny Tune Adventures and secondarily from their album Flood which I’d inherited after the death of my uncle Jay. He was a fascinating guy and had a wildly eclectic CD collection that I downloaded into my head little bits at a time. (TMBG, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the rapper Chubb Rock were some memorable inclusions.) Then in the summer of 2005, a bunch of my childhood friends headed down to Lebowskifest in Louisville (for the second time…more on that later, or never!), where TMBG headlined the big opening night concert, and I was kicked in the chest by how powerful they sound with a full band. Some of their arrangements on record sound a little…novelty song, but they are a real-ass band with a big live sound. I imagine that’s a big factor in how they’ve remained a band for forty-plus years.
I also love the way TMBG weaves these intense moments of tenderness and melancholy into such quirky premises. It reminds me of the improv maxim of committing to the stakes of the scene, or the way Charlie Kaufman’s movie scripts take absurd concepts (you can spend fifteen minutes being John Malkovich) and play them out to their emotional conclusions. On Friday night I was struck by the lyric “I want to thank you for putting me back in my snail shell” from the song “Snail Shell” which is ostensibly about a snail that fell out of its shell, but is also poetically about coming across someone who puts you back into alignment with your own sense of purpose and identity. I also got a little choked up by the lyric “leave the nightlight on inside the birdhouse in your soul,” and I’m not even 100% sure what that one means!
I really resist depressing art that is “naturalistic” or “realistic,” but I’m much more willing to engage with weirdo surrealist drags. (Maybe that means I’m a baby who can’t handle the real world. But also maybe it means that I know war is bad and I get bored when that’s what a movie is all about.) This also points back to my eye rolls at so many awards-y movie performances. Oh, he acted sad because in the movie his son died? WE ALL KNOW THAT DEATH MAKES YOU FEEL SAD. I’m way more interested in a coherent portrayal of a guy who learns that he is appearing in the dreams of everyone in the world. (Even though that specific movie was a little uneven!)
I’ve been on a bunch of recent podcasts that I forgot to mention, so here goes!
I was deeply flattered to try on my native accent for a Dead Pilots Society reading of a dormant script for a show called Massholes. My personal accent kind of faded in and out, to be honest! But I gave it my all!
I showed up on some recent episodes of Sound Heap with the great John-Luke Roberts!
I have recently been obsessed with my friends’ extremely chaotic new podcast Welcome to Talk Town, and I was lucky enough to appear as a guest on the last two episodes. It was some of the most fun I’ve had in months!!!
Did I mention that I chatted with my old friend Gabe Dunn about IronMan, which I’d never seen before and did NOT like?
Oh and also here’s a little topical standup joke that didn’t do great, but I still like so I shared it on the internet anyway.
They call him Eminem (the Ms stand for “Martial Mistake”) now. I mean, they don’t, but they could.
Mr. President, you really stepped in it. You declared martial law about a week ago, which people did not like (people rarely enjoy martial law, I’ve found). And then your declaration of military rule was voted down, which must have been so humiliating. In America, our (once and future, ugh) president’s attempt at seizing power through force was executed by a bunch of off-duty police officers and wine moms who think ordering furniture online is the same as sex trafficking. Obviously they weren’t going to succeed. But you declared the military was in charge of South Korea, and you got voted down. Not to engage in toxic masculinity, but you got cucked by democracy, dude. Strongman leaders all over the world are probably cooking you in your group chats, and even female Fox News anchor types who LOVE when men take their rights away most likely got an incurable case of “the ick.”
Now you’ve been impeached by parliament, which, unlike in our government here, means that you are prohibited from exercising presidential power until the whole situation is resolved. Even worse, your own party turned against you because you refused to resign. And honestly, as an American, it’s kind of beautiful to see that some political parties in some parts of the world still have a sense of shame. If a Republican politician in America failed to implement marital law, their supporters around the country would rush out into the streets and BEG the military to suppress their rights out of fealty to their leader. Matt Gaetz would stage a photo op with his leg pinned underneath a tank tread while he gave the thumbs up straight to camera. It’s lightly encouraging to know that in South Korea, some politicians still view embarrassment as embarrassing.
You’ve got a little time on your hands now, it seems. And that’s a chance for you to figure out what’s next because, unless you were really good at martial law, there was always going to be a next thing. If you don’t die in office, you’ve got to have a third act. It seems unlikely you can take after the recent American tradition and become elected president again after exhibiting wildly disqualifying behavior. But maybe you can do the slightly less recent American ex-president things of taking up painting or turning yourself into an entertainment executive or becoming vegan and just continuing to stick around while people grow more and more aware of your flaws over time.
Your options are limitless (well, except for being president still). You’re done with public service; now you’re ready for a little Yoon-time.
(DISCLAIMER: I know very little about Korean politics and hopefully learned just enough for this pep talk to make a little sense and not sound culturally monstrous!)
PEP TALK FOR A READER
I’ve done just a little editing of this request for brevity!
Not sure if this is relatable but we're halfway through December and I am struggling to get into the holiday spirit. I'm not at all depressed, everything is going great. I just feel tired after this past year, and like my head has been elsewhere (particularly the recent news cycle). Would love a pep talk on how to restore some holiday spirit and maybe get my groove back in time for Christmas. - Holidazed and Holiconfused
This writer has captured maybe the most prevalent mood I’ve ever seen someone describe as potentially unrelatable. Nearly everyone I know is feeling burnt out, wrung out, and a third out of your choosing. Our presidential election ended in a true worst case scenario for many people (although if you’re a billionaire who owns a racist bumper sticker factory, all your dreams are coming true). Everything feels like a scam lately. I am currently being hounded to pay two months of membership dues for a gym I’ve never been to in a city I haven’t lived in for over a decade. There are maybe some unexplained drones hovering over New Jersey, but also a bunch of dummies are getting freaked out while accidentally stargazing or spotting regular-ass airplanes. We’ve been living in “unprecedented times” for so long, I think it’s safe to say we’ve established a new precedent.
(Okay so maybe I am still wallowing in a little residual crankiness.)
Because you asked, and because I believe I have something to offer here, I will dip my toes briefly in to the advice-giving pool. Outside of the general year-end malaise, I deeply relate to the feeling of looking at a calendar and seeing a solid block of stuffI’vegottado. It’s a daunting position to be in, considering two or more weeks as a single unit of BUSY. But even if your holidays (Hanukkah and the other ones) are packed with obligations, I want to offer a few ways to reframe that experience and make it less dreadful.
How you’re feeling right now.
Break this period down into its component parts. Not for productivity reasons. I don’t think a to-do list is going to eradicate your doldrums. But even just considering the individual things that are keeping you busy is a nice way to focus on the events and experiences themselves rather than the fact that you are constantly occupied. You’ve got to go to the mall and pick up a couple of gifts? That’s not just an hour and a half of Being Annoyed (although it’s maybe also that); it’s a chance to bring joy into the lives of your loved ones. If it weren’t, you wouldn’t be doing it. Throw a podcast or audiobook on in your headphones and hurl yourself into the fray of commerce.
UGHHH you have to make an appearance at an office Christmas party? Sure, that’s a demand on your time. But what will you be doing there? Probably making some stilted smalltalk but probably also catching up with someone who you enjoy chatting with and mostly only see in the context of work. Get psyched for gossip instead of viewing the event as a period of your life you’re handing over to the whims of fate. Is there an hour you can reclaim for yourself in the middle of the day or after everyone else is asleep? SEIZE IT! It’s yours now! No one can make you not do that!
What will make this fun? Now that you’ve considered what you Have To Do, is there a way to make it more enjoyable? Can you bring a friend? Will there be a dog you can pet at this event, or a group of kids building a Lego structure you can ingratiate yourself with instead of talking about How Work Is with older cousins you never see? Can you talk with the older cousins about how annoying (or adorable) the kids are? Will there be food you’re excited to eat? This can be a fraught and frazzling time of year if you have difficult relationships with family members or holiday celebrations themselves. So…how can you build or observe traditions in ways that are as joyous as possible (AJAP).
This is something I used to tell friends who were trudging through first date after first date with dud after dud: It’s supposed to be fun. If it’s not fun, you don’t have to do it. And while that’s absolutely true with dating, it’s not always the case with family. You don’t always get the chance to opt out. But still, a party, a gathering, a family dinner is supposed to be fun, and treating it as such is a helpful way to start. But also…
How can you indulge the feeling of Don’t Wanna? Sometimes things have to get done, which is sad but true. There’s cleaning, cooking, gift buying, orchestrating travel, wrangling childcare, pretending Santa is real, making excuses for things you can’t do, and so much more. Obviously a disproportionate amount of stuff on average falls to moms under the auspices of “having it all.” But sometimes moms and others simply Don’t Wanna. In those cases, it might help to consider what can you…not do?
Do you have the ability to throw a few dollars at a problem? Make it rain, and buy some nice cookies instead of baking them! Are you expected to travel an inconvenient distance to see people who make you feel bad? Stay home! Are you overwhelmed with tasks? Ask for help! Or, quietly delete a few low-priority chores from your itinerary. If nobody but you is expected to pay attention to them anyway, chances are other people might not even notice they didn’t get done. Don’t wrap gifts! Put them in little bags! Or leave them in the bags they came in! Who gives a shit?
This is not failproof methodology. Sometimes you just have to do things you don’t want to. Or even a deluge of good things can leave you underwater. But instead of considering The Holidays as an mountain to be scaled, that you can make life easier by driving a car up the path instead of walking, or remembering that you’re climbing this mountain because you want to, or if you actually are not interested in scaling the peak, you’re free to go around. Everest is optional. And so is making egg nog from scratch.
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Bob Sapp - “Sapp Time”
Kind of a curveball this week, I know. This video feels like a very early aughts “can you believe this silly thing is on the internet?” cultural element, but I never hear it brought up as such. Maybe “Sapp Time” never achieved the heights of virality required to coast smoothly into the future. Perhaps there was just not a specific cultural stickiness that kept it around.
In any case, this music video that my college hallmates and I stumbled upon during out first year in school popped into my head this week, and the song is still surprisingly catchy in its clunkiness. I think at one point I knew what some of the Japanese words meant, but I do not remember any of the translations. The phonetic pronunciations are still rolling around along the wrinkles in my brain though.
(For reference, Bob Sapp played in one NFL game and then at some point moved to Japan to pursue combat sports, which he was not very good at, comparative to other professional fighters. But do they have a theme song like this? I don’t think so!)
SOME OTHER STUFF I ENJOYED
My friend Yassir Lester wrote (and co-directed along with his brother Isaiah) an extremely silly movie starring Shameik Moore and D’Arcy Carden (Janet from The Good Place), and Maris and I had a blast watching it. It was the most/hardest I’ve laughed at a movie this year!
Also my friend Martin Urbano put out a new standup special in character as a general creep who is making his return from being “cancelled.” He’s an excellent writer and performer, and he’s always turning the premises of his own jokes in on themselves over and over in a way that really asks the audience to examine what they’re laughing at. It’s a real tightrope walk!
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’ve got a bunch of NYC dates coming up, and then a few back on the road! See you there?!?!
I got back last night (technically today) from the little week-long tour I got to be a part of for Ted Leo and Aimee Mann’s Christmas Shows. The shows themselves and the attendant driving around were, to borrow an old phrase, just what I needed (JUST WHAT I NEEDED!). A week of performing with some of my favorite artists, in front of warm and enthusiastic crowds. I got to do all the fun parts of touring (writing jokes, goofing around with friends, performing for nice people) without the bad parts (posting videos on Instagram begging people to come to the shows, waking up at 5am to catch a flight). My parents were able to come see me tell jokes in person for the first time in several years (not counting when I visit them and won’t stop talking), and that was wonderful too!
I’m so grateful to Aimee and Ted (so cool and nice in addition to being treat musicians) for having me along for this run of shows. The whole squad (including special guests Paul F. Tompkins and Nellie McKay, the band, and the crew) has known each other and worked together for years, and as the newest guy, I was focused on:
a. Doing a good job onstage. b. Not being annoying.
Hopefully I pulled off both! I’m so used to touring by myself or in a car with one other person, and it was really fun to have a big part of the day in a van full of people, listening to music and podcasts and riffing silly bits (while also personally being mindful of goal “b,” not being annoying; sometimes a little bit of bit goes a long way when you’re the new guy). Ultimately, the pressure to achieve goal “a” was relieved by the fact that even if I realllly blew it, the audience was going to get to see Ted and Aimee play a bunch of the best songs of this (and the end of last) century, and no one would remember I existed. Pretty good for a worst case scenario! But I think I did a nice job with the job part and also with the not being annoying part.
It means a lot to me to see artists who are in the midst of long and varied careers, who work hard at cultivating a sense of community and collaboration, and who like watching each other perform from the side of the stage. And, not to sound like the oldest guy in history, I also love the magic of a show that is meant to be seen by a live audience and not chopped up into tiny pieces and sprinkled across the internet. (Although I do think the world deserves to witness PFT’s stirring musical number performed as Krampus.) The whole endeavor took the hard work of a whole bunch of people onstage and offstage, and the end result was really special and memorable, and I’m so glad I got to be a little part of it.
Between this and the writing project I’m working on with my friend Alison Leiby, I’m feeling energized by teamwork. That’s the spirit I’m going to try and take with me into 2025. For now, I am home in Brooklyn doing shows around NYC and hanging out with Maris and noodling around with some writing stuff and doing karaoke and watching movies and eating Chinese food. It’s cozyin’ time.
(Oh also, if you are not already a Paul F. Tompkins fan, you just have to listen to his bit about canned peanut brittle. He’s one of the greats! Also so nice!)
PEP TALK FOR HEALTH INSURANCE CEOs
Why does the guy on the right look like he’s tied down waiting to be bitten by the snake on the left?
Last week, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare was shot dead in the street, and a prevailing response even among many pacifists was: “Oh, so that’s why guns.”
All I’ll say here is: It’s never too late to quit your job and give all or most of your money away! There are plenty of other things to be in charge of. Nobody’s mad at the guy who runs the factory that makes twist ties. (Or at least, nobody’s that mad.)
Also, nobody’s making you be the CEO of anything! There are few skills I trust less than “good at business” for its own sake (even “suspiciously proficient at tying knots” could be a Cub Scout thing or a sex thing, not a murder thing). You could still learn to build furniture or play the violin! The world is your oyster!
Everyone’s doing gift guides in their newsletters lately, and I don’t have especially good taste, and I also don’t know what you, readers, like! So, in keeping with the Best Compliment I Ever Received feature this newsletter sometimes runs, I asked (on BlueSky) for the best gifts people have ever given, and maybe this will be some inspiration!
(I will say, tickets to a live event is a fun one, and I don’t just say that in a self-serving way as someone who performs regularly at live events! Similarly…merch or other tangible work sold by a favorite independent artist!)
I’ve divided the responses up into loose categories and shared them with you all!
Handmade Gifts!
[My partner] asked me “what kind of advent calendar would you want” and I, thinking this was hypothetical (I’m Jewish!), said “I dunno, probably rocks, bones, and bugs?” He sourced enough weird little things & chocolates for a cool nine-drawer cabinet (he forgot how many days in Chanukah)
Normally I would not consider “rocks, bones, and bugs” a good gift (unless the gift-recipient is a scientist or the gift-giver is an eight-year-old), but this is great!
I loaned my mother a comic book, Digger by Ursula Vernon. Months later she's down for Christmas and gives me the book back but then gives me a four-to-five inch tall felted figure of the main character, including a working button and backpack and a detachable pickaxe.
My husband built me a little Raspberry Pi computer that contains the classic Simpsons seasons (as defined by me). It plugs into the tv and you can choose an episode or let it shuffle. This may not sound romantic but it's some of the hardest I've ever swooned!
My sister took an existing book about sisterhood and affixed pictures of us throughout the entire book. Pictures of us as little children all the way up through adulthood. It is my most cherished object.
My sister made me a beautiful quilt, and I filled her freezer with healthy, homemade post-partum recipes I researched from around the world.
I lived in a house of 6 people for about 6 years and I moved out a few years ago but stay close to them. We see each other as family. Last Christmas one of them designed and had made a set of rings for all of us to wear. It was incredibly touching.
I love this one because it is thoughtful and generous and also custom rings make it feel like you’re part of a secret society or won a Super Bowl together.
My grandma knit me an afghan and said that I'd be getting a big hug from her whenever I wrapped myself up in it
That’s some top shelf grandma shit!!!
A patient once made needlepoint pot holders for me. They were beautiful, but what warmed me even more was she had low vision and was in her 90s but took the time to make them for me. I was so touched. Still am.
Also grandma-style even though it’s not technically from your grandma!
Stuff!(Because sometimes the best things in life…are things!)
I'm only saying this due to recency bias, but a very soft and cozy heated blanket. But actually the same person (my spouse) once found all the extant episodes of my favorite old time radio show and made me a CD of them ❤️ and before that made me actual mix tapes for my car with a tape deck!
My (adult!) child gifted me a Scrooge-style nightcap and a nice bottle of whiskey - for nightcaps!
Nothing better than a cozy situation. And very little worse than a fake-cozy situation. Like when you see a couch that looks nice and soft and you kind of slump down into it and it’s basically a park bench covered in fabric. Kiss my bruised ass, deceptively firm couches!
My bestie stayed with me for a few weeks after a breakup, and was horrified to learn I had no good knives (I was ~30). He bought me my first really good knife. It’s still going strong 20+ years later.
Damn this is the sweetest story I can imagine about acquiring a knife right after a breakup. Normally those don’t turn out this well!
I mentioned to my best friend that when I was around 10 my mom gave away my plush Fievel doll and I had been super sad about it, and months later she found one on ebay and gave it to me for Christmas.
Through the internet, all things are possible, both for better (here) and for worse (50% of other examples).
I don’t think this is what you’re looking for, but a friend (back in the day) gave us an ounce of pot when we were going thru some tough times. Much appreciated!
This is absolutely the kind of thing I was looking for! What a nice friend!
My husband got me an eye mask, kind of as a bit, because he stays up later than I do. It turned out to be the most useful thing he's ever gotten me (and in fact when that one was kind of getting ratty, he bought me a newer, nicer one that I still use).
Sometimes bits become real life!
A few years ago a friend got me a full tea set because I love to throw teas but had a hard time finding a set that had a cream pitcher and a sugar bowl that didn’t wasn’t ugly. Once I opened the box and realized what it was [a cream pitcher and sugar bowl that were not ugly, of course] I cried. It was so thoughtful.
I gave my best friend’s daughter a random stuffed animal for her first birthday that she is still obsessed with at 6 (the gift is making me feel like I totally nailed Cool Aunt early).
Tickets to my favorite baseball team!! I would never have spent the money. But oh, what a treat!!
My wife got custom Lego figures of the two of us.
I was moving to MI from CA, and wistful about leaving. My sister got me a necklace with a California Poppy that matched hers, and said I'd always be welcome to stay with her when I missed home. I think we're as close now as when we lived 30m apart.
The lesson here is listen to people and know what they like and just hammer it. Although you can go too hard. I think I’ve got to put an end to the run of buying Maris olive-themed jewelry before she has enough of it to open her own Etsy store and start flipping pieces I’ve given her.
After my dad died a friend with a lot of airline miles gave me enough of them for a round-trip flight so I could have a break from all the grief etc. It was incredibly kind and helpful!
Airline miles! The gold bars of the sky!
I offhand mentioned once to a friend that I always cringed using a can opener because I envisioned cutting myself on the lid and a few days later I received a beautifully giftwrapped OXO good grips safety can opener. I have felt warm with friendship every time I open a can for over ten years now.
I was embarking on an exciting new chapter professionally and my then-girlfriend bought me a wonderful backpack upgrade for everyday carry. Reader, I married her.
There is something so gratifying about having just the right tool for a job. I can only imagine how good it felt for someone to use dental floss for the first time instead of cleaning the spaces between their teeth with a twig or some twine.
for my birthday in october my bestie called my local fancy butcher and put two very nice steaks on hold for me, knowing i love cooking, rarely eat meat, and money was tight. i had a lovely birthday dinner!!!! (when i picked it up the staff cheered and said it was a first)
Celebrating my birthday - at the end of August - has always been a challenge because I was always moving or starting school. One year, my best friend baked me a birthday cake and froze it in my mom's freezer so I could have a home-baked cake on my actual birthday.
A loved one died on Thanksgiving day in 2002. My whole family had been in the hospital with her all week. When we got home that night, we found an entire thanksgiving feast had been prepared & set up in my parents’ house by their friends. It was the best and sweetest gift I’ve ever experienced.
A tub of sunshine-yellow carrot ginger soup from a distant friend when I was upside down headfirst in a snake pit of grief.
Once when we lived in California, the first time it had rained in months my husband drove to my office parking lot and replaced my windshield wipers so that I could drive home with new ones.
One of my exes bought me a set of tires when I was a broke grad student and had a tire blow out and couldn’t afford it, and it was just such an immense relief to have them instantly solve a huge problem for me.
When going through an especially busy & difficult time in my life a neighbor walked over and washed my car (during The Pollening here in the South). Asked for my keys & cleaned the inside too. Small thing, but something I lacked time to do and was very needed. Will never forget that small kindness.
As someone who has no idea how to take care of a car, this sounds incredible. My usual thing as a car owner is to drive until one of the parts starts making too loud a noise for me to hear the radio, or too acrid a smell for me to think thoughts, and then I take it into a mechanic who goes “You would have died if you’d driven ten more miles!” and then charges me my net worth to replace a piece of metal the size of my left thumb.
Cold Hard Cash
When I was 18, I asked my mom for money, which she thought was boring (she likes wrapping presents). So my mom gave me a Kleenex box with a dollar bill sticking out. When I pulled it out, I found it was an entire roll of dollar bills taped together that came out like tickets from a skee-ball machine
Was studying abroad in college & our classroom had a random piano. I’d arrive early to play. Showed up one morning & was told to stop: heartbroken. A few days later a classmate told me to keep playing & not to worry. I found out later he’d paid the place to make sure I could continue. Incredible.
I was getting divorced & struggling financially. I mentioned to a friend that I hadn’t filed yet because I had to come up with the court fee first. Soon after a stranger walked up to me and handed me an envelope with the money I needed. Several friends had taken up a collection, I found out later.
Someone once left me an envelope of cash for a few drinks at my local bar. Handwritten note and all. The thought and gesture were so kind.
There’s an old Simpsons joke where Homer describes alcohol as “the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems,” and that’s kind of how I feel about money. Capitalist exploitation, bad. Giving someone a wad of bills to make a problem go away, good.
Sometimes people treat money or gift certificates like a tacky or thoughtless gift and to that I say NO. Obviously you don’t want to give a dusty re-enveloped Borders gift card for your tenth wedding anniversary. But giving someone a green light to splurge at a restaurant (big recent trend in my family) or on a nice pair of sneakers without assuming what they want to eat/wear is often more thoughtful than going: “I bet you’d like this thing that’s maybe not your style or even your size!” That level of taste is so hard to nail! You don’t have to try it if you have any doubts!
Well, Harper Lee’s friends once gave her a year’s wages so she could have a year off to write. I think we have different friends, but it would be nice!
If anyone knows any patrons of the arts, I too would like to befriend one!
Acts Of Service
When I was very depressed once, my pal drove to my house, coaxed me into her car, and brought me to eat soup dumplings. It was the nicest thing.
My roommate and I were in the process of repainting basically the entire house that we were renting from my parents and we were burnt out. A friend was over and saw the supplies. He said "I have tomorrow off, I'll come paint it for you" and he DID. Painted until he was out of paint. A hero.
okay best gift ever was, after years of loneliness, a group of new friends all showed up for my birthday, did karaoke with me, and were their weird and wonderful selves. couldn't have asked for anything better than silliness and feeling loved
This is my kind of gift! I may not be a skilled house painter (traditional) or “guy who paints houses” (mob), but I can certainly take you out for soup or show up to your birthday party!
My dad died over the winter holidays in 2021. My fam all went back home for several weeks, mid-Dec to mid-Jan. I came back in Jan to find my SIL & friends had taken down all of our Christmas decorations for us & put them away, & had my house professionally cleaned. I will never forget that kindness.
My dad passed away unexpectedly and I had to leave town in a rush. When I got back my friends had cleaned my whole house. Which was….no small feat. It was totally unexpected and was the best thing EVER.
I was really sick one December, and very sad about it. When I came home one day, my husband had put up the tree and lights and just decorated the shit out of the house, and it cheered me up so much.
my mom stayed with us after our baby was born and did all the laundry, cooked, and organized my living room, it was the best gift anyone has ever given me
The week after my kid was born, my husband’s boss came over to help around the house. She ended up spending about an hour shredding old documents, repeatedly emptying the shredder, and vacuuming around it. I think of her every time I have to empty the shredder myself, an odious task.
These are all such generous uses of time and energy. As an aside, I am so relieved to not be a Christmas celebrator, because I’d absolutely be the slob with a tree up until March and lights up until May. I would probably try to cheat it by finding lights with what I’d consider a “year-round” color scheme (a thing that doesn’t actually exist) and then become the subject of gossip across the neighborhood. (I mean, assuming I ever live in a house again.)
Sentimental Value
My sister gave her daughter (my niece) my name as her middle name.
A beautiful and high-stakes gift.
I was carded at my 33rd birthday party. That was a gift from the universe!
On one hand, we shouldn’t put such a cultural premium on youth. On the other hand, it’s sometimes nice to have someone mistake you for a youth. What better day than your birthday?
This is revealing but, as an autistic, the best gifts are when I actually get what I asked for and not someone’s interpretation of it. I know it sounds ~not great, but again the autism demands specificity and particularity
Unclear what if anything this says about me, but I do relate to this. I was a VERY bad gift recipient as a child! As an adult I learned that if I never ask for anything specific, I don’t put any pressure on receiving anything specific, and I can just be delighted that someone thought to give me a gift at all. (Your mileage may vary, of course.)
Definitely up there, my first birthday after my dad passed a friend got me a Cameo from my favourite Jewish jobber, Barry Horowitz. Who also offered me very genuine condolences which was as lovely as it was unexpected.
Best friend in college got me a notebook filled with messages from my closest friends about why I was so special to them. Still keep it by my bedside to read on tough days.
I have one of these that my co-teachers made filled with pictures by my last group of students when I was a pre-school teacher. It’s so special to me!
My husband made me a compilation of videos from my family and friends, but they were all in the style of Cameos. Very funny!!!
A partner lovingly applying lipstick to me for the first time which helped me realize I was trans.
This is so tender, and I don’t know if it’s the right gift for everyone, this sounds like such a beautiful experience someone gave you, and I’m so glad you shared it here!
What about you, readers? Do you have a best gift you’ve ever received that you’d like to share? Please do!!!
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Emilyn Brodsky - “Hands off the Stove”
I recently met Emilyn through the excellent DC Pierson (whose “architect who designed New York ” videos are my favorite running internet comedy bit right now), and I realized that I’d seen her perform live probably…15 years ago opening for the World Inferno Friendship Society in Rhode Island. Wild!
I went back to listen to Emilyn’s studio albums, which are great, and her most recent one was self-produced, and it’s just so light and breezy-sounding, but also full of poignant lyrics and catchy hooks. There’s an emotional muscle behind the gentleness of the music. And a melodic punch behind the tenderness of the vocals. The horns! Really good stuff! I couldn’t stop listening to it! And now I’m sharing it with you!
Also, the recently shouted-out Doechii’s Tiny Desk Concert is great!
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 had a nice Thanksgiving with people you love, or at least some nice food, or at whatever is slightly less than least (penleast?) a moment to rest near the end of a long year, which all years are unless you’re a tortoise or a mountain.
Maris graciously agreed to sneak out of New York City with me for a quick visit to see my family. The travel included an early Wednesday wake-up and a late Thursday arrival back in Brooklyn, and I am thankful that she was amenable to shuttling up and down the northeast corridor via Amtrak to hang out with my folks. I have a very chatty family (with me being arguably and argumentatively the yappiest among us), so we packed a lot of great conversing and catching up into two-ish days. We also tried a new-to-us Dunkin’ seasonal alcoholic beverage (the Spiked Peppermint Mocha Iced Latte) which may be their all-time best boozy offering (not a strong field, but still). It had an egg nog quality, not in its flavor, but in the fact that I could drink one glass of it a year and feel totally content. It tasted like some novelty drink that a friend would whip up in a large batch for a holiday party, and you wouldn’t say no, but you also wouldn’t ask for the recipe. That’s more than I can say for their spiked iced teas.
A four-pack of this was more than my entire family drank, cumulatively.
Starting Friday, my time has mostly been devoted to the Aimee Mann and Ted Leo Christmas Show tour. I’m part of a little company of performers for this run of shows, and I do like…three minutes of standup plus a bunch of little songs and sketches with Aimee, Ted, Paul F. Tompkins, and Nellie McKay. Over the weekend, we had several hours of rehearsal (I was generously exempted from Thanksgiving day) and four excellent shows at City Winery in Manhattan. When I was in college, my roommates and I put on a weekly sketch show called Friends Like These, that always came together at the last minute, and this reminds me a little of that. I love the Little Rascalsy feeling of “we’re putting on a show!” Although it helps that in this case I’m tagging along with some of the best singers/songwriters/comedians in the world, and that the band is full of RIDICULOUSLY talented and accomplished musicians as well. I’ll probably write more about the specifics next week, but I don’t want to spoil anything for the folks who are going to see the tour in Alexandria, VA; Collingswood, NJ; Beverly, MA; and Norwalk, CT!
Between the family visit and the shows and the staying out late with friends after the shows and the pie, I’m feeling sleepy but satisfied, which I think is a good way to feel as the year comes to a close!
(Oh also we got the final version of my standup special edited, and hopefully we’ll figure out soon where it will live and when people can see it!!!)
PEP TALK FOR VITO THE PUG
A champion.
Vito, you little goblin, you’ve done it. Even though your face is as wrinkly as a 95-year-old man’s elbow skin. And your nasal passages are crazy straws made of flesh. And even at top speed, you run about as fast as a toddler can chuck a bowling ball. If Air Bud had been about a pug, he’d have been cut from the team in the first act of the film. And yet, Vito, you persevered. You showed them all! You won Best In Show at the National Dog Show!
Take that, dogs who can breathe normally! Shove it, canines with the disposition to perform tasks or the musculature to undertake impressive athletic feats! There’s trouble down at the old mill? Well, call a border collie! Vito the Pug is too busy posing with THE TROPHY HE WON FOR BEING THE GREATEST DOG.
Vito, you are an inspiration to everyone who’s ever been told that they’re too short, too round, too clingy, too out of breath. You’ve proven that there is no human-bred quality one might possess that can stop them from achieving their dreams. In a field of expertly groomed standard poodles and impeccably well-adjusted golden retrievers, a crumpled up little gremlin stood (metaphorically) tall and won the day.
We are all a little Vito at times, and little Vito, you’ve shown us what we’re capable of.
UNEXPECTED GOOD NEWS!
Over on BlueSky, I asked for people to share some unexpected pieces of news, big or small, that they’ve received lately. I received such lovely responses, and here they are! I’ve done some light editing for grammar, but that’s about it!
I got a chance to audition for my dream theater role (Carlotta in The Phantom of the Opera), which I never thought I'd get to even try for.
Oh hell yeah that’s great news! Sometimes almost getting the thing you want can feel discouraging, but what it really means, most of the time (as you know), is that you’re going in the right direction. When people say it’s an honor just to be nominated, they always sound slightly full of shit (which they sort of are) but they’re also telling the truth! I can say this honestly, as someone who has attended the Emmys as a nominee a year I did not win an Emmy.
I had such a nice time hiking with my nieces over Thanksgiving. The Bay Area delivered on great weather & views, and they are such interesting & funny people! Also, the Wicked movie really rocked, and we had a Secret Breakfast sundae afterward.
Incredible day. Great times with family. Perfect moviegoing experience (Wicked seems especially great for nieces; it’s niece-core, basically). And Breakfast Sundae? Game changer! I think that’s what the movie Game Change starring Julianne Moore was about. Just kidding. She played Sarah Palin in a film about the 2008 election. That’s still a movie you can probably watch somewhere if you want! Weird!
One of my union members needed sick time donations and our members got them 80% there and the campus president is going to waive the rest.
Our healthcare system in America sucks shit through a hose (and you have to pay out of pocket for the hose) but organized labor and mutual aid always warm my heart! It’s so beautiful when people care for each other! When people even temporarily band together to stave off the brutality of unchecked capitalism, it feels the same to me as when a pug wins a dog show. Against all odds, it happened!!!
Earthjustice continues to notch hard won essential wins. One of the organization’s attorneys blocked a handout for coal in an energy case and we just settled two cases in Colorado making electricity more affordable and less reliant on the climate destabilizing gas industry. This follows a slew of other recent big wins including protecting one of the worlds most endangered whales from the oil development that also threatens small scale fishers and tourist operators in the Gulf of Mexico.
Earth: 2 Climate Criminals: Well, a lot, but at least Earth is on the board.
A roof replacement that my mother was warning me about and that I should claim on my insurance came in at less than half of what I’d saved up for it.
Isn’t it a relief when some kind of financial misfortune isn’t as severe as you’d anticipated? It feels like a real big jerk threatening to kick your ass and then letting you off with a wedgie. You feel briefly invincible even though in reality you’ve merely been not-vinced.
Unbeknownst to me, the payroll office that just gave me a raise was supposed to give me an even better raise. They have corrected the error with back pay.
Okay, actually, upon further reflection, it is better when someone actually gives you more money than you thought they were going to. I hope you spend a small portion of it on something frivolous. Like a painting of a turtle waving “go around” to a faster animal. Maybe not that but something like that.
on thanksgiving my downstairs neighbor left me a mini-thanksgiving feast on my doorknob. good news as in an act of kindness still counts.
Neigh-bors! Neigh-bors!
I’ve lived in the same apartment for seven years, and our building has a really friendly energy to it. One time our neighbor’s smoke alarm was going off, and we had to call the fire department and let them into their place through our little adjoining balcony and it turned out they were just very deeply asleep, and they bought us a big bottle of wine as a thank you, even though we should have bought THEM a big bottle of wine as an apology for letting the fire department into their apartment when they were just doing a Snow White type slumber. Our upstairs neighbors play “City Of Stars” (from La La Land) on their piano several times a week, and they have a toddler who stomps around at weird hours, but they’re so so nice, and those sounds are just the cost of doing business of living in a community, and it’s really pretty cute if I’m being honest.
I do not extend the same goodwill to the next door neighbors who put one of those Ring doorbells that says “Hi! You’re being recorded!” on their brownstone. Boo that doorbell! It is my enemy.
In June 2024 , my photograph was chosen and made into a USPS stamp.
Can’t stop singing the name of this stamp in a Bob Seger voice.
I am so impressed by this!!! You get to be a stamp? Your work is now on par with icons like the Grand Canyon and Bugs Bunny! Stamps are forever! It says it right there on the thing! This is a legendary accomplishment and you should feel proud!
Have you received any unexpected good news lately? Leave! A! Comment!
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Nellie McKay - “David”
Nellie is very good at writing and singing songs. She’s on this little tour I’m a part of all week, and on Friday afternoon she asked if I’d come onstage with her and sing the Chipmunk Christmas song (the one where Alvin wants a hula hoop, which is such a 1950s-ass present to request, but that’s not the point), and I said sure, and it turns out I can do a fairly credible chipmunk voice, so that’s been fun. (Spoiler!)
“David” belongs to a favorite That’s Marvelous genre, which I call “jaunty bummers” (upbeat but depressing songs, not whatever gross sex thing British people might use that phrase to signify). Wikipedia told me that the title of Nellie’s debut album Get Away From Me was a play on Norah Jones’s Come Away With Me, and it made me wonder if kids these days know what powerful sway Norah Jones and her jazz whispers held over American culture in the early aughts. Perhaps with a newly elected second-term Republican president, jazz whispers will return.
UPCOMING SHOWS
Not a TON on the calendar right now, but I bet that’ll change soon! Maybe a couple of spots in Los Angeles early next year?
I don’t know if it’s just this time of year or if things in the entertainment industry are actually perking up, but I feel like there’s been more fun stuff to watch lately? Maris and I have been on the edges of our seat (same couch) with Season 2 Bad Sisters on Apple’s original tv platform that they seemingly forget to tell anyone exists. Season 1 was GREAT and Season 2 has kind of the same thing going as the second season of Search Party (an all-time favorite show) where these characters had a fun time solving/committing crimes for a while, and now they/we have to sit in the reality of what they just did. We also started Interior Chinatown which rules so far. (I don’t love the voiceover, but I am really into all the other meta-genre stuff!) Huge shout out to Ronny Chieng and Jimmy O. Yang who are really great as cousins/friends! We’re also excited to start the new Mike Shur/Ted Danson show on Netflix. I think it’s called Man on the Inside, but I will not look it up, so that might just be a grandfatherly recollection of the name of a heist movie Spike Lee made.
On Sunday, Maris and I went to a For Your Consideration screening of Wicked in Manhattan, and I was kind of blown away how much I enjoyed it. I read the book a realllly long time ago, and I’ve forgotten basically everything about it, and I never saw the stage show. The movie really got me though! Ariana Grande is super funny, and Cynthia Erivo gives such a good performance that you almost forget she’s not actually a magic green lady who lives in the world. Peter Dinklage is very good as a talking goat, which I mostly mention because one time we crossed paths while walking our dogs, and his sweet puppy jumped up on Bizzy (R.I.P.), and he responded by gently chiding: “Hey…respect your elders.” And Bowen Yang is good in everything, obviously!
The thing that kicked my ass about Wicked is how earnest the whole endeavor is. So much entertainment lately feels so burdened by the weight of iterating within genres that have existed for so long, but Wicked, despite it being a prequel to an existing play/movie, kind of (to use IMMEDIATELY dated language) fell out of a coconut tree. There’s one tiny little winking joke towards the end, but other than that this movie is SO SINCERE about Oz and magic and this mythical high school for youthful 30-somethings. Nothing against Deadpool, but it’s very un-Deadpool, if that makes sense.
That, plus getting a BUNCH of advance copies of friends’ books (brag!!!), finishing a script I co-wrote with a friend (that no one is asking for), and reading this short essay by my buddy , I’m feeling pretty energized about creative stuff! That’s all despite my feeling of dread that in the wake of the election, rich execs in LA are going to greenlight mostly things that some hypothetical poor (white) people that they imagine will want to watch, and the results will be really misguided and unpleasant.
I was in SUCH a bad mood all day on Saturday, but between a fun show on Saturday night and all this other stuff, I’m back to feeling good heading into the holiday.
Okay also! THIS WEEK I am going on a little tour with Ted Leo and Aimee Mann which I am so excited for! I’ll be probably doing a teensy little bit of standup and a few goofy bits as part of their Christmas shows along with the rest of the traveling party, Paul F. Tompkins and Nellie McKay!
My pal Alison Leiby an I are hosting our (extremely sporadic, borderline premise-less) show Sup, Bro? at SF Sketchfest on January 25th!!! Alison and I have so much fun co-hosting a live show, and the lineup is straight up BANANAS. So far we’ve got Aparna Nancherla, Dulcé Sloan, and the aforementioned Paul F. Tompkins on the bill! Bay Area: Come through and have a good time with us!!!
Simon & Garfunkel-ass photo by Arin Sang-urai.
PEP TALK FOR MATT GAETZ
Rep. Matt Gaetz, presumably spotting a high school in the distance. Mario Tama/Getty Images
Congratulations to this big ol’ creep on his greatest accomplishment! When I posted this little joke on Twitter (where the lights have come on and the floor is visibly sticky), several people with user names such as TrumpLovr1776 sent me replies like: “He should and will SUE YOU for SLANDER for this!” (and then tagged Matt Gaetz, like he’s gonna kiss them on the forehead for being such a good little guy).
First of all: You mean libel, idiots. Slander is spoken out loud!
Second of all: I’ll admit I was a little cavalier on social media. For the sake of humor, I used some inaccurate and possibly reckless language. So I want to say, for anyone reading…I’m sorry that I implied that Matt Gaetz ever was or will be the Attorney General of the United States. That was wrong of me, and I won’t let it happen again.
PEP TALK FOR A READER
This was an especially nicely written pep talk request!
Dear Josh,
You’re a sports guy (no Bill Simmons) and I’ll put my pep talk request in those terms. Blowouts feel bad but it’s the close calls that really kill you. Like I imagine Malcolm Butler jumping Russell Wilson’s pass sticks with Russ forever. (Am I kissing enough Boston sports ass? LOL.)
Rejection is one thing. But getting so close to an opportunity, and then it being snatched away, is really hurting me of late. I dealt with a layoff a few years ago, it took me several years to get back into my field, then my company folded in less than 3 months.
Now, professional near misses happen for many reasons. Lack of funding, changes in priorities, something else to complete the rule of 3s. That said: it’s still tough.
People tend to encourage me to start my own company as a response to this frustration. And I get that. Hell, in my heart it feels like the best way. But man. I need money for these Wale tickets NOW.
Love, Close But No Cuban
My comedian friends and I talk all the time about how there was this brief window where the internet felt like a place where artists and other creative folks had the opportunity to make and share good work and maybe get some recognition for it. Now it can sometimes seem like garnering that kind of acclaim is a prerequisite for working in creative fields. Industry tastemakers are more like tasterecognizers, seeing whose name has a big number next to it and throwing opportunities at that person. When a gig ends, artists are encouraged to start a Substack or a Patreon or an OnlyFans. And I appreciate the acumen of folks who can balance creative work with the hustle it takes to make it as a freestanding entity. But sometimes you just want to have a job, not start a company. With respect to Jay-Z, not every businessman needs to be a business, man.
As much as I admire any artist who finds ways to make ends meet, I do also think you can see the #grindset of certain creative types coming off of them like cartoon stink lines. You can feel it when a comic’s hour set is just an infomercial for their merch table. You can tell when a podcast host puts a little too much mustard on their ad reads, and you’re like…are you, like a casual Super Bowl viewer, mostly here for the commercials? I think we can all intuit when a writer/director/artist/actor/influencer is honing a craft and when they are making “content.”
Maybe I’m being naive here! I don’t begrudge anyone (wellllll, I don’t begrudge most people) an opportunity to make a living from a job well done. And unless you’re one of a very select group of people, that does take a little bit of elbow grease outside of your creative output. As I get older and gain experience, I start to notice how often the people who fade out of creative fields are the ones who can’t stomach sending a “just following up” email. And with deregulation allowing multimedia conglomerates to form like Voltron, there are fewer and fewer independent outlets (or, even legacy outlets) where you can just do art. The vampires who run these companies would gladly replace us with a single computer program that raises Earth’s surface temperature and never has an original thought if they could. So there’s some water-treading required just to stay afloat unless you’re Ryan Murphy. But again, with all due respect to Oscar winners Three 6 Mafia, I get a little itchy when I see people who are all hustle and no flow. Just go work at a hedge fund, then, weirdo!
Obviously I’m working out some of my own shit here! But what I mean to say to you, reader, is that you don’t have to be an LLC to stay in the game. You’re allowed to turn your own “COMMERCE” dial as far up or down as you feel good about, and figure the rest of it out from there. Not everyone has the luxury of making art for art’s sake and letting the chips fall where they may (then asking their parents for more chips if their old ones fall wrong). There’s no shame in paying for concert tickets with money you earn elsewhere. But it’s a drag how much of this is business, man.
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: The Both - “Milwaukee”
Ted and Aimee’s collaborative album The Both came out ten years ago, and Maris and I went to see them live at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. I bought a t-shirt, which was one of my favorites until it mysteriously disappeared. Now I’m doing a little tour with them, and I’m very excited. To paraphrase the guy from the beginning of that one Weezer song: Sometimes life’s so rad.
And, while we’re here “tv off” from the new Kendrick Lamar album makes me want to jump up in the air and break bricks with my bare fist like a Mario Bro. I’d listen to an entire Kendrick/Mustard album that just flips nearly identical string samples like this and “Not Like Us.”
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’ve got a bunch of NYC dates coming up, and then a few back on the road! See you there?!?!
To paraphrase the Foo Fighters: I’ve got a little confession to make. Don’t worry. This is not about me having an affair that resulted in a baby (which is now what that lyric reminds everyone of when Dave Grohl sings it, I assume). With all the very serious news lately, I haven’t really had the chance to admit this, but here goes: I am only (at best) a casual baseball fan, but I watched four out of the five World Series games just to root for the Yankees to lose. I don’t particularly care about the exploits of the Los Angeles Dodgers. I felt only slightly happy for their fans when their team won, but I experienced a rush of endorphins when they beat the Yankees that was about 95% as powerful as the one that hit when my beloved Red Sox defeated the Dodgers to win the Fall Classic in 2018.
The morning after the Red Sox clinched that championship, I had my final interview for a job at Desus & Mero on Showtime. I will never forget what Desus, a lifelong Yankees fan who knew I was from the Boston area, said to me as we sat down to talk business: “I bet you’re pretty fuckin’ happy today.” That’s how the interview started. I replied: “Yeah, it feels amazing [to win the World Series]. You guys should try it sometime.” I got the job anyway. I appreciate Desus’s open-mindedness to this day.
This season, the Sox finished a beautifully mediocre 81-81 came within a few breaks of scoring exactly as many runs as they allowed. Completely neutral. But I feel amazing. Because the Yankees imploded in crushing fashion on the biggest possible stage. Watching the 2024 World Series, and the joy it brought me, was an incredible commitment to good old fashioned New England spite, and it made me think that maybe, just maybe I should be in therapy after all.
Last week I was on a bunch of podcasts (and radio shows) making jokes about the news, if you can believe it. I flew to Detroit for a Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me live recording at the Fox Theater, which was gorgeous! The guest was Governor Gretchen Whitmer. I sometimes have trouble figuring out how to thoughtfully engage with politicians for the sake of entertainment, but I will say Gov. Whitmer was extremely funny and charismatic. Hari Kondabolu and Roxanne Roberts (the other panelists) were so much fun to joke around with. And, as always, it was a joy to see the whole Wait Wait team and work with them!
Then I flew home and plunked myself down in front of the computer to record an episode of The Bugle with the great Andy Zaltzman and Tiff Stevenson where I joked more about the news, but with swearing!
I also linked back up with Mile and Jack (of Mad Boosties fame, in this newsletter) on The Daily Zeitgeist to talk about the news after having talked about the news with John Fugelsang on his Sirius XM radio show. You get it!!!
Pep talks that fit in your pocket!
And, in other pep talk related news, the very nice and charming Paula Skaggs and Josh Linden have written a book of tiny pep talks that comes out TOMORROW (but is available for preorder now). My friend Jess Zimmerman sent me a copy, and it’s awfully sweet and charming and thoughtful! Check it out if you need a little more pep in your life! Seems like a swell holiday gift to me!
PEP TALK FOR ALEX JONES
So long, sucker! AP Photo: David J. Phillip
Congratulations, dickhead. For years you engaged in biblical levels of Fucking Around, and you’ve finally been hit with ten plagues worth of Finding Out.
For anyone who isn’t sure what I’m talking about: Alex Jones, the proprietor of intellectual superfund site InfoWars had to sell off his media empire to pay restitution to the families of Sandy Hook victims who he repeatedly slandered during his broadcasts. The site ended up being bought by The Onion (with support from the Sandy Hook families), meaning that the website best known for spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation is now owned by a way better website known for incisive social commentary that is also not literally true.
At a moment when the stupidest and cruelest people are ascending to the highest ranks of global political power, there is so much beauty in any affirmation that some misdeeds do not go unpunished. Bad things can, in fact, happen to bad people too. When I saw the news, I legitimately teared up, not even from laughing, but from the triple distilled platonic purity of the bit. Walter White himself would look at the chemical construction of The Onion’s decision to purchase one of the world’s most vile swamps of malicious conspiracy-mongering, adjust his stupid hat, and smile.
Would I prefer to live in a world where a screeching pimple of a man never impugns the names of grieving families in the wake of a tragedy they’ve suffered? Of course. But in the world we live in, one where there is profit to be made from chewing up poison and feeding it directly into the faces of your eager audience members like so many baby birds, it is a visceral relief to see this mother duck of misinformation get pulped by a helicopter blade of consequences.
AlJo, you are on the business end of an all time bit. This tops anything People Magazine’s Sexiest Guy Jim Halpert ever did to Dwight Schrute. It beats the time 50 Cent bought two hundred tickets to a Ja Rule show so the whole front would be empty. We’re approaching the prank territory occupied by the serpent who tricked Eve into eating the forbidden fruit that damned all of humanity.
Thank you for getting so thoroughly got, Alex Jones. I can only hope that you continue to spread goodness and inspire optimism across the nation by enduring more legal and karmic punishment in the future.
PEP TALK FOR A READER
This pep talk was concise and well-punctuated, and I didn’t really change it at all although I did make up the pseudonym at the end!
I’ve had tension with a friend, tension with one of my partners, and my anxiety has been generally through the roof lately. - Present, Tense
Historically, I am very bad at handling interpersonal tension. Especially with people that I care about. I don’t love being on the bad side of a stranger or a (do we still say…) frenemy, but when a real friend or loved one tells me: “Hey, we need to talk…later…” my brain goes into a spiral so tight it may as well have been thrown by Patrick Mahomes. WHAT do we have to talk about later? Do you secretly hate me and plan to come clean over dinner? Did you sell my social security number on the dark web? Is the conversation itself a ploy to distract me while ninjas riddle me with throwing stars? There is no end to the catastrophizing I can do between now and this mythical “later.” The practice would be impressive if there were any use to it at all.
In romantic relationships as a younger person, I was a chronic “Are you mad at me?” asker, which is, if you don’t know the kind of guy who takes someone who may or may not be mad at him (me) already and gets them annoyed at the very least.
All of those situations ended fine, or they ended and now it’s fine! There are so many ways interpersonal conflict can be resolved. Through talking openly about the issues at hand. Through time healing some wounds. (Not all woulds, though! Whoever came up with that expression must never have had the kind of wound that bleeds a lot.) Through the situation becoming untenable to the point that someone calls the whole thing off. These outcomes have various levels of attendant stress, but if you’re looking to get out, the only way, as they say, is through. You can’t stay…in. I mean, I guess you could also allow relations to deteriorate without taking any action to improve or disengage, but that one I don’t recommend! It turns out you can keep going through forever without making your way out, like a never ending pasta bowl of duress. But you don’t have to. No one can make you do that!
The other anxiety is a tough thing to disentangle from your concrete situation. It’s a real chicken and egg problem? You’re like: “Where the hell did that chicken come from? AND why won’t it stop laying eggs? I’m stressed out!” (I think that’s what that expression means.) There are so many options for attacking a you-vs-you conflict, and in some ways it’s harder because you are ultimately stuck with yourself no matter which you choose, but in many ways it’s a little less fraught because you don’t have to rely on someone else’s honesty or good faith to fix things. (Although you SHOULD trust those intentions from the people you care about, even when you’re in conflict.)
It’s hard to believe that you’ll ever be out when you’re so deep in the through part of it. But all oceans have shores and all buildings have doors and even every corn maze has a…corn path(???) out into the…broader…corn field(?). You can make it out the other side or back out the same side if that’s what you want, but the point is you can make it through one way or another or another or another.
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Ben Folds Five - “Kate”
On Tuesday night, Maris was a little under the weather, so her seat at the Ben Folds solo show at the Paramount in Brooklyn became a little table for my drink and the drink of the guy sitting on the other side of the empty chair. Attending this show closed the loop on my choice to do my first open mic in Boston in July 2004 instead of seeing Ben Folds (along with…I believe…Guster and Rufus Wainwright?) across town with my sister. Twenty years later, I have also seen him in concert. Now I think she has to be a professional comedian?
The show was part of Folds’s Paper Airplane Request Tour during which he plays one set of songs he chooses in advance and then plays a second set selected by audience requests made with paper airplanes thrown from the crowd onto the stage. The all-request set, through coincidence or a shared communal mood, was full of very gentle down-tempo songs. Folds himself remarked that he would never have structured a set that way, but he was respectful of the direction set forth by the room at large. Once again, democracy proves imperfect.
“Kate” provided a counterpoint to those requests. It’s a sweet, bouncy number, and when played solo it reminds you that a piano is a percussion instrument. Some of the slower tunes felt a little slight in the spacious concert hall without drums or bass or harmony to anchor them, but “Kate” filled the room with sound and energy.
Also, while Ben Folds (and his Five, which is of course is actually only him and two other guys), can be a little lyrically venomous, there’s a sweetness to “Kate.” The subject of the song is just a cool lady he wants to be more like. She plays drums and has cool taste in music and wears the same clothes day after day and smokes weed. And sure, the singer is probably projecting many of her appealing qualities onto her, but I find it endearing that he just wants to say “hey!” to her jack her style a little bit. Kate!
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 not going to get too deep into it here, but obviously last week’s presidential election went about as badly as it could have. Donald Trump not only won the electoral college (possibly America’s worst college now that the actual Trump University shut down) but he also won the popular vote; third time’s a harm, I guess!
Thanks for reading That's Marvelous!! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
There were some glimmers of hope further down the ballot. Seven out of ten states with abortion protections on the ballot passed those protections (which is good news unless there’s a national ban), with Florida’s amendment failing to meet the predetermined threshold to take effect, despite an overwhelming majority of voters approving of it. Missouri voted to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. People want healthcare and economic protections from corporate greed.
I am still crossing my fingers that President Biden uses his remaining time in office for helpful, progressive purposes: push to confirm judges who will preserve civil rights and democracy, maybe forgive some student debt, stop sending a zillion dollars worth of weapons to Israel every forty-five minutes. Part of me fears that he will simply use this time to dig up Strom Thurmond’s skeleton so he can shake his hand across the aisle one last and then pardon himself for the crime of grave robbing. SORRY FOR THE CYNICISM! I THINK I GET TO DO A LITTLE BIT OF THAT THIS WEEK!
I’ve been thinking a lot about what my friend Scaachi wrote about how this election wasn’t going to save us, and it’s not going to doom us. But there’s also going to be a real onslaught against a bunch of the broad “us.” By that I mean: immigrants and refugees, the unhoused, people of color, LGBTQIA+ people, women, and inclusive of/beyond those groups, anyone who’s not super rich and has to work for a living.
A lot of people have been sharing George Carlin’s words lately, and aside from the incisiveness of the jokes themselves, I think something really beautiful he did was ending his shows by saying “Take care of yourself…and take care of somebody else.” It’s the a call to the best impulses and abilities we have, as people.
A few little pieces of business before we move along…
This Thursday I’m sadly unable to perform at the Comedy Gives Back benefit show at Gotham in NYC. If you’re in town, it’s still a great show for a great cause. But I’ve been called away to record an episode of Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me at the Fox Theater in Detroit!
On Tuesday before results came in, I chatted NBA stuff with the excellent Miles and Jack on Mad Boosties.
I talked about entertainment and creativity and business and podcast guesting on Attach Your Résumé! (This was from a couple of weeks ago, but I forgot to mention it then.)
And, in very exciting news, I got to return to Normal Gossipwith geniuses Kelsey and Alex and the whole wonderful team (hi, Jae)!
Night Burger…deserves a quiet niiiiight.
This episode came out on Wednesday, and people were so kind about it being a nice little distraction from feeling political despair for an hour. Maybe you’ll like it too!
PEP TALK FOR DJs
I usually preface pictures of the Kowloon with: “This building LOOKS racist but…”
“Is this going to end up in your newsletter?” my friend Dan asked me on Saturday night at the surprise birthday party his mom and girlfriend threw for him at the Kowloon restaurant in Saugus, MA. The Kowloon (technically just “Kowloon” but not if you’ve ever been there, it’s not) is a giant Chinese restaurant on Route 1. It’s known for its tiki drinks as well as for being a go-to after prom/drama club cast party venue for a wide swath of Boston’s suburbs. One room in the vast culinary labyrinth has a boat in it, and there are tables inside the boat. On weekends they have comedy shows upstairs in the function rooms. I haven’t performed there since 2009. I’ve never had a good set or a bad spare rib in this building.
I wasn’t going to write a lot about the party even though, as Dan pointed out, it was the most North Shore thing of all time. Meaning: It took place at the Kowloon (check), and the guest of honor almost didn’t come because he had previous plans to watch the Bruins game on tv (double check). I was pushed to chronicle the event when the DJ demanded all sixty-ish guests flood the dance floor to perform choreography he taught us in real time to the song “Sweet Caroline” (infinity checks). At that point, the sheer Massachusettsness of the night became too much to ignore. The only thing that could have ratcheted the quotient up higher is if a Kennedy had drunk driven a car into the side of the venue, indicating the party’s end (or beginning, I guess).
To the DJ, I just want to say: You did your best under delicate circumstances. I can only imagine the sensitivity required to navigate being an interloper, plunked dead center into a room full of literally centuries of combined shared history. Even as someone who knew a lot of the other partygoers, I felt the gravity caused by such density of interpersonal history. I saw friends I’m in a group text with that’s active most days. I caught up with childhood pals I hadn’t seen in 15+ years. I met someone who had gone to the same school as a bunch of my friends and knew them at the time but wasn’t close with them and has since been folded into the friend group because she started dating one of the core members while everyone was in their 30s. Also, I sat with Dan’s cousins from Ohio who I’d heard about for…30ish years but never met before. There were layers here!
So for all those reasons, I understand your decision, DJ, to hammer us with Gen X and millennial party standards. You can’t take a ton of risks when you’re a stranger in a room like this. I cannot blame you for playing “Jump Around” by House of Pain (IMPORTANTLY: NOT FROM BOSTON) twice in a span of two hours. Or doing the same with “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang.” I was a little perplexed by how much of Billy Joel’s Storm Front album you played. But hey, you’ve got to put your own spin on the evening. And everyone seemed to have a wonderful time.
This is the DJ’s gift: Teasing out the threads that can take an occasion where disparate corners of a life converge—a wedding, a bar mitzvah, an anniversary—and weaving those strands into a shared communal energy. In the days after the election, a lot of people have talked about aspiring to a national sense of unity, as if it is possible or even desirable for a nation of nearly 400 million people to form a meaningful consensus on most issues. But maybe a DJ’s type of unity is something to strive for. Bringing an existing community closer together by sensing the group’s needs and providing for them. Making people on the outskirts of that community feel safe and welcome by caring for even the skeptics and the newcomers, while keeping an eye out for the safety of everyone around.
Like all good organizers, a DJ has the power to galvanize a group by harnessing the shared energy of a moment. Even if, in some moments, that energy is: “Wait is this guy playing 2 Live Crew? There are children and old people here!”
PEP TALK FOR A READER
I nicknamed this reader and cut out some preamble and…postamble (?) from their request that they indicated I could!
I made the very silly (but correct, I think) decision of breaking up with my sweet, wonderful boyfriend of 2 years right before the dark grim election-winter. It was an amicable, we-want-different-things breakup which uniquely sucks because I have a lot of love for him and our relationship never got the chance to be bad. I feel horrible for hurting him and also myself, and I am struggling to find fun things to do while I prepare for the holidays with a bunch of my happily-partnered family and friends. I know there will be goodness on the other side, but that other side feels impossible to visualize right now. Could really use a pep talk for this difficult time. - Single, Not Yet Ready To Mingle
Not to be reductive, but feeling bad is the worst. There are obviously caveats about having your health and there being bigger, worse things happening in the world, but hearing that has never, in the history of heartbreak, accelerated the healing process. Oh there are orphaned children in the world, so I should suck it up about missing out on a professional opportunity? WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY SO IN THE FIRST PLACE? Hearing about someone else’s misfortune rarely cheers me up, unless the misfortune is happening to a preexisting enemy. Very few of my enemies are orphans. And even most of those are adults by now.
That said: You are allowed to let other people’s joy be your joy as well. Your friends and family members are not happily romantically partnered to spite you. When you leave the room, they don’t scream “In her FACE!” and start making out. These relationships are (among other things) proof that abundant opportunities love and companionship exist in the world. Your own past suggests this as well!!! The end of a mostly-pleasant relationship is sad, but in the way that the end of a good movie is sad. I’d say “nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain” but it’s the middle of November now, and last week it was 73 degrees in New York, and we’re basically experiencing a drought. We should get Guns n Roses back together to record a song about that. Nothing lasts forever, even hot November drought. (Because, at the very least, November ends eventually.) Wow. Even by my usual standards, that was a lengthy and irrelevant digression.
Happiness can look like a lot of different things. It can mean being single and investing extra time and energy in your friendships. Or being single and investing extra time in binging Monk (engaging in a binge of, not using the search engine Bing to look it up) until you’re ready to be around other people. It can constitute sex with several strangers or a couple of friends! It could be finding one partner that makes you happy. Or, in some instances, it can mean non-monogamy. ALTHOUGH, MY HOTTEST RELATIONSHIP TAKE IS THAT MOST PEOPLE WHO ARE BAD AT MONOGAMY ARE BAD AT POLYAMORY FOR SIMILAR REASONS.
Maybe you’ll find your person. Or a parade of your people. The idea of a soul mate is romantic, sure, but it kind of trivializes relationships from your past as being “wrong.” Sometimes that’s true. But often things are right until they’re not. And you’ll find more right in the future, whether it’s one right or a series of several rights in a row like you’re circling the block looking for parking. But maybe you didn’t need to park right away after all. Maybe you were just out for a ride. I am really letting these metaphors get away from me this week.
Even an amicable breakup is still a breakup, and like you said, it’s a uniquely stressful kind. I’ve never seen anyone exuberantly Nicole-Kidman-divorce-walk away from a polite mutually agreed upon separation. There are many bad kinds of breakups (and many, many worse kinds of relationships than the “wants different things” kind) but this is one of them! It’s okay to feel bad. And, fewer people tell you this, but it’s also okay, if you can crack a window to a warm November breeze of joy, to feel good too.
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Doechii - “NISSAN ALTIMA”
I realized that maybe I should tag stuff I post that’s (lyrically) NSFW, but I assume most readers aren’t bumping these songs on their office computer desktop speakers. But in case you are: This week’s song is NSFW. The beat and the general vibe remind me of Missy Elliott’s (UNDERRATED!) “She’s a Bitch” which I think I’ve written about here before. My buddy Sean Sullivan put me onto this Doechii album (Alligator Bites Never Heal), and it’s great and just got nominated for a bunch of Grammy awards.
Good luck to Doechii at the Grammys! She seems cool and is really good at rapping in a bunch of different modes and moods. Her flow on “Nissan Altima” is relentless. Spiritually, a great headspace to put yourself in for ~these times~.
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’ve got a bunch of NYC dates coming up, and then a few back on the road! See you there?!?!
Please excuse the lateness of today’s newsletter (which marks TWO FULL YEARS of weekly editions of That’s Marvelous). Last month, Maris (who is my wife, for any new readers) stated a desire to, quote, “do some fall shit” and so this weekend some fall shit…we did. We rented a car and drove upstate for a couple of days somewhere quaint and picturesque, which was just what we needed to de-stress from our rigorous freelance writing and general anxiety lifestyles. The whole ride up, I made sure to point out anything I saw that qualified as “foliage,” which I’m sure did not get annoying at all.
On Sunday, we went to Dia Beacon, an art museum that doubles as a classic fifth date location for NYC couples. Maybe not always ~fifth~ date, but it’s a place you go sometime between staying the night at someone’s place and meeting their parents. Maris and I had never been before, despite having gone on a fifth date of our somewhere in the neighborhood of ten and a half years ago.
Something I loved about Dia Beacon is how much of the artwork is rooted in ideas. Each artist’s work seems to really be wrestling with something big. One entire room was devoted to paintings that depicted the date (in the grammar/language of the country of their creation) on which they were painted. The artist (On Kawara), over decades, was obsessed with the passage of time and tried to paint one of these a day. Sometimes he made two. If he couldn’t finish a painting by the end of the day, he threw it out. Another room, which appeared empty, contained a small placard by each exit affirming that the gallery, like every space on earth, is full of cosmic rays and was therefore not empty at all. You can’t get much higher concept than that. (I mean, I assume you have to be high when coming up with that concept.)
Good bit, Stanley Brouwn. Seems a little like you hadn’t realized you had a piece of conceptual art due that day. But good bit.
Very little of the art was aesthetically “beautiful” in the sense that you’d want it hanging in your living room. But it evoked so many different thoughts and responses in me. Overall, I was struck by the beauty of devoting a giant space to showcasing so many unique visions of the world. Specifically, visions that took time and resources to communicate (although there’s always a question of who benefits from this kind of allocation of resources and who doesn’t). Amidst a media landscape that demands constant, often thoughtless, production of culture, it’s a real joy to witness art that results from meticulous construction, and isn’t intended for rapid absorption.
Still, I did poke fun at an exhibit by Robert Ryman that used exclusively white paint spread with different techniques over various surfaces. As we walked by a sort of choppy white wave painting (as opposed to a completely covered canvas) I leaned over to Maris and whispered: “You’re crazy for this one, Ryman.” Got him.
We also watched two movies:
Weird the Weird Al parody biopic starring Danielle Radcliffe, was excellent. It captured the extremely difficult but delightful tone that Jerry Seinfeld’s Pop Tarts movie kind of carelessly gestured towards.
The Sweetest Thing starring Cameron Diaz, which in my mind was a cute rom com, but in reality (which Maris knew from having seen it in theaters) was a female-driven gross out comedy that felt SO “of its time” (2002) that it was a little tough to get through despite its brief duration. Are there any secret huge fans of The Sweetest Thing who read this newsletter? Let me know!
Also, in a huge piece of news for our household, Maris’s book cover and release date have been revealed!!! The cover is (in my humble opinion) excellent, and the roughly 40% of the book I’ve been allowed to read so far is ALSO excellent! You can preorder the whole book HERE now.
I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but preorders are really important to authors for convincing their publishers that there’s excitement around the book! So if you’re at all interested…I humbly request (both as a fan of Maris’s and as someone whose finances are entwined with hers) that you consider preordering.
Sick-ass book cover, right?
On the way home today we stopped at a Cheesecake Factory in a New Jersey mall because Maris and I are both children of the suburbs and cannot resist a giant salad (even when it’s declared a “lunch portion”) and a spring roll full of vaguely tex-mex chicken from time to time. It tasted incredible. And now we’re all caught up!
OH WAIT ALSO
I dressed up as Colin Robinson from What We Do in the Shadows for Halloween because I needed a costume that I didn’t have to shop for, and I already look what I’d call a humiliating amount like this character. Although I did miss an opportunity to go as Tim Walz’s mug shot, as long as I was shaving already.
I’m always just some light stubble away from looking like an energy vampire.
PEP TALK FOR ELECTION NIGHT FRETTERS
There’s arguably too much of my face in this week’s newsletter.
I try not to give advice in this newsletter, but here’s some anyway: Go to bed.
You’re not going to change the results of the election by staying up late while Steve Kornacki sweats through his button-down and paces his khakis to rags. Or by watching whatever they do on Fox News on election night. I assume they start with a bright red map captioned: “ANY RESULT OTHER THAN THIS IS FRAUD” and then kind of vamp sexistly and racistly after that.
In late 2016, Maris invented a technique called “defensive sleeping” in which she goes to bed before the tv coverage of election news even really starts trickling in. If you’re nervous about this election, why not give that a shot? There’s not going to be a buzzer-beating three-pointer or field goal that sends the vote to a thrilling conclusion. Even in the unlikely event that they call it on Tuesday night, it’ll just look like a guy who has seen enough declaring that he’s seen enough. Snoooooze. (Which is what you should be doing instead of watching along.)
The election itself (and not just the presidential category) has real outcomes for people. You staying up to watch all the results does not. You are not a better citizen for viewing live election coverage. You can learn all the relevant information on Wednesday morning from a newspaper or the internet or maybe even the general vibe of pedestrians in your neighborhood. (If there are no pedestrians in your neighborhood, peer through the window of a passing truck and try to ascertain the mood that way.)
There are lots of ways to make a difference in the world. Organizing your workplace is one. Participating in a door-knocking campaign for a political candidate is another. Giving money to an abortion fund or attending a political protest are two other things to do. Even voting is a teensy tiny avenue to make your voice heard and influence the democratic process except where the electoral college renders millions of votes practically meaningless but that’s not what we’re here to talk about. Watching CNN while stress-pounding Pepperidge Farms cookies is not such an avenue for change.
If you are still deciding whether to vote (or if a third party/protest vote is worthwhile), my friend wrote about this choice in a more forceful and eloquent way than I could. I suggest, as always, that you subscribe to his newsletter and even pay money for it if you have a few bucks to spare.
I will also say: Tony Hinchcliffe ending up in history books for swinging an election away from the candidate he supported by bombing harder than has ever been bombed in the history of comedy would be the funniest thing he’s ever done. So, please consider that as well when you cast your ballot.
So…do what you can, and then spend Tuesday night watching a movie you’ve been meaning to see, or talking to an old friend on the phone, or, I don’t know, creating a mnemonic device for remembering the difference between an alligator and a crocodile. You'll find out who won on Wednesday…or Sunday…or after Donald Trump gets bored from inciting a fortnight of January 6th-style attempted coups and flees to a non-extradition country.
You did all you could. Or you didn’t. But it’s too late to change that now. Regardless, your Election Night is your own.
PEP TALK FOR A READER
I nicknamed this reader but otherwise kept the request intact.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year: trying to juggle family time around the holidays, now with a new wrinkle…we have a newborn. All families in question will be in Texas, but it’s still a hassle. Every year we try to split the time evenly as possible and it always seems to result in making no one happy, so a pep talk for navigating the “WE WANNA SEE THE BABY” waters would be much appreciated! - Kiddin’ Around
The holidays, even when they’re wonderful, are inconvenient. If you’re hosting, there’s sooooo much to be done from cooking to cleaning to cataloging your resentments towards those who don’t chip in. And if you’re visiting, you’ve got to execute a travel itinerary while fifty percent of America is also traveling. Our infrastructure is not built for this!
I love visiting my family! I do also wish we could enjoy a secret Thanksgiving a week earlier or later when no one else is taking an urgent Amtrak from New York to Boston.
Here’s the pep talk: It’s an ENORMOUS privilege to have a new baby and the ability to travel and a whole bunch of family members you want to visit for the purposes of them spending time with your tiny new person who will not remember a moment of any of these visits, and who will complicate the whole process by orders of magnitude their little brain hasn’t yet downloaded the software to comprehend.
Taking on some major pain-in-the-ass logistics to see so many people you love is life’s best case scenario for the time being. You get to experience the joy of experiencing the misery of effort and annoyance. This is what we do all the rest of it for. (At least until the baby is old enough that you can start dictating your own holiday agenda a little more assertively.)
Consider it this way: Do you think Taylor Swift (and her entire band and stage crew) want to make EVERY STOP on the Eras Tour, which I believe started during the Bronze Age and is set to wrap up a week before our sun burns out? I would guess they do not. But T-Swift in demand everywhere, so that’s where she goes. Your baby is the Taylor Swift of the family. You are (for now) the baby’s stage crew. It’s not ideal, but in many respects, it’s the greatest thing in the world, even though it absolutely bites.
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Tyler, the Creator - “Sticky”
Tyler, the Creator’s last two albums are two of my favorite hip hop albums of the last few years, which is a surprise to me because they’re so sprawling and ambitious and confrontational, and I usually prefer records where people just rap as hard as they can over wicked loud drums.
“Sticky” features Lil Wayne and GloRilla and Sexy Redd (who recently un-endorsed Donald Trump…people can change). The beat builds and shifts and stomps and blurts. It’s nasty. The “chorus” sounds like an invitation to an ass-kicking. When the horns come in it feels like a marching band crashed through the walls. It makes me want to walk worse, all woozy and aggressive. It makes me want to knock things over. It makes me want to uppercut through my ceiling into my neighbor’s apartment. It’s on repeat in my headphones.
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’ve got a bunch of NYC dates coming up, and then a few back on the road! See you there?!?!
Login
