Hi everyone,

First of all, a happy belated Mom Christmas to all the mothers out there. And a hearty “hey, at least that’s over” to people who have a tough relationship with Mother’s Day. I got to talk to my own mom on the phone yesterday (BRAG!) and then as a gift to my mother-in-law, Maris and I rented a car and drove Maggie the Pug down to New Jersey to meet her maternal grandparents. Although if you’re the people from the rental car place who told me “no pets” while I was lightly hungover on Saturday morning…no we didn’t.

I published a whole bunch of freelance work this week, almost all about basketball, which was kind of a funny set of circumstances. It’s been a while since I’ve done much freelance work on the internet, and I was a little nervous to put so much writing out into the world. I was especially antsy because (and I don’t know if you’ve noticed this) people tend to have strong opinions about sports, and they (I’m breaking new ground here I’m sure) do not always read past the headline before commenting. I am so grateful for all the people who read this newsletter and let me jettison thoughts out of my head and into the universe without putting them into the eyeballs of too many random jerks!

Fortunately, things went pretty well (aside from a few scattered jerks)! Here’s a longwinded rundown, in case you missed any or all of this stuff. (Not unlikely!)

Shout out to my friend (and brilliant editor) Ashtyn Butuso who asked me to write a little something about Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla for the OffBall newsletter. I came up with some advice that imitated Mazzulla’s famously intense press conference quotes. I also wrote a piece for the basketball print magazine () that Ashtyn co-founded, and that’s out this week too. Sadly because I live thousands of miles from where the magazine is printed, I don’t have my copy yet. I can’t wait to get it in my hands assuming the USPS isn’t defunded while it’s out for delivery. I love every issue of Flagrant and am over the moon to have gotten to write about three-pointers for the new issue. Flagrant finally offered a way to subscribe, and I recommend if you like NBA or the WNBA (or both) that you do so!

Ashtyn and her co-founder Alex (who both make me laugh so much!!!) also had me on the Flagrant podcast last week, where we talked a bunch about basketball as well as a vast assortment of other subjects such as whether Mrs. Met is (in Alex’s words) “caked up.” I maintain she (Mrs. Met) has a pretty big butt for a baseball, but not on the overall spectrum of butts. Here’s a little video clip from our episode!

Another friend and brilliant editor Gaby Paiella asked me to write for GQ about the feeling of being a Celtics fan living in New York City as the C’s fell down 0-2 to the Knicks in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. (The Celtics have since won a game in the series, lowering my blood pressure by 50% in the process.) I appreciated the opportunity to say a lot of backhanded and petty things about my friends and colleagues who cheer for the New York Knickerbockers. I finished my first draft faster than I’d ever written anything, and I’m really delighted by how it turned out. The experience also offered a catharsis that group texts with other Celtics fans did not afford me. AND, I love the artwork they created for the piece!

Finally, I wrote a little essay about the Miami Heat for ’s newsletter Basketball Feelings. Katie is such a thoughtful and entertaining writer. I’ve learned so much about how to talk about sports with humanity and creativity from reading her work. She’s just the best, and I was delighted/intimidated to do a little writing for her.

If you are not sick of me yet, here’s my performance from last weekend’s 54/54/54 show at 54 Below. I do not have a great singing voice, but I had a wonderful time performing (part of) a They Might Be Giants song for a group of musical theater fans who kept asking me: “What show was that from?”

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And this Friday evening at Littlefield in Brooklyn, I’m performing on a WNBA season kickoff show that Defector is putting on!

And next Monday (5/19) I’m co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall! Thanks to everyone who came to see me and Alison co-host Sup, Bro? on Saturday! Come see this too! We’ll be doing a totally different set of deranged riffs!

PEP TALK FOR BILL BELICHICK

Over the weekend, 24-year-old Jordon Hudson finished third in the Miss Maine competition, which is not the kind of thing you’d normally hear about at all, except that Hudson is in a romantic relationship with 73-year-old UNC football coach Bill Belichick. And look, I believe that love can take all kinds of different forms. Honestly, I tip my hat to Belichick for defying the stereotype of an older man dating a woman half his age by going out and dating a woman who is one third of his age. But there are some weird details at play here. Wait, scratch that. There are only weird details in this story.

During a recent television interview Belicheck was doing to promote his new book, which I believe is called Tales From The Hoodie although I may have made that up entirely, Hudson shut down a question about how the couple met. (You know, the most obvious question to ask any two people when you find out they are dating.) Pablo Torre and Katie Nolan hypothesized on a recent podcast that the topic may be uncomfortable because it seems as if Hudson was only nineteen years old when the pair first met. I don’t think that counts as grooming, but it certainly sounds like…primping to me.

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For context: When they first encountered one another, Jordon Hudson had been alive for one fewer year than Bill Belichick had been Tom Brady’s head coach in the NFL. The story actually is that they met on an airplane, and if I was seated next to a 19-year-old woman on an airplane, here’s what I, a 40-year-old man would say to her.

Me: “It’s okay to wake me up if I’m snoring and it bothers you.”
Her: “Okay, old man.”

But who is (potentially) sex-criming whom? Is it weirder for an old guy to date a way way way way younger woman, or for that woman to install herself as a de facto agent and publicist in her way way way way older boyfriend’s career? (Honestly, both the “boy” and the “friend” in the word “boyfriend” seem inaccurate here. He’s more like a “makeoutgrandpa.”)

So to you, Bill Belichick, I want to offer some words of encouragement. First of all, if you two are legitimately happy together, and there’s a legal mechanism in place for protecting you if she tries to write your way-older-than-her children out of your will, and to compensate her for having to see your balls, god bless. If that’s the case, wow. I’m so glad a college cheerleader was able to find the love of her life who happened to be a guy with the disposition you’d imagine the human father of The Thing from The Fantastic Four having.

If this relationship doesn’t work out though, that’s okay too. There are plenty of other fish in the sea. And many of those fish are of an age where you can publicly admit when and how you met them.

(For more substantial coverage of this ongoing story, follow ’s newsletter Impersonal Foul or her podcast—The Sports Gossip Show—with !)

PEP TALK FOR A READER

I’ve made a couple of little tweaks to this request but nothing ridiculous.

Hi, Josh. I’m losing my house this month. I tried very hard to keep it, but my ex-husband and his lawyer have spent the last 11 months intentionally delaying and obstructing my settlement from the divorce so now I have no choice but to sell. I have no idea where we’re going to find to rent…but wherever we do will have a higher monthly payment than my current mortgage and will put my poor daughter through even more upheaval than she’s already suffered. I am devastated.
- There Goes The Neighborhood

For pretty obvious reasons, I don’t have a ton of upbeat things to day about losing your home. There’s not even really a cliché for this. There’s that saying about how god never closes a door without opening a window, but in this context that sounds like permission to commit divinely-aided breaking and entering. We’re talking about literal doors and windows, here, and for legal reasons I can’t recommend that you try to pry them open.

I also don’t believe that things need to be really bad sometimes for you to appreciate the happier periods in your life. It seems unlikely that as much as you are accustomed to your home’s specifics, you haven’t been taking the concepts of having a roof and walls for granted. So this doesn’t seem like a situation that’s going to be rich with the learning of hard but necessary lessons, or important perspectives you hadn’t considered before.

So many people in America are so close to finding themselves unhoused, and our culture is so unkind to them. Some places have a social safety net. Here’s it’s more like just…a net. Gotcha! You’re stuck here now! This is a terrible reality, and it’s important to acknowledge, but I don’t imagine a ton of character-building comes from experiencing it firsthand. You’re not some Ebenezer Scrooge-type of miser who needs to be reminded that other people exist.

The only flicker of optimism that I can see here is that someday this period will be in the past. That’s not true of all misfortunes, but it seems fair to surmise here. It sounds like you’re in a position to find a new place to live, even if it’s a downgrade from your current situation. On top of that, it sounds like an enormous psychic improvement to not be fighting over a house anymore, even if this new state of being is brought about by losing the house. (It’s the inverse in many ways of how a wedding is a wonderful celebration, but one of the things about having one is that it means you’re done with wedding planning.) Once this dispute is over, you’ll know what you need to do to make your life as hospitable as possible under new conditions.

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And, with regards to your daughter, I completely understand your impulse to protect her from further upheaval. But all you can do is provide the best life you can for her, full of the most love and support. Plenty of kids who have experienced turbulence at a young age have happy and healthy future. And plenty of absolute ghouls grow up in two-parent homes with massive square footage. This might not have been your happiest Mother’s Day, but there will be better ones ahead!

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Maura Weaver - “Goner”

My buddy Tommy McNamara came with me to see Chris Farren and Oceanator last Wednesday, and we arrived early enough to see opening act Maura Weaver. We walked into the showroom from the outdoor patio when we heard the opening chords of Maura’s set. Immediately we looked at each other and affirmed what we were both thinking: “This rules.”

Weaver’s 2023 album is very good, but live, there’s even more muscle and groove to the songs. The show was end-to-end one of the best concerts I’ve seen in a long time. The tour is still going on! See them if you can! I ran into Tommy again on Friday night for our friend Anthony DeVito’s standup special recording (which was great) and our conversation returned to Maura Weaver’s excellent opening set. It was a real unexpected treat.

Okay also though there’s been so much good music lately! The new Adult Mom record rules. The HORNS on this one. (I am, as always, a sucker for horns!!!)

And Um, Jennifer?’s album Um Comma Jennifer Question Mark is so specific and fun and full of songs about things I’d never heard songs about before. It’s great! I’ve just heard a bunch of great new stuff this week and I’m feeling hyped about it.

UPCOMING SHOWS

My calendar is filling in a little! Hooray!

5/14: Friends With Caveats at Caveat (Manhattan)

5/16: Defector WNBA Season Kickoff Show at Littlefield (Brooklyn)

5/19: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

5/21: Minibar (Brooklyn)

5/25: Picture This at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

6/1: What’s New? at Union Hall (Brooklyn…EARLY SHOW!)

6/26: Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! Taping (Portland, ME)

Hi everyone,

It feels weird to have a slightly lighter-than-usual standup schedule lately. “But Josh, that’s like…your job. What have you been doing?” Short answer: Don’t worry about it. Shorter answer: Other things!

Last night I performed on a fun show called 54/54/54 (featuring 54 performers singing 54-second songs on 5/4 at Manhattan’s 54 Below). It’s a little 55 burgers 55 fries 55 tacos 55 pies… in a fun way. I sang, per the host’s request, slightly less than a minute of “Birdhouse in Your Soul” by They Might Be Giants. I think I was…credible. But I was tucked into the lineup amidst some very heavy musical theater hitters. And, backstage, I had mentioned my song choice to other performers with little recognition in their eyes. So I did open my 54-second set by saying: “The performers you’ve seen tonight have beautiful voices and are performing songs you all know and love. I’m the only one brave enough to do neither.” Ten seconds in (or roughly 18% of the way through my performance), I made eye contact with a guy in the front row singing along, which made me feel literally and metaphorically seen. A fun night!

Earlier this year, I went on a little ticket-buying spree for all sorts of shows, and even though the money left my bank account months ago for some of these things, I’m finally reaping (going to shows) what I’ve sewn (ticket purchases). Last week Maris and I saw our friend (and Drama Desk Award Nominee!!!) Natalie Walker in a new musical where she is customarily brilliant. Her big musical number was the clear highlight of the show, not that it’s a competition with the other songs.

Then on Friday we saw Paul F. Tompkins’s Varietopia show on the tour’s NYC stop. (Okay this one we did not buy tickets for because a friend hooked us up. Thank you, Jordan!!!) This show was, also customarily, great. Paul was so funny as always and sang a beautiful tribute to the late Jill Sobule. And the musical guest (Medusa) was excellent as was the guest magician (Artoun Nazareth). In an unexpected coincidence, one of his magic tricks was extremely similar to one from the last magic performance we saw (last summer, we’re not doing like…constant magic watching), but that fact really highlighted how good his performance was, that we’d seen the trick before but enjoyed it this time even more. So much of the magic in a magic show isn’t about the magic part.

We also attended a one-year-old’s birthday party which was so much fun in part because a party for a kid that small is basically for adults, except everyone is more careful about covering electrical outlets and keeping knives out of reach. Happy birthday, Lulu!

This week I’m going to be hanging out at Frankenstein’s Baby tonight at Union Hall! On Wednesday I’m seeing Chris Farren and Oceanator play a show! Friday I’m going to ’s book launch and then to Anthony DeVito’s new standup special taping.

I’ve got a few fun things coming up, including a live Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me recording up in Portland, Maine at the end of June! And on June 1st I’m doing another What’s New? show at Union Hall in Brooklyn to work out some new material. My friend Meredith Dietz who is very funny will be on the show as well, and I’ll announce some other guests soon too. I’m also hanging out at tonight’s Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall and co-hosting on the 19th!

In the meantime, you can listen to me on the podcast talking about Massachusetts culture, and I got to chat with Griffin and David and Ben on the great Blank Check podcast about Amy Heckerling’s extremely silly gangster comedy Johny Dangerously which is actually really tricky to watch. (I used an internet archive link with pretty shaky video quality.)

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Okay that’s all the news for now! Don’t forget to get your Mothers’ Day ducks in a row if you’re a person who plans to celebrate Mothers’ Day. It is, against all odds, this coming Sunday.

PEP TALK FOR J.K. ROWLING

Last week, in defense of the network’s upcoming Harry Potter TV show, HBO’s Casey Bloys asserted that the series would not “secretly [be] infused” with J.K. Rowling’s worldview. Which, let’s take a second and acknowledge the bleak humor in saying, essentially: “We want this person’s intellectual property, but not, you know, her personal intellect, so much as one can call it that.” As if Hagrid Ogreman (last name presumed by me) comes from a separate part of Rowling’s mind, hermetically sealed off from a level of transphobia that appears, even to the casual observer, to have consumed her brain the way syphilis did to Al Capone’s. This is such a wild statement for Bloys to feel compelled to make. Like, when Woody Allen puts out a new movie, nobody feels the need to go: “Don’t worry! There’s no stepdaughter-marrying stuff in here!”

It didn’t have to be this way. You, J.K., created one of the most beloved book/movie series of all time. I don’t know why Harry Potter resonated as much as it did. But who knows why anything works? Mickey Mouse is a rodent who sounds like he’s been doing whippets. Jerry Seinfeld from the show Seinfeld is loosely based on Jerry Seinfeld, a New Yorker who hates everything. These are not intrinsically likable characters. And sure, there have been allegations of antisemitism in the Harry Potter universe. Personally, as a Jew, I was less offended by the gold-hoarding goblins than the fact that you decided the most evil guy in the universe should be named “Mort.” Still, you could have lived in your castle and even built another castle around that castle to insulate people from your terrible opinions. But instead you became more and more animated by your most bigoted impulses. It’s like you pointed a magic wand at your own head and shouted: “Transphobus amplifius!” or some other bullshit first-thought fake Latin.

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Remember the halcyon days of 2007 when you were like “Truth bomb: Dumbledore is gay!” and people were like, okay sure that’s kind of a Macklemore-ass thing of you to say, but we’re with it. (Obviously there are two caveats needed here: Macklemore in his current Mackleform was not famous in 2007. And also, against most odds including his former signature haircut, Macklemore seems cool now.)

Today, instead of using your massive wizard wealth to cure a disease or feed the hungry, you are funding campaigns to make sure transgender women can’t enjoy water polo or whatever the hell you’re on about lately. It stinks. You, frankly, stink.

Here’s the bright side for you, J.K. Rowling, a person who will never feel meaningful consequences for the harm you’ve done to others and doesn’t actually deserve consolation. The criticism you’re receiving and the turmoil around your work: It is all your fault. You did this to you. I imagine the criticism now feels the same as when religious weirdos protested your books for promoting an agenda of Dark Magick. Just like Ricky Gervais gets the same charge out of his transphobia as he did from saying the Bible may have taken some liberties with details (bold!) and Dave Chappelle can’t distinguish between the criticisms he receives after talking shit about marginalized people or saying that American society is positively termite-ridden with racism (he’s right about the second thing, of course). But it’s not the same, obviously. And you with a fully-formed prefrontal cortex should be able to tell the difference.

The ball is in your court. Or, to address you with your own mythology, the Quidditch puck(?) is in your…I don’t know…broom-catcher? You certainly don’t deserve any benefit of the doubt here, but you could have, at any point over the past seven or eight years, stopped this all from happening. Instead, you continue to spew garbage thoughts while generating enormous sums of money off of the performances of a new generation of child actors who will probably grow up to know better than you like the last ones did.

So, congratulations, I guess. You are become Mort, destroyer of your own legacy.

[Brief, non-joke point!!!! In this oppressive political and cultural climate, a nice thing you can do is support trans artists and also non-artist transgender people! Perhaps throw a few bucks towards Trans Lifeline or check out the artists performing at the Liberation Weekend music festival later this month in Washington DC as two examples of things to do. Okay thanks!]

PEP TALK FOR A READER

This was a very concise request, but I did add one comma and a nickname.

I got laid off almost two months ago now and thought I'd feel creative (I play in a band, I make art) in my newfound free time, but mostly I feel bummed out. Is there a pep talk for that?
- Brainiyuck

There IS a pep talk for that, and it’s right HERE! Well, right BELOW HERE! Wait for it…

HERE IT IS: I have to believe that you are bummed out at least in part because the thing that happened to you is a bummer. Even (especially!) if the job you were at was a true pain in the neck, you were there for a reason, and not in a spiritual, everything happens for a reason, sense. The reason in this case is that they were giving you money to show up. And now you don’t have to show up anymore, which has its benefits, certainly. But they probably aren’t paying you anymore either, which is a pretty substantial drawback.

And, irritatingly, it’s not just unstructured hours of the day that allow for the best creation of art. You also need to cultivate the right mental space, not to mention pulling together the financial resources for art materials and things like dinner and electricity. It’s a bad deal, honestly. Unless your creative work brings in enough money to live off of (and sometimes even in that case) you’re always trying to balance a seesaw with Enough Bandwidth on one side and Enough Money on the other. The tricky part is, the seesaw of capitalism isn’t designed to be in balance!

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An important part of pep talking, to me, is The Validation of Feelings. Because if I don’t acknowledge that there are legitimate reasons for you to feel bad, any response will come off as: “Actually things are fine, dummy!” Which is not what I mean! Especially because in many cases, things are not fine. (Will not elaborate. No need. If you think all things are fine…why are you here?)

Now, here’s the pep talk part of the pep talk: You can shake yourself out of this funk!!! Or, crucially, someone else can help shake you out of this funk. This funk-shaking could take many forms, probably not all of which are necessary! On the smallest level, you can fence off some time to do creative work in a contained period. Don’t kick your own ass for not being a gushing geyser of generative energy. You deserve to give yourself a few hours where imagining and executing creative projects becomes your entire task. Commit to not job searching or doing chores you put off over your entire tenure at the last gig or staring at the ceiling (or your phone) spiraling over the discrepancy between where you thought you’d be by now and where you currently find yourself. ESPECIALLY take some time off from that last thing. Maybe a friend can hold you accountable or even better collaborate with you on one of these simmering ideas. Or you could find a way to make some money that doesn’t stress you out too badly. OR, and I don’t mean to diagnose from afar, but I’ve spent some time around creative people, and maybe what you’re feeling is not just a post-job malaise but a smidge of depression. There are treatments and strategies for dealing with that too, despite what our current HHS Secretary might tell you!

This potential for satisfaction and improvement extends beyond creative ambition too. If there’s anyone reading who wants to learn how to rock climb or draft a will and testament or get a new printer cartridge, you can probably do those things with a combination of effort and support. Often that takes a little effort to discern what external obstacles are in your way and which obstacles are obstacling from inside the house, as it were or…as it ‘stacle.

So, to boil this pep talk down to two points, which maybe I should have done in the first place, but there’s no going back now because I’m too lazy to do that…

1. Your feelings of malaise are completely valid!

2. You can do something to adjust those feelings even though they are legitimate!!!

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Aesop Rock - “Send Help”

Okay so last week I shared (and ultimately deleted from the newsletter archives) a kind of stitched-together late-90s style rap song that at least one of the artists involved didn’t want out there. Sorry, Big Daddy Kane! My bad! Please believe I would never knowingly defy your wishes!

Included here is a new song by Aesop Rock, who represents the other genre of rap music I was obsessed with as a youth. At the turn of the century, Aesop Rock made lyrically dense songs set to somewhat confrontational sounding beats. Not rap confrontational like M.O.P. but noise confrontational like Nine Inch Nails. I got really into the catalog of El-P’s Definitive Jux label (to which Aesop Rock was signed), in part because they put out a ton of good stuff and in part because I liked the ethos even when some of the music was too much for my gentle radio-trained suburban ears.

When you are fifteen, and a celebrity (or even just a non-celebrity artist you’re aware of) is twenty-three, it feels like an enormous generational chasm. But when you’re forty and the other person is forty-eight, that’s basically the same age. Isn’t that weird? We’re all just adults now? Eminem is fifty-two years old. What the hell?

I can’t quite tell whether Aesop Rock’s choice of beats has gotten a little friendlier over time, or if my ears have grown up a little, or both. Either way, I stumbled across this song and video on YouTube, and I like it a lot! It’s cool to grow together with artists you’ve known (or known of) for a long time.

And one more! As I mentioned, I have tickets to see Chris Farren (who is so good live!) this week in New York, and this new song is another classic mega-catchy melody with extremely depressing lyrics. I’ve never heard a song about this particular uncomfortable feeling before! It’s new! It’s great! Chris Farren!

And, of course, the new PUP album Who Will Look After the Dogs? is out now too! It is great, and I’m so excited to hear them play these songs live later this year!

UPCOMING SHOWS

I am mostly close to home the next month or two, but that could change!!!

5/8: The Comedy Cellar (Manhattan)

5/14: Friends With Caveats at Caveat (Manhattan)

5/16: Defector WNBA Season Kickoff Show at Littlefield (Brooklyn)

5/19: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

5/21: Minibar (Brooklyn)

6/1: What’s New? at Union Hall (Brooklyn…EARLY SHOW!)

6/26: Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! Taping (Portland, ME)

Hi everyone,

Last week was all about BUSINESS in a bunch of funny little ways, including some social ones. On Saturday night, our friends Ashtyn and Tim came over to drink espresso martinis from the ~influencer~ kit that HBO sent me in celebration of the new season of Hacks. (We haven’t started watching yet! Between Gemstones and The Rehearsal and the NBA Playoffs, I’m at capacity for TV right now!) I’d never had an espresso martini before, and I’m not an influencer, but I did used to write for an HBO late night show, which I imagine was what got me on their list. Maris mixed up some delicious cocktails, and the little kick of coffee had the added benefit of motivating us to leave the house for a friend’s birthday party at 8:30pm. (Happy birthday, Sean!) It was an extremely successful #brand #integration.

I also auditioned to co-host a podcast for putting people to sleep that would only exist on a specific brand of white noise machine. The audition consisted of a sample episode I recorded with a friend, where we were instructed to banter and have fun, but not to be too engaging. (Laughter, we were told, really wakes people up, so we tried to be funny enough to keep the riffs afloat, but not funny enough to crack each other up.) I’d never been challenged like this before although people have occasionally told me that I’m plenty unfunny already! I kind of love a quirky little gig that pays me money to learn a weird new skill, so fingers crossed this pans out. Business!

Most spectacularly this week, Maris and I saw Glengarry Glen Ross on Broadway with our friend Casey who was visiting from Los Angeles. I’d never seen a staged version of GGR (not sure anyone abbreviates it that way) before, just the movie, and it had such a different tone. The show played to huge and consistent laughs, which I hadn’t expected despite the casting of big comedy stars (Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr, Michael McKean, and even Kieran Culkin). Maris hypothesized that it’s because in the present day, slick real estate guys from the past are self-evidently laughable. I also think that the re-exclusion of Alec Baldwin’s famous “Coffee is for closers!” monologue that was written into the 1992 filmed version of GlenGaGleRo (100% sure nobody calls it that) leaves the stage play without any character who seems cool or impressive. There’s no avatar of success, and everyone is (at best) a corruptible corporate drone and (at worst) a pathetic, corrupt scumbag. (Excising that role didn’t stop them from selling “coffee is for closers” mugs at the merch stand. Capitalism finds a way!)

Even the new season of The Rehearsal (no spoilers) digs into the gnawing push and pull of what it takes to acquire enough money to make real change, and whether the acquisition process impedes one’s ability to use that money beneficially. It’s an issue that’s certainly top of mind for me lately (how to be a responsible and helpful member of society while also finding a way to earn money). It’ll come up later in the newsletter as well. Oooo, a teaser!???!?!

It’s also ostensibly the topic of this podcast episode I did with my friend about the movie Iron Man 3. I honestly had a pretty good time watching this one even though I didn’t like the original Iron Man very much. In large part I was able to enjoy it because it was less about Tony Stark’s immense wealth and his ruminating about how he can use it responsibly. This one is more about how messed up it is to be an Avengers, and how America loves to hate a guy in a cave, which was more interesting to me. Is anyone else having this kind of gut reaction to entertainment as the U.S. government is increasingly directly manipulated by some of the most grotesque and racist oligarchs in world history? Just like, not wanting to see rich people feeling conflicted about their richness?

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In any case, I had fun talking with Gabe and maybe you’d have fun listening! And this week I’m psyched to see the great Paul F. Tompkins’ Varietopia show on Friday night. Lots to look forward to, even if I’m maybe about to render myself the Pagliacci of sleep podcasts and stay up all night twisted off the free espresso martinis.

PEP TALK FOR MAY FLOWERS

Over the past week, I’ve been spending a lot of time walking around my neighborhood with Maggie (pug, age 4). She is curious about all the sights and smells. She wants to befriend every person she sees, and for some reason growl at 50% of the other dogs and scrape her feet along the ground like a bull about to charge. Frankly, she’s too cute; when the weather is nice, strangers can’t help stopping to marvel at her squishy face. I do love it, and I am absolutely offended when folks don’t stop me to say how adorable she is. But we have places to go! Maggie has (finally) been convinced that it’s better for all parties concerned if she pees outside instead of inside. But she’s very picky about where she’s willing to go, and I try not to let her be distracted while she’s getting in the zone.

I’m happy to meander through Brooklyn with a small wrinkly dog in part because I am wildly underemployed but even more so because the weather has been rapidly improving; we’re in the midst of three of the six excellent weeks that seduce visitors into moving to New York and coax residents into staying here. The flowers in my neighborhood are in full bloom, and I have managed to pry my eyes off of my phone screen long enough to murmur: “Ooo, the cherry blossoms, or at least what I assume to be cherry blossoms, are lovely this year!” We haven’t quite hit the technical season, but May Flowers are doing their thing.

And to those flowers I say: Watch yourselves. I know you’re populating Instagram stories (and newsletter headers) now, but don’t get cocky. This could all go to hell for you on any day, and speaking from experience (with seasonal flora, not entropy generally, but also…) it will. Soon your petals will be strewn across the sidewalk, dead and ready to be outlined in pollen (nature’s chalk).

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I know this is a pep talk newsletter, but sometimes tough love is what’s needed, and I’m here to deliver. So May Flowers, don’t get too big for your branches and forget where you came from. You would be nothing without April Showers. Nothing. You were just buds and bulbs and stalks while the rest of us had to splash and splatter through the spring storms. DON’T THINK WE DIDN’T NOTICE.

Yes, everyone is happy to see you, even people with allergies. And no I don’t know if I have allergies or if I’ve just been staying up too late the last few weekends and feel like garbage because of that. Regardless! You’re great, May Flowers, but nothing lasts forever, even warm May sun. Be cool. And, sneezing aside, we will appreciate you while you’re here.

PEP TALK FOR A READER

I did a little re-formatting and nicknaming for this reader! That’s all!

My second tarot book is coming out in July and I am nervous to market it given *flails at the world.* I believe so strongly in what I do, but it's still a struggle right now. I'm positive that I'm not the only author in this place right now!
- Booked and Dizzy

Congratulations, B&D, on what is a big and thrilling accomplishment despite *glances back and forth furtively* basically everything else going on. I know for a fact you’re not the only author concerned about launching a new book in the face of *does one of those deep sighs where your lips go p-p-p-p-p-p-p* the vast majority of news reports and cultural headwinds. (I may be married to one.) Let’s take a step back here: It’s not just authors. If I had to bet, I’d guess people in nearly every line of work have felt some ambivalence lately about the value of what they do when confronted with *looks in mirror, slaps self in face once, scowls and walks out of the bathroom* the overwhelming chaos of living in the present day.

Teachers feel forced to do a worse job because of small cohorts of reactionary parents. Human rights lawyers are fraying at the ends worried that they are doing enough for clients at risk. I’m sure that there are plumbers out there thinking “Who gives a shit?” and dog trainers struggling with an unprofessional impulse to let a rogue chihuahua keep biting strangers. Who cares? How strong could his jaws possibly be? I bet PR representatives feel trepidation as well, but they will continue sending a “just following up” email every six days until the sun burns out, regardless of the fact that you have no idea how you got on their email list, and have never replied to a single one of the five dozen messages they’ve sent you already this year.

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It’s natural and beneficial to question the value of how you spend your days. I bet most thinking and feeling people keep themselves in check this way far more than the folks who are doing the bulk of the ruining of the world. If, for example, J.K. Rowling looked inward for a moment, she would realize her heart does not pass inspection and maybe she’d do some things differently. She’d probably stop throwing money and support behind the world’s cruelest transphobes and would likely include less antisemitism in her children’s books as well. (Forget the gold-hoarding goblins. She named the worst guy in the whole universe “Mort.”)

But wait!!! I am not trying to absolve anyone from the obligation to make the world a better place because you’ve done appropriate hand-wringing. No one can do that (especially not while we are *ahem* between Popes). But reflection on the issue of “What the hell am I doing with my life?” is worthwhile. And you can honestly say: “I’m doing creative work that I think will be of comfort and use to people!” Great! That is huge! And if you feel like that’s not enough, you can do more too!

Most people (myself very much included) do not have the capacity to fight fascism 24/7. We need sleep and snacks and sometimes to read a book about tarot or (as I’ve been told is popular) sexy dragons running their tails seductively along people’s lips. It’s good to do something small and nice for others, especially if you’re not talking over people doing BIG good things or pushing them out of the way. We’ve all got to do what we can, and that takes lots of different shapes, even and especially during a period of *winces, goes back to bed and pulls covers over head for an extra hour* this current deluge of bullshit.

We’re all in this together. (Despairing.)
But, more importantly, we’re all in this together. (Hopeful.)

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Video Dave - “Jay’s Appliance Repair”

Longtime newsletter readers know that I am a big fan (and friendly acquaintance) of Video Dave. His new album is very good, and this is my favorite song off of it. The beat is so breezy and bouncy. You can close your eyes and imagine yourself on a boat or a beach. Or, if you are already one of those places, you will feel like you’re your boatiest, beachiest self. Dave also lays out a maxim that I personally subscribe to but never had the words for: “I cannot hang with you if I cannot complain with you.” Perfect. Gotta leave room for some grievances at any social engagement.

[Editor’s note: I removed a second song from this post that was released without the artist’s approval and wasn’t quite exciting enough to warrant defying their wishes.]

UPCOMING SHOWS

I’m kind of busy the next couple of weeks, but I’ll still be onstage!

5/4: 54/54/54 at 54 Below (Manhattan)

5/13: Friends With Caveats at Caveat (Manhattan)

5/16: Defector WNBA Season Kickoff Show at Littlefield (Brooklyn)

5/19: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

6/1: What’s New? at Union Hall (Brooklyn…EARLY SHOW!)

Hi everyone,

I am writing to you after spending a few days in Austin for the Moontower Comedy Festival. Staying in downtown Austin just off of 6th Street really makes you look inward and ask some serious questions. Questions like: “Have all the nation’s 24-year-olds descended on a five-block strip to get blackout drunk?” And: “Can I count salsa as a vegetable? Because otherwise I might not have eaten a vegetable in like 36 hours.”

Despite navigating hordes of inebriated youths and a looming fear of scurvy, the festival was a really stellar time. I saw a ton of comedy friends and several non-comedy friends and made a ton of new friends (I’m very friendly). I don’t get to go to Los Angeles as often as I’d like, and that’s where many pals live now, so it was a treat to catch up with west coast buddies who were also in town. It was also nice to see a bunch of New York comedians outside of our normal rhythms. We got to do more hanging out and goofing around than when we have the rest of our lives to attend to.

Thanks to everyone who came to my headlining show at the State Theatre! And thanks to my friend Isabel Hagen for opening the show! Isabel writes perfect jokes and is also a classically trained viola player which is unfair and frankly rude. She must be stopped. (But in the event that her rampage is allowed to continue you should check out her directorial feature film debut at Tribeca this summer!)

HUGE thanks also to Colleen and the whole festival staff for organizing such a fun and impeccably run event. Thanks to the Sklar Brothers for having me on their show Tag It (where comedians do a set and then Randy and Jason provide a wealth of potential tags for their jokes) and Business Casual for having me on their live podcast show to take a practice SAT test in front of the audience. (My verbal section was pretty good, but my math could use some brushing up. I was extremely stressed out the entire time, through no fault of Business Casual’s.)

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Especially huge shout out to my friend whose beautiful and heartbreaking and hilarious show Happy Place I finally got to see. It’s a really special show, and not just because it’s extremely pro (Stoneham, MA hometown hero) Nancy Kerrigan and (excellent karaoke band) Sum-41.

Not to be all ~in these times~ but…uhh…in these times, I have extra added respect for the transgender comics and the comics who were not born in the United States for traveling to Texas to tell jokes.

Between this festival and a quick trip to Boston to perform on a fundraiser for my friend Mike Dorval’s cancer treatment (He’s doing well! It’s just that private health insurance is a nightmare even when it’s working!), I have felt especially grateful to be part of a community of friends and colleagues who care about each other as artists and people. I got to watch and work with lots of people I’ve looked up to for years, which is always a thrill. And I don’t think I did anything especially embarrassing even.

One non sequitur: Last week, a little girl (about four years old) in our neighborhood wanted to say hi to Maggie the pug, and afterwards she was extremely thrilled to show us that her dress had pockets. I hadn’t realized how early that starts!!!

This week: I’m co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall tonight. Another outrageous lineup per usual! Tomorrow night I’m co-headlining a show in Manhattan with Marina Franklin! And on Wednesday I’m doing an evening of humor readings. What will I be reading? Can I even read? These are questions I will try to answer over the next couple of days. Then things are a little quieter for a bit. Maris and I are seeing some bands play next week and I’m very psyched for that.

And if you’re not in town you can listen to me later this week on the Review of Mess podcast with (whose newsletter is a long-time favorite) and (a new fave)! And if you’re not sick of reading things I’ve written, check out my guest entry for Dingus of the Week in my friend ’s excellent newsletter! I say many mean and gross things about Marco Rubio!

Oh and I made a little video plea to Jeff Bezos. Please share to promote male astronaut awareness.

Oh! I saw my friend Ana Marie Cox over the weekend, and she still has a couple of slots available in her upcoming writing workshop!!!

Okay! On to the pep!

PEP TALK FOR THE NEXT POPE

The Pope died over the weekend or today depending on what time zone you’re in, and I will not be making jokes about that because while I don’t believe in hell, I also don’t enjoy people telling me I’ll go there online for a week straight. Plus, it would hurt my feelings if Catholics said mean things when Mel Brooks (the closest thing my people have to a Pope) died.

I know you’re out there somewhere listening to “Humble” by Kendrick Lamar in your headphones so as not to feel inappropriately worthy of assuming stewardship over the whole church. Maybe you’re worried that you won’t be able to fill Pope Francis’s shoes (which, upon Googling, had considerably more style than I imagined). Do not worry, future Pope. Just by virtue of taking office (Is that what we say about Pope? Again…Jewish.) you will be infallible. Catholic grandmas all over the world will accept whatever you say. That’s Pope’s Prerogative! You can even say that gay people are good or genocide is bad, and the only people who will really get mad are conservative commentators who should probably just have Ronald Reagan prayer candles in their homes and give up the facade of religion entirely.

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There’s only so bad a job you can do as Pope these days. You’re not going to convert the Vatican to cryptocurrency. (I don’t even know if Popes have that kind of municipal authority.) You’re probably going to be mostly within the general sphere of acceptable Popedom. Although honestly I do think it would be very funny if you, like, sincerely converted to Islam. That would probably shake the whole situation up a little. But I can’t imagine you came this far with all the robes and blessings and Latin to do that. And, if you do anything to cut out…you know…the thing the Catholic Church is second most famous for, you’ll probably go down as the GOAP (Greatest of All Popes).

PEP TALK FOR A READER

This request was extremely straightforward to I left it basically untouched.

I need a pep talk to get me through the next few months as I manage my senior dog's healthcare and possible end of life, getting my child through the end of HS and ready to launch into the adult world, and finalizing a divorce amid all the attendant financial and emotional turmoil.
- Have You Heard That Sometimes It Rains AND Pours?

My goodness, you are in the throes of so many big changes. And even the positive shifts are heavy and effortful. There’s not a single event you cataloged that will fully happen on its own, nor is there one that’s absent of a high-voltage emotional charge. There’s nothing you mentioned that’s laborious and less fraught (putting together new furniture, taking on a rigorous new job, learning to weld) or mentally taxing but otherwise undemanding (deciding whether to go back to school after you’ve been accepted, working up the nerve to ask for a sabbatical at work, lifting a fallen tree with your mind).

You’ve got to actually do all these things, and you’re going to feel as it’s going on. Raw deal, I know, but it’s the only one that’s on offer. But you can do this! And, more than that, you will! This isn’t like filing your taxes. You can’t just skate by without actually completing that task for a couple of years if things get hectic enough (not that I’d know, but I do). Dragging your feet will have immediate and noticeable consequences. So, wisely, you’ll probably choose to put your head down and barrel through this gauntlet of landmark events.

That is, in my opinion, lightly good news. You seem to realize that the only way out is through, so through is where you’re headed. But the better news, is that once you go through, you’re out. That’s the corollary, right? If the only way out is through, the place you end up once you’re through is out! It’s kind of like the transitive property of mathematics but…not quite. And after all this through you’re mired in, no one has ever been as out as you’re about to be.

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So get excited for out! You’re not going to be a brand new person. Despite what my old barber used to say immediately after every haircut (“Brand new man!” he’d gush, while snapping his fingers, despite removing maybe 5mm of hair from the sides of my head) one rarely finds one’s self a person fully transformed. But you will be a mostly-continuous version of yourself under new and bracing circumstances. They won’t all be good, but they will all offer the potential for a beautiful future informed by your past. Hold on! Out’s coming!

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Matt Berninger - “Bonnet of Pins”

Matt Berninger and his band The National are not known for music that makes one feel good. They’re more conversant in songs for drinking alone to while the sun creeps over the horizon on its way up. But this one has some big bright horns towards the end and an old school “Mr. November”-era National charge to is, so I made an exception. Sue me if you dare. I’ll fight it tooth and nail. (That kind of sounds like a National lyric honestly.)

And there’s a new Illuminati Hotties song featuring Stefan from PUP! Honestly, it’s a better fit for this section of the newsletter, but I’ve been going so hard for both of these bands individually in these here (web) pages that I figured you’d all be like enough already. So I linked it separately.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my friend Avery Friedman’s gentle and tender and lovely new album is out now! Congratulations, Avery!!!

UPCOMING SHOWS

I’m out and about in NYC a whole bunch coming up, plus a few shows on the road!

4/21: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

4/22: Co-Headlining Baruch PAC with Marina Franklin

4/23: GRIEFSTRIKE! Reading at Francis Kite (Manhattan)

5/4: 54/54/54 at 54 Below (Manhattan)

Hi everyone,

There’s very little routine weather I enjoy less than 40 degrees and rainy. Just snow, coward, I want to shout at the sky. On account of lousy weather and not much work on the calendar, I had an extremely cozy Maris-and-Maggie hanging out weekend, which was lovely when we did not have to subject ourselves to the elements. On Friday night, we watched Black Bag, the new Steven Soderbergh movie, which I loved and Maris liked a lot. It’s about love and mind games and espionage. And, it’s only 94 minutes long *guy on dating apps voice* because I guess that matters. (It does matter to me! I think movies should be short until proven to merit being long.)

We also plowed through the last few episodes of The Residence, the new Netflix series starring Uzo Aduba as an eccentric detective solving a murder in the White House. It might be my favorite of the recent batch of comedy/murder mystery shows. My all-time favorite is probably Search Party, but I don’t consider that part of this batch. The mystery of The Residence is very fun and mostly very tight! I laughed out loud a bunch of times! I don’t know many people who watched it (except for my friend Ashtyn who correctly guessed the ending!!!) so I have been mostly unable to vent about one little plot hole, but otherwise it was very enjoyable.

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In other television news, I’m so excited for the upcoming adaptation of my friend Holly Gramazio’s delightful novel The Husbands starring Juno Temple of Ted Lasso and more importantly the most recent season of Fargo. Congratulations to Holly and also to all of us on getting to watch a fun tv show!

I kind of screwed up my Sunday calendar, and instead of coming home to Massachusetts for Sunday’s Passover seder, I scheduled a train for this morning and then booked a little work in New York last night that made it hard to change once I realized what I’d done. I’m a truly horrendous long-term planner. So you’re good at living in the moment? you may ask. Also no.

Feeling annoyed at myself for missing my family’s Passover celebration did at least made me reflect a little extra on what Passover is. (The past few years I haven’t traveled home for Passover, but it’s been because of actually inconvenient scheduling rather than my own poor grasp of the calendar, and I haven’t done much around the holiday at all.) With the U.S. government ramping up its cruelty and persecution towards anyone that it considers an outsider, the Passover story feels upsettingly relevant. And of course it is hard to internalize the sorrow we (Jews!) are compelled to feel for the pain that the Ten Plagues caused without feeling analogous anguish over the pain being visited on the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, largely in the name of the Jewish people.

It’s a bad time! And Passover is very much a bad times holiday. But it’s also a reminder that bad times can end. So I am going to try to focus on that starting…now!

Here’s some more fun news!

As I mentioned last week, my episode of Abolish Everything is up on Nebula now, but in the interim, Nebula has posted a few clips from my presentation, including this one!

While I’m at it, here’s an extremely silly bit I couldn’t get out of my head, so I wrote some jokes and recorded them and put them online. It’s absolutely too specific and nonsense-y to work as standup, but I wanted to share it with you here.

I also was on last week’s episode Joel Kim Booster’s podcast Bad Dates talking about a time I was a bad date. My story will be familiar to anyone who’s read my book, but the episode is worth it to hear hilarious stories from Skyler Higley and Punkie Johnson as well as Joel’s commentary.

NOW A FEW REMINDERS!!!!

TONIGHT! I’m performing on a benefit at Laugh Boston in the titular Boston to help pay some bills for my friend Mike Dorval’s cancer treatment! It’s a tremendous lineup for a good cause, and my parents will be there, so I’d love if you could show up and laugh so I look like a professional to them.

THEN! I’ll be in Austin for Moontower this Thursday night! I haven’t been to Austin in like 2.5 years, and I’m so hyped to eat some bbq and see a ton of friends. I would love love love if you made it out to the show!

NEXT WEEK! I’m co-hosting another monster (pun semi-intended) Frankenstein’s Baby lineup at Union Hall in Brooklyn on Monday, and I’m doing a long set on Tuesday in Manhattan co-headlining with the great Marina Franklin.

PEP TALK FOR EVERYONE ON THE PITT

Okay so I have not seen this tv show at all because I am humiliatingly squeamish, but my wife is watching it as I’m working on this newsletter, and everyone seems like they’re in a pretty bad way. The doctors seem stressed as hell. The patients are in agony. I’m hearing constant moaning and squishing sounds, and not in a sensual way.

Here’s what I have to offer these people: I imagine that the patients are in capable hands and the doctors are working alongside trusted and assiduous colleagues. I feel like they wouldn’t make a drama about a hospital full of dumbass doctors who are always leaving rubber gloves inside of pancreases and amputating the wrong feet. These nurses may be overworked and underfunded (again, unclear on the sitch here, just kind of overhearing bloops and squelches) but they’re doing their best, dammit.

There are so many times in life that things just go wrong. I bet it is hard to be the kind of medical professional where occasionally your patients die. (I mean, I guess all of every doctor’s patients die on a long enough timeline, but ideally not right in front of them.) And it is probably as emotionally difficult to die as it is physically easy to do so. It rules to not be dead (not to rub it in if anyone dead is reading this), and it’s kind of amazing if you stop and think about the unlikelihood of being alive.

So many tragedies happen all the time, and anytime there’s someone there to help out when one befalls you is a miracle. Again I’m feeling kind of emotionally open this week, which is not all that normal for me, and the idea of like, doctors, is really astonishing. Why aren’t we all doctors? Should I be a doctor? Could I even get into medical school???

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But! The season is over so any potential bad news is all on hold for now. Get well soon, or get some rest, or both!

PEP TALK FOR TWO READERS

I did a little capitalizing and comma-izing to this request but otherwise left it unchanged.

I’m writing a novel (just words no pictures!) and I’ve never done this before and I have to finish it before I try to sell it and it feels like a big bet on myself!
- Oh, Word!

[Newsletterer’s note: The pep talk requester is a very talented writer and visual artist who has published books before that include their artwork, hence the parenthetical.]

In my biased (or rather, let’s say informed) opinion: This rules. It’s great to try a new form of creative expression, even if you’re horrendous at it (which I’m sure you’re not). Seriously, even if you’re in the process of writing the worst novel since ink was first put to paper (which I would bet my life you are not) it would be a worthwhile undertaking to bite of a big hunk of the unknown and chew it until it’s small enough to swallow.

(Caveats here being: As long as you aren’t endangering your ability to pay your bills, which it doesn’t sound like you are, or imperiling anyone else with your new endeavor, which also sounds unlikely. Writing a novel rarely ruins someone else’s life, and you realllly have to try to make that happen.)

You’ll almost definitely fold a new crevasse or two in your brain from the sheer novelty (pun unintended, but not deleted, so you be the judge…) of novel writing. It will no doubt inform your future attempts at picture-free fiction, or a return to the kind of work at which you’re already an expert.

SIDE NOTE: I think sometimes, and I’m not saying you’re doing this here, but sometimes, people write off the value of things that they’re already good at because they don’t feel hard and therefore don’t seem as worth doing. But it’s not a cheat to allow a pre-existing talent or previously-cultivated skill to lead you. It’s giving yourself the gift of your own expertise. You can always try new stuff, but you deserve full credit for your current capacity as well! SIDE NOTE OVER.

Even if the novel was a pile of goat puke (which, as we’ve established, it’s not) and you didn’t learn a single thing from the process (which, as we’ve covered, you will) the whole thing would be valuable because you want to do it. It’s good (if and when you can) to allot time and energy and precious mental capacity to something that fascinates and engages you, something that makes you feel alive and full of possibility.

I know I write a lot to and about people in the midst creative pursuits, but this pep talk goes for any kind of thing. If you want to take a French lesson or buy a skateboard, do it. It doesn’t matter if you never know how to tell a native Parisian where the library is, or land a kickflip. There’s valor in trying something new because you’ve never done it before and are curious. It’s the opposite of making AI draw you as an embryo or whatever. You benefit just by doing it, even if it’s bad. How often do you get to benefit from something even if you’re history’s worst practitioner of that skill? Almost never. And of course, as mentioned above, you aren’t and won’t be.

A PEP TALK UPDATE (PEPDATE?)

I received this message on Bluesky from a recent pep talk recipient and wanted to pass it along!

Do you ever do a 'where are they now?' for past pep talks?? because the end of my story is that while I couldn't afford to buy my current apartment [which my landlord is selling], I found another, better apartment nearby that I CAN afford!

Oh heck yeah!!!!

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Allo Darlin’ - “Tricky Questions”

The algorithm hit me right between the eyes on Friday night. Maris (and Maggie) and I were sitting on the couch, DJ-ing through our tv’s speakers via iTunes or Apple Music or whatever the app is called now. Maris spotted a new Allo Darlin’ song, the first in about a decade, on the New and Notable (or whatever that is called now) menu. Allo Darlin’, an Australian band, has apparently survived the rise and fall of the twee aughts and early 2010s and came out the other side…still twee. This song is so damn PLEASANT. It’s light and peppy and feels like spring. Hate to tip my cap to our robot overlords, but they really knew what I needed to hear.

BONUS SONG: Turnstile - “Never Enough”

We’ve also got this new Turnstile song, which I can’t get enough of, thanks to the human song selection machine . Turnstile has a loud/soft quality to their songs that is like if the Pixies sounded nothing like the Pixies. The soft parts are more delicate and the loud parts are more churning. Their album Glow On is widely beloved, but I had a little trouble finding a way in. My favorite previous Turnstile tune was the one featured in I Think You Should Leave which now makes me tear up in the wake of the death of Biff Wiff. Anyway, I get it now, and this song rules, and the video rules.

UPCOMING SHOWS

I’ve got a few great shows coming up and then my calendar gets a little light, tbh!
I’m going to see what I can do about that!

4/14: Benefit for Mike Dorval at Laugh Boston (Boston)

4/17: Moontower Comedy Festival Headlining Show (Austin)

4/21: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

4/22: Co-Headlining Baruch PAC with Marina Franklin

4/23: GRIEFSTRIKE! Reading at Francis Kite (Manhattan)

5/4: 54/54/54 at 54 Below (Manhattan)

Hi everyone,

I was kind of all over the place this week, physically and practically, which was a lot of fun. I had a great weekend at the Comedy Attic in Bloomington, Indiana, which is one of the best clubs in the entire country. I am not a big time celebrity or social media sensation (YOU: “No way! Josh???!?! You aren’t?”) and I am always so flattered when I am invited back to the Attic. I’m about halfway to building up a new headlining set, so I was a little looser than usual onstage, and I ended up having some fun talking to the crowd. Would you believe there are people who are old enough to go to comedy clubs but have literally never heard of Y2K??? These are the kinds of things you learn when you ask people questions.

I also (sorry to be cryptic) felt a little forward progress on a writing project I’m working on with a friend. Despite getting on several airplanes lately, I’d been feeling a little professionally sedentary, and this momentum released an embarrassing amount of endorphins from my brain. It was like the first nice day of spring, but for professional news.

In other, more explicit fun updates, I returned to the All Fantasy Everything podcast with my friends Ian Karmel, David Gborie, and Sean Jordan to fantasy draft Interactions With Strangers. Ian, David, and Sean are SO fast and SO funny on the show, but they create such a welcoming environment for guests to hop into their world and play around for an hour or two. I did a live show with them in Boston at the Wilbur a couple of years ago, and something David said made me laugh as hard as I’ve ever laughed at a live performance. Along with The Bugle, AFE is maybe my favorite podcast that I get to appear on regularly. I know I come back to this same realization every few months, but I am so lucky to get to have so much of my job be to goof around with my extraordinarily funny friends!

After that, I was back on Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me this week along with my friend Negin Farsad (who newsletter readers may remember from last week’s adventures in Alabama) and first-time panelist the great Tig Notaro! Please don’t tell Tig but I am always very intimidated by her (despite her only ever having been very nice to me). Another all-time career highlight was opening for her at the Academy of Music in Northampton, MA and then sitting backstage while she spent five minutes lying to the audience about the Indigo Girls being special guests on the show. Maris was with me, and even though we had been backstage for hours even she was like…ARE the Indigo Girls here??? Tig is so committed to bits!! The celebrity interview guest on WWDTM was Sterling K. Brown, and I went full Chris Farley Show inarticulate talking to him about Paradise. Thanks to the whole Wait Wait team for being the best, as always. (Here’s a short clip from the recording!)

Oh right ALSO my episode of Abolish Everything is up on Nebula (a thing I only kind of understand). The live taping was great. I had so much fun watching the other performers’ presentations and talking about why we should abolish confidence.

And, as has been previously established, I’ll be in Boston NEXT Monday (4/14) to help raise money for my friend Mike Dorval’s cancer treatment along with a great lineup. I can say without looking that it’s the best show in town that night.

And, on 4/17, I’m headlining one show at the State Theatre in Austin as part of the Moontower Comedy Festival. I have never been to town for Moontower before and I’m SO psyched for it!

Plus, I’ve got a fun show in NYC with my pal Marina Franklin on 4/22! It’s my first long set in the city in a while!

Lotta business this week! Not too painful though, right? We got through it!

A SMALL HEADS-UP FROM A FRIEND

My friend Ana is hosting a writing workshop about how to keep creating even if democracy (or your life) is in chaos. I know so many people who are really grappling with how to do creative work (or any kind of thinking) outside of the truly horrible news that seems to unfold daily. How much is it incumbent on us all to focus on that stuff? How do we step outside it and have our own thoughts? Ana is great, and this workshop feels like the kind of thing a lot of people are searching for lately.

It’s called “The Slow Burn”… don’t burn out, burn slow. (Alt tag line: “Your life isn’t linear, your writing practice doesn’t have to be, either."). I included both tag lines because I think they are both good and express different relevant ideas.

PEP TALK FOR THE ECONOMY

Something that frustrates me about the economy is that for most people there seems to be a ceiling but not a floor. When the economy is good, rich people always seem to be thriving, and when it’s going badly, they always seem to be pretending to be struggling. But it’s not like the rest of us become wealthy along with the Big Dogs of Finance (unsure what else to call them) when things are good. And even at the worst economic downturns, someone with no money in the stock market probably has a worse time than someone who lost half a billion bucks.

When the people who own (roughly) everything to begin with suck air through their teeth and knit their brows and say that they just don’t have the budget because of an economic downturn (or an anticipated economic downturn, remember that?) so they have to make layoffs, it makes me feel like the guy at the beginning of The Big Lebowski who’s dunking Jeff Bridges’s head in the toilet and yelling: “WHERE’S THE FUCKING MONEY, SHITHEEEAAAD! BUNNY SAYS YOU’RE GOOD FOR IT!”

Ultimately though it’s not on you, the economy, to be “good” or “bad.” You are completely made up by people. Unlike gravity or the freezing point of water, the economy only exists because we say it does. Or at least, it only exists in its current form because we say it does.

Last week when the stock market crashed, Mark Zuckerberg lost $18 billion and somehow got out of bed the next morning. If I lost even a single billion dollars (and I don’t know how I’d ever get that much money…maybe I’d find myself in line for a rollercoaster behind Jeff Bezos and he’d hand me a big wad of cash so it wouldn’t all fly away when he went “WAHOOO!” and threw his hands up in the air during the fast part) I would, having lost that quantity of money, be dead within hours.

I honestly think that if you can lose $18 billion overnight and still function the next day, you should have to give a million bucks in cash to anyone who asks, no matter the reason. Even if they just want to take a brick of tens and slap you in the face with it.

“Hey Zuck I’d love to start a bumper car course where people crash Honda Civics into each other and it’s expensive to insure.”
“Here’s a cool milli. Follow your dreams.”

“Marky Z.! My man! I’m trying to buy every remaining Beanie Baby!”
“Here’s a million clams. I hope there’s still a Princess Diana bear out there for you.”

“MarZu! Can I call you that? I just gotta know what panda meat tastes like.”
“Well, you’ll probably need a little more cash than this but, spoiler alert, you’re gonna love it.” (I have to imagine that Mark Zuckerberg has probably tasted the flesh of every animal on earth.)

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We (humans) did this!!!! Or rather they (the Trump administration) did this specific thing to the economy. The rises and falls of the stock market are not dictated by natural laws like the contours of a mountain range. They’re all things people made happen (like melting glaciers, if we’re looking for an analogy in nature).

Anyway, in two different midwestern cities this weekend, I saw audiences go absolutely wild with enthusiasm when it was announced how much money the richest people in America lost last week. People are furious and will only get madder when the markets perk back up and those same vampires are wealthier than ever. But you can’t take that personally, the economy. You’re not even a person.

PEP TALK FOR A READER

I left this request mostly as-was. Just so you know.

Can I get a pep talk for my broken ankle?

I am mere months away from turning 40, and I've already had two stupid falls in the past month. The first one (tripping on an uneven sidewalk) resulted in broken glasses, a black eye, and some scrapes on my face. The more recent one (missed the last step of my back steps because I didn't turn a light on) has resulted in a broken ankle. I know I'm getting older, but this is ridiculous! I know it's irrational, but now I'm worried I might have more frequent falls in the future, something people only worry about for very old people. I JUST joined a (super queer and inclusive) gym and now I have to pause the routine I was really enjoying! I also don't drive, but pride myself on walking/taking the bus everywhere, so I'm very annoyed to have to rely on rides for awhile. I don't like being told I can't do something!

- Not Even Forty

The thing about bad luck is that it’s both real and not real. Bad things happen to good people for no justifiable reason all the time. Misfortune is unavoidable and has real consequences. Damn this sounds a lot like how I’m describing the economy but it’s not like that at all, really. Because bad luck can disappear at any time for any reason or for no reason at all. Chance is not a rational actor. Two falls in short succession doesn’t necessarily mean that you are the kind of person who topples over all the time. Your dependence on others (at least in the short term) is a setback, not a definition.

Every human body is an ice cube on a countertop. There are no limits to the peril it faces at the whims of weather and randomness and other people’s actions. And even under the best circumstances, it’s not going to last forever.

But you’re making intentional choices to make your recovery as smooth and complete as possible. You’ll get back on your feet (foot?) again before too long. The routine you established before hasn’t gone away. It’s on pause the same way it would be if you were on vacation or got stuck working extra long hours for a while.

You can get back to the place where you were. Luck is real and imaginary. Momentum exists and it doesn’t. Can something be real if you can create it out of thin air? Can something be fake if you can feel it more than more if you’re looking for it?

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Camp Trash - “Detroiters”

The chorus of this song hits in a burst like biting into a soup dumpling. I mean, maybe it’s not even a chorus. Nothing comes back. “Detroiters” is more like four cohesive movements that all whizz by in a total of two and a half minutes. Keegan from Camp Trash referred to the tune as “Detroiters Season 3” on social media, and honestly that level of pandering is too direct for me to ignore. So here we are.

UPCOMING SHOWS

I’m out and about in NYC a whole bunch coming up, plus a few shows on the road!

4/14: Benefit for Mike Dorval at Laugh Boston (Boston)

4/17: Moontower Comedy Festival Headlining Show (Austin)

4/21: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

4/22: Co-Headlining Baruch PAC with Marina Franklin

4/23: GRIEFSTRIKE! Reading at Francis Kite (Manhattan)

5/4: 54/54/54 at 54 Below (Manhattan)

Hi everyone,

Last Thursday night after learning a lot about rainforests and climate science at my friend Chris Duffy’s show Wrong Answers Only in Mobile, Alabama, we arrived too late at the bar to order food. Our waitress graciously advised us that we could order something to eat at the venue’s spacious outdoor seating area, but until then, the venue manager had fifty pounds of free crawfish he was trying to give away. We turned to look across the yard, and there he was, waving at us from behind a massive tray of crustaceans. We ambled over to hime and sucked down a bunch of crawdads; I even ate a perfectly spiced plum-sized potato out of my hand like, well, a plum.

The show was so much fun as always, and the guest scientist really impressed upon the audience the ability to make small good choices whose ripple effects benefit lots of people. I thought that was a beautiful ethos to walk around with. My friend Alison Leiby and I had traveled together to Alabama on Wednesday for the Thursday night performance, and we spent Thursday morning poking around the Mobile Botanical Gardens and also the art museum. It was the perfect amount of Doing Something that felt cultural and enriching without being Actual Work. (Friend-of-the-newsletter Negin Farsad was also on the show, but she didn’t get to town in time to join us on our adventures.) Good show. Art museum. Botanical gardens. Mysterious seafood. That’s all it takes for me to call a trip a resounding success.

On Tuesday night before I left New York, I attended my friend Jamie Hood’s book launch for her new memoir Trauma Plot. Jamie writes with such a vast set of literary and philosophical touchstones, and she plumbs her own brain’s wrinkles so thoroughly and movingly. Her book contains intense subject matter, but Jamie’s conversation with was both extraordinarily thoughtful and at times a lot of fun too.

On Saturday I attended my nephew’s (by marriage, which counts but is its own specific relationship…uncle-in-law) bar mitzvah in New Jersey. He did a great job leading a service at his synagogue and then we all went out to a deli for lunch. It was suggested that I get a “sloppy joe” which in New Jersey is a club sandwich with several different meats and some coleslaw. I am unclear what the people of New Jersey call a saucy heap of ground beef on a hamburger bun, or whether they even serve that there, or do they not even know that the rest of America reserves the name “sloppy joe” for a completely different food item. I guess I have to…write a letter to Bon Jovi or Bruce Springsteen? I’m taking this all the way to the top!

Also, my episode of the So True podcast with the unfairly funny Caleb Hearon came out last week. We covered a lot of ground tonally from very sincere to extremely goofy and riffy. It was so much fun, and Caleb’s zillions of fans have been very nice to me about it, which put me at ease! I honestly was a little antsy before we recorded, because I felt nervous about matching the show’s traditional energy. It turns out I was being a baby! Caleb was so nice, and we had a great talk!

Plus, I talked with about politics and politics-adjacent ideas for her newsletter! It was a less silly conversation, but still very lovely!

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THIS WEEK I’m recording Wait Wait in Chicago on Thursday and then back at the Comedy Attic in Bloomington, Indiana for four shows Friday and Saturday (4/4-4/5)!!! Come enjoy a show if you’re nearby! I loooove this club!

ON APRIL 17TH I’m headlining one show in Austin as part of the Moontower Comedy Festival, and tickets are on sale NOW!

Plus on 4/14 I’m doing a great fundraiser in Boston if you’re around and up for an excellent show on a Monday night! (Gary Gulman will be on the show too, among others!) And 4/22 I’m co-headlining a show in NYC with Marina Franklin!!!

PEP TALK FOR PETE HEGSETH

Pete! Peter! Petey Bedwet (as I imagine your college friends called you)!

You biffed it, dude! You, the Secretary of Defense, outlined plans for bombing Yemen in a group chat that included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. Lots to chew on here, big dog. First of all, you don’t have bomb an already-impoverished nation to seem tough. Even if it is continuous with some really nasty U.S. foreign policy and seems consistent with your alleged personal policy on assault (in favor of). You could just do what other guys your age (Our age??? How am I only 4.5 years younger than the Secretary of Defense??? Another issue for another time!) do when they want to seem strong: Learn way too much about mixed martial arts and drive a wicked big car.

In terms of the OpSec nightmare though, here’s the good news: You can stop hiding. Everyone has seen who you are!

Sure, you have some widely respected achievements to your name. You went to Princeton! You served in the military! You’ve hosted a tv show and written (citation needed) books! You’re a high-ranking official in the executive branch of government at the same age Bob Dylan was when he recorded his MTV Unplugged concert. You’re very accomplished!

You’ve also been accused of sexual assault, and your own mother has written to you begging you to treat women better. You’ve got at least one tattoo with pretty clear white nationalist roots. You’re widely reported to be drunk at work a shocking amount, and that’s coming from me, a standup comedian, who is allowed to be drunk at work and is still agog at these stories. Your resume is, let’s say, diverse. And yes I am using that word despite knowing how much you hate it.

There’s an AA maxim that “we’re only as sick as our secrets,” and if that’s true then congratulations, fucker, you’re healthy as hell. Everyone in America knows you are a vile person and not an especially smart one. (For anyone still on your side, that’s the appeal, of course.) You don’t have to crouch behind your credentials anymore. In a fairer world, instead of having your own television program, you would have fallen off the Capitol building on January 6th while trying to free-climb the side of it so you could shove Nancy Pelosi’s letter opener up your butt handle-first. Although, considering we don’t live in a fairer world, you would have been pardoned last month anyway.

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I can only imagine the stress you’ve been under, having salisbury steak for brains, and still being elevated to the highest echelons of government. Thank goodness that in your second month on the job you texted sensitive military information to a journalist, ending the charade that you are competent or qualified for your position in any way. It must feel amazing, like the physical sensation of drunkenly shitting your pants in that brief instant before you realize that your pants are now full of shit, something I assume you know about firsthand, but that’s just conjecture. The bar has crashed through the floor and has rolled into the corner of a spooky sub-basement. No one expects anything of you now, and your bosses seem to be in your corner despite the right thing to do being to relieve you of your position and then probably make you live in a well for everyone else’s safety.

Anyway congratulations on living out loud and out cruel and out dumb. You don’t have to run anymore, which is fortunate, because you are extremely at risk for tripping and falling.

PEP TALK FOR A READER

I did a tiny bit of light editing to this request! Nothing substantial!

I need to work out for my heart health, but because of disability, my body moves differently. At a gym, there's a 50% chance I'll be stared at like unsupervised toddler, with folks going about their business but obviously concerned. And there’s a 50% chance someone will tell me I'm an inspiration for existing in public.
- Up In The Gym Just Dealing With Some Dipshits

Ugh! I hate that people feel so compelled to be weirdos to you! You deserve to only feel self-conscious at the gym for reasons that can apply to everyone: Worries about not knowing how to use the equipment, fear of smelling bad, accidentally forgetting the right clothes and having to work out in jeans. You know, across-the-board stuff.

There’s a giant bestseller called The Let Them Theory, which according to this excellent review by my friend Katie Heaney is like a book you’d write if you heard about therapy from a friend and decided to write an entire book based loosely on something that they told you their therapist once said to them. Basically, it’s about how you can’t control other people (true, unless you’re willing to work really hard at it, which isn’t super ethical anyway) and that you should just let them do the thing they’re going to do and then respond in a way that reflects your values.

First of all: What is even the alternative to that? You tackle the other person before they have a chance to say or do anything? You hide in a very deep hole so they cannot reach you with any offending actions? The fundamental premise of this book feels like one notch above nothing.

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Either way, I do think it’s fair to acknowledge that other people are going to do annoying things that you can’t always curtail even with your best effort. But instead of “let them” I’d like to propose an alternative philosophy: “Fuck them.” I of course mean this more like “a pox upon their house” and less like “have sexual relations with them.” But it’s hard to disambiguate the wording via text.

It is true that you can’t stop people, well-meaning or otherwise, from being pains in your butt. But also, fuck ‘em. Their misplaced concern or condescending feeling of “inspiration” is their problem, not yours. You’ve got a goal! These losers and chumps can’t stand in your way! They are nothing to you! As a practical matter: I bet that the more you show up and do your thing at the gym, the fewer annoyances from other regulars will present themself. But either way, when they do…fuck ‘em.

I don’t really have any standing to tell you this. I’m not really a fuck ‘em type of guy. And my exercise regimen consists mostly of running around getting jump shots up at my local park during firmly off-peak hours. I also count rushing through airports a few times a month as cardio, which doesn’t seem unreasonable, but I give myself generous unearned extra credit for it.

I’m not sure if your schedule or exercise needs allow for clandestine workouts. Or if that concept is even appealing to you. But what I can offer is the comfort of “fuck ‘em” and the encouragement to do what you need to do. (This is just a pep talk after all. For actual workout advice, I could not recommend more highly!)

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Beach Bunny - “Big Pink Bubble”

I was searching through the new songs on Apple Music to feel in touch with contemporary culture (biffed it), and I learned there’s a new Beach Bunny album coming out soon. “Big Pink Bubble” teeters on the edge of exuberance and dread. I love the specificity of the feelings in Beach Bunny songs, even when they’re made to be shouted along with at a live show. Beach Bunny is a band that sounds like a band! Not a guy with a laptop! Not an arts collective! A BAND! I love a band-sounding band! I’m psyched to hear the rest of the album and to maybe even get a ticket to see them next month!

UPCOMING SHOWS

I’m out and about in NYC a whole bunch coming up, plus a few shows on the road!

3/31: New York Comedy Club (Gramercy)

4/2: Freddy’s Backroom (Brooklyn)

4/3: Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me (Chicago)

4/4-4/5: The Comedy Attic (Bloomington, IN)

4/14: Benefit for Mike Dorval at Laugh Boston (Boston)

4/17: Moontower Comedy Festival Headlining Show (Austin)

4/21: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

4/22: Co-Headlining Baruch PAC with Marina Franklin

4/23: GRIEFSTRIKE! Reading at Francis Kite (Manhattan)

Hi everyone,

I imagine many of you are looking for a Maggie update, so let’s start there: She’s still very small and squishy and cuddly. She is a real bed hog at night, which is adorable but not ideal for my sleep schedule. She sometimes overlooks the treats people are trying to give her because she’s so excited to say hello and receive pets and scratches, which is almost too charming. We even got her to pee outside three (3) times by bringing her her pee pad outside and putting on the sidewalk. So, all in all, basically an angel. Would die for her. Hope it doesn’t come to that for any reason.

The other (much) big(ger) news this week was that Maris’s agent threw her a little party to celebrate distributing some advance reader copies of her book (out 7/1, but available for preorder now), and it was so lovely. I did not drink at all for fear of becoming too belligerently supportive of my brilliant wife’s excellent work. Many friends in the book world were there, and I met some nice new people and talked to them about what a genius Maris is, and it was a really good night.

On Thursday, Maris went to the National Book Critics Circle Awards, and I stayed home with our slightly clingy pug. The NBA action that night wasn’t much to text home about, so I watched Roy Wood Jr.’s new standup special (Lonely Flowers, on Hulu) as well as Ian Karmel’s new special (Comfort Beyond God’s Foresight, on YouTube) and really enjoyed both. Everything I’d heard and read about Roy’s special mentioned how spectacular the closing bit is, and it truly was, but not in the way I was expecting. Without spoiling too much, what blew me away was the specificity of the joke, and the absolute ease with which Roy delivered it. He grounds a poignant observation in an unexpected personal experience and delivers it with such fluidity and precision that it felt as if he covered every relevant detail and a surprising emotional heft with no extraneous effort or wasted motion. A paragon of the fabled “making it look easy.”

Ian, on the other hand, draws more attention to the form and construction of his jokes. They take unexpected and delightful tangents and sustain longer and more powerfully than you expect. He’s so playful without ever losing the thread that holds an idea together. It’s kind of like bopping a balloon around while you hold onto the string. There’s whimsy, but it’s always under control.

As long as we’re here, I also liked Liza Treyger’s recent Netflix special Night Owl very much. Liza has such a powerful level of self awareness and a strong comedic point of view that everything she says sounds perfectly like herself and completely unembellished in a way that I, a writer of sweaty unwieldy jokes at times, admire very much. The biggest compliment I can give Liza is that whenever her name comes up, a zillion women will say: “There is no one like her.” She just kills and kills and kills.

I posted a teensy bit of my own standup this week too! It’s a slice of a longer joke I’m working on. Relatedly, as you will see if you watch: One fun aspect of having a new dog is getting reacquainted with the other dog people of the neighborhood, out at weird hours, coaxed towards socializing with each other by the impulses of our pets. I met a really sweet couple with a dog and a baby (whose names I remember but will not share here) who had recently seen me perform live, and guessed that we live near each other because they recognized the landmark from this bit. It is, literally, a small world sometimes. (The show was less than a mile and a half from my apartment.) I am lightly concerned that the neighbors mentioned in this joke will come across it, but I don’t dislike them! Just their doorbell!

And, this may be controversial, but I loved the Severance finale. I found if full of exciting and imaginative surprises that felt deeply consistent with the characters we know and love. I didn’t mind the slowness of parts of this season; I don’t really care if a lot happens when we’re hanging out underground with our cast of weirdos. But it did seem like a few episodes lacked a sense of humor that I find really crucial to the show’s success. To me, seeing an occasional melon shaped like John Turturro’s head is as important to the show as finding out what a bunch of mysterious numbers mean. This is almost certainly my comedy writer bias. But I just don’t love when a show or movie uses Very Serious as shorthand for Good and Important. Also, no spoilers once again, but there was an animal noise in the finale that made Maggie do this.

Have you seen the finale yet? What did you think???

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Also this week I did karaoke with a friend and ate a fancy candy bar recommended by a friend and saw my pal Abby’s off-Broadway debut (just extended!) and had a little professional freakout from which I’ve mostly recovered. This week I’ve got a show in Mobile, AL and a bar mitzvah somewhere in New Jersey. Next week I’ll be in Chicago for Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me (4/3) and then at the Comedy Attic in Bloomington, IN (4/4-4/5). Come out if you’re around! I love this club!

Boston! I’m doing a GREAT fundraiser show for a GREAT cause on 4/14 at Laugh Boston in the Seaport. Come enjoy a killer lineup and help pay for my buddy Mike Dorval’s cancer treatment.

I don’t have the ticket link yet, but I’m extremely excited to be headlining one show at the Moontower Comedy Festival in Austin on 4/17. It’s my first time at the festival, and I can’t wait! More info coming soon. Live shows have been so fun lately. Frankenstein’s Baby has been a blast. I had a great time opening for my friend Adam Cayton-Holland last week. The new jokes are coming together. :)

Okay enough about me! On to the pep talks!

PEP TALK FOR CYBERTRUCKS

Last week, almost every Cybertruck on the road was recalled because two side panels are affixed to the vehicles with the discount glue that killed George Costanza’s fiancé on Seinfeld. I get it, Cybertrucks. You go to pieces easily. Some of my best friends lack a similar structural integrity, and I don’t call them pieces of garbage that cost $100,000 each. Physically, I probably wouldn’t stand up to traveling at 70 mph either. Parts of me would start flying off too. But you’ve got to realize that that’s not a great look for a truck, being bad at driving I mean.

I’m sorry that your design looks like graphics from a cutting edge computer game in 1994. If it were super functional for you to look that way, it wouldn’t be so bad. But your steel exoskeleton seems not just clunky, but dangerous and flimsy. Your aesthetic does appeal to the kind of guy who wishes he could drive a pair of wraparound Oakleys, though, so there’s that.

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There have been lots of bad cars in the past. You are not uniquely unsound, from a historical perspective. Most time a car is ugly and breaks down like Claire Danes on Homeland at any provocation, people show their displeasure (or desire to not be on fire) by not driving that car. But you, for reasons we’ll get to in a second are being protested across the country. That sounds hurtful. The Department of Justice agrees, but I was being sarcastic and they’re being sincere.

Yes Cybertrucks, you, like the Insane Clown Posse before you, can are not able to deal with the presence of magnets. But really the problem isn’t that you’re a tinfoil death trap that looks like a bike helmet from a Bladerunner movie. It’s that you’re being championed by a guy who somehow turned Henry Ford into the U.S.-based auto mogul with the second greatest fondness for Nazis.

I’ve been saying a lot of negative stuff, but here is something beautiful about a Cybertruck: It looks stupid, and it confers that it is most likely driven by a total dipshit. What an incredible melding of form and function. There are lots of cars that can seem douchey when they are driven by a douche. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they are badly designed. Just that they appeal to bad people. A Cybertruck has a structural and aesthetic quality that reflects the moral condition of the person behind the wheel. It’s cohesive. It’s elegant. It’s frankly spetacular for that reason only. Well, that reason and all the flames.

You’ll be back on the road soon, once the Tesla corporation ponies up (pun accidentally stumbled upon, but kept in regardless) for higher quality glue. And until you are next recalled because your tires are made from cracking birthday party balloon rubber or your side view mirrors keep flying off and lodging into pedestrians’ chests like ninja stars (both design flaws hypothetical, if you are a lawyer), you’ll be out there on the streets, being exactly what you are…a rickety chariot for the rich and easily-tricked who might otherwise go unrecognized as such.

PEP TALK FOR TWO READERS

I’ve combined these two pep talk requests for reasons that will be come clear pretty quickly!

CFPB worker here. Not thrilled that Musk/Trump are trying to destroy my agency that helps so many people. But very proud how hard my union brothers and sisters are fighting to save the CFPB.
- Solid(arity) State

My wife and I are planning to move to Portugal in the fall due to the downfall of America. We're excited and thankful that we have the means to do something like this but it's also hard and exhausting and sad! Would love a couple words of encouragement
- Great Ex-patations

The Trump/Musk administration (with insincere apologies to J.D. Vance who seems tangential to the whole operation) is causing so much pain and chaos already. Between the cruelty of the deportations/detentions, the resegregation policies, the apparently-intentional damage to the economy, and the selling off of the federal government for parts, lots of people (people of color, non-citizens, LGBTQ+ people, basically any protesters outside of the Capitol Rioters, and women, to name a few groups) are (understatement incoming) having a bad time lately.

After nine weeks (is that all it’s been???? really???) under this new regime, stuff I hadn’t even considered could go wrong is on the table. It’s dizzying to try and predict which new horror might befall us. Is RFK Jr. going to mandate every vaccine contain lead chips for the sake of balance? Is Elon Musk going to pour oil all over the national highway system and then tweet “lol street lube”? Is Linda McMahon going to dispatch WWE wrestlers to individually body slam high school students who try to read books by gay authors? It’s legitimately all on the table.

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The U.S. right now feels like a diminishingly safe for many people to live or even visit. I understand that some people who are able are making the decision to leave the country. That sounds like a hard choice to make. I remember how much consternation I felt moving from Boston to New York, and that took very little paperwork, and I wasn’t fleeing anything except for my own fear of success and hard work. For some people there’s a real question of whether it’s healthier to stay or to go (scientists call this quandary “Strummer’s Dilemma” okay sorry not the time I get it). For some, it’s the best available option.

On the other hand not everyone has the ability leave to or the interest in leaving. It’s incumbent on all of us still here to stand up for the most vulnerable people around. I know I’ve said this recently. But it feels worth reiterating. I think I also said this next part right around the election last year, but thinking about organizing and activism and contributing money to causes you believe in as ways not to do the least harm but as the chances to do the most good can sometimes ease a fraction of the psychic toll imposed by, well, much of reality. Not every choice is a Trolley Problem. We’re striving to do the best we can for each other, not the least worst. That means both that we shouldn’t limit our political imaginations through conventional wisdom, but also that we can acknowledge that doing a little good where you is the foundational element of making things better.

This all feels a little duplicative with previous newsletters, but it feels like history isn’t just repeating itself, it’s hitting rewind as soon as the track finishes. Sorry to the journalists and late night comedy writers who have to parse what’s actually going on here make it all digestible. It seems worth reiterating some of this stuff because the same feelings keep resurfacing as the same horrors pop up over and over again. We’ve got to do what’s within our reach. Sometimes that’s taking care of personal health, and sometimes that’s looking out for a neighbor. Usually those two things are related. Shout out to labor unions and mutual aid groups and teachers and doctors standing up for the people they work with. And of course, shout out to heretofore undiscovered genetic disorders in the bodies of the current Cabinet as well as all DOGE employees. Everyone’s gotta do what they can.

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Obongjayar - “Not In Surrender”

I came across this song in friend-of-the-newsletter Christian Finnegan’s , where I frequently learn about good songs. Christian describes “Not In Surrender” as a song that makes him want to run naked through the streets. It makes me want to turn my life into a wicked-focused workout montage for the sake of getting ripped enough to fight my greatest foe (hypothetical) or to get in a car and just drive on the highway until I escape some looming danger (probably hypothetical). It makes me want to plan a heist or have a chance encounter (platonic) with a stranger that changes everything.

The beat is just so relentless, and when the guitars chime in I feel like I could climb a hundred staircases without losing my breath, or jump down a hundred staircases without shattering my bones. If I were a runner, I’d listen to it while running, but honestly putting it on in my headphones makes me want to run somewhere at least a little bit.

UPCOMING SHOWS

I’m out and about in NYC a whole bunch coming up, plus a few shows on the road!

3/25: Alphaville (Brooklyn)

3/27: Wrong Answers Only (Mobile, AL)

4/2: Freddy’s Backroom (Brooklyn)

4/3: Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me (Chicago)

4/4-4/5: The Comedy Attic (Bloomington, IN)

4/14: Benefit for Mike Dorval at Laugh Boston (Boston)

4/17: Moontower Comedy Festival Headlining Show (Austin, link coming soon)

4/21: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

4/22: Co-Headlining Baruch PAC with Marina Franklin

4/23: GRIEFSTRIKE! Reading at Francis Kite (Manhattan)

Hi everyone,

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!!!!

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.

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.

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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!

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!

Also, on 4/22 I’m co-headlining a show in Manhattan (rare! exciting!) with Marina Franklin who is so so funny!

PEP TALK FOR MAGGIE THE PUG

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.

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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).

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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!

3/17: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

3/19: Opening for Adam Cayton-Holland at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

3/20: Grisly Pear (Midtown)

3/25: Alphaville (Brooklyn)

3/27: Wrong Answers Only (Mobile, AL)

4/2: Freddy’s Backroom (Brooklyn)

4/3: Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me (Chicago)

4/4-4/5: The Comedy Attic (Bloomington, IN)

4/14: Benefit for Mike Dorval at Laugh Boston (Boston)

4/17: Seaport Museum (Manhattan), Bushwick Comedy Club (Brooklyn)

4/21: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

4/22: Co-Headlining Baruch PAC with Marina Franklin

4/23: GRIEFSTRIKE! Reading at Francis Kite (Manhattan)

Hi everyone,

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.

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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.

Then I’ve got a few shows at Union Hall (also in Brooklyn) performing with my friend Taylor Garron (3/15), opening for my friend Adam Cayton-Holland (3/19), and co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby with my friend Tyrone Thornhill (3/17). Frankenbaby has another outrageous lineup thanks to our producer Jordan.

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

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.

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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.

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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!

3/10: Purim Show at Littlefield (Brooklyn)

3/11: The Backspace at Nod Hill (Ridgefield, CT)

3/15: Bushwick Comedy Club, Taylor Garron’s Show at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

3/17: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

3/19: Opening for Adam Cayton-Holland at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

3/20: Grisly Pear (Midtown)

3/25: Alphaville (Brooklyn)

3/27: Wrong Answers Only (Mobile, AL)

4/2: Freddy’s Backroom (Brooklyn)

4/3: Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me (Chicago)

4/4-4/5: The Comedy Attic (Bloomington, IN)

Hi everyone,

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 The New 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.

Sound off in the comments!

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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

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.

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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.

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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)

3/7: Pine Box Rock Shop (Brooklyn)

3/10: Purim Show at Littlefield (Brooklyn)

3/11: The Backspace at Nod Hill (Ridgefield, CT)

3/15: Bushwick Comedy Club, Taylor Garron’s Show at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

3/17: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

3/19: Opening for Adam Cayton-Holland at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

4/4-4/5: The Comedy Attic (Bloomington, IL—ticket link soon!)

Hi everyone,

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 Bugle last 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.

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!

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I’d love to hear if you have specific thoughts on this! Thanks so much in advance!

PEP TALK FOR PEOPLE CALLING THEIR REPS

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!

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.)

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Okay that’s all! Good luck out there!

PEP TALK FOR A READER

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!

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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!

2/27: Kelsey McKinney’s Book Launch (Philadelphia)

2/28: Abolish Everything at Caveat (NYC)

3/2: Steve Martin Presents at Union Hall (Brooklyn…but not that Steve Martin)

3/7: Pine Box Rock Shop (Brooklyn)

3/10: Purim Show at Littlefield (Brooklyn)

3/11: The Backspace at Nod Hill (Ridgefield, CT)

3/15: Bushwick Comedy Club, Taylor Garron’s Show at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

3/17: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

3/19: Opening for Adam Cayton-Holland at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

4/4-4/5: The Comedy Attic (Bloomington, IL—ticket link soon!)

Hi everyone,

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!

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!

In other news, the first episode from the Symphony Hall Boston Circle Round recordings is out now! It’s called “The Well of Honor” and I play a hungry donkey. Oh, and I did a little interview about record collecting for my internet pal Michele’s blog! And I recorded an episode of On The Bleachers with Sarah Enni and Zan Romanoff who are both excellent talkers!

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.

rabbis4ceasefire

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AND ONE LAST OTHER THING

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.

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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

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.

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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 Traitors or 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.

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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!

2/17: Co-Hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

2/23: Beauty Bar (Manhattan)

2/27: Kelsey McKinney’s Book Launch (Philadelphia)

2/28: Abolish Everything at Caveat (NYC)

3/2: Steve Martin Presents at Union Hall (Brooklyn…but not that Steve Martin)

3/7: Pine Box Rock Shop (Brooklyn)

3/11: The Backspace at Nod Hill (Ridgefield, CT)

3/15: Taylor Garron’s Show at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

3/17: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

3/19: Opening for Adam Cayton-Holland at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

4/4-4/5: The Comedy Attic (Bloomington, IL—ticket link soon!)

Hi everyone,

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!

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.

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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

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.

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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.

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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)

2/14: Helium Comedy Club (Buffalo)

2/16: Young Ethel’s

2/17: Co-Hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

2/23: Beauty Bar (Manhattan)

2/27: Kelsey McKinney’s Book Launch (Philadelphia)

3/2: Steve Martin Presents at Union Hall (Brooklyn…but not that Steve Martin)

3/7: Pine Box Rock Shop (Brooklyn)

3/11: The Backspace at Nod Hill (Ridgefield, CT)

Hi everyone,

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.

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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.

PEP TALK FOR ANTHONY DAVIS

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.

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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.

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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!

2/7: Don’t worry about it.

2/8: Circle Round Live Recording (Boston)

2/9: What’s New? at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

2/10: Funhouse at Pete’s Candy Store (Brooklyn)

2/13: Commune and Wild East Brewing (Both in Brooklyn)

2/14: Helium Comedy Club (Buffalo)

2/16: Young Ethel’s

2/17: Co-Hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

2/23: Beauty Bar (Manhattan)

2/27: Kelsey McKinney’s Book Launch (Philadelphia)

3/11: The Backspace at Nod Hill (Ridgefield, CT)

Hi everyone,

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!)

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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.

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 Day with 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

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.

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(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!

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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!

1/27: Superbloom at the Elysian Vault (Los Angeles)

1/29: Apartment Show, Better Half, and Adult Entertainment (Los Angeles)

2/5: Freddy’s Backroom (Brooklyn)

2/7: Don’t worry about it.

2/8: Circle Round Live Recording (Boston)

2/9: What’s New? at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

2/10: Funhouse at Pete’s Candy Store (Brooklyn)

2/13: Commune and Wild East Brewing (Both in Brooklyn)

2/16: Young Ethel’s

2/17: Co-Hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

2/23: Beauty Bar (Manhattan)

2/27: Kelsey McKinney’s Book Launch (Philadelphia)

3/11: The Backspace at Nod Hill (Ridgefield, CT)

Hi everyone,

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?)

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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!

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!

TONIGHT: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall in Brooklyn!
SATURDAY: Sup, Bro? with Alison Leiby in San Francisco (plus a couple of other Sketchfest shows, but I’d really love for you to come to this one)!!!
NEXT WEEK: Los Angeles! Details below!
2/8: Circle Round LIVE! in Boston

*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

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!

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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.

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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!

1/20: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

1/21: Taskmaster Premiere at Town Hall (Manhattan), Scorpion Records (Ridgewood)

1/22: Young Ethels (Brooklyn) and New Money at Flophouse Comedy Club (Brooklyn)

1/23: Spicy Moon Bowery (Manhattan)

1/25: Sup, Bro? at SF Sketchfest (San Francisco)

1/27: Superbloom at the Elysian Vault (Los Angeles)

1/29: Apartment Show, Better Half, and a third thing? (Los Angeles)

2/5: Freddy’s Backroom (Brooklyn)

2/7: Don’t worry about it.

2/8: Circle Round Live Recording (Boston)

2/9: What’s New? at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

2/10: Funhouse at Pete’s Candy Store (Brooklyn)

2/13: Commune and Wild East Brewing (Both in Brooklyn)

2/16: Young Ethel’s

2/17: Co-Hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

2/23: Beauty Bar (Manhattan)

2/27: Kelsey McKinney’s Book Launch (Philadelphia)

3/11: (Venue TBA) Ridgefield, CT

Hi everyone,

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!

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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 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!

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

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.)

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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).

Husbands. Where should I start?

Here!

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).

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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!

1/13: New York Comedy Club (Midtown)

1/16: Bomb Shelter at Gaf West (Manhattan)

1/17: Best Night Ever and BCC (Both in Brooklyn)

1/18: Bushwick Comedy Club (Brooklyn)

1/20: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

1/21: Scorpion Records (Ridgewood)

1/22: Young Ethels (Brooklyn) and New Money at Flophouse Comedy Club (Brooklyn)

1/23: Spicy Moon Bowery (Manhattan)

1/25: Sup, Bro? at SF Sketchfest (San Francisco)

2/8: Circle Round Live Recording (Boston)

2/9: What’s New? at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

2/27: Kelsey McKinney’s Book Launch (Philadelphia)

3/11: (Venue TBA) Ridgefield, CT

Hi everyone,

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!)

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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.

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.

Speaking of standup! Alison Leiby and I are bringing our show Sup, Bro? to Sketchfest in San Francisco on 1/25! I reiterate, the lineup is out of control! Aparna Nancherla! Paul F. Tompkins! Dulcé Sloan! Dave Mizzoni! (Alison and I are co-hosting the 1/20 Frankenstein’s Baby show at Union Hall in NY too!)

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

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!!!

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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.

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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?!?!

1/8: Ambush at Flophouse Comedy Club (Brooklyn)

1/9: Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me Live Recording (Chicago)

1/11: Sick-ass Panther (Manhattan) and QED (Queens)

1/16: Bomb Shelter at Gaf West (Manhattan)

1/17: Best Night Ever and BCC (Both in Brooklyn)

1/18: Bushwick Comedy Club (Brooklyn)

1/20: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

1/21: Scorpion Records (Ridgewood)

1/22: Young Ethels (Brooklyn)

1/23: New Money at Flophouse Comedy Club (Brooklyn)

1/25: Sup, Bro? at SF Sketchfest

2/8: Circle Round Live Recording (Boston)

Hi everyone,

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!)

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A post shared by @joshgondelman

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.

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?

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PEP TALK FOR AULD ACQUAINTANCE

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!

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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).

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UPCOMING SHOWS

It’s a slow time of the year, but I’ve got some more shows to announce soon!

1/1: The Comedy Cellar (NYC)

1/9: Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me Live Recording (Chicago)

1/18: Bushwick Comedy Club (Brooklyn)

1/20: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

1/25: Sup, Bro? at SF Sketchfest