#96. Drake and You

Even if you're not reading this, it's too late.

Hi everyone,

The post-August return to action, both personal and cultural, seems to be in full swing. However, while everyone else was getting back into the regular rhythm of their lives after Labor Day, Maris and I got the heck out of town and spent two days in Miami sitting by a pool in celebration of her birthday! Happy birthday, Maris! You are perfect! I am so glad we got to spend a couple of days drinking iced coffee and going swimming together now that you are done writing your book! Out of respect for you, I even watched a crow steal half of my croissant off of a table without saying: “I guess that’s why they call it a crowssant.” AN ENORMOUS SACRIFICE! FOR LOVE!

Miami is full of equal measures of vibrant culture and also guys driving Teslas who seem like they’d give you a million dollars if you wrote “BITCOIN” on a piece of printer paper in some kind of industrial font. It’s a perfect place to visit before we see whether the energy saved by those guys driving electric cars is outweighed by the energy it takes for them to power the blockchain and the whole city ends up underwater.

While we were away, I read Steven Wright’s novel Harold. Steven Wright is one of my favorite comedians, and his wry, poetic insights are strewn throughout the book in the same way that a jazz quintet playing very free and loose occasionally locks into a beautiful groove for a few seconds at a time. There was a lot to like in it, but there was also a lot that was not quite as impeccably crafted as his standup. I wonder if I’d prefer a poetry collection if he ever wanted to write one!

Thanks to the village of Bizzy-sitters required to make a quick jaunt out of town possible. You are all heroes, and I owe each of you my life, which isn’t really feasible, so…whoever claims it first…I guess it’s yours?

Maris flew home from Ft. Lauderdale on Friday, and I continued to zip around Florida and then up to Atlanta on the Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me Standup Tour. We did four theaters in four nights, and it was a blast. I drove all around Florida with Negin Farsad and had great shows with her and Alonzo Bodden and Dulcé Sloan. I started the weekend a little exhausted by my own thoughts since I’ve been telling these jokes for a little bit now (and I’ve watched them a zillion times as I work on editing my special), and the new ones aren’t quite road-ready yet. But it turns out the antidote to being sick of yourself is sharing your thoughts with theaters full of enthusiastic people who have never heard them before.

We didn’t think to take the picture until the audience was already leaving.

I had a lot of fun telling jokes and goofing around backstage with the other comics, plus I saw my cousins John and Frankie, and my friend Kayla, and my former high school Spanish teacher who I managed to call by her first name and not be weird about it. I missed seeing my friend Josie because she had to hustle home to relieve a babysitter so: Hi, Josie!

I’m still a little bedraggled from going out after the show last night in Atlanta, but also because on Friday in Orlando my hotel neighbors engaged in a series of brief but enthusiastic romantic interludes where they seemed to…how to say this delicately…take turns enjoying themselves. I couldn’t quite get a read on whether this was an agreed-upon arrangement where they alternated which one of them was having more fun while the other one toughed it out, or if they just did not communicate well. Obviously I was not in a position to ask them, but I had lots of time to consider the issue while I was not sleeping from 1-2 in the morning and then again from 5-6. (Good for them! Working both of those shifts in bed on the same night is a young person’s game, in my humble, aging opinion.)

Hopefully I’ll sneak in a little nap this week because on account of my not knowing how to use a calendar, I’m going to see three bands play this week? Tonight Maris and I are going to see our buddies in Charly Bliss rip it up at the Music Hall of Williamsburg! Then on Wednesday we’re going to see St. Vincent, purely based on the great review Maddie Connors wrote about her recent LA show. Then on Saturday night it’s the Old 97s, who have been on my Bands To See list for quite some time! Like I said up top: summer is (culturally) OVER! It’s time to DO THINGS INDOORS! (But feel free to enjoy the apocalyptically warm weather to spend a little more time at the beach if that’s your thing. Especially Miami residents. Who knows how long you have left above sea level?)

Otherwise, I’ll be doing a couple of spots this week in New York hashing out some choppy new jokes, which is the best part of telling jokes for comedians, and hopefully audiences like it too! Then I’m up in Boston for a live podcast taping (more info below) and back home hopefully for the Jewish Currents event I mentioned last week. They’re looking for a new location though! Fingers crossed! I really want to talk to Emma Seligman and Tavi Gevinson and James Schamus!

And! After a delightful run co-hosting the last days of Butterboy at Littlefield, Alison Leiby and I are part of a superteam (including the terrific comedians/pals Joyelle Nicole Johnson and Tyron Thornhill, DJ Donwill, and producer Jordan Ashleigh) bringing you the new biweekly show Frankenstein’s Baby!!! It’s going to be every 1st and 3rd Monday of the month at Union Hall in Brooklyn, and we’ll be co-hosting in various fun combinations. The first show will be next Monday (9/16), and the lineup is ridiculous!!! Grab! Those! Tickets!

Technically it’s Frankenstein’s Monster’s Baby pictured here.

PEP TALK FOR DRAKE

“Does God have a Plan B?” Photo: Prince Williams/WireImage

When you’re possibly the biggest (solo male) artist of a generation, there’s nowhere to go but down. But wow, nobody expected you to fall so far so fast. Kendrick Lamar, your nemesis, was just announced as the headliner for next year’s Super Bowl halftime show, and normally I’d say that someone else’s success is not a referendum on you. In this case, though, it absolutely is. K.Dot has long been a major artist, but last summer he ascended to dizzying new heights with a suite of songs about how much you, Drake, suck shit. And he’s probably going to perform at least one of those songs in the middle of the most-watched television event of the year. (This thought led me to question whether it would have been possible for 2Pac to have rapped “Hit ‘em Up” amidst an ad break during the Seinfeld finale and the answer is no, the timelines don’t work out.)

You have been beset by (rhyming) allegations of cultural appropriation, inadequate parenting, and sexual misconduct. In May and June, a DJ or even a venue’s pre-show playlist dropping the beat for “Not Like Us” would cause basically any crowd to turn up, from Kamala Harris rallies to sports stadiums to (one must assume) bat mitzvahs. It’s been a complicated year for Jewish people navigating historically Jewish institutions with problematic legacies, but my people have had no problem divesting from Drake in droves. Dude, you are taking more Ls in rapid succession than the word “parallelogram.”

Fortunately for you, while many people have been put off of your music by a J.D. Vance-like barrage of public humiliations, you have ascended to such heights over the past decade and a half that there are still many people in your corner. You have probably maintained a Canadian fan base out of national loyalty. But even if not, you’re definitely still a favored rapper amongst guys who call women “females” and use their Instagram accounts to post pictures of The Joker with captions like: “People say that I am crazy but that is only because a lion’s success cannot be recognized by a cockroach.” I imagine a number of non-English-speaking rap fans who enjoy your music on a rhythmic and/or phonetic basis have remained loyal to you. And for sure no one who pronounces the word “vodka” as if it’s spelled “v-o-k-k-a” has turned on you. So, congratulations on hanging onto the guys who have Entourage quotes in their Hinge profiles.

I don’t know that you’re a good person, Drake. But take comfort in this: There are lots of bad people out there, and they definitely have Spotify accounts.

PEP TALK FOR A READER

I’m a little late replying to this request, but hopefully either it’s no longer necessary, but in case it is, here we go!

Hi Josh, I had a (benign!!!) brain tumor removed last month and am in recovery. It has been a lot harder than I thought it would be. But I struggle since I think I should be grateful it was benign and also grateful to the people who are helping me recover. It’s harder and harder the more I “wake up” and get further out from surgery. I almost wish something would happen so I could go back to zombie mode of early post surgery.
- In My Head, In My Head (Zombie)

To an extent, we’re all kind of held captive by the narrative that when something dangerous and/or scary happens to us, we come out the other side changed in a good way. We end up with a fresh perspective, a new lease on life, a second chance. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and all of that horseshit. (It is interesting that there are certain animals whose shit we use as a pejorative. Horse. Bull. Dog. But other animals’ shit gets a pass. I’ve never heard anyone say: “What were you looking at, ref? That call was hipposhit!”)

But a lot of the time, tragedies (or even fortunate aversions of tragedy) have long-term negative consequences. This is no secret. Every tv show lately has to take an entire episode to be like: “This person doing bad stuff? It’s because of trauma! And the person who is maniacally driven to stop them? That’s also from trauma. PUT THAT IN YOUR PIPE AND GET OVER IT!”

I imagine receiving treatment for a benign brain tumor is like surviving a plane crash. It’s the luckiest result in a deeply unlucky situation. And more likely than coming out of it going “I should devote my life to a higher cause!” is the aftermath feeling like “Everything is hard and terrifying now!” It makes a lot of sense to me that you feel bad. A bad thing happened to you recently and you haven’t recovered. AND, recovering is its own rigorous process!!! So why would your response be: “Wow I’m on cloud nine! I’ve got to do more volunteer work!”

But! While those feelings are REAL and VALID, they are not like…long-term productive. Especially since you’re in (arguably) the hardest part. You evaded the worst possible outcome, but you haven’t bounced back from it yet. And I think you know this, but regressing can’t really be the answer either. Which sucks! You already “the only way out is through-ed” and now there’s more through to get through before you’re the rest of the way out? Sounds like a load of gecko shit to me.

There is something on the other side of this that’s better than what you’re feeling now. And it’s probably better than being a zombie too. You may not be stronger than before, but at least you’ll be un-undead.

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
André 3000 (feat. Kelis) - “Dracula’s Wedding”

As has been mentioned above, the new show I’m co-hosting is called Frankenstein’s Baby, and I can’t stop singing it to the tune of “Dracula’s Wedding” off of the André 3000 half of Outkast’s 2003 double album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, which I listened to this weekend as I bopped around Atlanta waiting for my hotel room to be ready to nap in. (I got into town early; I don’t employ some kind of nap-prep staff on the road to get my rooms optimally sleepy.)

The album overall is a little sprawling and stylistically chaotic in the way that things can get when duos are on the verge of a breakup not that I’d professionally know anything about that! But both André (first name basis presumed) and Big Boi (should I have said “Big”?) stuffed a ton of great music onto their respective CDs.

The album came out just as I started college, and “Hey Ya” in many ways is the first hit song of my adult life. I remember hearing it every time I stepped into a retail store or turned on a car radio or attended a social event from the time I graduated high school through my entire freshman year at Brandeis. It’s kind of fun to hear and feel a new song immediately become canonized as an all-time wedding reception classic in real time.

Anyway, “Dracula’s Wedding” rules and brings me back to a very specific time in my life when songs went from CD to computer hard drive to iPod and Outkast still seemed like they might make it in the long run.

UPCOMING SHOWS

I’ve got a bunch of NYC dates coming up, and then a few back on the road! See you there?!?!

9/12: Caveat (NYC)

9/12: Comedy Cellar (NYC)

9/13: This Day In Esoteric Political History Live Podcast (Boston)

9/15: Jewish Currents Panel (Brooklyn, daytime, I think?)

9/16: FIRST EVER FRANKENSTEIN’S BABY SHOW AT UNION HALL (Brooklyn)

9/17: Long Island Show (comment if you’re interested and I’ll find the details)

9/20-9/21: High Plains Comedy Festival (Denver) MORE INFO SOON!

9/23: New York Climate Week Event

9/25: Ambush at Ebbs Brewing (Brooklyn)

9/26: Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me Radio Recording (Kansas City)