#101. Flowers and You

It's stem against us.

Hi everyone,

First of all: A quick apology for the lateness of today’s newsletter! It’s been a busy couple of days, and then this morning I met a baby (great!) and went to the dentist (not to brag). So I’m a little bit behind!

Second of all, I want to thank all the That’s Marvelous readers for the kind words about our late great pug Bizzy. I have been overwhelmed by the dozens of thoughtful messages in the comments here, as well as the literally hundreds across social media. I haven’t been able to respond to everyone individually yet. My hope is that I will make time to express one-on-one gratitude before too long. But there is also an ENORMOUS chance that I will instead decide to never ever do it because the self-imposed pressure is driving me to the precipice of madness. Stay tuned to see which way this breaks.

It’s been a pretty melancholy week over here, and the grief has hit at unexpected moments. I find myself missing Bizzy at times when I used to be annoyed by her. Late at night, when I’d have to wake her up to take one last walk before I went to bed. Coordinating plans with Maris so there would be someone home to put out a dish of food at her usual mealtimes. When I realize I don’t have to make those accommodations, I feel pangs of sadness, little tugs of feeling where my life had grown in twists and loops to cater to the needs of an adorable twenty-pound tyrant with the brain of a garbage disposal.

Thank you to all our wonderful friends and family members who sent us these beautiful plants that will soon be dead because we have no idea how to care for them.

We’ve also been really well taken care of by friends checking in and sending care packages. Our apartment, at present, is home to more flowers than it had ever contained cumulatively over the previous seven years. We also received a ton of delicious food deliveries from friends. And because carb-rich meals mess with Maris’s blood sugar, I have consumed (basically) an entire chocolate babka, a half dozen bagels, and a half-pound of smoked salmon over the past seven days. It is the diet of a cartoon Jewish person. (Not one of the Nazi caricatures, a more benevolent one. Like Donatello from the Ninja Turtles, who I just decided we claim.)

It also became (or was destined to be) a very Jewy week here in Brooklyn overall. After taking too long a nap to make it there in person, Maris and I watched the Rabbis for Ceasefire Yizkor service on Saturday/Yom Kippur afternoon. The robust attendance (again, not us, but other people) and the unwavering commitment to both future peace and allowing present grief to transcend geopolitics affirmed so much of what connects me to the Jewish faith. I also started reading Yiddishe Kop, a short Kabbalah-adjacent treatise on Jewish folklore and philosophy, on my friend Amy’s recommendation, and despite the intricate theory and theology much of which I’m too pudding-brained to understand, it’s really resonating with me. It’s kind of like if Aesop’s Fables were also about Game Theory and they all took place in Eastern Europe instead of Ancient Greece But With Talking Frogs.

In (literally) other news, I am once again popping up in several periodicals this week. Here I am in the Washington Post recommending Hell Gate after doing so in this very newsletter a week ago. Thanks to Laura Wagner for chatting with me about one of my favorite news outlets. I also talked with Rachel Sugar from the New York Times about restaurants that don’t have websites (fine for a smaller place that can’t afford upkeep, infuriating when it’s a trendy place with a glossy Instagram page with no actual information on it). I made an unexpected appearance in the recent ABC News piece about Taskmaster that they shot back when I interviewed the hosts of the show in late March. And, finally, I appeared on a recent live episode of The Grawlix Saves the World giving competitive advice, and two live episodes This Day in Esoteric Political History talking about the idea of an “October Surprise” (despite what your parents may have told you, it’s not about Halloween candy filled with razor blades).

Yesterday, Maris and I saw The Big Gay Jamboree off-Broadway, and I very much recommend it if you are in town. It’s funny and inventive and full of great performances. Our friend Natalie Walker, who is amazing, has a large role, and I am always extra-thrilled to see a talented friend really crush a big professional opportunity. So many things in creative fields are so bad, and I feel even more attached than ever to cheer for great people doing a great job in a great thing. (Former SNL cast member Alex Moffat played the least singing-intensive role, and between that and Bad Monkey, which we’ll get to later, I’ve been enjoying his recent work!)

AND Sunday’s

Flagrant Mag

get together was so good!!! I missed the game itself, but I got to come by and see lots of friends and meet so many cool people I’d known of but never encountered in person! Flagrant forever! Go Liberty!

Plus I had several restorative friendship coffees and a GREAT time hosting the 826 Brooklyn Trivia For Cheaters event with my pal Emmy Blotnick on Tuesday night. Thanks for having us, 826. I’m sorry I refused to marry your daughter on account of already being married, older lady who kept trying to get me to marry your daughter. And thanks to Jake and Holden for letting me rank bagels with them on their Tiers of a Clown livestream on Wednesday!

I think the pigeon’s name is “Tony Pepperoni?”

Sorry I didn’t make it to Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall on Monday! I was a little ragged still from dog stuff. But I’ll be co-hosting with Alison Leiby next Monday! Killer lineup! Great venue! Early show! Grab your tickets, and I’ll see you there!

I don’t mean to make this part such a long chronicle of my week, but I find it very helpful while I’m still gently bobbing in the professional breeze to note that I actually am Doing Stuff kind of all the time.

PEP TALK FOR THE FLOWERS IN OUR APARTMENT

Hey there, flowers. I see you withering away on the counter, and I just wanted to say…it’s not you, it’s us. Neither my wife nor I have any aptitude for keeping plants alive. It is not out of any animosity towards you or your kind. Yes, Maris has some light allergies and has banished a few of you to the office where I will absolutely no doubt in my mind forget to water you. But that doesn’t mean we appreciate you any less. Your arrival meant so much to us. Sadly (for you), your departure will feel like nothing.

Still, you are beautiful, and you are rich in sentimental value if not in soil, nutrients, or adequately sized vases. Soon, all we will have left of you will be pictures of flowers, which on one hand do not brighten up the room in the same way, but on the other hand do not make my wife’s eyes itchy.

(TRULY thank you to everyone who sent all these gorgeous flowers, and I am sorry to be the H.H. Holmes of horticulture. Is that what the H stood for? Was that serial killer with the murder castle named Horticulture Horticulture Holmes? Anyway, you get it.)

PEP TALK FOR A READER

Okay, this request I have condensed substantially, but I promise I am taking all the words into account as I respond.

Hey Josh! I am in desperate need of a pep talk (although some may say I need a psychiatrist more, but whatevs)! I've been an aspiring TV comedy writer for way too long, and I'm about ready to give up. And yet, I know if I do, I'll regret it. So I've been writing specs and pilots for years, and a few of my scripts have advanced in competitions I've submitted to. This has given me the push to keep going. But nevertheless, I've never been able to get any representation, and as a plan B, I've tried to score production jobs in order to get my foot in the door, but even that has been elusive. I feel like I've been treading water for far too long. On top of this, my entire support system/family is in Chicago while I'm living in LA (a city I liked at one point but now have grown to actually hate). My parents are elderly and starting to deal with serious health issues. Luckily, I have siblings and other relatives living close to them in Chicago, but here I am, chasing what seems to have become a pipe dream, and I feel terribly guilty for not being there for them.
- I Love L.A. (In The Randy Newman Way)

When I moved from Boston to New York in 2011, I was 26 years old, and I felt nervous that I wouldn’t “make it” in the big(ger) city. Before I could bring myself to take the leap, I really had to commit to the idea that returning to New England after a year or two would not represent failure. It would just mean I tried something new, and it wasn’t what I wanted. Which is, in some respects, what failure is. But in other respects…who cares? It doesn’t go on some kind of scorecard or permanent record. It’s not embarrassing to make choices that improve your life unless that choice is going to the hospital to remove a croquet wicket from your butt because you got drunk and sat on one at a friend’s child’s baptism or bris.

The thing I said to me thirteen years ago, is true for you now, except it’s MORE true today than it was then. Thanks to Zoom, nobody has any idea where you live. And if people like your writing and want to meet with you to talk about it, you probably exist primarily in a 3x5 inch digital rectangle, just like everyone else. It doesn’t matter if you literally live inside the Hollywood sign or if you are subletting a corn crib in rural Kentucky. As long as you have wifi and a dream, you are within reach of the ~industry~, or whatever is left of it now that every media mogul is moving closer and closer to the strategy: “What if we made one movie every year that cost one billion dollars and earned us five billion dollars? We could buy back so many of our own stocks with that money!”

Your life, in its current configuration, sounds…miserable. You are far from your family with few professional prospects. You hate (your words not mine) the city you live in. It doesn’t have to be like this. Your support system is in Chicago, not like…Moose Ass, Alberta (no offense to any Canadian or moose readers of this newsletter). There is, famously, so much comedy in Chicago. I can’t promise you can “have it all” if you move back home, but it sounds like right now you have very little of it in Los Angeles.

I don’t say that to be cruel!!! I just mean, you don’t have to live like this!!! Hard work and some level of sacrifice are generally necessary to cultivate a creative career. But you don’t have to deprive yourself of valuable time with your family or stay in a place that doesn’t suit you…unless they’re paying you a lot of money to do those things. The good part about the toiling-in-obscurity phase of a career is that obscurity is everywhere. You are allowed to toil in cozier environs! Take ownership of it and put the YOUR in obsc-YOUR-ity!!!! You will probably make better and more interesting art if your brain is less consumed by guilt and resentment.

Again, I’m not trying to make fun of you here. I’m just pointing out that you know what is making you unhappy and how to change those conditions. As long as no one is begging you to be in a writers room or on a film set, you can live wherever you want. And then, if they implore you to return, you can go be unhappy personally while thriving professionally, like generations of writers before you. It’s not a failure to make healthy choices. Or maybe it is. But who cares! It’s your life, not Hollywood’s.

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Marcus King - “The Waiting” (Tom Petty cover, of course)

Maris and I just finished watching the AppleTV series Bad Monkey which you might be shocked to learn…exists. Vince Vaughn plays a disgraced detective in the Florida Keys trying to solve a mystery and then trying to prove that he solved it. I thought I was over Vince Vaughn’s whole thing, but it’s fun to see him playing into the fact that he’s kind of haggard now. It adds some charm to the smarm. We had a great time watching! Meredith Hagner (Search Party) is VERY good in it!

The show’s soundtrack is largely (exclusively?) made up of Tom Petty covers, which are are variously successful. This one is one of the few that offer a take on the source material that is both a. distinctive and b. good. (Some of the other more faithful covers are strong too!) It’s a bluesy/gospely version of the Tom Petty song whose chorus I often facetiously pretend I made up. “The waiting is the hardest part. Do you like that? I just came up with it.”

OTHER PICK-ME-UP STUFF OF THE WEEK:
”Relationship To Patient” (Short Film)

My friend Caroline Creaghead wrote and directed an extremely tender short film that I’ve been waiting to see for (possibly) years, and it’s now online! It’s all based in a small uncomfortable moment that feels so real, and the two central performances by Eleanore Pienta (Cocoon Central Dance Team) and H. Jon Benjamin (you know who this guy is) are very subtle and charming. It’s thirteen minutes long, and I loved it! Caroline was also one of the first people who booked me on cool shows when I was new to New York, and she was always so encouraging and generous even when I had (let’s say, charitably) not much going on. I do not know if I have even said this to her, but I have appreciated her kindness for years and years, and I really encourage people to support a nice friend and great artist!

And ALSO! My friend Chris Duffy did a fun and funny TED Talk!!! Chris’s work is always rooted in curiosity for his subject matter and generosity towards the audience. This talk is about creativity and keeping your mind open to surprises and delight.

UPCOMING SHOWS

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

10/18: The Muslims are Coming: Swing State Invasion (Reading, PA)

10/21: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

10/24: American Sawdust and then The Gutter (Brooklyn)

10/29: Slipper Room (Manhattan)

11/4: Co-hosting Frankeinstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

11/10: School Fundraiser at Eastville Comedy Club (Brooklyn)

11/14: Comedy Gives Back Fundraiser at Gotham Comedy Club (Manhattan)

11/15: Live From Outer Space at Cobra Club (Brooklyn)

11/21: Wrong Answers Only in Washington DC

11/29-12/8: TED LEO AND AIMEE MANN CHRISTMAS SHOWS (Several Cities)