#105. DJs and You

I will not jump around, nor will I get down, but it's not your fault.

Hi everyone,

I’m not going to get too deep into it here, but obviously last week’s presidential election went about as badly as it could have. Donald Trump not only won the electoral college (possibly America’s worst college now that the actual Trump University shut down) but he also won the popular vote; third time’s a harm, I guess!

There were some glimmers of hope further down the ballot. Seven out of ten states with abortion protections on the ballot passed those protections (which is good news unless there’s a national ban), with Florida’s amendment failing to meet the predetermined threshold to take effect, despite an overwhelming majority of voters approving of it. Missouri voted to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. People want healthcare and economic protections from corporate greed.

I am still crossing my fingers that President Biden uses his remaining time in office for helpful, progressive purposes: push to confirm judges who will preserve civil rights and democracy, maybe forgive some student debt, stop sending a zillion dollars worth of weapons to Israel every forty-five minutes. Part of me fears that he will simply use this time to dig up Strom Thurmond’s skeleton so he can shake his hand across the aisle one last and then pardon himself for the crime of grave robbing. SORRY FOR THE CYNICISM! I THINK I GET TO DO A LITTLE BIT OF THAT THIS WEEK!

I’ve been thinking a lot about what my friend Scaachi wrote about how this election wasn’t going to save us, and it’s not going to doom us. But there’s also going to be a real onslaught against a bunch of the broad “us.” By that I mean: immigrants and refugees, the unhoused, people of color, LGBTQIA+ people, women, and inclusive of/beyond those groups, anyone who’s not super rich and has to work for a living.

A lot of people have been sharing George Carlin’s words lately, and aside from the incisiveness of the jokes themselves, I think something really beautiful he did was ending his shows by saying “Take care of yourself…and take care of somebody else.” It’s the a call to the best impulses and abilities we have, as people.

So, let’s take care of each other, huh?

A few little pieces of business before we move along…

This Thursday I’m sadly unable to perform at the Comedy Gives Back benefit show at Gotham in NYC. If you’re in town, it’s still a great show for a great cause. But I’ve been called away to record an episode of Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me at the Fox Theater in Detroit!

I’ve also been on a bunch of podcasts this week.

I talked with the thoughtful and hopeful Ana Marie Cox about how to respond to the election for the first(?) episode of her show Another Day.

On Tuesday before results came in, I chatted NBA stuff with the excellent Miles and Jack on Mad Boosties.

I talked about entertainment and creativity and business and podcast guesting on Attach Your Résumé! (This was from a couple of weeks ago, but I forgot to mention it then.)

And, in very exciting news, I got to return to Normal Gossip with geniuses Kelsey and Alex and the whole wonderful team (hi, Jae)!

Night Burger…deserves a quiet niiiiight.

This episode came out on Wednesday, and people were so kind about it being a nice little distraction from feeling political despair for an hour. Maybe you’ll like it too!

PEP TALK FOR DJs

I usually preface pictures of the Kowloon with: “This building LOOKS racist but…”

“Is this going to end up in your newsletter?” my friend Dan asked me on Saturday night at the surprise birthday party his mom and girlfriend threw for him at the Kowloon restaurant in Saugus, MA. The Kowloon (technically just “Kowloon” but not if you’ve ever been there, it’s not) is a giant Chinese restaurant on Route 1. It’s known for its tiki drinks as well as for being a go-to after prom/drama club cast party venue for a wide swath of Boston’s suburbs. One room in the vast culinary labyrinth has a boat in it, and there are tables inside the boat. On weekends they have comedy shows upstairs in the function rooms. I haven’t performed there since 2009. I’ve never had a good set or a bad spare rib in this building.

I wasn’t going to write a lot about the party even though, as Dan pointed out, it was the most North Shore thing of all time. Meaning: It took place at the Kowloon (check), and the guest of honor almost didn’t come because he had previous plans to watch the Bruins game on tv (double check). I was pushed to chronicle the event when the DJ demanded all sixty-ish guests flood the dance floor to perform choreography he taught us in real time to the song “Sweet Caroline” (infinity checks). At that point, the sheer Massachusettsness of the night became too much to ignore. The only thing that could have ratcheted the quotient up higher is if a Kennedy had drunk driven a car into the side of the venue, indicating the party’s end (or beginning, I guess).

To the DJ, I just want to say: You did your best under delicate circumstances. I can only imagine the sensitivity required to navigate being an interloper, plunked dead center into a room full of literally centuries of combined shared history. Even as someone who knew a lot of the other partygoers, I felt the gravity caused by such density of interpersonal history. I saw friends I’m in a group text with that’s active most days. I caught up with childhood pals I hadn’t seen in 15+ years. I met someone who had gone to the same school as a bunch of my friends and knew them at the time but wasn’t close with them and has since been folded into the friend group because she started dating one of the core members while everyone was in their 30s. Also, I sat with Dan’s cousins from Ohio who I’d heard about for…30ish years but never met before. There were layers here!

So for all those reasons, I understand your decision, DJ, to hammer us with Gen X and millennial party standards. You can’t take a ton of risks when you’re a stranger in a room like this. I cannot blame you for playing “Jump Around” by House of Pain (IMPORTANTLY: NOT FROM BOSTON) twice in a span of two hours. Or doing the same with “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang.” I was a little perplexed by how much of Billy Joel’s Storm Front album you played. But hey, you’ve got to put your own spin on the evening. And everyone seemed to have a wonderful time.

This is the DJ’s gift: Teasing out the threads that can take an occasion where disparate corners of a life converge—a wedding, a bar mitzvah, an anniversary—and weaving those strands into a shared communal energy. In the days after the election, a lot of people have talked about aspiring to a national sense of unity, as if it is possible or even desirable for a nation of nearly 400 million people to form a meaningful consensus on most issues. But maybe a DJ’s type of unity is something to strive for. Bringing an existing community closer together by sensing the group’s needs and providing for them. Making people on the outskirts of that community feel safe and welcome by caring for even the skeptics and the newcomers, while keeping an eye out for the safety of everyone around.

Like all good organizers, a DJ has the power to galvanize a group by harnessing the shared energy of a moment. Even if, in some moments, that energy is: “Wait is this guy playing 2 Live Crew? There are children and old people here!”

PEP TALK FOR A READER

I nicknamed this reader and cut out some preamble and…postamble (?) from their request that they indicated I could!

I made the very silly (but correct, I think) decision of breaking up with my sweet, wonderful boyfriend of 2 years right before the dark grim election-winter. It was an amicable, we-want-different-things breakup which uniquely sucks because I have a lot of love for him and our relationship never got the chance to be bad. I feel horrible for hurting him and also myself, and I am struggling to find fun things to do while I prepare for the holidays with a bunch of my happily-partnered family and friends. I know there will be goodness on the other side, but that other side feels impossible to visualize right now. Could really use a pep talk for this difficult time.
- Single, Not Yet Ready To Mingle

Not to be reductive, but feeling bad is the worst. There are obviously caveats about having your health and there being bigger, worse things happening in the world, but hearing that has never, in the history of heartbreak, accelerated the healing process. Oh there are orphaned children in the world, so I should suck it up about missing out on a professional opportunity? WHY DIDN’T YOU SAY SO IN THE FIRST PLACE? Hearing about someone else’s misfortune rarely cheers me up, unless the misfortune is happening to a preexisting enemy. Very few of my enemies are orphans. And even most of those are adults by now.

That said: You are allowed to let other people’s joy be your joy as well. Your friends and family members are not happily romantically partnered to spite you. When you leave the room, they don’t scream “In her FACE!” and start making out. These relationships are (among other things) proof that abundant opportunities love and companionship exist in the world. Your own past suggests this as well!!! The end of a mostly-pleasant relationship is sad, but in the way that the end of a good movie is sad. I’d say “nothing lasts forever, even cold November rain” but it’s the middle of November now, and last week it was 73 degrees in New York, and we’re basically experiencing a drought. We should get Guns n Roses back together to record a song about that. Nothing lasts forever, even hot November drought. (Because, at the very least, November ends eventually.) Wow. Even by my usual standards, that was a lengthy and irrelevant digression.

Happiness can look like a lot of different things. It can mean being single and investing extra time and energy in your friendships. Or being single and investing extra time in binging Monk (engaging in a binge of, not using the search engine Bing to look it up) until you’re ready to be around other people. It can constitute sex with several strangers or a couple of friends! It could be finding one partner that makes you happy. Or, in some instances, it can mean non-monogamy. ALTHOUGH, MY HOTTEST RELATIONSHIP TAKE IS THAT MOST PEOPLE WHO ARE BAD AT MONOGAMY ARE BAD AT POLYAMORY FOR SIMILAR REASONS.

Maybe you’ll find your person. Or a parade of your people. The idea of a soul mate is romantic, sure, but it kind of trivializes relationships from your past as being “wrong.” Sometimes that’s true. But often things are right until they’re not. And you’ll find more right in the future, whether it’s one right or a series of several rights in a row like you’re circling the block looking for parking. But maybe you didn’t need to park right away after all. Maybe you were just out for a ride. I am really letting these metaphors get away from me this week.

Even an amicable breakup is still a breakup, and like you said, it’s a uniquely stressful kind. I’ve never seen anyone exuberantly Nicole-Kidman-divorce-walk away from a polite mutually agreed upon separation. There are many bad kinds of breakups (and many, many worse kinds of relationships than the “wants different things” kind) but this is one of them! It’s okay to feel bad. And, fewer people tell you this, but it’s also okay, if you can crack a window to a warm November breeze of joy, to feel good too.

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Doechii - “NISSAN ALTIMA”

I realized that maybe I should tag stuff I post that’s (lyrically) NSFW, but I assume most readers aren’t bumping these songs on their office computer desktop speakers. But in case you are: This week’s song is NSFW. The beat and the general vibe remind me of Missy Elliott’s (UNDERRATED!) “She’s a Bitch” which I think I’ve written about here before. My buddy Sean Sullivan put me onto this Doechii album (Alligator Bites Never Heal), and it’s great and just got nominated for a bunch of Grammy awards.

Good luck to Doechii at the Grammys! She seems cool and is really good at rapping in a bunch of different modes and moods. Her flow on “Nissan Altima” is relentless. Spiritually, a great headspace to put yourself in for ~these times~.

UPCOMING SHOWS

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

11/14: Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me Live Recording (Detroit)

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

11/21: Wrong Answers Only in Washington DC

11/23: Comedy From Scratch (Larchmont, NY)

11/25: Whiplash at UCB (NYC)

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