#108. Vito the Pug and Unexpected Good News
You smushed the competition the way genetics smushed your face.
Hi everyone,
I hope you had a nice Thanksgiving with people you love, or at least some nice food, or at whatever is slightly less than least (penleast?) a moment to rest near the end of a long year, which all years are unless you’re a tortoise or a mountain.
Maris graciously agreed to sneak out of New York City with me for a quick visit to see my family. The travel included an early Wednesday wake-up and a late Thursday arrival back in Brooklyn, and I am thankful that she was amenable to shuttling up and down the northeast corridor via Amtrak to hang out with my folks. I have a very chatty family (with me being arguably and argumentatively the yappiest among us), so we packed a lot of great conversing and catching up into two-ish days. We also tried a new-to-us Dunkin’ seasonal alcoholic beverage (the Spiked Peppermint Mocha Iced Latte) which may be their all-time best boozy offering (not a strong field, but still). It had an egg nog quality, not in its flavor, but in the fact that I could drink one glass of it a year and feel totally content. It tasted like some novelty drink that a friend would whip up in a large batch for a holiday party, and you wouldn’t say no, but you also wouldn’t ask for the recipe. That’s more than I can say for their spiked iced teas.
Starting Friday, my time has mostly been devoted to the Aimee Mann and Ted Leo Christmas Show tour. I’m part of a little company of performers for this run of shows, and I do like…three minutes of standup plus a bunch of little songs and sketches with Aimee, Ted, Paul F. Tompkins, and Nellie McKay. Over the weekend, we had several hours of rehearsal (I was generously exempted from Thanksgiving day) and four excellent shows at City Winery in Manhattan. When I was in college, my roommates and I put on a weekly sketch show called Friends Like These, that always came together at the last minute, and this reminds me a little of that. I love the Little Rascalsy feeling of “we’re putting on a show!” Although it helps that in this case I’m tagging along with some of the best singers/songwriters/comedians in the world, and that the band is full of RIDICULOUSLY talented and accomplished musicians as well. I’ll probably write more about the specifics next week, but I don’t want to spoil anything for the folks who are going to see the tour in Alexandria, VA; Collingswood, NJ; Beverly, MA; and Norwalk, CT!
Between the family visit and the shows and the staying out late with friends after the shows and the pie, I’m feeling sleepy but satisfied, which I think is a good way to feel as the year comes to a close!
(Oh also we got the final version of my standup special edited, and hopefully we’ll figure out soon where it will live and when people can see it!!!)
PEP TALK FOR VITO THE PUG
Vito, you little goblin, you’ve done it. Even though your face is as wrinkly as a 95-year-old man’s elbow skin. And your nasal passages are crazy straws made of flesh. And even at top speed, you run about as fast as a toddler can chuck a bowling ball. If Air Bud had been about a pug, he’d have been cut from the team in the first act of the film. And yet, Vito, you persevered. You showed them all! You won Best In Show at the National Dog Show!
Take that, dogs who can breathe normally! Shove it, canines with the disposition to perform tasks or the musculature to undertake impressive athletic feats! There’s trouble down at the old mill? Well, call a border collie! Vito the Pug is too busy posing with THE TROPHY HE WON FOR BEING THE GREATEST DOG.
Vito, you are an inspiration to everyone who’s ever been told that they’re too short, too round, too clingy, too out of breath. You’ve proven that there is no human-bred quality one might possess that can stop them from achieving their dreams. In a field of expertly groomed standard poodles and impeccably well-adjusted golden retrievers, a crumpled up little gremlin stood (metaphorically) tall and won the day.
We are all a little Vito at times, and little Vito, you’ve shown us what we’re capable of.
UNEXPECTED GOOD NEWS!
Over on BlueSky, I asked for people to share some unexpected pieces of news, big or small, that they’ve received lately. I received such lovely responses, and here they are! I’ve done some light editing for grammar, but that’s about it!
I got a chance to audition for my dream theater role (Carlotta in The Phantom of the Opera), which I never thought I'd get to even try for.
Oh hell yeah that’s great news! Sometimes almost getting the thing you want can feel discouraging, but what it really means, most of the time (as you know), is that you’re going in the right direction. When people say it’s an honor just to be nominated, they always sound slightly full of shit (which they sort of are) but they’re also telling the truth! I can say this honestly, as someone who has attended the Emmys as a nominee a year I did not win an Emmy.
I had such a nice time hiking with my nieces over Thanksgiving. The Bay Area delivered on great weather & views, and they are such interesting & funny people! Also, the Wicked movie really rocked, and we had a Secret Breakfast sundae afterward.
Incredible day. Great times with family. Perfect moviegoing experience (Wicked seems especially great for nieces; it’s niece-core, basically). And Breakfast Sundae? Game changer! I think that’s what the movie Game Change starring Julianne Moore was about. Just kidding. She played Sarah Palin in a film about the 2008 election. That’s still a movie you can probably watch somewhere if you want! Weird!
One of my union members needed sick time donations and our members got them 80% there and the campus president is going to waive the rest.
Our healthcare system in America sucks shit through a hose (and you have to pay out of pocket for the hose) but organized labor and mutual aid always warm my heart! It’s so beautiful when people care for each other! When people even temporarily band together to stave off the brutality of unchecked capitalism, it feels the same to me as when a pug wins a dog show. Against all odds, it happened!!!
Earthjustice continues to notch hard won essential wins. One of the organization’s attorneys blocked a handout for coal in an energy case and we just settled two cases in Colorado making electricity more affordable and less reliant on the climate destabilizing gas industry. This follows a slew of other recent big wins including protecting one of the worlds most endangered whales from the oil development that also threatens small scale fishers and tourist operators in the Gulf of Mexico.
Earth: 2
Climate Criminals: Well, a lot, but at least Earth is on the board.
A roof replacement that my mother was warning me about and that I should claim on my insurance came in at less than half of what I’d saved up for it.
Isn’t it a relief when some kind of financial misfortune isn’t as severe as you’d anticipated? It feels like a real big jerk threatening to kick your ass and then letting you off with a wedgie. You feel briefly invincible even though in reality you’ve merely been not-vinced.
Unbeknownst to me, the payroll office that just gave me a raise was supposed to give me an even better raise. They have corrected the error with back pay.
Okay, actually, upon further reflection, it is better when someone actually gives you more money than you thought they were going to. I hope you spend a small portion of it on something frivolous. Like a painting of a turtle waving “go around” to a faster animal. Maybe not that but something like that.
on thanksgiving my downstairs neighbor left me a mini-thanksgiving feast on my doorknob. good news as in an act of kindness still counts.
Neigh-bors! Neigh-bors!
I’ve lived in the same apartment for seven years, and our building has a really friendly energy to it. One time our neighbor’s smoke alarm was going off, and we had to call the fire department and let them into their place through our little adjoining balcony and it turned out they were just very deeply asleep, and they bought us a big bottle of wine as a thank you, even though we should have bought THEM a big bottle of wine as an apology for letting the fire department into their apartment when they were just doing a Snow White type slumber. Our upstairs neighbors play “City Of Stars” (from La La Land) on their piano several times a week, and they have a toddler who stomps around at weird hours, but they’re so so nice, and those sounds are just the cost of doing business of living in a community, and it’s really pretty cute if I’m being honest.
I do not extend the same goodwill to the next door neighbors who put one of those Ring doorbells that says “Hi! You’re being recorded!” on their brownstone. Boo that doorbell! It is my enemy.
In June 2024 , my photograph was chosen and made into a USPS stamp.
I am so impressed by this!!! You get to be a stamp? Your work is now on par with icons like the Grand Canyon and Bugs Bunny! Stamps are forever! It says it right there on the thing! This is a legendary accomplishment and you should feel proud!
Have you received any unexpected good news lately? Leave! A! Comment!
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Nellie McKay - “David”
Nellie is very good at writing and singing songs. She’s on this little tour I’m a part of all week, and on Friday afternoon she asked if I’d come onstage with her and sing the Chipmunk Christmas song (the one where Alvin wants a hula hoop, which is such a 1950s-ass present to request, but that’s not the point), and I said sure, and it turns out I can do a fairly credible chipmunk voice, so that’s been fun. (Spoiler!)
“David” belongs to a favorite That’s Marvelous genre, which I call “jaunty bummers” (upbeat but depressing songs, not whatever gross sex thing British people might use that phrase to signify). Wikipedia told me that the title of Nellie’s debut album Get Away From Me was a play on Norah Jones’s Come Away With Me, and it made me wonder if kids these days know what powerful sway Norah Jones and her jazz whispers held over American culture in the early aughts. Perhaps with a newly elected second-term Republican president, jazz whispers will return.
UPCOMING SHOWS
Not a TON on the calendar right now, but I bet that’ll change soon! Maybe a couple of spots in Los Angeles early next year?
12/3-12/8: TED LEO AND AIMEE MANN CHRISTMAS SHOWS (Several Cities)
12/12: Uptown Showdown at Symphony Space (NYC)
12/16: Co-Hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)
12/19: Bushwick Comedy Club (Brooklyn)
FYI Secret Breakfast is a delicious ice cream flavor made by San Francisco's Humphrey Slocombe. It is bourbon ice cream with corn flake cookie mix-ins. If an aunt had allowed me a taste of this ice cream when I was a kid, I am sure I would have felt very grown-up and sophisticated!
Never really thought about stamp designers until “Fargo”. I know he’s gone on to other things, but John Carroll Lynch will always be “tree cent stamp” to me