#114. Los Angeles and You
Stay safe!!!
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!
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.)
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?
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).
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
Last year during a petty argument about housework I got to land what I thought was the death blow "I took all the ornaments off the tree the first week in January, but it's mid February and you still have not taken the tree down."
It turns out my husband really enjoys seeing the lights in the window as he comes down the block to return home, so we've embraced it. It was a slim apartment sized tree to begin with, it fits neatly squished into one window at the end of our couch, and now it is our year-round tree. Certain times of year we decorate it for life events, last year for his birthday I bought a happy birthday garland for it and covered it with small bits of paraphernalia and gift certificates to his favorite dispensary. But mostly it just sits in the window free of ornaments, lit with little twinkling lights. There's something cozy and calming about it, even if our neighbors think we're insane.
dear josh,
great piece as always. thank you for amplifying the places to help folks in LA.
also, this is great: "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)."
and this is true and appreciated: "your life will probably be full of wonderful experiences and connections and entertainment with or without TikTok."
thank you for sharing as always!
love
myq