#118. Conversation Hearts and You

"Be mine?" Okay, caveman.

Hi everyone,

Congratulations to the city of Philadelphia on your big football victory last night, and apologies to Paul Rudd, America’s Kansas City fan! (Caleb Hearon too!) Also thanks to everyone who came out to last night’s What’s New? show at Union Hall! And thanks to the other comedians Myq Kaplan, Hoodo Hersi, and Carson Olshansky! It was a really fun time and I’m excited to keep working out these new jokes!

Before all that, it had been a weird week for me! I missed a funeral because of train delays, which was stressful. I made it to the shiva just a few minutes late, but I hadn’t really spoken to anyone before I got there, and you can’t exactly show up at an occasion like that and start complaining about your travel hiccups. There are more important matters to attend to. You’ve gotta keep your eye on the ball and save your Amtrak gripes for later.

It was very moving to see so much family and hear my cousins’ beautiful remembrances. It’s weird how being sad in a room together feels better than being sad in a room alone. There’s so much more total sadness in the space, but maybe many hearts make light work, to adapt an old saying.

Because of a previous commitment, I had to be in town on Saturday morning anyway. So I stuck around in Massachusetts for a few days hanging out with my parents and getting a little work done (and making a first trip to the new Anna’s Taqueria location in Woburn, which is an incredible development for Middlesex County and honestly the whole North Shore).

On Saturday I recorded two episodes of the Circle Round radio show/podcast live at Symphony Hall in Boston along with a cast of pals (Faith Salie, Bethany Van Delft, Hari Kondabolu). I played a donkey in one story and a hairy giantess in another. (I think these two should air over the next couple of weeks.) The live Circle Round performances always feature accompaniment by an incredible set of symphony musicians. Host/writer Rebecca Sheir and composer/conductor Eric Shimelonis have created a really amazing show and it’s always a thrill to be a part of.

Afterwards, there was a meet and greet where an endless (as far as I could see) line of kids and their parents waited to meet Rebecca, the Taylor Swift of children’s public radio hosts (in all the good ways and none of the less good ways). Lots of kids wanted autographs, which made me feel like Mickey Mouse. Some of the kids made donkey noises at me, which was also very charming. I think the rabbi from my cousin’s funeral was there, although I didn’t see him!

We didn’t quite get all the way into a circle here.

On account of the snow, Hari and I tried to get an early start on heading back to New York. The trip immediately became an arduous but fairly dull saga involving a Lyft to a commuter rail to an Amtrak to the A train which stopped running as soon as it got to Brooklyn leaving me and another friend who I realized was on the same train to split another Lyft home. There was also a cameo from a nice young woman named Paulina who I will probably never see again. That’s all you need to know about that, and probably more.

When I got home, Maris was already asleep, which was also not an ideal set of circumstances for complaining about travel delays. But I got to watch the Celtics complete their smushing of the Knicks, which always does my heart good, and makes me wish Desus & Mero was still on the air so I could gloat about it to my old bosses, possibly on television.

SOME BUSINESS: I forgot to mention this last week, but I did a really fun podcast talking about Sideways Stories From Wayside School, a book that meant a lot to me as a kid!

AND: This Friday (Valentine’s Day) I’ll be doing two shows at Helium Comedy Club in Buffalo! I haven’t been to Buffalo in 11 years, and who knows when I’ll be invited back after this trip, so come out and celebrate this holiday whether you are a couple, a throuple, or one person who thinks kissing is weird and gross.

This is the last time you’ll have to see this I swear.

Back on topic: I need a haircut, which doesn’t really make sense if you’ve seen my head in the last several years. But hopefully this week will be a lot about settling back into a rhythm and doing regular maintenance stuff after a couple of kind of off-kilter weeks! Okay time for the pep talks…

PEP TALK FOR CONVERSATION HEARTS

Romantic AND delicious.

Conversation hearts, you must know by now that you are one of the worst-tasting candies on the market. While some strong flavors like black licorice possess the dubious distinction of “acquired taste,” you remain anomalous in that you have barely any taste at all, and are often acquired purely by accident. I do not know of a single person who has ever purchased conversation hearts for the purpose of eating them. They are always for giving away. On the list of things that nobody wants for themselves, but they do occasionally disseminate amongst their lovers, conversation hearts rank juuuuust above gonorrhea.

And yet, somehow, you appear in our lives at regular intervals (so I guess maybe I should have said you’re like herpes?). You have found a niche in the candy world as a confection made primarily to be looked at and passed around as a token of affection. You are less a treat and more of a technically-edible greeting card. Is that something anyone needs? No. But we have accepted you into our lives year after year. And I think that’s as beautiful as your rainbow of pastel hues, and as sweet as…any candy that isn’t you, basically.

You are full of simple sentiments that range from the tender to the slightly outdated. But you do help teach us how to communicate directly. There is no beating around the bush with you, conversation hearts. Although, if someone was hiding in a shrub on a hunting expedition, I do think a conversation heart could serve as an ersatz shotgun shell in a pinch, just based on the fact that they’re two equally difficult-to-ingest items. A conversation heart is a reminder that sometimes it truly is the thought that counts. Because it sure isn’t the taste, texture, smell, nutritional quality, or general ability to be bitten into that’s keeping you around.

It’s nice to remember that you can be kind without being sweet. And that’s a conversation everyone should be ready for.

PEP TALK FOR A READER

This is a heavy one, and I didn’t edit it much!

My wife and I are foster parents for two older teenagers. One, a disabled black non-binary kid with autism and the other a white trans kid, both with tons of past trauma.

When the presidential election was decided, I tried to calm them both with "let's not panic, let's wait and see how this impacts us specifically and do our best to live happily despite the ominous gloom." With the recent EOs targeting gender-affirming care, our trans kid is panicking and our NB kid has sympathy panic. We try to do things like go out to eat, and joke about idiots who decide this BS. We are lucky to live in a Blue state and have a city near us that just declared itself as a safe place for LGBTQIA+ people, rejecting the EO. But with TikTok urgency and a whole lot of "Musk-iness" in the news/gov I worry about funding for these kids and their futures in general.

Can I get a refill of my own energy to pass that along? I'm starting to sound fake and hollow when I try to encourage them that *we* are here for them and that all hope isn't lost yet. These kids are great! And they will be an amazing addition to our society if they are empowered to thrive!
- Fostering Hope

Hi FH,

I’m so sorry that the (horrible) news has you and your family feeling (understandably) stressed out. Sometimes we feel bad when things aren’t actually that bad, which isn’t an ideal situation. But in this case things feel bad because they are bad, which means the strain you all are experiencing is aligned with reality, but unfortunately that’s even worse than freaking out over nothing.

Many of the cruelest dipshits in America have conspired to try and make life worse for our most vulnerable populations. Many of them could better use their time and energy trying to get their own kids to talk to them again, or learning what the Rage Against the Machine songs they like are actually about, but they have chosen to fill their days with hatred instead. I get so scared for my friends and family members being put at risk. And then I get so mad that these chumps with brains made of wet lint get to terrorize people for sport. It makes me want to grow out a big twirly mustache and tie someone to the train tracks EXCEPT that the same bigots who are endangering LGBTQ+ people are also trying to claw away at our infrastructure, so there’s a huge possibility that the trains will be too delayed to squish them like a penny on any kind of helpful timeline anyway.

It’s important to acknowledge how horrible things are and how scary they can still get. (By the way: Who was the asshole that saw “bad,” thought it wasn’t enough, and decided to invent “worse?”) But I think it’s also worthwhile to consider how many people are fighting back. Over the weekend, thousands of people rallied across the country in support of gender-affirming care. Attorneys general and state officials in many places have reaffirmed their protections for transgender people. And, in less policy-related news, Andrea Long Chu diced Pamela Paul into small cubes and fed her to sharks (rhetorically). That last one doesn’t offer any legal protection but it is immensely satisfying to read.

I can imagine it seem to your kids that the whole world is against them. Offering your household’s support is so beautiful and righteous, but I get how you can feel outnumbered. It’s not just you against the universe though. A few powerful creeps with hearts as disgusting as the floor of an airport bathroom are hell(where they would go when they eventually die if it were a real place)-bent on ruining lives. But there is a whole movement behind keeping people safe as well. And even (especially?) in scary times there’s great power in the solidarity of people standing together and telling the fuckers to get fucked.

(Also: For anyone looking to chip in a little bit towards this cause, there are lots of ways to do it, but this morning I made a little donation to The Trevor Project in accordance with the #AGoodGame initiative that Emma Sandoe and I started a few years back. Just one place to direct a buck or two!)

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
MJ Lenderman - “Wristwatch”

I’m really on a run with indie songwriter type guys. And this song is not super upbeat, but I haven’t been able to shake the lyric “I’ve got a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome.” Yes, I know this album was huge last year, but *Jim Gaffigan voice* I wanna talk about it now.

Also, look, I’m not going to do the work of the Totino’s Pizza Roll Corporation for them, but the extended version of the ad that they did with Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson is very funny.

UPCOMING SHOWS

I’m out and about in NYC a whole bunch coming up, plus a few shows on the road!

2/12: Funhouse at Pete’s Candy Store (Brooklyn)

2/13: Commune and Wild East Brewing (Both in Brooklyn)

2/14: Helium Comedy Club (Buffalo)

2/16: Young Ethel’s

2/17: Co-Hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

2/23: Beauty Bar (Manhattan)

2/27: Kelsey McKinney’s Book Launch (Philadelphia)

3/2: Steve Martin Presents at Union Hall (Brooklyn…but not that Steve Martin)

3/7: Pine Box Rock Shop (Brooklyn)

3/11: The Backspace at Nod Hill (Ridgefield, CT)