#132. Ms. Rachel and You

The most controversial children's show star since Tinky Winky.

Hi everyone,

This might be a long one because I had a week full of interesting experiences and (hopefully) commensurately interesting thoughts!

I’ve been thinking a bunch about the ends of things, and how they can be temporary and permanent at the same time. On Monday night (after I watched Maris interview our friend

Niko Stratis

about her new book The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman), the Celtics and Knicks had what was very nearly a classic playoff game. “Jayson Tatum has left his body” I texted a friend, as the C’s star drained a series of picturesque jump shots. Then, with his team down by nine points in the game’s twilight minutes, Tatum crashed back into himself. He crumpled to the ground, banging the floor in agony. On Tuesday we (all of us, right?) learned that he had ruptured his Achilles Tendon and had undergone surgery that morning. Season over for Tatum, season (effectively) over for the Celtics. They may have lost the series anyway—the Knicks were playing great—but this was an exclamation point that plunged into the heart of the season like a sword. JT will be back on the court eventually, but it’ll take his injured human body a long time to recover. Things will be different by the time he returns.

Mentioned above, but slightly off topic here.

Too bad the NBA season is over now *puts fingers in ears*. So psyched that the WNBA has tipped off. What perfect timing. Grand closing, grand opening. Let’s go Liberty! See you next year, basketball gentlemen!

Similarly, I saw my friend Lauren’s band Worriers play their last ever (ever, ever?) show in Brooklyn on Tuesday night. Lauren got a little choked up describing what playing the show meant to them. It struck me how even when you choose to bring a period of your life to a close, it can feel complicated while still being the right decision for the time being. You don’t have to befall a tragedy for the end of something to feel intense. Sometimes you really feel the weight of a sunset, you know? That said, I’m extremely psyched to see what post-Worriers music Lauren makes!

But! While my week started with endings, I ended it with a wonderful new beginning.

On Saturday night, I was preparing to do a short standup set/toast at a friend’s wedding, which normally I would dread (people don’t want standup comedy at a wedding usually, even when they think they do), but I trusted my friend Jennifer to nurture the proper context for me to not look like a total asshole up there. She and her husband, also a friend now, had asked me to tell some jokes about marriage and weddings, and fortunately I have written a bunch of those over the years. I didn’t realize it until last week, but I’ve been married long enough to have forgotten the exact wording of many of the jokes about my own wedding. In an attempt to re-learn my own material before the reception, I googled a few key words to pull up an old video, and I was met with a fascinating surprise.

Huge if true which of course it’s not because this AI function is damp garbage.

Now, normally I scroll right past the AI Overview that Google has decided to jam into our eyeballs anytime we use their search engine. But seeing my name highlighted slowed my thumbs down long enough to read the computer-fabricated and factually-incorrect sentence: “Josh Gondelman and Fiona Apple are married.” First of all, wow, flattering. Second of all, this would create a LOT of complications in (probably) both my life and the life of recording artist Fiona Apple if it were true, which it is (despite Google’s insistence) not.

For what it’s worth: The result seems to be in incorrect inference based on an old standup bit and a tweet from 2020 about my (actual) wife going on a walk to listen to Fiona Apple’s new album and my fear that she would join a coven of other Brooklyn women doing the same and never return. But, through an algorithmic game of telephone, Google turned that information into something completely nonsensical (though admittedly hilarious).

It feels totally deranged for Google to screwhorn (that’s a shoehorn they shove up your butt) this AI functionality into one of the company’s most beloved and widely-used services. Obviously the old school Google Search returned some dubious “facts” from time to time, but that still feels different than the top result announcing: “Hey it’s us, your trusted information sources here at Alphabet, and what we think is important is that you read whatever a fancy robot freestyles based on your search terms. We do not care whether it’s true, and we will beam that information into your brain and stand behind it whether it’s accurate or not! Cool, right?”

It’s not cool, Google! And I have to imagine for every easily-disregarded result (I know who I’m married to!) there are way more accurate-seeming replies that are, upon further inspection, false. This AI integration is like selling a model of microwave that flash-freezes your food instead of heating it up sometimes. Who cares if that occurrence is frequent or rare. That technology is not ready to be foisted onto the public! I know that I can be kind of an AI skeptic (okay, hater) in this newsletter. But I’m certainly not smart or plugged in enough to say with any authority that there will never be an important application for this emerging technology. I will say, I don’t have a ton of faith that these massive breakthroughs are coming when the people who are most psyched about them are duct taping deeply flawed LLMs to their existing software packages, making them vastly less useful in the process. It’s like if a plumber showed up at your house and immediately took a shit in your toilet tank. You would not be especially inclined trust that person’s skills or intentions. And even that is giving tech companies too much credit because most of us have encountered a plumber who has gotten the job done without any ancillary shenanigans.

Here’s the joke I was looking for, by the way!

joshgondelman

A post shared by @joshgondelman

People were very kind about my performance at the wedding, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t say: Congratulations Jennifer and Jonathan!!! They curated a really wonderful group of people and experiences to celebrate their love, and I was thrilled to be a part of it, and DOUBLE thrilled not to have screwed it up with my jokes!

On Wednesday, Maris (my real wife) and

Alison Leiby

(who has a new and great newsletter!!!) and I saw the Tim Robinson/Paul Rudd movie Friendship, which is so stressful and surreal and funny. I had seen several positive reviews and was worried that I’d be the one dull slob who didn’t think it lived up to the hype, but it really did for me. It’s definitely in the same vein as Robinson’s sketch show I Think You Should Leave, so it’s maybe not for everybody, but if it’s for your it’s really for you. I love the density of jokes it packs in instead of leaning on the unsettling tone to get laughs all on its own. I really recommend it if you like offbeat comedy!

Speaking of weird comedy things, I stumbled across this sketch that I’d written for the final season of Desus & Mero on Showtime. Well, it’s 1/3 of the sketch. The whole thing was a runner that recurred throughout the show. But embedded here is the final beat in the saga of Dr. Jonathan Ratzmor, the dermatologist that snitches go to to get their stitches. Anthony Atamaniuk was great as Dr. Ratzmor, and Seans Donnelly and Patton show up at the end with excellent supporting performances.

joshgondelman

A post shared by @joshgondelman

Also, tonight is Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall! We’ve got a super fun lineup and an also-super-fun special guest who must remain unannounced! ;)

Who could it be?

If weekends are more your speed for going out to comedy in New York City, I’ll be running a bunch of new material at 5pm on 6/1 (also at Union Hall in Park Slope) with a few friends doing sets on the show as well!

If you don’t live in New York (as most people do not), I recently recorded an episode of my friend Will Weldon’s podcast I Hate Bill Maher, where we broke down a 2004 episode of Maher’s show Real Time. I came in open-minded, but YIKES there was some awful stuff in there. Many super talented people (including pals) have worked at the show over the years, but there’s a lot of what Maher does that makes him hard to watch in addition to the fact that the jokes are twenty years old, which renders basically any late night comedy material incomprehensible at best.

A SMALL PIECE OF BUSINESS

Okay so I truly, TRULY hate being a “like, share, and subscribe” guy. But here’s the thing: That’s everything now! It’s basically unavoidable.

I spend several hours a week writing this newsletter for free, and my hope is that in exchange, when I have a more substantial project to promote, or I come to your town to do a show, that you consider checking out my other stuff and spreading the word and maybe buying a ticket.

I’m writing this today because either next week or the week after that, I’m going to be announcing the release of my new standup special (for real!!!). It’ll be somewhere easy to find/share/enjoy, and every little bit of word-of-mouth about it helps. So whether you want to share a favorite installment of this newsletter on social media, or add a silly video I post here to your Instagram stories, or even just text a friend and tell them that they might like my jokes, it would mean a lot to me!

But especially the info about the special! That’s huge! I, and others, worked so hard on it! I really want people to see it!

Okay thanks for enduring the business! Back to our regularly-scheduled programming!

PEP TALK FOR MS. RACHEL

The face of PURE EVIL (if you’re completely full of shit).

Ms. Rachel, I only kind of know what your whole deal is. I’m pretty sure I get the general idea from your overalls and body language, but I can’t claim to be a day one fan. Others, however, revere your talent. My friends who are parents of toddlers—regardless of sexual orientation—would gladly accept you into their lives in a throuple situation, predominantly because of your expertise in dealing with children. I have heard exclusively good things about your work, which I have not sought out as a childless adult man, but I’d happily fire it up while babysitting if any of the aforementioned friends would grow up and ask me to babysit.

But despite you having a gentle and capable energy around kides (a trustworthy quality), people have become furious at you. I imagine that came as a surprise to you, a person whose work does not court controversy. You don’t make music about committing violent crime. You have not written a book that besmirches the name of a well-loved celebrity. You haven’t even, to the best of my knowledge, advocated for the widespread adoption of an unorthodox pizza topping. You simply said that children should not be forced to starve or be murdered, which is an opinion some people get mad at now.

Of course you don’t like violence. If you did, you’d already have fomented an uprising of every toddler in America against their parents. Your tiny army would serve you with unwavering loyalty and could only be subdued by a counterinsurgency led by Bluey the cartoon dog. (Even this plan would likely fail because it takes a comparatively long time to produce animation.)

Obviously, this pep talk is directed to Ms. Rachel, but it’s for anyone who is told that compassion and empathy are foolish traits to cultivate. At the highest ranks of government, the most dearly held value is the ability to pin down another person, fart in their face, and take their wallet. It’s infuriating. I hate that anyone thinks this way. And even worse, there’s a strong impulse to want to get better at their thing than they are. Wouldn’t it feel so good to hold those people down, fart in their faces, and steal their wallets.

WRONG! That can’t be our aim! To paraphrase a popular saying: Every problem looks like a face when your only tool is a fart. What we’ve got to focus on is keeping vulnerable people’s faces un-farted-on. That’s the goal! This is all about trying to keep farts away from faces, not to build up face-farting strength and deploy it against our enemies. Work done in the service of that goal is noble and brave, even as it is gentle. I think this metaphor works and I will NOT be taking notes on it.

I know that may seem like a lengthy digression, but it’s really the whole point. The idea of measuring strength by the ability to do harm is a flawed one. The capacity to heal is another valid way to consider what being strong is, and it’s frequently more useful. And it’s suspicious to me when someone wants to undermine that objective.

That’s what Ms. Rachel knows and some other folks could learn. Remember: The only reason her enemies are not facing the wrath of her toddler army is because she chooses to hold them back.

PEP TALK FOR A READER

I combined the initial request with a brief follow-up on social media that offers some helpful context. The emoji is essential to the tone, in my opinion, so I left it there.

I'd love a pep talk for coming to terms with having been the unhelpful, sometimes actively mean partner in my marriage after I've made some serious steps to not to be this way in the future. I'm already making changes, but a pep talk about moving forward while reckoning with what I've done? Things are honestly much better [already]! Disappointed to report that sobriety has improved every area of life. 🤣 I just like your take on things and we can all use some pep.
- Cuts Like a Wife

Thank you for making this job a lot easier for me with the second half of your message! At first, I was a little antsy about how to respond. I usually try to give the people who write to me some encouragement to do what’s in their heart already. If it’s a 50/50 call, I side with the person who reads my newsletter out of my impulse to be helpful to the person in front of me instead of a stranger who I might not even reach…and also some light narcissism. Honestly, sometimes the people who write in are probably in the wrong, but that’s fine. We’re all wrong sometimes, and most of us don’t deserve to be thrown in a well or rocket-launched out of Earth’s atmosphere for our transgressions.

Still! It put a kink (inconvenience kind not sex kind) in my usual strategy when you were like: “I’ve been kind of a dickhead.” I cannot, in good conscience, say that your dickheadishness is no problem at all. That would be both dishonest and contrary to the spirit of the newsletter. I am in favor of being mean to people who deserve it, but not people who simply happen to be nearby when you’re in a foul mood. Even the assertion of having taken serious steps to improve the situation felt…vague. I didn’t quite know what to say that would acknowledge your humanity and ability to change without sounding a little too wide-eyed about the potential for things in this specific context to improve.

You can imagine my happiness for you (and immense personal relief) to hear that things have started to turn around already. This is where I really shine—any time or place the work has been done before I arrive and I can just say: “Looking good!”

And, in that spirit: “Looking good!” You’re doing it! You’re doing the thing!

I love hearing (with my eyes, which I guess they call “seeing”) that things are feeling better and that you’ve taken (what sound/look like) sustainable steps towards a future where you are making the best and healthiest possible decisions. Sobriety feels like a really positive development; it seems like it’s enabling you to be the best version of yourself. That doesn’t erase the past, but it lays the groundwork for a better future. And the more that the future becomes a solid past, the less of the past is the rocky parts of the past. A beautiful future is a beautiful past waiting to have happened.

Again, I will reiterate: “Looking good!”

(Also I want to plug my friend Rax King’s upcoming sobriety memoir Sloppy, which is extremely funny and heartfelt about even the parts of sobriety that are not easy.)

CHILL-ME-OUT SONG OF THE WEEK:
Gerry Mulligan - Night Lights

Look, I am anti generative AI for creative pursuits and also kind of a hater of algorithmic discovery mechanisms, but sometimes an unknowable piece of code gives you just what you need to hear. I basically never listen to jazz, but this album surfaced on YouTube, and I was like…oh hey nice! It’s low-key and relaxing without feeling too “lo fi beats to study to”- core. I looked up Gerry Mulligan to make sure he wasn’t like a famous Holocaust denier before posting, and nothing of the sort came up. Plus I learned that he helped arrange (and played on) Miles Davis’s Birth of the Cool album, which I think means my taste here has been at least semi-validated.

UPCOMING SHOWS

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

5/19: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

5/24: Picture This at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

6/1: What’s New? at Union Hall (Brooklyn…EARLY SHOW!)

6/18: Minibar (Brooklyn)

6/26: Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! Taping (Portland, ME)

9/13: Headlining the Fairfield Comedy Circle (CT)