#40. Another Reader Pep Talk Speed Round

I got more requests than I intended so let's goooo!!!

Hi everyone,

I realized today that a trip I’m taking next weekend (a college friend’s wedding in Minnesota) will constitute my sixth in a row being away from home for at least one day/night. Since last Sunday’s show in DC, I’ve come home to New York, performed in Nashville and Charlotte, come home again, and then made a quick trip up to Tanglewood in the Berkshires to do some voices for a (really, really fun) live performance of Circle Round. Totally check out the podcast if you have kids or are a kid or at one point were a kid. The cast was full of accomplished actor actors, so I was a little self-conscious, but everyone was so friendly and gracious in addition to being so talented! It was such a good time! It is helpful that from my experience teaching preschool I have a pretty decent sense of what kinds of silly voices kids respond to. (Fortunately that hasn’t changed too much since I got out of the early childhood education game over a decade ago.)

Plus, several months ago, I bought a pretty ostentatious pair of sneakers that I’d been waiting to break out at a suitable event, and a performance for children felt like the right occasion. Now that I’ve worn them out once, I love them and plan to wear them all the time.

I don’t know why I thought these were too busy! Just kidding, I know why.

I drove up to Tanglewood and because you’re not allowed to sleep while driving like you can on a plane (fascism, imo!!!) I listened to a few long podcast episodes. Here’s what I noticed: Jamie Loftus and Zach Cherry are both (separately) on podcast guest appearance heaters. I recommend listening to episodes of shows where they are guests. Also, Jamie’s limited run podcast My Year In Mensa is one of my all-time favorites! I’m reading her book about hot dogs (Raw Dog) as well, but they don’t let you do that while you’re driving either (damn nanny state). All of Jamie’s work is so funny and weird and ambitious but also really thoughtful and empathetic!!! Check it out if you haven’t!!!

In Nashville, I drank some beers during the day with my friend Haley (and Haley’s sister!), and I’ve previously noted, seeing two (2) friends and drinking two (2) beers in a city is enough to make me go: “This is one of the greatest places I’ve ever been.” In Charlotte, I was once again performing on the same night as Beyoncé (from Destiny’s Child), and as I was leaving for my show, the woman working at the hotel desk was cheering on other Black women who were leaving for the concert in their elaborate concert-going outfits. It was really sweet! She then told me that her equivalent to Beyoncé would be the R&B group Jagged Edge, which I did not realize was anyone’s opinion, but I love that it is hers!

PEP TALKS FOR READERS

I put out a call for pep talk requests and got a whole bunch, so I’m going to maybe do a little condensing (who can say) and respond to a bunch of them at a little less length than usual but probably a little more length than I’m planning honestly!

I'm a middle school theatre teacher about to start my 18th year, and hooooo boy! Being a fine arts public school teacher in Oklahoma is not easy. A pep talk would be amazing!
- That’s a Tulsa Order

Your students are so lucky to have you! These kids will remember your work as an oasis amidst all the weird, bad culture that’s increasingly foisted upon them by an education system that (in many places) is designed for kids to learn as little about art and history as possible. I’m sure it’s not going to stop there. We’re like a month away from Ron DeSantis outlawing the number 8 in Florida schools because it looks too much like boobs or butt cheeks (I’m not sure that he can tell the difference). He’ll be talking about the importance of free speech (racial slurs) while legally barring kids from typing “58008” on a calculator.

There’s only so much you can do, but doing it at all is the important part! You will be remembered fondly and will make a difference in a whole bunch of people’s lives. The many cool and weird people of Oklahoma need each other, more than they do in other places, even. Kids in artsier, more permissive regions can just go outside and see cool stuff. You get to/have to be that conduit for so many kids. It’s a great power/great responsibility situation, if Spider-Man were also given extremely limited resources. I’m sorry! And thank you for what you do!

Pep talk needed! My mom has brain cancer and we just decided to bring in hospice for her last months. She’s unmarried and has no other kids so there’s a whole lot falling on my plate at once.  I’m simultaneously in the process of moving apartments which should be illegal while dealing w other hard things.
- Say Yes To The Stress

I’m so sorry to hear about the turn your mother’s health has taken, and I hope you have lots of love and support nearby during this trying time. I bet even though your mom is leaning on you so heavily, you have several people to lean on who would be glad to be there for you.

Aside from that giant, upsetting feature of your life: It is SO unfair when more than one big or bad thing happens at once. These kinds of things should happen one at a time, the way henchmen fight Steven Seagal. Moving is an under-the-radar unpleasant experience even when things are otherwise fine. Logistically speaking, it’s like planning a wedding but without getting to have a party. The good news is, the move will happen. I have never seen anyone put off packing so long that they just get stuck living in their previous home. Moving is a problem that can be solved in many ways: 1. Money or 2. Helpful friends or 3. Doing a shitty job and it getting done anyway, but shittily. They don’t want you to know this, but #3 STILL COUNTS!

You’ll get through this with help and love and support.

I’d love a pep talk. I’m going on month 5 of unemployment, will be moving out of my apartment soon because I can no longer afford it, and am truly not sure what my next step will be. 
- Bad Times, Bad Times

After five rough months (or more, you never said things were ideal before you lost your job) in a row, it may feel like things can never be good again, but they can. The past doesn’t have to dictate the future. That’s why guys don’t do the whole “frosted tips” look anymore. Bad things can come to an end!!! (Or at least a twenty-year pause before they come back into style for some reason.)

We’ve already talked here about how bad moving is, and this is even worse than that, but it doesn’t have to be like this forever, and this hard time doesn’t mean that you’re bad or wrong. Just that there’s enough bad and wrong in the world to rub off on you for half a year, which stinks but hopefully will not define too much of your future.

(Also this is above my pay grade for pep talks, so I hope I don’t sound flippant, and I really hope that you have a safe place to stay for the time being while you get on your feet!)

About to start looking for a job after 17 years at the best workplace w/the best people & boss. We all got laid off. Feel career strong, but what if next job sucks?
- What About Job?

You have already done the hard part of this process, which is coming out of a layoff feeling strong overall, like Mario when he touches an invincibility star or the way a cinderblock feels when it smushes the hand of someone who isn’t quite good enough at karate to chop all the way through it.

Your question feels heavy, but it has a pretty simple answer: If your next job is bad, you’ll get a new one!!! Your circumstances are a drag, but you’ve had seventeen years of A Good Thing, and though it’s sad that that’s over, you do have the advantage of knowing whether the next thing is Also Good or Not Good Enough. That’s a huge leg up on people who have never been in such a great situation and have to live life like they’re at the eye doctor not knowing if this option is better than this one or if this one is actually good enough even if they can’t see the bottom row. Are we supposed to be able to read the bottom row or not? JUST TELL ME, DOCTOR. You know what’s good, and you know you can achieve it. Because you have! The next thing doesn’t also have to last for seventeen years. If you’re not feeling it, you can (figuratively) hit it and (literally) quit it.

Ok I have been feeling sooo weighed down by the current state of the world and how we’re going to burn to a crisp any day now and we are still acting like little productivity robots. And everything fun is being taken from us (college sports, TV and film) so there aren’t even a lot of things that can distract us anymore. I imagine myself as a skeleton on fire and right before I breathe my last breath I get a notification that my student loan payment is late and I press “pay” right before I die lol. What the heck can we do to fight all this bullshit! 
- Our Apocalypse Are Sealed

This really sums up a lot of the previous messages in one howl of despair, doesn’t it? The world is bad in so many ways, it can feel hopeless to persevere, and oh yeah we all will die eventually, unless by some stroke of dystopia, technology lets us live forever.

The upside (lol) to so many things being bad, is that there are so many things we can do to make them better!!! And, as we covered above, any amount of better is better than no amount of better. A large number of people working really hard can still make an impact on issues like climate change and universal healthcare. Those are really important issues! But there’s less important shit we can be solving all the time, on our own or in groups of two or three like child detectives. Prepare a meal for someone who’s hungry. Or even for someone who’s not that hungry but “could eat.” It adds up when you do it consistently! Or even when you take days off because you’re tired from work or hungover or just plain not feeling it on a Wednesday.

The distractions are important too, and even as our entertainment becomes a constant parade of $200 million dollar CGI superhero mix and mingle events, there is still so much great art being made at a smaller scale. The old stuff still exists too until it gets pulled off of streaming services as a tax write-off, but still for now it’s mostly there!

(Side note: I don’t want to doxx this letter writer, but they are a person who lives in a really thoughtful and generous way that minimizes suffering for others when at all possible and maximizes joy and comfort for those around them. You are making exactly the kind of work you’re talking about wanting! Sorry, Pagliacci. You clowned yourself.)

The fact that everything is on fire means that you probably have a bucket of water nearby that’s sufficient to extinguish something that’s been set aflame. And the number of people who notice these distressing trends means that there’s probably someone nearby who will turn a fire extinguisher on your smoldering skeleton. We can do so much for each other even when in isolation so much of that looks like so little so much of the time. We weren’t put on this earth to be productive!!! However we got here, whether an accident of science (definitely) or an intentional act of one god or another (lol but please don’t unsubscribe), we’re playing with house money by existing at all so let’s spend three hours getting coffee with friends and babysitting our neighbors’ kids so they can see a movie and recording the weird little songs we sing in the shower to send to the people we love.

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: “Planet of the Bass”

You have probably heard “Planet of the Bass” already. It’s a (mega viral) song by comedian Kyle Gordon but ostensibly by fictional characters DJ Crazy Times and Ms. Biljana Electronica. It’s a parody of one of my favorite genres of music. (See below.)

He TALKS TALKS he TALKS to you in the night in his dreams etc.

Kyle Gordon, who I do not know at all, makes a great horny satan in this song and video. This clip is a throwback not just in its genre, but also in that it feels kind of like a piece of internet culture that would have existed ten years ago. It’s not topical, and it’s not famous for pointing out some asshole being an asshole. The other big viral genre of thing is “Wow! Look at that!” which can be a good time too, but it’s nice to see something someone made on purpose be popular as well. Obviously, people gain big audiences online for displaying their skills, whether they’re comedic or culinary or choreographic. But it was unexpectedly pleasant to see a goofy thing come out of nowhere.

I missed the boat on making this my song of the week in any kind of relevant way, but I’m doing it now because “women are my favorite guy” is a perfect joke, and because I appreciate that there is still an appetite for elaborately produced bits that don’t have anything to do with anything.

UPCOMING SHOWS

I’m booking a few shows for later this fall, and I’m around doing set in New York (check out my website for details) but here’s where I’ll be on the road in the near future!

8/31 - Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me in Ann Arbor (sold out!!!)

9/8-9/9 - House of Comedy Detroit

9/29-9/30 - Laugh Camp St. Paul (several shows!!!)