Note: The Writers Guild of America has reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP on a new contract that will (presumably, soon) end the current strike! So many people worked so hard to make this happen! I'm so proud of our members, our Negotiating Committee, and our amazing staff! Also I’m enormously grateful for the support of our sibling unions and eager to continue standing with SAG-AFTRA in their ongoing fight for a fair deal too! I'm very emotional!!! More on this here as more info is available, but this is big exciting news, and I wanted to share it. Now, back to our regularly scheduled newsletter!
Hi everyone,
It’s Yom Kippur! Wait. Hold on. I don’t think an exclamation point is quite right to communicate the solemnity of the Jewish Day of Atonement. I’m going to try one more time. It’s Yom Kippur. There we go. That’s better.
Yom Kippur is the highest of the High Holidays on the Jewish calendar. It’s all about making amends for your past sins. When I was younger, I used to send a mass email to people in my life asking their forgiveness for any transgressions I may have committed against them in the past year. One time I forgot to bcc the recipients, so it became a whole thread of replies, mostly making fun of my email skills. That was the end of that tradition!
I’m not especially religious, but an apology-centric ritual still appeals to my personality. As long as we’re here, I would like to take a moment to apologize to anyone I’ve hurt in the past year, knowingly or unknowingly! And if there are any such people reading this newsletter, and there’s anything I can do to make amends, please reach out! Sorry for the SINCERITY!!!!
If anyone else has an apology (for anyone or anything) they want to get off their chest, drop it in the comments!
This weekend I’ve got a couple more shows with John Oliver before his usual opener returns from the Alaskan wilderness. Come through if you’re in Milwaukee or Bloomington (Indiana’s Version). The following week I’ll be back to Indiana (Indianapolis this time) and Cincinnati telling some jokes as part of the Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me standup tour.
PEP TALK FOR FALL
By the time the Autumnal Equinox hit, people had already been eulogizing summer for weeks. “Last beach day of the summer…” people lamented on Instagram and presumably out loud too. It felt a little rude, honestly! It’s not a courtesy we offer any other season. Nobody preemptively announces the last brisk light jacket morning of spring or the final cider of fall. Serious skiers sometimes mourn their final day on the slopes for the year, but that’s understandable given the way it feels like fresh powder will soon be replaced by mountaintop hurricanes as our climate continues to deteriorate.
Not only have we been gnashing our teeth and wringing our hands over summer’s conclusion, but we openly mock fall lovers. We deride the pumpkin spice latte AS IF IT’S ANY WORSE ANY ANY OTHER FLAVORED COFFEE. (They’re basically all mediocre!!!) We look askance at Mr. Autumn Man as he saunters by. And for what? The crime of being basic? For daring to enjoy things that are enjoyable? We don’t sneer at people for stopping to appreciate the first blooming flowers in the spring. Or for sitting by a crackling fire in the dead of winter. But for some reason, fall’s specific pleasures are considered to be for chumps.
Fall, you are more than a transition from from the (overrated) summer heat to the (overrated) winter chill. You’re more than just Spring For Vegetables. Yes, you are the season of the dreaded return to school for many kids. And you’re the favorite time of year of Halloween Adults, who are just Disney Adults who discovered Hot Topic. But you are so much greater than the sum of your parts.
Autumn brings relief to adults like me who are stressed out that every t-shirt, across all genders, seems to be a crop top now. It’s the best time of year for people who enjoy going outside but are never “working on a tan.” It’s the season for corduroy and apple pie and free furniture on the sidewalk that you’re almost certain doesn’t have bedbugs.
Sure, maybe those things are a little basic, but basic is what you go back to when you’re ready for a reset. So bring on the fall weather. Or, to say it with a little more pumpkin spice: Stop…flannel time.
PEP TALK FOR A READER
I’ve messed around with this request just a little bit for clarity. That’s all!
Dear Josh,
I'm feeling a lot of shame over letting my health get out of control. I'm only 50 years old and now see a handful of doctors where I am by far the youngest patient there. Today, I found out I have [an issue with my] blood pressure and I'm super scared. I suppose the worst part is for me that I'm afraid and drowning in shame to tell my partner, family and friends. By all appearances, I "look" healthy, but the inside of me is not. It's like my skin is the scaffolding but the inside is rot.
I'm exercising, drinking plenty of water, eating 75-80% healthy - definitely can improve that. Some of this is heredity. Any words of advice to help me out of my shame spiral? I'm so disappointed in myself and my shame is almost worst than my body's health issues.
Thanks,
Anonymous (Me)
Anonymous Me, I’m so sorry to hear about your health issues cropping up, and I hope you and your doctors get a handle on them soon.
Living in a human body is so weird! They’re all so different. Shaq and Lily Tomlin are both human beings, and they look nothing alike. Some people love cilantro and other people think it tastes like soap. A small subset of people probably enjoy the taste of soap. Some people’s idea of sex is more like stage combat or Comic Con to others.
Even the idea of high or low blood pressure is so weird to me. I can’t ever fully picture it. It always ends up with me imagining blood so pressurized it geysers out of your body and power-washes a nearby window, or a lack of pressure so profound you wind up with all your blood hanging out in your feet and knees until you look like those viral Big Red Boots. That’s not to make light of a serious situation! All I mean is that our bodies can be so opaque and mysterious even as we’re riding around in them. And the people around us may have no idea what’s going on inside. What you look like rarely tips people off. They can’t see your veins or bones unless something goes horribly wrong. I bet a lot of the older folks at your doctor wish they’d gone in younger, when they still presented as “healthier” even as the inside of them felt like Picasso’s Guernica looks.
It seems like you’re working really hard to rein in your blood’s wayward impulses! That sounds right to me, someone who is very much not a doctor SORRY MOM AND DAD (just kidding they are fine with my career). I completely understand the shame of feeling out of control in your own skin. But most of the time, people who love you want you to be okay and often want to support you in difficult times. Obviously not all family dynamics are healthy and safe, but it sounds like you’ve got lots of people in your life, and I bet some if not most of them will understand that you didn’t like…do this to yourself on purpose or through gross negligence. You didn’t, for example, cause this malady by drunk driving into a truck full of sodium that spilled directly into your bloodstream. You didn’t destabilize your internal ecosystem for kicks or as a bit.
The insides of our bodies are sources of shame under most circumstances because they’re so sticky and squishy and hidden away. But most people who care about you actually care about you, and not just when you’re healthy.
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Voxtrot - “The Start of Something”
So, Voxtrot has a new song out, but this isn’t it. This is a song from their mid-aughts blog-rock hot streak that I remember fondly in part because I like the way the music sounds and in other part because it coincided with my time in college so it feels Extra Formative and Meaningful to me. The video is Wicked Mid-Aughts in a way I will not defend. I can’t imagine anyone significantly older or younger than I am is really aware of this group at all considering they broke up 12ish years ago, and they didn’t exist for twice as long as they did exist before re-forming.
There are lots of buzzy bands from that era I’ve outgrown or forgotten about or realized were never that good in the first place (Who are you gonna believe, me [an 8/4 on Pitchfork] or your lying ears?). But I always come back to Voxtrot. They’re not in constant headphone rotation, but my wife and I will reliably throw their lone full-length album or one of their EPs on when we’re on a road trip, and we usually remember just enough of the words to sing along by the second chorus.
“The Start of Something” is extra jangly and a little twee in a way I still can’t resist (“come by and see me, I’m a love letter away”). It’s a nice bright song for a rainy day, which we’ve had a couple of in a row here in New York. So here you go!
The new song is good too, but I don’t have 15+ years of affection for it, so unfortunately it’s not the song of the week!
(In other songs-this-week news, That’s Marvelous favorite Pkew Pkew Pkew has a new album out that’s really good!)
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’ve got some new dates added in NYC as well as a bunch of fancy theater shows!
9/29: Miller High Life Theater in Milwaukee (Opening for John Oliver)
9/30: Indiana University Auditorium in Bloomington (Opening for John Oliver)
10/5: Dye House in Providence (Opening for Adam Pally)
10/7: Wait Wait Standup Tour at the Taft Theater in Cincinnati
10/8: Wait Wait Standup Tour at the Clowes Memorial Hall in Indianapolis
dear josh,
thank you for this! funny and meaningful as always!
i particularly like this sentence:
"Shaq and Lily Tomlin are both human beings, and they look nothing alike"
all the rest of the sentences are great too!
love you! "happy" yom kippur!
love
myq
I never considered fall to be "basic." It's pretty damn showy. People don't drive around in summer to look at leaves, do they? Nope, because they're all green. Now *that's basic. But I'm not here to quibble because I love fall and I think of my life as rather simple so if fall is basic, I'm that suits me just fine. It's my favorite season. If the scientists would get around to divvying up the earth by quadrant so I can live in fall most of the time, I'll be thrilled!