#52. Short Days and You

Has it been a year already? (It has!)

Hey everyone,

Happy one year anniversary to That’s Marvelous! Thanks so much to anyone who’s been here the whole time and to everyone who’s gotten on board along the way. To anyone who’s unsubscribed in the past year I’LL SEE YOU IN HELL!!! Just kidding! I’m sure you have your reasons, plus I don’t really believe in an afterlife.

I’ve had a very strange year (as have many people, I imagine) but this project has been a fun constant. I’ll probably do some kind of real Year In Review here soon as much for my own benefit as anything else. But for now I just want to say that it’s really nice that people read these things, and I’m proud of myself for doing 52 newsletters in a row without missing a week!

Last weekend, I did some really fun shows including hosting my pal Abby Govindan’s headlining gig at the New York Comedy Festival. The lineup was full of extremely funny younger comedians which made me feel old in a way that was very satisfying and energizing? There are so many good comedians working these days! It’s inspiring! When people says that comedy is bad now, they are either misinformed or lying for personal gain!

I also did a set at the Comedy Cellar where I was told David Copperfield (you know, from making the Statue of Liberty vanish) was in the audience. I looked for him after I got offstage but he had…disappeared! (Again, just kidding. I had to leave right after my set, so I didn’t bother him.)

I’ve got lots of fun stuff coming up too!

If you’re going to be at Alison Roman’s book tour show in Boston on 11/14, I will be there onstage interviewing Alison! It’s sold out, but I imagine at least one person reading this will be like: “Oh hey neat! I’ll be there!” Or maybe you’ll be more like: “Oh shucks I was hoping the Phantom Gourmet would be conducting this interview!”

I’m hosting Jesse David Fox’s book release show at the Bell House on 11/7, which is tomorrow. His book (about comedy) is really really great, and this show will be great with fewer essays and even more jokes!!!

PITTSBURGH: I’m going to be at Bottle Rocket in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS (on 11/18) and would love if you were there! Grab those tickets now!

I’m also going to be a panelist on the 12/14 Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me taping at Carnegie Hall! I was going to be on this show in 2021, but it got cancelled because of Covid, and I am very excited to get to dumb down one of the most prestigious theaters in America with my goofy bullshit two years later!

PEP TALK FOR SHORT DAYS

Here’s what the sky looks like at (estimated) 2pm these days.

People are quick to lament the shortness of days these days. But who said days are all that great anyway? More darkness means an abundance of night, and nights are pretty good. Inky twilight, in my opinion is (ironically?) a green light for pajamas, an important and beloved genre of clothing. We don’t always get to start late or pack it in early just because the sky tells us to, but that’s not the sky’s fault!!! We (people) did that to ourselves. We could have stopped after we invented the fireplace and those floppy sleeping hats that people wore back when ghosts visited them on Christmas, but nooooo we had to build a whole apparatus that lets us/makes us be productive even when the Earth is yelling at us to stay in bed.

Some people get seasonal depression as daylight hours diminish. But I’m sure plenty of people get summer depression too. Like, yeah, there’s abundant Vitamin D, but it’s so sweaty. I guess I’m not sure this depression exists. But it might! So that’s something to consider. I don’t know. I’m spinning out here! I mostly just wish I could experience 12-14 hours of daylight and also wear a sweater or a light jacket.

However you feel about the oncoming winter months, I think we can all agree on one thing: Fuck daylight saving time and the clock it rode in on!

PEP TALKS FOR READERS

I’ve done a little editing/condensing of these for the sake of smoothness, but I’m not putting meaningful words in anyone’s mouth! That’s the That’s Marvelous promise!

Got any pep talks for people living with chronic illness, both physical and mental, and feeling both drained by trying to be an honest witness to the large-scale tragedies going on in the world and yet also guilty for having things so (comparatively) easy? It’s me, I’m people.
- Runaway Drain

Maybe this thought is nothing; I’m kind of freestyling it as I go along. But hear me out! We talk a lot about doing what you can to make the world a better place, and that is important, the doing. (Also does anyone else sometimes read the word “doing” like it rhymes with “boing?” Or is that just me?) Doing is what creates change. And doing what you can is how much you’re able to do. So that’s how much you should do. I sound so high right now, but I swear I am not.

Okay, so with that (obvious) information put out there, I think what we miss out on sometimes is that the corollary to “Do what you can!” is “Don’t do what you can’t!” Part of the reason we don’t say that is that it sounds ridiculous to utter out loud. “Don’t do what you can’t!” Okay, Yoda. Thanks for the advice-slash-brain-teaser. The majority of the reason we don’t say this part though is that it’s impossible to do the opposite, so it usually goes without saying. “Do what you can’t!” is nonsense. It sounds like a slogan Kevin Hart would wear on a sweatshirt while giving an interview about savvy investment strategies before changing into a generic track suit to shoot a commercial for an online gambling website.

But! It’s important to remember that (globally speaking) you are not expected to do what you can’t do! Because you can’t do it! So don’t worry about it! Does that make sense? Like, doing what you can is enough, because any more than that is, by definition, more than you’re able to do. So it’s out of your hands. Fuckin’…you know? Like, do what you can. That’s the assignment. But you also have permission to not do the other things. I’m sure that as someone with chronic illness people often ask you to do more than you’re able. And that’s unfair. But when you’re asked to do what you can, you don’t have to do what you can’t. No matter what Kevin Hart’s hypothetical sweatshirt may tell you.

I'm feeling like I'm constantly behind at work, and I have a million emails to respond to. Can you give me a pep talk to get me through until work isn't so crazy? (It will always be crazy, and that's okay.)
- [I] Better Work, B

Answering work emails is like shoveling a car out after a big snow storm. Eventually you will get it done because the alternative (snow-covered car, infinite follow-up emails at increasingly short intervals) is so much worse than doing the thing itself.

Also, in the interim: No one has ever died from not answering a work email fast enough. Depending on your job, it’s very likely that no one else will die because you haven’t answered a work email yet. (Maybe if your job is emailing people the steps to perform open heart surgery or the PIN needed to defuse a bomb they would, but in most cases they’ll probably call you when it’s that urgent.) A bunch of these emails will probably be really easy to answer, too. Like, you can probably just say: Sure. Or no thanks let’s find another time. If you answer a few emails but not the rest of them right away, the people you haven’t responded to will never find out. Not to mention, your reward for answering an email is often just a new email to answer, so…what’s the rush, you know?

This task matters enough that you need to do it but not enough that you need to worry about doing it while you’re not doing it. So you won’t do it, and then you’ll do it. And someday might even have a different job where you won’t have to do this at quite the same annoying pace!

I could use a pep talk to start writing again. Context: I performed stand up for a few years, really enjoyed it but didn’t have the starving artist in me and I teach now. But I’d like to write again, especially the story of my last few years. I discovered I had an older half-brother who was raised in the same small town I grew up in. Our lives were intertwined for years without anyone’s knowledge to the truth. (Same swim team, he bagged groceries at the grocery store we frequented, our fathers knew each other etc.) He even has the same name as me! A year after discovering this, I got a brain injury, subdural hematoma and almost died in a prolonged seizure. 

There are many  other layers to this story  but I know it could be written (and maybe even performed). I just need someone talking me into sitting down and writing it.
- Write Here, Write Now

Good news, motherfucker. You wrote this much of your story down and now you just need to keep going. You sneaky weasel. You tricked yourself into writing. Now you’ve gone and done it. You’ve written it. And you can’t un-write it. Even if you delete what you wrote, there’s still this record of it. Do you think I’m some kind of stooge? Do you think I’m an idiot who doesn’t know that an email is writing? You can maybe trick yourself, but you can’t fool me. And I’m gonna call this shit out when I see it! You’re writing! Keep doing it!!! Even this much at a time counts as writing. YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST SNEAK THAT BY ME?

Also I’m glad you didn’t die, and I hope you have fun continuing to flesh out this very interesting life story.

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
The Roots - “Adrenaline!”

My favorite podcast, Open Mike Eagle’s show “What Had Happened Was” is in the midst of its fourth season, and it’s terrific! Every season, O.M.E. interviews the same person (always a luminary in the hip hop world) for a total of 10-ish hours about their various projects. This season is about Questlove, who is (no surprise) full of incredible stories and music history facts. Mostly, the season so far has been about the early days of The Roots, but there are great digressions about Quest’s father’s band and Boyz II Men and David Letterman! (I really hope he tells more stories about working with D’Angelo later in the season!!!)

“Adrenaline!” by the aforementioned Roots is (humiliatingly?) the song I listened to every time I got onstage for my whole first year doing standup to get maximally psyched. “100% Dundee” off the same album (Things Fall Apart, incredible in totality if you haven’t heard it) has a similar energy to it and also features the lyric: “Things fall apart and MCs unravelling/Backstage whispering to management like: “Change the order there’s no way that we can rock after them!”

If you’re looking to capture the feeling of being so powerful that no one can follow in your footsteps because they won’t be able to climb out of the impressions you leave behind…look no further.

UPCOMING SHOWS

I’m mostly doing shows around New York City for the next month! But also I’m back to traveling a bit! More on my website!

11/7: Jesse David Fox Book Launch Show at Bell House (Brooklyn)

11/8: Cracked Live at KGB Bar (NYC)

11/14: In conversation with Alison Roman (Arts at the Armory in Somerville, MA)

11/18: Bottle Rocket (Pittsburgh)

12/14: Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me at Carnegie Hall (NYC)