Hi everyone,
I have been thinking of my schedule through the end of the year as “basically sticking around at home” until I realized that in the past seven days I’ve traveled from Brooklyn to Boston and back then Pittsburgh and back, and in the NEXT seven I’ll be going to New Jersey and back and then Boston (again) and back. After that I’m very sedentary for the next month…except for a wedding in Connecticut.
Last Tuesday I did an extremely fun live event with Alison Roman as part of her book tour at Arts at the Armory in Somerville, MA (a perfect venue name to hear in the local accent). It was, without exaggeration, one of the easiest gigs of my life. Alison is such a charming and thoughtful expert in her field, and I literally could have been like: “So…pie?” and she would have been able to say an hour’s worth of smart and funny things about cooking and dessert and having company over and seasonal fruit etc. etc. etc. The photographer who took all the photos for Alison’s newest book is from the South Shore and was there too (Hi, Chris!), and it was fun to talk to him about food photography! (Sweet Enough, the aforementioned book, is out now. That and Natasha Pickowicz’s More Than Cake are both great holiday gifts if you’re looking!)
Saturday at Bottlerocket in Pittsburgh was one of my favorite shows all year! It’s a newish independent venue, and it’s the only one I’ve been to twice while working on this hour of material. It was really encouraging and exciting to feel how much my set has changed since I was in Pittsburgh last October. I wish every city had a venue this cozy and friendly and accommodating!
I also got in a series of arguments in the comments of a blog, but it’s not worth getting into here. (Although welcome new readers if anyone found their way to That’s Marvelous from that comment section!)
Next Tuesday (11/28) I’m doing a set at Joe Pera and Dan Licata’s monthly show at the Bell House in Brooklyn!
PEP TALK FOR MOVIES ABOUT COMPANIES
Movies about companies, I’m going to come right out and say it: I find you boring as hell. Even when done well, I find premises such as “a guy thought hey what if there was more than one McDonald’s” or “Blackberrys used to exist” to be more like anecdotes and less like feature films. My rubric for whether these movies are worth making is: Would you still spend 100 minutes watching this if the company/CEO in question were fully fictional? Very few of them pass this test! (For me it’s yes to basically anything about Elizabeth Holmes, no to basically anything about consumer goods from the early 2000s.)
It is undeniable, however, that these movies are perfect watch-with-your-parents entertainment. They feature recognizable stars with unrecognizable hair. You get to tell your mom who that guy is when she can’t quite place his face in a bald cap. You rarely if ever have to suffer through a protracted sex scene while sitting next to your dad. These are the least horny, least narratively complex, and least violent movies (unless you count the systemic violence under capitalism which these films rarely make explicit) in existence. No one will need to pause and ask whether that one lady is the same lady from before. Even if your nieces or nephews wander into the room while one of these flicks is on, they won’t be prompted to ask any difficult questions aside from: “What’s a Beanie Baby?”
I don’t blame the stars or the writers or the directors for the way these movies turn out!!! The people involved are almost always applying their immense skill and experience to these projects. It’s just that 10% of movies that get made now seem to get greenlit because executives go: “Everyone knows the word Ferrari! That’s like…half the battle of getting people to buy a ticket!” So the creativity is stifled by executives’ fascination with business as culture. I know these stories are ostensibly about people, but then make me care about these people!!!
And, for some reason, we love when actors play Someone Who Existed In Real Life, and we nominate them for what feels like a ridiculous percentage of awards. So why wouldn’t they chase an Oscar for portraying The Guy Who Realized Michael Jordan Was Good At Basketball. Sorry, Matt Damon (and Sonny Vaccaro, who seems like a more interesting guy than the movie Air illustrates)!!!!
This irritation also applies to almost every six-episode streaming docuseries about the financial fortunes of a company that simply fell out of fashion. I cannot and will not care what happened to Abercrombie & Fitch. I do not care about the rise and fall of Juul, especially when they don’t even make the effort to call the series Up In Smoke. THE PUNS ARE RIGHT THERE. And these docuseries don’t even have the benefit of Ben Affleck in silly glasses talking fast! It’s fun to watch Ben Affleck in silly glasses talking fast! But a comedic actor in a bad wig doesn’t make a movie a comedy. It just makes it a breezy 90-minute reprieve from (let’s say) talking about the Middle East with your extended family. Admittedly, that in itself is, as they say, not nothing.
Everyone is trying so hard, but this is too tall a hill to roll a boulder up, in most cases! So from now on I plan to save these films for visits with relatives. I won’t have to sell my parents on whatever weird niche indie comedy I’m excited for, and they won’t have to explain four seasons of a high-concept CBS drama I’ve never heard of to catch me up before we watch the previous week’s episode from the DVR.
A tangent:
This trend in film feels related to the unbearable marketing technique of having a celebrity tease a big announcement and then four days later having it actually be a brand endorsement that nobody gives a single pellet of rabbit shit about. You’ve all seen these before. Ryan Reynolds (hypothetically) will post a black and white Instagram selfie with his head in his hands with the caption: “I wanna die…” and half of his fans will immediately realize there’s some dumb gimmick around the corner and the other half will start praying and calling on Blake Lively to help and trying to get the Los Angeles police to do a wellness check at his house. Then, two days later, he’ll post a smiling selfie holding a can of soda with the caption: “I wanna diet sprite!!!!” And everyone will think FUCK OFF, RYAN REYNOLDS, GUY WHO SEEMS OTHERWISE NICE.
Snoop Dogg did this most recently by announcing he was “done with smoke” only for most people to assume he was coming out with his own line of vapes or weed gummies, but the actual tie-in announcement (for a smokeless fire pit) was even stupider and more annoying! I guess it works because now I am aware of one (1) specific brand of smokeless fire pit. So probably they’ll keep doing this forever.
Anyway, I’m not especially interested in the story “a company existed” and I’m IRRATIONALLY FURIOUS at marketing that’s like: “This person whose art you enjoy…they’re just a brand ambassador now. Everything you know about them will be used to sell you something you don’t want.”
I came of age (I think I’m using that correctly) in the ‘90s when accepting money for basically anything other than starring in a movie that was made for a teacher’s yearly salary or playing a concert in a venue larger than a bathroom stall was considered “selling out.” Nowadays people get less mad when an indie band licenses their music for a Doritos commercial, which seems…fine*. But I still resent marketing where an already rich person is like…I’m giving you a peek into my life…PSYCH! BUY SCOTCH TAPE! Stop trying to trick me into caring about companies. Go back to the old ways of manipulating me!!!
Sorry this pep talk turned into a screed. Happy Thanksgiving!
*Jesse David Fox and Kathryn Vanarendonk talk a lot about “selling out” as an idea during a recent episode of their podcast The Specials.
PEP TALKS FOR READERS
I’ve done some condensing of letters and nicknaming of writers in what has become the standard way.
The holidays bum me out. Mostly due to grief. But also due to depression depression and seasonal depression. I don't like feeling the pressure to perform happiness or the "holiday spirit." I'd opt out of Turkey Day and Christmas if I had the courage to. Sorry, Mariah. I still love you. So, please provide any words of encouragement as I try to move through arguably my most difficult stretch of the year.
- All I Have For Christmas Is Blues (nickname writer’s own)
This time of year can be such a drag for so many people! Whether you’ve got a fraught relationship with family, or have lost family, the bottom can really fall out for two months. Even under the best circumstances, the holidays usually entail expensive travel and meal prep and gift buying and chaotic work schedules. Yes, there’s also the potential for togetherness and community and joy but at what cost (or rather, I should say, things can feel hectic and overwhelming even when they’re nice).
You are not, however, uniquely miserable at this time of year. You are not a lone Grinch in a world full of Whos. So many people struggle around now, which might be of limited use to hear because it’s hard to create a community of people who want to be left the hell alone for a little while. And, while we’re here, maybe it’s not cowardice that keeps you attending holiday events while you’re not feeling up to it; maybe it’s generosity towards the people who want you there. (That doesn’t mean these events have to feel good, just that you’re not failing by showing up!)
It’s not a failure to feel bad while other people are feeling good. Think about it this way: We don’t judge people who struggle at other times of year the same way. Or, at least, we don’t judge ourselves like this for not enjoying beach weather, or for experiencing back-to-school stress. The holidays are just another time of year with some good parts and some bad parts. And if the holiday spirit doesn’t move you, that’s okay. Maybe you’ll perk up during College Bowl Season or Spring Thaw or Summer Barbecue Weather. Regardless, it’s not a flaw to prefer a period of the calendar when you don’t have to hear “Wonderful Christmastime” on the radio over and over.
My 34-year-old little sister was diagnosed with breast cancer on September 1st (no family history). This was devastating news but we were excited that she was recommended for a drug trial that would let her avoid chemotherapy. Unfortunately, we found out on Friday that the treatment wasn’t working and next week she’ll have to switch to standard chemo care. My logical brain knows that the survival rate of breast cancer is very high but my heart is still full of anxiety about worst case, losing my sister, and best case, the absolute hell she will need to go through doing this treatment. She also lives in Florida and I live in Colorado so I can’t be there for her in the way I want to be. How can I deal with the guilt of not being there and the worry while still maintaining hopefulness for an ultimately positive outcome?
- Rocky Mountain Low
I’m so sorry to hear about your sister’s increasingly-difficult diagnosis! I can only imagine how she is feeling, and how much stress this is putting on her and your whole family. My friend Molly Ruben-Long is a very funny comedian who recently received a similar diagnosis and immediately wrote some very funny jokes about it. (I don’t think it’s telling tales out of school to say that she hasn’t yet found out if she needs chemo but she told me that she was really worried about losing her hair. I told her that I, as a bald, found that hurtful.)
I imagine that the distance and uncertainty both feel really painful right now. You obviously can’t know the future (which is difficult for health reasons and also gambling reasons, if we learned anything from Back to the Future II), but you don’t have to be near someone to be a comfort to them. You are not absent because you are far away. And, conversely, simply being nearby someone suffering doesn’t guarantee you’d be of use to them. There are (and this may be hard to believe) many people in Florida who are not especially helpful at all!
You do not have to feel guilt over the physical distance between you and your sister. This isn’t your fault. Unless you intentionally gave her cancer or moved away specifically because you thought her having cancer would be bad luck for you. I assume if either of those things were true, you would have mentioned it earlier.
I know I’ve been a little flippant about this, but mostly I’ve been trying to underscore the fact that there’s kind of no way this won’t feel bad because you love your sister and want her to be okay. But feeling extra bad isn’t a sign that you love her more. You can show that you love her not by feeling terrible far away but by calling to check in on her or buying her takeout or finding a safe way to get her ~~off label cancer medication~~ that is easy to acquire in Colorado but trickier in Florida ifyouknowwhatimean.
My hunch (and don’t hold me to this, I’m a complete idiot) is that by doing the things within your power, you’ll feel the normal amount of bad that you can’t avoid and not the additional bad that you add on for a high cost and minimal-if-any benefit like truffle flavoring at a restaurant.
(And of course best wishes to your sister for a speedy recovery!!!)
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
André 3000 - I swear, I Really Wanted To Make A "Rap" Album But This Is Literally The Way The Wind Blew Me...
André 3000, of OutKast fame, put out an album of flute/ambient music last week. I honestly don’t know if it’s “good” or not because of my extremely unsophisticated taste in music. “They don’t make rap songs like they did when I was a kid!” I often think, oldly. But I do find this album really soothing, and I would like to be in the writers’ room for André’s next song title brainstorming session. It’s cool to see an artist who feels like he has nothing left to say in one medium shifting to a new one. And I also love the anecdotes about him just showing up in various cities noodling around on a flute in public, like Bill Murray but not consumed with a palpable sadness.
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’ve got some really fun shows coming up! Come see one! More NYC spots are listed on my website! Some more road stuff coming soon plus a big announcement I think.
11/28: Dan Joe Thanksgiving Show (Brooklyn)
12/6: Wits End with John Hodgman at the Midnight Theater (NYC)
12/14: Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me at Carnegie Hall (NYC)
1/18-1/20: The Comedy Vault (Batavia, IL)
You're marvelous! Thanks for making the world a less shitty place, and that's a really big deal these days!!!
as a Young Adult m Breast Cancer Survivor, i recommend Wildfire Magazine (https://www.wildfirecommunity.org) to folks facing that!
& while the prospect of losing your hair (or whatever) is scary, i think it helps to remember that we learn to accept and tolerate difficult things—it’s just that we can’t do that in advance, so it is not possible to imagine it. it’s normal to not be able to do that. (ALSO tho some nonprofits will pay for supplies if you want to try cold-capping, which sometimes preserves hair.)