#58. The People I Don't See Often and You

I miss you! No, sorry, the you to the left! Yes, you!

A couple of items of business up top to fulfill various overdue promises!

THIS SATURDAY (12/23) IN BROOKLYN! I’m running a What’s New? at Union Hall featuring Alison Leiby, Rojo Perez, Danish Maqbool, Meredith Casey, and more!!! I’m telling lots of new jokes!

BOSTON(ISH)! as promised from 1/26-1/27: Off Cabot in Beverly, MA! I’m doing four shows, but it’s a cozier venue than Laugh, where I’ve been a few times! I’m so excited to come home and I’d love to see you there! Come out, North Shore! We’ll argue about where to get roast beef sandwiches and whether the Red Sox will ever be good again!

ST PAUL!!! I’ve rescheduled my shows at Laugh Camp for 3/1-3/2! I’m so excited to come back to the Twin Cities!!! Two of my very favorite places to perform, side by side!

I also am planning to record a new comedy special next year (more on that very soon I swear)! But, as I refrained from saying during the various strikes this year, my first hour special People Pleaser, is free to watch on YouTube in the U.S.! If you’re new to the newsletter maybe you don’t know that!

OKAY ON TO THE REGULAR STUFF!

I writing this while slumped down on my couch, and I was thinking to myself: “Why do I feel like a wet sock?” It’s because I have been running all over the place this week doing shows (out until 2am popping between comedy club spots on Friday) and seeing shows. I saw friends of the newsletter Speedy Ortiz headline Bowery Ballroom on Saturday night. I’m a big fan of their music, but I’d never seen them live, and they were so good. The songs (old and new) really tear through the room.

On Wednesday, I took Maris to see Madonna, one of her bucket list artists, at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The opening act was a DJ on stage who played dance music for an hour, which isn’t my thing in an arena, but I get that it wasn’t for me. Then there was another hour while a different, unseen DJ played…regular(?) songs over the PA before Madonna took the stage. Madonna went on at 10:45pm (on a Wednesday, I reiterate). We only made it an hour into the show, which I will blame on my otherwise perfect and flawless wife’s need to get some sleep (although I was pretty sleepy myself as well). Madonna’s voice sounded great, and the spectacle of the arena show was really spectacle-ular (there has to be a better way to say that). And technically, seeing half of a Madonna show does still check “see Madonna perform” off a bucket list. So, that was a pretty big win!

Going further backwards in time (damn, this newsletter has an avant-garde structure) I saw my friend Jes Tom’s solo show Less Lonely. It’s about, in my opinion at least, love and community and gender and sex. Jes strikes an extremely skillful balance between sharing really openhearted insights and telling a zillion killer jokes. Jes is someone I think about whenever people say: “You can’t talk about anything anymore!” Their show is so funny and dense with jokes that you would not have heard in most mainstream comedy venues when I was starting standup! It makes me feel so overwhelmed by the possibilities of what comedy can be and whose voices and points of view belong in this artistic conversation! I super recommend this show if you’re in New York while it’s running!

Scenes from Jes Tom's solo show less lonely! What am I doing with my hands?

On Thursday I got to be a part of the Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me episode that was recorded live at Carnegie Hall! It is, unsurprisingly, one of the most beautiful venues I’ve ever performed in. It’s always such a pleasure to work with the whole Wait Wait team. Panelists Helen Hong and Alzo Slade cracked me up, per usual. The celebrity guest, Bethenny Frankel from Real Housewives of New York and other business ventures, nicknamed me Egg Slut. You’ll have to listen to find out why, but honestly I’m not sure that will get you 100% of the way to understanding either.

At Carnegie Hall in my new Hanukkah sweater. Egg Slut art by Lillian King.

It was also a really heavy week within the comedy community. Kenny Deforest, a very funny and widely beloved comedian, died on Wednesday after being hit by a car while biking a few days earlier. It’s so incomprehensibly sad that he’s gone. Lots of comedians have posted really beautiful remembrances of Kenny across social media, and I’ve been involved in lots of text message and in-person conversations about how much he’ll be missed. Despite the popular conception of of comedians as anti-social weirdos who are only looking out for ourselves, we are actually often extremely social weirdos who really look out for each other. And as my friend Emily reminded me, via text, with so much tragedy in the world, it is a privilege to get to grieve together, which is a good thing for me to remember.

Kenny and I were not super close, so I feel a little like I’m stealing sadness valor to write at length about him. But he was a good and funny guy, and I was always happy to get to work with him. A few months ago, I saw Kenny at a little comedy show at a bar Brooklyn, and I was really struck by how personal and sharp his new material was. He had such a great skill for being introspective and observant without leaving the audience with a feeling of heaviness. He’d recently moved back to New York after a few years living in LA, and I told him how glad I was that he came back, and he told me how glad he was to be back. Everybody’s stories about Kenny mention his warmth and enthusiasm.

Kenny’s recent standup special Don’t You Know Who I Am? is so funny and self-aware, and he really takes his time talking about some formative life experiences without sacrificing jokes or an overriding sense of playfulness. It’s so sad that this is the occasion for many people seeing Kenny’s work for the first time, but I hope lots of people find it and enjoy it and remember him well.

PEP TALKS FOR FRIENDS I DON’T SEE OFTEN

This week I am trying something a little different! I’m going to write down a few encouraging/complimentary things about friends I’ve seen recently and then commit to reaching out and telling them. My friend

Jaime Green

does a version of this on social media sometimes! (I’m pretty good about this but could be better.) Maybe some of these will hit home for you, reader! I’d love to hear things you feel about friends you don’t see often too, if you want to leave some nice things in the comments.

• Your sense of adventure and enthusiasm is a reminder that life doesn’t have to be boring, even when you have adult obligations.

• I love the way you define what family means to you and center that concept in your life.

• You do not care what is cool, which is an extremely cool quality!!!

• You hold a grudge with intense clarity and firmness.

• It’s beautiful the way your art and your humanity work hand in hand with one another! (This one I already texted to a friend. Sorry to make content from that conversation.)

• You have been through so much, and things are going to be okay in the future, or at least more okay!

• Not everyone lets people be momentarily horrible without judging them the way you do.

• I am terrified of you, but in a good way!

• So many of the things you think you are not good at, you are actually excellent at!!!

• Lots of people love you and care about you and believe in you and are cheering for you to succeed!

• You are so impressively mean to people who deserve it, and that is aspirational to me!

• I am so constantly worried about looking uninformed or unhip, and I am legitimately dazzled by the way you never hesitate to say: “Oh I don’t know what that is? Can you tell me about it?” when you’ve never heard of something. (I get sweaty and furtively google it in a panic after saying: “Of course I know what that is!”

• The way you treat people and move through the world leaves things better for your having been there and done that!

• Your kindness and friendship mean so much to me and to so many others!

• You seem never to do things you don’t want to do, which is amazing to me, a person who can be convinced to do anything if asked three times.

• I love to see people find and enjoy your artistic endeavors even and especially when they are completely bizarre and deranged!

• Even when your staunch commitment to your principles is annoying or off-putting to some people, you react with compassion and thoughtfulness, which is such a gift.

• You make people feel like old friends no matter how long you’ve known them!!!

PEP TALK FOR A READER

I have lightly condensed this reader’s pep talk request as I do from time to time!

I’ve been at my job for over 3 years, and I’ve led the program to record-breaking unprecedented success (literally, numerically). Now, due to budget cuts, I’m losing my job. I don’t have any new job lined up and I feel like I’m leaving with my tail between my legs even though I know I shouldn’t be.
- Budget Or Leave It

I get a lot of requests for pep talks about work stuff, which makes sense! Work is a drag! Well, having to work is a drag. Doing things and making things is cool, in my opinion. There’s a popular meme that’s like: “Why do I have to [do thing x]? My brain was made to pick berries and sunbathe.” Even if I don’t fully relate, I do like that as counterpoint to #alpha #hustle #grindset culture. I truly can’t stand the guys who worship at the altar of productivity and efficiency over all else, the dudes who ask questions on social media like: “Would you rather be given two hundred bitcoin or get to look at Bill Gates’s genetic code for an hour?” and “If you could eat lunch with any three people living or dead, how would you convince them to invest in your new company Cubr that delivers ham cubes to you anywhere on earth within 30 minutes?”

Despite my wishes that those guys contract some kind of Fake Rolex poisoning (or Actual Rolex poisoning), it is nice to have a project to work on, whether that’s building a dresser or raising a child or writing a song (or any combination of the three; you can have it all, in this very specific scenario I haphazardly invented). I don’t mean to be controversial, but it can be nice to feel helpful and purposeful and creative. It’s jobs that are the problem. Even when you’re good at them! Even when you love them, because, as the writer Sarah Jaffe says, Work Won’t Love You Back.

That’s not to say that you can’t enjoy going to work or collaborating with coworkers or doing your job well. It’s just that there’s always the risk that no matter how well you do your job, if a person above you on the org chart doesn’t do their job well, it’s always more likely to come down on you than them! It is not you who should feel shame for getting laid off. It is whoever above you decided that your good work isn’t as important as making some numbers go down and other numbers go up, regardless of the impact on your company. And those people don’t feel shame.

I don’t know how you can achieve this, but you deserve to feel a shamelessness about being GOOD at your job that other people get to feel about being BAD at theirs. Not having a job is financially troublesome, but it’s not embarrassing! What’s embarrassing (but sadly lucrative) is failing up. And no amount of #riseandgrind-ing can change that!

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Iris DeMent - “The Sacred Now”

Maris and I have been going through a bunch of the big “Best Albums of the Year” lists, and while I appreciate the breadth of genre represented, a lot of the entries I wasn’t aware of weren’t really my speed. (“A virtuoso recording of gut-kicking metal…” PASS! “Through intricately woven layers of subtle and arrhythmic electronica…” NO THANKS!) The one album that we hadn’t heard yet but latched onto right away is Iris DeMent’s Workin’ On A World.

The album’s lyrics are often literal and explicit in their exploration of subject matter and theme while still feeling incisive and poetic, and as you might imagine, “The Sacred Now” is about how everyone alive exists within the same present moment and has the obligation to invest in and tend to and appreciate it. DeMent’s quaver and jangle and earnestness really found me at the right time to really appreciate it. Maybe as this year ends you’ll feel the same.

UPCOMING SHOWS

I’ve got some really fun shows coming up! Come see one! More NYC spots are listed on my website, and more road dates are coming soon!

12/19: Christmas Boy with Tommy McNamara at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

12/23: What’s New? at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

1/8: Romantic Comedy at The Ripped Bodice (Brooklyn)

1/18-1/20: The Comedy Vault (Batavia, IL)

1/26-1/27: Off Cabot (Beverly, MA)

3/1-3/2: Laugh Camp (St. Paul, MN)