#59. A Little 2023 Wrap-up

Say goodbye to THESE (calendar months).

Hi everyone,

Merry Christmas and/or Happy Monday Off From Work! With the year (2023) winding down, I thought I’d do a little year-in-review type thing. I realize this is my second non-standard newsletter in a row, and I promise to get back to more or less the usual thing in 2024 (next year/week) unless you all hate the usual thing. Then I’ll figure out something else I guess? I’m extremely easy to bully.

I’ve noticed a little influx of subscribers coming in from Self Magazine (welcome!) after I wrote a piece for them about how we’re going to be tired every day, so we might as well try to do it on our terms. Thanks to my brilliant editor Rachel Miller for helping me squish this idea into shape!

The illustration for my Self piece! Isn’t it nice?

Also this week, I returned to The Bugle with the great Andy Zaltzman and Alice Fraser, and I jumped back on Business Wars as well.

For new-to-the-newsletter folks who don’t really know who I am or what I’m about, I recommend my standup special People Pleaser which is now free with ads on YouTube. (I also recommend it for people who aren’t new to the newsletter!)

Anyway! It’s the last week of the year, and I don’t think I’m alone in feeling a great wave of: “What the hell did I even do for the past twelve months!” So, largely for my own psychological well-being, but also for the sake of sharing a few things I’m proud of one last(?) time before we turn the page and (hopefully) do new stuff, here is a brief accounting of my year, both personally and professionally. I will be including some extremely small potatoes accomplishments to round out the list.

MY YEAR IN REVIEW, WITHOUT FURTHER ADO…

This year, I…

• Started off exactly where last year ended: Subbing in for an under-the-weather Todd Barry at Aimee Mann’s holiday show with Paul F. Tompkins and Griffin Newman (who was playing the role of Ted Leo).

• Attended weddings in three different states, and none of them were duds! Truly an unbelievable ratio. One was at an art museum and then a metal bar, one was at a summer camp with minimal electricity, and one was at a definitely haunted mansion-looking venue. The older I get, the more I love weddings. In part I think it’s because I appreciate anything that reconvenes a lot of friends from disparate places, and in part it’s because I spent my late 20s and early 30s working weekends and too anxious to take time off. I have also been fortunate enough to find myself in a place of financial stability that means I don’t have to sleep four-friends-to-a-bed like Charlie Bucket’s grandparents when I travel, which makes the whole enterprise a lot more comfortable.

• Interviewed Malala (yes, the Malala) on the radio. She was extraordinarily gracious and charming, and she took it in stride when I almost accidentally hung up halfway through the segment. It was such an honor and a thrill to keep Peter Sagal’s lectern warm guest hosting Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me for the week! Also, thanks to the WWDTM folks, I got to meet Bob Seger, perform at Carnegie Hall, and do standup in some beautiful theaters in the midwest.

• Had several long phone calls with friends. (Phone calls are my big trend forecast for 2024. I think they’re coming back. My theory about why younger people don’t like talking on the phone is that with the rise of texting and the absolutely precipitous drop in the quality of customer service, the quality of what happens on the average phone call has diminished. We’ve gotta reclaim phone calls! They’re not just for college alumni associations asking for money and our parents telling us someone from our hometown died!)

• Watched my niece (niece-in-law? do we say that?) absolutely dominate her bat mitzvah party. She truly owned the dance floor, leading a pack of tweens in elaborate routines and shouting out the uncensored lyrics to today’s pop hits (despite the DJ playing the censored version). The kids also knew all the words to “Low” by Flo Rida (feat. T-Pain), which was an ENORMOUS surprise to witness.

• Filmed a new ten minute standup set for Don’t Tell Comedy that will be available early next year for your eyes and ears.

• Wrote a humor piece for The New Yorker that people thought was real and got mad at when they posted it on social media. I hate when people are mad at me on purpose, but I love when people are mad at fake-me by accident!

• Contributed a small piece of advice to

  Jami Attenberg
  ’s book of craft tips and techniques for writers, which you can preorder right now!!! (It comes out in like two weeks!)

• Read some books. Not a ton, but some, which isn’t nothing, (but also isn’t much).

• Got to be in a music video for Speedy Ortiz, one of the best bands.

• Saw a ton of my favorite musical artists (some for the first time, some a couple of times) and turned off my working/stressing/planning brain as much as I could and got my ass kicked by live music.

• Tended to our elderly, eccentric pug in the middle of the night so that my wife could be well-rested to work on her book in the morning. (She did the same for me when I was on the road!)

• Sold out standup shows in Washington D.C., Brooklyn, Toronto, Pittsburgh, Utah, and Cincinnati. Did a ton of extremely fun, extremely not sold out shows (and some close to sold out shows) in many other cities! More to come soon!

• Performed in beautiful theaters and artsy hotel lobbies thanks to pals/colleagues like Kelsey and Alex from Normal Gossip, John Oliver, Adam Pally, Alison Roman, Alexandra Petri, Lance Bangs, Josh Kantor, Ben Hosley, and Jesse David Fox.

• Briefly tried smoking a little weed at night before bed. (It didn’t take.)

• Listened to roughly 18,000,000 hours of NBA podcasts and watched a roughly equivalent number of hours of games and sent approximately that many text messages about those games.

• Became extremely active in the WGA (and to a lesser extent SAG-AFTRA) strike effort! Met a TON of writers who work in different fields that I’d never otherwise know. I witnessed and benefitted from a TON of solidarity across the industry, and across the labor movement as a whole. I learned a lot about organizing and the entertainment industry and how to walk in circles while leading a chant on a megaphone. I got to write about it for The Nation and go on TMZ and (sort of) talk to model/podcaster (modcaster?) Emrata about it. It was a pretty intense time, but I’m so grateful to have been a small part of this giant group effort and success and witness/cheer for organizing efforts by flight attendants and auto workers and more! Also, for the first time in my life I have some pictures of me looking (relatively) cool and intense. (Please let me believe I looked cool and intense.)

Photo by Hilary Swift!

• Held friends’ new babies.

• Gave those babies back when they got fussy.

• Appeared on a bunch of great podcasts including…

  • All Fantasy Everything

  • The (aforementioned) Bugle & The Gargle

  • Seek Treatment

  • Help Side

  • Tell Me About It

  • Devine Intervention

  • First Ballot

  • The Novelizers

  • Captain Hippo Pleases The Cube

  • Many other shows also!!!

• Got my first credit on a narrative tv show (the final season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which I am very proud of)!!!

• UPDATE: I forgot that I also wrote lovingly about Polar Seltzer (the pride of Worcester, MA) for Slate, prompting Polar to send me an unbelievable quantity of seltzer in the mail, which I accepted after offering to pay for it and being ignored.

• Participated in a Jewish-Palestinian solidarity panel with some really kind and brilliant people (I think this will also be available to watch/listen to early next year), which made me a little nervous because I’m an avowed dumbass, but also it was important to me to stand with people who are advocating for peace and justice and freedom.

• Saw a ton of friends all across the U.S. and (one city in) Canada. Drank a little too much. Stayed out a little too late. Missed a few people in a few places, and felt sad but excited to see them in the future. Had several very long coffee catchups in my neighborhood with several pals. Made new friends and drove to gigs with them and ate dinner on a cruise ship with them and talked shit with them. Felt a great sense of community in good times and hard times.

• Ate lots of good meals and spent lots of wonderful time with Maris staying home and taking trips and seeing friends and eating food and singing karaoke.

Okay that’s most of it I think? What’d you get up to this year? Anything good?

A LITTLE RECOMMENDATION:
Gary Gulman - Born On 3rd Base

It is immoral that someone this funny also has such good hair!

You probably already know about Gary Gulman because he is very famous and successful. But maybe you don’t! And even if you do, maybe you hadn’t heard that he has a new standup special (Born on 3rd Base) out now (on Max…MAX? formatting unclear). Kathryn VanArendonk, one of my favorite culture writers/critics, wrote a great review of the special that really got into how skillfully Gary pairs his writing and performance (best in the business, imo) with his choice of subject matter (income inequality and empathy). I will also add that it’s a great special to watch with young (or old) comedy fans who can handle one or two curse words but aren’t people you want to sit through and hour of raunchy jokes with.

I will ALSO also add that Gary is an extremely thoughtful and nice dude, and that I’ve been a fan of his for almost two decades and a friend for a big chunk of that time. He’s one of the most beloved and respected comedians in the industry, and I am very grateful to have been the beneficiary of his wisdom and advice numerous times. One that sticks out: In 2010, I was opening for Gary in Atlanta, and on the walk back to the hotel after the shows, I confessed that earlier in the year I’d been considering scaling back my comedy ambitions and applying to grad school. Gary stopped walking and very sincerely told me: “This is your grad school!” And he was right; it was! I think about that conversation all the time!!!! It was (and still is!) so heartening that someone who I looked up to so much believed in me!

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!

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)