#60. Resolution Speed Round

Peppy new year to one and all!

Hi everyone,

Happy new year! I had a much-needed, (reasonably) laid back last week of 2023. Highlights include: Doing a little karaoke (stole my friend Chris’s move of starting the night with “Let Her Cry” by Hootie and the Blowish, and my friend Jaya’s move of ending the night with “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” by Celine Dion) and eating a lot of Chinese food. Maris and I watched (and really enjoyed) May December. This week, I’m back to work, taking a quick trip to San Francisco and then coming home to New York to tell some jokes on Ian Karmel’s Thursday night show at City Winery.

I also am making an effort to get on top of the logistical/maintenance stuff I always let slide, so I got an eye exam and a new pair of glasses (pictured below), which are (I think) stylish, but I worry they make me look like a guy who wrote one novel that everyone hated 15 years ago and has been working on a follow-up ever since.

New glasses, classic Maris.

I even went to the dentist for the first time in [REDACTED] months, but I’m doing the thing that parents of toddlers do where I tally up several dozen months instead of reducing to “years.” For both my glasses and my teeth, I went to the prominent millennial-focused franchises that let you book appointments online (and then they text you for days after your appointment to follow up even if you don’t text back…take the hint, dentist!!!). On the plus side, I was able to avoid some of the pitfalls of our country’s terrible healthcare system (draconian booking systems, six-month waits), but on the other hand I ended up unclear whether I was eligible for any of the benefits of our terrible healthcare system (marginal discounts on vision and dental procedures). The other drawback was dealing with the dentist’s Life, Laugh, Love-ass office decor.

“Brush like no one’s watching. Floss like your gums have never been hurt.”

After a truly grueling cleaning that felt like the hygienist was attempting to carve an individual statue of David out of each tooth in my mouth, I was told I’d have to return for one filling, which was honestly a relief. From the way she was chiseling I feared I’d become more cavity than tooth. As it turned out, the filling was only necessary because the existing filling on my only previous cavity had worn down and needed to be replaced. It was the return of an old foe, like Rocky II, so I will count it as a single cavity that took a break for a few years. New year, same me!

In a similar vein, I came into the living room on Saturday to find Maris watching The Big Lebowski (inspired by the nods to it in the new season of Fargo, which is excellent so far). I like to think of myself as having grown and changed since I first saw the movie 25ish years ago, but 90-seconds into this Lewbowski rewatch, I realized there’s a lot of 1998 Me still in there, lurking just beneath the surface.

They rolled their way into the semis.

The first time I saw The Big Lebowski, I was thrilled by how silly a movie made for grownups by serious filmmakers could be. It also taught me about the word “coitus,” the concept of nihilism, and Julianne Moore. I still love this movie from beginning to end, even though I almost always hate dream and drug tripping sequences in film (oh sure, let’s take a few minutes and explore the imagination of a person who only exists in someone else’s imagination to begin with). I mean, That’s Marvelous (the title of this very newsletter, in case you forgot) is a Lebowski reference.

Here is the best example of how deep the movie’s dialogue is buried in my brain…

I will note that I am also generally opposed to show-business stories as entertainment because they often land humblebraggier than the writer/performer intends. This story is no exception, but it’s mine, so I’m going to tell it: Early last year, on the extremely fun JoCo Cruise, Maris and I were talking to (the great!) Aimee Mann about dressing our dog Bizzy up in little outfits. In an echo of John Goodman’s confident cadence of how fast he could procure a severed toe (with nail polish) I said: “I can get you a picture of a pug by three o’clock this afternoon…with a sweater on.” It wasn’t until after I spoke that I realized where I’d cribbed the phrasing from, which felt a little goofy. And it was only after that that I realized AIMEE MANN IS IN THE BIG LEBOWSKI!!! Absolutely humiliating move, me!

It is 25% embarrassing and 75% comforting to have the same favorite movie as I had when I was thirteen. It means some combination of:

• I chose wisely as a young person.

• I have not grown up.

• My past and present selves are mutually recognizable in at least this modest way.

But I’ve come this far as a pretty similar guy, so I have chosen to accept this quality in myself while still being open to growth and change in other arenas.

Anyway, here’s to a year of continuity and improvement and reflection and joy and solidarity and community and peace and the other good stuff too.

RESOLUTION PEP TALKS

I asked (on Twitter) for people to send me their new year’s resolutions, especially ones they haven’t told people about, so I can pump them up a little bit, and here are the results! (As always I’ve made some minor tweaks to the requests.) But first, my own sole resolution, for the sixth year in a row.

This is pretty much my whole deal.

My goal is to finish the book I'm writing! Never written one before and I'm so close to finishing it.
- Fight For Your Write

This is an incredible resolution! I once heard a famous (lightly disgraced) author say that even if you keep the manuscript in a drawer forever, finishing a book is a huge accomplishment. He insisted that even if a book is bad, it’s still a big deal that you did what you set out to do. I agree with that generous assertion, even though this author made it before praising a new (very bad) first book by one of his friends. I was going to say that nobody can stop you from writing a book, which it technically probably not true. But no one WILL stop you from writing a book. You will finish this project, and maybe it’ll be good, and maybe it won’t, but that’s another problem for another time!

My new year's resolution is to date more and hopefully find a boyfriend.
- Single and Ready To You-Know-What

You’ve got this! As The Hold Steady once said: “There’s always other boys, there’s always other boyfriends/There’s always other boys, and you can make them like you.”

In the new year, I would like to go easier on myself, do more things just because/without overthinking, and take pride in compliments I receive and not just jokingly deflect them!
- Let The Right Words In

It’s hard to know when you’ve thought just the right amount! There’s a chance you might overcorrect and underthink a few decisions, but maybe that will be a nice change of pace! You’ll get to experience the thrill of being the person who orders the first thing on the menu or goes to see a weird art film they don’t understand with friends instead of staying at home and contemplating what to watch on tv.

The compliment thing is going to feel weird at first before it gets easier, but it’s really going to feel good to your friends/family/colleagues who don’t have to hear you reply to their attempts at kindness with: “No, no, no. I’m such a fucking piece of shit. You must have me confused with someone else, you stupid moron. Why else would you think I am good, when I am clearly the human equivalent of a wad of gum ground into the fabric of a movie theater seat.” What’s even the response to that? “Okay well fuck you, then?”

Even when it feels uncomfortable to go “Thanks! It means a lot that you’d say so!” think of it as a gift you are giving the people in your life.

i wanna learn how to cook. and by learn how to cook i mean i want 3 dishes i can hang my apron on. and the family say, “nah bruh. you did your thing.”
- My Confidence to the Chef

Great call, here. The excellent thing about this resolution is that you didn’t pigeonhole yourself to one type of dish. So one (or more) could be a dip or a side that takes half an hour to throw together. Cooking doesn’t have to be hard to be rewarding or impressive. The other great thing is that unlike other direction-following processes, cooking isn’t always a binary success/failure. Putting together a dresser 80% of the way leaves you with a heap of firewood. Getting a vodka sauce 80% right is still a pretty decent addition to a plate of pasta.

My resolution is to do stand-up again and connect with that insecure and funny and lovable community e.g. my people.
- Jokes On, Me

Hell yeah. I love a resolution to plug into a community. When I started doing standup, I inherited the wisdom that you had to be out doing it all the time to get really good. And that’s (at some level), true. The best way to go from “not doing something at all” to “being good at doing it” is to do it a whole bunch. However, it’s also okay to do things just as much as feels good and healthy. This is another situation where you don’t have to think of this as a binary between “aspiring to become Jerry Seinfeld” and “not doing comedy at all.” (Besides, other than having enough money to buy an armada of cars and have exactly one conversation with each of your peers in each of the vehicles, the first thing sounds like kind of a chore anyway, according to Jerry Seinfeld.)

I’m closing on a new house in 2 weeks. I’ve never lived alone. Never mind been solely responsible for a house. I just want to be responsible and tough and start figuring out a lot of stuff but not be afraid to ask for help, which is something in horrible at. I had my first house for 15 years and only now feel like I need to be a grown up? Idk. Spiraling lol
- Home(owner) Alone(r)

What a sick upgrade in problems you’ve given yourself! This all sounds like a lot to take on, but it’s so much better than other housing stresses! You have ascended to a new stratosphere of anxieties, like how the rapper Pimp C once bragged about eating so many shrimp he got iodine poisoning. You are at the intersection of ballin’ and bawlin’, and you’re going to figure this out!

I want a pep talk about me getting less pep talks.
- Pepless In Seattle (Note: Not actually in Seattle)

I don’t know if you mean you want to receive fewer pep talks than in the past, or that you’re definitely going to receive fewer pep talks than in the past, and you need help coping. Either way, it’s kind of paradoxical for me to respond with a pep talk because then it invalidates the premise of your request.

Either way, you’re going to be totally okay with fewer pep talks starting….now!

My New Year’s resolution is to spend less time watching tv with my roommate. For context, we are best friends and we’ve been roommates for our entire adult lives. I won’t drop our exact ages here but that’s a significant amount of time. We’re closing in on “have lived together longer than we lived apart” status.

I love him with my whole heart (and I like TV with a portion of my heart) but he’s pretty much always home when I am and he’s pretty much always got the TV on (his love of TV is both personal and professional) and I find it almost impossible to not  sit down and watch with him. And then the day is gone and I’ve accomplished none of my goals and I’ve enjoyed only a portion of my tv time, with the rest of that time feeling gross and lethargic.

My tentative goal is to limit myself to 2 hours of tv or one movie per day, but I’m worried about the siren song of friendship and sitcoms.
- Couch, That Hurts

A smarter, more nuanced newsletter than this might note that your real worry here isn’t about how much tv you watch; it’s about maintaining a friendship that you fear you may have outgrown and giving yourself the best chance to accomplish your goals outside of that friendship. A better writer might advise you to invite your roommate out to do other things, and to make sure that your entertainment choices during the time you do spend together on the couch feels restorative and/or enriching.

But, I’m just me, so I’ll say I have total confidence that you’ll find a way to navigate this long-tenured relationship while still allowing yourself to experience new and exciting personal growth. And also that if sometimes you end up slumped on the couch for longer than you’d planned, there are worse crimes to commit against one’s body and schedule.

if you still need unspoken new years resolutions for pep talks i want to write creatively and don’t know where to begin!! but if i put off trying another year i will be so disappointed in myself!!
- The Artist’s Waaaaay-ting, is the Hardest Part

On a personal note, I know the person who wrote this, and not only do I believe they’ll accomplish this goal, but I’m on the edge of my seat with excitement waiting to see what the long-term results will look like!

In general, I think this resolution gets to the heart of a lot of the anxiety people have around this time of year. I know I often feel the pressure to make the upcoming twelve months “my year” when in truth every year, even when it’s a rough one, is your year/my year/our year. Just like how even a piece of shit car can be your car, the worst year of your life was still your year.

Similarly, the only thing stopping you from going from being a person who doesn’t do a certain thing to being a person who does it is doing it for the first time. If you’ve written a limerick, you’ve written poetry. And you never have to worry about not having done it. Once you’ve dipped your littlest toe in the shallowest end of the pool, you can go back if you want, but you’ll never not have been there for at least a moment. Now all that’s left is the artistically difficult but psychologically less daunting hurdle of doing it more and better. Breaking the seal (a metaphor for psychologically dominating an aquatic mammal) is often the hardest part. But once you demoralize that sea creature a little bit, you’re in the game, and no one can say you aren’t!

If you, reader, have any other resolutions, leave a comment, and I’ll try to get back to you with at least an enthusiastic: “Get ‘em!”

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE NEW YEAR:
Mountain Goats - “This Year”

The pick-me-up song of the year, this year and every year.

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!

1/4: Opening for Ian Karmel at City Winery (NYC)

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

1/12: Hack City at Union Hall (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)