#61. Slush Puddles and You

billy joel voice Puddle of dread...puddle of ice.

Jan 08, 2024

Hi everyone,

I hope the first week of 2024 treated you well! I’ve had such a fun week of shows that I feel cosmically due for an epically bad set right around the corner. The audiences at the Comedy Cellar have been extra lively and attentive. I had the best time opening for my buddy Ian Karmel (still on tour) at City Winery and then hanging out late eating french fries and bullshitting. I can feel a total eating it coming on like a senior citizen with a bad knee can sense a thunder storm on the horizon.

I also traveled to San Francisco to guest host

Chris Duffy

’s extremely fun science/comedy show Wrong Answers Only at the Joint Mathematics Meetings, a big conference of mathematicians. I was a little nervous because the show was for an all-mathematician audience. I used to be good at math, and then math got harder. On the spectrum from “needs a calculator to figure out my age” to “understands string theory,” I’m a firm “can calculate a restaurant tip in my head unless I’ve had a disqualifying number of drinks.” In short: I definitively lack the expertise to put on a professional-grade math-intensive comedy show.

Signage at the Joint Mathematics Meetings. — You down with J.M.M.? Oh, you don’t know them?

Fortunately, the show is designed for the host and comedian panelists to be curious (aka uninformed) and ask questions. Our panelists (Chrissy Shackleford, Dauood Naimyar, and Natasha Vinik) were extremely funny and open to looking silly in front of a very smart audience who (it turned out) delighted in bullying us by asking questions that went way over our heads and doing what I can only describe as “math bits” with our guest expert, the extraordinarily brilliant (and patient) Emily Riehl.

Emily Riehl works in the fields of Category Theory and Homotopy Type Theory, which, to the best of my wildly limited understanding is the study of how mathematical entities are more alike than they appear. Her real world example was that in many categorical ways, a thong is the same as pants. To which I replied: “Well, I’ve never heard Sisqo sing THOSE PAAAANTS PA-PANTS-PANTS-PAAAAANTS!” The audience of mathematicians did not like that joke…at all. They also hated my assertion that there should be a geometry-based rap group called NWA²+NWB²=NWC².

PEP TALK FOR SLUSH PUDDLES

Boots stepping in slush, lifted from a place called BootRescue. — I shudder to think at how wet those socks are about to be.

Basically everyone loves a snow flurry but almost nobody likes a slush puddle, which seems unfair to me because a slush is the inevitable byproduct of even a light, picturesque dusting. It’s the other side of the “how the sausage gets made” coin. In this case, nobody wants to see how the sausage gets…pooped, I guess.

Slush, you are snow! Even when people don’t like to admit it because you’re really ~going through it~ and are a little annoying to deal with at the moment. You are the physical embodiment of: “If you can’t handle me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best.” Given the cycle of evaporation, condensation, and precipitation, it seems mathematically inevitable that you’ll be the beautiful, beloved incarnation of snow again in the future. (Although, I should really be clear…I don’t understand math at all.)

When people complain about you, slush, they don’t hate you, they’re just upset that a part of your journey is inconvenient for them. And, honestly, if they’ve ever posted an Instagram photo of a snow-capped pine tree or a boomerang of big fat flakes drifting through the air, they should waterproof their boots and shut their damn mouths about how much they hate stepping in puddles.

Also, as an aside, I have gleaned from social media that posting boomerangs is considered old people behavior by Gen Z. And to that I say: Yeah, I’m old! It’s fine! I turn 39 in a week, and one of the advantages of aging is that you can just do things you like and not care about what is cool. Specifically, I aspire to use social media more like an aunt or uncle. Lots of pictures of things and people I like and lots of comments on other people’s pictures saying how nice their haircut looks or how exciting their new job seems like or how cute their baby or dog is. I don’t have to call a carousel of 10 pictures a “dump” if I don’t want to. Stop trying to be cool, older millennials! It’s over for us!

Anyway, slush, you’re a real drag, but that’s part of the deal, and if the rest of us can’t accept that, it’s on us, not you.

PEP TALKS FOR A READER

I’ve done a little condensing and nicknaming of readers for my own, somewhat opaque purposes. Don’t worry about it.

Hi Josh! I ultimately want to be a writer, and I'm feeling like a lot of my friends who I started with at the same time have surpassed me - they're writing for major publications, or have book deals, or are writing for TV. I've had a lot of big personal events in the last year to deal with (I got divorced and stopped speaking with my parents) but it's hard to look at everyone else succeeding around me and not feel sad for my own career. Also a bit mad and jealous if we're being honest - if everyone else is getting the big opportunities and payday to go with it, why can't I too? So I guess my question is, any advice on how to not give up our yours dreams when they're not going so well?
- Worried I’m Writing Wrong

Okay, fine. I will do a little advice at the end of this non-advice pep talk, but mostly because it is advice I have to whisper in my own face every so often like Mark Wahlberg at the end of Boogie Nights.

But first, the pep talk! In situations like this, people often cite the maxim: “Comparison is the thief of joy.” And that’s true! It doesn’t feel good to compare yourself to more successful friends (and it feels even worse to compare yourself to more successful enemies, but that’s not the issue here thank goodness). Unfortunately, obliterating one’s own ego is the only path to eliminating all comparison. And while I have no beef with the tenets of Buddhist philosophy, as an artist, it can feel nice to have a teensy tiny itty bitty smidgen of ego, right? Especially when you aspire to professional creative work rather than just making art for art’s sake.

So, let’s allow for the fact that a little jealousy is toxic, but scrubbing away all of your frustration is impractical, in the same way you can never get all of your laundry clean at once unless you wash your clothes naked. But let’s also acknowledge that your struggles are not proof that the world is unfair. The world is unfair in so many ways! But that’s not what this is about, even if it sort of is. Your friends’ successes are not the principal effects of the world’s injustice. They also don’t mean that you’re untalented or destined to for failure. You are probably not those things! But honestly, even if you are both that’s fine, and if you are one you don’t have to be the other. Plenty of talented people never achieve the success they deserve, and plenty of untalented people thrive. See: Above acknowledgement of the unfairness of life.

Here comes the peppy part I swear: The fact is, your friends’ accomplishments make your own success materially more likely. For one thing, seeing people you like and respect and admire (assuming that’s how you feel about your friends) is a good sign, certainly better than watching the blossoming careers of people upon whose books and scripts and shoes you wouldn’t piss if they were on fire (to paraphrase a different, less Buddhist maxim). Not to mention, having friends with jobs and book deals makes it more likely that your own good work will rewarded BECAUSE THAT’S HOW PEOPLE GET JOBS AND AGENTS!!!

With all the high-profile talk about “nepo-babies” and people being born into a network of connections, I think we sometimes lose sight fo the fact that having a community of peers and colleagues and collaborators is actually a good thing when you develop it through hard work and mutual support. There is a certain romanticism to the (possibly) apocryphal stories of a writer sneaking a folio of materials onto the desk of a showbiz exec after chloroforming a guard and sneaking onto a studio lot, or a star being discovered through their natural it-factor while walking down the street in an especially jaunty or sensual manner. But often this kind of break happens because people want to work with and hire people they like and trust. Or they recommend people they like and trust for jobs when they are unavailable to do them. Sometimes this creates insular “boys clubs” and cliques, which isn’t ideal. But that doesn’t change the fact that when good things happen for your friends, that is actually good and not bad news for you. And isn’t that nicer than having to do everything alone, from scratch?

Also, as a famous comedian once reminded me in a comedy club green room after I refused to applaud for a friend as a joke: “It’s good to clap.” It is psychologically and communally beneficial to celebrate other people’s achievements even when you are a little sad and jealous. Maybe especially when you feel that way.

Okay, here’s the advice: Comparison is, if not inevitable, a true hassle to eliminate. So, when you feel yourself itching to compare, compare you to you. Have you created new work that you’re proud of lately? Are you learning from and supporting other people’s work when it resonates with you? Is your life outside of your art happy and/or healthy? Is there anything you could be doing to make things better/happier/more stimulating for yourself down the line?

It sounds like you’ve spent a good chunk of this year extracting yourself from personal relationships that were making your life worse. That’s not falling behind professionally. That’s clearing the path for a better future.

Comparison can steal your joy if you let it, but it can also show you how much joy is already in your life, and what you can do to cultivate more. And unless you’re the kind of person who does your laundry in the nude, that’s a pretty good place to arrive at.

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Jens Lekman and LouLou Lamotte - “Evening Prayer”

My friend

Sarah Brin

put me on to Jens Lekman when we were in college, but aside from a song or two that stuck in my brain through the years, I kind of lost track of him as a living, working artist in the same way you don’t check to see if there are any new Led Zeppelin songs being released. Then last week my friend Jane posted a “new” (seven years old but new to me) Jens Lekman song with a boppy little disco groove, and I was like…he’s back, baby! even though he probably never went anywhere and I was the one who drifted away. (Don’t tell him if you see him.)

As That’s Marvelous readers may know, something I’ve been thinking about a great deal lately is how close a friend you have to be to be helpful to someone who’s suffering, and this song posits…don’t worry about it. Just go for it. That’s nice to hear! And it’s also nice to hear this song, which despite its pervasive use of the word “tumor,” is extremely breezy.