#62. Veggie Burgers and You

It's my patty and I'll soy if I want to.

Jan 15, 2024

Hi everyone,

It’s my birthday! It’s not an important one (although, what birthday is important except for the day you’re initially born), but I do intend to celebrate because I like both treats and attention! But not too much attention! Exactly the amount I was hoping for AND NO MORE. (Can you tell why I do what I do professionally?)

While the year continues to shake itself awake, I’ve had a little more down time at home than usual, and I’ve been watching/reading things! I’m extremely excited for the Fargo season finale this week. (Something’s got to happen to Jon Hamm’s nipple rings, right?) I liked The Holdovers much more than I expected to! The trailer made it seem kind of…generic? But it was really lovely and well made! And I read my friend-of-a-friend (or maybe she’s my friend now too…something to check in on) Holly’s upcoming novel The Husbands which is about a woman whose attic magically produces a never-ending stream of husbands one at a time. It is SO charming and sweet and compelling and readable, exactly the kind of book I think a lot of people are looking for a lot of the time. I had up and down feelings about the movie Dream Scenario which was so inventive and full of great performances that I’d say it’s worth watching despite portraying a world that feels a little…cynical for my taste maybe? Agree? Disagree?

Tomorrow (Tuesday) night at 10 I’m opening for David Cross at Union Hall in Brooklyn. The show is sold out, but if you like me a little bit and David a lot, I imagine there will be some standby tickets if you show up early.

Also this week! I’m at the Comedy Vault in Batavia, IL for five shows (1/18-1/20), and I’d love to see you if you’re in the Chicago area!

Next week! I’ll be at Off Cabot in Beverly, MA for four shows (1/26-1/27)! Boston area let’s gooooo!!!

I was kind of all over the place last week, so if this newsletter is not enough Josh Gondelman news and entertainment for your taste, I’ve got a whole bunch of other Gondelman Media to recommend!

I appeared on Jordan Crucciola’s podcast Feeling Seen to discuss how Inside Llewyn Davis was like a horror movie to me!
I gave a little advice regarding bad jokes via
Amy Dickinson
’s “Ask Amy” column.
I posted some fun new standup jokes. I linked to the Instagram clips, but they’re also on TikTok if you’re more of a TikTok person! If you like them, maybe you’d want to follow me and/or share the bits you enjoy? Maybe not! That’s fine too! Also, while we’re at it, if you like this newsletter, it would be really wonderful if you could tell a friend or share it on your social media. I try to do a lot of free stuff in hopes people will buy tickets/books etc. when I put them out, and word of mouth really helps.
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(Both above clips were from my friend Erin Judge’s wonderful new show at the Ripped Bodice bookstore in Park Slope, Brooklyn!) I’ve got some more new standup coming out soon too. :)
A long panel conversation about (in large part) Jewish-Palestinian solidarity I was asked to be a part of in December was released online last week. The panelists were all really thoughtful and compelling, and I was very honored to be included. It was way outside my comfort zone in terms of the depth of the conversation not being the kind of thing I’m usually professionally/publicly a part of. Ultimately, I tried to get over my discomfort for the sake of being (hopefully) helpful and saying what I mean with my chest. Thanks to everyone behind Here & Everywhere and everyone who worked on it for organizing and executing such a thoughtful and heartfelt conversation.
In a similar vein, I was invited to be a panelist as part of Stephanie Ruhle’s “Nightcap” segment on her MSNBC show! I’ve done a bunch of MSNBC panel before, and I usually prepare a ton of jokes in advance. I like the challenge of being funny on these shows that are not explicitly set up for comedy. I’m not a pundit! I’m a goofball who knows enough about things to make jokes. This show has a different setup than I was used to, so I felt like maybe I didn’t do my best work! But that’s okay! It was a cool learning experience! I’ll be more lively and off the cuff if they have me back! I also once again shouted out friend of the newsletter Ayo Edebiri! (Everyone at 11th Hour was very nice and helpful and capable too!)

I think that’s all of it? It was quite a week! On to the regularly scheduled pep talks!

PEP TALK FOR VEGGIE BURGERS

The titular burger from Superiority Burger. — A bad picture of a great sandwich.

Last week, a good friend of mine moved to New York, and I spend several days choosing a restaurant for a welcome-to-town dinner hangout/catchup. I wanted to pick a place that felt specific to NYC but wasn’t too fussy or fancy and didn’t come off as corny (“let’s get dollar pizza slices and eat them while sitting in the crown of the Statue of Liberty!”) either. I landed on Superiority Burger in the East Village, a beloved vegetarian/vegan spot with a good bar. (Shout out to Gabriella and Christian who introduced me to the burgers by having them cater their vegan wedding!)

Obviously, vegetables contain nutrients, which in many cases is their appeal. But a good veggie burger says: Fuck that. A great veggie burger doesn’t succeed because it effectively imitates meat (although the Impossible and Beyond burgers are not bad). The success of a veggie burger lies in its ability to be a big chunk of ground up something tasty covered in a bunch of other tasty stuff that you can customize to your own particular preferences at a graduation party or a neighborhood watering hole.

A good veggie burger weds the premise of no animal dying for your meal with the sensation that maybe your meal is bringing you a few minutes closer to death. I respect the moxie of a sandwich that is cruelty free, except for what it does to the body of the person eating it. Consuming vegetarian junk food is like driving a Prius and getting hit by a Hummer. Everyone else is going to be fine.

The older you get and the more people depend on you, the less casual self-destruction you feel comfortable casually indulging in. Every thread you pull at turns out to be connected to someone else’s sleeve. It’s always been that way, but now you see it, and you can’t go back to the way it was before. A good, greasy, veggie burger allows you to careen lightly out of control while doing as little damage to anyone else as possible. Thank you, veggie burger, the good choice of bad decisions.

(The Superiority Collard Greens Sandwich is also really great.)

PEP TALKS FOR READERS

As usual I’ve done some condensing and renaming and punctuating, for my own reasons! DEAL WITH IT!

Hi, Josh. I’m a new CPAP user, and I could use a pep talk about it. Wearing a fighter pilot mask to bed may sound cool, but it feels like a dalek has attached itself to my face. So instead of waking up with a headache every day due to oxygen deprivation, I wake up with a sore nose, feeling old and sad. Not surprisingly, this has not helped my insomnia at all. I know this is a small-potato problem in the grand scheme of things, but it makes me a sad little spud.
- Ya Snooze, Ya Bruise

Not to be alarming, but it’s okay to get caught up in small potato problems sometimes, and I think this one is a real deal twice-baked Idaho number. I very much sympathize with this unease with trading a little improvement in your life for the concrete acknowledgement of the inexorable sawteeth of time against our squishy, crunchy human bodies. I recently got a new prescription for my glasses, and I experienced equally strong feelings of “oh good I can see better” and “oh shit, entropy got me again, that son of a gun.”

Old and sad is a grisly combo, and the worst thing about it is, you can only ever change half of it. Like, you can’t get less old. In fact, you’re only going to get more old, until that stops, which is a bigger problem than what you’re dealing with now. So, with young and happy fully off the table, and young and sad firmly in the rear view (which is kind of nice, right?), it seems like your best option here is to be old and…happy which is, despite what commercials for lotion tell you, possible. (Huge hat tip to

Jessica DeFino

’s newsletter The Unpublishable for championing that idea.)

Think of it this way: Your life is materially better than it was just a little while ago. The condition that had been ruining nights and mornings is in check, and the tradeoff is a lightly squished face. (Asked for comment, my pug Bizzy responded: “What, is there something wrong with a little smushing of the nose?”) You’re starting every day of your life with an advantage over how you’d been waking up. I understand (and feel!) the cultural weight of being older than you’ve ever been. Today is the first day of the last year of my 30s. But though you are getting older, you are also getting better, like wine or a Terminator or Meryl Streep. Take that, Death, you wheezy old dipshit!!!

Also, maybe there’s an adjustment that will be easier on your nose? Or maybe your cartilage will become SUPER STRONG from standing up to the mask every night. ONLY TIME WILL TELL!

I’d love to get a pep talk in the newsletter. I’m currently on the precipice of my new-ish life coaching business being successful, but it also feels like I’ve been on the precipice forever.
- Fourth and Goal-oriented

First off: Does this make me your coach? And am I now on the precipice of success? This could be huge for me!!!

Honestly, though, this is more of a job for you than it is for me. If you had your own you, what would you tell you to do? Probably something like: “Success can look different than you thought it might.” Or: “You have come this far, and you’ll get the rest of the way to your goals!” Or: “Now, at success’s threshold, is the time and place to destroy everything standing between you and your dreams with hammers and flamethrowers.” (Maybe not the last one. But I don’t know! I’m not the life coach here!)

I was almost against the idea of giving you a pep talk at all, on a “physician, heal thyself” type of vibe. But this newsletter is not for tough love. It is for…easy love, which is also a good kind of love. Plus, you deserve the same support you provide for others. So, good luck getting over that hump! You didn’t get this far by accident! And I hope you achieve all your dreams (unless you are one of the kinds of coaches that basically does MLM stuff in which case you should quit and become a social studies teacher or a bartender or something).

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Bishop Allen - “Things Are What You Make of Them”

Last week my friend Jane put me onto the new(ish) Jens Lekman album, and it reminded me of a period in my life when I had his old work and Bishop Allen’s first couple of albums in heavy rotation. Probably on an old school (lol) iPod. I was talking recently with a friend about whether Big Tech has actually brought us anything legitimately NEW and useful in years (with the premise being that Uber and the like aren’t new technology they’re just old technology plus a contempt for labor rights). The most recent example we could come up with was a phone/stereo system that also had GPS. Phone GPS (full of music) is an incredible invention. As recently as my college years, those were three separate devices that required wildly different implementation to use in a moving car. Anyway! Bishop Allen kind of from the Vampire Weekend School of Bands Who Are Fancy Little Guys, but that can be fun sometimes!