#64. Barbie and You

Your job is just movie, and that's cool.

Josh Gondelman

Jan 29, 2024

Hi everyone,

I got back yesterday afternoon from a trip home to Massachusetts to see my family and tell jokes AND I’M ALL OUTTA JOKES (jkjkjk). Off Cabot in Beverly is such a great venue and it was so much fun to do my first weekend of shows there. Thanks a TON to the staff and to everyone from childhood/summer camp/high school/college who made it out to the shows.

It’s always such a trip performing for a crowd (like the late show on Saturday) where a lot of people know me from (for lack of a better term) real life. I’ve been telling a story from high school that involves real people and real events, and the dynamic in the room (or at least in my brain) is so different when I feel like I’m being fact checked in real time.

Back when I was teaching preschool, my coworkers would come to see me and would be in complete party mode. Other comics would be like who were those wild 28-55-year-old women in the crowd? And I’d be like…oh they’re all early childhood education professionals. And the comics would be like…wow I hope they get home safely and sober up before they have to deal with children. It means so much to me for real that anyone (especially people who have to deal with me offstage too) get tickets to sit and listen to me talk for an hour uninterrupted. So, for real, thanks.

And double thanks to Julie who smuggled me in a junior roast beef three-way (mayo, bbq sauce, and cheese) from Nick’s in Beverly. It was my first North Shore Beef in years, and it was perfect. I am a little scared to post a review on the roast beef sandwich Facebook group I’ve been lurking on since the pandemic started (the commenters are so mean!!!) but I’d give it a strong 8.75 out of 10.

A north shore beef. If you know, you know. — Aesthetically horrific, but I swear it as delicious.

Also! My special taping in June sold out so fast (thank you!!!) and we’re working on getting a late show for the same night scheduled! More info soon!

Between now and then I’m adding a bunch of tour dates to get ready for the recording. Most recently added is SEATTLE back at Here-After on 5/10! Grab those tickets now! Last time I headlined there, the early show sold out well in advance and the late show got close too! (San Francisco and Portland shows that week will be announced soon too, with more dates to come!) Are there other places you’d like me to perform soon? Let me know!

PEP TALK FOR BARBIE

Barbie Driver. (Margot Robbie as Barbie driving a car.) — Petition to rebrand her recent flop as “Barbylon” so people go back and watch it.

Barbie, you’re doing great. You are a wildly popular toy and the basis for a wildly lucrative movie (Barbie). The film was nominated for several Oscars with some confusing omissions in light of who got the nods. (Personally, I think that Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie both gave great performances, but Gosling got nominated as a Supporting Actor because he did the classic thing people LOVE of Serious Guy Being Silly, which is a treat, but there’s also a whole genre of Silly People who rarely receive the same kind of credit for being fun to watch.) Oh boy, slight digression incoming…

We definitely underrate delight as a feeling art can generate. This isn’t really about you anymore, Barbie, but it’s on my mind. It is, in my extraordinarily biased opinion, much easier to make people sad than to delight them. A lot of superhero movies are boring and bad, and I wish there were fewer of them. But I feel the same about war movies. Oh you realized that war dehumanizes us all and there are no winners? Should we throw a party? Should we invite Ernest Hemingway? (Hat tip to Helena, the “should we invite” pioneer.) I wish we spoke more admiringly of movies that delighted us! Funny Ben Affleck is so much more interesting than Batman Ben Affleck!!! Justice for Barb and Star etc. etc. etc.

Barbie, the best possible thing that can come from your success is the opposite of you (no offense, and with all due respect to film critic Senator Hillary Clinton). Greta Gerwig (who has been overlooked for awards in the past!!!) took on the project of directing and co-writing a toy commercial for children that adults would also like, and I think she made the best possible Barbie movie. And hopefully now that she’s done the biggest thing possible she can do as many small things as she wants. Maybe now she will make Littler Women where Bob Odenkirk does a Honey I Shrunk the Kids on the March sisters. Maybe she’ll do an East Coast Ladybird-type movie that takes place in Albany instead of Sacramento. Or a new, teensy little story unrelated her previous work, which might be best of all. (Or maybe she’ll use her overflowing reservoir of Hollywood capital to make a giant weird epic she’d always dreamed of. Also good! It’s up to her!)

Barbie, even though you are the picture of having it all, not everything has to be everything. A movie can make a billion dollars without also being named the Best Art, even when it’s (in many respects) very good art! It’s worthwhile to do a good job for its own sake, and it’s a fairly miraculous feat that this movie is actually pretty good and isn’t just…I don’t know…Jumanji. Prestige is subjective and, frankly, capricious. (How does nearly every David O. Russell movie, even some horrendous ones, manage to plop itself squarely into the Oscar conversation?) Delight is undeniable.

As an homage to Barbie (2023), this pep talk got kind of tonally/thematically muddled at the end, despite being overall a good time.

PEP TALK FOR A READER

I did a little condensing and gave the requester a nickname, as is my custom.

Hi Josh! I love the attention of strangers and I could use a pep talk about recentering my creative self after being down in a corporate rabbit hole.
- Recenter of Attention

Here is a secret that well-adjusted people don’t want you to know: External validation feels good. You’re not supposed to make creative work for that reason, but you’re not supposed to put Q-Tips in your ears either.

If you want attention from strangers, though, there are any number of easier ways to get it than by recentering your creative self. You can fall over in public. You can tweet rage-bait garbage like: “Why would I ever read an entire book, when I can learn all the important parts just from the back cover? #lifehack” You can start wearing a big stupid hat everywhere you go. You can commit a series of increasingly audacious heists, hitting high profile targets and leaving a signature clue at the site of each robbery. (Okay maybe that one is harder than getting back in touch with your sense of creativity.)

If you want attention, you can get it today! Choose a 7-minute-long karaoke song to perform at a local bar! Argue with your significant other loudly and publicly! Knock over a statue with your car (or a smaller statue with your bike)!

If you want to feel and be creative rather than just courting the eyeballs and ear…pits(?) of strangers, you can do that too, but it’s certainly more work! The thing well-adjusted people are right about, though, is that it does feel better to do work you’re proud of than to seek out the electricity of praise or scorn for its own sake. Sorry for the tough (by my standards) love, but you probably don’t just want attention from strangers. Otherwise you’d have a pet snake you brought with you on your neighborhood errands. But, I think if you’re writing to me, you know that! You know it takes effort and intention to get out of a creative rut. And it might involve being more tired and less comfortable than you’ve gotten used to. Being creative takes time and energy. And then additional time and energy on top of that startup cost if you want to court positive reinforcement from the outside world! But you can do it!

If you want attention, rollerblade through a mall. If you want to be creative, block off a few minutes a day to write or paint or play an instrument. But if you want attention for doing creative work, that’s a different level of commitment. You can have that too, but it may be more of a whole thing.

(Okay a moment of advice for real: If it feels too daunting to go from “corporate job” to “creative genius,” make time to be a fan of work that inspires you. Watch and read and listen to stuff that moves you to do your own work. It is slightly more work than scrolling on your phone or watching a show you don’t have to really pay attention to, but it’s way more likely to get you hyped up to create meaningful work of your own!)

PICK-ME-UP THING OF THE WEEK:
Jacqueline Novak - “Get on Your Knees”

I saw Jacqueline’s show a few years back when it was running off-Broadway, and I’m so glad people all over the place can watch it now on Netflix. It’s an acclaimed solo show about sex and gender and power, but equally importantly, it is full of great jokes the whole way through. Jacqueline’s pacing and use of language is legitimately mesmerizing; nobody does it like her, for real.

Recently, in response to seeing that a documentary about the rise and fall of Juul existed, I tweeted “Not everything that ever happened needs to be a documentary.” And my friend Sean, a documentarian, gently corrected me that everything CAN be a documentary with the right care put into the storytelling. SIMILARLY, not every topic or story needs to be a one person show, but when someone is invested and insightful and comedically gifted enough anything (including blowjobs) can make for a great show. And not every “serious” topic makes for a great show if it doesn’t have that care and craft behind it.

People talk a lot of trash about dick jokes, but dicks are funny and if you have something new to say about them, let it rip, I think! It’s a shoddy craftsperson who blames their tools, pun intended.