#70. Bradley Cooper and You

Oh nose. You didn't.

Hi everyone,

Please excuse the slight lateness of this newsletter. I’ve found myself unexpectedly at sea. Well, unexpectedly is maybe the wrong word. I didn’t wake up tied to the mast of a pirate ship. I was asked last minute to return to this year’s JoCo Cruise as a replacement for the brilliant Maria Bamford, who got sick and had to cancel. (Best wishes to Maria for a speedy recovery!!) I’m excited to be back on the ship for the second year in a row (more on that next week, I’m sure), but it was a little hectic getting here.

Last week, I had to move around a bunch of things to make this travel possible, all while zipping out to Chicago for a Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me taping, which was a ton of fun. Then I came home for four hours before leaving again for the airport.

Maris and I landed in Ft. Lauderdale at 11:30pm on Friday, and around midnight, after everyone else on our flight had snatched their checked bags from the carousel, I had the feeling that mine might not be emerging from the airport’s churning maw after all. My hunch was correct; my bag was still in New York. It felt…real bad. There was a significant chance that I was going to have to get on the ship with just the shirt on my back, the pants on my legs, the socks on my feet, and the underwear on my butt.

Nine hours later, thanks to the helpfulness of several JetBlue employees (counteracting, presumably, one employee’s unhelpfulness), my bag arrived at the Ft. Lauderdale airport. I hopped in a shuttle, grabbed the bag, took a taxi back to the hotel, and boarded a different shuttle which took me to the ship. What a relief it is when a problem is solved on a relatively short timeline and incurs a relatively small expense. For the cost of $20 (one cab ride) and smelling slightly funky (on account of wearing the same clothes from Chicago to New York to Florida), everything got set straight. I’m more of a lingering uncertainty guy most of the time, so it honestly felt incredible for something that went awry to so quickly be returned to order. Not to be controversial, but I think we should solve more problems quickly and effectively.

A few miscellaneous items of business before we get started in earnest…

• Congratulations to Friend of the Newsletter Cord Jefferson on his Oscar win!

• Thanks to Andy and Chris for having me on the sold out Bugle live show in Cambridge which I was able to participate in remotely from a boat thanks to the marvels of modern technology! I’ll be telling jokes on the 3/28 Edinburgh show via Zoom as well!

• I’ll be guest co-hosting Butterboy at Littlefield with my friend Maeve Higgins every Monday night in April! Fun!

• Oh also! I’m hosting the New York ceremony of the Writers Guild Awards on April 14th! Maybe it’ll be broadcast online? I’ll find out! I’m really psyched, and as I previously said on the record: It was an honor to be asked, and even more of an honor after I was assured it wasn’t because several actually famous people said no before they decided to ask me.

It’s an honor, and I’m not even nominated for anything!

PEP TALK FOR BRADLEY COOPER

The “maestro” “himself.”

Sorry to hear about the Oscars, big guy. Not that you deserved to win Best Actor or Best Original(?) Screenplay this year (you didn’t). But you really seemed to want it. You wanted it badly enough to give a bunch of weird quotes about your dad’s frequent nudity and not liking your daughter very much in service (? again) of your goal. You wanted it enough to put a big ol’ fake nose on top of your already-not-small actual nose. What was the deal with that? When Jamie Foxx played Ray Charles, they just put sunglasses on him. They didn’t actually blind him. And he won. You don’t have to be physically just like the real person you’re pretending to be. That’s why it’s acting. (Also, why do we so often give Oscars to dramatic impressions even though we so often get annoyed by comedic impressions? Something to ponder!) You wanted it badly enough to spend six years learning how to conduct classical music, a thing that maybe eleven total moviegoers would have noticed if you were faking. (Anecdotally, conducting an orchestra and playing harmonica are the two most complicated skills everyone thinks they’d be fine at without any training.)

You are a good actor and a pretty good director and I think a decent screenwriter too. That’s a great resume to have. And, it’s true what they say, it’s an honor just to be nominated. (I say that as a person who has in the past been nominated for awards and not won them, and also as a person who has not been nominated for other awards at all, and yes also a person who has occasionally won awards.) You’ll have lots of other chances to win awards thanks to your talent, your hard work, and your extremely awards-y taste in projects. But I think we can all agree is that your best work is acting like a total maniac in other people’s movies (shout out to Licorice Pizza and even American Hustle…yeah, I said it).

All things considered, you got to make the artsy biopic of your dreams, and you reminded America of an important truth: Leonard Bernstein got busy, if you know what I mean. You didn’t win, but neither did Paul Giamatti or Jeffrey Wright. In fact, more great actors don’t win best actor every year than do. Ever think of that? Also, your life is better than the lives of 99.999% of all humans who ever lived. So, be cool, man. See you in a few years when you bring your weird intense energy back to a reluctant but obsessive press tour!

PEP TALK FOR A READER

This one I didn’t really mess with, although I did add a nickname.

Hello! I hope it’s not selfish of me to ask for another pep talk, but I’m gonna. I am physically disabled and broke my ankle on my strong leg (on my way to a comedy show!). Thus, doc sentenced me to 8 weeks non-weight-bearing. I’m stuck in bed cause I can’t walk, using a commode, the whole deal. I’m so bored and lonely. Please pep me up!
- Agony of the Feet

Please allow me to start by saying: OH NO! Of all the ills that comedy shows have inflicted on people, this is one of the worst I’ve heard of.

Your situation sounds like a miserable time, but it will ostensibly be a temporary one. Eight weeks is not that long in the grand scheme of things (despite how long Bradley Cooper’s Oscar campaign felt…sorry, had to get one last dig in). Case in point: I took three weeks just to respond to your message, and that time flew by (for me at least, your milage may vary). Eight weeks doesn’t even get you through a single season of most prestige television series, if it’s released weekly. (Quick digression: I really liked the first episode of The Regime. Did anyone else see it?) And, if you live in a place where there’s daylight saving, it’s really eight weeks minus one hour. Did that help? As I mentioned earlier in the newsletter, I do find it to be a relief when there’s a definite(ish) endpoint to a stress or strain.

Loneliness is really in the zeitgeist lately (and ironically many people have no one to discuss that with)! You are, again, lightly ironically, not alone in feeling isolated. But you are in a fairly unique position to get to demand companionship. I didn’t get to see a friend who was recently visiting from out of town because I (like a monster) tried to make her come to my neighborhood. And I hadn’t even broken my ankle. I was just being a brat! You, however, are in a STRONG position to make people do your bidding whether you’re hoping for a bedside visit or a Facetime or an old school phone call that removes one layer of having to be perceived.

Good luck with your eight five weeks of recovery! I hope you are back at your best soon! And until then, you can catch up on reading and/or watch as many seasons of prestige tv (binge-style) as your eyes and brain can withstand!

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Jean Grae - “Stop Drawing Sunglasses on the Sun”

Jean Grae is excellent at a zillion different forms of art and media, and she’s performing on the JoCo Cruise this week too. In a previous era of her artistic career, she was a great rapper, and I have been pretty cool about not gushing over the fact that I’ve loved her work since high school. (Also, she co-wrote a little song for me and Maris as an engagement present, which made me tear up heavily.) I haven’t seen Jean in a long time, and it’s so nice to get to hang out together on a big ol’ boat.

Here she is on a previous JoCo Cruise performing a very fun and charming song. The title kind of gives away the bit of her taking it so seriously, but it’s still delightful. This year she did it with a live band accompanying her, and that was even more fun. Sorry I don’t have video of that!

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! OH ALSO: In April I’ll be guest cohosting Butterboy at Littlefield with my friend Maeve Higgins every Monday! :)

3/22: Wait Wait…Late Panel Show (Caveat, NYC)

3/29-3/30: Comedy Attic (Bloomington, IN) (Four shows!)

4/5-4/6: Junk Drawer Coffee (New Orleans, LA) (Four shows!)

5/2: Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me Live Recording (Chicago)

5/3-5/4: Commonwealth Sanctuary in Dayton, KY (Tickets coming soon!)

5/8: Cobb’s Comedy Club (San Francisco)

5/10: Here-After (Seattle) (Two shows!)

5/12: Helium Comedy Club (Portland)

5/16-5/18: Vermont Comedy Club (Burlington) (Five shows!)

6/21: NEW SPECIAL TAPING AT THE BELL HOUSE IN BROOKLYN (Late show tickets on sale now!)