#85. Justin Timberlake and You

Crime me a river.

Jun 24, 2024

Hi everyone,

It’s been a pretty big week for me, personally. The Boston Celtics, whom you may remember from last week’s newsletter, closed out the NBA Finals with a blowout victory against the Dallas Mavericks last Monday night. This made many people cranky, which made me double happy. Everyone (except for honest-to-goodness Mavs fans) had the choice to get on board with a generally lovable C’s team, and yet not only did they refuse, many people deluded themselves into thinking Dallas was the superior squad. Make better choices next time, people, and you too can know joy!

In smaller national news, but larger personal news: I finally filmed my new standup special!!! The process was truly a dream come true. I got to work with so many amazing people, whom I will thank…NOW. Chris Werner, real deal genius director, long time pal, once and future co-worker! Russ Swanson, brilliant director of photography! Mark Newell, visionary production designer! Jess and Dom of Blonde Medicine, the most supportive and capable record label in the biz! Robby Fernandez and moxiepictures and the whole crew, for handling the production needs. My management team at Avalon for helping me piece everything together! My agents at CAA for sending me all over the country to build this hour(ish) of jokes! Maris for being a perfect beautiful genius every day and for hanging out with Bizzy solo when I was out of town! Alison Leiby and Nate Fridson for the notes on my set! Everyone who came out to see a show! Emma Bers for designing my tour merch and worker-owned print shop Radix Media for printing it! The Bell House for letting me put on two (sold out!!!!) shows! Matt Braunger, one of my all time favorite comics, for opening the shows while he was in town (go see him on tour)!

My last special (People Pleaser, available to stream now) was such a thrill to record and release, but with this one I had a lot more creative input. It’s a fully new set since People Pleaser (although there are four-ish minutes that may be familiar if you watched my recent Don’t Tell set). I got to work super closely with Chris, Mark, Russ, and Robby to pick the venue, design a set that feels really special and representative of the energy I wanted in the room and onscreen, and even consider the camera positioning. I had hoped to do this last summer, but there were delays because I didn’t want to shoot a special during the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes (we did this shoot as a fully union production, which I was very intent on), and then we ended up working around Chris’s new job (as an in-house director at SNL!!!). Honestly, the jokes are so much stronger after another year of touring. I think this material feels really cohesive and representative of the kind of work I want to be putting out into the world.

Friday was such a fun and special night. I wish I’d taken more pictures. I’m still beating myself up over some little performance mistakes, but I keep reminding me that none of that will show up in the final cut of the special, and that it’s much better to remember the wonderful feeling of the warm and enthusiastic audience, the moment backstage with Jess, Braunger, and my manager Biz scarfing down our (now-traditional) pre-show special taping lobster rolls, and the immense gratitude that people lent their time, effort, and resources to this project. I can’t wait to get to work on the edit. I’m not sure yet when the release date will be or where it will live (other than the audio which will be wherever you listen to things), but I am so excited to share this big project I’ve been working on (with a lot of help) for three-ish years!

OH, ALSO

Over the weekend I watched the movie Greener Grass, which has a few pals in it for a minute or two, and it’s so weird and wonderfully realized. I loved the cinematography and the score, and I thought the script and direction (both done by Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe, the movie’s two stars) were so artistically singular and unified! It’s like if David Lynch made a movie version of an SNL sketch? Does that make sense? Has anybody else seen this movie?

AND ANOTHER THING

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists shaking the sheets. — Another lousy picture of a great band. The zillionth of these I’ve taken at a show.

Last night, Maris and I got to see Ted Leo and the Pharmacists play a 20th anniversary show for their record Shake the Sheets, which aside from being musically one of the best records of the 21st century, imo, it remains what you might call “sadly relevant today.” And as bleak as it is that two decades after the album’s release we still need its anti-war and anti-capitalist messages as much as ever, it is inspirational that Ted and Lil’ Pharma (I don’t think anyone calls the band that) are still out there fighting the good fight, musically speaking.

On top of the politics, the show straight up ripped. The Tedliners played for almost two hours and sounded incredible and were so charming and at ease with each other on stage. The opening act was Ekko Astral, and Ted came out to sing on their last song (which is extremely heavy and good), and he shouted them out/brought them out at the end of his band’s set too. Extremely generous behavior if you ask me!!! It’s so cool to bring someone out on tour that you really believe in and who makes you raise your game rather than an opener who’s pleasant but doesn’t make you work hard to follow them. It’s a gift to the other artist and to the audience!

At one point in the show, Ted mentioned having written a song about getting old for Shake the Sheets twenty years ago. And, having had some tequila, I became reflective about the fact that I started doing standup twenty years ago as of next month (more on that next month), and what growth and longevity and sustainability means for a career in the arts. It didn’t hurt my endeavor to make it all about myself that I’d just recorded a new hour of jokes, largely about the feeling of getting older. And what an inspiration to see someone feeling like they’re getting old, and then making a masterpiece that endures for decades, and when they play it live it still sounds amazing and connects with audiences. That, to me, seems like the way to do it. I’ve got to try that sometime.

Thanks, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists!!! (And support independent musicians when you can, everyone!!!)

PEP TALK FOR JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE

Glassy-eyed pop star Justin Timberlake. — He’s going down. I’m yelling Timberrrrr(lake).

(I mean, who else could it be this week?)

JT. Dude. Tough week, huh? Not the DWI charge. Celebrity drunk driving, while extraordinarily reckless and immoral, is rarely a career-ender. Twice, just after the (gulp) turn of the century, America (sort of) elected a president who had pleaded guilty after being charged with drunk driving. You are physically fine, and you’ll be reputationally fine. For better and worse, people don’t care about your substance use. Bruno Mars had a cocaine charge dropped after fulfilling a community service commitment (and reportedly doing MORE hours than was mandated, which seems like cokey behavior to me but who can say for sure), and yet he remains one of the reigning champions of getting aunts and uncles out on the dance floor at weddings.

You physically survived getting behind the wheel while (allegedly) fucked up off of what one might call “dirty pop.” You will professionally survive that as well. The real crusher isn’t the fact of your arrest, it’s the details.

From hard-hitting news source Page Six:

“The cop didn’t know who he was at first,” a source told us. “Justin said under his breath, ‘This is going to ruin the tour.’ The cop replied, ‘What tour?’ Justin said, ‘The world tour.'”

Rough stuff, bud. My first thought when I saw that the cop didn’t recognize JT was: “Did a child soldier arrest Justin Timberlake?” But no, it was an adult police officer for whom the face (never mind the name) of one of the preeminent elder millennial pop stars has no meaning outside of your glazed-over eyes. Even people younger than you (myself included) have laughed (somewhat continuously for several days) at this fact. The desire to see you experience comeuppance has completely bypassed the realization that if you are irrelevant, we are also irrelevant.

Justin (if I may call you that) you have, in a single mugshot that looks like the ID badge for one of the innies at Lumon, caused an entire cohort to say (ahem) bye, bye, bye to their fear of aging. Your combination of musical superstardom, unwillingness to apologize for being (to put it bluntly) kind of a dick to some famous and beloved female artists, and public humiliation has temporarily obliterated the fear of aging in a generation of people who invented the word “adulting” because “growing up” seemed too scary to take on.

Your star power may have dimmed, but your cultural influence remains massive. In one fell swoop (a motion in which I imagine you were careening across the road considering you got pulled over in the Hamptons) you have enabled millennials to accept the passage of time, and you probably didn’t actually jeopardize the tour (which tour?). I’m sorry. The world tour.

PEP TALK FOR A READER

I’ve done a little format tweaking here for my own, non-nefarious, purposes. Plus I gave the reader their nickname.

My class reunion is this year. I’m pretty nervous about the weight I’ve gained and seeing my high school girlfriend. Please pep me up. Pep me up. Pep me up. *to the tune of “Pipe It Up” by Migos*
- “Fall Back” to School

There’s nothing shameful about harboring a shaky sensation as you tiptoe towards a reunion. It’s kind of an unnatural situation to put yourself in. Most of the time, when you don’t talk to a group of people for five or ten or twenty (or more) straight years, you simply…continue not to talk to those people, and you certainly don’t (often) make plans to hang out with them all at once. A reunion is such a discontinuity in your life; it’s one night where you plop the person you are now back into a context you left behind a long time ago. And I don’t mean that with any animosity or disdain. It’s just that anyone you’re anxious about seeing is probably not someone you’ve kept up with for reasons social, geographical, or a third -al. Especially with how easy it is to stay in touch these days (I don’t need to list all the keep-in-touch/harvest-your-data apps).

But! There’s a great chance that by attending, you’re opening yourself up to warm and enthusiastic interactions you’d otherwise miss out on. Most people aren’t coming to a reunion to make you feel bad, except in the case of a broader “I’ll show you (plural)!” which isn’t usually about you (singular). And while your personal self-consciousness is very relatable, the energy probably won’t be as judgmental as you fear. Most people don’t look exactly like they did in high school. Those who do are either genetically anomalous or surgically preposterous. You’ve gotta dance, or not dance, with the body that brought you, and everyone else will be doing the same.

It’s extremely hard to “win” a high school reunion. I am very proud of the life and career I’ve built. I’ve had the good fortune to work on some fairly popular stuff that people sometimes are excited to hear about. And I’m pretty plugged in with a fair number of classmates. But there were still people at my twenty-year reunion who asked me what I do for work and then when I told them said…huh…I’ve never heard of it. Take that, my ego!!! (I wasn’t trying and failing to be impressive. Someone inquired, and I squirmed as they tried to give me the benefit of the doubt that I’m doing okay.)

But it’s also hard to lose a reunion as long as you don’t do anything extremely belligerent or otherwise unpleasant. Probably you’ll have a nice, if slightly awkward in a few moments, time. The beautiful thing about high school reunions is that you all keep getting older, but you’re all still the same age.

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Lo Fi Ho Hum - “Never Been In Love”

Newsletter reader Jacob of Lo Fi Ho Hum emailed me to put his band’s new single (from their forthcoming album) on my radar, and all you need to know is that it’s some real “That Thing You Do” type of stuff! I’ve been tapping my toes to it all week. If you’re a newsletter reader and want me to consider one of your songs for this slot, no promises on results, but feel free to shoot your shot! I love learning about new music, and I love to be helpful!