#93. Tomatoes and You

You've got the ripe stuff.

Hi everyone,

So nice to see you here! I had a reasonably productive week, which made me feel satisfied and at ease for reasons I don’t love about myself, but what are you gonna do, you know?

I’m in “Sunrise, Sunset” mode with standup, meaning I'm almost done with an edit of my upcoming special (more news on that hopefully soon, but I’m really psyched about how it’s shaping up!!!) and I’ve been writing some new jokes that have started to click recently. That, to me, is the most fun part of the whole enterprise. Figuring out how to take an idea and squish it into the shape of a joke is such a fun creative challenge that’s different every time. And, in standup, a joke can take any form, which makes the whole project so open-ended and exhilarating (or if you catch me on a different week, lightly demoralizing).

I ended up doing a really fun mix of shows this week between a Saturday night spot at the Comedy Cellar, a set on my friends’ show A Place Upstate that they host in character as “The Cozy Brothers” and give advice about tick safety, and opening for my friend Natasha Vaynblat’s work in progress solo show “Childless Freak.” Oh! Right! I also read a great new short story that my friend Amy Silverberg published, and I took Maris to see (Bridget Everett’s Somebody Somewhere co-star) Jeff Hiller do a solo show at Joe’s Pub, and it was delightful. Speaking to the previously mentioned open-endedness of comedy, I go to see people work in so many different styles and perspectives, and it lit up my brain. (My friend Rose Kelso did an elaborate musical sketch that made me be like…I should try more new things!) Maybe I’ll have new and exciting ideas myself or maybe I’ll just enjoy the bright brain feeling and let that buoy the Regular Me Stuff that I’m doing. (With so many friends taking hour-long shows to the Fringe festival in Edinburgh this month, I did have an idea for something like that. Let’s see if I have the follow-through…or time…to do it!)

On Friday night I got to attend the album release party for my pals in the band Charly Bliss who put out their new record Forever on Friday day. They are such a great band and such sweet, generous people!!! I wrote the press bio for the record, and to get started I had an hour-long Zoom call with the group to talk about their process and what it meant to them to be recording and releasing a new album for the first time since before the pandemic. They talked so much about how special their relationships as bandmates are, and how free and thrilling this creative process was. They wrote the album across the world from each other (Eva, the lead singer, lives mostly in Australia now), and they really took their time to get the songs exactly how they want them. That’s a lesson I’m always trying to teach myself (not about songs, I don’t do those, but about other stuff). The album is full of perfect pop songs (I have described the sound of the record overall as Charly Rae Jepsen, if that means anything to you), and they’re going out on tour this September, so go see them if they’re in your area!!!

“I’ve never done that before and I don’t think I’ll ever do it again!” - Eva

On Sunday, Maris and I went to the Not Another Bomb rally at Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn, and it was heartening to see so many people come together to call for peace. Polling suggests that a Democratic candidate who supports an embargo on sending arms to Israel would do better in several swing states than one who doesn’t, so it’s both a moral and a political good! Just something to think about!

Also this week, I was on several more very fun podcasts!!

• I’m on Lady Journey with Sarah Tollemache and Katie Hannigan just goofin’ around.

• I return to The Gargle with Alice Fraser and Athena Kugblenu talking about non-election news.

• I get into it on Aminatou Sow’s Pop Culture Debate Club, arguing with Maris whether audiobooks or hard copy books are better.

PEP TALK FOR TOMATOES

The devil’s cherries, as I call them.

Tomatoes, it’s your season. You’re ripe, and you’re in demand, like a bunch of little red Glen Powells. That means people are pulling you off of your vines, slicing you into thick, slimy slabs, and eating you on white bread with mayo. I mean, I’m not. I am a lifelong tomato hater. No offense, tomatoes. I love your work in salsa and ketchup and pizza sauce, but I’m just not a fan of your solo stuff. Too raw for me, I guess? Or maybe it’s the fact that at best you taste like someone made a hamburger patty out of a hundred slugs they just pulled out of the ocean. And at worst you taste like an apple that someone dunked in a bucket of poison.

Soon it will no longer be your best time of year. But get this: People will continue slicing you up and putting you on roast beef sandwiches and tuna sandwiches and turkey sandwiches and hamburgers and salads despite there being no good reason for it. Why are tomatoes so frequently mandatory? How are they not an opt-in ingredient more often? You should have to ask for them the way you ask for guacamole. And the server should warn you against your decision, not because tomatoes cost extra, just because they’re bad for so much of the year (including, in my opinion, even when they’re good).

Such is your (inexplicable) allure, tomatoes. People will consume you en masse year round, despite your being extra inedible for 3/4 of the year. That’s not bad.

Despite my constant protestations and complaints, you’re doing great. Congratulations, slug burgers.

PEP TALK FOR A READER

I did just a little tweaking of this request for brevity!

Next year I will be marrying the love of my life (no pep-talk required there) but also moving from the US to his home in the UK. It’s all a bit overwhelming with trying to work out getting a visa and moving all my stuff overseas but also just the reality of living in a country where lots of things are just a little bit different. I need some encouragement that I can get all the logistics done and that it will be worth it.
- Making A Brentrance

Congratulations on marrying the love of your life! In my experience, that’s the exact right person to marry! (I haven’t tried doing it another way, but I can’t imagine it coming out better.)

Moving is always such a hassle, even when you’re relocating to a place with largely similar customs, like going from Boston (American League Philadelphia) to Philadelphia (National League Boston). But moving across the sea? Oof. Not me. Not after what they did to my boy, The Titanic. Making that move to be with the love of your life, though? That sounds like quite an adventure…or as they spell it over there: adventoure.

You said you’re looking for encouragement about getting logistics done, which I can offer. Encouragement. I am not good at offering practical help with logistics. The last time I traveled out of town on my own, I waited until my opening act was onstage during our 10pm show to book myself a hotel that I checked into at 12am. I do a slightly better job planning ahead when Maris and I travel together, mostly because I do not want to come back from a trip with my wife as a newly single person.

That may seem beside the point, but it actually IS the point. These kinds of big picture plans can be challenging and expensive and frankly annoying to figure out. But figure it out you will. The love of your life will be across the Atlantic Ocean. And while you can no longer run through an airport to catch him before he leaves, you are going to also go to the airport and get on a plane and move into your new home in a new countryside (although I think over there they say cuntry and it’s not a big deal).

You can do it the easy way (working hard to get it done smoothly) or the hard way (taking it easy and doing a sloppy, stressful job). But either way you’re not not going to do it. You’ll make it to your new home whether your belongings arrive neatly packed in shipping containers, or crammed into a trash bag that you gate check at the airport while wearing nine sweaters in order to avoid paying an overweight bag fee.

I can’t say whether this will be “worth it,” but I can say that being with someone you love, even under strange new conditions (like living in a “flat”), is the kind of thing that can be worth it. I don’t really buy into the maxim of “relationships are hard,” but I do think that moving is hard and sometimes moving is relationships, you know? But if you’re talking about this relationship specifically, I can’t speak to it except for how excited you are (hooray!!) about the person if not the place (or the process of getting there).

I believe in your ability to make this as orderly and efficient a process as possible (even as I, myself, generally lack that skill). But the worst case scenario is that you do a terrible job of it, and what they don’t tell you about a terrible job is: It is still a job that you can do.

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Charly Bliss - “Last First Kiss” (Hey that rhymes!)

“It hurts to try, but it kills to miss/I want you to be my last first kiss” what’s sweeter than that!!! (Also I love the Moonstruck-ass lyric “Let’s fight like Italians.”) This song should be on the radio 100 times an hour! My nice pals! Listen to this song and all of Forever, which isn’t that long, ironically.

UPCOMING SHOWS

I’ve got a bunch of NYC dates coming up, and then a few back on the road! See you there?!?!

8/20: Comedy Juice at Gotham Comedy Club (NYC)

8/21: Ambush Comedy at EBBs Brewing (Williamsburg)

8/23: Come On Down! at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

9/5: Wait Wait Standup Tour (Ft. Lauderdale, FL)

9/6: Wait Wait Standup Tour (Orlando, FL)

9/7: Wait Wait Standup Tour (Tampa, FL)

9/8: Wait Wait Standup Tour (Atlanta, GA)

9/20-9/21: High Plains Comedy Festival (Denver) MORE INFO SOON!

9/26: Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me Radio Recording (Kansas City)