#99. Eric Adams and You
Let your indictments be your excitements at the table of success.
Hi everyone,
This might be a rambly one! (Welcome new readers who heard me on Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! last weekend! Usually I’m not quite so longwinded.)
Last week I struck a pretty terrific balance between hanging out and doing work, which is honestly my biggest goal of late. Maris and I had brunch with our friends Jason and Emily and their itty bitty baby who is so cute. I enjoyed Mad Men Lunch Pt. II (which is just drinking on a weekday) with my friend Tanya. Did some fun standup sets. Had offee with my friend Caroline. Participated in New York Climate Summit comedy panel show. Reached out to one of my favorite musicians about licensing one of their songs for the opening/closing of my standup special. Ate dinner with Dionne Warwick (more on that below!?!!?!?). One drink at my friend Merritt’s birthday, and another at my friend Meredith’s birthday party, while sadly missing Dave’s birthday party. A little call about future work projects. Two podcasts. Saw Bad Moves play live. Met Joel McHale (super nice!) at the Comedy Cellar. A great talk after the show with my friend Matt Koff about comedy and They Might Be Giants (Are they a top ten all time American rock band? Sound off in the comments!) That was most of it I think.
My great friend Sarah was in town from London, and I hadn’t seen her in five or six years, so we had breakfast on Wednesday morning and then went to this immersive art installation in the financial district (she works in that field and has a google alert set for such things). We spent an hour meandering through fourteen of the fifteen exhibits (one was closed) and talking about them. At their best, they were technically impeccable and visually engrossing. Lots of mirrors (“This is the Instagram room,” Sarah quipped, not knowing there would be several more similar Instagram rooms to come.). At worst, I would describe the aesthetic of a few pieces as “NFT-core.” A few of the exhibits seemed like the work of someone who’d heard of Banksy and just kind of ran with that idea.
Sarah is so smart about considering intentionality in art, and considering what things could mean, and how they could be executed more successfully. And those qualities make her extremely fun to talk trash with. She basically has a post-graduate degree in it (as well as teasing out and explaining what’s interesting about art). So even though the thing itself was hit or miss, the conversation had no skips.
Thursday I flew to Kansas City for the aforementioned Wait Wait taping with the also aforementioned Dionne Warwick. The actual music legend and her very friendly associate came and ate dinner with me and Paula Poundstone and Shantira Jackson, and even Peter Sagal, esteemed host of the program decided to be a fan and ask for a picture, which gave the rest of us the green light to do the same. We mostly talked about astronauts and outer space at dinner. Ms. Warwick said she plans to stay on earth rather than ever going to Mars, and she chuckled politely when I said that the food there seems terrible. A huge win for me!
On Saturday I ran into my friend Shaina who literally moved to New York this week and doesn’t live anywhere near me! And then when I got home from that walk I had received an email from someone I’d never met but who I’d been corresponding with about a work thing, and he’d driven past me on the street around the same time. I was really struck by how beautiful small moments of synchronicity can be. I was recently talking to a friend who’s also not super spiritual, but who finds meaning in unexpected connection. I don’t mind the smallness of being one person out of eight billion on one planet out of ??? planets. But when the world feels small too, it’s a little bit of a comfort. Not only are we not alone, we’re all neighbors.
Rosh Hashanah starts on Wednesday night, and I’m (I think!) slightly more religious (a little) than I am spiritual (again, not really at all). What can I say, I like a once-a-year ceremony-adjacent snack and a feeling of being rooted in history. Plus I appreciate the concepts of renewal and forgiveness that the High Holidays bring into focus. I’ve been feeling a lot of closeness with a Jewish community lately attached to the ideas of protest and compassion. And I’ve been feeling kind of estranged from Jewish institutions that have taken up the cause of mercilessness. I imagine this next week will be full of heaviness and mourning, which is understandable. I also hope that as people grieve the losses of October 7th, they allow their grief to also encompass the tens of thousands of Palestinian lives (and now hundreds in Lebanon) that were taken in the wake of that tragedy.
I talked a little about these things on Francesca Fiorentini’s show last week. We also had a great chat about climate science with extremely smart journalist Kate Aronoff! And, in other news, I talked about very silly and frivolous stories on the great Alice Fraser’s show The Gargle.
It was a real week of a week. And I haven’t even touched the big local news yet, so…let’s get to it!
PEP TALK FOR ERIC ADAMS
Last summer, Mayor Eric Adams showed up on the WGA/SAG-AFTRA picket line (several months into the strikes, but who’s counting) and I was pulled into some photos with him. Knowing in advance this might happen, and being a naturally smiley person, I practiced several dead-behind-the-eyes expressions before leaving my apartment in the morning so as not to seem happy to be standing next to our mayor. No pictures of me have ever aged better. (Other people redacted because I didn’t ask their permission to post these.)
Mayor (still???) Adams, it has not been your best week in office. Last Wednesday you were indicted on several counts of fraud and bribery and lots of other things that mayors should not be caught doing. The (alleged) pattern of behavior dates back long before your tenure as mayor began, because you play like you practice and practice how you play. The full indictment includes a whole bunch of text messages between you and your staff that say things like “Please delete this text message because it was super illegal of me to send!” and “It’s crime time, big man! And I’ve got a passion for graftin’.” (I’m paraphrasing, but barely.)
Some of the smaller, more hilarious (alleged, but…) crimes include taking consistently discounted travel on Turkish Airlines in exchange for doing favors for the nation of Turkey, which raised red flags in your personal life because your routing always took you through Istanbul when you left the country. Look, I will sometimes go a little out of my way to earn points on my preferred airline but not fly-to-a-country-with-an-authoritarian-leader out of the way. I’m talking a layover in Atlanta, here. You allegedly tried to fly go Chile via Istanbul, starting out in New York, which is an act of cartographical malpractice that can only be described as Columbian.
The less hilarious, more infuriating allegations include falsifying campaign records to access New York City’s matching funds, which both boosted your campaign and siphoned away $10 million of the public’s money. Many have already pointed out the absolute gall to steal millions of dollars from the city and the slash budgets for local services like the library. Not to mention positioning yourself a a “law and order” mayor when you were more like a Law and Order: Criminal Intent mayor.
On Twitter I expressed some embarrassment that our city’s mayor was getting indicted like we live in Providence or something. And several people from Providence responded that the difference is that they actually LOVED their corrupt mayor, who did many good things for the city. (R.I.P. Buddy Cianci.) Fair point, Rhode Islanders!
Mayor (still?!!?!?!) Adams, you have to this point refused to resign, like a captain going down the the ship that he intentionally drove into a rock formation near the Turkish port city of Antalya (which was nowhere NEAR your ultimate destination, and not on the way either). As more and more of your political employees and appointees resign in disgrace, you persevere (also in disgrace). You are (politically) like Tony Montana going down in a hail of (metaphorical) gunfire, if Tony Montana had pretended to be a vegan for some reason. (“Where'd you get the beauty scar, tough guy? Eating tempeh?”)
So congratulations to do what even (walking criminal confession, recently disbarred in Washington D.C.) Rudy Giuliani couldn’t do: Getting indicted as a sitting New York City mayor. You will (fortunately for you) be remembered more for your brazen (ALLEGED lol) criminality than for your cruelty to migrants, lethal increases of police presence in our subways, and almost definite actual home address in New Jersey. And thank you for committing scams so flamboyant they basically assure that you will not be elected again. (Although if disgraced governor Andrew Cuomo ends up as our next mayor, I will get a membership to Zero Bond to yell at you in person when you get out of jail.)
You vowed to bring the swagger back to New York City, but you swaggered too close to the sun. And while I don’t quite respect that about you, I am grateful that your unflappable cop confidence led to your own political implosion.
You truly were here for a good time, and hopefully not a much longer time.
(Also, if you live in New York and are looking for incisive and entertaining coverage of the ongoing Eric Adams saga and other local news, I cannot recommend subscribing to Hell Gate highly enough!!!)
A READER’S PEP TALK FOR HERSELF
I recently (well, a few weeks ago) received a pep talk request from a reader, who before I could respond, had a big shift in attitude following a small shift in material circumstances. This reader has given me permission to publish their messages to me as a little extra pep talk this week!
I’d love a pep talk on getting back into dating. The last time I was actively dating was 2016, then broke up with my boyfriend in late 2019. Since then I haven’t been interested in romantic relationships at all, but at the beginning of the year I started to feel ready - and put the work in on myself. Went back to therapy, started journaling again, quit smoking weed…good things! So I’ve been on Hinge for almost a month now, and while I’ve gotten lots of interest and had some good chats, I’m nervous about committing to actual dates. The process of getting to know someone and letting someone get to know me feels exhausting - and doing it again and again until I find the right person? Yikes. I’m also a very different person than I was eight years ago, and I don’t want to date the same way I did back then, so I feel like I can’t fall back on experience for fear of repeating old bad patterns. At the same time, I’m excited to finally feel ready to open myself up to romantic connection again, and I’ve never felt more on top of my shit. Can you help get me pumped up enough to finally let someone take me out - even if I don’t find the right person right away?
- (Re)new Romantic
That was an extremely thoughtful message to receive, and one that I bet a lot of people can related to in part or in full! But, before I could respond, I received this message from the same person!
Hi Josh - no longer in need of a pep talk. Went on a singular Hinge date and met an amazing person and things are going great. It only takes one, I guess!! Just want to add that I’m dating differently than I ever have before - taking it slow and really getting to know him at a measured pace and vice versa, with the aim of building something meaningful and long-lasting. And I think laying out that I wanted to do things differently in my note to you really helped me recognize that and build on it. So your pep talk system absolutely did help in its own way
- (Re)new Romantic
I felt so good reading this message, not just because the Gondelman Pep Talk Method (tm) was given credit, maybe more than it/I deserve. But it just felt so nice to see the general premise of the newsletter (Things can be okay! Often you’re in a temporary funk that you can fix or ride out!) in effect in the real world! So, let that be a lesson to you readers…just because I am absolutely not on top of my emails (or more accurately I really only respond per week) doesn’t mean things in your life won’t improve!
Congratulations on your excellent news, (Re)new!
PEP TALK FOR A READER
I might be a little late with this pep talk too! If so, I apologize!
Hi Josh, I could use a pep talk. I'm (41F) headed on vacation with my parents (77M/77F) to San Francisco for a week soon. And while I'm blessed and happy to spend time with them like this, after a few days together, it's hard not to revert to kid attitudes when I'm in their company for this long. I'm a functional, grown adult and yet I can feel teenage me taking over by day three. What do I do? How do I fight this?
- All Play And No Work Makes Jack A Dull Girl
Okay, Jack (sorry to start this off sounding so much like Joe Biden), I know that you know that I know that you’re in a pretty swell position. There’s no need for me to stress to you the joy of getting to spend time with older relatives in a vacational context. You said it yourself! This is not a you-should-be-grateful pep talk. You seem to be tapped into the concept of gratitude enough that we can deal with the other part of this situation: Petty annoyances (which are really my wheelhouse here anyway)!
I, too, find myself becoming Teenage Me when I visit my folks. My mom (a wonderful person whom I love, and famously a reader of this newsletter) will offer me yogurt, and I will politely decline, knowing that she doesn’t know I have not eaten yogurt under any circumstances in like…ten years. And yet, there is still an adolescent twinge of Come on, MOM! that is not her fault at all. She’s being nice! And I never communicated to her that I don’t even think about yogurt at any point in my adult life. I just moved out of my parents’ house 17ish years ago (and then again 15ish years ago after a brief moving-back-in period) and developed a bunch of new habits that I didn’t tell my parents about. Anyway! Enough about me and my nonsense…
As usual, I will try to avoid giving advice here even in defiance of your specific request, but I will say this: You are allowed to return to Adult You at any moment, like a werewolf when the sun comes up, but if the werewolf could cause the sun to rise simply by taking a deep breath and saying: “Hey, I’m going to take a little walk and get a coffee? Do you two want anything?” As long as you are otherwise a good faith vacation participant (showing up for the tentpole events, hanging out with your parents in between when not otherwise occupied), you can even take a nap or read a book or meet up with a friend for a stroll (in my San Francisco experience, you will end up way more winded than expected at the end of that stroll because the terrain is like if SimCity and Rollercoaster Tycoon merged into one game and that game was a real life topographical map). You’ve got a week to spend with them, and I bet most weeks of your life are not spent in immediate proximity to the same two people 24/7. Even Run-D.M.C. probably planned a few solo hours when they were on tour (do not forget to include the late Jam Master Jay when you picture Run-D.M.C. in your mind). Even the most romantically invested throuples probably de-throup to go to work or Pilates or book club from time to time. You are allowed to introduce a little of your normal solitude/socializing rhythm into that half-fortnight (septnight?) with your folks.
Despite your Paul Rudd in Wet Hot American Summer-style sighing, you’ll probably have a very nice time and wind up thinking fondly this trip with your parents, especially if you are able to intersperse your time together with a little time apart.
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Dionne Warwick - “I Say A Little Prayer”
On my trip to Kansas City last week, I listened to the Apple Music “Dionne Warwick Essentials,” which made for a great flight. There were so many classic hits, and then deeper cuts (or big hits that had maybe just faded out of rotation before my time) and then other songs that I’d heard more frequently as covers. (I really wanted to ask Dionne Warwick what she thought of the White Stripes version of “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself” but I did not have the opportunity or moxie to do so.) I probably heard an a cappella group on campus cover “I Say A Little Prayer” a zillion times while I was at Brandeis, and no offense to (I think) Company B, but this version is superior. It’s not my place to pass judgement on the relative merits of the Aretha Franklin take on the tune.
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’ve got a bunch of NYC dates coming up, and then a few back on the road! See you there?!?!
10/2: Sleepwalk and then also Rodeo (Both Brooklyn)
10/4: Late Stage Live and Friends at Union Hall (Brooklyn)
10/7: Hanging out at Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)
10/8: Co-hosting Trivia For Cheaters 826 Fundraiser at Brooklyn Brewery
10/18: The Muslims are Coming: Swing State Invasion (Reading, PA)
10/21: Co-hosting Frankenstein’s Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)
10/24: American Sawdust (Brooklyn)
11/29-12/8: TED LEO AND AIMEE MANN CHRISTMAS SHOWS (Several Cities)
lmao
The line “cartographical malpractice” was wind in my sails