MASLOW MASLOW MASLOW: #181

and Sydney Sweeney chopping off her tits

Reid Pope

Mar 19, 2024

SHORT:

Thought about Syd Sweeney getting top surgery and cracked up.

Saw the end of the world in perfect focus.

Someone make a movie about this.

I Am Legend, but it’s I Am TV & Film Legend Sydney Sweeney And I Just Chopped My Ta’s Off (fits perfectly on a poster).

MEDIUM:

How’s everyone doing?

I’m feeling happy that the sun is out but mentally deranged about world events, personal to-do’s, and, as always, The Future.

I did, however, just find out that Busy Phillips is re-igniting her late night show — this time on QVC!

If anyone knows the booker, please let me know.

I’d love to do standup in front of some funky ass purses! Maybe a biiiig necklace or two. Scarves covered in illogically colored squiggles.

LONG:

A few things to address this week:

-The man who created karaoke died. I wanna thank him for inventing the machine on which my sister relentlessly performed "That Don’t Impress Me Much" over and over again in our childhood bedroom, turning me into an extremely patient zen buddhist at the age of 9 (and also prompting me to eventually google "who is Brad Pitt?").

-Relatedly, if ur posting a black and white pic of u on ur IG I’m gonna think ur dead and someone else posted it and it’s a memorial. So please stop doing that. The world’s full of wonderful colors. Show ‘em off.

-I’m doing a table read snippet of my pilot Old Queens at YALLFest. Get tix!

-I have yet to break my Lily Gladstone press junket addiction. I watched 25 videos of her this week and an additional 10 with Scorsese/his editor Thelma (including one where Ethan Hawk yells, “THELMA… THESE EYES! [YOUR] EYES!” into the audience) before bringing Scorsese onstage.

My favorite interview this week was this one — specifically the bit 15 minutes in where she speaks to Maslow’s hierarchy.

In widespread understanding of Maslow’s hierarchy, self-actualization is the pinnacle — the top of the pyramid. She clarifies that, when Maslow died, that wasn’t his most recent evolution of the theory. Instead, it was an inverted pyramid, based on the values of the Blackfoot people, with self-actualization as the base, rather than the peak.

Above self-actualization is your role in the community, how you serve the people around you. And cultural perpetuity is the apex.

“Your strengths are identified, but your purpose goes to serving your people and your culture, rather than… finding your purpose, your individual track.”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot with regard to entertainment, stand-up, social media, and the arts. I’ve been finding it hard to connect with the things that I’m doing, largely because stand-up feels so solitary — even in rooms with other comics and audience members, backyard parties, etc. it’s sort of just a bunch of off-the-clock soloists bumping up against one another, trying to self-actualize. It disguises itself as community, but it’s not quite it.

Social media aggravates this. Everyone’s on a quest to gain followers and continue to survive. It makes sense. But it feels like crap. At least, to me.

I get most frustrated and feel most empty when I’m yearning for individual attention and recognition. I am the happiest when I’m researching, writing, collaborating, and actually engaging with the world around me. But my default, is the former.

My animal survival brain is competitive and selfish. I’m trying to rewrite it to teach it that my survival actually depends on fulfilling collaborative experiences that serve something bigger than myself. My question on repeat for the last week when I enter a room, perform on a show, etc. is “how can I use the strengths, that I know I have, to serve this community1?” — it’s woo woo, but it has been working.

If I repeat the question to myself and focus my energy on the room/group of people I’m with and less on “oh jesus this comic on the lineup thinks I’m stupid” or “I did a bad job I will never succeed in this business [that never lets you feel like you’re succeeding anyway even when you’re seemingly at the top]”, I leave with a greater sense of fulfillment.

I’m really trying to make the basement performances, the birthday parties, the work sessions, the coffees, etc. the ends and not the means. The purpose and not the stepping stones.

We’ll see how long it lasts (lol)

C U Next Tuesday