SHORT:
This week I lost my job (and can’t find it anywhere! Haha! Ugh no but really I did) so this newsletter is scattered. If this is the first one you’ve ever read, plz go back and read the others!
MEDIUM:
This week white supremacists stormed the capital in t-shirts and clothes that read: “Camp Auschwitz” and “6 Million Wasn’t Enough”. It was atrocious and scary and also made me remember how in 5th grade our Jewish Day School showed us Schindler’s List and all the parents got really mad because they thought it was “starting us on the whole trauma thing too early”.
Whenever these modern nazis chant “Jews will not replace us” I’m like oh babe do not worry I’m not going anywhere near your cargo-short-Florida-ass-cousin-loving-life. I do not want to replace you in the land of COVID and SeaWorld.
This week I listened to David Bowie because it was his birthday, and I took the photo that’s at the top of this newsletter (fun fact: the carrot cigarette was incredibly slippery because it was expired and it kept falling out of my mouth. I threw out the whole pack after the pic was snapped).
This week I watched 1.5 hour Julia Louis-Dreyfus (FULL EVENT) | Mark Twain Prize 2018 FULL SHOW and cried because she’s so talented.
This week I ate 3 bagels. Adele wrote the song “When We Were Young” about the last time my brain and I enjoyed a bagel without shame :)))))))))))))))))))))))))))
This week I got high and got genuinely sad for the horses at Lincoln Center because after they get their shining moment onstage at the opera, they’re taken through the parking garage A.K.A. forced to walk by hundreds of CARS A.K.A. newer, shinier, updated versions of them! That’s like your ex walking you by all their new lovers A.K.A. new versions of you! Just plain mean!
This week I saw a guy intentionally roll across 3 lanes of traffic and walk away unscathed.
So god is a man I think.
LONG:
This week I’ve been feeling like Judy Garland (numb, gorgeous voice), so I’ve been watching a bunch of musical theater videos.
It really makes no sense that I like musical performance.
One time I literally googled “why do I like singing?” (the internet could not answer the question).
I feel that my aspirational self (cool, boyish, whatever) should absolutely NOT know every word to Anything Goes. I mean, come on, when I was 10, I had a rock themed birthday party. Not rock like rock n roll. Rock like pebbles, stones, and boulders. Where’s THAT toughness? Where’s that grit-butch-king?
Here I am at 24, alone in my apartment, sobbing to the 2018 Songs For A New World concert and belting high notes from Heathers: The Musical (a show that, like it or not, you know exists if you went to liberal arts school between the years 2016-now).
Speaking of liberal arts school, one time I got a callback to play Belle from Beauty And The Beast but then I got drunk the night before, someone punched me in the face, and I rolled up to the callback with two black eyes and a bloody nose. I didn’t get the part (but I did get cast as a background singer).
Anyway. Yes. I’m a dyke who likes singing. It’s a tortured existence (much like that of The Beast himself), but existence nonetheless.
I started doing theater in 1st grade. My Jewish Day School did a production of Little Shop Of Horrors where The Plant/Audrey II was a choir of kids and I was one of the plants (potted, FYI - full pot around my body). I remember getting rug burns on my knees from sliding around in the pot. I also remember being SCANDALIZED by how the 8th graders playing Audrey and Seymour kissed onstage (and offstage in the hall, not gonna lie!).
The next year we did a Marx Brothers musical (slay!) and I don’t remember much about it (there was a song about banks?)
In high school, I did Little Shop again (an all-girls version because I went to all-girls school and they stopped casting boys long before I arrived because people would “get too distracted” and “dumb themselves down”).
I hate when people dumb themselves down. You don’t know pain until you’ve watched a girl who has spent all of her formative life in all-girl’s education try to flirt with a boy.
“Oh you hate math? I actually also hate math too.”
Cara you are in AP Calculus as a Freshman. If you end of dating this dude at some point you’re going to accidentally scream about Numerical Approximations during sex and only if the dude’s really dumb will you be able to play it off as creative, made up safe-word.
Anyway, sophomore year, I sang Little Shop tunes, soul on fire… absolutely beaming… my braces shining under the stage lights!
The next year, I got my braces off and did Jesus Christ Superstar (again, a gorgeous all-girls version despite the fact that the show only has one female character in it). My mom threatened to sue the director of JCC because I was cast as the Jew who killed Jesus A.K.A. Annas A.K.A. role of a LIFETIME! (who are we kidding, I wanted to be Judas, and when I didn’t get it I cried for two days).
But then I DRIED MY TEARS and picked up my script. For two glorious nights (and one Sunday matinee), I belted “What Then To Do About Jesus Of Nazareth?” and “This Jesus Must Die!” – living out a rockin’ little goyish boyish fantasy.
Side note: I later had to get braces again because my orthodontist died midway through my phase I braces process. My teeth are still kinda fucked up. I think I’d be drop dead gorgeous if he hadn’t dropped dead.
After high school, I made the violent choice to do a cappella in college. My gay ass shoobeedoowopp-ed alongside some of the straightest women in American in a subversive act critics are calling “why”.
But I had fun. I feel weird about it, but I also love that I did it. After all, very few people can say they’ve sung a “Burning Love” as a Valentine-O-Gram to a classroom full of football players!!! To this day, they text me about stunning Lord Almighty-y-y-y riff (they do not).
My senior year, I actually co-ran the a cappella group with my friend Julia. Our college is building a presidential library for us in honor of the work we did leading the group. There will be entire room dedicated to one of our biggest achievements: getting the sopranos to blend (and making sure people didn’t get too plastered before important concerts).
One day I will write a But I'm A Cheerleader reboot about being transmasc called But I Was In An All-Female A Cappella Group.
One day I will fully embrace the fact that I like musical theater.
One day I will sing on Broadway (too much?)
I really think I could be the first nonbinary Evan Hansen (producers have told me that they’d have to rename it Dear Evan HANDSOME though– my sex appeal is too strong)
As Cole Porter once wrote and Sutton Foster once sang: “The world has gone mad today, And good's bad today. And black's white today, And day's night today… yada yada yada… god knowssssssss, Anything Goes!”
That’s sort of the theme of this whole damn newsletter I guess.
Thanks for reading.
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I appreciate you all and next week WILL be better!
-Meg
Social- @megspope@mpopetweets
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Website- meganpopework.com
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