THIS WEEK’S NEWSLETTER IS SPONSORED BY NOBODY LISTENS TO PAULA POUNDSTONE!!! Comedian Paula Poundstone and co-host Adam Felber are both regular panelists on NPR’s classic comedy show, Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me and bring that same genius! and infectiously! funny! energy to their pod. Brace yourself for a rollercoaster of diverse topics from Paula's hilarious attempts to understand QAnon to conversations about killer whales, casting directors, and carbon accounting.
I went on a run this week and realized I know nothing about anything (classic), so I popped NLTPP on and guess what? Now I know something (what the words “debt” and “ceiling” mean when placed next to each another).
Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone is an absolute riot you don’t want to miss.
SHORT:
People are scared of bein’ themselves (including me) and it’s killin’ us all!
MEDIUM:
The MTA decided to skip my station all weekend. This resulted in my having to walk 30-odd blocks home every night under the light of the silvery moon. On Saturday, I purchased a midnight burrito and horked it down as I strolled. Before I knew it, I was humming “Dreams” by The Cranberries. I stood in the middle of the empty avenue, looked up at the stars, and wondered if a cranberry burrito would be disgusting or actually kinda good.
I posted a slideshow of my magical burrito walk on TikTok and the kids are loving it. They comment things like, “this is so me” and I comment back “no it’s a burrito”. When my grandmother was my age, she was married with a 1-year-old child.
LONG:
My life partner has been gone for two weeks now. Not “gone” like dead. “Gone” like on vacation. Which is fine, but I’ve had to do something I haven’t done in quite a long time: attend birthday parties alone.
I’m a pretty social person, but there’s something about entering a bar/party by myself that makes me lose all sense of self-assuredness. I intensely prepare before walking in, like a kid getting ready to step onstage and say his big line in the school play, BUT I DON’T KNOW WHY I EVEN BOTHER, because EVERY SINGLE TIME I ENTER, I see ZERO people that I know, and immediately panic! THE SPOTLIGHT I WAS PREPARED TO STEP INTO DOES NOT MATERIALIZE! and I am LEFT SCRAMBLING IN THE DARK, desperate to locate someone I know (ideally the birthday boy! so I can still slay my prepared “oh my god, hi! you look amazing!” line).
I check the back porch. The upstairs. The downstairs. The bathroom. NOTHING. At this point the audience (a.k.a. god? the other bar patrons? your own consciousness?) is like “gxrl, what are you doing?” and I’m like “STOP LOOKING AT ME! HOW CAN YOU EVEN SEE ME? I’M NOT LIT! THE SPOTLIGHT NEVER CLICKED ON!” and they’re like “what spotlight?” and you’re like, “I don’t know! This metaphor is confusing and doesn’t really work!”
You turn and spastically make your way back through the bar-crowd, emanating blindfolded-kid-desperate-to-pin-a-tail-on-a-donkey energy. You should just leave. Your life is over. All of these people who you don’t know are going to somehow tell everyone you do know that you walked through a bar and couldn’t find your friend.
But THEN, you spot him. THE BDAY BOY! In a booth right by the entrance (how did you miss that?!). You walk up, and say your line, and the spotlight clicks on. You’re golden! … For about 30 seconds until he goes to talk to some other guys and you’re left to hold your own with a group of strangers (extended duet/group number in full light — more technically challenging than a solo in the spotlight, but far less terrifying ).
Anyway, I think all of this is loosely related to my great-grandfather fleeing Poland.
…
Snack Of The Week This Week is obviously the midnight burrito.
Star Of The Week is Sarah Sherman in You’re So Not Invited To My Bat Mitzvah (watch it if only for her physical choices as a rabbi on the treadmill during a meeting).
Thing that made me cry of the week is Trixie Mattel’s documentary (I’ve discovered drag/ drag race in the year of our lord 2023… I feel like we’re experiencing the drag-race-ification of the Brooklyn alt-comedy scene where everyone’s performing to “win” / do well on reels as opposed to… performing for performing’s sake…? And like… discovering something about yourself through performance? I don’t know. It used to feel good to try weird stuff in basements but now everyone has a DSLR set up at the mic and is doing a tight/sterile/boring/“relatable” five in order to get internet people’s lizard brains to be like, “wait, haha I do that! lemme add my 2 cents in the comments” — but this is for a different newsletter…)
Thanks, as always, for taking the time to engage with all this.
Maybe next week I’ll get a job offer!
C U Next Tuesday.
Thank you for subscribing. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s not – it’s a lot like when people slip on ice. If this is your first time reading, check out the archives.
Sincerely,
Reid Pope
Venmo: @rpope-venmo-26
Donate to The Audre Lorde Project
Bonus Jonas Zone:
I’ve spent the week watching these two girls reenact middle school productions of famous Broadway musicals — shoulders back, hands in fists, bobbing up and down to mimic sincere effort. They harmonize earnestly-but-poorly and contort their faces into crinkles and squints — a 12-year-old’s attempt at telegraphing human suffering/longing (or perhaps a visual signifier of a 12-year-old’s desperate attempt to remember the blocking of a deranged 30-something theatre teacher who made them run the scene hundreds of times while penning a director’s note on “the importance of Seussical in today’s climate”? A little bit of both?).
The reenactments straddle the line of tribute and parody in a way that makes them both hilarious and heartwarming. The parodiers seem to be having a ball — often cutting between takes due to their own laughter — which adds a double layer to it. They earnestly attempt to mimic middle school earnestness.
The videos are a refreshing homage to a pre-jaded era tucked in the middle of a very-jaded, strange, not-often-sincere internet. They made me think about how genuinely excited I would be to rehearse after school. How I’d stand in my change-of-clothes-I-could-move-in and fervently belt about love and loss.
When a middle schooler stomps their foot in-time with “It’s A Hard Knock Life”, the world shakes. And these TikTokers understand that! Worth checking out I think!
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