SHORT:
Welcome to this newsletter. It’s different than usual this week. Lots of media is gonna be involved as you scroll.
I studied “Modern Culture & Media” in college, so hopefully this is actually an excellent experience for you otherwise I am demanding a refund on my tuition.
Before we begin, I would like to announce that I am going to see Sandra Bernhard at City Winery by myself on August 31st and it is going to be the best night of my life.
Loyal readers know how much she means 2 me.
My girlfriend got me a photo of Sandra hosting Comedy Central Presents and it is on the wall right by my front door. It’s a really great thing for me to look at when I get back from shows. Reminds me that “it’s time to fess up and get real”.
Alright, let’s get started.
u rly should watch every single one of her letterman appearances
u HAVE the time / or u can MAKE the time (pt. 1) (pt. 2) (pt. 3)
MEDIUM:
It is still pride month– the month where gays get to have the most dehydrated sex of their lives.
My birthday is on June 26th aka the NYC Dyke March. Last time I went, I saw every single one of my ex’s and then ended up at a weird circuit party and then going to Williamsburg and hooking up with someone on a pullout couch in a random living room and hoping nobody walked in the front door to witness it all.
Picture me doing this with long hair in a low ponytail like a founding father in a shirt that says: “The Future Is Fluid” because that’s exactly what I was wearing and what was happening at that point in my life.
When my girlfriend’s cat Schwubby marches over to her food bowl now that’s a dyke march.
This week I did the shows I complained about last week (classic). I had fun sort of (classic-er).
I forgot that summer is a time when I personally eat so much ice cream and drink so many vodka sodas that my bowel movements are literally Tipsy Scoop.
… It’s the curse of a getting a drink ticket at a comedy show and then walking back to the train sweating out of every orifice so midway through the walk u decide “let’s just SEE if Daveys is open and maybe I’ll get a lil free sample” – then Davey’s either IS open and you DO get the free sample and then also a whole cone OR Davey’s isn’t open (they closed two mins ago and despite your pressing your face against the window and begging, they’re NOT gonna open for a sweaty dyke who is beating themself up about comedy set that ultimately does not matter) so you go to Van Leeuwen which you always have to google how to spell but u can ALSO ALWAYS count on to be open until 11pm in most locations.
Anyway here’s a clip from one of the shows. Before my set I frantically screamed “is anyone here any sort of gay” cuz I always have to know before I start. My posture onstage is atrocious please ignore it.
All I do in therapy now is talk about comedy (because we cured my gender - just kidding) and the other day I said,"is this thrilling for you" today when I was talking about it and he said "I'm not here to be thrilled".
My therapist did laugh when I said the Brooklyn alt scene is a special type of hell because it’s a huge popularity contest comprised of 1 million people who were never popular in high school.
Re: my onstage posture (which I of course whined about to him too), he reminded me that “pictures are not reality” <— (ok, Walter Benjamin! Brown Media degree callback)
and then he said that I should look up some articles of pictures of Beyoncé at the Super Bowl to see that even brilliantly talented stars get captured at weird angles.
In The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936), Benjamin talks about “auras” and how art objects are authentic in their existence in space and time. Reproduction (through something like a photograph) destroys the aura and depreciates the object's historical value and authority (sort of like duh, but good to think about I guess).
“The masses seek collective distraction, whereas art demands individual concentration from the spectator - hence the rising popularity of cinema at the expense of painting.”
– Walter Benyameeennn
All of this being said, I will be attaching show photos at the end of this and Walt Walt can suck it because they’re really cute.
Sureeee the ephemeral nature of stand-up and live performance can’t be reproduced, but not everyone can make it to a bar in Brooklyn to listen to a bunch of full grown adults scream into a karaoke machine (the bar is BYOSS - bring your own speaker system).
This isn’t really related, but I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately too re: audience and the consumption of “art” and pride month etc.
LONG:
I did another show for a bunch of definitely queer people, and it went ok. I was wearing my classic bandana and Tevas look (gay shoe- ur feet are naked with a bunch of little strap-ons).
Someone I really idolize tweeted about me after the show and said that I’m funny online and offline (a dream). I, of course, have spent the last two days debating whether he actually meant it or like in what capacity etc. etc. because the brains that we’re given upon birth are bad and then they grow and mold into worser and worser little palaces of perverse plasticity! :P :) :) rock on donkey kong <— what inside of my brain sounds like.
ENOUGH ABOUT COMEDY - this week was also DIVING OLYMPIC TRIALS (stay with me). As readers know, I did junior olympic and then collegiate diving for 12 years. That means that, during Olympic trials, I get to watch everyone who was once nice to me or mean to me fling themself off large structures and try to make it look pretty.
I sit there and root for the nice ones.
Two girls who used to kick my ass in diving made the Olympics (congrats to them).
Also congrats to another girl who made the Olympics with a full tuck list
Which means she had a low degree of difficulty but nailed all of them for really high scores A.K.A. what my coach (Oleg) was always telling me was possible but I never believed him. You see, I couldn’t spin for shit. I spun so slow that my coach often told me I looked like a broken suitcase flipping or a helicopter shot out of the sky. BUT I could always somehow miraculously land on my head sort of [consistency] - so HE believed that, as long as I did that, and got good scores on low degree of difficulty, I could make Nationals (this happened one singular time).
Anyway, in my family, we call this thing “The Oleg Theory” so of course my family group chat was popping off for this girl who made it using “The Oleg Theory”
Hopefully my family found it fun to watch these young girls slay instead of doing what they used to have to do at meets which is watch them while also praying that I at least would come in second to last and not DFL.
The last thing I will say about trials, is there was a 14 year old boy competing on tower and he was amazing but the announcers made it sound like he just sort of “showed up at the pool and was trying it for the first time”. My friend Emma sent me this clip and pointed it out. The commentary is so funny and bizarre (highlight: when they say “MANNISH”).
***
OTHER THINGS I DID THIS WEEK:
Watched In The Heights in theaters and quietly mouthed every lyric.
I used to listen to the soundtrack so much in high school that two of the tracks are still the most-played songs on my phone.
Dozens of parents have probably seen me sitting in my car, soaking wet after diving practice, belting “Breathe” – an emotional song about a first-generation college student returning home to her neighborhood.
My experience of “having a hard time learning a new dive and having an AP U.S. history test the next day” was absoluteeeeelyyyyyy so comically far from everything this character was feeling about REAL things, and yet– there I’d be, singing and crying… singing and crying. White as snow and privileged as fuck wailing along to the song.
My girlfriend liked the fact that there were not one but two Lord Of The Rings references in the movie.
This was her only review.
Speaking of my girlfriend, we went to the Brooklyn Liberation protest and there’s a photo of us in the New York Times where I’m definitely whining about how I forgot to bring sunglasses:
I will never not complain about things, even in spaces where I should be shutting up <3
After that I went home and called a Verizon lady about something and she said her name was June and it took everything in my power not to be like “Oh my god, happy June, June!”
I also had a tweet go viral (felt nothing, of course).
Half the comments are like: “Computing power onboard Apollo 11 was 100k times less than the phone you’re using to read this tweet. That’s 1/100,000.”
and the other half are people saying that we didn’t really put a man on the moon.
Finally, as I mentioned at the very top of this newsletter, I closed out the week with an awesome show called SOUR SHOW that I hosted with my dear friend Zach. The show honored the life and times (18 full years) of the undeniably talented Olivia Rodrigo.
So many people showed up to this chaotic event. People from high school. College. My girlfriend’s gay brother. There was a lot of dancing and at one point Zach and I dressed up as Bill and Melinda Gates and lip-synced an angry breakup song (Good 4 U).
HERE and HERE are more photos from the event.
Ok goodbye,
THANK YOU FOR READING! WITHOUT YOU, I’M NOTHING!!!!
If this is your first time reading the newsletter, read the archives. Sometimes I’m funny, sometimes I’m not – it’s very much like when people fall down.
Sincerely,
Reid
Venmo: @rpope-venmo-26
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