REID #39

Reid Pope

Jun 29, 2021

SHORT:

I am watching Succession for the first time in the year 2021.

I am Cousin Greg (short version).

I like when he sings to himself while shredding the important documents.

This is my complete review of the series so far.

MEDIUM:

If I went to bar mitzvah in the mid 2000’s as my “now” self, I would be the kid with 700 glow sticks around his neck having time of his life.

Instead, I was the girl in a purple “tunic” trying to join the freak-train in the “kids only dance room” and praying that an adult would not come in to witness us grinding offbeat to “Make Love In This Club”.

There should be 96 movies made about 8th Graders dancing to sexual club music in the middle of a community center that looks nothing like a club.

I guess every teen movie is sort of about that.

In 2009, I was truly scared of absolutely everything (except randomly, throwing myself off tall buildings and into a pool at diving practice).

These days, the only major thing I’m scared of is my new aloe plant dying of “root rot”.

You’re not supposed to water aloe plants too much. But/And you’re also supposed to water them “every now and then”.

So….. I quite simply… do not know what to do.

If you’re confused about the fact that I own plants and are like “how have I never heard about these plants before?” it’s because I just purchased them. And they NEED to live because they were so expensive. I got the least expensive plants on the website and they were still so expensive.

When I opened the box that they came in, dirt went everywhere, and a little worm fell out. Why do we pay exorbitant amounts to bring dirt into our homes?

Then again, I think these plants have cured my depression. Every time I look at them, I’m like “check out that green thing!”

When I was little, I would go to the nursery with my dad and pick out a bunch of flowers and vegetables to plant in our outdoor planters. I really loved wandering the outdoor aisles, coming home, kneeling on my children’s gardening pad, and planting the little spriggy things while wearing gloves.

I am now at a point in my life where I never want to kneel to do anything ever again and I never want to wear gloves and when the dirt from my new plants spilled out into a giant pile on my floor I left it there for 3 hours before finally mustering up the strength to Swiffer it up (no kneeling involved, slay king hallelujah).

Are you enjoying this boring newsletter so far? Talking about TV and domesticity and plants…

Who am I? Martha Stewart? (I wish).

LONG:

I need a butt plug for my mouth so I can shut the fuck up.

(There we go, no more TV and plants. Hello to my grandmother and my grandmother’s sister who religiously read this newsletter)

No matter how hard I try, I text EVERYONE about all my thoughts ALL THE TIME. I spin out, and then demand that friends, foes, lovers, and strangers “debrief with me”.

My friends know it’s coming. They’re like, “here we go… stay tuned after the show for a special look inside the episode"

(I never do this even tho they tell me to do it before every episode of Succession. Should I? I don’t really feel the need to know about how the coiled-up-white-guy actors “get into the headspace” to play coiled-up-white-guys. Does coiled make sense? I feel like every person on that show is constipated. The characters and the actors (method). That is my only other review)

Anyway, this weekend, I tried to reel it in. It was pride and my birthday and I am too old to have meltdowns in the sun. Don’t have the time. Don’t have the bandwidth. Don’t have the energy anymore. It’s also helpful that I no longer date long-haired-brunettes that scare the shit out of me and ruin my life. I date a Jimmy-Neutron-looking person whose favorite hobby is “sitting”.

Pride started on Thursday. I did a gay-ish comedy show and found out afterward that someone in the audience has the same therapist as me. We discovered this while chatting outside the club, on the streets of NYC, right before getting pizza – I’ve never seen the Sopranos, but I’m pretty sure that’s what the show’s about.

On Friday, I celebrated my dear friend Zach’s birthday at an Irish bar (sort of an anti-pride event). He’s gay, but being gay is hard, so he decided to have a not-gay birthday.

My friend Kayla came and ordered a skirt steak.

I talked to some boys about how I met someone with the same therapist as me and they were like “great”.

I left with my girlfriend and the next day I realized that I left my credit car at the bar and when I came back the bartenders were like “oy, are you hurting today?” and I didn’t have the guts to tell them that I was stone cold sober when I left the bar, I’m just a huge idiot and forgot my card. Plus, I was hurting in other ways. Always am.

On Saturday, I woke up to a homemade cinnamon roll with a candle in it floating near my face. My girlfriend is a genius baker (see below), and made me cinnamon rolls for breakfast AND a cinnamon roll CAKE for lunch/dinner.

Reid Pope @rpopetweets

My gf is a genius vegan baker

I sat at the park with the cake and my friends from 11-3 and then it poured rain on the cake and my friends and we left.

One of my friend’s cousins showed up with a full Ostrich egg that she found and was very excited to … cook? Is that what you do with those? It looked like something out of Harry Potter (not to reference Harry Potter, but… it did look like that).

After the park, I took my second shower of the day and went to the world-famous Dyke March in Manhattan and forgot it was my birthday and forgot a water bottle and almost died of dehydration but saw some fun lesbian-ish/trans people of all shapes and sizes.

There were also a lot of straight people leaning out their windows and taking pictures of the dykes. This one straight girl with a full blowout and floral dress tried to cut through the march on her way to dinner and had her arms up and was clutching her purse, terrified. Everyone was like, “yeah sry bb, the uglies are out today! Don’t worry, you can touch us, you won’t die.”

The next day, I (somehow) got out of bed and went to a bar in the West Village (not the world-famous Julius because it was very crowded and also because one time I said “how did this place survive the pandemic I think it’s owned by the mob” and ever since then they haven’t let me in because the bar’s been “too full” but I think it’s because they heard me say the thing about the mob which RLY sucks because they have cheap drinks and great mozzarella sticks. Another classic example of how I need a butt plug for my mouth).

After the Village, I had to go record a comedy show for a podcast (don’t think about that sentence too hard), so my gf and I hauled ass to Gowanus where I fully reverted back to my 2019 self.

There I was, frantically asking the sound guy if he could record the show and if he could put it on the hard drive that I brought but then realized that I didn’t bring the right dongle that would allow the file to flow from the computer to the hard drive because the venue runs everything off a PC not a Mac… so then I had to be like “can you email it to me?”

During all of this, literally every comedian I knew was in the green room like “hey Reid, are you performing on the show?” and I was like “no I’m doing tech” but then the projector tech stuff was very BAD during the show so I felt like I had to go back to them and be like… ok to clarify, I wasn’t running THAT tech… I was just sitting in the booth area making sure the guy was recording the show.

They ultimately do not and did not care and I need to calm down.

The show itself was fun but my gf and I were so exhausted. AND SWEATY.

We sat together, soaking wet on stools in the back.

I shoved a venue-warmed-up-frozen-pizza down my throat that she couldn’t eat because it wasn’t vegan.

I then proceeded to whisper the jokes of every comedian in her ear moments before they performed the jokes because I have all their sets memorized like a FREAK.

“Ok Get ready, this next joke is killer” - me every joke

The whole time I was wearing a shark swimsuit underneath my shorts because I thought it would be smarter to wear a swimsuit as underwear in the 90 degree heat earlier that day and never took it off.

After the show, I made my gf stand in the lobby as I chugged three cups of water and dissociated, thinking about how I wish I was as funny as the comedians who were on the show and then realizing no I actually just wish I WAS those people.

I couldn’t find my mask or wallet and was trying to rifle through my bag WHILE holding the cup of water and my girlfriend was like “do you want me to hold that for you?” and I was like “no it’s ok I got it” and then after a painful 2 minutes went by of me shimmying the bag around on my shoulder and almost dropping the cup multiple times, I was like, “actually yeah can you hold it for me?”

She is a saint.

The night ended with me deliriously yelling about how “I guess I would be taking the F train and then walking 20 minutes home".

People in the lobby were like hahaha and I was like wait explain why that is funny.

Nobody could.

They just said it was.

Sometimes comedy is a mystery/ life is a gift/ there's nothing like the present.

Oh ALSO at the show, I saw the guy Kyle who has the same therapist as me AGAIN and we decided that we had to tell our therapist about how we both have him as our therapist (something he already knows).

So today I told him and then was like “do you have to dump us now? Because we know each other?” and my therapist was like, “no that’s not how that works, plus, I would never dump you two… you are so dear to me.”

Which once AGAIN PROVES that he’s in complete and utter love with me (and Kyle, I guess. I’ll allow it).

On the walk home from the F train I was a little worried about getting attacked in the dark and then I thought about how if they tried to take my shorts off after attacking me, they would see that I was wearing a weird swimsuit covered in sharks.

So.

God bless them.

Remember how the beginning of this was about television and plants?