SHORT:
I am writing this at 11pm after a stand-up show at an ice cream store where I got blueberry-corn ice cream. Against all odds, it was good. The show and the cream.
Onstage I mentioned my left tit and then right tit and then said, “Levitating, Dua Lipa with Da Baby” (this is a pop culture reference, for those who do not know). The crowd went wild for the improvisation. Perhaps I’ll say it again the next time someone allows me to step onto that thing we call a stage that Shakespeare says all of the world is. Was that sentence syntax fun? It’s 11:32 now.
My girlfriend says that, “sometimes I am like the brother-in-law DEA agent from Breaking Bad no offense”. She’s right. The other day I explained to her that I couldn’t “get her things like water or a plate” because I was “scared I would mess it up”. She said, “that’s ok”.
Right now she’s really into this application on her phone that tracks sharks.
She found one that is currently showing up inland/ not in the ocean, and I was like “maybe it swam up a river by accident” and she was like um no I think someone caught it and it’s now dead.
That makes sense.
I feel that one day I will be killed by a man in a skin-tight “Pod Save America” tee.
I’ve never seen a man in one of those shirts that didn’t have a little murderous look in his eyes.
MEDIUM:
This week I watched the entirety of My Unorthodox Life on Netflix in one sitting. My friend Ben does the marketing for the show so you’re welcome Ben for including this in my award-winning newsletter.
The show is incredible. This woman named Julia secretly sold insurance something something etc. while being married to this Orthodox Jewish man and then at age 40 had enough money to leave her home and town and relationship and city go crazy-wild-insane-slutty-awesome-sexual in NYC and then somehow started a shoe line and is now a millionaire.
One of her daughters is bisexual and similarly “liberated” and makes out with this girl on a couch at her mother’s work event and her more religious sister Batsheva is like “that’s not ok” and she’s like ARE YOU SAYING THAT BECAUSE IM BI AND YOU’RE UNCOMFORTABLE? And the sister is like no, I’m saying that because it’s Ima’s work event.
They call the mom Ima which means mom in Hebrew and I love it.
Ima aka Julia is literally 3 Starbucks coffees and a collarbone in a jumpsuit. She’s snatched-for-the-gods and determined to uplift and help every woman in the whole damn world.
Julia’s youngest son named Aron is still very religious and there’s a scene where he and Julia go to a sushi lunch and then it cuts to him and his friend ferociously davening/doing the Birkat Hamazon (prayer after eating) as Julia sits cross-legged in a sparkly romper scrolling on her phone and that singular frame of the program alone belongs in the Smithsonian.
Idk if any/all of this is translating for my goy newsletter readers, but all I can say is, Jewish or not, please watch the show so I have someone to talk to about it.
There’s so much I haven’t mentioned. But I’ll end on this:
The iconic bi daughter goes to Stanford and so does my sister and I asked my sister via text if she knew the bi daughter and my sister was like “ya I was her psych TA”. I freaked out and my sister was like “ok, I’m really busy with actual important things like grad school so goodbye”.
Congrats to my sister on starting grad school by the way!
She is studying and going to save the world and I spent the whole week watching M.U.L. and screaming bloody murder at twinks about how “I know they think the British Olympic Diver Tom Daley is hot but I actually knew about him first when he was like 12. So actually they can all calm down”.
The Olympic commentators love to talk about Tom. I need them to talk less about him and provide more insider details on the sport, for example, when you dive with a tampon in it goes flying up your vagine so intensely that you lose all sense of space and time.
One announcer today was like, “the goal today is for nobody to hit their head” and I was like, so true girl!
Ultimately most sports are about making sure you don’t hit your head.
LONG:
What’s the link between My Unorthodox Life on Netflix and a Vegan Farm Sanctuary that I went to upstate this weekend? The answer may surprise you and the answer is: a 22 biracial genius from Kansas City named Rachel (who is my gf’s roommate and she wrote that line).
Rachel is the only person in my life (other than me) who has watched the reality show and who had to pet a cow named “Colin” this weekend, so basically, she’s going in the will (haven’t started drafting it yet, which is dumb because I’ve walked by two Pod Save America t-shirts this month).
As I mentioned in the last newsletter, my girlfriend is obsessed with this vegan farm sanctuary thing called Woodstock. This weekend, we went up there to see the ugly chickens and turkeys named things like “Sue” and “Beatrice” that she always sends me pictures of on Instagram.
My girlfriend’s gay brother drove us and belted along to Da Baby the whole time (who, if you haven’t been following, got in trouble yesterday for screaming homophobic things about AIDS onstage or something idk I honestly only read the article headline and then sent it to my gf’s gay brother and said “shoutout to your boy!”)
We arrived at the farm an hour early and the people at the gate were like “you’re so early”. We were like, “ok what should we do?” and they were like, “I guess you can drive in and sit in the car and wait” so we did and my girlfriend’s gay brother ate a sausage bagel secretly and quietly and out of sight of the vegan lesbians who run the place.
I really wanted one of the hot lesbians to give us a tour but we got another person who maybe was a lesbian or maybe just grew up in Portland.
Before the tour started, we all went to the bathroom and then my girlfriend asked everyone the age-old question: “did you see the cows from the bathroom?”
I did not. But I said “ya” (biggg brother-in-law from Breaking Bad energy).
On the tour our maybe-lesbian tour guide showed us a pig named Leroy (my grandfather’s name) and said that he eats grass but “with Wild Hogs it’s a bit different” (I am ALWAYS saying this!).
With Wild Hogs? It’s a bit different!
Put it on a t-shirt!
Soon after, I saw a rooster that looked fierce and played “Sissy That Walk” on my phone until I got stressed that the tour guide would hear it.
Our ?lez guide talked about how pigs are as intelligent as 3 or 4 year olds.
I think I am as intelligent as a pig.
Midway through the tour Rachel was like, “I’m too black for this”.
They wanted us to feed chickens blueberries with our hands and I was like “no, I do not wish to be pecked”. But then I finally picked up a blueberry and dropped it on the ground and a chicken named Pigeon ate it so… call me Farmer Joe.
The only animal I actually touched was an old goat named Buddy who came up to me and looked really “over it” and sad behind the eyes and I was like “alright I see myself in this one, I’ll touch it”.
The tour ended with an invocation of Beatrice (the ugly turkey I mentioned in last week’s newsletter and at the top of this section). I really wasn’t ready for her to be mentioned, so I burst out laughing when they talked about how they euthanized her under the very tree we were standing next to.
They say she’s the oldest turkey to have ever lived in the whole world, but I’m like who’s keeping tabs on that? I don’t buy it. If anyone knows a super old turkey let me know and I’ll tell you if it’s older or younger than Beatrice was before she was euthanized.
Can you believe I’m writing about this? Did you think you’d be at a point in your life when you’d be reading something like this? By choice?
It’s 12:07.
My girlfriend has sent me a photo of Buddy the goat “cheering me on” to keep going on this newsletter, but I think I’m going to call it quits.
I can’t believe I have done 43 of these. Someone give me a Ms. America sash that says Mx. Newsletter. Just kidding. I won’t wear it. If you ever see me in any sort of “sash”? It means an alien has taken over my body.
I know this was probably very chaotic and difficult to read, but as they say on My Unorthodox Life, “easy is boring!!!!!!!!”
Ok.
Goodnight.
I love you.
And...
Shalom (famously means hello goodbye and peace and I mean all of those in this instance).
If this is your first time reading the newsletter, read the archives. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s not – it’s very much like when people slip on ice.
Sincerely,
Reid
Venmo: @rpope-venmo-26
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