PLUG!
Please get tickets and come to my show on Friday The 24th! It’s called “The Art Of The Trap” and will be a fun faux-immersive-gallery show of the 195 thirst trap parodies I did over the pandemic. There will be drag and comedy from some very talented people. Then it will turn into a dance party/hang. It would mean the world to me if you came! If you can’t, tell ur friends 2!
Ticket link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/art-of-the-trap-tickets-169166456425
SHORT:
I really need to wear my glasses today because I was up until 2am working on a monologue about how Kristen Stewart is Martha Stewart’s daughter and my eyes hurt but I don’t want to wear them to therapy because I don’t want my therapist to “comment on them” – unpack THAT!
MEDIUM:
When my girlfriend is at the door,
And I don’t want to get up,
I say, “Come in”
And that’s a little something
I like to call:
^ some post-Emmy humor for you this Tuesday…
Sort of a play on words…
Beautiful that I still “play” at this age!!!!!
Did ppl watch the Emmys?
So many MILFs won...
Rita Wilson got COVID and now she’s a rapper I guess… Tale as old as time...
Y wasn’t Larry Saperstein, the tap dancing redhead from High School Musical The Musical The Series nominated?
Every time they cut to Kate Winslet, I kept thinking about seeing her tits in that horrible lesbian movie she was in with Saoirse Ronan…
And THAT’S my recap! Someone hire me to do them for Vanity Fair!
LONG:
Yom Kippur happened. I broke the fast alone with 4 mini Cinnabons.
It seems I have once again bullied/blackmailed god into inscribing me into the book of life despite my evil ways (I bully twinks).
The day before Yom Kippur was a very bad day.
The “Reid illusion” I built in grad school was shattered when a professor accidentally deadnamed me in front of the whole class.
He was confused. And kept saying it. Everyone turned and looked at me and I felt like I was going to cry and puke and shit myself all at once.
It felt like someone shoved me over the edge of a cliff and then caught me by the collar of my shirt.
I was fullllll dissociationstation/dangling for the rest of the class.
I don’t know why this particular instance felt like such a gut-punch. People deadname me pretty regularly, but this felt markedly different.
Maybe it’s because my guard was down... or because nobody in my cohort knew me as anything other than “Reid” until that moment. (actually that’s not tru, a lot of them also knew me as “smoking hot genius”, I heard ‘em talkin’ in the halls :))
We had to pitch a movie 10 minutes after the deadnaming, and I pitched from 1000 feet above my body…
Something about a woman who meticulously cleans phones at her hospital job and falls in love with the hospital security guard.
It was based on an obituary I read earlier that day:
“For most of her career, Marge was the back office bookkeeper and front store sales manager for Ernie's O'Connor Center Pharmacy across the street from O'Connor Hospital. When the pharmacy closed, Marge accepted a position as staffing clerk with O'Connor Hospital. We recently heard from her supervisor at the time that the first thing Marge would do when she came to work was to disinfect all the phones in her area. Somehow that did not surprise us.”
I thought it was funny that the family decide to include the phone detail in her 2-paragraph tribute.
When I die, please mention the fact that the first thing I do when I get to work is complain about how I do not want to be there/ do any of the work I have to do.
“Somehow that did not surprise us” – everyone.
My professor asked me “what the phone cleaning film would be like”. Like what famous movies would it would emulate or draw inspiration from…
I literally could not think of a single movie.
Not even one related to the pitch.
I floundered like the famous video where Billy Eichner asks that girl to “name a woman”.
“name a … movie?” “A movie!??? Uh…”
Every time someone in my grad cohort asks me if I’ve seen a movie, I have not. I’m starting to think that I maybe literally have never seen a film in my entire life...
…
…
I feel like a snowflake for complaining about the deadnaming here…
(Intellectually, my brain understands that it’s all words and it was an accident yada yada.
Unfortunately, my somatic response is more like: “you’re going to die, someone is attacking u with a Machete arm like in that Marvel movie Shang-Chi that you went to see even though you don’t like Marvel movies and it gave you nightmares”.
Ok… so I guess I have seen a film. But literally just that one!)
At this point, I’m like, honestly, who cares. Call me a snowflake. At least “snowflake” is gender neutral.
People love snowflakes. They put their tongues on snowflakes! They write whole songs about them.
…
,,,
Anyway, that’s what life’s been like.
Every day is a gift! (the kind Gus gives Don Eladio in Breaking Bad that kills u slowly)
I’m feelin a lot like the discourse surrounding Ted Lasso this week (exhausted) <3
Don’t you love the positive vibes of this newsletter!?
That’s what people come here for.
Complete optimism and positivity!
:)
:)
:)
never giv up!
i guess!
Thank you for subscribing. 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
Donate to The Audre Lorde Project
GET TICKETS HERE!!!!
Wowwwww! I have been missing out ! Love this writing and love you! (Adding another parasocial relationship). I’m sorry u got deadnamed that sucks. But your newsletter and everything you’ve ever done is a beam of creative light!