SHORT:
My eyes are burning rn which I can only hope means they’re arson-ing my body from the inside. Just kidding! Am I? I am so tired.
This week I did a comedy show in midtown that was sponsored by a spiked Kombucha brand and one of the brand ambassadors gave me a free t-shirt and drink and then said, “by the way, what’s your heritage?” I was like “uh, white… like Irish and Polish.” And she said, “I can totally see the European in you.” Which felt kinda Hitler-y! :)
On the way home from the show, I watched a man throw his socks out the train window.
MEDIUM:
I’ve been feeling like a Golem lately.
Not the Lord Of The Rings one.
I feel bad and good and like a protector and destroyer and embryonic and unfinished and malleable and made of clay and dirt.
I feel like this bitch:
and this bitch:
and all of these bitches:
For the golem to come to life, a rabbi needs to inscribe three Hebrew letters on its forehead, and I have the same 3 letters on my ankle, so… I’m an ankle Golem (the more fashionable kind! as anklets have always been > headbands IMO!).
Anyway, I think we all are amorphous and unformed and rely on other people to give us shape and meaning instead of sometimes just reveling in our golem-ness.
LONG:
This weekend, all I did was watch TV.
One of the shows I watched was Sex Lives Of College Girls starring Timmy Chalamoo’s sister and another blonde girl Renee Rapp who won the 2018 Jimmy Awards (and whose performance of “All Falls Down” from Chaplin still brings me to my knees/tears with every watch. She was sick during the Jimmy’s too. She’s an even BETTER vocalist than in this video. Watch her sing “Someone Gets Hurt” at Google HQ. If you want the ~works~).
Anyway, the show should be cancelled for making it seem like there's a grindr-like dating app for lesbians that tells u how many feet away from you someone is!!!!! didn't realize i was watching absolute fantasy fiction sci fi!!!
They also didn’t even give the app a name. At LEAST name it FingR or ScissR.
I also watched a beautiful show on HBO Max called Sort Of. It stars genderqueer Muslim playwright Bilal Baig and it’s extremely moving and funny and I don’t know why HBO isn’t putting 100% of their advertising budget behind it.
What else?
Uh.
I wish there was a new episode of Curb out every single day.
I watched Tick Tick Boom at a Starbucks Reserve while I was waiting for my lover to get off work so we could go to dinner. And I almost flipped a table over at the Starbucks Reserve when I found out 1. They don’t do peppermint mochas there 2. They cut Green Green Dress AND Sugar from the Tick Tick Boom Film and 3. There are so many cameos in the film it feels like it was sponsored by the damn app Cameo.
They talked about me on Succession:
Never forget my TV teacher James’s iconic line about how the show is “so lucky to have Cox on set”. He was obviously referring to the actor but then looked up at us and laughed at the innuendo.
I love my TV teacher James. He wears crocs and plays in the NYU Pipe & Drum band and always is talking about “his Pipers” and how they get late night hot dogs after rehearsals.
Wikipedia says: Since 1990, James has played with the New York University Pipes & Drums, and is one of their founding members and Pipe Sergeant.
He is also an accomplished photographer with many of his photographs appearing on Jones Soda labels.
He really can do it all.
Last week he got on a tangent about how his wife named her cat Ira and even though she claims it’s not named after Ira Glass, “She was living in Brooklyn at the time, and, whether they want to admit it or not, all women in Brooklyn have a special attachment to Ira Glass."
His cat’s name is Sabrina (like the teenage witch) because of, “The group of Gothy Women who work at the Humane Society.”
Other greatest hits James quotes:
[Out of nowhere] “Folks, I hope you all know how deadly hippos can be.”
“I was in Williamsburg buying cabbages for my cabbage plot and some hipsters in a cafe were playing the What We Do In The Shadows Theme Song.”
And a bunch of other lines about how Haggis is made.
Over the weekend I sent him a frantic email because I spent the semester writing a Pen15 bar mitzvah spec and on dec. 3 the first episode that comes out is titled "bat mitzvah".
He emailed me back saying “there’s practical things to do as a writer that are deep and easy and you should be anxious about. We’ll discuss.”
I think he meant SHOULDN’T be anxious.
But I laughed thinking of him and his crocs and pipes and cat standing over me and screaming “Be Anxious!”
Anyway. That’s about it for this week. Nothing too interesting.
Watch Sort Of.
Think about your Golem-ness.
Let me know if you see anyone throw their socks out of a train window.
I promise next week’s newsletter will be funnier/ better/ more interesting.
C u next Tuesday.
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