SHORT:
The bummer with cutting off my tits is now I can’t have a boob roller coaster at my amusement park à la Dolly Parton… instead I have to have a monorail.
So boring.
But still scary to conservatives… I guess… riding a trans person… Heyo! Okay! The Newsletter is getting political this week!
Just used Google and discovered that apparently Dolly doesn’t have a “boob rollercoaster” at her amusement park… Who in the world told me that? Where did I “learn” that info? Did I invent it? Hm… I’m feeling like I do when a femme lesbian wears a hat and says she’s “going boy mode”... I don’t know… what to do… about it…
I guess… nothing!
MEDIUM:
On Tuesday Night, I attended a premiere party for my friend Catherine’s Netflix special. The special is amazing. It’s called The Twist…? She’s Gorgeous. Read this newsletter and then go smash the play button on it. I am very proud of her.
Anyway I left the party on a stretcher unconscious covered in my own vomit.
The Twist…? I’d only had 2 martinis in 4 hours!
The Mount Sinai portal said my alcohol level wouldn’t have even counted as “drunk driving”.
And yet I passed out in a bathroom stall and had to throw away a gorgeous purple suede shirt I wore…
So what happened?
Was I allergic to something in the… martini? Was I drugged? Was the purple suede jacket that I got for $5.30 at a thrift shop cursed?
Nobody knows!
Right before I blacked out, I met two people who I’d heard about who were poets and screamed “you’re the poets!”
I spent the next morning thinking about how the poets probably thought I was dumb…
and how 900 comedians who I respect (and would like to respect me, in return) saw me getting carted out of the party, absolutely disgusting and comatose…
which means they probably think that I’m an irresponsible chaotic baby who they’ll never hire to work on something like their television program about irresponsible chaotic babies… (etc. etc. you know how ye old Reid brain works!)
But my sober friend said everyone there was plastered and, “should’ve gone in the ambulance with [me]”.
So hopefully people don’t remember, and if they do, at least that means they’re thinking about me! (this industry is so sad)
^ CANNOT SAY I AGREE WITH THIS, AL!
LONG:
Cut to me telling my therapist about how “it was kind of nice to pass out and be taken 2 hospital b/c I finally got to chill and lie down for once” (...perhaps it is not “the industry” that is sad… but actually just: life itself!)
The next day, I continued to pick apart the evening (of course).
I was wearing my dead grandma's irish pin… could that… have been “it”?
The paramedics said it may have been because I was drinking on SSRI’s… but (and if I had been awake in the ambulance, I would’ve told them this) I’ve been drinking on SSRI’s nearly every weekend since college and been fine.
Yeah. I was not awake in the ambulance.
Or for the first 2 hours I was at the hospital.
My friend Zachary kindly hurled his drunken ass into the back of the emergency vehicle with me and was providing the paramedics with the information he knew (while taking 300 photos of me and a couple of videos where he quizzed me on upcoming lineups for gay comedy shows, and when I got one of the answers wrong he was like, “oh this bitch is REALLY not okay).
Zach then got kicked out of the hospital for wreaking havoc/taking more photos/telling the nurses to gender me correctly even though I was comatose/screaming about how they/thems are alwayssss throwing up/etc.
I love him and would quite literally be dead without him so thank you Zach but also LOL u r a terrorist.
When my eyes fluttered open at 4am, my girlfriend (who I guess Zach had Instagram video-called) was sitting in a chair with her airpods in listening to a murder podcast and patting my foot (I was in bed with my boots still on, still covered in vomit).
She had the murder podcast on because it was far less scary than what was going on around us in the midtown Manhattan Emergency Room at 4am.
The only friend we made at the E.R. was a woman named Miss Williams who was in the curtained-off room next to me. She seemed to be a midtown E.R. mainstay/celebrity and kept telling everyone that her knees were broken while running around the floor and kept offering me Tylenol which my girlfriend kept kindly refusing on my behalf (because I still couldn’t talk).
I eventually ate some ice chips and went home to my girlfriend’s apartment in an Uber (where the man hit every pothole in the entire city). When I woke up, I discovered that I had no phone, no keys, and no wallet. Zach had “accidentally taken my phone” and my wallet and keys were… yep! You guessed it! Back at the hotel where I passed out and vomited and was carted out in front of 900 comedians.
Which meant… after the two hours it took me to sit up and put on my girlfriend’s Adidas pants (very tight on me) and the t-shirt she got because she saw Harry Styles wear it in 2009 (very comfy)...
I made my way BACK to midtown! Where the hotel concierge told me that he “could not give me back my wallet and keys (that were at the bar coat check) until 5pm when the bar coat check opened”. I sat down in the middle of the hotel lobby and cried and watched people check-in and considered literally getting a room to sleep and die in (because I felt so horrible), but then remembered that I didn’t even have my wallet so that wouldn’t have even been possible :) The Awesome Never Stops :) — new catchphrase?
I finally watched one of the bellhops be really nice to a family checking in and thought “this is my guy”, went up to him (skittering around the concierge so he didn’t see me ask the same question to a different person), and asked if he could unlock the coat check.
He said “of course” and walked me right up. I will be awarding this man the Presidential honor of freedom whenever they next do that (I called Joe Biden and he wrote down the bellhop’s name and said I could come to Washington and put it around his neck).
I left midtown and went home and slept forever.
When I woke up, I was still, of course, worried that I tarnished my reputation in the comedy community, so I turned on a podcast where some celebrity magically said something like: “Why worry about what people think of you? It’s a waste of time and energy!” and I was like “Sooo true, girl!” and then texted everyone I know about how I just listened to a podcast that said it’s a waste of time/energy to care about what other people think of you and what do they think of THAT?!
Also, at one point during my recovery period, I heard violent knocking on my apartment door and opened it to find a FedEx guy furious that my apartment was on the 4th floor but was marked #504. And I said, “no it’s not” and then I looked at the sign and, turns out, someone had switched all the apartment numbers on our floor to 5’s instead of 4’s overnight — THE AWESOME NEVER STOPS :)
The #’s are still like this… as I type this very newsletter… and nobody in the building has said anything… and it’s literally my whole floor… not just my apartment…
At first, when the guy came to the door, I was like, “did I sleep in the wrong apartment? Did someone prank me and move all my stuff one floor up?” and then I was like no, that’s not possible/ why would someone do that?
So… yeah… that mystery, along with the trigger of the martini incident… remains unsolved…
If you’re still reading… here are some other things that happened this week:
-My dad called me and told me he has “gotten into breathwork” and made me do it with him on the phone and then tried to get me to buy “tape for your mouth at night to keep it closed that makes you have to get up to pee less/ never”. I told him I need the day version of that to keep my big fat trap shut cuz I’m always saying stupid shit.
-I left my debit card on the UES while I was stone cold sober at my best friend’s birthday party (scared to even eat the free popcorn at the bar in case it was poison).
When I went back to get my card, I stopped at a UES deli where an 80 year old woman named Maggie told me me that “I must get the turkey provolone sandwich on baguette even tho I’m vegetarian because she’s a regular at the deli and it rly is the best thing on the menu even tho it’s simple” and then stood there until I ordered it
(the Jersey Boys soundtrack was, of course, blaring in the background during all of this and she, of course, watched me get the sandwich then made her way over to the checkout counter where she introduced every customer to the cashier and told them about “the big things the cashier’s son was up to in Miami”.)
She also told the butcher that she “didn’t like what he gave her the day prior” and he said, “that’s why I told you to sample it first, but you didn’t want to” and Maggie said, “Yeah, that sounds like me”. Then the butcher then said “I should’ve forced you to sample it anyway, I should’ve trusted my gut… after all… it’s a big one” and patted his stomach and I was like… I am in a movie.
Anyway, yeah! That’s it!
I must stop typing this newsletter now because someone on social media just told me congratulations u won an iphone 13.
If you ever want to get over ur fear of throwing up, do it uncontrollably in front of 900+ influencers and comedians.
Kisses and love (what? am I still drunk?) and 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
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Anyway…
THRILLING INSIDER VIEW OF CATHERINES PARTY!!! And I’m sure u threw up and then passed out with verve and panache. Hopefully the shirt is ok 💜💜💜