SHORT:
People make fun of nonbinary people for having weird names… meanwhile my dad’s in love with 25 golfers who are all legally named things like: Punkie Maverick Baluga John.
At the end of the day, we’re all the same!
(trying to get things in holes)
MEDIUM:
I love being a Jew and controlling the media.
By media, I of course mean, the social media that I run for the bean-based protein company at which I work.
Yeah. I’m still working for the beans.
Did you know that?
If not, now you do!
Message me if you want to learn more about the power of the small-but-mighty Lupini!
Best legume in the world!
3x the protein of eggs 3x the fiber of oats!
LONG:
This week, my girlfriend announced that she’s“really starting to feel like a part of the New York Times spelling bee game community”.
Good for her!
The NYTSBGC should have their own parade! Like Pride! Just a bunch of nerds whose eyesight’s gone bad from squinting at their phones (I guess that sort of is what pride is too, it’s just masked in glitter and thongs).
The other morning, I watched her slowly wake, pull up the puzzle comment section on her phone, and whisper: “let’s see what the gurlz are saying today”.
The sun had just barely penetrated her bedroom window (because it was early but also mostly because she has a huge overgrown aloe plant and candles with Leo DiCaprio and Harry Styles’s face all over the sill); and yet, despite the hour, she was tappin’ and laughin’ with a community of passionate nerds who spend their precious moments on earth trying to come up with spellings and iterations using the same 7 letters provided.
Do I understand any of it?
As the great mover and shaker Simon Cowell once said… “absolutely not”
… nevertheless, I suppose, in a time where one of the most popular TV programs is titled: The Summer I Turned Pretty, it’s good that some people are spending their time focusing on The Brain™ instead of looks (or whatever).
But also, do remember, as I mentioned last week, looks ARE important. No matter how many moms around the world try to convince you otherwise! Try telling Anne Frank that looks aren’t important (well you can’t because… she’s not alive, but go back in time and try!) She’d laugh right in ur face! Up there in her attic BECAUSE of her brown hair and brown eyes… wait… should I write a movie about Anne Frank called The Summer I Turned… To My Uncle And Was Like: Do You Think We’re Going To Be Up Here Forever? I’m not sure it would do as well.
Sidenote: My girlfriend’s roommate used to date one of the boys in the The Summer I Turned Pretty? and he went from having not that many Instagram followers to nearly 1 Million (actually) within like… a week of the show coming out.
My gf has a picture of him that she posted over five years ago and some fan account FOUND IT and liked it. The oceans are rising and flooding towns and the stan accounts are rising and going even deeper into people’s pasts!
Incredible!
Whatta world we live in!
Okay, anyway, sorry. Back to my girlfriend and the NYT puzzle-talk of it all.
Apparently a man named “Steve” in the comments “never ceases to make her smile”.
So I actually do think I need to enter NYT into my little google search button and study up on whatever Steve is typin’ and sayin’…
I can’t let Steve take MY THING.
Did that sound threatening and cool and badass? I’m really trying to be more of a hard-ass/badass bitch. But I gotta work on it…
Step 1, stop crying at things like how my Ukrainian diving coach’s son is going to the college of his dreams (congrats Mischa!)
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about communities and networks and blah blah blah a lot this week. Thanks to my gf’s freakish obsession with the NYT word games and also just because I spend my nights doing comedy and meeting performers and thinking about the gig-money-love-passion-packaging-management-ownership of it all.
Especially when it comes to autonomy/power.
People fight in the NYT Spelling Bee comments.
It makes me sad.
People fight and abuse power in comedy and theater.
It makes me sad.
And makes me feel like I have to embody or develop this weird “hard-ass/bad-ass” delusionally confident & individualist persona to survive (I was kidding, but also, I’m not).
I don’t think anyone can survive these days without wielding status/sexuality/money/power in one way or another, so it’s just about navigating it with care? And remembering that you’re in a huge knot of bullshit.
Life is performance and performance, at the end of the day, is a type of “servicing” — you are giving something to people and they are taking it and that give-take is rarely balanced, if ever. Because of this, it’s inextricably tied to the somatic/embodied/sexual.
Sexuality is power and power is a system of tension so there is always high/low which to me, hints at the constant risk or presence (even if watered down) of potential harm/abuse.
As long as sexuality/art/personhood/POV/performance is packaged and sold or used for attention-capital or actual-money-capital, it will remain entrenched in this weird system, so there will always be some sort of imbalance/ potential sleazy shit going on.
So you just have to try and be nice to yourself and other people and remember that community and lateral support exists. Or can exist.
I think this care/awareness goes away when people get mad egotistical or really see themself as a “solo artist” or “true individual”.
No man/entity is an island and yet companies and production companies and people want the most perfect unique never-before-seen completely-self-built beautiful islands in the world.
And people are shoving themselves into island cookie-cutters of their own creation.
But they’re still cookie cutters.
I dunno.
I read the Jeanine Garafolo article about not being “a sellout”, and I think… everything is a sale? I think it’s inescapable. I think to survive, to live, is to always be selling something.
Life and “the business” and whatever can just be less hellish if we look around and are nicer to one another instead of being like little Sims screaming and waving up at the sky.
Respond with your thoughts.
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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