Sent From My HotSpot: REID #244
with no power
SHORT:
Well, Elon is out of the White House.
After he left, they let Kristi Noem take DOGE out back and shoot it1.
MEDIUM:
I’m writing this in total darkness, using my phone hotspot, because our power’s been out for over 24 hours. Jess is going turbo in the group chat with our landlord, who claims they “stopped by and everything seemed fine.” Meanwhile, our lights, stove, oven, WiFi, and outlets are dead.
My laptop only works because I went to a friend’s blackbox play tonight, and the pre-show was me frantically plugging in every charger I own and muttering, “Power’s out! Fridge is rotting!” — a solo, site-specific piece I call: The Death of a Laptop2.
I also had to give a work presentation from the most baby shriek and espresso oil drill noisy cafe in America, thanks to the outage. Fortunately, I was able to distract my audience with a clip that had “a topical tie to Tom Cruise3.”
While I was in Texas this weekend, Jess watched six Tom Cruise movies in a row and sent me a photo of his hair with the message, “Have your hairdresser do this to you.”
So it’s entirely possible their horniness for a 61-year-old Scientologist is what shorted the grid4.
LONG:
I was in Texas helping with a late-night show at ATX, where my main job was wrangling a giant inflatable pair of sponsor lips that only stayed up if plugged into a leaf blower. We wrote an asthma joke to explain the noise, but the audience couldn’t hear it, so we just sounded deeply concerned about the mouth’s health5.
The rest of the weekend I went to panels on “the current state of television” (grim!) and was annoyed that most of the writers onstage were hot and articulate—two qualities writers should not have.
At one point, I was so sleep-deprived, heat-stroked, and low-blood-sugar, that I squatted in the aisle during a packed panel and sighed like a cartoon horse giving up. It was so loud that, heads turned… including two of my friends, whom I affectionately call The Rats (because they wrote a genius TV show about rats).
The Rats met as NBC pages and now live a disturbingly wholesome life writing TV and being in love in New York. At dinner on the last night, one of them ordered a peanut butter pie, took a bite, and casually said, “This kind of tastes like a Perfect Bar.”
I immediately screamed, “NO WAY, I LOVE PERFECT BARS!!!” at a volume that made everyone at the table recoil—except the peanut butter pie Rat, who just nodded… knowingly…
Turns out we both practice something I call The Perfect Drive-By—when you get so hungry you dissociate, sprint into a Starbucks like it’s a field hospital, yank a peanut butter Perfect Bar from that sad little fridge coffin, scan it, and tear it open before the automatic doors even close behind you…
Everyone else at the table had never heard of Perfect Bars and looked at us like we were describing an MLM.
I shared a hotel room in Texas with my friend Rima, who bragged that it had Austin’s smallest pool. Our room overlooked it. I didn’t swim, but I did stare at it a lot and say, “How do they know it’s the smallest?” and “Does a hot tub count? Because then this thing’s a liar.”
It hailed and was 90 degrees all weekend, so my hair lived in a limp, greasy bun—which was fine until I ended up near Jon Hamm. If it had been down, he would've said something life-changing. Instead, I was hunched in a corner talking to an intern who nearly fainted when she found out I was 28.
I flew home on Spirit Airlines because I hate myself. At the gate, a girl was thrilled to see a guy from Survivor on our flight, which felt a little too on the nose. They charged me $79 for a carry-on and $4.99 for water. The couple next to me kept kissing… loudly… No idea how they were in the mood… maybe they were just severely dehydrated due to the lack of complimentary beverages and and sharing saliva in a symbiotic way to survive.
I landed in Newark ready to do a Perfect Drive-By but got trapped in a 20-minute Starbucks line. Birds were flying around the airport, which always makes me pissed the fuck off. Wrong place, bitch! You have wings. You can go anywhere. Why are you at the Chili’s To-Go in Terminal C? I eventually got my bar and sent a pic to the one rat who gets it.
Snack of the Week is either:
The CAVA bowl I ate while “centering myself” and journaling in a downtown Austin location of a fast-casual Mediterranean chain as Meghan Trainor screamed overhead,
orThe Waldorf salad I horked from a plastic tub over a roadside counter while a pack of bikers zipped past in rainbow headbands.
Post of the Week is this awesome one from the Da Vinkis.
C U Next Tuesday
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If this is your first time reading, pls check out the archives.
Sincerely,
Reid Pope
Things Coming Up:
7:30pm June 7th: WokeWest at BK Art Haus
5pm June 8th: I’m in this doc that’s premiering at Tribeca
8pm & 9pm June 12th: I’m doing Savage Comedy @ Logan’s Run & It Girls @ Singers
June 16th: I’m doing stand-up at T4T Bell House
June 20th & 21st: You can come to my play-in-progress workshop
June 27th: You can come see a very special Going Down Live! at UCBNY
Hilarious joke referencing the time she openly admitted to shooting and killing a dog.
Waiting For ConEd, Long Day’s Journey Into Charge, The Iceman Cometh… But the Fridge is Dead, Angels in The Outlets, etc. etc.
I have not seen the new movie, but Jess has shown me the footage of him riding that airplane in a scary way about 900 times.
In brighter news: our downstairs neighbors — who once texted us at 4 a.m. about “creaking” and suggested we start going to bed by 11 — are finally moving out!!! I wish them peace, and an upstairs tenant who teaches toddler tap on hardwood!!!
Our guest on the show was George Wallace, who came out and crushed a set about how people piss all over the place in LA. It ended in a standing ovation.
love a perfect bar, hot tub does not count as pool
omg evil neighbors leaving GOD BLESS