#153. Frogs Against Fascism and You
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Hi everyone,
I hope you're doing well on this rainy (where I am, at least) Monday. I've been feeling the urge to wriggle out of my skin like wet jeans while I've been waiting for news on a bunch of work projects. I have been cheekily describing it as hell to friends and family, before downgrading it to purgatory. But I think purgatory is not that different from hell for a certain kind of person. Tom Petty, I appreciate your solidarity in defining waiting as the hardest part. You really got it, man.
When I remember to take a break from stewing, I have been living more or less in the moment, which I've always heard is the right time to live. I had a lovely visit home to Massachusetts, where I spent a great afternoon with my parents just hanging out, then I told some jokes and slept at a nice hotel and performed at the live Circle Round show at Symphony Hall. Circle Round is always a blast live, and this time I got to perform with the brilliant Jessica Rau and Mary Faber, as well as old comedy pal Lamont Price (who CRUSHED as a bird who could secretly talk). Just like when I got to do the same show with Bethany Van Delft earlier this year, I felt a true sense of "look how far we've come" in comparison to the kinds of gigs we were doing when we met (and often still do if I'm being honest). I'm excited for listeners to hear the two episodes we recorded!
Earlier last week I had the good fortune of being invited to opening night of Abby Wambaugh's show The First 3 Minutes of 17 Shows which is, structurally, what it sounds like. Abby performs three(ish) minutes of over a dozen premises for shows that they thought up. It's stylistically a little zany, in a fun way, but thematically very coherent. I found it really warm and tender and delightful. Kind of a marvel that someone who is so new to standup wrote such a funny solo show. I was especially impressed by the way the heavy moments felt so lyrical and well-considered. (FWIW: My favorite first-three-minutes segment was "Scare the Banana.") It's running for a little while longer if you're in New York. Tickets aren't wildly expensive, and it's a fun night out!
On Sunday night I played a tiny part in the Best Show 25th Anniversary shows at the Bell House. Thanks to my friend Brett Davis for including me! Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster are (obviously) two of the funniest people alive. I performed as part of the "Kill Gary" segment, which is a riff on the popular Kill Tony podcast, except it's hosted by Gary the Squirrel, a puppet.
It always means a lot to me to leave a tiny fingerprint on the legacy of so many giant wonderful institutions. I know I say this a lot, but I often feel like Forrest Gump but less physically fit, and with a firmer understanding of the reproductive process. I am always so flattered to be asked to be a part of stuff like this, and the doing/making part of it is so fun too. Unless you're the Wiggles, you don't often get to make hundreds of kids laugh and clap onstage. And the Best Show has so much lore and so many legendary people have been involved with it. It felt great to be a part of that for one night! Coincidentally, after the show I ended up chatting with Brendan McDonald, who produced WTF with Marc Maron, which ended today. It was really fascinating to get to talk to someone so crucial to such a monumental culture-shifting endeavor right as it was wrapping up!
In other podcast/Gondelman news, the episode of Jameela Jamil's podcast Wrong Turns I recorded a few months ago with my friend Erin Jackson is available to listen to now. We had a fun conversation sharing humiliating stories!
ALSO: Just a reminder that I'm going out on the road doing a little flurry of headlining shows through the end of the year. I've written a lot of new jokes since the last time I was in any of these cities! New Orleans (10/24-10/25)! Minneapolis (11/23)! Seattle (12/28, tickets on sale soon)! Portland, OR (12/30-12/31, tickets on sale soon)! All ticket links below!!!
PEP TALK FOR FROGS AGAINST FASCISM
I don't know why someone would own an inflatable frog costume. I'm assuming it's a logistically and emotionally complicated sex thing. I'm not judging. In fact, for a Portland resident "sexual fetish" is far less embarrassing a reason for possessing such an outfit than the equally likely "member of a highly competitive platonic adult leapfrog league." Whatever the reason, a bunch of Portland-area residents in mascot cosplay now comprise America's front line defenses against fascism. And a weary nation looks on and says: "Okay! At least someone is doing something!"
Philosophically, it seems like the idea here is that ICE doesn't mind – or perhaps actively enjoys – looking monstrously cruel, so the way to turn the optics against these agents is to make them look like massive fucking idiots. If an ICE agent is going to shoot a pastor in the head with a pepper ball in Chicago, there's no level of violence they could commit that they seem to believe will turn the tide meaningfully against them. It makes sense, then, to showcase how pathetic and craven this institution is. And one avenue of accomplishing that is to show them in full riot gear patrolling what is essentially an early Halloween party.
“If you’re going to make it silly and say that we’re evil, we’re going to make it silly by showing how evil you are,” said Brooks Brown, of Vancouver, Washington, who passed out 30 inflatable costumes Thursday night to anyone who wanted to get it on “Operation Inflation.” (NBC News)
There have been many kinds of opposition to ICE's assault on cities across the United States. I get choked up every time I see a video of concerned bystanders intervening to help someone safely escape an unjust arrest/abduction. But nothing has quite underscored the asymmetry between the "war" that Donald Trump has claimed is breaking out in urban areas and the reality of those regions (imperfect but largely peaceful). Nothing illustrates public safety more effectively than someone dressing like a dumbass and not getting beat up. And by that standard, Portland may statistically be the safest place in the history of the world.
Keep doing what you're doing, you weirdos. With ICE committing wide ranging criminal activity from assault to kidnapping to (presumably, on the low end) annoying traffic infractions, and the police uninterested in actually keeping order to protect the residents under their jurisdiction, it's up to a bunch of ComicCon-looking goofballs to uphold the Constitution. The government has resorted to a system of all-checks or all-balances (I forget which is which.) Frog suits are our last line of defense against our nü-metal gestapo.
So keep showing up. Keep opposing fascism. And keep your sex stuff out of it...unless you can do it in a way that would help keep the feds at bay.
PEP TALK FOR A READER
This request felt very relevant! I did a tiny bit of punctuation editing!
I’m the parent of a small child in a world that feels impossibly heavy and cruel. We need all the pep we can get.
- Grown and Stressy
Yesterday I had a long coffee and croissant (are those the C and C from C+C Music Factory?) hangout with a friend, and we did a LOT of good complaining. We are living through a moment where the stupidest and meanest people are accumulating an amount of wealth and power that would have made Alexander the Great DOUBLE weep upon realizing how many worlds he hadn't even considered conquering. And yes, that line about A the G was written for Die Hard, but we don't know that he NEVER wept that first time.
The entire U.S. economy seems to exist to allow investors to make it rain dollars on every AI startup, like Silicon Valley is a strip club where the performers never take off their fleece vests. Every movie script has to involve every single superhero that has ever existed, or no one will make it. Taylor Swift released a new album featuring several songs that even die hard Swifties cannot mount a defense for. (What do you mean you like your friends cancelled? Is Kevin Spacey a part of your squad?) And state violence across the globe persists despite worldwide protests. It feels like everyone cool and nice is taking it on the chin, while being an internationally recognized shithead is the surest path to success. (I am a little surprised no one lodged a disingenuous complaint that this newsletter never offered a sincere tribute to the life of Charlie Kirk, but I think everyone who pretended to want that got distracted by being mad they might have to hear Spanish during a Super Bowl performance.)
There's a lot of toxic sludge to wade through from the time you get up in the morning to the time you go to sleep at night. And that has, to varying degrees, always been the case throughout recorded history. I read recently that every generation feels like they might live to see the end of the world, and even if that's true it doesn't stop me from feeling like we might actually be the ones who live to see the end of the world.
And yet! We get up every day and we work hard to make our lives happy and comfortable. Then, with the energy we have left, we try to make the world happy and comfortable for other people too. We do this because we (us and others) deserve it. We do this because we have as much a claim to this world as the chumps and the bastards and the goblins who live to acquire as much as they can and dance around a flaming pile of their riches instead of sharing the wealth.
Not to sound too corporate-speak about it, but as scary as it may feel to raise a child amidst these conditions, what you're really looking at is an opportunity to teach a small person to grow up loving and caring for those around them. A toddler isn't someone you have to argue with because they're spouting talking points from a Ben Shapiro video (although the experience of debating with a toddler is not dissimilar to that). Your kid is not someone who possesses a deeply ingrained distrust of new ideas and unfamiliar people. (Well, I guess a little kid should have SOME distrust for unfamiliar people, just for the sake of safety.) But really your challenge isn't to protect your child from the evils of the world; you are up against the possibly-more-daunting but vastly-more-fulfilling task of indoctrinating a squishy little brain with values that equip them to make the world softer and kinder and healthier and happier. And you would be able (and obligated) to do that no matter how good or bad the world feels!
Things do seem unbearably heavy these days, but you have borne that weight so far, and the way to make it lighter is to teach more people to bear it along with you. And what better person to teach than someone who has never known anything but goodness so far?
PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Zach Tenorio - "What'd It Take"
Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 18, 2025
Here's another recommendation I straight up lifted from the wonderful Hearing Things newsletter! This bouncy, sub-two-minute keyboard riff sounds almost like something RJD2 would have included on one of his early albums, and I mean that as high praise. I grew up in the era of omnipresent sampling, and Tenorio plays keys here and samples himself, which technically counts as that and also one-ups Moby and Fatboy Slim. "What'd It Take" skitters around, mostly instrumental save for the repetition of the three word refrain, and then it's gone. It's like music you'd hear over time lapse footage of someone painting a mural. If you have something important but not unpleasant to get done in two minutes, this is the perfect soundtrack. Enjoy this and then go back and listen to Deadringer for the first time in a few years, like I did.
UPCOMING SHOWS
I’m buzzing around NYC for the next couple of month with scattered road dates and then hitting the road for Aimee and Ted’s Christmas Show tour!
10/14: Pretty Major at Union Hall (Brooklyn)
10/16: The Comedy Cellar (Manhattan)
10/17: Bushwick Comedy Club (Brooklyn); Flophouse Comedy Club (Brooklyn)
10/24-10/25: Sports Drink (New Orleans, four shows)
10/30: Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! Live Recording (Chicago)
11/8: Buyer's Remorse at Caveat (Manhattan)
11/9: Going Down with Ella Yurman at Second City (Brooklyn)
11/11: Doug Loves Movies at City Winery (Manhattan)
11/15: Bullseye Live Show at The PIT (Manhattan)
11/16: Hot Guy Draft at Littlefield (Brooklyn)
11/23: Parkway Theater (Minneapolis)
AIMEE MANN/TED LEO CHRISTMAS SHOW DATES
11/28-11/30 (four shows): City Winery (NYC)
12/2: The Birchmere (Alexandria, VA)
12/3: City Winery (Philadelphia)
12/4: District Music Hall (Norwalk, CT)
12/5: The Greenwich Odeum (East Greenwich, RI)
12/6: Chevalier Theatre (Medford, MA)
12/8: Agora Theatre and Ballroom (Cleveland, OH)
12/9: Royal Oak Music Theatre (Royal Oak, MI)
12/11-12/12: Mayfair Theatre at the Irish American Heritage Center (Chicago)
12/13: Stoughton Opera House (Stoughton, WI)
12/14: Fitzgerald Theater (St. Paul, MN)