By Josh Gondelman — 10 Nov 2025

#157. Jennifer Lawrence in Die My Love and You

This is her "dancing in anguish" face not her also-frequently-featured masturbation face.

Hi everyone,

Does everybody know about the concept of a "heat check?" It's a basketball term referring to a player who has hit a a few shots in a row and decides to test the strength of their momentum by launching another shot from exceptional distance, or while off-balance, or in the face of smothering defense. It's a useful framework for extra-basketball behavior as well. Damien Chazelle following up Whiplash and La La Land with the chaotic and far-ranging Babylon was a heat check. Meghan Markle launching a line of jams was a heat check. Any athlete who puts out a rap song...heat check.

I bring this up because on Tuesday night I witnessed possibly the greatest heat check of my life. It was well after midnight, and an exuberant lingered crowd on the sidewalk outside of the Paramount in Brooklyn, the site of Zohran Mamdani's official post-election party. A DJ with a powerful bluetooth speaker was buoying the already effervescent mood with a wide range of songs. He caused a borderline frenzy by throwing on "All I Do Is Win" by DJ Khaled featuring a bunch of actual artists. He followed up the 21st century's preeminent Jock Jam (unofficial) with the Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling" which is a song made for bar mitzvahs and movie montages of friends having a great night out that doesn't include club drugs. It was a little corny, sure, but it kept a sense of millennial optimism going. The crowd, who had previously been turning up to some Middle Eastern dance music I didn't recognize was now shouting: "Mazel tov!"

Then, in an act of musical hubris (or maybe just a curiosity about exactly how many endorphins were flowing through our individual blood streams), the DJ played "Macarena" by Los Del Rio. There was a momentary dip in the crowd's energy, as if we were all collectively weighing whether to mutiny. Ultimately, the collective verdict was: "Fuck it, we ball." The party continued, dispersing only after the mayor-elect waved from an SUV as he departed around 1:30am.

Unrelated to the playlist: Caught up in the ambient good mood and a few drinks deep, I said maybe the stupidest words that ever passed through my lips. I was standing on the periphery of a conversation between a friend and some friends of hers, and everyone was kind of toggling between English and Arabic. I was listening to the English parts of the chat and following along with the general emotional tenor of the Arabic parts. At one point I chimed in, causing a friend of a friend to ask if I spoke Arabic.

"No," I replied, "but I'm very emotionally intelligent." Throw me in the jail that was a big hole where they kept Batman until all the other prisoners decided it would be cool if he climbed out, please. Sorry! I was intoxicated by the idea that sometimes things can improve instead of getting worse indefinitely. And bourbon.

Sorry to do so much local politics talk in this week's newsletter, but it does feel like the election became kind of a national issue. I feel encouraged that New York City is going to have a mayor who cares about making conditions more livable for its residents in contrast to his opponent who acted like a bunch of special interests stuffed into person clothes the way you fill a scarecrow with straw.

I know not everyone thinks about politics in exactly the same way I do. And I certainly have said some mean-spirited things about many politicians (and I stand behind them). But YIKES people have been so viciously racist and Islamophobic in the days following Zohran's victory. I said this last week about the Cuomo campaign, but it seems to have gotten worse still.

To all the people saying they'll never come to New York City again because they don't want to step in a puddle and get socialism all over you...good? The bridges and tunnels will be slightly less congested without you coming into the city to see (I'm assuming) Stranger Things on Broadway or stand in line for ninety minutes to eat a bagel you saw on TikTok when there are equivalently good bagels two blocks away with no line.

I want to say this next part delicately because I mean it sincerely! It causes me a great deal of sadness to see the way some Jewish people have claimed that Zohran Mamdani's New York will not be safe for Jews. The guy was at my friends' passover seder. He mentioned opposing antisemitism in his acceptance speech. I hate hate hate the way a few blowhards (looking at you, Michael Rapaport) smearing him with truly vile attacks have poisoned such a huge chunk of the city's Jewish population against him.

I feel like such a stooge defending any politician, and I think voting for someone and generally liking them does not mean I will never have criticisms of their governance. But seeing people of all stripes from older Hasidic Jews to Gen Z Palestinians outside the Paramount made me feel really hopeful not just for Zohran's New York, but for the potential for things to improve across the country with hard work applied towards noble goals. Meanwhile, some of the worst antisemites in modern history (including Donald Trump) endorsed Zohran's opponent. So...what are we doing here, people? I hope people can take a deep breath and judge the mayor on what he says and does rather than what other people have said about him, especially when those people suck shit to begin with!

(Also...come on, Senate Democrats!!! What the hell???)

And obviously, Zohran is a huge improvement over our current mayor, who I cannot believe sat for this interview while he is still in office. Ziwe truly deserves a Nobel Prize for Chaos.

In other news, I was on my friend Alex Sujong Laughlin's podcast Try Hard talking about my recent attempted return to pickup basketball.

I'm also on the new episode of Circle Round (perfect for listening to with your kids or if you somehow are a kid yourself).

Quick reminder: I'll be in Minneapolis for one headlining show on 11/23 which is less than two weeks away!

And of course Aimee and Ted's Christmas Variety Show from Thanksgiving Weekend until 12/14, then Seattle (12/28) and Portland, OR (12/30-12/31) at the end of the year.

PEP TALK FOR JENNIFER LAWRENCE IN DIE MY LOVE

Jennifer Lawrence stressed out as confetti falls around her from Die My Love. — She deserves some kind of special Academy Award for Going Through It.

Cute baby, though!

(Baby not pictured here.)

PEP TALK FOR A READER

I did not really edit this pep talk at all, and the reader provided his own nickname, which I enjoyed very much.

My pops recently had open heart surgery and I’m at the ready to help his recovery. Concurrently, I have a friend getting married out of town in a few weeks. Would you please provide some pep about not feeling guilty about going to support a friend on such a joyous occasion?
- Shirk Nowitzki

Shirk! Listen!

You are not Michelle Yeoh nor are you Ke Huy Quan. No one expects you to be everything everywhere all at once. Some things you need to do and some places you need to be, and if the things get done it's okay to be in a different place if that's where you're called to. A mistake I often make is thinking that if something I need to do gets done, but I don't do it with my own two hands (or one hand, I guess...some tasks are single-handers, or double-footers, even) then it doesn't count as me doing it. But delegating counts as getting something done! Paying someone to change your oil gets your oil changed, even if it doesn't justify purchasing a Dickies jumpsuit.

This is a real me-to-me pep talk; it's been a while since I've done one, so please give me a little grace here. Making sure that a task is completed or a person is cared for is the job. And if you enlist someone else to take a shift, that's you making sure the job gets done. Obviously this is not always the right move. If you, say, hire an emissary to watch your child's dance recital or karate tournament, that's not really in the spirit of fulfilling that obligation. The idea, in that case, is not for someone to watch the ballet/martial arts. It's for you to be there. But in most cases, juggling a bunch of tasks involves keeping your eye on one while trusting the trajectory at which you've launched another.

Similarly, your dad might need a little help when you're scheduled to be out of town, but the being out of town is the thing that only you can do. You are not leaving indefinitely or without warning. You are not pointing a surveillance camera at your father and skipping town. As long as your dad has capable and attentive care, you get to round out the other parts of your life as well. 24/7/365 is too many hours and too many days to be on call. Your dad will understand this, I bet! And if he doesn't, you'll be back soon, and he'll be okay in the meantime. Not everything that's your responsibility is ONLY your responsibility. And sometimes the responsible thing to do is leaving someone else in charge for a bit.

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
the Mountain Goats - "Cold at Night"

As I've mentioned a bunch of times lately, this year I've felt a lot more access to a full range of emotion than usual, in ways that I think are healthy. I've felt madder and sadder than usual lately. Not with greater frequency, necessarily, but more fully. And happy moments have bowled me over even when they were objectively small. I got choked up watching Andre 3000 get choked up at OutKast's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction (big, but not for me). My heart swelled with gratitude when the guy at my bodega sliced up some turkey for my dog as a little present. They say you're supposed to feel your feelings, but honestly, I prefer the bottling-it-all-up method. It's the Massachusetts in me, I suppose.

The Mountain Goats have a new album out about a maritime accident, which does not sound like an occasion for much optimism. But the lyric "the first thing you learn is how strong you can be if you have to" speaks to something really relevant lately. The condition of modern life requires a lot of people to have to be stronger than they should need to be. Human beings have such a massive capacity for resilience which is both inspiring and devastating. Learning what one's limits are mean that one has been pushed to the limit, you know? Also, the lyric "the first thing you learn is how far you can go with no gas in the tank" reminds me of both humanity's collective tenacity and also that one Seinfeld episode where Kramer test drives the car well past the gas tank's "E" reading.

The arrangement of this song, full of urgent strings, felt like something from a musical to me even before I knew that the harmonies were sung by Lin-Manuel Miranda. (Maybe that will get my mom to check this song out! Hi, mom!) The Mountain Goats' body of work overall has this quality of mapping a metaphor so elegantly onto a narrative. It's kind of a musical theater quality to begin with. A Mountain Goats jukebox musical would absolutely crush with an audience of guys who look exactly like me. Here's hoping. It's good to hope.

UPCOMING SHOWS

I’m buzzing around NYC for most of November with scattered road dates and then hitting the road for Aimee and Ted’s Christmas Show tour! Then the west coast at the end of the year!

11/11: Doug Loves Movies at City Winery (Manhattan)

11/14: Bushwick Comedy Club (Brooklyn)

11/15: Bullseye Live Show at The PIT (Manhattan)

11/16: Hot Guy Draft at Littlefield (Brooklyn)

11/17: Co-Hosting Frankenstein's Baby (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)