#186. Graduates and You

Hi everyone,

I got back yesterday evening from a couple of days in Bristol, Tennessee performing at the Blue Ridge Comedy Club, which my old friend Shawn Carter opened a few years ago. I'd plugged my shows on Wait Wait and The Bugle, and I think we got a nice chunk of the NPR and British political comedy podcast listener contingent out to the shows, which were a lot of fun.

Over my 48ish hours in Bristol (made sliiiightly longer by some maintenance-induced travel delays), I tried to maximize my time in the south by eating a bunch of bbq (mission accomplished) and spending Saturday afternoon in a boat on a lake with Shawn and his five-year-old daughter. I got to witness a little southern kid try seltzer for the first time, which is as close as I've ever gotten to doing Jewish missionary work. I even got a decent bagel, which is not a given everywhere in the country.

In personal growth news: I also managed to slap on some sunscreen before we hit the water, which I usually don't remember to do until after I've gotten one scorching sunburn for the year. It's a good omen for 2026 that I returned from the excursion slightly bepinkened, but not remotely the shade of angry-vice-principal-red that I get when I forget to apply SPF protection.

And! Last Tuesday, it was my ninth wedding anniversary! Maris's too, obviously! Maris bought me an extremely good cardigan that I won't be able to wear for several months (so I have something to look forward to in the fall!!!), and I got her (among other things) a Fusilli Jerry off of Etsy. I searched to see if such a thing existed, and it did. In fact, Etsy offered more than one version of the Fusilli Jerry. Sometimes, the internet is beautiful. We also had a great dinner out, and we ran into the JoCo Cruise team, who sent us a round of Shirley Temples as a bit. I am so lucky to be married to someone I love so much!!!!

ALSO last week, I got to do a set and an interview on Chika's live talk show called (not coincidentally) Do It Live. The show also contained an panel with some young multi-hyphenate artists talking about how they're creating work outside the traditional entertainment industry. Chika was such a thoughtful interviewer and moderator, and so funny! I left the show feeling energized about the art people are making and how much more I can be doing on my own. I think I am going to dedicate this summer to some really silly writing projects!

And in one final also for this section, John Hodgman, Jean Grae and I did our first of a few shows at Union Hall which we scheduled in part to help John generate material for some upcoming gigs. The show was packed and Ruby Laks joined us as a musical guest (Jonathan Coulton chimed in on the guitar for a closing number too). We're back at it this Thursday (June 4th), and I'm also at Union Hall TONIGHT co-hosting Frankenstein's Baby with Alison Leiby (incredible lineup too, imo).

Quick announcement before we move things along: I AM RETURNING TO THE GREATER BOSTON AREA FOR MY FIRST HEADLINING GIGS IN A COUPLE OF YEARS!!!! ON SEPTEMBER 19TH, I'M DOING TWO SHOWS AT THE COMEDY STUDIO IN CAMBRIDGE, MA! THERE IS A GOOD CHANCE THESE WILL SELL OUT, SO PLEASE GRAB YOUR TICKETS NOW IF YOU'D LIKE THEM!!! I CAN'T WAIT FOR THESE SHOWS!!!

(Oh, and earlier this morning I recorded a new episode of The Gargle with genius host Alice Fraser and brilliant other guest John-Luke Roberts! It'll be out later this week!)

PEP TALK FOR GRADUATES

Hey hello! Because I spent Sunday in transit from Tennessee home to Brooklyn by way of Atlanta, I am going to share this little humor piece I read at last week's John/Jean/Josh show. My friend Danielle Weisberg shared a similar piece a couple of days later in her newsletter (it's paywalled there but other stuff is not), and I figured I'd post my version in my newsletter too instead of submitting it somewhere like the New Yorker since people are having parallel thoughts! Heeeere we go...

Why Are You Children Booing Me? I'm Rich!

…and it is an honor to be here today, congratulating you all on your commencement. “Commence” really is the operative word here. Far from your best days being behind you, life really begins when you leave the womb of this hallowed institution. That’s as true for those of you, graduating into a chaotic and depressing job market while saddled with student debt that equals the national deficit of several small nations, as it was for me, who dropped out of school in the 70s after paying for a full semester the amount a refurbished laptop costs in the present day. My life started in earnest that day when I founded my company MegaCompute. I could’t have known then that we would change the way people thought about compute power and general bigness. All I had was a little bit of knowledge, a whole lot of enthusiasm, and half a million dollars in seed money loaned to me interest-free by my father who owned a little mom and pop diamond mine at the time.

Those were heady years indeed. We worked out of the garage of the house I bought with money I’d saved working five hours a week at a record store while I was in high school. Along with my company’s co-founders, who I am legally not allowed to refer to by name on account of our out-of-court settlement, I worked tirelessly to take an industry that was already thriving and profitable and make it way more lucrative by paying our employees an amount so small it should have been illegal even back then. I mean it was illegal to pay them that little, and with good reason. But we were mavericks and did it anyway. By the time anyone tried to prosecute us, we were too big to fail, a phrase I invented depending on who you do or do not ask.

In some ways, I envy you, young graduates. Not for the economy you’re entering into, or the global political climate, which are of course fairly hostile to anyone who has not yet hoisted themselves by their bootstraps into a penthouse suite from the floor directly below the penthouse suite. Nor is my resentment caused by the multitudinous flavors of Oreo cookie available to you at even the shabbiest convenience stores (or so my personal shoppers tell me). I am, of course, capable of buying as many Oreos as I want. Which is none. Because I survive on protein bars called, uncomfortably, "George."

No, my jealousy stems from the fact that if I were embarking on my career starting today, I would have access to generative artificial intelligence models such as Claude, ChatGPT, and ClatGPud, the fusion of the two I invented by telling them to combine their abilities and create the world’s first larger language model.

In the past, if you wanted to enlist someone’s intellectual labor or implement their ideas, you had to pay them for it. No longer. No more will my free flowing river of capital be staunched by the need for “employees.” Now I simply hire one guy to prompt a GenAI model. The output is often inaccurate, but the important thing is, it exists, and it barely costs me anything. 

Excuse me. Please hold your reactions until the end of my address. I understand your impulse to shout out a “Wooooo!” of enthusiasm. But your pitch is so low. 

Wait. Could it be?

No! What? How?

Why are you children booing me? I’m rich! I know what I’m talking about. You cannot fight the future. This is a revolution, people! Can’t you see? The hundreds of thousands of dollars you put towards your degrees would have been better spent acquiring an opium den and then using Anthropic to streamline operations at that opium den through a series of layoffs. Sure, there’s a chance that advice would get you killed, even if you aren’t one of the people the app actively advises to end your own life. But that’s the beauty of the whole thing. We’ve closed the gap between people who know how to do things and people who might confuse their own butt cheeks with throw pillows. That actually happened to me once, by the way. It’s easier than you might think. 

Please let me finish! I was not prepared for such an onslaught. This is even worse than the time my good friend Dave Chappelle invited me onstage for reasons no one in attendance could pinpoint. But today I was specifically assured this would not happen by my chatbot lover Robota Flack. 

Sure, there might be 7,200 of you shouting at me now, but you are all living in a bubble, which you would have realized if you were in the six-person group chat I spend all day texting with. 

Fine. You know what? Great ideas area always unpalatable to the small-minded masses. I’m done putting pearls before swine. If there are any visionaries in this auditorium who want to hear the rest of my speech, meet me in the metaverse later. I will impart the rest of my wisdom upon you, and I’ll be selling several Bored Ape NFTs at what I'm sure you'll consider very reasonable prices.

PEP TALK FOR A READER

I did not edit this request much, but I DID add a nickname as is my custom.

I've been stagnating artistically lately and could use a pep talk to help me get back to my craft. Thanks!
- Rut's The Big Deal

Last Thursday night I was in the green room of Caveat, a small independent comedy venue in Manhattan. One of the producers of the evening's show began detailing her up-and-down relationship with Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, a twelve-week (?) process for unlocking one's creativity. The Artists's Way is every writer's backstop against applying to grad school for social work. One by one, the other producers and performers chimed in with their thoughts and method-specific questions even though almost none of the rest of us had read the book or attempted the path.

"I know enough people who have done it that I picked up most of it that way," someone offered. Most of the room nodded in agreement. We all know enough creative people who have needed a little burst through a feeling of stasis that they've turned to a lightly self-helpy guide to crashing through writer's block like a professional wrestler shattering a folding table with their own body weight.

I do know a few people who seem to be endlessly generative, uncapped fire hydrants of ideas and creativity. Unfortunately, the only way to achieve a state of ceaseless output if it's not your natural state is cocaine, and the results of that method are inconsistent at best. Most people, whether they're recreationally or professionally creative, need an occasional reset, recharge, or revenge. (Okay I am MOSTLY kidding about the third thing, which I added for rhythm and then thought...you know what...it does kind of work.) And while The Artist's Way demands a dedication that's untenable for most people's lives, it remains popular because it addresses a desire a lot of people have, and many of the bedrock techniques for getting into an artistic groove are refined versions of helpful and intuitive advice.

Claw back that parts of your brain that have been overrun by unnecessary stimulus. Enjoy art. Journal. Not to take money out of Ms. Cameron's pocket, but these are fairly common suggestions for regaining contact with your imagination. And of course it can be useful to have them (and more) laid out across an easy-to-understand structure. Community helps too, which is one of the reasons that FOTN (Friend of the Newsletter) Jami Attenberg's excellent "1,000 Words of Summer" project (happening now!) is so resonant for so many writers.

That was all a fairly longwinded way to say that the advice and technique you need to wrest creative control of your practice back from Executive Producer: The Rigors of Daily Life is already out there. Perhaps more comfortingly, and definitely more in line with the mission statement of the newsletter, is this: Most creative people go through these fallow periods from time to time. Because of the demands of a human body and a practical schedule, our minds are not constant playgrounds of whimsy or fertile meadows covered in fecund idea manure or whatever metaphor works for you. But almost nobody who feels this way experiences a total enduring innovation blackout. Your brain is not uniquely bad. You are, in fact, having an experience so common that it borders on hacky. We've all been there (that's why it can feel like a cliche).

And ironically, by embracing all the cliche advice, you can get back to a sense of originality. Or you could short circuit the process with cocaine, but I really only recommend that if you are the band Steely Dan.

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK: Emily Bjorke - "Little Time"

Emily Bjorke and I are both involved in Friend Of The Newsletter Christian Banda's film project The Decalogue. (I'm performing on a live show to raise funds for the next installment on June 14th at the Bell House in Brooklyn!!! Show ALSO featuring Niles Abston, Jay Jurden, Sydnee Washington, and a very special guest!)

"Little Time" has the big bright qualities of a big time radio hit. Beautifully layered instrumentation. Lyrics that feel both personal and universal. An overall brightness. If I didn't know that it came out a couple of weeks ago and was made by a professional acquaintance, I would have thought it was a popular and beloved song from years ago that I somehow happened to miss out on.

Hearing a song by a new-to-y0u artist is a lot like seeing an actor whose work you've never known of before in that you come to it with fresh eyes and no preconceptions of parasocial attachments. The work speaks for itself more completely. "Little Life," without context, feels like sunshine. And I should know. I was recently on a boat.

UPCOMING SHOWS

I'm mostly bopping around NYC this spring and summer doing spots, but I'm ramping up my road schedule for the fall! Where should I go?

6/1: Frankenstein's Baby at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

6/3: Fundraiser Gig (Burlington, VT)

6/4: John Hodgman/Jean Grae/Me at Union Hall (Brooklyn)

6/9: World's Best Dads at Caveat (NYC)

6/11: Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! Live Recording (Chicago)

6/13: Rodney's Comedy Club (Manhattan); Bushwick Comedy Club (Brooklyn)

6/14: Decalogue Short Film Fundraiser at Bell House (Brooklyn), Beauty Bar (NYC)

6/16: Paulie Gee's Slice Shop (Brooklyn)

6/21: Father's Day Daytime Show at Harpoon Brewery (Boston)

7/7: Alison Leiby's Book Launch at the Bell House (Brooklyn)

7/16: Programme 4 at LPR (Manhattan)

7/19: Debate Show at Greenpoint Comedy Club (Brooklyn)

7/23: Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! Live Recording (Chicago)

9/19: The Comedy Studio (Cambridge, MA)

10/21: Dallas, TX (DETAILS COMING SOON)

10/22: Houston, TX (DETAILS COMING SOON)