By Josh Gondelman — 31 Aug 2026

#199. Living Celebrities and You

Hi everyone,

We are closing out the dog days of summer, and coincidentally I have been meeting lots of actual dogs in my neighborhood. I mentioned a few weeks ago that Maggie the pug will yap aggressively at any dog bigger than her like a drunk sorority girl with a 6'5" boyfriend talking shit to a stranger at a bar. She will, however, stand still and allow a small dog to sniff her. Sometimes she'll raise one leg and let the other guy really get their nose in there. On rare occasions she'll sniff back. She's always playing weird-to-get.

I've been encountering lots of cute little gremlins via Maggie's social life: Potato, Frankie, Jean-Pierre, Iggy and Larry, and several more tiny pals. I greet these dogs by name every day. I could not recall the names of their human companions at gunpoint, which would be weird circumstances to ask me that question under, but still. Some of the people, I've never even really introduced myself to at all and vice versa. But they all know Maggie's name. And that's what's important to me.

Maris's birthday is coming up next weekend, and between that and the general end-of-summer slowdown, I've decided to (mostly) embrace the feeling of not much going on. I've been working on some writing projects and doing lots of podcasts and shows, but I have (again, mostly) detached myself from the expectation that I'd be generating any real momentum over these hazy weeks when anyone who might hire me for a job or reach out about collaborating on something exciting is (according to Instagram) probably in Paris.

But bopping around town has been a lot of fun. I had a wonderful What's New? show at Union Hall where the audience was possibly too warm and generous towards my new material, but that's a problem for Future Me to deal with when encountering Future Audiences. My guests: Myq Kaplan, Janesh Rahlan, Maddie Connors, and Rima Parikh were all tremendous, and it was a privilege to introduce them to the crowd. I did 40ish minutes of newish material over the course of the night, and I think there might be like...15 or 20 minutes of jokes I can sift out of that sprawl. Not a terrible yield! I really love doing these shows, but I thiiiink with so many headlining dates on the road coming up and a big show at the Bell House I'd like to sell out in November it'll be a while before I get loose like this again.

Also last week, Maris and I went to see a matinee of Titanique on Broadway (as I said, not much is going on lately so I am free for a Thursday matinee). It was one of the dumbest things I've ever seen, which I mean as an enthusiastic compliment. More things should be stupid themselves instead of assuming the audience is stupid. ("Stupid" is also maybe the only word I ever heard my grandmother use to describe a comedy she enjoyed.) Marla Mindelle who also co-wrote the show plays Celine Dion retelling the "true" story of the Titanic–but mostly the movie Titanic–"from memory". Her performance is so funny and locked in on a specific deranged energy that I loved. Jim Parsons plays Rose's mother, and truly nothing but respect to him for making presumably an absolute treasure chest full of money on Big Bang Theory and then spending his time goofing around in drag onstage. It was a perfect afternoon activity.

We also watched Maddie's Secret, a film written and directed by John Early, and it was also excellent. It almost sounds like a sketch comedy premise with Early playing the title character (Maddie, not the secret), a wholesome recipe developer at a Bon Appetite-esque website. But the Lifetime movie/after school special tone is played for real warmth and truly scary stakes when the extent of Maddie's eating disorder is revealed. There's a real darkness to the film, but it's also very sweet and fun and charming. Maris was especially taken with the scenes that take place in Maddie's dance class. And I loved how intentionally lit every scene was. Candlelit dinners. Washed out hospital scenes under fluorescent bulbs. Beautifully illuminated recipes on set. A great deal of care was obviously put into the way this movie looked, which is such a special quality.

Oh and my shows at The Comedy Studio in Cambridge, MA are coming up in just a couple of weeks!!! We added a 4:30 matinee, and there are still tickets available for the 9:30 show too! The middle show is sold out! This quick trip home will mark the kickoff for my long run of shows this fall/winter, and it's the only time I'll be in that part of Massachusetts!!! Also, thanks to the legend Mark Catalano for fixing my crashed website! I'm a week or two late saying so but he's the best, and I owe him huge! Sometimes people say they owe someone their firstborn child, but honestly that sounds like the other person is taking on a LOT of responsibility. Not really equitable compensation for a favor, I don't think.

PEP TALK FOR LIVING CELEBRITIES

Matthew Broderick in 2022. He's wearing a shirt and tie and blazer and nice round glasses. This photo is from Wikipedia, attributed to "Library of Congress Life" — Matthew Broderick: Famously still alive!

(Quick note: This is not about Matthew Broderick at all, really. I just needed an example of a famous person who is notably alive and does not seem at risk of imminent demise.)

When Dolly Parton and Tim Curry passed away (separately, I should clarify, for anyone who hasn't heard yet) this week, the outpouring of beautiful remembrances was too voluminous to read through in its entirety. (One really lovely piece was Natalie Weiner's writing about Dolly for The New Republic.) Amidst the sadness of the losses, I found the collective mourning to be really beautiful. It's rare to see two deaths of such well-known artists that don't turn into a litigation of their respective Wikipedia controversies sections. Both Parton and Curry seemed pretty universally beloved, which is a rare quality in these divided times. By divided times I mean an era when people can be famous for being assholes, and a lot of people don't like that very much.

I imagine seeing the inundation of tributes and remembrances for Dolly Parton and Tim Curry is intimidating for living celebrities, people who might wonder how their own legacies stack up, how they will be remembered. As I'm writing this, some stars are probably planning Tom Sawyer-style fake funerals just to hear the eulogies. That may sound too deranged to contemplate, but it's important to remember: Stars are not just like us. They are way weirder.

Most people will not be remembered as widely and as glowingly as these two. Simply put, almost all of us face professional limitations that did not apply to either Dolly Parton or Tim Curry. Even most career performers lack their range and depth of talent. So probably your obituaries will not feature phrases like "songwriting legend" or "iconic performances" unless you happen to go out in a plane crash alongside a legendary songwriter or iconic performer. So that's really going to limit the reach of the average obituary.

But these stars' legacies do not just stem from their talent. They were also never colossal shitheads. Both embraced and were embraced by queer communities. Dolly Parton used her royalties from Whitney Houston's cover of "I Will Always Love You" to invest in Nashville's Black community. Her financial contributions to childhood literacy are colossal.

You do not have to donate 300 million books to children across America to be remembered lovingly when you die. Which is fortunate. I couldn't even afford to donate one hundred million books to kids. But contributing to worthwhile causes and treating people with dignity are two ways to assure that people speak highly of you when you are no longer around. (The other way is by having the conservative apparatus harass anyone who described your life accurately until they get fired...but those people will eventually get big settlements and you'll look like a dumbass.)

Obviously this applies to non-famous people too! Modeling generosity and warmth endears you to those around you both during life and after it, even if you don't have the musical talent to write "I Will Always Love You" and "Jolene" no matter how many days you spend trying. Not to mention, regular people get a little more grace in death, which makes sense. Relationships can be fraught. Many people have complicated feelings about the loss of a family member, but you don't get thousands of strangers posting stuff online like: "I never really got Steve's whole deal, but he meant a lot to a lot of people, and I'm sad he's gone. For their sake, not mine. I'm kind of indifferent honestly." Or: "Rest in piss, Caitlin's grandma. I'll see you in hell."

There's a lesson to be learned here for living celebrities especially. The best way to preserve your memory isn't just to achieve the most. It's to do things that make a difference in other people's lives. Sorry, Mark Zuckerberg. I mean a positive difference. Everyone has bad days, sure. I don't mean that you have to live like a saint to leave a beneficial impact on the world. But you're much more likely to be remembered fondly if you use your wealth to improve the world and never marry your teenage cousin or bulldoze an entire neighborhood so you can build a waterpark for your pet ferrets.

I am a big time proponent of speaking ill of the dead. But I'm also a believer in living a life such that if anyone tries to talk shit about you, they are roundly told to shut the fuck up. Truly the mark of a life well lived.

PEP TALK FOR A READER

I didn't edit this request very much! I did add the nickname!

Jason is the handyman my landlord insists on using. He’s perfectly fine at doing household tasks, but he asked me out, which I hate! He has a key to my house! I told my landlord that he makes me uncomfortable and can I please have a different guy fix stuff in the house, but my landlord refuses to give up on Jason.

Now Jason is really flaky and absent-minded, he often doesn’t arrive when he say he will, and he’ll put off tasks for weeks. One time he left a drill under my couch for weeks, and I didn’t notice until something rolled under there! A light broke in my house, and he literally just touched the exposed wires with a metal screwdriver, causing the power to go out. What do I do about this chaotic weirdo with bad life skills and no impulse control?!

- Tenant vs. Jason

One of the most frustrating feelings I can pinpoint from my youth was figuring out that a particular adult was full of shit and having no recourse to correct them or compel them to modify their behavior. I had one teacher in high school who, when faced with a question he didn't know the answer to, would just start freestyling science (free-sci-ling) instead of looking up the correct response. It drove me up a wall, but what was I going to do? This was in the early 2000s when as long as a teacher wasn't throwing lit matches at their students, the general attitude from other adults towards kids was: "Sorry, bud. Maybe hurry up and get older so you don't have to deal with this person anymore."

As an adult, we still wind up in these positions from time to time. Most commonly, you might find yourself at the professional mercy of a boss who has ascended through some combination of pedigree, flattery, and blind confidence despite having the cognitive abilities of mud. In those cases, your options are: Plot a coup, find a new job, or hope your supervisor blows up his life to live on the beach with his much younger girlfriend who is a chatbot. Not a promising trio of choices.

The other instances in which you find yourself at the mercy of variable competence arise when you need to trust someone to complete a task you're not qualified for or legally allowed to attempt. Most of the time, these folks are experts in their fields. Pilots, for example, get the job done right a staggering percentage of the time. My Yelp review of literally every flight I've ever been on would go: "Ascended to the sky and descended still alive. Five stars." Even bus drivers (who I think deserve as much credit as pilots because there's so much more stuff you could possibly bump into down here on the ground) are capable even when they're surly. But in other venues, you sometimes end up face to face with someone who has no interest in or ability to complete an assigned task to your satisfaction.

A landlord, often, can provide such an impediment to your needs being fulfilled. The arrangement you enter into when you rent property from someone is that you give them money, and they make sure you have a safe, healthy, and functional place to live. Frequently, they check out after "you give them money" and the other stuff (the important parts for you, the renter) slips through the cracks (like the one between the refrigerator and the counter where in a lazier moment you may have kicked a fallen ice cube from time to time). And then when your landlord does send someone to extract you from your appliance or plaster-based predicament, he's often chosen through the sketchy "knows-a-guy" hiring process rather than any kind of review-centered quality control. This person could be a professional repairman, or he could simply have a drill (except for the times when his drill is under your couch). A guy your landlord knows is like a Double Stuf Oreo full of bad news. You don't know if he's good, and even if he's bad...you're kind of stuck with him. Two tough stufs.

I don't have any especially valuable advice for dealing with Jason, which is why I haven't brought him up by name over the course of several paragraphs. Your situation is unpleasant and you deserve better than an unprofessional (both personally and electrically) dork being given KEYS TO YOUR HOME?!?!! Obviously you can be unpleasant to him, which feels potentially helpful but potentially the opposite. You can refuse to be around when Jason is in your home, which is more of an inconvenience to you than it is a punishment for him. You could always hire your own handyperson you trust and send the receipt to your landlord or withhold that much in rent or eat the cost yourself, but again that's another classic: "Why should I change when he is the one who sucks?" solution.

Maybe there's a legal action you could take (especially since Jason, and I cannot stress my astonishment enough, has his own keys to your home) to bar him from the premises. That sounds extreme, but also, it is extreme to make you deal with some guy coming into your house to hit on you and electrocute himself. That's not the kind of energy you'd invite into your own life, I bet. You deserve to feel safe and comfortable and happy in the professionally-repaired home you pay money for. And I'm sorry that your landlord is making you feel like a kid again in one of the bad ways.

PICK-ME-UP SONG OF THE WEEK:
Busta Rhymes - "How You Want It"

My friend Zach Sherwin sent me a link to Busta Rhymes's appearance on the NYT Popcast, which I found interesting on a bunch of levels. At one point, Busta talks about how sometimes if he feels like he's fallen out of the public eye or cultural conversation, he'll find a hot song, record his own verse over it, and send it to the artist unsolicited to see if they want him on the remix. You can for sure view that as an unfortunate state of affairs where young artists don't maintain an active respect for an aging legend. I chose to think of it as: If Busta Rhymes is still making cold calls, I don't get to have an ego about reaching out with professional inquiries. I like the idea that you can take charge of your own destiny without it being a matter of constant #hustle and #grind.

Anyway, the "How You Want It" beat is so woozy and good, and Busta really uses his booming voice as a percussive element (which he discusses on that podcast episode as well). To me it's the tune that most fulfills the promise of "Busta Rhymes raps over a full album's worth of unreleased Dilla music." The Busta's urgency pushes against the lag of the beat, fighting it to a draw. It's cool to see him still doing it, thirty years after the release of his debut solo album.