Good morning!
Every Saturday I send out three recommendations and some updates about my shows and my life. Thanks for subscribing.
In addition to writing and comedy this week, I've been spending a ton of time setting up dinners and drinks with potential new LA friends. It's got me thinking about how much effort it takes to make and maintain relationships. Part of me misses the ease of making friends in my twenties, when you're all at the same bars and concerts and shows, crammed into tiny, weird smelling spaces until way too late. You run into people over and over until you basically have no choice but to become friends or enemies. In my thirties, there's more personal space and healthy sleep routines, but also families and jobs and lots of reasons to not hang out.
When I make new friends now, I appreciate the effort more. There's something beautifully vulnerable about full grown adults asking for each other's contact info and then spending 12-45 emails scheduling a platonic dinner date. Yes, we DO both know the same distant acquaintance. And yes, that IS enough of a connection for us to eat salads together at a later date, exact time/place TBD.
Upcoming Shows
I'm working on recording a new project and writing on deadline, so no performances this week.
This week’s list
GREAT:
Ocean Vuong is an award-winning poet whose debut novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, knocked me out. It's written in the second person, addressed to Vuong's mother, a woman who doesn't speak English and can't read. But Vuong still puts words on the page in an attempt to reach her. It's a beautiful and painful book. Jia Tolentino reviewed it and wrote that much of the book "is about what it means to become an American. 'What is a country but a borderless sentence, a life?' Little Dog asks." So much of what makes the book special is the writing itself, so I can't do it justice in summary. But here's an excerpt: On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
FUNNY:
Charles Gould is having a big year. He has a job working with Will Smith. He has a special out on Comedy Central. He's doing great. But he can't appreciate it because he's also going bald. In this hilarious (and touching) pilot, Charles gets very vulnerable interviewing doctors, his therapist, and bald celebrities about male pattern baldness. Charles Gould Confronts Balding
(p.s. if you're a fan of Barry, you have to watch this. I truly could not love Noho Hank more.)
INTERESTING:
"Thanks to Michael Gillespie, an obscure programmer at a Nerds on Call repair store, hundreds of thousands of ransomware victims have recovered their files for free." This is the story of a guy who helps people, not for fame or fortune, but just because it's the right thing to do. As more and more crimes are committed online, the consequences get more and more serious. But when ProPublica investigated the extortion economy, they discovered an unexpected force for good. The Ransomware Superhero of Normal, Illinois
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Have a great weekend,
Chris