Happy Saturday! Every week, I send out an email with some upcoming performances and three things for you to enjoy. This week, Mollie and I have been visiting family in Oregon and Seattle. It's a lot of outdoors activities, so I've mostly been unplugged from the Internet. As a person whose professional life is unpredictable and irregular, I find that routines and traditions are very important to me. Whether it's coming back to the same spot with family each year, sending this email every week, or inventing a holiday, I love knowing that I have some recurring events to depend on.
Upcoming Shows
EVERYWHERE:
Both full seasons of Wyatt Cenac's Problem Areas are streaming online and on HBO Go. Link
You can listen to all the episodes of my podcast You're the Expert on any podcast app. Three comedians interview a scientist about her work and why it matters. Link
NEW ORLEANS:
Tuesday, July 16 at 7:00 p.m. at the Civic Theater. I'll be performing at this Pop-Up Magazine show. SOLD OUT
NEW YORK:
Friday, July 19 at 7:00 p.m. at Littlefield. I'll be performing at Bit Tank, a show where comedians pitch jokes to sharks for real money. Link
Saturday, July 27 at 10:00 p.m. at Union Hall. Dillon Stevenson and Mike Brown host Super Video Bros, where comedians (including me) break down classic music videos. Link
July 29-31 at The Wild Project. A short play that I wrote is going to be performed as part of this year's Cherry Picking festival, which celebrates "new work, creative risk, and prosecco." I'll be performing in a play on Monday and my play is being staged on Wednesday. Link
You can find ticket links for all upcoming shows as soon as they are announced online at my website here.
This week’s list
GREAT:
I've been working on a project about long-term relationships and people keep recommending that I read Esther Perel. I finally got around to starting her book this week. Perel is a therapist, author, podcaster, and speaker who's one of the most prominent experts on relationships today. She says that "the quality of our relationships determines the quality of our lives." I'd never read any of her work before, but her latest book is very thought-provoking and compassionate. She looks at infidelity as a clinician, but also from a cultural and social perspective. Her big question is how can we be more honest with ourselves and our partners about what we're looking for in relationships and what our expectations are? The State of Affairs
FUNNY:
Sometimes I love comedy that's the work of masterful writers and performers. Other times, I can't stop laughing at a collection of words that probably took fifteen seconds to put together. This week, I'm going to share one of those. It's alternate lyrics to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme song. Every time I read one of these and then sing it in my head, it makes me laugh. There's nothing deeper there but there doesn't need to be. Wiki Titles Singable to the TMNT Theme Song (h/t Will Guzzardi)
INTERESTING:
Jonathan Blitzer is an incredibly talented writer doing very important investigative work on immigration. He has a book coming out called The Golden Door: The United States, Central America, and the Untold Story of the Border Crisis. It's "a narrative of forty years of immigration history in the U.S., El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to tell a sweeping story of the present crisis at the southern border." If you haven't read any of his work before, I recommend his analysis of how climate change is exacerbating migrationand how even ICE agents are losing patience with chaotic immigration policy. But honestly everything he writes is worth reading. Jonathan Blitzer
Thanks for reading! If you like these emails, please forward to a friend or spread the word. If someone forwarded you this email but you're not yet on the list, you cansubscribe here.
Have a great weekend,
Chris