3 Things: Mark Manson, Dina Martina, and Stay-at-Home Dads

Hi friends!

Did you notice the new logo? I love that drawing so much! It was custom created by the multi-talented Liz Fosslien (if you've been reading these for a while, you might remember her Murakami Mad Libs or "My Life in 3 Letters"). She is fantastic.
  
If you're new to 3 Things, welcome! Every Saturday, I send out a short email with three great things. I've also got some of my upcoming shows featured below. If you know anyone who you think would enjoy this, feel free to spread the word! They can get these delivered straight to their inbox here or see the archive of past emails, here.

SHOW UPDATE:  Next Saturday (1/24), I'll be in the Bay Area doing a You're the Expert show with The Daily Show's Wyatt Cenac! It's a special SF Sketchfest show and we've got an expert who does top secret research on extending human life. Check it out! 

Ok, on to this week's list!
 

1 Thing I Think Is Great:

I'm not ashamed to say that I love self-help books. There's something very satisfying about finishing a chapter and then shouting out loud "I can take charge of my life!" The books are often pretty silly, but every once in a while there's an idea that I find myself referencing with friends again and again. This article by Mark Manson fell into that category for me. People often ask "What do you want to do?" but they're forgetting the much more meaningful question. The Most Important Question of Your Life (h/t to Adrienne)
 

1 Thing That Made Me Laugh:

I'd never heard of Dina Martina before, but apparently she is a national drag and burlesque star. All I know is this interview she gave to Huffington Post is amazingly, surreally hilarious. I'm an instant fan. Her answer to "What do you make of the Democrats losing their majority?" legitimately made me spit water onto my computer screen. Dina Martina, Hilariously Surreal Raconteur
 

1 Interesting Thing:

What do you do when you're a Harvard educated, highly successful lawyer who becomes a stay-at-home dad and no longer feels respected? Duh. Write an article for The Atlantic. Ryan Park definitely drops a lot of names in this article, but it's also a really interesting look at the changing gender dynamics of parenting and work. What Ruth Bader Ginsburg Taught Me About Being a Stay-at-Home Dad

Ok, thanks for reading! More details on shows and my full schedule online at www.chrisduffycomedy.com/calendar/

Have a great weekend,
Chris

3 Things: Susanna Vagt, Elna Baker, and How to Fall in Love

1 Thing I Think Is Great:

In college, I had the good fortune to work with Susanna Vagt. She's an illustrator and an artist who's supremely talented and I love checking in on her website. Susanna creates these beautiful moments, a combination of an illustration and a short bit of text. They're unlike just about anything else I've seen and they tend to stick with me, bouncing around in my head while I go about my day. Here's her most recent (one of my favorites): Shared Time Capsules
 

1 Thing That Made Me Laugh:

Elna Baker works for This American Life, so you know her storytelling skills are top-notch. She also happens to be a single Mormon woman living in New York City. That's a combination she mines to great effect in her book, The New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance.

This book is one of my favorite memoirs I've ever read. It's laugh out loud funny, but it's also fascinating and touching. Elna is the rare person who believes strongly in something bigger than herself but is also willing to talk about her doubts and struggle with that belief. Her book is full of such unique adventures, for example when she got a job facilitating "doll adoptions" at FAO Schwartz. You can hear Elna read that chapter here: Babies Buying Babies
 

1 Interesting Thing:

"More than 20 years ago, the psychologist Arthur Aron succeeded in making two strangers fall in love in his laboratory. Last summer, I applied his technique in my own life, which is how I found myself standing on a bridge at midnight, staring into a man's eyes for exactly four minutes." 

This Modern Love column was so thought-provoking that I'm positive that it's only a matter of hours before every bar in Brooklyn is filled with couples running through Dr. Aron's questionnaire. To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This

Ok, thanks for reading! More details on shows and my full schedule online atwww.chrisduffycomedy.com/calendar/

Have a great weekend,
Chris

3 Things: Jo Firestone, Josh Gondelman, and the King of Clickbait

 

1 Thing I Think Is Great:

There is no one else like Jo Firestone. Very rarely, you see a performer who is totally unique. Even rarer is for that performer to be unique and a joy to watch (after all, it's a lot easier to be idiosyncratically terrible).

Jo manages to thread the needle with her seemingly endless supply of new shows. Here's a recent sampling of ones that I've had the privilege of being involved with: 1) A show where the last remaining audience member won a cash prize and nearly fifty comedians deliberately told terrible jokes to try and make the crowd leave. It lasted six hours. 2) A silent synchronized dance show where all the performers had their faces painted different colors of the rainbow. 3) A show where 6 comedians competed to improve the life of one sad audience member. The strategies involved a crystal cleansing, winning a recreated version of America's Next Top Model, and learning how to walk like the president. 

If you're in NYC, I cannot recommend strongly enough that you go to Jo's solo show "Try To Love Yourself" on January 30 at Ars Nova (tickets on sale soon). If you can't make it to the show, check out Jo's website or this interview I did with her for Wag's Revue.
 

1 Thing That Made Me Laugh:

Famous Writers Play Taboo is just a perfect humor piece. Thank goodness Josh Gondelman provided us with the jokes about Ernest Hemingway and Emily Dickinson that we didn't even know we needed. If you're not familiar with Josh's other work, you should check him out. He works on "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver" and he's an all-around source of kind-hearted hilarity.

1 Interesting Thing:

"A Katy Perry song was playing on the radio. 'Art is that which science has not yet explained,' he said. 'Imagine that the vocals are mediocre in an otherwise amazing song. What if you could have forty people record different vocals, and then test it by asking thousands of people, 'Which ones is best?' To me, that's a trickle in an ocean of possible ways you could improve every song on the radio.'" 

Andrew Marantz goes inside the operations of the viral internet and discovers a future that's almost literally out of a dystopian George Saunders novel. The King of Clickbait

Ok, thanks for reading! More details on shows and my full schedule online atwww.chrisduffycomedy.com/calendar/

Have a great weekend,
Chris