3 Things: Jimmie Fails, Whoopi Goldberg, and Jessica Francis Kane

Happy Saturday! Every week, I send out an email with my show dates and recommendations of things I think you might enjoy. At the moment, I don't have much to report. I'm trying to fight off procrastination and actually get my writing done. (The great part about freelancing is also the terrible part: there's no boss to make sure you're doing your work.) I hope you had a productive week, but also that you're taking some time to lie on the couch or the beach if you need it. 

NOTE TO NEW ORLEANS PEOPLE: Please stay safe and be careful! If you were planning on coming to this Tuesday's Pop-Up Magazine show, I've been told they're keeping track of the weather and will decide whether it's still happening or not after the weekend. 

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. SOLD OUT I'll be performing with Pop-Up Magazine. Please see the note above and be careful out there.

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. I'll be acting on Monday and a short play I wrote is being staged on Wednesday at the Cherry Picking festival for new work. SOLD OUT

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:
The Last Black Man in San Francisco is about Jimmie's dream to reclaim the Victorian house his grandfather built in the heart of the city, but it's also about gentrification, friendship, our attachment to stories and art, and how to find a place where you belong. Jimmie Fails stars as a fictionalized version of himself in a movie he co-wrote with his childhood best friend Joe Talbot. It's the best film I've seen this year. The acting, the cinematography, the story, and the music are all breathtaking. The story behind the making of the film is pretty amazing too. Here's an interview with Fails and Talbot about their city and their movie: Who Gets to Say F--- San Francisco Now?


FUNNY:
Nobody has had a showbiz career like Whoopi Goldberg. Broadway solo shows, standup comedy, hosting the Oscars, starring in movies, and co-hosting a daytime talk show. It's incredible. But her fame's almost the least interesting part about her. Did you know she's never eaten an egg, she feels like an alien, and she's significantly more passionate talking about farts than The View? Whoopi Goldberg on Controversy and Conversation


INTERESTING:
One of my favorite parts of traveling to do comedy is visiting old friends and getting to stay with them. Having a grown-up sleepover is the best way of really catching up with someone, in my opinion. You get to talk but also spend some down time together and I always leave with a new picture of what their daily life and routines look like. It's the best. Jessica Francis Kane wrote a novel about a woman who "rekindles old friendships with some strict rules." Staying at their place rather than a hotel is one of them. And to promote the novel, Kane tried to follow the rules herself. It's a fun piece and good inspiration to schedule a trip to see an old friend. The Visitor (h/t The Ann Friedman Weekly)


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 day,
Chris

3 Things: Nick Cave, Gabe Gundacker, and Max Liboiron

Happy Saturday!

Every week, I send out an email with my show dates and recommendations of things I think you might enjoy. This week, I spent the Fourth of July in Olympic National Park. While we were there, we hiked to the world's largest Sitka spruce tree. I'm always a fan of world's largest roadside attractions, but unlike a giant fiberglass lobster or a forty-foot tall filing cabinet, this is a living organism that's been growing in that spot for a thousand years. That spruce tree was already more than seven hundred years old when the U.S. declared independence. It kinda puts things in perspective. 

Speaking of perspective, I've been thinking about who we allow to experience freedom in"the land of the free." I'm inspired by the folks volunteering to visit immigrants held in detention and the organizations raising money for bail so poverty doesn't mean imprisonment. As we get deeper into the election cycle, I hope we'll ask for accountability from the politicians allowing this to happen, but I'm reminding myself to do more as an individual too. If you have more ideas for how to do something productive, I'd love to hear them. (I'll also accept tips about oversized objects located near major highways.)

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. Tickets are almost sold out for this year's Cherry Picking festival, which celebrates "new work, creative risk, and prosecco." I'll be performing in a staged reading on Monday and a short play I wrote is performed 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:
Nick Cave has been a rock star since the seventies. His songs have been covered by everyone from Johnny Cash to Metallica. But after years of cultivating theatrical distance from his audience, he's experimenting with bringing them in. When his teenage son died in an accident in 2015, Cave's work and his relationship with his fans kept him alive. So his new tour "features spontaneous exchanges between the artist and his audience" and he's been responding publicly to letters asking him about everything from God's voice to tragedy to writer's block. His responses, The Red Hand Files, are beautiful and fascinating. How is Susie Doing? (h/t Myq Kaplan, who recommends "What made you become a vegetarian?")


FUNNY:
Gabe Gundacker first got famous for his Vines and Instagram posts. Now, he writes and performs on Showtime's Our Cartoon President. He's genuinely talented as a musician and also genuinely hilarious. I will never stop loving his Zendaya is Meechee song, but this week I rediscovered Guy Who Likes Music. (h/t Jeff Manian)


INTERESTING:
"Every time you decide what question to ask or not ask others, what counting style you use, which statistics you use, how you frame things, where you publish them, who you work with, where you get funding from... all of that is political." Max Liboiron is an environmental scientist who's not just trying to change the way we pollute, she's trying to change the way science is conducted. In this short doc for The Atlantic, filmmakers Noah Hutton and Taylor Hess look at The Feminist, Anti-Colonial Scientific Approach to Micro-Plastics.


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 day,
Chris

3 Things: Esther Perel, TMNT, and Jonathan Blitzer

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