3 Things: Loudon Wainwright III, Demi Adejuyigbe, and Alexandra Schwartz

Happy Saturday,

This week's email is full of festive vibes because I'm already deep into Holiday Season™.  Personally, I love Thanksgiving the most, where you're expected to do nothing more than eat a full dinner, followed immediately by another full meal of pumpkin pie. (People do eat pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving right? This isn't like a few weeks back when I said pumpkin pie was a Halloween tradition and everyone said "No, Chris. We just carve scary faces into the pumpkins, fill them with fire, and throw them away. We would never eat them.")

While people often say Los Angeles doesn't have seasons, I've been discovering that that's not really true. There's a noticeable shift into Fall happening here. It rained this week, for the first time since I moved here. I was so happy to see rain that I sat with my hand pressed up against the front window watching it come down. That is, until our mailperson came by. She was clearly startled by me in the window. Especially since it looked like I was auditioning for a role in an antidepressant commercial. But it was beautiful nonetheless. 

Upcoming Shows

LOS ANGELES
Wednesday, January 15th at 7 pm at the Lyric-Hyperion. Matt Porter and I are starting a monthly multimedia comedy show called HOMEWORK. LA's funniest people perform and share the projects they've been working on at home. We'll announce the lineup and more details in the coming weeks, but tickets just went on sale. Link

NEW YORK
Friday, February 7th and Saturday, February 8th. I'm going to be back in NYC workshopping a stage show about the science of how to stay in love with the All For One theater company. Details and tickets will be announced in a few weeks, but mark your calendars! 

This week’s list

GREAT:
The night after Halloween, several houses in my neighborhood had Christmas lights up. I don't know when the right time for Christmas decorations is, but I feel like November 1st isn't it. That's exactly what drove Loudon Wainwright III to write this hilarious holiday classic: Suddenly It's Christmas. I've always loved his music but I feel like he doesn't get enough appreciation for how funny he is too. The whole album Career Moves is packed full of beautiful songs with genuinely funny lyrics.


FUNNY:
Demi Adejuyigbe creates comedy out of the most unusual places. He's a writer for The Good Place, host of the Gilmore Guys and Pump Up The Jams podcasts, and extremely goofy in the best possible way. Just watch his over-the-top celebration of the date (September 21) mentioned in Earth, Wind, and Fire's "September." 9/21 (and here are past years' videos). He also wrote lyrics to the Succession theme song, which are perfect. And those are just the tip of the iceberg. Demi Adejuyigbe


INTERESTING:
As I head back to NYC for Thanksgiving with my family, there is nothing more New York than an in-depth investigation of the Park Slope Food Co-op in The New Yorker. Alexandra Schwartz risks her reputation (and her co-op membership) by reporting on "produce and politics at the legendary Park Slope Food Co-op." Alex is a great writer and I sincerely think the co-op should adopt this sentence from her story as their new slogan "The place runs on sweat equity: your blood for bread, your labor for lox." Bounty Hunters


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Have a great week,
Chris

3 Things: Ocean Vuong, Charles Gould, and Michael Gillespie

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 


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 can subscribe here.

Have a great weekend,
Chris

3 Things: Dolly Parton's America, Good Cop Great Cop, and Mister Rogers

Happy Saturday!

I hope you're having a great week and easing into November. It's kind of a great month, right? Even though it's been a long time since I've been in a classroom, school is still how I think about the year. November means we're past the hiccups and challenges of getting into a new class and new material. Now, we're starting to settle into routines and make progress. Everybody has a sense of what you can get away with and what will get you detention. You have Thanksgiving break coming up, but there's also enough time left in the school year that anything is possible. 

Upcoming Shows

ONLINE:
Probably Science Podcast. I was a guest on this week's episode of Probably Science. Hosts Matt Kirshen and Andy Wood are so funny and they run down the latest in scientific news and discoveries with me. I had a blast and I cannot stop thinking about the rats that learned how to drive tiny cars. Link

This week’s list

GREAT:
Dolly Parton is unbelievable. Her talent as a performer, a songwriter, and just a cultural force are only the tip of the iceberg. I so rarely binge podcasts, but I listened to every episode of Dolly Parton's America in a row. Jad Abumrad, who co-created Radiolab, started out interviewing Dolly thinking he'd make one episode about her. But he stumbled onto so much material that it became its own miniseries. Like Radiolab, it's beautifully produced with lush layered audio. But it's also packed full of revelations about America, popular culture, suffering, transcendence, and creativity. I could listen to Dolly talk for hours (and I literally have). Dolly Parton's America

(Bonus link: I kinda knew Dolly's music for a long time, but the first song that really got me hooked and I played on repeat was this weird slowed-down version of Jolene. That was my gateway drug.)


FUNNY:
Good Cop Great Cop are one of my favorite sketch groups. They always put together a smart premise with perfect visuals and direction. Their sweet spot is identifying a tiny moment that everyone else overlooks and then pulling apart its logic until the whole thing unravels. Their newest video is about a secret agent who's getting briefed on his spy tools. It's so funny. Cube

(Here are two of my other favorite GCGC videos: Roommate and Game)


INTERESTING:
I'm excited for the new Mister Rogers movie. I loved the documentary, Won't You Be My Neighbor?, and like everyone else, I sobbed through the whole thing. The film is based on an article by journalist Tom Junod. He wrote a new piece this week about Fred Rogers' enduring wisdom. "I first met him 21 years ago, and now our relationship is the subject of a new movie. He's never been more revered—or more misunderstood." My Friend Mister Rogers


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 can subscribe here.

Have a great day,
Chris