52. The Week in Me
Thank you. All 1305 of you.
“If you can’t be an athlete, be an athletic supporter.”
This line from Grease has always stuck with me. I was an artistic kid: I took dance classes, I drew, I collaged, I studied acting at Broadway Bound in Lyndhurst, I read all the time, I was the photo editor for my college paper and photographed half of the bands to blow through Bergen County.
But somewhere during my Ben Franklin years (you’ll see) I became the athletic supporter. The jockstrap.
My writing skills would go to biographies of bands I represented. Social media content for my employers. “Editing” (punching up, removing the extra L he’d add to every “alright”) Paul, the 31-year-old I was dating at 19’s, feature length screenplay and New Girl spec scripts. An occasionally viral, occasionally (x) funny (x) tweet (x). That was it of my creativity for most of my twenties.
I remember the first laugh I ever got. I was 13, in the Hasbrouck Heights Middle School Play. The play was called “The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big, Round Things” and I can not find evidence of it online anywhere. It was a lampoon of your typical grammar school play where you’re a tree and conduct photosynthesis or whatever, but it was in on the joke. There was a doo-wop song called “Leif Erikson” that rustles through my mind sometimes: “Leif, Leif, Leif Erikson, Leif, Leif, Leif Erikson…”
My big scene was as the comet who killed the dinosaurs. I wore stage blacks, with a can of Comet cleaner on fishing wire around my neck. Funny. In the script, highlighted and autographed somewhere in my parents’ attic now, I approached the Styracosauruses and tiny-arm T-rexes had it out with them and then yelled “BOOM!” The dinosaurs, also in stage blacks with little dino tails, fall and convulse on the ground before shuddering their last dino breaths.
But. Me, a round new teen who did not NOT look like Benjamin Franklin (I will never wear a low ponytail in my adult life; I am scarred from the Aeropostale monkey t-shirts, low pony, John Lennon glasses combo of my childhood) and too much of a brain to not get bullied over, approached Erin Schneeweiss, the drama teacher. I was an inventive kid, a talkative one, but “a pleasure to have in class.” I spelled “eucalyptus” correctly in the second-grade spelling bee. I was precocious, but not funny. Not disruptive. Not funny.
But.
“Schnee1, instead of screaming the boom, what if I do it like I’m bored? Like I have to run a return at Victoria’s Secret after and this is just one part of my day.” Bless her, she got it. She said yes. And that’s what I did, in dress rehearsal, and opening night, with the Donald Trump “ya fired” hand because this was 2004 and I was a child and did not know about the Central Park Five yet. I got the laugh, in all four performances. I remember standing on that stage, clearly, one year shy of twenty later.
And then…nothing. I didn’t do the high school plays. I wrote a couple of lyrics, in a Word doc, when I was 16 or so, but never picked up a guitar. Never tried to sing. Never wrote a short story. Didn’t fall into the syphilis of college activities, slam poetry. Not until I was 24 and started writing 800-word film reviews on Instagram. And then that stopped too, until at 27 I was able to access enough peace to sit myself down to eke out my novel.
Why did I not let myself chase that high, all this time?
Thank you for running with me. It feels everything like this:
Big news!
I wrote an essay on the Cheers episode “Coach’s Daughter,” and it was published by Drunk Monkeys, a literary magazine! This is my second-ever accepted piece (I have submitted four) and I was so inspired by the prompt, “One Perfect Episode.” You can read it here, watch the episode here, and watch the masterpiece scene I recap below:
To listen:
Enjoy my holiday playlist for you!
I attended the live taping of this Paul Rudd appearance on Paul Giamatti’s paranormal/supernatural podcast, CHINGWAG. In a statement I shouldn’t even have to make, Paul Rudd was deeply charming:
To watch:
Formerly convicted Oliver James was illiterate until 2022, when he decided to learn how to read. He has now read over 80 books and reads at a third-grade level. This is a hard watch. His vulnerability, regret, overwhelm is hard to watch, but worth it. What a motivating story:
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To read:
Thank you to
for the little shoutout in Sunday’s newsletter: I am always happy to champion your studious, approachable work, such as this newest piece on Sara (Saartje) Baartman:
Thank you to my friend Meredith for sending me this invaluable COVID protection travel guide ahead of my trip to Tulsa. She gave me permission to share with all of you as you embark on your holiday travel:
I heeded the poop warning most of all.
“When I moved to Gaza in 2017, a Palestinian friend told me, or maybe warned me: Palestine makes you feel alive, because it makes you feel everything.” -
on Palestine:I spent much of last week reading about “momfluencers,” especially the thin Mormon blonde types. I call myself a lot of rough shit, but snarky is not a way I define myself. Reading about this culture is a swearing-in to a snarky view of other women, even when the analysis of the content they create is thoughtful, and fair. This conversation between
of and of about Instagram influencer Hannah Neeleman/Ballerina Farm felt balanced, and made me wish I could discuss it with my best friend, who I lost last year2:
Similarly, from
:
This is literally just Simone:
This is literally just Lugosi:
(my sweetest good boy)
Actually my babies:
Various and sundry:
Me:
ME:
ME!!!:
I would skin one of your mothers for this bag:
The holidays are not happy for many of us. I see that, I feel that trust me, and I am sending my love and wishes to you for peace, quiet, and comfort:
May your days be silkie and bright:
Love you bitches,
TG
We all called her that. I’m sure her students still call her that.
It’s still hard for me to say her name, or type it, regardless of whether I’m referring to her or anyone who shares it, and the acronym MBFWILLY is just…somehow harder because we’d both probably laugh about it. So yeah, it’s “my best friend, who I lost last year.”
Oh my goodness, that episode of Cheers has always stuck with me. When she says, "Mom was not... comfortable with her beauty" it slays me.
Hey babe, it's ok. I swerved from creative writing in my teens and ended up as an academic. I'm now unlearning what academia did to my writing style and starting afresh with words. And I'm over 60. You're doing great, don't fret!