My brother-in-law likes this. To me, the best part is how Mulaney responds when someone knocks on the door when he’s in a public restroom stall.
Why women love Glennon Melton
It’s tempting to dismiss Glennon Melton as just another beautiful recovering alcoholic, ex-bulimic mommy blogger. But there’s a reason she has tens of thousands of obsessed followers and a bestselling book: she is weirdly gifted at writing about everyday life, specifically, what makes it hard and what makes it beautiful. I say weirdly because, as one fan puts it, she “simultaneously sets the bar very high and very low,” in parenting and everything else she does. This post, below, is typical of her writing—you start skimming it with no intention of getting involved, then find yourself choked up because she has somehow captured everything that matters.
I’m curious whether men relate to this post. Not the part about wanting to get a makeover at the mall, the rest of it. It’s easy to imagine most women agreeing that we’re here to connect with others. But I don’t know if most men think this. I just asked Jimmy what his theory is on why we’re here and he said, “Survival?”
After 20 years of being a standup comedian, Marc Maron had become angry and bitter, having watched many of his peers achieve enormous success and fame. About 5 years ago, after the painful dissolution of his second marriage, he was “broke, on many levels,” and hit bottom. “Defeated and careerless,” he started doing a podcast in his garage, in which he had one-on-one conversations with his famous friends—other comedians. The podcast interviews were his way of getting help; they enabled him to talk out his feelings and connect with others, and along the way, he rediscovered his love of comedy.
The series, “WTF? with Marc Maron,” features over 400 intimate, engaging interviews, has garnered critical acclaim, and got him a new show on IFC channel called “Maron.” He has a great memoir out, too, Attempting Normal, in which he talks about his issues, marriages and addictions (which practically have their own plotline: he quit using coke and alcohol with the help of his second wife, used Viagra to get through his post-divorce depression then had to quit it (“to get back to the land of emotion”), fights an ongoing battle with food and porn, and now has what sounds like an over-dependence on the natural sweetener, Stevia—he seeks out “the good stuff. The 100% pure stuff,” not “the one that is cut with filler to bulk it up, like shitty cocaine”).
What I like about Maron is that he is flawed and talks about it. Also, he cares, and keeps trying to conquer his natural negative tendencies. In fact, his book is dedicated to “Everyone who is successfully defying their wiring.” I love that he had finally become resigned that success wasn’t going to happen for him, and then it did. I love that it came from him just following his instinct, and that it has helped heal him. “Me sitting at that table across from people talking to them on those microphones has changed the trajectory of my life completely.”
From his book:
“In our interview, Conan O’Brien said something about the secret of his success: ‘Get yourself in a situation where you have no choice.'”
“It’s amazing how much you can rationalize when you’re on drugs. I could actually say to myself, ‘Look, I’m only doing blow Wednesday through Saturday.””
“People don’t talk to each other about real things because they’re afraid of how they’ll be judged. Or they think other people don’t have the capacity to carry the burden of what they have to say. But all of that stuff is what makes us human; more than that, it’s what makes being human interesting and funny. How we got away from that, I don’t know. But fuck that: We’re built to deal with shit. We’re built to deal with death, disease, failure, struggle, heartbreak, problems. The way we each handle being human is where all the good stories, jokes, art, wisdom, revelations and bullshit come from.”
“I watched her do a nude improvised mambo to Tito Puente music coming out of the radio on top of the fridge. It was one of those moments I realized that I could be anywhere—a castle, a yacht, a private jet—but it wouldn’t get any better than that moment. It would not be any better than what was going on in my dirty beat-up Astoria kitchen. That is the power beautiful women have: They are portals into the timeless, into other worlds.”
“I had made a habit of compulsively checking the email that comes through my website. Trolling for validation, contempt, hate: the speedball of social networking in the age of accessibility.”
You can find Maron’s podcast interviews here (the ones with Louis CK and Judd Apatow are particularly good):
http://www.wtfpod.com
Hank Azaria talks about Phil Stutz
http://f.cl.ly/items/1o2r472N3g101G170C0M/phil-stutz.mp3
In this 1-minute audio clip, actor Hank Azaria talks about his therapist, Phil Stutz, who co-authored “The Tools,” which I wrote about in an earlier post on this site. I thought I liked Stutz when I read the book. Now I love him.
Sketch comedians Key and Peele
Both the writing and the performances in this sketch are nuanced and sophisticated, and the shifting attitude of Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele’s characters is so relatable and funny. The brilliance and humanity of this work highlights the inhumanity of white supremacist culture.
Gretchen Rubin makes de-cluttering less overwhelming
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0H7oCzXhAU
This video has stayed in my head because it features a very do-able piece of advice from Gretchen Rubin, the appealing, slightly nerdy author of “The Happiness Project.” De-cluttering one’s living space is a key tenet in her bestselling book, which details her year-long experiment attempting to increase her level of happiness. Readers benefit from the exhaustive-sounding research she did—the book is loaded with memorable insights and concrete advice on how to have a richer, more satisfying life.
From “The Happiness Project”:
“One April day, on a morning just like every other morning, I had a sudden realization: I was in danger of wasting my life. As I stared out the rain-splattered window of a city bus, I saw that the years of my life were slipping by. ‘What do I want from life anyway?’ I asked myself. … But I had never thought about what made me happy or how I might be happier. … I wasn’t depressed and I wasn’t having a midlife crisis, but I was suffering from midlife malaise—a recurrent sense of discontent and almost a feeling of disbelief.
‘Is this really it?'”
It just occurred to me that a recipe for unhappiness is to want things over which you have no control.
When my husband and I moved to L.A., it was to pursue screenwriting careers. To be considered for movie projects in particular, you basically have to sell a screenplay first. I was determined, and I made a conscious decision to stop pursuing other interests, at least temporarily, so that I could spend as much time writing as possible. Years passed, in which I kept telling myself, “I’ll start painting again once I’ve sold a script.” “It would be nice to get a dog, once I’ve sold a script.” Finally, at some point—I’m sure a very low point, thankfully I’ve blocked out the details—I realized I was postponing happiness, and that everything hinged on this goal that wasn’t necessarily in my control. So, I decided to make a list of all the things I wanted to do, that I had been putting off, and to start doing as many of the things as possible. One of the items on my list was another longtime goal, that of making a movie. If you know what goes into making a movie, you’ll understand why I thought it would be easier to sell a script than to make a movie and why I had put it off. Both things are hard, but here’s the critical difference: selling a script is not in one’s control and making a movie is.
I’m curious whether there has ever been a time in your life when you thought consciously about whether or not you were happy and took specific steps to try to increase your happiness?
The three Ohio women who were kidnapped
When people speak of or write about this news story, they almost always mention the fact that the three women undoubtedly suffered unspeakable horrors during the ten years they were held captive. It has been haunting me, thinking about what they, and the 6-year-old girl one of the women had while in captivity, might’ve endured. Today, I thought about the fact that an incredible number of people—good, decent, kind people, who will always outnumber the bad—know they suffered unspeakable horrors. We all allude to it in the looks we exchange with each other, in conversations, and in Facebook posts. Our sharing this horrible knowing links us, and I find that comforting. No one is alone—these women are not alone and we are not alone—we are all connected, both by our depressing thoughts and our caring and compassion. And every person the women encounter will likely show their sense of connectedness to them–it’ll be evident in their eyes and in their expressions and, I’m guessing, in a lot of tight, long hugs. These women will probably get spontaneous hugs from strangers for a long time. And that, at least, is a beautiful thing.
You have to play this loud
The last time I was heading to Houston, I wasn’t really looking forward to going. Houston had begun to seem out of reach to me—like so much there has changed, it’s just not as familiar. I didn’t know if it still held anything for me except bittersweet memories (this sounds really dramatic, but… I don’t know what else to say, this just sounds dramatic). Anyway, the first day there, I spent too much time on I-10 (which is now massive, with a billion lanes, but somehow has the same amount of traffic as it did when I left 16 years ago) and at IKEA (they should start a stopwatch when you enter and make you leave before you want to kill yourself). But all the people I encountered in restaurants and stuff, as always, were awesome. The second day, I borrowed my brother’s truck to go run some errands. Even though it was 11am-ish, the sky was midnight-blue-black because it was about to rain, which I love about Houston—when it rains in LA, it’s just gray out, never midnight-blue-black. Then I turned on the radio and this song came on (Goodhearted Woman). I cranked it, and the rain started to come down, and suddenly it felt great to be back in Texas. Even though I was alone in the truck, I yelled, “I’m in!!”
Canadian “It Girl” KELLY OXFORD
This 35-year-old mother of three kids has been everywhere lately—on Jimmy Kimmel and the Today show, in the LA Times, on the New York Times bestseller list, etc. Her story: starting in the 90s, as soon as she first heard about the Net, she began blogging (she was excited because no one would be editing her). She then posted to her blog every day for about 10 years (garnering a lot of fans with her dry wit). Then she got on Twitter and acquired a ton more followers (including lots of Hollywood people). She has since sold two TV pilots and a spec movie script and now has a new book out, about crazy adventures from her life, called, “Everything is Perfect When You’re a Liar.” She, her environmental engineer husband James and their kids recently moved to L.A. so that she could pursue her career. Her take on the difference between Canada and the U.S.:
“Canada is so different just because the government is so different. The people are the same but one thing I’ve learned is that I never really understood the nationalism in America, like, “We’re number one!” It’s so difficult to be successful here. In Canada the government funds the arts so if you do rise above in America, it makes sense why people are so proud. Even going to school in Canada is so much easier. You can’t be lazy here. You have to work hard and be very smart and very wily.”
For a highlights reel of her best tweets (fyi: I don’t tweet, I retweet, from a handful of people I follow):
https://twitter.com/courtneyinLA
Elle Macpherson’s Tumblr site
The posts on Elle Macpherson’s “Insights” blog on Tumblr are smart, concise and elegant. Clearly, she or someone on her staff has good taste and is up on every neat cultural event taking place right now. Each post features a single, compelling image, and you’ll find yourself wishing you could read every book, see every film and attend every exhibit covered. You’ll also find yourself wishing you could just see some T&A—I mean, this IS Elle Macpherson, the 80s supermodel known as “The Body” to her fellow Australians. If you make your way through to older posts, you will in fact see swimsuit pics that amaze and astound. (Of course, you can also just Google pics of Elle without going to her Tumblr site. Why read anything culture-related at all when you can go straight to the eye candy? This is why the Internet is bad, of course. It enables us to indulge our preference for instant gratification rather than seek out more challenging, thought-provoking content.)
(Did you think I was going to offer a solution to this? We already know what the solution is. Everyone keeps telling us: “Unplug.”)