“After years of consistent work, I am living the life of my dreams. There’s still a lot more I want to do, but there’s not much I would change about how my day-to-day looks.”

Despite my morning pages often sounding like they came out of Eeyore’s mouth after a ten-day coke bender, I also make sure to keep track of all the good things that surround me, which are plentiful. The people, the places and the experiences that knock my socks off even get their own journal. Yes, it’s a gratitude journal. Yes, it says “enjoy life” in gold script on the cover. Yes, it was purchased in the checkout line at T.J. Maxx. Show me one single person who can resist the tchotchkes in that gauntlet of bargains and I will show you someone who doesn’t know how to experience joy.

It’s not always perfect (and wouldn’t it suck if it were), but my day to day is pretty rad. If I wrote down a list of everything I did in the last month, and handed it back to myself ten or twenty years ago, I don’t know that past Alex would fully believe what her life was going to become. She for sure wouldn’t believe that the HPV finally goes away (then comes back, then goes away again. A true Kramer!) She would be over the moon though, to see that current Alex lives in New York City working full time as a standup comedian, has her health, lots of people who love her, and is in the best relationship of her life.

Over the last few years, I’ve been trying to keep myself in a mindset of gratitude with the phrase: “Remember when you wanted what you currently have”. But lately, I’ve come up with a new phrase for reflection:

I like that this version acknowledges that my past self had to persist for years to get me to where I am today.

In our optimization-obsessed world, we’re always being told that faster is better and that AI can do it for you, all while scrolling through a feed full of people telling you how to succeed RIGHT NOW. And listen, if your job is made easier because Claude is jizzing out spreadsheets at the speed of light, good for you. I hope all the time you saved is being added to your vacation days, or going towards a 4-day workweek, or increasing your salary enough to be able to afford a can of tuna in olive oil. But since it’s definitely not doing any of those things, it would be great for us all to remember that good things take time. A lot of time. Which is a good thing. Time is where relationships are built - with your craft, yourself and with others.

Take, for instance, the boxing class I went to this morning with my friend Harris, who was trying it out for the very first time. I’ve been boxing for about 10 years, and absolutely love it, but it’s so hard. It takes years to learn the punches, find your style, and move with some semblance of grace. I walked him through the basics before class, and made sure to tell him: “It won’t all click at once, but with practice, you’ll be a little less bad each time.” I was reminded of my own journey - taking classes in Chicago starting in 2016, moving to New York, then transitioning to one-on-one training with Sydney Miller, one of the greatest women I know. Here’s a video of where we started, around March 2023:

This video was taken one year later, in June 2024:

As you can see, obvious improvements were made, but they were only possible through steady, consistent work. Work that I loved putting in, because it developed a new understanding of strength within myself, allowed me to forge a beautiful relationship with Syd, and cut my arms so tight that I started calling them Michelle and Obama.

Standup is the same. I cringe when I watch early videos of myself on stage, but I also have to remember that every single time I got up there was a necessary stepping stone to get to where I am today. ChatGPT can definitely write a (really shitty) joke, but it will never be able to read the energy of a room. It will never know which joke to pivot to when an audience isn’t responding, or which pause to sit in just a little bit longer to build the tension for the punchline. I do. That’s what thirteen years of experience teaches you.

In short, this is your reminder that taking time to build the life you want is going to take a while. It should take a while, because that’s where all the good stuff happens. So instead of asking AI for a workout plan, or tips to fix your relationship, or how to write a good joke, go figure it out for yourself, the better, longer way. Because maybe ChatGPT will give you a map to get there fast, but the whole fucking point is to take the backroads, get a little lost along the way, and sit in the comfort that if you encounter any bears on your path, you know how to throw a mean left hook.

NYC nightly

Memphis, TN: A Really Bad Time with Alex Kumin: 9/10

Memphis, TN (standup): 9/11

Westport, NY: 9/18-9/19

*Chattanooga, TN: 10/17

Milwaukee, WI: 10/23-10/24

Cincinnati, OH: 11/7

*Bergen, Norway: 11/19-11/20

*Oslo, Norway: 11/24-11/28

*links coming soon

You can sign up for my email list here, or catch me on instagram & threads!

July 2025: We meet through mutual friends at a Phish concert. There is an immediate and enormous spark but nothing happens, as I’m dating someone else at the time.

December 2025: We go to Phish again, this time at Madison Square Garden in NYC (I am now single, and ready to jingle). After an epic night of the funkiest boogying you can imagine, we leave around midnight and I find out that he is supposed to fly back to Portland six hours later. I forcefully tell him gently ask him to push his flight back a day, he does, and we stay up all night dancing in my living room. This is also the night I fall in love with him, but since I’m not a verified axe murderer, I keep that to myself for another several months.

January 2026: We have our “first date” - he flies from Portland to NYC to stay with me for three days. Bold? Yes. The correct move? Also yes.

I tell a condensed version of this story on stage, and talk about how long distance relationships force you to figure out how you feel about someone absurdly fast, because the time you spend together at the beginning is so concentrated. I also mention the absolute agony of holding your farts in for a 3-day weekend and that I believe a relationship becomes official when you finally rip ass in front of them and they laugh (I made things official on his third visit).

After my set, I was approached by an adorable gal (Karen) visiting the states from New Zealand. She tells me that she’s at the show with a man (Sky) she met on Hinge a month prior. They had an instant connection and messaged/video chatted non-stop for three weeks, then he FLEW HER FROM AUCKLAND TO NEW YORK, and they’re currently on day 11 of their “first date”. While it had all the trappings of a true-crime documentary, both of them were still alive and wearing their own skin, so things seemed legit. I love a love story, so I told her to stay connected and keep me posted on their journey. She did indeed stay connected, and a few days later said she was extending her trip, so we all got together last night to chat about the insanity of world’s colliding, following your intuition when you match vibrationally with someone, and all the conscious choices that have to be made for relationships to succeed.

Karen and Sky talked about the knowing they felt right away when they started talking. That the distance actually helped them connect on an emotional level first, rather than anything physical. They both mentioned that their friends and families were concerned with how fast and extreme they were moving forward (understandable with the way that men can’t seem to stop murdering these days!) but that they just knew immediately that something clicked. I also noticed that both of them had a deep sense of independence, and a crystal clear view of themselves. I think this inner knowing is essential because it dictates the frequency with which you vibrate, which is how you attract people with that same vibration into your life.

I told them about meeting Jon, and how I believe our story started way before we actually met. A year before, to be exact, with another chance encounter after a show. I was in Chicago opening for Dave Attell and Jon’s best friend, Brian, was in the audience with his wife Kristina. They approached me afterwards to say how much they enjoyed my comedy, particularly the joke where I talk about how I think gravity was actually discovered by a genius woman in the 1400’s who experienced cum falling out of her (yes, my dad reads these Substacks, but it feels important for me to stand in my truth.) Brian and Kristina said they’d love to stay connected, and I remember feeling that vibrational pull with them - knowing beyond words or logical thinking that they were cool people that I’d like to get to know better, so I invited them to a headlining show I was doing in Chicago a couple months later. They bought tickets right away, came to the show, and stayed for a while afterwards, allowing us time to get to know each other.

I do hundreds of shows a year, and there are lots of people who enjoy my comedy without approaching me afterwards to tell me so. I also invite lots of people to my shows, who never end up coming. There was an element of fate that brought our worlds together that first night, but the conscious choice for Brian and Kristina to approach me after the show and the effort required for us to stay in touch and follow through with plans proved that there was a mutual energetic bond that felt worth pursuing.

After that, the next time I saw Brian and Kristina was late December walking out of the Phish concert at Madison Square Garden. I just need to say that the odds of running into someone you know outside of a sold out MSG show are smaller than average pupil size of the people attending that show, but it happened. Fate turned up again to escort us all to the next level, and I ended up hanging out with them again that night, getting to know more people from their friend group.

Seven months later, Phish came back to NYC, and Brian invited me to go with him and some of the guys that I had met over New Years (and yes, I realize as I write this that perhaps the four funky boys from Vermont are the connective tissue that I should be thanking for all of this-so maybe the title of the essay should be “When Fate, Conscious Choice, and Phish Collide). I had so much fun at that show, I decided to see the band again that Sunday in Saratoga Springs - which was the day I met Jon. I later found out that Jon hadn’t even planned on going to that weekend, but his boss broke his leg and needed someone to fill in at a meeting on the East Coast so Jon extended his trip by a few days to make the concert work.

Karen, Sky and I talked about all this last night, and the intricate tapestry of events and relationships that lead people to the right place at the right time. We talked about how any number of small decisions in either of our stories could have changed the trajectory completely - what if the Hinge algorithm never showed Karen to Sky? What if Brian and Kristina decided to stay in that night we met? What if Jon’s boss didn’t break his leg? It was a reminder that every experience, positive or negative, creates a sequence of events that sets the stage for world’s to collide. While we may not have agency or control over the circumstances of those experiences, we can control the energy we bring to it, and have a choice in the kinds of people and adventures we pursue from that place.

If there’s anything that I’ve learned in the last couple of years, it’s that the right people and experiences will come effortlessly into your life the more you pursue the things that light you up. So go to the concert, talk to the strangers, and always tell the cum joke on stage.

Upcoming shows in:

NYC nightly

Portland, OR: A Really Bad Time with Alex Kumin: 9/2

Memphis, TN: A Really Bad Time with Alex Kumin: 9/10

Memphis, TN (standup): 9/11

*Westport, NY: 9/18-9/19

*Chattanooga, TN: 10/17

Milwaukee, WI: 10/23-10/24

Cincinnati, OH: 11/7

*Bergen, Norway: 11/19-11/20

*Oslo, Norway: 11/24-11/28

*links coming soon

You can sign up for my email list here, or catch me on instagram & threads!

1. It is a no phone event. Cells are locked in Yondr pouches, which you hold onto for the duration of the show, then unlock on the way out. To be honest, watching a sea of men sport crossbody pouches felt incredible. I’m all about letting the fellas experience the very female reality of carrying everything around donkey style (externally, with resilience) to see how annoying it is because NOBODY WILL GIVE US POCKETS. Aside from seeing equity in motion, the no-phones environment was an absolutely peak vibe. I am a firm believer that every live performance (concert, comedy show, abortion) should be camera free. It’s jarring for the first 10 minutes, then you remember how life was before Apple climbed into our collective buttholes and spawned screen addictions so insidious we started to feel the need to watch concerts through a lens. If you’re taking minutes of video from every song, texting, scrolling instagram or checking your stocks (all things I have seen at the last two shows I’ve been to), then you are not actually at that concert, and you should leave. This is a hill I will die on.

2. Jack White has a lot of short fans. I’ve been to dozens of concerts in the last few years. I’ve seen about four of them. As a 5’3” woman who loves live music, I usually have to navigate concerts the way moles navigate the underground - using sound, vibration and smell. Luckily for me, Jack White is either the pied piper of short kings, or I happened to find myself in a cluster of the vertically challenged, because I was able to see him and the band for the entire duration of the show! I was so unaccustomed to the visuals that I still relied on my old methods, and I can tell you firsthand, he smelled amazing.

3. Boogying your face off is amazing for health and community. I recently learned a new term: “collective effervescence - a sociological concept coined by Émile Durkheim in 1912 describing the electric sense of energy, unity, and shared excitement that occurs when people gather for a group purpose. It fosters community bonding, temporary loss of individual self-consciousness, and heightened emotional connection.” So what I’m saying is, going to concerts is a chemical way to make the world a better place.

4. Jack White has elder millennial+ fans. That means that when I walked in, I was surrounded by salt and pepper hair, sensible shoes as far as the eye could see, and adults who knew how to handle their substances. It is such a wildly different experience being at a concert where you know the person standing next to you is on the correct amount of acid and also has arch supports in their Vans.

5. Supporting live art is absolutely essential right now. In the age of phones, AI, and dork billionaires who literally had to create online spaces to validate their existence, supporting actual human beings is one of the best things you can do to make sure we continue to have art. I had an audience member come up to me recently to say that she’s only ever watched comedy on her phone, and that “seeing you live was such a different experience than watching you on my couch”. Yes. Correct. The live medium that requires live humans at the live performance is better live. If you’re not already doing it (and especially if you live in a city), find a show to go support this week.

6. The women’s bathroom line is non-existent. While there were loads of female fans at the show, the scales tipped towards male in a way that made their bathroom line snake around the corner and thus put the gentleman in a rare and anger-inducing state of…having to wait to piss. It’s genuinely my favorite thing in the world to see the frustration in their eyes of being minorly inconvenienced in the way that every woman is, every time she’s ever had to pee in public, ever. Yet another score for Jack White.

7. He’s just a good dude. His philanthropic work is extensive and focuses on music and arts education, he helps preserve historic community landmarks and frequently shreds Trump to pieces on social media. Rock and roll, man. Amazing artists who are also amazing people are the best, and supporting them is so much easier when you know they’re giving back.

So go see Jack White if you can, or any other band/comedian/performance that tickles your fancy. You won’t regret it, and you’ll literally be helping to make the world a better place. Tell me how it goes!

Oh My Rockness: NYC Show list newsletter

Dice: Live events by venue and/or city

Upcoming standup shows in:

NYC nightly

Portland, OR: A Really Bad Time with Alex Kumin: 9/2

Memphis, TN: A Really Bad Time with Alex Kumin: 9/10

Memphis, TN (standup): 9/11

*Chattanooga, TN: 10/17

Milwaukee, WI: 10/23-10/24

Cincinnati, OH: 11/7

*Bergen, Norway: 11/19-11/20

*Oslo, Norway: 11/24-11/28

*links coming soon

You can sign up for my email list here, or catch me on instagram & threads!

Growing up, I hated how they would lump all the summer birthdays into one classroom celebration day at the end of June. It always felt more like a corporate “we have to do this” sheet cake bonanza rather than anything special for you. There’s a word for resisting the feeling of being lumped into a group (individuation), but I feel like the Germans have something better: Das Bedürfnis nach Anderssein: “the need to be different”. I love that umlautted consonant fest, and I think this “need to be different” turned me into the rabid party bitch I am today who takes birthday celebrations and rituals very seriously.

Starting around 5th grade, I would invite 10-15 friends over (I was, and still am, very popular!) for an epic sleepover which always included an ice cream bar, a piñata, and party favors from Oriental Trading, which I did feel inclined to research, because the company name feels pretty iffy in 2026: “Founded in 1932 in Omaha, Nebraska by Japanese American, Harry Watanabe, Oriental Trading was one of the nation’s first wholesale providers of novelties and gifts. Harry’s naming of the company reflected the geographic area and trading routes of the business. By the 1950’s, we were a major supplier to the carnival trade and expanded immensely in the succeeding decades through catalogs, direct marketing and eventually the Internet.”

The times were good, and the parties were had. A later substack will address what went down when teenage girls did sleepovers at the house with HBO.

For me, birthdays were always the best excuse to bring together my friends from the different areas of my life - sports, school, etc. I later became Senior Class President, so I am not kidding about the popular thing. As an adult, I morphed the celebrations into large scale park hangs, and the party favors moved from goodie bags with chochkies to psychedelics, because I really mean it when I say “rabid party bitch”.

One of the things I always do in the lead up to my birthday is re-read my journal from the year prior. I write daily, and have stacks of old notebooks filled to the brim with my thoughts and feelings, but mostly the phrase “I’m exhausted”. In honor of my 39th year, I wanted to share a tidbit of where I was each month last year, and the lessons I learned. TLDR list of lessons is below, but read on for a thorough explanation of each!

July 2025 lesson: You will have some serious slumps. They won’t last forever, and they may be trying to tell you something.

August 2025 lesson: Start where you are. It will suck. But then it won’t.

September 2025 lesson: Heartbreak blows, but it can lead you to some pretty magical places if you let yourself feel everything fully. Also, a lot of men are just children in adult bodies :)

October 2025 lesson: Chocolate cake at 10 pm is bad for your sleep.

November 2025 lesson: “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” — Carl Jung

December 2025 lesson: Listen to your intuition and make the first move if you have to. He will be so grateful you did, because he’s just as nervous as you are.

January 2026 lesson: Give yourself a deadline for the project you’re avoiding.

February/March 2026 lesson: The first draft, and I cannot stress this enough, will be a steaming pile of horseshit. But at least it will be steaming in real life in front of you, rather than steaming in your brain.

April 2026 lesson: Community, connection and dance are essential for the human spirit. Also, put your fucking phone away at concerts.

May 2026 lesson: Sometimes the thing you think you healed from isn’t done with you yet. Sit in the discomfort of it, and listen to what its trying to tell you.

June 2026 lesson: Vulnerability is the best thing you can do for yourself.

July 2025: Moved apartments and had a full breakdown about where I was in life

Moving is one of the more stressful things you can do, particularly in New York. Your routines are upended, you bleed money, and you can never find the good scissors when you need them. There is a literal and emotional clearing that takes place that puts you face to face with what you’ve been carrying and what you want to bring with you into your next chapter. I had been carrying a lot of emotional baggage (I was moving out of the apartment that I shared with my boyfriend of 8 years), and was scared of what this new solo chapter would look like for me. I was also coming to terms with the fact that I had been doing comedy for 12 years and still living paycheck to paycheck. I wasn’t finding joy in performing like I used to, and was terrified of what that would mean moving forward. I was in a full rut, and re-reading the entries from that time makes me so happy that I was in therapy. I started thinking more about how I wanted my days to look and what I wanted out of my career, and made small changes to my habits to align with those goals. It was a dark time, but being firmly on the other end now I can confidently say that those moments of friction are the necessary bridge to squeeze you forward.

July 2025 lesson: You will have some serious slumps. They won’t last forever, and they may be trying to tell you something.

August 2025: Started this Substack

One of the things that came to light for me in July was that I felt out of control of my career and finances. Being a standup comedian means that I am at the whim of comedy bookers. I can make myself available 7 nights a week, but that doesn’t mean I will get work. Also, the pay is abysmal. Drink tickets and a crisp $20 don’t get you far in this town. I figured that if I’m going to be making minimum wage, I should at least be enjoying what I do, and I love writing. It was scary to start yet another creative venture that required me to learn and fail in public, but we all gotta start somewhere. This quote by Ira Glass sums it up pretty perfectly:

August 2025 lesson: Start where you are. It will suck. But then it won’t.

September 2025: I got dumped

For the first time! Out of nowhere! I was furious and confused! But I wrote about it on my Substack:

10 tips on navigating a breakup from someone who’s really fucking good at healing

Just fire me: I want a corporate breakup

The breakup ended up being a catalyst for me to start writing my solo show, which I had been stumped on for years. Between writing about the pain and processing it in therapy and with psychedelics, I realized that the solo show I’d been trying to write (about cancer and rape!) would probably be easier to tell through the lens of the lessons I’d learned along the way, rather than a chronological retelling of the worst events of my life. Go figure.

September 2025 lesson: Heartbreak blows, but it can lead you to some pretty magical places if you let yourself feel everything fully. Also, a lot of men are just children in adult bodies :)

October 2025: struggled with exhaustion

..and doing too much. This is a big one for me. I feel guilty when I rest because there is “always something I could be doing” (hello capitalism!). I tend to overbook myself, run myself into the ground then spend a few days sick. I have been really trying to prioritize 8 hours of sleep a night and pay attention to the habits that keep me from getting good sleep, because I see a marked difference in my mood and creativity when I am rested.

(this one is verbatim from the journal) October 2025 lesson: Chocolate cake at 10 pm is bad for your sleep.

November 2025: Explored the shadows

As a millennial woman living in NYC, it is my duty to be a little witchy. I have my rituals and candles and crystals, and never forget to blow cinnamon across my front door on the first of the month, but I also love journaling around shadow work. Here are some questions I asked myself in November:

• What dark places do I avoid and what lessons do they hold?

• What parts of myself do I hide from others? Are there emotions or traits that I feel ashamed of?

• What wounds arise when I face uncertainty or discomfort and what are they trying to teach me?

November 2025 lesson: “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” — Carl Jung

December 2025: Met my fella

I met a wonderful gentleman in July 2025 through some mutual friends and there was a spark so insane that I still remember exactly how I felt when I shook his hand for the first time. I was seeing someone else at that point and he lived across the country so it didn’t seem logical to pursue. Cut to December 2025, we meet again at a concert, dance our faces off, and I think to myself “tonight is the night for sure”. I soon find out that he is scheduled to fly home at 6 am, dashing any hopes of more time spent together, but something in me felt like I needed to push him to stay. I asked him to switch his flight. He did. We stayed up all night talking and dancing and are now 7 ½ months into the best relationship I’ve ever had. It’s a really wonderful thing to find someone you can flail around with on the dance floor, talk to for hours, and feel totally at home with.

December 2025 lesson: Listen to your intuition and make the first move if you have to. He will be so grateful you did, because he’s just as nervous as you are.

January 2026: Booked a date for my solo show

If you’ve been following the stack, you know that I have been performing my solo show “A Really Bad Time” for the first time this year. It’s about my journey as a three time cancer survivor and how it’s related to the sexual trauma I experienced as a kid. It’s a dark comedy, and yes, it is very funny despite the subject matter. But it wasn’t written in January, and wasn’t going to be written until I booked a date to run it. I reserved a small, 40-seat space in Chicago at my beloved Lincoln Lodge Theater, and gave myself 3 months to write it.

January 2026 lesson: Give yourself a deadline for the project you’re avoiding.

February/March 2026: Wrote/performed my solo show.

Writing a show about the worst things that had ever happened to me was a tall order, and regardless of the fact that I had a looming show date, I was still completely stuck on how to do it. Enter: friends. The wonderful Jenny Hagel (Late Night with Seth Meyers) was instrumental in helping me get the story out. We tried something I had never done before, where I just talked at her for an hour, then she took notes on what stuck out and sent me off to write individual essays on each topic. I cobbled it together into a 20 page pile of slop first draft and…drumroll…absolutely hated it! But after writing three more drafts…I still hated it! I tweaked and tweaked until the night of my show, and three hours before running it for the first time, finally had something I felt okay sharing. I performed it that night to a small audience of the most supportive people imaginable, and felt an enormous sense of relief and pride at finally having written the damn thing after five years of trying.

February/March 2026 lesson: The first draft, and I cannot stress this enough, will be a steaming pile of horseshit. But at least it will be steaming in real life in front of you, rather than steaming in your brain.

April 2026: Worked a lot and danced a lot

I’m an avid concert goer (see: party bitch) and got to see Bob Moses in NYC and Phish in Las Vegas at the Sphere. There is something so communal and cathartic about moving your body with hundreds of other people - it’s otherworldly to me. It’s almost as if we are wired to seek out these experiences because dancing is one of the oldest human art forms and we are DESIGNED TO SEEK OUT CONNECTION. Amidst all the madness of today’s world, it can sometimes feel odd/selfish to be out and enjoying yourself, but it is essential for survival and is the fuel that refills your tank.

April 2026 lesson: Community, connection and dance are essential for the human spirit. Also, put your fucking phone away at concerts.

May 2026: Performed my solo show in NYC and had a complete breakdown afterwards

Let’s say it all together: progress isn’t linear. After running my solo show twice in Chicago, I was privileged to put it up at the iconic UCB Theater in New York. The audience was a mix of friends and strangers, and my therapist came too (it was our first time meeting in person after 5 years of zoom therapy. Yes, I wept in her arms). After getting a standing ovation when I finished, I walked off stage, dazed and dissociated, and proceeded to have a three week sob-fest where I fell into a depression I hadn’t felt since college. My therapist and I worked through the fact that while I had dealt with a lot of the content of the show individually, I hadn’t yet processed it as a whole, and the act of speaking it all publicly put it on display in a way I had never done before. It was like opening an attic that I had kept locked for 30 years, and everything came tumbling out. But an amazing thing happened. I could intuitively sense that this was a necessary clearing, and knew that I was finally ready to be the container for all the feelings I had suppressed for most of my life. I was patient with myself, and released years of pent up emotions without trying to numb or ignore them. It was like popping the biggest emotional blackhead of my life, and it was SPECTACULAR.

May 2026 lesson: Sometimes the thing you think you healed from isn’t done with you yet. Sit in the discomfort of it, and listen to what its trying to tell you.

June 2026: Wrapped up 5 years of therapy

My therapist has been growing her practice the last couple of years, and in March told me that she would no longer be providing direct service. Crushing? Yes. But when I think about where I was when I started with her and where I am now, I feel such immense gratitude for her, and for the work I’ve done to show up for myself when life wasn’t feeling the way I wanted it to feel. Therapy is hard, but it is without a doubt the best investment I’ve ever made.

June 2026 lesson: Vulnerability is the best thing you can do for yourself.

July 2026: Turned 39, and can’t believe what I did this year

July 2026 lesson: I’ll tell you next year

Upcoming standup shows in:

NYC nightly

*Portland, OR: A Really Bad Time with Alex Kumin: 9/2

Memphis, TN: A Really Bad Time with Alex Kumin: 9/10

Memphis, TN (standup): 9/11

*Chattanooga, TN: 10/17

Milwaukee, WI: 10/23-10/24

Cincinnati, OH: 11/7

*Bergen, Norway: 11/19-11/20

*Oslo, Norway: 11/24-11/28

*links coming soon

You can sign up for my email list here, or catch me on instagram & threads!

Last month I posted a joke about my love for psychedelics and got a bunch of fun responses, lots of new followers and a renewed interest in talking more about the experiences that the D.A.R.E. program said would MELT MY MIND (note: they did, but in the best way).

A couple of mushroom companies (Happy Caps Wellness and Mosaic) reached out to send me samples of their products so I’m starting another microdose journey and want to share some insights on what I did the first time, and document the process this time around!

Before diving in, I want to note that psychedelics are not for everyone (despite my joke suggesting otherwise). Individuals with a personal or family history of severe mental health conditions (such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder), people with uncontrolled cardiovascular issues, pregnant individuals, and those taking medications that interact with serotonin should not engage with psychedelics. It’s also important to note that psilocybin, LSD, MDMA and other psychedelics are still a schedule 1 substance, meaning there is no currently acceptable medical use and a high potential for abuse. I’m still wondering when the Catholic Church or the US government will get that designation!

I started experimenting with psychedelics in my early twenties. I always did them with close friends in safe environments, which I have found is not the case with a lot of people I talk to. Someone I spoke with recently said that the first time he tried mushrooms was in a car driving to San Francisco with four of his buddies. They gave him an entire 1/8 and told him “it’ll be fine” (men are unwell), and thirty minutes later the exhaust pipe fell loose and they were scraping along the highway, having nowhere to pull off. Sounds like a super chill and awesome time to be exploring the depths of your mind!

When I started taking them more, I noticed that with larger doses I was making connections I never had before, and feeling an openness and connectivity to myself and others that was unlike anything I’d ever experienced. The depth of it all was astounding. The best visual explanation I can give is when Miguel goes into the underworld in the movie Coco:

You go “Un Poco Loco” but in the best way.

What I love about psychedelics is that you can have these profound experiences, but not get addicted to them the way you do with alcohol or other drugs. I wasn’t rushing back to the abyss right after a significant experience, cus mamma needed some time to integrate the mountain of thoughts and feelings that had emerged. Seeing a half-woman half-dragon version of yourself in an unfolding lotus takes a few months to process.

In my late twenties, I started reading more about microdosing and how impactful it can be when it’s done with intention. Microdosing means that you’re taking a small, sub-perceptual amount, usually around .2-.3 grams of the substance. There are a couple popular ways to microdose:

• Fadiman protocol: microdose one day on, two days off

• Paul Stamets method: microdose 4-5 days on and 2-3 days off (and add Lion’s Mane* and Vitamin B3)

  • This cycle is repeated for 4-6 weeks, followed by a break of 2-6 weeks

  • *I have a Lion’s Mane tincture from Big Apple Fungi but there are lots of options out there!

I tried it for the first time in 2021 just after starting therapy with the greatest woman on earth, Grace (could there be a more perfect therapists name?) and had her full support. I was dealing with chronic anxiety, depression and general fear, or as I like to call it, the millennial holy trinity.

I read lots of books on the subject, which are listed below, but the most insightful was Ayelet Waldman’s “A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life. She microdosed LSD for 30 days and wrote daily about her emotional state, productivity, family relationships and physical health. Your girl loves any opportunity to buy another journal, so I made my own list of what to track:

Physical sensations, mood, self-talk, sleep, diet and movement/exercise.

I spent some time journaling about where I was emotionally before I started. It was just after COVID, so I had been essentially unemployed for the last year, and in therapy was just starting to dig into a lot of my emotional grief from cancer and other bad things. I was dealing with the following:

• Constant anger

• Blocked creativity

• Crippling comparison

• Tight and painful hips

• Years of chronic sadness, anxiety, depression and fear

I still have my journal from the experience, so here are some excerpts from the first four weeks:

5 days in

• “Central question lately: how do I get rid of this anger? It feels all consuming.”

• “Very emotional day today. Total crying breakdown. Couldn’t get creative. Booked an acupuncture appointment which was a big release. The acupuncturist talked a lot about the need to release the mental chatter.”

9 days in:

• “Emotions are all over the place. Woke up feeling frustrated. Meditated and journaled for an hour to calm down.”

10 days in:

• “Feeling a shift in the way I talk to myself and the confidence I have in myself. Felt really open yesterday and was able to talk about things I’ve kept bottled for a long time.”

• “Feeling like I found a key that fits a lock I’ve been trying to open for my whole life. Getting easier to set boundaries and speak up for what I want.”

15 days in

• “Finding an increased focus in the morning and self talk is becoming more neutral.”

• “Microdose days are exciting to wake up to. I usually feel a little brighter and more focused.”

20 days in

• “Woke up feeling depressed. In my head, defeated, anxious, sad.”

22 days in

• “Started the day feeling unfocused but then locked into a total flow.”

• “Feeling like the ice is melting. I’ve been feeling so stuck, blocked, sad, uncreative and down the last 6 months but all the work I’m doing feels like it’s finally coming together.”

23 days

• “Feeling like I’m coming home to myself. Easier for me to detach from my thoughts. Grace said I’m doing less black and white thinking, and it’s easier for me to connect to my specific emotions and get to the bottom of why I’m feeling the way I am. Thoughts don’t feel as sticky anymore.”

24 days

• “Woke up today feeling tired. The drinking this weekend has slowed me down.”

30 days in

• “Been noticing when I’m in a bad place and trying to come back to the present moment.”

• “Tonight someone told me ‘I haven’t seen you this happy in months’.”

• “Finding more calm in my days and realizing that present moment awareness is key. Finding deeper focus on non-dose days and generally feeling better about myself.”

My general findings from the experience:

• The progress is not linear. Some days were better than others, but the overall trajectory was positive.

• Paying daily attention to my habits and thoughts made it easier for me to figure out how to keep things at an even keel, and to identify which habits/behaviors throw me off:

  • I needed to combine everything for the maximum effects: healthy eating, meditation, exercise, no smoking/drinking, journaling plus microdosing.

• Period tracking along with this would have helped :) The luteal phase is a bitch and in re-reading this journal I noticed that the dip days often coincided with THE BLOOD.

• My exercise days felt more powerful throughout the experience.

• Microdosing and psychedelics are not a cure-all or a replacement for therapy and overall wellness. They are an additional tool to help you work through the inner trappings of your mind.

I’m starting a new microdose journey this week (thank you again Happy Caps Wellness and Mosaic for the samples!) and will be sharing some new findings at this chapter in my life! Follow along, send this to someone who might be interested in experimenting, and come see me live if you want to hear me talk about this on stage!

Resources

General

• Pyschedelics.com

• Psychedelics Today

• Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies

• Double Blind Magazine

• Maria Sabina - The Mother of Mushroom

• Paul Stamets - Mycologist

Books (don’t you dare get these on Amazon. Support your local bookstore, or try Better World Books)

• A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life: Ayelet Waldman

• Your Psilocybin Mushroom Companion: Michelle Janikian

• Psychedelic Explorers Guide: James Fadiman

• LSD: My Problem Child: Albert Hofmann

• The Psychedelic Experience: Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert

• The Doors of Perception: Aldous Huxley

• Be Here Now: Ram Dass

• How to change your mind: Michael Pollen

Documentaries

• How To Change Your Mind

• Fantastic Fungi

• Have a good trip: Adventures in Psychedelics

Raves and Ceremonies Heal Trauma in the Same Way, New Study Suggests

Anyone who’s ever felt the emotional floodgates open at a rave understands the energetic medicine of a dance floor. And now there’s research backing up this experience. A study published in the journal Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry found that adults with histories of childhood abuse or neglect who took psychedelics with therapeutic intention at organized ceremonies, raves, or music festivals reported lasting relief from trauma symptoms, a reduction of internalized shame, and a deepened sense of connection to themselves and the world around them. While a strobe flashing warehouse and a candle lit ceremony look drastically different on the surface, the researchers suspect both environments might be doing something similar for people who arrive carrying wounds.

Upcoming standup shows in:

NYC nightly

Memphis, TN: A Really Bad Time with Alex Kumin: 9/10

Memphis, TN (standup): 9/11

*Chattanooga, TN: 10/17

Milwaukee, WI: 10/23-10/24

Cincinnati, OH: 11/7

*Bergen, Norway: 11/19-11/20

*Oslo, Norway: 11/24-11/28

*links coming soon

You can sign up for my email list here, or catch me on instagram & threads!

I feel 0% guilt objectifying men

3. Watching MAGA/Trump enthusiast Alexi Lalas get absolutely destroyed during these halftime shows is giving “bully who gets his karma” and I am living for it. I’m a firm believer that people who still support the Nazi Pedophile deserve to be made as uncomfortable as possible at every moment of the day.

   

4. Everyone watches women’s sports :)

5. Water breaks at every game are an absolute joke. Fox is expected to generate between $250 million and $300 million in extra ad revenue, so it’s obviously not for “the health of the players”. Please see #1 for another reason why we don’t need the game to be wetter than it already is.

   

6. It’s so fun watching the World Cup. This is truly the people’s game and brings us together in ways not much else has in recent memory. The electricity is palpable and the way that American cities are centering the tournament is such a breath of fresh air. Long live the jogo bonito!

   

   

   Upcoming standup shows in:

   NYC: A Really Bad Time with Alex Kumin: 6/27

   Memphis, TN: A Really Bad Time with Alex Kumin: 9/10

   Memphis, TN (standup): 9/11

   *Chattanooga, TN: 10/17

   Milwaukee, WI: 10/23-10/24

   Cincinnati, OH: 11/7

   *Bergen, Norway: 11/19-11/20

   *Oslo, Norway: 11/24-11/28

   *links coming soon

   You can sign up for my email list here, or catch me on instagram & threads!

Advice is a noun defined as an opinion or recommendation offered as a guide to action, conduct, or a future decision. It is guidance given with the intention of being helpful. - Collins Dictionary

Last week I was in Chicago with the wonderful Jenny Hagel who was promoting her new book: Advice No One Asked For. She held an advice show, where audience members got to write down questions on love, family and career, pop them into buckets before the show, then Jenny and a guest (me!) answered them live. On a scale of 1 - “this is my new favorite way to perform”, I land squarely on the latter. It was connection to the audience at the highest tier. We laughed, we yelled about vibrators, I even sang Nancy Sinatra on the spot as a dare (“These Boots are Made for Walkin’” is the best karaoke song on the planet - fight me on it.) It was an hour of advice giving on questions that ranged from the silly (“my roommate’s cat is bullying me and my dog - what do I do?”) to the serious (“I’m engaged and don’t know if I want to stay”) and everything in between.

I pride myself on being a really solid (and nonjudgmental) advice giver - I’ve been through years of therapy, I love to reflect do psychedelics, and usually have a stack of books next to my bed that would be the envy of every self-help section at your local bookstore. Is the advice perfect every time? Not a chance! But I always hope that by offering some of the lessons I have learned through alchemizing my own pain and confusion, I can give you a better framework to work through the questions you have.

We spent an hour giving advice, and what struck me was the number of questions around the following topic: “I am in a relationship that I don’t think I want to be in. What should I do?”. As someone who spent quite a spell in a similar place in my longest relationship (eight years), my advice to all of those questions came down to this: you already know. Your intuition knows. Your body knows. You know.

No relationship is perfect, and there will obviously be ups and downs over the course of the long ones, but if you’re waking up every day and asking yourself “is this it?”, then something in you already knows what you need to do. But it’s the doing that’s the hard part. Probably the hardest thing you might ever have to do, particularly if the relationship is “good enough”. I was with a wonderful man who was supportive and kind and funny and loved me more than I thought possible. I grew up with this person. I learned how to love myself during that relationship, and I will love him for the rest of my life in my own way. But I spent a long time in that chilling space of “this doesn’t feel right, but I’m too afraid to do anything about it.”

Here are some of the thoughts I had that kept me in my relationship despite feeling the perpetual unease:

• “Things were amazing for a long time. What if this is just a phase?”

• “I love this man, nothing is really ‘wrong’ with the relationship, I just feel a nagging sense that it’s not right. I must be the problem”

• “I can’t leave now, he’s going through so much”

• “I don’t want to ruin his life”

• “What if I end up alone?”

• “What if this is supposed to be what it feels like and I’m just being unreasonable?”

• “I don’t want to be the villain, and I will be if I do this”

We talk a lot about what it feels like to be broken up with and the pain that comes along with not feeling chosen. We don’t talk nearly enough about how hard it is to be the person who ends a “good enough” relationship. It is excruciating. You do become the villain in someone’s story, and that is a hard thing to live with. I ended a relationship with a man who not only loved me, but who was also going through caretaking a sick family member. I feel guilt about the timing of it to this day. But I was living out a life that I knew wasn’t right, trying to ignore a voice that got louder each day I stayed.

A funny thing happens when you ignore your intuition day after day. It’s like a game of whac-a-mole. Easy enough to slam down the occasional plastic mole, but it gets harder the longer you’re in the game. They come up faster, and you start to focus all of your time and energy slamming down an unrelenting barrage of thoughts and feelings that, no matter how hard you try, will not give up. What was once a small thought in the back of your mind becomes the only thing you can think about. It may even start to manifest physically - stomachaches, constant crying, a whirring tension that will not go away. The breaking point for me was reading this quote by Glennon Doyle in her book Untamed:

I was staying not because I wanted to, but because I didn’t want to disappoint him, and that is not a reason to stay. I think that women in particular are taught to bear discomfort in exchange for maintaining the peace of everyone around them, but the discomfort of staying soon became larger than the discomfort of leaving.

The breakup was awful - heart-wrenching and dark and truly the worst moment(s) of my life. I became the villain in his story. I believe that I remain the villain to this day. But I am not my own villain anymore. I am not living a life that someone else wants me to live, because a healthy relationship cannot survive when only one person is buying in. It has taken me a long time to release the guilt of “ruining his life”, but in the end it was the right choice for me. My hope is that he is finding happiness and love within himself and the future relationships he enters.

It’s hard to find the courage to do something that you know will hurt someone else, and will catapult you into a new phase of life that you will probably be navigating alone for a while. But as I mentioned in the show with Jenny, courage is a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. Since the breakup I have been able to find more courage than I ever thought possible, knowing that my happiness is my choice, and that my job is to keep making the choices that bring me closer to the life I want to live.

So if you’re in that daunting place where you think you know what you need to do, please take my advice and make the decision to not disappoint yourself. You might be the villain, but your incredible cheekbones will cut through the grief eventually.

Below are some quotes that helped me navigate that funky time, pass along to anyone you know going through it!

Upcoming standup shows in:

A Really Bad Time with Alex Kumin NYC: 6/27

*Chattanooga, TN: 10/17

Milwaukee, WI: 10/23-10/24

Cincinnati, OH: 11/7

*Bergen, Norway: 11/19-11/20

*Oslo, Norway: 11/24-11/28

*links coming soon

You can sign up for my email list here, or catch me on instagram & threads!

I’ve been MIA for a bit - prepping, and then performing my solo show: A Really Bad Time, then went on vacation to Portugal for 9 days. More on that dream of a trip in another essay, but today we’re talkin’ about what happens when you share parts of yourself you don’t usually share and then your whole body says - oh! It’s time to purge everything? Clear your schedule, bitch!

I performed A Really Bad Time on May 7th in New York. It’s a show about my three rounds of cancer, as well as some childhood sexual trauma that I went through, and how all the events intersect in a big ol’ shame tornado. Dark at parts? Of course. Hilarious at others? Yes! Don’t believe me? Come see it when I run it again on June 27th at UCB NYC (and hopefully in a city near you this year!) Performing it this time did something weird to me, a sort of “uncorking” that I want to address.

After running this show for the first time in Chicago earlier this year, I was elated, relieved and so proud of myself for getting a story out that had taken me years to construct for public consumption. This second round knocked me clean on my ass. I remember coming off stage and feeling like I had “bombed” or missed the mark. I was dazed and dissociated talking to my friends after, and when I got home, I absolutely lost my mind crying. That crying continued for the next few days, along with an insane vulnerability hangover and higher-than-usual exhaustion. It should be noted that I got nothing but glowing feedback from the people who came, and yet, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it had all gone terribly wrong.

After some serious unpacking with my therapist, who came to the show, I realized that I was not upset about the delivery of the material, rather, newly upset at the content itself. Seeing all the worst events of my life on display in such a linear and clear way hit me like a ton of bricks. My animal brain went into overdrive at the massive system malfunction it perceived to be undergoing. After all, when you spend three decades keeping your darkest corners hidden, it can be pretty jarring to just flick on the (overhead…ew) light.

I thought I was just opening up to a crowd, but I accidentally opened Pandora’s Box. Since then, I have been in a slump - feeling sad, lethargic, and sobbing at the drop of a hat, which sounds terrible, but has been a necessary step in the right direction. It’s been a purge. A massive one.

A lot of what I talk about in the show is about how important it is to be honest about how you’re feeling, when you’re feeling it, and to let it come out of you. As someone who kept most of my suffering to myself starting at a young age (it’s tough to chat about an HPV diagnosis over a cold apple juice at age 7), I learned that putting on a happy face even when I wasn’t feeling happy was a perfect way to keep people from asking prying questions. When I later had to deal with three rounds of thyroid cancer, and all of my doctors told me not to worry about it because this was “the best cancer to have”, I again shoved the fear down, believing that I didn’t have the right to be scared or ask for help.

Putting it all together into an hour of performance really made me see clearly how much IT ALL FUCKING SUCKED (pardon my French), and because I now have the emotional bandwidth to sit with it, feel it, and release it, it’s all coming out. I just didn’t realize how much debris was in there. It’s like opening an attic that’s been sealed shut for decades, but the attic is the entire Grey Gardens estate, and I have to sort through the cobwebs and raccoon shit with a journal and a soda water “because we’re doing this the healthy way this time”. To be perfectly honest, it’s been overwhelming, but Alex from 5 years ago would probably have approached that attic door, sat down outside with a bottle of wine, and pounded the whole thing before walking back downstairs to find a joint. So clearly therapy is working.

While I have made plenty of strides in my emotional life since actively engaging in therapy, there are some common themes that still plague me. In these last several weeks, my old wounds have reappeared with more vigor than the hairs on my upper lip when I was in fourth grade. In no particular order, I present to you the stars of Alex’s waking nightmares:

• Anger at the injustice of what happened to me as a kid (sexual abuse and subsequent HPV diagnosis with no idea of what happened or who did it)

• Outrage at the current system of pedophiles running this country who have faced zero accountability

• Fear of the cancer coming back

• Sadness at the time I’ve lost ruminating over all of this

• Frustration at the paralysis I feel when I’m going through periods of low or sad emotions

• Exasperation that these traumatic events still have such a hold on me, years later, even when there are so many wonderful things happening in my life

Today (June 3rd) is the first time in weeks that I have felt my emotional sky clearing, and a rejoining with myself. It’s been a rough patch for sure, but I feel like I’m on the other side. This was a purge that I felt ready to handle, and knew that the time for numbing and ignoring was over. I stayed away from alcohol, forced myself to get more sleep than usual, moved my body every day, and reached out to friends as much as I could stand, knowing that these feelings would pass, and that this clearing was the necessary bridge to my next level of healing. The attic is a little less cluttered, a little brighter, and the contents are now on the floor in front of me instead of pounding me to the ground. But they’re still covered in a lot of raccoon shit.

My biggest takeaway from the last several weeks is that pretending to be okay when you are not is the best way to keep yourself in that state. I pretended to be okay as a kid, so that I wouldn’t have to tell anyone what was going on. I pretended to be okay when I had cancer because my doctor’s told me it was no big deal. I told myself “things could be worse” at every stage of life, and of course, they could be. They also could have been better.

By not allowing myself to feel the full extent of my pain, I was just putting it off for another day, and that day month finally arrived. So that’s where I’ve been. And I’m glad to be back. And if you need the reminder:

It’s okay to feel sad

It’s okay to feel afraid

It’s okay to feel overwhelmed

Just don’t keep it to yourself. The hinges on your attic door won’t be that strong forever.

Upcoming standup shows in

Portland, OR: June 6

A Really Bad Time with Alex Kumin NYC: 6/27

*Chattanooga, TN: 10/17

Milwaukee, WI: 10/23-10/24

Cincinnati, OH: 11/7

*Bergen, Norway: 11/19-11/20

*Oslo, Norway: 11/24-11/28

*links coming soon

You can sign up for my email list here, or catch me on instagram & threads!

I’m currently sitting at a little coffee shop in Elizabethtown, PA, killing time before opening for Josh Johnson at a nearby college tonight. Josh is an old friend from my Chicago days and is one of my favorite people to open for - he’s a Daily Show correspondent and a brilliant comedic mind. His audiences are smart and aware and engaging, the type of crowd I love to be in front of for standup (and life).

I don’t always get the luxury of performing for people like that. It goes with the comedy territory - learning first how to entertain audiences of every kind, and from there, gaining fans who support and follow you for your style. It’s a long road, one that I have loved and hated at different parts of the journey. It’s also a hard road. Especially in clubs that are male dominated (all of them), on platforms that censor “inappropriate” content (like a woman talking about her body), and in front of audiences that “just came here to forget about what’s happening in the world” (a convenient cop out for people who haven’t yet been affected by anything going on).

I understand that as a comedian, my first job is to make people laugh. And hunny? I do. I am grateful to be booked nightly in NYC - the comedy Mecca of the world. But I’ve been feeling more and more angry lately at the never-ending onslaught of the worst news imaginable, inflicted by administrations across the world (especially here in the US) that are facing zero consequences. Do I want to go out there and talk about how ZaNy & WiLd it is that every year a colony of ants rises from the depths of the earth and holds staff meetings in every crevice of my apartment? Sure! But also, ZERO MEN HAVE BEEN ARRESTED FOR RAPING CHILDREN. So you see my conundrum? I’m furious…all the time. But I’ve noticed that in a lot of comedy spaces, if I even start to go down the road of mentioning any of that, or this, or this, audiences start to shut down. To be clear, I’m not giving Ted Talks. It’s jokes like the following:

And to be clearer, it’s the women who are the most supportive of these jokes, loudly cheering and clapping, while men in the audience stay quieter.

I understand that I still have plenty to learn as a performer, including honing a joke writing style that straddles painful realities with pointed humor. I understand that there are lots of comedians who excel at that, so it is possible (George Carlin, Wanda Sykes, and Jim Jeffries to name a few faves). I also understand that my continued employment as a comedian means making people laugh, so lately (and I’m ashamed to say it) I’ve been holding off on bringing up anything too “jarring” on stage, and instead falling back on jokes that I know work well for most of the room. I don’t like that I’m doing this. I would like to be better at writing jokes that talk about the serious things in a funny way. Or appealing to a wider audience. But it’s where I am right now and I’d rather be honest about it than ignore it.

I am still working on finding my audience, as evidenced by the fact that I still struggle to get booked at clubs because I “only” have 100K followers across my social media platforms (yes, that is an insane thing to write). And because I don’t have the backing/validation of a small army, I am still taking what I can get, when I can get it, which means frequently performing for people who disagree with my opinions - which is IMPORTANT AND NECESSARY AND GOOD. Like I mentioned earlier, I believe that a great comedian should be able to get in front of any type of audience and crush.

But I also really want to find my people. The ones who want to come out to a show to laugh and release AND acknowledge that what’s going on in the world around us is fucked. The ones who see a woman walk on stage and don’t immediately discount her as unfunny (this still happens, from both men and women!), the ones who can laugh at me talking about my body and sex the same way they laughed at the four men before me who talked about their bodies and sex.

So if you’re that person, and you’re reading this, thank you. I love that you’re here. It means a lot that you’re sticking around, and I hope that I get to perform somewhere near you soon. If you know someone who you think would like my style, please forward this post to them, because I’d love to make them laugh too.

And if you’re in the New York area, I’m running my solo show on May 7th at UCB Theater: A Really Bad Time with Alex Kumin. It’s a dark comedy about my trials with cancer and sexual trauma (we love to keep it light!!!). It’s the most vulnerable and authentic thing I’ve done to date, and is for people who like to take hard things head on and find the sick humor in the shadows. I hope you can make it.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll catch you soon

xo

Upcoming standup shows in:

Nightly in NYC

A Really Bad Time with Alex Kumin NYC: 5/7

Portland, OR: June 6

*Chattanooga, TN: 10/17

*Cincinnati, OH: 11/7

*Bergen, Norway: 11/19-11/20

*Oslo, Norway: 11/24-11/28

*links coming soon

You can sign up for my email list here, or catch me on instagram & threads!

As a woman in standup comedy, I often feel like the Pied Piper of these modern day cavemen (and women!). Here is a minuscule collection of some of the comments I get on a regular basis:

It’s difficult to imagine someone walking up to me after a show to give me excellent constructive criticism like this to my face. A normal human being might find it difficult to look a complete stranger in the eyes and call them a “fucking slut” for voicing and opinion out loud, but hey - if the last several years have shown us anything, it’s that “normal people” are few and far between.

Certified Pieces of Shit hurl insults and threats behind the comfort of their phone because they don’t have to see the real time emotional reaction to their words, and likely won’t face consequences for their actions. Is it wild that this statement could be about an anonymous troll online or the current President of the United States? It is!

As Meta, TikTok and all the other digital cancers are getting program upgrades, it’s high time to start making new requirements for entry. With that, I give you my plan for the Emotional Intelligence Test that I believe should be required for anyone who wishes to hold a social media account. It’s a privilege to have access to this much information and this many people, and much like driving, its everyone’s responsibility to behave in a way that’s appropriate and safe for themselves and others.

Emotional Intelligence Test for Social Media

1. I am able to recognize at least 4 different human emotions in myself and others

   1. Name them:

2. When things go wrong in my life:

   1. I take a look at the circumstances that unfolded, and how I can improve my actions and behaviors moving forward.

   2. I blame the first person I come into contact with by calling them a slut, whore, bitch, douchebag, bimbo, cunt, pussy or any other descriptor that Andrew Tate uses in his manifestos.

3. When I have a problem I can’t solve:

   1. I ask a friend or colleague to help.

   2. Asking for help is weak.

4. If someone around me has an opinion on something that is DIFFERENT than mine:

   1. I accept that we are all entitled to our opinions.

   2. I scream expletives in their face about why they’re wrong and harass them until they walk away from me or threaten me with legal action.

5. I can read

6. When something makes me feel sad:

   1. I call a friend, go for a walk, or listen to music.

   2. Sadness for pussies. When angry, me punch wall.

7. In terms of friends and relationships:

   1. I have a history of deep and rich platonic and romantic relationships throughout my life.

   2. I don’t have many friends because everyone around me is an idiot.

8. I know that pausing before reacting:

   1. Is a healthy way to keep a situation calm.

   2. Gives my enemy time to strike again.

9. I have resolved that one thing that happened to me as a kid

   1. Yes.

   2. Nothing has ever happened to me that I couldn’t handle - why the fuck are you in my business? You’re an asshole. I’m gonna find out where you live.

10. I can make eye contact with my dad.

After submitting the exam to the appropriate board, a decision will be made about your eligibility to be online. If you do receive a license, congratulations! We hope you enjoy being online. If you fail the exam, you’ll be allowed to retake it again in one year, after proving that you have read a minimum of 3 books and logged at least 4 hours a week speaking to other humans face to face.

Thanks for reading, and as alway, check the links below to see me live or follow along with me on other platforms!

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Upcoming standup shows* in:

Nightly in NYC

Columbus, OH: April 10-11

Portland, OR: June 6

*Chattanooga, TN: 10/17

*Cincinnati, OH: 11/7

*Bergen, Norway: 11/19-11/20

*Oslo, Norway: 11/24-11/28

*links coming soon

You can sign up for my email list here, or catch me on instagram & threads!

Riding the subway every day takes a certain level of mental fortitude and physical stamina. Between the temperature differentials during the various seasons, the agility with which you have to navigate your transfers (that gap ahead of you is about to be filled by the woman with 5 shopping bags, get there NOW), and the constant awareness that standing on or near a puddle probably means you’re about to get juiced on from above, it’s a real American Ninja Warrior situation. Navigating this obstacle course is not for the faint of heart, but does require a special kind of spatial awareness.

The transit authority has done New Yorkers an enormous favor by acknowledging the mayhem of the subway system by posting “courtesy” reminders on trains and around the stations to let us all know how to behave in our little underground labyrinth of piss. Here are a few examples:

In the spirit of giving, I’d like to provide a few of my own Courtesy Reminders, based personal experiences I’ve had on the subway:

• Utilize the grab rails: We’re lookin at you, guy who thinks he’s got the core strength to surf in a metal snake going 50 mph. You’re not, and you look like an asshat.

• Smoke with consideration: Cigs on a closed subway car? Sure! You own the place, right? Just keep it to a slim, please.

• Put that dick away: It’s weird that we have to keep reminding you!

• Screaming teens riding home after school: Stop having atrocious personalities

• If you’re eating an orange, peel the rind off first: It’s not an apple! Stop eating it like that!

• Wipe your seat off if you spill: That chicken and rice meal belongs on the FLOOR of the car

• If you play upright bass and need two seats: We’re sorry you made that choice

• No headphones? No problem!: We’ve been meaning to watch that video of goats screaming again

Honorable mention

• BYO Crab Bags: You’re not always going to find a gentleman to pick up your live crustaceans

Don’t be someone’s subway story.

Thanks for being here! If you liked reading and would like to see me live, grab tickets for my upcoming standup shows in:

Nightly in NYC

Columbus, OH: April 10-11

Portland, OR: June 6

You can sign up for my email list here, or catch me on instagram & threads!

I have a chronic problem with “making it exist first”. I get in my own way like every man who’s ever stood in front of me at a concert (I’m 5’3” - so I do mean every man, and most women, to be honest). I tell myself all the classics:

“This isn’t perfect right now so what’s the point of trying?”

“What do I have to say that’s so important?”

“I need a clean space before I can start writing.”

“I should read more about the writing process before I begin.”

Aside from having a library full of books on “unleashing your creativity” and a toilet bowl that’s never been cleaner, my lack of self-confidence and fear of not being good enough have gotten in my way more than I care to admit over the years. That being said, two weeks ago I finally performed the first version of my solo show “A Really Bad Time”, about my three separate cancer diagnoses, and I’m still basking in the glow of having completed a project. It took me years. About three years of very conscious “trying to write it but not being able to get it out”, and many more years of “wanting to write it but not sure how to approach it”. The last several months I’ve been drafting and editing like a maniac, and the show finally came together in the 11th hour. Truly, the first run through I did out loud was four hours before I performed it for the first time. She loves the thrill, folks!

She also doesn’t gatekeep, so here are some of the things that worked for me to write the puke draft, after years of not being able to figure it out:

Set a due date or a performance date that you can’t back out of.

I set many “finish-by” dates in the last few years that were low stakes enough that I could ignore, and as that date approached in my calendar I would kick myself for not being finished even starting. As soon as I set a performance date with a ticket link, I was locked in. Did I consider cancelling the shows a month out? Yes! A week out! Even yesser! But I didn’t cancel, because I saw that people had bought tickets and wanted to see what I was cooking up. I also knew that canceling would have emotional stakes that were hard to stomach after years of telling myself I wanted to do this but not actually doing it. I taped this quote to my computer early on in the process as a reminder that the disappointment I was constantly feeling through my procrastination was my own to tackle:

Try a new writing technique (i.e. talking out loud to someone who takes notes on what sticks)

The reason I couldn’t get this show out of me wasn’t for lack of trying. I would sit down and get so overwhelmed with what I wanted to say that I couldn’t figure out where to begin. For context, I was trying to write about getting diagnosed with thyroid cancer three times, what I learned from it, and how it all connected back to a terrible thing that happened to me as a kid (you can read about that more here, or listen to the podcast where I talk about it here).

My wonderful friend Jenny (one of the genius writers on Late Night with Seth Meyers) was instrumental in helping me along the way. We got together and I just talked *at* her for an hour about everything I wanted to say in the show, she took notes, then told me the points that stuck out. We then made a list of topics, and my next job was to write an essay for each of them. She also gave me an old cork board and some notecards. I tacked each topic on the board and had a visual representation of where I needed to focus. After writing each essay, I was able to cobble together a very big and very loose document of ten separate essays. Did they connect? Nope. Was I one step closer to the final product? Yes.

Another note I got was from the wonderful Colin Quinn (I am privileged to know some very amazing comedians as a standup here in NYC!) who told me that the overarching lesson or theme would make itself clear as the writing came out, and that it would probably change a couple times along the way (spoiler: it did). In other words, don’t try to start with the grand takeaway, it will get in your way of starting.

Make the physical first draft as low stakes as possible.

I named my google doc “Puke Draft: This Is Dogshit And Will Never See The Light Of Day”. Seriously. Seeing that at the top of the page every day somehow gave me permission to make it as bad as possible.

Know that the first several iterations will not be even close to the final product.

The first draft I ended up writing was 12 pages of true dogshit (see above). I remember reading it to Jenny over zoom, absolutely hating it, and feeling terrified at how long it took me to write something this awful. I knew it wasn’t *it*, and cried when we hung up because I had three weeks until my show and was nowhere close to something I was proud of. Because I had a deadline, I couldn’t give up at this point, so I took the rest of the night away from it, then tackled it again the next day. I printed the whole thing, highlighted the parts that I liked (I believe it was two whole lines!), and kept building around those areas. I went through two more drafts like that, hating both of them a little less each time.

This is the same way a joke gets developed. You start with an idea, try it out in front of an audience, and tinker with it until the whole thing comes together. Usually only one or two points really land, so you keep those, but more importantly, you have to try it out to see what doesn’t work and change it until it does.

Michelangelo was once asked how he went about the sculpting process. His answer? ‘I saw the angel in the marble, and carved until I set him free’. In other words, he carved away what it wasn’t first, to allow what it was to come out. Am I saying I’m Michelangelo? Maybe.

Tell a couple of trusted friends what you’re doing and make time to share your progress with them before your show/due date.

Part of what got me from draft to draft was reading it out loud to another person, and listening to/incorporating their feedback. Another hidden benefit of doing it in front of other people is seeing how it feels to say it in front of an audience. There were parts that I knew right away needed to be changed, because what I wrote in my head just didn’t sound like I wanted to out loud. It’s important to be kind with yourself at this stage, particularly if you’re like me and have difficulty disconnecting yourself from your art. “This needs work” does not mean “You are a bad writer and a bad person and should start a dumpster fire then climb into it.”

Write down why you’re doing what you’re doing.

For me, this show has been a priority for years. I can’t even explain why I needed to write it, I just knew it needed to come out of me. I’m so glad I followed through. I have felt an unbelievable lightness, relief and pride in the last two weeks that came from doing the thing I said I was going to do (personal accountability is a heady drug). Check out some of the feedback I got from the folks who came out, and then go do your thing. It will be very hard but very worth it.

Thanks for being here! If you liked reading and would like to see me live, grab tickets for my upcoming standup shows in:

Westport, NY: March 20-21

Philadelphia, PA: March 11

Columbus, OH: April 10-11

Portland, OR: June 6

I’m also taking the solo show on the road, so let me know if you’d like to see it by signing up for my email list here. You can also catch me on instagram & threads!

It’s taken me years to get this out. I actually started jotting down initial thoughts about it after I got cancer the second time. So it’s literally taken me so long to write that I…got cancer again. It has felt really daunting - mostly because it’s a lot of heavy information to convey, and also because the bad thing that happened to me as a kid (hint: Epstein would have loved it) is a really hard thing to talk about. I knew writing a show about cancer would have to include that experience, because everything I’ve learned from cancer centers around my body, my relationship to myself, and my relationship to others, which was all thrown out of whack at that very young age.

I’ve been “procrastinating” on this show because of fear. It’s been visceral. I would literally sit down to write it and feel my entire body deflate along with all my energy and focus, and then that little voice would pipe up with “nobody wants to hear this- it’s too much”. The vulnerability of sharing such personal experiences goes directly against everything I’ve been telling myself as child: “you have to keep this thing a secret otherwise people will find out who you really are and you’ll be exiled from the village”.

In this case, the village is my modern day community, but this kind of thinking is hardwired into everyone’s DNA because of our 70,000 year old foremonkeys. The book Sapiens by Noah Yuval Harari speaks to this really well. The first chapter is all about how we started as apes and that when we started walking upright, it constricted the birth canal. This made it so that human babies started to be born prematurely so they could fit through that canal, and thus required years of care to become self-sufficient. Social behavior among humans, therefore, became essential for survival. It’s harder for a lone human to successfully hunt or forage for food while also tending to a child. The chapter goes on to talk about how that village, and the social group it was made of, offered protection from predators, resources for survival and opportunities for reproduction. Connection, therefore, is literally wired into our DNA, as essential.

That’s why it feels so good when you’re picked for the team, invited to the party, or elected the 2005 Needham High School Senior Class President (humble brag). We feel good when we connect. Which also makes the opposite true. It feels awful to be isolated, to feel like you don’t belong to a group, or when you feel like you have to hide a part of yourself to be accepted. Think of it like your ancient survival brain getting in the driver’s seat of your 2026 (insert whatever car is most representative of you. For me it’s a red convertible Mustang because it was my first and only Barbie car and I WILL own one in the future).

The fear of not belonging is strong. Like, “mom picking up a car cus’ her kid is trapped under it” strong. But for me, the pull to connect has become stronger over the last couple of years. So I’ve been working through these feelings pretty heavily with my therapist and my friends and family, all of whom know all of the good, bad and ugly things that have happened to me, and still show up because they love and accept me. TBH my therapist shows up because I pay her, but honestly? I have to be one of her favorites. I always have incredible trauma to work through, I love incorporating CBT concepts to my daily life and I’m fucking hilarious in session - a therapist’s dream if you ask me.

So on the day you’re reading this, just know that I did a really hard thing this week, and I’m really proud of myself for doing it. I’m sure I’ll be a little unhappy with the fact that it wasn’t “perfect”, but the headline for this week is that I kicked fear out of the driver’s seat.

I would love to hear from anyone reading this if you have something you worked through despite your fear or shame (or are currently moving through it!) - I’ll happily give you the best advice I can, as long as you have parking for my Mustang. Also, if you resonate with anything in this essay, you’ll probably like the show I’m working on. The plan is to do it as much as possible this year, wherever will have me. So let me know where I should go ;)

Thanks for being here! If you liked reading and would like to see me live, grab tickets for my upcoming standup shows in:

Westport, NY: March 20-21

Philadelphia, PA: March 11

Columbus, OH: April 10-11

Feel free to sign up for my standup email list here or catch me on instagram here!

“I’m not checking a bag. I’ll just pack light.” - Me, not one single time in my life.

Hi, it’s me, a lifelong heavy packer. I over-prepare for adventures, bring too many books in my backpack, and always have an XL suitcase that could probably fit a body or two inside (height dependent, chopped and stacked properly, of course). You know what else I have? Everything a “carry-on” warrior needs because they didn’t pack it themselves.

Extra sweater for the inconsistent weather? Got it.

A pair of socks for every day of travel? Got ‘em.

A tide pen, tissues, ibuprofen, a pencil sharpener for your sketches, a spare sketchbook and a portable easel? You can bet your sweet ass I’ve got all of it locked and loaded.

I pack heavy for it all - and I check my bag every time.

Every. Single. Time.

You might be reading this thinking, wow, checking a bag every time? That’s gross and sad and a waste of money. First of all - you’re welcome for contributing to the airline revenue that keeps base ticket costs low. Second of all - why don’t you get off your high horse and come on down to earth so we can chat, cus I guarantee that horse can’t carry all the shit you need for wherever you’re going.

“Alex, you’re only going away for 4 days, what’s even in that checked bag?”

I’ll tell you:

-More than one pair of shoes, because when I travel, I’m a multifaceted bitch. I like to do things like workout, go to the hotel pool, have a variety of stage looks, and explore the city I’m in. What I’m saying is, the cowboy boots are coming, along with the gym shoes, the converse and sometimes the hiking boots if I’m in striking distance of a mountain. They all serve a very different but necessary purpose, like the weapons in John Wick’s hidden armory. And much like those weapons, each pair of shoes slowly returns me to my old assassin ways after a group of Russian gangsters steals my car and kills my puppy, given to me by my late wife Helen.

-Liquids. All sorts of them. Any size I want. I feel like Poseidon wielding all my liquids: shampoo, conditioner, mousse, heat spray, toothpaste, sunscreen, a quart of chicken soup. It’s all in there, baby. The only items I bring in travel size are little perfumes, which I pack in a prescription bottle with a panty liner snaked around the inside for safe keeping. Honestly the perfect travel hack, period.

-A daytime outfit and a nighttime outfit for each day of travel. Pants can be reworn, shirts have a two-wear max. If you don’t understand this, you clearly have never sat in a dermatologist’s office as they explain why you need prescription strength deodorant for your hyperhidrosis. She sweats like a pig, folks! Also, I like to have options. I’ve never resonated with a character more in my life than Scott Donlan (played by John Michael Higgins) in Best In Show:

-3 pairs of underwear a day, minimum. There is nothing quite like the sinking feeling of rifling through your bag for a pair of clean underwear and being met with crotch after crotch that looks like you wiped up an Elmer’s Glue art project.

To conclude, let’s just accept that there are heavy packers and there are light packers. We are the yin and the yang, the necessary balance to the airport ecosystem. And you know what? I’d like to see a little more gratitude from the carry-on people for the service bag-checkers are providing. If we all carried on, not all of us could carry on. Do you follow? Also - you guys look sad and violent when the attendant announces that the flight is at capacity and some people will have to check their bag at the gate. It’s like a real life Hunger Games watching you scramble over each other to claim overhead bin space, and quite frankly, I could do without the desperation. The airport is already full of it.

Au revoir for now, and don’t let anyone tell you that your baggage is weighing you down when it’s the one thing setting you free to be who you were destined to be. Cheers to you, my sweaty, prepared, dry-crotched friends.

Thanks for being here! If you liked reading and would like to see me live, grab tickets for my upcoming standup shows in:

Las Vegas, NV: February 23-March 1

Chicago, IL: March 4-5 (solo show)

Chicago, IL: March 6

Westport, NY: March 20-21

Philadelphia, PA: March 11

Columbus, OH: April 10-11

Feel free to sign up for my standup email list here or catch me on instagram here!

Sexologist: “I love that you’re a sex educator, I’m a sexologist”

Me (post “O” face): “Do you live here?”

Sexologist: “Yes.”

Me: “Do you want to get coffee sometime?”

Sexologist: “Yeah!”

I wrote my number down on a piece of notebook paper, handed it to her, and we went out for a friend coffee this week. It was wonderful. We had a quick giggle when we hugged hello, acknowledging the whimsy and slight absurdity of the situation, but then got right into asking each other questions about our respective lives, career paths and relationships. We have plans to connect again soon for podcasting, professional work, as well as good, old fashioned conversation. Also, in case you were wondering, it took about 4 minutes for us to get to the topic of orgasms. I love my people.

I make stranger friends all the time, and it’s one of the things I love about myself. My college group chat is now wholly unsurprised when I text them something like*:

*(All of these are real).

Now here’s my request to you. Go do this. Connect with strangers. Create new relationships. Ask people out, whether platonically or romantically. I know that I live in a city and I’m in front of lots of people every night, and that I have charming dimples that lend themselves to interactions like this, but I urge you to remember what life was like before phones. Talking to strangers was the norm. Meeting people in shared spaces was…how you met people. It’s time to bring that back.

Our phones have turned us into weird little antisocial Gollum’s over the last several years. We’re offloading the courage it takes to speak to people face-to-face and making our thumbs do the talking for us. Thumbs are great for holding a lot of things, but not the entire weight of your personality. I think on the extreme end, it’s causing us to forget our shared humanity, which is allowing us to treat each other with a level of vitriol we’ve never seen before. Don’t believe me? Check the comments section on any of my standup videos! On the other end, it’s taking away the micro-interactions that keep us connected to each other on a day to day basis. From making eye contact with a stranger on the street to striking up conversation with someone next to you in the coffee line, to approaching someone at a bar that you find attractive, we have completely discarded these real, human interactions in favor of staying hidden behind our screens.

SO HOW DO WE DO IT? I’ll tell ya. Here are some tips from me to you on how to turn a stranger into a friend (or more…you little lovers):

• Shift your energy, you fucking recluse

  • Energy is real, and if you are closed off/unwilling to make yourself available to new people and opportunities, it will show. Start by physically making yourself open - Remove your headphones! Pick your head up! Smile! Spread your legs! Kidding about that last one!

  • Get familiar with the Law of Attraction - the idea that “like attracts like”. Everything in the universe, including thoughts, feelings, and physical objects, vibrates at specific frequencies, and similar vibrations attract each other. Every thought or emotion emits a specific vibrational energy into the universe, attracting similar energy back to you. Maintaining a high vibrational frequency is key to attracting what and who you desire into your life.

• Make eye contact and smile

  • So simple, and also, so hard. Eye contact feels intensely close, prompting a need to create psychological distance for safety, especially with strangers or when feeling insecure. If direct contact feels hard, feel free to look at the area between someone’s eyebrows, otherwise known as the “tweezer zone” for any of my fellow Arab Jews.

• If someone approaches you to talk, give the interaction a fair shake before you shut it down or walk away.

  • This is a good time to note that you never have to give your time to anyone who is making you feel uncomfortable or unsafe, and that my “approach strangers” advice is meant to be executed in public places where you feel comfortable. No dark alleys or empty parking lots or Epstein Islands.

• If you want to approach someone, ALL IT TAKES IS HELLO. THAT’S IT. I’M NOT KIDDING. JUST FUCKING SAY HELLO TO SOMEONE. IF THEY SAY HELLO BACK, PICK LITERALLY ANY TOPIC AND LET IT RIP. HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES AND CONTEXTS:

  • At the grocery store: “What do you think of this (pasta, peanut butter, granola)?” (bonus points if your dietary vibes align based on their food choices, and you already know they live in your area - so make sure you look hot next time you need to re-up on your olive oil)

  • At a sports game/concert: “If you could be anyone on the court/field/stage - who would you choose?”

  • In jail: “What are you in for?”

• When the urge to take out your phone strikes, sit in the “discomfort” of existing without looking at a screen. You can handle it. It was how you lived for years before smart phones.

  • Let yourself be bored while you wait for your coffee. Look around the restaurant when your friend gets up to use the restroom. Watch the movie playing on your TV without scrolling. What do you honestly need on social media? Unnecessary astrology advice followed immediately by live execution videos? Put the phone down and give your brain a rest. It’s where the magic happens.

• For the vintage approach - write your number down on a piece of paper with a little message based on the vibe. In my case, it was a platonic, consensual interaction that was meant to lead to a coffee hang. If you’re making eyes with someone at a bar, write your number down with a simple “call me” below it. It’s such a low stakes way to ask someone out, because if they never call, who gives a shit? You don’t even know their name.

That’s what I got for you right now. I would LOVE to know if you do any of these things - however small the gesture, so let me know in the comments what works, and any other tips/stories you have about turning strangers into more. Time to get back to community, folks.

Much love

Thanks for being here! If you liked reading and would like to see me live, grab tickets for my upcoming standup shows in:

Las Vegas, NV: February 23-March 1

Chicago, IL: March 4-5 (solo show)

Chicago, IL: March 6

Westport, NY: March 20-21 (ticket link soon)

Philadelphia, PA: March 11

Columbus, OH: April 10-11

Feel free to sign up for my standup email list here or catch me on instagram here!

• U.S. citizenship

• Have a valid driver’s license

• Be eligible to carry a firearm

• Enter on duty prior to your 40th birthday

  

With this in mind, we have also revamped the basic qualification requirements for careers across America, as we make this place Great Again. Read on for the newly revised eligibilities for popular career paths:

Teachers:

• Can read Dr. Seuss (it’s okay if you get twisted up on the Moose Juice page, that one’s hard!)

• Understand the very real dangers of discussing race and gender in class and vow to only pull lessons from 1940’s German textbooks

• Can count to 10….Commandments that is!

• Special consideration given to former high school bullies. Extra points awarded to those who can prove “swirly” experience

Doctors:

• Major bloodlust a plus

• Predilection for wearing masks

• A love for slicing and dicing

• Understand that money=healthcare and those who cannot afford their medical bills have made many missteps in life and don’t deserve to live

IT CEO

• Desire for total world domination

• Punchable face

• Has burned a dozen copies of George Orwell’s “1984”

Nursing, Social Work, Public Health, Physical Therapy, Public Health, Speech-Language pathology, Counseling, Occupational Therapy

• These are jobs for chicks, why would you even consider applying? (if you are a chick, have you thought about having more children?)

President of the United States

• Demonstrate a strong understanding of the following GREAT LEADERS: Benito Mussolini, Pol Pot, Sadam Hussein, Sauron, et al.

• Love assaulting women, especially when they ask for it

• Desire to start wars when people ask why you’re best friends with a pedo

• Enter on duty after your 70th birthday

We thank you for your interest in joining the workforce of this great nation! Please follow the link below to apply for any of the aforementioned careers:

www.TheGreatExperimentFailed.com

Thanks for being here! If you liked reading and would like to see me live, grab tickets for my upcoming standup shows in:

Chattanooga, TN: January 23-24

Las Vegas, NV: February 23-March 1

Chicago, IL: March 4-5 (solo show)

Chicago, IL: March 6

Philadelphia, PA: March 11

Columbus, OH: April 10-11 (ticket link coming soon!)

Feel free to sign up for my standup email list here or catch me on instagram here!

“In a striking reversal of past nutrition guidance, the Trump administration released new dietary guidelines on Wednesday that flip the food pyramid on its head, putting steak, cheese and whole milk near the top.” - New York Times

Carbs are out, you tubby losers. Robust servings of beef and whole fat dairy are in. And you can bet your ass we flipped the whole damn pyramid on its head, because everyone knows the most stable shape comes from one point of contact below, two above. Welcome to the Thunderdome, aka MAHA’s very strong, very masculine dietary recommendations.

These Guidelines mark the most significant reset of federal nutrition policy in our nation’s history. The message is simple: eat real, manosphere approved food. To Make America Healthy Again, we must return to the basics. The kind of red blooded diet that fueled your parent’s parents. Sure, there was an alarming prevalence of coronary heart disease from all that pure, American beef, but the men were hard back then, and what woman doesn’t love cooking up a fat roast?

The United States is amid a health emergency. Nearly 90% of health care spending goes to treating people who have chronic diseases. Many of these illnesses are not genetic destiny; they are the predictable result of the Standard American Diet—a diet which, over time, has become reliant on highly processed foods and coupled with a sedentary lifestyle. I bet you’re thinking - wait, didn’t Michelle Obama talk about this (like, a bunch) back in 2010 with her “Let’s Move” campaign, only to face massive backlash from the Republican party? She sure did. But since this is America, it took an unqualified man to say the same thing, but louder, for people to listen.

For decades, federal incentives have promoted low-quality, highly processed foods and pharmaceutical intervention instead of prevention. This changes today. We’re supercharging your macros, you fragile cucks. Smother that burger (no bun!) with beef tallow and wash it down with a tall, cold glass of whole, WHITE milk.

We are realigning our food system to support American farmers, ranchers, and companies who grow and produce real food — and the Trump administration is working to ensure all families can afford it, starting with cutting the cattle industry off at the knees by quadrupling beef imports from Argentina. America primero, baby!

We are putting real food back at the center of the American diet and reclaiming the food pyramid. In fact, it’s actually going to be called “The Tornado of #1 USA Power” from now on. Oh and also, we’re ending the war on saturated fats, and starting a whole new war in Venezuela because that feels fair and good for all people.

So let’s do it, America. Let’s wake up to the smell of Keto breath. Let’s test the limits of our bowels by drowning ourselves in that creamy elixir we call milk. Let’s increase greenhouse emissions from this cranked up beef demand so hard it rips a hole through the ozone layer big enough to fry us all before the Epstein list drops for real. Let’s Make America Healthy Again.

Thanks for reading, folks.

Tickets for my upcoming standup shows in:

Chattanooga, TN: January 23-24

Las Vegas, NV: February 23-March 1

Chicago, IL: March 4-6 (ticket links coming soon)

Philadelphia, PA: March 11

Feel free to sign up for my standup email list here or catch me on instagram here!

As a recent expert in Norwegian culture*, I can firmly say that while Norway has a stable, democratic political system; a strong welfare state that invests in universal healthcare, free college tuition, paid parental leave, subsidized childcare, generous pension benefits for seniors, high quality public transit; massive oil wealth that is managed responsibly; strong labor unions, high gender equality; a free market (and capitalist!) economy with high taxes for public services and government ownership of industries like energy, telecom & natural resources; and a general culture that emphasizes fairness, modesty and community…the USA is way better, and we want YOU (Norwegians, not Somalians) to come live here!

Let me convince you:

1. America has all the economic opportunity you could ask for, aka The American Dream. Want to start a small business, move up financially or go from zero to hero? Just get a time machine, go back to the Post WWII era when this place really started cookin’, and build yourself up! Sure, since then, trickle down economics, outsourcing, inequality and the various financial/housing crises have absolutely decimated any chance for low and middle class Americans to realize that dream, but at least the billionaires in this country are finally getting a chance at bat. Oh, and if you don’t have access to a time machine, that’s weird and means you’re poor, and you really need to pull yourself up from the bootstraps.

2. We believe in individual freedom more than any other country in the world. Freedom of:

   1. Speech

      

   2. Religion

      

   3. Press

      

   4. Assembly

      

3. We have the best military. They’re like, so good that the whole world is jealous but also respects us pretty hard. We’re in the midst of passing a $901 billion spending bill for them right now, which feels like a lot, but the way we see it in America is: we’d rather protect the idea of a free country than invest in the people we’re defending. Also, our Department of Defense was recently renamed the Department of WAR - which is metal as fuck and for sure doesn’t promote hostile attitudes towards us worldwide.

4. Diversity. We’re not one of those homogenous cultures that spurns anyone who doesn’t fit the mold. We just get our newly founded ICE gestapo to forcefully remove the real outliers (criminals & people who speak Spanish) from our streets so that we can have lots of diverse white people walking around our beautiful, variegated suburbs. Disregard our cities for the time being, Norwegians, we’re working on whiting them out!

5. Gunzzzzzzzzzz. Pow pow!

6. Our geography is unmatched. Forests that we’re leveling for timber, Great Plains that we go to for fracking, and hey - ever heard of a little thing called Purple Mountains Majesty? That rich color you see on the horizon is from the industrial waste we burn at unprecedented levels ;)

7. We have the best colleges and universities in the world. Yes, it costs between $12,000-$44,000 a year to attend ($48,000-$176,000 if you do the whole four year thing), but at least once you finish, you can probably find a job in your field and ride those loans out for the next four decades.

8. Healthcare. We have the BEST system in the world (for profit) and help SO MANY PEOPLE (go bankrupt when they get sick) and our healthcare CEO’s are so GENEROUS (when deciding their yearly salary.)

I could go on and on, but it would be unfair to keep bragging about how good we have it here compared to everywhere else. So if you’re Norwegian (or from any other country in the world that is in Scandinavia) feel free to hit up the US immigration website and start your application to become a BEST UNITED STATES CITIZEN. Plus, if you have a few million lying around (which you should, since you’re not paying for healthcare, college, or childcare), you can even apply for the Trump Gold Card:

Yes, this is real! All hail the Very Best United Great Incredible States of Freedom America!

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Thanks for reading, friends :)

Tickets for my upcoming standup shows in:

Chattanooga, TN: January 23-24

Las Vegas, NV: February 23-March 1

Chicago, IL: March 4-6 (ticket links coming soon)

Philadelphia, PA: March 11

Feel free to sign up for my standup email list here! Or give a listen to Into the Mud Podcast!

My name is Alex (it’s really Alexandra but I’m not one of those demons that makes you say the whole thing as if I’m Grecian royalty). I’m 38 years old and I live in a place called New York City. I’m sure you’ve been, in fact, I’m pretty sure I saw you walking around Times Square last week. Your beard was falling off and your suit was full of dirt and your butt was out a little but I gave you a hug anyway - I mean how often do you get to meet THE Santa?

This year I think I’ve been pretty good. I was nice to my friends, I did a good job at work, and I brushed my teeth and washed my face every night. Yes, even on the nights where I had too much adult juice, which I think is the truest measure of being a grown up. After all, there’s nothing worse than waking up with a hangover and a false eyelash stuck to your cheek.

I’ll keep things moving because I know you’re pretty busy with the 2 billion Christians you have to shop for. By the way, I’m only half Christian, so I hope it’s okay I’m writing to you. I’ll be sending a letter to Jew Santa (Jesus Christ) after this.

Here’s my list for this year, I really hope I can get all of it, but even one or two would be just great:

1. I’d like to sleep through the night just once. I’m not sure why my body stopped letting me do that the moment I hit 30, but boy am I sick of it! Just one, single, good night of rest would really change my whole life around, I think. If that’s too much, I’ll take an interrupted 8, but could you make it so that when I wake up at 4:00 am, I’m not overcome with “the early morning fear”?

2. Please give the people at Shen Yun what they want. I don’t know what it is, but they feel like a ghost with unfinished business the way they’re haunting billboards globally.

3. Can you tell the people who make weed to chill out a little bit? I know they can optimize everything with science now, but nobody asked for this. We just want to giggle a little at the grocery store, not shut down all communication centers in our brain and also feel paralyzed from the waist down and also question if we “overstepped it” with our best friend by sort of calling her brother an a**hole? That was the 37% THC talking.

4. Speaking of “nobody asked for this”, maybe get rid of Spotify wrapped. We all listen to Bad Bunny.

5. Can you check with whoever decided to make martini glasses that shape and ask if he’s well? There’s no other drink that requires you to come to it when it’s first served, and I just want to understand why he designed something so structurally unsound for a cocktail that gets you blasted after one sip.

6. Please make it so that men enjoy hot showers. Just once I’d like to enjoy a hot shower with a man where he doesn’t wince when he gets in, then cower in the corner the whole time like a rescue dog from an NFL trafficking ring.

7. Can you explain to me what “the cloud” is? I know you’re up there all the time, is it just the upstairs internet?

8. This one is just a thank you for getting Toy Story 5 in motion. It means you’re real because you read my letter from last year.

I left out some cookies for you and the reindeer. The milk is regular and the cookies have nuts, I know we have to say these things in 2025.

Sincerely,

Your friend Alex(andra)