Good god, the world continues to be a lot. Even pop culture isn’t very fun right now. Hollywood has fully brought back emaciated chic, Hayden Panettiere is dead at age 36, the stream of clips of Matt Damon doing “fun” TikToker interviews on the press tour for The Odyssey seems like it will never end…

And on a personal note, I’m coming out of a tough month of pretty intense physical and mental health stuff I’d rather not get into (I’m fine), which has honestly had me feeling a little detached from myself and the world around me lately.

So, today’s Tiny Personal Hell of The Week isn’t really something that is actually personally irritating and torturous to me; it’s more just a very dumb bit that keeps playing in my head that I can’t turn it off.

Tiny Personal Hell of The Week:

“In brightest day, in blackest night, clear eyes full hearts can’t lose.”

Tim and I are watching Lanterns, the new Green Lantern series from what I have come to think of as the “finally actually good DCU,” starring Kyle Chandler. I’ve never been much of a Green Lantern guy, but I’m enjoying the show and enjoying learning more of the Lanterns’ lore and mythology on the side. Best of all, since I don’t have any big nostalgic attachments or rabid fan allegiances to the world or the characters, when I’m watching my mind is free to wander and imagine the show as merely an extension of the FNLU (Friday Night Lights Universe).

I mean for gosh sakes, they almost immediately put him on a football field. They’re basically asking me to do this:

In the second episode, there’s a town hall scene where Sheriff Kerry Shane, played by Kelly Macdonald (who I just realized looks familiar because she previously starred in Boardwalk Empire, a show I barely watched but am aware of, good for her), is leading an open discussion about whether the town should cancel the next high school football game in light of the recent mass shooting/alien invasion at the last high school football game. She calls on “Coach” to weigh in, and some guy who I guess is “the football coach” stands up and starts talking, but wouldn’t it be so much better if Kyle Chandler, out of pure muscle memory, jumped up and answered instead? And then Connie Britton would show up as “Mrs. Coach Lantern” and we’d all just have a really fun time.

Dumb! Love it!

And now for some stuff that’s pretty good, actually:

• Bitching & Mourning just released our 5th episode, “Everyone’s a Death Doula Now.” Becky and I talk about how Nicole Kidman is the latest celebrity to express an interest in death doula certification, part of a larger rise in interest in death doula-ing over the last several years. We examine the trend, talk about Becky’s experience getting certified (just one of many things she and Nicole Kidman have in common), and imagine what various celebrities’ death doula practices might look like. We are both very big fans of Death Doula Marisa Tomei.

• TWO chances to see Ready To Die? next month! First, I’m running the show for Tim to practice being in charge of my slides for the first time (DON’T FUCK THIS UP, TIM) at the new Claude’s Comedy Club in Philadelphia on Sunday, September 20th, and then the following Saturday I’m in Chicago to perform as part of the Chicago End-of-Life Expo. Becky will also be there with her book and some fun interactive stuff, and we’ll have Bitching & Mourning stickers, maybe, if I can get my act together!

• Currently watching: Friday Night Lanterns obviously, andalso Furious starring Emmy Rossum, which is not necessarily a fun show but is really, really fantastic. No surprise: Liz Meriwhether does it again.

• Currently reading/recently read: Several books I enjoy but honestly it’s all kind of a blur right now and I’m running out of time before I have to sign off here

• Currently listening to a lot of: The Rolling Stones. Side note: Sometimes when I get a refresh of my shag haircut and it goes a little too short I worry that I look like I’m, like, the least-cute member of a 1970s British rock band.

  

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Wow it’s been a minute! Let’s just get right into it:

Tiny Personal Hell(s) of The Week

Technically this did not happen this week, but I’m off the theoretical schedule I privately pledged to keep with this newsletter, so we’re catching up. But two-ish weeks ago, I got to go to San Diego Comic-Con with Quirk Books! It wasn’t as life-changing as the last comic convention I went to and didn’t result in any overly self-indulgent personal essays in the New York Times, but I did get to see some old comics industry friends and catch up with an uncle who happened to be attending, and it was really, really fun to sell books. Crazy long days and the two weirdos who were borderline sexual harass-y with me aside, I had a blast the whole time….

…Except for the very end of Day 2, when it was too hot in the convention center and I hadn’t eaten enough and I suddenly got so overheated and uncontrollably nauseous that I had to abruptly exit a conversation and turn around and vomit into an empty box. I did have a split-second moment of “do I have time to run to a bathroom?” and the answer was OH SHIT NO THIS IS HAPPENING.

Not my finest hour, but weirdly, also not as mortifyingly embarrassing as you’d think? Maybe I was just too sick to care, but it also helped that no one seemed to even notice. The scammy online voice acting “college” in the booth next door kept pitching their scammy scam, and the scantily clad cosplayer I was in the middle of talking to (no idea who/what she was supposed to be, but I assume it was cosplay) apparently wasn’t paying attention. I was definitely heaving and crouching over that box in a corner for a good 2 or 3 minutes, and then I turned around and she was still standing there, waiting to hear if we had any con exclusives or giveaways.

Finally, she left, and I got up and flagged down a maintenance staff guy and our conversation went a little something like this:

ME
Hi, so, unfortunately we had a…vomiting incident, but there’s no mess, it’s just in a box. And I’m happy to get rid of the box myself, I just need to know where to take it.

HIM
Oh wow, how did that happen?

ME
Well, full disclosure, it was me.

And now for some stuff that’s pretty good, actually:

• Bitching & Mourning, my podcast with Becky Robison (fellow dead-parents-haver and author of My Parents Are Dead: What Now?) is well underway! We just dropped episode 4. You can listen anywhere you get podcasts, and here’s a little taste.

• Currently watching: Jersey Shore. Don’t ask. I got home from Comic-Con and Tim was laid up on the couch with an injury and in the middle of season 3. I would’ve put this down as a Tiny Personal Hell, but it’s so hard to look away.

• Currently reading/recently read: SO MANY books, but here are some of the stand-outs: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones, Pick a Color by Souvankham Thammavongsa, This Is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman, and A Good Person by Kirsten King, which was recommended to me by the very funny and well-read Josh Gondelman, and which I blew through in one sitting. Being in that character’s head was just — wow. You could really feel the spiraling. I’m jealous of how good that writing is.

• Currently listening to: the new Charli XCX album. I was very skeptical and the first time I heard “Rock Music” I thought it was unbearably cringe…but I get it now. I see the vision. The whole thing is great. I’ve even come around on “Rock Music” — it feels very tongue-in-cheek.

Oh crap, I’m late — an excellent excuse not to edit or proofread before posting this, which is my preferred way of Substacking anyway. Bye!

“The trail of clues surrounding Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s reported wedding plans now includes a New York City permit filing...A source at MSG told NBC News that the venue has blocked off July 2-4 and is making preparations for a big event.” -NBC News

It’s just hitting the major news networks now, but real Swifties know that Taylor’s actually been leaving clues about her wedding venue in her lyrics since the very beginning. No surprise, since we know she loves easter eggs, and she’s a master of the form!

Here are some lyrics that may have gone over your head when the songs first came out, but will make total sense now:

From “You Belong With Me”:

Walk in the streets with you in your worn-out jeans
I can’t help thinking this is how it ought to be
Laughing on a park bench, thinking to myself
“Hey, isn’t getting a street closure permit around Madison Square Garden easy?”

From “Love Story”:

You were Romeo, you were throwing pebbles
And my daddy said, “Stay away from Juliet”
And I was crying in my courtside floor seats
Begging you, “Please don’t go”

From “Welcome To New York”:

Walkin’ through a crowd, the Village is aglow
Then I go to Midtown and get married above Penn Station

From “Blank Space”:

So it’s gonna be The Garden
Or that building’s gonna go down in flames

From “The Man”:

I’m so sick of running as fast as I can
Wonderin’ if I’d get a better deal on renting The Garden if I was a man

From “Anti-Hero”:

It’s me, hi, I’m getting married at Madison Square Garden on July 2nd, 2026, it’s me

From “Actually Romantic”:

But it’s actually sweet
All the time you’ve spent on me
It’s honestly wild
All the effort you’ve put in
to close the streets around Madison Square Garden for my wedding
Billy Joel can’t even get that on his birthday

From the new “Untitled” (leaked):

My mayor Muslim
My bagel Jewish
I’m having my wedding at Madison Square Garden
The Knicks also play at Madison Square Garden

Well well well, if it isn’t everything once again just getting worse and worse. But also lololololol at the Reflecting Pool.

I’m feeling lazy economical this week, so let’s just dive right in:

Tiny Personal Hell(s) of The Week

• Tim put on Breaking Bad in a bored moment and I said OK but we are absolutely not falling into another Breaking Bad rewatch aaaaaand I bet you can guess what happened. What can I say, the violent high-stakes meth show is a comfort rewatch for both of us. The upside is I’ve been getting more chores done in the evening because it’s easy to walk away from something you enjoy but have already seen 5 billion times.

• …And yet, I’ll still come back in the room sometimes and be like “wait what happened with the box cutter?” So I guess the fact that I don’t have it totally memorized means I can still get away with sayyyyyy another 2-5 rewatches in my future, right?

• Arguably I can get away with watching a ton of TV because it’s “part of my job” to “keep up on shows” as someone who works in TV…but I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to mean keeping up on all the new shows, not rewatching all the shows I loved that started in 2008-ish that no one is interested in making anymore. Oh also: I’m a comedy writer and 90% of what I watch is drama. So really, even the flimsiest excuse is no excuse. TV forever!

• One of my pet peeves is when book blurbers describe a novel with words like, “uproariously funny I almost choked because I was laughing out loud so hard really thought I was actually going to die!” and then I read it and I think… was that funny? Certainly it was not “choked to death on my own laughter” funny. There are for sure novelists out there who are actually very, very funny, but broadly I think the book world has a problem understanding what comedy is. (Here’s a hint: It should be funny)

• I take a medication for a sleep disorder that has been stuck in Louisiana ever since I transferred it there ONE TIME when I needed a refill while we were in New Orleans back in FEBRUARY. It’s a controlled substance (hell yeah, DRUGS) so apparently I could transfer it easily from Pennsylvania to Louisiana, but NOT back out of Louisiana. And the thing is, also since it is a controlled substance, if I miss a dose the next day I’m useless because I start to get sick from withdrawal (hell NAH, drugs). So every month now, I go to battle with the CVS phone robot to try to stop it from filling the prescription in New Orleans so that I don’t have to go through the whole obstacle course of then canceling it in New Orleans; and then I go to my local CVS in-person and explain the whole situation and ask them to fill it there; and sometimes they say they can and sometimes they say they can’t and I have to go to another CVS across the city where they have it in stock; and then once they refill it I ask them to please update the settings so that it will refill in Philadelphia and not on Bourbon Street next time and they say OK no problem all taken care of; and then the next month we do the same thing all over again. BUT, in CVS’ defense, I will say that at least they seem to have finally gotten their mile-long receipts under control. So that’s something.

  
  

And now for some stuff that’s pretty good, actually:

• Peggy is halfway through chemo and she’s doing great. No side effects at all. She loves having cancer. For her it’s just a really fun car ride (she thinks all car rides are fun) and then a really fun time hanging out with the oncology staff and then a really fun time going home and getting lots of extra attention and treats.

• The first episode of Bitching & Mourning, my podcast with Becky Robison (fellow dead-parents-haver and author of My Parents Are Dead: What Now?) launched on Father’s Day, and the three (3) people who told me they listened said they enjoyed it! We talked about sympathy cards and why they are so, so bad. I bought way too many cards for this but at least there’s the fact that I’ll never have another use for them ever again!

• I’m going to San Diego Comic Con for Quirk Books (and by the way I’m having a lot of fun with this job). If you’re going let me know! I was thinking about maybe tacking on a San Francisco and/or LA visit to this trip, but unfortunately I don’t think it’s going to work out. I’m going to be in San Diego for almost a full week and I think it’s just going to be too exhausting because my mind and body are old now.

• Currently watching: We binged the final season of The Bear over the weekend. There’s more comedy in this season, which was great. For me personally though, all the caring that much about fine dining was more difficult not to roll your eyes at a little bit this season. They’re always talking about how restaurants take care of people, people go to restaurants to get a break from the noise of life, blah blah blah…and that’s nice but like, we’re only talking about rich people. The meal costs $190 a head. And yes that’s the world of the show, but I guess I just found that pretentiousness (not necessarily meant as a negative! again it’s the world of the show!) a little more distracting in this moment in reality when everybody’s broke and billionaires are so indiscreetly ruining our lives.

• Currently reading/recently read: I finished Dr. No by Percival Everett. It was enjoyable, but definitely not my favorite Percival Everett. I’ll confess I kept taking breaks to switch to other books because it didn’t always hold my attention. It was a clever story and frequently very funny, but I didn’t feel as invested in the characters as I did with some of his others like The Trees or Telephone or Erasure.

• Quick interruption to say I didn’t mean for this to become like, “Negative Nancy’s Yuck Your Yum Critic’s Corner.” Add that to the list of this week’s Tiny Personal (Hell)s.

• Currently listening to a lot of: Pissed Jeans. They are a Philly-based hardcore band that’s been around for a long time but I only really got into them in recent years. They’re playing a free show at Spruce Street Harbor Park in Philadelphia Thursday night, theoretically, unless it gets canceled because the weather forecast says it’s going to be 5 million degrees Farenheit.

OK that’s it, hope you’re having as good a time as you can in this life and that your own Tiny Personal Hell(s) aren’t too bad. Would love to hear about them anytime. Bye!

Well well well, if it isn’t everything once again just getting worse and worse. Elon Musk now has a trillion+ dollars instead of the trillion+ kicks to the face he actually deserves! There was a UFC cage match on the White House lawn, which would be hilarious if it weren’t so embarrassing! The Knicks won the NBA fin—

Just kidding on that last one. Don’t kill me Knicks fans and all of New York City that’s joined the bandwagon, I’m happy for you guys. Have fun out there!

But New York City isn’t the only person, place or thing that deserves a little treat. We do, too! And wouldn’t you know it, I have one for me/us, in the form of a few paragraphs that take a refreshing break from the real hells of the real world to indulge in complaining about the tiny, personal, relatively inconsequential hell(s) “ruining” my individual world.

Tiny Personal Hell(s) of The Week

• I’m writing a first draft. ‘Nuff said.
  
  ….OK, if you are not a writer, maybe not ‘nuff said. So here’s the thing about first drafts: They are painful, horrible, scary, insurmountable things and the only way to get through them is to just not think too much and just spew ANYTHING down on paper as quickly as possible. Writers sometimes refer to the first draft as the “vomit draft” to take some of the pressure off — the idea is that it’s not supposed to be good. Even if you’re rewriting absolute garbage gobbeldygook, any rewriting is automatically 1 billion percent less painful than starting from a blank page, even if you know what you intend to put on that page.
  
  I’m currently adapting my favorite pilot script into a novel and I think I’m making good progress and I like what I’m doing, but a first draft is still a first draft. Generally I try to just plow straight ahead until the entire thing is written before I go back and rewrite, but last week I took a few days just spending time with the chapters I’d already drafted and man…I forgot writing could be fun.
  
  But if I’m ever going to finish this story, I have to finish this story.

  Fortunately, going back over everything gave me some new ideas for the “third act” (I don’t know if there’s a name for what they call that part in books) and I now have a clearer plan for those story beats that I think is a lot more organic and character-driven than my original plotting. So I’m actually somewhat excited to get back to first drafting.
  
  Another helpful thing: Last week I came across the writer/director Zach Cregger talking about his version of getting through the “vomit draft,” which in short is to pretend that he’s hired a really stupid, tiny little elf to write his first draft for him, and he’s not paying it very well so he’s getting what he pays for, and he titles it “elf draft,” and then his job, writing as the elf, is to write the worst possible version of the scene.

  I’m not doing the elf part, but I am enjoying the mindset shift from not just “this doesn’t have to be good yet” to “YOUR JOB is to write the shittiest possible version of this.” I’m finding it to be a really effective self-jumpstart. And a lot of the time I end up failing, because I wind up with stuff I know I’ll actually want to keep and expand on…which is of course the whole point! Objects at rest stay at rest and objects in motion stay in motion, yadda yadda yadda.
  

And now for some stuff that’s pretty good, actually:

• Bitching & Mourning, my podcast with Becky Robison (fellow dead-parents-haver and author of My Parents Are Dead: What Now?) launches this Sunday! It’s Father’s Day, but it’s not like either of us had any plans. Listen to the trailer here or here or wherever else you get your podcasts. If you love someone who’s dead and have ever had to deal with grieving or handling post-death logistics in modern day America, then this podcast is for you.

• My novelized chapter of The Dark Night is the latest episode of The Novelizers podcast, hosted by the incomparably funny Dave Hill. Read by the very talented Lane Moore, who did a fantastic job. Listen here!

• We’re not even officially, technically any number of days into summer yet, but I’ve already given up on trying to fight the heat and humidity so I gave myself a little DIY shag cut over the weekend because I was feeling stupid too impatient to wait for a real haircut appointment brave. I think it turned out pretty well actually, but if you see me out in the streets and disagree, please keep your mouth shut or open it up only to lie to me!

• Since it’s already so disgustingly hot here in Philadelphia, Peggy’s rainbow-colored cooling vest is back, and this year’s debut coincidentally but conveniently fell on the first day of Pride. To all my friends and family celebrating: Happy Pride! We love you and Peggy says “you’re welcome!” for being an ally.

• Currently watching: Tim and I finally watched Pluribus and of course it was great. Give Rhea Seehorn all the awards. We as a people are so blessed that Vince Gilligan had a mid-life crisis that spun off into so many great TV shows.

• Currently reading/recently read: Coffin Moon by Keith Rosson, The Leftovers by Tom Perrota, The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth, Dr. No by Percival Everett, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, Miles From Nowhere by Nami Mun, Riding in Cars with Boys by Beverly Donofrio.

• Currently listening to a lot of: Thelma & The Sleaze, a band I saw on a poster outside a venue in Atlanta last year. I looked them up because I thought the name was fun, and it turns out their music is pretty fun too!

OK that’s it, time to end abruptly with no special sign-off or cute little callback or anything at all that would tie this all together. Bye!

Here we are once again, and everything is still trash! Fascism doesn’t take days off!

So once again, as a little treat, let’s indulge in some complaining about totally inconsequential problems that don’t actually matter:

Tiny Personal Hell(s) of The Week

• Curly/wavy/whatever hair problems
  
  From I guess around 2018-2020, while living in Los Angeles, I had a haircut that finally made it make sense for me to wear my hair naturally. I didn’t have to do anything at all, and it looked great, in any kind of weather. The higher the humidity the better, in fact.
  
  Then I moved back to the east coast, and it just wasn’t the same. Arguably it should’ve been GREAT for my hair, because here in the NYC-Philly-DC area it gets swampily humid at even the hint of warm weather, even in winter. I don’t know if it was because I wasn’t getting the exact same haircut, or if my hair texture just changed as I got older, but I’ve long theorized that the main issue was the change in climate (not to be confused with climate change — remember, this is the part of the newsletter where we focus on the small stuff).despite the whole “it’s a dry heat” thing, Los Angeles does have its own kind of humidity, and whatever kind that is, it’s frigging great for my hair.
  
  Then recently I was explaining this to a friend and he was like “It’s not humidity. It’s smog,” and obviously like…duh. I’m an idiot, because that never even occurred to me. But I guess forget everything you’ve been told, air pollution is good and someone should bottle that shit and sell it to me to put in my hair.
  

• Yes I reference The Traitors at the top of this thing but no I still have not actually seen The Traitors
  
  In the last 72 hours, I have listened to two different people, completely independently, rave about how great this show is, even if you’re someone who doesn’t watch Reality TV and you have no idea who anyone is (which is me). Reality TV is a huge gap in my cultural knowledge and I increasingly feel like I ought to at least be taking more of an interest, like, anthropologically. And now, it seems not only am I out of the loop on the dominant cultural conversation, I’m not even in the loop on the conversation about the conversation. And frankly, it’s not only personally disservicing (sure, that’s a word), it’s borderline irresponsible. To be a human in 2026 who just “never really got into” The Bachelor/Bachelorette multiverse is basically the same as being a physicist who just “never really got into” protons.
  
  So anyway — I might start watching The Traitors.
  

• Everyone hating on em dashes
  
  Yes, A.I. likes to overuse em dashes. But you know who else likes to overuse em dashes? ME! Hashtag not all em dashes.

And now for some stuff that’s pretty good, actually:

• It’s been reallllly nice outside

• Nice spring weather makes me want to hang out at the bar at Southwark, even though it’s inside. They leave the door open and it’s just very airy and nice and the bartender is a real mensch. Tim and I went the other night and it was perfect.

• Last month, with Peggy’s vet visits adding up (not to mention the bill for the 50,000 PEGSTRONG bracelets I ordered), I decided it might finally be time for me to go out and get myself a “real” job. And against all the odds in this job market, a) I found one and b) It’s a job I actually like??? I’m the new Marketing Manager at Quirk Books, and so far it rules. Lots of opportunities for humor and creativity, and in a field full of smart book people who understand and respect deadlines — what more could I ask for? Bonus: I forgot that full-time 9-5 jobs come with the perk of “fewer free hours every day to spend spiraling into despair and insecurity and self-hatred,” which I am very much enjoying. I’m one of those people who confusingly functions much better as a person and is far more productive and disciplined as a writer the less free time I have, because instead of developing nice hobbies my favorite pastime has always been being mean to myself if I’m not actively sitting over my keyboard going clickety-clackety. If I were a TikTok video a cool teen would caption me with something like, “the late stage capitalist urge to hate myself for not being "‘productive'.’” (Only a lot snappier and more succinct than that, because I am not a cool teen.)

• I’m currently writing something where everything just KEEPS. GOING. WRONG. for the characters, so for inspiration I’ve been reading and watching a lot of things where the characters are either a) relentlessly punished by the writers b) endlessly self-destructive or c) both. So far that includes includes re-reading this, starting this, rewatching UnCut Gems and Baby Reindeer, and finishing Half Man (which was absolutely WHOA). If anyone has other recommendations in that vein please send ‘em my way.

• I subscribe to a Substack writer who recommended this album this week because a Substack writer they subscribe to recommended it last week, and now I, too, am recommending it.

OK that’s it, time to leave abruptly! Bye!

Hello! Once again, A LOT is going on! The world just doesn’t stop. And now, HANTAVIRUS?! What are we doing?? I am cruise-curious (and in fact suspect that a lot of cruise hate is just classist), but they always seem to end badly, don’t they? First the Titanic, then the infamous Dave Matthews Band poop dump on a Chicago riverboat, then the other more recent and more extreme poop cruise, and now this! My heart simply cannot go on!

So it time, once again, to take a moment to complain about something that spectacularly doesn’t matter, as a little treat.

Tiny Personal Hell(s) of The Week

1. I’ve probably complained about this before and likely will again: How, in these extremely modern times, have we still not cracked the code on a to-go coffee cup lid that doesn’t leak all over the damn place? I’ve noticed the smaller cup the leakier the lid, too, which, leaves me no choice but to jump to the conclusion that #LidGate is a massive Big Coffee conspiracy to get me to purchase larger and larger sized coffees. No! Sometimes I really only want an 8 oz.! Or more accurately a 6 oz., after I walk out with it and it starts leaking all over my hands.

2. I am THICK into my Millennial midlife crisis, and I think given that, it can’t be a coincidence that I’ve found myself listening more and more to the music of my younger years. I’m regressing ever backwards, from the Blood Brothers of my 20s to the mid-career Green Day of my teens to the early-career Green Day of my childhood. This can’t be healthy, but what can I say, shit still slaps. Also file under “still holds up”: Everclear’s So Much For The Afterglow (1997).

And now for some stuff that’s pretty good, actually:

• Save the dates for some upcoming Ready To Die?s:

  • September 26 @ Chicago End-of-Life Expo in Chicago, IL

  • April 1 @ Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC.

• Things I enjoyed eating or drinking recently: A lemon poppyseed scone from FRIEDA, a blueberry streusel pretzel from Pretzel Day Pretzels, and the Whisper Song (beefeater gin, beet eau de vie, celery, lemon, thyme) at Charlie was a sinner. Sorry if you’re not in Philly and can’t get any of these. It’s been a very treat myself-y couple of weeks and I am INTO IT.

• Books I’ve read and enjoyed recently: The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, One Yellow Eye, Shutter. I also read a few books that I really did not enjoy recently, but I’m not here to talk trash, at least not about books. Disposable coffee lids can still suck it.

• I miss the Golden Age of Television both for the quality of the shows and the quantity of the employment. (I VERY MUCH IDENTIFY with Tony’s monologue from the Sopranos pilot except that in my case it applies to a TV writing career that started in the mid-2010s as opposed to, y’know, mob affiliations). I recently rewatched two of Peak TV’s last efforts, right before the streaming bubble collapsed under its own gravity like a dying star. Black Monday (extremely under-recognized, extraordinary cast, a real top-tier fucking comedy) and Baby Reindeer (you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll likely exhibit other emotions, etc.).

That’s it! Until next time:

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P.s. I so appreciate those of you who’ve recently pledged $$ if I ever turn on monetization for this thing, but it’s not necessary! For now I prefer to undervalue myself and my work and will continue to literally give it away for free.

Hello! Once again, it’s been awhile and it’s been A LOT. Our dog has a degenerative heart disease! And she just had intestinal surgery! And now she has cancer! And she’s gone weirdly MAHA about all of it?

Plus, in the world: Wars still war-ing! Bigots still bigot-ing! AI still AI-ing in more YIKES ways than you could even possibly imagine!

So I think it is time, once again, to take a moment to hyper-focus on a gripe that matters only to me but doesn’t really matter — as a little treat.

Tiny Personal Hell(s) of The Week

Just one today but boy is it annoying: I can FEEL the little black hair that grows out of the mole on the right side of my face starting to grow back, but it’s still too short to get a good grip with tweezers to pluck. Am I right, ladies?? And I really do need to pluck it as soon as humanly possible, because this hair only grows one of two ways: 1) I notice it immediately or 2) I don’t notice it until all of a sudden it’s five feet long and small children are trying to climb it.

And now for some stuff that’s pretty good, actually:

• Ready To Die? at Laurel Hill Cemetery was GREAT, and since the show I’ve made new connections with people who want to help me get it to more cemeteries and death education spaces which is very exciting. I’m meeting with folks from Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass. and Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. next month, so stay tuned for future dates in those cities and hopefully more.

• I think we can all agree that the last thing the world needs is another podcast…EXCEPT for the one I’m starting soon with Becky Robison, author of My Parents Are Dead: What Now? It’s called Bitching and Mourning, and it’s a show where we talk about all the annoying logistical aspects of death and petty grief grievances and just generally weird/funny/stupid stuff about death & loss that normally don’t get talked about. We’re banking a bunch of episodes right now, official launch date TBD.

• Last night I participated in my friend Emily Winter’s very fun bracket-style competition comedy show One Liner Madness. She and her co-producer tour it all over the country, and if it comes to your city I highly recommend you attend.

• Despite all the heart stuff and surgery and cancer stuff, Peggy is still 100% that bitch. (That’s not an outdated Lizzo reference, that is a commentary on her literal state of being as a female dog.) We’re waiting on some more test results to determine a treatment plan, but in the meantime she has just as much pittie tornado energy as ever and is enjoying getting many, many extra snacks. I keep taking pictures of her looking all dumb and happy and leaping through the air like absolutely nothing is wrong and texting them to people like, “This is the face of cancer [cue Sarah McLachlan song].”

• I have been absolutely annihilating books lately, and I’ve even been — if you can believe it — branching out by reading more books by white men. For the last few years I’ve mostly read only books by women and queer folks and everything by Percival Everett, but turns out some of these fellas are pretty good! Almost as good as women, even! Some recent reads I enjoyed especially are Keep This For Me by Jennifer Fawcett, What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown, Severance by Ling Ma. Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon, The Contortionist’s Handbook by Craig Clevenger and We Live in Water and The Financial Lives of Poets by Jess Walter. I would also be remiss if I didn’t plug my friend Nathaniel Popkin’s stirring new book coming out on May 5, Partly Strong, Partly Broken. (I actually read it months ago but it’s timely to mention now!)

• Music recommendation: Snow Tha Product, who I am no doubt late to. This is the song that hooked me, but the whole album is — can I pull off saying “fire”?

That’s all for now! Until next time:

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Hello! It’s been awhile, and it’s been a LOT. I was sick for a month! Tim’s mom died very suddenly and we were in Chicago for a week! ICE! Epstein files! War(s)!

It’s times like these when it’s important to focus on what doesn’t matter, as a little treat. So in that spirit I’m bringing back:

Tiny Personal Hell(s) of the Week

1. It was 75 degrees in Philadelphia on Tuesday, which was delightful. Then it was 80 degrees on Wednesday…but two days in a row of unseasonably warm weather? Too alarming to enjoy!! Then yesterday it was supposed to be 65 degrees and cloudy but wound up being 40 DEGREES and SNOWING and I was ONLY WEARING A LIGHT JACKET AND NOT PREPARED FOR IT AT ALL and today it is just plain ol’ cold.

2. I said I was going to focus only on petty shit that doesn’t matter and then I just accidentally wrote about climate apocalypse. That’s where we’re at, people: complaining about the planet dying is keepin’ it light.

In better news: Tim and I also celebrated our 5-year wedding anniversary at the end of February with a trip to New Orleans. It was great! We like to get travel tattoos on trips if we can squeeze it in, and I got this dumb little alligator. I love him. Have you ever seen such a stupid little hat???

I like my tattoos to be either a) a little creepy or b) a little silly which sometimes results in c) a little “huh?”

I didn’t start getting tattoos until I was in my 30s, which in theory is old enough to not get something dumb and regrettable, but it turns out you can get dumb, regrettable tattoos at any age! I don’t necessarily hate any of mine or have any I consider outright embarrassing, but I do have a few that are like…ehhh, I probably didn’t need to do that. And there are a couple I may get get covered up someday. But as someone who has tended towards rigidity and compulsion for most of her life, to me, getting somewhat impulsive tattoos is a refreshing and important exercise in not caring too much. Some of us need to embrace being more irresponsible sometimes.

My mom was still alive when I started getting tattoos, but well into her Alzheimer’s decline, so I can’t really reliably say how she felt about them. Sometimes she’d point and be like, “Oh!” and I’d be like “Oh that’s always been there, you just forgot. Also I’ve given you several healthy grandchildren, they’re just not here right now.”

I know my dad would definitely not like my tattoos. He considered tattoos, piercings, etc. dumb and pretentious. Which is probably another reason why I didn’t get any when I was younger. I wasn’t really afraid he’d be mad; I also wasn’t afraid he’d be disappointed. I was mostly afraid he’d be that third thing he was when I was 19 and called home to say I was planning on getting a “Monroe” facial piercing — just incredibly bummed to find out his daughter was so friggin’ laaaaaame. If he could see my tattoos now, I don’t think they’d kill him all over again or he’d disown me or anything…but I do think he’d roll his eyes super hard and make little comments under his breath like he used to when my mom and I were watching Friends.

Speaking of my parents: I was supposed to do my grief & death education-themed comedy show Ready To Die? at Laurel Hill Cemetery in February, but due to the actual death mentioned up top, I decided to postpone. A) We would have had to rush back home from Chicago the day after the funeral and b) even though Tim insisted it wouldn’t bother him or feel disrespectful I thought it just seemed…too fucked up? Like, maybe the show does not always need to go on.

But it’s now officially rescheduled for April, and tickets are still available! It’s gonna be really fun, and Laurel Hill is so beautiful. (I mean, first U.S. cemetery designated as a National Historic Landmark, much??) Admission also includes a post-show “paperwork party”to get you started thinking about your own affairs. Entertaining, educational, and a worthy investment in your future that’s an incredible gift to your loved ones? Wow! Here’s that ticket link once again.

As always, this post has been written but not re-read.

I’ve been around a lot of kids in the 5-101 range lately, and it’s been making me think about what I was like at their age.

On one hand, I was a lot like I am today: Often cripplingly insecure and self-critical. On the other hand, I was a lot like I am today: Occasionally delusional. One Chanukkah my parents gifted me a book titled something like Watercolor for the Amateur Artist, theoretically a perfect gift for my interests and age range…and I erupted into hot, embarrassed, offended tears because I, at 8 years old, did not consider myself an “amateur.”

And then thinking about that made me think about the time a therapist asked me to bring in a childhood photo for an exercise where she wanted me to talk to my childhood self, with the idea being that I couldn’t possibly be mean to my childhood self the way I am to my present self, and also that my childhood self would be proud of who I am today and what I’ve accomplished. I absolutely did not want to do that, so I told the therapist I didn’t have any childhood photos.2

This is definitely might be me deflecting, but I think it’s more fun to imagine my childhood self not just disappointed, but absolutely aghast at all I have not accomplished in line with her ambitions for us.

Like, we’d be talking about my writing career, and she’d be all, “TV? Who cares? We’re not even allowed to watch most of it,” which is a fair point. “What about our heavily not-researched, knock-off American Girl-series style historical fiction?” and I’d be like “Oh ummm that never really got off the ground” and she’d be like “Why not” and I’d be like “Well 7 handwritten pages isn’t really enough for a published book” and she’d be like “Well how many do we need, 10?” and I’d be like “I think a few more than that probably” and she’d be like “OK fine whatever just do it” and I’d be like “I can’t, I don’t have that journal anymore” and she’d be like “WHAT?” and I’d be like “Uhhhhh….” and she’d be like “WHAT ELSE DID YOU GET RID OF?” and I’d be like “Definitely not the bag of rocks you keep on the floor in your bedroom closet that’s not even crystals or geodes or anything, just a collection of rocks you thought looked cool and picked up off the ground” and she’d be like “OK good because those are probably super valuable in your times right?” and I’d be like “Uh huh yup.”

And then she’d glare at me and I’d say “Look I’m sorry I’m not everything you hoped we’d be, but here, I got you a present” and she’d be like “What is it?” and I’d pull out Watercolor for the Amateur Artist and she’d be like “Oh you fucking bitch hahahahahahaha” and we’d laugh and laugh and cry and laugh.

Wow. That therapist was right, I’m completely emotionally healed now. Your turn! How are you disappointing your childhood self today?

Happy Halloween! Here is a list of my own personal and very specific Halloween best-ofs:

Best Halloween Activity I Planned To Do But Never Got Around To And Now It’s Too Late:

Pumpkin picking

Unless you count the two mini pumpkins I got in the impulse buy section at Trader Joe’s.

Best Halloween Candy I Just Ate:

Peanut M&Ms

WAY better than the regular M&Ms I also just ate.

Best Halloween Candy Everyone Else Hates But I Think Is Good:

Candy Corn

I don’t understand all the candy corn hate. Candy corn is good. And I’m not just saying that because I once tweeted “Liking candy corn is normal and good, actually” and a candy corn company sent me a bunch of free candy corn and I’m hoping they’ll send me more.

If you wanna talk about a holiday-specific candy that sucks, let’s talk about freakin’ CANDY CANES. Where is the annual outpouring of Candy Cane hate??

Best Halloween Costume I Wore in 2019:

Flea Bag

I really only dress up for Halloween when I think I have an especially clever costume idea, and I really only bother trying to come up with a clever costume idea when I’m invited to a Halloween party that I actually plan to go to. (As opposed to when I’m invited to a Halloween party and I say “I’ll try to swing by!” knowing full well that I am going to stay home eating all the candy I bought to give out to trick-or-treaters.)

The last time that happened it was 2019 and the second season of FleaBag was really big, so I thought it’d be fun to go as a Bag of Fleas. And it was! And Tim went as the Hot Priest because basically all he has to do is shave his mustache to look like that guy.

Best Halloween Costume I’m Wearing Later Tonight:

Hold on, it’s a whole thing

A friend of mine is throwing a combo Halloween + 40th Birthday party and requesting that everyone come dressed as one (or more) of the things/people/places she’s been obsessed with over her 40 years on this earth, which is very fun. A very comprehensive list was provided, and Tim and I are doing a couples costume I came up with that combines THE SOPRANOS and DISNEY WORLD obsessions for a little something I like to call CHRISTOPHER AND PAULIE LOST IN THE PINE BARRENS EXCEPT INSTEAD OF THE PINE BARRENS IT’S DISNEY WORLD AND PAULIE HAS A MUSTACHE BECAUSE TIM REFUSED TO SHAVE HIS MUSTACHE THIS TIME.

I’ll get a picture of us later so you can see how dead-on it is but for now here’s a mock-up:

Best Halloween Monster That Scares My Dog:

Slender Pup

Slender Pup was created by Tim after we watched a documentary about Slenderman (because we are true crime assholes) and he started lurching around after the dog real tall-like going “Slender Pup! Wooof woof wooof woof wooooooofffff” and it freaked her out. And then a few weeks later he did it again in front of my brother’s dog and that dog really hated it. Sorry if this is coming off like I just like being mean to dogs but it’s just so dumb and funny and everyone should try it with every dog they know. And actually I don’t think Slender Pup is related to Halloween at all but it’s staying in.

The end!

Hey, hi, hello! I feel like everyone’s newsletters start with some version of “there are so many smore important things going on in the world right now, but…” and far be it from me to deviate from the norm so here you go:

FUCK.

That said,

One thing I am enjoying lately:

Listening to my entire music library on shuffle

I spend a lot of time talking about death1, but the flip side of memento mori (remember that you will die) is memento vivere (remember to live), and I think that’s really the whole point. I fear death in a really fuzzy, abstract way, kind of like, “hm, yeah, I’ve heard that’s gonna happen to me one day and I can’t really fully wrap my head around what that’ll be like but I will say I don’t love it, as a concept.” But I fear not living in a much more tangible, neurotic, Larry David-y way, like, '‘Am I doing life right? Can someone just tell me?”

But when I consider how to approach the ongoing project of living in a way that feels like “living life to the fullest” to me, I keep coming back to things like embracing novelty and spontaneity, seeking new experiences and adventures, saying “yes, and” to life, variety is Nice Spice, etc.

And to that end, I’ve discovered I REALLY enjoying listening to my music library on “Shuffle.” I forget why I started doing it, but it’s been an absolute delight. Going from “fake smile” by Ariana Grande to “You’ve Had More Things Pulled Out of That Thing Than a Burning Orphanage” by the dental-themed hardcore band Holy Molar isn’t whiplash; more like whip…laugh? Fliplash? Never mind, you get it.

I also really enjoy how certain songs will trigger certain long-buried memories out of nowhere. Like, shuffle recently landed on “Consideration (ft. SZA)” by Rihanna, and when Rihanna sings “let me cover your shit in glitter I can make it gold,” I was instantly transported back to the performance art class I took in my senior year of college where one girl walked over to a cardboard box in the corner of the room and squatted in it for two minutes and then got out and sprayed a can of gold spray paint inside and started giggling uncontrollably as she beckoned us all over to take a look at the result. Spoiler alert: It was her shit, covered in glitter, made gold. How did Rihanna know about that??

Tiny personal hell of the week:

This is actually my dog’s tiny personal hell. She loses her mind anytime a dog walks by the house, and now that I’ve rearranged the living furniture there’s a chair in the window she likes to jump up on to get a better view of the dog enemy in question. But when she wants to jump down, the chair slides on the hardwood floor very slightly and that is apparently VERY SCARY, even scarier than a mild-mannered golden retriever daring to mind its own damn business in somewhat close proximity. So she sits there and whines like she’s trapped and terrified. And then I say things like “you can do it” and “you got up, you can get down” in a disapproving parent tone, until either she gives up and jumps off on her own or I give up and go open the cheese drawer in the fridge and she jumps off because she would rather die than risk missing a chance at cheese.

That’s all for now! I’m going to try to get back into a more regular schedule with this thing, so stay tuned. But also I might not, so maybe don’t.

Hey, hi, hello! Here are some of the random bits and pieces occupying my brain this week:

-I love hearing new “Southernisms.” I get “a bigger kick out of ‘em than a mule in heat,” which is one I just made up all by myself. But an actual one I heard this week, from a Texas detective in a true crime documentary explaining why he ruled out a suspect: “[heavy sighing] He couldn’t organize a two-car parade.”

Gee freakin’ whiz, how great is that?? I kind of want to see it dramatized with a full hero’s journey treatment: A man on an epic quest to prove that he can, in fact, organize a two-car parade.

-Well, I held out as long as I could, but I finally found out what a Labubu is.

-A daily 15-minute appointment for “Gratitude” recently started appearing on my Google Calendar — as in, “practice it.” Huh? Who put that there? Was it me, and I just don’t remember? What the hell was I going through? Whatever made me think I could ever be emotionally well enough to make that a daily routine?

In other, totally unrelated news: My doctor just upped my Prozac prescription to the max recommended dosage! #Grateful

-I know it’s a little early to be talking about this but Fall is right around the corner so let me just say it: Enough with the Home Depot giant skeleton. We get it. It’s been done. Let us please, as a culture, move on.

-All hail Octopie:

This is my new thing. I’m gonna try to get really good at making Octopies. (Look, everyone needs a hobby.) I think this one isn’t bad for a first try, and it even held up decently well after baking (as pictured). But I want to refine my molding technique, and experiment with strategic placement of egg wash for shading. Also: Why is it so difficult for me to make a nice pie edge? Gotta even that shit out. (Also also: Next time I will give lighting and composition more consideration when I am doing my pie photography so it looks like something someone would actually want to eat instead of a pile of beige and goo.)

Hi! It’s been a minute!

Rather than keep waiting to have another good idea that I can expand into a full essay that is **smart** and **thoughtful** and **literary** (… have I ever done that?), I’ve decided to just barf out a clumpy hairball of dumb thoughts I collected in my Notes app this week.

1. A Belated Rite of Passage

   I’ve been getting a lot of “your lips need sun protection too” messaging/influencing lately — not from anywhere specific I can think of, it’s just like, in the air or something. I have not fact-checked whether or not I actually need to worry about my oral labia turning into wrinkly, cancer-ridden flesh flaps, so on a whim while I was at the pharmacy picking up a prescription, I also picked up a lil’ coconut-flavored SPF 30 lip balm from a brand called Sun Bum. (Not to be confused with my favorite lip stick brand, Moon Hobo Vagrant).
   
   I put no thought into choosing it other than “is this one slightly cheaper than the other two SPF lip balms this store sells?” (yes), but the experience of applying it turned out to be life-changing. GUYS it tastes SO GOOD. But that’s not the life-changing part. The seismic shift is that I have never had a “it’s so good I want to eat it” reaction to a cosmetic product before, which to me seems like an essential rite of girlhood passage that I just…never related to. But now, only 25 years late, I finally get why all my 12-year-old friends were ingesting LipSmackers in medically inadvisable quantities.

   

   Related to my childhood inexperience/embarrassment with “girly” things: One time I received a three-pack of Bath & Body Works “holiday scented” body sprays as a birthday gift (classy!), and I shut myself in my room and tried them out a bunch of times using the “spray and walk into it” method that I’d picked up from one of my more *sophisticated* friends, and I stank up the room so badly my mom got all mad and was like “I don’t think it’s safe for you to sleep in here with these fumes tonight tonight” so I lied and was like “weird I only sprayed ONE of them ONCE they must just be really strong I guess.”
   

2. Here’s a thing I would have tweeted if I still used the website formerly known as Twitter:
   
   “My salad days” - Me referring to the years I had an eating disorder

   
   Good? Should I “threads” this? Just kidding I can’t wait for all the social media websites to crash and burn so I can disappear from them all forever.
   

3. Superman review
   
   I saw Superman last weekend and despite the fact that it was TOO WOKE here is my mostly positive review:
   
   I liked 95% of Lois Lane’s outfits and I could easily recreate many of them with things I already own. I’ve been feeling like I don’t know how to dress myself anymore and I did not go into this movie expecting it to help solve that problem but I think it did? 4 stars!
   
   The one thing I didn’t like was that I really thought Superman’s bio mom was Lady Gaga for the first half of the movie (I don’t know what she’s done with her face and no judgment but she DOES look like that now!) and the fact that it was not Bradley Cooper but instead Bradley Cooper and Some Other Lady feels like a real wasted opportunity to appeal to what is surely the huge number of fans who meet in the middle of the “DC comics” and “A Star Is Born remake” Venn diagram.

That’s it! Did you enjoy this nonsense? If not, please share this publication with your enemies.

Share Welcome to Hell!!!

A lot of things are bad right now. So here are some things that are good.

First and foremost: The last time I sent a newsletter my cat was maybe going to die, but now she is alive! Toni The Miracle Baby has completed her three months of very expensive miracle treatment for F.I.P. and is thriving. She’s gained all her cat meat back on her cat bones, and is back to hour-long full-speed zoomies crashing around the house terrorizing our entitled grouchy man-baby cat (which is good, because Dude needs to be put in his place).

Another thing that is good: Friendship. The Bomb Bomb Bombshells recently decided to forego plans for a complex sex motel-slash-murder-mystery-themed sketch comedy show that none of us really had the time or mental capacity to pull off by the planned date, but I so appreciate these gals and all their support and maybe we’ll start a book club or something instead. Here we all are (including two Carolyns who were definitely both there) on the second-to-last night of South Philly’s wildest and most confusingly named Italian restaurant, Bomb Bomb Bar B Que.

Finally: I’ve been working with a director/new play development consultant to reshape Ready To Die? and also tell me where to stand and how to move my body and use the whole stage in ways that feel more deliberate and theater-y. I realize this will be controversial for those of you who’ve always considered my stilted lack of natural physicality to be my greatest asset as a performer, but I ask you to withhold your objections until you’ve seen what it’s like when I act like I’m comfortable in my own body and know what I’m doing. I am an artist, you must allow me to take risks!!

Here’s a flyer for some upcoming dates. If you’ve seen the show before, it’s changed a lot since you saw it you should see it again! If you haven’t seen the show before, disregard everything I’ve said up to this point — it’s been a flawless, fully-formed production since the very beginning because I am a perfect genius.

Tickets on sale now for Philly (NEXT SATURDAY!!!) here and Bethlehem here. If you’d like to see the show but it’s not in your budget, let me know and I can put you on the comp list.

OK now let’s talk about you. How are you doing? What’s good for you right now?

This is going to be one of those posts that I just spit out without really editing. Apologies in advance for any typos, lazy word choices or complete incoherencies.

“Happy birthday!”

“Hope you had a great birthday!”

“Happy happy birthday Alison!!!”

The birthday texts kept rolling in while I waited to hear what was wrong with our little cat.

Tim thought she’d seemed a little off in recent days, so I took her in for the first appointment our vet had available, expecting it to be a quick visit with a quick solution. Instead, they told me she was severely anemic with a very low red blood cell count, and advised that I take her to the emergency vet right away for more testing. Around 5:30pm, we got an answer: the doctor was diagnosing Toni with FIP, a typically fatal cat disease. Until a year ago, there was nothing you could do about it; now, there’s a treatment with a fairly high success rate, but it’s extremely expensive.

As soon as we got off the phone, I started screaming. It was guttural and involuntary. I couldn’t believe this was happening — again. I spent my last birthday in a hospital too, with my mom, also finding out she was probably dying.

I’m not a big birthday person. I don’t make big plans. And I’ve spent the last couple months dreading that this one was coming up, because I was scared of how I might feel reliving that anniversary, especially since it would fall four days after the 10th anniversary of my dad’s death. But the day started out OK: I woke up feeling good, Tim got me a very cute gift, and I had a productive writing morning. We had plans to go out for a drink that night.

And then it happened again.

Before I knew how bad it was, I let a few friends know what was going on, and joked that at least being at the cat hospital vs. the human hospital on my birthday was an improvement from last year. I joked that it was a tradition now, and I wondered what species I’d be with in the hospital next year. I can’t help myself. I wouldn’t even say jokes are my coping mechanism; they just start coming out of me in dark times. By the end of the night, I was joking that I’d give this whole birthday thing one more try, but if anyone starts dying on my birthday next year I’m just not gonna have ‘em anymore.

We went over to see Toni after getting the call. Somehow she looked even skinner than she did that morning. Her deep breathing was shaking her entire little body. But her eyes were alert, and she let us pet her. The vet ordered a blood transfusion and said that alone would make her feel a lot better.

Then I went home and confirmed the treatment medication order with a specialty pet pharmacist in New Jersey. She’ll need a new batch every 20 days for at least 3 months. All told this is going to be more money than I ever imagined I’d have to spend on a pet, but luckily, we can manage it financially. And we couldn’t manage not trying, emotionally. Mama Tim can’t bear not saving his baby and I can’t bear another death at this time of year.

Not that anytime would be a “good” time. As I’ve been working out my solo show, Ready To Die?, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking and talking about how you can never really, truly be “ready” for someone you love to die. My mom is a prime example: Because of her Alzheimer’s, I lost her in the sense that she was my mom years before she actually died, and it’d been years since she’d been able to communicate coherently and verbally. And then for her, the dying process stretched out over about a month, which was very, very hard to watch. The signs are very visible, especially when the person hasn’t been eating or drinking for weeks on end. So theoretically, I had lots of time to “prepare.” But when it actually happened it still floored me. It’s not that I thought it would be easy or anything; but because it had been a long time coming, and I’d been through it before with my dad, I just wasn’t expecting that same level of gut-punch, brain-breaking, “how is this happening?” I’m glad I got to be there with both of them for the moment they passed, but I’m not going to lie: It was harrowing. For the first few weeks after my mom died, I would get flashes of it and have panic attacks. I don’t think there is anything you will ever see in life that can prepare you for what death actually looks like. My therapist once described that moment of change as awe-inspiring, in the sense that it literally inspires awe. It’s so big. Too big. Right on the edge of making so little emotional sense you could go insane. Intellectually you understand, but emotionally it’s like, “how can someone be there, and then just be GONE?”

It’s hard to explain, but it’s definitely not what it looks like on TV. And I don’t think TV and movies should show what death actually looks like — if they even could — because I don’t think anyone would watch.

A few years ago I was on set producing an episode of Adam Ruins Everything, and we had a scene where a character dies suddenly (comedically). The actor was kind of a dick and a creep the whole shoot, as this story will partially illustrate. In one of his takes, he rolled his eyes way back in his head, like all the way back, and it way too vividly reminded me of what my dad’s death looked like — it really shook me up. So I asked the director for one more take, and to give the note that the death looked too real and we wanted to try it more exaggerated and comedic. We were in the video village in a separate room, but over my headphones I heard the actor scoff and complain, “Too real? Who knows what that even looks like?” I wanted to shout back, “I DO!” but I held back. I didn’t want to have to explain to everyone, and I’m not Hollywood enough to yell at some arrogant actor to remember who’s above the line on the call sheet. Instead, I waited until the scene wrapped, and then I went outside and cried in one of the bathroom trailers, which I would say is a step up from crying on the subway because you have privacy, but also a step down because it smells like poop. Actually I take that back. The subway also often smells like poop.

Anyway. What was I talking about? My cat? Right. OK here, I’ll tie it all together with a screenwriting reference:

Prayers up to the cat gods for Toni. We’re hoping for the best.

“Is anyone sitting here?” asked the bro who’d suddenly appeared beside me.

“Right here?” I said, confused. The seat next to me, while at that moment unoccupied, was very clearly taken, and there were other open seats at the bar. “Uh, yeah. But we’re leaving soon.”

He smiled, nodded, and then as he walked away he did one of the strangest things I’ve ever experienced in an interaction with another human: He…clapped me on the back? Like a Tee-Ball coach telling his least-talented player he’s still proud of him for trying.

Personally — and this may be controversial — I do not like it when strangers, put their hands on me. That’s just my weird thing I guess!!! It doesn’t even have to be sexual harassment — it more upsets me because it feels infantalizing and condescending.

“Oh, don’t touch me,” I started to say, but he was already gone.

My husband came back from the bathroom and sat down. The bro and his friend took two stools to my left, one seat down from us.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

But the bar was loud so I just told him right then. I could feel the bro’s eyes on us, but I didn’t think he could hear anything. I demonstrated the clap on the back, because at the time I couldn’t think of the term “clap on the back” and I didn’t know how else to verbally describe it. Tim summed up the whole thing with a “What the hell is wrong with people?” and I was like “I know!”, and that should’ve been the end of it, but then I kept talking about it for another whole like, 5-7 minutes. It was mostly just very repetitive.

“I just don’t even get it. What was that?”

“He was trying to hit on you.”

“I don’t think so. It didn’t feel like that, it just felt disrespectful.”

“Yeah, because he was bad at it.”

“I really don’t think so. In what world is clapping someone on the back like you’re two new men in the ‘50s hanging out in the waiting room smoking cigars celebrating your newborns a ‘move’?”

“He’s just some weird asshole. Don’t worry about it.”

“I could practically be his mom. He should respect his elders!”

“Let’s stop talking about this.”

“OK, yes. Excellent idea.”

(I did not stop talking about it.)

Finally, we got our bill and paid. But then as we got up to leave and turned towards the door I saw that the bro was just full-on STARING at us, like, with INTENT. I’m talking whole body turned to the side, back to his buddy so he could fully be facing us, elbow up on the bar with his face in his hand, just watching with a smug, extremely punchable smile on his face. At first I thought maybe he had heard me and he was trying to make eye contact to apologize, but nope. No expression of remorse whatsoever.

And look, I wouldn’t actually physically fight anyone unless I had to in self-defense. But I also refuse to be made to feel small by a goofy-ass entitled little bitch. So that’s when I turn into the Scrappy Doo of human women, by which I mean I think I’m a lot tougher than I am and it’s pretty annoying.

Here’s how that played out in this scenario:

Me, glaring: “What’s your problem?”

His dumb ass, smiling: “What?”

Me, glaring harder: “Why are you staring at me? Why did you touch me?”

His lying-ass ass, pretending he’s not lying: “I didn’t touch you!”

And then here is a dramatic reenactment of what happened next:

Scooby jumping in at the end there is my husband, playing the “this isn’t worth it and you’re embarrassing yourself” role.

“Let’s go,” he said quietly. So I came to my senses and kept walking, even though I was still all fired up and still doing that old-timey boxing thing where you hold your fists way out in front of you and wave them in circles. He’s seen the Scrappy Doo in me come out in me many a time, and I can tell you it is definitely not the reason he fell in love with me.

And look, I know it’s not great. But I do use my rage problem powers for good sometimes! For example, yelling at drivers who almost run us over because they blew through the crosswalk; or going outside and yelling at college kids drunkenly sing-shouting their fight song outside our house for 20 minutes at 11pm on a Tuesday.

My hair-trigger outrage for jerk behavior is probably the most South Philly thing about me. (I’m not a native, but I get the temper and self-righteousness from my mom’s side.) And I’m not necessarily totally mad about it! Sure, sometimes I make a fool of myself in practice, but I think in principle it’s always justified!

So that is what makes this a tiny person hell. One one hand, I don’t like the idea that I have this quiet rage simmering inside of me at all times. But on the other closed fist, FIGHT ME. And every day I must live with this extremely dumb duality.

So, I have a very good-looking dog. Not just cute — like, people regularly stop on the street to comment on how beautiful my dog is. Twice, people have been driving by and stopped their cars.

And I like that people think my dog is pretty. I had absolutely nothing to do with it, and I wish looks didn’t matter, but it gives me a sense of pride. I’m like one of those “alternative” moms who hates that her daughter wants to do child beauty pageants because she thinks they’re gross and toxic and send the wrong message to little girls, but then when her kid wins she’s still all like, “THAT’S MY GIRL, GO FRANCES BEAN!”1

But it also makes me think about that scene from the beginning of 101 Dalmatians where all the dogs and their humans walking up and down the street look alike…and then I wonder…am I good enough for my dog?

Is she way out of my league? When people see us out together, in their heads are they like, “Wow, she2 sure settled”? Do they go home later and tell their spouse/roommate/pets that they just saw the Zach Braff and Florence Pugh of humans/dogs?

I wish we didn’t all compare and judge people like this, and it doesn’t matter at all, but I do think about it uhhhhh a lot. So like all of my dumbest thoughts, I figured I ought to share it.

Anyone else have a really hot dog?

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Welcome to Welcome to Hell!!!. This is a newsletter/blog/whatever of sometimes deep (but mostly dumb) thoughts on life & stuff, irregularly authored by Emmy-losing comedy writer Alison Zeidman.

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This is actually more of a tiny personal hell of the last 3 years-ish, and a topic that surely I will have no regrets discussing on the internet: My boobs. Tits. Chesticles. Flesh mounds. Specifically, how they got bigger after I changed up my birth control and as a life-long small-busted I still cannot get used to it.

First, some background: I used to have a copper IUD. A lot of people love their IUDs. I did not. Not because it turned my periods from 2-3 day minor inconveniences into week-long biblical floods of menstrual blood (although that wasn’t great), but because I felt like I couldn’t trust it. The copper IUD is non-hormonal, which means supposedly there are no side effects, but I felt like mine was doing something to me besides controlling my risk for birth, because around the same time I started having these debilitating PMDD symptoms every month: Exhaustion, anxiety, can’t-get-out-of-bed levels of depression. Two weeks before my period, for about 2 weeks (also known as HALF A MONTH), I became progressively more useless. I could function enough to get my job and anything else that had to get done, done, but anything else was a big ol’ Nope, Not Happening.

But every time I tried to ask a gynecologist whether it was possible that the IUD had anything to do with it, they insisted no, that’s not possible (to which I replied “ANYTHING is possible if you just BELIEVE, little girl!!” because as the author of a newsletter titled WELCOME TO HELL!!! I am obviously a very naturally optimistic and upbeat person.)

And I tried not to believe. I did what they told me. I tried more anti-depressants, I tried less anti-depressants, I tried changing my other medications, I tried adding supplements, I got ALL the blood tests, I ruled out every other possible factor that I could think of aside from the general low-grade sense of bleak terror we all felt during the pandemic because that one was kind of my hands…but still, no dice.

The lowest point was probably when I joined a Facebook group called COPPER IUD AND COPPER TOXICITY SUPPORT GROUP. Did a lot of it resonate? Hell yes. But is self-diagnosing your own health problems and questioning accepted medicine based on anecdotal experiences from social media with no real solid scientific evidence a slippery slope to marrying the Q-anon Shaman? Also hell yes.

But then after two years I was like, fuck it. The one thing I haven’t tried is getting this thing out of me, so maybe I’ll listen to the internet for once and just get it removed and see what happens. (Just kidding we all listen to the internet all the time, it is our god.)

And after it was gone, did I turn out to be right? Was the copper IUD the problem all along? I can’t say for sure. This was not a randomized study with a large cohort of subjects in a controlled environment. All I know is, I started feeling better once I had it out of me.

Buttttttt not completely. I was still having PMDD-type symptoms. It was way less intense and didn’t last as long, but still, not ideal. Maybe this is just a thing that happens in your 30s? Or to the women in my family? Iunno.

So since I’d tried no hormones and that didn’t seem to work for me, I decided maybe I should try ALL the hormones this time and I went back on the birth control pill. Which kinda helped!

Buttttt still, not completely. So my doctor (a different doctor, not any of the ones who were like “Nah it’s not the IUD idiot just up your Prozac”) suggested that I try skipping the week of placebo pills at the end of each cycle and just go straight into the next pack. This is known as “continuous” birth control, but I think it’s more fun to refer to it as “full-time.” (Maybe only for me. I don’t know why.)

And that brings me to My Changing Body: The Sequel. Once I went on FT birth control my boobs got way bigger. I wouldn’t call them “big boobs,” but going from like an A/B to a C/C-and-a-half (apparently some bra brands do halves) was like…huh. Weird.

And kind of disorienting! I was never really aware of my boobs before, and then it was like, good lord the weight of these udders just hanging off me. They would get really sore around my period. My button-up shirts didn’t fit anymore. I had to buy new bras, and even worse, replace them regularly instead of wearing the same one or two for decades and not needing to worry about them getting stretched out because the main reason I wore them was just to catch underboob sweat in the summer.

But I don’t consider these developments (pun! ugh) necessarily good or bad. And I’m still on FT birth control because as far as side effects go, if the pill is what made this happen, that’s fine and well worth it to not to feel like I wanna die every month. And, for the most part, I’ve gotten more used to my new bigger-boobed reality and don’t think about ‘em as much.

But this week I’ve been feeling more just like, oh right, yeah, those are there now. Weird.

So now you’re hearing about it. Was this…informative? Entertaining? Relatable to anyone in any way? Why did I share this? Why do I write about any of the things I write about?

Final note: …Please don’t look at my boobs now.*

*And that includes looking at them in old photos to see if you can tell the difference. Just take my word for it.

Welcome to Welcome to Hell!!!. This is a newsletter of sometimes deep (but mostly dumb) thoughts on life & stuff from Emmy-losing comedy writer Alison Zeidman.

If you enjoy that sort of thing, please consider a free subscription to receive these in your inbox.

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This week, I was forced to steal some of my dog’s Prozac.

Don’t worry, I don’t mean “oh my god I was so depressed I just snapped and decided to try it” — I also take Prozac, but I ran out and I couldn’t reach my doctor to get it refilled right away.

Apparently, CVS will text me 36 reminders per day when it’s time to pick up a prescription they keep filling even though I keep telling them I don’t take it anymore, but absolutely zip when I’m out of auto-refills on one I actually need. I put up with all those bafflingly extra-long receipts for this??

So rather than miss two days of medication, I took some of my dog’s Prozac. Actually, I took a lot of my dog’s Prozac, because she takes a much lower dose than I do. And I will literally pay for this: filling her prescription at the dog pharmacy costs like 20 times as much as it costs me to fill mine at the human pharmacy.

But look at this face. My lil’ angel baby dog deserves everything, including a dog brain not riddled with separation anxiety.

Please also note that if you live in Philadelphia, Peggy desperately wants you to come to my show about death next Friday.

Snag your tickets or Peggy will be so sad! And then she’ll need more Prozac and she’ll have to steal mine and it’ll just turn into a whole thing!

Your turn. What tiny personal hell(s) did you experience this week?

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