I just assume that no one is paying attention to anything I say. It makes the anxiety easier to manage, and is mostly correct. So you can imagine my surprise when, last weekend, Drew posted that, on my recommendation, he and his family had watched and enjoyed Eli Yudin's very funny comedy special Humble Offering. While I would generally encourage people to go on continuing to pay me no mind, this was a worthwhile exception—What A Time To Be Alive, which Eli co-hosts and on which I've appeared a few times, is one of my favorite podcasts, and the special really is good, and it all made this week's episode possible.
After some de rigeur prefatory Carson Wentz Chat, we got right to the stuff that would make up most of the episode, which was a conversation about the business and practice of doing comedy that was frequently interrupted or derailed when one of us thought of something stupid or funny that we wanted to bring up. There's some substance in there about the hidden and less-hidden economics of comedy, how Instagram has upended every long-established aspect of that industry, and the challenge of self-funding and producing a notably candle-heavy endeavor like Eli's special. But the fun, as usual, is in the dumber stuff—a consideration of clothing that you absolutely cannot wear at the airport, the type of acting that Eli does and does not want to do, the reason why so many already rich and famous people are so eager to do the cabbage patch in a Homes.com commercial.
I guess this is true to some extent of every episode, but by cutting ourselves more or less free from sports this week we were able to drift toward and away from the subject of comedy—what would make big-ticket comedians who are already making MLB starting-pitcher money go to Riyadh for a little more, the desperate backwardness and self-justifying worldview of our leading Truth To Power comics—more or less as the spirit moved us. Somehow, all of us wound up agreeing that Andrew Dice Clay was prescient (in a bad way) and harder working than the people that followed him. I don't know to what extent I stand by all of that, but I really do appreciate that he dressed up for it.
The Funbag was similarly freewheeling, although there is once again some substance in it. A desperate plea for NYC sandwich recommendations was addressed, eventually, but only after a discussion of the singularly goofy feeling of giving extremely chalk possible recs and Drew's lifehack of eating pastrami at 10:30 in the morning. I reiterated my recommendation of the samosa sandwich, and the ensuing conversation on the perversity of British foodways allowed me to recommend the "Smack Barm, Pea Wet" video that completely rewired my brain some years ago. A question about how many crayons society really needs became an opportunity for Drew and Eli to discuss best practices in picking How It's Made episodes—"you want to see a lot of lathes"—and everyone locking in on specific crayon colors. The episode ends with me discussing my appreciation for the fine art made by 3-year-olds. Whether anyone was paying attention to that was, as ever, not my concern.
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