23 / And Here I Go Hither And Thither

Promoting my new solo show in LA and a piece about ants.

Let’s ride!!!!!!

Here’s what’s going on: I’m working on a solo show, and I’m performing it as a workshop in New York City on the 22nd (tickets) and then in LA on October 1st! If you’re in LA, I’d love for you to come see the show. Tickets are here. It’s stand-up, but it’s also video and some sketch even. Broadly speaking it’s about:

-making, finding, and endowing meaning

-the power of numbers

-the pursuit of scholastic knowledge

-sex and what that can be like

Two newsletters ago, I talked about the various skills I’ve had to learn as a working writer and comedian (sound engineering, sound and video editing, event production, negotiating – all of which I have no special aptitude for but are necessary for making creative work). The one I didn’t mention, despite relying on it most frequently in my life, is marketing. Marketing is crucial: I’ve seen entertainment projects of all sizes live or die by the strength or weakness of their marketing. It’s firmly a skill, which I know because my mom has worked in marketing her whole life and is constantly incredulous at my ineptitude at it. There are lots of brilliant ways to do it successfully, though the only two I can ever remember are “directly asking” and “branded pop-up shop” and I don’t have the infrastructure for the latter, so I’m stuck with the former and here we are.

Below my show promo I’ve included a little excerpt of a piece that’s part of my show, which I wrote after finishing Moby Dick.

***NEW YORK SHOWS***

Exploration: LIVE! at Union Hall – September 17, 7:30pm – $15 (tickets)

My beloved monthly show is this Saturday at Union Hall. Union Hall says “last tickets left,” which usually means under 10, so if you wanna come grab them now! This month we have Milly Tamarez, who’s been one of my favorite comedians for years, and Honey Pluton, whose show I performed on Monday night and by whom I was completely blown away. They told a 10-minute story that truly had me laughing top to bottom. So much charisma between the two, you guys gotta see. And of course Natalie and I will also be there :)

4 Essential Tips To Acing Your Next Algebra Exam (workshop) at Lifeworld – September 22, 8pm – $8 (tickets)

Doing a workshop version of my solo show at Lifeworld, a cool DIY venue my friends run in Gowanus. I’m trying to be pretty forward about the fact that this will be a workshop, which won’t change much about your experience besides the fact that if you see it and criticize it afterwards you’ll have to be like “Well it is just a workshop, I’m sure he’ll work out all those kinks before he runs it in LA.” I’ll be having George Civeris (who’s really funny and went to grad school) and Electra Telesford (who’s really funny and smart AND also a teacher!) open the show for me, which is super exciting.

***LOS ANGELES SHOWS***

Walker Upper: A Screening And Tutorial at Heavy Manners – September 24, 7pm – $12 (tickets)

Mere hours after I land in LA, Caroline Doyle, Emily Kob and I will be screening Walker Upper, the web series pilot we filmed last year. Caroline will also be leading a live tutorial on how to build cool stuff for your house. Caroline, if you don’t know, is not only a really funny comedian, but also a talented fabricator (not liar; fancy word for person who makes physical objects), both professionally and recreationally.

4 Essential Tips To Acing Your Next Algebra Exam at The Elysian – October 1, 7:30pm – $16 (tickets)

Hello!!!! This is the big one!!!! If you’re in LA please come see my solo show at the Elysian, with Richard Perez and Rachel Kaly opening. What can I say? I think it’ll be a fabulous evening and I’m flying across the country so I’m trying to sell tickets for it <3

The Ants Goeth Hither And Thither

[An excerpt from the show <3]

SO! Many hath queried whither goeth the ants? Well in conjecturing the goings on of that black and mighty colony, one has nought but to spend hours devoted to the humble quest of observation. And lo: observe thou wilt, for the ants goeth hither and thither. 

Now, the project of observing the ant is one whose texture of whimsy belies a brutal, even tortuous descent into human fallibility. Indeed, it is hell, and in attempting it, we will be forever marked internally, a quorum of bile forever mixed with our simple blood. Hell will become us. Let’s begin!

Now, we can understand the ants in one, or in aggregate. A single specimen, shiny and dark in its segmented form even at such minuscule size, undeniably has its own projects and endeavors. Within its shiny casing is a motivation of its own. Put an obstacle in its path and it will supersede it. Its motivations, though opaque, are real. It, like almost any living creature, is not ambivalent to its own life. It wants to live, and though we might try to put a large conceptual gulf in between our own wants and projects, at increasing remove the gulf shrinks until it’s imperceptible. They, like we, want. 

What those wants are, though, is impossible to understand via the project of the observation of a singular specimen. The ant in itself is incomprehensible, since its own singular actions cannot account for its own survival, legible only in the aggregate. The single ant provides food, for which it receives military protection, its fate conjoined inextricably with that of its colony. Put another way: an “ant” cannot exist. 

And further: is an ant an ant? Or is “ant” itself a hopelessly misapplied misnomer, yet another facile grasp at an imagined objectivity. Ant is a broad category, and to lasso so many ways of being into a single project of description is foolhardy, leaving us grasping for our closest available antecedents — the ants we know, generic, black-bodied, and industrious. To render something generic as such is to abscond from responsibility, to say that something is true even outside of us. But it is not: with invisible wires rigged through an elaborate structure, we still manipulate the category, unable, try as we might, to relinquish control, our dextrous fingers nudging and adjusting even as we yet marvel at their machinations, determined as ever by ourselves. 

How pathetic: to once again find in the human project of understanding the regular biases and petty wants. How shameful: to see another and only read in it ourselves. Woe: myopia! Woe our project of knowledge doomed as ever to fail, the filling of a porous bucket, for every drip added a drop collecting on the underside of the moldy and damp bottom. We stick our spines with spikes against the drooping of our bodies, filling this sad wet bag, all the while our leather shoes made elsewhere soak splash by splash. We look to the ant and see only ourselves, and even then not truly – in their segmented and bulbous bodies we see ourselves stretched and warped and huge. Woe! Our pathetic abjection, facile in its simple craving for megalomania, lacking even the self-awareness of its stature. Woe to me, engaged as a false prophet in the act of imparting knowledge; woe to you, meager students, limp at the lectern, lost in the great swirl of expectation! Look not to the ants for salvation, for your misery sways them not; you dead and cold on the floor are merely rocks to traverse, your tiny— 

Oh, sorry, Gert?

[Gert asks if he can use the restroom]

Yes.