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Hello reader, please like, comment, and share if you enjoy this, it really helps me out! There are two kinds of trouble you can get into as a child, they are very different, but the outcomes and consequences are the same. The first type of trouble is ‘crime adjacent trouble’. These are the ‘kids meal’ equivalent of adult crimes. Sort of cute, miniature versions of murder, arson, human trafficking, ect. Found huffing magic markers behind the school? Simple possession. Stealing Pokemon Cards? Grand larceny. Farting really loud on purpose? Usage of weapons of mass destruction. Laughing at said fart? Aiding and abetting a known terrorist. These sorts of infractions are dealt with harshly. Authority figures have the framework of their severity because of their adult crime equivalents and know what will happen if the behavior persists. They dole out detentions and suspensions to the children who commit them, and either the little criminals buckle under the weight of their sentences, or take them with the steely eyed indifference of a hardened criminal. “1 week no recess? How about you make it two? I’ve got to work on my drawing of what I assume boobs look like.” The second type of trouble is ‘Please, for the love of god, stop doing that’ trouble. This is where we trek into a new frontier of punishments which do not have adult equivalents, and are at the discretion of the authority figure in charge. Type 2 trouble arises when you do something which does not technically break any rules, but regardless makes teachers uncomfortable. This was the sort of trouble I got into, which was really tough because, although I was 9 years old, I could litigate and argue at the level of a conservative podcaster. One time, I was thrown out of class when the teacher was trying to describe whether words had a positive or negative connotation. “The word ‘hurt’ has a negative connotation.” She would say, bracing herself for my inevitable interjections.” “Oh really, what if you ‘hurt’ Osama Bin Laden? Would that be bad Ms. Prock? Last I checked he destroyed the empire state building and the pentagon, a shape which I have yet to learn.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, no one wanted endless war in the middle east more than 3rd graders. So I would do strange, abrasive things, get in trouble, and then argue about what specific rule I was breaking. I was often met with the phrase “because I said so” to which I would respond “But why, what thought process led you to have such a negative view on me speaking in a southern accent when I answer questions? I swear I’m not doing this just because I heard one on TV for the first time yesterday, this is who I am, and nobody talks to Texas Donny like this!” In elementary school I had a far worse relationship with my teachers than my type 1 compatriots. They were problem children, sure, but they had understandable problems. Their actions followed a line of logic. If you want to do well on a test, but you don’t want to study, you cheat. It makes perfect sense. It’s the kind of critical thinking a teacher can appreciate. It’s also the sort of thing an authority figure feels good about correcting. When you are given the power to punish, you often fantasize of wielding the flaming sword of justice with noble discernment. You do not often fantasize about telling a young boy to stop chirping before answering questions. Leading into middle school, that dynamic began to shift slightly. The type 1 kids, who stayed on the path of crime adjacent activity, became less benign. Scuffles became fights with blood and broken teeth, stealing markers turned into smoking weed, and being late to class morphed into competitive knife fighting. Meanwhile, while my strange behavior was still punished, I think I had broken the spirits of my teachers, who had bigger fish to fry now that my type 1 compatriots had a thirst for blood. Nevertheless, type 1s and type 2s are always lumped together. I got sent to detention, they got sent to special ed, which I always thought was interesting. Special education was supposed to be a place where students with learning disabilities and emotional problems got sorted out, but it was populated by a bunch of kids who just discovered weed too early. I knew a kid named Kyle White in middle school, who played football and went to special ed, a combo that was shockingly common. Kyle did not have a learning disability, at least not one you could ever accurately diagnose through the haze of marajuana that was pumping through his bloodstream at all times. It is certainly plausible that he was using weed to medicate an underlying learning disability, and if that was the case, Kyle was one of the most afflicted children who has ever lived. The amount of medication he had to take surpassed an entire terminal cancer ward combined. He took medication before school, after school, during school, during class. Kyle famously made a contraption fashioned out of a paper towel roll stuffed with different scented materials. He would take a hit from a pipe in class, then exhale it through the contraption. That way, instead of a teacher smelling pungent weed smoke and immediately sending him to the principal, a teacher would smell pungent weed smoke mixed with dryer sheets, and then send him to the principal. He would smile, laugh, say “you got me” and simply half walk half float to the principals office. There has never been a movie, tv show, or rap song that made me want to smoke weed as a teenager more than Kyle. I didn’t care that weed made food better, I was already eating enough of it at the time according to my pants size that called me “husky” and my classmates who called me “fat ass”. I didn’t care that it made sex better. That’s like if you told me now “you need to try this wild berry, It makes yacht racing so much more enjoyable!” You can’t enhance an experience you’re not having. But watching Kyle, carefree, sauntering to the principals office racked me with jealousy. I was always so nervous when I got sent to the principals, from elementary to middle school. But, much like a high paid athlete, the pressure elicited performances out of me that I never could have hoped to achieve without the heightened anxiety. You see, I was a master of getting out of trouble once I was already in it. I had a preternatural ability to tell an authority figure exactly what they wanted to hear once cornered. The trick was to give them everything they wanted, then give them more. Make them think their authority had such power that you were in literal physical anguish at the prospect of disappointing them. Sometimes I would even accent my self-admonishment by hitting my head with a flat palm over and over again until the principal would be forced to say “no no, stop that, don’t feel that bad.” That’s when I knew I had him. My pupils would dilate looking down the long stretching mile I was going to take once they had given me my precious inch. I’d leave the principal’s office, not only not being given a slap on the wrist, but with phone calls to my parents telling them ‘ease off him, he’s a good kid.’ Kyle was not as good at this little trick. He was charming, but he lacked the ability to self flagellate. He had “confidence” and “a sense of identity” and probably a myriad of other traits that were holding him back. We still found ourselves in trouble together fairly often, and we would chat quietly in detention when Officer Gammel (he used to be a police officer but he kept the title) wasn’t paying attention. “I tried blowing up a bunch of soda bottles with M80s on school property, what did you do?” Kyle would ask, like I was a cell mate on my first day in prison. “I tried blowing up my homework assignment with my mind.” I would reply sheepishly, feeling as though my crime wasn’t as cool or exciting as Kyle’s. He never made me feel judged though. There were certain “bad” kids who had a sense of inclusion far beyond their “good” counterparts. I remember Jack Bowdich, a kid who lived in a motel on route 6, was the first person to introduce himself to me in special ed. I personally think they had a mature way of looking at the world. They knew how bad their circumstances were, whether it be because of poor impulse control or their fathers gambling debts, so they were in no position to look down on others. Kyle and I chatted, and eventually the conversation got on the topic of sentencing. He was shocked at how little time I had to spend in detention when I was such a repeat offender. I told him about my little trick of prostrating myself at the feet of the disciplinarian, and Kyle listened with all the attention and focus he should have been putting into class. By the time Officer Gammel looked up from his phone to tell us to shut up, I had already imparted a truckload of strategies onto Kyle, and when we left detention I was assured Kyle would make progress in his ability to get out of trouble. When I found out he was permanently suspended two weeks later, I have to admit I was a little less confident in my council. “What happened?” I asked his cousin Eli. “The idiot got caught smoking weed, and started confessing that he also sold it. The principal booted him that day. He’s going to boarding school in Alaska now.” Up until that point I always had the idea that the truth would set you free, I had no idea that, depending on the truth, it could also get you sent to some adolescent Guantanamo Bay in Alaska. The whole ordeal made me paranoid. I contained my impulses to make weird noises or try to balance books on my eyeball, lest I slip up in the interrogation room and end up getting waterboarded while Alaskan king krabs pinch my toes. Kyle is now a successful fisherman, which is great! It turns out all that stuff teachers told him about studying and not doing drugs was a complete w

Before we start, my new book The Aardvark Protocol is available if you are a paid subscriber. It is a humor/thriller and I think you will love it. Now, please enjoy this story: My mom was an amateur motivational speaker. They exist, they are valid, they are loud. Professional motivational speakers are people who made fortunes or accomplished achievements that were so astonishing that other people want to pay them to hear them speak. Amateur motivational speakers tend to be people who think that they are so motivational, if they speak enough, their fortunes will come to them. For as long as I could remember my mother would do speaking engagements. She would put on her pants suits, make her hair as big as possible, and lift the spirits of kids who went to vocational high schools or employees at companies who probably picked her because the magician got too handsy last retreat. My mom was a bricklayer, and went on to start her own construction supply sales business. It was deeply impressive and I am very proud of my mom, but it doesn’t really blow anyone’s hair back unless you own a yacht. People don’t want to hear about your realistic achievements, they want you to own an island that various wealthy politicians and businessmen go and party on. Sorry if my mom wasn’t successful enough for you, but I can say for certain she never sacrificed a child to Moloc. I always wanted my mom to bring me to one of these events. I was interested in them. I was a strange child. My dad was one of those AA guys who replaced the unhealthy habit of drinking with the extremely healthy habit of working out for hours a day with no recovery. Some people get sober and go “I need to do a tough mudder every hour on the hour or I will go back to drinking.” Say what you will, but his legs were always too sore to get to the bar. So he was an intense guy, and my mom, with her blow out and nail extensions and hard hat, was an intense woman. I loved my parents, and got the notion at a young age that to be successful I had to work extremely hard. This is a great mindset when you turn 16, but at 8 it results in practicing four square while other children are building connections with each other. Whatever, I’ll see them out on the foursquare courts. We’ll see how far their social connections take them when they’re beating me 11-3 instead of 11-0. So when my mom first told me I would be going to a motivational speaking event in the library of a local community college, I was ecstatic. I would get to see people like Tony Robbins who I knew because my mom would play his cassettes while she was driving to distract me. Tony sort of became my Barney. They are very similar. They are both huge, scary, and have several pending sexual assault allegations against them. I don’t think their cases will have the same verdict though, you need to be willing to bribe witnesses or kill a judge when it comes to these sorts of things, so I think Barney will be the only one found innocent. When I heard there would be six speakers including my mom I was over the moon. Five Tony Robins plus my mom!? Such a group could take over a small island nation, my mom riding on the back of one of the Tonyranasauras rex’s and directing him to smash guard posts or denationalize pineapple farming. However, when I got to the event, I was somewhat disappointed. There was no motivational music, no giant stage, and worst of all no headset microphones to allow the speakers to get out into the audience, grab a woman by the head, and tell her “do not let your Huntington’s Disease stop you from opening your Etsy shop.” It was just a podium on the floor with a microphone. The dozen or so people in the crowd were old women and a few really intense 30 year old men who looked like they got their motivation by lighting the end of a glass pipe. This was not where business owners decided to take their first step. This was where future McDonald’s employees decided to become managers. I huffed, grabbed my gameboy, and went to the back of the room to hone my skills at Super Mario. Like everything else in my life at the time I approached Super Mario with an intensity far beyond the realm of pleasurable experience. I wonder what would have come of my mind if I had dedicated the same mental effort towards reading. Maybe I wouldn’t have been in special ed, maybe I could spell the word chocklet on a whim like some fancy professor. So my mom prepared her speech as her son soldered his synapses and developed a taste for blond women who were a foot taller than him. She was speaking last, we are a family of headliners, so I had to sit and half listen to the five separate fifteen minute speeches before hers, and boy did they stink. One guy spent the whole time talking about other motivational speakers. “When you’re feeling down, when you get really low, I know it can feel like things are never going to change. But it’s like Tony Robbins always says, “You have to believe it before you achieve it.” It was like we were transported back to a time before cassette players where town criers needed to relay messages from the guys in charge. “Hear ye hear ye, Lord Robins decrees you need to covet before you love it” The audience seemed to like him alot. They had heard all the stuff Tony said, but never from a guy with a microphone on stage, so this was all new to them. The old woman nodded their heads, making their white hair bob above their seats like the foamy caps of waves. The three speakers after this man were even worse. They read off papers, not once looking at the audience. A very thin woman, in a pencil skirt and skin that was so loose it looked like tree bark, would accentuate her points by periodically looking up from her paper, but it was never the right moments. She would say “It took me years to figure out how to lose the weight.” Then she would look at the audience, shaking her fist above her head and crying “It wasn’t diet or exercise!” and then look back at her page and mumbled, “It was my mindset.” The speaker before my mom was the only one that made me look up from my game in rapture. He was a Jamaican man with a thick accent. He had wide fiery eyes and leaned over the podium as though it were the only object in the path of him leaping into the audience and shouting in everyone’s faces. He was great! The thing that stuck out to me about the content of his speech was its completely directionless and non-motivational nature. Most motivational speeches start by the speaker explaining something awful that happened to them, and then conclude with how they overcame it. This guy had the first part down, but seemed to have no concept of the conclusion. “Back in Jamaica, my father would beat me without mercy. One time I was walking down the road, and I stepped on a rusty nail. When I limped home, my father beat me for ruining my shoe.” We all leaned forward, waiting for him to tell us that one day he stood up to his father, or how that experience taught him to look out for himself, but instead he just paused and said “...now that was awful. Why would he do that? It was an accident, I was not trying to step on the nail!” As his speech continued, I saw other audience members shift uncomfortably. This was not what they wanted, they wanted predictable narrative, they wanted conclusions to be hammered home. This man was offering a sort of avantguard abstract version of a motivational speech. You never had any idea where he was going. “Me and my wife have been together for thirty years, when people ask me ‘how do you stay together for so long’ I always say ‘I don ‘t know, I don’t want to be together anymore, but I don’ t know how to leave her.” This man completely broke the monotony of the evening. I realized what was wrong with all the other speakers. You knew where their speeches were going. If you can predict that someone wants you to work harder or turn your life around, the part of your brain that detects spontaneity shuts off. This man seemed like he could care less about what I did with my life, he had his own problems thank you very much. The only thing he said that was even remotely “motivational” was at the end of his speech, when he said, “Not a lot has worked out for me, but at the end of the day, I don’t think I will be crying in my casket. When he got off stage there was a smattering of applause. He did not stick around after to sell a book or hawk a course. He just walked out the front door, probably keeping an eye out so he didn’t step on any rusty nails or run into his wife. My mom got on stage after, talking about being the first woman to join the masons union on the east coast and how much she overcame and blah blah blah, but I couldn’t stop thinking about that strange man. Looking back on my life I think his speech feels as though it resonates more with me than any of the others from that night. Hard work will get you somewhere, but in my experience hard work is like unfurling a sail on a very small boat in the middle of the ocean, all it guarantees is forward motion. The direction is up to the wind and current. I’ve known people who work very hard and get nowhere close to where they want, and I know people who don’t put a sail out at all and end up doing pretty well for themselves. But somewhere on that vast endless ocean of experience and want, there is a man with no boat, no sail. He is on an island wondering why his dad beat him, and hoping his wife does not have his coordinates. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dandonohue.substack.com/subscribe

I did a show last night at a wonderful establishment. The booker is friendly and the crowds are stand up savvy and generous, however, I performed in its haunted room. The room is not haunted by ghosts who poke their heads out of closets or appear suddenly in a mirror, what haunts this room is much worse. I believe that years ago, in the far away land of 1998, a comedian had such a bad set in this room it ripped the space time continuum within it forever. Ever since that fateful day, the room has been a black hole of comedy, a vortex that sucks up laughter and leaves audiences, mostly composed of tourists, looking like rows of mannequins sporting the “just got in from Eastern Europe summer line”. Rows of flip flops and shirts that say “Armani” 1000 times. They stare at you, not only stone faced, but looking like they have never laughed before, like they’ve never heard a laugh, like someone came to their town with a rumor that someone had laughed 3 countries over and they beat him to death for his salacious lie. There is nothing wrong with the room itself. You walk in, there is a stage and a bar and in front of the stage there are tables and chairs. In standard comedy club fashion the room itself is lacquered with a thick black paint and everything serves to focus attention to the comedian on stage, it seems normal, and that’s what tricks you. I imagine audience members settling down expecting a good show, but when the first comedian takes the stage, a dark energy envelops the entirety of the crowd. Their faces go blank, their ability to laugh is taken away from them, and as if bound to their tables by invisible tether, their hands cease to be able to clap. This is where I performed last night, this is where I perform almost every week. I’m reading IT by Steven King at the moment, and there is a great plot device where the main characters leave their home town and their memories of the haunting they suffered there are instantly erased until they return years later to face down their monster once more. That’s exactly how I feel before I step back into this room. There is a nauseous sort of hope that sweeps over me before a show there. It’s not the hope of a traveler setting foot on new land, more like the hope a prospector feels panning the same river bed he’s panned thousands of times before, holding on to the false and insidious idea that maybe this time there will be gold at the end of his effort. Once I step into the room even that warped sense of optimism leaves me, and I settle into the darkness and silence. Last night after my bomb, I got off stage and slunk back to the green room. The green room is nice and there is a TV where they have a live camera set up and you can watch other comedians bomb as bad as you do, but last night was different. I watched my friend, Kelly Ryan, crush. It was like watching the devil get beat in a fiddle contest, it was incredible. I couldn’t hear exactly what she was saying, there was no audio feed, but I could hear the laughter bang against the door like a horde of zombies hungry for my self esteem rather than my brain. I had associated that room with bombing for so long that I had built this comfortable space in my mind where I said ‘it’s impossible to make them laugh, so it’s ok’. You could tell Kelly was killing by looking at her performance without audio. She was relaxed, smiling, and generally having a good time. There is a saying in comedy that goes something like this: “If you’re having fun on stage, the audience will have fun with you.” I think it’s a good little saying, but I prefer one of my own: “If you’re not having a good time on stage, the audience should have a good time anyway because you’re soooooo smart and special, and also someone in the audience should give you a TV show.” Anyway, Kelly finished her set to a kind of raucous applause that I didn’t know was possible in that room, and when she came into the green room I told her “wow, that sounded great.” To which she replied “You know, they just wanted me to talk about what was going on in the world. They were all kind of sitting around waiting for it to be addressed.” She said it so simply, so absolutely, like a plumber telling you “ya thats gotta be a blockage in the S-pipe, you’re gonna wanna put a spigot valve in the sprocket joint.” I mulled over what she said for a while, and it struck a few nerves for me. First off, I was thinking about current events a lot that day, and I am now as well. Military action in the middle east, multiple deaths caused in the name of the country I poorly file my taxes to every year, and a creeping sense of inevitability. My parents were born less than ten years after the conclusion of world war two. Those must have been hopeful times, living in the country which was the flaming sword of justice that vanquished evil. They then stood up bravely to the war in Vietnam, because what was going on there was not what the United States military stands for. I was born in a time where the marketing behind the United States military had been on auto pilot for a full generation before me. “Bringing democracy” and “securing freedom” were chanted like the drones of a bagpipe. They would spout talking points about imminent danger with no real conviction, using buzz words like they were entering the password to an ancient evil laptop. Now, we’re at a point where we don’t even really use those pretenses. Now we are at war because we are at war. We can come up with flimsy reasons afterwards, but those explanations are as varied and mystical as oracles looking into tea leaves. Going to war is an inevitability, because the country needs war almost as if we are offering it in homage. Our soldiers sign up to potentially be given as blood sacrifice in exchange for an article on Fox news with their face in front of a big American flag smiling brightly. The wanton disregard that this country seems to have for its soldiers does not hold a candle to the apathy it has for the lives of Iranians. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a way to turn all that into standup, but I think I should figure out a way to speak about things as they happen in real time. My issue is, I think slow, I write slow. My jokes are well thought out and pretty tight, but they take a long time to get that way. The thing that I am struggling with now is how to bridge the gap between what I am feeling and what I am doing on stage. Recently I’ve been going to open mics and letting loose on stage a little bit more. I don’t know if anything will come of it, but it does feel good. I’m a firm believer that an entertainer’s job is to entertain, and a comedian’s job is to be funny. This video that I saw of Stephen Graham recently sums it up pretty well. Go to 3:35 While I certainly believe this to be true, I also think a comedian has a better chance of being funny when they are talking about something they believe to be interesting. I think my problem is. I put a lot of pressure on myself, and pressure is just that, a containing, restrictive force. Sometimes I resent certain audiences, I think they are scared or stupid or annoying, and I let that get to me. My preconceived notion of what they want clouds my judgement and makes me act inauthentically. I think I learned a lot that night from Kelly, even though she doesn’t know it. If you put distance between yourself and others, consider yourself to be different, better, more thoughtful, or worse, dumber, you offer yourself a cushion. I think what I learned is if you look down on people, you make it harder to connect, and connecting with people is probably the only thing that could make me feel better right now. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dandonohue.substack.com/subscribe

When I was 12 years old, there were a few truths I clung to in order to make my socially unsuccessful life bearable. I did not have many friends due to my erratic and frankly off-putting nature--which I am now grateful for--but back then, it served only to keep me on the outskirts of social life, and therefore, on the outskirts of reality itself. When you lack friendship, you learn that it’s not just comradery you are missing out on, but a fundamental tether and attachment to sanity. Friends, romantic partners, and close emotional connections of all sorts serve to mirror your experience back to you, giving you the building blocks with which you construct the world and make a barrier between “normal” and “abnormal” thoughts and behavior. When you lack those connections, you need to fashion your own anchor to society by less conventional means, unless you want to be set adrift in total isolation. Before I get into what I made my anchor out of, I want to reiterate that I was 12 years old, and unconfined by even the most basic social pressures that are put upon us by friends and colleagues. The thing I loved, cherished, and gleaned my world view from was the comedy stylings of Dane Cook. I want to say this in no uncertain terms (and frankly, I want credit for being brave enough to state this publicly)--Dane Cook was the most important thing in my life at this time. I had almost nothing in common with my classmates, I spoke with a lateral lisp that not only made me sound different, but would cause flecks of spit to rocket out of my mouth, especially when I was excited about something I was talking about. My spitting issue persists into adulthood, and even now, after years of speech therapy, when I’m performing standup and I’m on a roll, sometimes I will see a fleck of spit travel from my mouth in slow motion, and arc through a pure, translucent beam of light to settle, as perfectly as if my saliva had a laser-guided tracking system, on the face of someone in the front row. My speech, coupled with my inability to remain silent, left me out of many fundamental conversations which could lead me to have conventional taste. I didn’t like any of the popular movies, didn’t listen to popular music, and opted to dress like my dad rather than my classmates, which left me looking like a 12-year-old metrosexual, my faux hawk jutting upward like a radio tower sending off signals to ward off friendship. But my classmates liked Dane Cook, and I liked Dane Cook, and that meant the world to me. Dane Cook is a comedian who gained prominence in the late 90s and early 2000s. His mixture of storytelling with absurd, act-out heavy material, garnered him an enormous following back in the early days of the internet where going “viral” was not even a coined term yet. His material was incredibly quotable, and he had an enormous fan base of young people. I remember distinctly quoting his material to other kids who were fans of his, and the immediate recognition and connection were a rare glimmer of light in the starless night of my preteens. My admiration for Dane Cook was not based on a deep knowledge and understanding of standup comedy--rather, it was a purely visceral experience that had an added context of providing a social function which was, in those days, extremely valuable to me. Later that year, I made a friend: Evan. He was strange like me, and we shared a love of Adult Swim. There were wonderful years of childhood where a friendship could be built on pretenses that were totally insubstantial. As adults, we choose the people in our lives with the discernment of a jeweler trying to find flaws in a diamond. Back then, all we needed to establish was that we had the same favorite color as someone else before diving into a life-altering social connection with them. Evan had an older brother, Noah, who was the first snob I ever encountered. He was a strange kind of snob--a type that can be hard to identify at first glance. He loved punk rock, played the bass when everyone else his age was learning the guitar, and had long hair that he made sure was covering his eyes at all times. He would have his friends over, and they would listen to bands like Leftover Crack and Fugazi. I would often catch Noah in the hallway to ask him about music he liked, and I would try and remember as many names as I could so I could look them up on LimeWire later and listen to them after clicking several links that ended up leading to snuff films. I miss the early internet. One day, when I was hanging out with Evan, he told me Noah had started doing improv. I didn’t know what improv was, but it sounded like what all my favorite comedians did--go on stage and say funny things off the top of their heads. (I, like a surprising amount of comedy fans, didn’t know then that stand up is pre-written.) After learning this, I rushed into Noah’s room before Evan could stop me. Bursting through the door, I saw he was on a swivel chair while his friend Alex was in the bed. They both had guitars in their hands and looked so, so cool. I was nervous, especially considering the unwelcoming way they were both looking at me, but I wanted to connect with them. And now that I’d learned Noah was involved with comedy, I blurted out, “Do you like Dane Cook?” Noah’s friend, Alex, 17 with muscle development so advanced for his age it seemed that he was destined to either play pro sports or go to prison, burst out laughing at my question. But Noah’s reaction was much more grave and unsettling. He lowered his head so his hair hung like tattered curtains over his eyes, and he said in a low and ominous half-whisper, “Dane Cook sucks.” Alex released another torrent of laughter while I stood, awestruck, unable to comprehend the words that had just been spoken. How could Dane Cook suck? He’d made me laugh like a billion times. Had Noah even seen the bit where he pretends to be a snake? Had he heard him impersonate the voice of a Burger King drive-through employee where he gets the distortion perfect? It simply couldn’t be. “Dane Cook is so funny,” I said, a tremble building in my voice. “He f*****g blows, man,” Alex said, finally getting ahold of himself. I felt a rage boil inside me. I left and slammed the door behind me, and I stewed about the interaction for months afterward. What I didn’t realize then is that I had just had my first experience with a snob, and years later I would not only forgive Noah, but thank him. Because even though I don’t completely agree with his assessments on comedy, I did learn a lot from him and his people about developing taste--and in turn, identity. I want to be clear about my definition of snob here. I’m not referring to someone who prefers the most expensive version of things and disregards affordable alternatives. This is the cartoon image of a snob, monocle in hand, saying a Patek Philippe Nautilus should be in rose gold rather than steel. The kind of snobs I’m referring to would tell you that a $30 Casio is a much better choice than a $12,000 Hublot. These kinds of snobs are people who are dedicated to doing research and deep dives into a specific topic, and through their devotion, they develop strong opinions that someone who is not well-versed in the topic would never have. Indulge me while I continue to use the wristwatch comparison for a moment (something I am a snob about.) You see, Hublot is a widely-known watch brand, and with its luxury price tag it would be easy for an average person to think it’s a brand that rivals Rolex in design and function. But when you start learning about the luxury segment of wristwatches, one of the first things you learn is that Hublot is a vacuum of design, has poor resale quality, and benefits much more from successful marketing than from the quality of its product. Long story short, it wouldn’t be a bad watch if it wasn’t five figures and looked like something...well, looked like something Dane Cook would wear, honestly. With that brief summary, you can understand where I’m coming from when it comes to critiquing Hublot. Now imagine we’re at a store. You see a Hublot, point at it, and say, “that watch looks cool,” only to be greeted with my squinty, incredulous stare, before I ear-beat you about how that’s actually a bad watch, an awful watch. If you wore that watch around watch nerds, we would laugh at you before reaching for our inhalers and pushing up our glasses with tape around the frame. Those kinds of reactions from snobs have given them a bad reputation. They are thought of as existing in a world so esoteric that they’re disconnected from society as a whole. The battle cries of “let people enjoy things,” and “ease up a little,” and “stop foaming at the mouth and barking every time you see a MVMT watch” are used to discredit and undermine snob opinions. Well, let me say this: as offputting as snobs can be, there is something much more insidious and harmful sitting in wait behind them. And if you remove snobs from society, there will be nothing stopping it--SLOP. Here is my theory: I propose that anti-snob propaganda is fueled by the increasing desire to get us all to consume slop products, slop food, and slop entertainment. If studios had it their way, we would all be watching When Harry Met Sally 12, an entirely AI remake where Sally fakes an orgasm, then looks directly into camera and says, “that’s how betting with DraftKings makes me feel.” Slop content, whether it be on TikTok or television, is always the most readily-available, highly-marketed choice out there. Marvel movies, remakes, and general AI and CGI garbage gets pushed on us incessantly--not because it’s the highest-quality material, but because it is the most profitable for the corporations producing it. No compelling actors, no original content, and no concise storyline are all money-saving features, and there is only one thing stopping us

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Hello SubStack! Just a few things up top. I will be doing standup in Seattle 1/9-10, LA 1/25 and DC 1/30-31. If I’m not coming to your city, please join my email list. You can find all that at this link. Important link Also, if you join the paid tier, it’s just 5 a month or 50 for the year and I’m going to put a lot of fun stuff on there! Ok sorry here we go How are we feeling? It’s been a little since I’ve posted a proper piece of writing on Substack. I took some deliberate time off where I decided to store up my creative juices and do what I enjoy most: drinking heavily and watching sensory overload videos designed to give babies dopamine issues. I came out of this fugue state about two days ago, my nails long, my eyeballs on fire, and my brain completely depleted of any chemical that might cause a reaction that could be subjectively categorized as “joy.” After several IV drips and a journey to a faith healer who deemed me a “lost cause,” I thought it was time to pick myself up by the velcro straps of my light-up shoes and make a New Years resolution! Now, from what I’ve seen from friends and family, New Year’s resolutions can generally be put into two categories: 1. Get jacked, and 2. Work more. These categories I’ve constructed are more broad than they seem. Reading more is a form of getting jacked--mentally jacked. Journaling is a form of working more--emotionally working more. If you’ve decided to make a resolution along those lines, that’s great! Enjoy two months of journaling until you realise there is only so much you can write about your ex and only so much you can read about your ex’s narcissism before you’re writing detailed breakdowns of their attachment styles and showing up to their work trying to give them a surrealist painting that encapsulates their negative mental patterns. When the security guard is throwing you out, you can yell, with total certainty, “No! You don’t understand! They’re crazy!” Once the restraining order is filed, you will need to find a more attainable goal like losing weight. But you’ll soon remember that big asses are in, and then you’ll change your goal to gaining weight, until you realize the importance of hip-to-waist ratio, at which point you will enter the quantum mechanics of modern exercise where you are simultaneously trying to gain and lose weight in a Schrodinger’s ass dilemma. Then you’ll give up on all that and decide “maybe I’m perfect just the way I am,” until next year, when you’ll wonder, “If I’m perfect, why do I spend so much time in the Hooters bathroom screaming?” at which point you’ll decide that what you need is another New Year’s resolution! People will try everything from modern, scientifically-studied nootropics, to old-school, classic, tried-and-true nootropics (cocaine) to muster more willpower to follow through with their resolution. To get this Substack finished I took about two grams of pure Bolivian nootrophic straight to the dome. Here’s the issue: let’s say you stick to your goals. You lose weight, read more, and finally start using separate razors for your face and body--what then? While many people could benefit from eating healthier or learning more, I have found these resolutions are a roundabout means to get to a similar end: “I want to change the way the world relates to me.” If you’re thinner, the world will greet you as a thin person. If you’re smarter, doors will open for you because you will be perceived as smarter. This makes a ton of sense, but as a person who willed myself into losing weight and gaining muscle in my early 20s, let me tell you--it doesn’t work as well as you think it will. Don’t get me wrong, it’s part of the puzzle, but people continue to have a huge blindspot in terms of resolutions that I’d like to discuss here. Instead of making resolutions that change you, how about making a resolution that changes your relationship with the world? Personally, I never hear New Year’s resolutions along the lines of “I’d like to do more favors for my friends.” What the hell happened to favors, anyway? Try asking a friend to take you to the airport, and they go, “Ubers are cheap.” Yeah, you want to know why Ubers are cheap? Because they’re piloted by Bulgarian indentured servants. Now take me to LAX before I hire a robot to deliver an IED to your apartment. The economic environment is plunging us all into becoming self-centered automatons, ordering DoorDash while we complain that Netflix slop isn’t as good as the slop they used to make. I think the key to happiness is to break this cycle as much as possible, but there’s a problem--people have armored themselves in ‘self care’ to uphold their complicity in their own atomisation. That’s right, some people are afraid to go against the term “self care” in its misused, mutated form we see today, but I will stare down that evil, demented teddy bear and hug it into submission. It would be insulting to your intelligence as a reader to go on about how I “don’t think taking care of yourself is a bad thing.” Obviously I don’t--you’re not a baby, let’s stop wasting time. Many deeply selfish people hide behind the idea of self care as an excuse for not being a member of society, and I’m over it. Helping other people, whether it’s by helping friends with a project or participating in outreach organizations, can be just as energizing as sitting in a bathtub filled with rose petals while you stare longingly at a picture of Paul Walker. Do both, find a balance. Do not go gently into that good night of solipsism and streaming services. What people fail to realize is that building community is hard work, and therefore, in my opinion, should be prioritized in your resolution. Personally, I will be resolving to do more food sorting for an organization known as “Community Fridge,” as well as trying to get shredded. Community Fridge is awesome because you meet other people who sort food, while also doing something good for a cause bigger than yourself. Imagine how cool it will be when I’m doing all that while also being 10% body fat. Who can stop me then? No one, that’s who. Your resolution doesn’t have to be as powerful or noble as mine. Make your resolution to go to the bar with friends once a week. At this point in society, that is a far more impressive task than journaling 200 pages a day. People get stuck in a self contained loop of self improvement, then feel hollow if and when their goals are completed. What I’m saying is: having abs is cool, but it’s even more cool to have friends around to tell you, “hey, put your shirt back on.” Thank you for reading! Join the paid tier to read more, see me live, join my email list, and as always, have a good one! This is a public episode. 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There are a few things I do every day. I write, I drink a full bottle of Bombay Sapphire and I go to the park. The park is about 80 yards by 80 yards, with a large modern jungle gym that takes up about a third of it. It’s one of those sleek multi-colored metal and plastic behemoths that replace the old wooden ones after too many children end up at the emergency room because they’ve gotten so many splinters they’re essentially more tree then child. There’s an area of the park that is supposed to be grassy, but due to harsh dog paws has given way to large spots of dirt that look like craters on an irrigated moon. There are a dozen huge trees that give shade to much of the park. I go there so often I know which spots will be covered and which will be in the sun at any time of day. If I don’t want direct sun I can’t go to the workout area between the hours of 9 am and 11 am, but outside of those hours, the pull up bar, even bars, Plyometric platform, weird platform on a spring that no one uses, and weird manual elliptical that people try to use and stop because it’s stupid, are covered by beautiful, natural shade. This is where I spend much of my time at the park. Gripping metal and hoisting my chin over a bar, doing leg lifts, or watching as men of all walks of life do the same. You never see women at the pull up bar at the park. I always hear men complain that women are wearing outfits that are too revealing at the gym, and to that I say, come with me to the park. You will be free from temptation unless you are attracted to a 60-year-old man with the body of a Marvel hero doing dips and listening to Louis Farrakhan on a JBL speaker. I love working out at the park for many reasons. Taking advantage of this country’s dwindling public utilities brings me a lot of joy, being outside is wonderful, and I love the characters that come around. You might think there would be a lot of crazy people working out at the park, and you’d be right--but what might surprise you is the level of decorum. You see, lifting etiquette is a relic of gym culture that is being obliterated by modern gyms, but at the park it’s a different story. Here, everyone is a little afraid of everyone else, because if you’re working out at the park, chances are you’re a little out of your mind. If someone is spending too much time at the pullup bar and you ask if you can work in (lifting jargon for using a piece of equipment someone else is using for a prolonged period of time so you don’t have to wait,) they almost always happily accommodate--out of respect for the art and tradition of physique development, or fear that you have a homemade knife on you. I went to a commercial gym with a friend recently where we had a much different experience. EOS Fitness is hell on earth for lifting etiquette. You could shoot a video of how not to act at a gym there, especially during peak hours, which seem to last from 6 am to 10 pm. People left weights out of the rack, people stayed on machines for thirty minutes at a time, people ran open air c**k fighting rings--the place was a mess. My friend Anna wanted me to help her learn how to use certain pieces of equipment there, and I happily obliged. I love going to the gym with my friends--it makes me feel like a tour guide in a scary underground cave. I get to say things like, “I know this seems scary, but if you stay on the path, this will be safe and enjoyable. Also, don’t touch that. Don’t touch anything, for the love of god.” We finished warming up in the upstairs area before making our way down to the much scarier weightlifting section. This gym is packed with people, but it feels more claustrophobic because there is zero consideration for other people there. Dudes are camping out at bench presses, and eating full meals in between sets. Women are having phone calls at the abductor machine. Everything was going fine until we had to go to do hip thrusts. There is an entire section for legs that is even scarier than the normal gym--a full room of barbell platforms that are always in use, and a smell that would make a plumber call for backup. There was a hip thrust machine open, but it was loaded with weight, so I started to unload it. I got the second plate off when I heard something that made me jump. “Hey!” barked a man who quickly walked from the other end of the gym. I think he wanted to run, but his body was hypertrophied to the point of near immobility. He was a gym rat. I’ve known gym rats, been friends with them, loved them, but there was something different about this man. He walked up to me and my friend. “No, I’m still using this.” He said it so matter-of-factly, as if he weren’t talking to us, but rather barking orders at subordinates. “Oh, that’s okay,” I said, “Can we work in?” I was definitely too friendly for what he was giving us, but I had just never experienced this level of glassy-eyed rudeness before. To me, the gym is a fun place where everyone has the same goal: to move our bodies, which have become sedentary from watching 500 45-second videos a day. The man just looked up at me as he put the 45 back on the machine. No. I was floored. I literally didn’t know you could say no to a request to work in. I was about to say something I most likely would have regretted when Anna said, “let’s just do something else.” I walked away, but that interaction has haunted me since. Let me explain something: there are different tiers of gyms. If you are at a serious powerlifting gym, there are different rules than at a cheap commercial gym. At a serious gym, you might be on a specific timing regimen for each set, so someone working in wouldn’t make any sense. But what this man did was the equivalent of going to a public basketball court and doing shooting practice, then when other people show up and ask if it’s cool to play, you answer, “no.” This interaction was this man’s fault, without a doubt, but his actions are heavily influenced and encouraged by his environment. I would like to take you on a little journey into the mind of a meathead. There is a conflict with the modern meathead, and one that is very difficult to rectify. They are hyper dedicated to lifting, but not in a lifting community. Back in the day, to learn about how to lift, you would need to find other people who lifted. There were books on the subject, but pictures could only do so much. You had to talk to more experienced lifters, and through talking to them, you would also pick up habits of decorum that are extremely valuable when it comes to community building. If you’re taking four sets of dumbbells and hogging them, everyone in the gym is going to think you’re an a*****e, but I’m sure a lot of people no longer know they’re doing something wrong. It wouldn’t even be worth explaining to that guy that what he’s doing is wrong, because there is no community to keep him accountable. For etiquette to be followed, there needs to be a culture in place so that when you correct someone’s behavior, there is a precedent to back you up. At modern commercial gyms, that culture has deteriorated. What EOS and many other gyms do is sell as many memberships as possible regardless of capacity. Because the memberships are cheap and people are broke, they don’t have any other option but to brave the disgusting landscape created by a cultureless workout space. The gym can’t kick anyone out or reprimand them out of fear of losing clients and getting bad reviews, so the gym sucks and will keep sucking, because people follow what is happening around them. If one person is hogging an area and you can’t do the exercise you want, and later you have the chance to hog an area, you’re of course going to do it. Many would say, “so go to a more expensive gym,” and yes, more expensive gyms are cleaner and people are generally neater. But if it’s always the case that more expensive means more organized, why is the pullup bar at the park so respectful? I have a theory that because the park is a public utility, there is a level of gratitude from people who workout there for the exercise space. Obviously this isn’t across the board, but barring people who are going through mental health episodes, I’ve found people at the park to be much more conscientious than almost everyone at commercial gyms. At EOS you pay your $30 and think, “well, if I’m paying for this place, I’m not going to clean up after myself--that’s the gym’s job.” At the park we understand the pullup bar is all we have, and we get to use it for free, so we better take care of it. This isn’t the case for other free things, but that’s because the pullup bar has a second aspect that makes the whole system work: culture. There needs to be a community for public utilities to work. When something is free, the thing that keeps people in line is other people making sure no one abuses it. That’s something we need more of in society. Many people take a passive role in their lives to avoid confrontation, and I think we have gone too far in that direction. You should pick your battles, but you need to fight a few battles. When someone hogs the pullup bar and doesn’t let me work in, I better tell them, “hey, that’s not how this space works.” Otherwise, the space won’t exist anymore, and it’ll just become a bar in the middle of the park. EOS Fitness is not my battleground--I think it’s lost due to the soulless, corporate ethos that pervades the space, but the pullup bar at the park is where I plant my flag. Where do you plant yours? It can be a library or a basketball court or a bagel shop, but it better be somewhere. Thank you for reading See me live in Portland, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Washington DC. Find tickets here Live tickets Join my email list to get updates when I come to your city email list Join the paid version of my substack for many more posts! This is a publi

On a brisk November day in upstate Maine, the Harrington family worked in quiet happy synchronicity to prepare their Thanksgiving day meal. Tammy and Susan worked over the stove, putting the final touches on plating a perfect golden brown turkey. Tammy’s husband, Patrick, worked on a bowl of spiked apple cider like a mad scientist. Even Grandma Joan, who had been slipping mentally in her later years, was helping to set the table. Each place setting got two spoons and no knives, but if that was the price for old Joan to be included, so be it. Susan’s kitchen was spacious and immaculate--high tech gas burning stove, tasteful blue backsplash against white tiles, and several hidden compartments in which guns of various calibers were stored, in case the war broke out. On top of the general pleasantness of family bonding, there was another reason everyone was so cheerful, and moving with a bouncing glee like elves in a workshop. Robert had not shown up. It was tense for a moment when everyone arrived, but Tammy sat everyone down and told them all not to engage with Robert if he started spouting his wacky ideas, especially Abby, who was on winter break from university. “Listen, I love you all, and I love our Robert, but I just do not want a repeat of last Thanksgiving. I can’t take it. If Robert starts sharing his...opinions, just don’t engage. There is no need to make this holiday ugly.” “Why do we do this?” Abby protested. “Why do we let him hold us hostage like this? What, just because he’s brainwashed we have to walk on eggshells?” There was a heavy silence that emanated throughout the living room. It was shared even by Tammy’s three young children, who didn’t fully understand what the grownups were talking about, but knew it was no good. Tammy had a feeling Abby would dissent--university was good for a young woman, but in a circumstance like this, she knew Abby’s opinionated nature may be a problem. “Listen, I understand what you mean. I’ve lived with him longer than you, but we’re family. Family is important. It’s the fundamental building block of society, and we will need family with what’s going to come in the next few years.” The family nodded in agreement. Even Abby was compelled by her plea. Now, dinner was set, and the chances of Robert showing up were dwindling by the moment. Maybe he was deterred by last Thanksgiving. Maybe arguing with the whole lot of the Harringtons made him weary of family gatherings. As they all sat and began to bow their heads, the front door opened, and a familiar voice pierced their tranquility like an arrow through chainmail. “Hey! Sorry I’m late!” The grace was postponed--everyone got up and immediately performed their duty of small talk and pleasantry with Robert. “How’ve you been?” and “how’s the city?” were greeted with “Great!” and “Hectic, but you know.” Everything seemed to be ok. Robert was pleasant, amicable, even extending an olive branch to Abby by asking her how university was treating her, to which she responded a terse, “Fine.” Robert grabbed a cup of the spiked cider and sat down. Now the real test was upon him, and Tammy cautiously resumed her call to grace. “Okay everyone, bow your heads...if you want to, that is. If you don’t, it’s ok. Just keep looking forward...quietly.” Abby rolled her eyes in disgust at the accommodations to Robert, but to everyone’s surprise, Robert was the first to close his eyes and bow his head. Tammy was startled at the gesture, and it took her a moment to gather herself and begin. “Um, okay. We are gathered here today to share a meal, as a family. May this meal nourish our bodies, like the stream nourishes the land. May we use the powerful energy to do good on this earth--this flat, flat earth. May the Jewish overlords who control the weather allow us to play outside today, and may the robots pretending to be human beings, like Bernie Sanders and Pedro Pascal, be sent into the fiery pits of the scrap yard. This is a day for family.” She looked up to see if Robert would mount a protest, but his head was still bowed and his face was serene. She smiled and went on. “Not the fake families of crisis actors who pretend to be victims of staged mass shootings perpetrated by the government to try and take away our rights as American citizens. I mean real families, like ours…amen.” “Amen,” the family chorused, none louder than Robert. Tammy was almost crying tears of joy as she said, “Okay, let’s eat.” The meal carried on wonderfully. Patrick talked about his new truck, Susan announced they she was trying for another kid--”we’re naming this one Adolf, let’s see what the government has to say about that”--and the kids finished eating quickly to play their favorite game, Ruby Ridge. “Come out with your hands up!” One of them shouted from behind a sofa in the living room. “No! My sovereignty is more important than your arbitrary misinterpretation of the Constitution,” another shouted in the living room. Through all of this, Robert sat quietly, nodding and smiling. But something was off. Tammy noticed he had stolen away six times for more cider, staggering back to the table after the last trip. She braced herself as Patrick continued his story. “So, I told the principal, so what if he brought a gun to school? We teach our kids about guns, they know how to handle them. Maybe a properly-armed student body is the best deterrent for a mass shooting,” he said, taking a bite of turkey so the rest of the table could nod in agreement. Tammy noticed that only Robert sat still. “I mean, we convinced them our boys didn’t need the stupid measles vaccine, so this should be no problem,” Patrick continued. “Vaccines,” Grandma Joan said, rolling her eyes. “I never got them, and neither did my second husband, or first husband. When they told me they both died of polio, I knew instantly it was a simple government operation to make sure I didn’t breed. Well, look who got the last laugh,” she said, winking at Patrick. “Well,” Robert started, and the table fell silent. “I think some vaccines work.” Robert’s tone, soaked in alcohol, still had the tinges of apprehension, as if he didn’t even really want to say what he said, but he had to. “Yeah, they work when it comes to putting nanobots in our bloodstream and tracking our location,” Patrick retorted. His tone was playful, but had an undertone of malice. “I don’t think they put nanobots in us,” Robert declared. “And I don’t think we should be talking about this right now!” Tammy pleaded. Abby leaned forward. “Uncle Robert, what do you think about public roads?” “Abby!” Tammy shouted. “There is no need to instigate at the dinner table.” “Come on--we’re all grownups, we can have a civil conversation,” Abby said. Robert looked at her, his vision clearly blurring and refocusing, before he said, “I think they’re good.” “You son of a bitch!” Patrick yelled. He needed to be restrained by Susan to stop him from lunging at Robert. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Patrick said, settling back in his seat. The children were looking now. Tammy shot a glance at Abby. “Why did you do that?” she hissed. “At university, they teach us it’s important to have uncomfortable conversations with our small minded family members,” Abby replied. “Small minded? That’s not even a real university, it’s a militia in the woods,” Robert said haughtily. Now it was Abby’s turn to stand up. “College accreditation is communism!” “You don’t even know what communism is! Last year you said public tap water was communist,” Robert said. “And I bet you love that fluoride, don’t you, Commie?” “Stop it! Stop it!” All eyes turned to look at the speaker. This time, it wasn’t Tammy trying to keep the peace--it was Susan’s six-year-old son, Stevebannon. “I don’t want you to fight, it makes me sad. I don’t want to be sad, I want to be happy. We should be happy, and together, for when the wolves come.” Everyone sat down. There were tears in Tammy’s eyes, and Robert’s too. They went over to the boy. His father picked him up, and Robert tussled his hair. “Youre right” Abby said. “I’m sorry, we should be getting along. Thanksgiving is about togetherness.” “Thanksgiving is about family,” Robert added. “Exactly, Thanksgiving is about acknowledging that the United States government planned and executed 9/11,” Stevebannon added. “Yeah,” Robert said. “And we can all agree on that.” The End This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dandonohue.substack.com/subscribe

Two days ago, I released a twenty four-minute, eight second-long standup comedy special on YouTube. This is the link. For purposes of algorithmic maximization, do me a favor and watch it all the way through, then play it on your phone and watch it all the way through, then make sure any time you’re out and about you take your friends’ phones and play my special on their device. When they ask, “Why are you silently playing through an entire comedy special while interacting with every interstitial ad?” you just say, “Because I support comedy, damn it!” Do you see what I just did there? I exaggerated my desire for you to watch my special as a way to cope with the material reality of the fact that I desperately DO want you to watch it. The earnest part of my psyche is often at odds with the sarcastic, but this special has turned their regular scuffles into a full-blown nuclear war. I would like to talk a little bit about this internal discord, not just for my own benefit, but because it is something that has been quietly plaguing many people who produce comedy, music, art, casual ribbon dancing videos, competitive ribbon dancing videos, or who perform the lost art of marionette love making. Part One: I became aware of many of my favorite standup comedians through the wonderful Comedy Central Half Hours, which would play on the weekends and gave me something to do while I spent time not hanging out with other kids or having enriching experiences. The format was simple: they filled a theater with people, had three or four comedians go up one by one, and recorded it for viewing on the network. Back then, I never considered how someone “got” a Comedy Central half hour. I imagined it was via some omnipotent comedy god who anointed only the most deserving comedians with this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Now that I’ve been doing standup for a while, I know that’s not the case. I’m positive there were endless politics and double crossing and back stabbing that happened in the process of jockeying for one of these spots. A lot of people like to think that before social media, only the most deserving artists got opportunities, but that is simply not the case. The road that weaves through the entertainment industry is scattered with carcasses of those who were undeniably talented but didn’t look right or sound right, were the wrong race or age, or pissed off the wrong producer by saying, “I think a 14-year-old is too young to date.” The benefit of the Comedy Central special wasn’t that it was a perfect system--it was that it promoted itself by the virtue of it being on TV, at a time when people still watched TV. The artist was under little pressure to “promote” their work because what could they do to promote it? Aside from going out in the street and screaming at people to tune in, there wasn’t much for them to do except sit back and hope people enjoyed their work. Part Two: I would like to say that I have “taken the career path” of an online comedian, but that isn’t the whole truth. The whole truth is that social media was the only place I could turn in hopes of following my dreams of being a touring comedian. I tried the other paths: acting, getting in at clubs, and making human sacrifices in order to appease the ghost of Rodney Dangerfield. Casting directors said no, club bookers said no, and that guy I tried to sacrifice was way too fast to catch. I was left with posting short videos online, and post short videos online I did. I was lucky--I was able to post my way into a decent career without having to do prank videos where I replace old peoples’ insulin with Astroglide gel, but it comes with a cost. Whether it’s the fault of an unjust system or my own shortcomings (it’s probably the shortcomings,) I don’t have anyone helping me promote my standup, tour dates, or acting but me. This sounds normal, but what happens when people who follow you for one thing, are suddenly inundated by requests to see you live or follow your Substack? (Thank you, by the way.) It causes this whiplash effect that frankly, I don’t like. I like giving people what they want. I like my page to be videos that I think are funny for the sake of fun rather than a marketing ploy to watch my special or see me live, but it’s my only option. All I hope is that people don’t judge me too harshly for inundating them, and understand that while the promo for my standup might be annoying, if it doesn’t work out the promo for my DJing will be so, so much worse. Before we have a little fun, let me just say this: I think the best way to promote something is to be honest. I will be honest here and say that I think the special is very good. I think it’s worth your time. Okay, now that that’s over, let’s go over some of my favorite comments I’ve gotten so far. Starting off hot. You know, a lot of people would feel judged by a comment like this, but I would actually like to take this opportunity to apologize to this person. You see, standup comedy requires exaggerated storytelling. I know I said I “got ready for bed” with a woman, but in reality, I’ve never been in the same room as a woman unchaperoned. I have what I call my “Female Purity Bodyguard.” His name is Chuck, and his job is to make sure that I am never alone in the same room as a woman, ESPECIALLY late at night. In the story it’s me and my girlfriend, but in reality, it was me, my girlfriend, and Chuck sleeping in between us so no funny business happened. I would like to make it clear that I think premarital sex is nasty and abhorent, which is why I ALWAYS sleep with Chuck. Okay, this one was confusing. At no time did I mention Margaret Thatcher in my standup or otherwise. I think it’s a jab at me because of my Irish last name, and I must say, bravo. Negative comments about my standup don’t really get to me. I think this special is good, and you won’t change my mind on that. The one way you can get to me is by insinuating that my video is a safe space for Margaret Thatcher praise. This is made even more strange by the fact that this person has a Betsy Ross flag picture and a handle with the word “patriot” in it. Are we bending the knee to the monarchy now? I hate to say it, but… seems a little bit Canadian to me, partner. Okay. While the Margaret Thatcher comment upset me, this one incensed me. That sweater is top tier--everyone thinks so. You can be a sweater contrarian all you want, but you’re just going for shock laughs, and I won’t stand for it. Me and that sweater have been through a lot together, and I hope only one day I am man enough to grow into it. All that being said, thank you for reading, and please, please, please watch the special and give me a comment like, “Came here from your Subtack and I loved this special and your sweater and I don’t like Margaret Thatcher. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dandonohue.substack.com/subscribe

If I were to take account of my thoughts on a given day, I would say a good 15% of them would be dedicated to resenting my current situation and contemplating all the things I deserve but don’t have. Aside from that, I’d say another 15% goes to hating myself, 20% goes to what kind of food I should eat next, and the remaining 50% goes to thinking about this one-armed monkey named Xing Xing who is a little standoffish, but you know he has a good heart. I’d like to talk about that first 15%, and how it can fester and grow until it consumes your entire psyche, making you miss out on some potentially interesting things in your life. Last weekend, I was lucky enough to take part in the New York Comedy Festival. I flew into JFK a few days early to do standup and get a feel for the scene out there. On the day I flew in, Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral election, and there was a general buzz of excitement when you talked to anyone under the age of 60 who did not own a Fortune 500 company that manufactures industrial child-crushing machines. I got a call that night from the manager of The Stand comedy club, who said that if I could get to Manhattan by 8PM, I could do a spot on his show. I hopped on a train and was shaking with excitement, which worked well because the person to the left of me was shaking with heroin withdrawals, and the woman to the right of me was shaking because she was afraid of the two insane people sitting to her left. I got out of the train and bolted down the sidewalk towards The Stand. It was a cool November night, and the streets were cluttered with people digging their hands in their coat pockets and hiking their shoulders up as if they were trying to bury their heads deep into their chest cavity for warmth. Yes, yes! I thought to myself as I turned the corner and saw the outside of The Stand. The front of the club looks like the exterior of any upscale restaurant, but when you head inside and to the back there are two rooms--a small upstairs room, and a beautiful downstairs club which offers some of the best audiences I’ve ever seen. Regulars at The Stand have been spoiled by great lineups and food so good it has no business being served in a comedy club. Soon that crowd would be mine, I thought as I walked toward the entrance. Then it happened. I froze, and ducked into an alleyway. I stood there, taking deep breaths and excusing myself to the rats I was intruding on who were eating cheese and playing dice. I don’t know how to describe these episodes that I occasionally suffer. They’re not panic attacks--I don’t feel like I’m having a heart attack, and they’re much less physically taxing. I’ve come to call them “ego tremors.” When I am feeling particularly out of my element or embarrassed, it feels as though a surge of electricity passes through my body, and I need to take a moment to collect myself. I thought years of standup comedy would minimize this reaction, but all it’s done is gotten me accustomed to it. I no longer see this reaction as alien, I see it as an old friend clocking into work with me. Nice to see you, spasm! Hope you’re not working overtime tonight! I’d like to sleep a little. I collected myself and started to make sense of the feeling I was experiencing. I had become scared that I was unwanted at the club. Not by the manager, or the other comedians, but by an overarching energetic force that I feel inside any new environment I need to acquaint myself with. This leads me to being nervous and standoffish, and unfortunately being nervous and standoffish is the best way to make a bad impression. I constantly worry I’m not doing the right things in my career, and when I meet new people in comedy who I perceive are doing better than me, shame starts punching me in the stomach like an old-school mobster, trying to collect a debt of my own creation. “Have you had enough?” it asks me. “Good, now you better be as successful as Matt Rife by next week--it’d be a shame if I had to come back and do this constantly throughout your life.” A lot of comedians in New York have elicited this feeling in me, and as I walked into The Stand it felt like they were all there, comfortable and smiling, having already done ten shows that night and ready to do ten more. There isn’t as much stage time in LA, especially for me, and that gives me an inferiority complex. The manager at The Stand, Joe, acts as if he knows everything I am thinking, and works tirelessly to dispel my self flagellating thoughts. As I walked past the host’s stand, into the dining area that contains a beautiful bar and a brick pizza oven, he walked up to me with a big smile. “Dan, I got you going up after Neal Brennan! You’re good with that?” “Yeah, absolutely,” I said. What I was thinking was, Joe, I will literally go up after a dog trained to do backflips if it means I get to do stage time. Getting to go up after Neal Brennan is like the highlight of my month, thank you, thank you so much. But you don’t want to be too desperate. Joe went off to do some logistical planning with the late night lineup, and I was left standing with my bags in hand, looking around desperately for someone I knew, or somewhere I could be alone. I didn’t recognize any of the comedians at the “comics table,” a booth reserved for those performing on the shows that night. I had seen some of them on shows, but I was in no state to make a clunky introduction, so I opted to sit alone. My thoughts turned dark. I mulled over everything about me that made me unlikable, and then, at the bottom of my spiral, someone started walking over to me, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Michael Longfellow looks like the perfect lead for a teen thriller about vampires who skateboard. We did standup in Los Angeles together before he was inevitably swept up in the arms of the industry. Michael is funny, and not just “he understands the craft of standup comedy” funny. I’m talking really funny, in his bones funny, like “something really bad must have happened to you as a kid” funny. We hadn’t seen each other for a while, and we talked for a long time. Sometimes, someone says exactly what you need in the moment, and in that moment Michael told me, “Yeah, I’ve been feeling stressed lately.” I hate to say this, and I wish it wasn’t true, but sometimes what I need is someone who I think is better than me to tell me that their life isn’t perfect. Now, Michael just completed a multi-year stint on SNL and is touring at a pace I can only dream of, but it still made me feel good to know that he could have problems too. When I said bye to Michael, I did all I could to convey that not only was I so happy to see him, but also his vulnerability helped my own mental state immensely, which for guys means I said, “Dude seeing you was sick, noogie noogie noogie.” I descended to the basement, where yet another scene which seemed to be directed by a higher power was unfolding. Neal Brennan was having a rough set. Neal Brennan has multiple Netflix specials, was the co-creator of the Chapelle Show, and is one of my biggest influences in comedy. The crowd was sparse at that hour, and they were out for blood. Neal, like a character in a zombie movie sacrificing himself for the group, was chastising them for their seeming enjoyment of watching people bomb. “Look at you, trying not to laugh, it’s disgusting.” I was laughing, and they were warming up, if only slightly. He got off stage, and as he passed me he looked at me and said, “Yikes.” Yikes was right. My set was equally tepid, but far less heroic. I gave my act 110% to try and placate the audience, who glared at me as if I were their hostage. I stepped off stage sweating, feeling bruised but not broken, and I wish I had known then that going up that night would lead to something great the very next night. The next night, my friend Lucas Zelnick, who looks like the bully in a teen thriller about skateboarding vampires (I guess I have a type?) was showing me around the Comedy Cellar. The Cellar is four different rooms where the greatest comedians of all time developed their acts. That night I saw Nikki Glaser run her SNL monologue. Lucas is a rising star at the Cellar, which makes sense because I saw his set that night, and he made the crowd laugh so hard it looked like he was doing physical damage to the room. While Lucas was giving me a tour of the place, showing me one of the smaller rooms, I saw Neal again in the stairway. I was now confronted with one of the most challenging aspects of communication for me--introducing myself to someone I have a connection to, but don’t know personally. This happens more often when you see a woman you’re interested in, and it’s usually more perfunctory. “Hey, haven’t I seen you at that one bar that everyone in the city goes to? Wow, what a connection we’ve just made, let’s start a life together.” This type of interaction is much more difficult man-to-man, but I gave it a shot. “Hey! We were on the same show last night,” I blurted out. Sometimes that’s all it takes. Neal smiled. “Yeah, god damn, what was that?” We chatted about the room and the audience, and soon he had to excuse himself to do his set. This might seem small to you, but there are a few things I want to do in comedy, and talking to Neal was one of them. Once I’ve arm wrestled Kumail Nanjiani and fist fought Jerry Seinfeld I might retire. I flew back from New York with a new understanding of my social hang-ups. I often feel as though I need to conquer my fear, stomp it out, strangle it, and become a new person in its absence. Now, I think the better thing to do is sit down and have a talk with your fear. Say, “Okay fear, I know you have some points, but we have a couple of people to talk to, and if you let us do that I promise you we can hyperventilate in the car.” There will always be a part of me that will feel inad

“Hey Dan, we’re going to cancel the late show--not enough tickets sold. Sorry buddy.” I sit in a greenroom on a maroon couch that was most likely a completely different color when it was carried into this comedy club several decades ago. It might have been bright red when the first ass, belonging to some vaudeville performer, imprinted itself on its cushion. I’ll bet even back then performers would often be told something similar, like “Hey hep-cat, we had to 86 the late show. Not enough swingers and kittens doing the Charleston through the front door.” For a stand up comedian, there are generally two shows a night: the early show and the late show. The club will cancel a show if the ticket sales aren’t enough to justify the cost of staying open, but they don’t make this decision until they’re absolutely sure they can’t make any money. It’s cruel, but it’s an old cruelty, like illness or being forced to listen to a coworkers favorite music. I feel as though I’m playing part in an ancient tradition of performers as I meekly accept what the manager has just told me. “Yeah sure, no problem, the early show is going to be fun,” I say, as he gives me a sympathetic nod and exits, closing the door behind him, trapping me in the strange mildewed air of the green room. The smell is thick with the flop sweat of countless acts before me. I sit and think about how I’ve failed before I’ve even gotten on stage, failed in the ever present challenge of every live performer in history. I’ve failed to sell enough tickets. There was a time in my career when I didn’t consider ticket sales. I was a beautiful little minnow swimming through the murky waters of comedy, where all was new and nothing was expected of me. I would show up to a venue and the booker would say, “sorry, we didn’t sell a lot of tickets,” and I’d say, “who cares, there’s a microphone, right? What’s there to worry about?” Little did I know that the booker most likely went home after those shows and drank even more hand sanitizer than show bookers usually drink. My first experience wrangling an audience came in 2022, and god, did it hurt. I had just amassed a decent-sized following by posting myself telling jokes while washing dishes in my sink. My minor success, coupled with my ever-expanding ego, turned me into the most volatile and damaged archetype possible: a man who is drunk on a very, very, small amount of power. My arrogance ballooned to maximum capacity when famous booker Frank P messaged me. He asked if I wanted to headline an iconic Los Angeles venue. I said yes immediately. I had headlined in San Diego before, and, even though the venue I performed at drew its own crowd, I felt that I was responsible for at least a few ticket sales. When I was done messaging Frank I posted a story that said I would be headlining in LA and everyone should buy tickets now. I put my phone down, put my head on my pillow, and fantasized about the virtual stampede that was now taking place to buy tickets. LA was a huge city, and certainly a high percentage of the people who follow me would rush to buy tickets. The website might crash, the venue might need to add seats, I might need to start a charity in order to launder the money that will undoubtedly be injected into my pockets in one month’s time. I didn’t think much about the show after that, seeing a sell-out as an inevitability. Three weeks passed, and I received a text message from the booker. I’ve received this message many times and in many forms since then, and no matter how many times it flashes across my screen, it always causes a pit of unfathomable depth to form in my stomach. “Hey Dan, we only have three tickets sold for your show. Could you maybe post about it again?” I studied the words to be sure I read them right. Three tickets? Did he mean three hundred? Was the message intended for a lesser act, like Jeff Dunham and his puppets? How will the puppets react? I bet Peanut will have ALOT to say about this one. Unfortunately I read the message correctly, and more unfortunately, Jeff Dunham manages to sell more tickets than me to this day, just because he’s more talented and likable. The world is as cruel as it is unfair. I went back on Instagram, more desperate this time. I used the word please about five times. “Hey, please buy tickets now. We need to get an idea of how many people are going, so please get your tickets now and please tell your friends before I “please” myself in the head with a gun,” I wrote. Under pressure, I am an incredible and persuasive writer. Unfortunately, my message went unheeded, and I arrived at the venue with six tickets sold. As though having three more people than expected had the potential of raising my spirits, the booker informed me that the other three were comped tickets he gave to tourists who he met at a spin class. I did my act in front of three audience members and three fitness enthusiasts, all of them brought together by a shared desire to politely nod as I told jokes and looked out at the mostly empty room. Going into my closer, I watched a janitor start sweeping, getting an early jump on a purposeless night of work. The venue was just as clean as when I found it. I greeted the three audience members. They were very nice and told me they had a great time. This was surprising because I could see their faces the entire show and their expressions told a different story. The stationary cyclists were equally, and eventually more enthusiastic than the people who came to see me on purpose. I waved goodbye to the tragedy-stricken-family-sized crowd and went back to my car. The car is a wonderful place to scream because of its soundproof nature, but you have to be careful of the fact that the front window is see through. Otherwise you run the risk of screaming in anger, then opening your eyes to see all six recent audience members staring at you with grave concern. You may then have to smile and wave, thinking you’re putting the car in reverse, slamming into the car in front of you, then driving away. That booker stopped booking me, and I embarked on my long journey of acceptance, perseverance, and tampered expectations. I learned that having a following does not mean you have a bunch of people who are willing to pay money, leave their homes, and see you. My videos are luckily humor-based (at least, when I write them well,) so it’s not like I have zero crossover. Maybe somewhere there is a person who makes taxidermy “how-to” videos who wants to cross over into standup. He would most likely have a harder time making that switch, even though his material would be easier to write. That being said, I struggle to sell tickets compared to other standup comedians with similar or smaller followings, and that can be hard to accept. I began to go on the road under similarly-false preconceptions about what followers mean. I would go to a city where I had ten thousand followers, and ten would show up. The ten that did show up got a good show. I have been doing standup for much longer than I’ve been making videos, but nevertheless, it’s hard to perform in rooms so small you don’t have to move your head to see everyone. If you’re selling a bunch of tickets on the road, you have the potential to have fun when you fly out to perform. You can afford to bring your friends, and afford to buy those friends matching sequin jumpsuits that you require them to wear at all times. Real fun. But if you don’t sell a lot of tickets, your experience is wildly different. I get on the plane to my shows nervous about whether I will make enough money to justify the flight, and I stay in the hotel the comedy club provides, if the comedy club provides accommodations. If I’m left to get my own hotel, I look for the cheapest place that hasn’t been mentioned in an article about a local homicide in the last six months. Because of that rule, Motel 6 is almost always out of the question. Leading up to the show, I am checking and refreshing the ticket count about ten times an hour, imagining what performing in front of the meager number will feel like. After shows, I am constantly trying to think up ways I can charm the manager so they will have me back at the club. I’ve considered resorting to doing magic tricks for them. Not all the shows on my last tour were poorly sold, but enough were to give me a sense of fear over my upcoming tour. I want to be clear: I have no issue performing for small crowds. I’ve performed for a single couple before, and will happily do it again (as long as it’s not the same couple--they left halfway through my set. I don’t know why they left, though I assume we can take agoraphobia off the table.) My fear as it relates to ticket sales is not selling enough to stay on the road. There is a limit to what a booking agent is willing to do for you. I have a wonderful booking agent, so wonderful that I know he has better things to do with his time than gamble on having me as a client for the rest of his life (but Ben, if you’re reading this, please keep believing in me. I will make over $2,000 in a year some day, you just wait.) So my fear is ever-present and has been for the last two years. You might think my anxiety is unsustainable, but almost every performer feels this way. Just look at every career comedian, who hasn’t died from overdose or suicide, or their wife killing them...okay, maybe it is unsustainable. Every comedian feels this way, even the famous ones. My friend Laura Peek, who is extremely funny and professional but is not yet a celebrity, was recently talking to Mark Normand, a famous comedian. She was telling him that she was worried about ticket sales in Chicago, and Mark looked at her and said, “hey...me too! Comedy!” It’s hard to imagine a man who regularly sells out theaters being worried about anything other than what kind of wrap to get around his solid-gol

Starting in late October, I will embark on my 2025 tour. Tickets are available for Sacramento, San Francisco, New York, Cleveland, and Boston, with more to be added soon. Buy tickets here. My first time touring was winter of last year, and as a way to ready myself for my upcoming travel, as well as subtly incentivize you to buy tickets (if you don’t, it’s fine--just get ready for months of angsty substack posts about destitution and hopelessness,) I’d like to tell you a little bit about what I learned on the road last year. It’s currently 5AM in Hollywood, a part of Los Angeles which is talked about incessantly outside the city while being ignored by the local government like a stuttering stepchild. I live near the Walk of Fame, a tourist attraction that somehow has less culture than Times Square. I stand with a backpack slung across my shoulder, on a corner just a few streets down from the stars with names like Bill Cosby, Chris Brown, and Benito Mussolini written on them. I am waiting to be picked up by my friend, AJ, who is as reliable as a well trained horse, and as intelligent as a horse that has been taught to count by tapping its hoof on the ground. I met AJ in Boston. He’s a large vegetarian, and like most mammalian herbivores, he holds in his eyes a kind of vacant knowingness. I don’t like using Uber, and I’m waiting for AJ to pick me up because Los Angeles refuses to have readily-available public transportation to the airport. Instead, LAX has a beautiful, intelligent system of transport already in place. The way LAX works--and this is really brilliant--is that you drive your car directly into four lanes of perpetually-gridlocked traffic that flows around one horseshoe. As you keep driving at two miles per hour, the traffic gets increasingly lighter because people decide to take their own lives instead of following through with their original plan of going to Jacksonville, Florida. Because you have to drive there, I opt to pay my friends to bring me to the airport. AJ was an obvious choice for me because he has a job as a delivery driver, which means he is already used to waking up early and has a saint’s patience when it comes to traffic. AJ has continued to be a fixture of my life on tour. Every time I wake up at 5AM, even if it’s just because I can’t sleep, I half expect a rickety old Prius to come creaking along my street to pick me up. The car rides with AJ to the airport have been lovely because we’re both generally delirious from sleep deprivation, which means laughs are easy to come by. “AJ, turn down this alleyway,” I say as we drive, with mischief in my eyes that are underscored by dark bags. “Why?” he replies, playing along. “AJ, I have a business opportunity down that alleyway that will revolutionize both of our financial futures.” “Are you going to buy fentanyl from a guy in that alleyway?” “Yes.” And we both giggle like idiots. After stepping out of AJ’s Prius, the sun only a suggestion on the horizon, I say goodbye, and turn toward the terminal with either excitement or dread, depending on what airline I was able to afford for this trip. If it’s Delta, it means I sold enough tickets the last go around to justify comfort. More often it’s Spirit or Frontier, but I’ve taken flights on even more obscure airlines. Have you ever taken a direct flight to Cleveland courtesy of Kyrgyzstan Airlines? The flight is smooth, but the only thing you can watch on the headrest TVs is an obscure horseback sport called Kok boru. I try to be friendly towards TSA. Sometimes it’s reciprocated, but often it’s met with the blank stare of a farmer looking at a cow that just mooed. Once I’m through, I walk into a world of chance. I never know exactly what I’m flying to. I’d like to share both a positive and negative experience, using Pittsburgh and Whistler as examples. A love letter to Pittsburgh: For cities in the United States, sometimes a bad reputation is the only thing that can save you. Nashville, to me, is getting uglier by the second. What was once a thriving artistic sanctuary, is now just a place where you’re forced to watch endless bachelorette parties parade across your condo window as you finish your work call with your managers at the “Buy and Pollute All The Clean Water In The World” start-up. This is because Nashville is known to be cool, and corporate money sniffs out cool like a pig sniffs out truffles. Because you rarely hear people clamoring to move to Pittsburgh, it has been temporarily saved from this level of development. I’m sure the city has changed significantly over the years, but when I drove into the city, a level of comfort washed over me like warm, if not a little polluted, river water. Pittsburgh was gorgeous. When I was there, I performed at a venue called the Bottlerocket Social Hall. It is the best venue I have ever performed at. The night of my show, I got to the venue early and went to the nearest coffee shop. It was called Grim Wizard, and it’s a goth coffee shop that plays heavy metal instead of Nora Jones. Don’t like that? Go to Starbucks, snowflake--we’ll be over here drinking espresso and playing Ozzy Osbourne pinball. This was the first of many small businesses I encountered in Pittsburgh that actually felt like someone’s passion. Not a cookie-cutter coffee shop made so a rich guy’s wife has something to do with her miserable, Percocet-fueled life. It had real, honest-to-goodness vision. There was also a goth weightlifting gym called Death Comes Lifting. Do you know the sign of a good local economy? Industrious goths. When I got hungry, I went to a diner where seven men, still in their reflective construction vests, were sitting in a row at the counter. I assumed they were doing road work and pot hole fill-ins, which is desperately needed in Pittsburgh. The roads look like the face of a life long frycook. There was one exhausted-looking server, and one overly-energetic chef you could see through a little window where he would plop down plates like a Vegas dealer distributing cards in a game of Blackjack. When I walked in, the server looked at me, made no attempt to alter her facial expression, and nodded to a stool. I sat down and proceeded to eat the best, cheapest breakfast I’ve ever had, while listening to the road crew talk to each other, picking up several new racial slurs on the way. I walked away from the diner with a full belly and a lot of questions about what a “gourd salesman” was. Maybe it was a fluke--I was only there for a day and a night in total--but it felt like the city of Pittsburgh greeted me with open, heavily-tattooed arms. As the sun went down that night, a crackling liveliness seemed to emerge like fireflies on the sidewalks, and every bar had a bartender who you knew at least five regulars had quietly fallen in love with. Do bar owners specifically select women and men who are easy to go head over heels for, or is it something about their control over alcohol that gives bartenders their evil, seductive charm? The show was perfect. The microphone cut out several times, which gave me something to talk about for about ten minutes before having to dip into material. Speaking to audience members after was a dream--everyone was courteous, no one overstayed or understayed their welcome. I’ve always been happy with my audience. They aren’t a massive bunch, but those who show up tend to be kind people and good laughers. There was a man in the crowd who told me and my feature Killian he was a camera man for gay porn in the 90s, and we ended up talking to him for an hour. As I went to bed later, a thought swam through my head that 24 hours before I would have never anticipated having: I need to come back to Pittsburgh. Whistler is not all Sunshine and Rainbows. (Whistler is not the actual city this happened in, don’t go after any Whistler venues.) People have been perplexed with the delusion and apparent stupidity of stand-up comedians in recent months. Comedians with podcasts have been bringing on guests that are war criminals, sex criminals, or reanimated German dictators who assure the audience they no longer want to take over the whole of Europe and only want to promote their supplement brand. These guests beg the question: how could these comedians be so deluded to think their actions will be received positively? Well, I have an answer, and it’s one I got in Whistler. I learned, on two cold nights, in front of even colder audiences, that a comedian needs to be delusional almost to the point of psychosis in order to make it through the part of their career I am currently trudging through. Those delusions don’t necessarily need to be the evil, self-aggrandizing kind, but they do need to exist, ferrying you through the rough waters of reality on a ship of fantasy. My first show in Whistler was so poorly sold that we had to do it in the smaller upstairs room, which was still too big for the tiny crowd that showed up. People were seated so far away from one another that there was no chance for them to form a real audience, just a patchwork of infrequent chuckles. The worst thing about shows like this is that when you don’t sell a lot of tickets, the club sort of ignores you. Servers are less excited because they don’t have as many tables, and therefore expect fewer tips. The manager of the club will sort of slink around, and sometimes not even show up at all. It feels like you failed an entire group of people that you didn’t know existed before your plane landed, and it’s hard to be funny for an hour when you just walked through the kitchen and heard a waitress’s forlorn sigh. You need delusion to get through these shows--the kind of delusion where you tell yourself, “It won’t always be like this--some day I’ll sell enough tickets for people here to be excited, some day the manager won’t roll his eyes at me. Some day, I’ll sell so many ti

The demographic of young, lonely men has been endlessly speculated on. Why are there so many young, lonely men? We need to save these young, lonely men! Honey, come quick, I think there's a young, lonely man under our bed! I was member of this demographic for the better part of my early to mid-twenties. If there is any consolation for those depressing, isolating years, it is that I now have firsthand experience in a matter of important public discourse. As a second consolation, I’m now really good at positioning five screens all playing separate podcasts around me while I eat so it feels like I have friends. "Lonely" is a very broad umbrella. Lonely men sort of have ranks, much like the volunteer militias many of them eventually end up taking part in. I was a gymcel: someone who sublimated sexual frustration into exercise. I didn't know I was a gymcel until I heard the term when I was twenty five years old. Sometimes you spend four years thinking something is a personality quirk that ends up being a diagnosable mental disorder--go figure. What interests me about my time as a gymcel was my media intake. I read several books and listened to countless podcasts during this period, and looking back at it, the degree to which I was reinforcing my isolated and emotionally-stunted lifestyle was shocking. The material I was drawn to at the time is what I want to write about here. There is an entire subgenre of self-help geared towards isolated young men that does not actually serve to help them round out their lives, but instead sends them deeper down the road of alpha brain, testosterone replacement therapy, and morning routines so constrictive they rival the schedule prisoners have in offshore enhanced interrogation facilities. It's a genre I refer to as Militarized Self-Help. When you look at David Goggins, it almost takes a moment to register him. There is an uncanniness about the width of his shoulders coupled with the comparative narrowness of his head, it's like the statue of a head put on an exceedingly wide pedestal. An easter island head on an endless beach. He almost has a monk's disposition, but where a monk's face is calm and serene, David’s is always somewhat angry and aggrieved like you just told him there was no estimate on how long his connecting flight would be delayed. David is a holy man of sorts who pushes a brand of asceticism to the youth of America. Instead of walking on hot coals, he runs for hundreds of miles at a time and does thousands of pull-ups in the span of a day. He speaks very little about relationships and friendships, and when he does, he usually advises that you should not allow them to take time away from your pursuits as a high achiever. In college, I loved David Goggins. I was already working out excessively, but he gave me the license to work out more. I was already isolated, but he told me isolation was good. David Goggins seemed to be a kindred spirit, which should have been concerning because he never seems to smile, laugh, or exhibit any of the normal human emotions one would associate with joy. Goggins and his supporters praise this lack of emotion, seeing happiness as frivolous and ultimately meaningless. To them, one should sacrifice happiness for the extremely meaningful pursuit of running really far and doing a bunch of pushups. There is this resentment in this sentiment that always comes through so clearly in the comment section under a David Goggins video. Basically, men who feel like society has given them no outlet can only find comfort in physical exertion to the point of self harm. Here are a few I found all under the same video. David Goggins wasn't the only man I listened to for advice at this time. Jocko Willink and Tim Kennedy were also integral parts of my descent into cynical, self-flagellating destruction. Each of these influencers are ex-military, they all preached similar doctrines, and they were all extremely popular with young men like me. Each one has the body of a super hero and will often recite war stories with the mix of self-aggrandizement and false humility which is a hallmark of this sort of influencer. I don't use influencer as a pejorative here; that is simply what they are, and understanding them as such helps to understand their rise and popularity. There is an attempted smokescreen used in the self-help influencer space which is both common and effective: denying that you are a self-help influencer. These influencers do this because they want to separate themselves from the earth-mama yoga influencers who tend to be women and push Yoni Eggs instead of creatine and Black Rife Coffee. Both groups spend a lot of time preaching to people who already share their mindset, both groups offer a feeling of superiority through the acceptance of esoteric principles, and both groups can really ruin a gathering by getting five beers deep and telling everyone “No, you need to read this book with a clearly insane person on the cover, it changed my life.” Jocko Willink and David Goggins have untold numbers of YouTube videos with titles like, "Building Unbreakable Discipline" and "Do It Yourself," which are primarily watched by men who already have ample discipline and already do everything themselves. These videos are not primarily for the slovenly, unmotivated hordes who need a guiding light to direct them out of their hedonistic lifestyles. They are made to reinforce the tendencies of overly rigid young men who see empathy as a feminist-marxist curse which will bring about a pagan apocalypse. They also reinforce the idea that people who are not hyper-motivated, regimented, and willing to crawl through broken glass at a moment's notice, are ‘soft.’ This idea hurt me most of all, looking down at people who took time to enjoy their lives. I saw students at my college who got together and had a few beers as weak, and that made me the perfect audience for Militarized Self-Help. I mean, do you think someone who doesn't already have a rigid mindset is going to buy a book with this kind of cover? What I'm trying to say is, reinforcing your own world view isn't a strategy for self improvement--it's the opposite. It entrenches you deeper in preexisting patterns and tendencies. What most of the people who are purchasing books like, “You Can't Hurt Me” actually need is fiction. They need to get into the minds and lives of characters who aren't hotdog-skinned 50-year-olds fighting male pattern baldness brought on by massive steroid cycles. Reading books about how you're a bitch is actually a cowardly thing to do if you already think that about yourself. Pushing yourself to read something that you think is frivolous is actually an act of bravery, because you’re pushing past mental boundaries set not only by yourself, but by society as a whole. I'm not saying things like discipline are bad--I have a morning routine and a workout regimen, and I've been doing Jiu-Jitsu for about ten years (I’m not that good, but I’ve recently started to hold my own against this 15-year-old in class who's been giving me problems.) My issue is with a specific type of discipline being peddled like a supplement to men who don't need more of it. I was given the message that solitude, exercise, and hard work are what life really is, and if you stray from them you're being lazy. For me, that turned out to be completely untrue. Solitude and hard work came easily to me, because I never had to interrogate how I was feeling or deal with other people on an emotional level, which is what I was actually afraid of. If you think deadlifting 500 pounds is hard, I wonder if you've ever talked to a stranger at a party and tried to find something in common with them. Both are just as strenuous, though I’ve yet to see if the latter is helped by wearing a weight lifting belt. Anyone spouting that friends are a liability because they get in the way of your plans to conquer the world is a weird idiot. Do you know why people try to conquer the world? Because they don't have any friends. Friends are the whole point to this stupid life we're living, and no amount of push-ups or hack squats is going to make that less true. Underneath all of these concepts of machismo and solitude is something even darker. The majority of these materials serve as a recruitment tool for the military. There is a reason most of the military influencers were in the special forces, even though the special forces make up a comparatively small portion of the military. Their recollections of specifically-targeted missions sanitize the reality and scope of war. Hearing Tim Kennedy recall his team killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is a story which is wrapped in a tight bow, and doesn't mention the countless civilians killed by less targeted American action in the Middle East. I only became aware of the nefarious undertones of these influencers material much later, but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I think about it. The American Military Industrial Complex has many clandestine tools for recruitment, but I didn't know one of them was being used on me. At the time, I was already firm in my stance that American involvement in the Middle East was unjustified, and wrote off the actions of these men as good deeds done in a bad situation. But if I’d been younger when I was exposed to these messages, who knows what I’d have felt. The influencers I mention both directly and indirectly espouse the idea that the American Military is the gold standard for personal development. That’s not true; it's a specific organization with the specific goal to train soldiers. Looking at it as anything other than that is a patronizing fantasy. I am now thirty years old, so I'm about five years removed from what I would refer to as self-imposed solitude. I try not to regret the days I spent listening to and reading material that reinforced my most harmful qualities, but it's a tall task. Recently, I've become an avid fan of f

I met Rick in Boston at an open mic. At the time, I lived in western Massachusetts, but ventured to Boston once or twice a week. Two hours there, two hours back. The drive to Boston always made me feel the kind of excitement only the naive have access to, their nerve endings yet to be ground down by years of disappointment. My mood on the drive back from Boston would vary depending on how my set went. If I did well, my head would be swimming with fantasies of becoming a professional comedian. The thought would soak in my brain like a narcotic; not a good narcotic, but one of those awful homemade ones like krokodil or jenkem. The euphoria was always tainted by its delusional basis. I was not good at standup at the time, so when I did well it was generally due to an overly receptive audience--a type of audience that does far more harm to a young comedian than a hostile one. When an audience is mean, you may feel bad for a few days afterward and consider quitting, which is as healthy to a young comedian as a brisk jog is to a marathon runner. When an audience is too supportive, and you're showered with waves of ill-gotten laughter, you risk wandering through the bowels of open mic comedy for the rest of your life. You will become a derelict bottom feeder, shambling from stage to stage with your tawdry material, trying to get laughter out of crowds like a man tries to get nicotine from cigarette butts on the sidewalk. If my set went poorly, I would always have a mind-numbing, soul-deadening drive back to Amherst, Massachusetts. The scattered rows of tail lights in front of me would blur and grow into orbs of red like the auras of twin demons, and my thoughts would sink into hopelessness and suicide. These weren't the kinds of suicidal ideations that would make a therapist concerned, they were just the defense mechanism of an artist who wasnt quite there yet in terms of talent. It was my brain saying, "well, either we have a lot of work to do, or we could kill ourselves…and doesn't the latter sound easier?" Every time I’ve seen a therapist, they always ask, "have you ever thought seriously about harming yourself or others?" and my answer is always something along the lines of, "Obviously…but not really." I wonder if there is a single person on earth who answers that question with a simple "no." Maybe the Dalai Lama, but if I had to wear that robe every day I might have some second thoughts about the everlasting tranquility of mindful existence. The night I met Rick in Boston was an anomaly, because I had a bad set, but I still drove home with that buzzing narcotic feeling that usually signaled success. My success that night was not on stage: it was in the parking lot of a bar called "Tavern At The End Of The World," when I made Rick laugh. That night, I had shown up late and was number thirty five on the list. Luckily, my friend Killian was there, and he introduced me to a group that would become my friends for the year and a half I lived in Boston: Zack, Jack, Kitra, and Rick. I was intimidated by all of them, but none more than Rick. I had seen him crush in a way that up to that point was unthinkable--by just being naturally funny. I clung to written material, and wouldn't dare deviate from it. Rick wrote jokes, but didn't need them. He had this ability to stand onstage, seemingly completely comfortable, and turn whatever the crowd gave him into something funny. "Where are you from?" Jack Burke asked me cordially. "Oh, western Mass. Not much of a scene out there, but there are a couple of good mics. Well, not 'good' like the mics out here, but they have a lot of normal people in the crowd. Well, not 'normal,' like you guys aren't normal or something. The scene out there is fun," I said, flinching and recoiling at each inane word that dropped out of my stupid mouth. "Cool," Jack said, kind of being an a*****e but also just moving the conversation along. Jack, Kitra, and Zack kept talking, but I noticed something to my right and turned. There was Rick. He was slight and wiry, with an intelligent, almost reptilian smile. He put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Western Mass, lots of Oxycontin out there." "Yeah," I replied, a little uncomfortable that someone was actually choosing to speak to me. "You know, the thing about Oxycontin is, it's great, but you always keep having to trade these sexual favors for it." I laughed, not just at what this strange, small man was saying, but at the way he was saying it. He was in his mid twenties, but sounded like a grandfather at the sweet spot of senility where he can still form thoughts and sentences, but is no longer fettered by the social contract. "Yeah," I said when I looked up. "And when you want more than one pill, you have to use both your hands." "Or your feet." "But not your mouth," I said, "You need your mouth to talk and remind everyone that you're straight." Now he laughed. Hard. Too hard for what the joke was, but God knows I was happy to take it. "I'm Rick," he said, extending a frail hand. "Dan," I replied, shaking his hand with extreme care, like I was handling a rare bird. Then, Rick turned to the group, interrupting them mid-conversation. They were happy to stop talking. I gathered that they respected Rick and wanted to know what he had to say. "Hey, this is Dan," Rick said. I waved awkwardly, and they returned the greeting with warm smiles. "Dan just said something really funny..."Rick said, and proceeded to recant our conversation to the group as I stood there awkwardly. As I expected, the punchline about using my mouth didn't hit as hard with them as it had with Rick. "...Well, I thought it was funny," he concluded, then turned back to me. We talked until the sun went down and the streetlights clicked on with their buzzing, yellow glow. Shabby men with thick coats began to congregate outside the liquor store next to us as if drawn by some natural internal compass, like salmon returning to their spawning ground. Rick told me about other mics I should go to, and which ones I should avoid. "Tomorrow at six, you should really check out Ed's basement. It's...really cool, lots of cool people go. It's like a salon of expression, or some other dumb shit like that," Rick mused, in his tone that was simultaneously sarcastic and sincere in a way I have never heard reproduced by another human being. I then followed him back into the tavern, which was loud and boisterous in a way that harkened back to a time where bars were for construction workers and alcoholics to blow off steam, and not built to appease tech job lackeys in Patagonia vests who have one and a half IPAs and call it a night. I would come to learn that Boston had several premiere mics with the same set-up the tavern had: a stage simply placed in the middle of an extremely loud bar. Can't get the attention of the alcoholics in the first fifteen seconds of your set? Welcome to hell, where you are resigned to perform three-to-five minutes of standup comedy to a room of people who seem completely unaware of your being there. I don't know what it feels like to be a ghost, but I do know what it feels like to look at a table full of people directly in front of me and ask them, "Hey how are you guys doing?" while my voice is amplified by two separate speakers, and not have a single one of them look up. Rick was completely unfazed by this set-up. He got everyone's attention milliseconds after taking the stage, and held it for the duration of his set as he talked about suicide and 9/11 (in millennial alt comedy, those are now looked at as two deeply hacky premises, but back then they were still on the table.) Watching this little man entertain a room full of people who seemed to be nowhere near his target demographic was incredible. After my set, where I managed to lose just about everyone in the room, I hopped in my car and drove the two hours back to Amherst. I already knew I would be driving the same route back to Boston the next day, to find out what was going on in Ed's Basement. Every famous scene that had a significant cultural impact had an equally-famous central meeting spot. The comedy boom of the 70s and 80s had the Comedy Store, the American punk explosion had CBGBs, and pedophiles had Epstein's Island. What is talked about less are the equally-fascinating meeting spots for scenes that never had a cultural impact. These scenes rise with the intention of nurturing a new generation of talent, and wither and die without seeing the light of day. Nevertheless, people's individual lives are forever changed by incubation in said scenes, and for me and about thirty other people, that scene was Ed's basement. The following night, I drove into Allston at about 6 pm, cruising slowly through its tangled, illogical streets to try and find parking. In 2017, Allston was in a transitional phase. It had a reputation for being a grimy enclave for would-be artists, which it wore with pride. Old brick buildings, standing three or four stories, housed the unshaved, unwashed future bass players of a generation. But prices were going up, and many of the dirtbag writers and musicians who would have lived there were relegated to other more obscure parts of Boston. For a few years, before almost everyone without family money was pushed out, there were two predominant camps of young people who lived there. Either college students whose parents could pay their rent on a halfway decent apartment, or real, honest-to-goodness city rats willing to hunker down in soon-to-be-condemned apartment buildings. The rich kids were numerous, and generally pleasant. They were young men who would try their hand at painting until they realized a job at their dad’s hedge fund might suit them better, and young women who wanted to be poets until they got treatment for their BPD and realized they just wanted to be happy. They lived similarly to everyone else, with one or two incongruities that you would figure out pretty quickly after me

Hank was lumbering back from the shotput circle when he saw a news truck with a big number three on its side. He watched as the crew piled out, two heavy set long haired men with goatees, and a small woman in a pants suit that was still somehow suggestive. She had a waterfall of blond hair gleaming in the morning sun. Hank thought it was funny how easy it was to tell who was the crew and who was in front of the camera. Even if they were all wearing the same outfit it would be easy to pick out the anchor. Hank would have loved one of the fat goateed men to deliver the news. "Ya hey, this is Frank with the news. A whole bunch of shit happened in Fairhaven today, let's go to Mike on the scene." "Ya hey thanks Frank, anyway ya, whole bunch of shit happening, ok back to you." Hank smiled at this thought as he made his way back to the shed. He then thought about how it was almost like the crew was assigned to their positions at birth. Sure you might see a small pretty woman in a film crew, but you never see one of those slobs delivering the news. They were like the guys he worked with at the DPW. Hank would sometimes try and picture them as anything other than what they were. He tried picturing Joey, his dumb racist boss, as a professor or a librarian. He pictured Rodger, the geezer of the crew, as a lawyer or a politician advocating for open container laws or universal basic lottery tickets. Sometimes Hank would look at himself in the mirror and try to picture himself living a different life. All he saw was a cumbersome body that felt like a burden to be dragged around and an ugly face full of crooked teeth. He even had an unfavorable view of his own brain which was always slipping into day dreams and could never process what someone told him the first time. He imagined himself out on a sale boat like some other boys in Marion, in one of those stupid polos or a pair of those ugly salmon colored short shorts that made you curse god for creating legs. He pictured himself at parties, talking to girls, one of them taking interest in him, going “I actually have a thing for ogres, do you want to go in another room and I can make out with you insane style?” Hank didn't know how girls talked. He would get fleeting images of a different life, but it would never stick, and he'd always find himself back in the office bathroom, or behind the shed at the Old Landing cemetery with Rodger shouting "Hey! Gentle giant! How long does it take you to piss?" Hank thought about Rodger, and if he'd still be working this summer. Rodger was close to seventy, but something in Hank knew he would be there. The other guys would always joke with Rodger about how he was going to die soon. Hank suspected the reason they had Rodger work groundskeeping at the grave yard was so all the other guys could laugh and say "Hey Rodge, instead of going home why don't you just claim a plot now?" Then Hank's mind slowly started to slip into daydream about the peace and quiet of Old Landing, when Bill screeched the gator to a halt in front of the shed. Hank flinched whenever he was brought back to the real world. “What are you doing?” Bill asked. “What?” said Hank, even though Hank was trying to say 'what' less so he could come off as less stupid. “I said what are you doing, just standing around.” “I, uh, I was waiting for you to tell me what to do.” Bill studied the kid for a moment before saying “good answer, at least you're not on your god damn phone. Hop in the gator were going to fill the water dispensers.” Hank nodded and hopped into the passenger seat. Bill wasn't the first adult to praise Hank for his unusually unplugged lifestyle. The truth was Hank was never on his phone, because he and his mother couldn't afford for him to have one, but Bill didn't need to know that. The sun was warm and gentle, and as the gator puttered along at eight miles per hour, the breeze cooled the light layer of sweat on Hank's face. They took the paved path up into the parking lot, and beyond the pavement, the tree line produced jack rabbits that grazed on the soon to be mowed greenery, looking up in suspicious intervals. “What are the news crews here for?” Hank asked, taking another peak at the crew, all of whom were leaning against the van, looking down on their phones at what Hank imagined were three very different versions of the internet. Bill glanced over at Hank incredulously. “You know why, don't you? They're here to see Abby.” Hank was embarrassed. He often found himself in situations where everybody but him seemed to know something. “I, uh, no I don't know who that is.” Bill stopped the gator in front of the athletic trainers office. He got out and grabbed one of the big orange water dispensers and Hank grabbed the other. He followed Bill to a spigot with a three foot hose attached, and Bill began to fill his dispenser. “Abby is a distance runner on the verge of breaking the state record in the mile.” Bill spoke in a way that made Hank feel this was something very important. Bill motioned for Hank to place the second dispenser next to the first. “I haven't heard of her, what grade is she in?” Hank asked. “Yours, she's a Junior, but she's homeschooled now. I don't think she could go to normal classes in school because-” Bill looked up at Hank, like he forgot who he was speaking to. He quickly finished by saying, “Well, she takes running pretty seriously, you'll see. Now grab your dispenser and load it in the back of the gator.” The water dispensers were ten gallons each and weighed about 80 pounds a piece. As Bill screwed on the lid of his respective cooler, he thought to himself that this was a way to show the kid he still had some strength in him. Bill had been filling and loading the coolers for so many years, his body, which should have been too old and brittle for such exertion, could somehow still handle the weight of the awkward heavy load. Bill prepared to heave one of the coolers onto the back of the gator. He stood tall to do some twists as a warm up, when Hank reached down with one hand to grab the side handle of the cooler in front of Bill, then grabbed the other the same way, and without so much as a grunt, lifted both up and into the back of the gator. The rear suspension compressed and squeaked to bear the weitht. Hank then lumbered back to the passenger side of the gator, while Bill, wide eyed, inspected the coolers. Bill thought there was no way they were full, water must have leaked out of them or something. But upon opening the lids he found them both to be filled to the brim. He looked at the kid, the width of him in the gator almost spilling into the driver's seat. “How the hell are you so strong?” Bill said, testing the heaviness of the coolers and finding he had to strain to budge them. Hank looked back over his shoulder with an embarrassed smile. “Oh, thanks. I like to lift weights, and I guess my dad was strong.” Bill nodded, and got into the gator. Hank sat quietly as Bill drove, he felt stupid for bringing up his dad. He tried to never do that out of fear of follow up questions. But Bill just drove, and they shared the silence men often share, each wanting to say things to each other, but deciding not to. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dandonohue.substack.com/subscribe