GET YOUR PETS (AND HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS)
This is a SECRET SOCIETY
I am going to get back into whaling with you in the secret room at the top of the stairs today.
But first, some public announcements…
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT 1:
On THURSDAY, June 27, I will be returning to your streamwaves with GET YOUR PETS at 3PM.
If you don’t know what this is, this is the thing where I, a person who used to be on actual television, now goes on the internet to talk to people’s cats, dogs, and other pets.
I find it very soothing to look at all your nice animals. They don’t have to be interesting.
So I hope you GET YOUR PETS and join us wherever you stream: INSTA, YOUTUBE, TWITCH, ETC.
Please see the secret room for a special code.
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT 2:
On Saturday I’ll be at SOLID SOUND with your friends, the comedians. This should be obvious by now.
But I’ll also officially announcing our JUDGE JOHN HODGMAN: ROAD COURT tour, plus a special pre-sale code.
(Unofficially: we’re going to NYC, Philadelphia, DC, Pittsburgh, Ann Arbor, Madison, St Paul, Burlington, Portland BC, Turners Falls, Brookline MA, Vancouver BC, Seattle, Portland OR, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
If you can’t be at Solid Sound, I’ll also be sharing that code first in the SECRET ROOM on Saturday, and then publicly and all over the place on July 1.
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT 3:
Finally, I want to publicly thank the three young guys with mustaches, and the one woman with the cool bag, for saying hi to me and GRIFFIN NEWMAN in public in Bushwick last Thursday.
When I am walking around my own neighborhood these days, I’m in my head so much that I usually feel like sweaty, invisible ghost. So it was very nice to be seen by the apparently psychic youngsters of Bushwick.
Griffin and I had gone to Bushwick to see HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS. Which is the name of a movie, not a wildlife feature of Bushwick.
And please may I tell you: that movie is a God-or-Whatever-Damned Delight.
You will watch that and maybe wonder, is this for me? And the answer is YES: it is for everyone. I have not stopped thinking about it.
Not only is it very funny, and not only is it beautifully half-photographed and half-animated, and not only is director Mike Cheslik a virtuosic visual storyteller, and not only is Ryan Brickson Cole Tews a quadratically-named, rubber-bodied, physical comedy savant…
But also: the whole thing is lit from within with the wild energy of two old friends from high school saying the words “HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS” to each other at a bar, and then knowing—without any question—that they were now required to spend a Wisconsin winter in the woods following those words to their completely illogical conclusion, which is this movie. And how it came to be made.
That is a good impulse. When you get older, it’s easier to resist the dare/curse of your own strange ideas. To doubt them, or fear them, and reject them. To become that sweaty ghost, unable to touch the world, afraid of making a single move.
So I’m glad I got out of my own neighborhood and head to see that movie, and I’m glad those young people were there to see the ghost. I would like to move to Bushwick and become their dad.
OH! On July 1, you can follow my and Griffin’s PRECISE FOOTSTEPS in Bushwick IF YOU’D LIKE.
But now there are some secrets and whaling news to share with you, but that happens up stairs…
