Jun 2, 2023·edited Jun 2, 2023Liked by Alex Dobrenko`
Here’s my question: While you’ve made it clear that you love your wife, we don’t know what else you love. At the risk of starting another beef with @Mike Sowden. What do you love?
As a wife guy, I only love my wife. Through my love for her exists my love for all other things - the sun, moon, animals, and stars as well. When one becomes a wife guy one gives up love of all other things in the known world. There is no other way.
For real tho: idk love is a strong word! I love movies in movie theaters with giant popcorns and refillable Diet Cokes (@michael estrin says this is only USA thing , so I also love USA), I love my parents and my family and all my friends. I love figuring shit out with friends that makes us laugh cuz we understand something that we didn’t before. I love reading stuff and going “whoa” cuz it was so good or made me think of something I’d never though of before.
I love my son and watching him become a new guy every few days and I love impersonating him cuz everything he says is so funny. MAMA HELP ME DADA HELP ME is my new fav. The last one was ‘ISARIGHT THERE MAMA” when we ask him where something is.
I love working out lol i have some shame around it maybe cuz its a bro thing or whatever bvur it makes my brain not hate itself
I love doing drugs but i dont anymore and i love that too.
I love helping people talk through their problems and figure it out and realize that its not so serious or that it is that serious
I love trying to change peoples minds but i also love knowing that its an impossible thing to do lol.
I love love love podcasts
And libraries i shoulda put libraries earlier I fucking love libraries. What a concept.
I love the movie wings of desire and a serious man and a bunch of others
I love being a dumbass goofball
I love being able to work my shit out to a live audience of all of you and feeling that people seem to dig it and connect
I love number based validation even tho i know its bad
I love therapy and talking about my fucking feelings
I love computers like a lot like keyboard shortcuts i am crazy for, and just all things computer related, like computers were my best friends before i had real friends and i love them for that
I love acting and doing improv and being a goof but do not love that i dont get to do either enough that makes me sad
I love rambling for way too long with lists about things i love
OK Q: what are 3 things u love and 3 things u hate
The best part of vacation is walking out of work on the last day before the trip begins. Total freedom. Once I’m there I begin to mourn how brief it is.
Three things I love besides my wife (that’s a tough limit, by the way):
1. My offspring (including the grandkids). I’d be even more selfish and self-centered if they hadn’t opened my heart.
2. Pizza. As a food, as a subculture, as a means of self-expression.
3. Performing and teaching not really two different things). There’s nothing like standing in front of a roomful of people, capturing their attention, then leaving them with something they didn’t have before.
Things I hate: besides the ghost of Richard Nixon, not much. Things I world have hated in my youth, I try not to give my attention to anymore.
okok im for SURE not asking you what you love unless its available on a podcast hahah
here's one: do you think all humans are writers or its just that some have a better facility for communicating with interest WHAT THEY KNOW (the best of "writing")
I think everyone has an infinite supply of interesting stuff to express and share, though most don't ever get the opportunity to do so. It's a privelage to click clack on the keyboard for hours and not one that most humans are lucky enough to experience. I also think people are made to believe that they aren't 'creative types' and so there's this big self censorship shit going on, which is also not great. But I think if you sat down with anyone in the world and ate their favorite meal, by the end they'd have told you a story that's better than almost any book ever written.
Thanks for telling the world that you love your wife. I dearly love my wife as well. It's so wholesome to share these crazy times together. Do you want a share a moment with us that describes why she's awesome?
what a simple yet complex question! The first thing that came to mind is how cool she is with me being super annoying at supermarkets, like we'll be really far from each other at opposite ends of the aisle and I'll start screaming "Honey! Honeybuns!" at her and she gets mortified bc she hates the attention being on her but also I know she's told me she secretly thinks its funny. Or like another example -
I was doing an improv show and I'm up in the 'booth' running the lights and lauren really hates when all the attention is on her but, again, she has told me she secretly sorta likes it, so before the first group that performed I would scream from the back, "hey everyone I just wanna take a minute to celebrate the VIP of the evening, the VIP of my life, Lauren my wife." and everyone would clap and clap and clap
and then before the second group I'd do the same thing
and then before our group went I did the same thing again
So I guess Lauren is awesome because she puts up with my dumb shit that sure is sorta funny but also probably a lil annoying.
also she's just so talented at everything and doesn't brag about any of it whereas I am the opposite - not great at anything and bragging about it all the time.
Thanks for this, this is awesome. I wrote the question yesterday when we were out dancing together.
She was smiling left to right, was so into the moment - I just loved her unbridled enthusiasm, her joy in this moment. I love how into life she is, which can be also hard sometimes - when life is not joyful. She feels fully and I love being part of that and feel my feelings as well, no matter what they are. We're in this together.
Idk if its my signature dish but it is the dish I eat 2-4x a day and I know its gross but I dont care I'm sick of hiding it SO HERE IT IS -- I eat cottage cheese with protein powder and blueberries and grape nuts. I KNOW IT sounds bad but its honestly amazing and I could eat it forever and I have been known to eat it like 5x a day. It's also just so easy to make and I dont have to think about it.
also I am, in the parlance of the bro, BULKING by which I mean lifting weights and supposed to have a lot of protein a day and this is just a super fast way to do that.
if you would like to unsubscribe I understand I really do
I'd like to ask you about comedy/humor and how someone who's autistic can tap into this side of their writing.
Mainly because I'm known for my seriousness, literal thinking and explosive feelings for inanimate objects, but also sometimes I make people laugh and I'm not sure why. This happened a lot in high school. I'd say something and the people around me would burst into laughter. It felt really good to make people laugh. I'd try to scan their faces, replay the situation/quotes/words in my head, but the context really eludes me. So as a default, I don't try to be funny much unless I'm one-on-one with someone in person and I know I can test their limits of friendship by trying to be funny. Anyways, I think I'm funny sometimes. And I'd like to be funny more of the time, especially in my writing.
hello from another autistic hilarious person (though I am not Alex!). I think autistic people are hilarious in our own ways. Sometimes, it can feel like people are laughing AT us when we're not making a joke – that is no good. But I like to think of it as my brilliant brain functioning on a whole different level, a focused comedy, and welcoming people into that hilario space.
Okay, there are a few layers to this. First, and i do not mean this in a gotcha! sorta way, I think the first step is to free yourself from the goal of being funny. Because when someone is trying to be funny, that's what the audience sees. And someone *trying* to be funny is not the same thing as someone being funny.
Like, you already said that you are often funny and you don't know why. That's great. I would argue that you don't have to know why! In other words, funny is a byproduct. A result of something else.
So what is that something else? My best bet is on 'the truth.' People laugh when you say true things because people laugh when they are surprised and people are surprised by the truth. Because it's the exception and not the rule of day to day life. So when someone says the truth everyone's like oh shit that's right but they don't say oh shit that's right they laugh with recognition.
Ok so 'tell the truth' that's great Alex super easy and very helpful thank you.
How do you do that? Here are some ideas: Write about what it feels like from your perspective to, for a meta but useful example, try to be funny. Like, what are the parts of that experience that trip you up or make you ashamed or afraid (note: only do this if its stuff youve worked through, not fresh trauma that's gonna destroy you because youre not ready to talk about / share it). But that's just one example of a truth that only you can share.
And so if you share that, it might be funny! Or it might not, that's not for us to decide. That's for someone later to decide. Like actually, send it to some friends and ask them what they think. I love when my editor friends add comments like 'lol' to parts of my posts cuz I know they're working. It's like standup. Standups don't know what works until they try. The funny comes in the conversation between writer and reader.
So my question back to you is also a bit of a prompt regarding all of this -- what is it like being autistic and trying to be funny? Cuz like, that's fascinating to me, as someone who is into comedy to learn how other types of minds think about it etc. But that's already getting sidetracked - what's it like for you? Are there examples of when you tried being funny and it bombed? Also what sort of stuff do you usually find funny?
Gosh darn if this isn’t the best $5 and change I spend each month. Quote me to everybody you want. This gal right here is a lifer.
So hmm. I receive your input around not trying to be funny and it pokes at something that I do feel is somewhat universally shared among neurodiverse folk: this feeling that everywhere we go, there is an element of trying required.
This means for me that I am not my instinctual self when I’m around people. I am the Observer, stringing together what TJ laughed at the last time we all had lunch and then I’m watching to see who laughed the hardest and if I can surmise why.
So trying to be funny starts in deeply laboring to understand and know someone. Which does have a bit of heartache around the edges, right? If I love you or find commonality or a “tug of sameness” my mind also begins to commit to memory all of my interactions with you. Because I want to be able to reach you with what I share. The curious thing here is this is how I offer a lot of writing guidance. Unless you are writing an academic thesis, I am reading someone’s work and asking, “Have you let me inside? Are you letting us in, or is this an arm’s length piece?” And I ask this only because I know what it’s like to write in a way that keeps people 10 yards away. And so I can sniff this out in someone’s writing and come alongside and go, “let’s try this instead.”
Anyways as for what I find funny? I love the shit where someone has worked really hard to build something and they completely forget that humans have to use it. Like the stairwell that ends at a brick wall. Or the kitchen island that has 1” of counter space on the sides of the sink. Like, perfect: you built a lagoon, not an island. That stuff has me in stitches: when we think we are doing the right thing and it falls flat. To your point, I see myself in these mistakes. I have a lifetime of thinking I’m on my way to success and it just bottoms out. And only in the last few years have I been able to see the comedy more than the heartache in this.
To wrap up, I will share a story with you that sums up why online dating did not ever work for me. This happened on more than one occasion, more than one person:
Non-description Person No. 431: “So I said, how bout them brown bananas??”
Me: Oh. Bananas.
Person: Yeaaaahhhh hahahaha! Why aren’t you laughing?
Me: Oh, I laugh when something is funny.
End scene. End date. End all interactions. Ghosted full stop.
it is super interesting how comedy requires and also plays with the idea of psychological safety. its why bad agro comedy is really painful imo cuz like, it violates that sense of safety that's pretty essential to creating room for laughing and all the other good stuff...
anyway I for one would love to read more about your experience of trying to be funny !!
just be sure to quote the "gosh darn" part accurately or you'll hear from the lawyers i keep on retainer for internet friendship violations. (they've not been very busy the last few years, so they'll be watching closely.)
oh goodness. the cavernous human sink hole of reddit ... this thread gives me a lot of feelings. nevertheless, thank you for sharing. i will keep scrolling and asking questions like, "how did human hands build that? did they shimmy between the brick walls to pile on the mortar? when did they get a lemonade break?" also i appreciate the push to try writing about trying to be funny. maybe one day.
p.s. i tried googling what "bad agro comedy" is because i don't know what that means and google wasn't very helpful. i'm trying to surmise what you mean, but i am coming up empty. no rush on this, but if you (or someone else reading this) have 2 seconds to share an example, i'd really appreciate it.
what if i told you that maybe one day was today! Like literally, you are already writing about it ! so you've done the hardest part (this is my high school soccer coach pep talk)
also a more upbeat reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/DesirePath/ - its all about paths that humans make by way of just walking rather than the paths that are made for us
Hello! Pardon my intrusion (if it is one) but I'm fascinated by this conversation. I'm not autistic, but I've always been fascinated by different kinds of brains... I guess what people now call "neurodiversity". The young fellow who trains us where I go to exercise has never told me that he's "on the spectrum", but I suspect that he is. He's super smart, and he's also super funny. I've always felt that what makes him funny is, as Alex points out, he speaks the truth. And it's a particular, idiosyncratic truth but a truth that people recognize all the same. And the shock and surprise of someone speaking that truth makes people laugh. As a young person, I learned to get laughs that way. Once you start doing it, it's actually not that hard to come up with things to say or point out that most people will never utter.
agreed. It's almost like being ND which I certainly am just gives me a lil bit of a leg up on seeing the world in weird and interesting ways that make sense to me and, bc they are often true, make sense to others but aren't stuff most people would say or think about on their own (this is also the recipe for good art often)
ANSWER: Yes! The bigger question is: Do people still offer me acting jobs? And the answer to that is.... not a lot! I mean I audition, and obviously this stuff is feast and famine, so who knows in a week i could be telling you that I'm booking all the time. But like, I've been auditioning a lot for commercials in the last week, and got a call back I did today and one on Monday. Will either of those turn into a job? I fuckin hope so but i cannot say for sure I simply cannot.
Q: Do canadians have a different relationship to work than americans?
ANSWER: How the hell would I know? ANSWER NO. 2: I doubt it. We're not that different from you 🥲. Still very much Western Civilization, Protestant Work Ethic, 40 hour work week, Capitalist pressure to produce, etc etc etc. To my mind, the biggest differences between us and you are the way we conduct ourselves (that's very vague I know, and also doesn't apply across the board), and guns.
PS, back to your answer... your acting reel on your website is so great! For what it's worth from someone with no connections or pull or friends in high places.
And... and... addendum. Please excuse my casual mention of guns. That's a whole... horrible ball of wax. I don't mean to be flippant. But it's true—that is one big difference.
totally hear you on the guns thing. I think that's what separates america from everyone tbh. i've been thinking a lot about that, like how our country is in a big ol chekov's gun situation...
speaking of pringles I had the trader joe's knockoff ones and they were too fake healthy
What is this is this a question
embarrassing u can’t tell
Never question chips
YOU CANT CALL THEM CHIPS
seriously I just learned this -- they are not legally allowed to be called chips because a chip must be made from cutting a banana.
Pringles (and TJ knockoffs)a are made from instant potato mix and thusly MUST be called crisps did you know that???
Q: what's a fun fact that you know that most dont and DO NOT make it about T swift
Here’s my question: While you’ve made it clear that you love your wife, we don’t know what else you love. At the risk of starting another beef with @Mike Sowden. What do you love?
As a wife guy, I only love my wife. Through my love for her exists my love for all other things - the sun, moon, animals, and stars as well. When one becomes a wife guy one gives up love of all other things in the known world. There is no other way.
For real tho: idk love is a strong word! I love movies in movie theaters with giant popcorns and refillable Diet Cokes (@michael estrin says this is only USA thing , so I also love USA), I love my parents and my family and all my friends. I love figuring shit out with friends that makes us laugh cuz we understand something that we didn’t before. I love reading stuff and going “whoa” cuz it was so good or made me think of something I’d never though of before.
I love my son and watching him become a new guy every few days and I love impersonating him cuz everything he says is so funny. MAMA HELP ME DADA HELP ME is my new fav. The last one was ‘ISARIGHT THERE MAMA” when we ask him where something is.
I love working out lol i have some shame around it maybe cuz its a bro thing or whatever bvur it makes my brain not hate itself
I love doing drugs but i dont anymore and i love that too.
I love helping people talk through their problems and figure it out and realize that its not so serious or that it is that serious
I love trying to change peoples minds but i also love knowing that its an impossible thing to do lol.
I love love love podcasts
And libraries i shoulda put libraries earlier I fucking love libraries. What a concept.
I love the movie wings of desire and a serious man and a bunch of others
I love being a dumbass goofball
I love being able to work my shit out to a live audience of all of you and feeling that people seem to dig it and connect
I love number based validation even tho i know its bad
I love therapy and talking about my fucking feelings
I love computers like a lot like keyboard shortcuts i am crazy for, and just all things computer related, like computers were my best friends before i had real friends and i love them for that
I love acting and doing improv and being a goof but do not love that i dont get to do either enough that makes me sad
I love rambling for way too long with lists about things i love
OK Q: what are 3 things u love and 3 things u hate
I love salty snacks
I love suntan lines
I love going to more than being there
whoa that third one got me like 🤔🤔🤔
The best part of vacation is walking out of work on the last day before the trip begins. Total freedom. Once I’m there I begin to mourn how brief it is.
There seems to be a correlation between being a substacker and loving libraries too much.
Three things I love besides my wife (that’s a tough limit, by the way):
1. My offspring (including the grandkids). I’d be even more selfish and self-centered if they hadn’t opened my heart.
2. Pizza. As a food, as a subculture, as a means of self-expression.
3. Performing and teaching not really two different things). There’s nothing like standing in front of a roomful of people, capturing their attention, then leaving them with something they didn’t have before.
Things I hate: besides the ghost of Richard Nixon, not much. Things I world have hated in my youth, I try not to give my attention to anymore.
okok im for SURE not asking you what you love unless its available on a podcast hahah
here's one: do you think all humans are writers or its just that some have a better facility for communicating with interest WHAT THEY KNOW (the best of "writing")
I think everyone has an infinite supply of interesting stuff to express and share, though most don't ever get the opportunity to do so. It's a privelage to click clack on the keyboard for hours and not one that most humans are lucky enough to experience. I also think people are made to believe that they aren't 'creative types' and so there's this big self censorship shit going on, which is also not great. But I think if you sat down with anyone in the world and ate their favorite meal, by the end they'd have told you a story that's better than almost any book ever written.
Q: who are some writers you really dig
hmmmm
soo many here goes the first take
roth dos passos kerouc updike conroy blount h.s thompson mary oliver jean rhys
kesey bolano henry miller anne patchett
bradbury shelby foote
hemingway faulkner
that last for humor try "the rievers"
ok thats just lookin for the car keys ha....styron roger angell e.b. white
jim harrison
jp dunleavy
my sister: lily king
(paid plug)
sister reveal
yeah
like she needs my help....gabriel garcia marquez orwell
i forget alot
my kid sister would cringe....
shit i just realised you could refer me to a past post lol
Thanks for telling the world that you love your wife. I dearly love my wife as well. It's so wholesome to share these crazy times together. Do you want a share a moment with us that describes why she's awesome?
what a simple yet complex question! The first thing that came to mind is how cool she is with me being super annoying at supermarkets, like we'll be really far from each other at opposite ends of the aisle and I'll start screaming "Honey! Honeybuns!" at her and she gets mortified bc she hates the attention being on her but also I know she's told me she secretly thinks its funny. Or like another example -
I was doing an improv show and I'm up in the 'booth' running the lights and lauren really hates when all the attention is on her but, again, she has told me she secretly sorta likes it, so before the first group that performed I would scream from the back, "hey everyone I just wanna take a minute to celebrate the VIP of the evening, the VIP of my life, Lauren my wife." and everyone would clap and clap and clap
and then before the second group I'd do the same thing
and then before our group went I did the same thing again
So I guess Lauren is awesome because she puts up with my dumb shit that sure is sorta funny but also probably a lil annoying.
also she's just so talented at everything and doesn't brag about any of it whereas I am the opposite - not great at anything and bragging about it all the time.
ok ur turn whats a reason you loves your wife
Thanks for this, this is awesome. I wrote the question yesterday when we were out dancing together.
She was smiling left to right, was so into the moment - I just loved her unbridled enthusiasm, her joy in this moment. I love how into life she is, which can be also hard sometimes - when life is not joyful. She feels fully and I love being part of that and feel my feelings as well, no matter what they are. We're in this together.
Q: What’s your signature dish and why?
Idk if its my signature dish but it is the dish I eat 2-4x a day and I know its gross but I dont care I'm sick of hiding it SO HERE IT IS -- I eat cottage cheese with protein powder and blueberries and grape nuts. I KNOW IT sounds bad but its honestly amazing and I could eat it forever and I have been known to eat it like 5x a day. It's also just so easy to make and I dont have to think about it.
also I am, in the parlance of the bro, BULKING by which I mean lifting weights and supposed to have a lot of protein a day and this is just a super fast way to do that.
if you would like to unsubscribe I understand I really do
same q bakc back to you: whats ur sig dish
well said
now go eat!
I'd like to ask you about comedy/humor and how someone who's autistic can tap into this side of their writing.
Mainly because I'm known for my seriousness, literal thinking and explosive feelings for inanimate objects, but also sometimes I make people laugh and I'm not sure why. This happened a lot in high school. I'd say something and the people around me would burst into laughter. It felt really good to make people laugh. I'd try to scan their faces, replay the situation/quotes/words in my head, but the context really eludes me. So as a default, I don't try to be funny much unless I'm one-on-one with someone in person and I know I can test their limits of friendship by trying to be funny. Anyways, I think I'm funny sometimes. And I'd like to be funny more of the time, especially in my writing.
Help, Guru Alex. 🤲
hello from another autistic hilarious person (though I am not Alex!). I think autistic people are hilarious in our own ways. Sometimes, it can feel like people are laughing AT us when we're not making a joke – that is no good. But I like to think of it as my brilliant brain functioning on a whole different level, a focused comedy, and welcoming people into that hilario space.
It’s nice to know I’m in good company. 🫶
Okay, there are a few layers to this. First, and i do not mean this in a gotcha! sorta way, I think the first step is to free yourself from the goal of being funny. Because when someone is trying to be funny, that's what the audience sees. And someone *trying* to be funny is not the same thing as someone being funny.
Like, you already said that you are often funny and you don't know why. That's great. I would argue that you don't have to know why! In other words, funny is a byproduct. A result of something else.
So what is that something else? My best bet is on 'the truth.' People laugh when you say true things because people laugh when they are surprised and people are surprised by the truth. Because it's the exception and not the rule of day to day life. So when someone says the truth everyone's like oh shit that's right but they don't say oh shit that's right they laugh with recognition.
Ok so 'tell the truth' that's great Alex super easy and very helpful thank you.
How do you do that? Here are some ideas: Write about what it feels like from your perspective to, for a meta but useful example, try to be funny. Like, what are the parts of that experience that trip you up or make you ashamed or afraid (note: only do this if its stuff youve worked through, not fresh trauma that's gonna destroy you because youre not ready to talk about / share it). But that's just one example of a truth that only you can share.
And so if you share that, it might be funny! Or it might not, that's not for us to decide. That's for someone later to decide. Like actually, send it to some friends and ask them what they think. I love when my editor friends add comments like 'lol' to parts of my posts cuz I know they're working. It's like standup. Standups don't know what works until they try. The funny comes in the conversation between writer and reader.
So my question back to you is also a bit of a prompt regarding all of this -- what is it like being autistic and trying to be funny? Cuz like, that's fascinating to me, as someone who is into comedy to learn how other types of minds think about it etc. But that's already getting sidetracked - what's it like for you? Are there examples of when you tried being funny and it bombed? Also what sort of stuff do you usually find funny?
Gosh darn if this isn’t the best $5 and change I spend each month. Quote me to everybody you want. This gal right here is a lifer.
So hmm. I receive your input around not trying to be funny and it pokes at something that I do feel is somewhat universally shared among neurodiverse folk: this feeling that everywhere we go, there is an element of trying required.
This means for me that I am not my instinctual self when I’m around people. I am the Observer, stringing together what TJ laughed at the last time we all had lunch and then I’m watching to see who laughed the hardest and if I can surmise why.
So trying to be funny starts in deeply laboring to understand and know someone. Which does have a bit of heartache around the edges, right? If I love you or find commonality or a “tug of sameness” my mind also begins to commit to memory all of my interactions with you. Because I want to be able to reach you with what I share. The curious thing here is this is how I offer a lot of writing guidance. Unless you are writing an academic thesis, I am reading someone’s work and asking, “Have you let me inside? Are you letting us in, or is this an arm’s length piece?” And I ask this only because I know what it’s like to write in a way that keeps people 10 yards away. And so I can sniff this out in someone’s writing and come alongside and go, “let’s try this instead.”
Anyways as for what I find funny? I love the shit where someone has worked really hard to build something and they completely forget that humans have to use it. Like the stairwell that ends at a brick wall. Or the kitchen island that has 1” of counter space on the sides of the sink. Like, perfect: you built a lagoon, not an island. That stuff has me in stitches: when we think we are doing the right thing and it falls flat. To your point, I see myself in these mistakes. I have a lifetime of thinking I’m on my way to success and it just bottoms out. And only in the last few years have I been able to see the comedy more than the heartache in this.
To wrap up, I will share a story with you that sums up why online dating did not ever work for me. This happened on more than one occasion, more than one person:
Non-description Person No. 431: “So I said, how bout them brown bananas??”
Me: Oh. Bananas.
Person: Yeaaaahhhh hahahaha! Why aren’t you laughing?
Me: Oh, I laugh when something is funny.
End scene. End date. End all interactions. Ghosted full stop.
🤷🏻♀️
wow I am gonna put that quote on a frikkin poster thank you so much!!
also lol about the bad designs have you seen https://www.reddit.com/r/CrappyDesign/ ?
it is super interesting how comedy requires and also plays with the idea of psychological safety. its why bad agro comedy is really painful imo cuz like, it violates that sense of safety that's pretty essential to creating room for laughing and all the other good stuff...
anyway I for one would love to read more about your experience of trying to be funny !!
just be sure to quote the "gosh darn" part accurately or you'll hear from the lawyers i keep on retainer for internet friendship violations. (they've not been very busy the last few years, so they'll be watching closely.)
oh goodness. the cavernous human sink hole of reddit ... this thread gives me a lot of feelings. nevertheless, thank you for sharing. i will keep scrolling and asking questions like, "how did human hands build that? did they shimmy between the brick walls to pile on the mortar? when did they get a lemonade break?" also i appreciate the push to try writing about trying to be funny. maybe one day.
p.s. i tried googling what "bad agro comedy" is because i don't know what that means and google wasn't very helpful. i'm trying to surmise what you mean, but i am coming up empty. no rush on this, but if you (or someone else reading this) have 2 seconds to share an example, i'd really appreciate it.
what if i told you that maybe one day was today! Like literally, you are already writing about it ! so you've done the hardest part (this is my high school soccer coach pep talk)
also a more upbeat reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/DesirePath/ - its all about paths that humans make by way of just walking rather than the paths that are made for us
agro comedy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bItcoUb5xsw this dude sucks so plz be careful watchintg more than lke 5 min will destroy your brain imo
Hello! Pardon my intrusion (if it is one) but I'm fascinated by this conversation. I'm not autistic, but I've always been fascinated by different kinds of brains... I guess what people now call "neurodiversity". The young fellow who trains us where I go to exercise has never told me that he's "on the spectrum", but I suspect that he is. He's super smart, and he's also super funny. I've always felt that what makes him funny is, as Alex points out, he speaks the truth. And it's a particular, idiosyncratic truth but a truth that people recognize all the same. And the shock and surprise of someone speaking that truth makes people laugh. As a young person, I learned to get laughs that way. Once you start doing it, it's actually not that hard to come up with things to say or point out that most people will never utter.
agreed. It's almost like being ND which I certainly am just gives me a lil bit of a leg up on seeing the world in weird and interesting ways that make sense to me and, bc they are often true, make sense to others but aren't stuff most people would say or think about on their own (this is also the recipe for good art often)
QUESTION: do you still take acting jobs?
ANSWER: Yes! The bigger question is: Do people still offer me acting jobs? And the answer to that is.... not a lot! I mean I audition, and obviously this stuff is feast and famine, so who knows in a week i could be telling you that I'm booking all the time. But like, I've been auditioning a lot for commercials in the last week, and got a call back I did today and one on Monday. Will either of those turn into a job? I fuckin hope so but i cannot say for sure I simply cannot.
Q: Do canadians have a different relationship to work than americans?
ANSWER: How the hell would I know? ANSWER NO. 2: I doubt it. We're not that different from you 🥲. Still very much Western Civilization, Protestant Work Ethic, 40 hour work week, Capitalist pressure to produce, etc etc etc. To my mind, the biggest differences between us and you are the way we conduct ourselves (that's very vague I know, and also doesn't apply across the board), and guns.
PS, back to your answer... your acting reel on your website is so great! For what it's worth from someone with no connections or pull or friends in high places.
And... and... addendum. Please excuse my casual mention of guns. That's a whole... horrible ball of wax. I don't mean to be flippant. But it's true—that is one big difference.
totally hear you on the guns thing. I think that's what separates america from everyone tbh. i've been thinking a lot about that, like how our country is in a big ol chekov's gun situation...
thank you for the kind words about my reel!
Not really kind words... just true words 🙂