how you answer this question will change everything [plz reply in comments]

also welcome new readers + some news!!

i worked on this image way too long for it to come out looking like this

Hello to all the wonderful new readers that have come aboard this crazy train, many of whom are here thanks to the oh so kind shoutout in the oh so great Today In Tabs newsletter by Rusty Foster which, if you’re not subscribed already, I highly recommend!

Which brings us up to 215 total subscribers!! Wow. In ancient Antarctica, the number 215 was lucky so, yea, this is big.

A quick intro to the newsletter below along with some cool news and finally, a very important question for you to answer in the comments: if you worked at a morgue, would you be upstairs with the grieving families or downstairs with the dead? It is absolutely essential you answer this so I have a better sense of who my readers are. Click the button below and you can leave a comment!

You’re Probably Wondering: Where Am I?

when i put ‘both are true’ into a free stock image website, this came up. feels right.

So what is this place? What is Both Are True? What do I tell my family at the dinner table when they ask me what sort of new stuff I’ve gotten into?

I don’t know. I can’t figure out the ‘brand’ for this thing. It’s a little this, a little that, a lotta hits and a few chats (you see that double rhyme thing? shakespeare could never).

Truthfully though - I write stories and essays about the things in life that make me laugh or cry or go “huh” which, these days, usually revolve around a mix of the following: acting and writing in LA, fatherhood, anxiety, creativity, whatever the opposite of hustle productivity culture is, and being a Ukrainian immigrant watching this bullshit war. Plus some fiction pieces and comedy and yea I could keep going which is the problem.

Ok fine you say, but you, Alex Dobrenko, who the heck are you? Well. I’m a comedy and film/tv guy who writes and acts. I had my best year of acting last year and worked a total of…six days! So stay tuned as this industry eats what’s left of my soul! You mighta seen me in the Steven Soderbergh movie KIMI, an episode of NCIS: LOS ANGELES, and that Geico commercial with McKayla Maroney that was on TV all the time last year.

I also made my own series called DISTANCE which we premiered a few years back. It got great reviews too - we were nominated for a Gotham Independent Film Breakthrough Series award and received praise from the lamestream media like New York Times, Paste Magazine, and Vulture who called it “Digital’s Next Step”.

Why am I telling you all this? Because I am bad at self promotion and also because I felt like it!

Both Are True Accepted Into Substack Grow

Still don’t really know what this newsletter is? SAME. Lucky for us all, Both Are True was just accepted into Substack Grow, a “six-week program that will bring together some of the most promising writers on Substack to level up their Substack publications, together.”

How about that!

I’m genuinely very, very pumped to meet a lot of other cool writers who I shall then recommend to y’all as well as figuring out wtf the “value proposition” is for potential subscribers.

It starts this Wed, June 22nd so I’ll be keeping y’all posted on what I learn.

Who Are All Of You??

Ok so, to end as we began - a question:

If you worked at a morgue, would you be upstairs with the grieving families or downstairs with the dead?

Also bonus points for answering any and all of the questions below:

1. Who are you?

2. Who are you really?

3. QUICK: Best thing you’ve read or seen or played or listened to lately?

With horseshoes and hand grenades,

Alex