Connect Them All
Dozens of comedians, a New York Times reporter, and two music icons walk into a bar...
We’re all busy in our own ways, all trying to stay one step ahead of our responsibilities and commitments, while also attempting to find time for ourselves.
It’s easy to put our heads down and just plow ahead without looking around or behind us.
This week I resolved to not just plow ahead. I wanted to take time to really think about some of the things I saw and did these past few busy days:
The gathering to celebrate a friend’s milestone birthday. The memorial service to remember a departed mentor. The concert to honor a jazz composer’s work.
The art exhibit, the walk in Central Park, the basketball games on TV.
What I kept coming back to was the idea of connection.
How the memorial service reconnected me with people from two distinct eras of my life, all there because of our shared connection to one man.
How the concert connected me with my 12-year-old jazz musician self; how sitting on the hard, wooden seats of Woolsey Hall connected me to my parents, who took me there for the first time when I was 7; and how this newsletter helped connect me with the new friends who joined me at the show.
How, while watching UConn’s NCAA championship win on Monday night, I connected (via text) not only with family members but also friends from throughout my life, who know how important a thread UConn basketball is in my story.
All of this made me think about the different ways people come into our lives. Why some stay and others go. And how one of the pleasures of aging is when someone from your past returns after a long absence, and you pick up right where you left off.
None of this is unique to me, of course. We all have these kinds of experiences, these connections.
But how often do we stop to appreciate them?
On to the list…
The Best…
…Book I Read This Week
Sicker in the Head: More Conversations About Life and Comedy (Random House, 2022) — By Judd Apatow
When writer-director-producer Judd Apatow was growing up on Long Island, he was obsessed with comedy. At age 16, he landed a show on his high school’s radio station, which turned into a vehicle for him to interview some of his favorite comedians.
Teenage Judd interviewed top comics of the 1980s, like Jerry Seinfeld and Garry Shandling, as well as a legend like Steve Allen.
Fast-forward to 2016. By then a successful Hollywood filmmaker and TV producer, Apatow published Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy. The book featured those old interviews along with new conversations with some of the biggest names in show business.
I read that book and loved it, so when the sequel — Sicker in the Head: More Conversations About Life and Comedy — came out last year, I was excited to check it out. This one, featuring 30 more interviews Apatow mostly did during the first pandemic year of 2020, was also a pleasure to read.
Like Apatow, I had some comedy obsessions as a teenager. I watched David Letterman and Conan O’Brien every night, rarely missing a show.
I also compiled a personal library of The Simpsons episodes by recording as many as I could off TV onto VHS tapes. This was more difficult than it sounds, requiring a lot of research and a deep understanding of afternoon and late night syndicated rerun patterns.
(By the time I went off to college in 1997, I had accumulated all but eight of the 178 episodes that had aired to that point — did I mention that I didn’t have a lot of dates in high school?)
Unlike Apatow, my obsessiveness didn’t lead me toward performing stand-up or becoming a comedy writer. I’m just a fan, but I know and enjoy the work of almost every person he interviews in the new book.
I think what I appreciate most about it — whether Apatow is talking to an old veteran like Letterman, a younger person like Ramy Yousseff or someone in between like Tig Notaro — is that I feel like I’m hanging out with friends.
And I think there’s peace in that: silencing the noise of the world for just a little while with talk of comedy, art, and our obsessions.
…Podcast I Listened to This Week
The Coldest Case in Laramie (The New York Times/Serial Productions, 2023) — Hosted by Kim Barker
Available on all the usual podcast apps
Coincidentally, in the same week that the first case explored by the Serial podcast team was back in the news, another New York Times/Serial Productions podcast hit the apps: The Coldest Case in Laramie.
This one explores the 1985 murder of Shelli Wiley, a University of Wyoming student who was stabbed to death in her apartment, which was then set on fire. Over the years, there had been arrests in the case but no charges had ever stuck. No one had ever gone on trial.
New York Times reporter Kim Barker, who was a high school student in Laramie, Wyoming, when the murder occurred, went back to her hometown to look for answers. What she and the show producers discovered unfolds across eight episodes.
What I liked is what the series says about our need for stories with conclusions, and for bad acts to be punished. I think this is human nature. In stories from ancient folklore to Hollywood movies and everything in between, we want answers to our questions, for the “bad guy” to get punished in the end.
I’ve served on juries for criminal cases twice, and I’ve seen the way an unconscious desire for this kind of neat narrative can shape how people consider evidence, can impact how they view an accused perpetrator, and can potentially skew the outcome of a case. It can be a dangerous approach.
The Coldest Case in Laramie explores our need to knit stories out of the information we have (or think we have), to assign blame, and the implications of this kind of thinking when belief rests on human memory, prejudice, and the projection of certainty.
The series has gotten mixed reviews, some saying that while the premise was interesting, the story was just “missing” something. But for me, that was exactly the point.
…Tune I Revisited This Week
“In a Sentimental Mood” (1963) — Duke Ellington and John Coltrane
One afternoon a few days ago, I was in Manhattan. While there, I decided to see some of Winfred Rembert’s artwork at a gallery on the Upper East Side. Afterwards, I headed to Central Park for a walk.
For context, I know Manhattan well. I lived there for about 15 years across three different periods, most recently from 2017-20.
When I walk around the city, I’m frequently reminded of past scenes from my life, as I see restaurants I used to eat at, bars I used to frequent, movie theaters I used to visit.
But I don’t walk around like an open wound, lamenting lost loves or bygone eras of my life. I walk with purpose, usually with a destination in mind, and everything I see — and whatever memories I conjure — is mere color for my trip.
So I can’t really explain why the following happened.
As soon as I entered Central Park, I suddenly needed to hear this beautifully haunting version of “In a Sentimental Mood,” released in 1963 on the album Duke Ellington & John Coltrane.
Heeding this urgent internal message, I immediately stopped the podcast I was listening to and cued up the song on my phone.
I listened to it as I walked. Then I listened to it again. And again. And again. I listened to it about a dozen times in a row before I exited the park about 45 minutes later.
I wasn’t consciously feeling sentimental or melancholy or sad. Wasn’t seeking solace in any specific way.
But maybe my body understood something my brain didn’t, somehow knew that this particular performance of this particular tune at this particular moment contained the answer to a question I hadn’t even thought to ask.
Here are links to some of my past essays, in case you missed any shows, movies or books:
TV Series:
Paul T. Goldman (2023)
Shrinking (2023)
Enlightened (2011-13)
Fleishman is in Trouble (2022)
Slow Horses (2022)
Movies/Documentaries/Comedy Specials:
Rocky (1976)
The Martha Mitchell Effect (2022)
Glory (1989)
The Player (1992)
Brick (2005)
Inherit the Wind (1960)
Marc Maron: From Bleak to Dark (2023)
The Elephant Whisperers (2022)
Fire of Love (2022)
Tár (2022)
Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004)
The Queen of Basketball (2021)
Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022)
Books:
Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South by Winfred Rembert as told to Erin I. Kelly
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley
Hollywood: The Oral History by Jeanine Basinger & Sam Wasson
Code Name Blue Wren by Jim Popkin
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
Good for a Girl by Lauren Fleshman
It’s OK That You’re Not OK by Megan Devine
An Immense World by Ed Yong
The Boys by Ron Howard and Clint Howard
Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs by Greil Marcus