Poop, and other stuff
Hello! Hope everyone’s having a great week.
Mine started kinda shitty—literally. If you have a weak stomach, skip ahead.
I woke up to literal sewage in the basement laundry room of my apartment. I’ll spare you the pics, although I definitely did not spare my landlord the pics. But without being too graphic, can I just ask….why is it always corn? Despite my state of disgust, I couldn’t stop the journey of the single kernel in front of me from flashing through my mind—from a field, to a can, to a Walmart shelf, to a crockpot vegan chili, through my entire digestive system, down a pipe, up a pipe, and now the object of my blind rage. At the end of the day, it’s not the corn’s fault. It is the landlord’s fault. Also, I should probably chew more.
***
I’ve read a lot of books this summer (a lot for me—if you’re one of those people who reads multiple books a month, bug off), most of them smutty romantasy. While I enjoy a fun romcom read, I didn’t expect to be into romance fantasy given that my only experience in the genre was the infamous Twilight novels. Desperate to fit in with the other girls in middle school, I powered through two of them before the boredom won. My friends then dragged me to one of the movies, during which I accidentally laughed at a scene that was not supposed to be funny and earned myself glares from across the theater. So I’m a bit surprised to be enjoying so many fairytale books, although I suspect it may be because beheading enemies and having moonlit trysts is about as far as you can get from what I do in my day job (debate how many exclamation points to put in my emails to seem friendly but not insane! If anyone knows the answer, let’s hop on a quick call to chat!! I’ll send a calendar invite!!!). Anyway, my brother told me that the books I’ve been reading aren’t feminist because of the traditional hetero romance tropes, and I told him to be quiet and stop dissecting gender roles, which is the first time we’ve ever been on those sides of an argument.
👏 3 Things
Hope in Hollywood can make magic. But it can also destroy you. I’m so tired of being destroyed. I’m tired of loving something that doesn’t seem to love me back. - A post from comedian Sara Schaefer on the pressure to project success, and how working in entertainment can feel like an abusive relationship. I’ve got so many thoughts I’ll probably need to do a whole separate piece on this.
While I.Q. scores may correlate to cognitive abilities, control over and knowledge of one’s emotional state is what is most important for professional and personal success. - This New York Times op-ed, You’re Only As Smart as Your Emotions, made me think about how we evaluate ourselves and define personal success.
Everyone poops, and it takes them about the same amount of time. - Today I learned that most mammals take an average of 12 seconds to poop, regardless of the size of the species (elephants, dogs, etc). Noticing a theme today? 💩
Shows
The August Main Character Energy show was an adventure. Upon realizing much too late that my costume called for dress pants, a relic of pre-pandemic life that I’ve been more than happy to forget, I managed to dig up and squeeze into a too-small pair from my college internship (Which was recently, of course! I am Definitely Not Approaching Thirty!) and thankfully went the entire night without splitting them or letting the audience spot my unzipped fly (as far as I know).
The performers were stellar and the audience was delightfully engaged, but the highlight for me was after the show, when I met a group who have been to multiple shows and told me they sit in the front specifically because they have so much fun playing along with my audience interaction bits. I do not know these people!!!! Is this what it feels like to have…fans? My brain keeps telling me they were probably just being nice. I keep telling my brain to shut up.
Mark your calendars! Main Character Energy will be back at the Second City NY on Saturday, September 28th at 7:00pm. That also happens to be the SNL season premiere date, so maybe catch my show, then go watch SNL, then call me and tell me that my show was better? Just an option. Our current lineup includes Lily Blumkin (The Daily Show), Eli Coyote Mandel (SNL, Comedy Central, New Yorker Mag), and Dino Stamotopolus (Community, Adult Swim, Mr. Show, Mad TV, The Dana Carvey Show, Conan O'Brien, The Ben Stiller Show, etc.), and that’s only half the lineup so maybe BLOCK OFF YOUR FREAKING CALENDARS, PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!
…was that too many exclamation points?
Love,
Caitlin, Frank, & Bud 💁🏻♀️🐈🐈⬛
