“I don’t really read anymore.” Does anyone?

I asked two friends (separately) for book recommendations recently. They both responded with the same author: David Sedaris. So I guess it’s time for me to pull Barrel Fever off the shelf and finally finish it. (Bookshelves: The original browser history!)

But what was even more interesting to me was how these two people, two of the most literate people I’ve known in my life, both said the same thing: “I don’t really read anymore.” I’m the same way. Well, I hardly ever read books anymore. But I probably read more words per day than I ever have – it’s just all short-form stuff (e.g. articles, social media posts, newsletters, essays, etc.). I worry about the lack of depthfulness I’m taking in however. 750 words is flirting, 300 pages is a relationship. The best thing about the internet is also the scariest: It’s made everything wide and shallow instead of narrow and deep.

Btw one friend made this (joke) suggestion: “Here is a classic beach read…’The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses.’” Light reading! Kinda want to steal part of that title and write a memoir called Nuclear Near Misses: My Life Dating in NYC.

Browsing in Brooklyn
Anyway, I decided to bypass Bezos and seek ideas at the bookstore in my hood. What’s it like shopping for books in Brooklyn? Exactly what you think. Here are some excerpts from the current staff picks list at my local bookseller:

• “it's due time to learn about anti-imperialism“

• “Why can't the leader of a slave rebellion be depicted as a hero?“

• “she was in a queer abusive relationship that left her struggling“

• “a Racism Is Bad book“

• “If you call yourself a feminist, read this book“

• “a truly mesmerizing play steeped in the racial dynamics of surveillance“

• “a procedural but for emotional labor“

• “an exploration of the slippery interface between mental illness and an irrational reality“

• “stumbling through her self-proclaimed and newly minted ‘lesbian life’"

• “LGBTQ history is not taught in the classroom“

• “the coming-of-age of a queer Middle Eastern child/teen/woman“

• “my idea of the narratives trans authors could tell was completely upended“

• “If you love found families, disability representation in fantasy…and a realistic representation of a refugee experience this is the book for you!“

Um, viva representation and all that, but isn’t putting all art through some sorta victimization checklist getting a bit tiresome? It’s less virtue signal than it is virtue siren. Nowadays, it feels like everyone is playing Mad Libs, except it’s more like Mad Liberals – and the only way to get approval from the morality-powers-that-be is via tales about queer refugee racism steeped in feminist theories of emotional labor while overcoming [kind of disability] during [type of atrocity] in [developing country].

That may be appealing politically and an easy way to demonstrate ethical superiority, but it’s also a recipe for bad art. It’s not the politics of it that irks me, it’s how much it’s turning us all into hack thinkers.

You can’t be a unique, creative outlier when you’re busy toeing the party line. It’s why people crave things like that Chappelle special: Even if you think he’s wrong, it still feels like a breath of fresh air to see someone expressing their own idiosyncratic, non-focus grouped, weirdo take on the world.

🅼🅰🆃🆃 💎 🆁🆄🅱🆈 @mattruby

No one's a loser anymore. Everyone's "brave" or a queen/king/ally. Even comedy shows are pep rallies. It all feels like preaching-to-the-choir cheerleading. Doesn't it feel gross and egocentric to anyone else? Guess this is my way of saying... I MISS RODNEY.

February 6th 2022

That’s why it was nice to read these thoughts from artist Petra Cortright explaining why she refuses to jump on the political art bandwagon:

What sets you apart from a lot of artists, in my opinion, is your disinterest in trying to be on the right side of issues. You always tried to not bring ethics into your work and keep art separate. How have you been thinking about this lately?

The art world almost has a gun to people’s heads in the current climate, telling them to make work that is political, social, or about someone’s identity. Art is so much bigger than that. I’ve always separated art from the art world and from the art market. It’s something that’s really important for me to be able to do because art would otherwise be ruined for me…I couldn’t sleep at the end of the day if I felt hypocritical about my work or if I was trying to say that the work was doing something or helping people in a way that it just wasn’t.

It’s very simple for me: Art in general is very meaningful to me and I feel like I am a defender of beauty and simplicity…Art can help things in a very abstract way, but if you really wanted to help people, you could become a social worker. There are other jobs that you could do that would make 1,000 times more of an impact.

Stop trying to be right and start trying to make the thing that only you can make. Your art doesn't need to help people, make a political statement, or prove you’re one of the good ones. We don’t all have to think like social workers. After all, making something beautiful, funny, or unique can improve society too.

Tangent: I did find this complaint from Cortright re: source material rather amusing…

It became harder to find interesting source material that wasn’t affected by algorithms, which make things boring. They’re just trying to push products for sale. I use Bing image search, which will bring up Blogspot images so you can sometimes get more interesting results.

Love this notion: “I’m an artist trying to be unique…and that’s why I use Bing instead of Google.” Bad technology is the artist’s good technology, I guess. Maybe someday soon we’ll hear this exchange in an art school: “Who’s your biggest influence?” “Jeeves.”

Anyway, I eventually turned to my home bookshelf and picked up a title I hadn’t read yet: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami. So far it’s great, but we’ll see if I ever make it to the end.

Share

Quickies

🌀 If you don't drink a Coke for a while and then take a sip, it tastes like both childhood and battery acid.

🌀 Being Jewish is constantly having a hunch that things won't work out well (along with indigestion).

🌀 I have an emo support dog. He won't stop listening to Dashboard Confessional.

🌀 Rewatching Sex and the City with gf and we now end every conversation like Carrie typing a question:

Her: "I wish we had cookie dough."
Me: "We know it might make us sick, yet we still want it raw. I couldn’t help but wonder: Why are we so attracted to cookie dough?"

🌀 Re: the SatC reboot…We need to give Kim Cattrall more credit for saying no. Bravo to people who move on with their lives and refuse to do cash grab reboots. In the ultimate plot twist, it turns out Samantha is the only one who is NOT a whore!

🌀 A big issue in our culture is how frequently we mistake acting crazy for seeming young.

🌀 Sooooooo love bombing is when someone gaslights you with foreplay, is that right?

🌀 There's some disease where people are bad at recognizing faces but I just want everyone to know that when I do it's simply because I'm inconsiderate. #classic

🅼🅰🆃🆃 💎 🆁🆄🅱🆈 @mattruby

It looks like someone just photoshopped in that dude on the right 😂

February 20th 2022

2 Likes

🌀 "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
-Some dead guy

🌀 Still trying to mainstream SFYL after a death the same way we do HBD on birthdays. Tired of having to type out sorry for your loss constantly. And then maybe a full screen takeover thing where instead of balloons it’s thoughts and prayers that float up.

🅼🅰🆃🆃 💎 🆁🆄🅱🆈 @mattruby

Dear people with tattoos who complain about it when others ask what their tattoo is, You know you could have just not done that, right? You put a conversation starter on your body and now you're mad that people are following your instructions.

February 15th 2022

3 Likes

🌀 The police who are breaking up that trucker convoy...we do or do not want to defund them? 👈 I call that a widdle (woke riddle).

🌀 A big mistakes people make is thinking social media represents reality. Nah. Try going onstage at night and talking about whatever the buzz du jour was on Twitter. A room full of people will look at you and clearly communicate they have no idea what the f*ck you're talking about.

Vooza @voozahq

I liked life better before toasters needed software updates.

February 17th 2022

3 Likes

Shows

NYC 2/26 = MISGUIDED MEDITATION
1 HOUR OPEN BAR + COMEDY RE: PSYCHEDELICS 🍄 THERAPY 🧠 MEDITATION 🧘 DEATH 💀

Raves from previous attendees:

"Loved it. You normalized cracking up while attempting to zen out. Thank you!" -Gina W.

"Incredible! Whoever thought comedy could be enjoyable (comedy clubs are NEVER cozy) and you could laugh so hard?!" -Marissa F.

"Everyone enjoyed the show tremendously." -Marc S.

More
Upcoming standup dates in NYC, Colorado, North Carolina, and NOLA:
2/22 Hot Soup (NYC) | Comedy Cellar *
2/23 Good Eggs (NYC) | NY Comedy Club (EV) *
2/26 Misguided Meditation (NYC)
3/4 Steamboat Springs, CO | Schmiggity’s
3/5 Steamboat Springs, CO | Schmiggity’s
3/6 Boulder, CO | Rayback Collective
3/29 Cary, NC | The Matthews House
3/30 Durham, NC | The Fruit
3/31 Raleigh, NC | Clouds Brewing Taproom
4/1 Asheville, NC | Getaway River Bar
5/27 New Orleans, LA | Comedy House NOLA

* Weekly shows

Videos

Click through for some international diplomacy…

rubymatt

A post shared by Matt Ruby (@rubymatt)

rubymatt

A post shared by Matt Ruby (@rubymatt)

And here’s another clip from my special/album “Feels Like Matt Ruby.”

Not funny clip: My mom (né Frances Stillman) is one of the stars of a 60s movie that is being shown in a retrospective at The Jewish Museum in NYC this week. The film is directed by "the godfather of avant garde cinema" Jonas Mekas and the exhibition surveys his 70-year career. It also features Allen Ginsberg reading poetry. Click to see vid and stills of her “acting” sad.

rubymatt

A post shared by Matt Ruby (@rubymatt)

5-spotted

1) The Algorithmic Trap examines how the world is becoming optimized for the dominant aesthetic of the internet (e.g. “the same lights, the same chairs, and the same damn avocado toast”).

Travel — when done right — is challenging. Like all face-to-face interaction, it’s inefficient. The fact that an experience can’t be found in a guidebook is precisely what makes it so special. Sure, a little tip helps — go here, go there; eat here, eat there; stay here, stay there — but at the end of the day, the great pleasures of travel are precisely what you can’t find on Yelp.

Algorithms are great at giving you something you like, but terrible at giving you something you love. Worse, by promoting familiarity, algorithms punish culture.

2) How the method figures into "The Godfather." De Niro studied with Stella Adler. Pacino, who studied with her rival, Lee Strasberg. And then in "Godfather II," you've got Lee Strasberg himself playing Hyman Roth. You've also got Sanford Meisner, who's sort of the third rival in there as well, because Diane Keaton and Robert Duvall and James Caan all studied with him. “You can see how all these different paths can lead to a fairly similar or compatible place,” explains Isaac Butler, author of the new book "The Method."

The sequence where Al Pacino is at the restaurant considering whether or not to commit murder for the first time - this is about halfway through the first "Godfather" film. And he gets - you know, he gets the gun from the tank behind the toilet. And he's going through this whole sort of tortured consideration of whether he's actually going to go through with this act. And how is he going to do it? But he never says that. There's no lines where he says it, you know? It's all in his body. And it's all in his face. And it's almost like you can read his thoughts in the subtext of the character. That is Lee Strasberg's techniques at its best.

3) Blackface is bad. Jewface? Not so much. Sarah Silverman discussed on her podcast:

There’s this long tradition of non-Jews playing Jews, and not just playing people who happen to be Jewish, but people whose Jewishness is their whole being. One could argue, for instance, that a gentile playing Joan Rivers correctly would be doing what is actually called ‘Jewface'…The pattern in film is just undeniable, and the pattern is — if the Jewish female character is courageous or deserves love, she is never played by a Jew. Ever!

Via this smart piece from Jason Zinoman: Is It Funny for the Jews?

4) Author Wells Tower on moose and his revision process.

There’s this metaphor I settled on for revisions. I was in Alaska on a kayaking trip, and I was warned by this park ranger to be really careful in the arctic lakes when the moose are around. A male moose will jump into the lake with the idea that a female moose is on the other side, and then he’ll get to the other side and think that the female is on the other side, and often the moose will continue to go back and forth until he drowns from his own indecision. To me, it’s a sitting metaphor for revision. You can’t keep mindlessly pacing from one impulse to another or you’ll drive yourself insane.

5) P.J. O’Rourke Wrote With High, Cranky Style in a Shrinking Tradition. About the formal way he dressed, O’Rourke commented:

The weirder you’re going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.

And this quip of his is great: “It’s better to spend money like there’s no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there’s no money.”

Thanks for reading.

-Matt

The end stuff

I'd love to hear from you – just leave a comment or hit reply/send an email email to mattruby@hey.com (I read/reply to all messages).

If you’re reading this via email, clicking the headline up top will always take you to a web version.

If you got this from a friend and would like to subscribe, you can sign up here.

Check the archive for back issues. Lots of good stuff there.

Social media: Find me on Twitter (@mattruby), Instagram (@rubymatt), or YouTube.

About the Rubesletter: In this weekly newsletter, NYC comedian/writer Matt Ruby dives deep on comedy, tech, mindfulness, and creativity. If you enjoy brainy/funny stuff, nuanced takes, don't get offended easily, & hate BS, sign up. New issues every Tuesday.

My latest standup special is free on YouTube. And you can stream my standup albums “Feels Like Matt Ruby” and “Hot Flashes” too.