Top Plug of the Week

Look, you all know about FlopTV by now (tickets still available!) so we won’t belabor it. If you’re not a season pass holder yet, we’re not sure what would entice you… other than maybe this screenshot:

Take Care of Yourselves

Knowing who our audience is, I daresay a lot of you are in the same bad place we are now. (And if you’re not… well, to paraphrase Miss Manners, “If you can’t say something nice, then tell people to go jump in a lake and reevaluate their morals.”)

Anyway, that being the case, I thought it would be nice to make this edition of the newsletter a kind of written sequel to FH Mini 84: The Peach Boys Smile, which featured Stu, Elliott, and myself (Dan) discussing the things we do to keep ourselves sane and (sliding scale) happy. Tending to yourself isn’t the long and short of it, of course — there’s a lot of work to be done, especially to help our most vulnerable — so I’m not suggesting that we all just retreat into a cave and lick our wounds forever. However, if we don’t lick those wounds first, they won’t heal. Right? That’s what wound-licking is all about? I dunno, sounds kind of gross to me, honestly, but the point is yum yum wounds. NO! Wait… The point is — it’s okay to have emotions, and it’s okay to address them first. There’s a reason why flight attendants tell you to fasten your own oxygen mask before helping the person in the seat next to you, and it’s not that they really hate that person in the seat next to you. It’s because if YOU can’t function, you’re not much use to others. So let’s start with you.

Maybe it’ll help to talk a bit about how I spent the day after the election. I hit the hay a bit after midnight the evening before, but Audrey had stayed up doomscrolling, so she was ahead of my on the news, and ready for me to not have the psychic energy to get out of bed for a while. Instead of trying to rouse me, she helpfully pointed me toward an Instagram post from our podcast network colleague, the ever-wise John Hodgman, who posted a link to Dialectical BehaviorTherapy tools related to distress tolerance. I read through them and said, “You know what? I’m going to take these to heart,” and got up, set on finding a project to keep my mind off things — because with all the other stuff that fucker’s gonna take away, I’m not gonna let him take my mental health from me too. _{(Note: I know this stance is a lot easier for me as a non-marginalized white guy — I worry for anyone who doesn’t have the same luxury. I hope that we can turn things around, and that those with the most to lose can find respite as well.)}

Creating stuff is one thing that brings me joy. It combines a lot that’s good for you: personal expression, the distraction of an absorbing task, and a feeling of accomplishment. As a podcaster/writer, I’m fortunate to have a malleable schedule, so I decided that — creation-wise — it was a day to embrace silliness and fun. So I spent most of Wednesday making THIS dumb comedy video, and sharing it around to try and cheer other people up (another great way to make yourself feel better: helping others. Not that comedy videos are the MOST helpful thing, but hey — you do what you can, with your abilities. I’m not terribly adept at most “useful” skills beyond house-husbanding, but I am extremely willing to make myself a fool for laffs). Then it was time to celebrate our wedding anniversary.

Oh. Did I not mention that 11/6 was our anniversary? Yeah, it turns out that Audrey and I picked a date with a high probability of giving the “happy” part of “happy anniversary” an ironic ring every four years. But, oddly, our evening together felt all the more meaningful because the state of the world underlined how much we, and everyone else, need our loved ones now. How much we need to be kind to one another.

Lest you think, “Oh, easy for you to feel better, when you had something special to mark the day…” well, yes… perhaps I did view the world through more ooey gooey glasses than I might otherwise, but let me assure you of this: I am eminently capable of letting bad circumstances turn me into angry, frustrated, dour Dan — a real pill, to be frank. The decision to not be that man was intentional, and difficult. (That’s another thing to celebrate. Growing into a stronger person is hard, and erratic, and painful, but it’s an accomplishment to be proud of, when you see the progress).

Ultimately, the night was as lovely as we could make it — food and drink at a nice Japanese restaurant, and live music at the small roots-oriented theater where we got married, where the multiracial, multi-gender-expressing crowd was not gonna let one petty husk of a man steal their joy — because love and connection between people will save you every time. The following will sadly be cold comfort for those directly affected by this country’s swing toward hatred, but… the worst of them? The ones with crabgrass and industrial sludge inside, where all the human kindness is supposed to go? Deep within, they feel the lack of that true love and connection. It’s why they lash out and try to feel important with bullying and hate, but they’ll never be happy on their march to Ebeneezer Scrooge-like funerals, filled with business associates, but empty of anyone who truly gave a damn.

So reach out. Connect. Love. Give and get kindness in turn. Hope for better days, and work towards them, but only give the bad stuff weight enough to fight it, and don’t fixate yourself into misery. Assholes are assholes. Sometimes, inexplicably, they’re even rewarded for it. Shit gets bleak. Stay strong. We love you.

ADDITIONAL SELF-CARE TIPS FROM STU AND ELLIOTT!

Stuart: “I’ve been going through a rough patch lately, but I’ve found two things have kept me centered and energized. The first is making time to see friends, my chosen family, in a public setting, usually at a bar or restaurant. The other should be equally obvious: watching movies. Both activities allow me to get out of my own head and better understand my place in this world.”

Elliott: “The older I get, the more I find self-care involves spending time paying attention to the natural world. The human world is stressful, human emotions are complicated and draining, and human problems seem omnipresent. So I go outside and listen to a bird calling. The bird doesn’t care about my problems. He doesn’t even know they exist. And if I tried to explain them to him, he’d find them dumb and boring. There’s something really comforting about how unimportant human emotions feel in the face of non-human things. The feeling doesn’t last long, but that just means I need to go outside more often.”

Next on the Podcast:

Hear ye on main!

11/9 - MEGALOPOLIS! You asked for it, and we deliver! It’s an episode on Francis Ford Coppola’s 120-million-dollar passion project mega-folly. Did the needs of Shocktober delay this episode slightly past the zeitgeistiest moment? Perhaps, BUT we’re doing this Megalopolis episode in mega-flopolis style, by having ROMAN MARS as our guest, to discuss how the film relates to Robert Moses, the biographical focus of his/Elliott’s Power Broker series on 99 Percent Invisible, as well as other subjects relating to city design, Romans, and the baffling reclamation of the Star Wars prequels. This is BLOCKBUSTER PODCASTING EXTRAORDINAIRE.

11/16 - Stuart guides us in part one of a two-part mini-splosion, ranking the top action heroes in Stu’s inimitable/arbitrary style!

You Made it to the End!

Here’s another shot from our recent refresh of our press materials, courtesy of terrific photographer Sylvie Rosokoff!