Episode 129: "A Hanna-Barbera Cartoon About Carnage"

Origin of the episode title

Refers to a comparison Julie makes about the noise she hears behind the bedroom door made by her beloved, yet fractious, Smiley Muffin wrestling with the Home Vet-tech. It is like a "Hanna-Barbera Cartoon About Carnage" It also refers to the noise that would be heard by her extended family in the dining room on Rosh Hashanah if she announced that she had a new gig with Al Jazeera America and then went into the kitchen to wrestle with her mother.

Monologue Transcript

‘Cause we’re living in a world of fools. Breaking us down when they all should let us be we belong to you and me, la da da da

Hi everybody. It’s Julie Klausner back for another episode of HWYW.

We just heard the Bee Gees How Deep is Your Love. If you are going to be in Seattle next weekend you’ll be able to see myself and Ted Leo as well as Danielle Henderson and Patton Oswalt. They are going to be doing How Was Your week unplugged live. It will be a lot of fun. It will also be terrific.

How is everybody’s end of August going? Are we all barreling towards Labor Day together or are we just sort of stacked junk, teetering and tottering like so many mismatched—like a crepe, a pancake, a blintz, with some sort of cronut at the top that would be our head. Let’s talk about eating a cronut for the first time which I did this week. It was disgusting and it was horrible. I regret it. Well I don’t regret it because now I know what cronuts are. They are too much. The staffers at Billy on the Street were kind enough to get on some sort of bizarre top secret waiting list and wait for I don’t know 3 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 weeks, and they got 6cronuts. They gave one to me. They gave one to Jake Fogelnest. They helped themselves to one or two. I don’t know how the payment plan was figured out but I had a cronut. It was terrible.

What a cronut should be…let me just start with the fact that I like donuts. I like croissants. I like a yeast donut and I like a cake donut. What I was hoping for, you know the difference right? A yeast donut is sort of a Krispy Krème and it comes off of a runway. There’s air inside of it. A cake donut is like a chocolate donut you get at Dunkin Donuts and the density is fine. It’s sometimes a little dry. What I was hoping that the cronut would be some kind of amalgam of the two and the layers would be an extra burst of fat and it would be terrific because croissant dough is magical. You can make anything with it.

What I got instead was deep fried, I guess every layer of the croissant dough is individually deep fried and then they stack them into a donut shape and then they fry that whole thing. What no one told me is that there are crème layers as well as the dough layers. That’s terrible miscalculation of what people do want and should want. There’s a frosting thing on the top-this doesn’t bother me. I’m pro sweets. I’m pro starches. What I m not pro is oozing crème. That was one experience of biting into one. My mouth was flooded with fats that I wasn’t familiar. I am not into heavy creamy things. I don’t like French pastry. An éclair is not something I have ever really cared for. I will eat an éclair. I mean I will eat an éclair but I won’t be thrilled about it. I would rather sort of lick the chocolate frosting off of it and throw the rest of it in the garbage for the dogs frankly.

The cronut had a semen-y quality. It was very come-y. The whole thing just left a come-y taste in mouth without even making my body feel good before during or after. I don’t recommend cronuts in general. I got very sick afterwards. I just sort of wanted some sort of recumbent toilet. It did things to my body that were bad. It made me feel morally bad as well. I shouldn’t have eaten the whole thing. I should have eaten it slower. How slow can you go, as Chubby Checkers once sang. If a baked good provokes guilt, suffering and revulsion, it really was like a Truffaut film. I didn’t like it. I guess in Canada they had cronut burgers which is shameful. I guess they have them, and then people put beef. People got sick. It’s good they got sick because how else will they learn. It’s not funny. It’s not cute. I’m not ok with it. Do you know what I want? Another cronut actually, now that I am talking about them for this long. I really crave another one. I would like to be on some sort of wait list. Which is worse, to be on a wait list for a cronut or to not be on Schindler’s list? Nobody knows. It’s a mystery. I am looking forward to the knock-off cronuts because I feel like a corporate food chain such as your Dunkin Donuts will perfect the notion. They did it with the croisandwich. Dunkin Donuts will have the sense to get rid of the crème. If you got rid of the crème you’d be halfway onto something. I ate a cronut this week. What else did I do? I watched all of House of Cards in about two or three sittings. I became hypnotized by the combined coldness of Robin Wright Penn, Robin Wright-- It takes two Robin Wrights to make a Penn—and Kevin Spacey acting like an asshole, like a cold sociopathic monster. Oh here’s an Emmy. How did you transform yourself into that character sir? I loved House of Cards, I thought it was brilliant. I can’t wait for more of those episodes in my face. I have the following observations about it. I think that Robin Wright’s character going off to be with her lover of indeterminate foreign origin was a little hard to believe, especially the scene that looked like it was out of that Janet Jackson video where people are just kind of dancing in a sepia-toned Bohemian loft style as their wont to do. She’s kind of sexy dancing with a woman and someone passed another person a joint, ooh? This party look very chill. That was hard for me to watch.

If you’ve seen the series you know that Robin Wright’s character is an uptight, she’s a cunt. She’s really a classic hard C cunt with a capital CUNT. I’m not ruining anything; she goes off and reunites with a past lov-air who’s a photographer and therefore has millions of dollars and a loft with some bohemian music video extras from 1994? She dances with a woman and thinks to herself, maybe this is the woman I was meant to be if I had taken the road less traveled. That didn’t ring true to me.

The rest of it I completely bought. It’s like good Newsroom. When the young journalist gets a job at Slugline you think to yourself, oh Slugline that’s a good hire for Slugline they’re going to get a lot of stories instead of shut up! Shut up Newsnight. I haven’t watched that show--the Newsroom? The Newsroom right? The Newsroom—since they had that episode when Will McAvoy was wearing some sort of purple V-neck. It was unacceptable. I haven’t watched it since. So I watched House of Cards. I ate a cronut. I got the Time-Warner guy to come over and switch out my cable box because I need to watch Breaking Bad at its regularly scheduled time and it was just a bunch of black silence, if I want black silence—some sort of racial thing can come here about Michael Clarke Duncan, he’s actually passed away so it would be in questionable taste but you can end that sentence. That’s the road less traveled you can choose your own adventure with that tangent. I was very disappointed about cable and I called them up and gave them what-for. I said listen Time Warner quit fucking me. They said we’re sorry we’ll send somebody over tomorrow. That wouldn’t be convenient for me. How about Tuesday? Fine.

The guy came on Tuesday. He was a chipper chipmunk. This guy was a lot of fun. I don’t want to get him into trouble. I actually don’t know his name. He was a lot of fun. He came in. He had the energy and gait of a young gazelle, he came in and swapped out my box and said to me, “What happened?” I said, ”Well on Sunday I couldn’t get AMC.” “Oh! Are you a Breaking Bad fan?” “Yep.” “That show is crazy.” “I know.” “I’m only up to Season 5.” “Well wait ‘til you see the last two episodes.” Then he said, “Do you watch Suits?” At that point I said, “No I don’t watch Suits,” but I seized on the opportunity because the box was loading and it would be a while before he could tell me if it was working and this young man had a lust for life. He wanted to explain the premise of Suits to me and I don’t know the premise of Suits so I said, “What is the premise of Suits?” The reason why he brought up Suits, I learned later, is because Gale from Breaking Bad was in Suits and might return to Suits as a bad guy. This also led to a story in which the cable guy mentioned running into Gale on the corner of 14th and I want to say 6th Avenue and said, “Hey! Oh my god! It’s Gale. You’re so great on Suits! You’ve got to come back. You’re so fun to watch!” and Gale said, “Why thank you.” That is exactly what Gale should have said. Because if you are a character actor walking down 14th Street and the Time Warner Cable guy is with a friend ,and he mentioned he was with a friend, you are blessed, you get laurels at your feet, candy from the sky, all sorts of sweets, doubloons, blessings, the way Marc Maron has cookies that people brought him in front of him at a live podcast taping. If those rain upon you and you find that two, for lack of a better term, blue collar gentlemen, are behind those words of love, what you do is you stop your day and think to yourself boy I’m really lucky. Here I am a character actor who is a little heavy but really has something special and has managed to work. He has managed to get himself a couple of jobs on a couple of good shows. I have not seen Suits but I assume it’s good show. Enough people watch it, that’s not nothing. It is a drama, dramas command respect. That Gale was nice is not…if he were not nice I would be more disappointed. I wouldn’t be shocked but I think that’s weird, why would you do that Gale?

Here’s the premise of Suits. I don’t really know the premise of Suits. I think there are some corrupt lawyers. I don’t know the premise of Suits. I was listening at the time I really just forgot it. It was like I checked out, I didn’t. I was with this guy, every moment. He did tell me the premise of Graceland which is another show. I’ve never heard of Graceland. There was a bad guy and he was caught and he lived in this estate which he named Graceland because he was an Elvis fan. Now a bunch of cops work in it but some of them are corrupt. He’s been charged to figure out which of the cops are corrupt. That’s the premise of Graceland which he also likes. That’s all we talked about. He fixed my cable box and he left. The cable box works great. That’s a nice thing and now I’ll be able to watch Al Jazeera America as much as I could stuff myself with.

Al Jazeera American is something that nobody is obsessing about. No one is talking about the fact that we have Al Jazeera America in our roster and how funny and insane that is. It used to be current TV right? There was Infomania, there was Keith Olberman reads to you form a book for 25 minutes. I feel that if Will McAvoy were to have scotch, let’s say, with Keith Olberman, he would walk out after five seconds thinking this guy is exhausting. What a chowderhead. Al Jazeera America now exists. People are surprisingly ok with it. There are people that are not ok with it and sometimes others retweet the nasty racially charged notions—wouldn’t it be funny if we did an Al Jazeera TV show #the real camels of Abudhabi. Oh no, no, no ,no , no, no.

There’s something in between. Not saying what a bunch of sand N-words, frankly, and hurray! Al Jazeera America maybe I’ll go pitch there next week. Something in between, which is that’s weird. And it is. If I were to come to my parents Rosh Hashanah feast, all of the brisket you can put in your trisket, and I were to say, “I have good news.” “What is it?” We did the brucha, we had the h challah and honey, and that’s when we actually start to eat, we fill up with all kinds of sweet. By the way I would rather have a piece of challah dipped in honey than a cronut any day. It’s not even a fair example.

Julie has good news. Everyone looks at Julie. In my fantasy everybody stops talking. “I sold something to Al Jazeera America. I’m going to be doing a talk show on Al Jazeera America.” Silence, a tumbleweed made out of kreplach passes through my cousin Judy’s well-appointed dining table. “Oh? What’s the show?” “You know it’s just a light-hearted look at pop culture and current events, I’m behind a desk they put me in HD makeup in a suit and a flattering suit jacket, I have guests on. Really it’s just an opportunity to be on AL Jazeera America.” “Julie can I talk to you in the kitchen for a minute?” That’s exactly what would happen.

Then when I went into the kitchen it would be like the time when, you guys remember Smiley Muffin, Rest in peace my sister from another mister, my beloved cat who is no longer with us. Smiley Muffin, as you remember was a big mush. She was a statuesque voluptuous Diva like Delta Burke. She would hang out on the couch with me. She would cuddle up with me at night. She was very chill. She’s sleep all day and we had a thing. She was wonderful and perfect. Except for when it was time to go to the vet and she would try to kill people who went to school for degrees. I realized I couldn’t take her to the vet anymore and so I got the vet come to me which you can do. If you live in New York City and have animals that can’t go to the vet without a lot of stress, you should google City Pets. There are excellent vets that will come to you and give your cat or dog a checkup. Your dog has to leave the house to go to the bathroom.

Let’s talk about cats more. So the vets came over. If you remember Smiley Muffin had a little something I was concerned about and they said she needed a biopsy. I said all right good luck with that. She said this vet tech will hold her down and take a biopsy but maybe we’ll do it in the next room. Ok, I’ll put her on the bed. Then the vet tech and Smiley were in my bedroom together and then the door was closed. I proceeded to hear the most teeth gnashing blood curdling noises. If there was a Hanna Barbera cartoon about carnage. I heard these noises come from the next room. The vet tech came out. She said, “Your cat is very confident. I said, “Go back in there and try it again.” The same thing happened. She came out and said this cat is not consenting to the biopsy. You have to take her in and sedate her. They write the words fractious in a loud red sharpie on her file in the same way I’ve heard pediatricians write over invested mother in a child’s file, concerned mother, invasive mother, over-bearing mother. They have different codes in Jewish parts of the coasts. It goes from Yentl to Mirror Has Two Faces. In this case Smiley never had to go to the vet until the end. This is a sad story. It’s not what I meant to say. What I meant to say if after my hypothetical Al Jazeera announcement I would go into the kitchen with some relative and it would sound like it did when Smiley and the vet tech were in that room together. I don’t have a show on Al Jazeera America. Would I pitch Al Jazeera America?

Absolutely, why not. Do you know what? It’s a buyer’s market is what I like to say. Boy do I like saying it. Do you know what also, I knew it already but I re-learned it this week in the aftermath of my cronut related trauma is that Carrie Mulligan, who I have never cared for, who I have always sort of felt was the bland Michelle Williams, if Michelle Williams is sea bass with maybe a whole sea bass baked in a thing of salt and the waiters debone it, this is nice. Then Carrie Mulligan is the steamed fluke. Carrie Mulligan is married to Mumford of Mumford and sons. Did you guys know that? Isn’t that terrible? Isn’t’ that something we should all sit with? The Obamas got another dog. I’m not into the new Obama dog. This might not be a popular opinion because all puppies are beautiful and all dogs are good dogs. I have said this for years. All dogs are good dogs. I’m not so into this dog though. What’s this dog’s name Gayle? Sunny. Arbitrary name. I’m disappointed that they got a second one of the same breed. I’m not so into her haircut. He haircut is Marla Gibbs Season 1 of 227. I’m just not into the dog. What can I say? It’s not that I don’t like that breed. I think they can be a little over-groomed. I’ll say that. I wouldn’t mind seeing a Portuguese Waterdog grow out his or her shag. I think Bo is adorable, but of all the hypo-allergenic dogs, I guess I don’t understand why they couldn’t mis it up a little bit. In no way are we ever suggesting god forbid they go to a shelter and get a mutt. Oh never, never, never. Let’s not go nuts about this. I don’t know what about a terrier or a golden doodle? There are other hypo-allergenic dogs is all I’m saying. I know Bo needs to be socialized and maybe it helps with somebody who probably smells like his mother. I don’t know there’s just something I don’t feel when I look at photos of Sunny that I would like to feel. I’m a little disappointed.

I have been off this week. Billy is in LA shooting parks and Rec which is wonderful. I am very excited that he’s working with Sam Elliott finally! How many people…what’s the bear grinder where you woof at people? What’s that called? Grizzler, makes mouth happy. Billy’s away we’ve been off this week. This is how I spent the week, watching House of Cards. Ordering from that one pizza place that made me sick—forgetting, remembering. I got my hair done. That’s it guys. I took a walk. We’re doing the Citibike photo shoot this Saturday. That’s exciting. That’s something to look forward to. Doing the photo shoot of me on a Citibike as I promised as you all donated your hard earned funds to see actualized. This is actually happening on Saturday. Dickie DeBella is coordinating it. Spoony will be there.

Everything is fine. It’s a little still. I’m also at I point this summer where I turned 35 and I am wondering and hoping, not that being invested in outcome is anything good, apparently, I’m wondering if there is ever something besides busy or tired from now on? I really hope there is. I’ve talked in the past about how I have tried to have more fun and nothing says fun like trying to have fun. Just like nothing says happiness like the word project after it, Gretchen Rubin. I have nothing against Gretchen Rubin. I would love to find a motor beneath that sort of busy tired cycle that propels me that is not even joy-based, but sort of comfort fueled. The new comfort fueled Jetta. It’s odd. It’s a very up and down kind of…that’s the nature of my work. Feast or famine by the way. That’s a phrase. It reminds me of fruit and fiber. Neither one is particularly appetizing, although a feast..no, I don’t think the word feast is appetizing.

I think the word feast implies you are doing something and someone else is being hurt. It is some sort of sick Peter Greenaway style feast where there are entrails and compromise. Nobody likes famine, least of all Andrew Lloyd Weber. Are we ready to deal with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat as a nation? I don’t think we’ve ever been able to deal with it. Did we mention this last week? If we didn’t I’m putting this on the record right now, Clay Aiken dressed up as Joseph in the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is in the Redhead Hall of Fame. That photo should replace every photo anyone has ever seen including and especially photos of travesty. That means that photo of the one Asian guy shooting the other one from Viet Nam in the head should now be replaced mentally, I don’t know if you want to do some sort of mental Orwellian find and replace function with a photo of Clay Aiken spinning, looking up with a shimmering main of auburn hair thinking how he is going to prove his brothers wrong. His brothers picked on him. He’ll show them. He’ll interpret dreams. What a stupid show.

Is it a stupid story? Do you know what’s not a stupid story? The one Dolly Parton sings in her Coat of many colors song. That about going to school wearing rags and having a mom that says you’re special, you’re not crap, you’re a king. You’re queen. Dolly Parton can’t be human. I’ve been grappling with her. We should all grapple with her once a year at least. We should appreciate her all year round but then one year really spend some time meditating and contemplating on exactly how, who, what, why—none of it adds up. I had a tweet, not to refer to my own tweets on my podcast, how self-referential can I be? But I had a tweet, ”Atheists, how do you explain Dolly Parton? But in reality I don’t think anyone can. I joked at one point she’s an alien. I don’t know what or how she is. But she is, and it’s exceptional. It’s extraordinary. I’ve never seen anyone like her. Her voice from when she was 10, 12, 13—however old she is now it doesn’t matter. I’m not entertaining any sort of jokey…She someone whose plastic surgery should never be spoken of. Joan Rivers, fine. Joan Rivers pokes fun at herself. So does Dolly, but it gets in the way of dumb people understanding the exact amount of talent we are dealing with. Coat of many colors, every one of her songs tells a story. Do you think she understands god as much as Stevie Nicks understands magic? I don’t know. Stevie Nicks is very much human, that what’s so great about her, Dolly Parton extra-terrestrial. I don’t know is the answer.

I spent some time on the Alf Wikipedia page for some Billy on the Street work. This is what I did this week in addition to cronuts and House of Cards, House of Cronuts. It would be tough to claim that Billy Eichner creates a hostile workplace, work environment, but I will say that for the sake of what I do for that show, I had to spend some significant time on Kathryn Heigl’s Pinterest. Kathryn Heigl has a website. If you look at Kathryn Heigl’s official website, it’s maintained by someone who takes it really seriously. It’s not an actress’s website that is completely outdated, or they made a big launch or push two years ago or even six months ago. Kathryn Heigl’s website is on point. It is also the kind of website that should belong to someone who hasn’t ‘made it’ yet. There are updates on there that should be part of a promotion of a less successful actress. There will be a screen shot of her talking to Jay Leno and it will say, “Kathryn was on The Tonight Show last night, click here to watch it.” Attention Kathryn has joined Instagram follow her photos of her and a dog in a field and the filter is Kelvin(?) I think. Read the reviews…Don’t read the reviews…The Big Wedding. Do you remember that movie or was it all a dream? What about those posters of Robin Williams with a light bulb in his mouth? Are those real? The new fall season is really going to rock guys. I can’t wait to see these new network television shows. They all seem so fun and smart and really seem to tap into a truth that is universal. The great thing about network shows is that they are good for everybody. That’s why it is called broadcast it’s for men, women, children, adults. It doesn’t matter. We can all sit around and enjoy Dads, The Goldberg’s, is it The Millers? No that’s the incest comedy. We’re about due for an incest romp aren’t we? A mistaken identity, what if Jennifer Aniston were a stripper. Wouldn’t that be funny guys?

There have been a couple of movies in which Jennifer Aniston has been in her underpants for ‘comic’ effect. I liked Horrible Bosses, but I remember he characters game being ‘what if she’s really horny?’ and she is naked under her dentist’s coat at one point. Wouldn’t that be funny? Yeah, that would be hilarious, come on. Let’s just go from A to C. I’m not asking A-F, let’s give a girl a different game besides being so sexy it’s silly. The only time that’s funny is when Jon Waters does it and there are women writhing around in sexual agony, RIP Haji from Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill who died last week, the one who talked like Chico Marx.

The only people who should be allowed to make women who are horny and sexy funny are gay men, because they know that lust is ridiculous when it comes to all of us, men and women. It can be. They don’t see us as objects of desire. They just see us as people they appreciate for reasons that have to do with being human, making another person laugh, or having something interesting to say, which is why I’m only dating gay men. I will say this about dating. If you are a boy listening and you want to ask a girl out, or you like a girl, I mean man and woman. You should ask her out and don’t think it will be creepy because it won’t. I really feel strongly about this. I’m not sure if men know this. If you like someone, if there’s a woman you find attractive and maybe you don’t know what her deal is, maybe you don’t want to do it in person, send her an email. Say, “Hey, would you like to get a drink sometime?” That’s appropriate. That’s positive. That’s wonderful. I encourage that in general.

There was an article in the Huffington Post the other day on how to wear pants. I don’t believe that there are no stupid questions. I believe that there are stupid questions. There are things like; I don’t know how to dress myself. Ok, but it is unacceptable when you become too stubborn to ask for help. I really do believe that if you are unsure about something you should absolutely ask. There’s no shame in learning something that it seems like it would be simply to know but you don’t know. So ask girls out. Don’t wear pleats. Let me know if you have any other questions. I’ll cover that for now. Women, keep doing everything you are doing.

I was also thinking about how men sometimes say I’ll never understand women, they’re so complicated. That’s just a nice way, or not a nice way of saying we’re just smarter than you. I love men. I really do love men. But emotional intelligence, intuition, all of that stuff, we are running a different race. The notion of women being so complicated and confusing, just ask, just ask. Where you get into trouble is the arrogance, where you get into trouble is not having the humility to recognize what you don’t know. There’s no shame in not knowing it. There’s only shame in pretending that you do. And being really stubborn when someone says, don’t wear that shirt, you can’t do that—Hey screw you. No actually do you know about shirts? You don’t? That’s fine. It has something to do with openness. It has something to do with stubbornness. We’re all stubborn, stubborn comfort should be the name of that drink. Doing what we know how to do feels good or it feels safe. There are certain people who would rather be right than be happy. I have been thinking about this because I know that winning, not in a Charlie Sheen sort of way is a value that we as people…we’re all bags of garbage and we’re all insecure and we don’t know what we’re doing. The sooner we accept that the better off we are.

The idea that we are right about something is very important to us. It’s very important to our egos. Our egos are very important to being powerful in this culture right? It’s a very egocentric culture, all of it. If I were to part with the notion, that maybe I was wrong, maybe my intuition about this person was lousy, maybe I was foolish to have decided something before I got a good look into what he or she actually is or does, it’s hard to admit that. It’s hard to go backwards. When we do then we can change, then we can be happier than we were before. Oftentimes it’s just more comfortable to cling because if you don’t have your own intuition then what do you have? In a perfect world you’ll still have your soul. I am trying to put the soul above the ego it’s not going well.

I will also say that I am in general grappling with the notion of freedom versus being trapped and whether or not it is scarier to be abandoned than it is to be trapped. To me it is scarier to be abandoned and that is something I need to change. Being trapped is, especially with women, I know I am being very vague, I don’t know if women value freedom as much as men do. That’s disconcerting to me. We have slave-based thoughts. As long as we’re kept we’re safe. If you have a domestic animal if you open the door m the pet is like what are you talking about? I’m good here, thank you very much. Really? You’re free! No, I’m good. I wonder sometimes, if women unfortunately are like that. This has to do with me seeing Orthodox women in Williamsburg and thinking they have my genes. They have my eyes, nose, and face. Why haven’t you started a revolution yet? How many revolutions have been led by women? Not enough.

Is it scarier to be abandoned than it is to be trapped? I’m thinking of this in all sort of way, in work, in life, in love, in relationships if you’re trapped with the wrong person versus abandoned by the wrong person. What the worst out of those two? I don’t know, I’m sort of contemplating. I hope that’s ok with you.

I will talk about the male Lavern and Shirley though because I know that you wanted me to go back to Network television and how great and innovative and insightful it is. There are a couple of projects coming done the pike for our ears nose and throat from Hollywood, from LALAwood, Hollyweird. The good people from network television green-lit a Wizard of Oz themed drama. The premise of which completely eludes me, I can’t imagine what that could be. I came into the Billy on the Street offices and said what the hell is going on. Jake Fogelnest pricked up his ears and said, “I don’t know, the Tinman needs a heart, the scarecrow needs a brain, maybe there are some organ donations…Jake, you’re a genius. That’s happening and then there’s also a male Laverne and Shirley. Finally, and also thank god, the male Laverne and Shirley everybody coming to network television, don’t worry there’s a out pilot commitment according to Nicki Fink.

Do you know what else there’s a commitment to? Gary Marshall’s great grand daughter going to Williams. At this point he’s just stock piling tuition for kids he could adopt, him and his teeth. He and his teeth, Gary Marshall’s teeth, that’s going to be the name of my Ska band. I’m going to start the show because otherwise I might start talking about ambiguous values and ego. I’m no Buddhist. I’m just a girl standing in front of a podcast audience asking them to get her tickets to Pippin because I heard it was very good. My parents went to see it. Andrea Martin wasn’t there Tova Feldshuh stood in and by stood in I mean she was suspended upside down and sang a song. That’s not a typical Wednesday night for Tova Feldshuh. How do you know? Because she told me! No, she didn’t tell me.

I did something with her once on the Hadassah network. What did we talk about? Passover. It was a really great time. I’m really sorry you missed it. It’s coming to the Al Jazeera America. Can you imagine if I pitched the Hadassah table? The Hadassah roundtable discussion to Al Jazeera American. Do you only talk about Passover? Yeah, we only talk about Passover. You don’t talk about different Jewish holiday? Nope, only Passover, all year round.

We have one guest this week, that’s all we need….