Episode 155: "Andrew and Sunshine"

Date

February 21, 2014

Guests

Morgan Murphy

Origin of the episode title

Names Julie made up for Katharine McPhee's dogs.

Discussed

Hi! Here is a new episode of HOW WAS YOUR WEEK featuring comedienne MORGAN MURPHY! Join us and listen while Morgan tells us about her experience on Crank Yankers, what mean things mean people say to her online, what her tattoos mean, and how lovely Kat Dennings is.

Plus: Valentine's Day and its aftermath! A celebrity encounter in the elevator! News about Jerry the Labradoodle! And welcome to the Redhead Hall of Fame, Craigslist Killer!

Enjoy this show. Soon February will be over!

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Monologue Transcript

Transcription by Amy

Hello, hello, it’s Julie Klausner back for another episode of HWYW. It is February but not for long so don’t hang yourself. Is hanging the most violent way to die? Guys, I’m not going to lie to you I’ve been in better places, not literally, even though I am in Los Angeles. I have mentally and emotionally been more robust. I’m not embarrassed to admit that I’m a little depressed. That shouldn’t come with any shame but I am embarrassed to admit that a lot of it goes back to—frankly Valentine’s Day didn’t help. It’s been a year since Jack and I broke up and I am in disbelief of that. It not that it seems like it was yesterday but it does. It’s more that I am still in a post-break up state and that’s interesting in at least a couple of way. It’s been a weird week.

I am coming back to New York for a little bit which I am excited about. I bought a ticket to come home for a long weekend. I will be in town. I am going to the premier of Billy on the Street. That’s going to be on March 4th at the Beacon Theater in New York City. I believe you can buy tickets but don’t ask me how I have no idea. I was under the impression that people were invited besides people who worked on it—Jake Fogelnest, Jon Daly was there this season. It’s a great season. You guys are going to love it. I am going to New York for that and to see James L. Jazz, my cat, whom I miss a lot.

I miss my life but then I am a little ambivalent. It’s been an odd week. I am at this place where things have settled in around me just enough where I can feel the crushing loneliness of being out here. I may have said that last week. I don’t remember. I think it will do me good to dip into Ye Olde Big Apple for enough time to realize how cold it is. I talk about weather too much.

I am concerned that I am boring because my mind tends to fasten itself lately on topics that are inherently unpleasant to others such as excessive realizations about weather and my own mood. Also that I’m in a constant state of ‘I can’t believe I don’t have a boyfriend anymore. It’s been a year. OK. The shock of I am not where I usually am. It’s nothing I am proud of, but I am not in the business of shaming myself for my feelings. Feelings are neutral, like the weather and like the weather, they do pass. But they are also very strong, at least in me. I don’t know how your emotions run, but mine are vibrant and therefore they shape worldview thoughts. I guess you are supposed to be healthy enough to create thoughts that control your emotions at some point but I haven’t gotten to that chapter of Dianetics yet so don’t spoil it. We’ll see how things change.

I am very fortunate to be working on an excellent TV show while I am out here. People have asked me to talk more about what I do and I don’t want to because I want to present myself to the world as someone who if you pay me I will have discretion. That said there’s absolutely nothing that isn’t fantastic about the show I am working on. Jon Mulaney is in it. It’s his show. Martin Short is in it. Elliott Gould is in it. Elliott Gould is a revelation. I cannot express enough how wonderful he is and how badly I want to be writing for the spin-off of his character. One thing at a time. I am still getting acclimated to being a terrible parker Posey. Stupid, yet I couldn’t help myself.

I live in this apartment building that is near the Crazy Girls strip establishment because I hate a long commute. I don’t know if I mentioned this before, but I am going to ask you to please...I am going to tell you a story about a celebrity, if you can hear the sound of my voice do me a favor and don’t tweet at her and say hey you are on this podcast. Let’s just keep this between you and me. Could you? Sure. Should you? That’s up to you but I would prefer that you didn’t? I don’t need her to be mad at me and she lives in my building. Here’s the story, are you ready? The answer is no because you are not. Katherine McPhee lives in my building. I know. I know. I know. I know. I couldn’t handle it when I first heard. Our pal Luke Canter helped me move in and when he left I got a text that said I saw Katherine McPhee. She was having a really hard time figuring out the intercom. Either she lives her or her boyfriend does. I said, “You’re insane. I know I just met you and you seem great but you are out of your mind. That’s clearly not her.” I didn’t want to believe it. Then a couple of weeks ago, by the way Katherine McPhee was the very charismatic and intelligent seeming star of the sadly defunct television series Smashed. She has the widest shoulder you have ever seen on a human. I don’t want to be mean but she has dumb cow eyes. Eyes that are in front of nothing of substance but steak. You look into the eyes and think is there a soul there? Yeah, sure, but mostly it’s just meat.

Katherine McPhee is also an American Idol person. Fine. Why am I only telling you now? Because I have been dealing with it. A couple of weeks ago I was in the parking garage of this building. This is only a sublet, I just live here (if you can call it living) I am staying here for my time in Los Angeles writing for Mulaney. I was at the parking garage waiting for the elevator that takes me up to my apartment when I hear the sound of little tiny paws on concrete. I recently stop calling it a parking lot. I’m a New Yorker. Hi. I’m Fran Lebowitz. I am here to talk to you about life insurance.

I hear the scraping of tiny paws and I turn to my right to realize that a small Chihuahua, this one was really small, without a leash is sort of tottering over to me. His or her owner is nowhere in sight. Sur enough his or her companion sidles up to his partner and the two of them are leashless running around a parking garage. I remember thinking to myself that is unsafe. I would be freaked out if my dogs were not on leashes and were playing around in a goddamn parking garage where people bound in at who knows how many miles per hour blasting that terrible—Dark Horse is a bad song. That Katy Perry song is not a good song. Come at me and @mention tweet her all you want. I don’t care. Tweet her. So they are running around and it’s disconcerting. I see that their owner is coming up behind them. I am talking to them, “Hi puppies.” And they are not listening to me because they are just not there completely. They didn’t seem like smart dogs. I am not disparaging small breeds even though I do believe dogs should be dogs. If a dog runs toward you, you should be afraid he is going to knock you over. That’s the fun of it.

So I acknowledge that the dogs’ owner is next to me, but I bend down to pet them even thought they are looking at me they can’t really see me. They are not that smart. I said, “What are their names?” She says, “Andrew and Sunshine” or whatever. I get in and I am still looking at them and I said, “Are they pure-bred Chihuahua?” “Yes.” I look up and realize that I am talking to Katherine McPhee. She and I are the only ones in the elevator. I am playing it cool and pretending that I don’t know who she is because we are talking about her dogs. As far as I am concerned she’s my neighbor and she’s a dog owner. I ask her other questions about the dogs; I asked who the alpha is because every time I see someone with more than one dog that’s the only question I have. That and what tricks does he know? Sometimes I ask if he’s mushy. She says, “She’s the Alpha.” So I laugh. I should mention that I live in an odd apartment building. They must treat it with cologne. It always reeks of some strong fragrance. It’s nice. It’s not an unpleasant fragrance; it’s just one of the features of the building. The lobby too, like a hotel, or a particular hotel that thinks it should smell like sandalwood. Lately it just smells like farts, that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, the elevator has reeked of cologne since the day I moved in. Katherine McPhee has lived here longer than I have because Luke Canter saw her that day when I was moving in and she was not moving in. Therefore she has been her longer. So I am talking about the dogs to Katherine McPhee and before she leaves the elevator she goes (sniff, sniff) “You smell great by the way.” I think to myself, oh boy. She doesn’t realize that the elevator is scented. No matter how long she’s lived here, she thinks it’s me. Shall I point out that it is the elevator? I decided no.

Then the elevator gets to Katherine McPhee’s floor (I live higher than her, no big deal) and the dogs go out of the elevator before she does because they are not respectful. She says goodnight. I think was that Katherine McPhee or was that just a generically attractive brunette woman? As she is leaving I realize she is carrying one of those, I don’t know if it is an LA thing, those meals where you get three meals and two snacks delivered to your house every day. It’s made out of book bag material and it’s in a box. They are prepackaged meals so you can lose weight, I suppose. As she leaves the elevator she is holding one of those sacks behind her back. On the bag of food it literally says Katherine McPhee.

Then, this is obviously the section of the show called Julie’s LA apartment building follies. Other stuff happened this week in this apartment building. There’s the return of Jerry. Jerry is an enormous caramel colored Labradoodle. When I met Jerry, Jerry went into the elevator without his owner. He realized we were going up instead of down and his owner said, after he came out of the elevator as the doors were closing, “We’ve been tricked Jerry.” That’s who Jerry is. I saw Jerry the other day, he got a haircut. He looks like a completely different dog. That’s not a great story but it is true. The thing that happened this week that was unusual… I lost my debit card on Saturday. I went to a Robeks Juice and I got a very berry, I rue the day that somebody figured out that very rhymes with berry. There are too many I love you berry much, isn’t that cute? Is it? It is pedestrian. I will put it that way. I lost my debit card and I came home. I was having a shitty day and I canceled an interviewed. I had to cancel my card. I realized it was missing. I dealt with it. The point is I was in a bad mood and then the fire alarm went off. The fire alarm in this building goes off in every single unit I suppose. It is very loud. I went down the stairs, thinking this could be a drill. Why are they doing this on the weekend? It was nothing. I went back upstairs, and then it went off again. The people downstairs said it was nothing. Then the next night at four in the morning the alarm goes off again. I was lying in bed thinking this is some sort of experiment. What is going on here? Is this a call to arms for me to call the management office? I get very bitchy, very quickly when it comes to customer service in general, and demanding, like with my cable. I am not paying for this ‘day’. Deduct this day. I almost called the management company and asked them to deduct a day of rent. Also I did that thing that only masterfully bitchy passive-aggressive women can pull off which is the ‘I’m confused’ approach to reprimanding someone. “I’m confused. Was the fire alarm supposed to go off at 4 in the morning because there was no fire?” I went downstairs, there was no fire, but the next day the woman who rented me the apartment, who I found out is Jerry’s owner’s girlfriend, which is insane because that means she lives with Jerry. She told me that they were trying to find the culprit. Apparently the guy that pulled the alarm at 4 in the morning was not the same person as the day before. They are trying to survey video footage to get the guy who pulled the alarm at 4 in the morning. I don’t think that is going well. Apparently the fire alarm the day before was pulled by a woman who was “having a fight with her boyfriend.” I don’t know what is going on in this building but I am blaming LA. I don’t know what else to tell you.

Somebody on Twitter said don’t blame Runyon Canyon. Don’t categorize LA based on Runyon Canyon. Fine, I’m not. Don’t categorize LA based on the shockingly horrible experience I had at CVS. They make you check yourself out on robots that are constantly broken and when you give them your credit card and they say it doesn’t work. If you ask them to call the credit card company they ask, “Do you want me to call?” Yes. Finally they do, and then they don’t have any bags. I know they don’t have plastic bags because theoretically it is good for the environment but they give you a paper sack with no handles. Nobody wants to hold a paper grocery sack of shampoo and vitamins and clutch it to their chest as they walk however many blocks to get to where they are living. Then you realize you are walking past a liquor store that has a boarded up window that a day ago when you passed it, it had a hole through it. Am I judging LA? A little. I’m sorry. The weather is perfect. Weather, weather, weather, weather, weather. Also most of my friends are here officially, so I do not mean to dismiss that in the sentence I expressed out loud with my mouth and voice. I need people I love in my life. I need support and company. I need distraction and love. I am a human.

I have a massage therapist named Doron. Jamie Denbo and Jessica Chaffin referred me to an Israel person named Doron who is a fantastic, wonderful massage therapist. Here’s the thing about Doron, 1) Apparently he was a medic in the Israeli army, and 2) Doron does not fuck around. He will, I don’t want to say beat the shit out of you, but I like a massage that is all business and I like to feel things cracking. I like to know what certain muscles are. By the way, Doron fixed my eye; knock on wood, Doron fixed my eye twitch. My temporalis muscle was in spasm from neck stuff. Isn‘t that interesting?

It is kind of interesting.

I was having twitchy stuff with my right eye. It was going bada bada bada bada bada and I talked about it on the podcast. Then I got a DM last week from They Might Be Giants saying to try a warm compress. That was awesome. They Might Be Giants sent me a direct message on Twitter saying try a warm compress on your eyeball. How could that have been better, the Residents maybe? That’s a funny eyeball joke if you get the reference. Were the Residents creepy enough as a band? Are we at a point where we can look back and say they were creepy enough? Or they could have been creepier. Let’s think about that. There’s a television show that was just green lit here in Hollywood, CA called Selfie. There is going to be a pilot called Selfie. In case you were worried that there wouldn’t be a pilot called Selfie you don’t have to worry anymore. There is going to be a pilot for network television and it is going to be called Selfie.

The Craig’s List killer is in the Red Head Hall of Fame. I am calling it. I am sorry. She’s not a red head. I don’t care. This woman is goddamn fascinating. The Craig’s List killer for those of you may or may not know, let’s call her a colorful killer, a colorful woman. She’s a little bit quirkier than the average bear. Her name is Miranda Barbour. She claims to be a serial killer and that she was in a satanic cult. Yes? No? Maybe? She’s 19. She’s a pretty girl and she lured strangers on Craig’s List then stabbed them to death. Of course, this was in Alaska because Alaska is the new Florida. We don’t know if she is telling the truth or not but she is a kooky broad and I wish her and Spoony well in their budding pen-pal romance. Meanwhile things with me and Cannibal Cop are in a holding pattern.

What else is happening with me this week? Unfortunate experience at CVS-covered. I don’t do anything besides work. I am complaining again. Listen guys I appreciate you being here for me to talk into a microphone that will eventually reach you. But I am not having fun right now. It’s not that I don’t love my job because I truly do. I am incredibly grateful to be learning as much as I am out here. But I am not having fun. I have a hard time with fun in general. I watched an episode of Girls. It was an excellent episode. They went to the beach house and danced and they are swimming. They are drinking wine. I just remember thinking; I didn’t get the memo about all of the fun I was supposed to have with friends or that I should still be having. I know I am closer to 40 than I am to 25. I feel like my challenge has been…am I one of those people that is going to settle for happy in a measured successful way over compromising? For me, the Oprah-like joy is not possible. The notion of having fun to me right now is such a pipe-dream. It’s like a quaint sort of bygone notion. I might not be the kind of person, this is honest and vulnerable but why not, I don’t think I am the kind of person that can be happy unless I am in a relationship. Isn’t that a bummer? I don’t know if it is anti-feminist or not. I hope it isn’t.

I think that might be the case. Not that I was thrilled in my last relationship for god sake. You can go to the video tape—remember that expression from sports? Maybe it is that. Maybe not, I have no idea. I do know that it’s silly to chase fun when all you need is the ground underneath you to be solid. I don’t expect to be one of these people who do cartwheels and yogurt commercials. I want to be the cartoon character in the anti-depressant ad that has little lines under her eyes, and the divot in the middle of the pill becomes the pill’s mouth. Have you seen this ad? It is very good. It is for Abilify which is not a word-Abilify. Ugh!

Let’s think about that for a second—Abilify. Well it gives you ability. How would we put that in a verb form? Well it abilifies you. All right. I want to be the cartoon woman in the second half of the anti-depressant ad. That’s what I am going for. Yes all of my archetypes are drawn from advertisings for things. Also I really like Broad City. I think it is a great show. You should watch it. I have absolutely no joke to say with that. I am not being sarcastic. It is a great show. Those girls are awesome.

What else is in the news, right? Did you see the Tonight Show? I didn’t see it. I saw the clip and it made me miss New York. Hold on a second with that cameo parade on the Jimmy Fallon network program, The Tonight Show with boy genius Jimmy Fallon. They had people come on; Rudy Giuliani was on, a lot of New York celebrities. It was nice. There was Joan Rivers, Sarah Jessica Parker, and then Rudy Giuliani says, “Thanks for bringing it back to New York.” I don’t mean to disparage that but he’s saying that? Where’s de Blasio? What is he doing? Is he plugging in a snow machine and zapping the Upper East Side? He’s like a Batman villain. He’s like the Snowman. His whole mission is to cover parts of the city that rich people live in with snow so that they are inconvenienced. That’s de Blasio’s Batman villain game. I think it would be cool if he and his wife were, I would like to see her be more visible. I would like her to do more appearances. I just do. I want to see more of her in general.

House of Cards is back. I have very mixed feelings about. Robin Wright does this thing in that show. First of all she has a hole in her neck that you could use to store M&Ms if she were to lie down. She also has this thing where she her lips are always pursed and her eyes are not dead. Her eyes are thinking but they are math thinking they are not verbal thinking. They are scanning, being logical and evaluating things. She’s got the kind of cold cerebral quality to her that represents the kind of person who never thinks about food that I hate. Do you know women who don’t think about that are completely poised, not looking their phone, or biting their nails? In the meantime Kevin Spacey sang a song. It’s a great show. I can’t stop watching it. It could be a bad show. It very well could be a bad show. But parts of it are good. Maybe all of it is good. I don’t know! I don’t know.

Billy is going to be on the Tonight Show. I am so excited. Ohh, I love Billy Eichner so much. I love him. I love Jake Fogelnest. I love Tom Scharpling, Holly Schlesingberg, and Jamie Denbo. Who else do I love? Let me look at my phone. Who else have I been texting with these days? Nate, Renate-Auntie Renate, who has been sending me videos of Jimmy Jazz showing her his tums. He has absolutely no idea I am gone. When I come back he’s going to think that it’s been a dream. Or he’ll be pissed about me. I don’t know. Anything could happen. Jason Woliner, he’s another good friend of mine. Did I say Holly? Ugh! Guys thanks for being you. RuPaul’s Drag Race starts on Monday. That’s something. What else?

Let’s start the show.