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Peak TV was characterized by great writing, great acting and in more than a few examples, the centering of terrible people.  The Sopranos, Breaking Bad and Mad Men are the three best of many examples of how, when television was at the best it’s ever been (and now with art dying a slow death during the rise of “Peak Content” it may be the best it will ever be), it was focuses on some of the worst people.  We laughed with and rooted for murderers, racists, drug dealers, serial killers, adulterers, incestuous murderers (once Jamie Lannister began helping Brienne of Tarth), etc.  But one of the great things about art (not content) is that it can play with your emotions and have you hoping for outcomes that (hopefully) you don’t wish for in real life.  But did this multi-decade conditioning create an America where we became desensitized to anti-heroes and just drop the “anti”?

On a related note, there is one particular theme in the anti-hero space that bears mentioning. It seems that America was willing to afford this artistic license to white male characters.  I have often joked (and yet, is it a joke?) that Emmy Awards were always showered on white centered drug shows (Breaking Bad, Ozark, Weeds) as if the struggle of white people who chose to deal drugs was worth praise while equally, if not better, drug dealing shows with Black and Latino people (The Wire, Narcos, Snowfall) always went away empty-handed (and almost always unnominated) as if that artistic journey was not as impressive or important.  So like so many things, I think race is central to the ability of white anti-heroes to get Americans watching and rooting for them.  This, of course, is not to say that The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, etc. are not incredible shows. They are. But if you think Ozark deserved more Emmys than The Wire, I also think I know who you voted for.

And yes, that brings me to Donald Trump.  I have said on podcasts and in writing that I do not think Donald Trump could have been President in any other time than this one. A time where our civic engagement is the only thing lower than our smart phone-destroyed attention spans.  A time following the first Black president. A time when politicians were just as likely to be serving their own brands as their constituents. A time when an entire news ecosystem exists, not to deliver news, but to distort news and foment a singular hate for the other political side.  This combination of factors created a unique and fertile soil for an attention seeking monster.  He has no depth, but that’s ok because we aren’t seeking depth. He possesses no knowledge, but that is ok because we seek confirmation, not truth.  But as I think more and more about all the factors that gave us President Trump, a singular embarrassment in modern political history and a Mount Rushmore of American Historical tragedies, I wonder if our pop culture landscape assisted as well.

People have often cited Modern Family as a comedy that helped America become more comfortable with gay people. If that’s true, then can’t it be true that culture works in reverse also?  That white anti-heroes made Americans comfortable with a lawless, but entertaining central figure (who was white)?  There is just one difference: THIS IS REAL LIFE.  When MAGA roots for Trump to defeat his enemies (Democrats, diversity, decency, nuance) perhaps it feels like Walter White taking out Gus Fring, but it’s actually real people, real laws and the real US Constitution that he is wrecking. But like a mob of people who claim the title of Christians, with barely a connection to Jesus, or claim to be “Constitutionalists” while watching their president wipe his ass with it, these are people who seem to already be living in a semi-fictional world.  The problem is that at 10pm on HBO or AMC, the villains are done.  In Trump’s case, he is just getting started.

We have grown too comfortable out in public.  People wear suits to do Tik Toks, pajamas to work and sweatpants to the theater.  Somewhere headphones became optional. The 1980s had one Radio Raheem; we are now stuck millions of iPhone Assholes.  There has been a real cultural regression in terms of manners, decorum and presentation. Perhaps in a society comprised of people that now embody the contradiction of both giving in to a cynical nihilism yet simultaneously desiring a life of crushing/dominating/influencing/serving cu*t, this was inevitable.  As technology replaces religion as the Opioid of the Masses (perhaps the vape to faith’s pipe?), we are presented with the obedience of a faithful population, without most of the positives that religion has provided. If “faith without works is dead” presents a call to action for people to employ their faith to make a positive change, the tech mantra could be “tech without deeper consideration is exactly what we want you self-centered, overly-pampered, flesh sack.”  So as we lose our sense of community, our economy, our individuality, our generosity and our ability to socialize normally, it brings me to a profound question: when did so many people start shitting in public?

Now as my podcast fans are aware, I have what is known as “Bowel Privilege.” That, of course, is the ability to control when and where I shit so well, that one might even call me “regular.”  But it is deeper than that.  It appears my body and mind are almost connected in a way that, barring illness (which would keep me home anyway), I can limit my movements to my home and hotels.  And even on one of the rare occasions when I had awful food poisoning and could not make it home in time. I ended up wrecking a bathroom at Cornel Hospital in Manhattan (security saw the end-scene-of-Airplane level of sweat on my face and let me use a bathroom).  I think that is what makes me so weird – my brain and body after 46 years on Earth operate in a way so that I go to the bathroom before work, almost like some sort of incredible Darwinian leap where my body adjusts to what appear to be my comfort levels.

In an effort to make myself the Twain/Tocqueville/Dostoyevsky of my time I am working on a series of aphorisms that I believe really define where we are. For example:

• You can tell how eroded the foundation of a society is by how many accountants have sleeve tattoos
• The proximity to the end of a democracy is directly proportional to how many selfies its citizens take
• Screens are the babysitters for a collapsing society
• The more people who shit in public places, the shittier your society is becoming

(my non-existent book publisher won’t allow me to preview any more excerpts from my upcoming memoir “Before The Lips Synced: A Comedian’s Journey in a Pre and Post Stupid World”)

To give you one more personal example, and to make clear that I am aware that my bowel privilege is extreme, I once took a train from Chicago to Los Angeles without squatting. I was staying with my friend in LA for the week, but when my train got in I told him – I am getting a hotel for the night and would see him in the morning.  He did not understand and later told me he wondered if I has a side chick in LA.  Not only was he wrong on my relationship fidelity, but he was vastly underestimating my bathroom morals as well.  I believed that a Hyatt Place was the appropriate place to handle business after a 40 hour hold up.  When he asked me if I really held it that entire time I looked at him, scrunched my face into a DeNiro impersonation and quoted Bobby D from the diner scene in Heat saying, “that’s the discipline.”

But before you accuse me of being assholier than thou, I understand my BP is an extreme. But what I have witnessed from work places, to Starbucks to sporting events, to mass transit and travel is that people have no bowel discipline. Is this an extension of society’s diminished sense of propriety and courtesy or am I just a bored, middle-aged man seeking an enemy to complain about? Or is it both?

My most recent encounter was flying to Chicago this past Saturday. The flight was early in the morning so I skipped morning coffee (part of Bowel Privilege is not doing things to undermine it) and it was a 1 hour, 50 minute flight.  3 people (at least) took shits on this flight.  You either just left home or are headed home (or to/from hotel(s)) and you came this unprepared? Now my United flight smells like a buffet of defecations because you couldn’t wait.  And your system has no filter/control/discretion?  I was 2 rows behind the bathroom so I was very aware of what was happening.

To show you that I am not a hard-hearted man, I allow for usage on cross country Amtrak trips.  But far too often I have been on long distance trains leaving at 3pm or some very normal, middle of the day time, and within 10 minutes of a 12-40 hour trip, multiple people are dropping snickers bars in their toilets and I am getting stage 3 brown lung in the first 1% of my trip.

I have seen it at work places – start your day with 30 minutes of billable shitting?  That offends the space, the firm and the client!

My local Starbucks – I get it if you are homeless and require the services of a Starbucks. Heck – I never even complained about the main washing his genitals in the sink of the NY Public Library when I was studying for the bar exam because cleanliness is next to godliness.  But the idea of me walking to my local Starbucks and then dropping a deuce in the coffee shop when my apartment is a 10 minute walk away? Never.

But perhaps you are sitting, surprisingly still reading this, wondering, seriously what is wrong with J-L.  I believe that with Missouri and Ohio no longer serving as bellwether states in elections, I believe now that “as the assholes go, so goes the country.”  It is emblematic of a less self-respecting, yet more arrogant citizenry. It is demonstrative of people placing their own needs above the olfactory comfort of the community. In other words, in the final J-L witticism my publisher is allowing me to share, “A country that won’t control its assholes will eventually elect one to shit all over them.”

To paraphrase Chris Rock, in America there’s two kinds of Americans: there’s Americans and there’s MAGA. I like Americans, but I hate MAGA.  It is time for non-MAGA Americans to face the truth about where we are in this country.  We are being run by the worst man, empowered by the worst coalition of people in our country’s history.  Of course this is on a relative historic scale.  But does anyone doubt that a 19th century Donald Trump would have owned slaves, separated slave families (to be crueler than some of the woke masters) and defended the Confederacy, when 21st Century Donald Trump… defends the Confederacy and claims that we talk too much about how bad slavery was?!  Does anyone believe that Trump voters, who looked beyond rape allegations, racist pronouncements and treason in the 2024 election would somehow look to their better angels decades or centuries ago?  The time of confronting the truth in America has been at hand for years now: we are in a Cold Civil War.  One side has power. The other has numerical and moral advantages, but an even great self-defeating and cynical outlook that negates those advantages.  We have allowed the worst coalition to empower the cruelest and most cowardly politicians to drive our democracy to its last rites.

For most of the last 10 years I have heard voices like Bill Maher say “You can hate Trump, but you can’t hate his voters” as if their minority rule was somehow an inevitability. And I never heard anyone Left, Right or Center (except maybe for some pontificating platitude from Cornel West) say “the Right can hate Hillary, but you cannot hate all Democrats.” Because all the Right has done is institutionalize, normalize and fetishize the demonic, America-hating dark delusion of the Left that they all imbibe.

Social Security, the GI Bill, Medicare, Medicaid, Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Affordable Care Act, Build Back Better, etc. – almost every major positive, popular act by our government in the last 100 years has been the work of Democrats – Democratic presidents with large Democratic majorities. Even after the overt racists fled to Nixon and Republicans, Clinton created more jobs, Obama extended health care and Biden created jobs and the biggest climate change fighting package ever.  In my lifetime national Republicans have given us the empty rhetoric and cruel deregulation of Reagan, the Iraq War of George W. Bush and the ending of modern democracy in America of Donald Trump.  And even the positives of Reagan (“Tear down this wall”) and W (fighting AIDS in Africa) have become ugly stepchildren to the pro Putin-pro AIDS in Africa MAGA movement. And it is very telling the George HW Bush, the smartest and most statesmanlike GOP President (and a victorious war president) of the last 45 years is the only one NOT to get re-elected.

So now we live in a country where Donald Trump, a man morally, intellectually and experientially unfit for the power and office he holds, far surpassing the second worst presidents in those categories, is our “leader.”  And 77 million Americans were morally and intellectually too weak to see that.  Selfishness and a pervasive, bipartisan epidemic of citizen malpractice (non-reading, non engaging, non voting) in our country, where claiming “both sides” affords you some unearned intellectual credit amongst similarly disengaged citizens, has led us to this point. So I am going to say something that should be said in kinder words by far more powerful people than me, but captured perfectly by Robert DeNiro: fuck ’em.  And as DeNiro’s Ace said in Casino, regarding an either stupid or corrupt casino worker, (paraphrasing) “Either you’re in on it or you’re too stupid.  Either way I cannot have you.”

Whether it is Bill Maher chasing clicks, Joe Rogan trying to keep his fans satisfied or Gavin Newsom beta testing every media strategy under the Sun, reaching out to, appeasing or finding common ground with a coalition of Americans who gleefully and/or ignorantly cheer its demise and its people’s pain is simply delaying what feels inevitable if we don’t change tactics. The solution is simple – the majority of the country that did not vote for Trump needs to find a common purpose and vested interests within that common purpose to render the MAGA movement a dark, but finite stain in American History.  It is a common refrain that “you can’t negotiate with terrorists.”  Well the MAGA movement is the political equivalent of terrorism.  And the time to negotiate with them, whether it be on CNN or in Joe Rogan’s studio is long gone.

The entire approach of politics for the next 4 to 40 years is as simple as it is daunting for non-MAGA:

A) Educate people on what government does and how what Trump is doing is destroying it. Like heart disease, you may not know it while it’s happening, but when the damage comes to fruition, it may very well be too late.

B) Motivate people to vote by letting them know the stakes and their power through collective action through effective and qualified communicators. Easier said than done, but we have a content glut and a knowledge deficit. We have a distraction excess and a famine of focus.  Educating, engaging and (occasionally) entertaining are the three responsibilities that Democrats must unfairly, but necessarily bear to save this country.

C) Find leaders and causes that can bridge the disparate parts of the Left and Independent voters together.  Too much political discourse in this country is dictated by treating the MAGA movement as a normal alternative of government in America.  The vast majority of the center and left, still believe in progress and helping people.  Finding a middle ground in that 51-55% is the key and then getting behind that consensus is the movement (not counting the huge, sad number of non-voters).  A movement and progress comprised of a range from John Fetterman, AKA Manchin’s Monster, to AOC can do good and great things for America. But asking that broad coalition fighting for their own vision of progress to find common ground with a Cancer on democracy where the only goal is accumulation and abuse of power is just a recipe for a milder form of Cancer.

D) Vote and vote and vote until you leave this Earth.  The MAGA movement is ignorant, selfish, shortsighted and cruel.  But it has one thing that the Left needs – a relentless pursuit of its goals.  Democracy in America is not a game, or even a season.  It is a lifelong commitment and we have superior numbers and a far superior track record of using government for the betterment of people, but we have inferior commitment and passion.

Now I am just a comedian (to many of you), but I remember being scolded for some of the tone of my videos 4 and 5 years ago. And Trump supporters would warn me that I would hurt my career by alienating half of the country. I have been cheered by MAGA audience members who could then not crack a smile when I mentioned I was a Democrat.  This movement is a cult of personality. Perhaps if it were Jesus leading it we’d have a cult dedicated to love and community, but instead it is a man with the most rotten moral core remaking the country in his image while a collection of greedy, insecure, ignorant hateful people cheer it on like the men at the bar in The Accused.  I hope those people continue to enjoy their free speech and all the other rights they are afforded in a Constitution many of them profess to love while knowing little of it and respecting it even less.  But I have been clear-eyed about Trump and his movement from very early on. Perhaps it was having a Haitian father, who had a keen eye for dictators, even clownish ones like Trump.  But we keep catching on too late as a country and a non-MAGA electorate.  We now cheer Gavin Newsom’s meme game when Trump has already won.  We applaud Marc Maron for taking it to Trump enablers and sycophants when they already have a stranglehold on the media that we seek to penetrate.  My point is, abandoning MAGA as a lost cause may seem harsh to some, but in 5 years it will seem prescient.  Anyone and everyone repulsed, scared, offended or just annoyed with MAGA needs to find a way to unite, engage and participate.  They hate you, they hate America and they will destroy it to show their disdain for you.  Humping a flag and shooting Bud Light is not what loving America is.  America is a set of ideals. Some people only believe in ideals when they look like them and talk like them. Others love ideals because any person can be a vessel for those ideals and have an opportunity to live those values.  I am not saying they hate you and America from some paranoid inference.  This is how they talk. They may understand their hate as love, but anyone with a common understanding of civics, American History and the English language knows that it is a deep resentment wrapped in the language, but not actions, of love. Does Donald Trump ever show happiness or joy beyond that of a bully or narcissist? Schadenfreude is not love of country; it’s love of seeing others suffer. That is the brand of patriotism that Trump has been selling to a large and accepting audience since 2015.  Hillary called half of them deplorable and her word choice and math were not nearly enough.

To illustrate my point through personal anecdote, 5 years ago I was on the WTF podcast with Marc Maron. It represented a career highlight for me and a validation of some success I had been having.  For about 15-20 minutes, the majority of my time speaking with Maron, I did my Trump impression (Maron laughed a lot) and almost undoubtedly had been saying some racist and sexist things.  When the episode was finally ready to go live many weeks later, it was in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. Maron complimented the impression in his intro, but then declined to air it because he felt it set the wrong tone for where the country was at the time.  I completely respected his decision and still do.  But it is illustrative. I sometimes joke on my podcast Rain on Your Parade that I feel like Quint from Jaws when it comes to Trump parody and commentary. I cut the bullshit. I get to the core of the man and do both commentary and comedy about him that is on point because I don’t do it for polite company, for corporate gigs or for “both sides.”  He is our worst.  And his enablers are our worst generation.

After this, if you need some levity please check out my special TRUMP VS CANADA on YouTube.

This morning, with my morning coffee, I finished a re-watch of Happy Gilmore, Adam Sandler’s classic sports comedy (and my favorite movie of his).  As compelled by my algorithm-content addled brain, I “needed” to do a re-watch of a movie I have seen five times, because Netflix is releasing Happy Gilmore 2 tomorrow.  I have my doubts as to whether, for many reasons, the sequel will be any good, but the original has more than earned a chance for the sequel.  But at the risk of jumping on the Cobra Kai-style trend of revisiting the bad guy years later, watching Shooter McGavin, played iconically (yes I mean that – not in the overused parlance of our times) by Christopher McDonald, I couldn’t help but think, “he sure would hate where we are today. And he wouldn’t be wrong.”

Before I continue, full disclosure, I have a complicated relationship with Happy Gilmore because 20s and 30s me looked very similar to Sandler’s Happy Gilmore (with a lot more height, muscle and entertainment business failure). But spiritually, as unflattering as this may sound, I am closer to McGavin.  Happy has my temper and my face, but McGavin has my righteous, traditional soul.

In the 1980s and 90s there was this trend that I did not notice until I was a fully formed adult, that villains in comedies were often annoying bureaucrats that in the real world were actually on the right side. Think Walter Peck in Ghostbusters – a mean EPA official with the buzzkill audacity to be concerned about… a ghost-catching, unregulated, nuclear reactor in the middle of Manhattan) or McGavin, a man who respects and honors the traditions of his sport, albeit too passionately and condescendingly.  Interestingly enough, Happy Gilmore came out a year before Tiger Woods won his first major and upended the traditions of his sport with his fist pumps and more importantly, his race.  But what Gilmore does is more akin to the first influencer golfer. Even when he is losing, he is a big star. More Anna Kournakova (who no one had a problem trashing and pointing out it was her beauty, not her talent that people cared for) than Tiger Woods (who as a Trump supporting adulterer probably made all the stuffy “traditionalists” feel more comfortable that some traditions were still safe in Woods’ hands).

So of course McGavin exhibits enough negative traits to merit being the villain of the film (hiring a heckler, hiring that heckler to hit Happy with a car, stealing his jacket after Happy wins), but his main complaints throughout the film concern the trashy people, vulgar antics and general disrespect for tradition that Happy and his fans represent.  Similar to how I complain about crocs and cell phones going off at Broadway shows, in the 29 years since Happy Gilmore, clearly a full rejection of all that McGavin represents appears to be a bad thing.

My guess is that the new film will adopt a middle ground on Shooter and give him some arc of redemption while still poking fun at him.  The same way I feel like a sequel to The Cable Guy is warranted, not just to honor an unfairly maligned classic, but because Chip Douglas’ late recognition of TV as the problem would make him a great hero 30 years later where the Internet and smart phones have created far worse villains.  But the question I have for Happy Gilmore 2 is, which would be better, sticking to the old ways with their problems or opening the floodgates like Happy did? And is there a middle ground available in the films or in real life?

Over the last month I have been alternating between the outstanding Stanley Cup playoffs and the outstanding NBA playoffs.  I know ratings are down because, like every aspect of American life except for what Donald Trump or Tik Tok tells us, we are far too busy with nothing to pay attention to anything.  But in addition to the incredible athleticism and high drama that both sets of playoffs have provided, I am also noticing that sports seems to be one of the last A.I. free holdouts in our culture.

This is not really shocking of course. I think some of the things that make sports so compelling still are the relative purity of sports as a meritocracy, and also seeing human beings pushing themselves and being pushed to their physical capacities.  I could never shoot like Steph Curry or jump like Anthony Edwards or skate like anyone because I cannot skate, but I am a human being and when we watch athletes, it is like watching someone take what we have to its capacity.  We have not yet started buying tickets to see a robot jump and flip like Simone Biles and I hope we never do.  But when it comes to art, I naively hoped the same feelings would permeate, but the exact opposite is happening.

It came to my attention a little less than a year ago that a YouTube channel called Dark Brandon was using my audio, upgrading it with A.I. and setting it to A.I. animation.  The person or people behind the channel gave me attribution and I occasionally see small upticks in my subscriber count as a result. In the last 5 years, thanks to constant production and some talent I have added 93,000 subscribers to my YouTube channel. The Dark Brandon channel, in a year or so, has amassed a subscriber count double that.  And because my audio was used a few times on the site, a random, disgruntled comedian accused me of hiding behind A.I. animation to attack him because a video on the site that I had nothing to do with  (and still have no idea what it is) apparently insulted him. He assumed I was the Wizard behind this A.I. driven Oz (if only that worked in a positive way and led to a massive surge in subscribers).

I don’t really care about them using my audio as long as they do so with attribution, but I keep learning that an increasing percentage of society does not care about comedy and art the way I do.  When I see a person do an impersonation or sing a song or write a good book I feel the same connection that I do with great athletes.  I cannot do that (or do it as well), but I can connect to their greatness because I share humanity with them and am seeing what we are capable of through their brilliance.  But it seems more and more people, rapidly, are falling in love with the ability to computer generate content and do not care how the sausage is made. For me, art is all about connecting how the sausage is made to the finished product.  But I think we are at a tragic inflection point where the finished product is all people care about.   We scroll, we consume, we move on. Like we are factory farming our own brains to separate the work and humanity from the content.

Art connects us. Content will divide us (further).  Followers on social media have been sending me more and more A.I. generated pictures, which in a vacuum are humorous, but I don’t live or create in a vacuum.  I don’t find it particularly interesting to punch some keys in a chatbot and it generates something for you.  But I fear that mine will be a mentality that will be extinct very soon.  John Keating, in Dead Poets Society said something to the effect of “Math, Science these are the building blocks of life, but poetry is why we live.”  Now it feels like we are rapidly approaching a “consuming content is why we live” mindset. The Matrix pods, but we are wide awake and glazing over voluntarily.

Like so many things from smart phones to lip syncing, I am sure I am going to lose this battle and we will lose another important and divine connection to one and other through creation of art.  But as I wrote in my last blog, creating art is often an act based on a desire to create something bigger than yourself and/or that outlives you, but I am watching in real time the degradation of not just art, but the very act of creation.

I wish that art could be considered the same way sports still are, but I think it is only a matter of when, at this point, before everyone is a content creator and consumer and no one is an artist.  We will lose something that may or may not be inherent in our DNA, but is one of the great things that humanity has ever developed.  And after that is gone, perhaps we will see a robot win Gold at an Olympics.

Growing up in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, one of the best things I recall from my youth (and early adulthood) were the black and white cookies from Mother’s Bakery. No matter what day of the week, there was always a chance they would not have them when my father would go for an evening walk to buy them. On those disappointing nights he would often return with cupcakes from Mother’s, which although consisting of the same ingredients as the black and white cookies, lacked both the cake-to-icing ratio of the cookie and the diversity, equity and inclusion that I preferred in my desserts.

The Mother’s black and white cookie was simply put the best black and white cookie I’ve ever had (Producer Jack Woltz’ voice) and I’ve had them all over the world!  They were made fresh daily and sold out daily.  I would always begin with the vanilla side, which was a sweeter icing, at times with a vague hint of lemon (this was a change about halfway in my decades of experience with Mother’s). I always began with vanilla because the cold glass of milk I always had waiting to chug, was a much better chaser to the chocolate side.  After meticulously finishing the vanilla side, I got to my favorite part of the cookie: the bi-racial overlap (you are what you eat).   I would eat this part horizontally, usually 2.5 bites worth of chocolate missionary-on-top-of-vanilla icing/frosting (not really sure – sort of a hybrid, midpoint between the two states of dessert matter) and then crush the chocolate side. Then with mouth mouth sufficiently caked and satisfied would chug the glass of milk with a deep sigh of satisfaction that signaled that my day was over.

I have had black and whites from many independent bakeries and chain bakeries and I have never had a black and white cookie that came anywhere close to Mother’s.  Like Secretariat at Belmont level distance.  And then one day, maybe a decade ago, Mother’s Bakery closed.  They had vanquished rival bakeries in the area, but after decades (I was aware of them for about 20 years but they had been open before then) they closed.  I have heard that the landlord that owns many commercial properties near where I grew up is one of those “I have enough money that I don’t care if my properties stay vacant” types.  Beyond the closing of a neighborhood institution that seemed to do a thriving business, the existential question I had ever since was, what happened to the Mother’s black and white cookies?  It seems they just no longer exist, but in the memory banks of my tastebuds.

You may be wondering, J-L, are you really just writing a blog about the loss of a cookie?  No, of course not.  When my special, Half Blackface came out (reminder – it is free on Amazon Prime and only has 61 ratings and reviews – I have 200K+ followers on social media, so needless to say that is disappointing) the producers decided, based on my NYC and bi-racial roots, to make the cover a black and white cookie.  I had no input on choosing it, but enthusiastically approved of the concept.  But as I reach a real crossroads in my comedy career and life, it has me contemplating mortality. Not of my own life, but of the work I have made.  But unlike the black and white cookies of my youth whose disappearance shocked me and has stayed with me, I am witnessing the increasing irrelevance of my work as it is happening.  Like the difference between being hit by a car and wasting away with a terminal illness.

I told my girlfriend in 2021 as I was experiencing career firsts and career highs left and right that I never wanted to tread water again with my comedy career. That if the surge in interest in my work and the quality and volume of my work were not self-sustaining economically and emotionally that I would not go back to the life of spending 50% of my time working a day job, 45% of my time doing comedy and 5% trying to cram in life. If after 20 years, hundreds of thousands of followers and 3 comedy careers worth of output I could not be a full time comedian  then I couldn’t do it anymore. And yet, nearly 5 years later that is exactly where I am.  Producing videos, podcasts, prepping a new special and living month to month ( I try very hard not to touch the money I made in 2020-21 because that now feels more like prize winnings than a validation of my work and dedication as a comedian – the fruits born of algorithm fertilizer more than artful tilling of comedic fields. So don’t take the “month to month” as literal and desperate as some others may mean it). With a little over a month before I make a potentially life-altering career decision, it has forced me to reckon with the state of entertainment and the state of my comedy career in a very sobering way.  My fear at this point, as it has often been is not the idea of stopping my pursuit of comedy success and work, but whether my work has left any sort of legacy, big or small.  Will any of my work outlive me?  Not only is the answer no, but it seems that the exact opposite is true: I will outlive my art.

Even as I write this, an irony is present: my word press blog site is informing me through an obnoxious red dot that my blog is failing on its “readability” metrics (shorter sentences, shorter paragraphs, shorter overall, etc.).  So, at the risk of losing the few of you who made it this far based on predictive attention span, I will continue.  When I began comedy the goals were to write jokes, practice/perform those jokes, refine those jokes, film those jokes for booking (not content) purposes and become a good comedian because that was the key to working as a comedian.  Then podcasts and YouTube and social media arrived, and while I have diligently worked on all those platforms, when Tik Tok came along it seemed to announce, with no ambiguity or respect for the old ways, that there was now only one path to success (for those not grandfathered in with success and fans before around 2015 or granted membership into the club/entourage of a legit comedy star): feed the content machine with what its algorithms want.

So the job of a comedian, especially one unrepresented by an agent, manager or other form of power broker, is to feed the algorithm. Like an art version of the machines feeding on comatose human bodies in The Matrix.  This would be bad enough if it was just affecting what percentage of artists became shameless, click hunting hacks, but it has affected the audience as well, and it is not fellow artists who eventually decide the worth and legacy of your work; it’s the audience.

Over the last 4 years I have seen everything from sketch videos to comedy specials to my appearance on Showtime’s Billions suppressed by algorithms.  Oddly enough it was a video filmed in Canada that exploded for me a couple of weeks ago, which raises the question: if I sell more tickets on a Wednesday to fans (not just regular club attendees, but fans) in a Canadian city than I can in any city in America on any night of the week, despite 85% of my fans being American, is the algorithm simply suppressing me where I live?  And before you get on your annoying partisan high horse, this began almost 2 years before Elon Musk bought Twitter.  Condemning Trump in 2021 meant condemning my work as well.  Social media wise, Trump and I shared 97% of the same DNA – like a chimp and human, respectively.

But it’s not just the algorithm, but the way social media has conditioned audience to consume.  I have had too many people write in my comments “where have you been?”, “where did you go?”, “I thought you quit”, “welcome back!” and many more comments like this that tell me my work is largely “out of sight, out of mind” for most of my fans followers.  This may seem like an odd complaint, but, to paraphrase Brian McKnight, “do I ever cross your mind… then go click on my page, my website, my YouTube page, anything!!!… anytime.”  Despite our near universal negative opinion of social media, we still seem to trust it to curate exactly what we want.  But if fans of mine think about my work, but then cannot take the 5 seconds to find me, often on the same site they are thinking of my work, then my comedy is no longer art, and is now mere distraction. Art is worth suffering for, hoping for and fighting for.  But distraction is not.  As more and more comedians, new and old, are content to bend the knee to the whims of algorithms and more audience treat comedy like a modern day joke-a-day desk calendar, it becomes a real question of whether it is worth it.  Because it is understandable if my work dies with me one day, but to watch it die while I am still making it is a much more difficult thing to accept.

Perhaps this is just something unique to me, but I don’t think it is. I see more successful comedians able to sell out huge theaters, not just small clubs with which I struggle.  I see comedians with smaller followings getting more gigs than me. Perhaps I simply rose during the pandemic because people were bored and receptive to politically-tinged comedy to get them through a day, but nothing more.  But it is little comfort when you want to keep making art and every common sense fiber is telling you that it is no longer with the effort, physically or mentally.

Whether it’s a greedy landlord pricing out Mother’s bakery, or algorithms exhausting the patience and desire of artists, the lesson seems to be that good things cannot last anymore.  But I will never have any doubts of the greatness and value of a Mother’s black and white cookie.  But if your entire success hinges not on the quality of your work, but the beneficence of algorithms and the increasingly addled minds they are cultivating, it forces you to wonder, like a tiny seed of doubt in a field of confidence you’ve spent your whole life working and perfecting, was it ever a good thing in the first place?

Despite being located very close by international standards, until a few days ago I had never been to Canada.  I also grew up and lived in New York City until I was 40 and have never been to the Statue of Liberty.  But thanks to the dementia warlord that is Donald J Trump, I saw an opportunity to finally crack the Canadian Curse (I’ve emailed Canadian clubs on and off for probably a decade without a reply before last month) and bring my comedy north of the border.  It worked and I was booked to perform at Yuk Yuks in downtown Toronto on April 9th. Here is how it went:

Travelling to Toronto

I woke up at 4am on Tuesday April 8th (on purpose). I needed to eat a healthy breakfast (knowing I would be travelling 24 of the next 60 hours on Amtrak, healthy eats would be less likely) so I had my black coffee, scrambled eggs and blueberries, shaved to make my increasingly jowly face more Trump smooth, hopped in the shower and then ran with my backpack, suitcase and garment bag to the 5:33am train to Penn Station. When I arrived at Penn Station at 610am it was beautifully and gloriously empty as I stood in the Amtrak First Class Lounge surveying the station like Simba and Mufasa overseeing their kingdom.

Then came the call for the 715am Maple Leaf from NYC to Toronto. I went into the business class car and saw the one seat empty was the first seat with about 6 feet of legroom (or as Amtrak calls it “space for handicapped passengers”). I then settled in with some magazines (The Atlantic, New Yorker, Swank), a book, and podcasts for the long haul to Toronto.

The trip was on time and uneventful until we arrived at the Canadian border. I checked for my passport for the 47th time on the trip, gathered my bags and went with everyone else to the border patrol check.

If you did not hear them speak, you could confuse Canadian border agents for January 6th looking dudes.  White, tactical gear, thick beards. And then you hear them speak and realize these guys sound far too friendly to be cruel. Of course, if you’ve heard Canadian hockey players talk after games they often sound so much like kindergarten teachers or park rangers that you forget they just committed felony assault during the game.  The way South African, Southern and Boston accents always sound presumptively racist to me, the Canadian accent sounds presumptively non-threatening.

When it was my time to get called I was called by the one woman in the crew, who just so happened to be fairly hot.  She called out my name with a perfectly pronounced “Jean-Louis” at which point I told her I was willing to move to Canada if she was unwilling to do long distance.  She asked me a bunch of questions about what I was going to do in Canada and when she did not volunteer any interest in my comedy show I told her, “I already live with a woman who is bored with my schtick, I don’t need another!”

I then reboarded the train and we made our way the final two hours or so to Toronto.  It is worth noting that although the Canadian train crew was bi-lingual, friendly and more thorough on safety instructions than the American crew, they made a point of saying that our free business class beverage perk was not honored in Canada. THANKS TRUMP!

Union Station-Union Hotel

I booked a stay at the Union Hotel seeing that it was across the street from Union Station (by the way, who was naming our train stations in North America, George Forman (RIP)? – I have been to at least 12 union stations in North America).  A cab driver called out to me as I walked the frigid streets of Toronto, “you need a taxi, friend?” and I thought,”Jeesh, Canadians are friendlier!

I arrived at the hotel and after having my name pronounced perfectly at the border I gave my passport to the hotel clerk and he said something like “jjjen lewis?” and I said “Ooof, Jean-Louis, I thought Toronto would nail it!” and he replied in his Euro accent, “Hey sorry I only speak three languages,” to which I laughed but thought “Well no French and shit English seems like a weird combo in Canada, SIR!”  I just wish my border agent side chick were there so we could laugh at him together.

I checked into my room, which was small, but slick. I then went to Chipotle for dinner (was not sure how late other places would be open) and had a donut nightcap at Tim Hortons across the street from my hotel.  My four, yes four, visits to TH over the next 34 hours would yield gold material for my show, but at the time of my first visit I just enjoyed an objectively delicious donut.  As a patriot I won’t say they’re better than Dunkin’, but as a fat fu*k headed towards an early, footless grave, I will say that Tim Hortons’ donuts are the best chain donuts I’ve had.

I went to sleep at 11pm so I would be well rested for the CBC Morning Match radio show with David Common.

Rise N Grind

I woke up at 4:30 am. Why? Because God hates me apparently.  But it was a blessing in disguise. Because my voice, like a lot of people, is so much different when I wake up, it gave me several hours to sit and talk to myself in my hotel room so that when called upon to speak like Trump on air, it would not sound super crappy.  So I went across the street to Tim Hortons, which either had a slumber party with many adults or is an early morning hang for Toronto’s unhoused population. I had one two donuts and a croissant with a coffee. I returned to my hotel room and resumed talking until I felt like the impression was about 90% there.

I arrived at the radio station at 745am for my 820am appearance on air. I bantered with the show staff and then it was time for me to get on the air.  David Common, the host, has a voice for radio and a face for TV.  I thought, if this is the kind of face you put on your radio, it makes sense that your female border agents would be good looking.  I had a strong appearance and then celebrated with a trip to… Tim Hortons.

The Hockey Hall of Fame

After TH, I made my way to the Hockey Hall of Fame.  Fans of mine know (or should know) that I have become a big hockey enthusiast over the last few years, even if attending NY Rangers’ games sometimes feels like 10% of the audience would have cheered on the assault of Abner Louima.  I have also complained about hockey culture where players cannot seem to master the art of humility without also appearing lobotomized. That excessively performative humility hit a new level when I went to the Hockey Hall of Fame and saw that it was in the basement of a shopping mall.

I did enjoy my trip to the Hall (bought a fridge magnet, which I just realized I left in my hotel room), spent a few hours investigating everything and came to the conclusion that Teemu Selanne, who scored 684 career regular season goals, is aging like a guy who has not stopped scoring.  The picture I took is not perfect, but if I don’t share it with you then I’m just a guy who takes pictures of handsome hockey players. Ummmm so anyway then I left and had lunch at Shake Shack (continuing to sample the Canadian specialties). Union Station (Toronto edition) is maybe the nicest train station I’ve ever been to (Moynihan is like a side car compared to the sheer size of Toronto so it’s unfair to compare the two).

I Live For The Funk

I then went into a funk that has become a sort of regular thing for me over the last couple of years.  I begin to despair about my comedy career (justified), which then spirals to a feeling that my life is failing on every level.  I think this is because of the importance of my comedy to me and how that importance has not been validated in many of the ways I would need it to be, to have the career that I want. And when you consider I have been doing comedy almost my entire adult life, it is a difficult spiral when you think before shows (in order) – I should be doing better – but I am not – have I wasted my life? – is the rest of my life good enough to compensate for this complete failure of my main adulthood pursuit – it doesn’t feel that way – I am in a city where I need ticket sales to even give me a chance at more gigs – and even if those gigs materialize will they lead my life or career to change at all – no, of course not – well get dressed and get this fucking show over with but be sure to text your girlfriend that she needs to make you quit comedy as you have done for half of your gigs this year.

Then I realized I had been sitting on my hotel bed for two hours doing nothing but thinking these thoughts. No book. No TV. No music.  And with that happy attitude I left the Union Hotel for Yuk Yuk’s, just desperate to do the show and never do comedy again.

Yuk Yuk’s

When I got to the club I ran into three fans who told me they’d been fans of mine since 2016 (intentionally or unintentionally flexing that they were fans of mine before I gained millions of admirers for 2 months in 2020) and of course the words of praise, combined with the ambiance of a comedy club beginning to fill up with people, began to melt away the funk.  I went up to the green room to dress up like Elon Musk. I was emceeing my own show as Elon, then a local comedian, Armin Arbabi, would middle (very strongly) followed by me as Trump.

The Musk set went well and Armin did very well and then it was time for the main event. I gave probably a 20 minute speech to the attendees on why they should be honored to be the 51st state and then took questions from the crowd, which I think was close to an hour.  Part of me believes, as I write this, that there is really no purpose in relaying how my set went. It is not the first time I have done a show where I know the show deserves and deserved a 5000 seat theater. But an inevitable truth has been coming into focus for me over the last few years: those opportunities are not going to happen for me. My modest expectations on the heels of the show of a big Canadian tour have already been watered down significantly, so my feelings are not just the morose musings of a comedian experiencing the roller coaster of entertainment emotions. But with all that said, the show was a hard A+. It was beyond worthy of hot border agentess, a delicious Tim Hortons donut and Teemu Selanne’s eyes. The responses from the fans, the club owner and the video crew I hired to record the show were the sort of unmistakable, emotional reactions to deeply enjoying something. I left very proud and satisfied.

 

Now when I finally physically left the club after a mega meet and greet I looked like a guy who had just been fired from a job – limping along Toronto city streets at 1045pm on a Wednesday carrying a backpack, a pair of New Balance sneakers and a flannel shirt (did not feel like changing out of the suit until I got back to the hotel).

I went to my Tim Hortons for a celebratory donut, but they had just closed. As I was walking away disappointed, the employee cleaning up opened the door and said “Sorry about that.”  And that felt better somehow than the quick satisfaction of a donut.

I made my way to Jack Ashtons’ (a restaurant open until 1am), for a delicious hamburger and fries, a traditionally American meal that based on the (thousands) of Canadian flags in the restaurant felt like a trap.  For the first time in a while I slept deeply and had to be rudely awakened by my alarm.

Leaving Toronto

My assessment of Toronto is probably how jazz artists felt about Paris before WWII – leaving my country to finally sell tickets and receive a response that satisfied me is, after having a Haitian father, probably the Blackest experience I’ve ever had.  It is a nice looking city, the people appeared to be as nice as advertised and I had one of my favorite shows ever.  I got a coffee and a donut from Tim Hortons (yes, this was the 4th trip for you folks who were counting) on my way to the train and made my way back to New York.

When I got home I was greeted by Laura and Cookie, as always. I deteriorated into a foul mood, probably because of the reality that constantly hits me with my comedy career – I will not be the success I want to be, but I tasted a night of it. But there’s no Tim Hortons guy to call out “sorry about that” when the disappointing nights follow.

Thank you very much Toronto.

Two decades in stand-up comedy have provided me with plenty of joy, plenty of pain and plenty of interesting experiences travelling the United States.  Late last week was my first trip to Charlotte, North Carolina, the “Queen City” (are Cincinnati and Charlotte ever going to have a WWE-style cage match to determine who is the sole Queen City?).  I was opening for the live show of The Black Guy Who Tips podcast and everything from the show to the fans to the city gave me all the positives that make me realize why I put up with all the frustrations of being in comedy.  But my train trip home from Charlotte to New Jersey was exactly the kind of experience I love getting from travelling to different parts of the country. Ok – let’s get to the recap!

The Black Guy Who Tips – a brief history

I do not know the first time I appeared on TBGWT, but I do know that my comedy career was at a low point (legitimately, not just the way I speak of it on a monthly basis), but once I was a guest on the show I realized that Rod & Karen had a different type of fan base.  An appearance on their show would yield the same amount of feedback and new followers as a good appearance on podcasts with fan bases twenty times larger.  And when I was doing road work as a feature, post TBGT, there would be fans of TBGWT showing up. The point is that, along with Pete Dominick’s podcast community, TBGWT gave me a new supply of high quality fans and kept me going in comedy until I could grow my own independent fan base (to then learn that most of them were just bored liberals who would simply check in to tell me they couldn’t make shows, subscribe to podcasts, watch YouTube, sign up my for my newsletter, etc. – apparently my fans are all the veteran from the Metallica video “One.”).  They run a great show and have one of the best high value fan bases in the comedy world.  And they are great people.

So when asked to open for their live show in Charlotte I said yes.

Amtrak to Charlotte

I got on the Carolinian at 7:20am in Newark, NJ for the 13 hour trip to Charlotte.  I had to sit next to someone for 10 of the 13 hours (two separate people) and it was generally uncomfortable. I am well known for my nationwide train travel and have been on trains as long as 45 hours (Chicago-Seattle). On those trains, however, I usually have my own small room, versus 13 hours in a single seat next to someone whose space I am trying to respect (if I were more like Trump I would simply ooze over into their seating area and say “buy me snacks and maybe I will give you your territory back”).

A little after Durham, NC (about 2.5 hours from Charlotte on the train) I thought, “I guess this train is going to get me there on time” (I had to record a live podcast at 930pm from my hotel room, so I only had 30 minutes of late time to spare).  And then the J-L Jinx struck (which tragically began when Patrice O’Neal asked me to emcee for him and passed away sixth months after I worked with him for the second time. Now my career feels like a combination of Curb Your Enthusiasm and Final Destination). Our train had to stop for over an hour because a truck crashed into a bridge on our route and engineers had to go to the bridge and assess the integrity of the bridge before we could cross over it.  We got the OK, but by then I had already canceled the podcast taping.

I got to my downtown Charlotte hotel and was charged $11 for a 20 oz water bottle and a snickers ice cream bar. Queen City indeed!  I did not realize royal city could invoke prima nocta to charge NYC airport prices!  I then went to bed prepared for a busy Friday.

The Beige Guy Who Interviews and The Black Guy Who Tips

When I went downstairs for my continental breakfast (eating enough to make my money back from the Snickers-Water robbery) I was greeted by Morgan Wallen playing on the radio, Fox News on the TV and burly white guys in camouflage  eating. It felt like I was in a safe house/panic room for Trump loving whites in a left-leaning Black city.

After breakfast I got on a zoom interview for a job at a law firm (found out today that I did not get a second interview – a disturbing event in my life because it is showing that my charm and interview skills can no longer mask my lack of employability). After the interview I went for lunch at the Capital Grille 10 minutes away because I eat lunch for the job I think I am going to get, not the job I am not going to get 3 days later.  I was struck by how nice downtown Charlotte is and how much construction is going up. Sadly, by me even observing this, I may have cursed the city with tragedy at a near future date.

I then went back to my hotel and read a book and prepped my set for the night.  After a nice shower it was time for the meet & greet at the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center.

The Show

Seeing Rod for the first time in person in two years and Karen for the first time in around a decade was a wonderful reminder that I do not just live in cyber space and then we greeted all of their fans.  And each time Karen would ask “would you like J-L and Justin (a regular on TBGWT and I believe Rod’s best friend), in a picture as well?”  It was nice to be included and most people clearly wanted me included, but I was always close to feeling like a tip screen at a coffee shop “fine! *taps reluctantly on ‘J-L in picture also’ option*”

I opened the show and did quite well.  When I get the video in a week or two I will post the set to my Patreon (fans leave blog immediately at mention of pay platform). I then remained as a guest on the episode. After helping Karen and Rod with some of the clean up/break down we ate a delicious meal at a restaurant nearby called Sea Level.   It was a great honor and pleasure to do the show and to see the work and fanbase that Rod and Karen have built through their talent, work and kindness. I then went to bed that night with the following thought: “I will never have that kind of fan base, but at least I am in line to get that law firm job. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz”

Jimmy Crack Corn and the Ride Home

I woke up at 5am to make sure I did not miss my 645am train home.  I went to the Starbucks across the street from the

train station and must say – people in the South are just nicer.  After a pleasant, early morning Starbucks session I walked across the street to the train. I boarded the business class car and sat next to a very polite, and more importantly, very petite, young Black woman. And then a man who I will call Jimmy Crack Corn got on the train. He looked like a typical late 30s white guy with a factory or construction job. He got on the train with a man I assumed was his friend, but then determined was just someone he struck up a conversation.  And by struck up a conversation I mean went on a three hour monologue.

I knew it was trouble because from the beginning Jimmy was too excited to explain every feature of the train and the (almost non-existent) perks of being in business class.  But once the conversation began it became clear that Jimmy had a lot to say.  I actually left to read for an hour in the snack car and when I returned it was like he had not stopped speaking. I knew this because the Black man sitting in front of me trying to read had a wide-eyed look that I had had an hour ago that said, “I can’t believe this guy is talking so much and so loudly” (perhaps “Black reader reacts to white talker” will be the next Tik Tok trend).  But as the largely one-sided conversation continued it hit various notes and I just leaned back and listened.

• Phase 1 was a TMI confessional that included discussions of substance abuse – “smoked crack just to get his former wife off his back” (this is when I gave him the nickname of Crack-Eyed Joe, but Jimmy Crack Corn feels better now), “had drunk drove 300 or 400 times”, his daughter has not seen his ex for 7 years because she is such an addict who doesn’t care, and he said the phrase “long story short” multiple times while telling incredibly long stories with the energy of a former addict whose new addiction was talking
• Phase 2 (return from reading in the snack car) was a discussion of fishing (his favorite activity) and how he doesn’t need to officially marry his current lady because Kurt Russell did just fine without it
• Phase 3 – this is when I start to realize that Jimmy Crack Corn might be the typical American white male voter and perhaps I am lucky to be forced to listen to him talk. He told his neighbor (who I realized through their conversation had been helped to the station by Jimmy, despite being strangers) that: he doesn’t like politics (though he spent 30 minutes talking about politics), thinks Trump is a scumbag, but that Tim Walz is crazy for putting tampons in the boys’ bathroom, that if you can’t rent a car as a kid you shouldn’t be able to change genders as a kid (with a token “I don’t understand it – educate me on it then”), thinks millionaires don’t care about us, thinks the Left is too sensitive, men shouldn’t play women’s sports and that he heard a true story about a kid that identified as a cat
• Phase 4 – toward the end of his seatmate’s ride Jimmy said, “it’s been a pleasure sitting with you. you made three hours feel like 30 minutes. I spend a lot of time alone up here (presumably lives in NC but works north of DC) and I like talking and meeting new people.

I felt like this guy was exactly who politicians on the Left should speak to because he seems to be all of the things with American white males that trouble the Left, but with a desire and willingness to engage.  Why not you J-L?  Because I was still pissed at how little I was able to read for the first part of the trip. But I will admit that I felt like I got a very full picture of someone who represents something important to understanding this country. And if I had talked at all and not been forced to listen, I would not have learned what I learned. That some of these dudes might be reachable, maybe. if you can get men like him to listen for even half as long as he likes to talk.

So this trip gave me everything I like out of comedy – a nice city, a great show, good fans and learning from different people in different places. Thank you to The Black Guy Who Tips and The White Guy Who Wouldn’t Shut Up.

The Four Nations Face Off, which just concluded with a thrilling win for Canada over the USA, felt like a recent high water mark for the NHL.  It showcased its stars in a premium offering of skill, competition and speed. But it also led to fairly predictable, thinly veiled attacks on the NBA. The irony of seeing a country defeat the USA at a time when Trumpism is a direct and offensive attack on their nation, while at the same time hearing hockey fans revert to notable Trump tactics of trashing someone else to make a victory feel sweeter, and making that target (a group largely comprised of) people of color.  if this last sentence made you huff, puff or roll your eyes then you should definitely keep reading, but first, some J-L sports background.

The Utah Jazz Sour Note

Basketball has almost always been my favorite sport. I have been a Utah Jazz fan for 38 years.  While it was Stockton and Malone that created my dedication to the Jazz, it was the franchise’s consistency and resilience in the face of the pressures on small market teams that kept me a fan.  I had witnessed three, organic rebuilds in those 38 years. After Malone-Stockton, came Kirilenko-Williams-Boozer. After that fizzled came the surprising Gordon Hayward-Gobert era and after that fizzled came the second best era of my life: Mitchell-Gobert.  The Jazz organization gave me a product with values that seem to be so underappreciated in our current social and sports climates: integrity, consistency, effort.  They continued to rebuild quicker than I expected each time by drafting smart, trading smart (please do not look at the 2011 draft though – one team drafted Enes Freedom Kanter (the GOAT of Fox News Summer league?) and Alec Burks, when those picks could have been Klay Thompson and Kawhi Leonard) and always giving their fans the feeling of “if we are not relevant, we will be as soon as possible.”

Now I do not want to get into the “should they have broken up the Mitchell-Gobert team?” – they should not have – but what has followed has been nearly unforgivable.  They made some big trades, hired a new coach (a fellow Williams College basketball alum, somehow bringing my connection to the Jazz even closer) and overachieved three years ago.  That Jazz team was doing what Jazz teams had almost always done – competed and performed greater than the sum of their parts.  When it was clear they were doing a forced rebuild I did not order the NBA team pass and then I saw what was happening and got it.  And then Danny Ainge decided his plans to tank were more important than the Jazz culture shining through. So he tanked the season, leading to a low lottery pick.  The same thing happened the NEXT SEASON.  Both years the team was in playoff position midway through “tank” years and both times Ainge made sure that they had the worst possible outcome – losing just enough for a low lottery pick. Creating a loser culture while not big enough losers to draft a Wembanyama.

Now for a lot of fans, the load management of basketball players and the emphasis on threes (even for teams that

cannot shoot them – hi Hornets-Bulls games) have diminished the game and I sort of agree. I love watching Steph Curry shoot, but that doesn’t mean I need to see every 7 footer do so as well.  I miss the post game and the mid range game and as a Malone-Stockton fan I am particularly fond of durable players. But none of these were enough to drive me away. It was the tanking, so shamefully and repetitively done, that forced me to look elsewhere for sports entertainment.

Jean-Louis is a Fit for Hockey

I grew up a fan of hockey because I loved hockey video games.  The same space that Madden and NBA 2K occupy in pop culture today was the terrain of NHL video games in the 90s.  Hockey was a bigger deal. I could name at least 25 NHL players without watching a game because of the games and trading cards.  Now my Uncle was a diehard Rangers fan, so my allegiance, as passive as it was, was to the Rangers.  My Uncle received calls from high school classmates that he had not seen or heard from in decades the night the Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1994.  I have a 94 championship hat in my closet, but I did not really care beyond the video games.

But every few years I would catch some Olympic hockey, or playoff hockey and go “it really is a great game. I should watch more” and then never do so.  But once the Jazz committed a mortal sin to my sports ethics, I felt free mentally and with my time to give hockey a real chance.

I have not been disappointed with the decision.  Live hockey games are outstanding. And while all professional athletes are impressive (I was blown away by the ballet at Lincoln Center last week, which feels like sports and art fused) the combination of skills needed to be a pro hockey player feel remarkable.  It made me realize, with a name like Jean-Louis and a 6’7″ 245 lbs frame (my college dimensions), why my Uncle wished I had played hockey (after my stint as a Yankees pitcher). Other than not knowing how to skate and being a “Mary” (an old school alternative to the F word I would hear from my uncle when complaining during baseball drills with him) I would have been an all world defenseman!

Hockey gave me something more than just a new sport though. It gave me, a middle-aged man (so weird writing that) a new, engaging hobby.  I had to learn the game of hockey and there is something fun, refreshing and innocent in learning something new at age 45 that doesn’t involve the words throuple or fentanyl.  But going to hockey games, in particular, NY Rangers games, has given me a glimpse of some of the off putting stereotypes of the hockey world, which some of the Four Nations Faceoff commentary confirmed.

NYPD Orgy

At NY Rangers games, much more so than the 3 other arenas I have attended hockey Games (Pittsburgh, NJ, Washington) there is a weird pro-cop vibe. While most sports have force fed the non-sequitur of saluting the flag before games, the Rangers seem to have a Police Benevolent Association sponsorship.  One of their post season awards is named for an officer who was paralyzed in the line of duty and cops seem to always present the flag before the anthem to a big cheer.  Supporting law enforcement is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is hard to remove the context of being in an arena that is overwhelmingly white, watching an overwhelmingly white sport check every box of performative MAGA patriotism and not feel like it is not mere coincidence.  Then there is the anthem.

During every Ranger game (parody video coming from me before the end of the season) the national anthem is a time to scream and shout throughout for the fans.  Many of these fans look and act like the types of people who condemned Colin Kaepernick to employment crucifixion for “not respecting the flag,” but then seem to abuse the anthem for sport, like the owner of a car who treats it like shit, but then asks you not to bring food inside the car.  The idea being that respecting the flag is for outsiders, but if it’s your anthem (conservative white Americans and their plus 1) you can scream over it.

It is with this intricate backstory that I watched what unfolded during the Four Nations Faceoff with disappointment, yet not with much surprise.

Four Nations: USA, Canada, White, Black

I had been rooting for the USA team at the beginning of the Four Nations Faceoff. They had four NY Rangers and I am American. Easy pick all around.  But then the GM of the US team made a statement before the finals that he hoped Trump would attend the finals and that (this part appears to be disputed by community notes under the Daily Beast article that reported) he said the idea of Canada as the 51st state had fired up the USA team).  Despite my disgust with Trump, I understand a national team inviting the President to attend an international competition finals.  But given the political and cultural climate right now (Trump is basically the 1936 Hitler to Conor McDavid’s Jesse Owens in Canada)  it seems that Trump has decided to extort an ally and disrespect their national identity. Good enough reasons to perhaps strike a more respectfully cautious, competitive tone.  I even see a lot of Canadians shitting on Wayne Gretzky because of his ties to Trump.  So perhaps this is bigger than just hockey for Canada, and hockey is just their best weapon to fight the USA with, other than poisoning maple syrup.

Canadian commentor and former player PK Subban did not help himself with his enthusiastic endorsement of Trump’s potential engagement. Subban as a Canadian and a Black man seemed to be doing a double sell out move to a lot of Black people and Canadians.  The response to Subban showed me that in Canada, Trump’s threat and insults were bigger than their national heroes and identity. We could possibly learn a lesson from them on that front.

But when Subban spoke of the NBA, it caught my ear (and my algorithms) more than his MAGA whisperings (whether to create buzz or not – some things are maybe not worth the clicks).  The NBA has been more popular than the NHL for decades in this country.  I think there are many reasons: lower barrier of entry for basketball, infinitely better marketing of basketball, mismanagement of TV deals by hockey, and an almost performative commitment to humility by hockey players (interviews with hockey players are mind numbingly bad to the point of intentionality). Mind you, when the NBA had a fighting problem, they legislated it out of the game because they were afraid of turning away fans. Yet fighting is still part of the culture of hockey.  When basketball players brawled it was thuggery that threatened the sport. When hockey players do it, it’s still the sweet science apparently.

In college when I would discuss which sport had better athletes, basketball or hockey, it always centered on the skills, size, athleticism. There was never that thinly coded language about “work ethic” and “character” and “passion.”  But there it was from Subban and hundreds of social media posts.  As the Four Nations showcased all the greatness of hockey, hockey commentators and fans could not help taking shots at the NBA.  Basketball gave a path out of poverty for many Black men. This is not to stereotype, but to ask, do those stories not demonstrate heart and determination and character, just as much as a grown man playing hurt?  Just because the NHL has not been able to make their game as financially successful as the NBA, does that mean NBA players do not work just as hard on their craft?  I hate the load management stuff. But I also hate the way that a lot of hockey people cannot help but showing their bitterness through code words that cannot be separated from race.  Especially because the hostility seems to be particularly heavy for Lebron James (Michael Jordan and Kobe never got that sort of hate and were specifically exempt from one of Subban’s diatribes). Is Lebron “soft” or is he the only one of the three to embrace Democratic politicians and Black rights? Or is it both?  I have been to hockey games. I see the culture. I see the fans.  Just as I cannot claim to know any one individual’s heart, I cannot, in the aggregate, pretend to see the racial bitterness posing as more “play the right way kid” crap that makes baseball so boring.

And speaking of baseball – if inflated salaries for a diminished product are what bothers hockey fans and commentators so much, how about some attacks on baseball?  What is is about baseball that makes it so immune from the NBA criticisms?

Watching the Four Nations Finals I felt compelled to root for Canada, even though I still felt myself pulling for the USA. I felt the just result happened and it was easier to feel that way while watching a bunch of bros in MAGA hats sitting behind the USA bench.  A win for the USA would be a double win for those scumbags – a gloating defeat over a wronged ally and a win for “hard working, non-showboating, play the right way” hockey bros.  So the better team won and, it would seem, the better country.

The Compromises We Make

I love basketball. I do not love the current product and I do not love what Danny Ainge has done to my favorite team.  I really enjoy hockey and enjoy seeing it live more than any other sport.  I have a quarter season plan with the Rangers and will likely upgrade to a half season next year.  I sit near respectful people and really look forward to the games (and when John Brancy sings the anthem, I feel a swell of pride that almost drowns out all the morons shouting for attention during the singing). But it still feels like a compromise at times. Sitting, hoping not to hear some ignorant stuff (the last time I went to a Steeler game was 2009 when I heard a fan refer to a Cleveland Brown star player as a ni**er, 7 years before I largely gave up on the NFL in the wake of its treatment of Colin Kaepernick) so I can enjoy the game guilt free.  But I never feel that way at basketball game (even in Utah). I don’t have a mild discomfort hoping to not hear hate speech at basketball games (not saying it cannot happen or doesn’t happen, but I don’t go into a basketball game thinking about it).

I bought a Chris Kreider jersey as my first Ranger jersey.  I had been to some games with my Uncle, but I regret that he was not alive for me to become fully immersed in the game. I feel like he would have approved of a Kreider jersey (or “sweater” as I am probably supposed to call it), and he may have called Zibanejad a “Mary” if I got his (no offense Mika – his imagined words, not mine).  Kreider is the longest tenured Ranger and I figured he was a safe purchase (he was almost traded this year, so not as safe as I thought).  He was also on the USA team during the Four Nations Faceoff.  And as the video played of the team receiving a phone call from Trump in the locker room I watched the expressions of the players. Matthew Tkachuk (he of the Morgan Wallen haircut) looked like a kid on Christmas morning.  And then I paused the TV when I could see Chris Kreider in the corner. He was just looking ahead. No enjoyment or amusement. No shame or disgust either.  Maybe he’s a Trump guy. Maybe he’s not. But I guess not knowing at all is as close as I can get in the hockey world to a win on the topic.

As greater Los Angeles burns, undoubtedly from effects of climate change unraked leaves, on the other coast of the country, whiners, fake altruists, libertarians and people who have spent years driving throughout New York City are lamenting the worst tragedy in New York City since the towers fell: congestion pricing.

Originally an idea of then-Republican (or Independent) Mayor Mike Bloomberg, the policy that has been implemented charges a toll for cars travelling into Manhattan below 60th street. There are various exceptions, trucks and larger vehicles pay more and yellow cabs are charged a whopping 75 cents (and $1.50 for ride share cars I believe).  The real or nominal goals behind congestion pricing are: to raise billions of dollars for MTA improvements, decrease traffic and improve air quality. No matter which of these you believe, these are all laudable goals and all true if we either reduce traffic and/or raise lots of money (apologies, I technically live in NJ now, but 39 years as a NYC resident, and a never-car owning, climate change-concerned citizen makes me feel some ownership of this policy).

So in Blue NYC of course people are behind this policy, right?  Maybe, but the loudest voices seem to be the complainers, like the NY Post desperately seeking any angle to demonize the policy (“Funeral hearses will have to pass on the $9 to grieving families!” – yes because when being charged thousands of dollars by a funeral home, it is the $9 that will break the spirit of the grieving families).

This reminds me of when Mayor Bill de Blasio did not have the guts (admittedly it would have taken a lot of guts) to cap (not even ban) the number of  ride share cars  in NYC.  Like so many libertarian tech “disrupters,” Uber came to the city with private investment money which allowed them to destroy the regulated taxi industry while they racked up debt paying drivers more than was sustainable with ride prices too cheap to sustain.  But once they had decimated the value of Taxi medallions they began paying drivers a lot less (ads went from “guaranteed $5K a month to drive for Uber” to “$300 a week” to “get a side hustle you automotive slave!” marketing over the course of a year or two). But their work was done; Uber was a part of city life (more than once I’ve watched a young dummy standing in the rain for their Uber as empty yellow taxis drove by) and the app-obsessed, labor insensitive, Democrats of convenience that flood Manhattan would not hear of NYC restricting Uber!  Arguments like “but Uber services communities that cabs won’t go to!” came from people who had never spoken of urban struggles before they needed an excuse to keep their Ubers.  “There’s not enough taxis!” said the people who live in a city with the most impressive and cheap mass transit systems.  “What about the jobs!” cried the people who actually deluded themselves into believing an early-era Uber $5 cab ride across Manhattan, which did not even require a tip, was some sort of labor Godsend!  So de Blasio caved to the tech money and the loud whiners and fake heroes of NYC and allowed Uber and its ilk to flood the streets of Manhattan.

So now, with bus lanes (a great addition by Bloomberg that turned buses into an actual viable option to travel in Manhattan if you were on a schedule), bike lanes (ugh) and the addition of 100,000 ride share cars in New York City (which I assume includes beyond Manhattan) you have issues like awful travel times, and slower ambulance response times (why doesn’t anyone say “less traffic saves lives?!”?) something needed to be done to rectify the impact of the selfishness that brought this upon Manhattan. Enter congestion pricing.

The re-election of Donald Trump basically meant that egg prices were more important to voters than democracy, decency, actual data, and a whole host of other substantive things.  And I believe the anger about congestion pricing is another example of what I referred to earlier as “Democrats of convenience.”  Climate change? Who cares, I want to drive my car. Slower emergency response time? So what, I want to travel in an Uber.  Raising funds to improve the MTA which shuttles millions of people to help make NYC work? I. DON’T. CARE.

So we are at a fork in the road in American and human history and with Trump and congestion pricing animosity I think it is clear we will take the path more traveled and that will make all the difference. We have chosen and will choose selfishness. If a Blue place like NYC cannot wholeheartedly embrace this as a collective challenge to be overcome together, for a relatively small amount of money, is there any inconvenience we won’t cave to? Let alone face down major challenges?  The WWII/JFK spirit of past generations is gone.  We take inconvenience (let’s not even get to actual sacrifice) as an affront to our American entitlement. We use “poor and middle class” people as swords to be wielded against policies that make more affluent or selfish people mildly inconvenienced.  We have never built in the costs of carbon into our society.  From hamburgers to driving your own SUV around, we allow people to live without truly paying for what they impose on society and then act offended and angry when a fraction of that cost is demanded (if gas were $12/gallon and hamburgers were $35 each that would be appropriate and would also cause riots and careers to end).  Congestion pricing is almost a concession – yes we know you are selfish and want to engage less with the community in public transit. Fine – but for the impact that causes on society (below 60th street in Manhattan), you may no longer do it for free.  BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

So in a society and world that needs dramatic change, we cannot even join together for modest and needed changes.  he truth is – the American Dream that allows people to live in houses a 90 minute drive from work is bordering on an environmental crime at this point.  Of course, cost of housing in cities is the fault of a certain class of people and government, but not everyone who chooses to live far away from work or public transit is always doing so as a result of housing cost. Sometimes it is the fact that your energy usage are personal choices made easier because the true cost and responsibility are not passed on to you. And for everyone who says things like “but the Subway is so dangerous.” Yes – the solution for that is more cops getting on trains, not groups of cops texting on their phones in subway stations.  The world of “treat me like a hero as my union allows me to avoid some of the scenarios that would require a hero” culture of the NYPD needs to end.  But the truth is, if even Blue society will put egg prices above democracy and selfish convenience over the environment and improving their own communities then perhaps we should all give up on America and the future.  But don’t tell me it’s because you care about anything besides yourself.  Because those working class people you are “concerned” about? Most of them are on the bus and subway while you sit in an Uber or your car fu*king things up.