Born during Dead Week
It's the Bermuda Triangle of birthdays. | Also: Why ladies love Luigi, Silicon Valley CEOs vs. Aaron Rodgers on ego death, how the Nobel prize got started, and lots more.
It’s my birthday. Yup, I was born during Dead Week – which I realize sounds like the opening line to a Bob Dylan song.
🎶 I was born during Dead Week / nowhere else to go up but up 🎶
If you’re unfamiliar, Dead Week is what they call the time between Xmas and New Year’s. And anyone born during this period knows it’s the Bermuda Triangle of birthdays (i.e. yours is sure to get lost).
The problem is everyone is always out of town for your birthday so good luck with throwing a big party. And your gifts get combined because who has time to shop for a whole other round of toys? By the time everyone’s back, the holiday vibes are over and now it’s hibernation mode, resolutions, and Dry January. Blech. No wonder Capricorns are so stubborn and critical.
(Btw, I think a new year's resolution should be like a pregnancy: People shouldn’t tell you about theirs until they’ve kept it for at least three months. Gonna hit the gym 3X/week now? I’ll believe it come April, ok?)
It’s especially rough when you’re a kid, since birthdays are basically the tot Oscars. In fact, having a childhood filled with dead week bdays can lead a person to feeling so shunned and ignored that they wind up undertaking ridiculous endeavors to attract attention. Y’know, like becoming a standup comedian. Don’t let this happen to your child.
If you know a Capricorn born during this week, make an effort to show you notice/care. (Rain check celebratory efforts are acceptable. Do it in January if you have to.) Trust me, it’ll be appreciated.
If you’re the parent of a dead week kid, heed my warning or else you may have to attend iffy musicals way past high school. As comedian Gary Gulman said, “The subtext of my near 30-year comedy career is ‘Mommy, look.’”
And if your birthday is this week, I just want you to know: I SEE YOU.
“What a guilt trip!” Look, I’m Jewish. It’s in my bones. “How can we make it up to you?” Well, here are a few options:
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More on Luigi
⛑️ Luigi is killing it with the ladies because he combines their three favorite things: a sense of purpose, abs, and true crime.
⛑️ People think the cops are dumb for giving Luigi such a glamorous perp walk but that falsely assumes the priority of the police is stopping crime as opposed to making themselves seem important.
⛑️ I remember once talking about perp walks with a French person and they couldn't fathom how a justice system could parade someone in handcuffs in front of the press while also insisting they were "presumed innocent." I just laughed and said, "Shut up and gimme my FREEDOM FRIES."
⛑️ Bad time to heckle if you’re named Mario:
⛑️ On SNL, Chris Rock called the UnitedHealthcare CEO a drug dealer, but he's really more of a drug denier.
⛑️ It’s cute how many people think CEOs actually own corporations and call all the shots. That’s just the system working exactly the way it’s supposed to. It’s like thinking Roger Goodell owns the NFL. Nah, he’s just there to take the hits while the nepo billionaires sip champagne in their luxury suites.
⛑️ If you really wanna break the internet, have that pole vaulter with the huge 🍆 shoot the CEO of Blue Cross.
Psyched out
💊 Silicon Valley CEOs quitting after doing psychedelics?…
…Ahem. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
💊 With his Netflix doc, Aaron Rodgers has become the #1 reference for ayahuasca…
…As someone who routinely discusses ego death onstage, I just want to let you all know: My ego death is way more impressive than Aaron Rodgers' ego death. In fact, I challenge him to an ego death duel where the winner is awarded the Ram Dass Trophy for egolessness. 🏆
💊 Speaking of, thanks to everyone who came out to the recent Misguided Meditation shows in NYC. They were a blast. Here’s a peek:
Quickies
🎯 It's amazing how much people who use the word "heterodoxy" a lot all have the same opinions.
🎯 Gen Z has suffered a lot of microaggressions. That’s why I have a lot of microsympathy for them.
🎯 If Die Hard happened today, most of the internet would be arguing on behalf of Asian Dawn.
🎯 If you enjoy Kieran Culkin patter, may I suggest hanging out with people who are on c0caine?
🎯 “Lil’” is fun because it’s us making the word “little” little.
🎯 My personality:
🎯 Love is knowing you're right and pretending you're wrong because it just ain't worth it.
🎯 Then: Tip the driver but not the barista.
Now: Tip the barista but not the driver.
Why? Phones are a**hole machines. Eye contact forces us to behave. Anonymity lets us become wild narcissists. That’s why we now tip the barista, but not the guy who dropped us off.
🎯 You don't have to list your favorite books of the year or publish a “Top 50 books of the year” rundown either. Let's get real. Just tell me one book to read. That way I can download it to my Kindle and spend the next year not reading it because I'm staring at my phone all day.
🎯 You know those "spot the traffic light" login things that replaced captchas? We should have those for other things too. Like, you don't get to give your opinion on Israel/Gaza until you prove you can find 'em on a map. Also, you shouldn’t get to vote on abortion rights until you prove you can find the g-spot.
🎯 Moving to NYC is like geozempic. You immediately lose weight since 1) you walk everywhere, 2) you’re competing against a bunch of people way hotter than wherever ya came from, and 3).you can’t afford to eat anymore because sandwiches now cost $27.
🎯 Each time zone should get its own President. They’ll have to come to us for bagels and abortion doctors. And we’ll have to go to them for steak and college football players.
🎯 Kara Swisher on Elon Musk: "He's so poor - all he has is money..." It's like the best Yogi Berra-ism that Yogi never actually said.
Comedy
🃏 Jokes: Get ‘em (and more) on my social media at Instagram – TikTok – Threads – X – Substack Notes – Bluesky
🃏 Tour: Upcoming shows in Seattle and Victoria (BC). Info here.
🃏 NYC weeklies: 1) GOOD EGGS (Mondays) at 7:30pm at NY Comedy Club (Upper West Side). 2) HOT SOUP (Tuesdays) at 10:30pm at Comedy Cellar. 3) GOOD EGGS (Wednesdays) at 8pm at NY Comedy Club (East Village).
🃏 FUNNY HOW: I have another newsletter all about the craft of doing standup. Check it out.
🃏 “Substance” Special: Watch my doc/special “Substance” at YouTube. Four nights, four shows, four states (high, drunk, 🍄, and sober).
🃏 My new standup special “Bolo” is available to stream now for only $4. Don’t wanna pay? It’ll be coming to YouTube/MattRuby on January 9, 2025 at 7pm EST (sign up to get notified here). Here’s the 🆕 trailer:
5-spotted
🗯️ 1. You get better at what you practice. 2. Everything is practice.
Look around and you may be surprised by what people are “practicing" each day. If you consider each moment a repetition, what are most people training for all day long?
Many people are practicing getting mad on social media. Others are practicing the fine art of noticing how they have been wronged. Still more have mastered the craft of making plans (but never following through).
But, of course, it doesn't have to be that way.
What are you practicing?
🗯️ The weird origin story of the Nobel prize.
There is a story that a newspaper confused Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, with his brother who had just died. Thus, Nobel got to read his (premature) obituary where he was called a “merchant of death” who had amassed wealth by developing new methods to maim and kill more people — which dynamite was certainly doing. Supposedly, that’s the wake-up call that made him devote his wealth to the Nobel Peace Prize, instead, so he’d be remembered differently.
🗯️ Literary fiction has become a largely female pursuit.
Novels are increasingly written by women and read by women. In 2004, about half the authors on the New York Times fiction best-seller list were women and about half men; this year, the list looks to be more than three-quarters women. According to multiple reports, women readers now account for about 80 percent of fiction sales.
🗯️ Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine, on how to fight back against our billionaire-owned tech ecosystems.
Building our own websites, making independent media, and striving for more democratic social networks—I think these are some of the small but crucial things we need to be doing to create alternatives to the monopolistic, billionaire-owned and increasingly authoritarian tech ecosystems currently dominating our lives. We still have to figure out how to triumph over extractive tech companies and curtail aggressively toxic social networks that encourage the spread of hateful messages, and to fund and elevate alternatives not in thrall to tech billionaires, but building working models is a necessary and urgent first step.
🗯️ How ideas are like birds. Oliver Burkeman describes Elizabeth Gilbert’s philosophy of creativity in Big Magic.
Essentially, she believes ideas have their own agency – that they visit you, like birds alighting on a branch, and that if you don’t do something about them fairly rapidly, they’re liable to fly away to someone else.
Thanks for reading.
-Matt
P.S. I have another newsletter that offers creativity tips from art legends. Get some:
Rambutan!!! “Rambut” means “hair” in Malay.
Hirsute Birthday.
Happy Birthday, Matt!