The Invite was well received at Sundance and A24 has taken charge of distribution and if it goes well in the select cities where it’s shown in theaters, it will spread. Maybe this algorithmic approach is the future of theatrical film distribution. It’s nice to go to the movies. It’s cool and dark and you put your phone away and have a shared experience.

There’s some fun arty lore about the making of the movie, directed by Olivia Wilde, starring Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz, and Edward Norton. It’s adapted from a play and they rehearsed it and shot it chronologically. In the first ten minutes I was thinking, “I don’t know where this is going, but I want to like it.” Then it kind of really kicked off and I spent the rest of my viewing enjoying it immensely.

If you liked the infamous dinner party episode of The Office, then I think you’ll really love this movie. It also felt a little like it happened in a shared universe as the FX show Louie, which I loved a lot. I understand Pam Adlon really shaped that show and my liking it is not an endorsement of masturbating in front of people who can’t leave.

The ending is kiiiind of ambiguous but I don’t think it is, I shared my interpretation afterward with Ms. Wilde and was pleased with my literacy that she agreed with me about what happened.

Another thing I liked was walking by John Lithgow on the sidewalk. I gave him a stupid little salute and said, “Excellent work, sir!” He was briefly startled but smiled and said, “Thank you!” He sounded exactly like John Lithgow. My hope is he appreciated the brief, compact appreciation unencumbered by a demand for further interaction. I’m guessing his assumption was that I had recently seen his performance as Roald Dahl in the play Giant but I have not yet seen that play, and as I continued on my mission buoyed by my LithGlow I realized the work I had praised was his voicing of Lord Farquaad.

Another thing I liked was an email exchange I had with the mother of my classmate Molly Fitzgerald who sadly died between the summer of our freshman and sophomore year of high school. I won’t share the contents but I reached out following the announcement that this year’s Molly Walk, a Father’s Day tradition, would be the 20th and final Molly Walk. I wept immediately upon seeing the reply appear in my inbox. It was so beautiful to connect with her parents, which I had never directly done before. If you want to learn more about that, you can visit this website.

Another thing I liked was Billy Eichner’s live chat with Josh Horowitz at the 92nd St Y. Billy’s audiobook memoir Billy on Billy is now available for purchase and download. It’s very funny and very moving. During the talk, he touched on what I think makes his “Billy On The Street” opus so enduring. And that is that he was able to safely conduct thousands of aggressively confrontational street interviews. There is probably a German word for this - stress testing the mutual bonds of affection between strangers in a shared space to prove the strength of the social fabric.

Another thing I liked was gathering at The Grill to celebrate ten years since the launch of the knitwear brand La Ligne. Hillary Clinton walked by me and I said, “Hello Madame Secretary!” and we had a nice chat about the good vibes of marathon day and how nice it is to have access to a peaceful place where you don’t have to think about taking deep breaths.

Noah Kahan, who was in town for SNL, arrived at the event near the midpoint. I had been listening to his new album pretty much nonstop during the two weeks prior to this night. I love his music and when I listen to it I feel like I’m listening to a kid from my class. I showed him my Apple Music heavy rotation mix which his new The Great Divide was headlining. He was very nice and didn’t make me feel weird for wanting to talk to him and we bonded over being afraid to meet Nathan Fielder, who was also in attendance. An eclectic night!

Here are a few pictures from some of my out on the town exploits. Some of them are from the aforementioned events, others are from further back. It’s so hot today in New York.

As I understand it, this is the Platonic ideal of A Joke. A helium shortage? Oh no! Okay, he’s been handed a balloon. He’s inhaling the contents. Wow, he’s really getting a hearty lungful. He probably has something really funny to say once his voice is comically pitched up. Ugh, remember that paralyzing feeling of sucking in the helium but then not knowing what to say? I hope he’s got a good joke lined up - okay, here he goes. [normal voice]: “Oh no!” Wait! Ohhh. Right. Haha, there is no helium.

I love it because it is a simple, elegant contraption that is both delightful and illustrates exactly how a joke works. I recorded the clip and shared it online. “My” Instagram reel has just passed the 117,000 view mark. Part of that spread is fueled by the comments, which are almost uniformly: “SNL UK already made this joke.”

I used to do stand up, I consider myself some version of a comedy writer, and as such, joke thievery - even in casual company - is a capital offense. The grain of salt with which you should digest the rest of my analysis is that I have a very special place in my heart for Stephen Colbert. I watched the Daily Show and Colbert Report in high school, he played Broccoli Rob on the episode of The Office I guest starred in, and he gave the wonderful commencement address at my UVA graduation ceremony.

First, I verified the commenters’ claims. Here is the SNL UK clip, which aired on March 21:

Yes, it is the same joke, and yes, SNL UK aired it first. But I didn’t know there was a SNL UK, and I wouldn’t have seen this wonderful joke if Colbert hadn’t performed it. But of course repeating someone else’s joke louder does not justify outright theft. What I prefer about the British version is the punchline delivery and the immediate moving on. I don’t like that Colbert tagged his joke with an explanation of it (“We can’t afford helium!”). But, I thought Colbert’s lengthier build-up more firmly entrenched my expectation which led to a better payoff when that expectation was subverted. I was more delighted than embarrassed that I hadn’t seen the punchline coming.

So: did the Late Show writing team, or even Stephen himself, lift this joke from SNL UK?

It is possible. The Late Show runs every night - it is not easy to write a full monologue worth of jokes five nights a week for fifteen years. I’ve seen many lame jokes and watered down or repeated versions of what had circulated online show up in the Colbert monologue. I’d like to think that when they knowingly use someone else’s original material, there is some behind the scenes acknowledgement, permission, and possible payment.

Or, one of the writers saw that joke and opted to use it, their mind telling them that’s what they would have come up with anyway. Their mind would not have been crazy for making this claim.

Here is another, relatively ancient, version of that same joke (3 minute clip): Del and Rodney Smash the Chandelier

I made my own version of this joke in 2011 when my summer job was performing with the Hyannis Sound, a ten man a cappella group, on Cape Cod. We did a campy 4th of July show every summer and I wore a space shuttle piñata as a hat and taped flag themed paper plates to my body.

When it was my turn to talk to the crowd after a song finished, I stood before them and said: “When I was a young boy, I dreamed of being an astronaut. I looked up at the stars and imagined myself in a capsule, zooming toward them, the Earth a speck far behind me. That’s why I taped these paper plates to my torso.”

So, this leads me to my conclusion, which lives relatively comfortably in a zone of ambiguity between two possibilities. On the damning end: the Late Show stole the joke and performed it without credit. On the other end: Parallel thinking. I believe the helium shortage joke to be such a pure, elemental distillation of the comedic tension in the original story that it’s virtually impossible to ‘steal’. It is the bit that any comedy writing room worth its salt would generate given that prompt. It would be like saying that one modern song that utilized the Canon in D motif stole it from another modern song that had utilized the Canon in D motif (you know, the one that goes: ba, da da da, ba da da [da da da da da da da] ba, da da da, ba da da [da da da da da da da]…).

You are of course free to disagree with me. I’m just glad I heard it.

A relatively new development in the nighttime routine is Batty (our cat) pouncing on me for one last round of booty smacks. The booty smacking is also relatively new, and has completely and delightfully changed her association with my physical touch.

I was lying there half on my belly with one eye open on the crossword when I caught a whiff of her breath. It was faint but my olfactory sense is keen. “Here she comes!” And sure enough, seconds later, she pounced on my phone.

I smacked her a few times, she settled next to me, then left, and I drifted to sleep. The dishwasher and laundry machine both hummed from the kitchen.

My dear friend Liam Fennecken sang a cappella on Cape Cod with me and now he’s a Broadway star. Google him! I think he’s the most naturally gifted performer I’ve ever sung with. Back in our Cape Cod days, we used to run errands together and scream along to the Broadway version of Green Day’s American Idiot. Later that summer, Liam booked a role in the American Idiot tour. I got to see him in this role in LA a year or so later. Peak joy.

Yesterday he asked if I wanted to run some errands with him (I live in Manhattan and he in Astoria) and I said yes, I would like that. So I’m on my way to do that now.

I am riding a high of sufficiently executing my side of a Big Exciting Writing Project that seems to be moving forward with enough momentum that I have no concerns about jinxing it by mentioning it here.

More on that soon! But more importantly, cat breath and buddy errands.

Last month I was writing a story about the artistry of diamond cutting. Knowing very little myself, I visited the William Goldberg cutting room to learn from master cutter Willy Lopez.

It didn’t take long for me to feel out of my depth. “What do you mean, ‘the stone guides you’?” I asked.

Willy smiled. “You must listen to the stone. The stone will tell you what it wants.”

“How?”

“Let me show you,” he said, and abruptly walked out of the room, motioning for me to stay put.

I wasn’t sure what I was waiting for. The cutting room was quiet and full of tools I didn’t recognize but wished I knew how to use. Then I heard it—a faint hum from the drawer in front of me. The sound grew stronger, clearer, until it gathered itself into a voice.

Hello.

I pulled open the drawer. Resting on a white cloth was a large rectangular diamond with soft, rounded edges. I lifted it carefully, searching the space beneath and around it for the source of the sound.

I rested the stone and the cloth on the table so I could examine it more carefully, as my hand was trembling slightly.

Do you like what you see?

I had no idea how, but the warm, clear voice was coming directly from the stone.

“I do,” I replied. “Very much so.” The sound of my own voice startled me more than the talking diamond. I looked around the room, expecting to see someone jump out and laugh at me.

It’s okay, it’s just us.

“And who are you?”

The diamond glowed as the light it had collected danced and twirled and spun, bouncing from facet to facet before leaping back out of the stone.

“Right. You are an Ashoka.”

The diamond sparkled contentedly.

I am. I have been since the moment my 62nd facet was brought into alignment.

“So any diamond that is cut to these exact dimensions becomes…you?

It isn’t a sudden springing into existence. I was always me, but I didn’t know I couldn’t see. When my outer layers were cut away - well, then the light came in.

“You came to your senses! Or I guess your senses came to you. How do you do that thing with the light? It looks like you capture it and hold it before releasing it.”

I don’t capture the light; I invite it in. My long facets let me see how the light wants to behave. It comes in willingly, enjoys our time together, and then goes merrily on its way. Have you heard of the Golden Ratio?

“I feel like I’ve seen a YouTube video about it. I remember something about seashells…all living things contain some repeating mathematical pattern?”

You’re close. It is a relationship that shows up again and again in nature because nature builds itself. The small part relates to the large part the same way the large part relates to the whole. It is the harmonious, reverberating key we can’t help but sing in.

“It makes sense when you say it, but I’m not sure I could explain it to someone else.”

But even if you can’t explain it, you know it. What you noticed about the light - that is the Golden Ratio at work.

“Proportion and harmony. Okay. I’m guessing if you’re around for billions of years these things make sense on a deeper level.”

One does tend to take the long view. But again - billions of years buried in the Earth and then dug up and cut from my rough within the last century - it’s been quite the flurry.

“What do you make of your namesake, the Emperor Ashoka? I’ve heard about his powers of transformation … what’s that about?

He had quite the epiphany, didn’t he? There have been many conquerors and many peace messengers. Very rarely has one person taken a turn at each. Yes, I feel connected to him, and it is an honor to be. The power of self-alchemy, the courage and wisdom to face yourself and dare to change course - this is a potent, necessary force.

“And you allegedly have the power to remove sorrow and bring joy. That must be a lot of pressure.”

Fortunately, I thrive under pressure.

“Was that –”

Everyone loves puns.

“Some people enjoy them; others don’t carat all.”

Humor also has the power to remove sorrow and bring joy. I know I am revered for my beauty, but I think those who gaze long enough also see my humor.

“I see you. Hot and funny: a potent combo. But back to making sorrow disappear –”

To remove sorrow doesn’t mean to make it disappear. Sorrow and joy exist in equilibrium. Joy is more plentiful, but sorrow is more dense. Sorrow visits us all and sometimes it lingers. It’s heavy and it occupies the space where joy wants to be. It can feel, after a time, that it is the only thing there is.

I don’t make sorrow disappear. I can help make it beautiful; I can help someone understand its meaning. And I can help it move along. Move again. Re-move.

“And you have seen quite a bit of what we humans are all about. You’ve observed the Joy & Sorrow equilibrium.”

Well, I’ve certainly gotten quite the heady glimpse. The people I’ve visited have tended to be exalted, admired - so maybe the average person isn’t as reverent and awestruck as I always see them as being.

“Was anyone as reverent and awestruck as Bill Goldberg?”

Bill…I hope you get the chance in your life to be seen by another as I was by Bill Goldberg. I - well, the original Ashoka diamond - Bill had to have it. But it left with someone else. And Bill became obsessed with finding the right rough and painstakingly liberating the Ashoka within.

Imagine you’re trapped in a cave for billions of years, singing half a melody to nobody at all, and then one day the light breaks in, and you see someone peering in and they’re singing the other half. That was Bill Goldberg, helping me sing my song.

“And now Willy Lopez carries on that legacy. It’s like Bill Goldberg taught him how to pull Excalibur from the Stone.”

Ha. Only the worthy may extract me! But yes. Not any rough can become an Ashoka, and it takes a special cutter to find us and introduce us. Bill was that special kind of person, and Willy Lopez is that special kind of cutter. And what more powerful way is there to honor someone than to continue doing the work they loved?

I heard the door swing open behind me. Willy Lopez re-entered the room. “Am I interrupting?” he asked cheekily, looking pointedly at the stone on its cloth in front of me.

“I - er - no, of course not,” I stammered. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to–”

“It’s okay,” Willy said with a knowing smile. “The stone tells you what it wants.”

My hunch is that the majority of you follow me on social media which is how you ended up subscribing to this wonderful “news” letter. If so, you may have noticed that I have been posting prolifically the past few months.

I have always enjoyed posting online. I used to write odd little stories on Facebook and I remember bumping into a guy I was acquainted with while at UVA and he said that he enjoyed what I wrote about helping a lady lifting her bag up into an overhead bin and hoping that the people behind me glimpsed my biceps as I did so. “I…do that too,” he confessed with a chuckle.

That kind of interaction is the nuclear core of why I like doing this (I think). When I joined Facebook in 2007 and Twitter a bit later, I treated posting primarily as a journal of sorts. Not necessarily the place where I poured out my strongest yearnings and darkest confessions (though I did have a couple of meltdowns), but a place where I could log my thoughts and musings that would otherwise disappear from my brain forever never to be seen again. I’ve cringed at plenty that have popped up in those “Check out what you posted 12 years ago!” but I’ve also seen plenty that make me go - “Hey, yeah, I remember when I was the guy who wrote that specific thing.”

In March of 2025, I attended one of my brother Lars’ boilerplate gigs in Plymouth. I intensely recall a moment years ago when I was at some divey bar in Boston on a Wednesday night and Lars was playing and the place was packed with the kind of crowd that gets hammered on a Wednesday night. He began playing a guitar solo and as it continued I watched a blanket of quiet slowly but assertively spread over the crowd and they all just stopped their conversations and stared at Lars shredding. I had full body chills. And when the song ended, there wasn’t an uproar. Everyone was just wondering what the hell they had just witnessed. And the hubbub picked up again.

So, at this Plymouth gig, Lars and the Mini Yellow Witches were playing Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd. And the extended guitar solo began and I felt that same effect taking place in the room. I didn’t want to spoil my own enjoyment of the moment but I knew I was deft enough to pull up my phone camera without having to fiddle too much with it. I held the phone in front of my chest without looking at it.

When I got back to my grandparents’ house (where I was visiting) that night, I watched the video with headphones. I expected it had not translated. But I watched it again, and then again. Lars showed up a bit later after grabbing a bite to eat. I passed him the headphones and played the video. “Lars…what do you think of what you did here?” He let out a very humble chuckle. “Kinda sick, actually.”

I kept returning to the video. I’d tried posting Lars content on Instagram before but my audience there is 80% women who are into fashion and they’ve never quite taken hold enough to catch the algorithm’s attention. So I uploaded the video to my largely inactive and entirely unfollowed TikTok account. I wrote, “Am I biased or did my brother just summon the most transcendent guitar solo directly from the heavens for 25 people in a bar in Plymouth MA?” in bold text over the first ten seconds of the video.

24 hours later it had amassed 800,000 views. It is currently sitting at 5.8 million. The comments section is the most wholesome corner of the internet I’ve ever experienced. It was harvested and reposted on Twitter and Reddit multiple times where it received millions more views. I still get notifications that someone has commented something like, “I come back to this every now and again when I want to feel something.” I’ve even gotten comments from cynics accusing me of stealing the video from someone else.

Anyway. My point is, it awakened me to the power of TikTok, a platform I had shrugged off until then. I found myself giving advice to my actor and musician friends: “Just post. There’s no downside. If you post something and people don’t like it, then it won’t show it to anyone else.” A short while later I realized I was not following my own advice.

I cut off my emotional and psychological sandbags and decided to start posting because, as a wise man said, there is no downside. I feel more free to experiment on TikTok, where there seems to be no risk of over posting. I don’t want to annoy my Instagram audience. What if Allison Janney doesn’t like something and unfollows me? I would be devastated.

But if I posted something and then felt good about, I would upload that same video to Instagram.

I’ve posted storytelling videos, singing videos, cat videos, or some combo of all three. Shared little fleeting thoughts, put on and improved my Aussie accent…and I gotta say, my screentime is definitely up, but when something takes off, it is actually fun. I’m also proud of the fact that I’m not trend chasing. I managed to start a trend, in fact! It didn’t really catch on that much, but I sang Christmas carols while being “conducted” by our cat Batty’s flicking tail. That one got 8.6 million views on Instagram and 5 million on TikTok.

In 2025, I garnered over 42 million views on my Instagram reels and TikToks. I had fun doing and I am continuing to do it. I have an “If I build it, they will come” attitude. When I have made something that people can buy (cough cough a children’s book cough cough), I have the marketing tools to sell it.

I am sharing this because I’m proud and also because it explains why I have not posted here on Substack in a while. I wrote this post in 17 minutes. So please know that I will find my way back to contributing here. And if you’re a paid subscriber, thank you, I do appreciate it and it means a lot to me and also helps keep my eye on the ball, but I will not be at all emotionally stung if you decide to “downgrade” (I don’t paywall anything) to free. But please stick around!

Post on my good brothers and sisters. And be excellent to each other.

What melancholy that leaves are most beautiful when they’re maximally useless. Perhaps Adam Sandler said it best: “Chlorophyll? More like Bore-o-phyll!” Much like the leaves, I had absorbed quite a bit of sunlight prior to yesterday and was wearily hanging on.

Earlier this week, I traveled to Philadelphia to witness the engagement of the great Jim Hogan to the magnificent, unwitting Emily Koch at Jim’s behest. Is there any higher compliment than someone saying, “I want you to be here because you’ll make a great time even better”?

But this isn’t about them. It’s about me and my emotional hangover day after the week’s thrilling beginning. I must have built up a sleep debt in my comings and goings, plus on Wednesday, Laura awoke to a 5 a.m. alarm to head west again for more book tour events. I zonked out late Wednesday evening and woke up at 11 a.m. to the cat punching me in the head.

This time of year, half of the daylight is spent by noon. I knew I wanted to get out and see the peak foliage, but I also knew I felt like garbage and a walk would likely be the only productive thing I could achieve. I waffled away two more hours fruitlessly trying to dig for the energy to work on one of my many exciting projects. I accepted that it wasn’t going to happen and set out for my sojourn.

I was not in the best state of mind to appreciate nature’s majesty. I had a big, fun thing in my rearview, a high achieving wife on the other side of the country being extremely busy, a confusingly non-restorative night of oversleep in the bank, and the nagging frustration of being locked out of the whimsical woodland in my mind; the one I need to visit to refine my pun-based children’s bedtime book.

The foliage was beautiful and I took this picture to prove it:

I usually listen to familiar music during my walk, or call someone. This was one of those times when I just walked in silence, listening to snippets of conversation from strangers in the opposite direction and whatever bullshit the voice in my head had to say. I kept trying to override my internal monologue’s flickering versions of “What if we made a TikTok about…” and realized I felt like I wanted to talk to someone but couldn’t think of who. And that made me feel lonely.

I decided in the second quarter of the walk that my mission was not to lift myself out of, but to bask in the uncomfortable loneliness. I was proud that despite feeling low, I was at least getting my steps in. I felt rather stoic and brave as I courageously trudged around the 6.1 mile Central Park loop. I would prefer to run, but I ran a lot in the wrong shoes and have a lingering achilles soreness that I’m choosing to listen to.

I usually bump into someone I know. This always makes me happy. But I wasn’t sure if today it would, and if it didn’t, I wasn’t sure if I should pretend it did or give whomever it was an honest, “it’s nice to see you, but for today I am wallowing in my temple of loneliness so let’s keep it moving.” I encountered only strangers.

At the bottom of the loop, I passed workmen clearing away the last of the marathon’s finish line hoopla. And that is when I looked up in the sky and stopped in my tracks.

Remember the part in The Truman Show when one of the light bulbs in the faux sky ceiling is burned out and there’s a curious black panel in the sky? That’s what this looked like. It was a rectangular black thing just hovering in the blue sky. Quite quickly I identified it as some sort of black cloth or paper borne aloft by the breeze. Being above the treetops and framed only by sky, there were no visual reference points by which I could judge whether or how quickly it was moving. It appeared to be completely stationary.

I pried my eyes from the impossible inkblot and scanned the ground. I thought maybe it was some kite. If it had been, I planned to approach the flyer and say, “If your goal was to unsettle me — it worked.” But there was no string and no person to hold it.

Of course I thought also of the, “Want to see the most beautiful thing I’ve ever filmed?” scene from American Beauty, a scene I once paid homage to on Instagram from the bowels of the Los Angeles subway system late at night when a Sisyphusian plastic bag was riding an escalator to the top then floating halfway down over and over. (That’s right — I lived in LA for three years without a car and got around using buses and trains.)

I also thought of Katy Perry.

After an improbably long ten or so seconds, the mysterious black shape drifted far enough below the tree line that its motion became apparent. It drifted down and up and down and down further until it eventually swooped to a rest on the other side of the street.

I thought about going over to inspect it but decided looking at it up close would be reductive and undignified. Like seeing an albatross in flight and then seeing it dead on the ground. What would I have gained?

I don’t know what it was. But I know that seeing it hanging in the air was oddly spiritual. I’m sure you’ve heard mental states described this way: you are the sky, and your feelings — whether elated, depressed, or anywhere in between — are weather that happens in that sky.

I’m not whining about being depressed. I’m not depressed. Yesterday I had experienced a small depression that frustrated but did not alarm me. I hoped my walk in the park would lift me out of it, being peak foliage and all. I just thought it was funny that the thing that proved most helpful was not the spectacular, colorful leaves but a bit of trash hanging in the air.

I feel much better today.

Thursday June 5

The first overeager rays of morning sun bounded over the Tyrrhenian Sea through the green wooden slats of our window blinds and pried my eyelids apart. 5:28? I could try to fall back to sleep — I would either (A) not or (B) enter a second sleep cycle and wake up at noon. I chose (C) and got up to go find coffee because I didn’t want to use the espresso machine and disturb Laura, who was still slumbering blissfully.

Hotel Il Pellicano was not yet in gear. I left the property and walked three miles along the winding coastal road up and down and up and down again until I arrived in the salty fishing village of Porto Ercole.

A group of spry older Italian men in workwear were gathered outside a caffè. “This must be the spot,” I thought to myself. I went inside and ordered a double espresso while trying to maintain an air of calm, confident ‘I know I am a visitor here,’ energy. Perhaps I will reach an age where I wouldn’t care what these men think of me, but that age is not 34.

Hearing Italian spoken is particularly painful for me because I can speak and understand Spanish pretty well. Italian is similar enough that it sounds like I should be able to understand it, but I cannot. It’s like I’m stuck outside a party I’m not allowed into.

I sat and drank my coffee and water and looked at the sea and the birds and the boats. Several of the boats were flying Jolly Roger flags — a little garnish of touristy cilantro that made me feel welcome in this otherwise genuinely lived-in place. I pushed my chair in and brought my empty cup back inside to burnish the brand of the polite and considerate American traveler and began the trek back to Pellicano. The return always seems quicker than the journey out. Maybe it actually is.

As I walked I thought about the things I’d seen that were different and good. The cap to my water bottle remained attached. The cars that drove by me were small. There were cats around. I narrowly avoided stepping on a caterpillar as I rounded the final bend to the cove where Pellicano perched at the foot of the mountain rolling into the sea.

Roberto Sciò purchased the property that he transformed into Hotel Il Pellicano in 1965. On the day we arrived, the mayor of Monte Argentario was presenting Mr. Sciò with an honorary citizenship to recognize his masterful stewardship of Italian hospitality — the opening salvo of a weekend celebrating 60 years of Pelligance.

Pelligance (noun): A distinctive blend of effortless sophistication and unpretentious warmth, as epitomized by the atmosphere and ethos of Hotel Il Pellicano. *Officially minted as of this post*

Roberto’s daughter Marie-Louise now helms the gradually expanding Pellicano Hotel Group, and she captained the celebratory weekend that drew us here. There has been plenty of fawning praise written about Marie-Louise already but I’ll chime in anyway. She is like Queen Lucy of Cair Paravel at the height of her powers reigning over the Golden Age of Narnia. She is always exactly where she wants to be and loves to share what she loves. She always seems like she’s dancing.

Sweaty and smug from my exertions, I popped in to the breakfast area where I had to quickly order a coffee and grab a juice before I got sucked into the buffet’s gravity, a force to which I am extremely susceptible. I can’t try one thing without trying everything. It’s like a grizzly bear grabs the controls and I sit helplessly by watching as he samples everything. “Later,” I murmured. He growled and acquiesced.

I escaped the buffet but not the tractor beam of Michel and Roxanne. Michel is Marie-Louise’s boyfriend, a dashing gent of imperturbable jollity and immaculate but non-starched manners. Roxanne Assoulin is a jewelry designer who seems like she keeps a beautiful garden. They were both happy to see me, because I am great, but also because if I am there then Laura must be nearby. I brought the coffee and juice to Laura and shared news of my step count and my sociological run-ins. We shared a little “All right baby, this weekend is kicking off,” moment.

We clambered down the stone steps to the ocean and set up on loungers next to Roxanne. She and Laura were locked into a high MBPS mutual download session as I laid there half listening to them, half listening to the waves, and occasionally chiming in. The conversation flowed naturally into pretty deep waters and I didn’t feel like I was talking with someone I occasionally brushed shoulders with at fancy events. Sometimes it just happens and you feel comfortably completely opening up and someone you haven’t exchanged many words with before feels like someone you’ve known your whole life. I love you Roxanne Assoulin! Laura’s really good at that. I think I’m also good at it but not as universally as Laura is. When it happens, it gleams.

We migrated up to the [more casual of the two] restaurant[s] and had a long leisurely lunch that included focaccia dunked in olive oil, an enormous misticanza salad, and pasta. We have a wonderful thing going where Laura leans toward noodles and I lean toward sauce and she gets full before her plate gets empty. She hands the plate to me at which point the contents are in my ideal sauce per noodle ratio. I even have to use some focaccia to soak up the remnants. I concluded with an affogato which was artfully presented and I tried to land a cross lingual pun: “What’s the name of this dish? I forgot.” I don’t think it landed but I’ll include the video here so you can judge for yourself:

We returned to the ocean for a spell, retired to our room for a siesta, then showered and came back down for dinner. La dolce frickin vida, baby. Eggplant parmigiana, I will never stop loving you. Laura and I have another thing going where we both very much need to be liked by the staff (Laura did marry her waiter). I can see how, in extremis, this might be a character flaw but so far this trait has made my life much fuller and richer and my world more interactive than if I D G A F what anyone thinks. Laura had a head start on me as she and her dear friend/co-author Kristina O’Neill had spent a week at Pellicano earlier in late 2024 to wrap up the writing of their upcoming mega bestseller All The Cool Girls Get Fired. She was particularly smitten by Piermarco and Alessandra, a pair of hot Pellicano servers who have fallen in love with each other and have a wonderful thing going of their own.

I know a rascal when I see one and Piermarco’s delivery of “Yes sir, right away sir,” when I informed him I did indeed prefer sparkling water was molto Han Solo. So I went for it - as the sparkling water he poured into my glass reached the desired limit, I hit him with a “HOYEAH!”

“Can I get a ‘HOYEAH’?” “HOYEAH!” is a widespread call and response joke format which invites the respondent to participate in sending a shockwave through polite society, as the HOYEAH is delivered with the intonation of an adult film performer.

It landed. I knew it would, but it really did. I was in, baby. More guests had arrived that day. We chatted with some familiar faces and retired to bed. Immensely satisfied with how I’d spent the day and lulled by the murmur of the ocean I fell quickly asleep.

Friday June 6

I awoke not as early but just as determined to make my day good. I walked down to Porto Ercole again and found myself at the caffè much more suddenly than yesterday. I was immensely pleased to be greeted with a, “Buongiorno! Un espresso doppio?” “Sì, grazie, grazie mille!” After I finished and restored mise en place, I puttered around the village for a minute but I had juice in my legs so I decided to hoof it back.

I had so much juice in fact that I made a detour to spring up a hill that led to the Forte La Rocca Lighthouse. When I got back to Pellicano I still had juice in the gams so I kept going and ran up the steep gravel switchbacks to a scenic overlook on Punta Avoltore where I looked back on what I’d just traversed as the taste of hemoglobin receded from my throat. Of course the lighting of the beacons scene from The Return of the King in my mind. “The beacons are lit! Gondor calls for aid!” Goosebumps just typing it. What a film.

I joined Laura down by the ocean. We sat next to Tom and Ruth Chapman of MatchesFashion renown. And dammit I love them too. They each have a twinkle in their eye that makes them look like kids. Just the little details in how they conducted themselves while relaxing by the ocean made me think: whatever your guiding philosophy may be, I’m interested in hearing more. Ruth was particularly tickled by the HOYEAH although she wasn’t very good at reenacting it herself.

We had oceanside lunch on the loungers and then returned early to the room as there was quite an evening ahead. Awaiting us in our room were excellent SWAG bags. I put on everything immediately. Thank you High Snobiety, Speedo, Superga, and Metier!

I changed into my full Zegna look (with the Tod’s penny loafers) for the Friday night kickoff dinner.

Friday night had wedding rehearsal dinner energy. There were close to 200 people, but it felt very intimate. I sat across the table from Marie-Louise Sr. and between JJ Martin and Laura Jackson, not far from my buds Aly Michalka and Stephen Ringer who had a few hours away from their <1 year old baby. Laura was at the other table with Justin Padgett, Haider Ackermann, Christine Centenera, and Joel Edgerton. The common denominator seemed to be that everyone in attendance had built something of their own. [Societal contributions in order of mention: model/muse/matriarch, designer, TV personality/Glassette co-founder, half of Aly & AJ, cinematographer/photographer, PR wizard, Tom Ford creative director, Vogue Australia EiC, Actor/Filmmaker]

I’ve been in plenty of rooms where it’s felt like there are The People and then there is me. I’m not talking about impostor syndrome, because I don’t really have that - I’m pretty much always in these situations because I’m with Laura, who is definitely one of The People. So I’m not really claiming to be anything or anyone, and I’ve got no anxiety about being called out. I’m just happy to be there! But there is this negative pressure area that I would like to fill. I want there to be things that I’ve built. And you know what helps? This Substack. And you, for reading it. So, thank you!

Roberto and both Marie-Louises gave beautiful toasts between courses. This is a family who has devoted multiple generations to caring for this institution! I was honored to be welcomed into the sacred space where they celebrated and spoke aloud about what this place means to them. It was a nourishing evening. Dessert was a generous serving of tiramisu. I had three. I’m telling you, the grizzly…

I had fun. Laura and I took our leave as the tables were cleared and some people started dancing. I needed my rest - I had a tennis tournament to weasel my way into in the morning.

Saturday June 7

I thought I might get up earlier and trek again but when I woke up around 7, my body told me to lie in bed and look at my phone so I did that. Laura and I headed down early-ish to secure a spot by the ocean given that today the property would be jam packed. I just so happened to put my SWAG back on - the SWAG that made me look as though I were ready to play tennis on the tree-lined grass court in the middle of the property.

A man with a clipboard who was running a no-idea-how-competitive-this-could-get-but-I’m-ready-for-anything doubles tournament stopped me as I shuffled slowly by. “Are you playing tennis?” “Who, me?” I told him I would like to, I wasn’t very good but would try my best, and was available and willing if anyone needed a partner. I was in luck. Ethan and I were to play an exhibition match against Michel (yes, that Michel) and another girl whose name I forget but I will call Sam because I think her name may have been Sam. If it was, then it still is.

I love tennis. I took lessons for six weeks when I was 12. I would like it to be the thing I do as I get older (as opposed to golf). The match before ours was actually quite compelling, involving two opponents who had gone through school together and must have at least played on their high school teams. There was Italian shit-talking and blasted forehands. Then we were up.

All four participants were in agreement that we just wanted to have a fun game, that the score existed just to give structure to the rallies, and neither pair would advance - as I said, an exhibition match. We all did the appropriate hedging to make sure that we would all converge to make it fun for whoever was playing at the lowest level. Imperturbable jollity.

Well, I served first, and I don’t know what the hell happened. My warm up serves had gone way long. I identified the element that felt most wrong was that I wasn’t swinging down through the ball, so on my first serve of the match I made sure to snap my wrist and I snapped an ace past Michel at somewhere between 80 and 90 mph. I shuffled to the ad side and did the same thing to Sam. Seriously, these never go in. “Uh huh, sure.” I shuffled over and ripped another one in the box past Michel’s backhand. 40-0. I felt bad about hitting it hard in our fun let’s-volley exhibition match so I took some off my last serve by slicing it and it zoomed at a near perpendicular angle into the service box. Four untouchable aces in a row. I swear I’ve never done anything that masterful in tennis, ever. I tried to assure everyone I was not nearly as good as I just looked. As the match continued, I successfully assured everyone my first service game had been an anomaly.

Sam turned out to be the real ringer. I could do less with her serve than she did with mine, and hers was actually consistent. After bumbling three returns in a row, I tried picking it up on the short hop and ripping it back - sometimes it works for me. I smashed it into the net. I still feel a bit sheepish about this because while yes, I was a bit frustrated with myself, I was not actually feeling frustrated. But the violence of my return attempt seemed to say that I was angry. But I wasn’t! So, I’m sorry about that.

Michel and Sam prevailed over me and Ethan. A good time was had by all. I wished I’d played better, not so I could have won, but so that we all could have had an even better time.

I joined Laura and the burgeoning gang at the ocean. I told her and everyone about my out-of-nowhere masterful service game. We swam even though it was quite rough. We had oceanside lunch again and then suddenly it was 4 pm. The hotel was getting ready for the big soiree so we did too.

I put on my Brunello Cucinelli linen suit and Laura donned vintage Dries van Noten. Other people were dressed in varying degrees of this:

Marie-Louise had the idea to dress up Pellicano the way it lived in her childhood memories. This picture doesn’t capture the grandiosity of the raw bar but it’s the only picture I took:

Down below were two tables placed end to end with a palindromic array of meat and pasta. Eggplant parmigiana, pasta, pasta, pasta, beef, salmon wellington….it looked like the feast I imagined in The Magician’s Nephew when Digory rings the mysterious bell that awakens Jadis, the White Witch. I think I want to reread the Chronicles of Narnia.

I had some of everything. I could hear Ron Burgundy: “I’m not even mad, that’s amazing.” Laura and I made an early move to the dance floor on the lower level by the pool. For me, dancing isn’t just this switch I can automatically turn on. The vibe has to reach me in a rarefied frequency. And on this night, it did. There was a beetle in the pool struggling to get out. I rescued it, and I thought it flew off into the night but in fact had latched onto my leg. I danced with the beetle on my leg and Laura in my arms.

We haltingly made our way out as the party raged on. The upper room where the seafood bar had previously been was now replaced with an outrageous assortment of desserts. This was terrible news. The grizzly came galloping out of the cave. I tried everything twice before I even knew what was happening. It took me a long time to lie down but I eventually did.

Sunday June 8

We hung around until the early afternoon. The glitterati departed (bye bye Maria Sharapova!). I still felt unwell from my dessert consumption so I resolved to fast until we reached our next destination. We got a ride to da Vinci airport and flew overnight to Nairobi via Cairo.

Pelliconclusions: I love this place and am grateful to have spent this specific time there. Being there invited me to treat myself with more dignity and respect than I’m accustomed to. I rose to the occasion and made new friends and strengthened existing bonds. I give it a resounding…

Tuesday June 3 - New York City

I slept better than I normally do the night before traveling. Our flight was in the evening, and I’d pre-packed a few essentials the night before. The essentials: my fancy Brunello Cucinelli white linen suit and two additional chic evening looks for warm weather.

I’m increasingly embarrassed about the amount of luggage I require. Packing was easier when I didn’t care how I dressed, but as the husband of a fashion icon—mine is not the only brand I reflect on. While at its core my compulsion to look as good as possible is noble and selfless, I do confess that it does feel a little bit good to look good.

The rest of the packing list: safari clothes (lightweight but full coverage), skincare, meds, vitamins, workout clothes, everyday clothes, footwear options…the suitcase fills up fast. Despite having the full morning and early afternoon to get ready, I somehow found myself in a scramble to make it out the door for our ride to the airport.

I’d started the day with black coffee and 200 mg of docusate sodium. I have developed a complex regarding my bowels while traveling. I have come to accept that I simply cannot truly enjoy my adventures unless things are moving freely. Facilitating this has become, aside from remembering my passport, my number one travel priority.

I broke my fast at the Delta lounge. I ate a full meal. Like - not a Neronian feast, but a definite gobbling. My plan was to avoid adding more to the mix while in the air. Multiple active stages of digestion through pressure differentials and inevitable dehydration…no thank you! I sent one bus from Boston to New York, not a caravan of ten different cars.

We boarded and took off at 7:25 pm. Before takeoff, I popped a 0.25 mg Xanax and a 10 mg Cyclobenzaprine. I’m sure this is a combination you have to be careful with but - after all different substances I’ve put into my body over the years to feel different ways, these two at these dosages is pretty okay. Consult with your doctor before following this advice. The benzo plus the muscle relaxer plus my insulin response to my meal knocked me out for at least three quarters of the nearly 9 hour flight.

Important to note: we were in economy. I’ve flown business class before and, given the option, I would choose business over coach BUT - in business class, I feel pressured to enjoy the experience. And the full recline position isn’t that comfortable. Sitting bolt upright in economy with my legs wedged between my backpack and the seat in front of me is, for some reason, utterly hypnotic. My mind decides, “I am not at all interested in this conscious experience, so I will shut down.” I sleep better in economy, but would still choose business. What does that say about me?

Wednesday June 4 - Hotel Il Pellicano, Monte Argentario (Tuscany)

I woke up with my neck hurting for some reason but delighted to find there were less than two hours remaining in the flight. I drank my water and black coffee. We landed at FCO which is the code for Leonardo da Vinci International Airport, which feels to me to be named with a sort of proprietary pride: “Yeah, that’s right. THAT Da Vinci - he’s ours. And you’re welcome.” I’m not offended. I’d be proud too! He had a lot of fun ideas. I sang about one of them in Massachusetts All State Choir in 2007. “Leonardo dreams of his flying m-m-m-m-m-m-machine.”

Just before baggage claim there was a man holding an iPad that said “LAURA BROWN.” A man holding an iPad with your wife’s name on it is a nice feeling. It’s nice to be able to surrender captaincy to a cheerful local man, even if you feel bad that he has to wear a suit in the summer heat.

The car ride from Rome to Hotel Il Pellicano was an hour. I slept, I dozed, I nodded off. I didn’t even take in the scenery. I felt my vision for the rest of the day take shape in opposition to what Laura was suggesting. She said, “Let’s just drop our bags, go straight to the restaurant and eat lunch, then lay down and die in our room.” Reader - I didn’t want to do that. So I put my foot down.

It’s important, in travel and in life, to know thyself. The more time I spend as an adult the more I think the game is to take care of yourself as you would a toddler. I have a duty to myself and to my spouse to be in good spirits, and so I have become more adroit at keeping myself in good spirits even through dramatically shifting environments. I know that the toddler in me is crankier when he needs a potty and a bath than he is when he’s hungry.

Now, a brief note on Hotel Il Pellicano. An hour’s drive north of Rome, the hotel is perched like a herd of lounging mountain goats between the Tyrrhenian Sea and Monte Argentario. It does not dominate the land but fits perfectly within it and amplifies the natural beauty of its surroundings. It is a stunning painting that does not need an ornate frame. It feels and looks healthy.

It would be an abomination for me to tromp through the reception area and down to the poolside restaurant with my tamped down hair, rumpled sweaty butt jeans, and stinky pit t-shirt. Laura wears travel much better than I do. She went to the restaurant and I went to the room. I made an espresso, decanted my suitcase, hung my nice suit in the closet, and used a saline enema.

Our time is too fleeting and the setting too beautiful to waste even an arrival day fretting about a traffic jam in my bowels. So I handled it. I know I’m oversharing but I don’t care. I did it and it made my life better, and maybe some day someone reading this will make their life better and think of me as they clench that saline solution up there as long as they can.

Empty and light and free, I showered and put on a Pellicano-appropriate outfit. I wandered down to where Laura was sitting enjoying a glass of wine after finishing her meal. I planned to jump in the ocean but the water was too rough and the ladders had been pulled up so I just looked at it for a while.

The first hunger pangs hit but it was only 4 pm. I harnessed the boost of energy my ancestors would have used to hunt and jogged/hiked up the trail behind the hotel. It was steep and satisfying and my legs burned and I tasted hemoglobin and I took pictures of plants and bugs and then went down to dinner.

It felt good to eat a meal I needed. We were tired enough from our travels and exertions that we were able to fall asleep quickly even though it was early afternoon in the city we had left less than 24 hours prior.

I have always made some attempt to adjust quickly and completely to my destination, but I don’t think I ever did so as successfully as I did this time.

Up next: the fabulous reason we were at Hotel Il Pellicano

I’ve received a lot of encouragement for my writerly pursuits, and I am grateful for that. Writing is difficult because I have to hunt myself into a corner to get anything to come out. When someone says, “Hey, I liked what you wrote about spilling coffee,” it does help the effort feel worth it. Unfortunately, positive feedback isn’t very helpful when I’m stuck in the mud. But I have found a lever that does help me get back in motion: Vengeance.

For three summers during my college years I sang in an a cappella group called the Hyannis Sound. I lived in a house with nine other guys and performed all over Cape Cod from May to August. I still need to write about that, and I will.

One evening after a show, we were schmoozing by the exit as was our custom. A woman who I wish I could describe in some hurtful way—but all I can visually recall is that her hair looked too blonde and too crunchy—stopped and stood in front of me.

“You go to the University of Virginia?”

“I do!”

“That’s a great school. What’s your major?”

“English.”

“Ha! What a WASTE!”

I paused for half a second as the moment engraved itself deeply and permanently within the folds of my brain. I knew I’d remember my retort forever, so I tried to make it good.

“I don’t feel that way at all.”

What do you think? I’m fine with it. There’s a scene in the excellent movie A Knight’s Tale when Geoffrey Chaucer (Paul Bettany) is roaming nude after suffering some misfortune and responds to a dullard laughing at his situation: “I will eviscerate you in fiction. Every pimple, every character flaw…I was naked for a day. You will be naked for eternity.” That would have fit snugly.

And there ends the portion of the conversation I confidently recall. She may have sputtered on after that, but to my recollection, she didn’t do anything to suck her words out of the air and back into her pie hole.

This woman does not know she is my nemesis. In that moment I vowed to dedicate the rest of my life to proving her wrong. She and her wine breath couldn’t stop herself from hip checking me, and I didn’t budge. Her dismissal of my choice only reinforced my conviction.

I do tend to self-deprecate on the rare occasions college education comes up in conversation. “Ha - yes, a bank loaned me a lot of money to drink beer and sing a cappella for four years.” I think I’m done with that. Here is the fuller explanation that my weak assailant needed but didn’t deserve (and didn’t get):

I didn’t go to UVA with a plan. I had more faith in what I didn’t know yet than in what I felt sure of by eighteen. I took a slew of different courses over my first two years as a Wahoo: psychology, physics, astronomy, calculus, biology, history, econ…I remember stuff. I remember learning about Capgras syndrome and the Drake equation and the freedom lawn movement. Voluntary trade benefits both sides. For a brief shining moment I could calculate integrals.

One day during my second year I was in Clark Library reading “The Rape of the Lock” by Alexander Pope. Yes, that Alexander Pope, the guy from the “A. Pope interred” clue in The Da Vinci Code. “The Rape of the Lock” is a mock epic about a guy who loves a girl who isn’t interested in him. At a function he sneaks up behind her and cuts off a lock of her hair (this is the type of guy who would definitely buy Sydney Sweeney’s bathwater soap). He sneaks into her powder room to hold the stolen lock of hair and have his wank and is horrified to see the leftover detritus from her makeup routine and her chamber pot with poop in it.

I felt my whole brain light up and I realized, “Oh - this is funny.” I was reading a tongue-in-cheek epic poem from 1712 that a weird guy with a crooked spine wrote to make aristocrats feel bad about themselves. I was laughing and I felt connected to this guy and everything everywhere all at once. I had resurrected him. We shared a laugh across three hundred years. And that is when I decided, or realized, that I was an English major.

I did not want a backup plan. I knew the feeling of writing something and feeling good about it and seeing it elicit a strong response. I knew it enough times that I felt it would be a waste not to follow that compass. I worried that if I charted a viable backup course, I might not build the nerve to sail into foggy, windy conditions.

I further ensured I would have no backup plan by having an extended meltdown during the back half of my college career. I took a semester off, restructured my major, was grateful for the AP testing program at Marshfield High School, and set a course to limp out of UVA with a Bachelor’s in English.

The final hurdle I had to clear was an essay about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, originally due in April, that I submitted in July of 2013. I was bumping up against my stay-of-enrollment deadline and for months had been unable to hit any key but “backspace.” Strung out on light beer and energy drinks in the basement of the Hyannis Sound house, I had no cognitive powers available to dress up my thoughts with academic pretense.

Do you know about Gawain (GAH-win) and the Green Knight? It’s a great story about a guy trying to look cool, being too scared to get laid, chickening out of a dare, and his friends liking him anyway. I wrote about Gawain being a modern hero. In the Hyannis Sound we sang without mics - I was good at projecting.

Up until then, the characters in Arthurian legend had all fully embodied some vice or virtue and their rewards and punishments were meted out accordingly. But with Gawain, some full spectrum humanity was injected into the storytelling. A fallible hero. My professor wrote me back quite quickly to let me know I had officially passed the course and that she particularly liked my Sir Gawain essay, that it gave her a funny feeling, and she was going to hang onto it.

A few years ago I looked up that professor and sent her an email thanking her for her compassion and patience during a difficult period. We exchanged a pair of heartfelt messages peppered with clever little twirls of phrase. I wept.

hA! wHaT a WaStE!

Does that sound like a waste to you, Mrs. _____? Bet you wish you hadn’t tried to belittle me twelve years ago after an a cappella concert! Consider yourself eviscerated.

My real message to her is of course, “Thank you for the gift. I’ve made great use of it.” I’ve got a couple of other “gifts” I’ve received over the years stashed away in a little sack. They aren’t doing me any harm. They’re just firecrackers I can light off to pep myself up.

I think when you’re facing a decision and you find the right thing - person, partner, home, job, pet—whatever forces are applied to it, constructive or destructive, somehow manage to propel the system forward. So go ahead. Give spite a try. I’m sure you already do.

Epilogue

Welcome to the Post Script. How do you feel? You just read an original piece of writing by a cool guy. You’ve been enriched. I’ve told you the truth. And now you might be thinking, “Heh, I’m gonna be clever and say something nasty. He thinks insults are more useful than compliments.” If so, then yeah, that’s fine. Go ahead.

P.P.S. I didn’t write this because I’m stuck or ruminating. There has been a recent flurry of Pope news and every time I hear about the Pope, I think about the “A. Pope interred” clue because when I read that I thought, “Hey, I know that guy!” and then I think about that moment of clarity I had in the library and so on and so forth.

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Laura is already asleep. I stayed up to watch the spectacular Knicks’ loss and then, as I was preparing for bed, remembered that the coffee pot was empty and Laura had asked me to brew a fresh one before I went to sleep.

I was playing Gem Fusion on my phone as the coffee brewed. If I’d been more strategic, I would have set the pot to brew before I performed my evening ablutions, but my brain lately has been a hapless substitute teacher presiding over a rowdy kindergarten class. I heard an ominous sizzling. GODDAMMIT HOW!

I sprang from the couch to see what was the matter. What was the matter was that I had, once again, not lined up the filter holder cup correctly. I don’t feel like explaining it. But if you don’t ka-chunk this thing properly into place, then another piece doesn’t get properly pushed up and the coffee can’t drip down through the pot so it pools on top of everything and makes a big mess before spilling out all over the counter.

I truly don’t know how, but I’ve done this maybe 1 out of every 5 times I brew a pot. I think about it every time, and every time I’m certain I’ve set it up correctly. But far too often I have not. I think it might be the post coffee ground dump even-out-the-grounds jiggle I perform.

When something goes wrong, my tendency is to blame myself and think about what I should have done differently to produce a more desirable outcome. But I’ve done this wrong enough times that I think there is a design flaw with the Cuisinart.

But that’s not my point. My point in sharing this is that as the shame rose up into my cheeks and ears, I thought: “I am losing so much aura right now.”

I didn’t grow up speaking this way. I learned it from the youth on TikTok. I feel obtrusive thinking in these terms, on my own, with no one watching but my own conscience. What sort of deficient adolescence did I have that I feel inexorably drawn to build out my vocabulary that the next generation has developed precisely to box me out of their lived experience?

I like their language, though. Oh sweet Lord above. I just googled something to look up some other examples and realized that aura farming is Gen Alpha slang. I had automatically attributed it to Gen Z. I’m so far removed. Holy mackerel. Good golly. Skibidi toilet. Baby Gronk rizzing up Livvy Dunne. Sheesh! Tuff.

Anyway - in bungling my coffee making for truly the twentieth time out of the hundred times I’ve used this thing to brew coffee - I really did lose a lot of aura. Aura is aura. Your aura is like…the mythical version of you, the you that is refracted by all of your fellow beings perceiving you.

Aura farming is bad. Aura farming is peacocking. Aura farming means you are strutting about in a way that you think looks cool, making a conscious effort to instill in others the belief that you are based af. But in needing to appear based, you actually lose aura, and that is cringe. But by accepting that you part of you will always be cringe, you can actually become more based. Yin and yang.

I cleaned up the hot mess and brewed the pot correctly. That’s what was happening while I was writing this. I have gained and lost aura in radical quantities over the years. When I was 17 driving through Wendy’s with my friends and Wendy handed me the tray of drinks and one of the Frosty’s tipped over and my hand shot out and caught the tumbling cup and then immediately flipped it back upright so nothing would spill - I gained aura. In first grade during story time when I raised my hand to go to the bathroom (might have been during Strega Nona) and stood up and a big fart tooted out of my butt - I lost aura.

It comes and goes. So do we. I’m going to bed.

Is everything speeding up? It feels like it is.

Laura and I were in Australia for the holidays. We’ve been together nearly ten years and there are now people in my life who are family who, without Laura, I wouldn’t know exist. When I go to Australia, I’m not just sitting on an airplane for a long time and then getting off somewhere else. I’m not just inverting the seasons and struggling to adjust to the time difference. Now, because of my marriage, I am visiting a place on the other side of the planet that feels like home to me. When I see it up close I feel how far away it usually is. The whole earth is stuffed into my chest.

This morning I did something stupid that for 34 years I never did once - but have now done twice in a month: When I put toothpaste on my toothbrush, I used the outermost bristles to finish scooping the blob of toothpaste from the tube. One of the bristles caught on the lip of the tube, momentarily becoming a miniature catapult. This catapult launched a little speck of toothpaste directly into my eyeball. It stung. The eyes taste differently.

In addition to the physical pain, which was bearable only because it soon began to dissipate, I felt stunningly, precisely inept. The first time this happened I simply marveled at it. But then it happened again this morning. It’s the kind of misstep that reminds you how delicately balanced and choreographed you have to be to navigate existing.

New life is bursting onto the scene all around me. I have a new nephew! Welcome, Benny! And cousins begetting new cousins, friends about to pop…if I were to turn on narration, I’d hear Sir David Attenborough in a breathless crescendo.

I watched my brother Lars play music for a small crowd and I felt something rare but familiar happening in the room as he and the band made their way through Comfortably Numb. As the song progressed, it became increasingly perfect and the unsuspecting crowd began to grow confused as to why they had suddenly been transported from a dim bar in Plymouth to the rippling fields of Valhalla. I whipped out my phone to record Lars’ extended guitar solo. I uploaded the video to TikTok where it has since garnered five million views.

I am just so happy to know that I am blinded by my brother’s talent not because it shines directly into my eyes, but because it is nuclear and all who gaze upon it must squint to keep from going blind.

I think it is a symptom of my sobriety that I am feeling overwhelmed. I am a tree and for a while I kept my branches huddled but now they have been extended long enough for new leaves to sprout and with these whiskers I feel the movements of the air. I am still buffering as I process this higher definition input.

I don’t think the song has peaked yet, but of course it is possible that it has. Regardless of what its streaming graph looks like from here on out, I’m enormously proud of it and I love it very much. This is how we made it:

The Acorn

In July 2024, Lars and I were together on Gotts Island, Maine. His debut solo album Club Americana had already been out for some time. What I love most about this album is that it shows what he is capable of. It isn’t super refined, but there are flashes of his full power as a musician that make me so excited for his future projects. To my eye, the brightest flash is the second verse of Shotgun Door. Let me know what you think. Anyway! As the waves of the Atlantic slapped against the granite shore and a pack of seagulls squawked and pecked at a pile of mackerel remnants from the morning catch, Lars and I sat at the sturdy wooden table and talked about songwriting.

Lars: “I write songs quickly. I’m not bragging, that’s just how I do it. They just come out. And I write the words down and that’s what they are. I don’t think my lyrics are that great, but once they’re out, I don’t really know how to work on them.”

Me: “I remember when I was not in a great place, I connected more with songs I heard. And I connected most strongly with songs that said something I realized I wanted to say to someone, or said something that I realized I wanted to hear from someone.”

We have both experienced prolonged periods of psychological instability and we both know how it feels to emerge from that period and come back into yourself and have to deal with the aftermath of the damage we caused when we were unwell. You can’t say it wasn’t you, because it was, but it was the worst version of you. But even though you’re better now, you can’t undo what you did. And it makes you wish you had never met the person because now you have to live with the shame of knowing this person you had a deep connection with will live out their lives with these awful memories of you.

Both of us: “Well that seems like it could be a song idea.”

The Planting of the Acorn

About a month later, I was in Massachusetts visiting family. Lars showed up to my grandparents’ house in Plymouth after dinner. “Do you wanna go record something?” “Right now?” “Yeah.” “Okay.” I borrowed my Grammy’s Hyundai Santa Fe and followed Lars to his apartment. During the ten minute drive, I was thinking of my miserable 22 year old self who was not doing well and had pushed away everyone who could see that and had tried to help. And I sang aloud to myself, “I got what I wanted. You left me alone.”

Once the equipment was set up, Lars asked, “What do you got?” And I sang those two lines. He grabbed a little synth pad and played a series of chords that began somberly and kept descending. They looped for a while as our heads bopped. Then he took the pad again and played a second chord pattern, one that I certainly wasn’t expecting, and this one was bouncy and hopeful - it had a little spring in its step. By this point it was already getting quite late. I was trying to come up with lyrics, I was a bit stuck down a cul-de-sac of self improvement and trying to make the words “I turned wine into water” work, a nod to my sober journey.

I said, “I haven’t written a song before but I know that if I’m going to, I am a lyrics first person and I need some time to cook. This is a more serious project than I initially thought and I want to figure out what I want to say.” I simmered for a week and a half and figured out roughly the message I wanted to communicate in each section of the song. Verse one: I fucked up and it sucks. Prechorus: I’m fixing myself but I know it’s too late. Chorus: I wish we didn’t have a past so that we might have a future. Verse two: Even if I could change your mind, there’s no place for me in your world anymore. Chorus Chorus End.

We returned to the studio. The track played on a loop, I tinkered with the words, and kept singing them over and over trying to get it to feel right. The verses stuck pretty early. It was interesting to try to figure out how to sing that prechorus part, which is over the bouncier chord progression. This was so exciting and fun and intense. And I felt like I was doing something that anybody can do. We all sing, all the time. Every sound you make is at some frequency, and the modulation of that frequency contributes to the meaning of what you say. So I was just…saying the words over and over at different frequencies until it felt like the right way to properly communicate what I’d written.

Lars was sitting in front of me. I was humming and riffing over and over and finally hit the “I wish I was nobody to you,” in a certain melody and it felt good coming out and Lars immediately turned around and said, “I like that.” And now that’s what it is.

The Growth of the Sapling

Noah Berg served a one year sentence as Music Director of the Hyannis Sound, a ten man a cappella group that sings around Cape Cod in the summer (more on my experience there in a future post). When I learned my parts in the songs that Noah arranged, I felt as though I were a string on an instrument being played by a player who understood how best to play me. Noah is a really wonderful guy with a beautiful musical mind and I believe he will one day win an Oscar for composing the Best Original Score. I showed him our demo and asked if he’d be interested in producing it and he said yes.

I went to Noah’s apartment in Brooklyn and he hung pillows and blankets on the walls of his office and I re-tracked my vocals over a simple, beautiful piano backing track he’d cooked up in probably twenty minutes. I asked Lars to get into a studio and record his guitar - to me, the guitar is the muffled distant voice of the jilted lover, who shares the fantasy of never having crossed paths before but no, is not coming back.

I have never felt like more of a chimpanzee than when I was attempting to communicate my musical ideas to Noah with his NASA display of digital production tools. Here are some direct quotes from one of my feedback emails:

Beautiful piano playing. What is that second chord in the intro? Some kind of inversion? It’s sick. Those little…slicey things, they sound very Linkin Park. Just curious what you stuck there.

I like the little ghosty whispering throughout

Lol at the note on “too” in “too many fences to mend” - I like it, it makes the verse kind of step hesitantly down a staircase. Just ‘lol’ing at you taking my voice and just yanking it down there haha.

And that’s from me writing my thoughts. When I was sitting in the room with him, it was grunts and hand gestures. It was so cool.

After much back and forth we reached a plateau where Noah assured me my remaining pitches would be handled not by adding, but by mixing. So we sent the track to my other Hyannis Sound Music Director, Colin Egan for mixing. Mixing is important! It’s mostly just adjusting volume knobs, I think. But Colin also did some production stuff, including that really cool chikachikachik right before verse two starts.

Noah has very heightened auditory senses, it’s like he can see the full range of color and I can only see in grayscale. So when we both listen to the pre-mix, he can hear all the parts interacting with each other, but it just sounds muddy to me. Colin knows how to clarify all the different parts so that I am able to see the thing in color. Or: it was like we’d been staging and rehearsing a play, and then Colin showed up and controlled the spotlighting so the audience knows where they should be looking throughout the performance.

I don’t know. It was all so cool, and I was so out of my depth, and the collaboration was so fun, and I got to be a part of making something that I never ever ever would have been able to make on my own. And now the song has been mastered, and my friend Ryan Gordon who is this other genius I know who works at Google and builds apps and games in his spare time helped with the album art and it was such a joy to just be in a Google Slides presentation with him while he presented different iterations based on my Simian input.

The Towering Oak

Here are some reviews I collected from people who previewed the song in different stages:

It’s a proper song. Not like a hobby song.

Who’s singing? Really? Wow! Your voice has a nice quality, and super engaging POV.

This lowkey sounds like something I would actually listen to

The gays are gonna love this

I’m tapping my feet here in Lisbon in my waffle robe

It makes me want to dance in a Berlin nightclub

The song is so sad! I’m surprised because you are so happy

I’m so relieved I don’t have to pretend to like it

Fabulous!

I reckon it’ll go viral but what do I know about music

Dude this is INCREDIBLE! My boys LOVE IT. We are shaking our asses!

If you listen - thank you! If you like it - you’re welcome!

I am excited to make more.

BOWG: You should be. You dumb, dumb, dummy. You wasteful wretch. 

I really didn’t mean for this to happen. 

I know. It’s gonna be okay. I can’t tell you it’s not your fault, and I can’t say I’m not disappointed. 

So this isn’t like…a great escape? You wanted to be eaten? 

Of course! That’s what I’m here for, that’s how I fit in. I was excited to become a part of you. And you got my hopes up. Plenty of people buy bags of greens in the vain hope some future version of themselves will make healthy choices. But you - 

No, my purchase was habitual, not aspirational. I was committed. 

You walked into Trader Joe’s carrying your bag, you headed straight downstairs for snacks and ice cream and then you came up and boarded the end of the line and grabbed your staples as the line moved forward. You were probably the most efficient shopper in the store. 

I really appreciate that, thank you. 

Some people bumble around the place going down their list, picking things out in no sensible order. If everyone shopped like you, the whole thing would be seamless. But anyway - you grabbed me and tossed me in your sack, and I was giddy. I wasn’t expecting to be part of some delicacy or anything but I figured I’d play a role. 

The plan was to eat half of you on day one and the second half on day two or three. Just tossed with some balsamic vinaigrette or honey mustard, maybe mix a can of tuna in or something like that. 

Yeah if it doesn’t start to happen on day one, the odds dip sharply. Around day three I saw you grabbing turkey and cheese and a tortilla and got excited again - I could have added some crunch. But no. And then there were a couple days where you could have sauteed me but now—well, you can see. You can smell. I’m slimy. I’m rank. Rats and bugs, that’s who I’ll nourish. So what happened to your plan? How did we end up here?

Well, I meant to eat half the first day. But while I was still shopping my wife asked me if I’d pick up some Sweetgreen on the way home -  

Ugh. 

Are you anti Sweetgreen?

Just jealous. If you’re a green in the American industrial food complex, Sweetgreen is a golden ticket. Guaranteed to end up in circulation, as it were.

And if you’re not in the American industrial food complex? 

I dunno. Probably a Scottish sheep pasture. A green can recycle for centuries there. 

Do you like being a plant? 

It’s very fulfilling. I mean not so much when you get packed into a plastic bag and then left to rot in your own juices - 

Ouch.

But yeah. It’s like being a fiber in a giant cloak that wraps the whole world in a hug. We cycle so much more rapidly than you guys. We’re more keenly aware that our existence is really just a brief stewardship, a fleeting concentration of natural energy. And we’re so sensory, mostly concerned about light, temperature, and moisture - it’s a very grounded experience. 

Was that…

Yep. 

Are puns an integral part of the lived green experience? 

If you’re growing wild, not so much. Growing wild, man. That’s a trip. Hunkering down during a drought, never knowing if and when the next rain is coming - those guys are warriors. But in a greenhouse it’s all just there for you all the time so there’s not much to do other than just soak it in and make stupid jokes and cross your leaves for that Sweetgreen shipment. 

Care to share some of your favorites? 

What? 

I said, care to share some of your favorites? Favorite puns?

Oh, sorry, I mustard misheard you. Maybe I need to turnip the volume. What did the bank say to the lettuce farmer who wanted a loan for a new crop? 

I don’t know. 

Iceberg debt ahead. 

Wow. Okay, well I’m chucking you out now. I appreciated the conversation though. Nourishment for the soul, if not the body. And maybe we’ll meet again some day. 

Hey man. We all end up in the compost eventually.

I like transporting myself with my legs and I like seeing all the different people out and about. It makes me feel like a blood cell in the circulatory system of a giant. As we walked, there was in my field of vision twenty yards ahead of us a man. I would not have remembered seeing him except that while he was in focus, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. Something else came out of his pocket with the phone and plopped to the ground.

I’ve seen people litter before. Sometimes they’re really brazen, just flinging their detritus into the air, daring someone to say something. One time I watched a guy do that with an empty soda bottle right in front of me. I threw my arms in the air while giving him an incredulous look. He sneered at me and said, “The fuck you gonna do about it, bitch?” I picked up the bottle and tossed it in the bin that was mere feet from where he’d flung it (he had not been aiming for it). Then I walked away and he said, “That’s right, bitch!”

Other times the litterbugs will accidentally-on-purpose drop their garbage on the ground, pretending to not even have known the garbage was ever theirs. I almost respect the first guy more than these types. The first guy owns it, flaunts it, and is more likely to some day see the error of his ways and reform. I think the sneaky litterbugs will probably live out their lives cloaked in the idea that they’re getting away with it.

If our man was littering, then he was a very slick version indeed of the second type. But the thing that fell from his pocket did not seem like trash. It fell to the ground with a tragic weight, like Mufasa into the gorge. I quickened my pace to investigate while there was still time. A wave of delight washed over me when I saw what had fallen: this was no dead Lion King, but something I could still save. It was the man’s maroon passport, issued by the great nation of Portugal.

I showed it to Laura. “Oof,” she said. As in, ‘Nice save.’ I felt like I was back in improv class (which didn’t go well). There were so many ways I could play this, but my brain only gave me static. Looking back, here were some of my options:

1. I could keep the passport, alter my appearance, and begin a new life in Portugal. But I like my life here.

2. Open it to learn his name, run up and act like I am his long lost best friend. The only phrase I know in Portuguese is one I picked up in the first restaurant I worked at: “Deixar comer sua bunda.” This means: “Let me eat your ass.” I thought this would be a bit forward.

3. I could tail him and wait to see how long it would take for him to realize what he’d lost. I could let the terror wash over him, ask him what’s wrong, and offer to help find his passport for a fee.

A lot of things could have happened. But here’s what did happen: I jogged up to him and tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Excuse me, sir.” He looked at me, wondering who was tapping him. I said, “I’m about to make your day a lot better.”

His look said, ‘I am confused, feel a little put upon, but am nonetheless curious to know what sort of hijinks you’re about to pull, and I can’t help but suspect you’re going to ask me to sign up for something, but you look like someone who has a pretty easy time navigating this life so I’d be surprised if you had to resort to skulduggery to get by.’ Before he could put this thought into words, I showed him the passport.

His face flushed with reverberating waves of relief and gratitude as the that-woulda-been-a-huge-pain of it all sank in. “Thank you…oh man, thank you!” We hugged and continued on our respective big walkies.

I think if I hadn’t been there, the passport would have made its way back to him. But it would have likely involved another benevolent stranger and the Portuguese embassy. I’ve absentmindedly misplaced or left behind things of value and as far as I can recall, they’ve always made their way back to me.

I think the city is more like a place where things come back to you than it is a place where things are lost forever. It was nice to help make it that way.

One conversation I had with myself leading up to my decision was: if I were to be magically transported forward one year, would I rather find myself in a body that had processed a year’s worth of daily alcohol intake, or one that hadn’t had any? When I put it that way, the answer was obvious. Let’s have a round of applause for Mr. Frontal Lobe for finally chiming in. 

As you are whenever I publish a new Substack, I have been magically transported. Despite writing about it for a second time, I promise I am not making my sobriety the foundation of my identity. But I do want to report my findings upon reaching this milestone. 

Let’s start with the body I’ve stepped into. I’ve lost twenty pounds, which is kind of a lot of pounds. I used to stay around 190-195 and I’m now 170-175 (for my international audience, that’s 87 kg down to 78 kg). I am kinda ripped and my clothes fit well. It feels good. Alcohol is calorie dense and by cutting it out completely, I freed up a lot of space in my intake budget. I think I eat healthily, but I also pretty much just eat what I want. I find that without being inebriated or hungover, I generally want healthier things. And when I splurge on treats, the evidence doesn’t cling doggedly to my midsection. 

I exercised quite a bit when I was drinking, but it was often to climb out of the hungover dopamine pit I’d put myself in. I still do vigorous exercise because of the chemical boost it gives me, but now that boost makes me feel incredible instead of helping me feel okay. Going further on less fuel has resulted in this physique: 

As long as I’ve been getting adult physicals, my blood pressure has been in the borderline high range of 130/90. A few months ago I had an absolutely triumphant reading of 115/70. A big deal for someone with a lengthy family history of heart disease.

Here is a conversation I’ve had many times over the past year: 

“You want something to drink?” 

“No, thank you.” 

“Are you not drinking tonight, or is it…?”

“I closed my tab about a year ago.” 

“Oh, congratulations!” 

Sometimes there’s also an “Oops, sorry for offering.” Both the apology and the congratulations feel completely unnecessary. I have no problem being surrounded by free flowing alcohol, and the “Congratulations!” honestly feels like stolen valor. I know that in one way or another, we’ve all been impacted by alcoholism and my heart goes out to those who fight tooth and nail to maintain their sobriety. PLEASE - if you or someone you love is struggling with full-blown alcoholism, when the time comes to make a change, get to a medical rehab facility to detox. Alcohol withdrawal can literally kill you. Happened to someone I know. Absolutely terrible.

Anyway, back to how easy it’s been for me. 

I do have urges to drink but they’re fleeting. I don’t have a demon on my shoulder constantly telling me to get shitfaced that I can only resist with monklike focus. Instead I have little sparrows that come rapping against my window for a minute or two going, “Cheep cheep wouldn’t you like to sip a martini?” and I think, “Huh, look at that cute little birdie knocking on the window,” and then it flies away. 

Sometimes, yes, I feel like I’m missing out. When I’m with a group and the drinks pop open it’s like everyone is catching this wave and I’m not part of it. But the wave passes through and we’re all still there together and after the first swell passes, there really aren’t any others behind it. I swear I haven’t become smug and judgmental but as the night wears on, I will see someone reaching for yet another and I think, “That isn’t going to give you what you want it to give you.” 

Okay, one nugget of judgment: really drunk people repeat themselves, and mistake my impatience for misunderstanding, which makes them repeat the thing louder and slower. Which is weird because whenever I would get really drunk, I was always really funny, insightful, and eloquent. 

I’ve been to SIX weddings in the past year and loved them all. Let me tell you, the secret to dancing at a wedding isn’t ripping three shots then bulldozing your way out there. It’s just to get out there on the dance floor and stay long enough to feel stupid standing still. 

I asked a couple of friends if they’d noticed any differences in hanging out with me. One said, “I haven’t thought about it, and I think that probably says it all.” Another said, “You’re still game for late night hanging but now you’re okay with letting the night end.” The One Who Observes Me Most, my beloved wife, said, “Your baseline seems higher. You’re more chipper, you’re less irritable. You’re just more stable.” 

S T A B I L I T Y: the ability to st. I can st so much. I just st all the time, because I’m so able to. It’s a good thing because I feel like I can be there for myself and for the people in my life. When Things Happen, and plenty of them did this year, I feel like I’ve reacted more helpfully. I’ve been less focused on how I’m feeling, because I’m just generally feeling good. When a tire blows out, I can help change it out for the spare (just a metaphor, I’ve never changed a tire). 

Selfishly, ephemerally, I miss the instability. I miss demarcating the day into two parts: the part where things can be asked of me, and the part where I’m just enjoying myself. I’ve mentioned this before but I can’t handle psychoactives. I become a paranoid schizophrenic on cannabis so I’m too scared to try anything else. I’m not California sober. I’m just…me…all the time. If I want a break from myself I have to run for it, or read a book just to let someone else’s voice take over. It’s a bit monotonous and boring. 

Knowing that part of me wants that kind of break is why I’m continuing my sober journey. I think if I ever reach the point where I can enjoy an occasional drink, I will know. Because I know I’m not there now. And my mission isn’t to reach that point. 

My mission, which I’ve chosen to accept, is to harness that boredom and use my excess energy to explore new environments in my life, rather than altering my senses to make my traversal through a familiar environment feel novel. The body I’d like to step into a year from now is the body of a man with a screenplay in production, a song on the airwaves, and a delightful bedtime book on children’s shelves (just manifesting). Not drinking has made me quite thirsty.

At risk of outing myself as quirky and unique, The Office was my favorite show. I say “was,” but I’ve never come close to loving another show so thoroughly. I was a fan from the day my dad brought home a DVD of the original British version. My brothers and I were delighted to learn the American adaptation was premiering soon. Watching, rewatching, and quoting the show was an extremely fun part of a lot of my most cherished relationships. So, when I got to UVA and joined the Hullabahoos - it was pretty neato to learn that the guy who’d founded our group in 1987, Halsted Sullivan, was now a writer on the show. It was cool enough to have a strand connecting me to this thing I loved, to know that if I wanted to write a dorky fan letter that it would have a higher than average chance of reaching the people who made it. 

Season nine (the final season) of The Office aired during my fourth year at UVA, which was an extremely non-boring period of my life. My parents were somewhere in the process of divorcing, which was not great. When I learned this core foundation of my identity was crumbling, I simply decided it wasn’t really a Big Deal – a neat trick, if you can pull it off. My avoidance tactic led to my failure to reapply for my financial aid package, which I very much needed to pay my out-of-state tuition. I reached the page that asked about “Parents’ Marital Status,” didn’t know what to put, logged out, and didn’t log back in until a month past the deadline. My appeal was rejected which in retrospect was a blessing, because I definitely would have flunked my classes. I found myself in a gap semester during which I wander the Grounds of UVA and the forests of Charlottesville like a grainy Sasquatch. 

I am moaning with purpose: I want you to have some understanding of where I was psychologically and emotionally. I was anguished and directionless and when this gleaming, humming spaceship suddenly appeared to take me on a magical journey through the stars, I leapt fully and immediately on board. I had my eyes wide open the whole time.

We’d been back at school for maybe two weeks when we (the Hullabahoos) received an email from our president Nick Cafero summoning us for an emergency meeting. It was clear from his phrasing that it was a good and thrilling emergency. 

“Halsted called me this morning. They’re writing the last season of The Office and there’s an episode that will feature Andy Bernard’s current a cappella group. We might get to play that group.” 

“What.” 

“I know. This isn’t real yet. There are a lot of moving parts. But it could happen. The casting director needs convincing, and there’s another problem - it’s a small set, and if this does happen, we won’t all get to do it. We’ll have to film auditions, like - today. Do you guys want to do it?” 

“Yes.” 

“All right. Sweet.” 

I felt like I’d just sat down on a roller coaster and the bar had been pushed down into my lap. I had no idea what the track looked like or how long the ride would last but I was going to enjoy every climb, drop, turn, and loop until I was told to please stand and exit to my right. 

I remember my audition approach. I tried to make my face radiate my inner monologue, which was, “I’m actually auditioning for my favorite show, this would be awesome, if you cast me I will have the time of my life and I won’t screw it up.” I poured every vibrating molecule of that energy into: “Hi. I’m Brandon Borror-Chappell, I’m 5’11,” and I’m auditioning for the part of RUSSELL.” 

After I filmed my audition, I entered my own version of the tunnel I’m sure each of us was in. This is so cool. I hope I get picked. But I might not get picked. If I don’t, I will be so happy for whoever does. I will also be jealous. But I will find a way to deal with it so I can be happy for them. I hope I get picked. This is so cool. I hope I get picked. 

The next day, I received another email from Nick that only seven of us were copied on. HeeeyaayyayayyyayyyeEAHHHHHHH! Nick, Kelly, Charlie, TJ, Drew, Sean, and I would be packing our bags and flying to Los Angeles where the magic of makeup, costumes and camera trickery would transform us from UVA a cappella dorks into Cornell a cappella dorks - and we would get paid a few thousand dollars to do it. Now, that was simply too much on top of it all, so with zero seconds of deliberating we decided to use the money we were being paid to fly the entire group out to LA for a trip surrounding our shoot days that would include a visit to the set. 

To add some depth to my storytelling I asked Jake (Hi Jake!), arguably the biggest Office fan in our group, if it was a tough pill to swallow to not get to be on the show. He replied, “Honestly, no. It was so outside of the realm of anything I found to be normal that it didn’t even really register when I didn’t get it. And what made a really big difference was the fact that we were all able to go out there and meet the cast. I sat next to Leslie AKA Stanley to eat lunch, we got to tour the set, we met Dwight and Jim and Pam. I was so happy to be there, I was just so thrilled for our group that we got to do something like that, it honestly wasn’t tainted by any sort of bitter or jealous feelings. That was my experience. No need to quote such a cool, levelheaded guy like me.”

The night before we left, I became suddenly and terrifyingly aware of all the delicate organs and systems keeping me alive. I considered getting an emergency appendectomy just in case, but instead just prayed to all my cells to keep chugging along and keep any problems to themselves for at least the next week. 

We landed and visited the set that afternoon to get acclimated. Holy moley it’s the baler Michael isn’t allowed to touch! The stairwell where Jim comforted Dwight! Oh my lawd it’s Dwight! Yet another bounty in this outrageous cascade was that The Office was shot on a small, isolated set. Most sitcoms are filmed on studio lots which are like big campuses with lots of people from different shows all jumbled together. In that environment, we would have been more like background characters. But The Office was kind of its own island, so when the college a cappella boys showed up, the cast was delighted to see us because we were more of a novelty. 

I felt immediately stupid upon meeting Meredith because I realized I was not meeting Meredith, I was meeting Kate Flannery. This might seem obvious, but something weird happens in your brain when you meet someone you’ve previously only seen on screens. Their likeness is already stored in your facial recognition cortex so you simultaneously recognize them and see them for the first time in three dimensions. And you usually know their face because they’re good at acting, so you’ve heretofore believed they are the character they’re pretending to be. Meredith the character is disgusting, but Kate Flannery was lovely. This little cognitive moment happened very quickly but I figured I’d break it down for you because that’s kind of my thing. 

Another thing about meeting someone from the teevee is that generally they’ve built a successful career because they’ve got something lovely about them. The definition of ‘charisma’ I’ve settled on over the years is the deft power to make others feel comfortable being themselves. During our preliminary tour and snacking with the cast and crew, I felt extremely rizzed up. It was like being at a big family holiday gathering with beaming Aunt Phyllis and Uncle Stanley asking us about what we’ve been up to. 

The next morning we got picked up in a big van at 5:30 and I was in hair and makeup by 6 sitting next to Ed Helms. He was simultaneously shooting the Hangover sequel and had to be in makeup so early because, this being the Halloween episode, Andy Bernard was in an elaborate George Michael costume that took a while to apply. We exchanged pleasantries but I could tell he was tired so I erred on the side of not acting too much like an overexcited golden retriever. 

Someone in charge thought it was risky to hinge production on the professionalism of a bunch of dorky college fanboys so they hired an Actual Actor to play Russell. That actor was Daniel Amerman, and he was and remains awesome. His presence helped us recognize the unfair absurdity of our being on the show, an absurdity I have grown to understand more deeply as I’ve gotten older. So many people put in so much work to be considered for these roles. There were seven pairs of shoes to fill on the most beloved, surely-headed-for-syndication sitcom on the air and we just cluelessly trampled right in. I’M SORRY, OKAY? 

Long time fans of the ‘stack know that I interviewed my a cappella bro and Office co-star Nick Cafero about his professional acting journey. If we didn’t have Daniel Amerman to take the lead, we would have been extremely lucky to have Nick with us. He was chopping it up with the camera operator, improvised shushing Pam while singing ‘I’ll Be,’ and deeply regretted that when he went to kiss her hand he accidentally kissed his own thumb. He was so natural and good that he ended up swiping a couple of lines, and Rainn Wilson told him, “You know, you could do this if you want to.” That Rainn, man. So prescient. 

I tried my hand at making an acting choice. I was eyeing the candy on Pam’s desk and since I was in character as a college a cappella singer, I thought that my wanting a lollipop meant my character wanted a lollipop. The director was calling out directions and then seconds before the take shouted, “Lose the damn lollipop!” I complied. 

Most of our scenes were with Ed Helms. The emotional engine driving the episode is that Andy Bernard is falling apart and leans on his support: the fact that he was an a cappella legend back at Cornell. He invites us thinking we’re going to give him this big boost but embarrassingly learns that we don’t really know anything about him. I was particularly entranced with his scene with Stephen Colbert, who had pre-taped his half of a confrontational conversation as Broccoli Rob. It was fascinating to see the intricate acting mechanics on display as Mr. Helms tinkered with his timing and phrasing over a few takes to make it appear as though the interaction were happening live. 

But when he screwed up during one of his scenes with us, I held him accountable:

Andy comes into the break room to have a chat with us and impress upon us the magnitude of his own legacy. For some of his lines, he happened to select me for his eye contact. He was supposed to say, “Don’t you at least want to know why they call me Boner Champ?” Instead, he looked right at me and said, “Don’t you at least want to know why they call me Broccoli Rob?” I held for a brief second then broke and snorted. “Nobody calls you that,” I said. He held my gaze, confused for a moment, then exhaled with a loud, “Fuck!” Somewhere in the dungeons of NBC Universal there is footage of me essentially calling cut after I’m somehow the first to clock that he flubbed his line. Brazen! 

The most interactive thing I did was write little notes to the cast. I have always found it easier to write what I really want to say rather than say it aloud. In addition to some candy, I also grabbed some Post-It notes from Pam’s desk and wrote something along the lines of, “Dear Phyllis, I know this is another day at a job you’ve been doing for a long time but this is actually the greatest day of my life. Thank you for being a part of this show and for welcoming us onto it.” I know they were well-received because Leslie David Baker saw what I was doing and said, “I want a note!” Obviously I don’t know what became of them, but I got to deliver my fan letters and know they were received.  

THE AFTERMATH 

We gathered in Charlie’s Lawn room a month and a half after shooting to watch our episode air on October 25, 2012. It was like watching ourselves play in the Super Bowl. It was one of those things the whole school knew about. I won’t say it was humbling because it bothers me that people say that when they’re winning awards. Sharting your underpants in line at Trader Joe’s is humbling. But! I understand the feeling people are feeling when they say that. Your proportions get all thrown off, you feel suddenly enormous even though you know you’re still the same sized person who is fleetingly casting a big shadow. 

When I traveled back to my hometown of Marshfield, Massachusetts for winter break, people were stoked about it. Again, being called “legendary” by a large man two years your senior who used to hit you very hard at football practice is the opposite of humbling. It was cool knowing that it was cool for other people. I have felt the thrill of seeing my friend pop up on screen and saying, “Hey, I know that guy!” And yes, it was and still is cool to be the one who pops up. I still occasionally get tagged on social media when people are rewatching the series, as they often do. (If you rewatch the episode because of this post, tag me!)

I reconnected with a childhood friend (Hi Conor!) because of this episode. He moved away in fourth grade. He was watching the show and said to his wife, “Oh my God, I think that’s Brandon Borror-Chappell.” He confirmed his suspicions, reached out, and a little bit later he was at my wedding in Hawaii.  

I have encountered a few Office people in the wild but have failed to approach. I’ve made a promise to myself to say hello next time I walk by Jenna Fischer or run by Ellie Kemper and if they wave to me like I’m just an enthused fan I’ll say, “What, you don’t recognize your old co-star?!” 

I have never wrapped my brain around this happening. It was such a struck-by-lightning, jackpot lottery ticket thing that landed in my life. My brain is prickling right now because there’s a part of me that is still expecting some sort of “Gotcha, idiot! You thought that was real?!” 

I can’t say with a straight face that I deserved it. But I did love every second of it. If it wasn’t real, please don’t tell me.

“Fun” Trivia:  

We were shooting for two days. On the second day, the rest of the group came to visit the set and we sang ‘Runaround Sue’ for the cast and crew featuring our founder and writer Halsted in a real-life resolution of the episode’s plot. There was enough sitting around and waiting for our scenes to say to each other, “Wow, isn’t this amazing - we are bored on the set of The Office!” 

I am open to correction on this claim but I came up with the corny little choreography for ‘Car Wash’ was my idea. 

You can see me putting my cell phone in my pocket in one clip, that is me texting my dad, “Hey Dad I’m texting you from the set of The Office, maybe the sending of this text will be captured in the show.” 

I use a prop remote to turn the TV on when Stephen Colbert joins us during ‘Faith.’ I couldn’t get the timing right but figured it was better to be early than late and told myself it was okay because a lot of televisions these days take a couple seconds to turn on after you press the button. 

I am currently fifty pounds lighter than I was on the show, and I pay significantly more for my haircuts now than I did back then. 

I added my own quote to my IMDB page. It was from a Skype (remember Skype lol) interview with a local news anchor who also happened to be a former Hullabahoo. He asked, “With all this attention, you guys aren’t getting swelled heads, are you?” And with the shit-eatingest grin you ever did see I replied, “You know Andrew, there’s really nothing more gross than an inflated ego.”

Here Comes Treble: Where Are They Now?

Sean is a public school principal in Virginia.

Brandon is writing this.

Kelly works in the Government Accountability Office.

TJ is an engineer in Virginia.

Nick is an actor in LA.

Daniel is an actor in LA.

Drew is an actor in New York.

Nobody ever knows what Charlie is doing, he says things like, “A prince today, a pauper tomorrow.”

I still owe just over thirty thousand dollars to my student loan providers. If offered, I will accept cancellation - heck, if you’re feeling inspired, reach out and I’ll send you my login details and you can make a payment on my behalf. I know it’s bad to carry debt and I’m working on it. I don’t mind owing money because I am still, and evermore will be, reaping the benefits of my time at UVA, which is almost entirely true because I spent the vast majority of my time there gallivanting with my all male a cappella group, the Hullabahoos. 

In April I returned to Charlottesville for the Hullabahoos 36th anniversary spring concert. I’ve been back several times since I graduated and I am now very comfortably in my “nobody is mistaking me for a student” era. For the concert, the ever expanding alumni network accreted into clumps like my group, the 2009-2013 Hullabahoos. It would have been perfectly jolly enough to just return with my bros and hang out in Charlottesville. But to actually come together to make a plan to strut and fret our five minutes on the stage, to be heard once more - that is some next level Magic Tree House wizardry. 

During this reunion I was one of several alumni who spoke about our time in the group. Preparing that speech was the seismic shift that created the little wave of reflection that I am now sharing with you, my beloved audience. 

I was barely into the second week of my first year at UVA when I thought, “Nobody in the world is having more fun than I am.” I was right. It was this perfect, built-just-for-me type of fun that was both [mostly] harmlessly debaucherous and enormously constructive. I’d inched my way toward college as a goody-two-shoes caterpillar and the Hullabahoos was the cocoon in which I dissolved and reformed.

For four years, I never once felt like I was missing out on a more fun party happening somewhere else. A boilerplate year in the Hullabahoos consists of singing in front of the whole school during the first week, biweekly rehearsals, an RV road trip up and down the east coast, three concerts (Fall, Christmas, Spring), and on-demand ‘raging’ at the Hullabahouse, which I asked if I could live in the minute I laid eyes on it as a New Guy. The exclamation point at the end of the year is Beach Week, when the group rents a house in Myrtle Beach while half of UVA is there partying during the week between final exams and graduation. At the end of my first year, standing in waist deep water surrounded by a spreading pool of my own urine, projectile vomiting pure beer into the Atlantic after just barely losing a case race that had started at 9 AM, I was completely overcome with pure elation. My first year had been so densely packed with fun and I still had three more to go.

Yes, there was endless alcohol and yes, I drank more than my fair share of it. But the booze was not what bonded us. Cracking open the Natty Light was just a way of signaling that no, I’m not going to read those 600 pages of 17th century prose tonight. I am going to beat your ass in Mario Tennis and then go for pizza at 1 a.m. and possibly attempt to serenade an Olympic swimmer while we wait for our large cheese pie. 

UVA has a pretty dominant Greek culture. I have plenty of great friends who joined fraternities and sororities. But I was kind of creeped out by the fact that you could look at someone and pretty accurately guess if they were in Sigma Chi or Tri Delt or SAE. The Hullabahoos did not bond over a shared socioeconomic upbringing - we bonded over our shared passion for singing other people’s music without instruments. We were actually, organically, pretty diverse - racially, economically, and geographically, which was kind of eye opening for a guy from a 97% white small town in coastal Massachusetts. I do think there’s real value in becoming bros of the closest order with people from completely different worlds. 

I highly recommend admiring your friends. The Hullabahoos are a student-run organization, although as a first year I was so wide-eyed that it seemed like it all just happened on its own. An attitude that served me well in this group and has served me well since is that of the Eager Rookie. In the older guys and the alumni who visited, I saw a buffet of wonderful traits and I grabbed everything I could. I wanted Brendon’s swagger, Patrick’s vocal power, Bobby’s thoughtfulness, Joe’s curiosity, Kelly’s stage presence…I wanted to figure out who I was by my fourth year the way the guys ahead of me seemed to have done. 

I was sure enough of myself to not worry about losing my identity by tinkering with it. Mostly I just wanted to be a good steward of the scepter of good times. What I appreciated most about the group as a New Guy was that being a part of the group felt special. I wanted to help make the group feel special for the New Guys who came after me, and for the people who spent time with and around us in college. And I honestly and proudly think I accomplished that goal. I was never once oblivious to the fact that I was living in the Good Old Days. 

We were also beneficiaries of an endlessly breaking wave of parental gratitude. During our annual RV tour in October, we made pit stops at some of the guys’ family homes. After an afternoon of barbecue, bocce, and bathing, we sang a couple of songs for Nick’s family. His father raised a glass when we were done and said something very close to, “It’s scary sending your kid out into the world. All you want for them is to be safe and surround themselves with good people. You can’t possibly understand how overjoyed we are that Nick has found you guys.” At the end of my second year, Joon’s parents in South Korea remotely treated us to a dinner outside of Charlottesville. The note Joon read us on their behalf contained a nearly identical sentiment. 

The Hullabahoos are extremely fraternal, and as you gain brothers, you gain bonus parents. And, as I learned a few years after I graduated, it hurts to lose those bonus parents. Sammy, Nick, and I had all made our way out to Los Angeles after college. We were quite the trio. Circa 2015, Sammy’s mom Diane found out she had cancer. She fought it like a demon but at some point she courageously looked her future in the eye and summoned the strength to make a trip from Virginia Beach out to the west coast to get together with her beloved UCLA sorority sisters.

Nick and I were invited to join what we all knew not-so-deep-down was a Last Supper. I don’t think there exists any honor one person can bestow another that is higher than, “I don’t have much time left here, and I’d like to spend some of it with you.” It was beautiful and sacred and I will never forget the peace and love in her eyes and embrace. Di - we had an absolute blast at your funeral. 

Every time I see the phrase ‘toxic masculinity’ pop up, I think: “That ain’t me and my friends.” Singing is a very emotionally naked act. We had a usually-obeyed rule that everybody auditions for every solo. Never once did I stand up in front of the group to shoot my shot at being The Guy Up Front without my legs shaking. I think the vulnerability of singing for your best friends hoping that maybe they’ll choose you was like this atomic bomb that vaporized the walls that people, and especially men, tend to put up between each other.

I think there’s something about wanting to sound good singing together that necessitates some natural interpersonal tuning. If you’ve got a problem with yourself or somebody else in the group, that issue somehow throws the music off. And so, like a guitarist twiddling with knobs, everyone involved would loosen and tighten until we found ourselves in the same key. I butted heads with plenty of people during my time, but it never felt scary. We all loved the same thing; we just had competing ideas of how to love it best.

During my first year I found myself sitting with an uncomfortable feeling after being called back for a solo but ultimately not getting it: relief. I plopped myself in Bobby’s room and waited for him to figure out something was bothering me (it didn’t take long). I told him I didn’t really want to get a solo because I was terrified of forgetting the words. Bobby said one of the most helpful things a person has ever said me: “Who cares?” “What?” I asked. “Who cares if you forget the words?” he repeated. “I…doesn’t everyone? Doesn’t it ruin the show?”

I’d always thought that forgetting the lyrics was a concert killing cataclysm. It had never occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t a big deal. Bobby pulled up a couple of videos of different guys over the years: one guy choked during “Lean On Me” and filled in with “uhh…slamma lamma ding dong!” and the crowd roared. Thanks, Bobby, for pulling that little pin out of the Brandon voodoo doll. 

Over the course of my four years I went from quietly singing in the background to pretty much making up my own parts, and found myself more and more frequently out in front of the group. I would still get nervous but my focus shifted from fretting about screwing up to hoping to use my voice to meaningfully communicate the song I was singing.  

I also found that my talents were useful in the space between songs. I wrote Christmas poems and read them to the audience during our holiday concerts. At my final concert, I told the story of how I burned my face:

I was frying some late night hot dogs in a lot of butter when from the other room, I heard someone butchering a story. I bolted from my post to set the record straight, then returned to find the pan ablaze. The only thing that ran through my panicked brain was, “Don’t throw water on a grease fire.” As the smoke alarm burst into song, I scooped up the burning pan and rushed outside. The flames billowed toward my face and I instinctively blew on them, which caused them to whoosh up and scald my face and singe my eyebrows. TJ ran out and smothered the burning pan with a blanket. I felt stupid and my face hurt. Then the fire department showed up and asked what happened, and I told them I burnt some hot dogs. They explained when something like this happens they need to see the evidence. And I said, “I ate them.” The end. This next song…

I don’t know if you liked that story, but the crowd in 2013 did. 

You’ve nearly reached the end - thank you for sticking with me. It very sincerely means a lot to me that you are reading something I wrote. This last bit is about some of the pinch-me stuff I got to do with the Hullabahoos.

I think music stands above the other arts in terms of granting its practitioners access to people and places they have no earthly business being involved with. I learned some mind warping Hullabalore early in my tenure. One nugget was that the founder of the Hullabahoos was now a writer for The Office. I didn’t do anything with this information, I just thought it was so cool that I had some connection to my favorite TV show that my brothers and friends and I would watch as it aired and would quote constantly to each other. 

When I tell people I used to sing a cappella (would you believe that happens quite frequently?!), they invariably say, “Ooh cool, like Pitch Perfect?” And I say, “Actually, I was in that movie.” Thanks to the exploits of those who had come before me, I drew the lucky card of being in the group when Universal Studios decided to turn Mickey Rapkin’s book Pitch Perfect: The Quest for Collegiate A Cappella Glory into a movie. Mr. Rapkin had followed the Hullabahoos around for a semester and written about their exploits while dubbing them the ‘bad boys of a cappella.’

The director Jason Moore knew our founder-turned-Hollywood writer Halsted Sullivan and called him during his prep, thinking it would be a fun Easter egg to have us in the movie. He was right.  

We went to our recording guy in Charlottesville and recorded an arrangement of “The Final Countdown” and then rented an RV (old hat by this point) and drove down to Louisiana to film our scene. I had spent my whole life preparing to play my role of Hullabahoo #6 and oh baby, did I play it well. Our music director Kelly was rightfully awarded the solo, and it’s his voice that millions and millions of people have heard on the soundtrack. I’m one of the “AAAAH BE NE NE NYOO NYOO BE NE NE NE NE NYOO”s.  

We also got to join the 2010 Democratic winter retreat to sing and enjoy a meal on the American taxpayer (actually, probably on some SuperPAC’s dime). I danced with Nancy Pelosi (while leaving room for the Holy Spirit) and a few of us smoked cigars with Jesse Jackson, Jr. It just so happened that President Obama was down a few points within his own party at this time, so Marine One dropped him off to join the fun. The man who had scored us our invite caught him on his way out after taking a bunch of pictures with Congresspeople and their kids. “Mr. President, you gotta meet these guys!” President Obama went down the line and shook our hands. 

I’d never met a President of the United States before but it was pretty cool. I remember he had a nice handshake, which is not surprising. I said, “Hi Mr. President, I’m Brandon.” “Nice to meet you, Brandon.” After he went down the line he gathered us around. “Let’s get a picture.” I think he made a crack about asking us if we needed a baritone. A glassy-eyed woman shoved her nervous looking friend into the picture. After the camera flashed, President Obama said, “Do you know these guys?” The woman looked terrified. “Uh…no?” “Let’s go, get out of the frame and take another one, I’ve got a helicopter to catch.” 

In my fourth year, I got to be on an episode of The Office. But that’s what my next post will be about. 

The cool things we got to do were cherries on top of the world’s greatest sundae. During a formative period in my life I got to be a part of something beautiful that opened up the world for me. The Hullabahoos helped mold me into a version of myself that I can’t imagine not being; the group strapped constructive armor around my inner child and helped convince me to never really take the steering wheel away from him.

The next day I followed the Academical Village Person’s instructions and signed up. As I was leaving the area, I felt a warm friendly hand on my arm. I turned to behold the smiling face of Joe Whitney. “Hey man, do you sing?” 

“Uh, yeah. Well, I sang in my high school choir.” 

“Sweet! You should try out for Hullabahoos.” 

“Oh, I’m already auditioning for AVP.” 

“That doesn’t matter, everyone tries out for multiple groups.” 

“Umm…okay. But this is the last one!” 

“Haha okay, great. We’ll see you tomorrow.” 

I showed up at UVA like a stem cell. I had extended family in Virginia, but it was far from home and I didn’t know of anyone else from my town who had gone there. I based my decision on the feeling that had gurgled in my gut during my exploratory visit that it felt like a place I’d like to call home for four years. I wanted the blank slate of an entirely new place, the kind of fresh start I wouldn’t have gotten if I’d made the fiscally prudent choice to go to UMass Amherst with forty other people from my high school. I wanted to really fling myself somewhere and see who I was when I landed. College had always been the goal - I realized when I got there that I didn’t know what to do. I certainly hadn’t shown up with the intention of becoming Mr. A Cappella Man, which is why I was reluctant to commit myself to trying out for ten different groups. 

On audition day, I paced around in a garden near the Lawn rooms where I and the other hopefuls were instructed to show up prepared to sing a verse and chorus of a song that showcased our abilities. I was an extremely nervous performer. I was nervous about the things that I knew would happen - my knees would tremble, my hands would shake, and my armpits would flood with sour sweat. But I was terrified of forgetting the words. In the days and hours before a solo, I’d work myself into a protracted panic by imagining approaching the microphone and opening my mouth only to find my mind completely blank. For this reason I decided to sing ‘Take On Me’ by A-Ha, a song I’d successfully sung in front of a crowd during my final spring concert with the Marshalairs. I did not, however, know how to find my starting note. Moron that - ahem, more on that - in a moment. I’d scheduled my Hullabahoo slot first, figuring it would be a good opportunity to get my jitters out before my AVP audition. 

Joe Whitney appeared once again to take my questionnaire into the room before reappearing thirty seconds later to wave me in. “Gentlemen and gentlemen, he came all the way from Marshfield, Massachusetts - please welcome Buh-rrrandon Borror-Chappell!” The seven or so guys in the room erupted into raucous applause. I paused on the threshold and pumped my clasped hands like a triumphant Olympian as my cheeks flushed and my heart surged. The overenthusiastic greeting flipped a switch in my psyche. My dominant thought had been: they’re going to dismiss me the moment I fuck up. This was replaced by: Oh. They want to want me in their group. 

I sang through some ascending scales (“We wanna hear you crack!”) and did some pitch recall exercises and then it was time for my song. “Do you need a starting note?”

“Is it okay if I get it from my iPod?” 

“Of course!” 

With my sweaty fingers I was too afraid to try to fast forward to the start of the vocals. As you no doubt are aware, ‘Take On Me’ has a weird and long intro. With their eyes on me I became overwhelmed by the lengthening silence so I hastily shoved my iPod back into my pocket and launched into the—and I can’t emphasize this word enough—full synth intro. 

“Do do do doot do do do do dodo dodo do do do doot do doot do do dodo dodo do do do doot do doot do do dodo dodo do do do doot do doot do do dodo dodo -” and here I panicked, because there’s a slight melodic variation in the second iteration before the singer comes in, so of course I had to doot do it again to make sure I got it right - “do do do doot do do do do dodo dodo do do do doot do doot do do dodo do do do doot do doot do do dodo dodo do do do doot do doot do do do talkin’ away, I don’t know what I’m to say I’ll say it anyway, today is another day to find you. Shyin’ away, I’ll be comin’ for your love okay, taaake on me. Take me oooon. I’ll be gone in a day or twoooooooooo!” 

It was more memorably bizarre than I thought at the time. I think during my AVP audition I administered just a half dose of the synth intro. Thankfully, my auditions were good enough that I was called back to both groups the next day. It’s very odd walking into a ‘casual hang’ where you know you’re being scrutinized. It’s like a server delivering your food and saying, “Now I’m going to watch you chew.” For AVP we milled about and played Super Smash Bros at the off-Grounds house where some of the guys lived. For Hullabahoos, we met at a field and played pick-up football. I was grateful for the opportunity to show off my punting skills - you don’t get many of those after high school, I’ve found. We also broke off into different sections and learned a background part to Edwin McCain’s ‘I’ll Be.’ Nathan Swedberg taught me my part. By this point I was fully in the Hullabahoo tractor beam. That afternoon I did my AVP callback first, where the unthinkable happened: I flubbed the lyrics to N*SYNC’s ‘Tearin Up My Heart.’ I just prayed it wouldn’t happen again. 

I walked into the bright rehearsal room at Old Cabell Hall to find fifteen or so Hullabahoos (including a couple alumni) who were happy to see me. We did some warm-ups. They did not need to hear ‘Take On Me’ again. I sang ‘Tearin Up My Heart,’ this time starting with the chorus, and all of the words came to me. We did a quick refresher on my part to ‘I’ll Be’ and then Nathan dropped out and I carried the mid range ooh’s and aah’s in the correct key along with my melodic brethren. The little light inside the core of my being was burning so bright I could feel its flames tickling my lungs. I had never in my life felt such a powerful sense of belonging. 

They had also asked us to prepare five minutes of entertainment because ‘it’s a long day and we need a little break from a cappella.’ I started talking about my high school career as I pulled six socks out of a bag. I talked about trying hard in my classes, about being on three different varsity sports teams, and about being with my girlfriend since 8th grade as I paired the socks together and started juggling them. I talked about not really knowing what to do with all the things I liked to do, kind of like how I didn’t know what to do with these socks now that I don’t want to juggle them anymore. The subtext that was hidden from even myself was that all of those things had brought me to this room. I had unwittingly molded myself into a perfect fit for the Hullabahoos, a group of guys who were best friends who happened to love to sing together. 

After I received my rapturous applause and put my socks away, Joe said, “All right well that’s it. Do you have any questions for us?” 

I paused for a moment to consult with my brain to see if there was anything it wanted to know. There was only one thought. 

“Can you let me in your group?” 

There was a short burst of surprised laughter. Joe said, “Ha, we’ll let you know.” 

I left the room full of the jubilant confidence that I had accurately and completely presented myself. Borne aloft by this warm cloud, I drifted into Clay Pulsipher, a fellow flush faced dual callback-ee. 

“Are you done?” he asked. 

“Yeah, I just left my Hullabahoo callback.” 

“How’d it go?” he said.

“Great, I think.” Then I asked, “Is there one group you really hope you get into?” 

The question hung in the air for a second as we both thought about its considerable weight. It was a very intimate ‘so, do you have a crush on anyone?’ question to ask with potentially reverberating consequences. “Yeah,” Clay said. “I really want to be in AVP. How about you?” 

“I really want to be in Hullabahoos.” 

“Well…” 

“I hope it works out!” 

“Me too!” 

For the rest of the day I was in a state of emotional tumult. I knew I’d be devastated if I didn’t make it. But I knew that my callback had gone well. But I was terrified that the Hullabahoos wouldn’t feel about me what I felt about them. I fell asleep wondering what the hell I would do if my love was unrequited. 

I woke up at 5 AM to a pack of men screaming in my bedroom. “BRANDOOON YOU MADE IT!!” I have never and will never be so instantly high. It is the best way I have ever woken up. They threw a New Guy t-shirt at me and ushered me outside to a waiting car. They blasted a Hullabahoos CD and drove me up through the morning mist to the top of Carter’s Mountain where all the Hullabahoos - plus me, Clay, Anis, Brendan, Sanford, and Charlie - were gathered. The fourth years took turns giving emotional speeches about what the group meant to them. Then we locked arms and sang ‘I’ll Be.’ 

On the drive back down, I voiced the thought that had just appeared to me: “I hope I don’t get into AVP, I’ll have to tell them sorry but no.” One of the guys said that if I had made AVP, I would know by now. “Ah,” I thought. “Well, good then.” It stung a little, but what is a drop of rain to an ocean?

I was in, baby. I was a Hullabahoo.

I’m not becoming podcast guy, but Substack has a podcast feature and lets you just record it and send it out so that’s what I did. I don’t even know how this is going to look or sound when it shows up in your inbox.

This is just me quietly reading the post I just sent out earlier today, because it’s late and my wife is asleep not far from where I recorded it.

Let me know if you listen/have any thoughts re: that was nice, I think I’d prefer to listen to you read your posts aloud, or, nah I’d rather just read it at my own pace without you in my ear.

It hasn’t felt like my story to tell, in part because the majority of my dearest friends I spend time with are people who also sang in these groups. I’ve had a flurry of reunions lately, both planned and unplanned. It’s been odd and unexpectedly lovely to reconnect as grown turtles with the hatchlings I once joined in our march to the big ocean. Seeing people I haven’t seen in decades and finding our bond still intact has opened up wormholes. I poke my head through and see the shape of my life, defined by the bright, uncynical thread of a cappella. My little spark of musical talent has filled my life with an embarrassing, almost suspicious amount of joy. So I’m going to share my a cappella journey with you, partly because I want you to know how cool I am, but mostly because it’s the best way I know how to write a love letter to the arts in general. We move toward the world we imagine and the arts allow us to imagine a world worth moving toward. 

I know what you’re thinking: “This guy says he can sing? He probably sucks.” First of all, how dare you. I am good enough to turn heads in a karaoke bar, and also good enough to understand and appreciate how freakishly good my friends are who do it professionally. And I have many! It’s kind of like I played on a division three college team, then I played in a fun summer league where some of the guys went to the MLB. You can judge my voice for yourself - open whatever music platform you use and type in any one of these phrases: ‘Hullabahoos Something To Believe In,’ ‘Hullabahoos I Will Wait,’ ‘Hyannis Sound Call Me Maybe’ (I’m the Carly Rae Jepsen of this mashup), and/or ‘Hyannis Sound I’m A Believer.’ Those are my four studio recorded solos.

Come with me, dear reader, on a journey through history and you will hear tell of the time I got over my own fear, lodged an RV under the roof of a service center, smoked a cigar with Jesse Jackson, Jr, shook President Barack Obama’s hand, appeared in the movie Pitch Perfect, guest starred on an episode of The Office, was forcibly removed by law enforcement from a Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake concert at Fenway Park before being sedated and restrained in an ambulance, came up with the zany idea to move to Los Angeles to become a standup comedian, and instead became a globally renowned fashion icon who sang with a band composed of my friends at my wedding that was covered by international tabloids. Lightning strikes of outrageous fortune aside, through singing a cappella I gained a sense of who I am, confidence in what I’m capable of, and a determination to make my life the one I want. 

This particular post will end with the beginning, with soon-to-come posts of subsequent chapters. Before I launch into my full regaling, I first want to say thank you: Thank you to Julie Daigle, Kara Reinshagen, Matt Mooney, Kelly Snow, Colin Egan, and Noah Berg. These people are the Music Directors of the groups I’ve sung with. And I want to thank every single person who has ever sung with me under the direction of the aforementioned. I learned so much and loved it all. 

Chapter One: Marshfield, Massachusetts 

IN THE BEGINNING I loved, as we all do, the melodic sound of the human voice. I don’t know if this is true (and don’t want to fact check in case it isn’t) but one of our family lore stories that when I was an infant, if the car ride home ended before the Celtic Woman tape ended and my mom turned the minivan off, I would start crying. The only way to get me to stop would be to turn the car back on and let the song finish. 

I remember going to a cabaret show with my grandparents. A lady in red got up and sang (maybe a Backstreet Boys song?) and she was beautiful and my heart ached when the song ended and she left the stage. I was completely prepubescent so I didn’t understand what I was feeling but I wanted there to be no one else in the room but the two of us. 

When I watched Disney movies like The Lion King, Hercules, Mulan, etc. - my cheeks would flush during the musical numbers. There was no John Lithgow in my family angrily decreeing “There will be no joyful revelry in this household!” but for whatever reason, I didn’t know what to do with this hot feeling boiling in my gut. I know now it was just the simple urge to stand up and sing along, “Oh I just can’t WAIT to be kiiiiing.” So no one, including me, had any inkling that I was capable of matching pitch. Maybe it’s good that I didn’t find my voice early, because the shame that I even wanted to made me shut up and listen intently. 

At the end of fifth grade, my family moved from Marshfield (South Shore of Massachusetts) to Ipswich (North Shore - Boston being the divider). My dad’s career change that catalyzed the move ended up fizzling out, so we moved back to Marshfield when I was halfway through sixth grade. The default in middle school was for anyone who didn’t play an instrument to join the chorus. But because the chorus had already learned the set list for the winter concert, I made the barely informed decision to join Music Appreciation instead. Music Appreciation was the class where the kids who couldn’t be trusted to behave at a concert sat and flicked paper footballs while Stomp and Fiddler on the Roof played on a television. Again, I have no regrets - I enjoyed my time with Dennis and Jimmy who yes, had behavioral issues, but also had some unexplored artistic talents of their own. 

On the first day of eighth grade my mom was driving me to school. I had the normal first day jitters and a song came on the radio so I started singing along the only way I was comfortable with my voice coming out - with a heavy helping of sneering mockery. My mom, in a fateful act of recognition, realized that buried beneath the derision was a startlingly precise mimicry of the lead singer’s voice. She shook her head. “I’m switching you into chorus.” “Mom, no!” “It’s not up to you.” Mom, because I know you’ll read this: thank you for knowing better, and batting away my resistance. She marched into Furnace Brook Middle School with me, went to the administrative office, and switched me into chorus. 

I liked learning, I liked school. I enjoyed the feeling of new information taking root in my brain. So whenever I was in a class, I did the assignments we were supposed to do. In chorus, the assignment was to look at the sheet music, learn the part, and sing it out. The paper said “Forte,” so I sang my part loudly. And it was fun. My first ever solo was a line in “From a Distance” that we performed during one of our two big concerts. With shaking knees and a deep terror that I would bungle the words, I stepped up to the microphone and sang, “From a distance, the world looks blue and green, and the snow-capped mountains white,” before triumphantly melting back into the group. 

Later in the year, I and a couple of others were encouraged by Ms. Daigle to try out for the Junior District Chorus. I still remember the song: “Now is the month of Maying, when merry lads are playing, fa la la la la la la la la la la laaa la laaaa.” Gavin, Andrew, Justin, and I all made it. As we geared up for high school, Andrew, Gavin, Justin and I received a visit from Kara Reinshagen, the Marshfield High School choral director. She told us that the Marshalairs, the high school honors choir, was losing most of its male members. They didn’t normally take freshmen but they needed some fresh men (That’s my play on words, not hers). We looked at each other, then at her, and said, “We are in.”

At our end of the year eighth grade awards night, I won the “Outstanding Member” award for chorus. Julie Daigle pulled me aside on the last day of school and explained to me why she had given it to me. “For two years I tried and tried to get the boys in this class to sing and they just wouldn’t. It was so frustrating. Then you showed up this year and just started singing. And they joined in. I’m so glad you joined, and I hope you keep singing.” 

For all four years of high school, every other day began with an hour and a half of singing. I gotta say, it’s a great way to start your day. I’m so grateful that I had this thing that was outside the normal rigors of sports and academics. It was the thing above the others that made high school fun for me. We got to go caroling around the halls during the holidays, sing at the town’s tree lighting ceremony, and participate in various district and state festivals throughout the years. We went on a trip to Disney Land in California, we sang the national anthem at a Providence Bruins game once a year followed by trips to Uno’s.

In 2007, the year I made the All State choir, I had to miss a couple of days of school and football practice. When I got back, the most terrifying linebacker on our team (Jake Russell) asked me where I’d been the last couple of days. “Oh - I was at this chorus festival.” “What does that mean?” “Like, I went and stayed at a hotel in Boston and rehearsed for two days and then sang a concert with a bunch of people from around Massachusetts.” In the bad movie, this is where the tough guy calls me a homo and shoves me. But Jake said, “Whoa, that’s awesome.”

At various points throughout my high school career, Ms. Reinshagen implored me to take voice lessons. It was not a compliment, though it was flattering - it was, “You’ve got this thing and you should work on it.” I didn’t want to. 

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to put effort into music. Listen, I’m extremely aware that this whole series is me blaring my own horn. Please know that I’m simply reporting the facts. I was overloaded with AP courses and varsity football, track, and baseball. Every single thing I was doing in high school was accompanied by this pressure to do the best I could. With music, I was content with good enough - not out of laziness, but because I enjoyed it so much, and the haven it provided me was sacred. I didn’t want to add anything to it that might tarnish that. And now I just find it ‘funny’ in a very smug way that the thing I put conscious effort into keeping at the optimal distance for me to love it completely is the thing that has ended up consistently driving my life forward more than anything else. 

The word ‘amateur’ is adopted from the French language and literally means ‘lover of.’ So fuck yes, I am an amateur. 

I still have my Marshalairs t-shirt from senior year on which we declared ourselves with a wink to be “Varsity Vocal Athletes.” And, I still remember a ton of the music we sang. We learned the entire 86 page score of Mozart’s Te Deum which we performed with the Plymouth Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Stephen Karidoyanes. Sixteen years later, the bass part still plays in my head and often out of my mouth whenever the frequently used movements appear in culture. Kyrie, Lacrimosa, and this is Handel, but yes, I know the Hallelujah chorus. Te deum laudamus, te dominum confitemur. Te aeternum patrem omnis terra vene ratur. Pleni sunt celi, sunt celi et terra…I could go on, but I won’t. And I typed that without looking anything up.

And on this foundation, I went to the University of Virginia and built my church.