Romantic Comedy(47)
I hope this isn’t all too much information. I found your description of your stepdad so interesting that I thought I would try to give a comparable description. One thing I am very lucky about is that I really do consider my sister Vicky to be one of my best friends. She was there when I hosted TNO, and you two met briefly. Our parents disapprove of her in a different way from how they disapprove of me （she’s a social worker who helps kids in foster care find “forever families,” which to me makes her a hero while to my parents she is prioritizing other people’s kids over her own—my nephew Jonah is six and my nephew Billy is four—plus she is divorced, which they also are ridiculously judgmental about）。 Vicky and I coordinate our annual visit to our parents so we can buffer each other.
Should I ask what your screenplay is about or does a genius not reveal the details of her work in progress? I assume it’s a romantic comedy and that it features an Indigo Girls song at the climactic moment, but are you willing to say what happens in it beyond that? I am glad to now know that the secret to becoming an award-winning TNO writer is getting your own TV in 5th grade! I guess one of the reasons I had to go into music is that I didn’t have my own TV until adulthood.
As for a day in the life…yours is a lot more interesting between dogs, chair yoga, and witty neighbors, but here goes:
9AM: wake up
10AM: at the risk of seeming like a cliché again, my trainer Bobby comes M/W/F. We do all our workouts outside and stay six feet apart. We stopped for a while in March-April, but for me personally working out is such an important way of maintaining an even keel with regard to sobriety and everything else.
1PM: lunch, then I catch up on emails or work stuff, which has slowed a lot. In the last few months, I have done some online fundraisers, including that notoriously glitchy one in late April.
4PM: either go for a hike to fight cabin fever or occasionally some friends come over. There are a few guys who I am messing around in a side project band with. One of the guys （two of the seven “guys” are women） is Erik Ventresca from Frontal Plumage, we’ve talked about working together for years, but for now we just jam in a totally low pressure way. Although I have a studio at my house, for obvious reasons, I carry everything outside, including amps. We’ve done this five or six times, and it’s been a salvation. I’d meet up every day if they could, but the rest of them have families…including kids doing online school.
8PM: as mentioned, Margit cooks most of my meals but I have been cooking more than I did in the past. Now that I know you’re a pescatarian, maybe some day I will make my pan-seared salmon for you. Do you like to cook?
About Annabel…yes, absolutely on water under the bridge. But I am intrigued by your missing paragraph of existential confusion. I love existential confusion! That missing paragraph reminds me of the missing Watergate tapes. （I’m trying to impress you with historic political references because that seems like something a TNO writer would be into. Is it working?）
You’re my first pen pal! Am I, um, your first?
from: Sally Milz <[email protected]>
to: Noah Brewster <[email protected]>
date: Jul 24, 2020, 10:22 AM
subject: Actually
Okay, I have A LOT of questions! Were you really a shy freaky goth teen or is that what you tell people out of modesty? Do you work out for three hours a day?! What kind of music does your side project band play? But above all, how can your parents not be so proud and impressed that you are a super-talented and successful musician beloved by millions of people around the world? That’s batshit crazy! In his heart of hearts, my stepdad doesn’t even find TNO funny （it’s in the “There’s a lot going on, isn’t there?” category for him）， and he’ll still tell anyone who’ll listen that I’m a writer there. The best part is that he refers to it as The Night Owl, singular, instead of The Night Owls.
Maybe this is the moment to confess that since 2018, I’ve listened to your music a lot. Like, even before you emailed me a few days ago. It might be a tiny bit true that when you hosted TNO, I wasn’t as familiar with your non-greatest hits as I could have been, but I’ve now gone back so far and so deep that I might even know the songs you forgot writing. （Have you forgotten writing certain songs? I’ve forgotten writing certain sketches, although if someone mentioned them, I’d remember. It’s not unlike a high school classmate that you don’t see for 22 years then spot in the cereal aisle of Hy-Vee after you’ve moved home during a pandemic and you recognize Vinny Kaplan immediately, but since you’re both wearing masks you just slink away and you’re pretty sure Vinny didn’t notice you but maybe he was pretending exactly like you were.） Anyway, at the risk of sounding like a cringey fangirl, it turns out you’re a great musician! Who knew?! Besides everyone??
I’m not sure whether a genius reveals the details of her screenplay, but I do reveal the details of mine （to a select few）。 It’s about a single Supreme Court Justice who falls in love with a lawyer who regularly argues cases in front of her. Or maybe it’s about a single advertising exec who oversees a cat food brand and falls in love with the single advertising exec who oversees the dog food brand. Or maybe the other single advertising exec oversees the rival cat food brand? Or, well, welcome into my brain. Several times, I’ve written about ten pages （probably not a coincidence that that’s the average length of a TNO sketch） before I start questioning not just the premise of the screenplay but all the life choices I’ve ever made up to now, abandoning that idea, and starting over. Btw the other secret to becoming a TNO writer, besides getting your own TV in fifth grade, is being obsessed with Mad Libs. Did you like Mad Libs? In fourth grade, my friends and I were doing them on the bus ride back from a field trip to a nature center and, to this day, nothing has ever made me laugh more than the sentence “I was so happy that I couldn’t wipe the smile off my penis.”