Tonight is the Season One Premiere of TextSavvy — a live, interactive mobile game show of word puzzles airing on school nights (Sunday-Thursday) at 9p Eastern on the Savvy app.

I’m a co-founder of the app — which we can confidently say is the world’s only mobile gaming platform for live-hosted, two-way interactive game shows — and the host of its flagship offering, TextSavvy.1

What does all of this mean for you? It means you can download the Savvy app and not merely watch our Wordle-inspired game show — but actively participate in it as a real-time contestant.

As I shared with my friend who recently interviewed me for his fabulous newsletter, I like to think of Savvy as a radical experiment in making phones fun again. We’re doing our best to create a safe space for attention, intention, and human connection in a world engineered for outrage, addiction, and isolation. You don’t dissociatively scroll Savvy; you show up for it. You don’t mindlessly binge it; you bring it. We’re a twenty-minute shot of functional screen time — where neurons are fed, not fried; where brains are refueled, not rotted.

We’re also giving away free money.

If you miss HQ Trivia, like playing word puzzles, and love winning cash, then you’re gonna lose your socks over Savvy (available for both Apple and Android). Download the free app — knowing you’re protected by our 100% no-hassle, money-back guarantee — and tune into a show sometime. Preferably, tonight! What else could you possibly be doing on a Sunday evening?

If you’re wondering how this all came together — how the “Quiz Daddy” wound up back on your phone hosting a new game, with a new nickname (“Puzzle Papi”), nearly a decade after that fateful first HQ broadcast went live to an audience of fifty-odd curious viewers that quickly swelled into the millions, reshaped the global media landscape, and turned an unknown comedian into an overnight sensation — well, I already kinda told that story in a previous post. Will give you a moment to catch up.

TL;DR: it started with a DM, which led to an incorporation, which resulted in rollout of our beta app in October. On that very first beta show on October 16, 2025, streaming live from a million-dollar Manhattan studio I had secured gratis in a savvy bartering arrangement, we draw a little more than 700 participants. On our final beta show on January 29, 2026, streaming live from Forever Dog Studios in Los Angeles (yes, I moved the show — any myself — across the country to make this work), we reached a little less than 1500 total viewers. On our show last Thursday — what we called our Season 0 Finale — we set a new record with a peak of over 4500 concurrently connected devices.

200% growth in our first official month? We’ll take it!

A Note on “Season 0”

The team had set a deadline to exit beta at the end of January and officially launch on February 1st. As the “alpha premiere” date approached, I simply didn’t feel we were ready for our close-up. I had just moved back to LA on January 27th, giving us time to run only one test show in our new studio set-up before Feb. 1. We had also just pushed a new update for the app, opening the game up to Android users for the first time. As with all new updates — especially one involving the onboarding of an entirely new OS client base — we were bound to experience some bugs and glitches. Hoping to have any production and development issues ironed out in about a month, the four Savvy co-founders came to the fun compromise of starting with a “Season 0” — partially inspired by the “Issue 0” comic books I used to collect.

You’re likely familiar with the acronym “MVP” from the world of sports, meaning “Most Valuable Player.” If you’re a cardiologist, maybe “Mitral Valve Prolapse” jumps to mind. Fans of the blaxploitation film genre might think of “Melvin Van Peebles.” The tech world has its own variant: “Minimum Viable Product,” which in and of itself means: the earliest version of a product that can be taken to market. For most software and hardware, the MVP is fairly objective in scope: it can perform its most basic functions without breaking.

In the world of entertainment media (and art, more broadly), there is no such concept as an MVP. In fact, it’s almost the opposite. When producing a song, or film, or TV show, the product is deemed “finished” and ready for the public consumption when the producer has exerted maximum resources and resolve towards the project — oftentimes going way over what was originally budgeted, in order to finish the job. And until it’s done, it’s not seeing the light of day. A song isn’t released before its chorus has been added, and the recordings have been mixed and mastered. A movie doesn’t open in theaters without a third act, or its title sequence and end credits. A TV show doesn’t air without its soundtrack.

With a “product” like a human-hosted, live-streamed, interactive mobile game show that straddles the unique axis of technology and media, that blends art and science, that squares the quantitative with the qualitative, the concept of an MVP can be wildly subjective. In designing and developing TextSavvy, the question our team keeps asking but can’t quite answer is: when is it finished? When are we “ready”?

The truth is, we are very far from where we ultimately want to be with this thing. If I were to honestly assess it, based on my vision for this singular game show experience, I’d say we’re only halfway there. But at the same, we’re certainly good enough, and I’m extremely proud of the work our team has poured into Savvy so far.

The clock just struck 4pm in LA. I have to walk the dog, get dressed, and get to the studio early tonight, to prepare for our special guest and test the new intro and animations my friend and true savant Russell Wyner made for Season One. I must sign off for now, but please stay following along as much more is to come with these diary entries — and with Savvy.

Here’s to sucking the marrow out of life,
Scott

ANSWER: HQ Trivia

February 14, 2020 wasn’t merely a rough day for lonely hearts.

For the two dozen or so former colleagues who had managed to remain employed at Intermedia Labs — the New York City-based startup that initially created the Hype mobile app, which later spawned the standalone Hype Quiz (HQ) app and the interactive game shows (HQ Trivia and HQ Words) that live-streamed within it — it’s hard to imagine a more heartless way to have been treated on that particular Valentine’s Day.

At around 3pm on that Friday — the start of what anyone would have reasonably expected to be a relaxing and love-filled holiday weekend — Intermedia’s CEO Rus Yusopov called an emergency all-hands meeting at his company’s Soho office to announce that after a planned acquisition had fallen through, Intermedia had run flat out of money, and effective immediately, HQ would cease operations. All employees and contractors were instantaneously terminated, without being given even the slightest comfort of actionable information regarding the status of payroll, benefits, or the possibility of severance.1

Happy V-Day! Enjoy your long weekend… which has now been indefinitely extended beyond Monday’s Presidents’ Day observance! Try not stare too far out into the futureless void!

I remember getting a call about this calamity while sitting in traffic for the Holland Tunnel heading into New Jersey — for reasons most likely involving thrift shopping. By this point, I had been almost a full year removed from the madness and morale-sucking morass that was late-stage HQ, and it had been two years since the app had reached peak growth, as measured by monthly installs (2 million in February 2018, compared to 67,000 in January 2019).

The summer of 2018 had been fraught with conflict between founders, boardroom drama, and rapidly declining audience numbers that triggered Rus’ ouster as CEO in September and the installation of co-founder Colin Kroll in his place. Three months later, Colin was found dead in his apartment from an accidental drug overdose2, opening the door for Rus to be reinstated as CEO shortly thereafter.

When a well-timed offer to host a new, RedZone-style live baseball show at MLB Network3 fell at my feet in March 2019, promising not only the dream opportunity to share a dressing room with the likes of Pedro Martinez, Jim Thome, and John Smoltz — childhood idols and all-time greats of the game I love more than I’m ashamed to admit — but also the prospect of twice the pay for half the work of my increasingly joyless HQ Trivia hosting duties, I gratefully jumped into the life raft.

But even then, facing a nightly, three-hour shift on live television from Monday-Friday, I didn’t want to fully cut ties with the community of HQties I helped build from the ground up — and had genuinely loved entertaining nearly every night for almost two years. Willing to sacrifice one of my precious weekend off-days from MLB, I petitioned Rus and his Executive Committee to consider a revised employment arrangement whereby I would continue hosting HQ Trivia on Sunday nights. Sundays had long been established as the marquee episode of the week, drawing the largest audiences while awarding the grandest cash prizes.

Reason might suggest that a media company — faced with the crisis of losing its star talent and “face of the franchise,” whose on-camera presence was a contractual condition of nearly every sponsorship deal the company had brokered with its brand partners (to the accumulated tune of $15 million) — would bend over backwards to mitigate a potentially existential threat and avert a disastrous news cycle around the host’s departure.

Alas, “reasonableness” was one of many qualities found to be dangerously lacking among the Masters of the HQniverse.4

Following a valiant but unsuccessful attempt by my reps to negotiate a fair agreement in good faith with the Executive Committee — and even despite a personal appeal to Intermedia’s board members in a deeply felt and difficult-to-write email (published, for the first time, below) — I was officially terminated by Intermedia Labs on April 5, 2019.

Reports of my exit trended on Twitter for three days.

.

April 1, 2019

To the Board of Intermedia Labs,

On this first day of April 2019, I am thinking back to April 2017 when I received a phone call out of the blue from Nick Gallo, an old friend from my intern days at The Onion, asking if I’d like to audition to be the host of a “game show for your phone” that he had been developing with the founders of Vine. By April 2018, that show - first called Hype Q and then HQ - had grown from a whimsical notion to an international phenomenon, averaging well over 1 million live nightly participants from around the world, defying and disrupting conventional media genres, and changing my life in immeasurable and irrevocable ways.

When HQ began, I wasn’t given an operating manual or guidebook. The camera flicked on, the stream went live, and I started talking... calling the players “HQties,” referring to questions that knocked out the majority of contestants as “savage,” adopting a song lyric from my favorite band as the show’s signature “nitty-gritty” catchphrase. For nearly two years, I’ve poured my heart and soul into HQ, and in the process, given HQ its heart and soul; constituting its DNA with every quirk of my personality, every Seinfeld and Simpsons reference, every nod to 90s baseball players lingering in the corners of my peculiar, pop-culture-addled brain. Nothing in my 12-year entertainment career has meant more to me personally and professionally than my involvement with HQ, and nothing would make me sadder than having my ties severed with it so abruptly and unceremoniously now.

Recently, another opportunity has come out of the blue - to host a nightly baseball show, Monday-Friday, for the next 6 months. As a massive baseball fan, this opportunity was too good to pass up, but in accepting the new position, it was my intention to remain connected with HQ in a meaningful capacity as host of its flagship Sunday night show and serve as the enduring “face” of HQ for publicity events. There are many examples of personalities hosting multiple shows across different networks simultaneously (Ryan Seacrest, Carson Daly, Michael Strahan, Steve Harvey), and I hoped a similar arrangement could be worked out for the next 6 months. Last week my representatives engaged in discussions with Rus and Nick about how to shape a new deal for my services going forward, in accommodation of my new schedule.

However, the proposal Rus and Nick have made, and the manner in which it was presented to my attorney, gave me the sense that they do not appreciate the value I have brought to the company and would continue to bring, even in a temporarily limited role. They intend to treat me like any anonymous contractor, dismissing the integral role I’ve played in the success of HQ to date. Given how I’ve so clearly gone above and beyond my mere hosting duties in these nearly 2 years with the company, I’m frankly shocked and terribly disheartened to hear just how little regard the Executive Committee seems to hold for my contributions.

Below you can find the initial offer from Rus and Nick in blue, my attorney’s fair and reasonable counter highlighted in yellow, and Nick’s response. I sincerely hope my tenure with this company can sustain through the end of 2019 and beyond, as we pursue greater progress and innovation in the live mobile space together. But if the Board is aligned with the Executive Committee on the ungracious offer put forth, then I really have no choice but to wish you all the best without me.

Respectfully,
Scott Rogowsky

Fittingly, the episode that would come to stand as my final sign-off from HQ Trivia (March 24, 2019) was co-hosted by a man no stranger to strained employer relations himself: Gilbert Gottfried.

Now here I was, ensnarled in a holiday-weekend rush-hour bottleneck, my mind on the pitchers and catchers who had recently reported to Spring Training — signaling the start of a new baseball season and, with it, my impending return to Secaucus for another year hosting ChangeUp on DAZN — when I was gut-punched by the unexpected news that a loved one had died.

Of course I loved HQ. I had poured myself into the show, taking it from those first internal test streams for the benefit of Intermedia’s eight employees to broadcasting to an estimated 5 million global contestants alongside Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. I infused every ounce of my creative DNA and comedic persona into the personality of the show, fusing my identity with the brand’s. I was a literal human face built into the user interface, a living “brand voice” speaking directly to the product’s millions of customers on a twice-daily basis. It’s only hitting me now how much I had become the anthropomorphized premise of a Black Mirror episode.

I can’t say I was too surprised that HQ had finally succumbed to the long-festering cancer it had inherited from its founder — a man who single-handedly steered a company once valued at $100 million straight into the ground, leaving hardly a penny to flip to its faithful staff for good luck on the way out.

But despite the writing that had long been on the wall, and despite the fact that HQ had felt dead to me for quite some time before the coroner’s report made it official, I still found myself struck by a profound sadness at the news.

I was sad for my former co-workers, so callously left up shit’s creek without a paddle… so heartlessly treated on the one specific day we’re meant to have a heart.

I was sad for the part of my psyche that — like the battered partner in an abusive relationship — had remained stubbornly attached to HQ, foolishly clinging to a faraway fantasy of reconciliation and return, now suddenly annihilated.

I was sad for the hardcore HQties who had stuck it out until the bitter end.

Learning of the ignominious circumstances surrounding HQ’s dying days, and knowing how avoidable its death truly was, my sadness mixed with righteous anger. We had caught lightning in a bottle — disrupting the tech, media, and mobile gaming industries, creating the future of television and bringing it vividly and defiantly into the present. We had been a beacon of light and a safe harbor of joy for millions of people around the world — reuniting estranged families, bonding offices and classrooms, uniting a fractured and divided society forced to contend daily with destabilizing political and economic forces.

And just like that, it was all gone. They really blew it.

February 14 also happens to be the anniversary of my first kiss, cemented twenty-five years ago today in the Scarsdale living room of one [NAME REDACTED], as the 1999 Chris O’Donnell vehicle The Bachelor flickered on the television in front of us, unnoticed. Copped my first feel that night, too.

If you miss those heady days of HQ Trivia, come find me on Savvy. I’m doing the live, interactive game show thing all over again, and if you ask me, it’s even better.

May the memory of HQ be a blessing for us all — just as the memory of [NAME REDACTED]’s soft lips and perfect tits remains a blessing for me.

KTLA’s cameras captured the blast live and relayed the astonishing images to television sets across Tinseltown in what was the first-ever broadcast of an atom bomb detonation. The only thing local viewers could see on their screens that morning was a flash of white light.

75 years after that historic telecast, a new chapter in the history of livestreaming was written this week in Los Angeles. In the early evening hours of February 1, 2026, a new bomb was dropped.

Don’t worry, there was no radioactive fallout. Nobody was vaporized. A handful of people did report suffering retinal damage, however further investigation revealed it wasn’t from any explosion, but rather the glare coming off my custom suit.1

It was a happy little bomb, delivering a 1-kiloton playload of fun — called TextSavvy: the new, live-streamed, interactive mobile game show that I’m hosting on the Savvy app.2

I first moved to Los Angeles in 2021, for a job and a girl. Within two weeks of settling into my furnished Marina del Rey rental, I lost the girl; within two months, I lost the job.

I moved back to New York in 2024 for the sake of a relationship that nearly made it a full year, but ultimately fell apart over creative differences—I wanted to create a life together; she wanted to create a woman-owned, drug-dealing empire. To each, their own.

I returned to LA at the top of 2025, flirting with the idea of a bi-coastal lifestyle, before another New York-based girlfriend boomeranged me back to the Big Apple for what I thought might be for good…

Turns out, nothing is “for good.” All is impermanent. No moment is sealed against time. Form arises from emptiness. Emptiness expresses itself as form. Which reminds me: I need to express my dog’s anal glands before he squirts his stank on my carseat again.

So I’m back in Lipstick City, baby. The City of Angles. The Gabby Windey City. This time around, I didn’t move for a woman, or for a boss, or even for the weather — although I couldn’t have timed a better escape from New York, what with this bombogenesis turning the Long Island Sound into a slushie machine.

This time, I moved purely for me.

And for Savvy.

On my flight from JFK to LAX, I watched a movie that completely missed me when it came out in 2023: Nicole Holofcener’s You Hurt My Feelings. It was very cute, very “adult,” and I was surprised to count three former guests of Running Late with Scott Rogowsky in the cast.3

It got me thinking about why I started my own late-night talk show in the first place. At the time (October 2011), I was a 26-year-old comedian six years into my “career,” with little to show for the effort. I desperately wanted to be writing or segment producing — or hell, assisting in the writers room — for a late-night talk show or sketch comedy show — or hell, a daytime talk show. But the fundamental truth at the core of my creative being was: I wanted to be hosting a talk show.

Slight problem… there were only a dozen or so talk shows on the air, and they all seemed to be set on the hosting front. But not only was it a crowded field, it was also a shrinking one. In the wake of the digital media revolution, television in general (and talk shows in particular) were starting to read the tea leaves on the uncertain future. Tired of waiting for another rejection from the captains of a declining industry, I decided to take matters into my own hand. I gave myself my own show.

From 2011-2019 I produced and hosted over one hundred IRL episodes of Running Late, inviting hundreds of celebrity guests to to join me on stage — alongside my sidekick/dad Marty and my band The Musical Guests — to entertain thousands of comedy fans from New York to Boston to Montreal to Los Angeles, and thousands more on YouTube. Did we unwittingly invent the “live podcast taping,” while at the same time stubbornly refusing to convert our show into a podcast? You make the call!

The many years of extemporaneous performance experience I gathered as a talk show host were directly responsible for landing my gig at HQ Trivia — both in being positioned to be called in for the audition, and in being prepared to “deliver the goods” and impress my future employers.

It should go without saying that HQ changed my life. In a matter of months I went from being an underemployed “struggling fartist” to becoming a household name — outside of the Rogowsky household, even! I spent the final minutes of 2017 as Jenny McCarthy’s guest on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, and I rang in 2019 with Steve Harvey on Fox’s New Year’s Eve with Steve. In between, Time Magazine named me one of their Five Faces of the Year for 2018. Insane? Utterly.

The notoriety I gained from my HQ tenure not only secured my future place in the New York Times obituary section,4 it has kept me in demand as a host and producer all these many years since my abrupt final sign-off (March 24, 2019). In that time I’ve been pitched on dozens of concepts by tech and media execs and ambitious entrepreneurs and pursued several opportunities that seemed exciting at first but faded before too soon. I’m grateful for every one of them, and for the people who invested their time and money into incorporating my talents with their visions, but after repeated fizzles and failures, I realized the truth of the quote my dad was fond of deploying around the dinner table: “If it is to be, it is up to me.”

It’s also up to a little bit of luck, and that came in the form of a DM from @ThatFrisianGuy, a plucky Dutchman named Johan knocking on my door with another pitch. Somewhat exhausted by the roller coaster of hopes over the recent years, I hesitated to reply at first, but Johan persisted, so I agreed to take a meeting.

The rest, as they say, is Savvy.

Six months after that initial, intrepid DM, Johan, his developer partner Benyamin, Josh — an cherished collaborator from those Running Late days — and I incorporated Play Savvy, Inc. as co-founders.

A little more than a year after incorporation, we exited beta and went live with the series premiere of our flagship interactive game show, TextSavvy, to over two-thousand concurrent players.

Working with Johan, Benyamin, Josh and our lean but seriously mean staff of extremely dedicated hires, we’re committed to seeing this thing all the way through, to fulfilling the promise that HQ only teased of creating “the future of television.” And unlike my turn at HQ where I was simply a “hired gun” with effectively zero influence over decision-making around product, design, and corporate strategy (I was completely absent from the company’s org chart, if you can believe it), I’m a key player on Team Savvy — and I’m in this to win this.

If Einhorn is Finkle, and Finkle is Einhorn, then Scott is Savvy and Savvy is Scott. If the Olive Garden can commit to never-ending soup and salad and unlimited breadsticks… if Arizona Iced Tea can commit to 99-cent cans… then you better believe I’m committed to creating wildly innovative, irresistibly interactive, world-class entertainment that can be immersively enjoyed from the comfort of one’s phone.

Brace yourself for the shockwaves of surprise and delight that you’ll experience live, tonight — and every school night (Sun-Thurs) — on Savvy (free to download for iOS and Android). Be seeing you… 👀

Finally, I’m through with all that, and so finally, I can present to you — in a very particular order known only to me that, confusingly for you, does not at all correspond with the scrambled assembly in which I’ve published it below — my twenty-five favorite things about the two-thousand and twenty-fifth year that was.

1. Gone Phishin’ at the Garden Pt. 1

   I welcomed 2025 watching my favorite band in the world play the World’s Greatest Arena. Remarkably, James Dolan keeps inviting Phish back to MSG for a four-night, nine-set New Year’s jamapalooza — despite each run reportedly costing him millions in roof repair.

   

   NYE ‘24 was spent in the corporal company of my friends Nick and Ari, and the spiritual company of the guy who had brought us together over twenty years ago — and who had been buried just weeks before. That show was for Reubs, my nursery schoolmate who went on to high school with Nick, college with Ari (where they formed the band Quintus), and post-college, reunited with me as roommates in Williamsburg. An extraordinarily gifted soul, as artistically talented as he was troubled, his demons ultimately led him to a stairwell in the Bronx, where his Earth safari came to an end.
   
   As the clock struck twelve and the opening notes of Auld Lang Syne soared above shimmering showers of confetti, we cried — partly for the loss of our friend, partly out of nostalgia for our youth, but mostly in celebration of Reuben’s life and in appreciation of his enduring legacy: the three of us, hanging at a show, high above the ground, on pillow jets of sound.
   

2. Baking French Toast

   Ever since my mommy helped me spoon the first clump of Bisquick batter that would transubstantiate into my first (burnt) flapjack, I have dedicated myself to mastery of the breakfast arts. French toast on the griddle has long been a staple in my home-cooking stable, but for the first time this year, entirely on a whim, I decided to look up the recipe for “Baked French Toast,” and gave it a whirl.

   

   It was love at first bite, and this one’s a keeper. Now that I’ve tasted that cinnamon-sugar dusted, custard-like brioche drizzled with dark amber maple, I can’t ever go back to pedestrian stovetop preparation, which requires expert soaking skills and patient grilling technique to prevent what can sometimes result in an overly dry disappointment.
   

   Life, consider yourself changed. Weight, consider yourself gained.

3. Hitting a Big Card with My Dad

   When my dad was my age now, he got me into baseball cards. Now that I’m his same age then — and with no kids of my own to pass on the hobby — the snake is eating its own tail: I’m getting him back into baseball cards.
   
   For his birthday, I gave him a box of 2025 Topps Allen & Ginter. And what did we hit? A Shohei Ohtani Bat Card! Embedded within the card is a genuine chip of an actual wood bat that Shohei Ohtani — arguably the most talented man to ever adjust his jockstrap in the 150-year professional history of baseball — actually used in a Major League game. It’s market value? Around $100. It’s sentimental value, when considering its hallowed provenance at the fulcrum of a forty-plus year father-son relationship? Around $108. Sentiment comes cheap these days.

4. Receiving a Big Card from My Bud

   My friend Jason is a real one, the kind of guy who could have easily faded into the backdrop of my awareness as we got on in years, but instead has only grown increasingly dear to me over the decades thanks to a mutually conscious effort to show up for each other. It helps that we’ve both maintained an abiding, unabated love of sports card collecting, despite how demonstrably uncool it always was (until the pandemic reshuffled its place in the cultural deck).

   

   This summer, Jason drove out to Chicago from New York in his camper truck to join me at The 45th National Sports Collectors Collection (“The National”) — my fifth attendance, his first. As a token of appreciation for letting him crash in my hotel and getting him credentials into the convention, he gifted me a gorgeous Tom Seaver certified autograph card, signed in bold, blue elegant cursive by the greatest Mets pitcher of all-time on a 2001 replica of his iconic 1967 Topps rookie. Why this particular card? Because Jason knew it would pair perfectly with the high-grade copy of Seaver’s original RC I bought my dad for his 60th birthday. That’s friendship. That’s baseball cards.
   

5. Working with Tom Brady
   This happened twice this summer, at The National and Fanatics Fest, while faithfully performing my duties as emcee of the Topps booth. Tom couldn’t have been nicer, or more patient with my “off-script” questioning about Chad Hutchinson and Drew Henson. I also appreciated that he didn’t mind my introducing him to the stage as “the 18th round pick of the Montreal Expos in the 1995 MLB Draft.”
   

6. Watching Chris Fleming Blow Up

   At some point in 2025, Chris Fleming became ubiquitous in my feed — and with good reason. The man (such as his assigned gender at birth would suggest) is hysterical. We first met in 2013 — he as panelist, I as moderator — at a supremely prescient Paley Center event titled “The Next Big Thing in Digital Comedy,” and I’ve shepped much naches in witnessing his rise to wider popular recognition in the decade-plus since.

   

   A truly original comic performer who exudes the unmistakable energy of a bisexual cocker spaniel, Fleming’s hyper-specific takes and hyperactive physicality are matched in acrobatic flamboyance only by a fashion sense that makes Eddie Izzard look like Eddie Pepitone. Consider his observations on Celine Dion’s gamer sons or Trader Joe’s invisible snacks. Make it your new year’s resolution to subscribe, follow, and experience live in concert this “American Girl doll left out in the rain.”

7. Celebrating My Birthday at Carnegie Hall

   Another comedian friend I’ve known even longer than Chris clocked a career milestone in 2025, and it happened to coincide with my 41st birthday. As the old saying goes, you get to Carnegie Hall by “practice, practice, practice,” and it’s quite possible nobody practiced more than Sam Morril, who made his debut at the NYC landmark on December 4th after nearly twenty years of chops-honing.

   
   I took a decidedly easier route to the venue that night — the N train to 57th Street-7th Avenue — but then again, that’s the difference between sitting in an audience and standing in front of one. Watching Sam send the capacity crowd into convulsions (among them, Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Seinfeld, who whisked right under my whiskers en route to their balcony box before the show), I must have looked like a ventriloquist’s dummy — a mile-wide smile plastered on my face as I laughed myself silly and took stock of the hundred feet between us — and the eighteen years behind us.

   

   We had come up together in New York’s open-mic trenches: some nights barking in confused foreign tourists to a second-floor black-box theater in Times Square, where Sam helped run a workout room; other nights waiting hours for our turn to test a few minutes of new material in a West Village basement, empty but for a few frustrated, fidgeting fellow strivers starved for stage time — heads buried in notebooks, names yet to be drawn from the bucket — far too consumed with tweaking their own sets to even pretend to be an attentive audience, practically rendering the entire exercise of joke assessment pointless.

   Whereas I made an early pivot to television writing, video producing, and talk show hosting, Sam stuck with his one true love: stand-up. He put in the reps and got in his steps, hopping uptown to downtown, bopping borough to borough, sometimes banking four or five spots a night, six or seven nights a week. He lived and breathed the art of the joke, always workshopping a bit, constantly crafting his act, sending me texts at all hours of the day that invariably began with the same three words — Is this funny? — followed by a promising premise and preliminary punch. He hit his 10,000 hours — then tacked on 20,000 more.
   
   That’s how Sam got to Carnegie Hall. And that’s how I got comped a ticket.
   

8. Defending My Penis on a Podcast
   During the throes of the pandemic, Sam and Mark Normand — another comedy comrade going back to those formative, final years of the Dubya administration — started sharing cocktails and conversation over Zoom to preserve their sanity amidst social distancing. They began recording their bull sessions and publishing them to YouTube under the banner We Might Be Drunk, serendipitously creating what has since become one of the world’s most-listened-to comedy podcasts.

   
   Over the years my name has occasionally come up in conversation on the show, and on each occasion it has sparked Mark to make a remark about my member. Apparently, what he most remembers from my old act are jokes about my dick. While making my first guest appearance on the pod in December, I seized on the opportunity to set the record straight on my shvantz. TL;DR: While by no means macro, it sits comfortably above the clinical threshold for micro — not that there’s anything wrong with that!
   
   It was good fun, and inspirational. Set an alarm for 2029 when you can pre-order what will be my Pulitzer Prize-winning compendium: The Big Book of Small Pricks.

9. Discovering Guerilla Toss

   I was asked by the proprietor of one of my favorite social content studios PHILM for my “Album of the Year” pick, but the piece never ran. So I’m running it here:
   
   You’re Weird Now by Guerilla Toss
   The promo around this release is what turned me onto the band, which I now count among my faves. I’ve been feasting on their back catalog this fall/winter, and am particularly obssessed with 2017’s GT Ultra. Simply put, it’s music that gets me going. If I’m listening in the car, it makes me want to pull over and start running. If I’m listening while running, it makes me want to run faster and harder and hurdle over small children or large dogs in my path.

   
   The tunes on this new album ripppp. “Red Flag to Angry Bull” is my Song of the Year (Trey + Malkmus guesting? Are you keeeeeding me?). And I appreciate that the opening track is named after the former co-host of America’s most beloved defunct, daytime MSNBC panel show!
   

10. Discovering Scoochie Boochie
    Perhaps the most delightful musical surprise of the year was the arrival of hip-hop artist Scoochie Boochie in my algorithm. I refuse to call him a “comedy rapper,” as such labeling might invite undeserved prejudice and risk diminishing his perceived talents as both a comedian and a rapper, but make no mistake: Scoochie knows how to write a joke and ride a beat with the best in both domains. Put them together in one performer, and I’m convinced he truly is, as he claims, the best rapper in the United States.

    Aided by various producer friends serving up snappy beats (most recently and exceptionally, Groovebox), Michael Ribbens has been cranking out silly singles and absurdly inspired concept albums under his alter ego since 2017, crafting an evolving mythology around a rapper “born from a volcano” who likes boobs, butts, and big hats. 2025 was the year Scoochie went viral, with music video clips for tracks like “Car Butt” and “I Have Sex” joining the Two-Comma Club on Instagram and TikTok. And it’s a virality that translates IRL, as every person I’ve played him for has become an instant fan. My friend who accompanied me to Bowery Electric in September for Scoochie’s first NYC live show walked in being completely unfamiliar with the music, and walked out wearing official merch: shorts emblazoned with the alliterative lyric “Dumb Dangler.”

11. Snorkeling with Sea Turtles in Hawaii

    I like snorkeling. I like turtles. I loved snorkeling with sea turtles, which I got to do in the clear blue waters off the North Shore of Oahu on my first visit to our most illegitimately united state in July. Thanks turtle friends! Hope you haven’t since been maimed by a boat propeller or suffocated by a six-pack ring!

12. Scuba Diving with Stingrays in Cabo

    Did I see License To Kill at far too young an age, instilling an irrational, lifelong fear of ‘Exploding Head Syndrome’ from rapid decompression? Yes. Did I therefore panic at the slightest pressure on my eardrums as I descended beneath the undulating depths of the Sea of Cortez in my scuba diving debut? You betcha. But thanks to a wonderfully patient instructor, I overcame my baseless anxieties to enjoy the indescribable thrill and surprising inner stillness of those thirty minutes at fifteen feet.
    
    Despite somewhat limited visibility, I was blessed to be swarmed by a school of silvery fish, who seemed to be relishing their summer off. And just before it was time to rejoin those pathetic air-breathers — walkin’ around on those… whattya call ‘em? Oh, feet — my guide waved me over to what at first glance seemed like a barren patch of ocean floor, coaxing a spotted round ray from its camouflaged sand trap and sending it scurrying into the abyss. What a country!

13. Getting Engaged (also in Cabo)
    More than one fear was confronted during that Mexican vacation in May. In addition to claustrophobia, thalassophobia, and barotraumaphobia, I conquered my commitmentphobia.
    
    It was simple, really. All I had to do was track down a very specific vintage diamond ring my girlfriend had chanced upon at an antique shop in Northern California, have it shipped to New York, pray it survived transit to Mexico City and then to Cabo, wait out a violent bout of Montezuma’s Revenge that nearly derailed the entire grand romantic plan, and then, on our final night in paradise, under the light of a full moon and an immaculately timed, completely unexpected fireworks display, between sips of champagne at the beachside bar of what is considered the most beautiful restaurant in the world (attached to the most expensive hotel I’ve ever stayed in), casually slip it onto her slender finger after receiving an answer in the affirmative to my question: “Would you like to be my wife?”
    
    The engagement didn’t stick. She kept the ring. But I’ll always have the diarrhea ;)

14. Naming a New Neighborhood

    In the wake of my break-up, I sublet a furnished studio near 57th and 11th for the final four months of the year. I quickly came to appreciate the quirks of my new neighborhood, which never failed to elicit curiosity from those who heard my cross-streets.

    My fascination with the “No-Man’s-Hattan Land” west of 11th Avenue and south of 59th Street — a neighborhood I christened “The Lower Upper Far West Side” o (“LUFaWS” or “The L’Upper F’West) — moved me to first write an essay, which was then adapted into a Shouts & Murmurs submission (ultimately, unsuccessful), which I then produced as a video essay. Perhaps its final form is actual inclusion into future maps of New York City. Cartographers of tomorrow, take heed!
    

15. Joining the Infinity Club

    While offering little in the way of destination restaurants or a bustling night life, my new neighborhood provided a fail-safe entertainment option in the Look Cinemas multiplex down the block from my building. On an early scouting mission upon moving in, I inquired about the “Infinity Club” the theatre was a
    advertising in the lobby. The manager informed me that in addition to discounts on concessions and additional tickets, the key perk to membership in the Infinity Club was one free ticket to any movie, each and every day for a full calendar year. Normally, he said, the membership fee was $200, but if I used the promo code he provided, I could get half off.

    
    365 movie tickets, for $100. Was I hearing him right?
    
    I was, and without any salesmanship required, I signed up right there in the lobby on my phone and immediately began availing myself of this celluloidal bonanza. In four months I caught eight films: Highest 2 Lowest (rotted), Marty Supreme (rocked), Bugonia (ruled), The Mastermind (not quite my tempo), One Battle After Another (now we’re talkin’ my tempo), Nuremberg (powerful, but formulaic), The Smashing Machine (unique and intense, but bland) and I Really Love My Husband (fun, funny, and oddly resonant in my post-break-up haze).
    
    The good news is… there’s a Look Cinemas not ten minutes from my new place in Los Angeles, allowing me continued enjoyment of my status to infinity, and beyond 57th Street.
    

16. Launching a Party Game
    In October 2023, I received a DM from a board game developer named Eric who said he was working on a new title called “The Good News Is…” that he felt lent itself well to my sense of humor. We scheduled a call (always take the meeting) and he pitched me on his idea for a prompt-and-response party game built around improvised, judge-selected humor, featuring my voice — emanating from an orange, electronic speaker box — announcing good news/bad news scenarios for players to fill-in-the-blank.

    

    Two years after that first call — following hundreds of hours of discussing, designing, writing, recording, re-recording, editing, prototyping, refining, video producing, and promotional appearances that took me from New York to Miami to Asheville to St. Louis — “The Good News Is…” hit virtual shelves in August. NOTE: The game was initially set to hit the physical shelves of a major national retailer across 500 of its stores, but our very stable president’s very brilliant tariffs put a costly wrench in those plans. Still waiting for the good news on that front…
    

17. Starting a Company
    2025 was the year I finally became a founder. 2026 is the year Savvy becomes the next HQ. More on this soon. In the meantime, get savvy 👀
    

18. Remembering Slobo
    The year began with some unsettling and tragic news. My AEPi fraternity brother and former roommate Jonathan “Slobo” Michaels, having been MIA for years, was confirmed to have died in November 2019 (full story here and here). In May, a dozen brothers gathered at a restaurant in New York to sit a belated shiva, swap stories, and toast his blessed memory. Jew Frat, up top!

    

19. Continuing Old Traditions
    The Slobo Memorial Steak Dinner may become a new tradition, but I was glad to also extend some standing ones by another year. A group of college chums have gathered for mead and merriment just about every holiday season since graduation, and this December we made The Spaniard our new Spritzer’s. Special props to Nick for making the train trek from New Canaan.
    
    And no holiday season would feel complete without a steakhouse splash out in the company of my treasured colleagues from the short-lived ChangeUp on DAZN, co-host Adnan and producer Anthony. It’s remarkable that a show lasting less than six months on air formed the foundation for what is now six years of friendship — and feasting. Adnan claimed home field advantage and chose the Fogo de Chão in the Paramus Mall as the locus for this year’s fiesta, and only because his Blue Jays lost in such heart-breaking fashion, we let him have it.

    

20. Meeting Gerjuan
    2025 was the year my virtual friendship with formerly incarcerated artist Gerjuan “Ge-Cue” Harmon — well-documented in these pages and podcasts — turned IRL, when I visited him at his Los Angeles home in March. It was a challenging first year out of prison for Ge, which unfortunately found him back behind bars in the fall, but the emotional and financial support he’s received from those of you following along here has been instrumental in his journey. Thank you.
    

21. Conversing with Dan
    With all due respect to Elena Ferrante, I also have a brilliant friend, and 2025 was the year our friendship took on expansive new dimensions. Having met in person only twice in the fourteen years since first contact, Dan and I met up twice in 2025 alone — in Barcelona in January, and in his native Sweden in September. In between, we established regular check-ins and hours-long chats about various osophies and ologies, sharing our thoughts on theories and teachings by the likes of Robert Sapolsky, Iian McGilchrist, Stuart Kauffman, Ken Wilber, Thomas Campbell, Alain de Botton, and “our guy,” Mickey Singer (Jaigurudev). These conversations helped keep us grounded amid much personal and cultural turbulence, while providing a vital outlet for joyful creativity and brain rotty silliness. More about that here.
    

22. Wearing my CVS Receipt Scarf
    When first gifted to me by a girlfriend, the scarf was greatly appreciated for its comedic novelty, if perhaps discounted as a useful accessory. That changed this year when I took it out of the closet and incorporated it into my “winter look,” with dramatic results. Never have I received more attention for an article of clothing, with several people even asking for a photo with it. Needless to say, this is one receipt I’ll be keeping — and not for the purposes of making a return!!! Stay tuned for my report on whether those ExtraCare bucks scan at check-out…

    

23. Making New Friends & Acquaintances
    I like nice people who do cool things, and I met a whole lot of them this year: Aliona, Allison, Ashton, Belinda, Benji, Brett, Brian, Genevieve, Gracie, Greg, Harris, Hudson, Jeanne, Johnny, Kareem, Lucy, Lynn, Mary, Nina, Noel, Renée, Rachel, Rob, Terence, Yair… to name just a few.
    

24. Producing a New Friend’s Project
    One of those new friends, comedian Terence Hartnett whom I met backstage at The Comedy Clubhouse in Barcelona, became my first “producing partner” when we hashed out a budget for a five-episode web series based on his attempt to not only learn the native German of his adopted Austria (where he moved from New York for the sake of his Viennese wife), but to competently perform stand-up in that foreign tongue. Shooting has begun, with episodes slated for release this summer. Working title: Laugh Language — bleib dran!
    

25. Gone Phishin’ at the Garden Pt. 2

    I said goodbye to ‘25 exactly as I greeted it: wading in a velvet sea with 19,000 fellow bathers, sharing in the groove of yet another YEMSG — the delightful acronymic portmanteau combining Phish’s quintessential composition You Enjoy Myself and their beloved home stage, which they’ve now graced 91 times over the past thirty years.

    As the final seconds of the year ticked down in step with the climactic crescendo of the band’s space-funk spin on Deodato’s Also Sprach Zarathustra (2001) — itself, a superflyed 1973 cover of Richard Strauss’ original 1896 tone poem, made famous by its seminal soundtrack placement in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey — I smiled harder than I ever have in my life, hugged my buddy Ted, and felt good about not just Hood, but all that was — and all the more that lies ahead.

Staring down the deadline of his cinematography program’s final project — a program he had applied to while still locked up at the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo, directing his precious allotment of outside phone calls to the New York Film Academy’s bursar’s office in a Herculean effort to arrange the requisite financial aid package needed to fund his celluloid dreams — he was scrambling to shape a concept and script that could be shot within budget.

The budget? Zero dollars.

He was also still struggling to navigate the many institutional potholes and roadblocks that dot the daily path of the underprivileged. His government relief had been reduced, forcing him to further stretch his dollars at the dollar store on grocery runs. He still hadn’t resolved his driver’s license issue — a hangover from his pre-incarceration era — compounding his exhaustion and frustration with the spotty public transportation network seemingly tacked onto car-centric Los Angeles as a civic obligation. And he was at his wit’s end trying to negotiate FilmLA’s permitting, licensing, and insurance bureaucracies — the necessary evils of indie pre-production.

Filming was set to begin July 16.

On July 21, I got a call from Gerjuan: “I just got out of jail.”

In an imprudent attempt at stress relief, he had followed a couple of call girls to the Chateau Marmont where they had a couple drinks and started smoking meth. According to Gerjuan, he refrained from the drugs, but must have caught some second-hand smoke because the next thing he knew, he was stumbling through Beverly Hills in the middle of the night where he jumped a fence to someone’s property — and quickly jumped back after realizing what he was doing.

But it was too late. Several police cars pulled up on him and “twenty officers stormed on me like it was the bank robbery of the decade.” He was charged with three misdemeanors — unauthorized access to a premises, tampering with a vehicle, and trespassing — and he woke up dazed and confused on the cold floor of the county jail.

Because of Gerjuan’s rap sheet and the apparent violation of his parole, he was held for five days — “for hopping a fucking fence” — before his case was sorted and he was called for a court appearance. After begging the judge for leniency and agreeing to plead guilty to the tampering charge (the others were dismissed), he was strapped with an ankle monitor and released on three months of home confinement.

Despite this setback, Gerjuan got back on track and completed his capstone film, Poetic Dysfunction — an eight-minute short in the style of a city symphony focused on the unhoused populations of downtown LA, described as “a cinematic poem blending elements of introspective imagery and social commentary.” But due to his unfortunate detour through the criminal justice system, he failed to secure enough course credits to earn his certificate from NYFA.

I wish I could say this would be Gerjuan’s last brush with the law before the year was up, but after an altercation over the alleged vandalization of a Ring camera, his landlord pressed felony charges and Gerjuan found himself back behind bars on October 21st — four days after his 43rd birthday, and one month shy of celebrating the first anniversary of his release from 12.5 years in California state prison. This time, the complications of his arrest record kept him jailed for nearly two months before he was able to choreograph enough outside assistance to make bail. He was released on December 14th.

Today’s episode is excerpted from our conversation on Christmas Eve.

Gerjuan knows he fucked up. He knows he’s set himself back. And he knows that generosity has its limitations. But his struggles are also understandable, given his unenviable circumstances. And if his artistic talents are sufficiently supported, he just might break out of this cycle of recidivism and reclaim his productive place in society.

If you’re feeling the holiday spirit and wish to shine your light his way, this man could really use your help. Click here to donate to his GoFundMe campaign.

On his behalf and mine, thank you.

I used to have a joke in my stand-up act that went:

I don’t understand the debate around abortion. “Does life begin at birth? Does it begin at conception? Does it start at 6 weeks, with the first heartbeat? Or is it at 24 weeks, the point of fetal viability?” Um, hello??? Haven’t we all seen the mugs? Life begins at 40!

As I write this on the cusp of completing my 41st year as an individuated unit of consciousness embodied in an organic life form called Scott Rogowsky, relishing these scant remaining hours of being legally permitted to verbally state, “I’m 40,” I take it back. It’s not a joke.

The mugs were right.

How could anyone possibly think that anything other than earnestly wrestling with a foundationally transformational midlife crisis could be considered “living”? You think you’re living as an embryo? Wait till you prematurely propose at the Waldorf in Cabo!

I can’t believe more than half the country’s state legislatures are locked in battle on the abortion issue — arguing over weeks? They’re off by decades! If floating around in someone else’s stomach is what you call ‘living’, then I want to know what you call getting blown in the bathroom of the Rainbow Room at your cousin’s wedding! No one has lived until they’ve shared a shrimp cocktail and a prosciutto-burrata pizza at Bond 45 with their rabbi’s daughter.

Tell you one thing… In these past 365 days? Not a single boring moment among them.

There have doubtless been countless instances in my first forty years of life when I was bored. Excruciatingly so. Math tests where I gave up after two minutes, resigned to white-knuckling my way through the next forty-three. Interminable car rides home from hyperextended holiday dinners, trapped in the back seat with Delilah’s long-distance dedications holding me hostage from sleep. Any time I’ve tried watching Frasier.

Maybe I was too busy with work this year to feel bored? In January, I co-founded a company called Savvy, serving as Chief Marketing Officer and hosting the interactive game shows that we stream live on our mobile app. It’s hard to be bored while building the next-gen entertainment platform poised to make good on the promises merely teased by that other game show app from like 15 years ago WHAT WAS IT CALLED I CAN’T REMEMBER???!!!!

That’s not to say there haven’t also been times when I was bored by my work:

Copywriting for my cousin’s temp agency right out of college and ultimately getting fired for daring to add a touch of color to the listings —“What do you mean the hospital client was upset with some of the phrasing in their listings? ‘Sponge-bathing old fogeys’ is part of the job description!”

Professionally blogging for an e-comedy site in the early 2010s, which mostly consisted of scouring competitors’ websites for clickbait posts about strange people doing stupid things and reskinning them as clickbaitier posts of my own.

I was even occasionally bored while running my vintage clothing shop in Santa Monica, on those miserable, rainy days when hours might pass without a single jingle of the door chime. What I would have given in those lonely moments for a bum muttering about “the final judgment” while threatening me with a kitchen knife — or a freeloader asking to use the toilet.

But these days? Bored? Impossible.

I’ll prove it.

As I type this I am screeching through the lower stratosphere somewhere east of Los Angeles and west of New York. Barring an invitation to join a future stunt-casted Blue Origin mission to sub-orbital space, these are the highest heights and fastest speeds I will ever experience in my earthly form. Even if my TV console crapped out, even if the inflight wi-fi went down, even if I had forgotten a book, and headphones, and computer, and notebook, and didn’t have access to any writing utensils or any means of “entertainment” or “diversion” of any kind for these six hours suspended above the clouds in the belly of this metal bird, I still wouldn’t be bored. Because?

Because, for one, I could spend a marvelous six hours meditating on the sheer magnitude of my altitude — HOW DID I GET UP HERE?? I could contemplate the human engineering that designed the jet engine, propelling me to ethereal elevations inconceivable to the 120 billion Homo Sapiens who lived and died before the advent of the aeroplane, who could only dream of sharing the skies with God’s favored, winged creatures. I could think about Da Vinci and his valiant efforts in manifesting the flying machines that would eventually peel away from the vellum of his sketchbooks and lift up, up and away, across the centuries to this fresh moment. Even a genius of his stature couldn’t have predicted the technological evolution that has afforded humans the privilege of simultaneously binging Biscoff cookies and The Office from 30,000 feet.

Because, for two, I could stave off the bare scent of boredom by spending those same six hours grounded in Deep Gratitude. An excerpt: I’m grateful for the cosmic series of clerical errors that conspired to produce my existence — randomly springing forth, when I did, with all ten fingers and ten toes as I did, to the most unconditionally loving and supportive parents that I did. I’m grateful to the woman formerly known as Tobi Steinberg for making the prudent decision, nine months prior to my taking birth, in graciously acquiescing to the connubial urges and circumcised advances of one Marty Rogowsky.

I’m grateful that these two perfect strangers had the parents they had, who provided just the right conditions for them to grow into the reproductively attractive partners they would eventually come to recognize in one another. I’m grateful for their felt sense of a common ancestry — too distant and dusty from its ancient origins in the Judaean Desert to fully rationalize, yet close enough to bind them in the enjoyment of lox, eggs, and onions.

I’m grateful for the mutual friend who set them up on a blind date, for the blind fate that brought this friend into their respective lives, for every cause that triggered every effect that ultimately brought me not only into this world, but to this moment — on this JetBlue flight from LAX to JFK. I’m grateful that the great Jim Gaffigan is seated across from me, and for the knowledge that if this plane were to go down, I could posthumously ride his celebrity coattails in the ensuing coverage.

Perhaps my new-onset boredom allergy is a side effect of reaching middle age — a byproduct of the alchemical reaction between “fear of death” and “fear of dying a whiny, ungrateful bitch.” Perhaps — in riding the crest of my admittedly belated realization that, contrary to previously held belief, I may not actually know everything — I have authorized the opening up of over one billion acres of virgin coastal territory for offshore drilling (cognitively-speaking).

Reading Viktor Frankl, Mickey Singer, Iain McGilchrist, Don Miguel Ruiz, bell hooks, Sapolsky, Kingsnorth, and Harari. Hearing Laraaji and Scoochie Boochie and Dylan’s gospel trilogy and Scott Walker and Jonny Fritz and Electric Warrior by T. Rex in its entirety. Discovering “song-poems” and Beyond Vaudeville and The Rabbi’s Cat (Le chat du rabbin). Parasailing in Tahoe. Scuba diving in Mexico. Time-traveling to pre-colonial Polynesia and Mesoamerica. Getting engaged. Getting disengaged. Keeping a betta fish.

These experiences are among the many that first coalesced for me in my forty-first year — on top of giving away $2 million worth of Bitcoin as host of an in-app quiz show for Robinhood, befriending (in the loosest definable sense) legendary amateur baseball catcher and professional football quarterback Tom Brady as MC of the Topps booth at Fanatics Fest and The National, marketing the nationwide release of an electronic table-top party game featuring my voice in the component and my likeness on the box, bootstrapping a tech startup, and starting this Substack.

Rogo’s Modern Life was the 40th birthday gift I gave myself on this day last year, with an inaugural post reclaiming my long-dormant identity as a writer. This very essay (soon coming to a close!) marks my sixty-eighth piece of published content, including podcasts and videos and all sorts of posts about all manners of things. It almost doesn’t matter what I’ve been writing, it just matters to me that I’ve been writing. And despite the many grueling hours I’ve spent in unadulterated agony, damned by dangling modifiers and tormented over the syntax of single sentences — ALL FOR WHAT??? — it’s been my greatest pleasure to get this stuff out of my head and onto the digital page. I’ve never felt more alive.

I’ve saved a final expression of gratitude for you, dear reader. Thank you for your continued interest in my work, here and elsewhere. Expect much more yet to come. I’ll do my best not to bore you.

Early maps labeled it “No-Man’s-Hattan-Land.”

Realtors christened it “LUFaWS” — “Lower Upper Far West Side.”

Recently, there’s been a push to rebrand it “SoCo” — “South of the Congestion toll.”

Most locals prefer to refer to it by its colloquial nickname, “Hell’s Ghost Kitchen.”

I call it: “Home.”

Of the dozen-odd addresses I’ve occupied across my fifteen years in New York, none has sparked more curiosity than the one I’ve been claiming these past few months, in exile from my broken engagement.

They allow people to live there?

I didn’t know those cross streets existed.

Is that technically New Jersey?

I’m here to tell you: 58th and 12th is real, and it’s spectacular.

C’mon! I’ll show you around!

Where the Hudson River meets the Hustler Club

It’s a neighborhly day in this beautywood… where trash-lined blocks and verbally abusive vermin combine to create the kind of shabby-chic atmosphere and vibrant soundscape one would expect to find being so close to the heart of it all (“it all” being the Department of Sanitation’s District 7 Garage Facility).

Nestled beside the dumpster behind Hell’s Kitchen and knocking at Manhattan’s back door, this “Gateway to the Highway” offers unparalleled access to the bridges and tunnels that will get you the hell out of New York. Go north to Westchester, and tour the DMX estate at Mount Vernon — now a National Historic Landmark! Go west to Weehawken, and maybe run into Amani Toomer and his kids at the playground! Don’t bother the guy for an autograph, he’s with his family for chrissakes.

Enjoy the drab character and architectural insignificance of 11th Avenue, a bustling retail corridor where conscious consumers can shop sustainably and source locally for everything from Land Rovers to MINI Coopers among its many women-owned, factory-to-floor automotive dealerships.

Perfectly positioned a mere twenty-minute walk to the nearest subway station and serviced by several CitiBike racks that are always empty when you need one and completely full when you need to dock one, you’ll come to appreciate the unexpected serenity in the chorus of neighbors silently cursing themselves as they embark once again on the long, perilous trek towards civilization.

For adventures seeking a true native experience, take a “bush taxi” by hopping onto the back of any passing UPS truck as it rumbles out of the 12th Avenue distribution center. You may not know where you’re going, but you’ll get there in 2-5 days!

The proximity to prime waterfront features can’t be understated. Luxuriate in your front-row seat to nature’s ongoing cycle of regurgitation, embodied by the former open sewer that is the mighty Hudson. Don’t be afraid to join the locals in slipping into her murky, mercury-laded waters for an intoxicated, late-night swim.

What other Big Apple enclave puts you mere steps from the Carnival Cruise terminal — where you’re mere steps from the norovirus, and only minutes from accidental drownings?

Who needs timeless charm when you can have a charmless time dodging the standing puddles of urine and piles of inscrutable excrement at your feet — and who needs entertainment options when you can star as both host and contestant in your very own man-on-the-street game show, Is It Human?

Whether you’re a superfan of the Intrepid Museum or you’ve dreamed of being trampled by a desperate Central Park carriage horse trying to flee the stables, LUFaWS is the place to be — when you urgently need a budget-friendly place to be!

That ringing in your ear? It’s not just from the ambulances steadily screaming down 57th Street and streaming into Mount Sinai West’s ER, it’s Tinker Bell whispering for you to embrace your inner pioneer and head out for the frontier. It’s the sound of being called home.

Would you be mine? Could you be mine?

Oh btw, I’m out of here January 1st.
PEACE!

12/25/25 UPDATE: I made a video companion to this piece, which you can watch on YouTube (click)

Dear Lord, thank you for the blessings you have bestowed upon us on this day and every day.

We gather in your Spirit to celebrate your goodness, your gifts, and your abundant provision so graciously made freely available on your age-restricted websites, whose explicit content we are most grateful to be 18 or older to view.

We pause to praise you and your bounty of busty, blond bombshells; your plentitude of depraved, petite housewives; your cornucopia of curvy, innocent Latinas; your harvest of hairy, Czech grannies. May our celebration be pleasing to you just as your eager Asian schoolgirls are pleasing to us.

Studly God, thank you for inviting your best friend’s hot mom to tease us with her bubble butt in tight gym shorts.

Horny Redeemer, thank you for your cuckold roommates’ goth girlfriends who can’t resist commenting on our noticeable bulge.

O, heavenly Stepfather, thank you for accidentally mistaking your stepdaughter for your wife. We’re grateful for your wisdom that reaches higher than the heavens and stretches far beyond our understanding of how such an accident could ever happen.

Forgive us when we don’t thank you enough for dominant MILFs, for disobedient teens, for tattooed nurses, for submissive maids, for big natural boss babes begging for BBC gangbangs. Only through your mercy, only by your grace, is it possible for all of their holes to be plugged.

Perverted Lord, help us to keep thankful hearts beyond this day of giving cranks and spanks to our respective hogs and monkeys, to remember your goodness in every extreme bondage scene and every bukkake compilation, to cherish your lesbian sluts going crazy in this insane three-way orgy.

May our lives be living prayers of gratitude to you, on this Wanksgiving Day and always.

Amen.

- Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr.

I’ll be honest, we moved fast. Slept together on the first date. Moved in together the next morning.

My friends were a little concerned. They said it seemed “slightly impulsive” and suggested we take more time to get to know each other first, before rushing headlong into such a commitment. But sometimes, love doesn’t work like that. Sometimes, when you know, you know.

For me, it was love at first sight — a love that only grew stronger the more time we spent in the each other’s company, which was a lot of time. We shared meals together, shared a bed together, took multiple long walks together, every single a day. All these years later, I’m still not sick of it.

And if he is, well… he hasn’t said anything.

We moved from LA to New York, and back and forth again, as I flirted with a bi-coastal lifestyle. Not once did he raise an objection or express a concern. He seems willing to follow me, unconditionally, along every step of the way, wherever our journey takes us.

We’re more than “in love” — we’re entwined. Practically merged. I think about him when we’re apart, often rushing home from an evening activity to get back for one last stroll before bed. You should see the way he greets me at the door, like I’ve returned from war after missing in action.

It’s an indefinite love, the “love supreme” Coltrane sang so beautifully about. But it’s also a love undefined. After all these years of relational bliss, we’ve yet to DTR. That is, until tonight…

We’re finally having “the talk.”

I’m nervous…

Because, like, what are we? What, fundamentally, is this? For as much as I feel he’s my lover, I feel just as strongly that he’s my son. Can it somehow be that he’s both? It’s no wonder my relationship status on Facebook has been stuck on “It’s Complicated.”

On the one hand, we end each night curled up in each other’s arms, fully nude. We routinely open-mouth kiss. On occasion, we’ve opened things up to allow a third or fourth into our monogamous domain. And a couple of times — strictly by accident — I touched his penis.

On the other hand, I birthed him.

As written, our relationship may appear to veer into what polite society might call “problematic” — or more specifically, “incestual polysexual bestiality.” But it certainly doesn’t feel illegal!

I sometimes joke with folks who remark on our public displays of affection and say, “We’re saving it for marriage.” But the truth is, when it comes to the physical stuff, I’m just not interested in going any further than first base.

And if he is, well… he hasn’t said anything.

UPDATE: We had the talk. And ultimately, we agreed that our love defies categorization. Am I his parent? Yes. Is he my partner? Yes. Does that make us parentners? Partnents? No, those aren’t words.

Even so, words don’t do us justice. Labels need not apply. We’re content to simply remain “a man and his dog”… “a dog and his man”… “a father and son who sleep naked together and sometimes, unintentionally, graze genitals”…

Goodnight :)

I wish Veterans Day didn’t exist.

What??? What kind of disrespectful, ungrateful, flag-burning sonuvabitch would make such a cruel and careless statement — let alone PUBLISH IT on the INTERNET to his MILLIONS of readers???

I can explain!!!

In a perfect world, Veterans Day wouldn’t need to exist… because in a perfect world, there would be no veterans… because in that same perfect world, there would be no wars to make them.

Who’s the sonuvabitch now, bitch???

Of course, we don’t live in a perfect world, so we have consecrated this holiday to salute those who have served our country, from the frontlines to the backlines, on battlefields, in naval theaters, and across airspaces, from All Quiet on the Western Front to Zero Dark Thirty.

Today I’m thinking of my Poppy Syd, Private First Class Steinberg, held captive for months as a German prisoner of the second World War, lucky enough to come home under his own power — without aid of a casket. He received a Purple Heart upon his return, the US military’s oldest decoration given to those wounded or killed in action, and lived the next forty years with a Nazi bullet lodged in his backside.

Can you believe this inglorious basterd? This Bear Jew who answered the call for his country, to defend the land his parents had settled against the same persistent evil that had driven them to it, fifty years earlier? This sonuvabitch gets shot and taken prisoner by Hitler’s goons — HITLER! The [Keith Olbermann voice] “worst person… in the world!” — only to outlive Der Führer and Himmler and Goebbels and Göring and Blondi (Hitler’s dog),1 and to be reunited with the love of his life, his waiting wife Elsie, in Norwalk, Connecticut.

And then, the babies start booming: first, my Uncle Jeff, followed by my mom, Tobi.

Thus concludes this brief history of my better half.

I’m also thinking of my dad’s dad, Grandpa Herb. He was also in the service…

He delivered for UPS!!! 😂😂😂

I descend on my dad’s side from a long line of medical discharges and deferments. In fact, Rogowsky is an old Polish word meaning “unfit for duty.” A childhood bout of rheumatic fever weakened Herb’s heart, keeping him out of WWII and Korea, while my dad dodged Vietnam on account of colorblindness and seasonal allergies.

Incidentally, they both became lawyers.

Thankfully, I’ve reached my 40s without being forcibly called to war — or becoming a lawyer. I’d like to assume the ship has sailed on G.I. Rogo, but if this timeline somehow worsens and the day comes when I’m drafted into service, you can bet I’ll be classified 4-F for my under-girthed and insufficiently-lengthed genitalia (per the War Secretary’s newly established combat standards).

But my mom’s side — those Steinbergs and Regenstreifs — those were the fighters. The scrappers. The absolute units. My Grammy’s brother, Uncle Sam, another combat-hardened vet, a hulk of a Jew. A gentle giant, stern and stentorian, with a neck waddle you could get lost in, and the courage to marry his cousin.

And Grammy’s sister Sally, proudly serving in the Women’s Auxiliary Corps as a WAC — and whacky she was. A salty old bird who smoked well into her 90s and ran with the pre-war Hollywood “It Crowd” while married to Jack Albertson — long before anyone knew the name, or recognized the face, as Grandpa Joe from the original Willy Wonka.2

And my mom, toughest of them all. Living three-quarters of her life with multiple sclerosis. Getting up every morning to face another day, and whatever disappointments and doctor’s appointments it may bring, for what feels like fifty years — because it has been. Resilience in real time.

And then there’s me. Half cold-blooded, cybernetic super soldier; half shirking, sniveling, super simp. Heir to centuries of selective cowardice colliding with reckless bravado. Torn between rushing to rescue the damsel in distress, and offering, “Gee, you know I would, but I was taught to avoid walking on train tracks. It’s dangerous. And besides, I’m not great with knots.”

You know what? I just decided to donate my blood.3 Making an appointment at a New York Blood Center mobile drive near Lincoln Center for next Monday. The way I see it, if Poppy Syd could shed crimson on foreign soil in defense of this nation, I can afford to bleed it forward.4

God Bless the vets, and God Bless America.

Me? I went to the bank with five $100 bills and kindly asked the teller to exchange them for five hundred $1 bills.

I then went home and spent a joyous forty minutes at the kitchen table carefully examining each bill for curious serial numbers or vintage series dates.

Do I make you horny, baby?

I had a backstory at the ready, had the teller asked, “Why?”1

“I work in the prop department for Law & Order: SVU, and we’re shooting a scene at a strip club.”

Not that a cover was even necessary — there was nothing improper about the picayune particulars of my peculiar, pecuniary petition — but I figured a white lie would be easier far less embarrassing than admitting the truth, which is...

I’m a numismatist.

Really, I’m a collector of all things. Always have been. At various points in my life I’ve collected sports cards, comic books, comic book cards, sports books, celebrity and athlete autographs, postage stamps, Starting Line-Ups, gems and minerals and fossils (here’s lookin’ at you, trilobite), matchbooks, glass bottles, historic newspapers and magazines, Playbills, political buttons, Wheaties boxes, Coca-Cola cans, “Got Milk?” ads, Hot Wheels, McDonald’s Happy Meal toys, Beanie Babies (errors and rarities only), vinyl records, vintage t-shirts and hats, and literally anything related to baseball (programs, yearbooks, scorecards and their mini pencils, pins, pennants, posters, pocket schedules, bobble heads, ticket stubs, team sets, seat cushions, stadium cups, ice cream sundae mini-helmets, player model gloves, game-used bats and balls, Cracker Jack prizes, even peanut butter jar lids) — in addition to coins and paper money, aka numismatics.

At the risk of censure from the Anti-Defamation League, money has held a distinct fascination for me ever since I first clutched a shiny nickel in my chubby, grubby baby hands.2 The fascination goes beyond money’s inherent mystique as a species-defining civilizational triumph of collective mythmaking — though a discussion of its ontology is one I’d happily indulge should you find yourself seated next to me on a cross-country flight. And despite being born at the precise time and place to seem the actual demon spawn of modern American capitalism itself — mid-1980s New York City — my fascination has little to do with the prosaic desire to acquire it.

Even before I fully understood how money can be exchanged for goods and services, I was taken with its pure physicality — the shapes, sizes, weights, textures, colors, and even smells of currency providing a face-value feast for the senses. Why trade money for collectible trifles and trinkets when the money itself could both satisfy my curiosity and stimulate my neurodivergence?

I look back fondly on the countless countless kid hours I spent sorting through the change that would accumulate in my dad’s sock drawer, marveling at the mosaic of silver slivers gleaming among the vast tinted spectrum of the humble penny — freshly-minted fiery reds and lustrous golden-blondes mingling with the warm brunettes and patinated blue-hairs of the older, copper crowd.

I’d wonder why certain coins had small letters printed beneath their dates, while others did not… why pennies and nickels were smooth around their circumferences, while quarters and dimes had ridged edges3... why quarters dated 1976 ditched the typical spread eagle motif on the tail for a colonial drummer boy… why pennies minted before 1959 featured stalks of wheat on the reverse instead of the stately memorial to the man on the obverse…

My Uncle Alan was largely responsible for nourishing this flourishing new hobby of mine, thanks to the many gifts he’d deliver me upon his return from some fantastic, far-flung voyage to Moscow or Macau in the form of exotic, leftover change: strangely engraved coins and cash in flashes of red and blue and purple and green — greens that were greener than any greenback I’d seen — bearing portraits of women in crowns and gowns and men in Mao suits, Stalin tunics, and Nehru jackets — none of whom I recognized, all presumed dead.

The sheer volume in variety of banknotes from countless countries in all their many denominations was more than enough to trigger my collector’s instinct latent OCD undiagnosed autism, and the deeper I got into these collecting weeds, the more popular I became at school.

lololol totally jk!!!

But I did start to become more knowledgeable about the kinds of things verrrrry few people — let alone 11-year-old kids — would ever care to know, discovering the answers to some of those questions that had earlier stirred me — the small letter stamped under the date on certain coins is a ‘mint mark,’ identifying the specific branch of the U.S. Mint where the coin was struck — while uncovering answers to questions unasked — pennies produced before 1982 contains 95% copper, making each one-cent piece worth three cents in the current copper market.

I’d beg my dad to take me to coin and stamp shows at the Westchester County Center — more like museum visits than shopping expeditions, since I didn’t have the money to buy… money. Once on a family trip to D.C., I positively geeked out during a tour of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing — “The Buck Starts Here!” — securing a bag of shredded Benjamins from the gift shop I long cherished as a prized souvenir.

And then, I grew up — and largely grew out of my dorkier obsessions. After decades tucked away in the attic, the Wheaties boxes and Coke bottles and bountiful bins brimming with myriad tchotchkes now boast their own impressive collections — of dust. But when it came to coins and paper money, I could never fully shake my magpie instinct. Over the years, I continued checking my change, sequestering copper-core pennies from their contemporary, copper-plated cousins and squirreling away star notes to my own sock drawer.

Recently, without remembering exactly how, I fell face-first down a delightfully strange new rabbit hole amid the warren of numismatics: fancy serial numbers.

Apparently, in the eon between my pre-Internet, early 90s childhood and today’s hypersaturated digital society, the confluence of online forums, social media, and ecommerce platforms has breathed fresh life into a once-musty hobby. Account for the normalization of neurodiversity and a culture in the grips of terminal-stage capitalism, and voilà — an entirely novel and shockingly valuable class of currency collecting was born.

It’s possible you’ve never lingered long enough over your allowance to notice, but every dollar bill printed by the Federal Reserve contains a complex array of numbers and letters on its face. The green, eight-digit string found in duplicate is the serial number, denoting the order in which the bill was stamped, sealed and sent out for circulation. In the example below, that 40316889 number means this was the 40,316,889th dollar bill that came off the line in its particular print run (corresponding to a year and issuing bank).

Now that you understand that, try to understand this: people are paying big bucks for smaller bucks if their serial numbers happen to be… “fancy.” Fancy has become the hobby’s catch-all adjective for anything interesting, unusual, or noteworthy in the number’s pattern. Terms like “radar” (number is same forwards and backwards), “binary” (consisting of only two distinct digits), “ladder” (numbers arranged in ascending or descending order) “repeater” (numbers repeating in combination), and “birthday note” (numbers conspiring to spell out a calendar date) have become standardized by hobbyists in the Internet-era, who share their finds on Instagram, YouTube, and Reddit — and sell them on eBay and Etsy.

Recognizing the absurdity of what was happening here, I snapped into action — scanning the scant bills in my wallet before tearing open the mattress to get at the rest of my hoard. Having left no serial unturned and still jonesin’ for another score, I kickstarted a scheme to cycle five hundred dollars on an endless loop: five $100 bills to five hundred $1 bills, and back again to five Ben Franklins — mixing in those terrific Thomas Jefferson twos and an occasional 20-pack of fivers, for the gosh darn heck of it. It’s not technically money laundering, but it sure feels like it!

Below is a report of what I found in today’s haul, and here is where you’ll find eBay listings for the fancy bills I fished out. At the very least, I hope I’ve provided an entertaining introduction to a niche subculture heretofore unknown to you. At most, may I’ve inspired you to drop everything (but the baby) and join me in this no-cost, all-fun, infinitely rewarding treasure hunt — one that might literally have you laughing all the way to the bank.

THE STATCASH® ANALYSIS
Out of five hundred bills, just twenty-four were printed before 2010 — sixteen from 2009, five from 2006, two from 2003 — and only dates to the 20th century (1999).4

I’my toying with the idea of stockpiling some of these older bills and trying on a new personality as “the guy who exclusively spends Obama-era cash.”5

Two were “star notes” — notes that were re-printed to replace faulty ones on the original production run. Because no two bills can have the same serial number (for accounting purposes), they’re reprinted with a ☆ in place of the final letter.

One was a “birthday note” — the 050201919 translating to May 20, 1919 in autistic arithmetic. Expecting an epic bidding war among the remaining 106-year-olds!

Two were “trinary” — containing three distinct digits (2, 5, 8 and 1, 2, 7).

One was a highly coveted “binary” — containing only two (1, 9).

One was a “triple-double repeater” or “three pair,” featuring three sets of doubly repeating digits (55, 77, 99). Another was a “triple repeater,” featuring two sets of triply repeating digits (111, 555).

One was a “partial ladder,” climbing half-way up with the first four digits (1-2-3-4).

One was a “broken partial ladder,” meaning it contained eight distinct digits which, if rearranged, could be said to form a partial ladder (0-2-3-4-5-6-7-8).6

Only one had a serial number under 100,000 (00078921), which I found mildly interesting.

I found two that included the year 1776. Now, if these were 07041776 or 17760704 — aka “‘MERICA NOTES” — I bet I could get some Toby Keith-loving, True Red-White-And-Blue Patriots® to bid them up well into the four figures.

But they’re not, so I’ve got ‘em listed at $7.76, or best offer. Make one now!

The final outs of the 150th Major League Baseball season had just been recorded on a broken-bat chopper up the middle hit by Alejandro Kirk of the Toronto Blue Jays and fielded by Mookie Betts of the Los Angeles Dodgers, who stepped on second base (“There’s one!”) and threw to Freddie Freeman at first (“There’s two!”) to complete a World Series-sealing double play for LA in front of 44,000 stunned Canadians at the retractable roof stadium in downtown Toronto formerly forever known as the SkyDome.1

I had popped in to catch the end of the game, after missing the first 8 1/2 innings due to a scheduling conflict. Earlier in the week, I had purchased tickets to the New York premiere of The Room Returns! — a movie I did not know existed until I saw it publicized on Instagram, earlier in the week — at the Roxy Cinema for November 1st. A shot-for-shot, line-for-line remake of writer/director/actor Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 cinematic masterpiece The Room, starring comedy hero Bob Odenkirk as Wiseau’s Johnny — with a cast Q&A to follow? Sorry, Sandy Koufax, I wasn’t going to miss this for the world… or the World Series.2

Shot entirely in a single day (January 10, 2023) on a no-string budget with an all-volunteer cast and crew in service of producing the film as a fundraiser for actingforacause.org (whose founder Brando Crawford conceived of, acted in, and directed it), The Room Returns! is a remarkable work of high art whose mere completion stands as a staggering accomplishment.

Recreating a 99-minute feature film in a single day on a green-screen set — without rehearsals — meant most scenes were captured in one take, with the cast cold-reading from off-camera teleprompters. Despite the many constraints on a production already burdened by its own self-awareness (comedians earnestly paying tribute to an earnest dramatic effort that inadvertently produced the greatest comedy of all-time), this Room redux was deftly directed and sharply acted.

Odenkirk delivered a career-crowning performance as Johnny, attending to the script’s idiosyncratic syntax and Wiseau’s extraterrestrial emotional expressions with deadpan precision and a devotion to the source material, a dedication clearly shared by the tremendously gifted actors portraying Lisa, Mark, Denny, Claudette, Mike, Michelle, Peter, Susan, Steven, and the Florist.

The light touches in The Room Returns! that deviate from the original make the homage all the richer. To note: The Room’s gratuitous and bizarrely overwrought sex scenes have been replaced with title cards that linger on screen for the same excruciating duration as their antecedents. The inherent goofiness of the “rooftop football” scene — in which the guys very normally toss the pigskin back and forth, on the roof — gets boosted by a Tim & Eric-esque composite editing technique that allows the football to seamfully pass from one man to another. And Greg Sestero, The Room’s line producer and the ur-“Mark,” makes an enjoyable cameo as the gun-toting, drug dealer who “wants his fucking money” from Denny, played to perfection by Parkland shooting survivor Cameron Kasky (who admitted in the Q&A that he had completely forgotten working on the film).

The result is a loving and laugh-filled tribute dressed in all the chaotic glory of its origin story and obvious handicaps, and I’m glad I went — despite the absence of IRL Odenkirk, whose flight to New York was canceled amid air traffic controller shortages due to the ongoing government shutdown. THANKS OBAMA!

Busting out of the Roxy, I checked my phone to see the Blue Jays up 4-3 on the heavily favored Blue Crew heading into the 9th. By the time I could locate a nightlife establishment in SoHo that deigned to display “sportsball” on “television,” the Dodgers had tied it on a Miguel Rojas solo blast. The Jays were now batting in the bottom of the 144th of what would ultimately be 146 innings played in this 2025 World Series.3 It was hard to recall a more ball-to-ball, wall-to-wall, front-to-back, back-and-forth, hard-fought, high-strung Fall Classic than this one. The gutsy pitching. The clutch hitting. The stupendous defense, with more perfect throws and picks to nail runners on base or at home in one series than seemingly all season.

And yet, the drama would build even greater. The tension would ratchet ever higher. The vicarious thrill I had been chasing as a Mets fan rooting for the Blue Jays was now transmogrifying into a nauseating, vicarious anxiety.4 My partiality for MLB’s lone north-of-the-border franchise lay not only in the simple fact that they happened to be the “anyone playing the Dodgers” in this moment. I genuinely love the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada — its people, poutine, and shoe museums — and I’ve long felt personally connected to streets and places like Trinity Bellwoods, Ossington, Spadina, Sneaky Dee’s, Comedy Bar, the Rivoli, The Annex and The Danforth thanks to my many dear friends running through the Six who have been rooting so hard for this team for so long.5

It helps that it’s been a fun team to follow over the past decade, going back to the back-to-back ALCS appearances of late-stage Joey Bats, prime Josh Donaldson, old hosses Dickey and Buehrle handing the reins to Stroman and Sanchez, pre-assault Osuna dominating out of the pen, and J.A. Happ becoming the unlikeliest member of the 20-win club since Rick Helling… to the more recent emergence of homegrown stars Vlad Jr. and Bo Bichette, who — with dearly departed Cavan Biggio — made Toronto’s 2019 club the answer to this favorite bit of baseball trivia: What team holds the record for most second-generation big leaguers to make their MLB debuts in the same season?

Back to the action… I already felt like I was going to barf, when this happened: Andy Pages, who started Game 7 on the bench after managing just one hit in his previous sixteen at-bats, is subbed into center field specifically for his defense with bases loaded and one out in the bottom of the ninth — and makes a spectacular, running catch while colliding with his neighbor in left,6 saving the Dodgers’ season and crushing Canadian spirit.

And then this happened: who else but Will Smith gets jiggy with a Shane Bieber hanging slider with two outs in the top of the 11th, giving LA their first lead of the game — and the only one they’d need.

But then, a new hope: Vladdy Daddy leads off the bottom of the 146th with a ferocious double laced down the left field line. He’s moved over to third on a flawless sacrifice bunt by Isiah Kiner-Falefa — answer to this newly-minted trivia question: Who was the first player of Samoan descent to appear in a World Series? Addison Barger walks on four pitches, and Alejandro Kirk — who had come up in the 9th with a chance to walk it off, but was instead forced to walk to first on a hit by a pitch — was back in the box with another shot at writing his name into baseball immortality, in the same set and setting where Joe touched ‘em all, all those years ago…

But alas, the broken-bat slap. The 6-6-3 double play. The Dodgers win, again.

In hindsight, my uncharacteristic, publicly shouted expletive had less to do with heartbreak by proxy for my Jays-loving friends, or righteous anger towards baseball’s new Evil Empire and the first repeat champs since the prior sinister administration (the Y2K Yankees).

I cursed the heavens because… well, that was it. That was all, folks. Another season was in the books — with all its screaming liners and sweeping sliders and daringly stretched doubles and gingerly stolen bases and diving-stops-in-the-hole and pinch-hit grand slams and plays-at-the-plate and game-ending twin killings — leaving another long, dark winter in its wake.

What now? Until the diamond dirt begins to thaw with those tentative first steps of pitchers and catchers come February, I’ll be warming my tuchus by the hot stove… watching football and basketball, I guess?

Fuck. I’m going to miss baseball.

RYE, NY is both the hometown of Seattle’s starting pitcher George Kirby and the location of Little Thai Kitchen, where I picked up the dinner that I’m currently demolishing alone in the den of my childhood home in neighboring Harrison.

Kirby graduated from Rye High School, and became just the fourth graduate from Harrison High’s arch rival to reach the Major Leagues when he debuted in 2022, after Eric Junge and local legend B.J. Surhoff and his brother, Rich.

Incidentally, another pair of brothers from Rye made it to the bigs, Colin and Brian Moran — although technically, they are from Port Chester (part of Rye Town) and attended the private high school Iona Prep. THE MORE YOU KNOW!

I spent $60 on a meal for one, $3 tip included. Yes, I tipped on an order for pickup. BECAUSE I’M A BETA CUCK.

What does $60 get you in the New York City suburbs circa 2025? Tao Hoo Tod, Yum Nam Sod, and something I’d never before seen on a menu called “Thai Sesame Chicken.”

Did I order well? NOT PARTICULARLY. The “Thai Sesame Chicken” turned out to be rather large chicken strips, beer battered and fried akin to the fish in ‘fish & chips.’ Let’s just say, what works for chicken of the sea doesn’t translate to chicken of the land. Shit was drier than a menopausal teetotaler leading a tax law seminar in the Sahara!

Seattle and Toronto are two of MLB’s more recent expansion cities, having birthed big league franchises in time for the 1977 season. That’s “recent” according to the temporal scale of baseball history, where ‘one Earth year’ roughly converts to ‘one Steve Trachsel start.’

I wonder who John Olerud is pulling for…

Toronto outfielder Daulton Varsho is the son of a former big leaguer — Gary Varsho — who was named after another former big leaguer — Darren Daulton.

The elder Varsho was also an outfielder who found part-time work with four different clubs over eight seasons in The Show, playing in a total of 571 games — the final 72 of which he spent with Darren Daulton and the 1995 Philadelphia Phillies.

Presuming Gary and Darren did not have a personal relationship before becoming teammates in March of that 1995 season, and knowing that Gary gave birth to his son Daulton in July 1996, that has to be one of the all-time shortest distances ever traveled from “total stranger” to “namesake of first born.”

How did that conversation go with Mrs. Varsho?

“Honey, I know we were thinking of naming our boy after your beloved father of blessed memory, but hear me out… there’s this guy I played with last year who’s suuuper cool. He’s got incredible hair, just an immaculate flow… and when he wears his wraparounds I swear he’s a spitting image of Roddy Piper mowing down those skull-faced alien freaks in They Live. Remember that movie? Anyway, ready for this? He goes by ‘Dutch’… how cool is that!!! Whattya think???

No? Alright, well ‘Dutch’ is his nickname. What about his government name? Darren Varsho! I love it! Rolls right off the tongue!

NO TO DARREN??? C’mon, it’s perfect! OK OK, what if we take Dutch’s last name and make it our son’s first name? It’s not ‘Morandini’ … that’s a different guy.”

Sadly, Darren Daulton passed away prematurely on August 6, 2017 from brain cancer at the age of 55. But thankfully he lived just long enough to see Daulton Varsho get drafted in the 2nd Round of the 2017 MLB Draft by the Arizona Diamondbacks, on June 12.

THE DOPPELGÄNG’S ALL HERE!

Baby, baby, baby oh how Shane Bieber is channeling Dave Stieber…

Eugenio Suárez with the extremely princely Valiant vibes…

and Jorge Polanco is giving Big Riz Ahmed Energy…

By George, with that clutch dinger, Springer has nudged himself into the “Top 5” of baseball’s all-time best Georges, behind Brett, Sisler, Kelly, and Foster. And if he can take the championship hardware home to Toronto, he might even supplant SkyDome legend Bell as the Jays’ most iconic George.

Between Kirby and Springer, it’s been a GEORGY ORGY at the Rogers Centre!

What a series! Tough loss for Seattle who shall remain the lone MLB franchise yet to taste a Fall Classic Spiced Latte… but I’m very happy for my many friends in the T dot who are surely running through The Six without any woes tonight — other than the economic uncertainties posed by escalating U.S. trade tensions, rising domestic inflation, and the weakening of the Canadian dollar!!!

Strip Tees is a recurring series in which I write about t-shirts I like

Happy Taylor Swift Weekend to all who are celebrating.

The global megastar’s much anticipated 12th studio album The Life of a Showgirl dropped on Friday, October 3, becoming the most-streamed album in a single day of 2025 with over 300 million plays in less than 11 hours.

How did she — and we — get here?

Our story begins in earnest on October 24, 2006, when a 16 year-old country singer/songwriter from suburban Nashville (by way of suburban Reading, Pennsylvania) with a precocious pop sensibility and emergent cross-over potential released her eponymous debut record to instant acclaim.

Now let’s jump ahead to November 11, 2008, when the barely legal starlet dropped her second studio album, and a star was born. Fearless debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200, selling nearly 600,000 copies in its first week en route to becoming America’s best selling album of 2009, taking home Album of the Year at the 2010 Grammys, and catapulting Taylor Swift to the top of Pop Star Mountain… where she’s comfortably remained ever since.

Now let’s back up just a bit to the spring and summer of 2008. Swift is still in her “Supporting Act” era but staying true to her surname, having rapidly expanded her fan base on the strength of relentless gigging and high-profile exposure earned from assuming opener duties for country stars Rascal Flatts, George Strait, Brad Paisley, and in a gorgeous twist of fate, her hit-making muse Tim McGraw and his wife Faith Hill for select dates of their Soul2Soul II Tour.

If Malcolm Gladwell were to train his gimlet eye on the career of Taylor Swift, he would point to 2008 as her “tipping point,” the year that set her up to become the cultural juggernaut she is today and one of the most influential and commercially dominant pop stars of all time.

This was the year that saw her place the keystone in the bridge that carried her from country curiosity to Top 40 sensation, that linked the final radio singles from her debut record (“Picture to Burn” and “Should’ve Said No”) to the first smash singles of her sophomore effort (“Love Story” and “White Horse”), that took her from sharing the bill with Big & Rich and Cowboy Troy at the KISS Country Chili Cook-Off in Pembroke Pines, FL (January 27, 2008) to sharing the stage with Mariah Carey, Celine Dion, Christina Aguilera, and B.B. King at the GRAMMY Nominations concert in downtown Los Angeles (December 3, 2008)

That pivotal year is represented here in this exceptional shirt specimen": a “First Edition / First Printing” of Taylor’s 2008 official tour merch. Printed on the front of this flattering canary yellow, 100% cotton Gildan garment is the smiling, curly-haired songstress clutching her pearl-inlaid, custom Taylor-brand guitar — on point! On the reverse are her concert locations, beginning with her February 15 appearance at the House of Blues in North Myrtle Beach, SC and notably ending with a phantom Scottsdale, AZ date (no evidence exists of Taylor Swift ever performing in Scottsdale in 2008, leading me to conclude the show had been scheduled at the time of printing but canceled in the interim).

Over the last few years I have been quietly amassing a stockpile of what I would call “RC” and “XRC” shirts of 21st Century pop icons like Taylor, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, One Direction, and the Jonas Brothers. Borrowing from familiar sports card terminology “Rookie Card” (RC) and “Extended Rookie Card” (XRC, or a player’s first appearance on a card when included in an update or traded set, usually released the year prior to their official RC in a standard issue set), I have designated shirts from what would be considered the artist’s first solo headlining tour as their RCs, and shirts from their earlier promo or non-headlining tours as their XRCs.

Therefore, this Taylor tee would fall into that coveted XRC category, but with a delicious twist…

I have tracked down three variations of this shirt, each sporting the same obverse graphic and but featuring a different assortment of dates on the back. After spending far too much time sequestered in deep research, it is my expert opinion that the subject of today’s “Strip Tees” is the first version of the shirt, with subsequent printings made to reflect additions (or as in the case of Scottsdale, subtractions) to her tour dates while replenishing her stock at the merch tables following what can only assumed to be a swift sellout of the initial print run.

I own this shirt in two sizes: an XL that stays with me and this Small (18” x 25.5”) that I’m listing at quizdaddys.com to commemorate Taylor’s transition into her Showgirl era. If you’re looking to impress your fellow Swifties, or if you’re a keen investor looking for an alternative (and wearable!) asset class, take this one off your Wi$h Li$t and add it to your collection today.

Copenhagen in 2006 was still many years away from becoming the widely desirable, highly Instagrammable destination it is today: a quiet backwater lacking the raucous reputation of far more popular study abroad locales like Rome, Barcelona, or Sydney. But my schmuck friends and I made our own fun, namely by making fun of our seriously minded and sober in mien professors.

To say I “studied” abroad is a bit of a misnomer. The principal aim of my Scandinavian semester was to meet sexually liberated Danish women, eat lasciviously iced Danish pastries, and get a good, long look at that Little Mermaid statue… and Odin help any professor who tried to distract me from that mission with “homework” and “assignments.” My modus operandi was to exert the bare minimum effort required to secure a passing grade.

With one notable exception…

Nordic Mythology was the singular course in the catalog that had a prayer of capturing my attention and imagination. It was taught by a jolly old fellow sprouting a Viking Age beard and sporting Cosby-esque sweaters that strained to stretch around his rotundity named — get ready for this — Morten Warmind, who had no mind for attempting to corral the American idiots running rampant in his classroom.

Instead, Morty required us to not only read, but also write a final paper about the Poetic Edda — an anonymous collection of skaldic poetry dating from the 10th century — and its 13th century companion the Prose Edda, which taken together are considered the primary source textbooks of Norse mythology.

Did I complete the readings? Hellllll nah. Did I skim them enough to write a ridiculous parody infused with references to 80s baseball players and 90s video games? Yes, yes I did. Reviewing this paper nearly twenty years later, I’m quite impressed with my younger self to commit to such a supremely ludicrous bit over so many pages. Prof. Warmind must have been impressed, too. Despite having no possible way of comprehending 90% of what I wrote, he gave me an A-.

Scott Rogowsky
Nordic Mythology
Prof. Morten Warmind
May 5th, 2006

The Parodic Edda

Much is known of the pre-Christian beliefs held by the peoples who settled Scandinavia in the early centuries AD through various written transcriptions of Norse histories and sagas that have survived the many generations. The canon of Nordic Mythology is rich with the tales of Odin, the Norse god of wisdom and war; his wife Frigg and sons Thor and Balder; the love goddess Freyja and her brother Freyr; Loki, the god of mischief, and his wolfen son Fenrir.

But a recent discovery has brought to light the mythologies of many forgotten and previously unknown Nordic deities. In the fall of 2005, the demolition of a Frederiksberg townhouse was stayed when a shoebox containing a collection of Penthouse magazines from the early 1990s and a book of ancient skaldic poetry and saga was discovered in a crawlspace under the basement stairs.

The manual of poetics is believed to have been authored by Snoring Stutterson, the renowned Icelandic scribe and historian more famous for having suffered from narcolepsy and various speech impediments than for his oft-piddling mythography. The codex, dubbed The Pathetic Edda, is composed of three sections: the first describes the saga of Scott Baiowulf’s journey from his native Iceland across the North Sea to Sjælland to perform in the very first Roskilde Music Festival; the second is Hrbek’s Poem that relates the story of the brave Hrbek and his quest for the great northern white ash tree, Hillerich; the third part, written on college-ruled loose leaf paper and messily stapled to the other two, is a list of Kurt Russell movies in which the actor can be seen sporting a tank top and mullet.

Radiocarbon testing date the first two manuscripts, well-preserved on their original calf vellum, to the early twelfth century, while paleographers using Nintendochronolgy, a controversial but more precise method of scientific dating, have determined that the addendum was written by a 17 year-old boy who had stayed home from school to beat The Legend of Zelda sometime during late 1980s, making it a genuine relic of the Germanic Aluminum Age. Contemporary scholars further researching the document also maintain that the boy was briefly employed at his neighborhood 7-Eleven and frequently lied about the status of his virginity.

In recent months, professors at the University of Copenhagen have completed the arduous task of translating The Pathetic Edda from its original Norse into the humorous Pig Norse, and then into Tamil, a Dravidian language popular among native Sri Lankans. While it is estimated that an official English version will not be available for another three to four years, an Ohio-based amateur historian calling himself “Shwaggy Steve” has published an incipient interpretation of the Edda on his web log The Stoned Rosetta, having translated the manuscript using AltaVista’s Babel Fish during commercial breaks of a Quantum Leap marathon on the Sci-Fi Channel.

Steve’s work has been copy and pasted here for the purpose of this graded writing assignment without his permission, but with full confidence that he will never find out.

Baiowulf

Here we begin with a riddle asked of the great Odin before he was allowed to go sledding: “What is the difference between a ewe with a headache and a mallard with a cold?” One’s a sick duck… well I forgot the rest, but allow me to tell you the story of King Philbin and The Family Baiowulf.

Philbin ruled over a small parcel of land in the birch forests of Iceland whose location next to a slaughterhouse had greatly reduced the property’s value on the secondary market. In a clearing he had built a cottage in which he lived with his wife Guri and his three sons, Jimmy, Esteban, and Scott. Philbin was at one time a revered king, adored by his subjects/neighbors, the Jorgensens. But he had grown gray with age and increasingly fond of the bottle, and frequent attacks of delirium tremens had rendered his sovereign reign unstable.

Guri was a woman of great strength and interpersonal skills, and her hatred of rodentia had led her to establish a successful exterminator and pest control employed on occasion by the gods themselves. It is said that her thorough handling of a carpenter ant infestation garnered much praise from the noble Bragi in the form of his celebrated poem-ballad “Only the Best (Can Locate the Nest).”

It is said that Jimmy and Esteban were young men of good stock and had gone into real estate business together, developing condos in Valhalla to meet the burgeoning demands of slain warriors entering Odin’s hall. Guri was very proud of these two sons and their profiteering, and she would often prepare for them morning dew cakes, malted meadshakes, and other sweet treats as a show of her affection. But of her youngest Scott she felt only shame and served only reindeer hoof.

As a young child, Scott was given every opportunity to become a bold warrior and was expected to succeed his father on the throne. He was taught to forge his own weapons, trained in the ancestral ways of swordsmanship, and he even spent a summer at Master Egil’s All-Star Archery Camp for Lil’ Bowmen to further hone his craft and experiment with soft drugs. But as he grew into adolescence, Scott, who was called by the family name Baiowulf (and also answered to “Iceman”), had no interest in the warrior profession. He appreciated the arts and excelled in musicianship. In that way, he took after his uncle Dobro the Fretless, the most celebrated dulcimer craftsmen in all of Midgard. It was Dobro who taught Baiowulf the intricacies of playing the psaltery and had introduced the talented youth to Reykjavik’s vibrant underground pagan rock scene.

Now there is this to tell: Baiowulf was sitting on a stump, composing a pleasant tune on his bone whistle, when he heard a rustling in the forest. He gave his whistle a rest, stood up, and listened for the sound to repeat. Once again, he heard the crunching of twigs and saw movement in the trees. A short, bearded old man appeared at the edge of the clearing, dressed in tattered garments and clutching a scroll. His eyes opened wide as he hurried towards Baiowulf and spoke:

“Young man, I am called Sisqó, son of Korg and descendent of Roland, King of the Synths. I am exceedingly skilled in the bardic arts, and I have written many of the songs the Æsir fancy today. Alas, I hold here in my hand the lyrics to the greatest song ever written, a song that will surely captivate all the gods and goddesses of the Asgard in simultaneous head nodding. I call it Diphthong Song, but it has remained incomplete and has never been sung, for I have yet to find a suitable melody to match my words. Lo these forty years I have wandered the realms of mortals far and wide across woodlands and great plains, listening for just the right tune to complete my masterpiece. Today, the wind carried the most wonderful whistling to my ears, and I stand before you now, having followed the sound to you and your bone instrument. You must accept these lyrics and perform the song at the music festival in Roskilde that is scheduled for next fortnight to mark the vernal equinox.”

With that, the noble bard extended the tightly bound scroll to Baiowulf and continued: “I have endured countless ailments and suffered tremendous fatigue in my many years of wandering, but I remained strong to ward off the temptress Hel until I had found the perfect suitor for my poem. Now that I have heard your melodic strains, I can entrust to you my words and surrender my feeble body to what lies beneath.” And before Baiowulf could even express a gesture of gratitude, Sisqó collapsed to the ground and released his final breath.

The startled Baiowulf ran in search of his uncle Dobro who would surely know what to do with the song and how to economically dispose of a dead body. Dobro was in his workshop, perfecting a new hammer-assisted dulcimer, when Baiowulf excitedly entered with the news: “An old man came to me in the wood, having been wooed by the sweet melodies I have composed on my bone whistle. He called himself Sisqó and claimed to be a bard well renowned among the Æsir. He handed me this scroll on which are printed the lyrics to the Diphthong Song, the greatest song in the world. With his dying breath, he summoned me to perform the song at Roskilde.”

Dobro stood at attention: “Sisqó, you say, was the man who came before you. Son of Korg? Descendent of Roland? My nephew, Sisqó is my father Moog’s brother, your great-uncle. Moog would always speak of him with much fondness – he had run away from home at an early age, but was blessed with incredible talent as a songsmith. No one could create an infectious party beat like Sisqó, and his music has made the gods well-pleased. We must go to Roskilde to perform this song and continue our family legacy.”

Baiowulf went to his mother, who had just come back from Asgard after ridding Tyr’s wine cellar of a roof rat infestation, and told her of his plans. Guri never had much time for her youngest son or held any interest in his “mindless musical ramblings,” as she called them. “You put down your sword so you can fiddle around on your whistles and whistle around on your fiddles, and now you want to sail off to Denmark for a music festival? Go to Roskilde; get out of my house with this nonsense, and just go. If you don’t come back, I will not consider it a loss too great.”

Baiowulf tried to explain the importance of the song and his connection to Sisqó, but his mother’s harsh words had stung, and he sought his father for redemption. King Philbin had been steady with the mead that day and was experiencing severe macropsia when his son approached with news of his impending travels. His father’s state necessitated that Baiowulf stand fifteen feet away as he said: “I’m leaving for Roskilde. There is a music festival that I must attend, with Sisqó’s song in hand, to spread the divine music that rests deep in my soul. It is called Diphthong Song, and it is the greatest song in the world.”

But the drunk and visually-impaired king could only babble incoherently in response. The dejected Baiowulf then left his broken home with a packed bag of his favorite tunics and his trusty whistle. When he met with his uncle at harbor, he was his own man.

It is now told the two men left comfortable Iceland and traveled by small craft across the treacherous seas, subsisting on the generosity of Njordbær, the vegan god of seafood, who provided daily rations of his famous chopped sea salad. It was a mixture of sea lettuce, sea cucumber, and sea avocado with Njordbær’s special Baltic vinaigrette made from scratch of pressed kelp and cormorant droppings.

Though generous, the portions were rather unpalatable. Not ones to complain, especially at the charity of a good-meaning god, Dobro and the young musician managed to stomach the helpings. But there were many times during the trip when Baiowulf quietly cursed his bad luck for drawing the auspices of the vegan god, remembering that the Jorgensens were treated to the finest shrimps and herrings during their transatlantic passage on a family vacation several years prior.

On the third day of their second week of seafaring, the two men reached the shores of Denmark, landing near Hundested at the mouth of the Isefjord. Exhausted and quite sickened from the Baltic vinaigrette, Dobro and Baiowulf were visited by Gnocchi, Loki’s half-Italian half-brother and god of pasta dumplings. He spoke to them: “I have watched you journey from Iceland across the treacherous seas, eating Njordbær’s well-intentioned but woefully unpleasant provisions. Please forgive him and his veganism; we believe he’s just going through a phase. Allow me to treat you with a feast of potato-filled pasta lumps, on behalf of the Vanir.”

Gnocchi stepped aside and revealed a table set for two in the shelter of a large ash tree, and with a flutter of his slate blue, cotton velvet cloak that he wore to add a sense of mystery and drama to his life, there appeared on the table a bucket of pasta dumplings. “It is a veritable never ending pasta bowl,” quipped Dobro, and the tired travelers ate to their hearts content as Gnocchi sat nearby, watching intently and breathing heavily, occasionally murmuring under his breath, “Yes, just like that. Eat it, eat it all up.”

Now is the time to tell that Baiowulf and his uncle, weary of the waterways, journeyed on foot the rest of the distance to Roskilde. They knew they were close when they came upon the pedestrian traffic that had accumulated for the start of the festival. The event promoters had advertised all across Denmark and Sweden, and over 200,000 people were expected for the weekend to celebrate music, culture, and humanism. Ninety-six bands and bards were scheduled to perform in eight music tents over the three days, among them the acoustic folk-duo Saga Genesis, the alternative noise rockers Rage Against the Ragnorak, and the celebrated Odin’s Dirty Bastards, a string quintet featuring five illegitimate sons of the All-Father.

Baiowulf fought his way to the front, his uncle following close behind. They reached the main stage as the headliner Signy Pop and The She-Wolves were in the middle of sound-checking. Baiowulf knew this was the right time, and he climbed up on stage clutching the scroll and this bone whistle. Dobro set up beside his nephew with his hammered dulcimer tuned to the key of rock, and began hammering the intro lick. Baiowulf took a deep breath, unfurled the parchment, and began to sing. The audience quieted and turned to the stage as if drawn by a divine power. Baiowulf then took out his whistle and took control of the melody, a sound so sweet as it met the ears of everyone in attendance.

The music soared skyward and reached the Asgard where the assembly of gods put down their Sudoku books and froze in rapt attention. The ethereal music had mesmerized the whole world at once. And then, a flash of bright light illuminated the night sky and the crowd broke into a frenetic dance. The driving beat and catchy hooks of the Diphthong Song had the stars themselves undulating to the rhythmic pulse. Baiowulf blew on his whistle, Dobro plucked his strings, and some men say the spirit of Sisqó hovered above the stage and assumed lead vocals.

The song concluded and Baiowulf received a seventeen-day standing ovation. The rest of the festival was cancelled, as there was no need for any more music. Diphthong Song had captivated a continent, and Baiowulf went on to become a celebrated recording artist and master of the bardic arts, and after him his songs have been handed down from one man to another.

Hrbek’s Poem

Hrbek’s Poem (Hrbeskvida) is well-preserved but rather poorly written, an unfortunate hallmark of Stutterson’s work. The sated gods wished to be entertained with a home run derby between Thor and Hrbek, the greatest batsman in Midgard. Hrbek realized he wouldn’t stand a chance against Thor and his mighty hammer unless he could fashion a bat out of the trunk of great northern white ash tree, Hillerich. He goes to the Utgard ash forest where Hillerich stands, protected by Hrabosky the Reliever, and along the way meets Fidrych (The Bird) who agrees to fly Hrbek to Hrabosky’s bullpen.

Like most encounters between batsman and reliever, the adventure is all fun and games until someone gets hit by a pitch. In this case, it is Hrabosky who suffers a debilitating strike at the hands of Fidrych who took revenge for his banishment from the rotation. In the end, Hrbek is declared the victor at the discretion of the gods whose collective attention deficit has diverted their concentration back to logic-based, number-placement puzzles.

1 Once, the fastidious gods feasted on lox and bagels,1
they demanded entertainment of brutish display;
they sought a derby to determine the greatest swing,
they found that Odin’s son and Hrbek made a desirable
match.

2 The Twin Cities-dweller propped up, his cheery nature2
turning to that of concern as he eyed Mjolnir,
Hlorridi grinned knowingly and looked into his eyes:
‘You are going to need Hillerich’s trunk to claim victory.’3

3 The trashful talk did not find Hrbek well;
he began to consider the joke in a serious light;
he announced his intention to call the bluff and make path,
‘towards the great ash forest protected by the Relievers.’4

4 Herbie dismissed the charity of his friends;
the gallant Gaetti offered his club,
the burly Brunansky hoisted his weighty stick in gift,
even the mighty Killebrew stepped forward from the famous
hall to extend his own silver slugger.

5 The defiant one said his farewells and marched east,
his fearlessness perceived as recklessness by the gods;
only upon nightfall did the great outdoorsman feel regret,5
‘The fireballer stands guard and awaits my arrival.’6

6 The lad was stirred from his sleep by a giant egret,7
Fidrych, the brave Reliever who had lost favor with the
father of Fu;8
he wished to enact revenge and found a partner in the eager
Herbie.

7 ‘Intrepid traveler, I will lead you to Hrabosky’s pen
where you can secure a branch from the great ash tree.
I wish to face the Mad Contrarian once again;
I will meet his fastball with a blazing speed pitch
of my own.’

8 The thick-armed playmate of Puckett held to The Bird9
as his broad wings flapped and flew the rest of the way.

9 Hirsute, sinister-handed Hrabosky
came late back from grooming the mound.
He went into his bull’s pen to gather stock for his supper;
nobody made a finer ox-tail soup.

10 ‘Greetings, Hrabosky, I have come to your pen to tell you
of a batsman in need of wood,
the root-stem of Bradsby’s better half is what he requires10
to defeat Sif’s husband and earn respect from the Æsir.

11 See where he hides behind the manure pile;
I overheard his plans for cutting down great Hillerich
whilst you tended to your bulls.’

12 Steam did the pile at the Reliever’s gaze,
and the terrible smell, an olfactory nightmare,
roused Herbie from his spot.

13 ‘You come to the Great Ash Forest
for my precious wood, but you are mistaken to believe
you can fell my trees without provoking my favor.
I say, follow me to the mound.’

14 Forward they went, and the mustachioed giant
turned his gaze on his brawny intruder.
His mind didn’t speak encouragingly to him,
when he saw
the one who had initiated the T-Rex Tag.11

15 Fidrych walked behind Hrbek and Hrabosky,
until they reached the manicured mound
where the Mad Contrarian said no man could
hack at Hillerich if he could not lift the rosin bag.

16 With that, the brave, royal cardinal grabbed
the bag in a huff,12
jerked it skywards and violently hurled it down at Herbie,
who managed to dive wayside to escape
the cloud of powder.

17 The oft-injured Hrbek stood and dusted himself,
approached the mound with newfound vigor;
the rosin bag he tried to lift but buckled under,
again he grabbed at it whole and failed after a struggle.

18 Until the friendly Bird told him
some birdly advice which he knew:
‘Cut the bag and bleed the rosin, the heavy element;
Hrabosky’s challenge is as flawed as his delivery.

19 The strong man, hunter of ducks, slit the bag and
spilled its contents;
the emptied purse high above his head
a show of cunning to enrage the Contrarian,
fuming red with the madness of a hundred Martins.13

20 ‘My challenge you met with chicanery,
and my prized rosin you have rendered unworkable;
never again will it dry my sweaty palms
or inspire my entertaining mound rituals.

21 You must pay for your transgressions;
my fast ball will send you straight to the Hel’s pit.’

22 The thickly bearded Reliever wound up to deliver his blow,
but the unorthodox Fidrych intervened before the release;
a wicked slider sent Hrabosky to the ground,
sprawled and shaken.

23 Hrbek worked quickly and wrapped his thick arms
around Hillerich’s sturdy base,
with bent knees he brought all his divine power to bear;
each tug steadily loosened the unyielding soil
until the whole of the great tree had been uprooted.

24 Hillerch in hand and his wonder bat secure,
Herbie had not gone far from the pen
when the burly batsman looked once behind him;
he saw the fiery southpaw approaching with flared nostril
admirably framed by bushy mustache.

25 He turned and swung the mighty ash, eager for slaying,
and contact was made on the sweet spot indeed;
the giant hurdled through the air until his bones met
with Ymir’s in a bloody mess on the mountain.

26 The satisfied Hrbek came to the assembly of the gods,
dragging behind him the Reliever’s sacred ash;
the father of Modi knew well from the red-stained wood
that the derby was well under way.

27 But before Thor could take any cuts of his own,
the impulsive gods had already grown weary
of the contest;
Hrbek was declared the winner,
and the gods returned to their Sudoku.

After four days exploring Skåne, the country’s southernmost province of fertile farmland, squeaky sand beaches, and an inexplicably annual “Palm Festival” (despite palm trees not being anywhere near native to the area), my ears had just begun getting comfortable with the swirling symphony of the Swedish language — even if my lips were still wary of attempting its obscene vowels.

My friend Dan had hosted me at his apartment a short walk from the city center of Trelleborg, site of said PalmFestivalen, whose occasion I was delighted to chance upon in his very last minute, hastily planned vacation. We rode some rides, ate some halloumi burgers, discovered Italian Brainrot trading cards, and spent one memorable evening in the highly spirited company of Dan’s ex-con uncle Matzi perambulating the side streets in search of an appropriately vibed pub.

We also delighted in day trips: east, to the tucked away fishing village of Kåseberga and “Sweden’s Stonehenge” Ales staner — with pit stops at Dan’s childhood home in Smygehamn (where I picked perfectly ripe plums right off the plum tree in his backyard) and a seasonal restaurant in Hörte (where we, the very last guests of the season, befriended the American chef and aspiring kombucha magnate who masterminded our kimchi tacos) — and west, to the Falsterbo Peninsula, once known as the “St. Tropez of Sweden,” where we observed with wide-eyed wonder a woman fill a bucket with crabs plucked from the harbor, before plunking down in the dunes to absorb a perfect sunset.

Oh, and we picked the FUCK outta some wild blackberries. These puppies are $7.99/pint at Whole Foods!

But the most ‘fruitful’ activity Dan and I shared in was the creation of a new podcast, now part of The 40 Year-Old Podcaster network, which we’re calling Brain Drain 90210. It’s really a three-way collab with Dan’s custom-trained GPT he named SYMBA joining us on the mic as we go deep into whatever fleeting inanity has captured our ADHD-addled minds.

Rostock and Two Smoking Barrels
I arrived in Germany’s 39th largest city too late to do anything other than find my hotel and crash. After navigating a bus transfer to the S-Bahn with the help of a friendly couple from Stuttgart, I reached the funky ‘Prize by Radisson’ (found hours earlier on hotels.com) around 11:30pm. The overnight manager checking me in gave me the scoop on Rostock, what once was a perennial All-Star in the Hanseatic League and more recently was the strategic coastal hub of the German Democratic Republic during its four decade run.

The next morning I strolled along the banks of the Warnow River, its shipyards and boat docks rousing my inner ancient mariner. I began imagining another life for myself… a boater’s life. Scott, the Boatsman. The man with a boat. It makes perfect sense why The Lonely Island went platinum with “I’m On A Boat” — they tapped into a subliminal maritime drive seemingly shared by the collective consciousness. The idea of being on a boat straight up rules, yet few can even fathom ever finding themselves on one. “Never thought I’d be on a boat,” muses T-Pain, speaking for all of us.

But it was a car I was after on this day. I had hatched a plan to rent one in Rostock and drop off in Düsseldorf, with a three-day road trip through northern/western Germany in between. First stop: Warnemünde, the seaside resort district of Rostock, known for their dozens of kiosks and cafes serving fischbrötchen (fish sandwiches). I ordered one with smoked halibut and asked the vendor if his inventory was freshly caught from the Baltic.

“No, it’s all empty out there. This fish is coming from Denmark and the Netherlands.”

Sad! But of course, the fishmongers of Warnemünde continue to monger their foreign fish, crafting the sandwiches that form the pistons of Warnemünde’s economic engine. God forbid there be consequences to extractive capitalism, no! The fish will simply keep coming from further and further afield until there is none left there, and there, and there…

DEBBIE DOWNER HAS ENTERED THE CHAT.

From Warnemünde I made stops in Wismar (home of Nosferatu!) and Lübeck (picturesque Medieval city whose gates are still standing 560 years later) before settling into Hamburg for the night, in time for a late dinner. You KNOW your boy hunted down a hamburger, for the plot.

I put in 30,000 steps the next day, starting with a loop around Hamburg city center, through the Speicherstadt and HafenCity, riding the sci-fi escalator to the top of the Elbphilharmonie. I took an elevator 250 ft up the spire of St. Nikolai Church — or at least, what was left after “Operation Gomorrah” destroyed the bulk of it. The spindly neo-Gothic tower is practically all that remains — charred black by the firestorm that consumed 60% of the city and killed 40,000 civilians — standing forevermore as a memorial to the horrors of war.

Germany, I love you, but… don’t start no shit there won’t be no shit!

Look, I could go on and on about this trip, but I’m itching to hit PUBLISH so you can listen to the new pod! Suffice it to say, the rest of the way was a breeze. Bremen, Osnabrück, Münster, Düsseldorf, train to Amsterdam, flight back to New York. I discovered the life and works of Felix Nussbaum, scrambled up the side of a 12th century castle, nearly overdosed on apfelkulchen, and saw the word ‘ausfahrt’ so many times it no longer seemed funny.

Not only did I feel completely safe as a Jew in Deutschland, but it struck me as slightly empowering to be traipsing through a country that only a short 80 years ago was eagerly genociding my ancestors. Maybe it was all the German men rocking below-the-knee jorts and Tevas, or the German kids I observed licking comically oversized lollipops in a brazen display of self-parody, but the vibes from North Rhineland to Western Pomerania were immaculate.

And with that I’ll say, auf wiedersehen!

Have you ever thought about where you’ll be when the world ends? What you’ll be doing when that blinding flash turns night to day, and it all fades to white?

I thought about it as I loitered in the dining area of the Hampton Inn at Düsseldorf Central Station, watching a uniformed frau dismantle the yoghurt1 parfait station while I sucked the marrow from a single-serving Nutella packet.

What if this was the precise moment the Four Horsemen came riding in (Labubu keychains dangling), and my final earthly act was greedily tonguing chocolate-smeared plastic crevices for stubborn morsels of emulsified palm oil?

At least, one could say, I died doing what I loved.

Mainlining Nutella, sure, but also…

EUROTRIPPING!!!!!!

I don’t need to tell you the prices in New York City have gotten out of hand. Not only is the RENT TOO DAMN HIGH, but since when did oat milk strawberry matchas start costing $9.50? And when is someone going to have the guts to introduce a raspberry matcha, goddamit??

For roughly the same price as treating my imaginary family to the worst seats in the house for Stranger Things on Broadway, I could fly nonstop to the Netherlands and bum around my ancestral continent for two weeks. So that’s exactly what I did to swan song this glorious summer.

I wrote about my love for Amsterdam when I was last there in January, so without further waxing poetic about bitterballen, I’ll just say two nights in that fair city is never enough… but that’s all I had if I wanted to maximize my time in Sweden with my good ol’ buddy Dan. And I wanted to! So before I could full understand exactly what that wet grey stuff is inside the bitterballen, I was back in the friendly skies on a plane to Copenhagen, then on a train strait-across to Sweden, and then in an automobile to the country’s southernmost city: Trelleborg.

Life on Earth can be reduced to a perpetual chain of probability events, billions of interlocking cause-and-effects, intersecting at trillions of angles, each interaction holding the potential to branch out into quintillions of possibilities. With each choice we make, each action we take, we shift the probabilities of whatever comes next.

What was the probability that Dan I would find ourselves in Toronto in the summer of 2011, wide-eyed in the creative prime of our late twenties, as invited guests of the CFC Worldwide Short Film Festival,2 selected to screen our respective creations?

You’d first have to analyze the probabilities that he and I would both independently defy our socially conditioned professional expectations to pursue entertainment careers, at that crucial moment in the infancy of this century that bore a revolution in independent digital production, allowing aspiring writers, actors, and directors to bypass the sclerotic studio system and self-produce/distribute films for eager audiences on Vimeo and YouTube — forming the bedrock layers for all that we now call “content.”

You’d then have to examine the moment when we each decided to submit to this random festival, the existence can be traced back along its own algorithm of probabilities. I was a marginally successful comedy writer, hanging on to spare credits as a contributor to The Onion, allowed to call myself a comedian thanks to early forays into stand-up, but never an “actor” — and most certainly not a “filmmaker.”

I had uploaded my first video to YouTube in January 2009 — a four-minute sketch about an imagined NFL writers room that went viral by the standards of the time, receiving over 200,000 views in 24 hours — produced under the auspices of a sports-comedy collective called 12 Angry Mascots. That early success gave us the shot of confidence to make the “pivot to video,” which saw us cranking out silly vidz to fill out our live shows and post to our channel, suddenly swelling with subscribers. It was one such short, the sole silent film in our canon and therefore the one that could most plausibly be considered “art,” that I sent on a lark to the fest. I don’t even recall how I heard about the damn thing…

Dan was a serious actor, starring in a short by his friend and frequent collaborator Jimmy, a serious director, as evidenced by his Bergman- and Tarkovsky-themed forearm tattoos. But Dan’s always been a funny man, too, and we bonded over a shared appreciation for the comedy of Tim & Eric and the general absurdities of the human condition.

We each must have met 100 other people during that festival weekend in Toronto, so what are the probabilities that we’re each the only person we’ve kept in touch with since? And how did it come to pass that our friendship has only strengthened over time, despite distance and… HEY WAIT A MINUTE didn’t I already write about Dan after our destination dude date in Barcelona in January? Well ok, let’s just cut to the chase then… which is…

DAN AND I HAVE STARTED A PODCAST.

You’re welcome, world. It’s called Brain Drain 90210 — and you’ll simply have to find out why, and who our mysterious third co-host is who helped us settle on that epicmaxxed title.

Maybe I’ll follow up with a fuller travelogue of my recent adventures, but for now, sit back and enjoy the smooth sounds of a Scott and a Swede in your RSS feed.

I am a 40 year-old man.

Ipso facto, I haven’t the faintest idea of what the Culture has anointed its “song of the summer” for this blessed two-thousand and twenty-fifth annum of Our Lord and Savior. Even ChatGPT is hesitant to provide a definitive answer when pressed, cravenly offering only “strong contenders”: Ordinary by Alex Warren (who?), Golden by HUNTR/X (what?), Manchild by Sabrina Carpenter (ok this person I’ve heard of), Half Full by ROYOrbital (this one I made up).

But if I were asked to name the one instantly recognizable, seemingly inescapable earworm that captures this midyear mood and most deservedly claims the title of Official Ultimate 2025 Summer Jam™, topping my personal charts is that lo-fi, downbeat banger whose chorus I’ve caught myself repeating — often joined in by others — and whose understated hook has become the anthem of our collective soul:

I’m Sorry to Hear (Traditional).

Phoning a buddy I haven’t spoken with since January and learning he recently lost his dog, the first and only pet he’s ever had…

“I’m sorry to hear.”

Reading about a hit-and-run in the New York Post and realizing the victim was the sister of a Sunday school classmate…

“I’m sorry to hear.”

Having drinks with a lifelong friend in town from California and getting the latest update on his father, slowly slipping away to Parkinson’s…

“I’m sorry to hear.”

Watching the Mets announcers take a break from game commentary to eulogize the team’s longtime medical director, whose two sons were high school classmates and whose warm smile — and comped tickets — I will forever fondly cherish…

“I’m sorry to hear.”

Running into a neighbor I hadn’t seen in ages — at first a delightful surprise, until discovering her reason for returning to her childhood home is because her mother’s cancer had returned, too…

“I’m sorry to hear.”

OG Rogo’s readers might remember my post-inauguration post from January, in which I outlined my new year’s resolution to turn off, tune out, and drop in. That is: turn off my phone’s incessant notifications and end the tyranny of distraction I had been willingly — if unwittingly — inviting into my life; tune out the relentless thrum of impotent information — the armada of sensationalized negativity and righteous anger borne on ceaseless currents of doom and despair — that parades as “the news,” pervades our society, and invades our psyche; and drop in to the only thing that ever truly matters — the present moment.

I’m pleased to report that I’ve mostly stuck with it.

Coming out of Hoffman last June, I realized I was long overdue in scheduling a sit down with my phone to have that sometimes difficult but always important DTR conversation. It was time to tell my phone that it is a tool for me to use — that I choose to use — and not some oppressive force that uses me. I even broached the idea of seeing other phones, or at least opening things up and getting kinky with a third (we nearly made a move on a Nokia flip).

Since that talk, screen time has been way down, and thanks to a little nugget I nibbled from one of the “Staff Picks” on my summer reading list — Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act — I’ve added a new mantra to my morning routine: “Sun light before screen light,” meaning I’m not checking my phone until I’ve first checked outside.

Redefining the relationship with my phone is still a work in progress and a daily practice, requiring steady reinforcements of mindful intention to power my will and rewire my brain. And I won’t lie: resisting the pull of my social feed — an algorithmic hydra of baseball card breaks, jam band memes, and snippets from podcasts with templatized, tatted hosts and names like “Giggles and Jiggles” or “Pro Tips with The Gooner Gang” — has been harder than finding moist roast turkey at a Jewish deli.1

Tuning out has been easier in one respect. With no TV or radio in my apartment and no newspapers delivered to my door, I have largely extricated myself from the vicious cycle of 24/7 news. Of course, as a construct long cemented over many decades and so deeply ingrained in social interaction, it’s impossible to avoid it all. But each time I belatedly catch wind of a story, it serves as a humbling reminder of just how utterly inconsequential and flagrantly disposable that piece of news actually was — and, by extension, all of it is.

What was surely heralded with glaring headlines and blaring graphics upon its breaking — undoubtedly hijacking the public discourse and gripping the world’s attention for the day, maybe half a day, maybe a few hours? — is now a whisper of a memory in the hive mind; a drop in the frothing ocean of all-caps, all-consuming news that broke before it and has broken since.

For example: apparently John Elway killed a guy? In a golf cart? I was apprised of this tragic accident that occurred back in April — and for which Elway was cleared of any wrongdoing following an investigation that concluded in July — only last week, when my buddy Eli made a passing reference to it as we walked by… a golf cart.

The only reason this story became national news in the first place is because of its proximity to a famous former athlete — which I feel sparking within me a digressive diatribe about celebrity culture that I’ll bottle up for another post. But considering that, aside from possessing remarkable prowess at throwing a football, John Elway is simply a person like anyone else, and moreover a person with whom 99.999% of the population cannot claim to be personally acquainted, how does knowledge of his heartbreaking misfortunate affect me whatsoever — other than to make me sad?

“I’m sorry to hear.”

As for dropping in, well, allow me to drop into this very moment with you, and share my thoughts immediately as they come to me:

I’m reflecting on what a wonderful day today has been. The very day itself… the sun, shining so brightly, shouting so loudly, “Look at me! Well, ok, don’t look directly at me, but look at me, figuratively! Admire my majesty, the splendor of my light, the cozy swaddling of my warmth, the awesome abundance that I bring with my energy — my photons that radiate your way from 93,000,000 miles away (just down the block, on the galactic map) — energy that plants use to photosynthesize and grow leaves and fruits and herbs and nuts, that is then transferred to you, that allows you to live and breathe! Energy that heats up and evaporates the water in our rivers and lakes and oceans, creating great storm clouds bursting with rain, that carries the water across the land and dumps it in our forests and farmland — effectively powering an entirely organic, globally connected irrigation system. Energy that —”

The sun has a lot to say, if anyone’s listening…

I was admiring the sun while sitting outside having lunch with my Uncle Steve. We talk about consciousness and the nature of reality and I shared what I’ve been gleaning from Thomas Campbell — a discovery I must credit to Spotify’s algorithm2 which gifted me his recent appearance on the Know Thyself podcast. I find Campbell’s “theory of everything” to be rather compelling, and I believe — as he does — that we are on the precipice of a paradigm shift as powerful as the Copernican revolution.

In a future post I will offer my HOT TAKE on Artificial Intelligence and the launch of my self-funded rebranding campaign,3 but for now, let’s get back to this wonderful day, and that wonderful conversation with my uncle over a delicious BBQ-chipotle egg sandwich, which was followed by a wonderful walk in Central Park with my friend Jason — who made the cross-borough schlep all the way from Windsor Freakin’ Terrace just to see me!4 We followed our curiosity into an impromptu game of spikeball — a first attempt for both of us! — our new shirtless friends Tom and Austin who kindly showed us the ropes. We weren’t bad for first timers, coming back from a 4-point deficit to get ahead by one, only to lose by two!

I even captured the very moment Jason and I learned how to play on my Ray-Ban Metas:

After stops for pistachio matcha lattes and banana pudding cookies, I picked up the dogs and walked Jason to his train. On the way back to my apartment I met a woman named Teardrop standing outside of It’s Sugar who asked if I would buy her something from inside. I was more than happy to oblige, as Teardrop picked out some cotton candy-flavored bubble gum and this ICEE Snack Bar candy set:

And now I’m heading downtown to Quad Cinema to see the movie Or Something, which I only learned about last night after seeing the trailer before a different movie at Quad Cinema, Checkpoint Zoo. WHAT A MOVIE. If you like animals, and stories about human resiliency and selflessness and love, you will like it.

BUT BEFORE I LEAVE — a final bit of good news to share…

I have a game out! It’s called The Good News Is… and it was produced by Eric Poses at All Things Equal (of Loaded Questions fame). I recorded 200 “good news/bad news” prompts, and it’s up to you to fill-in-the-blanks with an answer, that will either match another player’s answer, or be chosen as the favorite answer of the round. It’s fun for almost the whole family (ages 13+), and if you want to check it out, you can buy it direct (with $5 off, free shipping, and a free puzzle thrown in when you order before September 1st) by clicking right here. Or here. Click anywhere you want, really.

Jeremy Claud was another, and the first interview subject in my long-gestating podcast project “12/4/84.”

Brett Zuckerman is yet one more, and the subject of this second installment, hot off the presses — despite being recorded in April.

I had invited Brett to meet me at a vacant Christopher Street storefront which my friends at Bleecker Trading had loaned me to stage a vintage pop-up. Over the course of that rainy Friday afternoon, Brett and I ran the gamut of conversation — with an occasional customer interrupting every now and again — from our New York metro area upbringings, summer camp experiences, Mets and Phish fandom, 9/11, dead popes, first loves and sexual awakenings, Saturday Night Live, the impacts of social media, Bar Mitzvahs, and what it means to truly become an adult.

It turned out we had much more than a birthday in common, and as the similarities eerily stacked up, it occurred to me that we might be cosmic twins — a case study in parallel lives, separated by a few simple twists of fate and perhaps the ultimate sliding door moment in any young Jewish man’s journey: the decision to go to law school.

Big thanks to Brett for taking not only the time to sit down with me, but for his thoughtfulness in bringing a pile of nostalgic goodies for the first-ever 40 Year-Old Podcaster show & tell. Even bigger thanks to Brett’s brother Ross for connecting us in the first place. And special thanks to The Surfboard Six whose music appears in this episode (“Metrograph” instrumental from their new album New York City Baby).

Ripping a 1989 Topps pack live at the shop, on the pod

On December 16, 2013, a jury was unable to reach a verdict on charges of first-degree burglary and grand theft.

On June 16, 2014, a different jury found him guilty.

On September 26, 2014, a judge sentenced him to 17 years in California state prison.

On November 26, 2024, the artist was released.

The artist is Gerjuan “Ge-Cue” Harmon. He was born an artist, in Detroit, and despite a fractured childhood in South Central LA that left him orphaned at three years old and a challenged adolescence in Burbank that saw him shuttling between foster care and juvie — even despite serving 12.5 of those 17 years — he never stopped being an artist.

In fact, it was while in prison, after recharging his creative energies and reconnecting with his bohemian spirit, that he experienced his most prolific artistic streak — yielding dozens of works using improvised tools and “found” canvases and materials, many considered contraband by the COs who monitored his every move (but looked the other way once his rare talent was recognized).

Gerjuan sketched, etched, painted, sculpted, collaged, imagined, manifested. He was commissioned to design graphical informational posters for fellow inmates and paint murals for the yard. He sent his work out into the world, cold-mailing his precious art to entertainers, creative directors, entrepreneurs, professors — anyone whose image flicked across the television in his cell or the projector of his mind that he admired and felt inspired to make a connection.

I was one such person, who in December 2023 received a mysterious package in the mail with a return address label from “California Men’s Colony — San Luis Obispo,” containing an impressively decorated wooden plank and a three-page, hand-written letter from the artist.

His unsolicited outreach and gifting of a piece of his very soul touched me at the core of my own, sparking a correspondence and subsequent friendship over the past year. Recently, I had the privilege of visiting Gerjuan at his home in Toluca Lake — not far from the streets of his troubled youth and the scene of his life-changing arrest — where he’s balancing civilian reintegration after more than a decade of incarceration with the full-time rigors of film school as a 41-year-old first-year cinematography student.

Gerjuan proudly arranged his portfolio on his bed for me to admire: dozens of pieces he had managed to send to friends and family on the outside for safekeeping, each a conduit for vicarious liberation while his body remained in bondage. One particular series caught my attention due to its cryptic numerical notations on the back. Gerjuan explained:

I was teaching art at the prison, and there was a lot of debate going on — I don’t remember if it was just between us at the facility or the art world in general — about what constitutes “Black Art.” My take was: just because I’m Black doesn’t mean I have to portray Black people in every one of my paintings. If I remade Da Vinci’s The Last Supper with Armenians speaking Chinese, it’s still Black Art, because it was made by Black hands.

It was also around the time of the 30th anniversary of Basquiat’s death [August 12, 2018]. So to honor him and his legacy, I committed to making a new piece of art every day for 20 straight days. I called the series 2030:1888 — 20 for the days, 30 for the years since Basquiat passed, ‘18 and ‘88 for the 30 years in between [1988-2018].

This series is just a small sampling of the many “miracles” Gerjuan produced and salvaged — works that, by all rights, should never have made it beyond his prison walls. And yet, here they are: resting in a spartan Toluca Lake bedroom, quietly awaiting their inevitable recognition by horn-rimmed critics and flowing-linened gallerists of the international Art World — once his full story is finally told and shared.

In the meantime, Gerjuan continues to struggle. The film academy he’s been attending since January has been rinsing him for every nickel he’s got — and he hasn’t got much. Getting by on Dollar Tree groceries, city buses, and the kindness of friends and family (albeit, kindness that’s straining under the weight of his dire straits), he’s now relying on the GoFundMe we launched this month, and the sale of his precious art to make ends meet and fund his capstone film project. Just this past week, he was forced to cough up another $500 for an insurance certificate at the eleventh hour of his final shoot — the latest in the string of hidden costs that have hampered his creativity, dampened his spirit, and in his darkest moments, tested his sanity.

Even with you giving me money, financial aid giving me money, I took out a loan, and I still can’t cover it all. Those [expletives] at the school STILL got their hand out? I don’t understand. What is there that I DON’T have to pay extra for? $25 here. $25 there. And then they hit you back, “Oh you didn’t fill this form out” — that’s another $45. And the school doesn’t cover any of it. That’s where the frustration lies, and the more I get my mind on that, the less enthused I get about it all. They got me in a vice grip.

The art speaks for itself. His story speaks for itself. If either moves you, please consider supporting Gerjuan here. If you’d like to purchase any of his art or request more information about any of the pieces in the video, please email the artist directly.

New to this story? Catch up with the first post and Episode 1 of our podcast RELEASE: Life Beyond Bars. Follow Gerjuan on Instagram @crushederasers.