071 - Rogo's 25 for '25... Arriving Well Into '26

Please cut some slack for a guy still processing '97...

After spending the first two weeks of 2026 catching up on everyone else’s thoughtful recaps of 2025, I decided I wanted in on The World’s Largest Self-Reflective Circle Jerk™ (brought to you by The Hedonic Content Treadmill).

I was all set to add my icing to the Internet’s oogie cookie, when out of the blue, 2016 started trending, and I suddenly had a new round of content to catch up on…

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.