Checking On Youse

Or yinz, or y'all, or all y'all, etc.

Lake Michigan today

January is not an easy month for many people. The lack of daylight in the Northern Hemisphere, the aftereffects of holiday celebrations or lack thereof, and the colder temperatures can all sort of collude to create a depressed haze that settles on many folks. Oh, and that’s not even incorporating the fact that some people have to return to jobs they don’t really like after vacations that seemed far too short.

Something about the change of the year puts the squeeze on weeping scabs until they burst open and can no longer be ignored. I have noticed that this month seems to be when a lot of folks begin to attempt to address maladies of the mental, spiritual and physical sort. That’s a good thing, although one cannot ignore the pain that goes into the decision to change one’s life.

I quit drinking and the other fun stuff years ago, and what got me there was not, to put it mildly, a goddamn beautiful picnic in the park. But whatever gets you there is whatever gets you there. It’s hard not to be grateful for it sometimes, even when I feel anger or shame or guilt or regret. Everything unfolds as it does, and we can assign meaning to it or we can just let it ride.

So I’m sitting here in Chicago, sober and annoyed and worried and grateful and in a bit of a mood, with no booze in my house because that’s best for me, particularly on any day that ends with “y,” and I want to check on alla youse, not because I have any solution to what may ail ye, but just to say “hey.”

In my sacred homeland of New Jersey, and in southeastern PA, and some other places too, there is a practice of saying "youse" or "yuhs" when chatting to a group of humans or other sentient beings. It's the equivalent of "y'all" or, if we are being even more inclusive, "all y'all."

Data tells me about 15% of youse are based in California. It’s a particularly devastating day for many readers in Southern California, where I lived for years and where I still have many friends. Throughout the day, it’s become increasingly difficult to focus on anything unrelated to the health and safety of people there. I hope you are as well as can be expected, and I am keeping you in my thoughts, for whatever that’s worth.

Today is the 4th anniversary of the loss of a friend to many in the weird wider Los Angeles comedy community, Neil Mahoney. Neil was a well-known TV and film editor, director, artist, and human, Emmy-nominated for his work on “Key & Peele” and worthy of a Nobel Prize especially invented for the person on Earth who most loved the Canadian cult TV series “Letterkenny.”

Neil was very sarcastic and very funny and very generous and very many other things. Today, in the waning light of an icy Chicago day, I am hanging out with his memorial candle and a letter opener from his memorial (we had the chance to pick one of his many antique letter openers and knives.) It remains the memorial with the best food and music in my lived experience thus far. I would be remiss if I did not mention that

Paul F Tompkins

closed it out with a banger of a live musical performance. Also, there were donuts. I mean, come the fuck on. It was great.

Neil lived in Silver Lake, and I’m thinking of how well he decorated that little home today, of how much his landlords adored him, and of how many friends he had. I’m thinking of writing his obituary with his best friend, Jonah Ray Rodrigues, a wonderful young man (he’s two years my junior, and thus a wee lad.)

I’m thinking of Los Angeles, where Neil’s Cape Cod-bred Irish-Swedish ass somehow seemed perfectly at home.

Los Angeles is a wonderful place. It goes through a lot. It gets through a lot.

After Neil died, many of us made donations to Los Angeles Family Housing in his name. They do a a beautiful job helping unhoused neighbors find shelter. I think they are going to be busier than ever in the coming months. If you feel moved to donate in Neil Mahoney’s memory, or just because you’d like to help that great city out, here is the link.

I also recommend SELAH as a fantastic place to send some money to help the unhoused in Los Angeles. They do excellent work in the community.

Anyway. Here we all are. I’ve got a book project out on submission, and a half-hour comedy pilot out there somewhere in the ether, and who knows if anyone will like these amalgamations of words enough to want to make them available to a wider audience? Art is such a fucking Hail Mary pass, nearly every time.

I was too tired to do a fitness class today. I guess I should call my full-time job a “day job,” but some people call it a “paycheck job” and other people call it a “gratitude job.” I don’t know what to call mine, but I’ve had it for years and I try to be good at it, and good to the people with whom I work.

Besides the aforementioned stuff, I’m working on one project that interests me not at all, and another one that interests me quite a lot. I am fortunate to have work at all, and I know that.

For years, I made work my Higher Power. It is not my Higher Power. It is a job, or jobs. The more I treat it as such, with a practicality and pragmatism devoid of romantic sentiment, the more it shrinks to occupy the right-sized space in my life.

What matters is our people and our other animals, the love we give them and the love they return. We don’t know how much time any of us will have. Sometimes we have fair warning about the end, or at least a solid indication of it. Sometimes, as with Neil, we fall asleep, warm and comfortable after a fun couple days with best friends, and simply never wake up.

I’m so happy he got that. If he had to go, he deserved that peaceful end. I’m so happy we got him for as long as we did.

Say hi to your friend whom you haven’t spoken to in a minute, just because. Just to do it.

Thanks for being here.

Love,

Sara

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Jan. 16 show in Chicago: CLASS! with Sara Benincasa & Chad the Bird

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