✉️: Welcome to March (2025)

Creative Hours, Top Jokes Of February, Podcasts, Interviews, and Recommendations!

— This is a longer post than usual, so if you’re reading this via email, you might want to hop on over the web version here to read the full thing! —

Paid subscribers (typically) get early access to this monthly update but since this one is coming out later in the month than usual its available to everyone everywhere all at once!

Table of Contents:

• March Letter From African America:

  • Creative Hours

• Last Month Right Now!

• Stuff You Might’ve Missed:

  • You Are The Genre, Yub Nub, and Thoughts On Conan O’Brien

• Current Obsessions

• Somethin’ Else

• Song of the Month

  • Where Did The Night Go by Gil Scott-Heron

Letter From African America (March 2025)

Dear readers,

What a time… What a time… What a time…

As you well know, I do these updates partly for you, but mostly for myself, stemming from some bizarre need to publicly acknowledging what’s going on in my life and the greater culture. And, boy, do we all have a lot going on.

I usually write these at the tale end of the previous month or head start of the next, but since this is later than either of those I have to do some heavier mental time travel.

The good stuff:

• I have a big project coming out this summer that’s getting nearer and nearer to completion.

• I’m finally doing more standup in an earnest way (and actually enjoying it).

• The many episodes dissecting genre and creative pathways on my You Are The Genre podcast have, at last, blossomed into a personal confidence in my work that had been wavering greatly.

• I actually feel like I’m reaching a form of (creative) balance.

The bad stuff:

• I mean… have you read the news lately?

• The economic crunch is devastatingly real right now (and I’ve experienced the great recession!).

• There’s so much going on, so little time to deal with it, and any moment that I’m not hustling or occupied with some sort of task fills me with guilt and dread.

That all being typed, it does feel like the good stuff will eventually conquer the bad stuff.

One of the great highlights of February was that I got to borrow a friend’s car. I really enjoy driving. I do some of my best concentrated thinking while focusing on the road. And it was great not having to time my days around trains for a while. You know… getting hit with that sweet feeling of independence and agency that America is always selling.

One of these driving adventures led me to the Brooklyn Museum for its Black History Month edition of First Saturdays. And, to my surprise, who did I see, center stage, conducting the dance floor with an epic DJ set? None other than

mamoudou n’diaye

(a former You Are The Genre guest):

I keep going back to this thought of living, perhaps, too many lives over the years. I’ve had an insane number of jobs and have cobbled together so many crafts into a safety boat while the old systems crumble. And now, well into my thirties, moments like this—unexpectedly seeing a friend I made in the standup scene, on stage for something not comedy related—fill me with joy and awe. Like, how the hell is this moment even happening?

Part of that joy us a ripple effect of the pandemic. I’m still getting back into the social system of things. Doing standup again, for instance, requires me getting re-aligned with the scene at hand. I love the friction of a city. The chance in encounters that lead to other chance encounters, that lead to new friends, or new enemies, or new jobs.

The creative balance I feel at the moment is fickle, but in its core is the knowledge, without the shadow of doubt, of what I’m capable of, yet don’t always have the hours to tackle.

Time = money.

Money = time.

Art is the symbol that you’ve been told means “equals.”

Let’s see what such frictions brings us in the months ahead.

Best,

-Tim

last month right now! (best jokes)

Each weekday, I email five jokes and subscribers vote on the ones that make them laugh the most! Here are your favorite jokes from February 2025!

WEDNESDAY: 2-5-2025

• Workers at NASA have been told to scrub key terms and mentions of groups from its website including indigenous people and women. Ironically, leaving nothing on the site except for the lyrics to Gil Scott-Heron’s “Whitey On The Moon.”

[read the other jokes from that week here]

FRIDAY : 2-14-2025

• Roku crossed the $1 billion threshold in platform revenue. Unsurprisingly, none of that money is going toward fixing Roku City’s crumbling infrastructure.

  

  Wait, actually can we zoom in there?… Yeah, that appears to be a Roku Bernie Sanders giving a speech about it.

  

[read the other jokes from that week here]

FRIDAY : 2-21-2025

• Mitch McConnell won’t seek re-election. Instead, he’ll do some soul searching. Literally. “I know I left it here somewhere…”

[read the other jokes from that week here]

WEDNESDAY: 2-26-2025

• Kathleen Kennedy, the longtime president of Lucasfilm, is expected to step down at the end of 2025. Per Lucasfilm tradition, she’ll be ceremoniously frozen in carbonate and shipped and stacked in the mysterious warehouse from Raiders Of The Lost Ark.

  

[read the other jokes from that day here]

NOTE: Kathleen Kennedy later confirmed that she is not retiring.

stuff you might’ve missed

PODCAST: You Are The Genre

• Here are the You Are The Genre episodes that we released in February!

  • I spoke with comedian and TV writer

    Alexandria Love
    about the many lives comedians live and how she bridged her early love of the comedy genre into action as an adult.

    [Alexandria Love] Is The Genre

  • Storyteller Shannon Cason joined me to discuss fusing his early paths in marketing and rap with his current award-winning career as a storyteller with The Moth and Snap Judgment.

    [Shannon Cason] Is The Genre

  • Mark Bazer spoke to me from his day job about how his early love of comedy bridged into his career as a newspaper columnist and influenced his decision to host the long-running Chicago staple, The Interview Show — which now has a podcast called… you guessed it: The Interview Show with Mark Bazer.

    [Mark Bazer] Is The Genre

  • And I spoke to novelist Micaiah Johnson about following through with her early passion for books and science fiction.

    [Micaiah Johnson] Is The Genre

• POST: OVERTHINKING The Increasing Relevance Of Conan O'Brien

  OVERTHINKING The Increasing Relevance Of Conan O'Brien

• PODCAST: Yub Nub

  Yub Nub
  , the Star Wars focused podcast that I co-host with Jim Fagan and Greg Iwinski is back! Check out our episodes about Skeleton Crew!

current obsessions

SOUNDS

• ALBUM: “I’m New Here” by Gil Scott-Heron

  A graphic novel that I’ll mention later in the post inclined me check out the Gil Scott-Heron’s final album, I’m New Here, released the year before his death. Rare artists have a final project that lives up to the expectations set by their previous incarnations, but some real experimental magic is captured here, not unlike Johnny Cash’s American IV: The Man Comes Around. But, even with that comparison, it stands out that I’m Still Here is not Scott-Heron putting his own spin on other people’s words. It’s him, in full force, making an assessment of his time spent on this planet.

• PODCAST: C-SPAN: Lectures In History

  My passion for “boring” content has expanded into the realm of C-SPAN audio. I used to love C-SPAN back when television was simple, and it was just a few buttons away. This podcast is, for the most part, the audio version of a video series you can watch on the site, but sometimes there are audio exclusives and the experience allows you to join students in college classrooms to hear lectures on topics ranging from the American Revolution to 9-11.

SIGHTS:

• FILM: The Annihilation of Fish

  My spouse surprised me with tickets to see The Annihilation of Fish starring James Earl Jones and directed by Charles Burnett. Sitting in the theater, I was immediately transported 1999, the year of its completion. An added layer to the experience is that James Earl Jones simply reminds me of my beloved grandpa (or pawpaw, as I call him) who passed away a few years back. Something about this film gave me a movie-going first. My nostalgia for James Earl Jones melded with my nostalgia for my actual grandfather. It’s a strange mix that I imagine hits anyone mourning a specific loss at some point.

• TV: Clean Slate

  I typically avoid promoting things on the smiley face service unless it really stands out, and by golly, with Clean Slate, the great comedian George Wallace has made a series that stands out for being progressive, hilarious, and heartfelt—a really difficult combo to crack.

• DOCUMENTARY: Steve Jobs: The Man In The Machine

  I love a reminder that there are no heroes. Hard to tell if we’ll ever have mythical figures like Steve Jobs again but that’s probably a good thing. There’s always a downside to such stature, and this documentary shines a light on how deep that well goes.

• TV: Have I Got News For You

  This Roy Wood Jr. hosted show has quickly been added to my weekly news diet. Watching Roy, Amber Ruffin, and

  Michael Ian Black
  comedically, anxiously, and authentically process the news each week is a nice lil’ treat.

• FILM: The Conversation

  The Criterion Channel app has a cool compilation of films under the theme of surveillance and I’ve been playing The Conversation in the background a lot while doing other tasks. Often, I’m left wondering why we so rarely see movies like this. Also, the score for this film was clearly an inspiration for the score of Severance.

• TV: Common Side Effects

  The best shows are the ones where it’s impossible tell the ins and outs of how they were made. At some point, you just have to succumb to their majesty. That’s how I feel about Common Side Effects. There are moments in this animated series that are so real in either its funniness or drama that I’m angry no live action project has ever captured it. And its a masterclass in characterization and structure.

READS:

• GRAPHIC NOVEL: In Search of Gil Scott-Heron by Thomas Mauceri

  Now, I didn’t get to finish this book because a customer at the bookstore I’m at part-time (Taylor & Co Books) purchased it, sensing my enjoyment, but I’m confident it lands the plane well. It’s a wonderful blend of text and images that brings context to the life of Gil Scott-Heron through the lens of journalist Thomas Mauceri who was meant to interview him only to discover he’d passed.

  

somethin’ else

Click to explore a random segment of the newsletter.

song of the month

🎶 And time to start up again / Pulling on my socks now / Should have been asleep / When I was sitting there drinking beer / And trying to start another letter to you / Don't know how many times I dreamed to write again last night / Should've been asleep when I turned the stack of records over and over / So I wouldn't be up by myself / Where did the night go?🎶

Until next time, remember YOU ARE THE GENRE!

✉️(PAST LETTERS)✉️