Welcome to April, 2024

The Search For A New Routine + The Top Jokes of Last Month! + New Podcast Episodes & Recommendations!

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

Table of Contents:

• April Letter From African America:

  • The Search For A New Routine

• Last Month Right Now!:

  • The Top Jokes of Last Month!

• Stuff You Might’ve Missed:

  • You Are The Genre Episodes + Text Interview + Sci-Fi & more!

• Current Obsessions:

  • TV, film, audio, and text recs!

• Somethin’ Else:

  • My Epic Defense Of Coffee

• Song of the Month:

  • AMERICAN REQUIEM by Beyoncé

Letter From African America (April, 2024)

Dear readers,

Welcome to Spring! I never think the winter affects me until the sun slowly reveals itself between intervals of April rain and I start thinking, “Damn, I coulda been living like this?!”

Ironically, my favorite part of March was going into a dark room alone to watch Dune Part Two in theaters. The pandemic takes the blame for movie-going becoming a rarer indulgence (despite it being my favorite thing to do).

Well… truthfully, the pandemic and my dog, Spock, share the blame.

Here he is playing dominoes… So cute, right?

BUT, he also has horrible separation anxiety. Which means a great deal of planning a coordination has to take place between my spouse and I before we go outside to do anything — like go play dominoes with friends.

Sure, we have a cool spy camera that watches the little guy and spits out treats. But that also means we have to watch the little guy through a futuristic machine that shoots out miniature peanut butter cubes whenever he’s being a “good boy.”

What a life this dog has! I mean, there may be a God watching over us, but he certainly never tosses down snacks!

So, now that you know all of that, I’m sure you understand that when Paul Atreides finally mastered the art of riding a giant sand worm named “grandfather,” in Dune Part Two — I FELT THAT!

And speaking of mastery, I spent much of last month trying to figure out how to get into a consistent groove with my writing and day-to-day activities while adding on new things like working part time at my local independent bookstore Taylor & Co. Books (owned and operated by

Andrew E. Colarusso

who I have interviewed in the newsletter!), navigating top secret new projects, and organizing the production process for my new You Are The Genre podcast (which takes more work than you’d think).

I had a pretty good system going last year. Which is crazy because of all of the wedding planning, striking, and grieving that was going on at the time. Perhaps the adrenaline rush of all that is what fueled me.

One highlight of working a few days a week at your friendly neighborhood independent bookstore is that you get to have to have a “staff pick.” Mine currently highlights my favorite book, The Intuitionist:

Which reminds me… I’ve totally been slacking on my own personal reading goals (I’m THIS close to finishing one of the books in my list of Books On My Shelf That I Hope To Finish In 2024)!

Luckily, a new groove has emerged and though it will likely have to adapt to new things by 2025, I think I’ll be sticking to it this year.

And I good new groove is emerging for you all as well.

Best,

-Tim & Spock

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 March, 2024!

THURSDAY: 3-7-2024

• President Joe Biden is addressing the nation tonight at the State of the Union. And sources say he’ll be testing out a new catchphrase: “I ain’t scared of you motherf*ckers.”

  [read the other jokes from that week here]

WEDNESDAY: 3-13-2024

• Roku hackers breached 15,000 accounts and are selling them online. There’s apparently a big market for people who want to start wherever you left off watching reruns of Living Single.

  [read the other jokes from that week here]

MONDAY: 3-18-2024

• Sacramento will soon give low-income Black and Native American families $725 a month, no strings attached. Possibly related: String sales have skyrocketed in white communities surrounding Sacramento.

  [read the other jokes from that week here]

I’d also like to shout out the hilarious

Alexandria Love

who wrote 25 jokes for the newsletter all of last week!

Here’s one of my favorite jokes of hers from that run:

• Disney announced this week that they are considering a reboot of the Pirates of The Caribbean franchise. Unfortunately, the other movies already covered all the historically accurate pirates, so this trilogy will be focusing on a millennial who illegally downloads a copy of How Stella Got Her Groove Back.

Check out more highlights from her week here:

And subscribe to her Great! newsletter!

stuff you might’ve missed

• Listen to the latest four episodes of You Are The Genre!

  Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever else you get podcasts!

  

  

  • [Rob Schulte] Is The Genre: How ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’ forged Rob Schulte’s path from high school theater to professional podcasting.

  • [Freddie Nunez] Is The Genre: How skateboarding to Blink-182 led to Freddie Nunez's current country sound.

  • [Molly McAleer] Is The Genre: How comedy, a grandfather who wrote mystery novels, and growing up in a full house helped TV writer and podcaster Molly McAleer's embrace her own genre.

  • [Sonia Denis] Is The Genre: How a childhood love of acting guided Sonia Denis away from the lucrative world of coding and onto a roller coaster of entertainment, including standup, TV writing and acting in Marvel’s ‘Ironheart.’

  And paid subscribers can listen ahead to my interview with Zach Cherry — from the amazing sci-fi series Severance!

  [Zach Cherry] Is The Genre

• After a brief hiatus,

  Alternate Timeline
  (my alternate newsletter dedicated to sci-fi short story writing) is back in action! And my latest story Lunar Self is available for you to cruelly judge HERE!

  

• I made my triumphant return to the Smash Boom Best podcast to defend dragonflies!

• Another cool

  Alternate Timeline
  read is my TEXT MESSAGE interview with
  Ben Holbrook
  HERE!

  

• Free subscribers now have access to my EMAIL interview with

  Fareeha Khan
  ! We talk about the hustle economy, artistic freedom, getting paid to do improv, vague hope for the future & more!

  An [EMAIL] Conversation with Fareeha Khan

• Listen to the latest four episodes of Yub Nub the Star Wars podcast that I co-host with Jim Fagan and Greg Iwinski!

• I was a guest on the Survivor focused podcast, Merge Boot, A Survivor Podcast talking about the latest episode of Survivor with hosts Joel Edmiston and Cody Crain! It was an absolute blast and may have actually made me a Survivor fan!

current obsessions

SOUNDS:

• ALBUM: Cowboy Carter by Beyoncé

  The whole record feels like a splash of cool water, and it’s amazing how every track makes me think about ten things at once. It’s referential, aspirational, and genre bending in the best of ways.

• PODCAST: CHINWAG “ASK THE PHILOSOPHER! PT 1”

  This isn’t my first time talking about CHINWAG, hosted by actor Paul Giamatti and author/philosopher Stephen Asma, but it’s another great example of what makes the show so great. Somehow this single episode explained the basics of philosophy in a way I didn’t know was possible.

• SONG: “The Mess” by Calvero & Tiffany Topol

  Calvero (a.k.a. Gabe Liebowitz) is one of the most beloved musicians in Chicago. And I recently learned of this new song of his in collaborating with Tiffany Topol that seems to (maybe purposefully) have excellent A Goofy Movie vibes! I also highly recommend falling down the rabbit hole of Calvero’s TikToK!

• PODCAST: House of R

  A show dedicated to deep dives of film & TV franchises, Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson’s House of R never disappoints! And this episode about the new ‘X-Men ‘97’ series was just what I needed to fully digest this feast of a show.

• MORE MUSIC!:

  • Other albums I’ve been listening to lately include…

    • Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space) & Blowout Comb by Digable Planets

    • Montgomeryland by Wes Montgomery

    • Mingus Ah Um & Blues & Roots by Charles Mingus

SIGHTS:

Follow me on Letterboxd here!

• TELEVISION: Quiet On The Set: The Dark Side Of Kids TV (2024)

  This is more of an “important watch” than “current obsession.” Having worked as a writer in children’s television — specifically at Nickelodeon — I got numerous texts from friends asking “Have you seen this?!” And I’m grateful that I finally have. It’s devastating learning about the experiences of some of the children on these sets as well as the experiences of some of the writers and crew members working under incredibly cruel demands. When I started at Nickelodeon, it was at this surreal point where myself and many of my fellow staff writers were suddenly working at the network we grew up watching and adoring as children. I do believe a great deal of things changed by the time I started working there — primarily because our culture has changed. Though, of course, there may be experiences I’m simply unaware of. Regardless, this documentary is an important warning of the many dangers out there for children — and should make us all take a moment to re-evaluate the things we laughed at and ignored in the past.

• FILM: Jackie’s Back! (1999)

  This is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen! I watched in in preparation for my appearance in an upcoming episode of Molly McAleer’s Mother May I Sleep With Podcast podcast. And in the process, couldn’t believe how unheralded this gem of a film is. It’s making me want to do as much research on writer/directer Robert Townsend as I possibly can. How is it possible that this one mane made Meteor Man, The Five Heartbeats, B.A.P.S. and this — which is currently available to stream o Tubi.

• TELEVISION: X-Men ‘97(2024)

  This… this is how you do it.

• FILM: Big Eyes (2014)

  I had the pleasure of seeing this film for the first time at an event orchestrated by

  Letters From African America
  supporter,
  Jan Lisa Huttner
  and it’s an absolutely stunning piece of work.

• YOUTUBE: Sci-Fi Storytelling with March Bernardin & Beau DeMayo (2023)

  The House of R podcast made me aware of this conversation between Marc Bernardin and Beau DeMayo — two working Black genre writers in the TV, comic book and animation space. It’s a nice watch for unpacking the ways sci-fi can deal with matters of race, gender, and sexual orientation.

• TELEVISION: Shōgun (2024 miniseries)

  You know… it’s just nice knowing a complicated, political, historical fiction series like this can still get made. I also talked about it in a recent episode of Yub Nub!

• TELEVISION/FILM: STEVE (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces (2024)

  Hey, the title explains it all!

• FILM: Dune Part Two (2024)

  Just a fun time at the movies!

READS:

• ARTICLE: The Future of ‘Star Trek’: From ‘Starfleet Academy’ to New Movies and Michelle Yeoh, How the 58-Year-Old Franchise Is Planning for the Next Generation of Fans (VARIETY)

  

  Neil Jamieson for Variety

somethin’ else

Video proof of my defense of coffee vs tea has been released! I always have a blast at Uptown Showdown — but somehow always manage to regret what I decided to wear on camera.

song of the month

Again, I think the new Beyoncé album is easily one of the greatest of all time, and the opening track AMERICAN REQUIEM is what sealed the deal for me. It gave me the same “woah” feeling of listening to Abbey Road for the first time. It’s a tone piece for the record, but so much more. The harmonies make me think of Queen. The organ makes me think of Parliament/Funkadelic. The squeals make me think of Prince. And filtered through Beyoncé, it’s all something new and fresh.

🎶GOODBYE TO WHAT HAS BEEN / A PRETTY HOUSE THAT WE NEVER SETTLED IN / A FUNERAL FOR FAIR-WEATHER FRIENDS / I AM THE ONE TO CLEANSE ME OF MY FATHER’S SINS🎶

Until next time, remember YOU ARE THE GENRE!

PAST LETTERS:

December, 2022 / February, 2023 / March, 2023 / April, 2023 / May, 2023 / June, 2023 / July, 2023 / August, 2023 / September, 2023 / October, 2023 / November, 2023 / December, 2023 / January, 2024 / February, 2024 / March, 2024