One night last week, I awoke, startled, just before dawn. A disturbing thought had flashed in my mind:
the Red Room from Twin Peaks, only it’s the set for Jerry Springer or Maury where they resolve family disputes with people who talk all weird like that
Horrifying — an awful premise, lame and obvious, yet the flash lingered in the corners of my eyes, diffuse, like the sunrise slowly waxing over the lake outside the window. I had become Agent Cooper decoding a dream, only my fixation had no hidden meaning at all. Unable to sleep, I got up to write it down, hoping that committing this insipid thought to paper might help to purge it from my brain. I could barely see my pen marks in the pre-dawn gloom; I just had to trust my scrawls were there.
Afterward, I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I went for a morning run to clear my head. I’d never gotten up early to run before. Health has never been enough of a motivating factor for me — this time, I needed to find something to get rid of other than weight.
During a recent session, my therapist asked me, “Do you ever have intrusive thoughts?” There is a clinical definition for this (though pop-psych articles, sadly, do not address the intrusion of bad sketch premises):
Intrusive thoughts are thoughts that seem to become stuck in the mind. They can cause distress, as the nature of the thought may be upsetting. They may also reoccur frequently, which can make the concern worse.
These thoughts, however, are just thoughts. They seemingly appear out of nowhere, cause anxiety, but have no meaning in your life. They’re not warning messages or red flags. They’re simply thoughts.
They’re simply thoughts. Is this helpful? Everything I think is, simply, a thought, yet some thoughts are fully formed, presented in the theatre of my mind with distinct voices and elaborate staging, while others are scrambled letters, words hastily graffitied onto my cortex and washed away within an instant. Some are mundane; few are cheerful. These days, most of my thoughts are grim. Just thinking about the world right now naturally causes distress. Do these really qualify as “intrusive thoughts”?
Sometimes I don’t like to be stoned because there’s a chance I might freak out. When that happens, a malignant monologue will form in my brain, dealing a constant stream of thoughts that are, more or less, intrusive. Recently, I got out of bed in the middle of the night to transcribe such a torrent:
I am weird. I am strange. I do not deserve to have my life under control. How could I make a living for myself? Forget being famous — even being noted for your work. That is for people who belong in this world. People who have their shit together, or, if they don’t, are at least interesting about it. You don’t have your shit together — you’re a fuck-up, a failure — and all you have to show for it is a resume line under “Extracurriculars.”
You have never done anything of worth. Your compassion will never be enough to compensate for your annoying disposition.
You should try being better. That’s your eternal goal — the meaning of life: as long as you live, you’ll long for a life worth living.
These. Thoughts. Are. Toxic. Go to bed!
Not every decision in life has to be made at the edge of an ice floe. You can do things — make mistakes — with the stakes still low. Everything is not always This or Nothing Else.
This is a recurring instance for me — self-flagellation mixed with fruitless attempts at making some profound sense of them. It is difficult to read these words now, mostly because they’re so mean, but also because these intrusive thoughts aren’t present during 99% of my waking hours. Still, every so often, the thoughts intrude, and even the passive act of thinking forms a dungeon from which I can’t escape.
The pandemic, of course, has intruded on every aspect of our lives. This essay by Tara Haelle talks about a concept called surge capacity, “a collection of adaptive systems — mental and physical — that humans draw on for short-term survival in acutely stressful situations.” In the piece, she notes the ways the pandemic has, for most of us, stretched our surge capacity to the limit, to the point where we are experiencing a sort of prolonged, collective trauma. And that’s before we consider the other intrusions in the news. Whenever I read about the way white supremacists have “infiltrated” police forces — some would say that’s by design — or see QAnon rallies masquerading as child-trafficking protests, or just reflect on the way that the Culture War has invaded politics so thoroughly that we are no longer able to make collective decisions for society — indeed, that our politics has destroyed our ability to recognize problems, let alone solve them — I feel my own surge capacity reaching its limit. And then it’s time to start the day.
A few weeks ago, my girlfriend and I watched Howard, a documentary on Disney+ about Howard Ashman, the brilliant lyricist behind The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. We liked it, and we both had no idea about Ashman’s tragic death from AIDS. The film mentioned he had presented an original treatment for Aladdin several months before he passed, which was more faithful to the original folk tale and featured several different songs. Supposedly, when Disney was ready to move forward with Ashman’s posthumous pet project, Jeffrey Katzenberg intervened, throwing most of Ashman’s ideas out the window and re-shaping the story to suit his taste: more romance; less, uh, critiques of materialism; more questionable representations; plus, let’s make Aladdin older, more like Tom Cruise than Matthew Broderick.
I love the Aladdin from my childhood, but Ashman’s treatment seems like it would have been more magical. It’s funnier, sweeter, more about Aladdin’s scrappy courage and bond with his friends. Yet even as his passion for the story bleeds from the page, Ashman seems to anticipate the inevitable intrusion of Disney’s execs:
A NOTE ON FURRY CREATURES: At the moment there aren't any. That is, no mice or bunnies. The parrot, Genies, and Three Friends are fairly broad characters who serve some of the same purpose. If animals, however, talking or otherwise, are thought to be desirable, there are a few possibilities.
Ashman’s gift is present throughout the treatment. I like the way he tinkers with several reprises of “Another Arabian Night,” as the Narrator (secretly the Genie of the Ring) remains a central voice. Take the introduction of the Wazir:
IN THE PALACE, RIGHT HERE, LIVED A WICKED WAZIR --
THE ADVISER TO SULTAN HA-MED --
AND THIS PART-TIME MAGICIAN. THIS AMATEUR SEER
WISHED HIS BOSS, THE GOOD SULTAN, DEAD.HE WAS CHARMING AND SLICK
BUT UNSPEAKABLY SICK,
THIS DESPICABLE PARASITE.
WHAT A VILLAIN, BOO HISS!
FURTHER PROOF, DEARS, THAT THIS
IS ANOTHER ...
ARABIAN NIGHT!
(“What a villain, boo hiss!” is just great — and reminds me of Ashman’s most ingenious line: “Les Poissons, Les Poissons / Hee hee hee, haw haw haw!”)
Conversely, the final version of Aladdin has only one reprise, sung by the wicked wazir’s replacement — the much more dour Jafar. Here are those lyrics, presumably written by Ashman’s replacement, Tim Rice:
SO, ALI TURNS OUT TO BE MERELY ALADDIN
JUST A CON, NEED I GO ON?
TAKE IT FROM ME
HIS PERSONALITY FLAWS
GIVE ME ADEQUATE CAUSE
TO SEND HIM PACKING ON A ONE-WAY TRIP
SO HIS PROSPECTS TAKE A TERMINAL DIP
HIS ASSETS FROZEN, THE VENUE CHOSEN
IS THE ENDS OF THE EARTH, WHOOPEE!
Something about these lyrics aren’t quite as fun. They don’t flow. The phrase “terminal dip” is awkward to me, and the “assets frozen” finance pun doesn’t really line up with anything else in the film. There isn’t the sense of playfulness, of verbal panache, that Ashman showed off in his lyrics. Reading his treatment, I could only wonder what could have been — what Ashman still could have given us — had that horrible disease not intruded into his cells.
Moving Forward, Looking Back
I rebuilt my personal website, figuring it might help me find a website-management job, or at least let me ride the high of a single accomplishment. In doing so, I got to look back at a few of my old projects. There’s the Bannon show, of course, but some of these old videos from the Peaches & Hot Sauce days are still pretty fun.
It’s crazy how many nascent threads of our current political shitstorm we managed to throw into this satirical parody from 2014:
I can see the eagerness in my eyes in the pilot of Making New Friends, from all the way back in 2012. How young we were — how naive:
I remember working so hard on this parody of '80s instructional videos for Groupon. I’d written a sequel for golf, but the project lost steam after we poured too many hours into this one. There was a lot of creative energy at that place, and sometimes I forget that there were in fact some special days:
This is a strange time in all our lives. Everything feels like it’s in transition. In the Before Times, back when my own life was relatively on track, I’d find myself racked with a neurotic sense of regret: Sure, things are pretty good now, but would they be better if only I’d done [whatever]? Now, so much of our circumstance is beyond our control that regrets seem silly. Oddly enough, maybe this year is helping me get a little closer to something I spent five years of therapy trying to find: accepting my past as a foundational experience rather than a series of missed opportunities. I had some fun, and that’s all I could do.
Pods With Friends
I’ve enjoyed using this space to share some great podcasts made by my friends. In this edition, I’d like to focus on a few projects from friends who are making great art with their Asian American background at the center:
The delightful SJ Son, an alum of my college sketch comedy group, strikes up funny and relatable conversations with her pal Woody Fu in Emotional Slut.
My former colleague Jess Yueng turned our layoff into action, joining the grassroots team at Fresh Off the Vote — a podcast centered on intergenerational politics from an AAPI perspective.
Total sweethearts Peter Kim and Eunji Kim poke fun at their Korean culture while exploring universal issues with The Ajumma Show.
September Already
It’s already September, which means it’s almost officially Fall. Soon I’ll be obsessed with football — and sad that it’s even happening amid all this — and wearing a denim jacket outside. It’s hard to believe that 2020 is almost over, but it is, and we will get through this.
My birthday is on November 3, which this year, as you might know, is Election Day. If you haven’t already, please make a plan to vote. Make sure others in your life have a plan, too. I’m sure as hell gonna be drinking on my birthday, but I don’t want to end up drowning in sorrow.
Finally, it seems this has become a monthly newsletter, but I still have the goal of sending it out more regularly. If you’re reading this, let me know if you have any thoughts — even if they’re intrusive! Please, intrude on my life. I miss you all. Stay safe and be well.