This was a joy to produce, host and perform in. Next shows are in March/April. Message me here to get on our mailing list to be among the first notified!

The ICU nurse who loved dogs and helping veterans was no angel.

"Tyranny is seldom (in the long run, never) imposed on people from without; it is a projection of their own pusillanimity" -- Northrop Frye

My favorite part of the holidays is getting an email wishing me Seasons Greetings & Happy Holidays from the mortgage company that sold my mortgage to another lender six weeks after closing

"The aim of education is to be able to distinguish illusion from reality" -- Northrop Frye

Not one episode from Halt And Catch Fire? Not even S4E7, "Who Needs A Guy?" This list is invalid www.theringer.com/project/best...

Me, a Matthew Lillard stan since "SLC Punk," when I got to S3 of "Halt And Catch Fire"

I’m now six episodes in, and as a card carrying Dan-Fan, I can’t be the only one noticing the similarities/analogues between “Pluribus” and Steely Dan’s “King Of The World,” even down to the geography #iykyk

Some of you plan to have the Roku 24-hour Yule Log channel on during holiday events this year. I plan on having that classic late-'70s claymation-Santa-riding-a-Norelco-electric-razor commercial on a loop. We are not the same.

“A Christmas Carol,” but it’s just three books from my TBR pile, one of which is “A Christmas Carol” ruffling its pages in disappointment

Only two couple episodes in on #Pluribus, but so far it seems to me as if its an exploration --- given the cult-like collective "group mind" of the "infected" and Carol's vehement antipathy to them -- of how everyone hates improv. (😉I say this as an improv teacher and performer)

Wanna know what goes hard? Toots Thielemans’ harmonica solo in the outro of the original “Sesame Street” theme song. I was seated in front of a black-and-white Philco (yes, aluminum foil on the antennae) when the show debuted, and that solo is still with me. Note for note. GOATed.

I heard Mamdani is going to institute Stanis-Law (ski), where you have to constantly mine your own sense memories to locate motivation for your character *sorry not sorry*

3-D Chess, I’m tellin’ ya. Right before the busiest travel season. People whose emotions are frazzled and whose dollars are stretched are going to be stranded, rerouted, forced to pay additional nuisance fees because of cancelled flights/reservations/accomodations. Masterful gambit, sir.

I’m at a Buc-ee’s in rural Virginia. My first time. I’m never leaving.

“Fate specializes in practical jokes in bad taste: fate very seldom pulls out a card from the pack to help you” — Northrop Frye

This is very good

The funniest novel ever written. Kingsley Amis, gone three decades ago today.

Sunday President diarrheas on the country, Monday President bulldozes White House, Tuesday President steals $230 million, Wednesday President... fucks a horse? Let's see if he fucks a horse.

Hey, fam -- let's say you couldn't make the rally in DC today due to a prior obligation. Do you have to return George Soros' money? Asking for a friend who already spent it on a really bitchin' Camaro

Tonight at the DC Arts Center: the improvised Shakespeare show I direct/perform is back as part of the Rails Comedy 8 pm block of shows. Ticket link in replies!

Eating at Minetta Tavern this evening. I know the original in NYC was named after the Minetta Brook in Manhattan, but I always like pretending the one in DC was named after former US Secretary of Transportation (under the Bush I administration) Norman Y. Mineta.

Perhaps the best insight into Hamlet's character I've come across is from Auden's "Lectures on Shakespeare": "He is fundamentally bored, and for that reason he acts theatrically."

“The history of libertarianism in the United States cannot be separated from the business of selling collectible coins” — Quinn Slobodian, “Hayek’s Bastards: Race, Gold, IQ, and the Capitalism of the Far Right”

Tonight at Studio Theatre, 7pm

"The other day I had a dream where capitalists created terrorism in order to force the state to better protect the business community" - a character in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's "The Third Generation" (1979)

Sorry we had to cancel your cancer treatment, but the Secretary of Defense had to fly all the generals in so he could call them fat.

Tonight at the DCAC in Adams Morgan, 8 pm. Tix in the link!

The Merely Players had a blast at last night’s show @ Studio Theatre as part of Washington Improv Theater’s ‘s run. Missed us? No worries: tomorrow night we’re back at The DC Arts Center as part of Rails Comedy ‘s run of awesomeness. Tuesday, Sept 29, 8 pm in Adams Morgan. Tix link in comments!

Tonight at Studio Theatre!

Yep. All of this. When people ask me why I joined the military, I tell them because I had nowhere else to go.

"Craziness, down through history, has performed impressively" -- John Updike

"Shakespeare was the Michael Bay of his era": my interview with Washington Improv Theater on @dctheaterarts.bsky.social about The Merely Players, an improvised-Shakespeare show I direct & perform in. Next show: Sun 7 pm, @ Studio Theater. Also: link to buy tix! dctheaterarts.org/2025/09/19/f...

When a British actor dies: British media obits: "Critics still consider his 1992 performance of 'Hamlet' at the RST an unmatched stunning tour-de-force" Same actor, US obits: "Best known as the villainous General Mogg in 'SpaceGoobers'"

I've never been prouder to (a) live in DC, and (b) be an Air Force veteran *pops salute*

The thing about this new generation of Republican fascists is they don't actually *mind* being called fascists, and in fact enjoy cosplaying as fascists in the streets of my city #DCTakeover

For all that right-wing denigration of “participation trophies,” residue of culture wars from decades past, they’re awfully silent on Trump’s entitled and pathetic slavering after a Nobel Prize simply because Barack Obama has one and he doesn’t

Silly question, Washington Post: Fascism.

There's no need to click on legacy media headlines like "What Trump's DC Takeover Means" or "Why Is Trump Deploying Troops to DC?" or "Trump Takes Over DC: What To Expect?" The answer is, and always has been, fascism.

You guys know Philip K. Dick essentially called all of this, right? *gestures at everything*

I move to Portland, Trump deploys the National Guard. I move back to DC, Trump deploys the National Guard. Maybe it's me? Because I'm starting to think I should randomly walk up to MAGAts and ask, in my best Tom Waits voice, "YOU EVER WONDER HOW I GOT THESE SCARS!?!?!?

"To dissolve art back into the artist’s experience is like scraping the paint off a canvas in order to see what the 'real' canvas looked like before it assumed its painted disguise" -- Northrop Frye

The hill I'll die on: the most criminally underrated performance in cinematic history is this one, and it's not even close. Not even a Best Supporting actor nom? You bastages. You fargin' iceholes #JohnnyDangerously #RomanMoroni

Stephen Colbert is going SCORCHED EARTH right now. To RFK Jr: “Fuck you, you roid-addled nepo carnie! Fuck you, you roadkill-munching Luddite human slim jim!”

Washington Post: “Is fascism bad? The answer may surprise you” Teen Vogue: “Here are three fun tips you can use this summer to disable an armored personnel carrier”

Holy shit, they did it. They wrote the headline.

Tom Lehrer may be the best light verse poet America has produced, up there with XJ Kennedy and Dorothy Parker. From "Wernher von Braun": "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?/That’s not my department,’ says Wernher von Braun.” So long, Mr. Lehrer www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/a...

"In a world that never repeats itself with exactitude, all believing is betting" -- Louis Menand, "The Metaphysical Club"

"The cruel seek forgiveness for their sins in asking those they wronged for a favor" -- Tennessee Williams