(I don’t work for MUD or anything. I just like the idea and it’s giving me exactly what it said it would.)
Mud Water. It sounds revolting. Whoever came up with the name needs a hard slap across the face with a sack of Matcha, but they’re definitely on to something.
The point at which Mud water (or MUD\WTR as it’s known) slid into my DMs, was the exact same point at which I’d just consumed my fifth doppio espresso for the day. It wasn’t pretty. I was a jittery, caffeine-addled sleepless mess.
The caffeine spiral happened after returning from…
The surprising benefits of keeping a diary, and the Stoic mindfulness “Last Time” meditation.
Every day for the past 13 years I’ve kept a digital diary of what I did that day. It’s part daily review, part ‘separating the days for each other’, part written memory to aid my faulty in-built one. It sends me an email asking, “What did you do today?” I reply. It goes into a secure cloud-based platform and gets stored. (I used to use OhLife.com, but now I use Maildiary.net)
It’s nothing fancy — I don’t go into detail about my feelings unless someone died, or I got a cartoon published in the New Yorker, or I get the…
The one essential creative practice to cultivate above all others.
“You can’t really hear yourself until you’re able to turn down the volume on everyone else.”
~ Cal Newport
In writing about an article by Arthur C. Brooks about Beethoven’s deafness, Cal Newport expounds on the vital importance of blocking out the noise of the crowds in order to hear your own voice.
The TL;DR of the article is that once Beethoven had gone completely deaf, his work became more original and innovative. It is surmised that this was due to his inability to be influenced by prevailing compositional fashions. …
A Highlight Reel of the Food Network’s ‘Buddy VS. Christmas’
December was an eventful month in an eventful, horizonless year, so you can be forgiven for not catching the best show on television amid the fray!
Luckily for you, I’ve strung together something of a ‘best bits’ compilation for you to take a look at before you dive whisk-first into the series.
Buddy VS. Christmas was so much fun to shoot. I was hosting and judging alongside Courtney Quinn (@ColorMeCourtney) and haven’t eaten so many baked goods in my life. It’s a miracle my pants fit by week 4.
Between the Broadway set-designers, Glass-blowers, Lego Masters, and Animatronic puppet-masters…
It may have been a bit of a shithole, but it was my shithole.
No Respect, I tell ya.
October 14, 2020
When I moved to New York 6 years ago, I had a notebook with 7 years worth of jokes in it that I’d been performing in Australia. None of them worked in New York. I flushed my notebook down the toilet at the Ludlow Hotel, blocked the toilet and fled as the water rose and flooded the bathroom. A worthy death for a such tired, dreadful material.
Over the following 3 years, I went out every night of the week, did 3–4 spots each night and worked up a new hour of material (ok, 35 minutes of…
April 9, 2020
When I was a kid living in my Mum’s duplex in Perth, I would get $4.49 per week from my paper route. I probably should have been saving it, but as soon as that cash hit my palm I would jump on my bike and zoom down to the corner store to blow all of it on the latest issue of MAD (Okay, it was $2.95 (cheap!), but I blew the rest on sweet, sweet candy).
It was exhilarating as a kid to discover that there was a magazine that was not only full of the best…
