On Trying To Be Funny During a Polycrisis 😂

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Hello, Lovelies,

How the hell are you?

Trying to work—or even think about comedy or stories—during a polycrisis is a daunting feat at best. And yet, here we are.

I’ve just come off a jam-packed week at Empress Editions. We’ve been preparing for the London Book Fair, which means getting all of our assets together as quickly as possible. The adrenaline of this creative process is thrilling, but not without hiccups.

We just completed the trailer for our first witchy-Jane-Bond series, The Department of Dark Errands by Imogen Vane. It is SO MUCH fun working with both Imogen and Kimberly Warner on this project. I got hella emotional when the trailer dropped.

But almost immediately, we get a call from Target: they need physical book mockups for Are You There God? It’s Me, Menopause, in order to plan in-store displays with our partners at Beacon Wellness—AKA… the vibrator ladies—in September.

Tiny problem: the novel is still in edits with the author and our glorious senior editor, Molly Zakoor. We have a beautiful cover designed by our amazing team—but we still don’t have a fully designed galley with a spine, back cover with description, author bio, praise, or marketing copy assembled into anything that resembles an actual book. So, I dust off my grad school graphic design skills and whip one up…

At the exact same time, we get a ping from our printer that the Joan Didion book isn’t sizing correctly in the new template and needs to be fixed.

While the team works on that, I hot-foot it across campus to FedEx, where they help me print large full-color versions of the Are You There God? cover and then wrap them around our existing Fallout galleys so they can be overnighted to Minneapolis for the Target meetings.

All undergrad students, debating whether to miss classes, trading shifts—by the end of it, we had these gorgeous mockup books with Are You There God? on the outside and Eleanor Anstruther’s hilariously tender Fallout on the inside. I was high-fiving them for helping a little feminist press make its way into Target. It was genuinely awesome and filled me with so much hope—I got teary as I waved goodbye.

But we were not in the clear yet. Right as I’m racing back for my next meeting, I get a text from our building maintenance: the hot water is out. No showers for anyone. WTW? They’re sending a plumber. It’s the boiler. It will be loud. Prepare ye.

Meanwhile, we have investor Zoom meetings. I am totally disgusting, sweaty, in leggings, a coffee-stained MIT quarter-zip, and my hair is dangerously sexy Keri Russell from The Diplomat. Not a good look for a first meeting.

Thankfully, we have a coworking space with conference rooms. After letting in Lenny-the-plumber, I sprint to one of them, where Betsy Tong and I present our hearts out to well-coiffed two gentleman bankers.

I fully leverage my Diplomat swagger, and shockingly, they do NOT pat us on the head. They see the argument we’re making—that midlife women’s voices are real cultural capital, essential to the betterment of women, the world, and AI bias correction. YES! They’re in for our investor day at the end of January, and they also have a CFO candidate who could give our financials the defensibility they need. We are elated!

Then we realize: WAIT, it’s also launch week for another fantastic book in which my co-founder and bestie is featured. The New Rules of Women’s Health by Meghan Rabbitt includes our very own Heather J Robertson (FKA Bartos), the top-five menopause expert in the nation, per Maria Shriver (huzzah), all while we’re racing around in the snow doing crafts (for Heather, not Maria—although we would absolutely do crafts for Maria anytime; she’s way cool).

The book’s even in goop! So, LA people, mark your calendars, Heather is going to be appearing with Meghan on February 16th at 6 pm at Zibby’s Bookshop in Santa Monica. Tickets can be purchased here. The event can also be streamed on YouTube Live HERE. SO exciting!

In the middle of all that, we also received the preliminary cover for New York Times notable author Molly Moynahan’s new novel, MotherPerson. And I just—wow—this cover screams all the awards, in a banshee wail against trad-wife erasure. I cannot wait for readers everywhere to experience the singularly vivid voice of Molly.

And then, yowza… we got the preliminary cover of our fabulous midlife thriller, Up to Her Neck, by Elaine M Wolff. So much dopamine, it just stops me cold:

We’re working on a couple more, but phew!

In the middle of all of that… who would have thought such a grandiose geopolitical orgy of chaos could be fomented by one half-sentient, day-glow Cheeto? Leave Greenland alone. Let the Venezuelans determine their own future. Leave Minnesota alone. Go play your dumb golf, FFS. Stop bothering everyone with your late-night tariffs and gross plots for world-grifter domination. We’re exhausted.

Since every day is an attempt to frame some version of common sense out of this unreality, I’m going to continue my little comedy masterclass. So, here we go…

Because comedy, as we’ve already discussed in weeks prior, is not about inventing humor out of thin air. It’s about recognizing that your life is already a sitcom—you’re just under-editing it.

That’s the third lesson.

Most people think comedy requires wit, or bravery, or some rare comedic gene bestowed at birth. It doesn’t. What it requires is distance. Distance from the moment. Distance from the shame. Distance from the instinct to turn every story into a confession instead of a scene.

Which is why I want to talk about how to mine personal embarrassment without self-annihilation. How to understand the difference between confession and craft. And how to rewrite your own humiliating or irritating interactions as if you are—objectively—the only sane person in the room.

Because very often, you are.

Take, for example, a trip I took last year to Shanghai on an ultra-formal business visit to meet with clients and manufacturers. Upon checking into my hotel—an apartment larger and more posh than anything I’ve ever lived in in the U.S.—I was handed a “how to survive a nuclear attack by America” kit.

Inside was a tin-foil anti-nuclear survival hood. Readers, I could NOT resist.

Now, paired with my particular mop of crazy-curly birdsnest hair, this hood made me look less like a resilient global executive and more like a deeply alarmed chicken.

Naturally, it gets stuck.

And, I cannot get it OFF my head.

So, I have to call housekeeping, who arrive, and when I open the door, to the shocked, demure housekeeper, I realize I do not know the word for “Help” in Mandarin, but this is when the international language of ghaaaaaaaaagh!!! kicks in, and we both start howling with laughter. And I know I am not the first American to do this.

It is precisely at that moment, my client shows up at the open door—just as we (another maid had to come with tools) were all trying to remove this ridiculous, super-strength tin foil contraption from my head, while I am laughing so hard I can barely breathe, and simultaneously trying to figure out how I am going to explain myself to everyone after I am freed.

Meanwhile, part of my brain is also calmly noting: Good lord! They think this is going to save them from a mad orange despot? They’re all going to be running around like roast chickens who cannot break free of their foil containers. Their goose is cooked—so to speak.

The whole thing was straight out of Friends. Thanksgiving. Joey. Turkey. FADE OUT.

That’s not trauma. That’s television.

We once had a perfectly awful counselor a million years ago who tried to convince me that carrying the entire mental load of our household was—wait for it—my fault. Apparently, I was “overfunctioning” for my then-darling-husband, whose superpower was strategic incompetence, and I needed to “let him” do more.

And, I went full Larry David on her.

“I’m overfunctioning, Janice??? I’m overfunctioning? Look, lady—if I functioned even a hair less, the kids would starve, the bills would evaporate, no one would ever leave the house, and I’d have zero career. Sure, he might plan a solo expedition to the Arctic for his writing research—but Paris? France? Sunflowers, castles, foie gras every ten meters? That was me, sister. Wicked fun. You’re welcome. Overfunctioning? Of course I am. Nothing gets done unless I do it. How are you a marriage counselor and somehow so wildly unfamiliar with systemic patriarchy?”

Again: not a breakdown. A scene.

And this is the thing I want to make very clear: your life is already doing the work. The comedy is right there, waiting. The only question is whether you’re willing to step back and shape it—rather than bleed it directly onto the page.

Rewrite an irritating or humiliating interaction as if it’s a sitcom scene. Give it characters. Give it timing. Give yourself the dignity of perspective. You are not the joke—you are the lens.

And if you don’t feel like doing the assignment? That’s fine too.

Hermès… going fully hand-drawn in the age of AI, and the online store animation and scoring are spectacular:

The Wuthering Heights trailer. I know people are bitching about the casting, but damn, Emerald Fennell’s directorial eye is so exquisite…

People in Boulder, CO! Our own Kimberly Warner will be discussing Unfixed at The Boulder Bookstore on Tuesday at 6:30 pm—please join us if you can!

And then at Symphony Space’s Leonard Nimoy Thalia in New York—on May 2nd, Kimberly Warner will be appearing live with Open Secrets Magazine at their personal storytelling summit featuring acclaimed essayists, memoir authors, and storytellers discussing how and why they bare their souls in their work. Get tickets here! The VIP party sounds amazeballs!

Okay, because sometimes the bravest creative act in a polycrisis is not productivity—it’s attention. Attention to what’s small, what’s a glimmer, what’s revealing, what’s already funny if you let it breathe. We’ll keep going.

Last, last thing: we’ve been asked about the sale of our absolutely not caps. Please know that 100% of the proceeds from the sales of those hats (and soon hoodies) go to the ACLU - Minnesota. It’s the least we can do.

Next week: why anger is often the cleanest entry point to comedy, how point of view does most of the heavy lifting, and why editing—not inspiration—is again the real magic.

Stay safe, stay scrappy - xoxo,
Gotham Girl 🖤

PS - I am a human typo. Amnesty appreciated.