Ambien

Dear Hannah,

Roseanne is a beautiful name ruined for two and maybe three generations by a horrible person.  She was hired because she was horrible and she was fired because she was horrible.  She said all the wrong things and got a show and said the wrong wrong thing and then lost it.  Comedy is the art of saying things that it's timely to say.  It's the art of offending people it's the right time to offend.  Roseanne wasn't entirely timely.  She likened Valerie Jarrett to a monkey and was kicked off her own show.  She was too rude in general for the 50's but this one comment might have made it.  She wouldn't have gotten a show back then but she might not have lost her best job.

On being an amateur

Dear H,

I know I'm in love with this work because I feel I'm not worthy of it.  All of these essays are from me but they aren't me.  I feel they're infinitely above me.  Many of them couldn't be rewritten if I tried, and they represent a part of me so spontaneous and beautiful and ephemeral -- a snapshot of my soul, most usually at three in the morning; here for a moment and then lost forever -- that many times I wonder how they came out of me at all.

Your truths and mine

Dear Hannah,

Why do people say speak your truth?  I was always taught that if it's only your truth it's not true.  You might as well hang a sign on your chest that says lie to me.

#MeToo and the so-called "complexity" of women

Dear Hannah,

Crazy women like to call the average man a simpleton, but the truth as usual is far more sinister -- and far more fun. It isn't true that he only wants some things, like sex. His brain has simply weighed all the other options and decided some things are more important than the other things.  Which is why men who want men are so likely to get AIDS.

Saint Bezos' act of penance

Dear M,

Once you become one of the richest men in the world, the chief question on every liberal's mind is how will you atone for your richness?  The answer is you'll have to become less rich.