Author: Brandon379

My wife made me write this.  If you’re imagining that as a hand-drawn cartoon where she’s looming over me as I sit at a mechanical typewriter, banging this out under the threat of a rolling pin-inflicted wallop, thank you. You’re my people and we should watch Looney Tunes together sometime.  But no, she made me…

Y’all, I hate small talk.   It’s facile, uncomfortable, and it makes two or more people feel responsible for keeping up a conversation that they don’t want to have, usually while waiting for more important things or people to experience.  But, like a crystal-clear brook—or Krystal and Brooke from Accounts Receivable at the office—we keep on…

In the summer of 2011, I quit my job, moved into an attic apartment in a brownstone, and wrote for my damn life. I was in Covington, a river town that’s just a flip-flop’s throw across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. My theater company had moved to Columbus, but I didn’t want to go. At…

I want to say I’m sorry for not writing in a while. And that’s the problem, I think.   See, it doesn’t really matter to you that I haven’t been all up your inbox for the past few weeks. You’ve got a life to live—one that can certainly function without some guy with incredible bone…

After Casey Goodson was murdered, but before Ma’Khia Bryant was shot down, I went to an event space to rehearse with my improv troupe.   We are a bunch of still-kind-of-young professionals who enjoy playing onstage together, and over the past couple of years we have built a nice following and sold out 15 consecutive…

Easter is mine.   Well, technically, it’s for all of us, I guess. Celebrate as you like, please.  But if you want to know what I’m up to (and you’re going to, since you subscribed to this), I’m hosting my biggest family dinner to date. We’re a mix of vaccinated folks and recovered patients that…

You’re busy, aren’t you? Of course you are.  You’re awake, and most of you reading this right now are living in America, so chances are your Shut Up a Second Blog reading time is in tandem with some other stuff you have to do.  And that’s totally cool, people. These blogs are bathroom-friendly, mass transit-compatible…

“And tell everyone how cool I am.  Without telling everybody how cool I am.”   These are the words spoken to me by my ace-in-the-place, my one-and-only-like Sony, my best friend.   He told me to say all that. His name is Joe.  He’s an ass.   Like any ass in your life, Joe is…

In the fall of 2002, I was 220 pounds, starting a new career as a performer, freshly dumped by my upwardly mobile girlfriend, and kinda homeless. It was a confusing, disappointing time in which I was either regretful or worried at any given moment.   Oh, and angry.  Constantly angry.  So very, very angry.  Life…

I love Thursdays. Weekends get a lot of love. Mondays get some unfair hatred.  Any good comedy writer will tell you that the funniest day of the week is Tuesday.  But Thursdays? Man. Freaking love this day.   Sometimes we can’t understand why we love the things we do.  But I can easily trace my…