How To Entertain Yourself This Summer While Avoiding Monkey Pox

Civil War? Comic Books? A Child-Free Lifestyle? What in the world is up with this week’s newsletter? And WHERE are those WAYWO.TV episodes?

I’m showing my age, but I don’t care. There’s nothing to fear about getting older.

Some of you may remember the Nintendo 64 launching. It was a BIG deal in the late ‘90s.

Well, most Nintendo launches are big deals, except for the Game Cube and the second Wii. You know, the one with the big ass remote?

But that N64 launch? The hype surrounding that one was crazy.

There was just one problem: For the longest time, the only game you could play was Super Mario 64.

And while I liked that game, I could only listen to Mario says “Yahoo!” before wanting to make him jump off a cliff.

And then, there was a trickle three months later, until you finally got to Mario Kart and the Star Wars game at Christmas.

Not the best way to launch a product, but when you’re Nintendo, you can get away with things like that.

I’m not Nintendo though.

And I know, and I hope you do too, that when you launch something, there should be options for your customers.

But second, you don’t want to have the farmer’s market problem where you’re giving away strawberries, and someone takes a strawberry, chews it in front of you like some kind of animal, and then says, “Yeah that’s not bad” before proceeding on their way.

Never to be seen again.

For all you know, your strawberries might have killed them.

Anyway, my point here is that if you have a podcast you’re launching, like say WAYWO.TV, you want to have a lot of episodes up for people to enjoy.

So, I am proud to share with you that I have eight for you to listen to.

Come listen to their episodes, and more, right here on WAYWO.TV.

It’s not likely that I’m going to follow a conventional release schedule, by the way.

Eventually, we should settle into a groove of two episodes a week, but for now, I have this huge backlog that we’re working through, and I want ALL of the backlog (about 64 episodes) out before we go weekly.

The backlog is my fault.

We were going to launch way sooner.

Please hang with me. All 64+ episodes are coming.

Just in time for another round of stay-at-home orders with this Monkey Pox thing.

Enjoy the newsletter. Enjoy the show.

-BJ

I’ve been thinking about a new non-fiction book.

Basically about how we’ve been in a state of undeclared war against the far right since Oklahoma City, how the threat from white supremacists has gone mainstream, and how mass shootings like what happened in Buffalo are acts of Civil War, and not isolated incidents, as described by Barbara F. Walter in this excellent new book.

Obviously, I need to do some comedy first.

Because the new book would not be the happiest, so I need to charge my batteries before diving into something like that.

Barbara’s book is solid, and she’s a Ph.D. so she’s not some radical crank.

Don’t take my word for it.

As the New York Times Book Review said, “Required reading for anyone invested in preserving our 246-year experiment in self-government.”

Oh. by the way, if you live in New York State and don’t want to subsidize a cable news channel that has at least one host goading their viewers into shooting you, click here.

I think it’s time we end the Fox News Tax and give everyone the opportunity to opt out of paying for Fox News.

I had a great interview with comics writer, Adam Rose.

You can catch a short clip above when we’re talking about the importance of the medium you choose in telling your story.

As time goes on, the video series will be different from the podcast version of the show.

My hope is that the podcast is a short listen, and if you like the interview and want to hear more, you can come over to the YouTube channel and watch the full thing.

The joke with the mid-roll would also be different (you’ll hear what I mean soon), as well as the outro.

I’m not there yet, but that’s the plan.

I hope you like it.

For the next eleven weeks, I’m going to use this spot to plug my old podcast, “Rosie & BJ Save The World”.

It came out during the pandemic, so I didn’t do much promoting of it for obvious reasons.

In the second episode, Rosie and I talk about why we’re both advocates of the child-free lifestyle. You can listen to the episode here.

Would you believe that one of us is a huge liberal?

(It’s me. I’m the liberal.)

Disclaimer: We both love kids. If you have kids and want to have kids, that is a beautiful and terrific thing. This episode is more about how Rosie and I are both child-free, and our argument for being so. It’s not an attack at all on kids.

They are filthy, delightful little monsters.

No, I still haven’t built the dating website yet.

I have no idea to find the work that I’m able to do during the week. You can help me get my time back by buying me a coffee here.

-You can send me an email at BJ@BJMendelson.com

-And you can always text me at 646-331-8341. Yes. That’s my real number, so please don’t call it. I won’t answer. Not unless you are one of the stars of ABC’s “The Rookie”, Melissa O'Neil, and you want to go out on a date with me.

Also! I was reading “Influence Is Your Super Power”, which is a terrific book. It’s a nice intro to the art of persuasion.

One of the things the author, Dr. Zoe Chance, at the Yale School of Management talks about is asking. Specifically, we’re bad at asking for the things we want in life.

Hey, if you don’t ask for help, you may never know what you’re missing out on.

P.S. Fun fact: Monkey Pox is spreading via sex. So if you were thinking of going to Fuck City this Summer with COVID (seemingly, but not really) on the decline, you might want to cancel that trip.

Fuck City will always be there, but you may not be.

Stay safe. Keep wearing those masks, and keep your hands to yourself. this Summer.

America is counting on you.