How to Make a Minimalist Painting of Your Pet Poodle

LOTS to update you on. So much to share. So little time. I’m just going to shut up and let you dive right in this week.

I felt like this email could use more pictures. So, the picture above is going to be the new header. I hope you like it. It’s my old dog, Fifi, with her favorite toy. She’s looking out the window because she knows the mailman is coming.

And as you well know, dogs fucking hate the mailman.

I don’t know the artist’s name. I hired her off of Fiverr (you can do the same here) because I needed an image for my Buy Me a Coffee page. So that’s where this image has lived for a few months now.

But I gotta be honest, I love this image so much that I knew I had to find a better use for it.

There’s a lesson in here about repurposing your old content. I’ll let you figure out what that is.

Also: I finished “The Richest Man in Babylon: Championship Edition”. There are going to be some last-minute punch-ups because I am constantly tweaking things until the very last second, but my end of things is done.

I’m hoping we can get through all the production stuff fairly quickly.

That would mean the book would be available in May in print and electronically, and then in Audiobook not long after that.

Fun fact: I make more money selling audiobook versions of my work than anything else. So that’s why every book I write now is only 20,000 words.

That’s about three hours-ish of an audiobook. Long enough to cover most flights and commutes in one round trip. So, just a tip for my fellow authors and writers out there. The money is in the audiobooks.

Oh, by the way: I’m going to ask Sophia Bush, star of “Good Sam” on CBS to voice the audiobook for “Richest Man in Babylon: Championship Edition”.

I love her voice. She was also my very first celebrity interview, back when I thought journalism would be a secure field to get into. I interviewed Sophia, by phone, in my college dorm room. Even then I knew I had to get her to voice something.

Don’t get your hopes up. The odds are great she’ll say no. But I am going to ask anyway.

You never know, right?

-BJ

I am really overwhelmed by matters down here on Earth. You don’t need me to tell you which ones. I’m sure you’re feeling the exact same way. So, I’m super into books about deep space and the nature of the universe.

It’s a gentle reminder that none of this really matters in the cosmic scale of things. It sucks as it’s happening. It’s horrible to witness. But some of the sting is lost when you realize the stars we look up to at night are already gone.

All that’s left is this beautiful light show they left behind for all of us to enjoy. So, let’s enjoy it.

This week! On WAYWO.TV, I am joined by “Rutherford Falls” season two writer, Taietsarónsere (aka Tai Leclaire), who talks with me about his writing process for television, the cult TV classic “Dead Like Me”, and a joke we all need to keep an eye out for in the next season of “Rutherford Falls” on Peacock.

You can watch the interview here.

This is something Rosie and I were working on just before the pandemic hit. So, for obvious reasons, we couldn’t really go around promoting the show.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that I think now is a perfect time to re-introduce people to this fun podcast miniseries we did. Wherein comedian Rosie Tran (whom you can see here in this terrific Peacock Comedy Special) and I talk about the world’s greatest challenges and how to solve them.

So, I’m going to use this space for the next twelve weeks to pretend like the show is premiering for the first time.

And below are the show notes for that first episode:

That was a lot, right? And I didn’t even give you a “Space Trip” update. There’s a lot going on. I’m tired and badly need a vacation, but I know what I need to do between now and when the pandemic ends in 2024. And I don’t want to waste any time getting there, you know?

That’s all for this week. BJ@BJMendelson.com is the email. 646-331-8341 is the number (my real one), but please don’t call it. I won’t answer. Not unless you’re Melissa O'Neil from TV’s “The Rookie” and you want to go out on a date with me.

I have some other cool shit here.

PS: If you text me, tell me who you are. Some of you are texting me and I just have the number, but no name, and so I have no idea who is who! I smoke too much weed to memorize things like phone numbers.