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The only photo evidence of me at the Hell Yea! Comedy Show last Friday that I know of. Thanks for the black and white treatment Liam Wolf. He’s a funny dude, follow him on IG:
Random Thought
I found myself at my local pub (The Wild Rover) in the midst of my sober February. I went to hang out for a few and catch up with some friends and I thought maybe I’d be alright as long as the goal of going to said bar was to catch up with friends who were already there and not just wander in to get drunk, which is my usual modus operandi at the Rover. And it was cool. I got a soda. Got to say hello to people I usually see almost every weekend but now it’s been a bit longer with the sober month thing. I wasn’t tempted to order alcohol and I didn’t. I got in and out in about thirty minutes, which is sorta unheard of for me and bars.
I don’t know if bars are different sober or I’m different sober or now that I type that out, it’s probably a combo of both. But at some point I looked around and all I saw and heard were people yelling at each other. Not angry yelling, but talking really loud because you had to to be heard over the jukebox and all the other people at the bar who also happened to be talking loud. It seemed like a lot. I couldn’t help but wonder if I peeled a layer back on a thing I like to do for fun and maybe saw something in it I didn’t wanna see.
Screaming to be heard doesn’t seem fun. Listening to other people’s music picks, most of the time, not fun. Although I was happy to see my friends, I was also filled with an urge to get home and hang solo and listen to the music I wanted to hear (for free). And with all that convo going on at the bar, some of it was convo you’d want to ignore. I think most of us have fallen victim to being stuck in the drunken convo you can’t seem to find a way to get out of (and maybe some of us are guilty of subjecting others to that as well), and sober me has less patience for it. I was dreading someone coming up to me and talking my ear off for ten minutes about a topic I don’t care about. It didn’t happen, but I saw it happening to others. The risk was real.
I know what I love about bars and I don’t expect that to go away. It’s a clubhouse, a place to hang out, a place to not be alone. But there’s been something about this sober month where I’ve almost started to embrace being alone. And I’m not really concerned about becoming some kind of shut-in because comedy keeps me social. But even with comedy, I’ve found myself leaving open mics earlier and not hanging as hard or late as I usually tend to do.
There’s something cool about balancing the social stuff with the alone time and also with sleeping better. It’s a tough mathematical equation but it feels like there’s gotta be a way to balance it all out and get enough of all these things without over-sacrificing any of the others.
Sober me also has a better grasp of when my social battery is closer to depleted and I think that was the case at the Rover on Saturday. Because the Rover didn’t change. The Rover was just being the Rover on a Saturday night. But I knew I’d had enough of whatever socializing I had been doing up to that point and it was time to move on to my next phase which was recharging and being alone… a brief hibernation period till I’d find myself ready to socialize again.
If you follow me on IG, you’ve probably already seen this, but for no reason whatsoever, here is a picture of me telling jokes with my fly down. (Thanks for the clutch pic, Gina!)
*This week’s newsletter title, ‘I Need A Hole In My Head,’ is a lyric from the song, ‘Hole In My Head,’ off the new Laura Jane Grace album, ‘Hole In My Head,’ which I write about later in this issue.
Movie I Watched Recently
Red Rocket
(Prime)
This was a fun, weird movie about a washed up porn star (Mikey Saber) who moves back to his small town home in Texas and does not seem very welcomed to be back. His return is completely unannounced and he begs his ex (who’s still technically his wife and who he used to do porn with) to let him crash there. She’s resistant at first but she (Lexi) and her mom (Lil) give in and let him stay.
Mikey is a very unlikable protagonist. He’s arrogant and spends most of the film talking about how great things are and how he’s gonna get back out to LA again soon and be big again. He pretty much lies and cons everyone he interacts with. He meets a 17 year old girl (Strawberry) who works at a donut shop and he seduces her and tries to convince her to get into porn. Mikey at one point exclaims that 17 is legal in Texas and I don’t know if that’s true and there was no way I was gonna Google it because I don’t want that kinda stuff in my Google search history so I guess I’ll never know but whether it’s true or not, it feels skeevy either way.
I learned a new, fun term from this movie, “suitcase pimp” (which honestly might’ve been a better title for the movie but that’s whatever). It basically means a dude who leeches off of women to get by which Mikey certainly qualifies as.
There was a part of me that saw some parallels to the movie, ‘Young Adult,’ which I watched and wrote about a few weeks back. That protagonist was also very unlikable but she won me over in the end when she pulled a, “fuck this town, I’m going back to the big city” type move. The major difference between her and Mikey is that in ‘Young Adult,’ the protagonist earned all her own shit. Mikey’s just a leach mostly who happens to be well hung and charismatic which I guess help in the porn industry but only take you so far.
I may have skipped over some other important details. There’s donuts, drugs, sex of course, and maybe the best cinematic use of the NSYNC song, ‘Bye Bye Bye.’
TV show I’m currently watching
South Park: Joining the Panderverse
(Paramount+)
It’s been a minute since I’ve watched any South Park and maybe that was a good thing because sometimes it escapes my mind that South Park is so fucking good. South Park has been around forever and it’s kinda cool how they’ve transitioned into this phase of longer episodes that feel more like specials.
This episode riffs on the idea of a multiverse and a reality somewhere else where the boys are actually women. Something happens to cause the universes to mix up and the Cartmans (I struggled with how to pluralize Cartman’s name. Cartmans, Cartman’s, or Cartmen???) of both universes are now stuck in the other reality, the other Cartman being a Black woman.
There’s plenty of social commentary not so well hidden in this episode. They go hard on Disney and pandering hence the title of the episode. I had no idea who Kathleen Kennedy was before watching this but now I’m well aware and it’s because South Park goes in hard on her.
There’s also a theme of how all the grownups in South Park don’t know how to fix anything and they end up having to use handymen for everything and as the grownups become more useless, the handymen start to use this to their advantage by raising prices and becoming millionaires. Meanwhile, it’s the college educated adults who find themselves waiting in front of Home Depot for work because AI has pretty much replaced all their jobs. And it all starts with an oven door that Randy doesn’t know how to fix (I found this all oddly relatable as a dude who doesn’t know how to fix things).
It’s a very fun episode.
Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny
Albums of the Week
I listened to two new albums this week plus a song but one of those albums was an EP so it felt more like a new album and a half. Anyways, here we go…
Hole In My Head / Laura Jane Grace
This is probably one of the more highly anticipated albums for me in quite some time. I don’t know what you want me to say about LJG (lead singer of Against Me! but this is her solo stuff) without falling short of writing a love letter. I love LJG. Everything she writes connects and hits with me.
I’ve loved all her solo output since the last Against Me! album. This would be solo album number three since then but the tone of the album feels different from the previous two. The previous two solo albums felt like Pandemic albums. They felt more sparse and dark and a tad sadder. They fit in with the times they were released. And that’s a consistent theme with anything LJG’s done over the last 20 or so years. I feel like through the phases of my life she’s been there somehow writing an album that connects with me strongly at that point in time. I’m sure our similar age has something to do with it, but beyond that, it bugs me out sometimes how much I’ll listen to a new LJG thing and think, “goddamn that’s just what I needed to hear.”
If the last two albums felt like pandemic albums, this feels like the end of a Pandemic. This album’s whole vibe to me is going outside and taking on the world again. I hear liberation in the music but I also hear trepidation and worry for a world outside that’s far from fixed, in fact maybe farther from fixed.
I also hear the celebration of a punk rock life in middle age. LJG will probably never write another, ‘Reinventing Axl Rose,’ but you can’t listen to this album and not tell me that LJG is still a punk rocker at heart. By rigid definition, the sound is probably not your textbook case of punk rock, but it’s music written by a punk rocker and that’s enough to make it punk.
It’s also a much fuller sound than LJG’s two previous records. It’s a lot more electric. There’s some percussion although most of it is clap sounds. When I first heard the first single before the album came out (the song, ‘Hole In My Head,’) I was like, holy shit, Laura got a band together. But upon further investigation, she didn’t. It’s just that some of these songs got a lot more sound squeezed into them.
But if you wanna hear more pure solo acoustic type stuff, there’s plenty of that on this album too.
Overall, well done. I’ve listened to this album four times already. Can’t stop, won’t stop.
This album cover is how my brain feels sometimes.
Clover / Screaming Females
‘Clover’ is an EP follow up to their last full length release, ‘Desire Pathway.’ This EP has been out for a minute but it was only exclusively sold at shows. I guess now that there aren’t gonna be anymore shows (for those that don’t know, Screaming Females announced their split like a month or so ago) they decided to give it a full release.
And so it was with a heavy heart that I gave this EP a listen. My assumption is that this will be the very last time I get to listen to new Screaming Females music. Sometimes a band breaks up and that’s it, nothing new ever again. So it’s like they save you the melancholy of that experience. It’s bittersweet because of course I wanna hear these songs, but it’s a bummer that I know I’ll never see this band live again (or assume… I guess we do live in a, ‘never say never,’ world).
Anyways, I assume these songs are more or less B-sides from their last album. And it’s a decent collection of songs. If I’m being honest, I didn’t enjoy this EP as much as I enjoyed ‘Desire Pathways,’ but I think that’s the way it’s supposed to be. These feel like songs that were ready to go but kept off the album for whatever reason. I’m glad these songs are available and I’m sure I’ll give it a listen many times more in the future. But it’s hard not to think of them as more or less those weird songs that didn’t make their last full album.
The Females break up was so abrupt and with no explanation given, not that they owe one to anybody. I feel like all art should be done on the artists’ terms and that’s that. But it does make me curious if while recording these songs if they knew or had any idea that this would be it.
Turn The Lights Back On / Billy Joel
For whatever reason, Billy Joel wrote a new song. The man who’s spent the past two decades plus saying he doesn’t need to write anything new finally felt tempted to do just that. And hey, this song isn’t that bad.
I do consider myself a Billy Joel fan but I’ve never been a big fan of his later stuff (especially, ‘River of Dreams’). I’ve always thought Billy Joel wrote so much great stuff early in his career that he didn’t owe us anything ever again. He did his part. We’re good here.
But he went and did it and I’m happy to report that, ‘Turn The Lights Back On,’ is a much, much better song than, ‘River of Dreams.’
There’s a video to go along with the song as well and it kinda freaked me out because it’s all AI-ish with younger versions of Billy Joel singing the song. It’s like AI was rubbing the human condition of aging in my face, a thing AI doesn’t have to worry about.
Book I’m Currently Reading
Confessions of a Forty-Something Fuck Up / Alexandra Potter
This was a really good read if only because it really encapsulates how it feels to be in your 40’s without a family and feeling like you’re struggling and looking around and feeling like you’re the fuck up and everyone else around you has it figured out.
But by the end, the realization hits the main character, Nell, that no one has it all figured out, that most people probably see themselves as fucking up and thinking everyone else around them has it figured out. It’s sorta par for the human experience.
You just gotta keep plugging away and doing your thing and showing gratitude for the good stuff in your life. This book is heavy on the gratitude. Most chapters end with a gratitude list. I probably won’t start adding that as a feature to the Josh Wells Weekly anytime soon, but I do think it’s important to take stock of the things that are cool in your life. But it’s easy to lose sight of that stuff sometimes. The struggle is real.
You also gotta move on. That’s a constant theme in this book. It’s easy sometimes to get mired in our pasts and feel stuck there or beat ourselves up for things we can’t fix but you just gotta let shit go. The next phase of your life can’t happen if you won’t put an ending to the last one. I know that probably comes off as some Oprah-type shit, but it’s also kinda punk rock. Burn the past.
Maybe everyone has no idea what they’re doing or maybe that’s just me and the author. I don’t know.
Random sports thought of the week
It’s a weird time for sports because the NFL is done and the NBA is in all star break so it’s like most of my sports consumption is just news and rumors and speculation about the second half of the NBA season.
Maybe I should make an NBA Finals prediction? Okay, here goes:
Denver Nuggets vs Boston Celtics
Celtics win.
When the Celtics first traded for Porzingis in the offseason and got rid of Marcus Smart, I was all like, “WTF are you guys doing over there?” But true to form, me doubting the logic of a sports franchise is almost a lock for it actually being a good thing because I don’t know what I’m talking about ever.
Some other random NBA thoughts:
I think it would be fun to see the Clippers make it to the Finals but I just feel like the Nuggets are the more no-nonsense pick.
I’m in shock that the Bucks fired their coach and hired Doc Rivers. It happened weeks ago but still, that one took me by surprise.
I’m such a Lillard fan and would love to see him get a ring.
Speaking of Doc Rivers, his son Austin does ESPN stuff and it’s so awkward whenever something about his dad comes up and he has to talk about it.
Steph Curry is still my favorite player in the NBA.
That Joel Embiid injury is a heartbreaker. I feel like he’s one of this era’s true greats but I don’t know if it’s ever gonna happen for him. I’d hate to see him leave Philly to chase a ring after this even though I’d really like to see him get a ring. It’d just be a better story if he got a ring AND stayed in Philly.
Steph Curry and Sabrina Ionescu had a one-on-one three point contest for All Star Weekend and it was pretty cool. Steph won but Sabrina’s still a beast and it was fun to see some NBA/WNBA cross pollination.
Random pro wrestling thought of the week
For two weeks in a row now, Darby Allin has been part of the best promo on TV. And yes, I’m putting his promos above the Rock.
A week ago he had a very impassioned promo about his spot in AEW and what AEW should be in the wrestling world and what it all means to him and how the Bucks have changed but he hasn’t. It felt believable, like we were getting the real Darby.
Then just this week him and Sting had a prerecorded backstage promo that hit hard. Sting did a lot of the heavy lifting since the Bucks attacked his sons and he also brought up how his father passed away recently. But Darby did and said just enough in that promo to set Sting up so that when Sting said the Bucks got the fight of their lives coming to them, that shit felt super believable too.
The build up to Sting’s final match is my favorite thing in wrestling right now. I’m gonna be sad when it’s over. I hope AEW doesn’t fuck it up in the end. Give Sting the win. Let him go out in glory. He’s earned it. And let Darby be able to launch himself to that next level in the aftermath.
Darby is probably my favorite young wrestler on the planet but I’ve always thought his promo skills needed work (although his prerecorded stuff has always been killer). If he can get those mic skills up on a regular basis, I feel like the sky’s the limit for Darby Allin.
Sting is 64 and still somehow cooler than everything else. Aging isn’t so bad.
Top 5 Billy Joel Songs
1- Scenes From an Italian Restaurant
2- You May Be Right
3- The Stranger
4- Goodnight Saigon
5- Angry Young Man
Weekly Quote
“I really wish I was less of a thinking man and more of a fool not afraid of rejection.”
-Billy Joel
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