I went to a taping of Late Night with Seth Meyers and then I saw a dead body on the subway platform. I have some kind of sickness going on in my body right now and I’m not sure what it is but it makes me sore all over especially my ribs and I can’t stop crying at videos of Jack Antonoff. I woke up sweating and blew my nose in a dirty sock.
I’m really curious about the seating procedure at Late Night? They ushered us in and then pointed Emma and I to two seats on the far side of the right aisle when there were still vacancies further up in the center rows. That made me feel so awful. That we were exiled to the side for some reason which I’ve of course decided to equate to a lack of perceived beauty. Yes I am more upset about being ugly than seeing a dead body on the subway platform. Sorry.
Seth Meyers is so much more manly in person. He’s not a super big guy but he’s a super big guy. Everything in the studio other than Seth is smaller there. The desk especially. And the fake New York skyline at night windows. But Seth is huge. I could almost see his energy hovering above him like a shadow monster. The abundance of charisma and control that he has is jarring and made me feel like a little kid. He had power long before someone gave it to him. It’s in his breath and his knees and especially in his elbows. They are dripping in dominance and ease when he leans forward against them on his desk and when he folds his fingers into his pockets and golf laughs during the breaks between shots. He is Goliath and he is David and he will never lose.
I raised my hand to ask him when he’ll finally get a Ben and Jerry’s flavor that has pretzel pieces and caramel in it and is called something like “Late Bite” but he never called on me. My mom and I both agreed that it was because he was intimidated by my cool chill funny vibe. Did you know that before The Tonight Dough Jimmy Fallon had another flavor called Late Night Snack? It had chocolate covered potato chips in it which is a lot braver than cookie dough. It’s always cookie dough isn’t it. Money money money.
On the Ben and Jerry’s website they have a flavor graveyard eulogizing discontinued flavors with commemorative poems in defense of them being put to rest, but Late Night Snack isn’t on there. They’ve chosen to let it fade into obscurity. One day I will pour out a bag of crushed original Lay’s in its honor at the tomb of the unknown soldier.
The dead man on the subway platform was laying with his arms outstretched like I imagined Johnny Cade after the rumble which my eighth grade English teacher said was supposed to evoke Jesus Christ. There’s a chance that he may have still been alive but the cops were holding their walkie talkies really close to their mouths and Emma said his chest looked still.
When we were walking through Rockefeller center to get to the Late Night studio there were framed photos of Dan Aykroyd and Steve Martin doing The Festrunk Brothers on the walls. We are two wild and craaazy guys. I wonder if going gray so young made it easier for Steve Martin to grow old. People are always joking that they thought he was born with it. I lost all of my hair when I was fifteen and now it’s always in the front of my mind. Pulsing. That i’ll lose it again. Every glare of light or spot missed by the hair dye looks like a bald spot to me. I guess this is the entire opposite from Steve though. I got one more fear and he got one less.
Maybe on the other hand all of my other fears got smaller and all of his other fears got bigger. Maybe it just shouldnt matter. Hair, I mean. Ugliness and money and people who say Jack Antonoff’s music is mindless maximalism. Not when there is a dead man on the subway platform and people taking brave risks like potato chip ice cream.
So I went to a taping of Seth Meyers and I felt small small small until I exploded into the largest entity the world has ever seen. Scattered all over everything. Steve Martin’s new Ben and Jerry’s flavor is strawberry ice cream with swirls of chocolate hazelnut butter and pieces of my shattered physical and emotional and celestial body mixed in. Super good and it comes in dairy free. Right from the start. Rest in peace to just everyone. Rest in peace.