A sentiment TOO HOT FOR TWITTER
Welcome to Hella Immaculate, I love you.
I’m Dave, a comedian, podcaster, storyteller, teacher, and abolitionist organizer. I love making light of heavy shit and taking frivolous things too seriously. Hella Immaculate is my existential, spiritual, political, creative-process-and-culture-obsessed alt-weekly.
If you enjoy this, please consider joining my Patreon. You can get playlists, shoutouts, and bonus podcast audio. You’ll also stock my fridge with insulin and have the satisfaction of keeping my work independent—meaning I’m accountable only to The Mystery and you.
A tweet that lived for but a moment
Because of my experience being eulogized on Facebook, I go on high alert when a death hits social media, watching for the familiar patterns: mundanities, hypocrisies, but also opportunities to challenge myself to empathize with posting mourners.
This week’s social media mourning reminder comes courtesy of Norm Macdonald’s death (which is a sad and premature passing of a legend, for sure). I’m actually not anti celeb eulogy, but:
Unless your post offers INSIGHT into the person or their work, that shit is for YOU and could be spoken aloud in your living room.
THIS IS MY PODCAST, THIS IS YOUR AFTERLIFE
No new episode this week because the next one is a big one I’m trying to make sure I present right. It’s the “Reversaroo,” an episode in which previous guests and fans of the show Meaghan Strickland and Claire Favret ask ME the questions I normally ask guests.
Thanks to a decision I left up to Patreon subscribers, I’m releasing it in two parts, one a week. If you want to prep for the listen (it’s gonna be a VERY fun one), check out Meaghan’s and Claire’s standalone episodes!
THEY’RE JUST, LIKE, MY SUGGESTIONS, MAN
Watch Marxist art critic John Berger’s 4-part BBC docu-series Ways of Seeing. I recommended it last week and actually watched it this week, and there are more banger lines than any public television program features a dude standing in front of a green screen talking about art has any right to drop. If you haven’t yet, you owe it to yourself to blow your mind.
Celebrate! Last week, we donated $30 to help a woman named Sharon remove a cyst on the side of her face that is impeding her daily life. Several of us donated, and I’m really proud of that.
Got a response to something here? Reply or comment, and I’ll hit you back.
MAY I PLAY YOU A SOUND?
My music doc obsession has continued by finishing all of Netflix’s Hip-Hop Evolution. I believe it’s the Season 2 episode about the Bay Area that introduced me to Paris, “The Black Panther of Hip-Hop.”
I’ve been listening to his debut album, The Devil Made Me Do It, as I write this, and the titular lead single is as good an intro as any. Driving, straightforward, hard-hitting, political raps in that smooth, early-90s, Rakim-style flow over Public Enemy-ish production.