Potty Humor

A dispatch from the border between diapers and commando. Plus recs for Colbert/Letterman destroying CBS property, Emmy Blotnick's new special, and Antonia Cereijido on short stories in Hollywood.

We are potty training this weekend so I have bodily fluids on the mind.

I know that some people don’t find poop or pee to be funny. If that’s you, please feel free to skip ahead to this week’s list, which I promise is 100% potty humor free.

If you, like me, have a juvenile, immature, disgusting sense of humor, I have several things to tell you.

One is that, if you haven’t already, you should read my previous newsletter about the worst smell I’ve ever smelled. I had several readers report to me that, despite not being fans of potty humor usually, they thought it was one of the funniest things I’ve ever sent out.

As far as how to accomplish potty training, I got tips from my friend Lily who has three sons, all out of diapers. She told me to get as many of the small plastic potties as I could afford and to place them in every room of my house so there was never a far distance to travel when nature called. As a result, we have a large enough quantity of potties that multiple visitors have said “do you know how many potties there are in this house?” as though I kept going to the store and buying a new one, forgetting we already had one at home, like that viral video of the guy buying hoisin sauce.

We’re also working off this book, which we took out of the library and has several pages which are heavily stained.

If there was ever a book that I did not want to encounter a stained page in, it’s this one. But we’re in too deep to return it now.

This book is in a category of parenting books where the author swears once or twice to prove they’re not like those other uptight parenting experts, they’re actually cool! But the swear is something like “wipe your *#%!” and they didn’t even type out the whole word so they’re kind of a badass in the same way that I am, which is to say, not at all a badass. I remember one time my friend Ivan heard me say “what the heck” and shook his head with such disdain that, more than a decade later, I can still remember it. “Have some self respect and at least say ‘what the hell’ when you’re around me,” Ivan said.

I would also put Oh Crap! in the large category of parenting books that promise a foolproof technique to achieve a milestone (eating solid foods, sleeping through the night, etc.) and then include numerous anecdotes about the fools who failed to follow their advice and were cursed for years as a result. I won’t be one of the fools who dared to question “the Pied Piper of Poop.”

One of her dictates is to prove to my child how comfortable I am with bodily functions and how normal it is by allowing him to watch me when I go poop. So not only am I spending this weekend mopping up my kid’s pee, I’m also inviting him into the bathroom each morning where he looks at me somewhat confused while I grunt away my previous day’s meals. It’s a show I truly hope he will never remember but, given my luck, will probably be his first conscious memory.

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My upcoming events and other projects:

MY BOOK: Humor Me is out in bookstores everywhere

NEW PODCAST EPISODE: Adam Aleksic is a linguist who studies the way people talk online and how it affects our offline communication. He’s managed to take a very academic pursuit and translate it in a way that reaches millions of people through his social media account EtymologyNerd. This week on the podcast, I talked with Adam about his work, about how language works, and about why it matters what words people use. You can listen (or watch) wherever you get podcasts! How algorithms changed the way we communicate

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This week’s list

GREAT:

There is so much to say about Colbert and his last week of shows that I won’t even attempt to do it justice. It’s a shame that his show is ending. It’s a shame that so many talented, hard-working, caring people are out of the job because of corporate cowardice and authoritarianism. But Colbert has refused to lower his standards or to be anything other than gracious. It’s been so generous how he has given the writers and staff on his show so much airtime and the opportunity to do ridiculous and extremely stupid but hilarious bits even in their final moments (shout out to Carley Moseley playing the most deranged daughter to ever appear on CBS and Michael Cruz Kayne’s musical number about fish). But one of my favorite moments of the entire farewell tour was Letterman coming back to the Ed Sullivan Theater to reprise an old bit. It’s contagious how much fun Letterman and Colbert are having and even some catharsis in the goofiest way possible: Wanton Destruction of CBS Property

FUNNY:

I’ve been watching Emmy Blotnick perform standup comedy for more than a decade and it’s always a delight. She is so funny and so smart but also so silly. She’s a great reminder of the fact that comedy is allowed to be fun. Her new special, What’s Her Secret?, is out now and she’s funny enough that I am willing to create a new account for a streaming service named Gorilla Comedy Plus, which is apparently a real thing and not just a bit Emmy made up. Although I wouldn’t put it past her. Here’s a clip that made me laugh a lot.

INTERESTING:

One of the best new media outlets I’ve come across is L.A. Material. They put out really compelling, well-researched features and articles that are obviously of interest to Angelenos, but also worth reading wherever you live. My pal Antonia Cereijido is an exceptionally talented journalist who writes for them. She’s published lots of great pieces but I thought this one, about Hollywood’s current obsession with short stories, was really mind-blowing and I haven’t heard it be reported anywhere else. The Big Short: How short stories became Hollywood’s hottest format.

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That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading! Please share Bright Spots with anyone you think might enjoy it.

With the triumphant sound of a toilet flushing,

Chris Duffy

This has been Bright Spots, a newsletter.

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…wait, who are you?

I’m Chris Duffy. I’m a comedian, I host TED’s How to Be a Better Human podcast, and I’m both a former fifth grade teacher and a former fifth grade student. I wrote a book called Humor Me: How Laughing More Can Make You Present, Creative, Connected, and Happy that’s out now from Doubleday.