Welcoming hecklers & waiting for Wrapped 🎤
big deck energy
Kaley on how James Acaster breaks comedy norms
This weekend I watched British comedian James Acaster's excellent new standup hour Hecklers Welcome on HBO. Throughout the set, the Taskmaster alum and Off Menu podcast host invited his audience to heckle him, use their phones, talk, basically break all forms of good audience etiquette.
As the special gets underway you learn the reason behind the gimmick: James confesses that during Covid lockdown he realized he hated performing standup, that his body was anxious all the time, and he especially resented how emotionally tied he was to something outside of his control: his audience. But instead of quitting, he (after therapy and introspection) decided to lean into it, making adjustments to see if he could do his job in a more emotionally sustainable way. As someone with anxiety who has herself done years of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, I felt pretty seen and inspired.
Beyond welcoming hecklers, the special also broke form by including all the blemishes a typical special would cut. Acaster's first mic has technical issues and has to be replaced, the camera repeatedly cuts to the members of the audience shuffling in and out to use the bathroom, crowd reactions focus on dour-looking faces instead of laughing ones. It’s an extremely compelling piece of performance art and very worth your time!
The moments where Acaster engages the hecklers are some of the funniest bits, but not the most impressive. What's most impressive to me is the plumbing of his own insecurities and the public confrontation of his biggest anxiety. It's an experiment in exposure therapy, shared with the world. It's a feat of self actualization to identify what triggers you, articulate your vulnerabilities to “your crowd,” and make adjustments for your happiness and wellbeing. Sometimes those adjustments break social norms, but in a post-Covid, post-Trump world, what are norms anyway?
James doesn't say this explicitly, but it's safe to assume he also has anxieties around starting his set. Instead of being announced, he's already on stage as the crowd rolls in, alternatively playing the drums, tetherball, or doing yoga. Starting public speaking is the most anxiety inducing for me too, someone who also loves a crowd. I often feel the most anxious in the first five minutes of a presentation and the idea of walking down the aisle at my wedding made me panicky. So I didn't. Before my ceremony, my now-husband and I milled about on the beach with cocktails in hand and walked up to the dais together when we felt ready. It probably wasn’t as charmingly quirky as Acaster's norm breaking but that’s besides the point: it was for me. Just like his are for him. Thankfully he also produced a special that might be among the best of the year.
➕ For more James: Watch him make Seth Meyers lose it for 10 minutes straight and a compilation of him on my favorite season of Taskmaster.
This week in Cool Shiny Culture:
🚲 Megan’s Cool: I just ordered a print of Frank Ocean biking painted by the very cool artist Serena Monet. I previously purchased a print of her Kendrick Lamar portrait from the “Not Like Us” video and am drawn to how she’s pulling references from pop culture & featuring some of my favorite musicians.
🦃 Kaley’s Cool: Another fun HBO watch: college buddy comedy Sweethearts. Starring the ever reliable Kiernan Shipka and very charming Nico Hiraga as best friends who make a pact to break up with their high school sweethearts at Thanksgiving break (aka the turkey dump). Was it great? No. And it would've worked better as a TV series. But it had some truly funny moments (especially from TikTok breakout Caleb Hearon who leads the B plot) and I’m a sucker for a modern retelling of When Harry Met Sally. (For another, better, retelling, read You, Again by Kate Goldbeck).
⚓ Megan’s Shiny: I’ve slowly been getting back into TV and one of my new favorite shows is the procedural medical melodrama Doctor Odyssey. Starring Joshua Jackson, Doctor Odyssey follows Dr. Max Bankman and his medical staff as they care for passengers on a luxury cruiseliner. Imagine if House and Below Deck had a baby that was then adopted by Ryan Murphy, that is Dr. Odyssey. It’s campy, fun, and feel-good-even-when -it’s-sad (there’s a threesome and a suicide within the same episode). Basically, it’s a complete escapist fantasy where cynicism goes to die. Like Kaley’s Cool this week, it’s not “good” but I very much recommend it if only for the revolving door of guest stars. 🤞season 2 🤞
🌏 Kaley’s Shiny: “What if I just traveled the world through Love is Blind?” -Me, 6 episodes deep into LIB: Habibi, huddled under blankets while searching “cute balaclava women” on Amazon
Must See TT: Click for 🐍 Dang. 🐍
Marketing we’re eagerly awaiting: Spotify Wrapped 2024 🎧
Over here at CSC HQ, we’re notorious superfans of Spotify Wrapped, the brand’s annual stats-based recap of users’ listening habits, and have been eagerly awaiting 2024‘s drop. Apparently, we’re not alone in our anticipation. If you were to Google “Spotify Wrapped 2024” at any point this week you would’ve been met with a fresh set of articles claiming to have “all the details” and give you “everything we know” about when Spotify Wrapped will drop, which was, not a lot (They think it’s Wednesday December 4th).
The Spotify user in me is slightly annoyed that my Apple Music-devotee friends got access to their year-end stats first. The marketer in me is impressed that the platform has people practically begging for what is essentially a marketing activation.
After years of building goodwill through consistency, innovation, and fun, Spotify has been able to achieve what every brand wants: ownership of a cultural moment. However, Spotify also notably followed up their last Wrapped campaign with a massive layoff, cutting 17% of staff in December 2023. CEO & co-founder, Daniel Ek, has since admitted that the layoffs impacted the company, “more than anticipated.” We have been noticing the enshittification of Spotify over the last year as once cleverly titled & hand curated playlists with vibrant imagery disappeared in favor of AI-supported everything. 👻🍅🍅🍅
Will 2024’s Wrapped live up to its creative past or continue Spotify’s slide into modern mediocrity? We’ll be watching! 😜
Send us your stats, 🎶
Megan & Kaley
P.S. We welcome feedback (maybe not heckles), and would be very grateful if you forwarded this newsletter to someone who might like it!
Reading this after wrapped dropped and the foreshadowing 👌🏾👌🏾