long story short

2020. What a year! So much has happened, and yet it feels like nothing has happened. Did time and space collide, hijack the rollercoaster we were all on, and kept us going through the loops? It's the last day of the year but it doesn't feel like we're getting off the ride just yet. 

But in any case, here is a bunch of things that made me feel less terrible and/or amplified the terrible feelings (in a good, cathartic way) this year.

Did this series really end this year? Did we really see the last of BoJack, Diane, Princess Caroline, Todd, and Mr. Peanutbutter? It had its curtain call last January, and it already feels like forever ago. When I first started watching this show, there were only three seasons so far on Netflix. In between waiting for the new seasons, I'd always feel hopeful: maybe this is the season for redemption, for comeuppance but also recovery. And every finale, I'd be punched in the gut at how much sadder and bleaker things seemed for this crazy group of people you couldn't help but root for. Unarguably, the series finale was the most heartbreaking of them all. Why? Because endings are always hard. But also, because the endings that hurt more are the ones we actually saw coming. When we know things cannot turn out any other way. When the inevitability of anguish can be seen from a mile away, and yet we go through with it because that's life. That's just how it is. Sometimes, life's a bitch and you die, right? But sometimes, life's a bitch and you keep on living. And it was nice while it lasted.

No one else makes music that perfectly encapsulates the psychological phenomena of "the call of the void" better than Lana. Going through her entire discography this year felt like wearing different masks. Each time, it's a mask painted in a shade of gloom and foreboding, but it's actually very freeing, almost like escaping to a world where sadness is the catalyst that turns your charcoal feelings into diamonds. Living in the moment is accepting all the highs and lows of life and making beautiful music because of, in spite of, in pursuit of it. She said it best in Norman F*cking Rockwell: happiness is a butterfly, every day is a lullaby, I try to catch it into lightning, I sing it into my music. I just want to dance. 

Speaking of dancing, 2020 was a year of fully surrendering to pop music. I realized that the most powerful songs to cry to are those that force you to move. Why? Because with them, there is no choice other than to dance the pain away. To acquiesce to the pulsating beats, to be consumed by the music - it's both concession and catharsis. (I made a playlist of sad bangers that clocks in at exactly sixty minutes, and which of course include Carly Rae, Jessie Ware, Robyn, and Mark Ronson among others.)

I dove into these two concept albums this year because I felt like the conceit created for each of them was so interesting. Gentrification and media consumption even in outer space, a lunar wedding, a space motel. A vampire that feels frozen in time. The metaphors perfectly bridge the divide between these bands' hard and soft extremes. It all feels so alien, and yet very much familiar. And oddly comforting. (Plus, Dave Grohl returned as the drummer for this QOTSA album!)

Don't be fooled: this is currently HBO's biggest prestige drama. A media mogul is forced to step down from his media conglomerate, but for him, none of his children are ready to inherit his legacy. High stakes, betrayal, money, family, power But damn it, everything about this show is just so, sooo funny. Which isn't a surprise, given that it is produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. It's this fantastic portrait of a powerful family, full of terrible people, making terrible choices. The sad thing is it reflects the reality that our fates - the information we consume, most importantly - rely on the whims of these few entitled brats. They're all trainwrecks in their own way, but it's so hard to look away. 

Before this book, I didn't really have an opinion on Colin Jost. I don't consider him an SNL great, although I do know he's been writing for it since he graduated from Harvard in 2005. I think he's an okay Weekend Update anchor, I know he's dating ScarJo, aaaand that's pretty much it. But I'm so glad I picked up this book, partly because since he was writing about the era of SNL I mostly grew up with (2005-present), I knew much of what he was talking about. Mostly because it was very self-aware of what people perceive as his own mediocrity. He recognizes his privilege. He acknowledges his weaknesses. But he hustles his way through. He consistently out-works anyone else to show that he may not be the best, but he's really good at what he does anyway. (The chapter about his mom being the chief medical officer of the New York Fire Department during 9/11 also made me cry buckets. She saved so many lives but also lost so many others. It was a great illustration of her tenacity and compassion, which was great of Jost to highlight in his book.)

Aside from Jost's memoir, I read another book about SNL this year, "Saturday Night Live and American TV." I also started rewatching old episodes on Peacock (on VPN). And I binge-watched "Creating Saturday Night Live" behind-the-scenes videos on YouTube. Like I've said before, I've always secretly dreamt of becoming a screenwriter for a comedy show. When people ask me about my "what if" - this is one of mine. And SNL will always be that unexplored, unattainable playground. 

Another "what if." This book is unarguably one of my favorite memoirs from this year. Adrienne Miller lived out what every creative writing and literature major could only dream of: become the literary editor of Esquire. This meant she got to meet, mingle with, and critique some of the best writers of her generation. But this also meant learning how to navigate the very elitist, often classist, and sometimes misogynistic world of the modern-day literati. Her tenuous relationship with David Foster Wallace was the highlight of the book, and while I'm an ardent admirer of the man (I still mourn his passing), I felt that it was only fitting that she wrote about the difficult aspects of being his friend/former flame. Some parts of her story felt emotionally crushing, but it was a necessary story to tell, and I'm glad she shared it with the world. 

I wish I had this show in my adolescence. It would have made me feel less bad about feeling certain things - emotionally and sexually. The premise of this show may seem dumb and wacky (okay, it is), but it's so refreshingly honest and simple. Puberty brings about so many changes. And it's okay to feel worried, anxious, or angry about it. The important thing is to accept that it's all normal. Our body shouldn't define us, but understanding it certainly leads to clarity about who we are. (Connie the Hormone Monster is my absolute favorite! I actually cried when Jessi had her first period because everything Connie said about it was true: it makes you want to listen to Lana del Rey while cutting your hair and screaming at your mom.)

She's my most played artist this 2020. I'm in the 0.1% of her listeners. Need I say more? Much of Ariana's music and disposition mirrors my own struggles. There is something so compelling about a figure who has gone through so many traumatic experiences in such a short time and managed to emerge stronger, kinder, and more self-deprecating even in her vulnerability. It was certainly not easy surviving a terrorist attack, losing your fans, losing your ex, breaking off an engagement. But she manages to distill her feelings of fear, longing, and acceptance into such great pop songs. They're so fun to sing to, to cry to. To find comfort in. To borrow from Pitchfork: "Sweetener dazzled because its joy was defiant. thank u, next caromed through phases of glee and grief, moving from pink champagne bravado into stark confessions. Positions searches for peace. It traces the quiet work of piecing yourself together, the terror of re-learning how to trust." This is Ariana's power for me: the ability to take tangible pain and make something from it, to feel whole again. 

I started teaching at a public, city-funded university's law school this year. It was certainly one of the nice detours this year brought. I applied last year given the university's proximity to my office, but at the time there were no openings available. Enter 2020, and an opportunity opened up for Legal Philosophy. Trying to teach my students about justice, fairness, and due process was especially very difficult this year. Considering this government's incompetence and moral bankruptcy, it was challenging to reconcile theory with reality. But it's also comforting to know that this crop of students are compassionate and intelligent, able to see where our institutions fail and how they should navigate their future place in the profession. In many ways, this teaching gig was a welcome detour. If the pandemic didn't happen, I'd probably be abroad, finishing my LLM under a scholarship. I got admitted to three schools this year, but I had to put that dream on hold, but to be honest, I also feel relieved. The country is in such a mess. It's exhausting and it feels unending. But being forced to stay here made me put things into perspective. What is it that I want to do for this place? Is it a dream worth pursuing? And the answer, every day, despite the gaslighting and the emotional abuse our leaders are putting us through, is yes. Our institutions deserve better. We can do better. And we can do our part when we find it in ourselves to point our goals towards that direction: progress. 

*

The truth was I almost didn't want to write anything about 2020 anymore. I've already done that several times this year. But maybe that's a good thing. While this year may have been hard to process, I grabbed every opportunity to reflect and to write as soon as I felt it necessary. (Not always in this blog, but in my private notebooks, at least.) If anything, 2020 forced me to face my fears head on. I had no other choice. I was stuck in one place, so I had to deal with things right away. And deal with it, I did, with this list of things  being just as crucial in taking the edge off as the love of friends and family with whom I've grown closer in many ways this year.

I wish 2021 will be kinder. But even if it isn't, at the very least, after this shitshow of a year, I hope we all are. 2020 was tiresome. I hope we never forget the lessons it taught us: kindness, patience, compassion. 

And the fervent hope that things will, should, and can get better. Because what else is there to help carry us through? 

When I was a teenager, one of the biggest perks of finally sleeping in my own room was getting to stay up late. Back then, getting lost in the peculiar algorithms of YouTube was not a thing yet. Instead, what excited me the most was getting to catch all these "adult" shows on cable which, at the time, were beginning to be understandable to me. Adult Swim, Sex and the City, and yes, the three late night shows: Late Show with David Letterman, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien.

Late night shows were a particularly endearing breed for me. It had celebrity interviews, sure, but the real draw was the personality behind the table. I've always taken these shows at face value and liked them for the different flavors each one gave. Dave, for his sardonic, cynical humor especially in his Top Ten. Jay, for his rapid-fire monologue and Headlines. And Conan. Oh Conan. I learned the words "shenanigans," "moral outrage," and "noches de pasion" because of Late Night. I had the softest spot for him even when he was the one that most confounded me. He was too quick, too sharp for fifteen-year-old me, but it was always a delight trying to catch up with him and be in on the ride.

When the whole Tonight Show controversy erupted in 2010, I followed it obsessively online. At the time, none of my other friends watched these shows, so it felt like this devastating blow that I couldn't share with anyone. I liked Jay, sure, but the whole shake up was not a good look on him at all. It only solidified what I've always felt through the years: Team Conan all the way. He wasn't given enough leeway with his version of the Tonight Show. And it was so unfair.

After that, the late night scene was no longer the same. Since then, new players have come into the fray. Fallon, Meyers, Corden, Colbert, Kimmel, Noah - these guys are now holding the fort. But the format has changed in so many ways - and necessarily so, given the changes in technology and the way audiences consume media. They now have more sketches and gimmicks, and rely on the virality of each individual segment rather than the cohesiveness of one whole show. Which isn't entirely bad, per se. I do like their content too. It's just different.

Which, I guess, is why I felt the need to read this book when I got an epub copy. I wanted to know what really went behind the scenes, what changed the network's mind, and at what point NBC realized that the late night landscape was going to be significantly shaken again. (Incidentally, I was also really curious to know how the contracts were drafted in the negotiations.)

It's quite ironic that all this went down precisely because they were trying to avoid the exact same thing that happened between David Letterman and Jay Leno back in the 1990s, following Johnny Carson's retirement from The Tonight Show. In the early 2000s, NBC wanted to have a "Prince of Wales" succession clause to secure the person who will "inherit" the throne of The Tonight Show and avoid any drama. The idea was brilliant and the identity of who the successor will be was clear: Conan. What did them all in was the timing.

I'll save you the trouble of reading the book and just refer you to the Wikipedia page linked above if you want to know the timeline of how it all went. But more than just the narration of events, what stood out more in the The War for Late Night was the very personal, and authentic depiction of the actual people involved in the fray. The network executives, the agents, the producers, even the competition at the time. (There's a great chapter on Letterman, but also a recognition of the other key players like Kimmel, Fallon, Colbert, and Stewart.) Most importantly, Conan and Jay.

I've always been Team Conan. He's loved by all, from young intellectuals to fellow comedians and artists. I love the guy, I admire the guy, I binge-consume any content of his that I can get my hands on (Podcast? check; Late Night classics? check; interviews on YouTube? check; Conan without Borders? check.) And the book is actually very sympathetic towards him, showing that in many ways, he really was the victim here. Many other factors were at play: the timing, the ratings, the lead-in, the bind that NBC head Gaspin was in considering the network's descent from the ranks. But it still all boils down to the fact that NBC didn't want him enough. They didn't want him to go elsewhere, but they were willing to break a promise made to him just to make more money. He didn't deserve to have The Tonight Show taken away from him like that.

But, the book also did a good job of showing Jay's side. He's a no nonsense kind of comedian. He wasn't innovative, he wasn't a genius. He didn't go to Harvard like Conan. But - and this is crucial - people loved him. He didn't appeal to the intellectuals, sure, but he is certainly well-liked by even the simplest of folks in Nebraska. He had mass appeal. And to top that off, he worked hard. Really hard. He didn't play into the celebrity schtick, he didn't mind not winning awards. He ran The Tonight Show like a ship, and it always landed at the same place: the top. He consistently beat Letterman in the ratings, something Conan couldn't do. You can't fault the network for wanting to give the keys back to him, especially after the variety show they offered him did not work.

Conan got a shitty lead-in during his stint at The Tonight Show because the network botched it with The Jay Leno show at 10:00 pm. But the fault here is to be placed squarely on the lawyers. Jay had the leverage between the two of them because his lawyers were able to secure for him a "pay-and-play" contract, as opposed to the usual "pay-or-play" (which was what Conan had). This contract guaranteed NBC would both air his program and pay him for up to two years, whether the program continued or not. This is completely different from Conan's The Tonight Show contract, which provided that NBC can either play his program for two years or pull the plug on the show and just pay him off, by network prerogative. Comparing both, NBC stood to lose more if they broke the contract with Jay than with Conan. The pay-and-play was unusual in the TV setting at the time, and there was no way Conan's lawyers could have anticipated that that was possible, because it wasn't an industry standard. But Jay's lawyers did. So his ass was saved by the network instead.

The book was published in 2010. Reading it now, in 2020, it's easy to say that Conan still eventually got the better end of the deal in the long run. Sure he never got to fully enjoy his tenure as the host of The Tonight Show. But he was able to diversify his content: he got to set up his own production company, has a podcast, shoots for a Netflix docuseries, has mockumentary shorts involving his staff, and still has a late night talk show, albeit on a cable channel now. He has the freedom to do whatever he wants, and that has only resulted in more hilarious, genre-bending, and entertaining content since then. In particular, his podcast and travel series show a different side of him, one that allows him to flesh out his conversations with his interviewee because he has more time to breathe and just be. The interviews he does now no longer focus on just, say, promoting a movie, or rehashing an oft-repeated anecdote. He has the opportunity to really get to know them, find out their stories, and all while sharing a little part of himself. Even in other forms of media, he's still somehow changing the game.

But at the same time, I can't help but wonder - what could have been? If he had remained at The Tonight Show, I think he would have eventually veered towards the same content (aimed at virality), while still maintaining his identity. Breaking the norms, making people uncomfortable, finding the silver lining even at the perverse. He may not be doing a Lipsync Battle or Carpool Karaoke - but I think audiences would have loved an updated Triumph the Insult Comic Dog just the same. He could have been breaking even more barriers, given the timeslot's reach.

Alas, it wasn't meant to be. And as with most things, we have no other choice but to look at it as a glass-half-full kind of situation. The late night format as we knew it had to end somehow. It was just unfortunate that it had to claim one of the greats as its victim.

One of my favorite post-Tonight Show Conan content though, is his speech for the 2010 graduating class of Dartmouth. It has all the ingredients of everything Conan: hilarious, ridiculous, well-researched, self-deprecating, and full of wit. But what stood out about this speech - and what makes me re-watch it from time to time - is his honesty. And the ability to turn his heartbreak into a catalyst for something more meaningful.

It's definitely a beautiful way of looking at failure. The road to success will always be paved with disappointments. That's a fact of life that we all have to come to terms with. But real success isn't solely measured by your ability to reach the top. It's also about the kind of person you've become while you were at it. Did you take advantage of someone else? Did you steal? Did you cause pain? I guess, my biggest take away from this book is that when things like this happen, there are no clear winners. On paper, there might be. But victory lies with whoever walked away with grace, humility, and compassion. So, with every triumph, we must never forget to ask: "At what cost?"

Forever echoing my favorite sign off from Conan: