Hi guys! How was your summer?! Mine has been a friggin’ trip!

I do wish to be more consistent here, really, but history’s proving otherwise. So I can confidently say: you’ll get me when you get me. But the reason is because this summer has taught me something really valuable about writing: your brain is your tool, and you need to treat it well. It’s all output/input stuff.

I think creative work isn’t always seen as output because it’s “from the heart” or “from the brain”, and it doesn’t always look like labor. But after a string of jobs this year, I found myself realizing I’d been working it to the point of overheating. I pitched something on a project that had someone respond “that’s exactly like this other thing you did”, to which I realized—my brain was so stressed out it was playing reruns. We had reached the end of the tape. Our catalogue had been run through. The TV station in my brain was fully out of programming.

And after that moment, I began to realize the reason I was rehashing ideas wasn’t because I was out of them—it’s because I was only feeding my brain work. I think you can see this with a lot of comedians now—their comedy is about comedians, sketches are about sketch comedy, TikToks are about things you see on TikTok. And so I began incorporating non-work as work in my life, from long walks to spontaneous desert getaways to a lot of pottery. Here’s a Marilyn Monroe ghost I made that I’m proud of.

Anyway, I’m not even saying this in a “touch grass” kinda way—I’m saying this to say that non-work helps you do much better work. AKA, touch grass you can go back and write accurately about that grass. Fill the tank.

There are two instances this summer in which I was forced to write around 50 pages of a script in a single day—and in the next two weeks, both of those are going public for everyone to see. I also have had time to craft the dream shows I’ve always wanted to make, which are ALL HAPPENING THIS MONTH:

1. The Pat Pat Club (Live and Livestreamed) - a show I created with longtime buds Patrick Sargent and Dominique Bañas returns tomorrow! We have an unbelievable cast of improvisers joining our jazz musicians this month, including Edi Patterson, Lisa Gilroy, Carl Tart, Amanda-Lehan Canto, Angela Giarratana, Payam Banifaz, Mary Lou, and Lamar Woods. This show has become a dream show—a pure vibe with electric energy that really has a “you never know what’s gonna happen” feeling to it. Please check it out tomorrow!

   

1. Mamma Mia! But Different (Live and Livestreamed) - my favorite thing to do, a jukebox musical featuring ABBA with an entirely new story, is back! It’s my first full script staged since BIG BEAR, and I wrote it entirely in a day at Disneyland because a pass expired but I still needed to do this (picture below of me being absolutely ill). This one is one we’ve had an idea for for years, and more specifically it’s a banger showcase for Angela Giarratana, who’s the verified lead of the whole thing (and she has the monologues to prove it). It’s a mafia movie about if wives got so fed up they started their own mob (just to feel something). We’re almost completely sold out on 8/29 but (and you didn’t hear it from me) there’s gonna be an encore on 8/31! And livestream available too!

3. A Live Table Read on AOAOAOA’s Patreon - this was more of a punishment, but I had to write a 58 page, 13 song musical in a single day because I lost a bet on the “Artists on Artists on Artists on Artists” Patreon, and now we’re reading it LIVE, IN-STUDIO, WITH MUSIC this Sunday, 8/23. It’s based on a Jeremy Culhane character where he called himself “Lemon DiLemon, the man who introduced vanilla to Hollywood”—and that’s all I got. The show is insane, and so much fun, but we also have a wild cast joining us like Paul F. Tompkins, Miles Bonsignore, and Kimia Behpoornia. If you join the $10 tier, you’ll be able to see our antics anyway (including auditions and show development leading up). I think it’s going to be unbelievably fun, and I’m excited for you to see it.

Anyway, long story short I had to have a cocoon of a summer to have this big of an August, and these are truly the shows I’ve always wanted to make and I’m so excited. I hope to see you online or in person at one of these! And there’s so much more coming.

Question: is there anything you like, want to hear from me about? Does anyone have questions about creating, or writing, or South Pasadena? Let me know! I’m happy to answer!

See you soon! Go do something fun! Love you!
Patrick

P.S. Pat’s Pick - because I love to recommend, please enjoy this absolutely wild Village People knock-off I found recently called Revanche. They were a group of Italian people and made some really wild disco, specifically the song “You Get High In NYC”—I think it’s the song of the summer.