Hey friend,

I’ve got a bunch of shows coming up in Vienna, Edinburgh Fringe, LA, and NYC so I wrote a little something about what that does to my brain. I posted it on Substack which includes an audio recording of me, Brendan, recorded at 2AM last night PST. You can also read it in this email below.

If you’re wondering why you’re receiving this, at some point you signed up for my newsletter. GOT YA!! If you only want to receive emails when I am coming to your city, respond here with your favorite emoji and I’ll make the change. Yours, Brendan

July 23, 2026

2AM

I’m trying to do too many things again. As I type– or rather– dictate into a pair of dying Airpods, I’m pacing around my kitchen to get my steps in like a working mom of three. I have eggs hard boiling in the pressure cooker, a load of laundry in the dryer, and an audiobook about Chernobyl freshly paused. The reactor just exploded and I had to take a breather, which I do while checking my email. Every activity must be compounded to distract me from the one core directive always humming in the back of my brain: tickets.

As part of the fools journey that is my life, I’ve selected a career that requires me to promote my upcoming shows at all hours. I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat thinking about tickets. In the morning, I check my online portals for updated spreadsheets to see how my precious tickets are doing. Today: not well. I’d gotten a bit high on myself after a solid run of shows in LA this summer (the trick: tiny venues + emailing every person who has ever politely told me “I’d love to see you do your thing some time”) but I’m about to head to Vienna for three stand-up shows and the festival director emails that sales are “light.”

“How light?” I ask, covering my eyes.

“Very light,” he responds. Austrians. Direct. To the point.

I took German in high school. My teacher, Frau Bowman, was born right after World War II and grew up in a bombed out orphanage. At the start of sophomore year, she told us the story of how, on her birthday, the orphanage gave her a grubby little cake to celebrate surviving another year. Instead of eating the cake all at once, she hid what was left under her bed. Later, she returned to find an alley cat had snuck in and eaten the rest of her cake. Frau Bowman, then just a small girl and not a Frau at all, proceeded to drown the cat as retribution. As an adult, Frau Bowman immigrated to America so that she could tell that story to high schoolers in Indiana for the rest of her life. “Tell the cat story,” we pleaded, having heard lore from the classes above us. And she did, unflappable, in all its gory details. German speakers do not sugar coat things.

I picture myself in Vienna performing in a theatre for between five to seven Frau Bowmans, hands cocked and ready to plunge my head into The Danube if I don’t make them laugh. The image makes me long to leave my pesky tickets behind and move to the woods. Somewhere quiet and peaceful. Chernobyl maybe. No one lives in Chernobyl anymore and the people who do wouldn’t care that I’m a comedian who can’t sell tickets. In Chernobyl, there are other things to worry about, like wolves with two mouths.

I stop pacing and speak aloud to my kitchen “I see so much comedy where I’m one of ten people in the audience and it’s a great time! Small crowds are fun!” This is ‘cope’ as they say. Or bargaining, if low ticket sales can be classified as grief. I’m bringing a solo show sort of about grief (aren’t all solo shows sort of about grief?) to Edinburgh Fringe after Vienna. I’m doing 25 shows, which is about 1500 tickets. If I don’t sell 1500 tickets, will my grieving be incomplete? Will my sibling know I love them if only five to seven Scottish people show up– “What?!” my boyfriend yells, interrupting me from his office. “I’m on the phone!” I yell back. A big part of our relationship is yelling incoherently to each other from different rooms because both of us are too preoccupied to walk over to have a proper conversation.

The laundry machine begins it’s jingle– I slap PAUSE and then run it for another 25 minutes without checking to see if the clothes are dry or not. I know they aren’t. I know my dryer like I know my own brain, which is spiraling. I have friends who can sell out theaters, arenas, whole tours worth of tickets in a matter of minutes. Comedians whose websites crash like they’re Beyonce. I wonder what this must feel like. But I also know— have heard— that the grass isn’t always greener. That when you get successful, you catch what is called “lifestyle creep.” Suddenly you’re surrounded by assistants, full-time editors, CAA, Live Nation, and a weird spending habit where you impulsively buy 100 pairs of compression socks on Amazon every couple weeks and they sit in your garage but somehow you find comfort knowing they are there. And all these mouths and stocking addictions must be fed by selling out bigger venues and even more tickets. When Netflix is a Joke announced Louis CK at The Hollywood Bowl, it was reported that he struggled to sell the massive venue. “We’re not that different, Louie CK,” I thought to myself as I checked my own sputtering Netflix is a Joke ticket sales.

I hit the release button on the pressure cooker and hot, eggy steam sprays from the valve right into my face. Once again, divided attention yielding a less-than-ideal result. The night of the Chernobyl disaster, there were many opportunities to shut the reactor down before it went critical, but the chief engineer Anatoly Dyatlov was unrelenting. He didn’t see the signs of incoming disaster. Perhaps he had another pressing matter on his mind, like navigating the politburo, finishing a Dostoevsky or selling tickets to a comedy show. Did they have comedy in the USSR? Were any Chernobyl-area comedy shows cancelled in the wake of the reactor meltdown? Was there one soviet comedian who was, very quietly, relieved that for a moment he was released of the pressure to sell tickets?

As I spoon the scalding eggs out of the Instant Pot and lower them into a bowl of ice water, I press play on the audiobook to find out.

Click here for my upcoming shows and tickets.