So You Need To Decide
People ask me all the time if there is a print edition of So You Need To Decide. There isn’t. It was commissioned and conceived as an original audiobook. And I may do it as a print edition - eventually. But…
I thought to celebrate Mother’s Day I’d share the intro to the Family chapter, where I talk about my decision not to have children and the birthing of UnCabaret, which the LA Times called “the mother show of alternative comedy” and how it was both my mother and I was its mother. The life of creating is often like that.
For more fun listen to the audiobook - where this chapter includes pieces of my conversations with Dave Holmes, Tim Bagley, Isaac Mizrahi, Sandra Bernhard, AB Farrelly, Judy Gold, Baron Vaughn, Phoebe Bridgers, Jamie Bridgers, Byron Bowers and Greg Behrendt.
So You Need To Decide available everywhere audiobooks are - and if your mom listens to audiobooks you can use your audible credits on it for her Mother’s Day gift. xx B
People ask me - do you have a family. They mean do you have kids of course. Because obviously, we all have a family. Two families actually. The family we’re born into and our family of choice. Unless you’ve decided to believe we chose our parents. In which case, two families of choice. Lucky you!
Sometimes people are more pointed and actually ask about kids. Asking if someone has kids, besides being one of the most impolite questions, is one of the most impatient ones. Because if you just wait a sec, the answer always reveals itself. Maybe in a badly timed text, baby pic phone wallpaper, or as the explanation of the trashed back seat of the SUV. And if not - after a certain point - there’s your answer. Really just stand by. More is always being revealed. Or less as I’ve come to believe.
But we all do ask. Because we’re curious about this enormous decision that ripples out into a million other decisions. And here’s the thing. I used to say no, I don’t have kids. But then people would say you will, you’ll see. And then I would say maybe you’ll see. Since I’m me. Then - that uncomfortable impasse. Who knows me better? Me or someone who doesn’t even know me well enough to know whether I have kids. Hi.
And then two things happened to make me decide to say yes.
One. I decided to say yes in general. My first husband accused me of being so negative, for a positive person. No, I’m not I said. Knee jerk reaction, but ha ha. And I get it, time to change.
And two, even though I don’t have kids – at least not in any of the ways they mean it, as a birth mom or an adopted mom. Or stepmom. Foster mom. Still. I do have kids in the ways that I mean it. In some of the alternative ways - I have a pseudo daughter who started out as an intern. I have nephews. I have students. I have Gen Z ex-housemates. But the truth is my parenting has mostly been for my show, UnCabaret.
Of course, it’s not the same. For one thing, it also feels like it’s my parent. Yeah, in some ways I am its mom, and in some ways it’s mine. We create each other in like an infinity loop - I create it, it creates a new me, so I change it. It’s a dance that I’ve been doing for decades now.
And in still other ways it’s a place where a family exists.
I know I’m not alone in feeling like a project is a child. But it’s weird, if you google ‘married to my job’ you get pages and pages and pages of search results. Links to anxious attachment, intimacy issues, childhood trauma, phantom vibration syndrome and irrelationship. But if you google ‘when your job is your child’ – no matter how many times you try rephrasing it - you get results about unemployment and parenthood, bringing kids to work, explaining your job to your kids and how many years you need to take off work to have a child. 2-5 apparently. So weird, we see a job can be a spouse but not a child. Or we can, but no one is talking about it. Maybe because it’s more of a female phenom? I really don’t know. Which I’m fine with by the way and being comfortable with uncertainty is one of the many things that my mom, UnCabaret has taught me.
Anyway, as a qualifier – in case you think I’m imagining this, I’ve often been called ‘the godmother of alternative comedy’. First UnCabaret itself was called the ‘godmother of alternative comedy’ by the LA weekly. Which would I guess make me the god mother mother. Then people started mis attributing it to the LA Times. And finally misquoting it as me being the god mother of alt comedy. And then finally this year I read something that called me the god mother of comedy. Ha. Well, it’s where I’ve directed my not inconsequential stores of maternal energy. And I guess it shows.
I decided I didn’t want to have actual kids when I was fifteen. Maybe before. But when I was fifteen, I knew for sure, and I knew that I knew. I had one of those light-bulb-moments. I was in the passenger seat of my boyfriend’s jacked-up Chevy Nova. He looked like a Jewish Elvis. That’s really neither here nor there but just to give you a picture. I remember we were waiting for the traffic to let us turn right, and I was staring at a wall of freshly greened New Haven woods. And I decided. Or realized. Or realized I had decided. I’m never going to have kids. I’m an artist and you can’t do both. That was my thinking. My thinking has changed, at least to some degree. But I didn’t need google to know that there would be years I wouldn’t be able to make work, years that were filled with things I wanted to make work about. There would be the feeling of never catching up. There would be challenging finances. I’d never get a room of my own. Now I know that’s maybe scarcity thinking. But for female creatives still sadly often true.
What I don’t remember though, is what happened to turn the light bulb of decision/realization on in that particular moment. Was it the boyfriend talking about having kids? Was it that I resented going home to family dinner? Was it the abortion I’d just nursed my friend Monica through?
It might have been that I was thinking about a certain Edward Hopper painting. Western Motel. I was obsessed with that painting. Haunted by it. It’s the one where a woman sits at the edge of a motel bed. Her bags are packed. Coat’s draped on a big empty chair. Looking at us, though not exactly, but definitely not at the strange mountains out the picture window behind her. Was she leaving? Arriving? Waiting for someone? Taking in the energy that remained from someone who had just left? Is she sitting there deciding? Immobilized by indecision? Where to go? Who to be? I mean, she’s ready to leave, why isn’t she leaving? And if she’s just arrived, why isn’t she unpacking? What is she waiting for?
I’d been going downtown, to the Yale Art Museum, to look at this painting on the regular. I didn’t know if I was afraid of becoming that woman. If I wanted to be that woman, or if maybe I wanted to be Edward Hopper. Or all three. And that puzzled me. The part of me that was a woman wanting to be a muse. The part of me that was an artist wanting to be amused.
And maybe all these things pulled me to it. Got me out of the ancestral family tract home and onto the bus. I’d go sit on the little museum bench – sidebar - why can’t they put comfortable chairs in museums? I mean what’s the decision-making process there? Let’s make sure people are so uncomfortable looking at art they can never really love it? – anyway I’d sit and stare at it. Mesmerized. Confused. Maybe angry, grateful, fearful and hopeful too. To say that that painting convinced me not to have children might be an overstatement. But it might not be.
I mean I was freaked out about overpopulation. And I’d been working to raise money for an organization called ZPG, Zero Population Growth. If you can call selling happy face buttons as part of a B’nai Brith Girls fundraiser - work.
I also questioned the ‘get to’ part of ‘you get to re-live your childhood’. My childhood was shaped by an autoimmune disease. And I wasn’t anxious to relive it. But I do cherish the time in the hospital which was rich in life shaping events. One of which was being the subject of a piece in The Providence Journal, which ran a big picture of me. Sitting on my bed. All dressed up. Like the woman in Western Motel. I’m also not looking at the camera, I’m looking down into an Etch-A-Sketch. And towering over me, instead of mountains, a dozen student nurses all peering adoringly at me. They look like angels . The caption reads: All The Girls Are Interested in Beth. Ha.
But the fact there was that picture of me, maybe it was that that drew me to the painting. Maybe it was the hospital that was the reason I didn’t want to have kids and this painting was the breadcrumb to realizing that.
But there was something else and maybe this painting helped me understand it. The woman seemed lonely. And maybe I saw in this painting the Scylla and Charybdis of the family decision. I didn’t want kids. But I also didn’t want to be lonely.
So, by the time I was fifteen, when I knew, and knew that I knew, that I didn’t want to have kids. What I didn’t know that I knew, was that I did want a family. Almost as much as I didn’t want kids. I don’t think that my teenage brain could have made sense of that alternating current of feelings. I don’t want kids. I do want a family. It would have blown a circuit. In fact, I didn’t realize until much after I had pulled off this hat trick, that it’s what I was attempting to do.
Which makes it even more miraculous that I did find a way to have a family without having children. When I say a way I mean ways. ways. Those usual that I mentioned. But really UnCabaret.
After a few trial runs, or the gestation as I like to think of it, a couple of other residencies, UnCabaret landed, was born, in a venue called LunaPark, and it miraculously became that. A family. The show was on Sunday, so it had a Sunday dinner vibe, and afterwards we’d all hang out. We ate the squash soup, the fried calamari, drank the drinks. And we told the stories behind the stories on stage. Friends were invited. Sure, we fought. We talked about each other. That didn’t matter. It was a home base. But it was loose enough, there was a freedom to it, the way I imagined a family could be, that you could come and go. And come back.
But as much as it housed a family, UnCabaret was a member of the family too. Does that make sense? I’m not sure. But it’s true. It was like a child. It forced me to grow up. I hadn’t like the rules of the comedy world, so I’d worked to change them. But once I changed the rules, I had to enforce them. I hadn’t thought ahead to that part. How did I become the man I heard myself wonder one night. I mean I knew how, but it still baffled me. The way maybe every parent is sometimes baffled by the amount they change based on this one decision to have a child.
Deciding to ‘have’ UnCabaret meant I created, hosted, produced, booked, and loved the show. And I made the rules. What I told people was: do material that if you don’t do it you feel like your head will explode. And don’t repeat material, unless it’s to contextualize new material. Tell stories. Not jokes. I enforced those rules during the show talking to performers from a mic in the back of the room – keeping the sets very conversational. Judy Toll, who was one of the original UnCab crew, used to call me on Monday mornings, going through everyone’s set. If someone had strayed into their act, it did sometimes happen, Judy would say they were cheating! She may as well have said, Mooom.
In fact, she did call me and Greg Miller, to whom I was married and who was the other producer of the show, Mommy and Daddy. We were no older than her. It wasn’t that. It was the mom and pop shop vibe of it.
Greg and I had started working on UnCab at the point we would have been having kids together. Sometime after I created UnCab, Greg and his screenwriting partner/best friend - split up. He first decided to go it alone and rented an office in a building on the corner of Hollywood and Vine, it could have come out of a Raymond Chandler book. The frosted glass door, the view of, as we called it, The Dirty Boulevard. But he didn’t like screenwriting alone and so he started kibbitzing on the show. As it grew, he stepped in to do some of the produceorial work for. We worked well together. The Hollywood Reporter once called us the Sonny and Cher of alt comedy.
And for us, the show functioned the way a child does. Giving us something to join forces on. It wasn’t either of our only thing, but it was always there. Like a child. A weekly show needs to be fed. It was a defining element of our lives. Gave us that focus that a child does. I didn’t get that I was doing one of those ‘eat this instead of that’ substitution moves. But with life instead of donuts.
And UnCab grew, the way a kid might. New venues, TV, radio gigs, new media, new talent. The ups and downs. Hot years cooler years. And when a drift started happening. I didn’t notice. The way you sometimes don’t when someone drifts away. Even if that someone is you.
It wasn’t just me. A lot of the original group was off doing other amazing things. Starring in shows, getting movies made, publishing NYT best sellers. And even though the show was still going, and we had new folks in it, I got a sort of empty nest feeling. And I started to feel a little resentful. Or maybe a lot. I’d spent all this time nurturing UnCab and it had been successful - besides the Sunday night show, I’d done spin off shows, hosted a two radio shows, made a special for Comedy Central, appeared on Sex & The City, was a correspondent for All Things Considered, it wasn’t like there wasn’t anything else going on in my life. But, well - I hadn’t exactly cashed in.
But we carried on. Until finally we didn’t. I had to bust a move. How much could I give to Uncab? As my friends were starting to send kids off to college I just kind of let go. I’d tried to ‘close the show’ before. Even announced that I’d closed it. But new venues, new performers, a bird in hand, and really just a mother’s love kept sucking me back in.
Then I wrote a new show, 100% Happy 88% of the Time. And did let go. And while we were touring that show about happiness, ironically – or maybe not - Greg and I began to break up. I’ll share more of that story in the love chapter. Here the main point is, like so many marriages, once the kids were out of the house, the marriage fell apart.
And then I had to find my way without this locus of my family. I felt so unsettled. Sometimes I would stand at the supermarket flummoxed. I had decision fatigue. Besides deciding to end the marriage – I’d decided to break up with drinking. And I decided or we did together, to declare bankruptcy. I mean maybe the solution to empty nest is just to fill it with life changing decisions. So, when I faced food choices that bag of root vegetable chips seemed like a good decision. I need grounding I thought every time I bought them.
But I missed my kid. The way you do. I wondered if she’d ever come home. I wondered if I’d ever have a home for her. Then I remembered. I was starting over. Partly because of what she had done to me. F you UnCabaret! It’s all your fault. Blame. Then I admitted it wasn’t and blamed my ex. Then I remembered it wasn’t his fault and I blamed myself. And then I knew that wasn’t healthy and so I went back to blaming UnCabaret. And then the cycle began again.
Slowly but surely, one day at a time, things got better. As they do. And one day a friend reached out Mitch Kaplan, my new partner and I about a space that needed shows. So I reached out, we went down. The booker wanted us to do something.
Mitch suggested UnCabaret. That show is dead to me I said. Yeah, the healing had not really begun. I started tossing out other ideas. But everybody loves UnCabaret he said. Yeah, but that shows dead to me I insisted. I threw out more ideas. Nothing was sticking. Let’s just do one. For your birthday. We’ll do it together. We’ll add music. It will be fun. Mitch and music were in fact two of the things that were getting me through this time. So, I agreed. The guy was excited. We shook on it.
On the way to the car, I had every feeling. Including doubt. And you know what Oprah says, when in doubt, don’t. Or was it doubt? Maybe it was just uncertainty. I was also excited. The way a parent will feel I expect, when a child is coming home after being away for a long time. Maybe after a trip to another continent. How much will they have changed? Will I recognize them.
Then I have to circle back for a minute to tell you this next part. During the past few hard years a friend had given me an encouraging card to celebrate 9 months of not drinking. On the front of the card was a photo of a crossroads. With two street signs. One said Hope. The other said one way.
I don’t believe in hope I told her. Hope is about the future. I’m a yogi. I’m about the now. Then I heard my now ex saying: it’s the hope that will kill you. Yeah, it’s not.
And I saw I’d decided to believe this along with him but without realizing it. The way you do in a family sometimes. I didn’t know if I was ready to not believe it though. So, I thanked her. And just because I needed encouragement and she was the most encouraging person I had in my life right then, I kept that card up wherever it was that I moved to. In all the guest rooms, and offices, and house sits. All the places I got to see other families from the inside. That’s quite a privilege. Always there was that card. And maybe I was starting to feel a little hope.
So back to the club - there we were walking out of this meeting, talking about what the new UnCabaret was, would be. When I notice that the venue is on the corner of First and Hope streets. What? It was like the card literally had come to life. I mean you hear stories about vision boards manifesting but this was ridiculously literal. And then I realized that the venue itself was called First and Hope. Sometimes a sign is actually a sign.
So I had to surrender to the rebirth of my child, my mother, my family, UnCabaret.
There may as well have been a welcome home sign etched into my heart on the night we did it. I can’t imagine any parent happier to see a child. But like a child, UnCab had somehow changed in the time we’d been apart. And I’d changed. But we were back together, with Mitch as a new spark of life stepdad. And life would go on. And more decisions would be made. But we wouldn’t leave each other again. We’d made peace.
My very first self-generated prayer, not one I’d read was I build a house of light and there in dwell. And that’s what UnCab was. Is. Me and my baby. Me and my mom. Me and my family.