Saturday, March 29, 2025

THREE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY Eat Drink Laugh at Pangea, Saturday April 5 at 9pm

I know what you're thinking. "Hey, Paul, how come you haven't done any actual writing lately?" Well, what do you think stand-up is? You think I make that shit up onstage?

Besides, I need to put asses in seats. Fifty seats, to be precise. (OK, 40. Ten of those seats are reserved for comedians.) And this blog has gotten 166,922 page views as of this writing. So, if all of you show up, I could sell out Pangea 3,338.44 times! That's 278.20 shows, or enough shows for the next 23.18 years! (Granted, not all of you live in New York City. And I wouldn't want to fly, what with Elon Musk firing all our air traffic controllers. But I digress...)

And, oh yeah, it's Eat Drink Laugh's THREE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY! So there's that. And I hear that "Cher" will be making a special appearance. In fact, there'll be two "Cher"s!

So get your asses down to Pangea next Saturday, April 5 at 9pm! All 50 of them!

I mean, 40.

Advance tickets available here: https://cur8.com/23871/project/130494

Thursday, February 20, 2025

A Letter to the New York Times

To the Editor:

“These Days, It’s ‘Sexy’ to Be a Republican” is one of the most nauseatingly tone-deaf articles I’ve ever read, even by the Styles section’s admittedly low standards.

Is it “sexy” to cut off funding for USAID, as Trump has done, consigning thousands of poor people to certain death?

Is it “glamorous” for Musk, an unelected private citizen, to arbitrarily fire hundreds of career civil servants and shut down vital government agencies?

Is it “cool” that there have been six plane crashes since Trump took office, that he’s fired people from the already understaffed FAA, that he’s endangered our lives and national security with his cabinet appointments and foreign policy decisions, and that he continues to break the law and violate the Constitution, even as a convicted felon?

I’m not surprised that the people mentioned in this article are all under 30. That means they’re all too young to remember a world before Trump (let alone Nixon and Watergate).

And how could any self-respecting gay man support Trump when he’s made a career of scapegoating trans people?

God help us!

Paul Hallasy

New York, NY

Friday, February 14, 2025

Eat Drink Laugh at Pangea, Saturday, March 1 at 9pm

Oh, hey, it's me again. I'm producing/hosting a stand-up comedy show called Eat Drink Laugh at Pangea on Saturday, March 1 at 9pm. It's the perfect antidote to the shit show we're witnessing on a daily basis. And you know I'll have something to say about that as well!

Saturday, January 11, 2025

Eat Drink Laugh at Pangea, Friday, January 24 at 9pm

Oh, hey, all you 150K+ readers. You might be interested to know that I’ve been producing/hosting a monthly stand-up comedy show called Eat Drink Laugh at Pangea since April, 2022. If you like my curmudgeonry on the page (OK, screen), you’ll love it on the stage!

Oh yeah, I’m also looking for a producer/investors for my screenplay, All the Bands in the ’80s, but that's another blog post!

Thursday, December 26, 2024

Worst New Year Ever

There has never been a new year I was less looking forward to than 2025.

And it’s not just next year. It’s the next four years. I honestly don’t know how I, our country or our planet are going to survive them.

Trump hasn’t even taken office yet and we’ve already had a sneak preview of what the next four years are going to be like: complete chaos. (Of course, we already saw what his first term was like, but apparently Americans have a very short memory.)

Let’s review, shall we?

We just learned that Matt Gaetz, Trump’s pick for attorney general, is guilty of statutory rape and drug possession, among other crimes. Pete Hegseth, his pick to lead the Defense Department, is also guilty of sexual assault and is an alcoholic. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., his pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, is an anti-vaxxer and also a former drug addict. Kash Patel, his pick to lead the FBI, wants to basically dismantle that organization. Tulsi Gabbard, his pick to be the Director of National Intelligence, is a supporter of Vladimir Putin.

And that’s just a sampling.

We just narrowly avoided yet another government shutdown and now Trump wants to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal! Are you fucking kidding me?!!!

What’s been happening in my home town of New York City lately? Let’s see:

The CEO of United Healthcare was gunned down in broad daylight and his accused killer became a folk hero because that’s what it took to have a conversation about health insurance in this country.

And a homeless woman on a subway train was set on fire by an illegal immigrant, throwing into high relief the crises of both homelessness and immigration (not to mention the lackadaisical response by our police department).

Meanwhile, personally, I’m in the midst of yet another job search because a large chunk of our economy is being run by temporary, freelance or contract employees like myself and, due to “the holidays,” no business is being conducted between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.

And woe unto the person who, like myself, had his prescriptions run out during the aforementioned holidays because chances are your doctor will be on his annual two-week end-of-year vacation, so you’ll just have to do without any medication until January 2.

Is it any wonder I’m not feeling the Christmas spirit? Bah humbug!

Oh, yeah, and happy New Year!

Tuesday, December 17, 2024

The End of Social Media

This morning, as I was about to look for a job on LinkedIn, I responded to someone’s post about how useless job postings in general (and LinkedIn’s in particular) were for finding a job. (I believe this is the definition of either irony or insanity.) The poster said that, based on his conversations, most people found their jobs either through networking or because they knew someone in the company. I commented that, indeed (no pun), only 3% of jobs were found from job postings and that on my last job search I had responded to 1,700 job postings and only gotten five interviews. (I eventually wound up getting a job through a temp agency which I said was, I supposed, like knowing someone in the company.)

My feed was immediately filled by people telling their own LinkedIn horror stories (as well as numerous advertisements), but no posts from people I was actually connected to. Similarly, a few days ago, I asked someone a question on Instagram in response to a post this person made about a friend of hers in the film industry. Although this person never answered my question, I immediately started seeing dozens of posts from her.

Is this the great future that was promised to us by A.I.?

In both these instances (and in business in general) the idea seems to be, “How can we remove humans from the equation?” If there’s a job that a software (in this case, A.I.) can do “better,” let’s replace the human with the software.

Two more examples:

I recently joined both Threads and Bluesky after deleting my Twitter account (because Elon Musk was instrumental in electing Donald Trump, donating $250 million to his campaign, as well as suppressing anti-Trump tweets and promoting pro-Trump tweets). After a few weeks, I have 131 followers on Threads and 52 on Bluesky. On both platforms, I see posts from basically the same two people (who must do nothing but post all day), to the point where I’ve started deleting some of them.

I just use these two platforms to vent my frustration at the election of Trump/Republicans, but I’m just preaching to the converted. I’m not actually changing anyone’s mind. So what's the point?

The only reason I stayed on Twitter after Elon Musk bought it was to be a “voice of the opposition” and look how well that worked out.

The best of these platforms might be Facebook, perhaps because it’s based on people I actually know. (I compare these other platforms to a bunch of people screaming into a vacuum.) But even here, out of 1,793 “friends,” I only see posts from about two dozen. And on all these platforms, the “conversation” seems to be very one-sided. It just seems to be people promoting or selling something (to be fair, I’m guilty of that as well), but rarely engaging in actual conversation.

Maybe I should just rely on my website and blog. If people are interested, fine, if not, that’s fine too. But, of course, then the issue becomes how to get people to pay attention to your website or blog, hence social media.

It’s a vicious cycle.

Now excuse me while I post this on Facebook, Threads and Bluesky.

Thursday, December 12, 2024

Eat Drink Laugh at Pangea, Saturday, December 21 at 9pm

I'm hosting a stand-up comedy show at Pangea on Saturday, December 21 at 9pm, $10 in advance ($15 at the door) plus $20 minimum. Advance tickets available here: https://cur8.com/23871/project/127527

I hope you'll join me and this great line-up of comedians.

See you there!

Paul