That Just Happened.

Hey everyone! I was gone for a bit, maybe you noticed — if you didn’t, I’m absolutely crushed.

So what was I doing for this week that absorbed my sanity, my time, and my writing? I hosted a late night show! It was incredibly fun and a ton of work, and I thought it might be fun to share a little bit of how it came together.

I’ve been to the Austin TV Festival (also known as ATX TV Fest) for the past few years. The first year I was asked to speak on a panel about the then-nascent writers’ strike. I wish I could tell you I remembered every detail of that panel and speech, but the following 100+ days of striking have obliterated so much of my 2023 memory.

Then I went back in 2024 to talk about making late night and the future of the genre. Both of those years I had a great time. The ATX TV Fest is, as a friend said, “small-festival vibes with a big-festival lineup.” Great organizers and staff, fun panels, and a crowd that straight up loves television.

This year, I did a late night show. Whole thing, with guests and jokes and ad breaks. And although I was planning it and working on it for months, that last final few days became a total black hole of attention and time and focus. Which mean that, for the first time in a long long time, I had no idea what was going on in the news.

Okay - that might sound weird for a late night show that’s about the news and current events, but part of planning a one-time episode for several months is that you’re using some larger evergreen but relevant pieces and not trying to use your barebones team to say write an entire monologue on things that happened 8 hours ago. That said, we did add a joke to the top of the show about Elon leaving the White House. But what was different and weird was finding out about the departure from a friend (and OMGreg subscriber) texting me “what a news day.” I had to ask what was up, because I was so disconnected from The Firehose.

I think it was actually a great learning experience to take a couple days all the way out of the news cycle, because it helps me understand people who either out of privilege or intentional ignorance don’t follow the news at all. Because if you’re totally out of the news, not that much has changed in your life. You can get up, buy food, drive around, go to work, go to the mall, walk past an Auntie Anne’s, try on some shoes, go back to Auntie Anne’s and get one of those hot dogs wrapped in a pretzel things. And at no point will the crushing hand of fascism even brush you.

But the problem is… it will. The stories we’re seeing of small town Republicans mad that their brown person got reported. Of cutoffs and funding closures and restrictive laws and all sorts of things….. the headlines are full of more and more cases where that crushing hand of fascism (or CHoF) reaches out and touches you even when you weren’t looking for it.

Because there’s a lot of talk right now about these endless stories where a MAGA person says they “didn’t vote for this.” And sure we could ask “what specifically did you vote for and how did you think that was going to happen” or “what did you think about the time he promised to do the bad thing he’s doing right now” or “will any of this make your vote change or even stay home?” We could ask those smart questions or we could ask:

Did you really think none of this would affect you?

Because to be out of the news loop doesn’t actually protect anyone — including you, the person not reading it. And people can’t really say they were tricked. Almost all of them were around last time for a presidency that was, y’know, bad. If you’re up to date, if you have the object permanence to put pieces together, you’ll know when things seem bad and when things are bad.

Which gives me an idea about why Elon left…

-Greg