What the Memoirist and the Comedy Writer Have in Common

From: Elizabeth Wurtzel To: Ben Karlin

Hope you killed the man in Reno!

You are so Johnny Cash!

That is so Jew-y of you!

I love that you are multitasking TV shows. Excellent! I too multitask, thereby accomplishing nothing, but you, you create hit fake news shows. Right now, as I compose this email, I am also sitting on an Amtrak train and reading an article about this poor (actually, apparently quite wealthy, but never mind) Palestinian scholar who can't get tenure at Barnard because she wrote things that might be construed as less than kind about Israel, and I am also eating a Cup-of-Noodles soup, and having a phone conversation about termites with my mother. But you are probably coming up with the next Daily Show for HBO and an online version of The Onion for Slate or something like that, and maybe even writing a buddy movie for Adam Sandler and Chris Rock, or whoever the kids think are funny these days, all the while I'm just typing this email and slurping away and telling my mom to look in the Yellow Pages for an exterminator.

If that paragraph made no sense, forgive me.

I'm not good at doing six things at once.

It's funny you should mention the 237th richest man in the world. As I told you, my thesis is about intellectual property, and there's a section about how rich you would be based on the order in which you receive valuable information, like a hot stock tip. And I go through the regression from the 27th richest to the 270th richest to the 27,000th richest person in the world.

So, you see, maybe our work has something in common.

Speaking of failed relationships, I know a lot about those. Somehow all my ex-boyfriends are still in my life now. No idea why. I might just look good in a rearview mirror. And all of them are good guys, just no one I'd want to be bound to anymore.

One of them, who now produces movies in LA, is somewhere in Connecticut right now, and I think he wants to hang out, which is possible, because Connecticut is, after all, a state the size of Connecticut. It's not a state the size of Rhode Island, but nothing is very far from anything else here. Eek!!!

Anyway, my favorite people all live in Brooklyn. This is a foul fact I accept.

A goattee is better than a soul patch.

All good men go through an earring phase.

Look, people in Wisconsin wear tube socks to scuba dive. You can't be blamed.

I wore nothing but black all through college. These things happen. I still have a nose ring. It looks good when I'm not wearing any clothes.

Everyone makes mistakes.

Next: Staying friends with an ex