The Wit and Wisdom of Maria DeCotis

This is Mike Birbiglia. He tells a pretty good story.

Among his many credits, Birbiglia is a frequent contributor to This American Life. Within that framework, Birbiglia had a contest to select his “understudy.” This is a hilarious premise in and of itself as one would be understudying for his one-man show. Here he explains the contest to Jimmy Fallon.

As you may notice, this blogger has become comically besotted with a comic named Maria DeCotis, due to her presentations of outtakes from our Governor Andrew Cuomo. Before she started with the Cuomo stuff, she entered the Birbiglia understudy competition, choosing to do one of his most favored bits, “Scrambler.”

But she did it in Italian.

This performance made the cut, and she ended up performing for an audience and Ira Glass. It is hilarious.

Hey. Lorne Michaels. Are you watching this performer? Yinz should be.

Working While Black! How Dare He!

Our friends at The Chatty Passenger sum up this story the best.

Imagine you’re a delivery driver, driving along listening to your gospel music and trying to get to your next stop. It’s a great day. Now imagine that you are blocked into a gated community and prevented from leaving by the president of the Homeowners Association just because he thinks you’re suspicious!

This is exactly what happened to Travis Miller Sr.

Or, if you’d like to go right to the video:

Yep, we fixed racism! Sure did!

Maria DeCotis Does It Again

Also…

Plus a fresh quarantine set from Knower…




There are many of us hearing about the communications/collaboration platform Zoom these days and realizing that, for people of a certain age, that word has a rather different meaning. The New Yorker has recently recognized this.

It reminded me of a story This American Life told us a while ago. This is well worth your 32 minutes. And, face it, You’ve got time!