I Moved to the Woods

And All I Got Was a Bunch of Bear Scat, No Internet, and an Unshakeable Inner Peace

I grew up in the city and I lived in the city all my life and now all of a sudden I live 35 minutes from the closest store and that store is a mini-mart that sells worms. I live 12 minutes from the closest paved road and an hour from the closest hospital and the only internet available (except for Elon Musk’s baby boy space juice, which I’m ashamed to say we are considering) runs at pre-Napster speeds. There was a bobcat on my neighbor’s deck! Bobcat the ANIMAL!

We moved to the woods because 1) rent in Seattle is sooooooooo expensive and 2) we needed space for Roya to move in and 3) our dog demands to chase a Frisbee through the sticker bushes for 18-22 hours per day or else he drags us straight to hell and 4) my parents bought this log cabin in the early 80s and it’s 100 years old and it needs a ton of care and weedwhacking and my mom needed help and we needed rent we could afford and so here we are! A real win-win! Did you know there is a special kind of TINY SQUIRREL called the Douglas Squirrel that is native to Pacific coast forests????????

Now that the horror of moving two times in one year has passed (and combining two households into one while simultaneously moving that dual household into an already furnished house, plz anesthetize me until June), we looooooove living in the woods. It is a quiet life. I feel like I’m catching up on 41 years of sleep. I am using the electric blanket daily. A harbor seal tried to eat Barry. A bear crapped on the lawn bigtime.

AND YET, LIFE AND COMMERCE MARCH ON! I might live in the woods but my career lives in HOLLYWOOD, baby!!!!!!!

I have so many Hollywood announcements to show you about! PLEASE read to the end and I will reward you with little treats!

HOLLYWOOD ANNOUNCEMENT #1:

I HAVE MADE A NEW PODCAST! It’s called Text Me Back, it comes out Thursday, November 9, and it’s a little chitty-chatty show with my best friend from high school and noted REAL BELTWAY INSIDER AND EXTREME SWAMP LAWYER, Meagan Hatcher-Mays. It’s one of the best things that I have ever made—on a short list with Butt News, Shit, Actually, my first This American Life episode, Shrill the book, and the pool party episode of Shrill.

This podcast is soooooooo funny and Meagan is a star. We talk about our friendship and the news stories that catch our eyes and the bees in our bonnets and the purchases that give our lives meaning and our pets’ various diseases and what the bears in my yard are up to. My goal, personally, is for Text Me Back to be your new comfort-listen. We’re your friends now, dog!

You can listen to the trailer and a little sneak peek HERE and SUBSCRIBE WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS and get new episodes every Thursday. (And don’t fret—I am definitely going to keep doing the Butt News Movie Club Movie Buttcast once this exhausting season has ended! Which is soon!)

HOLLYWOOD ANNOUNCEMENT #2:

If you’re in the greater Seattle area, you have TWO more chances to catch my live stage show (with a bunch of new material!), Every Castle, Ranked, for the foreseeable future! This week I’m doing a new works residency at the Seattle Rep, culminating in a work-in-progress performance, AND I’ll be doing a bigger show at the Edmonds Performing Arts Center!

EDMONDS: Thursday 11/9, 7:30 pm - Edmonds Performing Arts Center

SEATTLE: Sunday 11/12, 5:30 pm - Seattle Repertory Theater (PONCHO)

If the Rep show is sold out (it’s a small-ish space), PLEASE come to the Edmonds show! Edmonds is actually NOT that far and it is so cute! Have you ever been there? You can get a lobster roll!

HOLLYWOOD ANNOUNCEMENT #3:

Ahamefule and Charles Mudede and I started writing the script for Thin Skin in, I think, 2014? We raised all the money and shot it in 2018 and then it was supposed to premiere at festivals in the summer of 2020 and then that got, of course, horribly dashed, and then we finally got a distributor and then they got folded into another company and disappeared and then we finally got another distributor and the movie was finally going to actually come out in September 2023 and we were so excited and then we had to postpone the premiere because of the WGA strike and we were proud to do it but it was heartbreaking and scary. This has been the longest, most agonizing process—just to be able to share our precious baby with you all—and we were SO NERVOUS that something was going to go wrong AGAIN, but somehow it hasn’t and we finally get to show this movie to you!!!

Thin Skin will be in theaters in New York, LA, and Seattle, and streaming on demand starting 11/28. It makes a huge difference to a tiny film like this to have people come out to theatrical screenings, so we’d love it if you’d join us!

LOS ANGELES: Thursday 11/16, 7:30 pm (feat. Q&A with Aham, Lindy, and Charles) - Laemmle Santa Monica Film Center

SEATTLE: Thursday 11/16 through Sun 11/19, various showtimes (feat. Q&A with Aham, Lindy, and Charles on Saturday 11/18 at 7 pm) - Ark Lodge

NEW YORK: Thursday 11/30, 7 pm (feat. Q&A with Charles) - e-flux

Also, if you’ve never heard Aham’s This American Life piece that was one of the inspirations for this film, give a listen! It’s so good.

please subscribe to my podcast and come to my events—u don’t want to disappoint spaghetti face!!!!!!!

HOLLYWOOD ANNOUNCEMENT #4:

I WAS SOOOOOOO SCARED BUT I WATCHED MIDSOMMAR FOR BUTT NEWS AND I TRIED TO WRITE IT UP IN TIME FOR HALLOWEEN BUT I FAILED BUT IT’S COMING ASAP (HOPEFULLY THIS WEEK) AND WOW THIS MOVIE WAS NOT SCARY AT ALL! BUT MAYBE THAT’S JUST BECAUSE I’M NORWEGIAN SO THIS IS BASICALLY MY LIFE????? ALL THE “SCARY” PARTS WERE JUST A GIRL BEING LIKE “HEJ COME OVER HERE” AND THEN THE GUY’S LIKE “OK” HAHAHAHAAHAHAHA

Here’s the little treat I promised you!