Host - Michelle Jalowski
Michelle Jalowski: [00:00:02] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm Michelle Jalowski, your host for this episode.
I recently started a New Year's tradition that I really like. It goes something like this. At the beginning of January, I write a list of goals and wishes for the whole upcoming year. It's like a to do list with little checkboxes next to each one. Some of the things I write down, I know I can achieve, and some things are a bit more pie in the sky. Like, on the list might be, practice piano regularly and get a new pet insurance policy for my dog, but also buy a house in New York City and work on a Moth story with Lizzo. Still achievable, but a reach.
Then at the end of the year, I go through the list and put a check mark next to all the things I accomplished. The ones I didn't, I'll rewrite and then I'll put in some new ones also, It's a helpful way to reflect on the things I did do and see what I didn't quite manage and have to carry over. And who doesn't love checking something off a list?
In that spirit of reflection, today, we've got two stories from Moth hosts looking back on past New Year's hijinks. First up is Dan Kennedy. To be absolutely clear, Dan might not be a trained professional, but you still shouldn't try this stunt at home. Like, seriously, do not even think about it. He told this while hosting a Boston Mainstage. The theme of the night was Great Expectations. Here's Dan.
[cheers and applause]
Dan: [00:01:16] It was five minutes before midnight on New Year's Eve. Quite some time ago, my girlfriend and I, we had just turned 30 and we thought, we're adults now, so we'll stay in for New Year's Eve and [audience laughter] be sophisticated and mature. I was sitting on the couch in our apartment on Wall Street on the 20th floor, which I know that's a big missing piece. The only explanation I owe you people is it was a period I was going through, [audience laughter] and it didn't add up or go great. So, I was sitting there and I was like, “This is great. Being mature and being an adult. Whoa, it's so nice.” And then, I look and what I'm doing-- I'm sitting on the sofa putting software on our Mac laptops at 05:00 to midnight on New Year's Eve. [audience laughter]
I think you are really losing your edge. [audience laughter] So, I go, “What am I going to do though?” You know what I mean? Like, “How am I going to turn up the old volume, get back to the old me?” So, I remembered my friend, Nick, had worked on an independent film down in Texas. When he was there, he was buying a bunch of fireworks. He came back to New York City with a box of fireworks and gave me a bunch of them. And I thought, I have a great idea. [audience laughter]
The fireworks are in that back bedroom that we use as a home office, because we're adults now. I will go back there, turn up the volume, really get this thing started. It's New Year's Eve. So, Maria loves to cook. She's cooking some awesome thing in the kitchen totally occupied with her culinary talent, which enables me to just sneak by-- I just walk slowly by, so she doesn't know, the old me is here. [audience laughter] I go to the back bedroom. I choose this firework out of one of those boxes. It's this thing, it's about, I don't know, it's like this long, it's way bigger than anything needs to be to celebrate any kind of 4th of July situation. It's got plastic wings on top of it. It's just weirdly aggressive.
The idea is you put it on the ground, and you light the fuse, and it spins, and the plastic wings take it super high up in the air and it explodes in this giant fiery display. So I go, “How cool is this going to be?” I'm thinking to myself, I will toss it out the window. Yeah, exactly. This is going to be awesome. [audience laughter] And it will have a 20-storey head start. It will go 20 stories higher than it was ever designed to go. It will then do its giant fiery display, and people all over Manhattan will be like, “Wait, is there a professional grade fireworks show happening down there too?” [audience laughter] And I'll be like, “Eh, it's just me doing something. No big deal.” [audience laughter]
So, I open the window, I light the fuse and it's totally one of those like Road Runner cartoon fuses. It's like, this long and it starts sparkling and I'm holding it. The window's right there, it's open. And Maria, as is often the case if she looks over and doesn't see me, will start going, “What's he doing?” [audience laughter] And just then had walked into the back room, and I'm holding this giant firework [audience laughter] with a fuse that's getting shorter. She says a phrase I've come to know over the years, which is, “What are you doing?”
For the first time in my life, I said something that I thought was so cool and badass to my girlfriend. Like, for just a second, I felt like the loser character who's barely untraditional, handsome, but such a loose cannon that Catherine Keener falls in love with him in an independent movie. [audience laughter] And I go, “Happy New Year,” [audience laughter] fling this firework out the window.
And that's when stuff starts going wrong. [audience laughter] It took a turn. It's not balanced well, because they didn't plan on this and it flips. It's now drilling earthward 60 miles an hour, give or take, from the 20th floor. I run over, and I look down and it's just going, going, going down, down, down like 13, 12, 11, 10, 9. It gets down to the second story, and it does this thing I still cannot believe I saw with my own eyes. It just bangs a left, goes up our alley. [audience laughter] It's like CNN footage from “The very first war you ever saw on TV.” I was like, “What the-- How did it even know do that?”. It's headed for the dumpster. [audience laughter] New Year is literally already shaping up to be a dumpster fire. [audience laughter]
The dumpster is like the size of an 18-wheeler trailer. It's giant. There's 400 apartments in this building or something. So, it's New Year's Eve. It's filled with dried Christmas trees, wrapping paper, I don't know, probably bales of hay, what the fuck, you know? [audience laughter] Sure, put them in there. It goes right for it, almost it's trying to impress me. And burrows in, down through this seven-layered dip of light, flashy fuels. It's going down, going down, going down. I'm like, “Oh, my God, oh my God, oh my God.” And then, it's just, I'm looking. seems cool. I'm like, “I think this is cool. I think nothing's going to have to happen.”
And then, all of a sudden, it starts its fiery display, because it thinks it's up in the sky. And I'm like, “You're not in the sky. You're on the-- Dude, don't do the thing.” And it's like, “Check this out though.” [mimics actions] It's doing all of its little tricks. I turn from the bad seed instantly into this scared nine-year-old boy. I look at Maria and I go, “Oh, my God, it went into the dumpster. Now, what are we supposed to do?” [audience laughter] She does this thing where I will never forget this moment. She takes two steps backwards, puts her hands up and goes, “This is all you.” [audience laughter] I'm like, “That is not what a true partnership is. [audience laughter] Relationships are supposed to be about being in there.” I'm like, “All right, just deal with it. You have to deal with it.”
So, I'm looking down, and it seems calm. But I'm like, “Yeah, but you're also 20 floors up.” Like, maybe, I don't know what's really happening. Then I see it, an orange spot. And the orange spot starts to grow. It starts to grow a little bigger and a little bigger, and suddenly, it's taking up the whole dumpster. The flames are probably like one or two stories high. And I'm like, “Oh, this is feeling totally bad.” Like, “Thank God nobody gets hurt.” Because suddenly there are five huge New York City fire trucks, and they're hooking cables up to it, pulling it out into the middle of the street, shooting it with foam.
I'm instantly this weird, like, Paul Giamatti character. 20 floors up with the lights out, going, “Oh, my God, [audience laughter] there's so many fire trucks down there. It's really huge.” I'm completely freaking out. Even after the firemen put this out, my adrenaline is just peaking. Like, there's no way I'm getting to sleep. It's now 04:00 in the morning. Maria went to bed, I think at five minutes after midnight, was just like, “Happy New Year.” Boom. Goes to sleep. I finally settle down enough to go into the bedroom. I don't want to wake her up, so I just lie down on top of the covers, very still. I'm staring at the ceiling. I'm trying to get my heart to stop finally racing. I'm calming down when she whispers this line that will haunt me from the rest of my years, “They're going to find you.” Yeah. [audience laughter]
[cheers and applause]
Michelle Jalowski: [00:09:58] That was Dan Kennedy. Dan is one of the original developers of The Moth podcast and a longtime host and performer at The Moth. He's the author of three books, Loser Goes First, Rock On and American Spirit, and cocreator of the new
comedy fiction podcast, KPODD 101.3 with maximum fun networks Benjamin R. Harrison. KPODD is available wherever you get your podcasts. Also, if you're wondering, yes, Dan and his girlfriend are still together and they now live in upstate New York.
Our next story is from Ophira Eisenberg. Since her story doesn't involve setting off fireworks, feel free to recreate it at home. She told this while hosting a Moth Mainstage in Tarrytown, New York, where theme of the night was There's a place for us. Here's Ophira.
[cheers and applause]
Ophira: [00:10:45] Growing up in Calgary, Alberta, Canada-- Yeah. Woo-woo. Interesting. I couldn't wait to leave you either, actually, if you're here. I just didn't feel like Calgary, Alberta, it's cowboys and it's the prairies, a lot of oil money. I did not feel like I fit in. I kept fantasizing another place to go. And honestly, I didn't know exactly what it was. I was, of course, as a child obsessed with Sesame Street, so I suppose it was Queens. [chuckles] Eventually, I was very scared. I was very scared to move to New York or really just anywhere outside of the country. But then, I went to college in Canada, but I had a friend who went to college in New York and she said, “Oh, come visit, come visit,” not understanding that when most people say that, they don't mean it. And I decided to come visit her.
As a 25-year-old, I said, I'm going to come for New Year's Eve. I know. It's so naive. You do not bombard someone's apartment in New York for New Year's Eve. New Year's Eve, as anyone who lives around here anyways, is daunting, right? I knew that she was going to feel excited to have me. I didn't know that she was going to feel the pressure of having to figure out what we would do if I came. But I was 25 years old. Honestly, we could have done anything, and I would have thought it was fabulous. But when I got to meet her at her place, she lived in a dorm near the East Village, and she said that we had an invitation to a party. She was like, “We got us an invitation to a New Year's party.” I was like, “Oh my goodness, we're going to a party in New York. This is amazing.”
She let me borrow some of her clothes, because mine were not good enough. [audience laughter] I said, where is the party? And she said, “It's in Times Square.” [audience laughter] This is in the 1990s. And so, I was like, “We're going to Times Square?” And she was like, “We're going to Times Square.” So, we put on our outfits and we took the subway pretty close. But of course, you couldn't go very close, because it's all fenced off basically for the big ball drop. But we had this address with an invitation, and she was just showing it to the policemen who were standing guarding these barricades, and they were looking at it, and nodding and letting us through. I had no idea that was special at all either. I was like, “Oh, they're so helpful.” [audience laughter]
We got to the address. It was a condo in the middle of Times Square. Now, I wasn't so aware of where I was, because I was 25 years old, my first time in New York. But I think it was like 45th and 7th. And so, it was a beautiful building. Again, I didn't understand what was going on. We walked in. There was a doorman. He handed us champagne, or maybe it was Prosecco, or maybe it was apple juice. Really, at 25, it all was the same to me. And I was like, “Oh, my goodness, this is where your friends live?” And she was like, “Yeah.” And honestly, I did not know the term trust fund kid yet. [audience laughter] So, I was like, “Wow, if I work really hard too, [audience laughter] maybe one day.”
We took the elevator up to the penthouse. The doors opened into the apartment. I just remember the entire place was white. Just white carpeting, and white walls, and white furniture and white throw pillows, and I was like, “It's like Celine Dion's place.” [audience laughter] And it was a party. Everyone there was my age, but they seemed cool. I had conversations with all these different people about art. We were spewing our ideas of philosophy, all full of grandeur, like you do. I didn't feel like myself. I felt like a better version of myself. And I was like, “Oh, these are the people I might hang out with one day.”
And then, it became close to midnight, and we were told we all have to go onto the terrace. There was a terrace. The terrace basically looked over Times Square. If you went like this, you could see the ball. The countdown started, and we all started counting down-- We're counting down at the same time as thousands of people on the street beneath us. So, we're counting the same time. It just feels wild. And then, it's Happy New Year. Everyone is screaming and laughing. I can't believe that I'm there. And this man, he looks like Benicio del Toro, grabs me. It was the 1990s, maybe it was Benicio del Toro. Grabs me and just kisses me and then looks at me and goes, “Happy New Year” and disappears. And I was like, “[gasps] That is so New York.” [audience laughter] Just to be desire and then off.
And then, everyone on the terrace started shouting, “We're in the center of the world. We're in the center of the world.” The confetti was falling, but it was so cold. It looked like sparkles were floating from the air all around me. I looked at all these people and this place I was and I thought, this is where I'm going to move to. This is where I'm going to move to and this is what my life is going to be like every year. [audience laughter] Thank you. [laughs]
[cheers and applause]
Michelle Jalowski: [00:16:34] That was Ophira Eisenberg. If you're curious about what happened after she moved to New York City, well, we asked her and she sent us this little reflection.
Ophira: [00:16:41] So, I did move to New York. It was years and years and years and years later, but I did do it. I don't live in a penthouse in Times Square. Matter of fact, it was also many years before I lived in an apartment that was beyond just a couch in the corner of a living room with many people. But here we are. And New Year's, wow, I never spent another New Year's in Times Square. I've done a lot of cool, fun things in New York on New Year's. But now, I got to say my favorite New Year's plan is to stay at home and spend it with my family. I think that's the most New Yorky thing to say of all time, that on New Year's in the center of the world, you want to spend it in your apartment. [laughs]
Michelle Jalowski: [00:17:32] Ophira Eisenberg is a stand-up comedian, writer and the host of the new comedy podcast, Parenting is a Joke with iHeartRadio and Pretty Good Friends. She hosted NPR's Ask Me Another for nine years, where she interviewed hundreds of celebrities including Rosie Perez, Yo-Yo Ma, Awkwafina, Roxane Gay, Nick Kroll, Chelsea Handler and more. She's appeared multiple times on CBS' The Late Show, Comedy Central, HBO, The New Yorker Festival, Kevin Hart's LOL Network, Gotham Live, and the Today Show. Her own memoir, Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy, was optioned for a television series. And her new comedy special, Plant-Based Jokes, is available as an album on iTunes and streaming on YouTube now.
That's all for this episode. Whether your New Year's included exciting parties, fireworks or just heading to bed early, we hope you have a wonderful 2023 filled with incredible stories.
Marc Sollinger: [00:18:23] Michelle Jalowski is a producer and director at The Moth, where she helps people craft and shape their stories for stages all over the world.
This episode of The Moth podcast was produced by Sarah Austin Jenness, Sarah Jane Johnson and me, Marc Sollinger. The rest of The Moth’s leadership team include Sarah Haberman, Catherine Burns, Jenifer Hixson, Meg Bowles, Jennifer Birmingham, Marina Klutse, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant, Lee Ann Gullie, Inga Glodowski and Aldi Kaza. All Moth stories are true, as remembered by their storytellers.
For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org. The Moth podcast is presented by PRX, The Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.