Follow, Listen, Laugh, Watch, Read: Five Recs From Comedian Beth Stelling

With a daunting array of specials, writing credits, TV and podcast appearances, and best “stand-up” accolades, Beth Stelling is more than qualified to make you rethink Uncle Kracker (see below). Girl Daddy, a special whose name projects the odious label “female comic” onto hypothetical motherhood, premieres August 20 on HBO Max.

Look, as much as I love watching videos of people falling down stairs, cats fighting their reflections in the mirror and a goose playing a drum with his feet, I had to choose something with a little more substance. And that substance is garlic powder. I first came across Eddie and his grandma, whom he occasionally calls Mom Mom, in a video he took at the kitchen table while she seasoned her eggs with garlic powder. Like a lot of garlic powder. Eddie: “Oh my god. Mom Mom. That’s insane!” To which she replies: “You’re insane. That’s what keeps me alive!” I guess I love the sweetness in Eddie’s voice when he talks to his grandma, and the volume at which he has to deliver it in order for her to hear. Mom Mom never fails to make me laugh with her confident snark, which can only be gained from living on this planet as long as she has.

Because I tend to choose a song and listen to it on repeat for days on end, that song usually colors a particular time in my life or attaches itself to a memory. Monica Martin’s “Cruel” underscored the wintry days I spent in New York City late 2018 staying at the Standard Hotel in the West Village after I headlined Gotham Comedy Club. I got a room for myself overlooking the Hudson River that I thought would provide the perfect setting to write, but they were doing construction every day. Loud banging, drills, wrenches maybe? It felt like they were cutting my room out of the side of the building. One afternoon I started to take a bath to relax, and the tub filled with brown water. So I toweled off, turned Monica up in my headphones, took a topless selfie and wrote some jokes before walking to my sets at the Comedy Cellar. I can barely choose a “Cruel” lyric to share, because I love all of them, but I’ll go with the opening line: “Angel on my shoulder till I lost it / I’m barely out the door and she’s exhausted.”

I wasn’t introduced to stand-up until I was 18 years old, and after deciding I wanted to try to be one I avoided watching it altogether: I was terrified of stealing material or a persona. Now I’m in a place where I can watch stand-up, but it’s harder to elicit laughter because I’ve seen too much and know the tricks. This special, taped in 1979, took me on a ride and made me laugh out loud. Pryor is everything I aim to be: silly, dark, real, subtle, animated, vulnerable. So while Pryor’s name is probably not new to you, 41 years later the jokes are still relevant. I found that incredible and sad.

Seriously screw this show for making all other love stories complete trash, including the ones I’ve personally experienced. For starters Normal People is beautifully filmed in Ireland, Italy and Sweden. I’ve only been to one of those places and no one like Connell kissed me. The acting, direction and writing (based on Sally Rooney’s novel) are so captivating that I’m hesitant to even try to describe them to you. Just know that if Normal People were written about the first time I fell in love, it would be filmed in southwest Ohio as one long shot of me talking on a landline in my closet after setting my AIM away message to an Uncle Kracker lyric. BDStelling: “Follow me / Everything is all right / I’ll be the one to tuck you in at night / And if you want to leave I can guarantee / You won’t find nobody else like me.”

Does it count as reading if you listen to it? The new age-old question. This book was recommended to me by comedian Charla Lauriston when we were writing on season 3 of The Last O.G. It’s a compilation of advice columns that Strayed wrote anonymously, mostly for the online literary magazine The Rumpus. So the cat’s out of the bag that Sugar is Strayed, and her book offers superb life and love advice from someone you know has lived without bumpers. I liked the audiobook because it’s narrated by Sugar herself, in a calming voice that tempers some of the heavier essays.