Mike Birbiglia Followed Me On Twitter Last Night Which Is Cool But He's Gonna Hate Every One Of My Tweets Which Stinks
Last night, Trent and I went over to the Cort Theater on 47th and saw Mike Birbiglia’s “The New One”, and it was fantastic. If you’re not sure what “The New One” is, I’m going to assume you don’t follow literally anybody on Instagram or Twitter, because if you did, you woulda heard about it – it’s Mike Birbiglia’s new stand-up/one man show type thing on Broadway, and just about EVERYONE has seen it.
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I’ve been a fan of Mike Birbiglia for five or six years now, and am comfortable saying it’s a toss-up between only he and Bill Burr when it comes to my personal favorite comedian of all time. From his films, ‘Sleepwalk With Me’ and ‘Don’t Think Twice’, to his specials like ‘Thank God For Jokes’ and ‘My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend’ (the latter of which is one of my favorite specials ever), he just has something about his brand of humor that really resonates with me beyond the jokes.
Maybe it’s the awkwardness, maybe it’s his tales of anxiety, sometimes it’s the depression themes – all of the lovely stuff you want in a comedy show – but one a serious note, he (spoilers!) always flips everything around and finds the humor in all of it. Which is what I’ve tried to do with my own struggles here, probably subconsciously inspired by the man himself! But the overall point is, I genuinely connect with Birbiglia’s work.
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Last night was the first time I’d ever gotten the chance to see him live, and his new show absolutely lived up to the hype, which was dope. I won’t spoil anything as it’s still on broadway for another ten days, and I assume it’ll be turned into his next special after it closes, but you’d love it – especially if you have kids (which I do not).
Afterwards, I fired off a tweet encouraging folks to catch it on broadway before it’s gone, and something pretty stunning happened!
Mike Birbiglia followed me!
Instantly, as I do when all people I really admire have followed me, I got pretty excited and assumed it was a mistake. Then, after that initial rush of “adrenaline” wore off and he didn’t smash that unfollow button, I realized that Mike Birbiglia is going to hate every tweet he sees from me.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve felt this way before and it’s turned out just fine. When my childhood crush from the WWF, Torrie Wilson, threw me the follow, I didn’t tweet for days. I was petrified that I would screw this virtual first date up, before realizing I probably read the signs wrong and needed to tweet if I wanted to keep my job here.
When Conor McGregor followed me…oh boy. I FREAKED THE FUCK OUT. Couldn’t believe it. I over-analyzed every letter I typed and sought consultation before hitting send from at least 3 trusted sources on every tweet I sent out for months.
Eventually I realized, these people don’t care! Torrie followed me because I wrote a complimentary blog or two about her, Conor followed me…well…because I actually just follow him around in real life, but they’re both from the fields in which I most often tweet about! Professional wrestling and mixed martial arts! Birbigs, though – he’s legitimately gonna just hate my tweets. All of ‘em. I can’t imagine tweeting anything that he would enjoy. I don’t see him as the kind to be cravin’ knockouts clips, or criticisms on Vince McMahon’s booking of Daniel Bryan post-unretirement, or my breif economy breakdowns of the independent wrestling landscape.
Now I’m just in this uncomfortable position where I don’t really want him to feel uncomfortable about it but I feel uncomfortable about it and feel bad about the whole situation, so I’m getting my feelings out about it on the blog in hopes I feel less uncomfortable about it afterwards. I don’t want Mike Birbiglia to feel like it’d be rude to unfollow me but he probably definitely should so I’m not clogging his feed with bullshit. Or maybe mute me. That’s my point here.
Anyway, go see his show on broadway before it closes on the 20th!