Gold Standard Girlfriend

The most cosmopolitan friend I have is my former coworker, Meagan. When I recently texted her the link to a Louis Vuitton Neverfull with hot pinking lining at 1AM, asking, “Is this cute or tacky? I am too influenced by Lisa Vanderpump,” she replied thoughtfully the next day.

“It’s not tacky, but it’s v basic,” she wrote. She then sent a link to a sleek, leather laptop bag, telling me, “These are v gorgeous and cool girl and would fit your laptop without looking like a basic Highland Park mom.”

Meagan and I got close when we both worked together at a large law firm in Dallas. A crew of us who joined the firm during the same two-week stretch in July 2018 have all since lateraled (attorney talk for “switched jobs”) to various other places but have still stayed in touch.

When we both started at the firm, I never expected Meagan and I would be friends. The first day I saw her, I was incredibly intimidated by her. She had bob-length short hair with blond highlights. She drove an Acura SUV. She carried her things in a sleek leather bag. She worked out with a personal trainer and wore high heels from fancy department stores.

I wore none of these things and did none of these things.

I rarely wore makeup to work and kept my hair pulled back in elastic ties. The one pair of heels I could stomach wearing were LifeStrides Comfort Pumps I bought at Marshall’s. When they wore out, I bought three more pairs on Amazon for $15.99 each, willing to run them down, throw them out, and start again with a fresh pair. I worked out to YouTube videos, if at all, and drove a beat-up Volkswagen Beetle.

The most cosmopolitan thing about Meagan was that, despite these superficial differences, she never once made me feel like I was less than her for being the scrappy little ragamuffin I was. In fact, she made me feel not only like I could attain the level of high-quality life that she enjoyed, but indeed I deserved that as well.

She would slip into my office around 9:30am, carrying a paper cup from Merit Coffee, a San Antonio coffeehouse chain that had just opened a Dallas location. Yes, we had free machine-coffee in the break room, but Meagan liked her Americano from Merit. In the ballerest of baller moves, she walked around holding piping hot coffee in a cup with no plastic lid. A full 20 ounces of black coffee and espresso (if that’s what an Americano is?? I actually drink Pumpkin Spice Lattes because, see above, I am basic), not a lid in sight. NO LID. NO FEAR.

The boldness was honestly incredible and a micro example of her overall confidence and poise. Not only did she dare to carry her coffee that way, but she did so successfully. White pants? Not a drop. Coral-colored blouse? Flawless. I sipped free break-room coffee from a work-issued thermal mug, lid tightly affixed. She, on the other hand, would sit kicked back in the guest chair in my office, steam rising from her cup, casually fielding panicked questions from me about what guy I was dating.

First, it was a situationship I was in, with someone who Meagan regarded at the time (and who I regard now with the benefit of hindsight) as not worthy of my attention. My bird-in-the-hand mentality had me death-gripping onto something that never served me.

“What should I do about this dude?” I asked her.

To Meagan, the solution was clear: Shut it down. Move on. Demand more. After a little more foot-dragging, I finally did.

A few months later, after some mediocre and downright bad Bumble matches, I matched with a gorgeous filmmaker with a great sense of humor.

“Holy shit, look at this guy,” I told her, showing her a photo of my now-fiancé, Paris. “He’s super hot. What is happening? How did we match?”

“You deserve someone like that,” she said. “Why wouldn’t you date a hot guy like him?”

This was a great question. I mean, I hadn’t ever really done it before. Some folks date those who are out of their league. I vacillated between very much in-my-league to way-below-my-league for many years, owing to a debilitating lack of self-esteem.

“I think I am going to go out with him,” I told her.

“You absolutely should,” she said. Then, over the next few weeks, she helped me decide on responses to his texts.

When I started looking for a new-to-me car and began eying a luxury pre-owned SUV, I got mixed input from friends and family. Frugal folks in my life balked at this, but not Meagan. I pulled her around to the other side of my desk one afternoon to show her the car I had chosen. Low milage. Well-maintained. High quality.

“I love it,” she said. “It’s perfect. You deserve it.”

Later, when I showed her a laptop backpack I thought I may want to buy, an upgrade from the beat-up shoulder bag I schlepped my things around in, she didn’t skip a beat. She knew – we both did – I was making big law money at the time. I could afford something a little nicer than what I had. Even so, I wasn’t going for some Kardashianesque Hermès Birkin bag. It was a classic piece from Tumi with a five-year warranty.

Meagan never pushed me toward ostentation but instead taught me to appreciate and value quality in all areas of my life. The question was never, “Is this trendy? Is this cool?” It was always, “How was this made? What is it made of? Who made it?” For it was these qualities that would tell you whether something would last.

When she was poached from our law firm by one of the largest and most well-known companies in the world, it was no surprise.  A person like her values quality because she is quality. A person like her stands out as the best and is therefore coveted by the best.

At the time, the law firm job was the best job I had ever had, at least by conventional measures. I had never made as much money, enjoyed such perks, worked on such sophisticated matters, or had that much prestige attached to my name. Still, I hated it but I clung tight. Like the situationship, it was yet another bird-in-the-hand.

Meagan enjoyed all those same benefits working with me at the firm. Perks and prestige aside, when that other job came calling, she left with no hesitation. She had the law firm bird in the hand and found it lacking. She recognized what she deserved and took the leap, negotiating a deal for herself with the new company over and above the initial offer.

I could never, I thought at the time.

“They’re going to pay for that?” I would ask her about some benefit she would be receiving.

“For sure they are,” she replied, unshakable.

Even after she left, she remained steadfast in ushering me toward just exactly what I deserved. When a news story would break about a deal in the podcasting industry, she never failed to send it my way.

“That’s going to be you,” she said, speaking into existence what I quietly hoped for but thought may not be possible. “Soon,” she added.

I had the bird in my hand – the ultimate lawyer job – and felt guilty for having an eye toward leaving to pursue what I truly wanted to do. Hearing that my dream was possible, from someone like her, was huge. All those busy hours, those nights and weekends at the firm, I knew weren’t going to do anything to move the needle in my direction of full-time creative work.

When I started looking around to leave, she was the first person I texted the new job posting to. I found a fellowship – a 9-to-5 opportunity to get paid doing the only thing I really loved at the firm, pro bono work.

“It’s perfect,” she said, and pointed out that the set hours would give me time to grow the show.

I leapt. I applied. I was offered the fellowship and let her know I was selected.

“Of course you were,” she said.

No matter the news I called her with – the podcast was picked up by a network, we were signed by a talent agency, I am quitting work to do the show full time - each time, she would frame my trajectory and the show’s success as an inevitability rather than a fluke.

There are people in this world who will see for us a life we would never want for ourselves. They may pressure us into their ideals or bully us with their expectations.

Then there are others who see us for who we are and for what we have at the present moment.

Best and rarest of all, there are the Meagans of the world. Few and far between, these are the ones with sky-high visions for themselves and for the people they love. These rare ones see for us not what we are or what they think we should be. Instead, they knock aside our fear, our self-imposed limitations, and the foolish expectations of society. They open our eyes to what we deserve. They open our hands so we can let go of that for which we have settled. Through their examples and encouragement, they help us actualize what we were meant for and live the life we truly deserve.

And if we are really lucky, they’ll stop us from impulse-buying a silly shoulder bag that would make us look BASIC AF.

***

This piece first appeared in Sunday Morning Hot Tea. Subscribe so you don’t miss another piece.

You Might Be

People have been sending me frog pictures recently. Well, not just me. They send them to the show, post them on our Facebook group, and tag us in posts containing frogs on Instagram. We’ve seen cartoon frogs, real frogs, and frogs with macromutations resulting in eyeballs in their mouths. Most recently, we got a picture of a nude frog, though aren’t they all? This one was standing on its hind legs, its little froggy bottom on full display.

These photos started pouring in after we did an episode on The Loveland Frog Man. After the episode aired, two things happened. First, we were informed that we incorrectly pronounced the town’s name, saying “LOVE-land” throughout the episode. Native Lovelanders apparently say “luv-l’nd.” I issued an official statement on the next episode explaining that I say LOVE-Land because (1) I’m from Texas and that’s just how I talk, and (2) saying “luv-l’nd” before “Frog Man” misses the opportunity for a really great rhyme, and that is marketing 101.

Second, we started getting these frog pics, including the one of the little nudie frog booty. Confused comments on the tushy photo indicated to me that most folks were unaware that frogs had butts. I’m sure, of course, they knew that frogs had something back there. After all, every living creature has a built-in exit route. But people seemed amused and surprised at his little cheeks all popped out at the top of his skinny legs beneath his bulbous figure.

I, on the other hand, was not surprised at all. I learned about frog butts as a child. It happened when I stumbled onto a bootleg audio cassette that belonged to my Mam-maw, my grandmother on my mom’s side. My dad’s mom, Granny, sent religious literature and admonished us for never going to church. Mam-maw slipped me swigs of her piña coladas and gave me fun stuff like this stand-up comedy cassette.

I have no clue where she got the tape. The handwriting on the label was decidedly mannish and didn’t match the curly cues of her cursive style. A widow of nearly 20 years at the time and never having dated or remarried after my grandfather’s death, it likely came from a handyman or neighbor or person she met at the grocery store.

Mam-maw never met a stranger. She made every person she met feel heard and loved immediately. This created a swath of people who considered her to be their grandma, too, even though biologically she was nothing of the sort. My selfish little heart thought love was a limited quantity item, and so I believed if she had these hangers-on, she would necessarily have to love me less. This meant I had to hate them. Mam-maw taught me the opposite was true. She had an ever-expanding heart, and no new arrivals were going to bump me out. Her capacity to love went hand-in-hand with her generosity. She was generous with everything – her affection, her attention, her ear, her limited funds, and just about any item in her house.

“It’s only stuff,” she once said to quell my protests as she was forking over her wedding band to a ne’er-do-well cousin who once came knocking.

Given her generosity, it is no surprise I ended up with her bootleg comedy tape. I confess, I can’t remember much about how I got it. Maybe I asked for it, thinking it was a music cassette like my beloved Simpsons Sing the Blues album. What I do remember is taking it home and putting it in the enormous silver stereo that sat on a wooden entertainment center in our living room. I put my head next to the speaker and pressed play.

The tape began with an announcer’s voice.

“Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Jeff Foxworthy.”

A crowd screamed and a twanged voice thanked them very much. The tape was Jeff Foxworthy’s 1993 album You Might Be A Redneck If… recorded live at the Majestic Theater in Dallas. Foxworthy, then in his 30s, waxed poetic about how good it was to be in Texas and how crazy Southerners talked. He hails from Georgia, but his opening bit about words like yunto, as in “We goin’ tomorrow. Yunto?” and jeetyet as in, “You hungry? Jeetyet?” absolutely killed with the Dallas crowd. It was jokes about my people told in front of a crowd of my people.

He then launched into his signature “You might be a redneck” bit before he covered the difference in single life and married life, and the roles of men and women in relationships and society. You know, all the things a girl in grade school really related to.

I wasn’t a total comedy beginner. I was raised on The Dick Van Dyke Show and Seinfeld. I understood that comedy writing was a job, a real career people really did. I understood that stand-up comedy existed. I just thought it existed only in the state of New York and only in 2-to-5-minute increments before a sitcom began. Listening to Jeff Foxworthy’s voice for the duration of a full cassette tape – both sides! – recorded in my hometown, talking like my family and my neighbors, describing what our life was like, gave me hope.

It wasn’t all about my family. He also talked about fishing and belt buckles and boots, things that were a little more country than we were. In so doing, he let me feel a comfortable distance from the butts of his jokes. Still, he wasn’t necessarily mocking any of his subjects. His bits were an exaggerated celebration, and based on the audience’s cheers, a relatable and enjoyable celebration at that.

It wasn’t unusual for me to sit and listen to a voice coming through the stereo speaker. Throughout my childhood, we spent every school day morning listening to Kidd Kraddick in the Morning, a local drive-time DJ who eventually became nationally syndicated. From Kidd, Kellie, and Big Al, I learned you can be funny with your friends behind a microphone as your job. That part I understood.

The only thing missing from the radio show was an audience. My family and I may have been laughing while eating Eggos in the comfort of our living room or in our mini-van in the drop-off line at school, but the DJs never heard us. Listening to the Foxworthy tape, my tiny ear pressed against the black fabric of the speakers, I heard the immediate whoops and hollers resulting from Foxworthy’s jokes. I heard the subtle laughs that bubbled up after a particularly clever line. I heard crowdwork.

I had no idea what it looked like inside the Majestic Theater the night he performed this set. Like the radio shows, it was just a voice emanating from a void, except with an audience behind him. I think I just imagined him performing in a black void of nothingness, unable to conceptualize what a full-blown theatrical stand-up show should look like. I kept that mental picture of him in the void inside my head for years, until I finally caught one of his specials on TV.

Soon, I sought out other stand-up shows. That’s when I first watched Lewis Black and Dave Chappelle and Adam Ferrara. It’s why I later bought and memorized Shut Up, You Fucking Baby, David Cross’s 2001 album, and why I, along with almost everyone else I knew from high school, bought Dane Cook’s 2005 album Retaliation.

I studied the differences in their voices. The rhythm of their jokes. I learned timing and setups, though I didn’t know I was learning.  I was enamored with the act of standing up with a microphone and making audiences laugh, but none of them made me feel like I could do something similar as much as Jeff Foxworthy did.

To this day, my family – namely my mom – quotes several of his jokes, including the one about frog butts. The same joke that popped into my head when I saw those little green cheeks and made me turn his comedy on. The bit actually appears on 1998’s Totally Committed, a spin-off of sorts from Foxworthy’s previous redneck-heavy material. The redneck talk is still there. It’s just phrased in a different way.

Listening back now, the material in both specials holds up. More esoteric minds than mine may consider it a bit hack, but I’d challenge them to come up with a more memorable metaphor for what childbirth looks like than “a wet Saint Bernard trying to come in through the cat door.”

I’ll concede the path of marriage jokes and “men versus women” is well trodden. It’s also still true, and relatable as hell. Though they seem like we’ve always known the phrase, when he first debuted “You might be a redneck, it was revolutionary. He built an entire career, an empire even, on these observations. They resonated so much because they were largely true. Believe me, I know. I’ve lived some of them. He also provided the shoulders on which my current favorite comic, Nate Bargatze, stands. A much more evolved form of the schtick for sure, Bargatze makes me actually cry-laugh with his specials no matter how many times I’ve watched them. But he is undoubtedly inspired by Foxworthy. I’m sure others are, too.

Whatever anyone feels about Jeff Foxworthy, I can say this much: he made me laugh back then and managed to do it again today when I revisit his material. Today’s laugh came out a little different. It wasn’t based in the wonderment I held for him back when I was a kid. It was the type of laugh rooted in nostalgic recognition. Like jokes you heard from your schoolteacher. So clever and exciting at first, then by the tenth or twentieth time they’re delivered, you see them coming and slide into them like slippers.

Listening back now, I almost have the Redneck album memorized. I can finish the lines, not because the jokes are predictable, but because I was so changed by them. Could a setup like “If you’ve ever had to haul a can of paint to the top of a water tower to defend your sister’s honor…” ever be so easily forgotten?

For me, these jokes were transformative. I will always hold a spot in my comedy heart for them. Jeff Foxworthy was one of my earliest teachers, delivering lectures through those wood paneled speakers in my parents’ living room from each side of that tape. Lifelong lessons that made me who I am - like how to speak in your own voice, how to pull comedy stories from your own life, and just exactly what a frog’s butt looks like.

***

This piece first appeared in Sunday Morning Hot Tea. Subscribe so you don’t miss another piece.

Vocal Coach

I promise this newsletter is not all about people who die. However, this week is going to be about another person who has died. We lost my high school speech teacher, Coach Copeland, this week. He was a mainstay in my hometown. A beloved football coach. A family man. And a damn fine comedian.

I only had him for one semester. I don’t even know if he would have recognized me if we would have seen each other again. Doesn’t matter to me if he would have remembered me or not. I remembered him.

He started every class with this poem that he recited from memory. If I’m not mistaken, I believe he even had the saying stitched onto a throw pillow which he kept in his classroom. It went:

“This is the beginning of a new day.
God has given me this day to use as I will.
I can waste it or use it for good.
What I do today is very important because I am exchanging a day of my life for it.
When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever, leaving something in its place I have traded for it.
I want it to be a gain, not a loss.
Good not evil.
Success, not failure, in order that I shall not regret the price I paid for it.”

It was cheesy at the time, but it really stuck with me. I mean really stuck. Every single one of those words live in my brain to this day. I cannot remember where I put my keys or what I had for dinner. I constantly forget to reply to texts. I will forget people’s birthdays and my own age. But somehow, I can remember every word to this poem from my tenth-grade speech class from 2003. When I heard Coach died this week, I wanted to know more about the source of this mantra, this prayer, that began each of our classes.

Growing up in the conservative Christian town of Mesquite, Texas, I assumed this refrain was from the Bible. If not, I figured it was at least Bible-adjacent. Turns out that assumption was incorrect. It is the words to a poem formerly called, “A Salesman’s Prayer” – later renamed “A New Day” by a Texan accountant/car salesman named Heartsill Wilson. Because of course it was.

Even if the words weren’t from the Bible, I have absorbed them like gospel. I think about them when I’ve lied lazily on the sofa for a full day, or when I’ve spent eight hours helping clients. I’ve traded a day of my life for this day – was it worth it? In both cases, yes. I think sofa-lying time is just as important as productivity time. Self-care, baby!

Coach Copeland was also the first person to share with me this Teddy Roosevelt quote:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Again, I remember most of this quote verbatim, yet I couldn’t remember the route I took on my walk earlier today. It meant that much to me. Whenever I am faced with criticism, which as the podcast grows, is becoming more frequent, I plan to turn back to this quote. Not just the words, but the person who taught it to me.

Coach Copeland was, to put it plainly, a real hoot. He had a leather face with deep crevices cut into it from decades squinting his striking blue eyes toward a football field. He had a laugh that sounded wicked but pure. When something got him tickled, his cheeks and eyebrows would draw up, and he would wheeze from deep in his belly.

My career is lawyering, but my passion is storytelling – on the show, in writing, with friends and family. I love a funny story well told. The semester I spent in Coach Copeland’s class was less a speech class and more a masterclass in storytelling.

In addition to his inspirational quotes, he captivated us with his Vaudeville-style pun stories. He once told what I have learned is called “the longest joke in the world.” It involves a talking snake and a lever that could bring about the end of the world. He told the whole, long-ass thing and held everyone’s attention to the very end. He got a laugh, too. Not an easy feat with a crowd full of high schoolers.

These long stories would’ve been completely obnoxious except for that infectious laugh that got even a room full of teenagers on his side. Side note: I don’t know how teachers do it. Kids and teenagers are scary to me. But Coach Copeland came in with cool confidence. A man like that, with his polo shirt and a face open and kind but weathered, you just knew. He had seen some shit. He wasn’t afraid of our dumbasses. He commanded respect, and he commanded the room. He also seemed to get a real kick out of us, too.

Aside from those two quotes and a few of the pun stories, I don’t remember a single thing I learned in that class, not from the books anyway. Everything Coach Copeland taught us was by virtue of his presence. I learned to be a great speaker because I got to hear him speak. His comedic timing, delivery, and unshakable commitment to the bit all stuck with me.

I’m sure we also had to do speeches in there. That was the name of the class after all. I just can’t remember any of them. What we learned the most was from just listening, which is a lesson in itself.

Miss you, Coach.

***

This piece first appeared in Sunday Morning Hot Tea. Subscribe so you don’t miss another piece.

I Love You, You Monster

On the Pulaski stop of the orange line, headed toward Chicago’s Midway Airport, a man stepped into my train car wearing no pants. From the waist up, he was quite dapper, wearing a beige sport coat, a matching button down, and a dark tie, neatly knotted. His hair was a bit wild, a mess of black wiry strands pointing in all directions. He had a thick dark mustache. From the waist down, however, he wore only white underwear, dark dress socks, and finely shined leather shoes. It was business on the top, no pants party on the bottom.

He stepped onto the train and began to sing, which I only knew by the movement of his mouth. I couldn’t hear him with my headphones in my ears. All I could hear was the Dallas traffic and weather from an MP3 recording of The Russ Martin Show on Dallas’s 105.3FM.

I gripped my pink iPod Mini and turned the dial up, drowning out the pantsless man even more. At the time, I think the guys on the show were blowing something up or shoving fireworks down their manager, Gavin’s, pants. Probably pulling the cork from a bottle of whiskey, letting the small squeak and glug noises play into the microphone.

Nobody on the train ever noticed the times I doubled over laughing or cried from homesickness while listening to the recordings of this show. How could they? There were more pressing things, like today, a man with no pants singing an Italian aria.

Earlier that year, at 20 years old, I had headed off to Chicago for college, ready to leave the city of Dallas in my dust. Goodbye, you trash heap, I thought as I pulled away from my hometown in a red Dodge Ram dragging a U-Haul trailer behind me. I will never, ever come back.

It only took six months, maybe a year before the nostalgia and intense homesickness set in.

I should preface this by saying I love Chicago. It’s an amazing place with wonderful people. It’s one of my all-time favorite cities. Talking about Chicago, for me, is like talking about an ex who you parted with on really good terms, but who you know, ultimately, is not right for you. But damn, you had fun while you were together. And no hard feelings, but you’re just really happy with who you’re with now. That’s the love triangle between myself, Chicago, and Dallas.

The first few months up there were a whirlwind. I loved every single thing, from the snow to the busses, to the people on the busses, to the comedy theaters, to all my new cool friends with their Midwestern accents. I loved the food and the museums and the parks and the random street performers and the cyclists who took extremely dangerous risks with their lives. I even loved the nude cyclists who rode, balls out, down Michigan Ave.

Then I noticed the winters were too cold. There was never any parking. Traffic was horrendous. I couldn’t get cream gravy ANY FUCKING WHERE. No place served Dr Pepper. Tex Mex did not exist there except at one single Uncle Julio’s off the North/Clyborn red line stop, which was only just ok. Everybody loved the Bears. Nobody gave a shit about the Cowboys. Pretty soon, it started to feel a little lonely.

Heaven on Earth and yet WHERE IS MY GD CREAM GRAVY?!

In my desperation for a little piece of home, I figured out that I could listen to Dallas radio. For a recurring donation to the Russ Martin Show Listeners Foundation each month, I got access to an archive of MP3s of previous episodes of The Russ Martin Show.

I loaded up my iPod, and when I pressed play, I was not on a crowded bus or trudging through slush, a thousand miles away from home. I was in the treehouse with Russ and Dan and the gang. I was laughing at their less-than-appropriate jokes and clinging to every single word of the traffic report. 635, 35, 75, 30. My highways. My traffic.

I listened all the time, not just on my commutes. When my boyfriend and I broke up, I began living alone, but not really. By myself in an empty apartment, I would turn the guys’ voices up on my stereo. Neighbors probably thought a fraternity had moved in, with constant sounds of men laughing, the squeak of whiskey bottle corks, explosions, and that opening guitar riff of “You Shook Me All Night Long” by AC/DC, which always finished off the show. 

Russ was a polarizing figure in Dallas radio. Sometimes, he was flat out silly. When beloved Dallas icon Big Tex was set ablaze, Russ gave him a dramatic church eulogy backed by “Amazing Grace” on bagpipes. Sometimes he used a voice changer to become “Little Russ,” a child version of himself that asked inappropriate questions under the guise of innocence. He tortured his old boss, Gavin, by sticking fireworks down Gavin’s pants, putting sheetrock up over the man’s office door, or straight up stealing his pants in well-choreographed but real-sounding bits.

As Russ said, he was taken by a fire that burned him nekkid. RIP!

On Fridays, he left airtime open for local no-kill shelter Paws in the City to adopt out homeless pets. When police officers or fire fighters were killed in the line of duty, like the 2016 mass shooting in downtown Dallas that left five officers dead, Russ wrote checks to the families via his foundation to cover funeral expenses, mortgage payments, and other immediate needs.

On the other hand, he sometimes said racist, sexist, and homophobic things. Some coworkers hated him and claimed he was a tyrant with a horrible attitude. He was arrested and pleaded no contest for domestic violence. He struggled with substance use and health problems.

And this past weekend, he died.

I’ll be totally honest. I had not listened to the show in earnest in many years. On one of the episodes after Russ’s death, Dan, a co-host who has taken over as the de facto leader, mentioned Russ’s waning health in the past few years. Russ had stopped performing every day, and the show’s time slot had been cut down from four hours to just two.

Tuning back into the treehouse this week, you can hear how the guys were shaped by Russ. At the same time, it is apparent how they have evolved beyond him. For one, Russ absolutely hated crying and showing emotions. But this week, when one caller choked up, Dan told him, “Let it flow, buddy.” The guys talked about telling their guy friends how much they loved one another. They listened as widows of fallen police officers spoke about how much the foundation’s support meant and cried along with them.

It’s hard to reconcile my love for someone who meant so much to me, who was a constant companion when I felt so desperately alone, with the flip side of his personality and his actions off the mic. When I heard he died, I was devastated, remembered all the times the show made me laugh, and began replaying my favorite bits in my head. For the people he hurt, his death probably felt like a sigh of relief, which is fair. We all have our own experiences with the people who shape us.

This week, Alfie, another member of the crew, played one of my favorite bits. It’s from a time Russ went on a rant backed by an instrumental version of “God Bless Texas” by Little Texas. I remember hearing this bit while I lived in Chicago and playing it so often I once had it memorized.

It had faded from my brain over the years, but when I heard it this week, I started screaming in my office. When my boyfriend, Paris, walked in and asked what was happening, I burst into tears.

“They’re playing it,” I said.

The rant begins, “I am Dallas!” and reads like a love poem to our city. A truncated version appears below.

“I’m the flying red horse.

I’m the majestic Dallas skyline.

I’m the Dallas Morning News. (I was the Herald.)

I’m Central Expressway. I’m Schepps Dairy.

I’m the Old Red Courthouse.

I’m Union Station.

I’m the reflecting pond in front of City of Dallas.

I’m the star that glistens on the chest of Dallas police officers.

I’m White Rock Lake.

I’m the Dallas Mavericks. I’m the Dallas Stars. I’m the Dallas Cowboys (muffled).

I’m the pissy city council. I’m the lack of city management.

I’m buffalo-sized potholes.

I’m the Dallas North Tollway. I’m Big Tex. I’m Southwest Airlines.

I’m the zoo where the gorillas run free!

I’m the West End. I’m the great Tom Landry Freeway.

I’m the freaks in Deep Ellum.

I’m SMU. I’m Love Field.

I didn’t have nothing to do with Kennedy.

I’m John Steely Dan’s cabin.

I’m the dead bodies at the bottom of the Trinity.

I’m Reunion Tower. I’m the Adolphus. I’m that lipstick building on Stemmons.

I’m John Carpenter, LBJ, Marvin D. Love. I’m RL Thornton.

I’m the strength that took us from John Steely Dan’s cabin to the shining star of the Southwest.

I’m the sights. I’m the sounds. I’m the smells. I am its essence.

I am Dallas.”

He spoke with a self-deprecating reverence for our town, and it softened my heart. When I first heard it a thousand miles from home, I thought, That’s our town! That’s my town.

From Russ I learned the magic of getting on a mic and putting on the show you want to make. I am a better comedian and podcaster because of the hours I spent in my empty apartment in Chicago listening to him. I was also a lot less lonely because of it, too.

One of the best compliments I can get is from people in faraway places, even other countries, saying they want to come visit Dallas because of the things we talk about on the show. When I get on a mic now and talk about my town, I try to do so with that same unassuming pride I learned from Russ. It’s like, look, we know parts of it suck, but, dammit, its ours and we love it anyway and we’re doing our best to be better. It’s how we feel about Dallas and how I feel about Russ.

She ain’t much, but she’s ours.

You can never replace your hometown. And a hometown may not even be the city where you were born. I’m talking about the city that made you, the one that shaped you. It’s who you are. You can play pretend, sure. Try to adopt a new one. But no matter what, your hometown will always be in you, even if you try to move away or turn it off.

The years taught me that no matter where I lived or how hard I’ve tried, I am Dallas. Russ was, too. Rest easy, boss man.

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This piece first appeared in Sunday Morning Hot Tea. Subscribe so you don’t miss another piece.