Greetings Grasshopper! 🥷
I have loved Weird Al Yankovic since I was a kid bouncing around the living room to “Eat It.” Last night I finally saw him live. Somewhere between the accordion solo and the fourth costume change, I figured out something.
Stay with me.
He did not walk onto the stage. Of course he didn’t. The lights came up on a giant screen, and there he was, singing his way down a backstage hallway with a camera bobbing in front of him. The whole arena started to swivel. Which door was he coming through, stage left or the back or that little tunnel by the merch table? A few thousand grown adults craned their necks like meerkats. They were already his.
He had us before he was even in the room.
Then he arrived, and honey. The outfit. There was a print on his pants, another on his shirt, and then, draped over the whole situation like a cherry on a very loud sundae, a third print in glorious Hawaiian. In case the first two got lonely. That man’s clothes were talking to us before he opened his mouth.
Here’s what got me, though. A huge part of the show was the band.
You know how most bands just stand politely in the back and play their parts? This crew did the opposite. They were in costume too, full character, and they kept changing all night long. At one point I stopped watching Weird Al entirely. I was too busy watching the bass player, who had somehow acquired a set of Princess Leia cinnamon buns the size of dinner plates. Every soul on that stage was in on the joke, right down to the edges. The show refused to stay inside the spotlight. It spilled out to the cheap seats and rolled back again.
And that, Grasshopper, is the whole lesson. It was sitting right there on a bass player’s head.
Most of us hit “publish” like we are clocking in for a shift. The email shuffles out in a plain solid-color shirt, no personality packed for the trip. We hope nobody notices.
Meanwhile the people who actually opened it were hoping for a show.
Weird Al built a whole career on one deceptively simple trick. He takes a song you know by heart, and then the words turn a corner you never saw coming. The melody says “you’re safe, you know this one.” The lyrics say “do you, though?” The familiar holds the door open and the surprise strolls right through it. He has been doing this to us since 1979. We keep buying tickets to be delighted by it.
That trick has a name. It is the most useful thing I can hand you today.
Pattern interruption is the secret.
Call it the camera in the hallway. Call it the cinnamon buns. It is the reason a reader leans in instead of scrolling past, because they cannot quite guess your next move.
You do not need an arena or an accordion to pull it off. You need to decide that your work gets to be a show instead of a memo. Let your weird out of its cage. Caption that photo like you find it funny, because you do, and start the next email somewhere nobody expects.
That is who I have decided to be for you. I get to be a show-person. In my emails, over on Substack, in whatever ridiculous image I cook up next. And I will keep you guessing which door I am coming through.
So consider this your front-row seat.
This Friday at 10am Central, the Come Write Inn Open House swings its doors open, and there is a chair with your name on it. I will spill what is new in my world. We will catch up with the regulars, then chase down whatever wild idea is begging to be chased. There is no script and no name-tag in sight, and not one of us knows quite what is going to happen. That is the point. Come pull up a chair and watch me try to practice what I just preached:
I am off to dig my loudest print shirt out of the back of the closet. Purely for research.
This week, in the spirit of his greatest anthem: dare to be a little stupid out there. 🪗
RJ 🥷🏼❤️🤖
PS: The bass player went through at least four different wigs over the course of the night. The cinnamon buns were merely the warm-up. That is the level of commitment I intend to bring to your next newsletter.
❤️🔪 ❤️🔪 ❤️🔪
From RJ’s Secret Invisible Coffee Shop
Naturally, today’s pour is the one Cedric orders right before he does something brave and ridiculous in front of the whole tavern.
☕ Showstopper’s Folly
Fire Blooded Power Seekers treat every conversation like a performance and every mistake like material for the next act. This blend captures their spicy magic that sometimes goes wonderfully wrong: ginger for audacity, cinnamon for the heat of going first, black cocoa for failure transformed, chocolate for the sweetness of next week’s most-shared post.
The pour: 1¼ parts ginger, 1 part cinnamon spice, 1 part black cocoa, 1 part chocolate.
Brewed in honor of Cedric, the Inn’s patron saint of failing spectacularly in public. Pull up a stool and order the Folly. Then go be a showstopper.
❤️🔪 ❤️🔪 ❤️🔪