upworthy

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Joy

Robin Williams saw a struggling comedian bomb on stage. He changed her life with one sentence.

They had never met but Williams knew exactly what to say.

ha.wikipedia.org

Robin Williams performs on stage.

Robin Williams once beautifully said, "I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy. Because they know what it feels like to feel absolutely worthless and they don't want anybody else to feel like that."

One night at a comedy club in Los Angeles, a new, nervous stand-up comic was called to the stage by the emcee. In one hand, she casually had a beer that she propped up on the piano. In the other, was her notebook full of scribbled, half-written joke premises and a few wine stains. She did her opening joke and the response was so quiet, she could hear the ice machine crackling in the kitchen. Joke two — a slight spattering of nervous laughter. Joke three got a heartier laugh, but then it went back to deafening quiet by joke four.

She mercifully got through her final joke, and said "That's my time" long before the red light in the back of the club even went on. She scurried off stage with her beer, like that rat in New York carrying a piece of pizza. Panicked, embarrassed, and frankly — a little hungry.

It was just one of those nights. The last time she'd done this act — same words nearly exactly — she'd received an applause break. This time, she was left questioning every one of her life decisions. Why had she come to Los Angeles? How was the next month's rent supposed to get paid? Why had she cut her hair in the "Rachel-styled" haircut?

As she was about to enter the hallway that led into the bar area, she could feel actual tears forming behind her eyes, like little faucets that were slowly turning on. "Don't cry at the comedy club," she told herself. Rather, "Don't cry at the comedy club AGAIN." But as the tears came anyway, she looked up and lo and behold, there was Robin Williams. She stuttered, "You. Are. One of my favorites. Ever." He looked at her, his blue eyes warmly crinkling and said, "You were amazing."

It hadn't been true. But the fact that he would go out of his way to make this total stranger's awful night into one of her best at that time, was just the kind of person Robin was.

I know this because that woman was me.

I wanted to tell him about the Mork and Mindy poster on my wall as a kid, and how I had cut out Mindy's face and put in my third-grade class photo. I wanted to tell him how much I loved his care for animals and for the unhoused and for the less fortunate. Or that because of him, I had a weird fetish for suspenders. (The last one wasn't quite true, but I still wanted to say it.)

But instead I merely laughed and said "Oh, thank you. But I can do better." He gave me a gentle look like, "We're all in this together," and even though I knew I'd never have a career like his, it dawned on me that it didn't matter. That being kind to others actually DID matter and that he was a lighthouse in a really stormy, pitch-black ocean.

I stuck it out and just a few years later, got to perform in the super cool and coveted "New Faces" show at the Just for Laughs Montreal Comedy Fest. Didn't kill there either, but I was able to step back and look down from an aerial view. How we uplift others, whether through laughter or kindness, is really the only control we have in this world.

Years later, after Robin passed away, I had heart surgery and was feeling down. I had read that cardiac issues could leave a person biochemically depressed and the first person I thought of was him. I messaged our mutual friend from San Francisco and asked if he remembered Robin speaking to him about heart surgery and depression. He only affirmed that yes, it was a very real side effect and that I should take it seriously.

I have always thought of the neurotransmitter Serotonin like it was a flowery perfume. Notes of honey, lavender, rose. When someone has a good amount of it floating through their synapses, it leaves trace of itself wherever it goes, as if the tunnels it burrows under pumps it out through a steam grate. But from what I've heard, Robin struggled with that too. And yet he still found a way to leave a lovely and inviting scent behind him, because he wanted to make sure OTHERS were okay.

heart, robin williams, comediansA heart shaped neon sign in the dark Photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash

I guess, even in his death, I was looking to Robin for answers. But one puzzle remains solved: making others happy is the kindest thing we can do, even when our own valves --- whether heart or perfume pumps --- fail to work.

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Humor

Canadian comedian makes a funny and thoughtful case for why he doesn't want to be rich

"Bring rich won't make history remember you."

via TED

Comedian Pardis Parker at the Global Ted COnference 2022.

In April 2022, comedian Pardis Parker performed a five-minute set at the global TED Conference in Vancouver, Canada, where he admitted he’s “terrified of wanting to be a billionaire.” The performance was a funny and bold, statement in a culture obsessed with the ultra-wealthy.

Parker’s fear of becoming a billionaire began after he left Canada for Los Angeles. “I think the biggest difference between Canada and L.A. is the extent to which people in L.A. fetishize wealth,” Parker said.

“I'm terrified, man. I'm terrified that L.A. is changing me that I'm becoming one of those people who chases money, who fetishizes wealth who wants to be a billionaire,” he continued. “When I say that people get angry they get defensive. They’re like, ‘What's wrong with being rich? What's wrong with being a billionaire? What's wrong with being financially savvy?’ It's just like yo man, if you own a billion of anything that doesn't make you savvy, that makes you a hoarder.

He then points out that billionaires are just as quickly forgotten as anyone else. “There's 2,668 billionaires on the planet right now. Name them. You can't, and that's while they're still alive,” Parker joked.

Parker finishes his chunk by sharing how almost everyone can leave a legacy long after they’re gone. For example, give kids a full-size candy bar on Halloween. “That's it, that's it. Legacy cemented. It's been 30 years since I went trick-or-treating and me and my brother still talk about 39 Grenon.”

Parker’s stand-up routine presents a fun way of rethinking what it means to be rich and leave a legacy and he’s right. In the end, people will probably forget those who impressed them with their wealth, but they’ll never forget someone who made them feel good.

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wealth
Education

Grad student in California commuted from L.A. to class in the Bay Area by plane to save on rent

He made the trip from Los Angeles to Cal Berkeley and back an average of 3 days a week.

via Kelly/Pexels

The inside of a commercial airliner.

Even though Los Angeles and San Francisco are both in California, they are still 380 miles apart, which either involves an hour-and-fifteen-minute-long flight or a roughly 7-hour drive.

An engineer in Los Angeles named Bill got accepted into a one-year master’s degree program at Cal Berkeley but was put off by the idea of paying the astronomical rent in the Bay Area. Berkeley is located just north of Oakland in the East Bay, where the average rent is over $3500 a month.

Bill had an affordable place in L.A. and a job waiting for him when he finished school, so he decided he would do the unthinkable to most people, commute to school and back.

"I was living in LA comfortably. I got accepted into a one-year MEng program (technically August 2022-May 2023). I knew I would go back to LA after graduation because I want to go back to my previous employer once I graduate,” he shared on Reddit’s Berkeley subforum. “I love flying and I have a lot of frequent flyer miles/points from credit card sign up bonus/flying over the past few years. Bay area rent is expensive in general, and my program is only 10 months, so I thought I could get it through commuting by plane."

Bill had classes three days a week on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, but he booked flights for five days a week in case he had a meeting or an event he had to attend.


“If I don't need to come to campus that Tu/Th, I just cancel the tickets the night before and get a full refund. I have elite status with Alaska and Southwest, both offer a valuable perk called same-day change,” Bill said.

On a typical Monday and Wednesday during the fall schedule, when classes started at 10 am, he would wake up at 3:40 am in Los Angeles and drive to Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) for a 6:00 Alaska Airlines flight to San Francisco International Airport (SFO). Upon arriving in the Bay, he would take the BART light-rail train to campus. For his 8 am Friday class, he would take the 5:30 am Southwest Flight to Oakland International Airport.

“If I'm hanging out with friends or working on hw/projects with cohort for a bit longer in the library, I would take the last flight home (905pm OAK-LAX on Southwest or 1030pm SFO-LAX on Alaska),” he continued. “But normally I would take the 6pm or 7pm flight and reach home around 930pm.”

Bill completed the degree program in 10 months, and the total cost for transportation was less than two months of rent living in Berkeley.

Total Cost:

$5592.66, with $671.29 on BART, $520.00 on parking, $1948.27 on gas, $39.96 on inflight wifi, $1552.10 on Alaska, 407500 Alaska miles, $758.24 on Southwest, 156945 Southwest points, $71.30 on United, 5500 United miles, $15.60 on Avianca, 6500 Avianca miles, $15.90 on Spirit. 114 trips, 238 flights, 92089 miles flown, spent 75955 minutes on my commute, equivalent to 52.75 24-hr days.

But most importantly, Bill got his degree, and according to Fox 5 San Diego, he is now working full-time as a transportation engineer. He hopes to one day become Secretary of the U.S. Transportation Department, like Pete Buttigieg.

“This is probably one of the craziest things I’ve done in my life, and I’m so glad I made it through, without missing any classes,” Bill said. “That itself is a miracle.”

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Education

People can't believe that Detroit is actually east of Atlanta. Here's why it's true.

You'll never see America the same way.

via Pexels, Wikipedia and Wikipedia

Is Atlanta really west of Detroit?

As the old saying goes, “the map is not the territory,” and sometimes maps can be misleading. David Blattman, head of production at Barstool Sports, shared four unbelievable facts about U.S. geography on Twitter, all of which appear to be wildly incorrect, but aren't.

“These geography facts have left me speechless,” Blattman wrote on Twitter.

  • Alaska is the northernmost, westernmost & easternmost state.
  • You can travel north, south, east, or west in Stamford, CT & the next state you hit is NY.
  • Reno is further west than LA.

  • Detroit is further east than Atlanta.

Each one of these bullet points deserves a fact check, but Snopes stepped in to make sense of the last one, which feels false. Is Detroit, a midwestern city, really east of Atlanta, a city that’s a 4-hour drive from the east coast?

Yes, Detroit is east of Atlanta.


“Atlanta is actually west of Detroit. Its coordinates are (emphasis added): 33.7488° N, 84.3877° W while Detroit's are 42.3314° N, 83.0458° W,” Bethania Palma at Snopes confirmed. The fact-checking site reached out to geographer Maria Lane for further comment.

She explained that our eyes are fooled by their locations because the east coast extends further east as it moves north. Conversely, in the south, the coast moves towards the west. This makes Atlanta appear to be much further east.

We are also fooled by how we’ve determined what’s “east coast” and what's "midwest.”

"So it shouldn't be any surprise that places on the southern 'east coast' are further west than places on the northern 'east coast,'" Lane wrote. "And northern places that we consider 'inland' or 'midwest' when compared to those far-north areas of the east coast, can still be relatively farther east than coast-adjacent places in the South."

This Tumblr post from @realtivegeography explains it perfectly.

https://www.tumblr.com/relativegeography/111177770466/atlanta-is-farther-west-than-detroit

So what about the other three hard-to-believe geographical facts?

Alaska is the northernmost, westernmost and easternmost state.

It makes sense that Alaska is the northernmost and westernmost state. It also has the title of easternmost because the Aleutian Islands arc right up to the edge of the Western Hemisphere and cross over into the Eastern Hemisphere. Alaska’s Semisopochnoi Island (179° East) is so far west it actually lies in the Eastern Hemisphere. Alaska’s Little Diomede island lies only 4 km from Big Diomede, a Russian territory. In the dead of winter, when the water around the island freezes, one can walk from the U.S. to Russia in under an hour.

https://mapsontheweb.zoom-maps.com/post/173359016889/due-to-the-aleutian-islands-alaska-is-the

You can travel north, south, east or west in Stamford, Connecticut, and the next state you hit is NY.

Blattman explained this perfectly in a tweet with a map showing how it works.

Reno is further west than Los Angeles.

How can Reno, Nevada, be west of Los Angeles, California? Los Angeles has beaches, and Reno is 128 miles from the coastline. Much like how the east coast recedes west as it heads south, the west coast does the same, pushing Los Angeles to the east of Reno.

reno nevada, los angeles california, west coast

Reno, Nevada in relation to Los Angeles, California.

via Google Maps

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