What is this?
Hi. My name is Don Rutledge. Listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DKx0qJ8QOQ
More than likely, you found this by me approaching you saying, "Hey... so, I have this stupid newsletter that I send out every Wednesday." And now you're trapped and don't have the courage to tell me you're not interested in receiving the email threads anymore. You're afraid it's going to jeopardize our friendship. Well... you're right. We're finished if you back out now.
Joking! Haha! Joking... just joking. It's going to your spam, you completely forgot you were on it.
For those that don't know me and found this blog in the future, some background. Hi. I'm Don. I'm an aspiring comedian and comedy television writer-producer. I grew up in Texas. I was raised in a log cabin by a single mother with my younger brother. The family business was wood furniture and sculptors. My mother is one of the best, if not the best, wood sculptors of animals in Texas and probably all of the South. I grew up in the sculpting business where she taught me how to use a chainsaw; (I'm kind of rusty, but I was good at handling it at one point). Went to an experimental STEM high school where I was taught college-level engineering. After making a documentary film about race horses over 2-1/2 years, made silly videos for projects in school, and was told I had the skills to be a writer by my English teachers, I decided to become a standup comedian and skip college. Mom hated that idea, so I went to college at the University of Texas at Austin. I got a BS in the all-encompassing umbrella major "Radio-Television-Film" with a focus on screenwriting and producing. While in college, I got super interested in television after being thrown into making independent student comedy television shows. They were bad. As bad as student short films go. But I eventually got into development at the public access station and helped shows grow. Moved to Los Angeles through a college program to pursue comedy television producing, getting with the Producers Guild as an intern and volunteer. After graduating in Fall 2018, I moved back to Los Angeles. Hollywood is such a gated club, so I signed up with 5 temp agencies (at the time 5, now 7) and got into one of the famous movie studios as a temp. Keeping it as a day job in the industry, I perform silly stuff at night and write jokes during the day. If you go to a party and find me, please introduce yourself as I'm usually the guy in the corner entertaining the weirdos with the handlebar mustaches, tribal tattoos, and black leggings (on ladies, not dudes...). I'll be sitting on the coach in my favorite flannel jacket, making dorky faces, and spewing garbage about how seeds are on the outside of a strawberry, airplane etiquette is the "when in doubt" social contract, the existential threat of the Singularity, and more. It's fun! And I hope you'll be a friend one day :)
What is The Maiyah-Don "Shoot the Sh*t" Wednesday Thread? It all started as me being a temp at that movie studio in the year 2019. Started in March and for that year, I bounced around their Video Games department, Accounts Payable, Accounting, Reception, Accounts Payable again, Television Development, and Reception again. The main reason I got Reception as a temp gig at the movie studio was because I spoke to the receptionist all the time: in the morning, after lunch, after work. I found nobody to really talk to, so I grew to just talking to the receptionists at the movie studio. One of them is named Maiyah and we quickly became friends because of my antics.
In August/September 2019, I was filing papers in the Accounts Payable department and since it was menial work, I was able to listen to books. Audiobooks, it's good stuff. I found that audiobooks had less of a retention on my mind than actually reading the book. Let's face it, someone is reading to you the book rather than you reading it to yourself. So I tried different methods to handle recall of the material I was listening to; one of these methods was explaining to somebody else what you learned (thanks for the nifty trick Mr. 9th grade Biology Teacher). "Who could I explain this to?" I wondered. Ah! How about Maiyah? I went up to Maiyah everyday after lunch and told her what I learned from the book. You know... we were "shooting the sh*t". I was able to remember it better and she had some cool takeaways. And maybe there were some facts here and there that she wanted to see, so once I got back to my desk, I typed up all the quotes from the book I was reading and sent it her way in an email. Sometimes I would provide articles and pictures that pertained to the book. (I did this by pirating the book I was listening to, Ctrl+F what I had heard, copy-pasting the passage into my email, and tacking on personal comments on that email).
Soon every day I was talking to Maiyah at 1:50pm, talk to her for 10 minutes, went back to my desk and spend maybe 10 to 15 minutes typing up what we talked about. Sometimes she would be interested in what I was reading so I sent her the links to where she could pirate it.
This went on for about 1 to 2 weeks, everyday increasing the amount I was typing and sending, gradually climbing to 10 minutes of typing after lunch, to 20 minutes, to 30 minutes, to eventually an hour everyday. It ate up a lot of my time.
After that, I said, "No way I'm doing this everyday," and I promised Maiyah I'll send her my email at least once a week. Monday is too early, nobody reads work emails on Friday afternoon... Wednesday! When? After lunch, let's say late afternoon, yeah? Yeah!
And at first it was Maiyah. Then I asked the other receptionist if he wanted to join. Then I asked the security guards, then the friend I made in Accounts Receivable. Then college buddies that lived in town, my friends, my friends of friends. Eventually everyone I knew at work was getting pitched my email thread if they wanted to join.
I did an email each week of what I learned. It then evolved to what I not only learned, but what I been up to. Soon it turned into a 4-part email: A small blurb of saying hello, introductions to new friends on the email thread, three things I learned that week, and what I've been up to. And only up until recently (in accordance to this post), I started turning to the format of: 1) my take on something as a mini-essay, 2) three things I want to share like a poem or video or article, and 3) a small link to that week's stand-up routine or some writing I'm working on.
On 2/3/20, I decided to have a blog-like website to hold all my emails. I jump from email to email and my day job is really rickety as it can end at any moment. I send the Maiyah-Don STS Wed email from my work email at the movie studio, so if that gets shutdown by me leaving, I won't have access to all my friends' email addresses, nor would I have access to my previous emails. That safest thing to do then in that case is house all my crap on a blog site.
I'll be upfront. I hate blogs. But some blogs are good so I won't knock all of them. This technically won't be a "blog" in the traditional sense. More like a storage unit.
Today, Maiyah and I are still close friends. She is no longer the receptionist and currently holds a role in the marketing department at the movie studio. At one point it was just her and me. Now it's about 30 friends.
If you don't know me and interested in reading my crap, keep going below.
Let me be clear here about a few things:
1. This is technically an internal, Hollywood newsletter with people that work in the industry, many of which are my friends. I will not release the contact information of my industry friends.
2. I will not allow people I don't know to be a part of the email thread I send out to my friends. If you want to read what I wrote that week, you'll have to wait until I put it up on this blog.
3. I have an email below you can contact me at, but I will not accept any unsolicited submissions. No scripts, unpublished works, whatever. I will not open it, look at it, or anything. If you do, I will delete it and block you.
4. It's my writing, I write what I want to write. I will have some controversial opinions on mundane things. Voice your opinion, go ahead. Shoot me an email.
5. If you have suggestions on how I could improve the website, formatting, or anything of that nature, I'll be all ears. Shoot me an email.
6. Lastly, if you would like to meet me here in Los Angeles, please don't hesitate to reach out at the contact info below. We could do coffee, lunch, drinks, all that jazz. I like diners with big portioned breakfasts, so we could try that as well.
Below is my contact info.
You can call my office at 310-596-7737
Feel free to email me at dnrtldg@outlook.com
Thank you! Enjoy the show!
PS. I sometimes go by as "Zeke Zamzow"..."Zippity Doo" is the middle name.