I’m an Editor-In-Chief now.
Hello and welcome to COMFY, a new “magazine” by (and, to be honest, mostly for) me, Tommy Dassalo.
Thank you very much for subscribing of your own volition, or for pissing someone off so much that they’ve signed you up as a prank.
Every so often (I typed and deleted ‘month’ because I could feel myself having a panic attack about the idea of having a strict timeframe for this thing) you’ll get a little e-mail from me that will feature some music I’m enjoying, a piece of writing that will most likely always be about food in some way, and a bunch of cartoons that I’ve probably done on the couch while my girlfriend is next to me watching ‘Below Deck.’
I know that you’re most likely thinking that all this really amounts to is an excuse for me to have your e-mail address for when I’m trying to plug something next. And sure, cards on the table: you’re partly right! Well done! You’ve cracked the code and seen through The Matrix of the performer / audience relationship.
But mostly it’s because I wanted to do some writing about things that I enjoy that I feel like I don’t really have the opportunity to talk about anywhere else. I’d love to do stand-up about the schnitzel wrap at Alimentari or do an hour long discussion about the Ratatouille soundtrack on a podcast but it feels like it would be taking the piss, within two mediums that are already very much renowned for taking the piss.
Also I was putting heaps of my cartoons on Instagram for a while there but I started to feel like the algorithm was throttling me. I don’t even mean that in a disgruntled Youtuber “they’re trying to cancel me!” kind of way, just that that’s how the whole business model is set up, and that’s fine. I bet they’re absolutely quaking in their boots now that they realise I’ve jumped ship and gone elsewhere with my little doodles of me getting sucked off by Donald Duck.
OK so that’s that. I promise these won’t always start with a big spiel justifying every thought that’s come through my head while I've been typing but also, maybe they will. It’s my damn newsletter. If I want to have a full blown episode in the introduction of every edition, then that’s what I’ll do and you’ll just have to learn to like it (or unsubscribe, I guess.)
I hope you enjoy COMFY, and as always: I love hearing your feedback, on the condition that it’s all positive.
What A Long Strange Trip (To The Fish & Chip Shop) It’s Been.
Throughout high school, I was a chunky kid. Most of my pocket money would go towards treats from the tuck shop and I had all of the daily specials memorised. Thursday was my favourite: the sweet chilli chicken wrap, which was such a coveted item that it necessitated me becoming friends with the tuck shop ladies who would put one aside for me every week, lest I get there too late and find the bains-marie completely cleaned out.
My mother, like many mothers, is an excellent cook. And I, like many spoilt little assholes with happy upbringings, was never satisfied with her cooking. Take-out was never presented as an option in our house, my parents taking too much pride in their efforts to offer nutritious meals prepared with love. I yearned to be the child of inattentive parents who would slap down twenty dollars for a pizza on a Friday night before heading out the door, rather than my draconian overlords who slaved away for hours in the kitchen, preparing a coq au vin for their Little Master.
When I finished high school, I began experimenting in the kitchen, which might lead you to believe that I developed an early aptitude for fresh ingredients and how best to use them. It didn’t. The extent of my “research” involved testing the limits of my body by working out how much cream I could add to a jar of Leggo’s pasta sauce before it made me physically ill (two cups was roughly the threshold). On reflection, “experimenting” is probably overstating what I was getting up to, as it basically only ever amounted to combining two to three of the cheapest jars of slop from the supermarket and seeing what would happen, but god damn if I didn’t feel like Heston Blumenthal while I was setting out to discover if Nando’s Peri Peri sauce tasted good on top of spaghetti (it did.)
These formative experiences carried me through most of my twenties. The iron fisted approach to takeaway in my childhood led to some truly decadent extremes of gorging myself when I was out on my own and had freedom of choice for every meal. The local fish and chip shop on Rathdowne Street in Carlton struggled to keep enough burger patties on hand for my disturbing weekly intake. When I did cook at home, I felt like like a Michelin star chef whenever I took the extra time to cook up some tinned tomatoes to serve with some penne, instead of just pouring something out of a jar that had a little puppet on the label.
I wish I could pinpoint the exact moment when my tastes changed and “matured”. Perhaps it was when I was having a bowl of dim sims from Danny’s Burgers for lunch for the third time in a week, staring at myself in the full-length mirror that faces the bar seating, that I thought to myself “there has to be more to life – or at the very least, meal times - than this?”
In any case, all of a sudden my schedule started to revolve more and more around food. If I was heading to another city for comedy gigs, I would tack on an extra night or two to go to restaurants that I’d heard were good. If I was thinking about a destination for a holiday, my itinerary shifted towards countries with cuisines that I loved. Even today, I was at a doctor’s appointment that kept me waiting for an hour. As the clock ticked and it got closer and closer to lunch time, rather than being annoyed that my time was being wasted, I thought “now that it’ll be lunch time when I’m leaving here, I suppose I just have to go and try that noodle place I just read about.” (Master Lanzhou Noodle Bar FYI. Loved it. Crazy that it’s taken me so long to eat there. You’ve gotta get the dry noodles with the Sichuan pork mince. Unbelievable.)
That’s not to say that I’ve completely abandoned my first love of gorging on a burger in the middle of the week. I exercise way more than I ever did back in the Rathdowne Street days (AKA at all) so if anything my blowouts, when they happen, are more vile and decadent than ever before. But now they’re balanced out by kitchen experiments that actually consist of at least one green ingredient, and a weekend booking at an establishment that doesn’t serve potato cakes. Or if it does, they’re hand made from scratch and cost eighteen dollars – because a hefty price tag is how one can justify being well into their 30’s and enjoying the same foods as when they were an impoverished student.
In spite of all this, and I hate to say it, but ‘coq au vin’? Still not for me, sorry. I barely even know what it is. I recently read Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain and I love how a lot of his pieces end on a call-to-action to the reader, so here’s mine: tonight, treat yourself to a bit of Nando’s Peri Peri dip on some pasta. Trust me.
Click here for this issue’s playlist on Apple Music.
Click here for this issue’s playlist on Spotify.
If you don’t use either of those services then I’m afraid I cannot help you.
Toro Y Moi Y Moi
‘Days In Love’ - Toro Y Moi.
This is my favourite song on Toro’s new album, by a pretty wide margin. For the unfamiliar: Toro Y Moi are essentially a band but their albums are just done by one main person - a guy called Chaz Bear. I’ve loved Chaz’s music since I first heard ‘Still Sound’, from his second album, on a blog around the time it came out. I get really excited for every new album, even though he’s never released one that’s quite done it for me all the way through - with the exception of ‘Anything In Return’ - his third album. I would love for him to make another album that just sounds like that but he’s a guy who’s constantly changing up what he does from one album to the next - often pretty substantially. I respect the hell out of it creatively but it does mean that it’s often quite a jarring experience to be a fan of his. You can get whiplash from one album to the next.
Toro Y Moi toured Australia with the Falls Festival in 2015/ 2016. I had gotten a job through my friend Nathan, driving bands around for the Festival, because someone had bailed at the very last minute. I was broke and desperate for cash so when Nathan asked if I knew anyone who’d want to do it, I jumped at the opportunity. Every morning I would get up, hop in the big minivan that the Festival had hired for me, drive to the airport, pick up a band, drive them to their hotel, or to the Festival site, and then drive home. I loved it.
For the first couple of days I drove around Weird Al’s band (sans Weird Al, which really takes a lot of the oomph out of that namedrop), and a new young musician from Ireland called Soak.
Towards the end of the Festival, I check my roster, and I see that I’m driving around Toro Y Moi for two days. I can’t believe it. I absolutely freak out. I’m a huge fan of the band and I’m going to be spending hours and hours with them inside a minivan. I start convincing myself that we’ll hit it off and by the end of the Australian tour, they’ll be inviting me to get up on stage and shake a tambourine with them. I don’t even think there’s a single tambourine in any Toro Y Moi songs but it doesn’t matter - they’ll invent some tambourine parts for their new best friend Tommy Dassalo.
As I’m arriving at the airport to pick them up, I realise something that sends a chill down my spine. I’ve got my phone hooked up to the car stereo and I’ve been driving around with a playlist of music that I made. A playlist that includes some songs by Toro Y Moi. I pull over on the freeway near the airport and spend ten minutes going through the playlist and deleting every single one of their songs because I could not imagine anything more mortifying than being busted being a fan of the band who I was being paid to drive around. If anything, I felt like it was more professional to pretend that I hated not only their music, but them as people.
The band are very nice but very quiet. I somehow manage to keep a lid on my intense love and admiration for them. When I pick them up from their hotel to drive them to the Festival, Chaz is sitting by himself in the lobby, drawing in a sketchbook. A fairly innocuous activity that in that moment, to me, is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. I get to watch them from the side of stage at the Festival, and they’re amazing - one of the best live shows I’d ever experienced. On New Years Day, I pick them up from their hotel and drive them to the airport. With their gear unloaded, they say their goodbyes and thank me. Their tour manager puts his hand out for a handshake. I’m going to blame what happened next on sunstroke from the extraordinary heatwave that Melbourne had been going through, but I took this extended handshake as an invitation for a hug. Caught in my arms, all this startled man can do is pat me on the back and say “thanks, man.” I make eye contact with nearly all of the other band members one by one who suddenly pick up the pace of getting their instruments onto the nearby trolley, as if they’re worried that their driver from the Festival is going to follow them into the airport and try to get onto the flight with them or something? Weird.
I drive home and I’m reeling from how thoroughly I’ve just embarrassed myself. I fall into a deep mental hole as I convince myself that this interaction is reflective of my entire personality and how I handle myself socially. It takes me months to be able to listen to Toro Y Moi again without instantly blushing as I remember that day, and any time sometime goes in for a handshake or a hug, it causes me to break out into a sweat and start slowly rocking back and forth. I’ve never been the same since that day, and honestly I don’t think I ever will be.
Anyway, ‘Days In Love’ is a sick song. I love the bit where the drums go fully crazy.
Upcoming Shows.
You’re out of your damn mind if you think you’re getting out of this newsletter without plugs for some things that I’m doing.
PERTH: JUNE 15. ‘TURTLE ISLAND’ Solo Show.
I’m in Perth next weekend doing my stand-up show from this year’s Festivals. It’s about the time I got taken hostage on a remote tropical island in Fiji. I was meant to do this in March and it got moved because of the borders and, quite frankly, it’s a real pain in the ass having to remember it again after I haven’t done it for a couple of months. So please come so that the stress is worth it! It was really fun to do in all of the other cities.
Tickets here.
MELBOURNE: AUGUST 7. ‘GOOD INTENTIONS’ Monthly Comedy Gig.
This is a new gig that I’m running with Josh Earl. It’s monthly, we co-host it together and then we both do a set of all new material. Plus there’s other acts on who are always gonna be great. We did the first one last week and it went off. It completely sold out and everyone killed. Come to this one! I’m pumped.
I’m also doing some new material shows in Sydney and Brisbane in September but they’re not on sale yet so I’ll plug them in the next edition of this. Or keep an eye on my socials if you’re in those places!
He's done it again!
I love Tommy’s recommendations, I’m so glad he has formalised this! Great first edition ❤️