Author: fred chong rutherford
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I tell stories about the improbability and inevitability of meaningful connection
In December 2023, I was in year 5 of my CPTSD therapy. I weighed 361 pounds. I’d been diagnosed with pre-diabetes. I had trapped myself in a miserable story of self-destruction. And worse? I spread the misery around me. I needed to change my story. I read everything I could find about what happens to…
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Learning to live
In 1983 …My 9th birthday was the 1st week of July.My sister’s funeral was a week later. July 22, 1983. Friday. I started work. This was my parent’s way for them to keep an eye on me, and also to do what they knew, to use work to distract from feeling bad. For two years,…
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Goodbye to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
I just learned that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is being shutdown this year. This is my gut level reaction to it, peer to peer, human to human, unfiltered but hopefully at least spelled correctly. The world is a poorer place without the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I grew up in a small rural town.…
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Walking Again
Losing weight slowly but consistently has been challenging, but worth it. Every other time I ever lost weight it was a quick burst, followed by some kind of maintenance, with no change to underlying habits. Sticking with “no more than 2 pounds a week” is life changing. Everything about this has been different. I eat…
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My first Magnet class is coming up – Funny Voices and Feelings
I’m teaching my first Magnet class, and it’s about character artistry called ‘Funny Voices and Feelings.’ It’s about using a fun voice to find a character, whether through a bad impression, or simply changing up how you talk in simple ways with voice, pitch, and more, and letting that inhabit in your improv. Change the…
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Looking dramatic at the Magnet with Blue Hause
Ona Vicente and Dmitry Shein are COOL! They’re so cool, they’re both fellow comedy performers and amazing Magnet people, and they’ve started Blue Hause photography because they’re COOL! Which fits, you should see the pictures they take. I got to be in a photoshoot they did, and this picture, I look like I’m on the…
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Podcast guest spot upcoming on Love Hurts
Storyteller, filmmaker and podcaster Bryan Berlin’s podcast Love Hurts explores the messiness of love between family, friends, partners, faith, art, and anything in between. I was on recently to talk about comedy, and this time I’ve talked about before where my step-grandmother Bobbie tried to bond with me by telling me tenderly and sincerely that,…
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Podcast guest spot upcoming on There It Is
Jason Farr, my friend in comedy from the Magnet Theater, has a great podcast called There It Is where he surfs the seas of jocular chatting with different comedians – and somehow I’m on it too! The episode launches on all of your favorite podcast places like iTunes and whatever else is good, so check…
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Podcast voiceover performance upcoming on Girl Tales – The Legend of Yuwul
The great Rebecca Cunningham of Girl Tales cast me to play a bunch of characters in Nina Ki’s retelling of an ancient Korean story ‘The Legend of Yuwul.’ It’s one of those stories from the old days when tigers smoked pipes, about a girl named Yuwul who lives with her father, the Old Admiral, and…
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I Got Fact Checked by USA Today for a Comedy SEO Experiment
Okay, so, the goofy thing I did about the 2020 Republican National Convention actually did capture that traffic I noticed on google console. Most of the people who clicked through got the joke, and laughed, a few people didn’t and that’s all good. But there were two VERY weird outcomes I had no idea were…