And his whole life, he just kept chasing that high. As a seven-year-old, he would draw smiley faces on his butt, stick a toothbrush in it, and do entire monologues—out of his butt—for the family. He was part of a sketch comedy troupe in high school called Will Act for Food, WAFF for short. They rented out a small theater for their first live-sketch show, and midway through, Harris meandered across the stage totally naked, wearing nothing but a cowboy hat over his loins. Our grandmother was in the audience. I remember, years later, she wore the same befuddled face watching his first Showtime comedy special, where he did this bit about jerking off when you have a roommate, and how you have to keep checking to make sure the roommate isn’t awake, so it really amounts to jerking off to your roommate.
His grades weren’t great in school, but not for a lack of intrinsic motivation. A staunch academic, our dad was always pushing him to do better, but Harris refused to do things that didn’t make him happy. Rather, he played drums in his high school band, Pralines and Dik, and spent countless hours consuming every comedy special or sitcom he could find on TV or at Blockbuster, his spiritual home. He idolized Louis C.K. and Mitch Hedberg. Hedberg would go on to die of a drug overdose at thirty-seven years old, and Louis C.K. would be accused of sexual misconduct by a number of women. Regardless, these were the giants who, despite their demons, influenced Harris to become who he was.
When we were teenagers, our parents took us to see them on two separate occasions at the Laff Stop, this infamous, little comedy club in Houston that no longer exists. After Louis’s set, Harris approached him at the bar and, in all seriousness, told Louis he could give him some notes on how to be funnier. He was always fearless. Mostly fearless. I remember he used to throw up before going on stage. He threw up constantly as a child. When we were kids, stomach cramps were his go-to excuse to leave anywhere he no longer wanted to be. In high school, he’d chug Kaopectate for breakfast nearly every morning. One time in college, I saw him hang up the phone after a moderately tense conversation with a girlfriend and immediately vomit.
Despite the naturally nervous stomach, Harris started doing open mics as soon as he turned eighteen and could legally enter the clubs without our parents. The whole summer before leaving for college, he got up every Monday night at the Laff Stop, where he’d seen his idols years before. I remember sitting in the audience for these mostly terrible shows, nervously waiting for his name to be called. During his set, I would laugh uncomfortably hard at all his jokes and look around to make sure everyone else was doing the same. He used to tell this one joke about potato shoes that I can still hear in my head in his exact intonation: “Do you think a homeless guy ever went up to another homeless guy and accidentally asked him for some change? Excuse me, can you spare some change? Um, can you spare some change?! Oh, hey Terry didn’t see ya there! You like my new shoes? They’re old. You like my new shoes? They’re potatoes!”
When he got to Emerson College in Boston, he majored in television and video but continued to focus on comedy. He did regular open mics at the Comedy Studio in Harvard Square and started a bizarro sketch comedy group called Fancy Pants with college friends Noah Garfinkel, Jim Hanft, Joe Mande, Gabe Rothschild, and Armen Weitzman.
During Harris’s last semester at Emerson, he opted for an internship at Comedy Central in LA. It didn’t take long for all the executives to start stopping by the intern’s desk to get advice on what was and wasn’t funny. Harris was a living comedy encyclopedia, the Little Man Tate of the comedy world. After the internship ended, he remained in LA and got a day job being a nanny to two little French boys. But at night, it was all comedy. He signed up for classes at Upright Citizens Brigade and continued going to every open mic he could find.
In May 2006, fresh out of college, he got a spot on UCB’s Comedy Death-Ray hosted by Scott Aukerman of Comedy Bang! Bang! Scott would go on to become one of Harris’s dearest friends and closest collaborators, but at the time, he’d never met Harris nor seen his act and was skeptical because Harris was essentially a newborn baby. However, a mutual friend convinced Scott to put him on the show with Doug Benson, Sarah Silverman, Paul F. Tompkins, Tig Notaro, and Blaine Capatch. According to Scott, Harris killed. At twenty-two, on a line-up like that, he made his mark.
Harris was that rare person whose childhood dreams turned into adult realities. He always knew what he wanted to do and actually did it. Being whip-smart, funny, hardworking, and endlessly charming contributed to his success, but it’s also worth noting that he’d always been lucky. He was the asshole who left his cell phone in a New York City cab only to have the cabbie drive it back to my Queens apartment hours later just to return it to him. When he was in college, he lost his wallet in the Boston bus terminal and someone mailed it to our permanent address in Texas with all the cash still in it.
Six months after doing the Comedy Death-Ray show, Harris got an email from Sarah Silverman asking if he’d be interested in writing for her new Comedy Central show:
Okay, so we have a slot open to write on the next season of my show. Do you have anything we can read? My producer will contact you about it, but I wanted to give you a heads up. Flanny loves you and I thought you were GREAT when I saw you. Don’t know what you are looking to do, but if this potentially interests you, submit something—anything—if you think it represents how you write or come up with ideas.
If this isn’t what you are looking to do PLEASE don’t think twice. It was just a thought. Always good to have a young smart silly greenie in the room is all. But if you’re not looking to write on a show, it’s not like it would be awkward next time we bump into each other or something.
s
According to Harris, she escorted him to a big, fancy business lunch a few weeks later to meet the studio executives. Knowing that he was twenty-two and totally out of his element, she literally grabbed him by the arm and mentored him through each new handshake. “Harris, this is so and so, shake his hand. Harris, this is so and so, shake his hand.” And it worked. He booked the job as the “young smart silly greenie in the room.”
From there, Harris’s career trajectory was swift and steep. After two seasons on The Sarah Silverman Show, he got hired as a staff writer on Season 2 of Parks and Recreation, where he remained for the next six years, eventually working his way up to the title of co-executive producer. In his spare time, he wrote for Eastbound & Down and became a notorious podcaster with popular shows like Analyze Phish, Comedy Bang! Bang!, and Farts and Procreation. He did stand-up on the Jimmy Kimmel Show and opened for Sarah, Aziz Ansari, and Louis C.K.
At the time Harris died, he was a thirty-year-old co-executive producer on a beloved, major network television show. He had invented the word humblebrag, which earned him a book deal and a spot in the English dictionary. He had written jokes for President Obama that the president delivered in Zach Galifianakis’s Between Two Ferns, which has been viewed on YouTube more than twenty million times.
How many people can say that?
On the phone with Harris that March day, I tried to stay calm and judgment-free.
“Do you plan to go to rehab?” I asked.
He said he couldn’t. Parks was shooting through June. He had to be in LA for work. He planned to tackle this on his own. He could do it. It was under control.
Also: “Don’t tell Mom and Dad—please don’t tell Mom and Dad,” he insisted. He didn’t want to worry them. He only wanted to worry me. Three days before my wedding. Best to just keep this secret safe like we’d always done. He’d see me at the wedding, he said. He was excited! Yay! Don’t worry. “I’ll be fine. Love you, sister.”
I hung up and cried into Mike’s shirt while standing beside the kitchen table. I always knew my brother was a recreational drug user but had no idea it had gotten to the point where he needed them. I knew he’d been having severe back pain and was taking painkillers. The pain was so bad, he had been rushed to the emergency room one night in a
n ambulance. He and I had seen this storyline on one of our favorite TV shows, Intervention, countless times. Back pain + painkillers = drug addiction. And yet here we were.
It was a lot to take in three days before my wedding. It was a lot to take in, period.
Harris gave it his all that weekend, but there was a cloudy film over the lens. He smiled with his mouth and not his eyes, like in one of those tests of all the smiling faces where you pick the genuinely happy people and the sad people. He was always a little distant, a little withdrawn, and smoking or pacing excessively, but the distance felt wider and it was more of a palpable bummer on the happiest day of my life. I didn’t get the impression, however, that anyone else noticed. Harris had years of professional experience being outwardly charming and carefree when he felt like a tense little ball of toxic waste on the inside. That’s essentially what it is to be a comedian. Plus, my parents were just thrilled blind that he was there with his girlfriend. My mom insisted that she be in all the family photos that day.
Second to Mike’s wedding vows—which began with the sentence “You are strange”…swoon—Harris’s toast was my favorite speech of the day. It was a classic sort of toast that only a little brother could give to his big sister:
Hello everybody. I’m Harris—I’m the brother. So, my sister—she basically raised me. And by raised, I mean tortured me. She would dress me up in girl clothes and make me do her weird plays she wrote, and she’d play with my Hanukkah presents first. One time, her and Jennifer tried to trick me into drinking my own pee. They pretended that it was their pee, but it was apple juice, and then they made me go in a cup, too. But I knew. I didn’t do it…til later.
And then we grew up, and she befriended me. And by befriended I mean she taught me how to be delinquent. She taught me how to sneak out of the house without the alarm going off. She’d throw me a few extra beers if her and her friends didn’t want them. She taught me how to hide contraband in the back of my stereo, where the batteries go. It’s a big slot back there, and you can fit a lot of stuff. And I worshipped her and thought she was the coolest. She shopped at the Value Village resale shop, and so I shopped there, too, ’cause I wanted her to think I was cool, which is disgusting. It’s a horrible cesspool of germs and armpit stains and I went through just so she’d like me.
And then we became adults, and I think that’s when we actually became real friends and equals. And, you know, she’s the person I could always talk to the most, and I always counted on her for anything. And even when I was busy becoming a Hollywood douchebag, she would always check in on me and force me to stay in touch, and I’m glad that we did.
You know, she’s obviously very thoughtful and caring, and she deserves someone that’s equally thoughtful and caring, and I think she found that in Mike. They are a perfect fit. Stephanie goes one hundred miles per hour and Mike, he goes a cool thirty miles per hour, so between them, they’re going sixty-five, and that’s a good speed. So, I’m glad that I got a brother and our family got bigger, and I love you guys. Congrats.
I cackled my way to tears, and before he took his seat, I hugged him with all of the love I had in my body, which was the only thing that existed inside of me on that glorious day.
I was so happy.
03
Week One
I didn’t know it was possible to awaken from a state of sleep in tears, but the morning after your death, I learn that it is. It’s my thirty-fourth birthday, but Facebook doesn’t understand that I’m not in the mood to celebrate anything ever again. Every time I log on, a window pops up with an exploding firework graphic and a happy birthday banner that displays all the wall posts about your death. I tell Mike to take my birthday off the calendar for the duration of our lives.
Over the next few days, we all want to die but make arrangements instead.
We meet with the funeral director. Talk programs. Select pallbearers. Pick out burial clothes: a Phish T-shirt, your favorite reindeer pajama bottoms, house slippers, and a Phish hat. We choose a casket out of a binder with plastic sheet covers that the funeral director presents. It’s traditional to bury a Jewish person in a plain, pine box, but Mom insists on something nicer.
We meet with the current rabbi of our synagogue who married Mike and me two years before and the retired rabbi, who Bar/Bat Mitzvahed both of us as children. Do you remember after your speech when he told the audience to look for this kid at the Laff Stop some day? You were always you. The rabbis will co-lead the service. During the recessional, we’ll play “Once in a While,” our favorite Don’t Stop or We’ll Die song. That was your band, and you loved playing drums in it more than almost anything, so it feels appropriate.
In a way, this is all just like directing a play. A very depressing play.
Everyone decides that I should deliver your eulogy. Mom and Dad always said I spoke for you the first five years of your life—they thought maybe you were mute—so I guess it’s fitting that I speak for you now. Somehow. I spend hours working on it. Remembering, writing, revising; remembering, writing, revising; remembering, writing, revising. When Mike prints out the final draft for me, the cover page logs twenty-six hours of work. Meanwhile, Mike writes an obituary that is beautiful and poignant, but the newspaper sends an invoice for $2,563.72, which is fucking lunacy. It’s like that scene from The Big Lebowski where the snooty funeral director tries to sell John Goodman’s character an urn for $180, and he shouts, “Just because we’re bereaved doesn’t make us saps!” Then he pounds his fist on the desk and transports the ashes in a Folgers coffee can. Mike edits the obituary down to $1,406.34.
People keep asking where they can make a donation. These are the sorts of things you have to figure out when a person you love dies. We all agree on a scholarship fund at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, where I currently teach acting full-time. You and I both graduated from the theatre department, and you always loved to come talk to my students when you were in town. It feels like a good fit. I call my boss, the principal of the school, to hash out the details. In the same conversation, I tell him I’m not sure when I’ll be coming back to work. He tells me to take all the time I need. I wonder if forever is an option.
You also made me the executor of your estate, a demanding job for which I never applied. Over the course of the week, I sign various documents. Turns out, you had created a living trust several years ago that was completely squared away and in order when you died. Not a single string was left untied. Fifty percent of your estate will go to me, and fifty percent will go to Mom and Dad. Your business manager said it’s extremely unusual for his clients, especially the young, creative ones, to be this detailed with post-death arrangements. Mike and I have an actual child and don’t even have a will yet. I make a mental note to call the attorney and schedule an appointment to get that done once the dust settles. If the dust ever settles.
All the while, we try to coordinate with the funeral home in Houston, the detective, and the coroner’s office in LA. The coroner won’t release your body until they complete an autopsy, and there are too many dead people in line.
So, we wait.
Meanwhile, people come and go. They bring deli. It feels wrong.
When an old person dies, it makes sense for people to visit, nosh on corned beef, and make small talk. But not now. Not when a young, talented, brilliant, remarkable person has died. True tragedy transcends small talk. The occasion, however, hasn’t stopped Dad from being Dad, and he’s still trying his best to do the “polite host” routine. He keeps perfunctorily asking people how they are, and they keep carelessly responding with the latest news about their children and grandchildren. To a man who’s just lost his own child and future grandchildren. If you were here, you’d comment on what a fucked-up scene this is.
My fuse is particularly short. I don’t want to hug or commiserate or cry on another shoulder. I have no tolerance for social conventions. Anyone who asks, “How
are you?” is met with “Terrible—my brother just died.” Some version of this sentence keeps running through my mind like a newsfeed on the bottom of a screen. It never stops. It underscores every moment: “My brother is dead, my brother is dead, my brother is dead, my brother is dead, my brother is dead, my brother is dead, my brother is dead, my brother is dead, my brother is dead…”
Like I have to keep saying it or it isn’t real. Like I have to keep reminding myself that this is really happening because it’s just too fucking unbelievable.
More unbelievable is that your death is a now a trending topic on social media. My entire Facebook feed is you—photos, articles, podcasts, videos, quotes, blog posts, tweets. On Instagram, the hashtag #harriswittels brings up hand-drawn sketches and paintings by strangers, tribute photos of you doing stand-up and playing the recurring role of Harris, the animal control guy, on Parks and Rec captioned with favorite quotes like “I hate smoking sections—unless we’re talking about the movie The Mask with Jim Carrey, then the smoking section is my favorite part.” Someone has sketched a detailed black-and-white picture of you and made it into a sticker with a caption that reads Humble Living: Harris Wittels (1984–2015). People are pasting them all over LA, taking photos of them whenever spotted, and posting the photos online. It’s like a game: Find the Harris Wittels memorial sticker.
To see it unfold in this way is simultaneously comforting and horrifying. Your death is not just something we are able to deal with privately as a family; it’s something people are grieving publicly and “liking” on Facebook. The Westboro Baptist Church is literally standing outside the offices of LA Weekly holding protest signs that say God Hates Fag Enablers, Repent or Perish, and Harris In Hell. It’s sick as fuck, although a spectacle you would have likely enjoyed. Your friend Joe Mande sums it up best on Twitter: “Goddammit, Harris, the Westboro Baptist Church just called you a ‘fag enabler’ and you’re not here to see it.”
Everything Is Horrible and Wonderful Page 3