Abby came to me via her mother, who e-mailed me after reading a My Single Peeps column. Abby, who is 34 and a stand-up comic, says she asked her mom — a founder of the Malibu Jewish Center & Synagogue — to use her contacts to hook her up with someone like David Letterman. Instead, her mom came back with, “I have someone better. I hooked you up with Seth from My Single Peeps.” I can’t help her stand-up career, but maybe I can help her meet her soul mate.
She describes her comedy as “conscious comedy,” which to me sounds like “comedy that isn’t funny.” “When I do shows, there will always be a redeeming punch line or something uplifting in my comedy,” she says. I’ve just met her but I can’t help telling her how unfunny that sounds. She defends herself with, “I always kill the room.” I assume she means kills them with the funny, but I’ve never heard her perform, so it’s up to you to decide.
I ask Abby about the type of man she’s looking for, and she says, “I don’t want the typical L.A. cheese ball.” She wants someone who is spiritual, which to her means that he believes in something bigger than himself. “Call God whatever you want — just call God,” she says with a laugh. She studied with Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem and “loves the life.” But she still likes to walk around in booty shorts and pumps. “I’d love a shomer Shabbos man to help me get toward that life.”
In college, she shadowed a weather guy at a news station and thought it looked easy. “He partied all night, got paid more than anyone on staff (according to him), went to the gym at noon, and strolled in to work at 2:30.” She spent most of her internship making out with him. She went on to graduate school, where she was shocked by the amount of science that went into being a meteorologist. “I thought it was two minutes of science and 10 hours of performance. I realized it was 10 hours of science and two minutes of performance.” She worked as a weather girl in Mississippi while still in school, but her heart wasn’t in it. “Anyone can do it, but it’s hard, and it’s not my passion. So I flew back to L.A. to become the actress/waitress my parents were panicked about me becoming.”
Abby has a lot of odd jobs. I can’t really keep track of all of the things she does. She has a tutoring company; she writes; she sells “Mitzvah Kitz,” which she calls “Shabbat in a bag”; she teaches yoga; and she’s a life coach. I say, “You’re all over the f—-ing map.” She says, “It’s easy to get certifications.” And she has a sense of humor at the ridiculousness of her varied careers.
Abby also has a kooky side — the side of her that tries to convince me to stay away from doctors and all Western medicine, because “they’ll kill you.” But she’s also kind of tongue-in-cheek about her vegan, consciousness-raising, hippie-speak. She says, with no shame, “I want to wake up every day and do something uplifting and beneficial to the world.” Then, realizing how saccharine that sounds, she adds, “Tikkun olam forever” and starts laughing.
If you’re interested in seeing what she’s about, you can check out her website, humorhealinghumanity.com.
If you’re interested in anyone you see on My Single Peeps, send an e-mail and a picture, including the person’s name in the subject line, to mysinglepeeps@jewishjournal.com, and we’ll forward it to your favorite peep.
Seth Menachem is an actor and writer living in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter. You can see more of his work on his Web site, sethmenachem.com, and meet even more single peeps at mysinglepeeps.com.
