The Lighter Side with Jay

Allison Guilbault (Counselor, LAC, LHMC) has spent time working with rape victims, prisoners in solitary confinement, and members of the LGBTQA+ community. She currently works in private practice in NJ, and has pivoted to a fully online model. 

I loved Allison's perspective on mental health, as well as learning about her amazing journey to get to where she is professionally today. She follows the tradition of my guests who do fantastic, important work thinking that what they do is nothing special. She is, of course, very, very wrong. 


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Erin A. Bauer is my ex girlfriend. We dated during my first ever nervous breakdown, and I can confidently say that I would not be here today were it not for the love and support she gave me through those years. She adds a little color to my mental health journey here, but she does a lot more.

Erin has worked in education for the state of New York for over 20 years. She currently serves as the Wellness Coach for the Office of School Wellness Programs, and is in charge of making sure that all of the students in NYC are maintaining physical fitness during the pandemic. 

We talked about all that, we talked about the world being on fire, and we talked about true crime. Because that's how we do.

This episode of the Essential Lighter Side is proudly sponsored by SavetheChildren.org/savekids , an organization that believes every child deserves a future. Every last child.The services they are providing during the pandemic are invalulable, and I urge you to visit their site to see how you can help out. 

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Phil Alongi and I met as kids. We both had asthma and had to go to the nurse's office to get our inhalers every day. Ironically, the guy who had asthma so bad that he had to change schools (Phil), went on to become a booming tenor opera singer, who is also an Emmy-winning news producer.

I loved getting to catch up with Phil. He gave his unique perspective on covering the news of the day, took me through the meandering path of his career, and reminded me of some fantastic times from my childhood.

Check out Phil's opera site here. 

This episode of the Essential Lighter Side is proudly sponsored by SavetheChildren.org/savekids , an organization that believes every child deserves a future. Every last child.The services they are providing during the pandemic are invalulable, and I urge you to visit their site to see how you can help out. 

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Jim hosts an online trivia service called Trivia Hubbub He writes questions and orchestrates the event for groups of friends, or for drop-ins just looking for something to do. Prior to the pandemic, Jim worked for House of Independents, a fantastic live-music venue in Asbury Park, NJ. With live music being on ice for the time being, he's giving some more love to the live trivia game, and he is endeavoring to make it a refreshing oasis from the ennui. 

If you are tired of hanging out with your friends on Zoom and just starting at each other, hoping something interesting happens, you should give Jim a call and give those hangouts a purpose: beating your friends in a game of useless knowledge. As a bonus, Jim is a super cool guy, and I loved chatting with him about trivia in the time of corona, how he has adjusted his lifestyle, and, of course, music. 

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Melissa and Bethany are the co-owners of HBH Counseling, a client based approach therapy center in New Jersey. They have had to move their entire business online in order to continue to service their existing clients, and they have done so both nimbly and effectively. What's more, they have also seen a noticeable uptick in new enrollments. We talked about the stress of all that, and got into some of the issues Melissa and Bethany believe those of us with mental health issues may be facing in the near and distant futures. 

We laughed too. I promise. But, the services these two wonderful women are providing are invaluable. They offer online group therapy, and their entire therapy schedule can be found here. I encourage anyone who is suffering to reach out. 

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Michael Buckley is my best friend and hetero life mate. He is here to tell the story of how the pandemic has found him moved 3,000 miles across the country, with his personal training business Buckley Body Solutions forced to make some quick pivots. This is the story of how one man lost his dog, but found love in the time of Corona.  

Buckley trained me and saw me go from 375lbs to 185 lbs. He is the best personal trainer on Earth, and you should absolutely check out his streaming programs during the quarantine!

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Along with his wife Shannon, Eli Silver owns and operates a fully functional, fully organic CSA farm. We talked about what the word "organic" really means, the disruption in the food chain caused by COVID-19, and life on a farm in 2020. 

Oh, Eli is also a lawyer in the Attorney General's office, handling child abuse cases. 

This was a fascinating conversation, and I know you will enjoy it. 

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Eric Shapiro shares my mental health issues. So that's fun. We both over-analyze every single we do, both never think we are doing enough, both are filled with guilt. Jewish and Italian, respectively. Must be a hometown thing. BUT, Eric is WRONG about himself, as he has had an incredibly diverse and robust career path, ranging from mounting several indie film productions, to working as a ghost writer, to writing 6 works of fiction and 1 of non-fiction, to being the father to 2 young boys, and, finally, running a SUCCESSFUL, INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER in the year 2020.

You can check out all of Eric's writing here. His film work is here. You can check out the newspaper here.

Music by Steve Kupp and Remember Jones
Audio engineering and editing by PodBear Audio

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Jared and Tyler Picone are two intelligent, compassionate, empathetic brothers who happen to also have two of the most amazing singing voices I have had the pleasure to be in the same vicinity as. They are part of the Milian Mafia, a throwback to time of Ball Culture, when drag queens would form Houses and become a defacto family.

We talked about their upbringing, their activism, and you KNOW they sang. The odds of two brothers both being gay and both being this talented have gotta be slim, right? This was a really deep dive into the idea of privilege, the joy of being a theater kid, and the ever-enduring love of two brothers.

Music by Steve Kupp and Remember Jones
Editing by PodBear Audio 

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Jonathan Giordano, aka "Mudhustler" was the single most influential weight-loss personality for me when I got serious about using social media as a system of support. His recipes, like the Big Ass Waffle, the One Point Donut, and Bird Balls, were so pervasive in the Weight Watchers world that I was making them daily years before I ever got to know the man behind them.

Now, I consider Jonathan a friend and a peer. When he isn't being a social media influencer, Jonathan runs a concrete company in Massachusetts. The company has been deemed essential, so Jon is still hard at work, but the toll that this pandemic has taken on him is apparent.

This is the third time Jonathan has been on my show, and it is absolutely the most raw he has been as well. This hasn't been easy on him, nor has it been on any of us, and he once again has shown that his ability to strip away the nonsense and show his true self is an invaluable trait,  and a huge part of the reason he retains a devoted following.

This is a very real conversation about mental health, weight loss, and video games.

Get ALL of the Mudhustler recipes, merch, and content on his website.

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