(Content Warning: Sexual Assault, Cancer)

Sometimes I feel like I need to justify my popcorny TV watching habits: so, I watch TV while I code, which means that I can’t watch anything deep or cerebral because that’s too engaging. No Pantheon, no Ghost In the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, no Arcane: when I’m coding I need something more in the Brooklyn Nine Nine territory.

Anyways: Sakamoto Days!

It’s a comedy/action Netflix anime that’s… okay, I guess?

So, this released a few years back:

So, every now and then I rewatch Jenny Nicholson talking about the worst reality TV show of all time, because it’s funny, and because I have a cold.

Anyways, the comments for that video are now filled with people pushing their own, alternate takes for worst reality TV show of all time, and, uh, okay.

WB’s Superstar USA.

The whole show is available in its entirety on YouTube:

Whereas our legendary Opposite Worlds was merely dangerously incompetent, WB’S Superstar USA is actively malicious, a season long elaborate prank.

i’d love to watch a video essay about psycholonials with the caveat that I wouldn’t trust anybody who read psycholonials to make a video essay about psycholonials

So, I’ve made no small matter (outside of my blog) out of my growing Homestuck fandom. (And also: my complete and utter lack of interest in participating in Homestuck fandom.)

It really is a singular piece of art.

If you’ve ever wondered how Andrew Hussie felt about Homestuck, here comes Psycholonials, a VN by Andrew Hussie about… Homestuck.

I’ve never seen the movie, The Neverending Story

So, both Tiff and I had seen some growing groundswell behind the old, famously terrible movie “Showgirls”.

Has Showgirls actually become kind of good?

Tom Jolliffe takes a look back at Showgirls, once universally derided and considered one of the worst films ever… but is it actually misunderstood? Upon its release in 1995, Paul Verhoeven’s trashy spectacular, Showgirls was obliterated by critics….

Showgirls: Complete and utter trainwreck or misunderstood satirical feminist masterpiece?

Solarpunk has been picking up in popularity in the past few years.

Like in this… weirdly gorgeous yogurt ad.

This one was a Hugo nominee five years ago or so, and a real physical copy has been sitting on my bookshelf forever.

you know what, I think it’s time

the parade of musicals-i-havent-seen-yet continues…

Did you know I was probably in my 30s before I watched Casablanca for the first time?

let’s watch another episode of Columbo

let’s watch an episode of Columbo

The Dark Knight (2008) is a pretty memorable movie, but one character who sticks out to me is “cliche spouting cop”.

Every damn line from him is a tired cliche.

Nobody else seems to focus on this guy but I hate him.

ḧ̶̡̨̨̛̩͔̻̘̻̺͓͕̯̥́̐̓͌͋͗̈́̈́̍̑̽͆̇͝͝͠e̷͍̤̥̗͂̒̉͒̆̎͊̃͆́̀̃̊̍͂̓͜l̸̛̜̩̩͖̥̮̰͂͆̆̏̊̆͌͌͑̚ͅl̵̢̡̫̲͔̱͔̤̣͚͋̐́̽̾͒̓̏̋̒̌o̵̰̽̏̊̈́̅̅̎́̅̍̄͋̓̕̕̚ ̸̢̧̨̱̹͚̘̭̦̣͕̩̩̹͉̽̀̍́̄͌͒̒̑̽̒̊̓̒͋̏͝ḓ̵̩͇̱̤̙́o̷̧̙̺̮͚̹̹͔͇̰͍̯͔͖͜͝l̷̡͚̹̙͍̘̳͓̜̱̲̟̗̪̯̔͜ĺ̴̢̧̛̼͎̳̠͔͙̤̬̣̫̈́̓̌̎̾̅͛͋̎͌̽̆͆y̷͖̖͉̩͔̥͇̫̳͙̣͕̭͚̽̆̓͜

Hello Dolly runs for 2 hours and 30 minutes, and if you’re wondering if there are any parts of it that are better than the 45 seconds in WALL-E

nope

something about the cadence of this is just very, very funny, so many lines in this hit an absurd comedic tone

textbook… the homeowner cut a hole in their wall, ‘cause they’re wily, and they musta hit a cable or somethin’

does that happen a lot?

in Canada alone… a million homes a second

a m- that can’t be right

as far as I can tell there doesn’t appear to be any upper limit on my tolerance for the runtime of long rambling looks at unusual media

the movie Krampus does a lot to demonstrate how horror can become comedy with just a bouncier, happier, foley

Oh man, Culinary Class Wars is so good I immediately love it, it’s Squid Game Iron Chef

I love Kiki’s Delivery Service and Porco Rosso.

there’s this shot in Porco Rosso that’s just a fast, low flight over the Italian countryside that I assume gave the animator working on it an actual heart attack

every damn frame of Kiki’s Delivery Service takes place on some piece of beautiful, detailed, warm, pleasant art, I don’t even need to pick one out, I can just stop the movie literally anywhere and it’s this kinda thing and it’s on screen for 1.2 seconds and then another one, and then another one, for like 90 minutes

this is one of my favorite movies of all time and Tiff doesn’t care for it because nothing much happens in it, but it’s just a pleasant, chill ride all the way through

I watch it on lazy Saturdays

If you like Stardew Valley this is the movie with the Stardew Valley-est vibe that you can find

this movie should be on the list of anti-anxiety drugs

I watched the movie Network (1976) a while back, which is a near-future dystopian film about what happens when we let journalism get taken over by entertainment and ratings-chasing.

Howard Beale goes from a respected journalist to this red-faced fear-mongering angry shouting head.

… and I don’t think it ages very well, because the thing it predicted came to pass essentially immediately and hasn’t left since, I was born a decade later, I can’t remember an era when news WASN’T like this.

I don’t read. I exhaust media.

I don’t just watch things, when I find something truly good, I start re-watching it again and again and again, every year or so, because that’s about how long it takes to reset my emotional response to the content. I don’t just want to get hit by the last episode of The Good Place, I watch the whole thing in joyous anticipation of that hit, I want to get to the part at the end that makes me cry.

Eventually, my emotional response smoothes out: it’s too predictable, I know it too well.

I haven’t just read Homestuck.

I have read Homestuck, in its entirely, every year, for 5 years in a row, until last year when the emotional beats finally stopped landing.

I’m gonna let it sit a bit. There’s still some stuff in there that I think can hit if I let it brew for a couple of years.

that’s true for a lot of media I’ve really loved, I’ve not just watched it but I’ve watched it a LOT, I feel like I’ve Thoroughly Mined it For Humor and Emotional Content and there’s not much there that’s left to find.

I haven’t quite memorized it but I don’t quit until there’s not a single beat that I don’t know by heart.

The Good Place is a tough one because, to be honest, it’s a long slog through a lot of often pretty boring shenanigans. The character humor holds up, but not quite as well on repeat watching. Once you know the twists, it’s less fun. But there’s still a lot meat at the end: a kind of eternal cosmic love story on par with This is How You Lose The Time War.

and the final episode, which can’t hit right if you don’t watch the preamble

you can’t cheat emotional beats like that, you can’t just skip directly to the good part, you’ve gotta soak in the whole thing for it to Work properly

It’s probably not going into the regular rotation, but I also don’t think that I’ve watched it for the last time.

I’m not way into drugs, aside from smooshing my cat’s face, fiction is literally the best tool I have for monkeying with my emotional state

nobody ever calls this out but in iconic 1941 film noir The Maltese Falcon, Miles Archer is killed by being shot in the nuts, to death

“oh, man”

“right in the chimichangas”

I almost bailed on Thermae Romae after one episode because it was just this irritating bog-standard Shonen plot where a plucky young boy wants to be the BEST BATHHOUSE DESIGNER IN THE WORLD

ugggghhhhhh

it’s no surprise that this episode was added by netflix to pad out the series and actually has almost nothing to do with the rest of the episodes

every episode after that is much better, featuring the almost mechanical formula of Modestus encountering a roman bathhouse design problem, accidentally getting transported to modern japan, being amazed and humbled by modern bathroom technology, then transported back into rome where he copies it with ancient technology and is hailed as a genius.

This formula is both funny and good fun.

Like, we all have the persistent fantasy of showing off mundane modern tech to an ancient person and watching them be amazed, right? It’s that feeling bottled into a television show.

also as a man with no shortage of mediterranean blood I have had this exact same progression of emotions with a bidet:

“where did you get so much mediterranean blood, are you italian?”

“no, i just buy it by the jar from a guy I met under a bridge”

I don’t watch a lot of anime but I’ve absolutely seen The Way of the Househusband start to finish about three times.

The joke is incredibly dumb and not terribly progressive: this scary man enjoys doing traditionally feminine chores with all of the shouting intensity of a serious, dramatic action anime protagonist - but - he does really sell it.

I’m not sure what there’s left for cyberpunk fiction to offer, there’s already five corporations that own everything, powered skateboards, portable hacking devices, and a ubiquitous net, that’s just “fiction” now.

you could have a story where an enterprising hacker steals millions of dollars from an idealistic but foolish autonomous collective of bankers who put their trust in an untrustworthy distributed ledger protocol and you’d have to check first whether to file that under “science fiction” or “documentary”

say what you want about solarpunk at least it’s a vision of a future without fucking “creds”

so I’ve been powerwatching original Frasier, and at about Season 5 I started to notice that there’s a pretty iconic picture on Frasier’s fridge

That’s… Pantalone!

I know that image from the Wikipedia page on him, from the commedia dell’arte.

He’s, like, a core comedic archetype in this ancient tradition.

A lot of people think that just because something is “old” it’s necessarily “classy and cultured” but the commedia dell’arte is, as far as I can tell, broad dumb comedy: the joke about Pantalone is that he’s old, and pompous, and horny… but why would they include this reference on Frasier’s fridge?

“The character of Pantalone is entirely based on currency and ego, for he has the highest regard for his intelligence, but at every step he becomes the butt for every conceivable kind of trick”

“Pantalone is characterized as loving his money and having emotional extremes. With his sinister and often inhumane treatment towards his fellows, Pantalone is perceived to be a pivotal part of commedia.”

Oh, okay, so, Frasier is … something of a Pantalone - for he has the highest regard for his intelligence, but at every step he becomes the butt for every conceivable kind of trick"

That is an extremely highbrow meta-joke that the set designers slipped in.

I’m not sure how I really feel about this show. I’ve been brewing on it for several seasons.

I haven’t seen an old-school multi-camera sitcom in a long time, reliably extracting humor from a small set of actors and sets, it’s a weirdly minimalist feeling.

Nothing ever changes, it’s just this endlessly re-configurable machine with the same reliable, almost mechanical widgets and locations, creating an endless engine of content.

The flywheel of endless content created by having characters who reliably bounce off of one another in fun ways is neat.

That’s not a “Frasier” thing, that’s a “basically every sitcom made before the year 2000” thing.

Heck, that’s even a commedia dell’arte thing: it was improvisational and based on everybody knowing the stock characters and situations.

I can also see why I didn’t like the show very much during its original run - I’d have been 7 when it started airing, most of the show’s humor was not targeted at my demographic.

Now I’m closer to Frasier’s age (ew) the whole show is much funnier.

The show’s high-falutin references and cruel wordplay are very funny. I’m not proud to admit it, but I think the best jokes in the whole thing are “snide, mean, unbelievably fast burns” (of which there are no shortage of online compilations).

I’m not great with “cringe” humor - humor derived from putting someone in an awkward situation - and while Frasier’s pompousness makes him an obvious target for an endless parade of karmic retribution, a lot of it still makes me uncomfortable.

As an example of what a Frasier sketch might look like:

imagine a situation where Frasier thinks he’s delivering a speech for a birthday but he doesn’t realize he’s actually delivering a eulogy: fate conspires such that his speech works for both situations (humorously) but makes him out to be a monster, embarrassing him.

This hinges on both brilliant wordplay and unbearable awkwardness, and I can only really enjoy about 50% of that.

A weird amount of this show happens with Frasier in a robe.

I’m not sure if that’s a useful note but it’s definitely a note: this is a robe-laden show.

I guess it’s because Frasier doesn’t own much in the way of casual-wear clothing at all: he’s either in a suit or a robe for much of the show’s runtime.

It also allows for Frasier and his enormous collection of doomed romances with beautiful women to indicate “sexytimes a-happenin’” while keeping everybody pretty much fully clothed.

I don’t think this show works without Niles, David Hyde Pierce is extremely funny and his character gives the show a lot of free reign to lean into the characters’ almost clownish pomposity and ridiculousness at full steam.

With just Frasier the joke is always on the contrast between him and the normies, but as soon as there are two of these pompous buffoons on screen suddenly you’ve got a party.

Niles is like a cartoon caricature of Frasier, all of his worst features magnified into a little gremlin to torment him and deny him the space he would need to experience any character development. I can’t think of a lot of shows that have had characters playing against, essentially, Flanderized versions of themselves and it works weirdly well and is, IMO, easily the most fun character dynamic in the whole thing.

woogh there are some rough season 7 episodes, this show kinda falls off a cliff in the back end

anyways tune in for my youtube video where I explain my dark theory where everybody in The Wizard of Oz was dead the whole time because it was filmed 84 years ago

There’s a really recent episode of Black Mirror where the plot is that a rich white lady completely loses her shit and goes crazy, which hurts her social media score, which causes her to lose her shit even more, which ruins her life because in the future, your social media score determines your access to everything.

But all of her experiences with being unpopular are just experiences that regular poor people have, all the time, today - the rental company gave her a bad car! Nobody listened to her when she complained at the airport! The justice system didn’t treat her fairly!

And one day of being treated this way drove this poor woman completely insane.

People really liked this episode. Such effective horror writing! Imagine if the world was actually like this?

And, like… damn, the world is really like this, it’s just that the currency is “money” rather than “popularity”, as if that is any fairer.

What’s curious is that nobody has pitched a Muppet movie on the internet yet that I wouldn’t watch.

A Muppet fantasy RPG where Muppets gather around a RPG table but all of their actions are performed by live-action actors, with The Rock voiced by Ms. Piggy? Sold.

Muppet Dune? Sign me up.

A Muppet adaptation of the Muppet Christmas Carol called “The Muppet Muppet Christmas Carol” where they re-do the Muppet Christmas Carol but with more Muppets? Absolutely

Muppet 1984? Why not?

Actually I might veto any big Muppet fantasy projects like LoTR because the Jim Henson company might lean into their Dark Crystal collection a bit and nobody needs any more of those creepy expressionless indistinguishable Brian Froud waifs.

The movie marketing fails to note that this is considered the correct, optimal status for babies.