So, we made good on our promise to cut the cord, and we’ve been exploring the offerings of YouTube TV. Before committing, we’re trying it out via my sister-in-law’s account, but there’s a problem. You see, she lives in Denver, so when we had to do the location verification, our Roku confirmed we lived in Denver. So, that means that all of my programming is on Mountain Time. Also, the only clock in the living room was on the front of the cable box. So, now I’ve got no cable box, and my shows are two hours behind. Needless to say, I’m ALL FUCKED UP! I don’t know the day, the time, anything. At first, it didn’t seem like it would be a big issue. So, I’d just watch The Simpsons on FXX two hours behind usual. No, it turned out to be a very big deal. Why was Cartoonito ending at noon? Why was Bob’s Burgers on at 11 PM? It became too much. So, I decided to just watch things that weren’t beholden to a timeslot. That’s when I found YouTube TV’s Portlandia channel.
Longtime readers of the site might remember that I discovered Portlandia over a decade ago, when I streamed the first season. At the time, I didn’t really get the show. In fact, I said that it was “too white for me” – something I rarely say about anything. That said, we would go on to experience phenomena WAY whiter since then. I mean, The Ice Bucket Challenge, viral Karen videos, and trad wives, to name a few. So, in hindsight, there was nothing wrong with the show. Plus, I didn’t really know Portland at that time. The whole “Keep Portland Weird” and all that stuff. I would come to learn about it over the next few years, plus some neighbors moved out there, so they could confirm. The show likes to joke that it’s the place where “The Dream of the 90s is Alive”, and they ain’t lying. Steampunkers hanging out next to culture vultures, living across the street from a lesbian commune. It’s like a city planned by Jules Verne on an acid trip. Once you truly get “Portland”, then you realize the show is genius. I’m still surprised that they felt there was a national audience for this, but they got 8 seasons and 77 episodes out of it, so they knew something I clearly didn’t.
I’m constantly amazed by the chemistry between Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein. They have commented on it in interviews, but there’s still an air of mystery to their whole…thing. In the show, they live together, and even sleep in the same bedroom, but have twin beds. You’re left wondering “Are they fucking? Are they siblings? Are they siblings who fuck?” They’re just so great together, and Armisen has said that it’s the most intimate relationship he’s ever had, outside of “the physical stuff”. So, did they try and it didn’t work? Is he just into some weird shit (He seems like a dude into some weird shit)? Oh, well, whatever the answer, they’re magic onscreen, whether they’re women’s bookstore owners Toni and Candace, or they’re yuppie couple Peter and Nance, or toxic couple Nina and Lance. At times, they’re ad hoc advisers to Kyle MacLachlan’s Mayor, despite having no real political experience, yet the mayor is a magical childlike figure, while they seem tuned into the needs of the people of Portland.
Anyway, all I’ve really watched this week is Portlandia. All damn day. I can’t say I’ve seen the whole series yet, but I’ve seen a LOT of it. I even managed to see the series finale, which was understated but excellent. It’s not the kind of show where the city is gonna blow up or anything, and I liked how they handled it. I know it’s not gonna be a show for everyone, but I think everyone should at least give it a try. I mean, where else are you gonna see Jason Sudeikis have sex with k.d. lang?
Lindsay and I did take some time to watch the Eminem documentary Stans on Paramount+. If you’re an old fuddy duddy, then you may not know that “stan”, slang for an obsessed fan, has its origin in the 2000 Eminem song of the same name. In the song, a psychotic fan professes his obsession with the rapper via a series of fan letters. When Eminem doesn’t reply in a timely manner, the fan letters become more and more deranged, until the fan ends up killing himself and his pregnant wife in a tragic accident. Now, I’m not exactly sure what I thought this thing would be about, going into it. I think I believed it would cover some extreme examples of stans over time. Instead, though, it really just interviewed a bunch of Eminem fans, as they described how much his music has meant to them. Interspersed are interviews with Em himself, as he tells the story of his rise, from his perspective.
It’s an interesting production, but it’s also very clearly a PR project, as it coincided with the recording of his latest “comeback” album, The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce). Eminem is in a very exclusive club, along with Britney Spears and Mariah Carey, where every new album is considered a “comeback” album. This usually means that they take long periods of time between releases, during which there has also been chaos in their personal lives. Also, there tends to be a string of underperforming albums behind them. So, this album was expected to put him back on top. And it didn’t, in terms of quality, as it has the lowest Metacritic score of any of his albums.
The documentary is fine, but you’re not gonna learn anything you didn’t already know, especially if you’ve been a fan since the beginning. Over 25 years later, he’s still kinda like “Nah, it’s crazy folks care about me.” So, while he appreciates his fans, he doesn’t really understand why they feel he’s worthy of such adoration. Also, the fans interviewed aren’t exactly stans. Sure, they’re big fans, but outside the UK chick whose body is covered with Eminem tattoos, their fandom is rather tame. The biggest sin, however, is all of these fans were brought into a studio for their interviews. And it’s clear that Eminem’s portions are filmed in the same studio. However, the fans NEVER GET TO MEET EMINEM! It’s a documentary about their intense fandom of a guy, whom they’ve never met, and they aren’t even given the payoff of getting to meet him! It’s been reported that many of them got to finally meet him at the premiere of the documentary, but not all of those interviewed could make that trip, so womp womp. If you’ve already got Paramount+, and you have more than a passing interest in Marshall Mathers, then go ahead and watch Stans. Otherwise, don’t waste your time.
Next up, we watched aka Charlie Sheen on Netflix. What can I say that you don’t already know? We lived through all that. I mean, the good news is he survived it, and he’s reportedly been sober for 8 years. Like Stans, though, this is just another PR vehicle, designed to let Hollywood know that he’s no longer a problem, and that he’s available for work. That, or he knows he’s dying, and wanted to tell his side of the story while he still could. I mean, it’s no surprise Martin and Emilio declined to participate, especially since there’s an undertone that a lot of Charlie’s issues were almost inherited from Martin. They talk about how 11-year old Charlie was on set for Apocalypse Now, and witnessed the drug-induced mental issues Martin struggled with while filming that movie. They also portray Martin as a steadfast father, who never gave up on his son. Still, there’s an argument to be made that there might have been nature or even nurture reasons for why Charlie grew up to be the man he became.
There are two interesting parts that make the docuseries worthwhile. First, they talk to everyone involved in that tumultuous time, from Two and a Half Men costar Jon Cryer, to ex-wife Denise Richards, to Sheen’s personal drug dealer. Yes, his DEALER! And that guy revealed that the way they got his to quit crack was that they started cutting the potency, giving his weaker and weaker crack. Eventually, he got tired of not achieving the high he expected, and just quit. The second thing is he explains how he contracted HIV. I’m not going to even explain that, just in case that’s what gets you to watch.
Before I go, however, I found a third part pretty interesting. You see, when Charlie was going through his whole “Winning!/Tiger Blood” psychosis, a lot of folks around him were taking advantage of his situation. In fact, he was on The Alex Jones Show when he first uttered “Winning!” Unable to work, though he had child support payments that were due, Charlie embarked on his Violent Torpedo of Truth Tour, where he would roll into a major city and just rant onstage for an hour. The folks paying $100 a ticket for this trainwreck? Alex Jones fans and the like. Here in DC, he performed to 3,700 people at DAR Constitution Hall in 2011, where he got onstage and started spouting the same birther conspiracies about Barack Obama that had also garnered attention for Trump. The tour would eventually fall apart because, well, it depended on a crack addict being a professional. That said, I truly believe there is a timeline were Charlie Sheen becomes some sort of alt-Right talking head, and the only reason it didn’t happen here is that he was too much of an unpredictable wild card for the movement to be able to control. Anyway, it’s an interesting doc, even if it was carefully edited to ignore certain things (like the first kid he had, with his high school sweetheart).
Run The Numbers
The past 2 weeks, I’ve turned my focus toward single-issue comics, so that I could get those numbers up. I read a lot of random stuff, like the WWE SmackDown 20th Anniversary Special. Surprising to no one, it was terrible. Inconsistent art, and a lot of times where it was unclear who the characters were supposed to be, due to the somewhat unstable roster at the time (it was published in 2019).
I also read Closer, by Kieron Gillen and Steve Lieber. It’s hard to really describe this book, but Gillen calls it an “apocalypse romance”, where a love story is set against an end of the world backdrop. If you’ve read Gillen’s Phonogram work from Image, then you already know what to expect here: a story built on the foundation of a particular song. Almost a “hipster jukebox musical”. My issue, however, is that I didn’t know that going into it. Image promoted it as a one-shot comic, which is always attractive, as you’re in and out. The problem, however, is that this particular story only really works if you’re familiar with Burt Bacharach’s “(They Long To Be) Close To You”. It’s not required, but I think the story works best if you know the song, as well as a few of the covers released for it. Even an intro page, saying something like “You might want to fire up ‘(They Long To Be) Close To You’ for the best experience!”, would have been helpful.
Anyway, the story follows a woman who has reluctantly volunteered for a scientific experiment. She’s placed in an isolation booth for an hour and then released. The lead scientist then reveals that the birds they had in the lab had increased from 50 to 53 during that hour (“Why do birds suddenly appear, every time you are near?”). He tells her that he was hired to explain a lot of random phenomena that had been observed in that city, and had deduced that most of it revolved around her. So, he had to figure out what it was about her that was causing reality to warp. And then the crazy stuff REALLY starts to happen. Long story short, it’s ultimately disappointing. Also, I wonder why Image released this as a standalone comic, with no real support behind it. I feel it probably would have worked a little better as part of an anthology or something, but it really misses the mark as a lone comic experience.
Next up, I read another Image book, Everything Dead and Dying #1. In the issue, we meet a white middle aged farmer, who’s awoken by his small black daughter. OK, you have my attention. He tosses her up in the air playfully, and they go downstairs, where his husband is cooking breakfast. Oh, this is DIFFERENT! He talks to the mailman, and sets out to work on his farm, which is located on the other side of town. He rides his tractor through the idyllic town, and ends up at his large, walled off farm. After putting in a full day’s work, he makes his way back home. Along the way, the illusion starts to shatter. The reader notices that the town isn’t as idyllic as it had seemed. Maybe the folks walking in town aren’t…folks? He arrives home to realize he’s missed dinner with his family, so he apologizes to no one in particular, and goes to bed. He wakes up the next morning, only everything is different. Now we’re seeing the world as he sees it. Same little black daughter as before, but now she’s clearly a zombie. Husband in kitchen? Zombie. Mailman? Zombie.
Apparently, a flu broke out 13 years ago, turning everyone into zombies. Our protagonist, however, discovered he was somehow immune. So, he had watched as everyone and everything died around him. The zombies’ muscle memory seemed locked into their actions from their last day alive, and he had just been following the “script”. He had no contact with the world outside of the town, as communications fell as the world got sick. Now, he mourns the life that he lost, including getting old with his husband and having a daughter who should be going off to college. So, he buries himself in his work, as he’s got his own muscle memory driving his actions. He can feel himself getting older, and knows he won’t be around forever. He has acted as something of a caretaker for the town’s zombiefolk, and wonders what will happen when he’s gone. Then, at the end, he discovers he’s NOT the last person on Earth.
I was really drawn into this story, as it’s a small glimpse of a larger concept. This isn’t about zombies ravaging a city, or survivors barricading themselves in shopping malls. It’s about a man burying his grief by following a routine. We don’t get stories about gay farmers. We certainly don’t get them about gay farmers with black daughters. And she’s NOT adopted, which is a key part of the story, as well. My only issue, though, is that the ending pretty much immediately seemed to send it into the realm of The Walking Dead. I’m not obtuse enough to think Robert Kirkman invented the zombie genre. I won’t even say he improved upon it. But he did use it to tell a VERY long story that has been lucrative for all involved, even if the actual comic ended somewhat abruptly. I don’t love The Walking Dead, and I don’t want to go down that road again. I was pretty much resigned to the idea I was done with this series, and then I learned it’s just a 5-issue miniseries. I can do that. I don’t have to worry about this band of survivors trying to make to Washington, thinking the CDC has a “cure”. I don’t have to worry about shady government organizations kidnapping the farmer. You can only do so much with 5 issues, meaning this will remain the small, quaint story I’d been led to believe it was. I won’t buy another issue, but I’ll definitely check out the trade paperback when the series is collected.
Will Around The Web
It was a terrible week for folks who don’t care for me, as I was on ALL the podcasts!
First up, I was invited back to Wizards: The Podcast Guide to Comics for the “1/2” episode for issue #115. It was an issue packed with interesting news stories, so Adam and I needed to do a “Part 2” just so we could cover everything. Mainly, I got to gush about my love of the DVD format, as the issue had an article about a DVD release of the Superman movie, which seemed like such a foreign concept in 2001.
Next, there was a brand new episode of Remember That Show?, as we continued our “Come and Knock on Our Pod” summer event with The Ropers. I make a LOT of mistakes in this episode, but it’s still a great conversation.
Things You Might Have Missed This Week
- Taking advantage of their corporate relationship, the hour-long A Paw Patrol Christmas will air on CBS (for the first time!) on November 28th, and in prime time. Take that, Charlie Brown!
- Daredevil: Born Again has been renewed for season 3 on Disney+.
- RIP, Alexander Pierce. That’s right, MCU megastar Robert Redford passed away this week. Though he did a string of movies in the 70s and 80s, most of Gen Z know him as Nick Fury’s craggy-faced boss in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
- NBC has hired Stanley Tucci to do coverage of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy, obviously to bring in the Wine Mom demographic.
- Despite MTV never officially canceling the show, it appears that Catfish: The TV Show is done, as host Nev Schulman has become a real estate agent with New York firm Coldwell Banker Warburg.
- During a press conference in which nobody seemed excited, WWE Chief Content Officer Paul Levesque (Triple H) announced that 2026’s WrestleMania 43 will be held in Saudi Arabia. It should be noted that WWE has an excellent track record of protecting their female wrestlers in the Middle East…
- Severance‘s Tramell Tillman became the first black actor to with the Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. Technically, he’s also the first black gay actor to win that award, but I guess you only get one label.
Nothing had the West Week Ever, so if that’s what you’ve been waiting for, you can stop reading here. Otherwise, we need to have a chat. Something like this would normally be a Willfully Ignorant post, but those are when there’s a chance I could be wrong. And I’m not wrong here. We’ve spent so long allowing folks to misuse and misunderstand examples of violations of “free speech” that we no longer recognize actual violations where they’re staring us right in the face.
Over the past two weeks, we’ve seen many examples of corporations making choices that would seemingly keep them in the good graces of both the current administration and Republican shareholders. First off, DC Comics/Warner Bros Discovery fired writer Gretchen Felker-Martin after she made negative comments following the death of Charlie Kirk. There is certainly an argument for “there’s a time and a place”, but completely missing from the discussion is how Kirk was essentially against Felker-Martin’s lifestyle, as she is a trans woman. I can imagine she would feel some time of way after hearing that news, but those are “inside thoughts”. Still, I have to say that, in my 43 years on this Earth, I have never seen a corporation move as swiftly to fire a person as we witnessed here.
Felker-Martin’s Red Hood #1 comic was released September 10th – the same day that Kirk was killed. By that evening, DC had her on a conference call telling her she was fired. OK, it happens. But there’s more! Not only was she fired, but the book was canceled. Not that it would be postposed and relaunched with a new writer. Not that she would have to issue an apology. It was done. After one issue. And this was one of the rare series that DC had thrown their marketing support behind. But that wasn’t the end of it. You see, based on the way the comic industry works, orders for books are submitted more than 2 months before the on-street date. So, this means retailers had already placed orders for #s 2 & 3, so DC told retailers that they would be credited for those orders. Also, retailers would be credited for their orders for #1 – the very books they had on shelves – with a soft insinuation that they not sell those copies anymore. Some shops pulled them, while most threw them up on eBay. Also, tomorrow is Batman Day at comic shops, and one of the freebies was a Gotham Sampler, with a preview of Red Hood. Not anymore. DC later issued a statement asking retailers not to give it out, and they would also be credited for any orders for that book. In a world where corporations tend not to give a fuck about anyone, DC is bending over backwards to assuage fans of one man, who died in a horrible manner, but was neither an elected figure nor beloved by all. However, DC/WB could do this, as it’s a corporation. Sure, Felker-Martin said all of this on her personal social media account, but she had allegedly been “coached” about her social media prior to this, and this isn’t protected by the First Amendment.
This week, Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s, stepped down from the company he started 47 years ago, because he felt that corporate parent, Unilever, was stifling his ability to express his political beliefs. Ben & Jerry’s has long been known for its activism, but the company merged with Unilever in 2000. At that time, the founders felt that it was necessary move, in order to expand the company, but they were under the belief that they would continue just as they always had. In recent years, however, Greenfield and Unilever bumped heads, especially in regards to how the brand was being handled during the conflict in Israel. Unilever, on the other hand, had no need for activism, as they didn’t want to be divisive. So, all of this had been building for a while, and Greenfield left. He’s now lobbying for a way to return Ben & Jerry’s to being an independent brand, but he couldn’t continue to turn a blind eye, as an employee of Unilever. And leaving, though sad, was the thing for him to do. Unilever isn’t the government, so they weren’t suppressing Free Speech, but rather doing what they felt was in the best interest of their corporate affairs. Had they fired him (Which, I’m sure, was impossible due to some contractual clause, as they probably would have by now if they could have), it still wouldn’t have been a violation of Free Speech.
Say it with me here: THE FIRST AMENDMENT PROTECTS YOU FROM THE GOVERNMENT. AND ONLY THE GOVERNMENT. WHEN A GOVERNMENT ENTITY IMPEDES YOUR RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND/OR FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION, *THAT* IS A VIOLATION OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT.
So, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, there are murkier waters to explore. South Park has been in hot water all season. I’ve already talked about this. They inked their renewal the day before the Skydance acquisition of Paramount – the same Paramount that had fired Stephen Colbert to curry favor with the current administration. So, Paramount needed South Park, but there seemed to be some guardrails in place. For one thing, it was almost immediately put on a bi-weekly schedule. The show continued to rail against political figures, like Kristi Noem and the aforementioned Kirk, but I almost felt like this was done for more network oversight – which was dumb, since the show is notoriously produced down to the wire. Well, this week, around midday Wednesday, Matt Stone and Trey Parker released a statement that basically said they were sorry, but they missed their deadline. Um, they’ve been making this show for roughly three decades, so I’m not buying it. Especially since Comedy Central was set to repeat a current season episode about Charlie Kirk, which had been pulled in light of all the stuff going on. I think the network got involved here, due to government pressure, but I can’t prove it.
The big one happened midweek, though, when several ABC affiliates refused to carry Jimmy Kimmel Live! following his monologue on Monday’s show. Since certain factions seem to be in favor of “forced mourning”, they don’t like when public messages don’t align with that. Kimmel said that MAGA Republicans have been having to reckon with the fact that Kirk’s killer was one of them. And, as of Monday, that’s pretty much what the evidence suggested. Sadly, however, the investigation is a mess (Thanks, Kashyap!). Things are moving quickly, plus the Right has been STRIVING to find a way to pin this on “The Violent Left”. Either way, folks marinated on Kimmel’s words and didn’t like what they heard. Station owners Sinclair and Nexstar (both Conservative-owned) said they would pull Wednesday’s episode from their affiliates, which amounted to roughly 66% of the markets. Like DC and WB, Disney/ABC tried to come up with a solution, as these station owners wanted an apology, and Kimmel instead wanted to double down. At the 11th hour, it was decided that the show was “suspended indefinitely”. So, another late night show bites the dust because the Right didn’t like what he was saying.
This is a bad precedent, especially when the sitting president tells a reporter that he’s coming for him next (that was on Monday), and then says he’s coming for The View (that was yesterday). Meanwhile, a Fox News host, just last weekend, said that homeless people should be given involuntarily lethal injection. His cohosts didn’t miss a beat. They agreed. Sure, he was pressured into apologizing by Monday, but he’s still got a job. Meanwhile, there were people driving around last weekend, reporting businesses that didn’t have their flags at half staff. People are rounding up screenshots to get folks fired. And their targets aren’t “celebrating”. They simply aren’t mourning “appropriately”, or enough for their liking. This sounds a lot like Cancel Culture, but these are the same folks who claimed that was a scourge destroying the nation. Oh, but it’s OK when you change the name and use it yourself? Can’t wait to see how they rebrand DEI. Kirk is the poster child for all of this, and what happened to him was horrible. Before you get wrapped up in the fervor, however, you might want to read the fine print, as you might realize you’re part of something you didn’t know you were signing up for. Or, maybe you did. I guess we’re all learning new things about each other these days…