A Spicy Hot Taskmaster Take (Part 1)
On a recommendation from our friend RJ, E and I have started watching Taskmaster, a British game show where comedians compete in a series of bizarre and random tasks and then have their performance ranked by the titular Taskmaster, Greg Davies.
The tasks range from "Make this block of ice dissapear" to "Make the most 'exotic' sandwich" to "Have a conversation with a Swedish person." Full episodes are available on youtube, but watching clips of individual tasks is a good way to see if you'd enjoy the show before you commit. E and I just finished watching season 4, so, we're committed.
The other day, we were watching Taskmaster and I don't think we'd even gotten through the opening theme music before I paused it and started talking E's ear off about homoerotic tension on the show.
I started this newsletter to help me get out of a creative funk. And I've found that it's a good place for me to write down the thoughts and feelings that don't fit anywhere else. I have a blog, but it is historically and ostensibly about travel, and more people read what I write over there (historically and ostensibly, anyway) so I'm more particular about what I post. I do also occasionally pitch essays and ideas to websites, but those pieces definitely need to be more fleshed out than what I put in this newsletter.
A lot of times I'll have an idea that I want to share, but I don't think it's exciting enough to make a good personal essay or piece of cultural criticism. It's more of a lukewarm take than a hot take, but I still want to talk about it. So, partway through rambling to E about how male-male attraction is often played for laughs in comedy and how the men on Taskmaster manage to tease each other without it feeling homophobic, I stopped and shifted gears.
"This is the kind of random stuff I want to write about in my newsletter," I told E. And, so, here we are.
It feels pretty silly for this take, which I already told you is lukewarm, to be a two-parter, but I'm out of writing time for today so it's going to have to wait. Thanks for reading!