An Unexpected Face Turn
Literally within minutes of yesterday’s edition going out I happened across this video, which is of a player in Animal Crossing getting sneezed on by a fellow islander (you live on an island, not a survey “Asian and Pacific” type, wow), which, in this day and age, seems like something they may want to patch out in the next update except not really.
I must admit that until today I was very firmly anti-Coronavirus but, after seeing it git Rand Paul and Harvey Weinstein? And after hearing that Rand did the very Libertarian thing of unknowingly infect other Republican senators by using the gym and facilities at the Capitol before getting his test results back because “durrr my liberties”? Ehhh, nah, I’m still pretty firmly anti-virus, but at least it’s giving back after first-striking Tom Hanks.
Watch This: I THINK YOU SHOULD LEAVE, via Netflix
I’m still trying to figure out a style guide for this thing, but in the meantime I’d recommend I THINK YOU SHOULD LEAVE, one of the funniest shows to hit in awhile. It’s a very brief series, about six 15ish-minute episodes, each full of rapid-fire sketches that almost all hit, including some all-timers with “Baby of the Year” and “Car Design Focus Group”.
I mean look at this guy, of course he’s going to be a rascal. There’s also some good supplemental listening, an episode of the Yeah But Still podcast where Tim appears to talk about the series. It’s one of those series where the first ep should tell you whether you’re on its wavelength, but if you enjoy it it’s a riot.
This photo came out of Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot wearing the strangest-fitting pants and I can’t stop thinking about it.
Assuming the photo itself is very recent, public officials should probably be concerned about things other than rocking sick fits, but still there’s relaxed fit and then there’s comatose fit for pants and these are dangerously close to the latter. It reminded everyone of this other picture of the 2003 NBA Draft class, which happened during a time when this look was evidently in fashion, but at least for them you can say that it’s tricky to dress people who are about 6.5-7 feet tall.
To put this into context, this was also when the public at large thought the Iraq War was still a good thing so I guess we all had some issues of judgment at the time.
This piece from IndieWire’s David Ehrlich is a good pulse-check on the theater industry and how they’ve been impacted by this pandemic. While things do currently seem dire for the business as a whole, with studios shifting to debuting films via video-on-demand, it is a good reminder of the importance of theaters and the communal experience of watching films in a dedicated space rather than through whatever screen happens to be closest.
This compilation of elected officials in Italy berating their constituents who attempt, or even think of attempting to break the lockdown orders is great, and I think society in general would be improved if elected officials were allowed to be this blunt sometimes, but most of ours aren’t this clever and would probably just wind up cold-clocking someone.
People offering grossly uninformed opinions about Our Current Situation to try and get likes and retweets and accidentally guiding us into a mass extinction is probably the most deserving way for us to go, given that we’re a society that’s now unleashing long-dormant diseases on our children because some celebrities watched YouTube videos about vaccinations once, but it’s still very jarring to see. To be fair much of it has stepped in to fill the void caused by mixed messages from every level of government, which usually causes people to throw their hands up and say “well when you get your shit together find me at the beach”. It also can’t help that the president is still insisting on calling it “the Chinese virus” and most of his supporters think it’s a plot by the Lizard King or something.
This sums up the current state of the airline industry pretty well and is a less serious companion to this piece from the New York Times and this late-breaking news about 1,200+ airport workers in the NYC area alone being laid off to remind you that whenever things like free college get brought up people pipe in with “oH nO oNE iS aSKinG fOR tHInGs fOR FReEEeeE” but what they really mean is they’d rather that poor people don’t get things for free. Rich people, however, deserve unlimited trips to the trough and we should worry more about the people on the frontlines of these things rather than any exec-levels.
To course-correct some of that heaviness, here’s a video of a bat peeing and I don’t know what it’s supposed to say or mean and UHH WARNING: it’s got bat dong in it but like the inverse of Batman it may not be the content we deserve but it’s the content we need.
