XMASTIME: April 2023

Sunday, April 30, 2023

A Day in the Life

Decided to get a slice of Buffalo chicken pizza

Oooooooh, my new earpod headphones showed up, I'll try them while eating my pizza!

Immediately drop left earpod onto pizza

Into the part of the slice that has the the most sitting blue cheese dressing

Ugh. Fucking wipe the crap off the earpod with paper towel

Go to drop paper towel on top of pizza since I'm done

Drop the earpod right back into blue cheese instead

Fuck this shit, I'm going back to bed

And I hate blue cheese anyway

Here's to Porridge!

I don't mean to rabbit on (get it???) about Porridge all day, but this has always been one of my all-time favorite shots from any sitcom. The cut to all the guys staring at Fletch's daughter, in particular Richard Beckinsale's perfectly dead eyes, is absolute comedy perfection and should hang from the Sitcom Hall of Fame rafters. How they got through this scene without having to do it a hundred times from cracking up is beyond me.

This Is a Lot About Food in Tin Cans

Just Desserts is widely considered as one of the best Porridge episodes, and it centers around Ronnie Barker's Fletcher a missing tin of pineapple chunks.

Meanwhile, the very first episode of Open All Hours features a scene with David Jason's Granville arguing with Barker's Arkwright about a tin of pears.

Meanwhile, that's the very scene Only Fools and Horses producer Ray Butt saw Jason in that led to his becoming Del Boy.

I guess what I'm asking is, how bananas is it that tinned food has had such an impact on British television? 🤷‍♂️🤔

Very Short Xmastime Movie Review

DARBY O'GILL AND THE LITTLE PEOPLE

Disney, 1959

ME BEFORE STARTING THE MOVIE: oh man this is gonna be great, it'll be a Proustian trip back to my childhood while celebrating the beautiful & bountiful warmth and storytelling of my people, the Irish!

ME AFTER 10 MINUTES: oh so this whole thing is just one leprechaun being an asshole?

Xmastime Truth Time

If you claim to not like Jim Gaffigan then I am automatically suspicious of you.

New Xmastime Series!

I call this one, "Shitty Comments I Make in My Head That I Don't Actually Post Because I Don't Wanna Put Such a Thing Out into the World". Enjoy, everybody!

Brilliant.

cant one of you rich people get married at mar-a-lago just so when this idiot shows up for some camera time you can tell him to fuck right off already? https://t.co/Q84CjLz3Xu
— XMASTIME (@XMASTIMEblog) April 30, 2023

A Note on The Beatles Anthology

As much as I'm still jonesing for the supposed 80 more hours of Get Back, but then time it came out in Nov. 2021 even I'd become spoiled with how much Beatles stuff you had at your fingertips at any given moment. So when I look back at how insanely lucky we felt when The Beatles Anthology came on in 1995 I still just can't believe it, that for three nights we got 2 hours of The Beatles on tv - being a man of taste of course I videotaped every second, and literally wore the tapes out over the next few years. It's just crazy to think of how anything could feel so much like a pool of water in a desert today. Rock on, everybody 🤗

State du Moi

I don't know if I'm just aging faster every but it's occurred to me that I'm ready for some early-2000s online nostalgia. 🤗🕺

Fascinating du Jour

Oh FFS Can't I Just Have a Peaceful Sunday Like Everybody Else?

This is just another shithead who knows he can make a ton of money going around for years "running for president". This is our future, every asshole with money endlessly "running for president" and collecting more & more $$$$ from suckers. Great.😡

https://t.co/yivDbH5mTd https://t.co/rptx8zDQC6
— David Weigel (@daveweigel) April 30, 2023

Things I Like

Every day, I’ll add one thing to this list:

…Opening Day at Yankee Stadium, "Norsemen" on Netflix, Bobby Murcer, casually picking at almonds, Tony Gwynn, "Parting the Waters", any time Dee shook Raj down for a quarter, Laurie Metcalf, penny hockey, dogs with a bit of a weight problem, Trinidad doubles on 19 & 5th back in 1998, the lunch rolls at my high school, Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe, the Violent Femmes, the incredibly important/iconic mix tapes of my youth(ish), leftovers that can easily be thrown together as one big leftover,whatever genre it is that includes "The Diary of a Nobody" by George & Weedon Grossmith and "Memoirs of a Madman" by Flaubert and "Notes from Underground" by Dostoevsky, Larry Wilmore, Pat's cheesesteak wit-out, Ada Límon, any Antonio-centric episode of "Wings", the Grassroots Tavern, the crazy drop in temperature before a storm, books that fit into my jacket pocket, the way the Metro is the only way I feel connected to Brooklyn on a small daily basis, "The Royle Family", the Bedford Ave L station, The Ramones, The Beatles, being alive today.

A Cheers Question for Cheery People

So, yesterday's post about the 40th anniversary of Valley Girl reminded me of this:

Capturing shit on film is kinda weird anyway, isn't it? I mean, who knows where you might be in a picture somewhere. Some family from North Dakota get their picture taken on the Boardwalk, you happen to be walking behind them and there you are, on some mantle in a room in a house in a town you'll never even know exists. Maybe in 1983 you took a picture, and beside a tree in the picture happened to be a girl you end up meeting and marrying 20 years later. Same with movies - e.g. the last scene of "Valley Girl," when the camera pulls away, showing the LA freeway packed with cars. What if you were in one of those cars? There you are, on film forever. Kinda creepy. Hell, there's even shots of unknown people that have become "standards", shown anytime there's a show about some subject. Like the girl screaming into the fence while the Beatles played Shea in '65, or the girl running to her father coming home from Vietnam. Anybody in the Zapruder film. We see these shots over and over; whatever happened to these people? They alive, dead? What's their story, what'd they go through in the ensuing decades? Become anybody, have 5 kids, date Tony Basil? The teenagers cracking eggs on the heads of the SNCC protesters in Woolworth's (or Montgomery Ward?) - what become of them? Would they do it again if they could, or are they ashamed of their actions of that moment? Somebody needs to find all these people, the people on the periphery caught forever, caught as part of history. Find these people, tell us about them. Now that would be a coffee table book I'd read.

Meanwhile I'm in the midst of a Cheers re-watch thanks to EGG FOO WHAT?!, so I can't help but wonder, has anyone ever researched to find out who this guy was? I mean, by now billions & billions of eyeballs have seen this photo of him; who is he? What'd he become? Was he alive when Cheers began? Or even close? Did he ever live up to that youthful, smug, "I'm about to take over the world" look?

Cheers All-time Line du Jour

The Birth of My Yankees Fandom

25 years ago today, I set foot ("set foot"? dafuck do we say things like this for?) in The Stadium for the very first time and immediately fell in love with my beloved Yankees.

Griffey hit two out and A-Rod one for the Mariners while Mariah Carey sat behind the Yankees dugout cheering on her new boyfriend, Derek Jeter. Tino won it for us in the 10th with a walkoff single. :)

Of Course. Right on Schedule.

I just can't with this motherfucker anymore; this absolute waste of fucking space has presided over the most garbage, corrupt Supreme Court in modern history and every history book ever should fucking pound away at that truth until the Earth collapses into the Sun. What a piece of shit.

Questions. I Have Them.

Is there a connection between Cheers legend Gary Portnoy and Boston-ified pizza review guy Dave Portnoy? 🤔🤷‍♂️

Poverty, Updated

Just the other day I mentioned this from Gereinek's Book on Poverty:

"God could have made all men rich, but he wanted there to be poor people in this world, that the rich might be able to redeem their sins."

Never-minding the ridiculousness of such a thing, and while I framed it as being set in the Middle Ages, a look at Xmastime all-time slice of slice To the Manor Born just now lets me know that such thinking on the poor continued to exist up to and including 1980, even after Audrey fforbes-Hamilton - one of my Top 10 Britcom characters of all time!! -had been forced out of Grantleigh. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Saturday, April 29, 2023

Good Question. #longlivethekinks

Public Announcement

I'd like to make it VERY clear to everybody out there: if you ever see me fighting in the forest with a Grizzly bear, HELP ME.

OFAH du Jour

1,000 performances and I didn't go to one of them. And I was even in London. Oh well. I guess I'm just so thrilled it happened at all 🤗🇬🇧

We’ve reached the end of Hooky Street, folks - but this isn’t goodbye, it’s Bonjour For Now! 🍻 Thank you to everybody who has supported #OFAHMusical over the past four and a half years. We love you all! #LongLiveHookyStreet pic.twitter.com/hmWjIsAGoc
— Only Fools and Horses The Musical (@OFAHMusical) April 29, 2023

New Xmastime Series!!!

I call this one, "Shitty Comments I Make in My Head That I Don't Actually Post Because I Don't Wanna Put Such a Thing Out into the World". Enjoy, everybody!

Valley Girl at 40

When I posted the Wham! video below I thought I had hit absolute peak mid-80s look/feel/vibe, but then I realized that Valley Girl was released 40 years ago today. It's hard to think of a more "this is what the early 80s looked like!" in the same way Leave it to Beaver would be for the 50s: actual memories to few, but in the cultural conscience of the many. For one, it is probably almost solely responsible for the curiously famous classic I Melt with You (which led to one of the lockdown's best moments 🤗🤗🤗🤗). It's a great example of a time when a movie's soundtrack could come to mean even more than the movie itself.

I don't really have much to add that you can't just look up somewhere else and read for yourself. It's just one of those flicks everybody loves, and you look back and wonder if they somehow KNEW how to drench themselves in the absolute look/style of the day? Is anybody really that brilliantly self-conscious and present at any given moment in time?

Also, the only time I was ever really cool is the summer after 10th grade we watched Valley Girl and Rylo got his clippers and cut my hair so it looked just like Nicolas Cage's. Dudes around town tried to copy me, but didn't pull it off. I, however, looked bitchin' af.

Also, Valley Girl will always be as great reminder of how criminally overlooked the absolutely incredible Peter Case was (is):

How Is if Fucking Possible

That in the year 2023 streaming services don't have a default SKIP INTRO in the settings so you never, ever hafta actually do it again. Grrr. GRR!!!

Questions. I Have Them.

If we can skip over its weirdly political official video, is Wham!'s Freedom the biggest legitimate pop hit of the 80s that sounded the most like Motown?

Brilliant.

Probably From This Year’s Family Christmas Photo Shoot. Great.

Things I Like

Movie Ideas. I Have Them.

Artificial intelligence - I call it “AI” - eventually solves immortality, including bringing everyone who has ever lived back to life & having to live together - hilarity ensues!

LOOKING FOR INVESTORS, PEOPLE!!

Thoughts. I Have Them.

I there a connection between our culture's thirst for reprehensibly awful characters with insane wealth driven more & more miserable every day - Succession, Billions, Yellowstone, etc etc - and the reign of Donald Trump? Side note - before Trump, would some little shit like this even think to act like this?

On the flip side, wouldn't you argue that the (relatively few) number of people who actually watch those shows are the exact kind of people who would NOT vote for Trump?

🤔🤷‍♂️

EFW?! STARS ON 45 - 202

After griping about Xmastime, Mike helps Greg drop the hammer on Meathead once & for all.#allinthefamily #eggfoowhat

LISTEN HERE

Oh FFS

I've never rooted harder for anybody to miss a shot like I did with this little shit.

"I'm born ready." 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/l9HUXGulxs
— Kevin O'Connor (@KevinOConnorNBA) April 29, 2023

Friday, April 28, 2023

Funny Tweet by Me Du Jour

Too Easy

I Just Wrote Joe Rogan's Next 5 Specials:

Wow, Just Wow 😢

I'm a 50 year-old man in the year 2023 who has lived in the Deep South and New York City and in between, and this clip from Roy Wood, Jr is shocking in how little I must really know about being black in America today. The extra layer of what could happen just for the crime of having the receipt in your pocket when they ask for it is just beyond depressing.

New Super-Snarky Xmastime Series!

Things I Like

Every day, I’ll add one thing to this list:

…blueberry ide(d) tea, Opening Day at Yankee Stadium, "Norsemen" on Netflix, Bobby Murcer, casually picking at almonds, Tony Gwynn, "Parting the Waters", any time Dee shook Raj down for a quarter, Laurie Metcalf, penny hockey, dogs with a bit of a weight problem, Trinidad doubles on 19 & 5th back in 1998, the lunch rolls at my high school, Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe, the Violent Femmes, the incredibly important/iconic mix tapes of my youth(ish), leftovers that can easily be thrown together as one big leftover,whatever genre it is that includes "The Diary of a Nobody" by George & Weedon Grossmith and "Memoirs of a Madman" by Flaubert and "Notes from Underground" by Dostoevsky, Larry Wilmore, Pat's cheesesteak wit-out, Ada Límon, any Antonio-centric episode of "Wings", the Grassroots Tavern, the crazy drop in temperature before a storm, books that fit into my jacket pocket, the way the Metro is the only way I feel connected to Brooklyn on a small daily basis, "The Royle Family", the Bedford Ave L station, The Ramones,

XMASTIME FRIDAY FILMS: Full Metal Scooter

The Ramones are The Greatest

"Music fans" whose ears are apparently never connected to their brains love to dismiss The Ramones as lyricists, which of course is ridiculous - Rockaway Beach's "chewin' out a rhythm on my bubblegum, the sun is out & I want some" is easily the greatest opening line in rock & roll history, both in terms of catchiness & instantly dropping the listener into the singer's mindset and his actual setting. Glad to See You Go is a perfect example - while the lyrics are kinda funny/witty, they brilliantly tell a story in as few lines as possible:

Gonna take a chance on her, one bullet in the cylinder
And in a moment of passion, get the glory like Charles Manson.

Gonna smile I'm gonna laugh, you're gonna get a blood bath
And in a moment of passion, yet the glory like Charles Manson

You gotta go go go go, Goodbye
Glad to see you go go go go goodbye
Glad to see you go go go go goodbye

Now I know the score, I don't need you anymore
Don't want you 'cause you're a bore

I need somebody good, I need a miracle
Should I take a chance on her? One bullet in the cylinder
Gonna smile, I'm gonna laugh they're gonna want my autograph
And in a moment of passion get the glory like Charles Manson

In an instant we get that this guy's sick of being bored with his girlfriend, dreams of getting rid of her in a comically fame-achieving way like noted cult leader/murderer Charles Manson, engages with the audience to ask if he really should make a change and then BRILLIANTLY winks at us that if he did do all the crazy shit he dreams of doing to her, we'd love him so much for it we'd ask for his autograph. A whole story with characters and audience engagement in as beautifully succinct a collection of words as possible.

And if all that's not enough, these are some of the best rhymes ever sung, not just moon/June shit, such as

passion/Manson
gonna laugh/bloodbath
somebody good/miracle
chance on her/cylinder

Anyone who tells you think think The Ramones are "brainless punks" are just fucking idiots and you need newer, better friends.

New Xmastime Series!!!

I call this one, "Shitty Comments I Make in My Head That I Don't Actually Post Because I Don't Wanna Put Such a Thing Out into the World". Enjoy, everybody!

Oh Damn Ya'll...

...is it Payday Friday again already?

Thursday, April 27, 2023

New Super-Snarky Xmastime Series!

Truth du Jour

The Internet is proof that everybody's out there doing amazing shit everywhere all the time.

A brief history of Cinema

pic.twitter.com/4iv8Y9Sj6O
— Michael Warburton (@MichaelWarbur17) April 27, 2023

Wedding Presents are Stupid

Buying people wedding presents today in the year 2023 Anno Dominos Pizza is fucking stupid:
Wedding presents are an absurd tradition that have lived years—decades?—past their purpose. It is time for them to stop.

Marrying couples are now rarely in the position of “setting up a household,” the original intention of the post-wedding deluge of toaster ovens and salad spinners. “Wedding presents for modern cohabitating adults with established households are in the pure realm of deadweight loss—you’re buying things for people that they haven’t bought for themselves because they think they’re overpriced,” he wrote. “And in a society where a large and growing share of the population never marries, the custom is both unfair and inefficient.”

I've been to maybe 20/25 weddings in my life and maybe ONE of them had that "let's help these youngsters start their lives together!" feeling; the other 99.999% were purely performative affairs for people who already had everything they needed and more, and we're all supposed to pretend it's not super-weird that we're all looking at some list these couple put on a website for us to choose from with as little thought as possible, all so after the most chaotic, already-stupid day of their lives they're theoretically supposed to be able to haul off a mountain of presents. Fuck that shit. I'm all for giving cash, or admitting to each other that adults giving prescribed gifts to each other (I'm looking at you, Christmas) is just fucking stupid and adds a level of anxiety that is 100% unnecessary.

"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “didn't you totally crush it at weddings back in the day?"

Sigh. Yes I did, faithful readers, YES I did.

I'll Be Honest

I saw the words "Ivanka Splits from" and my dick immediately started wagging its tail.

Things I Like

Every day, I’ll add one thing to this list:

…finally making it to the second episode of "Last of the Summer Wine", blueberry ide(d) tea, Opening Day at Yankee Stadium, "Norsemen" on Netflix, Bobby Murcer, casually picking at almonds, Tony Gwynn, "Parting the Waters", any time Dee shook Raj down for a quarter, Laurie Metcalf, penny hockey, dogs with a bit of a weight problem, Trinidad doubles on 19 & 5th back in 1998, the lunch rolls at my high school, Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe, the Violent Femmes, the incredibly important/iconic mix tapes of my youth(ish), leftovers that can easily be thrown together as one big leftover,whatever genre it is that includes "The Diary of a Nobody" by George & Weedon Grossmith and "Memoirs of a Madman" by Flaubert and "Notes from Underground" by Dostoevsky, Larry Wilmore, Pat's cheesesteak wit-out, Ada Límon, any Antonio-centric episode of "Wings", the Grassroots Tavern, the crazy drop in temperature before a storm, books that fit into my jacket pocket, the way the Metro is the only way I feel connected to Brooklyn on a small daily basis, "The Royle Family", the Bedford Ave L station,

Thoughts. I Have Them.

Casually throwing around the phrase "Survival of the fittest!" as some sort of personal philosophical construct is actually very destructive for human beings in real time; in its original form that we pretend to understand it's meant as "over millions of years", not "RIGHT FUCKING NOW!!"

Eyeroll du Jour

Can someone break their own silence when they haven’t shut up yet?

I mean dafuck even I've gone longer without speaking and one time my neighbor duct-taped my mouth together because I didn’t know how to shut the fuck up. Camon guys what are we even doing here?

Questions. I Have Them, II.

Why do we always ask if something is “up” to snuff, but never "down" to snuff? 🤔🤷‍♂️

Questions. I Have Them.

Do we sneeze in our sleep? 🤔🤷‍♂️

Viva La James Corden

Apparently tonight is James Corden's final night as host of whichever late night show he's the host of; I can still remember binging the entire two seasons of The Wrong Man(s) and literally the first news that popped up right afterwards was the announcement that he was coming to America to host the show. Wow, I thought, that's the guy I just watched. Then of course I watched Gavin And Stacey and it's been true love ever since, so I have one thing to say to him as he starts the next phase of his life:

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE JAMES CORDEN BUT PLEASE PLEASE GET BACK TO WRITING SITCOMS WE LOVE LOVE LOVE!!! 🤗🤗🤗🤗

Mind Blown du Jour

I was shocked to learn that at some point today, Dick Groat was still alive. Groat's one of those names I've known all my life that played back in the Middle Ages and I would've assumed died long ago, but then after poking around I read about Chris Haughey:

Haughey is the last living major league baseball player from the 1943 season.

1943. FDR was the president. Sure he only played in one game, pitching for 7 innings (against no-hitter legend Johnny Van Der Meer, fyi) but it's not like we're saying he was BORN in 1943, we're saying he played in a professional baseball game in 1943 and is still alive as of this moment!!!!

Bro, lighten up - we won the war! Hitler's dead! Arby's is only 21 years away!!!!

EGG FOO WHAT?! Episode 43

Greg can’t hold back his hatred for Tom Petty, Mike’s still upset Greg hasn’t come through for him in his hour of darkness & Mike hopes John Cleese learns how to put together a sitcom.

LISTEN HERE:

Wednesday, April 26, 2023

Dafuck Gregory's Coffee with Your Tricky Dicky Shit All Up in Here 😳

Things I Like

Every day, I’ll add one thing to this list:

…peanut M&Ms, finally making it to the second episode of "Last of the Summer Wine", blueberry ide(d) tea, Opening Day at Yankee Stadium, "Norsemen" on Netflix, Bobby Murcer, casually picking at almonds, Tony Gwynn, "Parting the Waters", any time Dee shook Raj down for a quarter, Laurie Metcalf, penny hockey, dogs with a bit of a weight problem, Trinidad doubles on 19 & 5th back in 1998, the lunch rolls at my high school, Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe, the Violent Femmes, the incredibly important/iconic mix tapes of my youth(ish), leftovers that can easily be thrown together as one big leftover,whatever genre it is that includes "The Diary of a Nobody" by George & Weedon Grossmith and "Memoirs of a Madman" by Flaubert and "Notes from Underground" by Dostoevsky, Larry Wilmore, Pat's cheesesteak wit-out, Ada Límon, any Antonio-centric episode of "Wings", the Grassroots Tavern, the crazy drop in temperature before a storm, books that fit into my jacket pocket, the way the Metro is the only way I feel connected to Brooklyn on a small daily basis, "The Royle Family",

Fab Four du Jour

There is a picture exactly like this in every high school yearbook ever produced 🤣🤣🤣🤣

The Only Reason I Agree 100% with Every Word of This is Because I Cannot Agree 101%

Amazing, awesome, YES re: one of my favorite Beatles superslices!!!!

READ THE ENTIRE THREAD HERE!!!

Oh Oh

Well Look Who's Finally Getting Off Their Ass & Making Something Of Themselves

Fuck Joe D

I don't know if this is true, I've never heard of it before, but I hope it is since it gives me even more reason to hate Joe fucking DiMaggio. Fuck you, Joe D!

Being Funny is a Noble Thing

I remember seeing this interview a few years ago and loving it. I've been open about how much I fucking hate people like Christopher Guest, who *refuses* to be funny unless it's a specific job he's getting paid for, "holding out* on being funny in any interview situation or whatever. Gee, sounds like a great guy to hang out with.

Meanwhile we have Seinfeld, arguably the greatest comedian of all time, saying that yes of COURSE he's constantly trying to be funny at all times. And unlike some comedians who try to tell us that being funny is somehow a burden, Seinfeld says what is 100000% correct, that being funny is a gift that funny people owe to the world to share! So fuck Christopher Guest and three cheers for Jerry Seinfeld.

BROOKLYN @ 25

[XMASTIME NOTE] I moved to Brooklyn 25 years ago this past January; throughout the year I'll be noting things, no matter how small they are in reality, that I remember & associate with those first few days/weeks/months of living in the greatest city in the world.

Whenever my mind flashes to that first flush of my first few months in New York City, I think of exactly three movies I watched in the theater - 3 more than I've seen in a theater in almost every year since. Here's a few thoughts on each. Enjoy!

RUSHMORE

The soundtrack is a fully rich, wonderful character all to itself both in the songs themselves and how it plays throughout the entire movie. Which I think became a Wes Anderson "thing", particularly as he'd go on to learn "when in doubt, just throw in another amazing song by The Kinks".

The George Plimpton joint on PBS was wonderful, but it leaves me with one question: was he the real-life version of Max Fischer?

How much did Steve Carell base Michael Scott on Max, particularly the scene with Luke Wilson?

The one negative thing about the movie is that it seems to have been the launching pad for Bill Murray's now-signature hazy sleepwalk routine that's lasted a decade and a half now.

PRIMARY COLORS

Every time I see it, I swear to fucking christ that Travolta's acting job in that flick is one of these best I've ever seen. Cine-buffs will refute this, but it's true. Dude was dead-on the whole flick. I understand that it's a caricature of Bill Clinton, but he nailed it way past an A++; his details are amazing. And he has at least three hair-raising moments 1) the first scene 2) the Krispy Kreme scene 3) him singing Good Ole Boys Like Me.

I remember once flipping back and forth between Primary Colors and The War Room. Trippy to the point of wondering which one was real and which one was the farce.

I don't know why they couldn't get an American to play the Hillary Clinton role but I'm ALWAYS Team Emma Thompson, so 🤷‍♂️ 🕺

NO LOOKING BACK

Nowhere near as funny as his first two films, which are both stone-cold classics, but still a really, really good movie with a typical Ed Burns cast & set in such a definitive time and place.

Say what you will about how crappy his music is - and I'm all here for it, people - but Bon Jovi was just dead-on fantastic in it, and it's a shame he didn't go on to more acting roles like this. It's not like he was playing some cinematic version of himself either, it was a real role and a real character and he killed it.

Again, the movie's very of it's time, just awash in that mid-late 90s warmth of hues & colors that seem so quaint today. Looking at the bar scenes today you're reminded "oh yeah, there was a time we'd all wander into our local bar and hopefully our friends were there and we'll just hang out."

Egg McMuffins: The Devil's Oven Mitts?

The Egg McMuffin is garbage, I truly don't understand the appeal; the English Muffin is always streamed and gross JUST GET THE GODDAM GREAT BISCUIT ALREADY, PEOPLE!! - XMASTIME

Sure $41 is too much to pay for an Egg McMuffin but then again so is $6; the moment this thing is put together, the entire reason for an English Muffin in the first place - its delectable nooks & crannies - are steamed away, making the entire thing just two shitty, curiously-chewy pieces of bread. 😡😡😡😡

YES! And Thank You for Asking, Longtime Xmastime Hall of Famer Carol Burnett!!!!

When Good Things Happen to Good People

I won't bore you people with another run of me & Ada's glory days in the Williamsburg Softball League but hey this seems like a big deal? 🤗

I Spy with My Beady Little Eye...

...a chicken in handcuffs demanding freedom.

INTRODUCING: New Super-Snarky Xmastime Series!

Absolutely Bloody Brilliant

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

A Quick Note on Tonight's Ted Lasso

EASILY the best episode in memory, just fantastic. 5 stars, no notes.

Tho I'm sure I'll have a detailed list of grievances by tomorrow of course 🤣

This. I Can't Even.

I mean what can you say, the kid's reaction to the toilet is goddam golden and I swear I wish he'd won the Emmy just for that. 4 stars, no notes. 🤣

BONUS: episode also features a young F. Murray Abraham absolutely KILLING IT in his scene!

Twitter Hero du Jour

Things I Like

Every day, I’ll add one thing to this list:

…the CartierFamily Youtube channel, peanut M&Ms, finally making it to the second episode of "Last of the Summer Wine", blueberry ide(d) tea, Opening Day at Yankee Stadium, "Norsemen" on Netflix, Bobby Murcer, casually picking at almonds, Tony Gwynn, "Parting the Waters", any time Dee shook Raj down for a quarter, Laurie Metcalf, penny hockey, dogs with a bit of a weight problem, Trinidad doubles on 19 & 5th back in 1998, the lunch rolls at my high school, Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe, the Violent Femmes, the incredibly important/iconic mix tapes of my youth(ish), leftovers that can easily be thrown together as one big leftover,whatever genre it is that includes "The Diary of a Nobody" by George & Weedon Grossmith and "Memoirs of a Madman" by Flaubert and "Notes from Underground" by Dostoevsky, Larry Wilmore, Pat's cheesesteak wit-out, Ada Límon, any Antonio-centric episode of "Wings", the Grassroots Tavern, the crazy drop in temperature before a storm, books that fit into my jacket pocket, the way the Metro is the only way I feel connected to Brooklyn on a small daily basis,

Xmastime. A Reminder.

A trip to the Corporate Shitter today slapped this reminder smack dab into my curiously handsome face:

As I've mentioned several times before INCLUDING HERE (and HERE!), there's NOTHING I've seen men do in the corporate shitter that I agree with. But the topper has got to be the recent phenomenon of every time I'm in a stall taking a dump, some dude walks in and brushes his teeth in the sink. What? Are you kidding me? For fuck's sake, I don't wanna be there; at least you have a choice, and you choose to stand there and brush your teeth? Really?

It's like the old classic about the guy walking in on his best friend fucking his wife: "Charlie, I have to, but you?"

Yesterday's (Brilliant) Instagram Story

Greetings from Instagram! 🤗🕺🤗🕺

Roll On, Bob Newhart

Over the past few months or so I've been watching The Bob Newhart Show for the first time; I'm in the fourth season and cannot say enough about this show. It's pure, pure comedy, with great lines from Bob that are funnier and funnier as you get to know him and then of course the requisite amazing cast that's LOL funny. The show has that cheesy cozy 1970s look I LOVE, that dark brown hue nirvanascape! Here's to people enjoying another 50 years of this great show, and a reminder to be thrilled that Bob Newhart is still very much alive and walks amongst us. - XMASTIME

I've always loved Bob Newhart's standup comedy but I 'd never really watched his (first) sitcom until about a year ago, when I slipped it into my Mary Tyler Moore Show/All in the Family rotation. So when I read that his wife of 60 years died yesterday, I can't help but think it's gonna be one of those "married couple is married for a thousand years and as soon as one dies, the other quickly follows" and I really, really, really hope it's not the case.