What is spicy? What!?

I ask because of this dumb ad that keeps popping up on YouTube. It's Kumail Nanjiani driving a car through some city streets and weaving around flaming wreckage. At the end, he remarks "Ok, that's spicy." And then the ad ends. That's it. And it's driving me (absolutely no pun intended) out of my mind. 

To be clear, nothing against Kumail Nanjiani.
He is a--are we still saying snack?

Dear Lexus, I'm not buying a Lexus 
because you interrupted my YouTube watching.
Oh, and also because I can't afford a Lexus. 

Now, let me stop you right there. No. The ad has not done its job. I realize it's living--as the expression goes--rent free in my head, but I am not now, nor will I ever buy a Lexus. Because that's what they're selling. As much as I love Kumail Nanjiani, and I do, this ad is dumb and frustrating and I hate it. I'm sorry, you know what? Hate's a strong word...let's say resent. I strongly resent all advertising, like in general, but particularly the commercials on YouTube which interrupt whatever you're watching, sometimes mid-sentence, to sell some nonsense you don't care about. Mid-sentence! Can you beli-

The Eternals is a film that forces us to ask
the questions what the fuck are the Eternals?

I'm left with so many, many questions. Questions like, what's going on here? Why are things on fire? And crucially, what does he find so spicy? My understanding is that he's using it in the colloquial sense rather than the literal, but doesn't spicy mean sassy or rude? Is the destruction all around him a result of sassiness? At no point am I thinking to myself: why not buy a Lexus? And then, afterwards, go see The Eternals. There's-huh? Oh, forgot to mention, this is an ad for The Eternals. 

Because synergy. I guess the thought here is that we're going to be so intrigued by the mystery created by Kumail Nanjiani's assertion that spiciness is afoot that we'll go to the site, watch the full ad and be persuaded to buy both a ticket to the movie and a forty thousand dollar luxury sedan. But mostly all its succeeded in doing is make me shout at the screen "What? What is so spicy?" 

Above: Actor/writer Kumail Nanjiani remarking on the spiciness of the situation.

健康长寿·繁荣昌盛*

Meanwhile, we're living with the 
looming threat of authoritarianism 
and no Star Trek- themed park...

Like I've mentioned before, I'm not an amusement park person. The mix of inedible food, nausea, and screaming children has never appeared to me. That said, I'm a little jealous of China. Well, ok not the authoritarianism and human rights violations, but they're getting a Star Trek theme park, so there's that. Ok, it's not a Star Trek park per se, but rather an eight billion dollar resort themed around Paramount studios in Kunming, China and part of it will be Star Trek themed. The rest of it, I suppose, will be based on Paramount's other streaming series? 

Which, I mean, what else do they have? Survivor and like five different versions of NCIS? One is a TV show about trying to survive in a harsh, unwelcoming environment and the other is a police procedural for olds. Neither sounds like a particularly appealing vacation, so why not make the whole thing Star Trek?

Wait, what's even going on here? Is this what Survivor is now?
Because this looks like a ropes course for team-building getaways.

"Lebel lange un gedeihe, Nerds."

-an old German saying

Anyway, if a Star Trek attraction sounds familiar, it's because Star Trek the Experience in Las Vegas did exactly the same thing but closed like ten years ago. So now, according to Trekmovie.com, the only Star Trek themed park attraction in the world right is in Germany--which is again, inconvenient for me--at a place called Movie Park. Although this makes more sense than China, as Germany is pretty keen on Star Trek. In fact there's a subset of the extended universe novels written in German. But does anyone in China know or care about it? But an exhaustive search of the internet--by which I mean I googled it--came up with a kind of confusing answer to whether or not Star Trek is popular in China. Mostly it appears not to be a thing, but there's nearly one and a half billion people there, so statistically someone's got to be into it.

Although the crew of the Enterprise did
once team up with Mark Twain, so, I mean,
the Chinese government isn't wrong here.

Searching for "Chinese Star Trek fans" yields some results including some lunatic CEO who modeled his company's headquarters after the Starship Enterprise. My sense it that the fandom in China is something akin to the following say Blake's Seven or Space Battleship Yamoto has in the US. So, you know, nerds. Not helping matters is the fact that the Chinese Government bans movies and television about time travel--a well Star Trek dips into kind of a lot--saying that they "treat history frivolously." Which is a weird thing to get upset about, but I don't want to tell them how to police state. 

Anyway, all this is to say that while I would never begrudge overseas fans the experience of paying way too much for watered down cocktails in a recreation of Quark's Bar or getting married on a replica of the Enterprise-D's bridge. Never, more power to them. But what I want to know, is why isn't there one of these in the U.S? 

I mean, we invented obsessive fandom.

*I guess it's Chinese for "live long and prosper" but this is Google translate we're talking about so, who can say?

Today in approximations of human emotion:

"Research? But that's hard and lame." 

-Americans

The phrase crocodile tears refers to a false display of emotion and it's usually a charge we level at kids for pretending to cry when they don't get their way. But I was curious as to why that is, so I looked it up. Fortunately for me, we live in a world where doing research is a simple as a lazy internet search, with the best, most accurate results always being among the first. Ok, obviously I'm being sarcastic and we can easily blame the internet for the spread of white supremacy, climate change disinformation, and the entire Trump administration.

Pictured: almost enough salt.

Fine, but I think I can be fairly confident that there's not a bunch of conspiracy theorists out there spreading fake etymologies. Sure, we should take everything we read online with at least some salt, but let's assume that what I found about the origin of crocodile tears is probably correct. Anyway, it's an old phrase that's been around since ancient times and it comes from the way crocodiles appear to cry when they feed which people in the past, being dumb, interpreted as the reptiles crying for their prey.

Above: like, a week ago?

The biological truth of it is that they're actually lubricating their eyes while they feed. Since we tend to only observe crocodiles eating while they're on land, they're usually a little dried out, hence the tears. So like I said, ancient people: kind of dumb. I mean, they followed leaders who didn't have their interests at heart, some thought the world was flat, and still others mistrusted science because they felt it challenged their worldview. Luckily for us, humans have moved on and are now driven by reason.

So why even bring this up? I don't know. The question popped into my mind yesterday for no reason at all. I guess I was suddenly curious as to why we use the image of a cold, calculating predator without the capacity for remorse to describe an insincere child.

Pictured: an unrelated photo of Kyle Rittenhouse weeping at his 
trial for those murders we all saw him commit. Like, on video.

Yes, I'm talking about the Rock again.

So couple of things. First, what is it with Dwayne Johnson recently that I'm talking about him two days in a row? Second, it's happened. I've become an old. 

Pictured: me, evidently.

Don't worry gun fans, he's still going to
use guns, they just won't be real ones. He'll still
be shooting tons of people for years to come.

Allow me to explain. Just the other day I was reading about Dwayne the Rock Johnson's pledge to stop using real guns in movies because using real guns in movies is incredibly reckless and totally unnecessary and for some reason it's taken a fatal on-set accident to point that out. And then today, I read this thing about how Johnson is playing the supervillain Black Adam and the movie is going to try and get away with as much murder as possible and still be PG-13. And I mean, I don't know, it this what it's come to?

"Kids still like edgy, right?"

-Garcia, keeping his

finger on the pulse

According to the film's director, Hiram Garcia, fans can expect a murder-filled adaptation of the comic:

"Black Adam is edgy, right? That's gonna be a PG-13 movie where it was very much like, say, The Dark Knight, where that pushed the edges of PG-13. I think we do that very much with Black Adam. We have a very high kill count for our movie."

-Hiram Garcia, gushing

like a severed artery 

Pictured: also me. Although that one's no joke,
I think I'm really going to need readers soon.

And this is where the "I'm an old" part comes in. I don't know that there was a point in my life where I was looking for more violence in movies. Possible when I was like, an early teen or something? I don't know, it's just not something I remember caring about. But as I get older, I'm finding myself more and more uncomfortable with it. Maybe it's age, or maybe it's because the real world has gotten so much more aggressive lately, who can say? Maybe I'm just violenced out at a time when a lot of popular entertainment relies really heavily on violence.

I'm not super-familiar with Black Adam as a character beyond the fact that he's a Shazam villain, which makes this a spin-off of that film. So is a high body count a selling point? In this movie that's a spin-off of a movie about magical kids who transform into, I don't know, magical adults? Or Power Rangers. I'm not sure. I think there were wizard involved...doesn't matter. This is the movie whose sequel needs a high body count?

I actually thought the movie was pretty fun, just not super memorable. 

Just because it's super-violent doesn't mean
they won't have time for comedy. Like Black Adam
buying beer for his nemesis. Who's also a minor.

I know that violent, edgy, comic book things are in. The Boys, Venom, Joker. I suppose that the idea is that it's time to subvert the squeaky clean super hero tropes and do something grittier. And that's fine, except we've been getting grittier since Tim Burton's Batman. We get it. Superheroes are flawed. At some point squeaky clean becomes subversive. But my point, if I have one, is that why is director Hiram Garcia foaming at the mouth about how violent his new movie's going to be?

Did he think that Black Adam fans would hear that it was going to be PG-13 and so he's out doing damage control? Because if that's the case, I think the question is less why is Black Adam PG-13? and more what's wrong with these blood-thirsty comic fans? And what's more is when did I become Emily Littella?

From Saturday Night Live? In the 70's? I-What? No I didn't watch
it in the 70's. I'm not that old...I have YouTube thank you very much.

What's Wallace Shawn up to these days?

Good for Dwayne Johnson. Like, I have 100% nothing against the Rock. I mean, I always kind of thought pro wrestling was dumb as it combined sports and bad acting, but he did an episode of Star Trek: Voyager once, so he's ok in my book.

Although the episode in question had Seven of Nine and the Rock in
some kind of space wrestling match; combining sports, bad acting and Star Trek. 
And it was itself pretty dumb, but who cares? Oh, and even did his eyebrow thing.

Uh...starting after his new movie
which comes out in a few days and
includes tons of guns. So after that.

I bring him up because the actor--yes, he's an actor and the second highest paid one in the world right now. Anyway, the actor has announced that in the wake of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins's death on the set of Rust, his production company will no longer use real firearms on set. Hutchins was killed two weeks ago when Alec Baldwin accidentally shot her and another crew member with what turned out to be a loaded weapon. And yes, before you ask, noted election loser Donald Trump has absolutely weighed in on that terrible accident saying:

Pictured: that coup he incited.

"In my opinion, he had something to do with it, but if nothing else, how do you take a gun, whether it's loaded or not loaded, how do you take a gun, point it at somebody that's not even in the movie and just point it at this person and pull the trigger, and now she's dead."

-Donald Trump, suddenly 

concerned with the consequences 

people's actions have on others

I mean, look at this nonsense.
Everything is added in post production
so why even bother with real guns?

Well, obviously Donald Trump is a piece of shit but like I was saying, good for Dwayne Johnson. I don't know anything about film production (but since when has not knowing anything stoped anyone from voicing an opinion?), but it seems insane to me that there is, in 2021, a need to use real guns on a set. And for that matter, what is real ammunition doing anywhere within a ten miles of a prop gun? Doesn't matter. If nothing else, maybe Hutchins's death will call attention to workplace safety in the film industry. 

Don't worry parents, nobody gets
laid in GI Joe Retaliation, just shot.

But why so many guns in the first place? Johnson's pledge wasn't "I promise to stop making movies with so many guns." Or even, "I promise to take a long hard look at the glorification of gun violence in films." Instead it was "maybe we won't use actual guns anymore." I'm not the first to point out that ours is a fucked up culture that's perfectly comfortable with violence in movies, but then when there's nudity or more than one instance of the word "fuck" everybody looses their minds. But why is that?

"Give us what we want or we'll
straight up murder you." 

-Rep. Madison Cawthorn

I'm not suggesting that movie violence necessarily leads to real life violence--ok, I actually don't know that, I'm not an expert--for all I know, maybe there is some connection. I'd personally chalk our appetite for movie violence up to the fact that we live in a violent world. Did you see the other day when Congressman Madison Cawthorn from North Carolina went on a rant where he said he'd "run over" all who oppose him? Which, in a world in which Republicans have tried to make running over protesters legal, is not an idle threat, it's part of their party platform. 

But the alarming rise of super-agro right-wing shit-heels aside, the market for violent movies did lead kind of indirectly lead to Halyna Hutchins's death. That is, if there's a hundred movies a year, and seventy of them involve real guns on the set, statistically, it's a matter or time before something like this happens. And admittedly I'm making up those numbers (again, not an expert, but who cares? This is the internet), but maybe it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if filmmakers didn't rely so heavily on violence to tell a story?

Huh? No, I actually have no idea what they'd do instead. Reboot
My Dinner with Andre maybe? I don't know, I'm not a screenwriter.

Hey, that's not an enclave...

"Next up on the agenda: replacing baseball
and apple pie with tennis and avocado toast."

-the secret left-wing cabal

Hey, you know who's full of shit? Josh Hawley. The Republican Senator from Missouri who, at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando Florida--because of course Orlando, Florida--went on a screed against the left's efforts to dismantle what it is to truly be a man. Also a woman. And did you know that liberals also won't say the word "mother" anymore? Apparently we say "birthing people," which, I don't know about you but I must have missed that directive from the secret cabal that secretly coordinates the destruction of American values. It's a good thing Josh Hawley's got his finger on the pulse.

You can read the Senator's entire speech here, just be sure to shower afterwords. In it, he says that the left "...believe that America is a systemically racist, structurally oppressive hopelessly patriarchal kind of place."

-noted white guy, Josh Hawley

"I'm a white man who's also a Senator, so if anyone knows about racism and
sexism, it's me. And trust me, I'd let you know if you were being oppressed."

-Senator Hawley, oppression expert

Although in a sense, keeping a loaded
weapon that close to one's genitals is
a form of bravery. But it's also dumb.

Hawley, who was evidently elected President of Men at some point, contrasts the right's virtues of "courage, independence, and assertiveness" with the left's corrosive values of "tolerance, compliance, and consumption--which, I mean, couple of things. First, I think he's confusing courage with gun ownership which I've personally always equated with being a gigantic wuss. I just don't think one needs to bring an assault rifle into Starbucks, or walk around with a handgun in their pants to feel brave. 

They literally idolize him.

As for independence, I'm not sure a political party that spent four years pretending that a visibly deranged reality TV host was not only not insane, but also good at his job, has much to say on the topic of independence. The one thing, and really the only thing, the GOP has going for it is its ability to stick together. Something the DNC could probably learn from. That said, it was their lockstep, blind worship of Donald Trump that led them to attempt a coup which they now pretend didn't happen.  

Which brings us to assertiveness. Assertiveness is an ability to speak up for oneself and is respectful of oneself and others. The January 6th coup attempt wasn't assertiveness, it was a coup attempt, so it's weird that not everyone involved is in jail right now.

They don't call out the national guard for assertiveness.
They do however call it out for treason.

Pictured: Bernie Sanders, seen here
telling supporters to go buy stuff.

Anyway, back to the liberals and our hatred of all things good and pure. Hawley slapped the left with "tolerance, compliance, and consumption." And I mean, I guess tolerance is a bad thing when you're trying to win the hearts and minds of the kind of people who buy tiki torches and protest how white people have been treated, and I'm guessing the compliance thing is about how everyone is being brutally forced to get a life-saving vaccine. But consumption? Aren't we all supposed to be communists or something?

"Not completely full, maybe just,
I don't know, up to here?"

-Hawley, on shit

Doesn't matter, like I said he's full of shit. But the things that's been picked up everywhere is his assertion that the left, through its war on masculinity, is destroying the economy and weakening the Republic. Bold words from the coup guy.

"Still...can we be surprised that after years of being told that they are the problem, that their manhood is the problem, more and more men are withdrawing in to the enclave of idleness and pornogrpahy, and video games?"

-Josh Hawley on--wait, enclave?

Above: Donald Trump and enclave
star Stormy Daniels. Whom he paid off.

Does...does he know what an enclave is? Because he could say "withdrawing into the embrace of idleness and pornography and video games." That'd be much better. Anyway, it's the perfect, most Republican argument he can make because it allows him to call people lazy while at the same time blaming progressives and the twin evils of porn and video games. Twin evils that both sides, both sides, have been hypocritically denouncing for ages while at the same time totally embracing.

What happened in the 80's that
would account for-oh...right...

Bravo. You see, according to Hawley, the reason the labor force is shrinking isn't because Americans since the 1980's have been asked to do more and more demanding work for stagnate wages while the wealth gap has grown exponentially. It's because the left are making men feel bad for acting like shitty people. And how dare they call people out for their behavior? If there's one thing Republicans and the people who vote for them can't stand and, feel entitled to immunity from, it's consequences.

Oh, and you know, for the record, I know plenty of people, of all genders, who would love to withdraw into an enclave--again, wrong word--of porn and video games. I mean, what an enclave! It's not a men thing. Josh Hawley should really stop painting us all with his dumb, binary brush and he should really, really stop telling us what's ruining the Republic. You know, because of the coup he was such a big supporter of.

Above: Hawley, seen here expressing his solidarity with protestors
on January 6th shortly before they tried to overthrow America.

Much Ado about much a didn't...

Hey, guess who died? Go on, guess. Right. The answer is obviously lots of people, but specifically I'm talking about Ado Campeol, the guy who didn't invent tiramisu. 

Above: Ado Campeol (right) seen here not inventing tiramisu.

Pictured: Bananas Foster, which
Ado also didn't invent.

Yeah, you heard me. When I saw the headline, I suppose my first thought was slow news day, which, I mean, even slower blog day for me, since this is what I'm writing about. So my next thought was tiramisu had been around for ages and how could the inventor possibly still be alive? It turns out Ado Campeol was ninety-three years old, and invented the dessert only about fifty years ago, back in 1972. Or didn't invent. That's the even weirder thing. While he's credited with inventing the dessert, every source that credits him, goes on to explain that he deserves no credit. 

With real, authentic tiramisu, you
can practically taste the salmonella.

Have you ever had it? Tiramisu? It's ladies fingers soaked in coffee, with egg, mascarpone, and cocoa. It is delicious, but also super bad for you. And it's not just because it's basically a plate of fat and cholesterol, but also because it's supposed to be made with raw eggs. Of course, Campeol made it to ninety-three so...Anyway, since we don't live in Italy, we've probably never had real tiramisu, but have definitely had a pretentious friend who's well actually'ed us about it. Probably while pronouncing mascarpone with a middling Italian accent while everyone else just rolls their eyes.

Happenstance is for comic book
origin stories, not dessert. 

Ok, but who did invent it? Some articles say it was Alba Campeol, Ado's wife, while others give the credit to Roberto Linguanotto, a chef at Le Beccherie, Campeol's restaurant. Linguanotto even has a preposterous story about the time he dropped mascarpone into sugar and accidentally invented it. Which, sure. Don't believe a word of if, but sure. Ok, so while it was served at Campeol's restaurant that may have popularized it, tiramisu was not his idea, so why are we talking about Ado and not Linguanotto and his dumb story?

Sorry, like, condolences and everything. He was ninety-three, which is a good run, but not necessarily worthy of international headlines. But here we are, talking about the passing of the father of tiramisu despite that fact that the guy who died had, at beast, a tangential role in its creation. He's, at best, its uncle. Although hang on, I suppose the role of a father is, biologically speaking, minimal. So sure. Fine. Farewell to the father of tiramisu. 

"What? I tell people we're pregnant because
we're in this together. What's wrong with that?"