An amusing thought I had was Gervais finding himself in the Philippines and discovering that his 80's songs were hits there and he’d be more successful as touring has-been musician in the country than as a stand up comedian.

Viewed through the lens of Wandavision’s fascination with TV tropes I don’t think egregious stunt casting really crosses any lines here. 

I like Maron’s view on these jokes, especially Rife's apology with the special needs helmet - it’s so fucking hack. We’re kind of doing a disservice to the shittiness of the jokes by talking about whether or not they’re “offensive.” They’re just examples of middle of the road hack comedy. That should be the story, and…

The short story suffers from a problem a lot of literary fiction has, which is that in trying to avoid an excess of melodrama or epiphany or purple prose, the author ends up just sort of relating a thing that happened. I feel the best litfic can relate the surprising emotional intensity of everyday life, find beauty…

I dunno, I don’t think “nothing I do matters” is reasonable. We all participate in our cultural evolution, and promulgating good ideas can contribute to the changing of minds, even if it’s a slow process that only touches a few people at a time.

Yeah, I don’t have a problem with people feeding rapists and other criminals to the Internet Outage Machine. But misogyny is not a crime and publishing private texts that can damage a person’s reputation (even if they’re not “explicitly named”) seems...harsh. It’s not a public service announcement, it’s revenge.

She called them out by name at an awards show, a pretty public affair. 

Hard work and work not being fun is fine. Verbal abuse isn’t.

I have a coworker who would say that makes you ANTIFA and their enemy. But they love Indiana Jones. Their world experience makes total sense to them and I have no idea what to make of it.

The more even-handed critiques make a pretty decent case that the exhibit feels unfocused and maybe even lazy. I gotta say, though, I don’t know what her original criticism of the modern art world was exactly, but if it’s that a lot of it is a bunch of snooty assholes patting themselves on the back for being into…

Considering his reputation I seriously call into question the Modern Lovers take.

That’s true - Gadsby isn’t responsible for that. Pop culture had already been tending towards encouraging people to ignore challenging ideas and ennobling their preference for comfort and kitsch well before Nanette.

Boots Riley faced the same kind of criticism for distributing his upcoming tv show through Amazon.

I didn’t hate it, I just don’t know if you can call something a “comedy” show if the main purpose or intent of the substantive content isn’t to make people laugh. I won’t argue against people whossay she’s a skilled performer, masterfully juggles tension, or that she can be funny when she wants to be—I’m just saying…

Yeah it’s really weird.  It’s like if Coke decided to change its name to Fanta.  Why would you drop “HBO?”  It’s iconic.  What the fuck is “Max?”

I think the dumb decision gets bonus points for changing from HBO Max to just Max, despite not including any Cinemax material even though HBO owns Cinemax, and the Cinemax channels are now actually just called Max.

COVID is what fucked things up and required the day-date release, which you mention one time in the article.

I have no idea why on earth they would dump the prestigious and legendary part of their name. Is this company being run by clowns?

That, and it’s not a college town.

The reason the video game industry is so shit is because they’re not unionised.