On a show that made me strongly wish Netflix that had a “skip painfully unfunny comedy bits” button, Matt Lucas was responsible for more than his share of painfully unfunny comedy bits. I will not be sorry he’s gone in the next season. I am worried, though - if the show’s producers thought he was a good choice in the…

I read something the other day that argued new Twitter’s content moderation policy (i.e. Musk makes a personal decision and then tweets it out) is so reckless and juvenile as to make Facebook look, by comparison, like a relatively well-run platform, which is really saying something. It’s like two dumpster fires…

Judging by Chappelle’s own behavior recently, he does not appear to be surrounded by truth-speakers who will challenge his assumptions. No doubt he thought “rich guy quasi-celebrity champion of the right wing - my transphobic fans probably really like this guy!” And all the yes-men in the room immediately said,…

Across its entire portfolio, GO Media is just one big outrage machine. The empty shell that Deadspin has become is just one article after another about how everyone and everything connected with sports is deplorable. They do this because outrage produces a reaction - we comment on the article (like you and I just…

Because this wasn’t an affair between two tax accountants. It involved two media personalities, whose value to the network depends on their ability to inspire parasocial relationships among the viewers. They don’t need to be nice, funny, and relatable, but they do need to SEEM to be those things when the cameras are…

I once was in the middle of a disagreement with a colleague at a big company who was in charge of drafting “thought leadership” articles for an executive. Me and my boss had been pointing out that these articles simply bragged about the existing products and services of the company, and there was not really anything…

She reportedly sent De Luca an email that included a link to the Wikipedia page for “character arc” and was also uninterested in having further conversations with Gunn and Safran.

More that their existing deal with Netflix makes their production of The Sandman profitable tomorrow rather than today, and he wants all of the money up front. He might threaten to walk away from the deal unless they sweeten the pot, but for now I’m assuming that he’s not so shitty a businessman as to throw away a…

It is when you engineer a leveraged buyout that saddles your new company with an absolute mountain of debt, which now needs to be paid off. Zaslav made his bed and has to lie in it. If he’s ruining his health with a rage and stress cocktail, that’s fine by me; the shitty side of that coin is the fact that a lot of peop…

My long-ago study of classical Greek tells me the stress would have been on the ante-penult, or third syllable from the end of the word: “her- AH -stratus.”

Remember when WW’s dead ex-boyfriend was resurrected by way of stealing another man’s body and life and everyone was totally cool with that turn of events?

If it had come after film #1, this decision would have been baffling and upsetting. Coming after film #2, it’s actually kind of a relief. If nothing else, we can now be confident that Chris Pine’s character won’t be re-resurrected in the next one.

Le Caviste, in South Lake Union.

So what’s your bet for Christmas Day - HOLLY or JOLLY? I trust it won’t be SANTA, because that would be far too on the nose.

Related topic: my wife and I went to a Seattle restaurant last night, and the entire menu was in French. Not a word in English to be found anywhere, despite the fact that the owners are two American dudes who just like Paris. Obviously, this isn’t the first time I’ve come across this phenomenon, but this was the first…

Hot take ... well, not hot, really—tepid take:

What they expected were two things: 1) adjustments to their contracts, given that the previous contracts were drawn up on the assumption that ticket sales would contribute to their earnings; and 2) professional courtesy in the form of a heads-up and maybe a consultation before all this was a fait accompli. We can…

Zaslav and the previous guy are functioning like a one-two punch of ineptitude, the one burning WB’s reputation as the creator-friendly studio with his “suck it up, I can do what I want” attitude, and Zaslav with his hard pivot away from streaming and IP-driven content and toward more disposable reality programming.…

So Ye’s mistake wasn’t spouting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, it was speaking the truth out loud? Holy shit - I already thought Chapelle was an asshole, but it looks like he’s ascended to a whole new level. Anyone who decides to continue giving this guy a platform can go fuck themselves.

There are certain celebrities within the music and entertainment who seem to exist entirely to supply GO Media with material about which they can be performatively outraged, 700 to 1,000 words at a time. Nothing ever comes of it - this is all a song set on repeat, looping over and over again.