New Movie Times: shit

Showing posts with label shit. Show all posts

Tuesday, 3 September 2019

Is It Worth Being A Good Person In 2019 America?

Illustration: Jim Cooke (G/O Media)

Funbag

Time for your weekly edition of the Deadspin Funbag. Got something on your mind? [Email the Funbag](mailto:funbag.deadspin@gmail.com).

Today, we’re talking about doctors, the Mariners, capture the flag, being followed, and more.

Your letters:

Stosh:

It could be that this has always been the case, but it definitely seems like only horrible people excel in the world today. Does it pay to be a pleasant person?

It does. I know it doesn’t feel that way at the moment, but you can take cold comfort in the fact that history has often been kind to morally repugnant shitheads. It has, indeed, always been the case. I know Trump is in charge and that Trump is the world’s most hideous man, but people older than you and me have lived through the ascent and prosperity of plenty of other god-awful humans. That doesn’t mean you should use the Sackler family as a template for your own existence. The system really is set up so that you can profit by turning heel and fucking over other people, which is an unpleasant thing to learn about the world. BUT… sometimes okay people do well, too. Look at me! I’m a good person!

(unadulterated silence)

Okay, maybe I’m not the best example. What about, like, the Jonas Brothers? They seem nice and still do well for themselves. It CAN be done, I swear. In fact, compared to, like, the days of Genghis Khan, people are arguably nicer than they’ve ever been! Crime rates are down! We haven’t nuked each other to kingdom come just yet! Call it 20 percent nicer. I can be a better person. Not in the online sense, but on the ground. I could give more money and time to worthy causes. I could do more volunteer work. I haven’t done enough, and it’s not that I feel guilty about it. It’s that I know I’m missing out on something I’d truly enjoy doing by sitting on my ass. I’m depriving myself.

Don’t make the mistake of framing the whole “Should I be a prick?” question strictly in financial terms. It’s worth considering the (ugh) intangibles. When you’re pleasant in your everyday dealings, people are pleasant to you, and then they help you when you’re in a tight spot. Or, at least, they oughtta. That’s why they teach you common decency at elementary school in between savage games of Butts Up. They want you to abide by the golden rule for a reason. Say please. Say thank you. Don’t take out your fucking phone at the dinner table. Be professional. Give a fuck. You get more Christmas gifts when you do all that. TAKE THAT, JEFF BEZOS! Some of us do things the RIGHT way, you pile of shit. I’ll cut you good!

Peter:

Which children’s playground game would make the best pro sport/league?

Capture The Flag. I say this knowing that if some fabled playground game COULD have been a billion-dollar professional sport, it already would be. But there’s a reason that the only time you see wiffle ball on TV is when it’s a celebrity game and, like, Joe Scarborough is the pitcher. No matter. I firmly believe that Capture The Flag is the be-all-end-all of kid games, particularly in the summertime. Not Hopscotch. Not Butts Up (though watching Justin Verlander compete in a game of Butts Up would be mesmerizing). Not trading Garbage Pail Kids. None of that. Capture The Flag is the GOAT.

When I went to sleepaway camp as a kid, they would stage a game of it on a massive field, with the entire camp split into two teams. We played the version of Capture The Flag where each side had a jail. So if you got tagged crossing over into enemy territory, you went to the jail and then your teammates could free you by running into the jail without getting tagged themselves. Freeing someone from a Capture the Flag gulag was nearly as thrilling as actually capturing the flag. Felt like breaking out of San Quentin.

Like the flag circle, jail was a safe space (don’t tell National Review), so if you got into it without being tagged, there was this really tense moment where you had to properly time when you and your freed hostage could dare to bust loose from the circle and make a break for the dividing line. WHAT A RUSH. IF you got tagged on the way back, you got baked into a pie.

A couple of times, I managed to make it all the way into the flag circle, mostly because the other team was busy chasing down and tagging faster kids. I don’t think I ever made it back home with that flag, not even once. If I had, that flag would be framed and hanging from a wall in our bedroom. So I would absolutely watch Alvin Kamara attempt to play this game along with 49 of his peers. This would be fascinating for a solid five minutes before I change the channel to bird-watching. Summer may be unofficially over, but Capture the Flag deserves to be enshrined by our government as the awesomest shit in history. Build a memorial to it on the Mall, to honor the tagged. Carve my name into the quartzite a thousand times over.

I would tell you that honorable mention here goes to Smear The Queer, but A) NFL football is better, and B) You really can’t/shouldn’t call that game that anymore. Someone on Reddit suggested re-branding Smear The Queer as Get Down, Mister President, but that’s almost too deferential to whoever has the ball. I’m not trying to save the ballcarrier from himself. I’m trying to beat his ass. Just call it Kill Bill, Part 3 or something.

Cameron:

When do kids learn to properly use a Kleenex? I have a sick six-year-old who has gone through a whole box and not a single one looks used.

My kids can all use Kleenex properly and the youngest one is seven. I think your six-year-old should get the hang of it sooner rather than later. Once a child understands that they can snot into a tissue with impunity, they come around quick. OH WOW I CAN PICK MY NOSE WITH THIS ANYTIME I WANT TO! Whole new avenue of opportunity opens up for them.

They will waste paper as they learn. Kids waste everything on this earth: tissues, food, water, your love, and such and such. But it’s worth harping on them when it comes to properly blowing their noses. I know this because my kids have wiped their boogers on the couch. One time I looked at the side of one of the cushions and it looked like an old man’s skin three days after he got too much sun. Horrifying shit. I would routinely catch one of the kids picking without a tissue and, in extremely overbearing fashion, I would hold up a tissue box in front of them to be a nag. Then they’d roll their eyes and insist “I wasn’t picking my nose!” Lies. All lies. I refused to give up. I didn’t wanna reach under a table again and discover an impromptu biotech lab. You don’t either. Kids grow. They eventually learn all the crap you and I now know. It’ll happen.

Jeff:

Common foods that make me gag are bananas, celery, seeded rye bread, and hard-boiled eggs, although I can’t figure out for the life of me what these have in common, and why I like other strong-flavored foods like anchovies and sauerkraut. Is there any connection to other foods you don’t like, or is it totally random?

I don’t think my least favorite foods have much in common. I don’t like mayo, olives, beets, and, like, brie cheese. That is not a food group. When the FDA issues a nutrition pyramid, you don’t see a wheel of baked brie topped with black olives at the top in the Weird Appetizers group. They have more pressing foodstuffs to categorize.

I hate these foods for varying reasons. I hate the texture and smell of mayo, along with its inexplicable, eternal omnipresence in fucking everything. I hate beets because beets taste like raw potatoes someone washed in corn syrup and then dumped into a vat of Easter egg dye. I hate olives because they’re distressingly meaty. I’ve told this story before, but one time I was at some cocktail party and ate what I thought was a fried mushroom. It was a fried olive. Terrible moment. I’ll never get over it. I wish this somehow related to my distaste for runny cheeses, but I’m at a loss. Each of my food hang-ups is unique and special, like a fingerprint.

I think that broader food quality dislikes are a childhood thing. I used to fear anchovies as a little kid. Like Jeff, I also once hated rye bread. I didn’t think bread should be tangy. I also disliked orange cheese(?), whipped cream, and pretty much any cooked fish. If I thought a food looked scary or had a strange texture, or if I thought certain foods HAD to taste a certain way and not deviate, I avoided them. I eventually grew out of those widespread aversions (except for mayo; mayo is still a fraternity prank). Your palate matures along with you, and what’s left are a handful of random foods you dislike for reasons you either cannot explain or that you just can’t overcome. You can never eat a basket of calamari again after Sheila dumped you that one time after you ordered one. Speaking of sudden nausea…

Kyle:

Have Mike Pence and Mother ever done mouth stuff?

Oh, sure. Everyone does mouth stuff, even people who need written consent from THE LORD before they get into it. Mike Pence probably begs Jesus for forgiveness every time he has to come up for air down there.

Also, since I’m a child of the 80s, I am predisposed to believe that the most demonstrably pious individuals are complete freaks behind closed doors. Mother probably slaps a gimp mask on her hubby every Saturday morning, holds him facedown in a wading pool filled with buttermilk, and then lashes him with a riding crop. I wasn’t born yesterday. I know how this type operates. Mouth stuff is the most NORMAL shit they’re into.

Evan (NOTE: this email sent in wintertime):

Today I saw two separate adult humans wearing winter gloves on the train and casually using their noses to navigate on their phones. I don’t have a question I just thought you needed to know this.

Why don’t they just buy the phone gloves? They have the special tactile winter gloves now with fingertip pads so that you can still use a touchscreen. People buy those things all the time. I would tell you that this is a depressing factoid about society as a whole, but I’m the type of person who A) Is too stupid to own a pair, B) Will shed a glove and risk frostbite at the bus stop in January just to refresh Twitter to see who fucked up, and C) Will probably do the nose thing now that I know about it. It’s resourceful. It’s how MacGyver would use an iPhone. I’m pathetic.

Carson:

Do you think you’d notice some sketchy guys in a Crown Vic tailing you all the way home? I’d like to think I would, but then again I can’t really think of a situation where I’m looking out for someone following me home.

I’d notice. Absolutely. I spend every waking minute imagining that my life is a shitty action movie, so when another car stays behind me for a noticeable amount of time, I immediately think it’s the Feds, or a serial killer following me home to cut me up and plant me in some sort of body garden. Then the van in question turns onto Burnside Drive and my little flirtation with paranoia comes to a sudden and bittersweet end. I was looking forward to tussling with that murderer, man. I would have smacked him in the nose to get him off me, like he was a shark.

So if it happened for real, you better believe I would be on HIGH ALERT. I’m the guy who, after the 2016 election, turned on TweetDelete AND enabled a passcode on my phone because I was told the Feds can force you to unlock your phone with touch ID but can’t do the same with a passcode. Did that paranoia come back to bite me in the ass when I could least afford to have it happen? My friend, you know it did.

HALFTIME!

Chad:

After honoring my seven-year-old’s request to spell “bell” out loud for him, for what felt like the 100th time, I started wondering how many different words I’ve actually spelled out loud one hundred times or more. Over-under is five—what say you?

I was gonna say zero EXCEPT I remembered as a kid that my brother, my sister, and I would spell out MISSISSIPPI as fast as we possibly could. We thought it was funny, mostly because there’s a “peepee” in there. Same goes for ICUP, which is not a real word but should be. It could even be the name of a show about drinking beer from a keg: I, Cup. But otherwise, 100 is an onerous number of times to spell out a single word. I say this even though, as I told Roth and Greenwell last week, my wife and I used to spell out certain words so that the kids wouldn’t know what we were talking about. That doesn’t work now that the kids can spell. They know we’re talking about potentially buying C-A-N-D-Y. The jig is up.

For most people, I would wager that swear words get spelled out the most. I used to do this with my kids around. “Honey, I gotta go take an S-H-I-T.” The kids could still Google my name and suddenly be inundated with a million SHITS and FUCKS and COCKBARFS. And yet, I still tried to maintain the façade that I was a discreet fellow. No point in keeping that up any longer. They know a shit is a shit. They aren’t stupid.

Andy:

When Trump tweeted from Vietnam, it made me wonder if he knows how to connect to WiFi if he’s in a country that doesn’t have the best cellular service. Like, when he steps into a hotel, does he know how to connect his phone to the WiFi or does an aide immediately take his phone and connect for him?

Not a chance he knows how to do it. He may not even know what WiFi is. He walks into a new room, can’t get his browser to load, and then screams that someone should be fired because of it. Then a bunch of terrified lackeys scramble to fix the problem so that the President can get back online and tell the world that the media is lying and that Stephanie Zimbalist very much DID want to sleep with him back in 1986. As Trump does this, 12 hurricanes strike the mainland and 800 people are gunned down at random. That’s every morning now.

Dan:

Lifelong Mariners fan here in Washington, and a friend in my group that’s a lifelong Yankees fan (also from Washington, go figure) has decided to rock the EXACT SAME M’S HAT that I have! This dude still talks shit about his beloved Yanks, but wears my Ms hat out and about. What’s the correct protocol here besides taking it off of him and throwing it into the bus-lane downtown?

You should give him shit. It won’t amount to anything. Yankees fans are too stupid and proud to EVER indulge in a moment of self-reflection. But that doesn’t mean you should accept your friend being a literal asshat. Do your bro duty and unload on his sorry ass. Call him a fuckhead. Slash his tires. Hide his asthma inhaler from him. Spend every waking second reminding him that he’s an ugly asshole. Shit on him until you get right up to that line where it stops being friendly banter and is poised to devolve into outright hostility. That’s what makes being a guy so FUN.

Why would a Yanks fan wear a Mariners hat anyway? The Yanks have a bazillion rings. The Mariners have never won fuck all. In fact, when the Mariners won 116 games one year and broke the MLB wins record (which they hold to this day), they still choked in the playoffs against … the YANKEES. Either your friend is grossly ignorant, as all Yankees fans are, or he’s trolling you on a level that MERITS outright hostility, if not open violence. I say assault him. He’s likely used to such things.

Andrew:

The other day, I looked in the mirror and realized that my hat, sweater and vest were all made by Patagonia. Even worse, the logos on all three items were visible, so I looked like the world’s least attractive and most unfit Patagonia model. What’s the most items you can wear from a single brand before you start to look like a weirdo? Two seems reasonable, although if the logos are hidden, then maybe it doesn’t matter?

If the logos aren’t visible, then you’re off the hook. If I walk out the door dressed head-to-toe in Uniqlo, and I have, I do NOT look like a hypebeast. I look like someone paid me to be a crowd extra in Mission: Impossible film. I am invisible.

It’s a different story if everyone can see the brand in question, and even then it depends on the brand. Like, if you walk around wearing all-adidas shit, it makes perfect sense. You’re wearing a t-shirt, mesh shorts, and a pair of slides. Those are articles of clothing that are meant to be part of a complete ensemble: a sloppy, boring ensemble. Whereas if it’s all Patagonia, you look like the founder of Honest Tea. Or if it’s all Polo shit, you look like a preppy asshole. Not only do you look the brand, but people will assume that you deliberately set out to do so.

That’s not a sin, necessarily. I know we at Deadspin treat saying brand names like we’re summoning fucking Voldemort, but brands are so ubiquitous now that plenty of people openly align themselves with ones that they think are interesting or cool. Kids especially. My kids were into Under Armour for a long time. I did not sit the kids down and say to them, “Well listen, boys and girls, you might think that UA is KEWL and HIP, but you know what’s not cool? CEO Kevin Plank sitting on the President’s WAY bogus business council and then resigning because he wanted to stick to sports. Tell me that’s IN with the school crowd!” I just let their little private fad run its course, and it usually does. The daughter likes Lululemon now, which is a whole OTHER problem.

Jammy:

Can Shaq use a urinal?

Yes. He’s not 30 feet tall. I saw Shaq in person this past June and his size is breathtaking to behold in person. But the man can use a pisser. I’m 6-foot-3 and even I encounter the occasional public urinal that’s awfully high, like I could rest my balls on the lip of it. Such urinals can easily accommodate a man of Shaq’s height and girth. Not the kiddie urinals, though. Some of those are stationed a foot underground. Exactly how small do they think children are?

Pete:

I just saw Nas perform with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. At what point is it pathetic that I attend concerts of artists from my formative years? I say this because I mercilessly heckled my parents for going to a “Beach Boys” concert in 1999 that turned out to be one of the Beach Boys and Carnie Wilson.

Never. It’s never pathetic. Did you have a good time at the show? Then who gives a shit about how it looks? I long ago resigned myself to the fact that I like rock, and rock is now for old fogies. When I gotta think up a halftime song for this column, I inevitably end up picking some track that betrays my age, even if it’s from a relatively new band. But I like what I like and there’s little sense in fighting it. I still go to every Bob Mould show when he comes into town. If you gave me tickets to the Stones, I would absolutely go and enjoy myself. If the act in question still knows how to put on a live performance, no sense in depriving myself of the pleasure. Sometimes that live show can help me remember why I liked that band to begin with.

Years ago, my parents dragged me to a Gene Pitney concert. If you’re unfamiliar with the since-deceased Gene Pitney, you’re hardly alone. Even I was too young to know who that was, but that didn’t stop my parents anyway. “He the guy who sings ‘Town Without Pity’!” they cried. I was like whuh? They took me to the show, which was located in a rural Connecticut amphitheater that was essentially a circus tent. Pitney did his set in the round, including his aforementioned, lone greatest hit. I think I had an all-right time. Gene Pitney was a professional. He was also 106 years old, but he knew how to work a stage. Never let your self-perceived reputation get in the way of heading out to go see a long-in-the-tooth artist grab one last paycheck. Besides, Nas is cooler than Gene Pitney. I doubt that’ll ever change.

Will:

Is it socially acceptable for a grown man to take a glove to a baseball game? I’m going to be catching a couple games during a business trip to Florida in a couple weeks, so I’ll be without the wife and kids. Am I going to look like a weirdo walking in solo with a glove during batting practice?

Yeah, but that’s all right. Do what you enjoy. Again, no point in letting your ego get in the way of having fun. It’s one thing if you’re Zack Hample and you’re elbowing toddlers out of the way to snatch up balls to sell on eBay like a smug prick. But if you wanna bring a glove to a game as a one-off, I won’t judge you. You’re not gonna catch jack shit, and stadium security will probably confiscate your glove and burn it right in front of you. Even if you do manage to get your glove through the gate, you’ll probably end up cursing yourself for having the bright idea to lug one around a ballpark for fours hours. But hopefully you’ll be dead drunk for all that. HOORAY BASEBALL!

I have brought a glove to an MLB game in the past, like when I was a teenager. I absolutely felt like a member of the team when I did that. LOOGIT ME! I’M AN OUTFIELDER! I caught nothing.

Nicholas:

I’m in medical school. At what point can I reply to an airline or public page for a doctor? I really want to do this though I know that it’s lame to want public praise.

In my mind, you have to graduate first. If I was having a heart attack in an airport terminal and the first guy to rush to my aide turned out to be Nick Riviera, Hollywood Upstairs Medical School freshman, I would be distraught. I want my doctor to be a doctor.

However, if it’s clear that you’re the ONLY person in the immediate vicinity who knows jack shit about medicine, and you’re know what the patient involved needs and if you can give them what they need, fine. Put on your scrubs. You’re the last resort, but that’s better than no resort. You’re the only girl left at the bar for last call.

Email of the week!

Tony:

I regularly donate noncash items worth, in my estimation, about $499 annually. On one recent Goodwill visit, the attendant pulled the cart to the back of my trunk, and we loaded the following items:
1. A giant foam hand making a shocker gesture with the caption “Shock ‘Em”
2. A Halloween decorative bouquet of fake dead flowers
3. A tape recorder that we acquired from my grandmother-in-law 10 years ago (with 1 tape included)
The attendant asked me if I wanted a receipt, and I somewhat-embarrisingly said “sure.” My wife looked at me side-eyed. I could sense the regret that she had for ever being associated with me. Later, I attempted to complete the tax form but couldn’t bring myself to do it.
What is the most worthless item you’ve ever donated?

Probably a tray of brownies to the back-to-school picnic. I use the shitty mix for those. The Ghirardelli mix I keep for myself.

Sunday, 4 August 2019

Why Your Children's Television Program Sucks: The Garfield Show

Illustration: Jim Cooke

A look at the awful children’s programming you’re forced to endure before you can finally kick the kids out of the TV room to watch sports for eight hours. Image by Jim Cooke.

The Show

The Garfield Show

The Theme Song

[alarm clock rings]

[sax solo opener]

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA BA BA BA-BA

BA-BA BA BA BAAA BA-BA BA!

The Mythology

Created decades ago by cartoonist Jim Davis, who saw a commercial opportunity for a comic strip about cats because there were so many comic strips strictly about dogs, Garfield has become so popular and widely read that you almost certainly know the particulars and players in the Garfield Cinematic Universe, even if you’ve only encountered it via internet gags. There’s a cat. This cat is real fucking slovenly. He loves lasagna and hates Mondays. He’s more self-centered than the President but half as orange (ZING!). He’s the OG Grumpy Cat. His owner is a pathetic schlub named Jon Arbuckle who routinely dukes it out with David Seville for the title of Most Thoroughly Emasculated Owner Of Cartoon Animals. There’s a dog that slobbers a lot in the household as well. Somehow this adds up to hijinks.

I loved Garfield as a child. I owned every Garfield comic strip book, including the Treasuries, which were printed in color. I even owned the first Garfield book, back when he looked like a state senator from Kentucky. I laughed at all the jokes, even one-liners about Beau Brummel and Brigitte Bardot that I didn’t understand. I owned dozens of Garfield stuffed animals. I had one with a pull string where the Garfield would say things like, “Color me unimpressed” every time you pulled it. Just like a real Internet commenter! Back when AJ Daulerio ran this site, he randomly gchatted to me one day, “I bet you had a lot of Garfield toys when you were a kid” and I was like HOW DID YOU KNOW? There was a Garfield book called Garfield Takes The Cake and I once thought up a SONG for it in my head, skipping to the bus stop and being like ♫ Garfield, Garfield! Taaaaakes the caaaake! ♫ I was not the most popular kid at school.

I also watched the original Garfield & Friends Saturday morning cartoon, with the title character voiced by the late Lorenzo Music. Davis once said that Music never let anyone see his face, which sounds dark and mysterious until you do a Google image search for “Lorenzo Music” and see his face pop up multiple times.

That show ended back in 1994, and it was replaced over a decade later by The Garfield Show, an all-CGI animated showcase that seemed tailored specifically to people who were like, “I wish they could bring back the old Garfield show, only cheaper!” My fellow Garfheads, I am happy to report that they indeed did just that. I’m gonna celebrate by mailing Nermal to Abu Dhabi.

Episode Format

Pretty much every episode of The Garfield Show involves him doing something selfish and lazy (eating all the pizza in town, for instance), which then precipitates a chain reaction disaster (oh no, Vito’s pizza is-a now out-a the pizza because of that-a crazy cat!). This is followed by Garfield audibly moaning and then reluctantly un-fucking everything—“Fine, I’ll force Odie to build Vito a second pizza oven,” for example—so that he can at last go back to being fat and lazy.

That’s all foreseeable. It’s just the kind of shit you’d expect from a comic strip franchise that’s worked over the same jokes for decades now. But treating my man Garf, particularly in this iteration, as shopworn pablum for the masses fails to recognize just how deeply fucking WEIRD the broader Garfield universe is. It all feels so strange. It all is so strange. The characters all look like they got left on the cutting room floor of the Homer Cubed vignette from Treehouse of Horror. It’s a highly canny valley they occupy.

And in this universe, Garfield spends entire episodes doing things like harnessing the power to stop time, negotiating with lasagna-shaped space aliens, or capturing wild turkeys. You can tell that the writers on this show get bored even more easily than the title character does. “What if we had Garfield fuck a robot elephant?” The familiar Ugh It’s Monday jokes are merely the base of the show. Generous ladlefuls of LSD are then poured on top. Everyone’s tripping balls out here.

Characters

Garfield: Without voice-over help from Lorenzo Music or Bill Murray (who infamously voiced Garfield in the movie version because he claims he was under the mistaken impression that one of Coen brothers had written it), the showrunners picked veteran animated voice actor Frank Welker to play Garfield. You might remember Welker from The Simpsons, or from the new Scooby Doo. Like Music, Welker lends a laconic, oddly charming affect to Garfield’s monologues as he bashes alarm clocks to pieces and fills Jon’s bathtub with Hawaiian punch. I can’t believe I’m talking about this shit so seriously. BIG FAT HAIRY DEAL.

Jon: Just your average perpetually single cartoonist (real stretch in character development with that occupation there) who spends every episode bitching about how his cat has made him an indentured servant, but then turns around at the end of those same episodes and is like, “I love my fat male dominatrix cat!” Hard to believe he can’t find a woman to share his horrible life with. In a twist, it is JON who the pet! O HO HO BET YOU DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING! What a powerless dipshit.

(sees dirty dishes still in the sink)

Oh shit the missus will NOT be happy if she sees those. I better wash them and then wash them again just to make sure they’re right.

Odie: The dog. Drools all the time and is very happy and stupid. Just like every other dog, really. Odie is also blindly loyal to both Jon and to Garfield, and routinely gets enlisted in Garfield’s shenanigans, always to his eventual detriment. Hey Odie, go fight that saber-toothed tiger. Hey Odie, go whizz on that electric fence. Hey Odie, hold this pistol and tell the cops it was a heat-of-the-moment thing. Odie deserves better. Come live with me, Odie. I won’t trick you into tarring the roof when I accidentally burn the house down.

Nermal: Acknowledged by everyone (including himself) to be the cutest cat in the world. I’m not seeing it, personally. Even if Nermal really were the world’s cutest cat, it’s still a fucking cat, you know? It’s not like I’m beholding an $850,000 Bugatti. Garfield despises Nermal and routinely attempts to murder him. I like ol’ Garf’s go-getter style in that regard. Nermal’s an asshole. Also, he’s got a weird name. I read it as “Normal” for a good eight years at first.

Liz: Veterinarian whom Jon routinely harasses every time he drags Garfield to an appointment (you’re not gonna believe it, but Garfield hates going to the vet WHAAAAAAAAAA?). And yet she still agrees to go out on dates with Jon! She should blow the whistle on that pitiful, cat-afflicted mope. Instead, karma has inflicted a different fate upon Jon: in the Garfieldverse, Jon is stuck in an endless loop where he gets rejected by the same girl over and over and over again. Why, it’s just like my teenage years HEY-OOOOOOOOOOOO.

Doc: Jon’s brother. A farmer. Hates being called “Doc Boy,” so Jon always calls him “Doc Boy.” Some enterprising Redditor out there has definitely drawn Doc Boy jamming a pitchfork into Jon’s chest, which admittedly beats the other artwork you’ll find at that site. Hey Jon, did you ever consider that, by trolling your brother like a fucking dweeb, you’re modeling poor behavior for your cat, hmm? Of course you didn’t.

Pooky: Garfield’s bear. His Bobo, if you will. At this point I’m making Simpsons references just to keep you interested. Garfield loves his bear, which means that it winds up in mortal peril roughly every four episodes. Garfield inevitably ends up having to drop Odie into the middle of an Albanian gang dispute to rescue the thing from a band of opium smugglers and whatnot. The gag here is that Garfield treats everyone and everything like shit except for one inanimate object. Whatever.

[my kid shoots a Nerf gun at the TV]

YOU THINK THAT’S FUNNY, BOY? THAT TV IS WORTH MORE THAN YOU ARE!

Eddie Gourmand: Vile food critic who can make or break restaurants with a review, because it’s still apparently 1996 in this show. Anyway, Eddie is selfish and fat and arrogant, but not in the CUTE way that Garfield is all of those things. Honestly, this man is nightmare fuel. He’s distressing to see and hear. There’s lots of trippy nightmare fuel in this show!

Drusilla and Minerva: Two little girls who occasionally visit to torture Garfield and poor Odie by dressing them up and shrieking at them. Ever watch one of those old Tom & Jerry cartoons where Tom’s little girl owner pretends he’s a baby and punishes him by forcing him to take castor oil? That girl was a fucking abuser. Anyway, this show has two of her.

Vito: The pizza guy. No one let Sal Paolantonio see how this show depicts Italian-Garfieldians. Madone.

Best Episode

There’s one episode where Jon takes Garfield onto a TV show called “Pet Matchers” to see if the two of them are truly compatible, and the show reveals what’s obvious to everyone except Jon: that he sucks and so does his cat. The host then splits the two of them up, because we all know that TV hosts are legally allowed to determine pet custody. Then Garfield figures out that the host is a big fucking fraud and exposes him, which means that he and Jon can get back together again and continue to be utterly miserable forever. Yay?

Worst Episode

Those Drusilla and Minerva episodes are brutal. Trust me when I tell you that those two are as annoying as Garfield says they are. Really, any episode that features ancillary characters like Drusilla and Minerva or Doc Boy is going to be unbearable. The Garfield Show has a dozen Scrappy Doos waiting in the bullpen to derail virtually any plot. Really, the only good side character is Nermal, and then only because Garfield roasts his cutesy ass every five seconds. And what better way to raise children than to expose them to low-level insult comedy?

Pros

I’m biased here because I was little snot who used to love Garfield, but I’m fine watching this show with my kids when they queue it up on Netflix. God, that fucking sax solo is burned into my mind. It’s livin’ rent free in my noggin and bakin’ lasagna for the visitors. It’s in my head right now! GAHHHHHHHHHH!!!

I can be as cynical as Garfield when it comes to Garfield, but I’m also a sucker for easy nostalgia. One look at that pink nose and those bigass eyes and Garfield’s clown-sized feet and I’m right back in elementary school in Orono, Minnesota, where kids beat my ass in tetherball and made fun of me for wearing prescription lip balm. Also, girls would cover their mouths to snicker anytime I walked past them in the halls. Truly, those were glory days. At my folks house, there are STILL Garfield plush toys lying around somewhere. Crack one open and a family of scarab beetles attacks you.

Anyway, Garfield sometimes learns lessons on this show. They even have little PSA interludes, which your kids will invariably skip.

Cons

Why do you think I am the way I am? What do you think happens when you subject a child to a cartoon character who has shitty manners, cares only about himself, thinks perpetual cynicism is an endearing quality, never gets up, and constantly bitches about everything? Me. You get me. Turns out the Garfield was ME all along. Disgusting.

You could easily argue, as I am about to, that Garfield is what’s wrong with AMERICA. He thrives despite his own monstrosity. That’s here! That happens for shitty people here every five seconds! Again, look at me! I have a job. I don’t deserve a fucking job. I should be scavenging for food in the dumpster outside Vito’s. Instead, I get to broadcast my dumbest thoughts onto the Internet for money. America is a crime, and Garfield is why.

And yet, I let my kids watch this shit. I’m like, “Aw, they like Garfield the way I do!” instead of being like, “OH SWEET BABY JESUS ON A CORNCOB NO, THEY LIKE GARFIELD THE WAY I DO!” The cycle begins anew. Don’t let this happen to YOU. Turn your kids on to more responsible fare. This US Acres book is only nine bucks!

God Man, Fuck You Bret Stephens

In case you were busy actually enjoying your weekend, Jordan Peterson celebrity cruise attendant Bret Stephens went ahead and ruined everyone else’s by scribbling out a bunch of racist bumper sticker slogans in the New York Times. And this time, ol’ Bret did so without the veneer of preciousness that he usually grants to everything he touches…

Nothing bad is gonna happen to Bret Stephens for this, of course. He lives in the same magical fairy-tale land other conservative dudes live in where they receive the largest bullhorn and grandest sum of money possible to cry out to the world that they’ve been sent to the guillotine for daring to speak their precious truths. This is a country where poor Brett Kavanaugh, vociferously defended by his companion in Bret-itude, can get credibly accused of sexual assault and still ascend to the Supreme Court—and cement gerrymandering as eternal law after he arrives there—by squirting out a few in front of the Senate and telling everyone he enjoys beer. The Times isn’t gonna fire Bret Stephens. That joint employs some genuinely excellent take havers, such as Charles Blow. But the people in charge over there know that what REALLY drives engagement is letting smug pricks like Stephens and Bari Weiss and four-eyed penis David Brooks scream DEMOCRATS DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW TO PLEASE ME from inside the battlements of a supposed fortress of impregnable liberalism.

Stephens will get to keep spewing his noxious brand of horseshit over there for as long as he likes. What’s more, he even gets to deploy the cheap wingnut trick where you address criticism by telling everyone SORRY YOU WERE TOO STUPID TO UNDERSTAND MY REMARKABLY NUANCED TAKE:

The only nice thing I can say about Stephens’ thread linked in Jason Concepcion’s tweet above is that he limits the thread to just four tweets. And yet it won’t shock you to discover that he still someone manages to drone on insufferably throughout this miniseries, attempting to further clarify his shitty rhetoric like he’s doing YOU a fucking favor. Here comes the preciousness once more, now at full blast:

God man, FUCK you. Fuck you sideways. I think Stephens understands that he’s being dull, dishonest, clichéd, hostile, and still racist all in one go. But that’s a free lunch conservatives have been enjoying for years now. Stephens himself clearly has no problem grazing at that spread. No matter how much he says he’ll never vote for Trump—I AM CANCELLING MY SUBSCRIPTION TO DONALD TRUMP, SIR—he gets to act like people calling his views racist (they are) is the true offense here. And he is forever permitted to roll his eyes at anyone he finds beneath him, which means everyone.

Stephens should apologize for being who he is every fucking day of the week. He’s a repulsive slug of a man. That the Times would let Stephens indulge in the cycle of saying nasty shit and then arrogantly proclaiming that he expects people like Soledad O’Brien—who has had herself quite a week interacting with enormous alt-right shitbags—to apologize to him for daring to question him, is emblematic of the way the paper of record allows itself to get worked over by our least oppressed members of society positing that they are actually history’s greatest victims. Employing Bret Stephens means the Times gets to dodge criticism for being too liberal by going, “Look guys, we even let a shithead like Bret Stephens onto our pages!” Therefore, Stephens gets ample inches of column space to sort out who counts as a real American and who does not, and even makes sure to take an indirect jab at people who seek refuge here and end up dying because of the right wing’s institutional hatred and indifference toward them. And then… THEN… he gets to performatively wallow in the misery he’s sown.

It’s a fucking pathetic act. All of it. It’s a never-ending cycle where a conservative says some horrible shit, gets properly criticized for it, and then goes WELL I GUESS YOU JUST CAN’T SAY ANYTHING ANYMORE! in response to that criticism. Stephens doesn’t even have to pretend he’s listening to anyone else. Getting ratioed, to him, counts as prison time served. Inciting a wee bit of Timesman-on-Timesman violence is a point of troll pride for him. God forbid he suffer ACTUAL repercussions for saying such unapologetically ugly shit. The Times shouldn’t pay this fucking hack to trot out this labored act over and over again, but that’s precisely what Stephens has done throughout his entire tenure at the Times, with breathtaking amounts of both cynicism and condescension. And bossman James Bennet lets him. The Times doesn’t give a rat’s ass if they’re publishing de facto racialist pamphleteering. That’s just rounding out the discourse for them. Sorry if they can’t HANDLE the explosiveness of my perfectly aimed broadside.

And Stephens, of all people, has the predictable gall to say that everyone ELSE is the reason Trump is gonna win in 2020. It couldn’t possibly be because supposed guardians of democracy have foolishly offered STEPHENS asylum, helping disseminate his garbage into the mainstream and to act as sentry for the entrenched powers that be, and then paying him handsomely for the privilege. Nooooo… couldn’t be. I’d tell this pile of shit to take a look in the mirror. But I already know he’d gladly take me up on the offer, just for all the wrong reasons.

Holy Shit, Avengers: Infinity War Actually [Redacted] [Redacted] [Redacted]

Hey, have you seen Avengers: Infinity War? No? Stop reading, get the hell out of this post, leave your work early, get tickets, and then come right back here. Go, and go soon, because holy fucking shit, once people see this film this weekend there is no way you’re going to avoid spoilers.

S

P

O

I

L

E

R

SYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

YO!

They did it! They did The Snap!

Okay, okay, let’s back up. Just for a second. I know all anybody wants to talk about is the ending. I honestly was not sure whether we’d get the snap in this movie, or if this one would be the heroes briefly holding off the Mad Titan, but man, they really committed to it. Look at this list:

Gamora. Heimdall. Loki. Black Panther. Falcon. Vision. Bucky. Star-Lord. Mantis. Drax. Groot. Scarlet Witch. Dr. Strange. Spider-Man.

They’re all dead. They’re gone.

“Mr. Stark, I don’t want to go.”

Fucking stab me right in the heart and rip it out.

Let’s just run through the big moments, then we can comb through the finer things, because good lord, this film felt like nothing but big moments stacking on top of each other until the screen mercifully and frustratingly cut to black after that final dastardly content smile on the sunset.

From the moment the “Marvel Studios” logo disappears, one thing is made plain to viewers—this movie is not waiting for you to catch up, and it’s damn sure not going to do it for you. It opens after Xandar has already been decimated and the last of the Asgardians are being slaughtered. We’re introduced to Thanos, the film’s protagonist, in a way. He’s stunningly large, carrying Thor around like a sack of potatoes, and they show early on with a quick-but-devastating UFC match with Hulk that Thanos has the brawn to back up his high-minded talk.

This is just the first of many times Marvel shows off their high-tech motion-capture final product, and man, Thanos looks good. The subtle smirks, squints, smiles, strains, tears, all of it looks realistic, at least within the context of the MCU. Josh Brolin’s performance is pitch-perfect—if Thanos were just a raving genocidal meathead, the movie would crumble beneath its star power and nonstop narrative. But in a movie that clearly values every second, they allow Brolin quite a bit of room to introduce us to the inner-workings of a character that’s only ever been on the MCU’s periphery, through both flashbacks and some expository dialogue with Gamora and Dr. Strange. His home planet, Titan, was overpopulated and everybody except him died, and since then he’s been going around trying to wipe out half of the universe’s population. The Infinity Gauntlet and the Infinity Stones are the quickest route to that end goal. Over the course of the film, his motivations aren’t perfectly crafted to the point that you cheer for him, but they root themselves as believable enough in your mind early on, so that when he does the things he does in the latter half of the film, you feel at least part of the weight he feels when he makes some fairly dramatic decisions.

Back to the Asgardians: Loki and Heimdall are toast, as far as I’m concerned. My coworker Eric Van Allen pointed out that you can’t really have Thor movies without Loki, but for some reason, even though they allude to a hopeless revival a couple times, my feeling is that Loki is gone for good. (If that’s the case, this movie just wiped out essentially everything Thor: Ragnorak set up for Thor’s future story lines.)

The New York battle sequence with Iron Man, Wong, Spider-Man, and Dr. Strange is fast-paced, hilarious, and entertaining. And given that we’d just seen Loki snuffed out, the hindsight knowledge that everyone makes it out of this fight alive wasn’t quite as clear while everyone was getting their ass kicked. (We’ll come back to the Hulk’s low-T issues in a bit.) The most important thing the fight did was give us some much needed quality time with Ebony Maw, the clear standout among the Black Order. The Black Order seem to be Thanos’s top-four warriors, all with different strengths—Maw moves things, Proxima Midnight is a good fighter and can telekinetically control weapons, Black Dwarf is basically a dumb, scaly version of Hulk, and Corvus Glaive is Midnight’s boy, and he has a glaive.

It’s unclear just what the upper limits on Maw’s powers are—he splits a car in half, seamlessly controls metal objects, bests Dr. Strange pretty quickly—but he’s the only one among the Order that’s really given any sort of opportunity to voice his role, which is that of a devoted acolyte. He talks about how it’s “salvation” to be killed by Thanos; the other members of the Order just seem to really enjoy the killin’ part. (I’m sure there was a romantic goodbye scene between Proxima Midnight and Corvus Glaive that didn’t make the cut, but without it, Proxima and Black Dwarf are just bodies for the Avengers to punch and do slightly cooler Finishing Kills with than the six-armed aliens.) Maw’s build-up is short-lived, though, because he gets pretty easily disposed of on the spaceship back to Titan.

In Scotland, Scarlet Witch and Vision are chilling under the radar, thinking about running away together (like I said, this movie is not spending any time on the family farm) before one of the best jump-scares of the MCU, with Glaive stabbing Vision through the gut out of nowhere. This fight is honestly small beans compared to everything else, but it’s necessary to set up Vision’s tragic story, intro the Disgraced Avengers, and also get us to Wakanda.

The Guardians-Thor meet-up was a natural choice given the direction Taika Waititi took Ragnarok, and the humor here felt natural. The whole part about Star-Lord trying to establish male dominance in front of Gamora was cheesy, sure, but the two Chrises are good enough actors that it was fun for the brief moment it lasted. The Rocket-Thor pairing worked a lot better, if only because they both seem to possess a more grounded understanding of the reaches of power possible in the universe. Star-Lord, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to quite comprehend it, even joking around when Gamora begs him to kill her should Thanos get his hands on her. It takes her forcing him to swear on his dead mother to get him to finally stop deflecting and start accepting the gravity of the war they find themselves in. Of course, when he tries to do so, and saves his life by impressing Thanos, it doesn’t even matter thanks to that little red stone—that whole Collector fake-out sequence was amazing. Given that we’d already said farewell to Loki, I sincerely thought that was the end of Mantis and Drax.

The Thanos-Gamora setup is obviously what the writers and directors were banking on as one of the pillars holding up this movie. Only providing a single flashback asked a lot of us, as we had to then infer from Gamora constantly hurling insults at the big purple fella that their relationship deteriorated after he won five-year-old Gamora over with a shiny switchblade. But Zoe Saldana is, thankfully, a skilled enough actor to convey all the middle, unseen history between then and now—Thanos took her, killed her parents, made her his daughter and main assassin before she ran into a half-human named Peter Quill.

Cards on the table, I didn’t instantly remember how the Red Skull could have ended up on Vormir (he fell through a wormhole when he tried to hold the Space Stone in the first Captain America), but there he was. Some more cards on the table: I did not think that was when Gamora was going to die. I thought Gamora and the Soul Stone would be last, in terms of how and when Thanos figured out what the ultimate secret to obtaining the stone was. I had also convinced myself there was no way she would take Thanos to the one place the Soul Stone was, but then it kind of made sense when she tried to convince him that his path was doomed to failure because he didn’t love anybody. Given that she insisted on having Quill kill her, I have to think that final grasp on the ledge was an act, and that she realized too late that Thanos would indeed instantly realize that he did love her. But nope. It was as simple as that—Gamora, the most fierce, calculated, morally emboldened of the Guardians is no more. Barring a giant undoing of the entire movie’s events (certainly not unfathomable given what happened in this one), Gamora is gone.

The battle on Titan is split up over a series of cuts between the initial assault on Wakanda and Thor’s smithying side-mission. And here’s where the most frustrating part of the movie comes: When Star-Lord breaks down, refuses to believe Thanos, and then punches him, everyone in my theater groaned and gasped, because it is totally believable if you’re invested in Quill’s character. Over the course of the two Guardians films and his role in this movie, Quill often fails to comprehend matters outside of his immediate sphere; he’s riding high from realizing he’s part-Celestial and being a respected galaxy-guarder—even after Thor tells him Xandar is gone, he continues trying to one-up him. It is made quite clear that he has neither of the dread and anxiety of Iron Man or the pragmatism of Dr. Strange, and in this instance, it costs the half the universe their lives.

The first half of the battle on Wakanda is both very cool and very Avengers, which is to say we never really have a fear of either the Black Order or the aliens besting our heroes—by this point, we know they’re setting the table for the titan. There are plenty of great action shots, and even when the point predictably comes where the music takes a darker turn and the alien army seems to be overwhelming our heroes, the payoff of Thor coming through with his new Groot-Axe somehow still works, because that’s just what happens when you have Chris Hemsworth and an unlimited special effects budget. Both the Axe Throw and the Big Slam rule hard, and neither are top-5 moments in this movie.

No, the real fun comes after Dr. Strange turns over the Time Stone to save Tony Stark’s life—for a split-second, I was prepping for the end of Iron Man—and Thanos makes for Earth. That final walk, from the waterfall to the cliff’s edge where Vision was in a crumpled heap, is handled beautifully. By this point, we know none of the heroes in the frame have a chance. The closest thing to hope we get is Captain America surprising the towering monstrous villain by holding him back for a moment, and even then, it’s barely been two seconds before Thanos disposes of him with a screen-shaking right hook. Despite his Civil War activities, Vision is a completely sympathetic character this film, and it pays off when you watch Thanos smirk and simply rewind time and kill him, again, by plucking that stone, and a glob of wires and cables, from his forehead. And even then, you think that is the worst of it. When Thor finally appears and sends his axe several inches into Thanos’s chest, you think that this may be the end of the titan. But the camera lingers a moment too long—the first twinge of those purple lips was enough to signal what was coming, but by then your breath is gone. Then, Snap.

Everybody in the theater said something as each character floated away (Black Panther elicited the loudest cries) but for 30 seconds, everyone sat motionless and silent as Iron Man held Peter Parker in his arms, as the kid from Queens slowly drifted away. That moment, that one where Spider-Man fades—shit, I don’t think I quite have the words for it, even almost a full day later. I knew they were milking it, and damnit I still couldn’t stand to watch it. That’s how you do the damn Snap.

Here are my nitpicks and assorted thoughts:

The Black Order had no backstory, no motivations, and were basically just there to be people other than Thanos that our heroes could punch. Black Dwarf mumbles and grunts roughly three words; Proxima Midnight gets one line about how Black Widow stabbed her lover; and Corvus Glaive gets a good jump-scare and a couple decently frightening close-ups. That is largely it from this bunch, and while they make for some decent filler fighting, you can’t help but wonder if there wasn’t something more that could have been done here—then again, I’m not sure where you’d find the time to do so given this movie’s length and density.
I could have used a bit more time on pre-apocalypse Titan. Again, I’m not sure where we’d find the minutes for this, but I thought the single flashback to Titan with Dr. Strange sold short his commitment to this whole mission of population control. The Gamora flashback was quick, but the movie committed a powerful actress to convincing us that her experience with him was hell, in large part because it was a one-way relationship. The Titan-Thanos backstory only has Thanos to lean on, and while it’s still moving, maybe just one more convincing shot of Thanos pleading with his planet elders to hear him out may have made the mission more palatable. That it was as acceptable as it ended up being is a credit to Brolin and the CGI wizards.
Let’s talk about the banter, and this isn’t precisely a complaint. Infinity War is hands down the best in-theater experience Marvel’s put out. It’s grand, somber, insane, beautiful, and fun as hell. And a big part of that is because Marvel was able to handle each one of these characters so carefully and maintain the established tones and character quirks of each one. That’s naturally expressed via jokes and quips. So, if I have to shoehorn a very specific qualm in here, it’s that some jokes were too funny and made me and other people laugh a beat too long and miss a line. I will note that the Russos did a decent job of leaving laugh pauses, where we get a non-speaking shot of another character raising their eyebrows or laughing; I was just part of a particularly invested opening-night crowd, with one guy sitting near me that laughed at 100 percent full-volume for every fucking joke. Learn when to chuckle, my dude.
I’m not sure how people who aren’t at least halfway invested in the MCU will consume this film. It’s got numerous beautiful landscapes and set pieces, a couple excellent fight sequences, more than its fair share of truly emotional farewells, and pretty tight subplots that lead us to that magic moment. But so much of the emotional heft came from the baggage I carried into this movie, and I have a hard time understanding what these stakes would mean to someone who really didn’t care much about Captain America or Star-Lord or Gamora or Spider-Man as characters. As long as someone is a general superhero movie fan, I think it’ll still land, but hoo boy, as a 10-year fan, that final 30 minutes had my palms gushing sweat.
The “Iron Spider” suit and “Bleeding Edge” Iron Man suit both ruled very hard. I was curious how they were going to get nanotech from Wakanda into Stark’s hands, and they found a pretty slick way, melding together that info with the additional sting of realizing he’s ready to start a family and a life with Pepper Potts. Love the use of the extra spider legs and that we don’t have to spend any time exploring its new tricks.
Hulk has some stuff to figure out, it seems. After Thanos gives Hulk the ass-whooping of the lifetime (I half-expected Jim Ross to make a cameo when Thanos slammed him), Hulk is no longer interested in fighting, or even coming out to play, telling Bruce Banner “No!” multiple times. I’m not sure where this is building to for Avengers 4, since we’re not getting a Hulk cameo in either Ant-Man or Captain Marvel. All of our heroes have lost someone they care about by the end of the movie; for Banner, that just happens to be the big green beast that’s now hiding inside him, refusing to come out.
Hawkeye and Ant-Man are NOT in this movie! They’re under “house arrest,” according to Black Widow, who says they took a deal with the government after things died down from the Civil War debacle. So, expect Clint to show up on the family farm, either in Ant-Man & The Wasp or Avengers 4.

There are only a couple for-sure things moving forward:

The Snap will go down as the single boldest decision Marvel’s committed to, narratively, in this entire 10-year run. Saying you are making a movie based on heavy source material is one thing in a reality where movies only get made if they can continue making you money—Captain America survived Civil War despite dying in the comic version. But to actually follow through with one of the most iconic comic book moments, that results in some of the most important (and yes, profitable) superheroes dying and not being resurrected in the same film, is a decision that’s earned, in part by having the source material as something to point to, and in part by making 18 preceding movies, of which the majority are fun and entertaining. Ending the movie with Thanos in a cabin on some random planet was a bold move that Marvel understood would not an acceptable cliffhanger if everything that preceded it didn’t earn it.
Tony Stark is going to be fucked up. Part of Civil War and the entirety of Spiderman: Homecoming made very clear how Stark felt about using what is essentially a child soldier in this greater war he’s seen in both visions and dreams since he first fell back through the wormhole in 2012. Now, to have Spider-Man die in his arms, pleading with him like the child he is, just hours after he spoke to Pepper about wanting a child of their own, that’s it. That’s Stark’s worst nightmare in the fading flesh. I’m not sure what Avengers 4 holds for him, but expect to see a broken, unhinged Tony Stark hellbent on saving the universe and not himself.
We’re absolutely still in the 1 in 14 million chance Dr. Strange told the team on Titan about. Everything from him telling Stark he’d risk “the kid’s life” and his life to protect the Stone, to his sudden willingness to turn over the Time Stone, to his parting message to Stark screams that The Snap was part of that larger plan.
I have little idea what that larger plan is. All we have to go off of is the knowledge that Ant-Man & The Wasp is out in July and Captain Marvel is out next March—so, some combination of the quantum zone, the B.A.R.F technology, and Captain Marvel’s Kree connections will somehow lead us to beating Thanos. I’m sure those movies will fill in some gaps, but for once, I feel pretty clueless.

I’ve only watched every second of Avengers: Infinity War one time. My judgment is bound to change once I see it a second time and can pick it apart beat-by-beat; I’ll think of ideas of what the movie could have been, and formulate theories on how it could have better spent its time or built its characters. But for the first time, for the first full 2 hours and 40 minutes I spent starting at a massive screen watching what was basically three third acts, I couldn’t have been happier. It’s a cliché, but movies this daring and grand and beautiful are the reason people still go see them in theaters.

Infinity War’s floor is so high, that when you start to nitpick the film’s various pitfalls—Dinklage wasn’t really all that special; half of the Black Order were basically just walking punch machines; not enough time on pre-apocalypse Titan—you begin to realize just how impressive this film’s accomplishments are. This is a movie with 18 prequels and 30-some stars, none of whom feel cheated in terms of screen time, and more importantly, the quality of that screen time.

The main critique I’ve heard so far concerns the cliffhanger, but there’s just no way you could smash the collection of all the stones in half and still have a halfway decent film. The constant ramping up of the action and the stakes—Thanos threw a fucking moon at Iron Man!—and the commitment to the characters while not weakening the action or stakes made this movie’s ending absolutely perfect for me. For all that the MCU is (a movie-making, money-printing machine), if the trade-off for movies this fun requires that I have to go see another this summer and two more next year, then I’m all for it. “Thanos will return,” and I couldn’t be happier.

Avengers: Infinity War was a double-truck book fight come to life over the course of a full movie. It was colorful—no drab grey-blue palettes, here—it was well-acted, it was respectful of the source material, and it grounded itself in real stakes and balanced itself with a levity established in prior installments. It is a movie a younger me would have never expected to see made so perfectly, and it’s a movie even current-aged me could only halfway imagine.

As my girlfriend and I staggered out of the movie theater, shell-shocked and dazed from the most epic, wide-ranging, charging, heart-ripper of a MCU movie yet, we grasped for words to describe what we just saw. For whatever faults you have with the capitalistic film-making system or the marketing campaigns or the glut of superhero movies, all I can say is no other movie series has come close to making me feel that way. The day Marvel stops giving me that feeling, I’ll stop going. As best I can tell, based off Infinity War, that won’t be any time soon.

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood Is A Fun Movie About Making Shit Up

Screenshot: Sony Pictures Entertainment (YouTube)

In 1992, when I would have been 11 years old or so, I went with my family to the theater to see the movie Radio Flyer, starring Elijah Wood and the annoying dinosaur enthusiast kid from Jurassic Park (Joseph Mazzello) as brothers in an abusive household in... probably the late 1950s or early 1960s? This was a late and particularly bad entry in the bad post-Stand By Me/Wonder Years genre of shows and movies in which aging white baby-boomer dudes narrate bittersweet and needle-drop-festooned memories of their childhood adventures in retro-America. In this case, Tom Hanks, playing a grownup version of Wood’s character, tells the movie’s story as a lesson to his own squabbling sons.

The way it goes is: Wood and Mazzello’s well-meaning but broke and desperate single mom has shacked up with a guy who, when she’s out working, habitually gets drunk and viciously beats Mazzello’s character. Over the course of the movie the beatings get worse and worse. It becomes clear that before long he’s going to kill the little kid or cripple him for life. So the brothers, inspired by a local folktale, begin constructing a functioning airplane out of their Radio Flyer toy wagon and erector sets and shit, with the idea that Mazzello will fly away in the airplane and be safe from the stepdad. (This is already awful, just awful, but as an 11-year-old I just wanted to believe that you could make an airplane out of toys and fly it.)

So the moment of truth arrives, and the absurd little plane, with Mazzello aboard, is rocketing down the bumpy slope of the local mountain, trying to pick up enough speed to take off before it rattles apart. And then it does! And it flies away! And you can see its twinkling lights up there in the night sky! And Frodo stands there with his big tearful eyes and radios a goodbye to his little brother, who’s safe from the abuser now but who will never come back! And everybody in the theater is all choked up because love and loyalty and the pure little-kid impulse to protect each other enabled these brothers to do this amazing thing, and loving something and letting it go or whatever!

I was pumped, man. I think my brother and I talked about Radio Flyer for like a week straight. Then there came a point when I was talking about the ending, and how cool it was that the brothers’ silly little plane actually flew, man, and the little brother went off and toured the world in his little toy airplane instead of suffering and being abused, and my mom waited until I paused for breath and said, with a kind of merciful gentleness you might use to remind a confused elderly relative that, don’t you remember, Aunt Mabel died in 1983, “Well, that isn’t what really happened.”

What do you mean, it didn’t really happen? Of course it happened! It happened right there on the screen! But, no. Abused children cannot escape their abusers by building functioning airplanes out of toys and flying away to have adventures; telling a story that ended that way would be utterly reprehensible. What happened was, the little brother crashed and died on his way down that slope, because that’s the only thing that could happen if a little kid tried to make an airplane out of toys and then sat in it and launched it down a bumpy mountain slope. But to his big brother, this had been a kind of escape, because the little brother’s suffering had ended and the evil stepdad couldn’t get to him anymore. The big brother had turned his little brother’s memory into a fable he could use to help his own kids have insights into things like love and promise-keeping and getting along or whatever.

This, also, is a completely reprehensible story to tell in a movie pitched at kids! It’s possibly even bleaker and more appalling than the literal interpretation! Radio Flyer is one of the worst movies I’ve seen in my life. But my mom was right about it. The little brother definitely is dead as hell at the end. More to the point, this has stuck with me as a time when my mom exploded my brain and permanently changed the way I read or watched fiction.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino’s new movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margot Robbie as various movie-industry people in Hollywood in 1969, is a movie fascinated with the liberty storytelling gives a person to imagine and create and tell whatever story they want, to banish the real world all the way outside of the universe of a story, even if it’s a story about the real people and events of the real world, and even if the only audience is the storyteller himself.

One of the first things that happens in the movie is DiCaprio’s character, a fading actor named Rick Dalton, explains his dependence on a personal driver by saying his car is in the shop for repairs, and a narrator’s voice breaks in to tell viewers this isn’t true, that Rick needs a driver because his license is suspended for drunk driving. Within the scene, the fib passes unchallenged. It’s never clear whether the talent agent to whom Rick told it (played by a cutely doddering Al Pacino) would have cared either way.

Later, alone up on Rick’s roof, doing the demeaning work of fixing Rick’s television antenna, unemployed stuntman Cliff (Pitt) reflects on the events that damaged his professional standing—namely, the time he smashed a parked car while kicking Bruce Lee’s ass in front of a bunch of people. Whether Cliff’s remembered version of events is accurate or not is never made clear. Later events affirm that he is indeed a formidable fighter, but his recollection of Lee as a loudmouthed, self-aggrandizing phony seems at odds with Lee’s two subsequent appearances in the movie, outside of Cliff’s memory, as an encouraging and accommodating instructor helping Sharon Tate (Robbie) and then Jay Sebring (Emile Hirsch) practice martial arts. What’s clear is that remembering it this way helps Cliff feel better about things. “Fair enough,” he shrugs with a little smile, and returns to fixing the antenna.

Rick and Cliff aren’t the only ones doing this; it’s a fictional movie, after all, written by somebody and directed by somebody. At the nadir of his career and with his confidence totally shot, Rick somehow summons the wherewithal to nail, on the first take, a big scene in a guest appearance he’s filming for a younger star’s western TV show. Notably, the cameras and crew and all signs that it’s taking place on a filming set disappear until the scene-within-the-scene cuts. The director reacts ecstatically to Rick’s performance; the preternaturally wise and self-possessed eight-year-old girl co-starring in the scene leans in to tell Rick it was the best acting she’s ever seen.

Within the film, there’s no particular reason to say this didn’t actually happen; it did. But there’s no particular reason it had to happen that way. There never was a Rick Dalton who starred in western TV shows in the 1960s, so this one just as easily could have flubbed that scene, melted down, been attacked by bees, and been struck by a meteor. Instead, Rick gets a break, and things get better for him, because that’s how the story’s author preferred it.

That’s always the case in fiction, but Once Upon a Time in Hollywood calls your attention to it, by placing its story in a real place in a time that already happened and peopling it at least in part with famous characters who actually existed, the events of whose lives are extensively documented, and then monkeying with them in conspicuous ways. No stuntman kicked Bruce Lee’s ass and smashed him into the side of a car. No show called Bounty Law ever aired on NBC. The show Rick guest-stars on, Lancer, was a real show, but no Rick Dalton ever guest-starred on it. And, most conspicuously, no fading western TV star and his stuntman buddy fought off and killed Manson Family hippies Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, and Patricia Krenwinkel next door to actress Sharon Tate’s house on the night of August 8, 1969.

That last bit is the movie’s climax, as well as its most drastic and irreconcilable departure from actual history. In reality, Watson, Atkins, and Krenwinkel infamously invaded Tate’s home that night, on Charles Manson’s orders, and brutally murdered her, as well as her unborn baby and four guests in her house. In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the cultists are distracted when an irritable Rick (Tate’s next-door neighbor) yells at them, decide to murder him instead, and get just the absolute shit killed out of them by Rick, Cliff, Rick’s new Italian wife Francesca, and Cliff’s dog Brandy, in a cartoonishly violent sequence that had my theater audience laughing hysterically. At least partly in relief, I think. Tate, who moves through the movie outside of Rick’s storyline as a sweetly happy counterpoint to his angst and despair, doesn’t even witness the horror. Offscreen, she hears the events described to her after the fact, over an intercom, in a sentence or two. She invites Rick in to have a drink with her and her friends, and that’s the end of the movie. It feels merciful, and deeply weird, and extremely sad; it makes the actual events of the actual night of August 8, 1969 feel painfully nearby.

In broad terms this is similar to how Tarantino ended Inglourious Basterds, his 2009 movie about a squad of Nazi-hunting Jewish soldiers behind the fighting lines during World War II. That movie famously climaxed with a pair of the soldiers machine-gunning Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels to pulp in a burning movie theater, which, while deliriously enjoyable to watch on screen, is of course not at all how Hitler and Goebbels met their ends in the real world. I suppose a thing to do with this is to try to divine some insight into Quentin Tarantino: Auteur Filmmaker, since after all he’s the guy making the choices. The problem with that is that Tarantino is not a very interesting person, just a big tall coked-up weirdo who has internalized a bazillion movies, and I don’t actually care all that much what these storytelling choices can tell me about him. If these movies are about Quentin Tarantino, that sucks.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is fun, though, and I liked it. It’s pretty to look at, its vision of 1969 Los Angeles drawn in bright sunlit colors during the day and neon at night and filled with bitchin’ classic cars. The soundtrack is good and largely though not entirely avoids the obvious needle-drops associated with the time period. Pitt’s as wryly detached as in virtually every other movie he’s ever made, but mostly to good use. DiCaprio does his volume-scoring thing, frothing and raging and weeping, and for once seems in on the joke; he’s funny as hell. Robbie’s relative lack of spoken lines has been the subject of some controversy; as an artistic choice it’d be a lot easier to accept if the camera didn’t make quite so many trips down her bare legs—if the story had as much use for her voice as it does for her figure—but she makes her scenes sweet and sad anyway. The movie’s high point is just Robbie’s Tate, sitting in a dark movie theater watching the real Tate’s performance in The Wrecking Crew and taking in the reactions of her fellow moviegoers. The movie’s peppered with weirdo details (Wolf’s Tooth Dog Food, “Good Food for Mean Dogs”), welcome cameos, and celebrity impersonations. It’s never slow or boring.

I liked the movie best as a sort of shaggy-dog riff on storytelling and escapism and the thrill of being able to make a story go wherever you want. The title of the movie itself owns up to its fairy tale nature. Some critics have read it as nostalgic for what Hollywood was like in 1969; from there you can interrogate which exact differences between 1969 and now might make Quentin Tarantino, man of many extremely shitty takes and troubling behaviors, nostalgic for the former. But there again, I don’t care about Quentin Tarantino, and 15 bucks is too much many times over to pay to be made to think about him. I like better the idea that what happens in the movie is what the movie is about, only and entirely, without any attempt at climbing inside Tarantino’s mind to discern his authorial intent. It’s great when Brad Pitt takes his shirt off. It’s funny when Leonardo DiCaprio walks out into the cul-de-sac in a kimono with a pitcher of frozen margaritas in his hand. It’s a relief when the murderous cultists die instead of the kind and pregnant young woman.

I don’t know what any of this has to do with Radio Flyer. I just couldn’t figure out where to start the blog. I can’t really figure out how to end it, either, but that bit’s easier.